BONUS Ask Marc Anything #8

Episode 734237 • Released May 9, 2023 • Speakers not detected

Episode 734237 artwork
00:00:13okay here we go another episode of ask mark anything are you ready how does your new garage studio feel compared to your og garage studio well it's definitely different we had to overcome some obstacles here and you have to understand something about the original garage is that it had my entire life's worth of stuff in it and it was always growing there were hundreds of books in there
00:00:40The walls were lined with bookshelves.
00:00:42There was art and bits and pieces of ephemera all over the walls, photographs, pictures, paintings.
00:00:49There was guitar equipment there.
00:00:50There was a rug on the floor.
00:00:52There was all sorts of tchotchkes and a desk full of stuff.
00:00:56It was not cluttered, but it was packed, which gave us a lot of...
00:01:02Sound quality because it was very homey and there was no empty wall space.
00:01:06So the sound was kind of great in there.
00:01:09So when I got this place, it's a bigger space, I think.
00:01:13And it was clean.
00:01:14It was.
00:01:15And once I had to make it a house, it became a different thing.
00:01:18It was a bouncy room.
00:01:20So I didn't really want to clutter it with all this stuff that I had in the old garage.
00:01:24I wanted to go through that stuff, and most of that ended up in my home office upstairs in my house.
00:01:30So the walls are pretty sparse in here, but it became really about soundproofing this place.
00:01:35And I had some kid...
00:01:36who made me all the panels.
00:01:38And there's panels on the ceiling, and there's movable panels surrounding the desk I'm sitting at.
00:01:44And the guitars are out here, but there's not much on the walls.
00:01:47There's my Frank Kozik, Gimme Shelter poster.
00:01:50There's a picture of Chuck Berry, a picture of Helen Wolfe.
00:01:53There's a sort of a strange piece of art, a silk-screened WTF in sign language I have up here.
00:02:00But I did choose some select clutter references
00:02:02from the old desk in the old garage, which seems to be sort of out of place because there's no clutter to counter it.
00:02:09But I have like bits of stuff.
00:02:11There's all kinds of weird stuff on the desk here that was on the desk in the original cluttered garage.
00:02:16So it looks kind of par for the course.
00:02:18But here it's very, it looks like why this stuff?
00:02:21And I think it was just familiar to me.
00:02:23And I thought like, well, I got to have something on the desk.
00:02:25I don't want it to be completely sterile in here.
00:02:27But the sound is real good.
00:02:29The kid who made me these panels, it was funny.
00:02:31When he first brought them over, they just reeked of weed.
00:02:36And he felt guilty, so he had to redo some of them because they reeked of weed.
00:02:42But that's the primary difference, is the other place was weirdly homey and authentically cluttered.
00:02:50This place is...
00:02:52More of a studio really is the main difference.
00:02:57But and I had to get used to that because I thought that the original garage meant something.
00:03:01And it did because people would walk in and be like, what the fuck?
00:03:05But as I got more confident in my in my conversational skills, I really I thought that I needed all that stuff.
00:03:12And I don't really need it.
00:03:14That was the biggest adjustment is like, dude, the conversations are the conversations.
00:03:19It's not about the garage, though.
00:03:20I do have the chair, the original chair in here from the original garage.
00:03:25The one Obama sat on is still here right there.
00:03:28And some of the clutter on the desk.
00:03:32Ever considered getting a studio instead of doing it at home?
00:03:37It's a really short commute to work when you do it at home.
00:03:43And now I have a separate building anyway.
00:03:46So, no.
00:03:48I've done it in studios here and there during the course of the thing.
00:03:52But no, I never considered that.
00:03:54Why would I do that?
00:03:56Leave the house?
00:03:58When and why did you choose not to record video for your interviews?
00:04:02From the inception, this was an audio podcast, an audio product.
00:04:09Part of the thing that Brendan does, and certainly that I do, is this was never meant to be video.
00:04:17Because there's a production element to it that Brendan, that's his genius and that's what he does.
00:04:24There's editing that needs to be done.
00:04:26It's of a piece and it's of creating an audio show.
00:04:33So, you know, the music and the editing and the configuring ads and stuff, it was always what we did.
00:04:40And it is specific.
00:04:43We never set out to do a video podcast and we couldn't do what we do in a video podcast because we structure the thing.
00:04:51What makes Brendan a great producer for me?
00:04:55Look, Brendan understands me more than anyone.
00:04:59Brendan has listened to me for more hours than anyone.
00:05:02Brendan was with me at the beginning of my radio career.
00:05:06Brendan understands exactly how my brain works and how to feed it.
00:05:10And Brendan knows how to make things understandable to me when I need to understand things.
00:05:15He also knows how to present things to me to sort of...
00:05:20make the interviews better or to inform me about things.
00:05:22He's also, look, it's all him in terms of, like, he handles all of that.
00:05:31But a producer's job is also to sort of structure and inform and present talent, me, with, you know...
00:05:41what he thinks should be, you know, focused on, which he does, you know, most of the time.
00:05:46A lot of times I don't know everything about a guest, obviously, and he sort of has some ideas in his head that usually gel with mine.
00:05:53But also I just, you know, trust him with everything.
00:05:55He's the smartest guy I know and always does a brilliant job.
00:05:59And I trust him with my monologues to sort of, you know, get my back in those.
00:06:04And there's just really no one...
00:06:06Like this show doesn't exist without Brendan.
00:06:08There's no moving forward without it.
00:06:10We are really sort of partners in the truest sense.
00:06:15So, yeah, that's why.
00:06:17Because he's, you know, whether he likes it or not, he's completely kind of professionally enmeshed with my brain and also has this amazing skill set on top of there.
00:06:26And if I ever have questions about anything, I'll answer them.
00:06:32All usually professional, occasionally personal.
00:06:35As the podcast has grown over nearly 14 years, has your approach to booking guests remained the same in present day compared to when the show really popped in 2011?
00:06:45No, it's very different because usually I was drawing from my people I knew or people who I knew knew them.
00:06:54You know, it was sort of...
00:06:56I don't know if we were working with a booking agency at that time, but eventually you've got to be in the loop with people who are moving through interview programs.
00:07:06So it's very much different.
00:07:08I'm not sure exactly about 2011, but at some point we started using Central Booking.
00:07:14who also books TV talk shows, to sort of pitch us people and tell me who's available.
00:07:19So I know, because I don't know everybody anymore.
00:07:21And a lot of times I don't know the work of people that are pitched.
00:07:24So it becomes sort of this full-on immersive learning experience, deciding to do particular guests and whether we should do them and who's available and all that stuff.
00:07:33So I think it's almost completely different.
00:07:37Were there any episodes that you felt like you just didn't get it right?
00:07:40Yeah, there are.
00:07:41There are probably more than I want to admit, because a lot of times, certainly at the beginning of the podcast, I had my own expectations.
00:07:51And a lot of times I didn't necessarily meet them.
00:07:53And I'd walk away feeling like I fucking screwed up, forgetting that...
00:07:57a lot of my guests, their fans have never heard them in this context before, have never really heard them talk about anything at length, and that their experience is going to be different than mine.
00:08:08So a lot of times, whether I think I got it right or didn't, I kind of suck it up and realize that it's going to be something exciting and different and new, not only to me, but to anyone who listens to it and who's a fan of that.
00:08:25Sometimes you get...
00:08:26You know, repeating stories and that kind of stuff.
00:08:28But that's just the nature of being a public person.
00:08:30But there are times where I didn't get it right.
00:08:33I think that my interview with Darren Aronofsky was a kind of a fucking mess because I didn't get through the entire movie he was there to promote, which was Mother, which usually I used to be able to get away with that.
00:08:46You know, because it's really kind of a life career interview.
00:08:50But, you know, he was very invested in that movie and I couldn't get through that movie.
00:08:54And also that night, he was there at night for some reason and Buster had gotten out and I didn't know where the cat was.
00:09:00So I was freaking out about the cat because it was nighttime and coyotes were coming out.
00:09:04I didn't watch the movie that he wanted to talk about.
00:09:07So I felt like that in my mind stands out as kind of a...
00:09:12not getting it right moment.
00:09:15There have been other times, but usually I get most of it right.
00:09:19And between Brendan and me, sometimes some organizing, sometimes omissions aren't that bad.
00:09:26You can't talk about everything with everybody.
00:09:28But I felt like I really, you know, screwed the pooch on that one.
00:09:33And, you know, since then, I make sure to be pretty thoroughly engaged with, you know, especially if I like the person's work, with the work they're there to promote.
00:09:42Also, that happened with John Cale, though I seem to have saved that after an hour or so of talking about the Velvet Underground and noise music.
00:09:50You know, I realized that I had not heard the CD or the album he was there to promote.
00:09:56But I kind of saved it.
00:09:57It worked out okay.
00:09:59But that was another...
00:10:01thing I didn't get right.
00:10:02And the same lesson was learned.
00:10:05Which non-comedian guest on the show was truly and unexpectedly hilarious?
00:10:11Oh, well, just in recent memory, Hugh Grant totally surprised me and was very funny.
00:10:19There's been a lot of funny people.
00:10:21I think I remember Josh Brolin being pretty funny.
00:10:24But Hugh Grant was like a total curveball to me.
00:10:27Hilarious.
00:10:28Is there a hell no guest from the early days that you never would have had on that you interviewed recently recently?
00:10:36Yeah, I mean...
00:10:40A lot of my tunes have changed because back in the day when we were just doing people I knew or people who I knew knew them, there was a lot of people that I was curious about.
00:10:50And then early on, we didn't do a lot of actors because I didn't know if they were really great at doing interviews.
00:10:57But as time went on and we talked to more and more people and I wanted to learn more about acting, we had more actors on.
00:11:03So I would say there's probably some people that I wouldn't... But I remember there was a time where...
00:11:08You know, Huey Lewis came up and I'm like, Huey Lewis.
00:11:12But then you start to really think about these people, you know, and their careers and what they've given the world or what their, you know, what their output has been.
00:11:19It's like whether I like them or not, a lot of times they deserve certainly to be...
00:11:24reckoned with and, and to be sort of like engaged, whether I like them or not.
00:11:30So yeah, there were definitely people.
00:11:32I don't remember who they are, but my context has changed since early on.
00:11:37But I was like that pretty early on.
00:11:38So like, even if I didn't like them, like, dude, this guy's got a story and it might not be for me, but you know, with like Huey, Huey Lewis, like who doesn't know Huey Lewis songs?
00:11:49And that turned out to be a great interview.
00:11:51Did you ever have an awkward moment with a guest right after the microphones went off?
00:11:56Yeah, I guess so.
00:11:57I mean, sometimes there's just weird, you know, what do you do after that?
00:12:00Famously, there was, you know, I remember like early on Conan O'Brien was lingering and I had this moment where I'm like, wow, this is weird.
00:12:08I kind of want him to leave, you know, because I got things to do.
00:12:12There was that.
00:12:14Then there was like, I had awkward moments before the shows sometimes.
00:12:19Like, I remember when Lisa Lampanelli was on that I didn't know she was coming.
00:12:24And like, I almost was on my way out the door and she showed up with a publicist.
00:12:29And I was like, I just had to go like, oh my God, how did I not know she was coming?
00:12:34I knew why she was there.
00:12:36And I didn't say like, I didn't know you were coming.
00:12:37I just played it like everything was normal.
00:12:39But that was, that was crazy.
00:12:43Well, I don't always know what to do with guests after the microphones go off.
00:12:47Usually they, you know, we kind of like detach.
00:12:49I mean, there've been times where I can't remember when Kristen Bell had to eat, but if it was before or after, but I remember I had to feed Kristen Bell.
00:12:57I just happened to have a lot of leftovers and I eat exactly like she did.
00:13:00So that was fun.
00:13:01I had to feed a few people.
00:13:03Jonathan Glazer, I cooked him a sausage.
00:13:07Oh, yeah.
00:13:08Alana from Broad City.
00:13:09She needed a bowl of puffins.
00:13:11Roseanne Cash had some cantaloupe.
00:13:14Vice President Gore.
00:13:15He needed to eat before we went on, but he brought his own food.
00:13:19Oh, there's also people that I didn't have on because I didn't know who they were.
00:13:22And I don't think they'd come on now.
00:13:24You know, like Tiffany Haddish.
00:13:27I didn't know who she was.
00:13:27And she said, someday, Marc Maron.
00:13:29And I'm like, all right, lady.
00:13:31And then, you know, she's this huge star.
00:13:32But I think she doesn't come on either because she doesn't care or she's just, you know, spiting me.
00:13:38But yeah, there's been awkward moments.
00:13:42does Scott Rudin still book guests for you?
00:13:44He never really booked guests for me, but he was sort of a fan of the show and he was producing a lot of theater.
00:13:51And that was sort of out of my wheelhouse and I wasn't in New York.
00:13:54So Rudin would suggest, I think we did quite a few playwrights
00:14:00on his suggestion.
00:14:01I think they were mostly playwrights or, or theater producers that, um, that he was, these were productions that he was involved with and he knew me and he knew the show.
00:14:12So he would email and it was kind of intense getting emails from him, but it was usually in the world of theater is my recollection of that relationship.
00:14:21Have you ever regretted having a guest on?
00:14:24Uh, look, I, I,
00:14:26I don't have regrets.
00:14:29There was a couple of kind of things that kind of went sideways that, you know, like one, we didn't air.
00:14:35Franklin Ajay came on.
00:14:36And at the time, I thought like I would have Al Madrigal, who was a huge Franklin Ajay fan.
00:14:42Come over and do the interview with me.
00:14:44And on that day, there was a lot of plumbing problems at my house and there was workmen there and Franklin wasn't really into it.
00:14:51And it was awkward, you know, having three people there in that that never made the air.
00:14:56Billy Braver, another old comedian that no one really knows, that was sort of.
00:15:00That got weird because I thought it would be interesting to talk to somebody who retired from comedy, but he wanted to get back in show business.
00:15:08And I thought it was a very kind of weird, painful episode.
00:15:11But he refused to, you know, we weren't going to air it, but he was very adamant about us airing it.
00:15:16And he threatened to, you know, have Barbra Streisand's lawyer contact us if we didn't air it.
00:15:22But I don't have any regrets here.
00:15:25You know, there's an episode with Wendy Liebman that never aired because I just couldn't really get her talking in a conversational way.
00:15:32But I think she's pissed off at me about that and about other things.
00:15:36So I don't know.
00:15:37But that never made the air.
00:15:38It just wasn't really airable because we couldn't really get a conversation going.
00:15:42I don't have any other regrets.
00:15:44Which guest stayed over the longest after recording just to shoot the shit and hang?
00:15:48I don't know, you know, Jon Hamm, I remember when he was on, we hung out for a while on the porch.
00:15:52I think David Crosby lingered for a long time, which was kind of interesting.
00:15:56I really, because we talked for a long time on the mic and then after the mics went off, he still wanted to hang out and he wanted to come back.
00:16:03I thought he was going to sleep over.
00:16:05Rest in peace, David Crosby.
00:16:08How long were you doing stand-up before you felt like you were doing consistently well?
00:16:12I don't know, like 25 years?
00:16:18I don't know, man.
00:16:20Sadly, it wasn't that long ago.
00:16:24Well, I guess I started getting paid in 88, 98, 2008, 2010.
00:16:27Yeah, man, I got to tell you, man, it wasn't like really... I always did well, but I fought for it, and it wasn't me at my most comfortable.
00:16:38But I don't know about consistently, but I was always...
00:16:44I was always doing the job, but I don't know if I was that consistent.
00:16:49I think I'm pretty consistent now, but I think it was fairly recent within the last 10 years, certainly.
00:16:58Well, yeah.
00:17:15I really started doing comedy in New Mexico after my last year of college.
00:17:23I think I did it a bit.
00:17:24No, no, it was really after that.
00:17:27And, you know, I did open mics in Albuquerque.
00:17:30There wasn't a club yet.
00:17:31And I did a Chinese restaurant, but yeah.
00:17:35And then I moved to Hollywood and I became a doorman at the comedy store and I was working at the comedy store in the belly room and trying to get my shit together.
00:17:43And then at some point in time after that, I was opening.
00:17:47I was doing the host spot a couple years.
00:17:53I was doing the host spot at Laughs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, while I was just out of L.A.
00:17:59Maybe I had 10 minutes.
00:18:01So I was doing that.
00:18:03And then when I got back to Boston after I cleaned up the first time,
00:18:07Um, in 87 or so I was doing as many open mics as I could.
00:18:11You had to sign up, you had to wait around.
00:18:14And then after, and I think I was doing some opening gigs, but by, but like 88 was when, you know, I had about a half hours of material and I was started working after I won a competition or came in second.
00:18:28So I don't know.
00:18:30What's the question?
00:18:31I always made friends with comics.
00:18:32I got to San Francisco in 92.
00:18:35So I was doing Boston, New England, one nighters for a few years.
00:18:40I moved to New York in 89, but that was my only social circle is that mics were different when I was coming up.
00:18:47They were usually only at comedy clubs.
00:18:49They had a certain night.
00:18:50You did them.
00:18:51When I was in Boston, it was a catch rising star.
00:18:53There was a kind of, it wasn't quite an open mic, but kind of, it was a signup thing.
00:18:58I think it was on Sundays and Mondays, but all I ever hung out with was with comics.
00:19:03Who else are you going to hang out with that?
00:19:04You know, once you enter the life, you live the life.
00:19:12I was playing actual shows pretty early on as an opener.
00:19:18But then, you know, here and there.
00:19:20But the way the one-night thing worked in Boston, you did a half hour to open.
00:19:24So that's really a feature spot anywhere else.
00:19:27These were two-person shows.
00:19:29So by the time I was out in the world...
00:19:31And opening these road shows, these two-man shows, I could feature pretty effectively.
00:19:36And I headlined.
00:19:37By the time I got to San Francisco in 92, 93, I was starting to headline pretty quickly.
00:19:44I didn't spend a lot of time as a feature.
00:19:46Wondering about your early days, weeks, months of sobriety.
00:19:49Was it hard to be in comedy clubs where booze was readily available and probably free?
00:19:54Well, look, man, I was so ready to stop by the time I stopped.
00:19:57I was dating a woman who got me sober, who was sober, who was also starting a career in comedy.
00:20:03She was with me all the time.
00:20:04I was going to at least two meetings a day.
00:20:07for years, and I was heavily sort of socialized into program.
00:20:15A lot of the people I was hanging out with were in AA.
00:20:18For some reason, I don't remember it being that difficult.
00:20:23I was smoking a lot of cigarettes, drinking a lot of coffee, and I didn't feel like it was... I don't know.
00:20:30I was in the life.
00:20:31I was immersed in sobriety, so it did not...
00:20:35feel that hard to be around the booze.
00:20:41I don't know why that is.
00:20:43And it still doesn't.
00:20:44I never think about drinking.
00:20:46But it's been almost 24 years, I guess.
00:20:49Isn't that right?
00:20:53What was a movie or show you auditioned for that you truly wanted the part but did not get it?
00:20:58A Serious Man, the Coen Brothers movie.
00:21:01I worked pretty hard on that, and I wanted that lead.
00:21:05I read for the lead of that.
00:21:06Not that I was ever in the running or even capable of doing it, but I wanted that.
00:21:10That Michael Stuhlbarg got it.
00:21:14And, you know, like, he did a great job with it.
00:21:16And he's a great actor.
00:21:17And, you know, he's definitely at a level I'm not.
00:21:19I don't know if I could have handled it.
00:21:21They certainly weren't going to give me a lead.
00:21:23But was there another role in there for me?
00:21:26I don't know.
00:21:26Look, I wanted it.
00:21:28I worked to do it.
00:21:29There was no chance I was getting it.
00:21:33how long did it take you to create the show Marin?
00:21:35And what was the writing process for the pilot episode?
00:21:38Well, I mean, you know, we had pitched that show to apostle, the production company, and we got to work on the pilot really came out of a pilot presentation.
00:21:48We did, and we shot, I wrote it with Duncan Birmingham, a writer that had to deal with, uh, apostle.
00:21:55We wrote that what was supposed to be a pilot presentation.
00:21:59We cast it.
00:22:00W Kamau Bell was in it.
00:22:02Ed Asner was in it as my father.
00:22:05But the pilot episode really came out to be about 22 minutes.
00:22:10And that was sort of what we took around to try to get it made to networks.
00:22:16So that began the process.
00:22:18But that was just me and Duncan.
00:22:19And then once we got the deal to write the show, I hired a writing team to run the show, Sievert Glarum and Michael Jammin.
00:22:32And I brought in Jerry Stahl and eventually Dave Anthony.
00:22:39And, you know, but there was only a few of us that first season.
00:22:43So we just started hammering out show ideas based on my life and breaking them down in the room.
00:22:48But it's a pretty small writer's room.
00:22:51That's how it came to be.
00:22:52It was all kind of it started with a pilot presentation.
00:22:56Walk us through what it's like for you before you go on stage for a big show.
00:23:00Are there any superstitions?
00:23:02Do you pace?
00:23:03Eat the same foods?
00:23:04Walk in from the same side?
00:23:06How far ahead before the show do you arrive?
00:23:09Do you run through some stuff?
00:23:11What do you tell yourself?
00:23:13At different points in my career, I had different superstitions.
00:23:15When I first started out, I needed to be wearing a shirt with some sort of skeleton on it.
00:23:22I had pinky rings.
00:23:23I had certain jackets I thought that were good luck and certain colors I couldn't wear.
00:23:27But ultimately, as time went on, I like having... Right now, on my rider, there isn't much.
00:23:34I like having the Zevia soda, the ginger ale, some cashew nuts.
00:23:39What I really like doing is...
00:23:41getting to the theater for a sound check, spending time on stage.
00:23:45I like when they play.
00:23:46I have a song list for the pre-show that I spend time on, all songs I like listening to.
00:23:53So a lot of times what I like to do before a show is spend time on stage in the empty theater and then sit in the theater in the center and have them blast some music that I like in the big room.
00:24:05I love doing that.
00:24:07But that's really the only stuff I do anymore.
00:24:12Sometimes I'll go over my set list, but not in any panicky way.
00:24:16Once I get going, I know what I'm doing.
00:24:18I usually bring notes up there, whether I look at them or not, it's another story.
00:24:22But yeah, I just like feeling the theater before the show and hearing my music loud in a big theater.
00:24:33You talk often about your career and how at one point you were a nobody.
00:24:36Do you think about how you got to where you are today in terms of how you must at some point have pictured the kind of career lifestyle that you wanted?
00:24:43Do you in present day think there was some sort of universal force that you put out in the world to help you achieve the kind of success that you have today?
00:24:52Or is it all just random lucky timing?
00:24:55Well, I wouldn't say that.
00:24:56I mean, I worked hard.
00:24:58And I always worked hard.
00:25:00And as a stand-up, I was hammering away for years.
00:25:04I never quit.
00:25:05I never, you know, slacked off.
00:25:07You know, when I lived in New York, I was doing as many sets as possible.
00:25:10I was working as much as possible.
00:25:11I was generating as much new material as possible.
00:25:14I was doing TV sets.
00:25:15I was doing half-hour specials.
00:25:17You know, I did, but I was still not a known quantity.
00:25:20I did all those, you know, Conan O'Brien episodes and fucking Letterman and everything, but I still couldn't sell tickets.
00:25:26So I don't know.
00:25:28What kind of career lifestyle that I had in mind other than being a recognized comic that did relevant work, like one of the people that people knew, a comic that was well known.
00:25:40I don't know what the lifestyle was or what went along with that, but I was trying to be a successful comic.
00:25:46Do I think there was some universal force that I put out in the world?
00:25:51No, I just worked really hard.
00:25:52And by the time the podcast happened, you know, I was sort of down for the count in terms of being a comic because I really didn't have a draw.
00:26:01And the podcast changed all that.
00:26:02And I think if there was any sort of cosmic timing, I don't know if it was lucky because I had a skill set.
00:26:08There's like lucky timing is only relative to what you can show up to do.
00:26:13I mean, if you have lucky timing and you can't deliver the goods, what fucking good is it?
00:26:18You'll just like, hey, God, where's that?
00:26:20What happened to that guy that did that thing?
00:26:22He had great timing.
00:26:24Well, he really didn't know how to do it.
00:26:25He just had that one trick.
00:26:27So by the time...
00:26:29things clicked into place and the podcast was taking off, you know, I was a, you know, I'd been doing comedy, you know, like 88, 98, like 20 years plus.
00:26:41So I was ready to go and I'd been doing radio a few years.
00:26:43So when the cosmic timing worked in my favor for once, I had the goods.
00:26:49So timing doesn't matter if you can't do the job.
00:26:52So if there's anything that,
00:26:55any universal force that I put out in the world.
00:26:58It was just years of working hard and, and focused and committed and without any other options.
00:27:12I'm turning 40, and after decades of resistance, I've given in and gotten into Steely Dan.
00:27:17I never thought it would happen, but here we are.
00:27:19Has this happened to you?
00:27:20Look, I like the Dan.
00:27:21I have no problem with the Dan.
00:27:23I can appreciate their music, and I can appreciate their genius, and I can appreciate everything that, you know, you're supposed to appreciate about Steely Dan.
00:27:33But that doesn't mean I listen to him a lot.
00:27:35And Donald Fagan is a fan of my show because he emails me sometimes.
00:27:41It goes back and forth.
00:27:42I don't know how much he listens to me.
00:27:45It might be more than I listen to him, but I like hearing from him.
00:27:49He's kind of a funny guy.
00:27:51What kind of pick do I use now?
00:27:53Oddly, I use these very thick picks.
00:27:57Big triangle picks.
00:27:58They're red.
00:27:59They're from a company called V-Pick, a guy who makes custom picks.
00:28:04It's really thick.
00:28:05I mean, it's got to be over a millimeter.
00:28:07And it's the Ed King model.
00:28:09Ed King, who was the guitar player for Strawberry Alarm Clock and the first three, maybe two or three Skynyrd records.
00:28:16Maybe just the first two, actually.
00:28:18He was the original guitar player, one of them for Lynyrd Skynyrd.
00:28:21The Ed King model at V-Pick is what I use.
00:28:27What is the heaviest rock metal band that you like?
00:28:33Heavy rock metal.
00:28:35I'm probably dated with it.
00:28:37You know, I like a lot of the Sabbath stuff.
00:28:39I love ACDC.
00:28:41Out of the sort of pantheon or the old heavy stuff.
00:28:46Look, I don't know how heavy ACDC is, but I love them.
00:28:49And I certainly have a lot of love for Sabbath.
00:28:51And I don't mind...
00:28:53Metallica, I don't mind.
00:28:55Megadeth, Anthrax is okay, right?
00:28:59But I don't know those guys a lot.
00:29:01I'd have to say, sadly, because it's dated, just Sabbath and ACDC.
00:29:06What was the last meeting you went to and what was the topic?
00:29:09What's your sobriety date?
00:29:14I feel like I just went to a meeting out of town with somebody.
00:29:17I don't remember what the topic was.
00:29:19It was probably a step or a reading out of Bill Says or a big book portion.
00:29:27My sobriety date, I think I landed on August 9th.
00:29:31is my sobriety date.
00:29:34And I can't remember the last meeting I went to.
00:29:37I feel like it was out of town.
00:29:39I might have been on one of my recent trips to New York.
00:29:42I think I went to Perry Street.
00:29:45And I don't know if there was a topic.
00:29:47But I always tend to go to one meeting at Perry Street when I go to New York because that's like an old-timey recovery clubhouse that was one of the places that I first got sober in.
00:30:01What was it like to live in the East Village in the early 90s?
00:30:03What were your memories, places to eat, and what bands did you see live?
00:30:09Well, I was not... Sadly, I was not a big band guy.
00:30:13I was there from 89 to 92-ish.
00:30:17And I lived on second between A and B. And next door, there was this weird can recycling place.
00:30:23And then there was a storefront that had a few things in the window, but it was a heroin drug front.
00:30:27There was a lot of junkies around.
00:30:29There was like...
00:30:31a weird sort of sculpture garden on the corner of 2nd and C. And I remember we used to go to 7B.
00:30:42We used to go to Veselka.
00:30:43We used to go to Kiev.
00:30:45A lot of the comics would go to Kiev because I think it was open all night.
00:30:49It's gone.
00:30:50It was a Ukrainian place.
00:30:51And then Veselka came.
00:30:52I remember 7B was around the corner.
00:30:54Two Boots.
00:30:55I lived like down the street from the original Two Boots.
00:30:57I ate there a lot.
00:31:00Where else did I eat?
00:31:01But I had this little kind of one-room apartment.
00:31:06And I just remember it being a little intense down there.
00:31:08I had a VW Golf that got broken into a lot.
00:31:12The tires got flattened.
00:31:13I needed it to drive to Boston all the time.
00:31:15And I drove around the city, too, at night doing spots.
00:31:18But I just remember it being consumed with sort of a druggie, kind of grimy element.
00:31:27And there was a bar.
00:31:28What was that?
00:31:29Seven and B wasn't seven B. Wasn't that a restaurant there?
00:31:32And then there was the burrito place right there.
00:31:35Oh yeah.
00:31:37I used to go to dojo a lot.
00:31:40And, and back then Tompkins square still had the band shell.
00:31:43It was before the riots.
00:31:45And there was such a, there was always like this homeless flea market going on.
00:31:48There's always stuff along Avenue a for sale books and weird.
00:31:52I wrote jokes about that place about, uh, you know, being down there.
00:31:57Yeah, man.
00:31:58Then there was the stuff over on the Lower East Side where we used to do the Luna Lounge at Luna.
00:32:07You know, there was the hat.
00:32:08There was the sombrero.
00:32:12You know, Katz's wasn't really where we ate.
00:32:14There was a Middle Eastern place right there on Houston I went to.
00:32:17I don't know, man.
00:32:18It was heavy back then, you know, before I went to San Francisco.
00:32:22But sadly, I didn't do much music.
00:32:24It was all comedy all the time.
00:32:27What are you optimistic about for society?
00:32:30Not much.
00:32:34Not much.
00:32:36I keep plugging, you know, day to day.
00:32:38I wake up in a dark place most days.
00:32:41And then as, you know, as the day progresses, if I exercise and get coffeed up, I don't know.
00:32:47I'm excited about the possibility of...
00:32:51There's good art being done, both in movies, streaming, stand up, music, visual arts, painting.
00:33:02I still believe there's a lot of creativity out there that it's finding its way.
00:33:06And that always is exciting to me.
00:33:09I don't know if I'm optimistic.
00:33:12I sadly don't have much optimism about the future of America, you know, really in the broader cultural or political sense.
00:33:22I don't have optimism about the sort of future of, you know, climate or the world.
00:33:28So, you know, I got to keep it kind of small and keep it with my interests.
00:33:33I find myself, you know, finding lately music and movies and, you know, art that I enjoy engaging with that keeps my brain kind of juiced.
00:33:44But but sadly, I don't have a lot of optimism.
00:33:47And and, you know, each day I wouldn't say it's a struggle, but I really have to kind of pull it together to to sort of make the best out of the life I have left.
00:34:01Thanks for asking.
00:34:02Nice talking to you.

BONUS Ask Marc Anything #8

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