BONUS Producer Cuts - Maria Bamford, Jessica Chastain, Adam Conover and more from August
Guest:Hey, Full Marin listeners, it's Brendan, the producer of WTF, and it's another round of producer cuts here for you on the bonus feed.
Guest:These are all things from the month of August, and it looks like that's how I'm going to be able to do these moving forward, kind of collecting these by month and then presenting them to you in a big chunk and
Guest:And this one's got a lot.
Guest:I've got a lot of stuff from past guests as well as Mark's monologue.
Guest:So let's get right into it.
Guest:First, we've got the episode with Gary Mule Deer.
Guest:And this was something I cut.
Guest:Normally, you know, I often cut stuff right at the beginning when Mark and the guests start talking before they've actually like engaged in a in a chat.
Guest:And this was them going on about guitar talk.
Guest:And, you know, it's actually stuff I probably wouldn't have even included in producer cuts, just standard run of the mill stuff that gets cut because there's not a lot going on.
Guest:But then at the end of this section, they start talking about Steve Martin, who was a roommate of Gary Mule Deer's.
Guest:And I thought it was a fun little bit of information that I didn't want you to be without.
Guest:So so here's that clip from the episode with Gary Mule Deer.
Guest:Roger Miller told you there's no money above the fifth fret?
Guest:No money above it.
Guest:There's no money up there.
Guest:He said he wrote all of his songs.
Guest:Well, he wrote them all down.
Guest:Go to the fifth fret.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I just started playing.
Marc:Yeah, I can bring that thing pretty close to you.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:I just started playing.
Marc:Yeah, I've been playing all my life.
Marc:I just started playing with people recently.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:You know, like I put some guys together.
Guest:We're doing cover songs and stuff.
Guest:And, yeah, I'm okay.
Guest:You know, I just, you know, I'm going to save some money.
Guest:I got some old amps.
Guest:But, I mean, you know, those are the only ones.
Guest:They're great old amps.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't know how to work pedals, really.
Guest:I don't either.
Marc:Yeah, and I've acquired some guitars.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:over time many i've gotten i've tried to hustle out of people for free yeah and uh you know i mean i'm starting to get to that point where i think like well maybe i'll get rid of all the guitars that i that i don't play and just get a really good one that i do right i've got i guess i've got maybe seven or eight i i've always been a gibson guy
Guest:You have?
Guest:I've been a Gibson guy.
Guest:Always had Gibsons.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:And I'm a rhythm guitar player, and I have one picking pattern.
Guest:That's about it.
Guest:The Travis pattern?
Guest:Yeah, basically kind of like that.
Guest:Basic Travis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Three fingers.
Guest:Kind of, yeah, between Chet Atkins and Travis, and it doesn't last very long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Back to strumming again.
Guest:Yeah, I mean.
Guest:It doesn't last a whole lot.
Marc:I try.
Marc:You know, I've been playing leads.
Marc:I got the pentatonics.
Marc:I can do all right.
Guest:I can do all right.
Guest:I can.
Guest:I can't do any lead guitar.
Guest:I never have.
Guest:No.
Guest:I've always had great musicians.
Guest:I've always hung with the best musicians.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My, you know, my first album I ever do is with the Wrecking Crew in L.A., for God's sake.
Marc:Well, yeah, I watched a doc, you know, and it gave me sort of an arc.
Marc:But it's interesting because, you know, I don't know if you know my stuff.
Marc:Yeah, I do.
Marc:I've been talking to certainly a number of your peers.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, Steve Martin won't come on unless we only talk about banjo.
Marc:And I can talk about banjo with other people.
Marc:That's Steve.
Marc:Yeah, whatever.
Marc:You know, he seems to be in and out of his relationship with his stand-up past anyway.
Marc:He is, yeah.
Guest:Okay, now this was from the August 7th monologue.
Guest:It was Mark talking about club comedy in New York right after he had just come back from New York.
Guest:I had to trim this monologue down.
Guest:And so here's this section that I didn't include in the main show.
Guest:The comedy thing in New York.
Guest:I have not done club work here in a long time, and I didn't always know why, but I kind of knew why.
Guest:There is some...
Marc:element to spending your early years kind of honing your craft in a place that is relatively traumatic and stressful for years.
Marc:And it's through that repetition that neural pathways are carved, the trauma pathways of repetitive self-abuse.
Marc:And some of that, I think, is at play in my aversion to doing club comedy in New York.
Marc:There's a certain type of audience.
Marc:There's a certain type of engagement with the sort of mainstream clubs here, The Cellar, Stand Up New York, The Stand, whatever the other ones are at this point.
Marc:I don't really know the city, but I just avoided it because it gets,
Marc:the feeling of going on stage just for a short set in New York.
Marc:It's not fun.
Marc:I'm not like, this is going to be great.
Marc:All of everything, everything, all the feelings that I used to have when I was starting out, come back and I'm like, Oh fuck, this audience is like, God damn it.
Marc:You know, I got to just fight it out.
Marc:I got to like, you know, over, I got to amp it up.
Marc:I got to, you know, get my guard up and start punching.
Marc:So there's no, like, I can't find, it's very hard for me to find the space to,
Marc:to engage the nuance that has become my style and feel good about the work.
Marc:Like, look, I work almost every night at the comedy store if I'm in L.A., but that's my home club, and I understand how that place works, and the audiences are different.
Marc:The expectations are different, and I believe that to be true.
Marc:And New York is a very specific thing, and I know how to do it.
Marc:Because I forced myself to do it for years.
Marc:You know, I figured it out.
Marc:I trained.
Marc:I learned how to punch and stay in the groove and do as well as I could, given the nature of what I do.
Marc:But going back to it, it doesn't bring me any joy.
Marc:It just brings back that same feeling of like, you'll get through it, man.
Marc:Slug it out.
Marc:Don't sweat it.
Marc:Stay in the groove.
Marc:But I was like, fuck it, dude.
Marc:I mean, at what point do you relax?
Marc:I mean, you're almost 60, you fuck.
Marc:I mean, Jesus, man, you know, just go do what you do.
Marc:You are who you are.
Marc:It'll be fine.
Marc:But like, there's that very thin veil of, you know, persona, like persona versus person, you know, who I am.
Marc:And you don't want that, you know, kind of breaking down at all.
Marc:I don't like in LA or if I do long shows for people that know who I am, you know, I can kind of get totally open pretty quick, but you know, and part of me wants to do that.
Marc:But when you're in New York, if you start to sort of show too much of yourself, the audience is like, I don't think this guy's got a handle on this.
Marc:I don't like, you know, I don't know if this is funny or like where he's coming from.
Marc:Like, it's just a very slight shift in disposition that I don't want to break down.
Marc:But it was fine.
Marc:I went to the stand.
Marc:I hadn't been to their new club.
Marc:It was great.
Marc:So I guess that's it in a nutshell.
Marc:I just feel like either I need to spend more time here, figure out how to split my time with New York because just the organic nature of this city and the possibility for human engagement is
Marc:in a fairly spontaneous or consistent manner is high.
Marc:And I feel like that's important for the soul and for the mind.
Marc:And I got to make that happen because I enjoy it and I'm old.
Guest:Okay, this one's a real quick one.
Guest:It's just the beginning of the Adam Conover conversation.
Guest:This happened right at the start of the recording again, and I thought this was amusing.
Guest:It just wasn't something I could start the episode off with, but here it is for you to enjoy.
Guest:Of liquid death.
Guest:And then eventually we had to stop giving it out because it was wigging out the unhoused folks because it looks too much like beer.
Guest:And it was like giving them trouble with the cops.
Yeah.
Marc:Really?
Marc:So this was at the beginning of Liquid Death?
Guest:Yeah, this was two years ago.
Guest:This was during the pandemic.
Guest:But yeah, if you imagine if you're on a corner and you're drinking this and you see a cop car go by, you're not feeling super comfortable.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, I mean, I have talked to... Is that good?
Marc:Checked you?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I feel pretty good.
Marc:I have talked to parents whose kids like it for that reason.
Yeah.
Marc:Because it makes them feel like they're drinking something not legal.
Guest:I think it proves like you could use it in a psychology class for the effect of marketing and branding on your experience.
Guest:Because I'm happier drinking it in a green room or at a show since I quit drinking.
Guest:It makes me feel more like I'm having, even though it's... A grown-up beverage?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If I'm hanging out with drunk people, it makes me feel a little bit, not drunk, but just a little bit in party mode to have one of these as opposed to a bottle.
Marc:What are you hanging out with drunk people for?
Marc:What an annoying business that is.
Marc:You can run circles around them.
Marc:That's the best thing about it.
Marc:I guess, but eventually you've just got to be like, you said that already.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you just walk away from them.
Guest:They don't notice.
Guest:OK, this next clip was from Mark's monologue on August 10th, and it was around his sober anniversary.
Guest:He was talking about, you know, his his many years of sobriety.
Guest:And he got into this bit about weed.
Guest:And I know exactly what he's saying here.
Guest:I think that you full Marin listeners who know Mark very well.
Guest:Don't read anything into this or have any fear of Mark relapsing.
Guest:I just know from experience that when he talks about drug use like this, we get a lot of feedback of people who are like concerned for him or think maybe he's relapsing or something.
Guest:And I know that he's not.
Guest:And I didn't find that it was worth it on his sober anniversary for him to get a bunch of emails about that kind of stuff.
Guest:So instead, I saved it for you here.
Guest:This is Mark talking about weed.
Marc:It's interesting for me now, and I've been doing some material about this because I one of the gifts of being sober is that I don't really ever think about drinking.
Marc:I don't think about using drugs.
Marc:I'm not uncomfortable around it.
Marc:I don't get cravings ever.
Marc:But man, there's a lot of weed around.
Marc:And it just kind of blows my mind.
Marc:And I think I've talked about this here before.
Marc:You know, sometimes, you know, I get like the other night I was over at the comedy store and I did Sam Tripoli's show.
Marc:He does a produce show that he does every month or so.
Marc:And a lot of times there's a weed sponsor.
Marc:And right there in the green room, there's like an entire weed store set up giving away samples of that particular brand of cannabis product.
Marc:And, you know, my kit enjoys the weed a bit, so I usually go pick some up for nothing and let her have it.
Marc:But, man, I had a bag of weed last night that I just couldn't help but think.
Marc:Like, you know, there's a whole spectrum of weed now.
Marc:And this guy was like, well, what does she like, flowers or oil or gummies or, you know, and I'm like, I guess flowers, maybe some joints.
Marc:And he just fills up this bag, a gift bag for me to take.
Marc:And I'm looking at this gift bag and I'm like, man, I haven't smoked weed in like 24 years.
Marc:And back then, whatever was in that bag would have been worth like over $1,000 probably.
Marc:It was crazy the quality of this shit.
Marc:Back in the day, there was just good weed and bad weed.
Marc:That was it.
Marc:That was the whole spectrum.
Marc:Now there's a fairly complicated spectrum, but some of that stuff looks like stuff I can't.
Marc:It's just mind blowing.
Marc:Now, some of you may think in like, well, that sounds dangerous, Mark.
Marc:That sounds like you're putting yourself into the proximity of temptation and a problem.
Marc:Not really, but I do find it fascinating.
Marc:And some part of me thinks like, man, if I could just go back in time.
Marc:Like 25 years, you know, I could smoke a little of this and make myself like a thousand bucks.
Marc:But now it's like nothing.
Marc:It's a, you know, out of all the things that have changed, and I'm including the Internet since I was a kid and iPhones.
Marc:outside of other paradigms starting to shift, the amount of weed in the world and the idea that weed would ever just become something you could just walk in and get at a store and then walk out and smoke it on the street, that to me is like, I don't know if it's progress, but it's pretty fucking mind-blowing.
Marc:I'll tell you that.
Guest:Okay, this clip's from the August 14th episode, and in Mark's monologue when he was talking about being in Salt Lake City, he actually had a lot more to say about it, and I just felt sometimes with the cities he visits and the kind of ongoing travelogues he gives from being there, if it's taking up too much time, that's a part where I really tend to cut stuff down.
Guest:But I thought this was some nice local color about Salt Lake City, so here it is for you to enjoy.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:I can't explain it, but it is as simple as that.
Marc:I mean, when we landed there in Utah, I mean, we were, Lara and I were leaving Burbank, and we saw some Mormon missionaries in their suits with their tags, with their name tags.
Marc:And there were some men, there were some women.
Marc:It seemed like the women had sort of an updated pioneer dress situation going on.
Marc:It looked like a little hipper of a schmata.
Marc:Uh, for the, for the Mormon look.
Marc:And it turns out, I found out when I, when I did the shows, cause I brought it up on stage that I guess the church has allowed them to wear floral patterns now.
Marc:So the, the, the women are kind of, I guess they get a little bit of a freedom.
Marc:To to engage in in a little more fun with their femininity.
Marc:Maybe it's the impact of Barbie.
Marc:I doubt it.
Marc:But I'm sure they're denied everything else.
Marc:But I did notice that.
Marc:So we we walk off the plane and there's just hundreds of people with signs.
Marc:And, you know, I thought like this can't be for me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, I know I haven't been here in a while.
Marc:Of course not.
Marc:It was people holding up signs that said, welcome back from your mission.
Marc:But then I thought again, my life's been kind of a mission.
Marc:It wasn't for me.
Marc:Apparently, they send the groups out for like two years, and then they come back and they get the big welcome.
Marc:I don't know if it's a commission thing.
Marc:I don't know if that matters in terms of your status or the size of the piece of cake you get or where your name is positioned in the Great Mountain.
Marc:But it was kind of interesting.
Marc:It's always...
Marc:But for some reason, when I'm in Salt Lake City, I don't feel threatened or too creeped out.
Marc:I always feel like I've met nothing but nice people there.
Marc:And granted, I don't think diversity is its strong suit.
Marc:You do get the full spectrum of whiteness in Utah.
Marc:But again, always great audiences and very willing to laugh at themselves.
Marc:And I did, you know, I'm taking the risks now.
Marc:You know, I've been working out here in LA.
Marc:I've been doing the Dynasty Typewriter.
Marc:I've made some decisions about, you know, where I want to go with my new material.
Marc:A lot of it is hyper-personal, dealing with my own mental illness, dealing with my own sort of childhood trauma and stuff.
Marc:Because, as I said maybe before, that, you know, doing the work around grief on my last special and finding fairly deep laughs in it, I realized that, you know, if I can keep that aperture open...
Marc:to that type of sort of sharing myself, if I can find the strength and the vulnerability necessary to move through some of this stuff, it is pretty fucking rewarding.
Marc:And Salt Lake City was the place that they saw at first in terms of doing it
Marc:in front of a regular comedy club crowd.
Marc:You know, and I did some of my other stuff.
Marc:It seems that, you know, every hour that I work on, I'm going to have a chunk on anti-Semitism.
Marc:It's sort of like my Hot Pockets, you know, if you're a Jim Gaffigan fan.
Marc:You know, that Hot Pockets has been hanging over him for for probably two decades.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Anti-Semitism is my Hot Pocket.
Marc:So I think Jim has the problem of people yelling out Hot Pockets at his shows.
Marc:Rarely does anyone yell Jews in any at any of my shows, but they get it.
Guest:Okay, more from Jessica Chastain here.
Guest:We had a producer cut clip that I gave you guys well before her episode even aired.
Guest:But now that it has aired, this was a section I took out.
Guest:I took out a chunk of Mark and Jessica talking about the George and Tammy miniseries when it got into stuff that, you know, if you're just listening to this and you had not seen the miniseries, you might be lost.
Guest:And so...
Guest:You're not going to hear a lot of that stuff.
Guest:Some of that stuff just gone and on the cutting room floor.
Guest:But then in the midst of that, they started talking about a character played by Steve Zahn, which is what you'll hear them talking about right at the start of this clip.
Guest:And then they get into a character played by Pat Healy, who is a friend of Mark's and someone who has been on WTF.
Guest:You can go back and listen to the Pat Healy episode of WTF.
Guest:But so here's Mark and Jessica Chastain getting in-depth about the George and Tammy miniseries with some character development discussion around Steve Zahn and Pat Healy.
Marc:Like, you don't like him right away because he's one of those guys like, hey, you must remember me guy.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like, how do you not know my name guy?
Marc:And then he turns out to be the most consciously evil of all of them.
Guest:Which sometimes I find, and I don't know if this is how you see, I find sometimes that it's the people you least expect.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Which is why it's amazing that Steve Zahn does it because he's like the nicest, sweetest guy.
Marc:It's always the worms, the wormy guys.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know who feel like they don't have enough or they're not getting enough recognition.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also, you know, I know Pat like Healy.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Patches.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who did like that.
Marc:That was like the best work I've seen.
Marc:He's always very good.
Marc:But I haven't seen him in a while.
Marc:But that was great.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, he and this is a last minute thing because we were about we were just starting to shoot and we were having a lot of trouble.
Guest:It was going to be who was it going to be?
Guest:It was going to be another actor.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And there was a schedule issue.
Guest:And then all of a sudden we didn't have that actor.
Guest:And I was like, oh, I don't know.
Guest:You know, we're struggling here.
Guest:And Mike Shannon said, can you show me a picture of Don?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I want to see what he looks like.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And he looked at the picture of Don Chaplin.
Guest:He goes, that's Pat Healy.
Guest:That's Patches.
Marc:Michael said that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Michael Shannon in the makeup chair.
Guest:And we're like, oh, my God.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And of course it is.
Guest:And it was a very quick one, too.
Guest:And then all of a sudden, Pat was there.
Marc:He was in it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But again, another character that's kind of a worm, you know, and kind of a guy who didn't think he was getting his due.
Marc:And he turns out to be an evil fuck, too, right?
Guest:Well, I mean, it's interesting.
Guest:It's like a lot of situations where I think insecurity can be a really tough thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think Tammy, in some sense, in the research that I've done...
Guest:Sometimes would partner and align herself with men who maybe felt resentful of the talent that she had, maybe the power that she had, and punished her for it.
Marc:But that codependency thing, why do you take up with those kind of dudes?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right?
Guest:But also, this is the 1960s.
Guest:I mean, when she met Dawn, she showed up in Nashville.
Guest:This is insane for a female singer.
Guest:She showed up with three kids, a divorced woman in Nashville, single mom.
Guest:And, you know, there's these interviews of him and Dawn talking about meeting her.
Guest:You know, he worked at the hotel that she rented a room at.
Guest:And him talking, I mean, it was quite...
Guest:You know, not super nice the way he talked about her, but how they met and like how her clothes had holes in it.
Guest:And like, you know, she was really not in a great situation in her life when they met.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So he's going to save her.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or do that.
Guest:Take advantage of the fact that she's not in a great situation.
Marc:And so did the other guy.
Marc:So did Richie.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And then be like, okay, I'm going to help you.
Guest:You've never really had anyone take care of you.
Guest:I'm going to take care of you.
Marc:That's interesting.
Guest:And then you realize, actually, they're just kind of bleeding or dry in some sense.
Marc:You know, I think I came to it with, did you ever see that movie?
Marc:It's on Criterion now, these Alan Garfin movies that are, The Strange One with Ben Gazzara.
Marc:I haven't seen that.
Marc:But the other one's called Something Wild.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:With Ralph Meeker.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think I saw that a long time ago.
Marc:Where he kind of takes her hostage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I just watched that.
Marc:And then I watched George and Tammy.
Marc:And Meeker, it's one of the best performances I've ever seen.
Marc:I didn't even know that guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But it's like that same kind of weird spell that a certain type of man puts on damaged women or women who are in trouble.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think it's a sense of like, let me take care of you.
Guest:You need to rest now.
Guest:Let me help you.
Guest:You've worked so hard your whole life.
Marc:You deserve a rest.
Marc:And then they become monsters.
Guest:OK, another clip here from the start of a recording.
Guest:And this went on for a while, went on for about five minutes before I could find a real entry point.
Guest:And because of that, it's a good talk about the comedy cellar with Nimesh Patel.
Guest:So this is right from the beginning of their chat.
Guest:You can hear them kind of settling into their chairs and talking about the garage.
Guest:But then they get into talking about the comedy cellar and it goes on for about five minutes.
Guest:And this was the episode with Nimesh Patel, who is a regular there in the New York comedy scene.
Marc:Most of the earlier experiences, if there is a legendary or famous garage,
Marc:It was the last one.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:But this is where it happens now.
Marc:And the last garage was very cluttered, and I just picked select shit to put on my desk.
Marc:It used to just—the old one had books everywhere.
Marc:It was just, like, totally different personality-wise.
Guest:But look at that.
Marc:The picture's up at the cellar.
Guest:Oh, yeah, with Obama?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So it looks different.
Guest:But I was like, I know Obama's—you've interviewed Obama.
Marc:But that's his chair, so you got the chair.
Marc:That's happening.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:But, yeah, that's the old house.
Marc:That's nicer than to put that picture up over there.
Marc:Yeah, that's pretty cool.
Marc:I'm glad I have a presence over there.
Marc:I haven't worked there in fucking years.
Marc:I haven't been there in a few weeks, a few months, yeah.
Marc:But that's your home club, right?
Marc:Yes, it is.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I don't know what it is.
Marc:I'm not sure.
Marc:Like, I've been to New York a few times, and I just sort of like, don't want to go over there.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It was different when I was coming up.
Marc:How long ago did, when's the last year we were there, and how long ago...
Marc:It wasn't a million years ago, but it was within the last four years.
Marc:I think maybe just before the pandemic, I did sets next door and downstairs, and Esty was there.
Marc:But the whole place looks different, and a lot of the guys I knew are either dead or physically compromised somehow.
Marc:It's okay.
Marc:I'm used to that, but...
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:You can never go home sometimes, you know?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I was back there.
Guest:Actually, last week I was doing a podcast upstairs.
Guest:So that's a podcast studio now?
Guest:No, they got one, I think, three flights above.
Guest:Not Olive Tree, not the restaurant, but above that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.
Marc:Well, it used to be an apartment above there, I guess.
Guest:I think they still have an apartment, but above it they built a podcast studio.
Guest:So he owns the building.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Noam's got it under control.
Marc:It's so funny.
Marc:That kid was just this weird kid who just played guitar everywhere when I was coming up.
Marc:Nothing's changed.
Marc:Shout out Noam.
Marc:The boss's kid.
Marc:And now he's trying to step into the old man's shoes with the conversations and whatnot.
Guest:He's doing it well, man.
Guest:It's fun arguing with Noam.
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah, I enjoy it because...
Guest:I know that there's not, at least for me, there hasn't been stakes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, because, like, he's not, like, hold a grudge.
Guest:Like, you're not going to get to work here anymore unless you say that's fucking insane.
Marc:Well, I think it would be hard to even do that.
Marc:But, like, he takes his father's position around.
Marc:Well, I never knew Manny.
Marc:Oh, but, like, you know, around Israel and around conservative ideas.
Guest:Yep, yep, yep.
Marc:Fiscal conservative, socially liberal, fiscal conservative, constitutionalist shit.
Guest:Yep, it's fun.
Guest:It's fun to argue with him because he's a lawyer, but he'll let you get your digs in.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Is he a lawyer?
Guest:He's a trained lawyer.
Guest:I never knew that.
Marc:Did he practice?
Marc:I'm not sure if he practiced.
Marc:When did he do that?
Marc:He must have been doing that when he wasn't playing guitar?
Guest:Yeah, in between cover sessions.
Marc:In between gigs at the wah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:There's something about walking into that cellar and having the band right there.
Marc:It's sort of like this used to be next door downstairs.
Marc:They used to be just Charlie Chaplin all the time.
Marc:And now this is taking up half the place and it's too loud.
Guest:You went on a Monday or a Tuesday or like a Friday night, back when they were doing our Friday nights, but your complaint is the same as every comic that walks in there on a Monday.
Guest:It's like, no, man, it's too goddamn loud.
Guest:We can't even talk.
Marc:Right, but it keeps going, right?
Marc:Yeah, I mean, but that's... Those Beatle covers are necessary, I guess.
Guest:100%.
Guest:There's still new people filming it every week, and it's still just like, all right, this is what it is.
Marc:The food's still good?
Guest:It's so fucking good.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I always... But, you know, I miss it like... Listen to me like old guy.
Marc:They used to have that fucking shawarma going up front.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Like they used to be right up front in the window.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:They had that shawarma going.
Marc:I was never there then.
Marc:The best.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:And I don't even know if the shawarma is the same, but it was like the real deal shit.
Marc:Not the particle meat, but they're shaving like just pieces of lamb skewered up all day long.
Guest:Maybe they are...
Guest:Maybe they just outsourced it to Mamoon's now, which is right next door still.
Guest:Did they?
Guest:Yeah, Mamoon's is still there.
Marc:No, I know, but I think they're still cooking it in the back.
Guest:No, I don't think so.
Guest:I mean, their kitchen is still in the back.
Guest:The shawarma, I'm not sure.
Guest:I haven't had shawarma there.
Marc:I mean, the shawarma was the best because it was all grizzly and right off of that thing, and then they heated up a little bit in the fire.
Guest:They have upped their food game for sure.
Guest:You think they have?
Guest:Yeah, I mean.
Guest:It was always good.
Guest:They have salmon.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I go there for food sometimes.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Before a set or after a set.
Guest:It's like this is the best bucket.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:That's like the reason to go is just to eat the Israeli salad with the chicken kebab or whatever.
Guest:Yep, there it is.
Guest:The Mediterranean platter with the chicken kebab skewered.
Guest:It's the best.
Guest:Pita extra crispy hummus.
Yeah.
Guest:Okay, this next clip is from the August 21st monologue, and this was recorded the day Mark had talked to Jeff Charlotte.
Guest:So he had Jeff Charlotte on the mind, and he talks quite extensively about the book that he read of Jeff Charlotte's, The Undertow, and about the conversation they had.
Guest:And I just felt that this was probably better saved for when we did the Jeff Charlotte episode.
Guest:So here's the clip from that.
Guest:And then there's another thing from the August 21st show that I'll tell you about after this clip.
Marc:Entertaining the reality.
Marc:Entertaining the reality of what's happening.
Marc:I guess that's what I'm trying to get at.
Marc:And I think there's some big things going on in my brain.
Marc:Obviously, I've been talking about...
Marc:watching old movies, and that's just sort of updating my database.
Marc:That's just watching stuff that I've always known was great now that I'm an older fella and sort of able to entertain them with the wisdom I have accumulated over my years since seeing them when I was a younger person.
Marc:So I'm not really entertaining people
Marc:the movies, but I'm just sort of updating my feelings about them, my reaction to them, and also just reassessing them as art and as things that were important to me.
Marc:I just watched...
Marc:Marathon Man the other night.
Marc:It's sort of along the arc of what I've been watching.
Marc:And I didn't watch that that long ago.
Marc:But man, I mean, what a fucking story.
Marc:What a multi-leveled story.
Marc:What an amazing way to bring into focus and together sort of, at that time, surviving Nazis, the Holocaust, the McCarthy hearings, the sort of...
Marc:Environmental disaster was a kind of subtext of that movie because of protesters.
Marc:There was also, you know, dealing with, you know, education with the black market, with the corruption of certain government agencies or these characters, one who couldn't ever let go of his father's suicide.
Marc:And why?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:and has made his whole life about following in his footsteps.
Marc:The other one is just a sort of morally bankrupt capitalist working in the dark places of the global diamond business.
Marc:And it takes into consideration Jewish themes.
Marc:I mean, it's just, what a rich movie.
Marc:And it doesn't, you know, it takes a while to get there.
Marc:But nonetheless, I've been doing that.
Marc:But I recently talked to... The other day, there were a couple rounds of spiraling, I guess.
Marc:Well, a couple of days ago, I talked... A couple of days ago, I interviewed Jeff Charlotte about his...
Marc:His new book.
Marc:It's called The Undertow, Scenes from a Slow, Slow Civil War.
Marc:And it was one of these books.
Marc:I read the whole thing because it's right up my alley.
Marc:And it's been a lot of this.
Marc:Oddly, the conversations I've been having has to do with the reality of the of the writer's strike and the actor's strike that we're now kind of talking to writers, talking to thinkers that that.
Marc:I've talked to Charlotte many times in my life at different junctures on Air America, the radio show I had many years ago, and then again on Break Room Live.
Marc:But this is sort of a memoir, in a sense, a travelogue of him going through the country, across the country, going to...
Marc:churches, homes, rallies around, you know, he's using flags as kind of signs, you know, the spectrum of Trump flags and American fascist flags and libertarian sort of indicators.
Marc:And he's talking to a lot of these people about, you
Marc:you know, where they're at.
Marc:And he's also exploring the new myth of whiteness and the propaganda on the right and the growing sort of momentum of a sort of very evolved propaganda involving Christianity, conspiracy, and just, you know, flat out fascism.
Marc:And he's also documenting his own movement through this and his own sort of agenda.
Marc:And he's talking about climate change
Marc:You know, underneath it, there's a sort of level of that going on.
Marc:But either way, in talking to him, he said something interesting in that he said, I said, well, how do you deal with this, this knowledge of this?
Marc:He says, well, I talk to these people and I talk to about what's going on.
Marc:So his way of dealing with it is being...
Marc:personally so well informed that it becomes irrefutable what is happening and and that is just the responsibility of being informed and then you kind of deal with that as a reality and figure out what you can do about it and you know he had suggestions but you you know not many but he's certainly not optimistic but you can hear that when that episode drops
Guest:OK, and so something Mark does sometimes is he will send me a pickup after he's done the intro.
Guest:And I cut the intro together and then he said, I have something I wanted to say about this tropical storm that didn't really happen here in Los Angeles.
Guest:I said, OK, send it to me.
Guest:And he sent it to me.
Guest:And the tone just didn't match.
Guest:his original monologue to just happen sometimes.
Guest:And I couldn't really find a place to fit this in.
Guest:It wasn't that substantial either.
Guest:So it was okay to cut it out.
Guest:But I just thought maybe it's interesting for you to hear sometimes the type of thing Mark will send me after the fact and why it may or may not make it into the episode.
Marc:All right, before I get kind of rolling here, I made it through this tropical storm, this hurricane, which kind of diminished down to a number one or number two.
Marc:It wasn't even that big of a storm, and there was just all this leading up to it, this insanity in the newspaper, which is good.
Marc:To be prepared for an emergency is fine, but we've all gotten kind of numb to it.
Marc:I guess you shouldn't be.
Marc:I knew I had food.
Marc:I knew I had plenty of water.
Marc:room full of liquid death that's not a sponsor that's not an ad they just kept sending it so when an emergency comes i'm like well i'm good with that and i've got choices carbonated or flat but also just i i'm always kind of kicking myself that why don't i get a generator but then i think well how does that even work can you generate the whole house i guess i said i guess i should look into this stuff
Marc:Because they said, you know, it's going to flood.
Marc:The power is going to be out.
Marc:It just was crazy.
Marc:I didn't know if my roof was going to blow off.
Marc:I didn't know if the trees were going to blow down and onto my house.
Marc:But for some reason, I got to a point where, like, we'll see.
Marc:Most of the time, these things kind of, you know, especially if they're a hurricane, they'll hit, you know, they'll come off the water and kind of break apart a bit by the time it gets out east.
Marc:And sure enough, it was really just not even that big a rainstorm, but the fucking power still went out.
Marc:And I don't know if they...
Marc:I don't know why.
Marc:I tweeted at Glendale Water and Power.
Marc:I was like, really, you guys?
Marc:But like, what is that?
Marc:Why would I do that?
Marc:I was like, it's barely raining.
Marc:But some part of me thought like, were they overprepared?
Marc:And then I don't even know how it would happen.
Marc:Some part of me, like my brain wanted to go into some conspiracy.
Marc:Maybe they just shut it all off just in case.
Marc:But that's crazy.
Marc:I don't I don't know what happened, but it came on in a couple hours.
Marc:It doesn't matter.
Marc:I'm OK.
Marc:There was no need for sandbags and everything in my home is OK.
Marc:I hope everything is OK where where you are and with whatever you're going through, whether it be rain, wind, fire or heat.
Marc:Okay, you know, it's happening.
Marc:But I hope you're okay.
Marc:There, there's that.
Marc:I'm also a little congested.
Marc:I'm this cold.
Marc:It's not lingering.
Marc:I just seem to be filled with snot.
Marc:Okay, so that's why my voice is like that.
Marc:All right.
Guest:OK, a quick segment here from the monologue on August 24th.
Guest:Mark was talking about coping with anxiety.
Guest:I think the reason that I took this out is because it was just right at the beginning of his monologue.
Guest:And I thought, OK, a little heavy for welcoming people to the show.
Guest:And let's just swap this out with Mark introducing the guest.
Guest:But because it was from the heart, I figured it's a good thing for you guys to hear.
Marc:Oh, my machine's fucked up.
Marc:That's got nothing to do with anything, but my little Zoom machine, my H4N, my backup that I have sitting here says card full.
Marc:And you know why that is?
Marc:Because I just left it recording.
Marc:That's why I did that yesterday.
Marc:Not unlike leaving my turntable on for maybe a day or two.
Marc:It's a bad feeling, but, you know, it's fixable.
Marc:It's not a big problem.
Marc:I've got to figure out that.
Marc:Do you?
Marc:How are you?
Marc:How dramatic are you about little problems?
Marc:I still think it has a direct correlation to feeling...
Marc:powerless over most things and terrified about others, rightfully so, and maybe feeling like there's not much you can do about it.
Marc:So why not overreact to any minor fucking problem in your life?
Marc:I have to put a certain amount of self-talk around it.
Marc:Like, you know, when you get into a series of things where you drop one thing and then another thing spills and then you bump into something else and it all happens and
Marc:you know, in fairly quick succession and you have that moment where you're like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:I have changed that language to, okay, so this is how it's going to be?
Marc:This is going to be what this is?
Marc:Sure, why not?
Marc:I'll knock this over, I'll kick this thing down, and then I'll just hurt my hand on that thing.
Marc:That's the sequence of events.
Marc:That's what's happening today.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:As opposed to, God damn it!
Marc:What is wit this day?
Marc:It's a slight shift, but it's a meaningful shift, and I think it implies growth.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Is everything okay by you?
Marc:How's by you?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Then we had our episode with the great Maria Bamford, who Mark and I love dearly.
Guest:She was back on the show for, I believe, the fifth or sixth time.
Guest:But what Mark started kind of prompting her with in this section was all stuff that I felt like not only does he talk about it a lot,
Guest:He had talked about it recently, like it's like the fantasy bond by Robert Firestone.
Guest:It's things that kind of come up a lot in Mark's brain.
Guest:And I just felt like, you know, there was so much rich material in the Maria interview that we didn't have to rehash this stuff.
Guest:But for you to listen to it, it's probably interesting because it's her response to it.
Guest:So here it is for you, Mark and Maria Bamford, extending the conversation they had in the episode.
Marc:Oh, it's funny.
Marc:I just remember I was doing a joke about, you know, the idea of victim mode and the idea of, you know, constantly being, you know, treated, but, you know, not really enacting any sort of real change because it's the nature of that business in a way sometimes, you know, I think the mental health business where –
Marc:You know, you may not be getting any real work done and you're sort of kept in this place.
Marc:And I talk about cognitive therapy.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But the way I talk about it, I say there's actually an old joke that I think is really the best metaphor for effective psychological practice.
Marc:OK.
Marc:And it's a classic.
Marc:I think it's a Jewish joke where the guy walks into the doctor and he raises his arms up and he says, Doc, it hurts when I do this.
Marc:And the doc says, well, I don't do that.
Guest:Yay!
Guest:Don't do it.
Marc:When I move that forward into the world, I just picture some guy in social events and stuff just battling to not put his hands on.
Guest:Yeah, I'm currently, I went to the OCD conference.
Guest:That's what I'm doing.
Guest:And I started this therapy called Acceptance Commitment Therapy, ACT.
Guest:Anyways, I'm going.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:It's a nice guy in South Pasadena.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he gave me some assignments and a book to read.
Guest:I did it.
Guest:Now we're going to see how my brain explodes.
Marc:What is it?
Guest:What is it?
Guest:He made like a graph on the – and are you going towards your values?
Guest:Like, okay, let's say weighing yourself.
Guest:Like, okay, if I'm weighing myself every day, is that going towards my values of wanting to be connected with friends and family?
Guest:No, it's taken me out of the game.
Guest:Like I'm going numbers, numbers.
Marc:But every morning you're sort of like that was very relatable to me about, you know, what your number is.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And if you're over the number, how bad the day is.
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Terrible.
Marc:Like mine's like 179.
Marc:If I'm if I get over 179, we're in trouble.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Where do you go?
Guest:You set yourself on fire.
Marc:But I literally feel like this thing that has no self.
Guest:Start rolling around.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:I just know that outdoors, I'm like, I got to get out of this body.
Guest:Yeah, so I'm hoping it'll help with things like that.
Guest:I always get grumpy before shows, and I would like that to stop because it's ludicrous.
Guest:Even if a show goes poorly, it doesn't matter.
Guest:It never mattered.
Marc:As you get older, yeah, the not matter thing is a good thing to have.
Guest:Yeah, I think I need some help with that because I'll get all whipped up before shows.
Guest:I have some shows this weekend.
Marc:How does that manifest?
Guest:Oh, I get irritable.
Guest:I get irritable.
Guest:I get kind of like...
Marc:What are you mad about?
Marc:Like the possibility of failing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's fear.
Guest:And then I'm cranky with my sweet pea, my husband.
Guest:And he's like, what the fuck?
Guest:And he's like, oh, you have a show.
Guest:And I'm like, yes, I'm sorry.
Marc:You have a bunch of people that are excited to see you that you can't lose in front of.
Marc:Why not make yourself fucking angry?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It is really.
Guest:So I'm hoping that this ACT therapy will do well.
Guest:If not, it's by a very nice grocery store so I can pick up some groceries.
Marc:That's good.
Marc:Yeah, the whole idea of believing love is difficult for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Coming at me or going out of me.
Marc:Oh, what do you mean?
Marc:Well, I mean like that.
Marc:Like I have people that like they're excited to see you and they love you.
Marc:It's like, nah, I'll show them.
Guest:Well, my dad's favorite quote was by Golda Meir.
Guest:Don't be humble.
Guest:You're not that great.
Guest:I see you, dad.
Marc:Did you ever do EMDR?
Guest:No.
Guest:Oh, yes, I did.
Guest:I did.
Guest:It didn't hit me.
Guest:I didn't have any trauma.
Guest:I really just didn't.
Guest:I grew up in a very lovely family family.
Marc:That's interesting that you say that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Because it feels like on some level that – like I have grown to believe that attachment trauma is where it comes from, whether it's they don't provide enough for you to find a self or they are too selfish in that or they're kind of like abusing your – like I –
Marc:I had a guy that told me years ago, a psychiatrist, because, you know, because of like the sexualizing and feeling connected to people that he said, well, you're seeking primal union.
Marc:And I'm like, what is that?
Marc:And he says, well, you had primal union with your mother.
Marc:That's where you have it.
Marc:But a responsible parent, somehow or another, either instinctively or knowingly, must let you have you.
Marc:And if that doesn't happen, you spend your life trying to re-engage with a primal union.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:And also this guy, Robert Firestone, which was interesting.
Marc:You know that guy?
Marc:The fantasy bond?
Guest:No.
Marc:That one blew my mind, man.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Marc:Because he said that if you have selfish parents or whatever the abuse is, that when you're younger...
Marc:um and you feel awkward and fucked up yeah you there there's no way you can blame your parents in your mind because they're your parents and they're perfect so you blame yourself yeah and then you put a parent in your head that that is sort of like you are terrible you stink and that that thing changed my entire fucking life okay i'll read that book fantasy bond yes okay robert firestone love it because i i feel like
Guest:Show business is like a bad relationship.
Marc:I used to say that all the time, but show business is not your parents.
Guest:And it's an alcoholic.
Guest:It shows up on your front lawn at 8 a.m.
Guest:and going, hey, I love you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I love you so much where you've been.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I've been right here.
Guest:I've been here the whole time talking.
Guest:The whole time.
Guest:Okay, this is also from the Maria Bamford episode.
Guest:It was the August 31st monologue.
Guest:And this episode was running way long, so I had to cut some stuff.
Guest:And just, you know, this was the chunk that I cut out of Mark's monologue.
Guest:And not only do I think it's a good bit, it's got a funny story about Mark's cats, which they're always crowd pleasers.
Guest:And I know that people, you know, have subscribed to the show for a very long time just to hear about the cats.
Guest:Unfortunately, I couldn't include it in the episode because of the length.
Guest:So here it is for you.
Guest:Look, you can do it.
Guest:OK, you can do it.
Marc:All you've got to do is just choose against your instincts.
Marc:I know that sounds weird, but it's a little thing called acting as if or making contrary decisions, contrary actions.
Marc:You know, you just got to get through the first couple minutes.
Marc:You got to get through a minute at a time.
Marc:Whatever you're trying to wrangle, whatever you're trying to resist, whatever you're trying to not do because it's not good for you,
Marc:You can do it.
Marc:It just comes down to a minute-by-minute thing.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:And the brain... Look, we've all seen how fragile and easily fuckable brains are.
Marc:What a disaster.
Marc:And no one gets out...
Marc:unscathed.
Marc:Everybody's got their own template that they adjust and tweak and sometimes trash.
Marc:But, you know, the template you put in place to keep your brain somewhat in order and keep your life somewhat together, it is what it is.
Marc:But occasionally, you might need to reboot it.
Marc:You might need to sort of add things, take things out, realize when things are outdated.
Marc:That happens naturally, I'm finding.
Marc:As you get older, things just – they go away.
Marc:They just – they don't – the switch doesn't work anymore, no matter how much you click on it.
Marc:It just don't work anymore.
Marc:But here was the thing I was going to tell you.
Marc:I –
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I had this thought like, I wish I had control over my imagination because what it's doing on its own, not great generally.
Marc:Left untethered and to free range just to roam about the psychic landscape, depending on what your imagination is used to providing you, whether it's relief or just constant terror and
Marc:At some point, you got to reel that thing in and make some better cartoons.
Marc:Create a better fiction.
Marc:See if you can harness that imagination and just don't let it run wild.
Marc:Because, look, if you got a brain like mine, the imagination just out there grazing, it's not it's not eating the good stuff.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Also.
Marc:This is an experience that any cat owner of a certain type does not want to experience.
Marc:So I'm laying on my couch having a nap after a couple interviews.
Marc:And I didn't notice that my ring sensor went off because it goes off every two seconds because I have it set to too sensitive a setting.
Marc:If I don't, it doesn't pick up full humans walking up.
Marc:But now it picks up everything.
Marc:So I didn't notice it.
Marc:And then I heard something almost crash into my door.
Marc:It felt like something kind of ran into my front door, which is a big front door.
Marc:So I'm like, what the fuck is that?
Marc:And I get up off the couch.
Marc:I walk out of the den and I look down the hall at my front door.
Marc:And who's outside?
Marc:Charlie.
Marc:Charlie Beans Roscoe.
Marc:little over a year old, an indoor cat is outside the door looking in.
Marc:And I'm like, what the fuck happened here?
Marc:And then I walk up and there's fucking dumb Sam, Sammy, Smushy, the smusher.
Marc:He's out there too, just on the porch, wandering around.
Marc:And when you're an indoor cat owner, this is like, you don't know what's going to happen at this moment.
Marc:A couple of things can happen.
Marc:You can open the door and maybe one or both cats will amble in or run in, depending how freaked out they are.
Marc:Neither one of them have spent any time outside free roaming.
Marc:Or you're going to open the door and they're going to bolt.
Marc:And that's going to be at least an afternoon of trying to get your cats.
Marc:And it might it might take you all over the neighborhood and it might not even happen that day.
Marc:I've had a lot of experience with this.
Marc:I've had outdoor cats before, but no more.
Marc:The predatory coyotes.
Marc:But so I opened the door and Charlie just walks in.
Marc:And Sam, who's a little slow, he's just out there.
Marc:He's just sort of standing out there, seemingly thinking about it.
Marc:Like, is this where I want to be?
Marc:Or do I want to be inside?
Marc:I don't know if I can decide right now.
Marc:And I'm like, Sam.
Marc:And he's like, I'm not even going to look at that guy.
Marc:You know, I've got an opportunity here.
Marc:I'm like, Sammy, Sam.
Marc:He's like, yeah, I hear you.
Marc:But, you know, there's a lot out here that I didn't know about.
Marc:And, you know, I don't know if I can take it all in right now.
Marc:Sam, Sam.
Marc:And I was able to kind of walk up to him and grab him and put him in the house.
Marc:I don't know how they got out.
Marc:I don't think they are able to trance, whatever you call it.
Marc:I don't think they can walk through glass.
Marc:I believe what happened is I went to close the door and I closed it behind me and it didn't latch.
Marc:So it was a little open.
Marc:And then I went to my ring.
Marc:I went to my ring footage and they were out there like 10 minutes and I have footage of them just kind of wandering around the porch.
Marc:So anyway, it worked out okay.
Marc:But it...
Marc:As you cat owners know, it's a pretty exciting moment when you notice that your indoor cat is just out in your fucking yard.
Marc:Worked out though.
Marc:It worked out.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And that is it for this round of producer cuts.
Guest:I'll have more for you next month when we do the September producer cuts.
Guest:And until then, keep on listening to your bonus content here on the full Marin.
Guest:We appreciate you being around.
Yeah.