BONUS The Friday Show - Smartening Marc About Heel Turns
Marc:You've talked about this before, about how a lot of the culture is just heel culture.
Marc:I'm trying to do a joke about it where I say, it used to be like if you kind of knew you were an asshole, that meant you were going to probably try to work on it.
Marc:Those days are over.
Marc:Yeah, you're right.
Yeah.
Guest:Chris, welcome back.
Guest:BMAC, how's it going?
Guest:I'm good, man.
Guest:How was Chicago?
Guest:It was great.
Guest:I went to Wrigley Field, caught a, well, no, that's not true.
Guest:I caught a deflected home run ball during batting practice, and that was really great.
Guest:That had so many qualifiers to it.
Guest:Listen, have you ever seen a home run ball?
Guest:It's like a missile.
Guest:And I've seen it.
Guest:I'm like, oh, I'm not going anywhere near that motherfucker.
Guest:So yeah, I caught the deflection.
Guest:You were there.
Guest:It was great weather.
Guest:Everything looked beautiful in the photos you sent me.
Guest:Yeah, it was perfect.
Guest:Perfect, perfect Chicago day.
Guest:Had a Chicago hot dog, which, awesome.
Guest:Highly recommend.
Guest:With everything on it?
Guest:Everything.
Guest:The full deal?
Guest:Yeah, the works.
Guest:Yeah, you know, I'm not necessarily in a phase where I eat hot dogs anymore, but if I do splurge on a hot dog, I'm going to do that.
Guest:I've never done the Chicago hot dog, which, if people listening don't know, it's like full of vegetables.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't mean it's healthy.
Guest:I just mean that the hot dog is there.
Guest:It's supposed to be like a full beef Vienna Frank, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they put tomato slices.
Guest:Pickles.
Guest:A full pickle spear, right?
Guest:Or like you cut a pickle spear in half.
Guest:You put it next to the dog.
Guest:Some little peppers too, right?
Guest:Yep, little peppers.
Guest:Some green stuff, which I'll be honest with you –
Guest:Maybe that's relish.
Guest:I forget what it is.
Guest:Do you know what that is?
Guest:I think it's pickled relish, like just typical.
Guest:Oh, because it's like fluorescent green and it's delicious.
Guest:And you get some celery salt on there too.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Got some celery salt, got some mustard.
Guest:I didn't put ketchup and ruin it.
Guest:So yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:It was a proper dog.
Guest:I'm jealous of it, but there's a place near my house that does one.
Guest:They're from Chicago, and they show off their Chicago dogs outside the store, and I'm always regretful that I don't really eat that stuff, because I like to eat it.
Guest:So maybe on my birthday or something, I will splurge for the Chicago dog.
Guest:Now, you were away, but I know you're a loyal friend and listener.
Guest:Did you listen to our bonus content from this week about The Sopranos?
Guest:Yeah, I feel like that was targeted to me, man.
Guest:Yes, I know you're a huge fan.
Guest:You and I obviously talked about The Sopranos a lot while it was on and ever since.
Guest:And yeah, what did you think?
Guest:Are those two memorable episodes for you as well?
Guest:Oh, God, yeah, especially because I was just talking to our friend Case about these same exact episodes because she's doing a rewatch.
Guest:And yeah, the and also the intervention scene is I probably watch that like once a year.
Guest:Because it is just the best.
Guest:It might be more than that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like I said on the episode the other day, I think I know that scene by heart.
Guest:Like I was watching it again recently.
Guest:I was like, yep, know all these jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You killed the dog?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So did it bring up any memories for you of episodes that you might not have thought about in a while or anything like that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I literally had to go from that and then watch two episodes of Sopranos.
Guest:And for me, the episodes that I watched that really made, like cemented the show for me was the two episodes at the end of season two.
Guest:Episodes 12 and 13.
Guest:The ones where...
Guest:The ones where Janice kills Richie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Tony has food poisoning.
Guest:And his dreams keep telling him that Pussy is the informant.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But that's so interesting that you also picked two episodes that revolve around a major character.
Guest:And in that case, two episodes of two major characters getting killed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like it really is.
Guest:You know, people always talk about like, you know, people who were fans of that show always bring up how, oh, the murders were over exaggerated.
Guest:You know, people then started to expect too much killing and they weren't appreciating the human drama of the show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's funny.
Guest:It's like the things that are really imprinted in the mind from that show are these deaths.
Guest:They carried so much weight.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And those episodes that you guys talked about, I mean, just all timing it.
Guest:But these episodes are really, if you think about it, they're like the DNA of all prestige television now.
Guest:Because before these episodes, they never cared about the penultimate episode being this huge thing where someone might die.
Guest:And in this one, they fucking do it.
Guest:Yeah, it has become almost a cliche now that you really have to get your haunches up for that second to last episode.
Guest:Because that's where everything's going to happen.
Guest:Yeah, every show, Game of Thrones, Wire, they all do it.
Guest:It's wild.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And that, yeah, I can't, I'm trying to remember about the first, oh yeah, isn't in the first season of Sopranos, the second to last episode is where Tony gets shot?
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah, that was a, that's a crazy thing that they really started then.
Guest:Now he doesn't die and, you know, it's not, but it was still pretty shocking at the time.
Guest:Like you see these guys coming at him with a gun and, you know, and you're realizing that his mother was responsible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, yeah, you have this big moment at the end of the first season, but it's the second to last episode.
Guest:And if you had cued into that, you would have known at the end of the second season, you have this second to last episode and they're just having dinner and in their shitty relationship, Tony's sister, Janice, I think just does Richie punch her in the face?
Guest:No, he sure does.
Guest:Something terrible.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Punches her right in the face.
Guest:So she goes and gets a gun while he's eating dinner.
Guest:Well, the gun that they use during sex.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, which Carmella and Janice talk about.
Guest:And Carmella's like, aren't you a feminist?
Guest:And Janice says, well, we usually take out the clip during, which usually is doing a lot of the lifting there.
Yeah.
Guest:Very uncomfortable.
Guest:And what's great about that, first of all, before that, Tony finally gives the okay to like, okay, we got to get rid of Rishi.
Guest:So he finally tells his lieutenant to do that.
Guest:And wouldn't you know, and this is what I love about the show.
Guest:It took all the people that love these mafia stories and it just fucked with them.
Guest:Because in any other show where it's the mafia, you're going to have like a godfather, you know, end of godfather moment where there's music playing and, you know, someone kills Richie Finer.
Guest:Yeah, Carlo gets it in the front seat of the car.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Nope.
Guest:Not here.
Guest:It's Janice in the kitchen.
Guest:Who you also hate, by the way.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:That's the only thing.
Guest:It's like, you don't want Janice to do anything.
Guest:Also, that episode has like one of the all-timer, like an all-timer line from Tony.
Guest:I hope you wrote it down.
Guest:Is this when Janice is leaving on the bus?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Please tell me you wrote it down because I don't remember exactly what it is, but it is hilarious.
Guest:Tony is putting Janice on a bus to Seattle afterwards.
Guest:After she murdered the guy and they disposed of the body.
Guest:The bus rolls up and Tony, by the way, first of all, Tony says, all in all, pretty good visit.
Guest:So Janice asks, where's Rich's body?
Guest:And Tony says, we buried him on a hill overlooking a little river with pine combs all around.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Come on, Janice.
Guest:What the fuck?
Just...
Guest:The best line reading ever.
Guest:He's so deadpan about it too.
Guest:And he's like, he does that thing that Gandolfini does where his voice gets gentle and soft.
Guest:With some pie cones all around.
Guest:Oh, baby.
Guest:There's also, I remember when he goes back home and he sees Carmela and she's like, what's going on?
Guest:What happened?
Guest:And he's like, Carmela, we've been married for how long?
Guest:Don't make me make you an accessory after the fact.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just great, great fucking show.
Guest:And what's the, the, the, the last episode of that is just fully his, his, his fever and his, while he's hallucinating.
Guest:Not fully.
Guest:Like beforehand they go to, to Asabuco.
Guest:No, what's the, what's the restaurant called with Artie?
Guest:Vesuvio's.
Guest:Oh, we have Vesuvio's.
Guest:They go to Vesuvio's.
Guest:He also goes to Indian place and, and he gets food poisoning there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And,
Guest:And there's a bunch of vignettes, which is also great.
Guest:Have you ever watched Twin Peaks?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The first season long ago.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I can't take credit for this.
Guest:I actually have and own a book.
Guest:I mean, you're talking to a guy who lives a mile away from The Sopranos' house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You visited, right?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:People like put flowers there sometimes.
Yeah.
Guest:Or some gabagool.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There's a book by Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall called The Sopranos Sessions.
Guest:Ah, right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And it's actually pretty great.
Guest:If you ever do do a rewatch, I recommend...
Guest:Watching an episode, reading the chapter that they do like a little synopsis of.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's great stuff in here.
Guest:And one of the things that I read years ago, because I've had this a while, is this episode was very much like Twin Peaks.
Guest:It's a lot of Tony's subconscious finding, you know, telling him that it's pussy.
Guest:And what I love, I'm just going to read it verbatim.
Guest:Every time the episode plunges us into one of the dreams, their context and meanings are a bit plainer.
Guest:It's as if Tony's subconscious keeps explaining things.
Guest:Tony doesn't quite get it.
Guest:And his subconscious tries again in simpler language until it finally abandons ambiguity and has the fish flat out tell him what he needs to know.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:If you rewatch it, you're like, holy shit, of course it all makes sense.
Guest:His subconscious is just trying in the most subtle ways saying, hey, it's pussy.
Guest:But it's almost like a Homer Simpson thing.
Guest:Like he's too dumb to actually pick up the subtle messages.
Guest:So his brain has to drop a fish in his dream and have the fish talk to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So great.
Guest:It really is like The Simpsons, for sure.
Guest:And then Pussy actually dies.
Guest:So that's all there.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:And that's a tense, difficult scene, especially because you kind of feel bad for Big Pussy at that point.
Guest:He's doomed.
Guest:There was, throughout that season, no way out for him.
Guest:I can't believe we watched a show with Big Pussy, and we're saying that.
Guest:Like, it's normal.
Guest:He lived on City Island in the Bronx, and he was known to live there.
Guest:And our friend, Kevin...
Guest:His parents lived on City Island and Kevin said he went to visit him and he went to the store with his dad and they saw that actor, Vincent Pastore, riding by the store that they went to on a bicycle.
Guest:And they get back to the house and walk in with groceries or whatever and Kevin's mom is standing there and his dad goes, we saw Big Pussy!
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:Just exactly the right thing to say when you come home with the groceries.
Guest:Oh, fucking hell.
Guest:I'm surprised you didn't say some big pussy on a bike.
Guest:Well, we've turned this into an unofficial sequel to Tuesday's episode, and we will get on with what we're doing here today.
Guest:We'll talk to Mark in a couple minutes.
Guest:I did first want to catch up on some of the questions people were sending in.
Guest:There were some ones here that I thought were interesting in the sense that I don't know that I've ever really answered some of this.
Guest:And again, if you want to keep sending stuff in for us, we're happy to take your questions and kind of do a general topic.
Guest:So that's great.
Guest:But right now, I just want to address a couple of questions.
Guest:There was one person wrote in asking me if I was ever interviewed on WTF in the earliest episodes.
Guest:Interviewed, no.
Guest:And I don't think that would ever happen.
Guest:But if you go back to the first, I guess, 11 or so episodes, Mark and I were recording it in the same room.
Guest:You know, I was engineering it for him.
Guest:And I kind of served as like a little sounding board for him.
Guest:You know, almost like...
Guest:Typical board op sidekick role.
Guest:That happened then throughout the first year or so.
Guest:Like whenever Mark would come back to New York, we'd maybe record some episodes here and there where I would sit in the room with him.
Guest:We'd talk back and forth.
Guest:I think like the 50th episode we did that and some other ones in that area.
Guest:But the actual one where there are two episodes where I was on the show proper for a lengthy period of time.
Guest:The one is episode 614, which is right after the Obama episode.
Guest:And that was really just one full episode where Mark and I could talk about how the Obama thing came to be.
Guest:And then the other one was the 1000th episode because we just figured, well, why don't we just tell our whole story?
Guest:And that's probably the closest that I'm ever going to get to be interviewed, even though I was kind of running the narrative on that and more like I was prompting Mark.
Guest:Much the same way I do here on these bonus episodes, just giving him timeline stuff that he could chime in on.
Guest:So, yes, that was it.
Guest:There's a second follow up to this question that the person said, if you would ever be interviewed, would you edit it yourself?
Guest:And I would not.
Guest:And that's probably why it's never going to happen.
Yeah.
Guest:Oh, wait.
Guest:I got to ask.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That episode right after Obama, were you guys like, what the fuck do we put on after Obama?
Guest:Oh, no, no.
Guest:It was totally planned.
Guest:It was... Yeah, because...
Guest:Mainly because we, like, we didn't want to automatic, like, the show goes up on Monday, and then by Thursday, we're supposed to have a new show there.
Guest:And we knew that there would be a lot more attention on the show, but that also people maybe would go all week before they'd hear about it or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And we didn't want to skip a Thursday, right?
Guest:We didn't want to have no show because it's like our thing.
Guest:We have two shows a week no matter what.
Guest:But we wanted that second show to relate to the Monday show, right?
Guest:And, you know, that was just the no-brainer way to do it.
Guest:We recorded it.
Guest:As soon as the like the day was done with Obama, it wasn't right after Obama left.
Guest:I think it was like just as as the sun was starting to go down, we recorded because Mark did a bunch of press that day.
Guest:We did a bunch of like cleanup with the Secret Service and, you know, tying up loose ends to the actual interview.
Guest:And then once that was all done, a couple hours after, you know, Obama left, we sat down in the garage and just talked about everything.
Guest:Cool.
Guest:I'm glad that there wasn't some poor comedian being like, no, please don't put me after Obama.
Guest:Well, the joke was that at the end of that episode, Mark says, so who do we have for next week?
Guest:And I said, I think Rich Voss is next.
Guest:And so, yeah, we put Rich Voss up next.
Guest:Because that was like that was another thing we wanted to make sure that like when we did put a new episode up, it was like right back to the grind.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We didn't want to be like, oh, now we're a different show.
Guest:Like, no, no, no.
Guest:It's Rich Voss, like a comedian from the cellar.
Guest:Awesome.
Guest:Oh, this is interesting.
Guest:It's directed to me, Chris, but I wanted to ask you this question as well.
Guest:They said, are you a big fan of comedy or have you become one during your time working with Mark?
Guest:Who would you say your favorite comedians are?
Guest:And I was a huge fan of comedy before I started working with Mark.
Guest:Stand-up comedy specifically.
Guest:I think everybody's a fan of laughing and enjoys comedy.
Guest:But no, I was I would say that I was a better than average stand up comedy fan, like more more frequently watching and admiring stand up comics.
Guest:I think my favorite stand up comic at that age, like when I started working with Mark was Mitch Hedberg.
Guest:And I knew Mark when we started working together, like I knew him as a comic.
Guest:And I I wouldn't say I wasn't a fan of his, but I definitely was not.
Guest:He was not a guy that was he was not.
Guest:He was not one of my guys.
Guest:If I was being interviewed and it was the who are your guys, I wouldn't have said Marc Maron.
Guest:But I knew him.
Guest:I knew him from HBO stuff and Comedy Central stuff.
Guest:I knew who he was.
Guest:I wouldn't say I had 100% familiarity with him.
Guest:But it was cool.
Guest:I was like, OK, cool.
Guest:Marc Maron.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's cool.
Guest:We'll have a fun time in the mornings.
Guest:Yeah, Mitch Hedberg was a huge fan.
Guest:I guess I grew up with listening to my dad's Carlin and Cheech and Chong records, like actual records.
Guest:Bill Cosby.
Guest:Woody Allen.
Guest:These were all LPs that my father had, and I loved them.
Guest:I loved listening.
Guest:I had Eddie Murphy's Delirious on tape, and I used to put the tape recorder under my pillow and listen to it as I went to sleep.
Guest:Like press play.
Guest:So the speaker was right under the pillow and nobody else could hear it.
Guest:Just me.
Guest:I think I would have gotten in trouble if I was heard listening to it.
Guest:So I kept it quiet.
Guest:But yeah, I love that.
Guest:I loved all kinds of comedy albums that were not necessarily stand up.
Guest:Also, the Bob and Doug McKenzie from SCTV.
Guest:I had their album, Listen to It to Death.
Guest:I loved Penn and Teller.
Guest:Uh, had, had their videos, watched them all the time.
Guest:So yeah, I was, and, and, and then I just, you know, fell in love as a kid with SNL and, uh, all sorts of sketch comedy.
Guest:I would stay up late at night to watch something called the Sunday comics, which was like, uh,
Guest:It was a one-hour comedy thing on... It might have been syndicated.
Guest:For me, it aired on Fox.
Guest:And it would be like a showcase where they'd show... Comic Strip Live did it as well.
Guest:You'd get four or five comedians that did 10 minutes a piece.
Guest:They'd usually have one person kind of host.
Guest:It was a little bit like Evening at the Improv had a similar model to that.
Guest:That was... Wow, I remember this so clearly now.
Guest:There was an episode of the Sunday Comics with Weird Al Yankovic as the...
Guest:He wasn't even the guest host.
Guest:He was just going to be on to perform songs at the end of the episode.
Guest:The guest host was Victoria Jackson, you know, who's crazy now.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And she was, I think, just coming off of SNL or still on SNL.
Guest:But the comics...
Guest:were norm mcdonald bill hicks and i believe charles fleischer you know the guy who plays roger rabbit from from zodiac you know the guy in the basement in zodiac oh no kidding that's the same guy yeah that's roger rabbit yeah yeah uh
Guest:But yeah, that was my first exposure to Norm Macdonald and Bill Hicks.
Guest:And I remember them specifically that like watching that show.
Guest:I was like, well, those two guys are hilarious.
Guest:And I had no idea who they were, where they came from.
Guest:I must have been 11, 11 or 12, like my son's current age.
Guest:So, yeah, that was like brain changing for me to see that.
Guest:Uh, so yeah, just to, you know, answer that question.
Guest:I was a dyed in the wool comedy fan.
Guest:I don't know about you, Chris.
Guest:I mean, you, you definitely, uh, were in comedy circles having worked at like, you know, WNEW and with Ron and Fizz.
Guest:It must've been comics around.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, there were a lot of comics around.
Guest:I wasn't too into stand-up comedy.
Guest:For some reason, I just didn't like the vibe of comedy, you know, like the comedy cellar and stuff.
Guest:Just didn't appeal to me.
Guest:By the way, you saying, like, I'm an above-average comedy fan is, like, hilarious.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You are very, you were very much a comedy fan when you were working at Air America.
Guest:Like it just, you know, like no one, you know, I don't know too many people that have, you know, that are listening to comedy albums under their pillow to go to bed at night.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Okay, fair.
Guest:But I will say, and I always have this thought, I have this thought about everything, including like podcasts, including wrestling, everything.
Guest:In my mind, I always know, well, there are plenty of people who are way more into this than me.
Guest:Fair.
Guest:I do have a kind of jack of all trades, master of none quality to myself that I kind of feel okay about.
Guest:I don't think I'm too obsessively into any one thing.
Guest:I know people who hear me talk about wrestling on this might think that's crazy, but I could just as passionately talk about the New York Mets.
Guest:Sure can.
Guest:There's any number of things that I get into.
Guest:Yeah, politics, news.
Guest:There are ways that I just kind of sponge information in.
Guest:Movies, television.
Guest:I mean, yeah, you really are jack of all trades.
Guest:But for me, I didn't love stand up too much, but I did love comedy shows.
Guest:Like I love Dave Chappelle's show.
Guest:Oh, like the sketch shows, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the sketch shows.
Guest:I loved Seinfeld.
Guest:I used to go to bed watching or falling asleep to Cheers at 11 o'clock on WPIX.
Guest:And I also liked Louis C.K.
Guest:But I really picked some winners for comedians.
Guest:Oh, but I loved Louis from way back before Louis even started doing his like family oriented, you know, self-reflective comedy.
Guest:Like in the early 90s.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In the early 90s, he was a real absurdist.
Guest:Like, you know, it was very close to Mitch Hedberg.
Guest:And it was funny, like here in New York, it was like Louis and Dave Attell were the two big like on fire comics.
Guest:And like Dave won.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He was, he beat Louie for sure.
Guest:Like in terms of like the popularity and like who was a bigger draw.
Guest:And really for Louie, it wasn't until he started embracing, like talking more about himself personally, his life, his family, and that he became the big draw.
Guest:So that's an kind of just interesting side tangent.
Guest:And, but yeah, I was the same.
Guest:I would also love to draw little connections.
Guest:Like I knew Louie as a comic and then I would learn that, oh, he's working on Conan now.
Guest:And I would watch Conan and specifically try to like locate where can I like sense Louie's influence, which was the same thing I was doing with Conan when he was writing for the Simpsons.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Totally.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I loved doing all that stuff.
Guest:Okay, this is a question for both of us.
Guest:Do both or either of you watch MMA, mixed martial arts?
Guest:Also, if you're not familiar with that term, that's like the UFC and anything that's kind of fighting in a cage.
Guest:And I'll speak for myself.
Guest:My answer is no.
Guest:I have watched it.
Guest:I don't watch it regularly.
Guest:I don't find myself getting into it.
Guest:I kind of liked when they did a thing that was a reality show, The Ultimate Fighter.
Guest:I think I watched one season of that just to watch how a guy would get into UFC.
Guest:But I don't watch...
Guest:and i think basically i just don't like real violence i like my violence to be fake yeah yeah yeah like my my cousin tries to get me to watch mma and i'll watch it and i'm like this is extreme are you okay yeah um but but you know people love it and you know god bless them uh i just worry about those people like it's uh it's really violent
Guest:The other thing I like about wrestling more than UFC and MMA fights is, you know, you have actual faces and heels, which is why, you know, like, I know there are MMA people who posture and act like heels or whatever, but like...
Guest:you know, it's not the million dollar man, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not a guy who is like his MJF is like a villain who shows up to the arena and makes problems for everyone.
Guest:Like that's the kind of heel that I like.
Guest:And, you know, we've been trying to do a little bit of smartening markup on, on wrestling here.
Guest:And one of the things I realized he, he probably has never seen is a good heel turn.
Guest:Uh, you know, he's talked about it before, but, uh, like I, it occurred to me that, oh yeah, he probably has never seen what it's like when somebody goes heel.
Guest:So I wanted him to watch some really great versions of that and see what he thinks.
Guest:So let's get him on the horn here.
Guest:Uh, I should say, as we're going to, to transition here to Mark, uh, the music you're about to hear, I didn't realize this until I was pointed out to me on Twitter, uh,
Guest:This is a bumper that was sent in to us by a guy named Dean.
Guest:He goes by WebPuppy45 on Twitter if you want to check him out.
Guest:And I just must have gone in and grabbed it from the batch of things I had.
Guest:Oh, this one sounds kind of wrestling-y.
Guest:And put it in there.
Guest:And so this is from Dean.
Guest:And thank you again for Dean.
Guest:The reason I found out about this is because he's subscribing to this.
Guest:And he says.
Guest:Oh, I heard you used my bumper.
Guest:That was great.
Guest:And so thank you, Dean.
Guest:And go check him out there at WebPuppy45 on Twitter if it's still around by the time you're listening to this.
Guest:Verified accounts, baby.
Guest:Well, speaking of no longer verified, I think that is Marc Maron who lost his blue checkmark today.
Guest:But we'll get him on here now and see how he's doing.
Music.
Guest:What's up, fellas?
Guest:Oh, look at that.
Guest:Do you miss your blue check already?
Guest:Did it go away?
Guest:Yeah, it's gone.
Guest:No blue checks anymore.
Guest:Do you miss it?
Guest:Do you feel it?
Guest:It went kaput like the SpaceX rocket.
Marc:No more blue check, huh?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was on that space shuttle.
Marc:Don't you wish there were people on that thing?
Guest:I saw a guy made a joke today.
Guest:He said, well, what the press isn't covering is that Elon Musk's unmanned rocket exploding is getting him one step closer to when he explodes a manned rocket.
Yeah.
Guest:I already got all the gigs.
Guest:Those PR gigs.
Marc:How are you, man?
Marc:How's your brain?
Marc:My brain, I don't know, man.
Marc:It seems to be a little janky.
Guest:Well, yeah, I'm interested to know exactly what was behind this text I received at 1258 today.
Guest:It just says, wonder if this vegan trip is fucking with my brain.
Guest:Like I'm not getting enough brain food.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that makes sense.
Marc:How is that not a weird text?
Guest:I want to know what food you think is specifically, A, giving you better intelligence or more connected neuropathways, and which ones are harming.
Marc:Oh, I heard that the bad cholesterol, you need some of it for your brain.
Yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right, so you're going to have some eggs?
Marc:Right.
Marc:The meat cholesterol.
Marc:It goes to your brain.
Marc:It's brain food.
Marc:And that if you get too low on that, you get loopy.
Marc:I'm pretty sure a carrot counts.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:I mean, if you want to believe Bugs Bunny.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the spinach is good too.
Marc:That's for strength.
Guest:That's not for brain.
Guest:That's for the muscle.
Guest:Bud's buddy was very crafty though.
Guest:He could like just talk you into putting your head in an oven.
Guest:So I kind of believe in the carrot.
Marc:No, I think that's probably true.
Marc:I just, I don't know, man.
Marc:I'm going to go get those blood tests tomorrow and we'll hammer it out.
Marc:That was not your doctor today.
Marc:Today was the yearly or semi-yearly skin check.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Where they just look at your body, the guy and he says things like that you don't understand to a nurse.
Marc:Like some cutaneous stinker, the cutaneous fucker.
Marc:And then like, you know, just counted little things on my body.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Nothing bad.
Guest:I always like when they're behind you and you hear them go like, hmm.
Guest:I'm like, wait, what's that hmm?
Marc:Good hmm or bad hmm?
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:It's worse when they're giving you a prostate exam.
Marc:I haven't done that yet.
Marc:You're one of those guys.
Marc:What are you, a fucking idiot?
Marc:No, I'm only like 43.
Marc:When are you supposed to get them?
Guest:45, right?
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, yeah, I think there is different, like, insurance.
Guest:Like, prostate exam is different, though, than colonoscopy, right?
Guest:And colonoscopy now, most insurance won't cover that before you're 50.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:But you can get a finger up your ass any time.
Guest:Yeah, but you really want one.
Guest:I'll be in the city tomorrow for my end.
Guest:There's plenty of places where it's cheap.
Marc:Yeah, just ask.
Marc:It's not going to be a professional opinion.
Guest:I mean, you don't know, baby.
Guest:I know a guy.
Guest:Yeah, Tompkins Square Park, there's a lot of barter that goes on there.
Marc:You might want to go to a lobby of a hotel somewhere.
Yeah.
Guest:The other thing, Mark, that we could talk about here briefly is that you saw the movie Air, which now the three of us have all seen.
Guest:And I think is a great example for, you know, especially for people listening to this, for whatever reason you're listening to this, like...
Guest:You might not be the target audience for wrestling.
Guest:You might not care about what me and Chris talk about.
Guest:But the idea that this movie air is about the creation of Nike sneakers, specifically around the mid 80s NBA.
Guest:And it was still such a compelling, interesting movie, fun movie to watch.
Guest:That is a great proof of concept that you can make a movie out of anything.
Marc:Well, yeah, but, you know, I could see the story, but it is true.
Marc:I don't know why they chose that story.
Marc:It's my feeling that they're probably going to do five different sport movies like this.
Marc:You know, they're going to do one about running shorts, about rackets, about golf balls.
Marc:I'm sure you can find the story anywhere about clubs, golf clubs.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I think we might have been in a new era of movie making.
Guest:It's now brands.
Guest:I want to know how our brand came to be.
Guest:I think that's actually absolutely true because they're running out of this fantasy IP stuff.
Guest:There has not been, other than Harry Potter, in the last 20 years, something that's kind of universally beloved as a worldwide global...
Guest:IP, the way comic books are and Star Wars and that.
Guest:So, yeah, they're going to go to brands.
Guest:Heinz Ketchup would be a good one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:57.
Guest:You double that up.
Guest:You got a whole movie.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:We're talking television series.
Marc:That's the number of episodes.
Marc:I'd like to see a miniseries on the history of Jägermeister.
Guest:yeah oh but you know what is actually a really good one they should definitely do this Stroh's beer there's apparently some story about like the family got in a war with each other over Stroh's and eventually wound up selling it to Pabst and everyone lost all their money yeah like they should definitely make the Stroh's brewing war movie
Marc:Yeah, I think this is a more uplifting movie than the OxyContin family thing.
Guest:The Sackler one?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The Sackler.
Marc:Not an uplifting brand movie.
Guest:No, actually, I think there's a new Tetris movie.
Guest:I think we really are living in this brand reality where brands are going to be the next movie.
Guest:They're making one about the making of the Blackberry, too.
Guest:from the point of view of the blackberry stop touching me i don't know what that one's for either oh my god you used to have a whole thing in your act about blackberries about how if you hit the t it went up to the top remember that yeah yeah and it was like oh you're a genius come back wizard lady
Guest:oh yeah that's right i remember because you were like some one of these days i'm just gonna see a kid flying and would be like dude how do you do that i don't know my phone does it that still could happen oh more so than ever yeah absolutely i don't know my phone does it
Guest:One thing I thought was was interesting about air was literally the complete lack of villains.
Guest:There's no like I guess other than like Adidas Converse.
Guest:There's no villains in the movie.
Guest:It's just like, is this guy going to make this crazy deal happen?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And well, you know.
Marc:The guy Phil Knight, is that his name?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:He comes off as kind of a dick a bit.
Guest:But totally in the end, they convert him, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That's like the whole third act thing is that he comes around.
Marc:I thought what was great was just seeing how all those guys handled the job of acting.
Marc:Like, you know, all of them.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Ben, Matt, Jason, Chris Tucker.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, well, Viola Davis is Viola Davis, but they all are very different actors.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And Matt Damon's the best.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Especially when he's Fat Damon.
Marc:Fat Damon.
Marc:Fat Matt.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:Yeah, because he's just like, he's let himself go.
Marc:He's egoless.
Marc:He plays a great schlump.
Guest:Yeah, because he's a schlub with megawatt charm still.
Guest:He's never going to be able to hide what's appealing about him.
Marc:Yeah, I thought it was great because, I don't know, I don't really know anything about basketball.
Guest:Nor did you have to, yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:And it was a good story.
Marc:And, you know, it was of a time.
Marc:I really, I really thought that the, you know, it can get kind of annoying when they've obviously dug up and had the set deck find all the equipment from the period.
Marc:Like I'd never seen it showcased quite so specifically.
Marc:It was literally just a shameless montage here and there of things that people had.
Guest:Oh, but I didn't think, I thought that was one million percent story intentional.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:No, it was no problem.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That it was like they were, he was trying to show how important brands are in this emerging culture.
Guest:What was there, a Game Boy there?
Guest:There was a Game Boy there.
Guest:There was just a scene where he goes into 7-Eleven and you just get every logo that you know on the shelves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Hustler.
Guest:There was a way of Wonder Bread.
Guest:And it was deliberately showing you the kind of color of the logos and that.
Guest:And I felt like it all wound up paying off that when you finally see that Jordan silhouette logo, you're like, oh, that's as important as the Ghostbusters logo or whatever it was they showed earlier on in the movie that you're like, yeah, this guy earned his money.
Guest:Like it absolutely it becomes a story about personal worth that like that.
Guest:And Viola Davis, as Jordan's mom, is like, yeah, you will not undervalue my son.
Guest:He is worth this.
Marc:God, he certainly was, it seems.
Marc:I mean.
Marc:$400 million a year in passive income.
Marc:Is that wild?
Guest:It's crazy.
Yeah.
Guest:By the way, the fact that you don't know anything about basketball, I guess the very last moment of that movie really resonated for you because you got to find out that Michael Jordan happened to become one of the best professional basketball players of all time.
Guest:Wow, look at this.
Guest:I was so excited for him.
Guest:Where you're like, I don't know if he's going to do it.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, it turned out to be true.
Guest:Everything his mom said.
Guest:It's like the end of Walk Hard where they're like the real Dewey Cox.
Guest:Oh, the real Michael Jordan, huh?
Guest:He was a real guy after all.
Marc:Well, yeah, I pulled one of those horrible old man things with my girlfriend the other night where I'm like,
Guest:was too bad about the helicopter thing and she's like um that was kobe bryant yeah well that was i felt like sent you on this brain spiral that you like you're concerned about because and it's like that's just a normal thing to do when you don't follow this stuff and i said michael jordan's still alive and she's like yeah oh my god that's good
Marc:Knock on fucking wood.
Marc:Man, that was close.
Marc:That was close.
Marc:Could happen to anybody.
Guest:Tell me what you think, Chris.
Guest:I bet Mark would like The Last Dance.
Marc:Oh, absolutely you would.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:What's that?
Marc:I like most things if they're touching.
Guest:Yeah, this was like peak COVID, right?
Guest:Like right at the time where no one could go anywhere that ESPN had this eight part, is it?
Guest:I think it's eight.
Guest:I think it's eight or 10.
Guest:I think it's 10.
Guest:A documentary about the Chicago Bulls, the Jordan era Chicago Bulls.
Guest:And it was the first major documentary produced with the cooperation of everyone involved.
Guest:So that's Jordan and Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson, Dennis Rodman, everybody associated with that team.
Guest:And it's really entertaining.
Guest:And probably the best so far.
Guest:The best actual look at Michael Jordan and his like the psychology of that guy.
Guest:And he's not just a one of a kind basketball player.
Guest:He's a one of a kind human being.
Guest:You're like, oh, yeah, they don't make people like this.
Marc:But what was he?
Marc:Was he a good baseball player?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:Terrible.
Guest:I mean, he won three championships and then he retired, which is still shrouded in mystery and controversy, mostly because people couldn't understand.
Guest:It's like JFK getting shot.
Guest:People were like, this had to be a conspiracy, right?
Guest:It wouldn't just happen.
Guest:So there's all this conspiracy about he was forced to because of a gambling problem or something, but nobody ever knows.
Guest:And it's at this point now, if there was a conspiracy, it probably would have come out.
Guest:And Occam's razor is probably where you go with this, that he just burned out.
Guest:His dad had been murdered.
Guest:And so he was just like, I'm done.
Guest:I don't want to do this anymore.
Guest:And I'm going to, I'm so great.
Guest:I'm going to go approach something else.
Guest:And he tried to make it in major league baseball.
Guest:He never made it past like double A baseball in Chicago in the minors.
Guest:He was bad at that.
Guest:too um and why'd they kill his dad it's a it was a carjacking that uh you know was was a robbery and dad got killed and um that's also been fed into this conspiracy about like why he oh well maybe that was a gambling debt or something but right it looks like it was just a robbery um
Guest:But yeah, he winds up coming back.
Guest:What kind of debt could that guy not have paid?
Guest:Well, exactly.
Guest:He's huge gambling.
Guest:You know, he loves poker and stuff, you know.
Guest:Yeah, but he makes $400 million a year in his sleep.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:what kind of what kind of debt would michael jordan have to say god give me another week fellas well my guess is if there was any kind of if there was ever anything like that it wouldn't be because he couldn't pay it it was just because he probably didn't right like like that that can definitely be the kind of guy who gets in a situation and goes no fuck you i'm not giving you your money and right somebody feels like they got to teach him a lesson but i don't i want to reiterate i don't think that's true
Guest:I think he just quit basketball and went to play baseball and then came back and he won three more championships.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Amazing.
Marc:It sounds like he was really a great player and I enjoyed learning about his shoe.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I was learning about his shoe.
Guest:The left one, not even the right one.
Guest:Well, the fact that there were no real bad guys in the movie did get me thinking about something that, you know, one of the things that Chris and I have been talking about when we talk about wrestling on here is, you know, how much we enjoy a lot of the heel performers.
Guest:And you talked about that with Chris Jericho, too, when you were talking to Mark about just how being a heel is so much fun.
Guest:You know, Chris and I spoke with Box Brown about Andy Kaufman and just how Andy loved being a heel.
Guest:And the thing that, though, clicked in my brain...
Guest:Was when the last time we talked to you about this and we were showing you those clips of Steve Austin in that, you were wondering, you're like, is this, was this somebody's heel turn in that?
Guest:And it wasn't.
Guest:Everyone was just playing out their characters.
Guest:And I realized like, oh, Mark has never really seen what it's like to watch a wrestling angle where somebody turns heel on another guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I sent you what are probably considered the two most famous ones.
Guest:I don't think there are.
Guest:There are probably other ones that people have a stronger feeling toward.
Guest:But those two that I sent you are like the two most famous ones.
Guest:And I'm kind of interested.
Guest:Those are the historic heel turns?
Marc:Historic heel turns.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, without having any history for anything other than I know who Hulk Hogan is.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I mean, they were well acted, I guess.
Marc:But I'm sure that for you guys, it must have been just life changing.
Guest:Well, that's funny because Chris says that one of them was.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:Oh, it must have been like seven or eight.
Guest:No, you were older than that.
Guest:I hate to tell you.
Guest:Was I?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:So what year was that?
Guest:If you're talking about the Shawn Michaels one, that was the beginning of 91.
Guest:So I don't know what year, 11 or 12 or so.
Guest:But that's still fine.
Guest:But still, yeah.
Guest:I'm not a teenager or like 20 years old.
Guest:Be like, no, Sean.
Guest:The one with the tag team guy?
Guest:Yeah, I want you to explain, Mark, what you watched, and then I'll see if we can fill in any blanks for you.
Marc:Well, I watched, you know, one guy with a mullet talking to another guy.
Marc:with a roughly the same length mullet these were long mullets yeah where were they when they were talking they were i think backstage and there was another wrestler interviewing them did you happen to notice anything about the setting they were in was it an office no it's a no definitely not an office it's a barber shop oh i don't i guess i wasn't paying close enough attention
Guest:That's like the one thing that stands out to me that as I sent you the clip, I'm like, he's going to wonder why are these guys in a barber shop?
Marc:No, I didn't know.
Marc:Whatever the case, the barber was off.
Guest:No, the guy with the microphone was Brutus the barber.
Marc:Okay, so that's the wrestler?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Were they about to get haircuts?
Marc:That's his gimmick.
Guest:no no he's just you know there were right there were there were several kind of sets that would be used for interview segments so like jake the snake he had the snake pit and you'd go stand around his snakes and stuff and that sounds exciting idiot went with the barber then the barber shop there was also the funeral parlor that was the that was the undertaker's guy paul bearer he uh he hosted the funeral parlor and you'd go on the funeral parlor and have an interview sometimes you get locked in a casket
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's good.
Marc:With the barbershop, what's the worst that could happen?
Marc:Well, the worst that could happen is what you saw.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:Well, that guy, I mean, best I could tell, he was trying to make things right with his partner.
Marc:And he said, well, this is, you know, this one shot at this.
Marc:And it's a very odd thing.
Marc:It's like, I'm going to turn around and then I'm going to turn back around and see if you'll shake my hand.
Guest:Yeah, where it's like, it's like basically me turning around, you could walk away and we'll just like leave this as it is.
Guest:But if I turn around and you're still here, it means you want to solve things.
Guest:And then the guy's still there.
Guest:I do that same thing with my wife, by the way.
Guest:I'm like, I'm going to turn around.
Guest:And if you're still there, when I turn back around, we're good.
Marc:And that's how it changed your life when you were 11.
Marc:You apply it to your marriage.
Guest:That's amazing.
Marc:It really made an impact.
Marc:Hey, honey, this is from wrestling.
Guest:So, yeah, the one guy turns the other guy around.
Marc:Right, and then the guy seems like, but he's angrily seeming like he's going to do it, reaches his hand out, even shakes his hand, and then just clocks the guy, kicks him right in the throat.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And then he throws him through a window.
Marc:Throws him right through the window, yeah.
Marc:The window to nowhere at the barbershop.
Guest:Now, wait, I have a question, though.
Guest:Were you watching this with the sound off?
Marc:No, I watched it with the sound on.
Guest:Okay, because there is one of the great lines of all time on the commentary there.
Guest:Yeah, it's very funny.
Guest:A face announcer and a heel announcer, right?
Guest:The face announcer is Gorilla Monsoon and the heel announcer is Bobby Heenan.
Guest:So he's going to always take the side of the heels, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so these two guys who are, for anyone listening who doesn't know, this was Shawn Michaels, who goes on to be one of the great wrestlers of all time, still considered that to this day.
Guest:And he's the one who turns heel on his, at the time, tag team partner, Marty Gennetti.
Guest:They were called the Rockers.
Guest:And it was very clear to everyone that Sean was the guy.
Guest:Like, they were going to put the rocket ship on him and blast him to the moon.
Guest:But the way to do that was to make him go heel first.
Guest:Then you get him over as a heel, get him over as a heel, and then he could become a babyface again down the line.
Guest:But he goes on to become really...
Guest:Quite frankly, one of the best wrestlers in history.
Guest:He still to this day is the guy who trains the WWE wrestlers at their like rookie center, right?
Guest:He's in charge of development of wrestlers.
Guest:This is the guy who was turning heel, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, the blonde one.
Guest:And it's so funny, I've shown people all throughout my life, if I'd be watching wrestling and people come over and they don't know what it is, I'm like, oh, sit down and watch.
Guest:I'm watching this thing.
Guest:When Shawn Michaels shows up, even back when he was in that team, the Rockers,
Guest:Any person watching it is always like, well, that guy's good.
Guest:Look, I remember watching with a friend of mine who had no interest.
Guest:He just didn't care.
Guest:He didn't care when it was on.
Guest:He didn't care when it was over.
Guest:There was nothing about it that he was like, yeah, that appealed to me.
Guest:Zero appeal.
Guest:And then we were watching it once and Shawn Michaels came on.
Guest:He's like, well, that guy, I watched that.
Guest:You got any more matches with that guy?
Guest:So there's just something undeniable about Shawn Michaels, how good he was.
Marc:And this was the moment where he basically- I like that Brendan's had this lifelong conversion experience with everybody he knows.
Marc:He tries to bring them into the fold.
Guest:Yes, totally.
Guest:There's got to be a reason, right?
Guest:I can't just be like, oh no, this is terrible, but I am watching it still.
Guest:I have some justifiable reason.
Marc:You needed validation.
Guest:Yes, right.
Marc:Well, that guy seems to be the right size and the kick looked real good.
Marc:Oh, the kick is great.
Guest:Eventually, not right away, but eventually that became his signature move.
Guest:Sweet chin music.
Guest:Yeah, like Hulk Hogan drops a leg, this guy would do the kick to the jaw.
Guest:That was called, as Chris said, sweet chin music.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he gives the kick to the jaw.
Guest:Before he does that, though, Bobby Heenan, the bad guy announcer, is saying, he's not going to leave.
Guest:These guys need each other.
Guest:There's no way.
Guest:He needs him.
Guest:They need each other.
Guest:And then they shake hands and he raises his hand and they're cheering.
Guest:The music comes back on and he gets the kick right to the jaw.
Guest:Bobby Heenan goes, oh, I knew he was going to do that.
Guest:I told you he was going to do it.
Guest:I knew he was going to do it.
Guest:And then Shawn Michaels goes, he picks up his partner, Marty Jannetty, looks him in the face, says something to him.
Guest:You can't really hear him.
Guest:And then as does a running throw of this guy through a plate glass window of the barbershop, cracks all the glass, glass falls to the ground.
Guest:And Bobby Heenan goes, did you see that?
Guest:Jannetty tried to dive through the window to escape.
Marc:Yeah, that was funny.
Marc:He's like, oh, the cowardice.
Marc:No, my feelings were like, I knew that guy, the big guy that threw him through the window.
Marc:I knew he had something, that guy.
Marc:The other guy I didn't care much about.
Guest:The funny thing about that, you just identified two things that have become kind of shorthand in wrestling.
Guest:That when a guy turns on his partner, they call that putting him through the barbershop window.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Forever?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, forever.
Guest:And he could do it anywhere.
Guest:Oh, he got put through the barbershop window, that guy, because he was turned on.
Guest:The other thing is that if you're of a tag team and one guy goes on to have a great career and one guy is not successful, that guy has now become known as the Marty Jannetty, who was that other guy.
Guest:That guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What happened to that guy?
Guest:He washed out mostly because of personal problems, like a lot of drug problems and stuff.
Marc:There's a lot of Marty Jannettys in comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, totally.
Guest:You should start calling them that.
Guest:The crazy thing about it is that Marty Jannetty himself was awesome.
Guest:Like he was an excellent worker.
Guest:He just didn't have what Shawn Michaels had in terms of his charisma and his way he presented himself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, speaking of people who had charisma and presented themselves, that brings to the other one, which is definitely the most famous heel turn of all time.
Guest:In fact, pretty much considered unfathomable when it happened.
Guest:And that was the other clip I sent you.
Marc:So what did you see with that one?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I just saw Hulk and I know Hulk from being Hulk and being alive in America, in the world.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And, you know, he seemed to, you know, kind of, he was coming into the ring.
Marc:I don't know what was going on in the ring.
Marc:There's a lot of people in there.
Marc:There's a guy down.
Marc:And then Hulk came out of nowhere and just jumped on the guy that was down.
Marc:Well, when he came out, people were generally happy to see him, right?
Marc:Yeah, it was Hulk Hogan.
Marc:I was happy to see him.
Marc:I didn't even know why.
Guest:Yes, and the guy who was on the ground was, you also probably know that guy.
Guest:That was Macho Man Randy Savage.
Guest:Even if you didn't know him on site, you've probably heard that name, Macho Man.
Marc:Sure, sure.
Marc:Well, he was down.
Marc:There was a couple other guys around.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Marc:And I don't know what the situation was there.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:There was a lot of people involved, though.
Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And then Hulk Hogan drops a leg on Macho Man.
Guest:And were you aware at that moment that he was turning heel?
Guest:Did that communicate to you that he was?
Marc:Well, it seemed a little like, you know, out of nowhere, you know, too.
Marc:And the guy, I think, on the ground was wearing the same outfit, kind of.
Marc:And by the response to the crowd, I knew that something horrible had happened and would change history forever.
Guest:Actually kind of did like it literally like you can draw the line from that moment to like Gawker getting put out of business and like the First Amendment getting eroded.
Marc:Yeah, I felt that.
Marc:I knew that Hulk had done something horrendously disappointing yet very exciting to a lot of people.
Marc:That's true.
Guest:I was making sure to look at the crowd when I was watching the clip.
Guest:There are like grown men who are so happy.
Yeah.
Guest:There's like a guy, two guys high five each other.
Guest:They're so happy that Hulk had turned into a bad guy.
Guest:And I believe the clip goes on for a very long time.
Guest:No one knew it was coming.
Guest:No one knew it was coming.
Guest:I mean, I think that, I think that if you were like a really smartened up fan, you would know like this had to be an option.
Guest:Like if you, you spent the time ahead of that pay-per-view to,
Guest:working through the scenarios in there in your head who could it be that could turn then maybe it would be hulk hogan now the thing was this was in the middle of that company called wcw is owned by ted turner turner networks uh they were beating wwf at the time it was the first time wwf really had a challenger almost got put out of business frankly yeah hulk hogan coming out there
Guest:It was a match where two guys who were former WWF wrestlers had come into this company and were basically like, we're going to take over.
Guest:And we're going to take over at this pay-per-view.
Guest:We're going to be joined by a partner.
Guest:And they started the match and had no partner.
Guest:And everyone assumed that sometime throughout the match, a former WWF guy...
Guest:would join them in the ring in this partnership.
Guest:But nobody really banked on it being Hulk Hogan, mostly because nobody could assume Hulk Hogan would take that risk with his image and his career.
Guest:He made a lot of money from merchandise.
Guest:And, you know, you would just think it's a big shift to do it.
Marc:And for him, it wound up...
Marc:And they were huge.
Guest:It wound up being way bigger merchandise sellers.
Guest:I don't know if like from his peak of Hulkamania, but it was huge.
Guest:Hulk Hogan was a very shrewd political operator in the wrestling business.
Guest:And he knew when a train was leaving a station and he saw the money in this angle.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:After reluctant, being reluctant about it initially, he agreed to doing it.
Guest:Now, one thing that's interesting, Chris, you noticed this when we were talking about it, that Bobby Heenan, who's once again on commentary in this, when Hulk Hogan comes out, he's screaming, but whose side is he on?
Guest:And that was because WCW did not smarten up the announcers.
Guest:Oh, no kidding.
Guest:That's why people are upset about it.
Guest:They did not know.
Guest:The announcers did not know Hogan was going to turn.
Guest:If they had known, Bobby probably wouldn't have tipped it like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, he probably would have he would have said, OK, I got to just pretend Hulk Hogan's here to save the day.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But even introducing this little bit of doubt was there because he had doubt since he didn't know what was going on.
Guest:right no a moment of honesty in the shtick exactly well another moment of honesty was that was real garbage being thrown by the fans and that if you let that thing play out for the next 10 minutes or so however long it goes where hogan does a promo and he tells the fans to stick it and uh the the ring gets covered in garbage just completely covered
Guest:That wasn't planted because that has never happened.
Guest:No, it's completely organic.
Guest:A fan charges into the ring and Kevin Nash, the tallest guy there, has to legit put the boots to this guy for trying to run into the ring.
Guest:Chaos.
Guest:Yes, it was total chaos.
Guest:It was the biggest money angle they ever did at WCW.
Guest:It started a period where they beat WWF in the ratings for 83 straight weeks.
Guest:It was it was one of the great angles of all time, but also, you know, for Hulk Hogan, quite a career turn, character change and definitely elongated his career when it was probably otherwise on the on the outs.
Guest:Did he stay a bad guy for the rest of it?
Guest:He went, no, he eventually went back, went back to the exact same Hulkamania thing, which is, which worked because by then it was a nostalgia thing, right?
Guest:It was for, you know, maybe six years later, he goes back to doing red and yellow Hulk Hogan, doing Hulkamania.
Guest:Are there people that just never liked Bad Hulk?
Guest:Probably.
Guest:There are probably people who never liked Hulk, period.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, definitely Bad Hulk and that group, the NWO, they started really dominating the show to a point where people got tired of it, you know, because they were all over it all the time.
Guest:So that also happens in wrestling all the time.
Guest:It's oversaturation of things.
Guest:Oh, there was a famous, there was a clip of like an old lady yelling at Hulk Hogan.
Guest:I'm pretty sure she never flipped and liked Bad Hulk.
Guest:She did not like Bad Hulk.
Marc:The angry granny.
Yeah.
Marc:The heel turn thing, I don't, you know, even when I really think about Andy doing it, I'm trying to think that if I enjoy that type of negative attention at all.
Guest:No, it's interesting.
Guest:It's so antithetical to you that that because you even in aggression want to be liked.
Marc:Yeah, but I have felt where I know where I'm.
Marc:I know I've been on stage many times and even some on some particular jokes where, you know, I know there's a lot of people that don't like me.
Marc:And I generally feel in that moment that I'm kind of glad those particular people don't like me.
Guest:Well, that's a legit heel turn then.
Marc:I definitely know what that feels like.
Guest:Mick Fallon used to talk about this, said that the best heels were the ones who believed they were right.
Guest:And that if you were a good heel, you had to cut a convincing promo, not because the audience would buy that you were right, but that you bought you were right.
Guest:And so that would therefore then convince the audience that you were a legit bad guy.
Guest:Wild.
Marc:Yeah, I've definitely been that guy.
Guest:Well, Louie recently did a heel turn.
Guest:Yeah, but that was a different body part.
Marc:What do they call that move?
Marc:The Louie.
Marc:Yeah, and he definitely has defended that position.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I mean, you've talked about this before, about how a lot of the culture is just heel culture.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's what Trump is.
Marc:I'm trying to do a joke about it where I say, it used to be like if you kind of knew you were an asshole, that meant you were going to probably try to work on it.
Marc:Those days are over.
Yeah, you're right.
Yeah.
Marc:You lean right into that now.
Marc:All the way.
Guest:So, all right, Chris.
Guest:So how did it change your life?
Guest:Oh, I mean, it would just broke my, like, it was like my first heartbreak, really.
Guest:It was my first wrestling heartbreak.
Guest:Like, I personally love the Rockers.
Guest:I think they could have been tag team champs for a very long time.
Guest:You still believe it?
Guest:Yeah, I'm very much a rocker fan.
Guest:I remember having like the WWF magazine with the rockers on it.
Guest:But yeah, it was shocking.
Guest:And I did not like Shawn Michaels for a pretty long time.
Guest:And yeah, it was my first wrestling heartbreak.
Marc:Are you still sad that the rockers didn't?
Marc:become what they know i'm over it i'm over it's fine no ftr is better uh so yeah it's gonna be it's it's okay okay all right dude well we will uh you know as i always said it's it's really it's as these things come up i think sometimes it's good to get your perspective on them as a total uh outsider in these things but now you guys can keep talking when i go are you gonna like now we just wrap it up yeah oh you're not gonna go back and be like oh that barbershop you're not gonna keep talking for an hour yeah
Guest:No, but you always do have the option of listening to these if you want to.
Guest:I do.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:They're podcasts.
Guest:You can find them wherever you get other podcasts.
Guest:Rate and review, please, Mark.
Guest:Rate and review.
Guest:What's the machine I need?
What?
Guest:The godfather of podcasting.
Guest:So how do I listen to my dad?
Guest:What do you get it on the computer?
Guest:You don't know what it took to get this guy to listen to a season of Karina Longworth's show.
Marc:I think I literally said, where is it?
Guest:Right next to your thing.
Guest:The thing that you've been doing for years.
Guest:It's like if you didn't understand what a house was when you lived in a house.
Guest:You mean it has stairs?
Marc:You go up them?
Marc:Or you could just get it on the same thing that I... All right.
Marc:So it's a podcast.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, you go figure that out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I'm going to go try to understand my house.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I'll talk to you guys later.
Okay.
Bye, buddy.
Guest:All right, that was fun.
Guest:Always good to have Mark getting smartened up.
Guest:We will continue smartening Mark in future weeks.
Guest:But for now, we're going to leave you and we'll say goodbye with the best thing we saw in the wrestling world this past week.
Guest:What was your choice this week, Chris?
Guest:buddy it's uh jay white versus uh commander oh yes that was all time on an aw dynamite yeah yeah and i know you watched it how is commander like alive like how is he a real person yeah is he like a cyborg come to to dance or uh walk a high wire like i don't
Guest:He loves walking on those ropes.
Guest:I thought that that match was better than the one they had when we went to see it in person.
Guest:We saw it at, he wrestled Sammy Guevara at the AEW show on Long Island.
Guest:And I thought that one was fun being there in person, but it was less of a match and more just a bunch of jumping off ropes.
Guest:This was like an actual legit match.
Guest:It was really fun.
Guest:Yeah, I actually thought that Commander would actually maybe beat Jay White in his AEW.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, but no.
Guest:Not going to happen.
Guest:Not with that contract.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What was your favorite wrestling?
Guest:So I'm going to go back to last week, last Friday, a week ago, to the AEW Rampage show.
Guest:And it was actually an interview segment.
Guest:that was the Jericho Appreciation Society trying to show that they knew how to rap.
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:And this was because they're in a feud with the acclaimed who does know how to rap.
Guest:And the Jericho Appreciation Society was out there.
Guest:And what I thought was so great about this was because obviously the joke here is that they can't, right?
Guest:That they're terrible at it.
Guest:And they were legit terrible at it.
Guest:That was why it worked.
Guest:Like a lot of times if you're in this position and you're doing this as a bit, you're going to try to be bad.
Guest:And then it's almost that it's good, right?
Guest:Like you're being jokey bad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But this, they had no flow.
Guest:They had barely, they could barely keep a beat, no rhythm.
Guest:The rhymes were terrible.
Guest:And then it got to the last guy, Jake Hager, whose gimmick is he likes his hat.
Guest:And everything rhymed with hat, but not...
Guest:Not even in a way that wound up making, like it didn't go with the beat.
Guest:It was like, he'd say like something, this and that.
Guest:And then he'd just be like, ah, like this hat.
Guest:Like he just, I was like, wow, these guys are really good at doing this badly.
Guest:uh then the acclaim came out and instead of rapping they just said ah fuck it and ran to the ring and beat the shit out of these guys the best part of that man oh i mean all of it together really really exceptional but i love that they because you're waiting for them to do a battle rap right yeah a battle rap and they're like no fuck it yeah also why lower themselves to having to rap against these pieces of shit
Guest:That was a lot of fun.
Guest:I appreciated that very much.
Guest:And I'm sure there'll be more stuff in the next week that we like and enjoy.
Guest:I know you and I are going crazy about Succession right now, too, which we will refrain from talking about just because there's still spoiler territory there.
Guest:But I'm so excited every Sunday night.
Guest:It's such a treat.
Guest:I can't wait.
Guest:I'm as excited about Succession as I would be catching a foul ball at Yankee Stadium.
Guest:Ah, yes.
Guest:For all the Tom heads out there.
Guest:Well, if you are a fan of Succession, I hope you're enjoying it as much as we are, and I hope you've liked this.
Guest:This has been The Friday Show.
Guest:I'm Brendan.
Guest:That's Chris.
Guest:Peace.
Guest:See you later.