BONUS The Friday Show - Monday Night Mayhem, Part 1
Guest:My favorite was Colt Cabana's story.
Guest:Vince was like, whoa, what do you do?
Guest:What do you like?
Guest:And Colt Cabana said, well, I love alternative comedy.
Guest:Like he meant like Mark.
Guest:And Vince looked at him and went, oh, like Jackie Gleason.
Guest:What?
Guest:And I was like, Colt was literally like, oh, no.
Guest:Like everything went into like slow-mo.
Guest:Like he knew right then and there he was doomed.
Marc:Hey, Chris.
Marc:Brandon, I tried a new drug this weekend.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:What was it?
Marc:It was taking kids to see the new Spider-Man movie.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:And not telling them that it was a part one of two.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:It was awesome.
Marc:They...
Marc:They were booing the screen.
Marc:They were asking for their refund.
Marc:I felt like I was the emperor in Return of the Jedi.
Marc:Like, yes, yes.
Marc:Channel your hatred.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:It was delicious.
Guest:But wait, now in the aftermath, though, were they able to settle down and realize that they had seen a great movie or were they still pissed the whole time?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They were able to settle down.
Marc:What's the shock that the story is not ending?
Marc:They were like, OK, it was good.
Guest:What are the age ranges of these kids?
Guest:10, 8, and 6.
Guest:Well, the 10-year-old, I could see it.
Guest:A 6-year-old, you can convince them anything's good or bad, right?
Guest:So they just follow whatever the other kids say.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:So yeah, if you had a 10-year-old as the ringleader, that was going to happen.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, how was the rest of the weekend?
Guest:You did mini golf and stuff with the kids?
Marc:It was actually just one day that I babysat three kids, but we packed a lot in.
Marc:We went to the movies.
Marc:We went to the mall.
Marc:We rode these, like, little mechanical animals through the mall.
Marc:Yeah, like, they're, like, squirrels.
Marc:scooters you sit on yes they don't go that fast but you drive them around and it looks like a donkey or a monkey or a panda yeah yeah so the kids loved that and uh they tried boba tea for the first time or bubble tea and uh and they were really excited about mr beast burger and oh yeah yeah they they loved that and uh yeah it was a great time did you have a mr beast burger
Marc:Yeah, I sure did.
Marc:Was it good?
Marc:It was delicious.
Marc:Yeah, it was great.
Marc:I mean, it's a burger.
Marc:It's a smash burger.
Marc:I don't understand the appeal.
Guest:It's no pasta mania in the mall there, I guess.
Guest:Well, I wish I do.
Guest:Yeah, right, right.
Guest:We never will know.
Guest:That's a little deep tease.
Guest:Deep tease, because it's literally not going to happen until next week.
Guest:We are going to do a kind of two-part episode for you here today, because next week both Chris and I are unavailable, but we'll get something in the can.
Guest:And it'll be connected to this week's episode, as you will soon see.
Guest:But first, wanted to get your feedback, Chris, on anything WTF-related from this week.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, so the Ben Kingsley episode happened.
Marc:How about that, huh?
Marc:How about that?
Marc:First of all, so I check Twitter in the morning, which sucks nowadays anyway.
Marc:But anyway, I'm on Twitter.
Marc:I see Mark post his picture with Sir Ben Kingsley.
Marc:And I see your reply saying like, oh, I know what that face means.
Marc:And so I'm like, okay.
Marc:All right, I don't want to know anymore.
Marc:I'm just going to let it roll.
Marc:And Mark starts talking.
Marc:He has the intro to Kingsley.
Marc:And he's just prepping or just talking about, you know, his process and the show and the whole, you know, he's been doing this for so long.
Marc:So I'm like, oh no.
Marc:Something bad happened.
Marc:So now I'm like, all right, buckle up, because this is going to happen.
Marc:And then he just keeps fucking going on this intro.
Marc:He talks about the water and then getting a mug.
Marc:And I'm just like, oh, no, something really bad must have happened.
Marc:And yeah, sure enough, that episode happens.
Marc:And can I just say, I think it was the liquid death that threw the whole thing akimbo.
Guest:What do you think?
Guest:I think based on Ben Kingsley's track record, I'm going to call him Sir Ben.
Guest:What a ridiculous thing.
Guest:But based on his track record, this happens all the time.
Guest:Does it?
Guest:Really?
Guest:This is how he is.
Guest:This is his chosen mode of being...
Guest:I don't even want to call it adversarial.
Guest:It is just his way of trying to control a media environment that he is put in.
Guest:He says the same stories.
Guest:He does these monologues.
Guest:He gets angry at anyone asking him a question that's off the monologue.
Guest:And I don't even know if angry is the right word.
Guest:Because I don't know his emotions.
Guest:I don't know his emotional state.
Guest:But he stops it.
Guest:And as Mark said, he stares daggers.
Guest:And I would direct people to a Guardian interview with him from 2015.
Guest:And it is with a reporter named Zoe Williams.
Guest:And go ahead and Google that and look it up and read it.
Guest:And you will be very surprised to see an almost identical experience with
Guest:Now, I would say what I found most exemplary about Mark is that he stayed in the saddle on that talk.
Guest:And although he was never going to break through it and have the guy act like a human...
Guest:and have a conversation with him, he was able to, Mark was able to steer it in directions that didn't make it just sound like a one hour long rehearsed bit.
Guest:Like I was very impressed, especially like the first thing I said to Mark was like, wow, even you five years ago would not have been able to do this.
Guest:Like he had enough confidence and wherewithal and experience, right?
Guest:of these kinds of things happening before to know how to play it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, and, you know, I think that the fact that after the interview was over, he said the guy was a total mensch after that.
Guest:He really turned on the charm once they were out of the garage and everything.
Guest:Ben Kingsley did, I mean, and I have to think that that, that must've been like Ben Kingsley, like, Oh, okay.
Guest:You got through that.
Guest:You did okay there, kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:It definitely makes us think twice about these kind of episodes, though.
Guest:Like, when you really boil down to it, it's like, do you really need to fucking hear from Ben Kingsley?
Guest:Like...
Guest:I agree with what Mark is saying to an extent that, like, from a standpoint of getting a very renowned actor's experience with acting, there's something useful in that episode.
Guest:Like, there is some interesting things about his relationship with Shakespeare and how it's kind of formed his, you know, style and how he thinks about himself as an actor.
Guest:But, like...
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Do you need that?
Guest:Is that like a worthwhile thing?
Guest:Is it worth it?
Guest:Is it worth the trouble Mark put himself through?
Guest:Is it the trouble we put ourselves through in the aftermath of it?
Guest:Absolutely not.
Guest:It's literally one of those things where I was like, if this was everything, I would quit this fucking show.
Guest:Like I would turn the show off.
Guest:You would not have WTF anymore.
Guest:If everything was like this, no fucking way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not worth it.
Guest:Gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So like, yeah, for it to happen once out of hundreds of times, because it's really there's there's barely any other times that have been like this.
Guest:Barely.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, you know, and most of the times if it has been like this.
Guest:Like I can think of like the one with Larry King where Larry King was a real dick to Mark and he didn't hide it.
Guest:And Mark then didn't hide it in his setup to the thing and whatever.
Guest:And Larry King apologized.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Afterwards, like he was like, you know, they got word to us like, oh, you know, he wanted to send his regrets.
Guest:It wasn't his best day or something like that.
Guest:But and I, you know, I didn't care that anybody else does or doesn't apologize.
Guest:But it's like if that were the regular way that things go, like no chance.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Speaking of the regular way that things go, though, here's the other thing.
Guest:What's that?
Guest:Sometimes we get feedback into the show.
Guest:Usually it's like, it's like people who have not listened for very long.
Guest:Maybe they're listening because they like the particular guest or they, or they're new to the show.
Guest:They don't really know Mark as a personality.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's very, very, it's much less likely to get this from somebody who's been listening for a while, but we get feedback sometimes of people saying like, you're a bad interviewer because you don't let the guests talk.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I would like to address those.
Guest:Anytime I've ever seen that, it's like the same as the complaint of like, you know, I don't like you talking for the first 15 minutes.
Guest:Why do you do that?
Guest:Just get to the guest.
Guest:It's like there's no point in addressing that concern.
Guest:That's just somebody that doesn't understand what we're doing.
Guest:And that's fine.
Guest:We're not I'm not here to educate on that.
Guest:If you like the show, you like the show.
Guest:Fine.
Guest:If you want to fast forward.
Guest:Great.
Guest:But I will take this opportunity just in case.
Guest:There are any full Marin listeners who have that same thought for some reason.
Guest:They don't like that Mark interjects or that Mark, you know, has his own things to say about himself and about life and his own thoughts on things while the guest is in there in the garage with him.
Guest:And they have an interchange as opposed to just listening to the guest.
Guest:Here's what you will get if Mark doesn't do that.
Guest:You will get a guy doing a monologue for an hour about stuff that you don't give a shit about or maybe three people do or whatever.
Guest:The reason why we do this show is because it's Mark's show.
Guest:It's not Ben Kingsley show.
Guest:And so the reason why someone will be on the show and their episode will be interesting to people is because Mark interrupts them and puts his own thoughts in and gets them off their narratives.
Guest:So like it is a good exemplary episode.
Guest:of why we don't do the thing that people sometimes complain we don't do.
Guest:Why do you interrupt so much?
Guest:Why do you talk over the guest?
Guest:Here's why.
Guest:Because otherwise you get Ben Kingsley.
Marc:The lecture of Ben Kingsley.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Go fucking subscribe to Masterclass.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, there's a service for that.
Marc:I love that Bark mentions that this guy's an actor.
Marc:It's his job to pretend.
Marc:He can act his way through shit.
Marc:He couldn't act normal here.
Marc:He had to just shut down.
Guest:I think it's a dominance trait.
Guest:I think it's a tactic.
Guest:In that piece I suggested, that Guardian piece, this is what that writer, Zoe Williams, says.
Guest:She writes, He is, like any charismatic, totally dominant.
Guest:His mood is the weather.
Guest:He can turn the sunshine on and off like a switch and watch his audience expand and shrink at his determination.
Guest:He enjoys this a little bit too much, in my opinion.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Marc:That's fucking pitch perfect for what happened.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:I mean, there was a point where Ben Kingsley was talking about his inadequacy about doing Hamlet and him saying that he can't get through the next two hours.
Marc:And I honestly thought that, like, I could feel Mark sort of breaking the fourth wall and just staring at the audience at that moment.
Marc:Because it's just like, man, this fucking guy, he's...
Marc:He's really doing this, huh?
Marc:He's just not allowing me in.
Marc:He has like a force field around him the entire time.
Marc:And I mean, when Mark was like, oh, when you peed outside the bathroom in that movie, silence.
Marc:He didn't even react to that.
Guest:Well, you know, it's interesting about that.
Guest:It's like, I don't think Ben Kingsley was thinking this.
Guest:I think all he was thinking was this motherfucker is trying to knock me off my monologue.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But what Mark assessed at the end of the day was...
Guest:He thought about it and he was like, why of all the things that Ben Kingsley has done and all the performances I've ever seen.
Guest:Now, Sexy Beast is one of his most famous performances and people do love it and it's very memorable.
Guest:But then of all the performances, that's the one Mark remembers the most.
Guest:And then of that performance, the thing he remembers most is this guy pissing on the floor.
Guest:And Mark, at the end of this talk, when he and I were talking about it, he's like...
Guest:That's why I remember that, because that moment is this guy at his most truthful.
Guest:He's doing all this talk this whole hour about finding his truth, expressing his truth through acting.
Guest:How do you get to the truth?
Guest:Mark's like, that's why that part stuck out to me, because that's who he is.
Guest:He wants to piss on the floor and have you sit there and take it.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you fucking nailed it.
Guest:Yeah, Mark did it.
Guest:Mark nailed it.
Guest:And, you know, Mark is a good reader of people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He does it for a living.
Guest:He has to get on a stage and know what the room is like.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, like he reads people, not just in this setting of like one on one in his garage.
Marc:He's good at it.
Marc:Yeah, Kingsley says, we all know actors who went into very dangerous areas and didn't survive.
Marc:And Mark's like, is that true?
Marc:And his response is, we all know this.
Marc:And it's just like, yeah, sure.
Marc:Sure, I guess we all know this.
Guest:Yeah, I wasn't even sure what that meant.
Guest:Like, what, there are guys who went crazy because they were method actors?
Guest:We all know this, Brendan.
Guest:We all know this.
Marc:Is he saying, like, Daniel Day-Lewis, like, still thinks he's Lincoln or something?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Seriously, what were these words that you're saying?
Marc:I don't understand it.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:How about Mark asking about his mom?
Marc:So how about your mom?
Marc:Did she see your work?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yes, she did.
Guest:That was accompanied with this.
Guest:And I'm doing the hand slash across my throat motion.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He was basically like, I'm not talking about, don't ask me anymore about that.
Guest:And...
Guest:Mark was like, well, like, just say that then.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just say, like, I don't know.
Guest:I don't want to talk.
Guest:Like, that's a human thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:To say, oh, yeah, I don't want to talk about this.
Guest:OK, I'll move on.
Guest:But instead, like, does this silent thing and does a throat slash moment movement like cut?
Marc:Very weird.
Marc:Mark got so close to breaking that force field apparently right there.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Also, I just wish that when Kingsley asked if he could read the poem, I wanted Mark to say, you know what?
Marc:We're out of time.
Marc:Sorry.
Sorry.
Guest:That was another weird thing.
Guest:Like he keeps going like, what is this poem?
Guest:And he's like, well, I'll tell you.
Guest:And then he's telling him and then he doesn't say what the poem is called or what.
Guest:And he's like, okay, well, what is the poem?
Guest:And he's like, well, I just told you what it is.
Guest:No, you didn't.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You didn't say what it was.
Guest:And then he's like, would you like me to read it?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That's what I've been trying to get at here.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:I mean, again, I was proud of Mark.
Guest:I thought he did a great job.
Guest:I think the reaction to it has been almost unanimous.
Guest:And, you know, you know what I've said.
Guest:We're always like...
Guest:Happy to be transparent with stuff on this show.
Guest:And there's been plenty of times where Mark has the Beastie Boys.
Guest:That's a great example.
Guest:The Beastie Boys were a type of interview that he didn't love because they were kind of doing a shtick with themselves.
Guest:And he felt...
Guest:I think the thing that will really rankle Mark is when he is made to feel subordinate on his own show.
Guest:It's not only his show, it's his house.
Guest:It's all his environment.
Guest:And in the case of the Beastie Boys, he kind of said that.
Guest:He did a similar thing in the intro.
Guest:And we got a lot of reaction.
Guest:There were people like...
Guest:Get a grip, pal.
Guest:Like, these are two lifelong friends.
Guest:Like, you should just be happy that they're having fun on your show.
Guest:Like, they didn't sit there and sandbag you.
Guest:And it's like, I get what Mark's saying, but I also get how that comes across to listeners where they totally enjoyed the show.
Guest:They enjoyed hearing the Beastie Boys talking to each other and having fun.
Guest:And it didn't seem rude to Mark.
Guest:So why does Mark feel the need to...
Guest:to express that on the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I get that.
Guest:Uh, I did not, I saw like, again, it was like maybe I saw maybe two or three emails and nothing else of people being like, I didn't think it was so bad.
Guest:What was your problem?
Guest:You know?
Guest:And, and unanimity amongst all the rest of the feedback we got saying, um,
Guest:God, you have the patience of a saint to get through that.
Guest:That was crazy.
Guest:And when that happens, when you see a reaction that's that big, I don't think we did anything wrong.
Guest:No, absolutely.
Guest:I will say this.
Guest:I'm not going to say specifically that there's massive changes afoot in WTF land.
Guest:But we definitely had a conversation with our bookers afterwards to say...
Guest:Less of these types of guests, please.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like like, you know, it's not less of Ben Kingsley's.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like there's no way to like he's one individual.
Guest:There's no way to know how he gets replicated as an individual or if anything like that would ever happen again.
Guest:But in terms of the stuff that we get served to us.
Guest:Right.
Guest:This might happen.
Guest:This could this is a possibility.
Guest:This is an opportunity.
Guest:We are going to be less inclined to want to have people on who are just renowned for something, acting, directing, singing or something, and they're promoting a movie and Mark has no connection to it or otherwise.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, OK, how do you differentiate that between Jessica Chastain and Ben Kingsley?
Guest:Well, Mark watched that George and Tammy, the Tammy Wynette, George Jones miniseries that she did, and he fucking loved it.
Guest:So great.
Guest:That makes perfect sense for him to talk to her about it.
Guest:And then anything else in her career that she's done.
Guest:But when it's like, oh, Ben Kingsley, you know, he doesn't grant a lot of interviews.
Guest:And would you like to do this?
Guest:And would you, you know...
Guest:Okay, what's he in?
Guest:Oh, this Dali movie.
Guest:Yeah, I guess I watched it.
Guest:I watched it.
Guest:Thought it was fine and that.
Guest:But it's like, what are we differentiating here, right?
Guest:There's nothing that is standing out in any way other than it's an interview show.
Guest:And hopefully, our hope every time is that Mark can do what he does well and get something out of a person that they're not going to do in another outlet.
Guest:But when that goes south, this is what you get.
Guest:You get the Ben Kingsley thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it's like, OK, well, what do we do to prevent that?
Guest:Like I said, I'm not saying you as a listener going to all of a sudden send some major overhauls of the show.
Guest:But I just went back.
Guest:I put into my statistical page on the dashboard that I have what like I plugged in the last year, like the last 365 days and.
Guest:And I then organized it by number of downloads per episode, right?
Guest:What got the most downloads in the last one year period, right?
Guest:So I'm not looking at all time.
Guest:I'm not looking at trends over time.
Guest:I just want to know, where's our audience at in the last year where we've had some great episodes, very, you know, noteworthy guests, some things that made news like Courtney Love or things.
Guest:It's a good representative year.
Guest:If I asked you that and you generally listen to most episodes of the show or you at least know who's on the show, what would you give a guess about the last year of the show?
Guest:What would have been the most listened to episode?
Guest:probably some famous actor famous actor well that's okay that seems like reasonable would you would you venture a guess would you can you think of an episode maybe that you listen to that that you think oh i bet everyone heard that one as well i mean ice cube probably brought a lot of eyeballs that's a good that's a good guess you know what austin butler
Guest:Austin Butler, that's a great guest because you think, oh, there's an outside fan base there, right?
Guest:Number one, by a lot, by 100,000 listens more than the number two guest of the year was Patton Oswalt.
Guest:Wow, really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:So in the top 10 of guests...
Guest:I think it was number five.
Guest:I sent this all to Mark yesterday in trying to kind of talk him, talk through with him exactly how I'm feeling about the guests on the show.
Guest:Patton Oswalt, number one.
Guest:Number four, I believe, Nikki Glaser, another comedian.
Guest:Number eight, Sam Rockwell, guy who'd been on the show before.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not a comic, but a guy who'd been on the show who we had back because they got to know each other during the bad guys and became friends.
Guest:And people saw, hey, look, Mr. Wolf and Mr. Snake are talking to each other on this podcast.
Yeah.
Guest:Number 10, Whitney Cummings.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Someone who'd been on three times in the past, right?
Guest:But they're friends and they're comics and they talk, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so out of 102 episodes in the last, 104, 104 episodes in the last year, that top 10 had four that were repeat guests and still, you know, had a lot of people listening to them.
Guest:So...
Guest:It's a little counter to a thought process that we had for a very long time that the data used to bear out that people didn't want to hear reruns of the show, right?
Guest:They were less inclined to hear people again.
Guest:They wanted new stuff.
Guest:And well...
Guest:You know, now we've been doing the show for almost 15 years.
Guest:There's hundreds and hundreds of hours, probably thousands of hours of content for people to listen to.
Guest:And when they see the names come up in their feed, what they really want is...
Guest:Fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They want to hear Mark having fun with someone.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We did.
Guest:Maybe if you're listening to this, you were one of the people who filled it out.
Guest:We asked our listeners to do a content survey for us.
Guest:I know some people wrote to me thinking it was a an ad survey.
Guest:They wanted to know, why are you trying to get our demos for ads?
Guest:It was a one million percent project.
Guest:I promise you it was not for ads.
Guest:It was a survey made by me.
Guest:I made the questions.
Guest:I did not make them for ads.
Guest:I made them for content.
Guest:I wanted to know why are people listening?
Guest:What are they into?
Guest:Just in general, how are you feeling about your WTF experience these days?
Guest:What would you be more inclined to listen to on the bonus content?
Guest:All this stuff.
Guest:The number one thing people said they wanted to hear on WTF Plus, on the bonus content, was Mark talking to his friends.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That was it.
Guest:Number one thing.
Guest:So I, you know, there's nothing about my way of working that is reactionary.
Guest:I'm a deliberative person, as you may have guessed from this Friday show that we do.
Guest:I have a lot of the whole reason we're doing this Friday show is because of data.
Guest:Like I put a lot of stock into data and data.
Guest:visible trends that I can see, not gut, not guesswork, right?
Guest:Can you tell me substantially that this makes sense as a decision to make?
Guest:And what I can tell you is that substantially, it makes sense to have Mark talk to people he's very familiar with and has fun with.
Guest:Does that have to be every episode?
Guest:No.
Guest:But as you can tell from this week's episode where there was another repeat guest who was just on four years ago, right?
Guest:Tom Dreesen was on in 2019.
Guest:It's not a long time ago.
Guest:But he came back because Mark really liked these stories he was telling and they had a great time.
Guest:And I think you'll see a lot more of that because...
Guest:If the option is do that or take a stab at the next guy who's been knighted and has an Oscar and it's a crapshoot what kind of conversation you're going to get out of it, I'm going to go with the guy telling mob stories.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:By the way, do you have any mob stories?
Marc:Living in Staten Island, I only have a couple of mob stories.
Guest:I don't have mob stories like, I know that guy was a mobster.
Guest:I have a lot of, like, what Tom Dreesen was referring to in the episode of, like, oh, that's a wannabe.
Guest:Like, plenty of, like, construction dudes, like, in my neighborhood, going back 20 years or whatever, that it's like...
Guest:you know, this guy got those door frames in a shady way or whatever, but like, he's not a mafia guy.
Guest:Like he just did something shady to get those and he installed them and they're probably like not to code or whatever.
Guest:And he paid somebody off to not enforce it or whatever.
Guest:But like,
Guest:Yeah, criminality from a, let's say, ethnic persuasion.
Guest:I think it definitely fits the bill in some ways.
Guest:But no, never have I had a full on mobster experience.
Guest:I mean, like I went to school up in the Bronx and Arthur Avenue was totally mobbed up.
Guest:And we'd go to restaurants and you'd see guys who you're like, I'm going to make a guess about that dude right there.
Guest:But nothing specific.
Guest:No.
Guest:Gotcha.
Guest:How about you?
Marc:What was your Staten Island situation?
Marc:So growing up in Staten Island, just my street was filled with two family houses.
Marc:On the other side of the street, though, there was a one family house, big like kind of McMansion.
Marc:And there was a family that lived there.
Marc:I used to play with the kids.
Marc:We all would hang out.
Marc:Their dad would be like just like kind of hovering.
Marc:And we'd talk like, oh, your dad doesn't wear shoes ever.
Marc:Apparently he's like, yeah, he got hit by lightning.
Marc:uh you know like a few years ago i'm like all right well that's weird but okay whatever let's like go and play tag and stuff so um one day one of the kids the youngest kid is like you know really sad i'm like hey man what's what's the matter it's like my dad like i don't know if i'm gonna see him again it's like well why why would you not like be seeing your dad again he's like oh you know he's just i don't know i just i hear bad things with my mom
Marc:I'm like, all right, well, you know, don't worry.
Marc:It'll be fine.
Marc:And, like, the next day, I get, like, the Staten Island Advance.
Marc:It's the newspaper.
Marc:And I get it, like, right outside my front door.
Marc:And I look at it, and it's, like, the headline, the front page was, you know, Staten Island man, you know, murdered.
Marc:And the picture is of...
Marc:my neighbor's house, like from basically my viewpoint of my house.
Marc:So it was one of those things where like, I had the newspaper up and then I, I, I, I lowered the newspaper like, wait, that's the same house.
Marc:So apparently this poor kid, um, his dad got chopped up and put into the back of a, uh, of a station wagon.
Marc:And, uh, they found him.
Marc:So that was, that was my, one of my brushes with, uh,
Guest:The worst part about that is the kid knew.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Like, he had a feeling that it was going to happen.
Guest:That's the worst.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:That family, you know, hopefully they're doing okay.
Marc:I don't know what became of them after I moved.
Guest:But, yeah.
Guest:You know, I was glad that there was something that Tom Dreesen brought up in that thing.
Guest:Is that, like...
Guest:These guys, they always, it's always so laborious, the work.
Guest:And like, they want to live this image of being like high on the hog and like, you know, the world is at their command as these guys with no cares and no responsibilities.
Guest:And they just take what they want and do what they want.
Guest:And it never is that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that mythology of it is just the most deadly thing.
Guest:And these guys always have a life that sounds so much harder, is obviously fraught with death and peril and them committing violence.
Guest:And just like the look.
Guest:I'm not a religious man, but there are holy books that say don't do these things like killing, stealing, right?
Guest:Adultery.
Guest:They say those things for a reason because they were living when they were like, man, people are doing this shit and they are dying at a clip.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like our society is crumbling because of this stuff.
Guest:We need to do something about that.
Guest:And like these guys, like it's one of the reasons why Martin Scorsese is like my favorite filmmaker.
Guest:Cause he's also, it's all rooted in Catholicism, right?
Guest:Like his, everything he does is through the lens of being Catholic, being Roman Catholic.
Guest:And like, that's exactly his experience too.
Guest:It's like, what are you fucking idiots doing?
Guest:The temptation of this to just live totally by your appetites, you're doomed.
Guest:You'll never be able to overcome it.
Guest:You will be doomed every time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's so much harder.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yes, it's so much harder.
Guest:And it's so much harder for such minimal rewards.
Guest:Like for everything where you think, oh, man, look at that.
Guest:They got the, hey, Karen, I got the most expensive tree.
Guest:Oh, that's your reward.
Guest:The most expensive tree.
Marc:I got a Cadillac in my mom's name.
Marc:Like, yeah, it's going to work out terribly for you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I just love that part in the Irishman where it's like at the end, like De Niro and Pesci are in jail.
Guest:Like Pesci is about to fucking die in jail.
Guest:He's so old.
Guest:They're wheeling him around and they're sitting there and they're like, oh, this is the best bread.
Guest:Like, oh, really?
Guest:That's what a great life you're leading to the grave.
Guest:You get to sit in the prison yard and eat the best bread with a box of grape juice.
Guest:Oh, fascinating stuff.
Guest:So, yes, those were that was this week's episodes of WTF.
Guest:Sir Ben and Sir Tom.
Guest:Why not just Tom Dreeson, a guy much more being inclined to call sir.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like that's a cool dude.
Guest:Like, by the way, if you haven't listened to it, Tom's episode from 2019 is also awesome.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:Like there are definitely two episodes to listen to together.
Guest:If you haven't listened to either of them or you only listen to one, both of these Tom Drees and episodes are great.
Guest:He's a fascinating dude.
Guest:He has a tremendously touching story about his childhood and who his real father was.
Guest:And, uh, and, uh, you know, he's just like a kind of real actual salt of the earth guy.
Guest:It made me like both times listening to his last episode.
Guest:And then this one, I realized like, Oh, this is why David Letterman is friends with this guy for life.
Guest:Cause he's like real.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like he must feel to somebody like Dave Letterman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, fucking thank God.
Guest:Another show business person who just feels like a real dude.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like a guy who like I could just talk to back home and it would be no different.
Guest:And and yeah, I am a big fan of Tom Dreesen as a person.
Guest:And yeah, go listen to both of those episodes.
Guest:And Tom's story about Johnny Carson is awesome.
Marc:Insane.
Guest:If you haven't listened to that episode.
Guest:That's the whole reason Mark said, you got to come back on.
Guest:Because he told him that Johnny Carson story in the parking lot of the comedy store.
Guest:And he was like, oh, we got to do this on the mic.
Guest:That story is insane.
Marc:First of all, what was Johnny Carson thinking?
Marc:Oh, he's probably just drunk off his ass, right?
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I mean, I was captivated by that story.
Marc:I cannot believe Johnny Carson didn't end up in the bottom of the ocean somewhere.
Guest:Well, he almost did.
Guest:It sure sounds like it.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I was looking up about that guy, too.
Guest:Crazy Joe Gallo, who, you know, he's portrayed by Sebastian Maniscalco in The Irishman.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And but I was looking up about him.
Guest:Apparently, he was full on diagnosed schizophrenic.
Guest:So like, like, you know, I guess like a prison doctor or somebody was like, oh, yeah, you're schizophrenic.
Guest:So, like, that was why his nickname was Crazy Joe.
Guest:It wasn't just, like, a random thing.
Guest:It was, this guy seems crazy.
Guest:Like, no, they found out, oh, he is crazy.
Guest:Like, by clinical craziness.
Guest:And sorry, no offense, but, like, that was the way people thought of things at the time.
Guest:You know, I weren't as sensitive about mental health and schizophrenia.
Guest:And so they were like, this guy is Crazy Joe.
Guest:He hears voices and will kill you.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, there's another amazing episode, uh, that, that Mark did talking about, uh, mafia stuff was a very early one from one of the, from the first year of WTF with a guy named Mike DiStefano, uh, who has since died.
Guest:Um, and, but was a really fascinating guy.
Guest:He, uh, did not get into comedy until very late.
Guest:He was basically a crimed up guy living in the Bronx.
Guest:And, uh, he, I think, uh,
Guest:contracted HIV from heroin use.
Guest:And so he became a drug counselor and HIV AIDS counselor as well, and found that he was funny while doing it.
Guest:And someone suggested at some point, you should try to get into stand up comedy.
Guest:He got into it, I think in his 40s.
Guest:Uh, and he tells this story about doing a club, like an early time when he's doing his sets and, uh, a bunch of mobsters came to see him, like people that he knew.
Guest:And he says, there's one guy sitting in the audience who was a killer, like a guy, a murderer, people murdered people.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And before he before Mike was going up, like the comics were coming out before this guy was heckling them.
Guest:He was throwing ice at them.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And and the club owner or manager, whoever was there that day in charge, went up to Mike and was like, is that guy with you?
Guest:And he was like, oh, yeah, yeah, he is.
Guest:He was like, well, I'm fucking throwing him out of here.
Guest:Like, he is gone.
Guest:I'm going out there and he's gone.
Guest:He's, you know, disruptive and being abusive.
Guest:That guy's fucking gone.
Guest:And Mike was like, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:Listen, I'll go handle it.
Guest:Don't don't do it.
Guest:That guy will kill you.
Guest:And the club owner said, what do you mean?
Yeah.
Guest:And Mike was like, I found that very funny.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:He's like, I mean, he will make you not alive.
Marc:He will end your life.
Marc:That's what I mean.
Marc:The opposite of alive.
Guest:And he said he went out there to talk to this guy and be like, hey, yeah, you know, you just got to not heckle these guys and don't throw ice at them.
Guest:And this dude was like, oh, Mikey, I thought I was helping you out.
Guest:Like, he thought...
Guest:That the way to get Mike over as a comic was to destroy the people who were going up in front of him, like make sure they had terrible sets.
Guest:Only like a true psychopath would think to do that.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's just something missing there in the, in that fella.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the brain.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Uh, this was a Mike DeStefano episode one 30.
Guest:Uh, it was from 2010.
Guest:So just a little past a year of doing this.
Guest:Uh, and I really can't recommend that one enough.
Guest:What a great, great episode.
Guest:Um, and I, I, it was one of our early favorites.
Guest:It got excerpted by this American life.
Guest:Um,
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Just a really great episode, hallmark episode of the show, if you never heard it.
Guest:And it's available to you, Full Marin listeners, and you alone.
Guest:It's not in the free feed.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, that's been a lot of WTF stuff.
Guest:We can get into some wrestling talk for our first
Guest:wrestling viewers who I know, thanks to that survey, are still out there.
Guest:Thank you for tuning in continually to our wrestling content portion of the show.
Guest:The big reason that we wanted to talk some wrestling was there is a new two-hour wrestling show on every week, a new AEW program on Saturdays now called Collision.
Guest:It debuted this past Saturday.
Guest:Chris, what did you think of the debut of Collision?
Marc:I love that they paid Elton John.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:That was a great intro.
Guest:So it opens with Saturday Night's All Right for Fighting.
Guest:And it was a great little opening package cut together.
Guest:It did a thing that I love that would harken back to the old Saturday Night's Main Event days on WWF from the 80s was they're going to obviously change the opening every week because the opening...
Guest:shots were of the people who are fighting each other on that night's show right like it would show this guy and the opponent and then this guy and the opponent but set to the Elton John song uh and I love that I love that little touch and uh it did not go unnoticed by me um
Guest:But I also thought the whole show was really well put together.
Guest:It felt new.
Guest:It felt different from their Dynamite show, which I think is important.
Guest:The look was different.
Guest:The sound was different.
Guest:Great commentary.
Guest:Great commentary.
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:The matches were good.
Guest:There was nothing that was like a tremendous blow away, but they were all entertaining.
Guest:So I was excited to have it on a Saturday night.
Guest:And as you said, Chris, you'll never watch it on a Saturday night.
Guest:But you watched it, what, Sunday?
Guest:Yeah, Sunday morning.
Guest:And that works fine.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:For sure.
Guest:Like a nice, lazy Sunday thing to do.
Marc:Yeah, just kind of like when I was a kid.
Marc:I was, you know, instead of like when I'm folding laundry, I'm going to be watching Collision.
Marc:So it really works out fantastic.
Marc:I do wonder about CM Punk.
Marc:Obviously, it's great that he's back.
Marc:He puts butts in the seat.
Marc:But is this guy worth this drama?
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:We had a listener write in to our comment section and say, what is your opinion about CM Punk coming back to AEW?
Guest:I am excited.
Guest:This is what the listener said.
Guest:I would say, I think he's going to be good TV.
Yeah.
Guest:As a person who wants AEW to succeed, I hope he's good for business.
Guest:Because do you know who he reminds me of?
Guest:I'm not the first person to say this.
Guest:The ultimate warrior.
Marc:Oh, the ultimate warrior.
Yeah.
Guest:Yes, like a total free agent, almost loose cannon guy who has interpersonal problems like everywhere he goes, but like the owner of the company just can't quit him because he's like crack.
Guest:He pops ratings.
Guest:He's good for TV.
Guest:He's exciting.
Guest:And like, I think Tony Khan is like this guy.
Guest:He he brings the goods and I don't want to say no.
Guest:Like, I don't know.
Guest:If it were me, personally, I would have been like, yeah, we got to cut bait.
Guest:This is too much hassle.
Guest:And I'm the guy... Look, I like CM Punk.
Guest:I'm a fan.
Guest:I introduced him to Mark.
Guest:I got him on WTF when Mark had no idea who he was.
Guest:I watched...
Guest:WWF, when he became the champion, and I hadn't been watching WWF for years, when he left WWF, I stopped watching.
Guest:Like, I like the guy.
Guest:I'm a fan.
Guest:I would not have brought him back to AEW.
Guest:But that's me.
Guest:It's not my money.
Guest:It's not my company.
Guest:And he's back, and he's the focal point of the show.
Guest:And he's great.
Guest:He's great on TV.
Guest:He's a good performer.
Guest:So, yeah, it's like, if it can just stay good on TV, I'm good with it.
Guest:I...
Guest:As a general rule, don't believe people change ever.
Guest:And so I think that the prospects of him lasting long are not great, but we shall see.
Guest:I'm not going to rule anything out.
Marc:Yeah, for me, he reminds me of Donald Trump.
Marc:And it's like, you know, news organizations were airing live Trump events in 2016 because he brought ratings.
Marc:You know, he put butts in the seats.
Marc:He was selling out.
Marc:And like, where did that lead us?
Marc:No, we're good.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So CM Punk is going to be playing heel, right, outside of Chicago?
Marc:Is that what I'm getting?
Marc:That's the vibe I'm getting, is that the elite are the villains in Chicago, and they're the good guys everywhere else.
Marc:And CM Punk's going to get... Yeah, we'll see.
Guest:I don't know, though.
Guest:There's nothing about him that they're doing that...
Guest:Makes me think he's going to play heel.
Guest:Now, he has no problem playing heel.
Guest:And so if he gets booed somewhere, he will lean into that.
Guest:But I assume he'll get booed.
Guest:He'll get cheered in Toronto.
Guest:You know, they have a main event on Collision this coming week, and that's in Toronto.
Guest:And then he's on the Forbidden Door show.
Guest:That's in Toronto.
Guest:I assume he's going to, you know, be cheered.
Marc:But what do I know?
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:It's all speculation, but it is fascinating.
Marc:And, yeah, I'm kind of mixed on CM Punk is the answer to that question.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think he's great business.
Marc:I don't think he's great in the locker room, and I don't know if I can justify having him there.
Marc:But it's not my company, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, and, like, that's it.
Guest:I'm happy to see where it goes as long as it doesn't mean, like, they go out of business.
Guest:Like, you know.
Guest:Well, it was interesting.
Guest:We saw this collision show.
Guest:We thought it was good.
Guest:We had these conversation points around CM Punk, but it made me think like a lot of times the debut of a new wrestling show, it's usually a big deal and it heralds in like a new era for wrestling.
Guest:And this collision show was different enough from Dynamite that I think it could cause quite a bit of change for AEW.
Guest:We'll see moving forward.
Guest:But the last time this happened very explicitly was over 30 years ago.
Guest:And that was the debut of Monday Night Raw from the WWF.
Guest:And so Chris and I went back and watched the very first episode of Monday Night Raw after having watched the very first episode of AEW Collision.
Guest:And I don't know, Chris, what were your impressions of Monday Night Raw from January 11th, 1993?
Marc:First of all, just the weirdest cold open with Bobby the Brain Heenan.
Marc:Like, I don't.
Marc:And it was a running gag throughout.
Guest:Yes, this was their attempt at comedy throughout the show was Bobby Heenan trying to get into the building because he had been replaced on commentary.
Guest:More on that in a second.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So he tries just as himself.
Marc:Then he dresses up in drag, I want to say.
Marc:And then he dresses up as a Hasidic Jewish person.
Marc:That was some edgy comedy there.
Guest:Boy, that only scratched the surface of things that would not find its way on TV in 2023.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We can talk about a few more of those.
Guest:Talk about, not endorse, I should add.
Guest:I want to mention, though, that the reason they made this show was a desperation attempt, frankly.
Guest:Business was hurting.
Guest:Hulk Hogan was not around for the first time in a full year.
Guest:He does come back a couple weeks later into this and winds up main eventing the next WrestleMania.
Guest:But they had no Hogan.
Guest:They had brought Ultimate Warrior back, and then he left again.
Guest:much like we were talking about CM Punk, volatility backstage and whatnot.
Guest:He was fired or he quit, depending on who you ask.
Guest:And the ratings were tanking.
Guest:They had on USA in this slot a show that we've talked about before, Primetime Wrestling, and it was at its lowest ratings ever.
Guest:It was really struggling.
Guest:So Monday Night Raw was an innovation.
Guest:It was something they wanted to do to shake things up.
Guest:And, you know, it's still on today, 30 plus years later, so you can't say that it wasn't successful.
Guest:Was it a successful show, first show, debut show, right out of the gate?
Guest:Your mileage may vary on that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I would say it had some pluses and some very stark negatives.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:First of all, it was very small in scale, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Which kind of looked cool.
Guest:They were in the Manhattan Center, which I think is that what became the Hammerstein Ballroom?
Marc:I think so.
Marc:And they used to be there a lot, right?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And other wrestling shows have since gone there.
Guest:It looked kind of cool.
Guest:It is so small that I wound up noticing it threw off the entrances.
Guest:Like guys had no room to enter.
Guest:It was like, and now entering the ring, The Undertaker, and he was already there.
Guest:Like he's just like, he took two steps and now he's in the ring.
Marc:Well, even before that, Vince and Macho Man are talking and there's a siren going off the entire time.
Marc:And I'm just like, what is happening to my brain right now?
Marc:It's so distracting.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:The siren was a big, big, big part of their early imaging that was in the theme song.
Guest:I thought the opening theme song was great because much like we talked about last episode,
Guest:Jim Johnston was great at wrestling music.
Guest:He did the theme song for Monday Night Raw, and it was really great.
Guest:We see the opening.
Guest:You hear the siren, as you're talking about.
Guest:And then we see the commentary team, which is Vince McMahon in the tuxedo doing his Vince McMahon thing.
Guest:Macho man Randy Savage, who had just been the champion four months ago, and now he's relegated to announcer role.
Guest:This was a Vince thing.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Vince, at this point, thought, these guys are too old.
Guest:Like, I want younger guys.
Guest:And Randy had a ton left in the tank, as he would soon show by going to WCW.
Guest:But he was thought to be, maybe it was like an injury thing, too.
Guest:He wanted to dial back on his time.
Guest:But Vince, at this point, was like, okay, we're going to move him into an announcer slash ambassador role.
Guest:He's not going to be a full-time wrestler.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he was there.
Guest:And then the third member of this commentary team who replaced Bobby the Brain Heenan was Rob Bartlett.
Marc:He reminded me of Dennis Miller being added to Monday Night Football.
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:There was a little bit of a difference.
Guest:The big difference there was Dennis Miller was famous.
Guest:Who was this fucking guy, dude?
Guest:All right.
Guest:This is a classic Vince story and just classic rich guy experience in general.
Guest:Rob Barlett was a comic.
Guest:He still is, I believe.
Guest:And he was a sidekick on I Miss in the Morning, one of the crew.
Marc:By the way, Imus gets a plug later on in this episode.
Guest:So does WFAN.
Guest:Buy the call letters.
Guest:So insane.
Guest:But so Rob Barlow was an Imus lackey.
Guest:I don't want to say lackey.
Guest:He was just a guy on the show.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He would come a comedian on the show.
Guest:And apparently he was hired to be the auctioneer at a charity auction for the Connecticut Special Olympics.
Guest:So WWF did a lot of work with them.
Guest:And so Vince was in attendance and this guy was doing, you know, the kind of hack standup hosting gig.
Guest:It's it happens.
Guest:Everybody does it.
Guest:And one of the things he did was he roasted Vince for some time.
Guest:pastel colored suit vince was wearing i i don't remember the exact details of but it was it was something he was wearing was goofy looking and rob bartlett from the stage did like 20 minutes on how silly vince looked and making fun of him and just did went on do the comedy of this thing
Guest:Vince, because he has no life, right?
Guest:And all his life was and still is, is WWF.
Guest:He doesn't know anything about pop culture.
Guest:My favorite was Colt Cabana's story when he talked to Mark that Vince was like, whoa, what do you do?
Guest:What do you like?
Guest:Because that was how he always got guys gimmicks, right?
Guest:Like he just tried to find out like, what were your actual interests or what's your background?
Guest:Like, oh, you're a mortician.
Guest:Well, you work with The Undertaker.
Guest:Like that was real, right?
Guest:Like Paul Bear, he was a real mortician.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he asked Colt Cabana, like, oh, what are you into?
Guest:What do you like?
Guest:And Colt Cabana said, well, I love alternative comedy.
Guest:Like, he meant, like, Mark.
Guest:Like, he meant, like, going to, like, Luna Lounge in the day, right?
Guest:And Vince looked at him and went, oh, like Jackie Gleason.
Guest:What?
What?
Guest:And I was like, Colt was literally like, oh no.
Guest:Like everything went into like slow-mo.
Guest:Like he knew right then and there he was doomed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And yes, Colt was doomed.
Guest:I think he made it on TV twice and nothing ever happened with him there.
Guest:But so yeah, Vince has no frame of reference for anything in the culture.
Guest:So he went and had this night out, probably had like a drink or two and thought, I had the time of my life.
Guest:This guy was hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:this guy who made fun of me in a good humored way.
Guest:And it was the greatest thing I ever saw.
Guest:Uh, he, uh, calls Rob Bartlett up like two days later, whatever.
Guest:Uh, Rob Bartlett tells this story saying he got a call.
Guest:I heard it was Vince McMahon on the phone to talk to you.
Guest:And he thought, Oh, this guy's going to threaten me.
Guest:I'm going to like, I'm going to tell him that here come the death threats or whatever.
Guest:And he was like, Bartlett,
Guest:Saw you the other night.
Guest:I'm sorry you didn't like my outfit, my attire.
Guest:But I'm wondering, how would you like to host a new television show?
Oh, God.
Marc:I mean, you gotta, I mean, I guess that's like, you gotta, you gotta work, guys, because you never know who's in attendance and what job you might get.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:So this guy goes from roasting Vince to being the number three guy on Monday Night Raw.
Guest:On their new live television show.
Marc:There are all these edgy jokes that he was saying.
Marc:And when I say edgy...
Guest:apparently told him that was what vince's direction to him was so like apparently the only thing off limits was he couldn't say anything about miss elizabeth because randy would fucking lose his shit because they had just gotten divorced so he was told no talking about miss elizabeth but anything else you want to say do whatever you want it's on the table wow so he had all these edgy jokes that were just horribly racist
Marc:Just racist jokes.
Guest:Total racist jokes.
Guest:The entire time.
Guest:Egg roll joke about Yokozuna.
Guest:He called him an Oriental.
Guest:He made a sushi bar joke.
Guest:It was, yeah, the whole show was full of this stuff.
Marc:And it was, it was just, you know, how in modern wrestling shows,
Marc:The announcing just, you know, sort of matches the, you know, what's happening or they're announcing.
Marc:This was just so distracting.
Marc:I couldn't focus on anything.
Guest:Well, because this guy didn't know anything about the product.
Guest:Like he's literally asking, who's this guy?
Guest:Which guy is that?
Guest:Like, you know, they clearly tried to prep him a little bit ahead of time, but it's wrestling.
Guest:If you're not into it, you're not going to retain that stuff.
Marc:This guy, and Brennan, remind me, what episode of WTF is this guy on?
Marc:I'm kidding.
Marc:He obviously never was a guest on your show.
Guest:No, but I will say this.
Guest:Okay, I do want to kind of defend Rob Bartlett a little bit because I've read interviews with him since then.
Guest:He fully gets that he was not...
Guest:right for this.
Guest:He doesn't try to defend it.
Guest:He's like, I was given this opportunity and I took it, but they should have never done it.
Guest:I should not have been there.
Guest:He treats the wrestlers, when he talks about them in hindsight, as they were total professionals.
Guest:They didn't have to be.
Guest:They could have given me the cold shoulder.
Guest:They were nice to me.
Guest:He has responded to his
Guest:I don't think he lasted more than eight, nine episodes.
Guest:So his brief stint on Monday Night Raw, he has conducted himself since that in accordance to his performance.
Guest:He is not bitter or acting like he was something better than he was.
Marc:There was a whole match where he did a Mike Tyson impersonation.
Marc:The worst one you've ever heard in your life, too, by the way.
Marc:It made me so mad.
Marc:Like, how could they, how did they think this was working?
Marc:No, he did that.
Marc:Shut it down.
Guest:He did a Gary Coleman joke about Coco Beware, to which Vince said, ha ha.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I always love Vince's, Vince's attempt at being a human being.
Guest:Like someone would tell a joke and he'll just go, ha ha.
Marc:Well, he also like, he wanted to make a point that this was, this was Monday night raw.
Marc:And what did he say?
Marc:It was, it was, um,
Marc:What was it?
Marc:It was on.
Marc:It was on cut on.
Guest:And then you're having the same problem they were having because they couldn't fucking get it.
Guest:They tried like eight times to get this catchphrase that Vince obviously had gotten into their heads ahead of time and they couldn't do it.
Guest:It was like it was supposed to be, I think, uncut, uncensored and uncooked.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Uncooked.
Marc:Uncooked.
Guest:question mark it just doesn't make sense i guess just because raw right right it's not cooked i mean the most literal of yes that was the that was the catchphrase and three guys where so it's three words
Guest:And three humans.
Guest:And each one of these humans is supposed to say one of those words.
Guest:And they tried eight times.
Guest:I think they got it once.
Guest:And they didn't get it once on the last try.
Guest:They got it once on like the third try.
Guest:And then every time after that was completely fucked up.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I hate it.
Marc:It reminded me a lot of the Jerry Springer show.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Well, that's fitting.
Guest:1993, I think Jerry Springer's mid-90s.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:So there's a Steiner brother match, right?
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:And it's exhausting.
Guest:Yeah, because all the matches, all of them are basically jobber matches.
Marc:But this Steiner match is, you know, Steiner versus a jobber.
Marc:But you've got Doink the Clown in the background.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yes, distracting everything.
Marc:There was no place for your eyes to just land.
Marc:It was exhausting.
Marc:Wait, wait.
Guest:Was it Doink the Clown or was it Dork the Clown?
Marc:Why were they calling him Dork the Clown?
Guest:Well, I think it was Bartlett who didn't know what he was called.
Guest:Or maybe he was trying to make a joke.
Guest:There's obviously no way to know.
Guest:Hey, are you being serious or being funny?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's no way to know from this comedian if you're being serious or funny.
Guest:And so he calls him Dork.
Guest:But then Vince bites on that.
Guest:Yes, he's Dork the Clown.
Guest:And his macho man has to pull them out of this spiral.
Guest:Oh, I think his name is Doink.
Guest:Oh, yes, Doink the Clown.
Marc:It's fucking unreal.
Marc:There's a Shawn Michaels match against Max Moon.
Guest:Max Moon, yeah.
Guest:I don't remember him, but... Well, no, you shouldn't.
Guest:He was only around for a few minutes, but he is from outer space.
Marc:Oh, the worst unitard you've ever seen.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That was actually supposed to be the wrestler Conan, who then turned it down and they gave it to some guy standing around.
Guest:His name is Paul Diamond.
Guest:He was previously playing a masked Japanese wrestler named Kato.
Guest:And he was like, I fit into that suit.
Guest:And they were like, OK, yeah, you're Max Moon.
Marc:Unbelievable.
Marc:This match went on.
Marc:This was the longest match of the night.
Marc:Went through a break.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:It was like an eternity.
Marc:And it was Shawn Michaels who's the champion.
Marc:Who's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who's great.
Marc:Intercontinental champion.
Marc:And he's having a hard time defeating this joke.
Marc:It was perplexing, honestly.
Marc:I didn't understand it.
Guest:Well, this was the one where the Tyson impersonation was going on too.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the entire like long ass, by the way, it's probably like 10 minutes, but it felt like forever.
Marc:A year, a year and a half.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there's that.
Marc:By the way, I mean, it wasn't just this, this guy from Don Inamis.
Marc:It was, there was a like, oh, coming up next, Woody Allen versus Mia Farrow in a steel cage match.
Guest:Total Vince comedy.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Fuck you.
Guest:Like there was a Woody on Mia Farrow joke.
Guest:There was some Amy Fisher, but a Foucault joke.
Guest:That was the Bartlett said, but it was clearly written for him because it had wrestler names in it.
Guest:So like he wouldn't have known who sensational Sherry is.
Guest:So he's reading something probably Vince gave to him.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:The comedy.
Guest:Oh man.
Guest:Comedy with quote marks around it.
Marc:It sucks so much.
Marc:And then there was so much time spent on the Royal Rumble entrance.
Marc:I remember being a kid and being like, oh, I'm excited.
Marc:I want to know who that is.
Marc:But that was reserved for, I don't know, Saturday mornings or something.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Well, they were still in the kind of transition away from that here.
Guest:I will say that was probably like the most enjoyable part of the show to me.
Guest:Like Mean Gene being Mean Gene, he's so awesome.
Guest:He like will sell anything.
Guest:They do all these little interviews with the guys, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, this guy, oh, Mr. Perfect, he's in the Royal Rumble.
Guest:You get a little interviews.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
Guest:Hacksaw Jim Duggan said the greatest thing.
Guest:He said, I'm, wait, I got to try to remember exactly how you phrased it.
Guest:He says, I don't guarantee that I'm going to win, but I'm going to give it 100%.
Guest:And I was like, wow.
Guest:He's being honest.
Guest:Like, he's not saying that he's going to go there and he's going to, I'm going to destroy everybody to win.
Guest:He's like, I don't know.
Guest:I don't think I'm necessarily going to win this thing.
Guest:Realistic goals.
Guest:I love it.
Guest:But you will see me work very hard.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Does he work hard?
Marc:Do you remember how long he was in?
Guest:Oh, yes, I do remember.
Guest:Not in the match.
Guest:Must have gotten injured or something ahead of time.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I also love that Mr. Fuji is currently the only manager of Yokozuna.
Guest:Later on, they bring in Jim Cornette to do the talking for him.
Guest:But so here, Mr. Fuji has to cut the promos, and he's a tremendously terrible promo.
Guest:Always has been.
Guest:And he calls him Yokozuna.
Guest:Over and over and over again.
Guest:My Yokozuma.
Guest:And it's like, these are taped.
Guest:You can cut.
Guest:You can say, Fuji, it's Zuna.
Guest:Call him Yokozuna because he's going to be our world champion in like two months.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I mean, just do the 30 Rock.
Marc:Put some jelly beans in his mouth and just have someone else do the words.
Marc:Like, holy shit.
Guest:I like the picture.
Guest:It's like that scene in Hail Caesar where it's like Vince off camera to Mr. Fuji.
Guest:Would that it were so simple.
Marc:By the way, in this Royal Rumble match, both head shrinkers are going to be in there.
Guest:Both of them.
Guest:Both there.
Guest:Samu and Fatu.
Guest:It was my favorite part of the show.
Guest:There was also a Kamala baby face turn that was from one of the other shows.
Guest:I mean, like the existence of Kamala is is another one of those things that's like so bad and racist.
Guest:It's like shocking that it ever got on TV.
Guest:However, I know you should never say however after that other sentence, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Guest:However, Jim Harris, the guy playing Kamala.
Mm hmm.
Guest:is very good at what he does.
Guest:Like, just that little two-minute clip they showed, where it was Kamala getting turned baby-faced because these guys who are his handlers treat him very poorly, and then the guy who is the Reverend, who has been trying to tell him he's a man and he has self-worth, he comes out and he tells these guys to stop slapping Kamala, and then they beat up that Reverend Slick, and then Kamala, he's...
Guest:Looking at Reverend Slick and he's missed this look on his face of like sorrow and confusion.
Guest:I'm like, wait a minute.
Guest:This dude's actually acting.
Guest:He's very good.
Guest:Yeah, he would have popped me like as a baby.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Kamala, you finally turned like great.
Guest:Still like no excuse for a guy running around on television with, you know, stars and a moon painted on his body.
Guest:And he's the headhunter.
Guest:Just not acceptable.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Razor Ramon, though, we get Razor Ramon being interviewed by Vince McMahon.
Guest:He is still in full Scarface mode, right?
Guest:Like that was the intention when he first came in was you're just playing Scarface.
Marc:I mean, God, I can't believe Raw is still on to this day after this first episode, but it just shows that these things improve over time.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, what did you think of the first episode?
Guest:Oh, I mean, it's... Look, I have to admit, they had never done anything like this, so it did feel different.
Guest:And even watching it now, with that in mind, like I said, it looked cool being in that building that was totally unlike what WWF was at the time in these arenas.
Guest:And, you know, The Undertaker, he comes out, he's clearly a star, he's a guy that can build things around.
Guest:But it was just noticeable to me how, like...
Guest:chintzy everything feels right like in the absence of Hulkamania there's just so much kind of substandard stuff going on there was a during that Undertaker main event which it's like that was barely a main event it's just like a squash match of him and this guy Damien Demento who stunk and I'm listening to Vince call this match and it's like it's a bad match even for a squash and Vince is like oh look he hit him right in the chops yeah yeah
Guest:And I was like, well, this is why the company was like this.
Guest:And this is why he's out there.
Guest:And he's like, we're going to sell Monday Night Raw.
Guest:Because this guy could sell anything.
Guest:Like, whatever crap.
Guest:This is why he thought he could get away with it.
Guest:Because whatever crap there was, he was like, I'm going to sell this.
Guest:I'm going to sell this.
Guest:It's going to be...
Guest:It's going to be a hit like Hulkamania was a hit.
Guest:I'm Vince McMahon.
Guest:I hit him right in the chops.
Guest:This is Monday Night Raw.
Guest:Like he's he's up, up, up, up here on everything, no matter how much garbage there was on the screen.
Guest:And he basically got away with it for a year and a half, 18, 19 months.
Guest:Because the business of WWF at the time was not good.
Guest:He almost went to jail as he was getting prosecuted for steroid charges.
Guest:Gets off of that in the summer of 94.
Guest:The actual business of touring and going to house shows, they were relying a lot on overseas money.
Guest:The overseas tours were doing very well.
Guest:But ratings were still good.
Guest:Monday Night Raw in like 94 and 95 was doing excellent ratings.
Guest:Despite house show business being down, despite pay-per-view buys being down, Monday Night Raw was doing very well.
Guest:And I think Vince would have gladly coasted on that for quite a while if it were not for September 1995.
Guest:When finally, after decades of...
Guest:WWF had direct competition on cable TV in the form of WCW Monday Nitro.
Guest:And for next week's episode, Chris and I will talk about the first Monday Nitro just like we did with the first Monday Night Raw and see how it matches up.
Guest:because I'm quite interested in what you think of this, Chris.
Guest:It was a different experience than watching the first Monday Night Raw, and I will leave it at that.
Guest:And so since we'll end on that cliffhanger, we will move into the best thing we saw in wrestling this past week.
Guest:What was yours, Chris?
Marc:My favorite thing I watched, it was on AEW's new show, Collision.
Marc:It was Buddy Matthews and Andrade.
Marc:Andrade, yes.
Guest:Andrade El Idolo.
Guest:You were not the only person with the problem.
Guest:Kevin Kelly, the announcer, butchered his name like three times.
Guest:He was like, Andrade Delilolo.
Guest:And then they must have told him, no, no, it's El Idolo, like the idol.
Guest:And...
Guest:El Idolo.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:El Idolo.
Guest:Then he came back from commercial.
Guest:And now here comes Andre El Idolo.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Andrade.
Guest:He finally got it.
Guest:But that match was awesome.
Marc:Those are two guys just killing each other.
Marc:First of all, two guys I don't see that often.
Marc:I've never seen Andrade.
Marc:Goddamn, sorry, I'm saying his name, butchering his name, but I don't see him that often.
Marc:Is he back from an injury?
Guest:Yeah, he was injured and he was out for a while.
Guest:He had also been a backstage headache, which is like the thing about Collision was like, oh, they're just getting all the misfits, right?
Guest:Oh, God.
Guest:But but it looks like everything's been smoothed over with that guy.
Guest:And he was legit out with a triceps injury.
Guest:And yes, so he is back now, which is good.
Guest:I like the idea that like you should just put these new guys like these guys people haven't seen on collision, like make it feel different.
Marc:Wow, how ironic that it's another tricep injury, huh?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, a tricep or pec, something up there.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Wow, interesting.
Marc:But also Buddy Matthews, was he also injured?
Guest:I don't think he was recently injured.
Guest:I think they mentioned a knee injury, which he did have, but that was for the storyline of the match where you had these two guys—
Guest:Dealing with injuries, right?
Guest:So Buddy Matthew's knee, which winds up giving out and then he can hit certain moves and Andrade's pec or tricep, he winds up favoring that.
Guest:And then these two guys are fighting over those injuries for the rest of the match, which I thought was great.
Guest:psychology yes to the point where at the end of the match he goes to put him in a figure four and in order to submit him and make him you know feel extra pain on this injured knee he has to do andrade has to do the bridge up on the figure four
Guest:which he can't do because his arm is hurting him.
Guest:But he then powers through it and gets it.
Guest:And that's the figure eight.
Guest:And the crowd pops their minds out of control on that.
Guest:And do you understand why?
Guest:There's a little bit of an inside joke there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What's the inside wrestling?
Marc:Because I just thought it was a cool move.
Marc:Why were they going nuts?
Guest:That move is someone else's move, right?
Guest:The figure four is kind of famous for being Ric Flair's move, right?
Guest:Ric Flair has a daughter.
Guest:Her name is Charlotte Flair.
Marc:Oh, all right.
Marc:So it's Charlotte Flair's move, great.
Guest:So when she does the figure four, she bridges out of it and calls it the figure eight.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So why did they care?
Guest:Charlotte is married to Andrade.
Okay.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So he was using his wife's move.
Guest:And the other guy, Buddy, was using his wife's move.
Guest:His wife is Rhea Ripley, who is in WWE.
Guest:She's the one with Dominic.
Marc:Oh, shit.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So she does that move, which is like a figure, which is like a sharpshooter, but from the front.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like he holds up the legs and ties the legs.
Guest:So, yes, both of these guys, which I thought was very cool, used their wives moves to try to win the match.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:That must be.
Marc:I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm just realizing that these these guys have wives, spouses in another company.
Marc:That must be havoc on their relationship.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Traveling.
Guest:everything it's tough it's really tough yeah my favorite thing uh this past week goes all the way back to which is now like the sea show the third most important show in the aw universe which is rampage and they did the mixed tag match with uh
Guest:Mark Briscoe and his dad, Papa Briscoe and Aubrey Edwards, our former guest on this show.
Guest:And they fought Jeff Jarrett and his wife, Karen Jarrett and Jay Lethal.
Guest:And it was all the bells and whistles you can possibly imagine.
Guest:And it ended with Aubrey putting Karen Jarrett in a figure four, getting her to submit.
Guest:And they made the point that it worked because of Aubrey's strong ballerina legs.
Guest:amazing they were selling her ballet background the whole match and then when she put her in a figure four i think it was chris jericho who was on commentary was like it's the strong legs she's got strong legs oh that's great uh so yes that gave that heartened me quite a lot especially in light of our conversation that we had with aubrey and uh and that uh you know just kind of it was i was biased but it won me over for the week that was my favorite thing
Guest:Awesome.
Marc:I'm going to check that out.
Guest:Well, hang on.
Guest:And Chris and I are going to now record our thoughts on Monday Nitro.
Guest:But you will hear that next week, along with some answers to questions that got sent in about WTF stuff.
Guest:It's going to be a week where we take off, but that doesn't mean you don't get more bonus content on the Friday show.
Guest:I'm Brendan, and that is Chris.
Guest:Peace!