BONUS Ask Marc Anything #11
Okay, this is it.
Ask me anything.
Thank you for your questions.
Let's get in it.
Let's get on it.
Let's get to them.
Is there an audio version of From Bleak to Dark?
Yes, there will be a vinyl release from craft recordings of...
From Bleak to Dark.
It's out on digital right now.
And the vinyl is forthcoming.
I will let you know when that comes out.
Can you expand about why the night of the Chevy Chase roast was such a bad night for you personally?
Well, I can.
I had accepted to do the roast.
I'm not really a roast comic.
I don't really know how to do it.
I still don't.
I didn't really know how to do it then.
I'm not very good at insult comedy as a genre movie.
You know, I can be funny in an insulting way, but I didn't really know the format.
It made me nervous.
I had to write a bunch of jokes.
My ex-wife Mishnah wrote a couple jokes, and it was before the roasts were really a thing.
But the bottom line was it was a huge dais.
There were just it seemed like 100 people on it.
Many of them had nothing to do with roasting.
The audience was huge.
It was at the Hilton, I think, in New York City.
And they were eating.
And it was just a flat night.
Chevy didn't really want to engage or be there.
Everyone was bombing.
And I just had a very hard time bombing that hard in front of that many people and my peers.
And it just kind of sent me spiraling into a kind of not a nervous breakdown, but it was it was embarrassing.
It was hard to bomb that hard.
Look, they made it look good, but it just felt like a very public humiliation.
Now, granted, any bomb is that in a way, but you do get used to it.
But I just didn't feel.
It just felt like a very almost.
dismissive room.
Chevy wasn't fun.
There was nothing fun about it.
And once the joke started crapping out, it's just like any other bomb.
It was just a big one.
And I felt like it made me look bad.
I felt like everyone was judging me, even though everyone else was bombing, except for maybe a couple of people.
And I don't know.
It was humiliating and it made me doubt myself in a very deep way.
I have to assume there are some comics you don't enjoy as much as others.
Without or with naming names, what is it about certain comics that you don't enjoy?
Perhaps type of material or stage presence or something else.
Well, I don't like not being able to see somebody's being.
You know, I don't like people that are so distanced from their material or from their style that I can't get a sense of who they are.
I don't like hackneyed jokes.
I don't like comics that don't have very good material in terms of originality or how it's executed.
I don't like people that aren't necessarily interesting or innately funny.
But I can appreciate a pretty broad spectrum of comedy, but I like to see, I like it to be a full, fully realized thing, both on behalf of the comic and his or her or their character.
connection to the material.
I don't like people that that do cheap comedy or or or just I can even handle a little bit of hackiness from comics if they at least approach it in a different way.
It's really a mixed bag of why I register people as being not funny or I can't watch it.
Sometimes I'm embarrassed for them.
Sometimes I feel like it's hard for me to watch.
There's a few different reasons.
Why do you ask us to hang on a minute at the end of every episode?
Well, that's where an ad is going to go.
But if you have WTF Plus, you don't hear any ads.
So you just hear like a little bit of silence.
So if you're just hearing that, you're obviously a top tier listener and you don't hear the ads that come after it.
Do you ever listen to the produced version of the podcast to see what made it in and what editing liberties Brendan took?
Not really.
I will listen to episodes that Brendan, like, thought came out amazing or that he did a miraculous job editing.
Or if I can just tell that he was proud of the work.
But generally, I trust him personally.
A hundred percent.
And he'll tell me, like, sometimes I'll just ask him, I'm like, did that thing make it in?
He's like, nope.
And I'm like, all right.
I've been listening to the archive in nearly all the first 500 episodes.
Your intro has changed.
You say something in it that I have yet to make out.
It sounds like Numbajudaev.
It might have something to do with El Chupacabra.
What the fuck is it?
It was in the montage of audio clips, you know, in the original version of the show.
And it is Nick Kroll in the character as El Chupacabra saying WTF.
Yeah.
WTF.
So it sounds maybe like Numba Judev to you, but it's El Chupacabra saying WTF.
What are your thoughts on so many celebrities starting interview podcasts years after you and a few others brought it mainstream?
Do you think it dilutes what you are doing when the same guest is having multiple long-form discussions at the same time?
I don't know.
I don't pay attention to any of them.
I don't listen to any podcasts.
Brendan's on top of it sometimes.
But ultimately, it was like that at the beginning.
It was even worse at the beginning of podcasting because there was only a handful of us.
And especially with the comics, a lot of them would go from show to show.
I think the thing that I resent the most is that because of their peer group, some of these bigger celebrities have a lot easier access to certain other celebrities that I may want to interview and we can't just get to them.
So that bums me out.
But other than that, I don't know.
I don't know what's going on out there.
We do what we do and generally we do it differently.
Yeah.
Was there a specific point where you and Brendan realized WTF was going to pay all the bills or did it just sort of ease in?
No, there was a point.
You know, I was all in all the time, as was Brendan.
But Brendan, you know, had to have another job because he has a family and he's smart and he doesn't.
He's a responsible human being.
So he had another job for the first.
Oh, my God.
Must have been four or five years more.
What?
Probably.
Yeah, probably five years.
He had a job until 2013 and he was secretly working as my partner on WTF and editing everything.
He was doing the same job.
He just couldn't tell anybody about it.
It always bummed me out.
Because I always wanted to bring him up in interviews, and I couldn't because he had a no-compete clause at his other job.
So it was on the down low.
And then in 2013, he said, look, I'm going to go full-time with WTF.
And I said, hey, man, you don't have to do that.
Don't take any chances.
I was freaked out.
I'm like, you got a family, man.
Look, I could lose everything.
I don't care.
But don't do it, man.
But he was like—
Don't worry about me.
I did the research.
I know what I'm doing.
And I'm like, all right.
And that instilled a certain amount of confidence in me as well.
Because I don't pay attention to numbers, really.
So I don't know what the fuck is going on.
But that was the point.
What's the story of the purple painting you used as a background for your selfies with guests?
There's a painting in my foyer.
Yeah.
by an artist named Rima Gulom.
That's R-E-M-A.
First name, last name, G-H-U-L-O-U-M.
And she was a peer of my ex's, who was also a painter, an abstract painter.
Sarah Kane was a big fan of her friend Rima's work.
And we went to a show with some of Remus paintings.
And I just love that painting.
And I want to be a patron of the arts in a way that I can afford.
So I bought a painting.
And it's a big, beautiful, purple, abstract painting.
I think she's a great painter.
And apparently that was done as a sort of in memory of Prince.
It was done shortly after Prince passed away.
So that's the story on that painting.
One episode that has always stood out to me was Cheech and Chong.
Do you have any fond memories of that interview?
I loved every second of that interview.
That interview was amazing because I grew up with Cheech and Chong listening to their records.
And I couldn't believe I was going to get to interview them both together.
And when I had the headphones on and they were just sitting there talking, they sounded exactly like Cheech and Chong.
It was fucking hilarious.
What a great day that was.
Are you familiar with or have an opinion about Phil Hendry?
Yes.
Yeah, he's kind of a radio genius.
And I'd always heard about him and always knew about him.
And then I started listening to him a bit.
And he's been on WTF twice.
Episode 393 and a short one on episode 605.
He was also in season two of Marin.
So, yes, I like Phil Hendry.
And...
And I'm familiar with him.
I was wondering if Mark has ever read the work or had any level of interaction with Robert Lipsight, Sam Lipsight's father, from co-writing Dick Gregory's autobiography to being the sports writer who seemingly cares the least about winning in the context of sports.
He seems like a really interesting figure.
I did stand up at...
Bob Lipsight's wedding and I've met him several times and I know a lot about him because I'm best friends with his son so I hear about Robert Lipsight quite a bit you're often pretty cavalier about expressing your opinions of people and their work on the air Jerry Seinfeld Babylon etc as a listener it's appreciated but does this ever come back to bite you in the ass in ways you regret
Well, I've long realized that you take a chance when you're in the world of entertainment and you still want to be somewhat of a cultural critic that, you know, it's a fine line and sure, it's bitten me in the ass.
Do I regret it?
Not really.
And if I do, I try to apologize in a genuine way about it and assess whether or not it was worth it.
You sometimes have guests who are reluctant to share or reveal things.
How do you pivot and try to get information out of the more...
Emotionally closed off subjects.
Well, you know, I've grown adept at feeling the line and feeling the resistance if it's an emotional thing or I just I'm very I've become intuitive about where it happens and I'll kind of shift the conversation or try to frame it in a different way.
without them really knowing it to kind of begin to get into it.
And then if they're not going to go there, they're not going to go there.
I mean, what are you going to do?
You move on to something else.
Do I have a favorite Hitchcock movie?
You know, I don't know.
I'm not a huge Hitchcock person, but I did rewatch Psycho not too long ago.
And I do like that movie.
Thank you for introducing me to Kelly Reichardt.
Old Joy and Certain Women blew my mind.
Are there any other under the radar directors or movies that you'd recommend?
I don't know what under the radar is.
And usually if I have a reaction to something, you hear it on the show or you hear me talk to the director.
I don't know that there's anything that I haven't shared on the show around that kind of stuff.
Usually, yeah, they all come on the show or I talk about it.
anything that I react to like that.
So I can't necessarily give you the names, but I know that I've talked about all of them on the show.
A while back, you had a film crew following you for a documentary.
Can we please get an update?
It's ongoing.
Stephen Fine Arts, the guy who directed my HBO special, has been directing this documentary about me for like three years already.
It just, it never ended.
And now we're kind of in this zone where we need an ending.
And I keep telling him, I'm like, what are you waiting for?
Something tragic to happen?
Let's just make a decision.
What's your favorite household chore?
I feel like you'd be good at ironing clothes.
Well, it's definitely not that.
I can't remember the last time I ironed clothes.
You know, I like cooking.
Is that a household chore?
I really...
I love to cook.
I love to straighten out.
I love to, you know, I used to be a stacker, but now I don't mind tidying up in a general sense.
But if cooking is a household chore, I'll take it.
And I do like the feeling of finishing laundry.
I like folding my clothes.
Do you let the cats sleep with you?
Yes.
If they will sleep, you know, Charlie's a little asshole still and it's really hit or miss.
Sometimes he'll, you know, I'll leave the door open and I'll try to get him to just relax.
But no, he wants, you know, the ball.
He wants to throw things.
He wants to climb the curtains.
He wants to make noises of any kind.
But they're more than welcome to sleep with me if they sleep.
Sammy doesn't really seem to like to sleep in my bed.
Buster will.
And Charlie definitely will.
But yeah, they can do whatever they want, sadly.
Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and think, fuck, why did I say that?
Or generally have regrets about revealing too much of yourself?
Yes.
I don't think it's like waking up in the middle of the night.
But after a stand-up show or after something on the podcast, I have to kind of accept that I said it and live with the decision.
Usually I don't regret it, but I don't always know why I do it.
And I do feel a little exposed by it.
But that is a big part of how I do what I do.
Inside your comedian brain, what is the difference between you standing on stage trying to make a live audience laugh, you sitting alone with a microphone trying to make your podcast audience laugh, and you in private conversation trying to make an individual friend laugh?
Or is it all the same to you?
No, they're all very different.
You know, when you're on stage, you know, that's that's your purpose.
That's your intent.
And you're moving towards them.
And, you know, it's very immediate.
And that is the job of the comic.
You want to get laughs where you decide to get them.
Sometimes it's impulsive.
Sometimes it's improvised.
But generally, that is your job.
You get up there and you focus and you do the job and and the craft of making the audience laugh.
And there is a version of me that lives up there.
These versions are not that different.
Sitting alone with a microphone here, I'm not that as conscious of trying to make people laugh.
And I wouldn't say that I'm always funny.
I think that I'm more varied.
I would say I'm less funny here than the other people.
certainly on a standup mic.
I know when I've got something funny to say and I know that how to innately pace it, but it's not my intent on this mic to be funny all the time.
I can relax in private conversation.
Well, look, man, if I've got a friend and you know, you're kind of riffing it out, you're going back and forth.
They say something, I say something.
So it's more spontaneous.
It's more exciting.
It's part of the exchange.
And that, I think that is where
the idea of being naturally funny becomes very apparent.
It does on the standup stage as well in improv and improvising, but in conversation where you're kind of in a, in a, a, an interaction, a relationship in a conversation where,
And it kind of moves the conversation along or to add something to it.
You know, I do it a lot with Sam, with Jerry, all my friends.
I like making those guys laugh.
And sometimes out of those conversations comes great ideas for stand-up.
Not directly, but, you know, sometimes we're talking about humor.
But they're all very different, the things that you –
That you talked about here.
The three me's.
There's probably a couple other ones, too.
My dad recently started dating after my mom died.
I'm wondering how your grief comes up in your current relationship with Kit.
Well, I mean, my relationship with Kit began in the shadow of Lynn's death.
Yeah.
within four, like five months.
And it was, you know, the thing with Kit has evolved.
I mean, we didn't know it would keep going.
We were in the middle of COVID.
I was paralyzed with sadness.
She was dealing with her own grief around things in her life.
And it was more of a companionship thing that we didn't have very big expectations of, out of, or if any.
And it went on a long time like that.
And then it became a little deeper and it became a little bigger.
But it's still there.
And, you know, I can talk freely about it.
And she, you know, has a full understanding of it.
Yeah.
It comes up sometimes.
You mentioned your mom has pinched your sides to see if you gained weight.
My mom does the same and it's now triggering and awful when other people touch my waist out of affection.
Have you had a similar experience?
Yes, I always have that.
Have you ever told your mom that you noticed and how it makes you feel?
Yes, I told her to get her fucking hands off of me.
And it has totally destroyed my ability to have other people touch me.
It's a real struggle.
It always feels a little squirmy to me and horribly uncomfortable.
So I deal with it, but I generally just suck it up and try to relax because I don't want the other person to feel awful and you can't go through your whole life squirming out of people touching you where your fat is.
But it's a lifelong struggle.
Good question.
Have you made a will?
If so, who are you leaving everything to?
Well, I just redid my will.
And a good portion will go to my brother if he lives.
I've given a nice chunk of change to some people who are important in my life.
Good friends.
I've also left Brendan a large sum, if it still exists when I do die, to disperse to charities that at that time are currently in need.
And I've left my records to Dan at the record store.
Since you've been sober, what is the absolute closest you've come to drinking or taking drugs again?
I don't think I've come close to drinking.
I don't think I've come close to cocaine or weed.
I'd say the closest one comes is when they get prescribed pain medicine.
one comes the closest I've come is, you know, the moment where you have pain medicine prescribed for pain, but you know, you don't, you know, the pain's not as bad as would require medicine, but you figure, well, I've got the medicine.
Uh, and you know, I've got a pass here.
Why not take it?
But I don't, um, um,
But I do know that pain meds, when I've gotten surgery or something like that, they work.
So I have taken oxycodone when I had my tooth ripped out of my head, but just one.
And then eventually I throw them out.
But they do linger in the cabinet longer than they should.
How old were you when you got your first pet and what was it?
There was always dogs around.
From my earliest memory, we had sheepdogs.
My father was very into sheepdogs.
He was into showing dogs.
We had a champion sheepdog.
The first sheepdog was not a champion, but he was a good guy.
He died of cancer, Mac.
I must've been nine or eight.
And yeah, so it was always, but we had him earlier than that.
I mean, we must've had him when I was five or six.
And then there were gerbils.
One maybe, but that wasn't very exciting.
But there was always dogs.
There was Mac, Macduff, and Raglan, and Samantha, and Disco.
Those were all...
dogs I grew up with, sheepdogs.
And then there were a couple of cats around later.
Garfield was a field cat.
My mom had Gimper and another one called... The fuck was that other one's name?
But I was close to Garfield, and Gimper was a black, long hair.
But it was mostly those fucking sheepdogs.
So I guess when I was five or six, they started being around for my entire childhood, one sheepdog or another.
Like you, I transferred to Boston University after one year of college.
I'm curious, your first year as a transfer student, where did you live?
Was it in the dorms?
Yes.
Yes.
I signed up for a dorm, like they had special interest dorms that really didn't turn out to be that.
But I signed up for like a food, some sort of, for people from different cultures who cook.
I don't remember what the deal was, but I ended up at 500...
Park Drive, which was right in between Beacon and the turn off there, like by Buswell Street, in between Beacon and Buswell at 500 to 504.
I stayed there.
I was on the first floor the first year, but it was like an apartment.
That was the benefit.
It wasn't really a dorm.
These were apartment.
It just lucked out because I signed up for a special interest housing program.
So it was me, I had my own room.
My buddy Lance had his own room.
And then there was Brad and Tony in one of the rooms and Alexis and John in another room.
And we had a full kitchen.
Like it was a full on apartment.
And then the year after that, the semester after that, I moved just next door in the same building to the second floor.
Same situation.
But we all had our own rooms.
Lance had his own room.
And...
I did and Brad and Tony.
So it was a smaller four room, but again, full kitchen.
That's where I lived.
And then I moved off campus after the first year to Carlton Street, which was down around the corner to a very dark apartment where I lived with Lance and other people over time, over the years.
Is it hard that many folks feel they know you but have never met you?
It's not hard and I've learned how to be as gracious as I can possibly be.
And usually if they're not mentally ill in some way, they know that I don't know them.
But sometimes it's hard for them to know that and it annoys them.
Have you ever been into gaming of any kind, board games, puzzles, backgammon, chess, maybe old arcade games as you came across them at bars and movies and theaters?
I feel like playing chess with you could be fun for about 20 to 30 minutes.
I'm terrible at chess.
I have no strategy.
I know how everything moves, but I don't know how to play.
Don't like puzzles.
Brief backgammon period when I was a kid.
Arcade games.
I remember at the bowling alley, we used to go play the first Space Invaders and the first Asteroids when they first came out.
I was not really good at either of them.
I got okay at Space Invaders.
But then there was the one that I got good at.
Why am I forgetting the name of it?
And I don't even know if I pronounced the name of it right.
Galaga?
Galaga?
Galaga?
I used to play that at the pizza place across from where I lived in college.
I got pretty good at that one.
I like that one.
I remember when Missile Command came out.
I remember when Tetris came out.
But I think Galaga was the one I was best at.
What is your morning stretch routine?
I usually do a kind of deep squat that I stay in for a couple of minutes, then stand up and do a full body stretch and go side to side.
And then I pull myself down to touch my toes and stay in that and get that wide open.
Then I lay on my back.
And I'll do like, what is it, crying baby or whatever.
And then I'll pull my knees in and then I'll do a four stretch.
You know, the four, you make a four with your legs to open up your back.
And then I'll, you know, I'll fold my leg, my knee over, my right knee over my left and do that back stretch.
That's about it.
How would I like to be remembered?
As...
As a person that surprisingly turned out okay.
As a person that evolved and changed.
As a person that helped people.
And I mean, I'd really like to be remembered as a great comic.
All those would be good.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Bye.