BONUS Marc's Calendar - January 1991
Music Music
So, I'm going through the books.
I'm going through the books.
My old date books and address books.
I have a stack of them.
I've done this a couple of times on Instagram Live, but I've never done it on audio.
I don't know.
It's interesting to me because I'm under the belief that
we have many different lives.
If you've moved around a lot, I've lived in four or five different cities in my life, or maybe four, but some a couple times.
And each section of my life where I've lived in different cities, or if I was younger, or my sort of intensity around what I was doing was different, it feels like a different life that not only feels far away from me, but I don't know who that guy was.
I don't know who the guy was that was doing what he was doing.
I mean, I know it was me.
I'm not delusional.
But it was really a different life.
I'm looking at a calendar from January 1991.
I used to buy these desktop sort of calendars, you know, the big ones.
It was a book, but it was big.
And each day, it was like a full-size sort of calendar.
It wasn't a day at a time kind of thing.
I needed to see the whole month at a time and then write in the boxes.
And I began working professionally as a comic in 1988 after winning a competition in Boston.
So this is 1991.
I moved to New York in 89 to try to crack the clubs there.
And you couldn't make any money in New York unless you were playing weekend gigs at the clubs.
And I was just trying to break in.
So I had to go back up to New England where I would do one nighters.
and clubs in New England to make whatever meager living I was making for years.
So this is like two years after, I'm like 88, 89, 90, 91.
So this is like the third year in.
to working as a comic.
Having started, I did comedy a few times in college in 84 and 85, but I would say 87.
So I graduated in 86, 87, 87, 88.
Yeah, I graduated in 86 and then I moved to LA, became a doorman at the comedy store, then got fucked up on drugs.
So I mean, I started, I think I would say officially in 85.
And moved to L.A.
in 86 and then 87, hit the wall, moved back, back to Boston to start over.
And then I came in the competition.
I came second in that competition, 88.
And then I started doing the one-nighters.
But looking at these calendars after I moved down to New York to try to crack that, it was like in January of 1991, 32 years ago.
Like all I see here in the first month, in January, I'm at the Comedy Cellar on the 1st of January.
That's the day after New Year's, not on New Year's Eve.
I wasn't getting that kind of work.
I was getting thrown weeknights there by the woman, Kathy, who used to book the place.
And Esty, the woman who passes all the judgment, they wouldn't really let me work weekends.
So I take these weekday spots, I guess, because I don't remember really being passed there until 95, right?
But so I had the place on the Lower East Side in New York, you know, which was sad.
What a fucking sad life.
And all I wanted to do was comedy.
So I did The Cellar on Tuesday on the 1st.
And then all of a sudden I'm in Sheraton at the Sheraton Hotel in Springfield, Mass., which was a gig.
I guess I drove up from New York and I drove to Boston where I imagine I was staying at my girlfriend's house or staying...
at Dave Cross's, at Bob Wilson's place, because I don't remember having a place up there.
I don't know where the fuck I was living up there.
In 91, I guess that was when, it must have been when Kim was living in Somerville before the roommates all decided to intervene and not let me stay there anymore.
I have a weird perception of who I was.
Clearly, I was relatively unbearable.
But then I'm at Stitches, Friday and Saturday, which is a club, it was in the Paradise,
on Commonwealth Avenue.
And I guess I'm up there for a week because I played a place called Chappies.
I don't remember where the fuck Chappies was.
And then it just says, sell, sell.
Couldn't have been, there must've been a place called the comedy cell.
Is that possible?
I don't fucking know.
You think maybe it was a seller, but I don't think I was working weekends.
Then, so that was, means I was back down in New York.
for a few days and back up to Knicks in Boston.
It was crazy.
But the more I go through this, Taunton Regency, that was a good gig.
That was at a hotel in Taunton in a conference room.
That was a full weekend gig.
Might have even been two shows.
Then I've got The Epicurean in Exeter, New Hampshire.
No recollection.
The University of Maine in Orono, that couldn't have been great.
That was in February 91.
And then back to New York where you just crank them out on the 28th after the University of Maine, Broadway Comedy Club, Boston Comedy Club and the Improv, at least three spots that night.
So I stayed in New York till Friday.
Then Saturday, I must have gone back up to Boston because I'm at a place called the Tipperary.
I can only remember the exterior because I was running away from it.
Then back at Knicks in Boston.
Then Stitches for $550.
13, 14, 15th, and 16th for 550 bucks.
Then Knicks cranking it out.
Then back into, then Giggles.
Then I go to LA and Phoenix.
I don't know what I did out there.
This is 91, 30 something years ago.
Giggles and Saugus, 500 bucks for the weekend.
I don't get it, man.
The EM Club in Groton, Connecticut.
Michelle's.
I don't know where that was.
Rockland.
Where was that?
Pure Platinum in Dover.
Must have been Rockland, Maine.
Pure Platinum in Dover, New Hampshire.
I actually did that with Sarah Silverman once.
I wonder if that was the time because I stayed at her family's house.
Jesus Christ.
This is crazy.
I kind of remember Pure Platinum.
It was a dance club.
Then back down to New York.
Stand Up New York on the 23rd.
The Improv on the 24th.
The Improv on the 25th.
Then Penn State.
No recollection.
TR's in Londonderry, New Hampshire.
Londonderry, Connecticut.
TR's was that place.
That was the place where Bob Batchelor lost his mind.
Holy shit.
It was like this horrible little half a 50s diner place.
I told you that story, right?
Where I'm driving Bob Batch.
Oh, my God.
He used to close with the signs.
I'll tell you again.
It's bonus material.
I don't know if you've all heard it.
Bob Batch was this comic.
Here's the thing.
When you're doing one nighters for there were several companies where you do these one nighters for.
So they had, you know, subcontracted gigs to these bars all over the region.
Sometimes you had to drive the headliner.
The opener did a half hour.
Headliner did 45.
I was opening.
I drive Bob Batch down.
Batch used to close with these signs where they were kind of the phonetic translation or writing of Southern sayings like mere for a minute.
Come here for a minute.
Like M-E-E-R-F-I-R-M-I-N-I-T.
Mirror for a minute.
He would just hold up mirror for a minute.
And then he'd be like, mirror for a minute.
Come here for a minute.
And then explain it.
And they'd get the laugh.
He had a bunch of them.
I don't even know if it was his bit.
But that was it.
The signs.
That was his big closer.
So I'm driving down to TRs.
from Boston with Bob Batch in the car, and he's just like, I can't get on fucking Letterman.
How the fuck do people get on Letterman?
The whole fucking time, it's like, these fuckers, like, just like, you know, on and on.
Like, you know, I'm fucked.
I can't.
Just like this diatribe about not being able to get on Letterman.
And he was angry.
And it was two hours of that, in my recollection.
And we get to TRs.
And I go up there and open.
There's like nine people there and one guy in a wheelchair, I recollect.
I'm just painting the picture for you.
Nine people scattered, dude in a wheelchair.
There's like half a car in the middle of the place for the DJ booth, but that wasn't really big enough to hold a car or even a half a car.
So I go up and do whatever the fuck I could.
Half hour, did everything I had.
Brought Bob Batch up, went to the bathroom, come out.
And he just has lost his mind.
He's screaming at the nine people.
You know how hard it is to get on Letterman.
You think I want to fucking be here.
It was crazy.
And we're just in the middle of fucking Connecticut.
Nobody's there.
And he's yelling.
He's screaming on stage.
And I'd never done this again, and I never did it before, but I stepped out and I said, Bob, Bob, you got to chill out, man.
You got to take it easy.
Let's just chill out.
It's too weird, man.
Chill out.
Went into the middle of the room and fucking, you know, got in between him and the audience and said, let's just relax here.
And he was like, what the fuck am I going to do now?
And I'm like, Bob, do the signs, man.
Do the signs.
He's like, yeah, just do the signs.
I think that'll be good.
Do the signs.
He did the signs.
I don't think he did his full time.
And we got the fuck out of there.
Good times at TRs in Londonderry.
And then I'm like in New York and then there's stitches.
But the thing that's weird is these nights where, you know, I would do the Village Gate.
I would do the improv.
I would do Boston Comedy Club.
I would do stand up in New York.
I do five or six spots a night.
That was the way you fucking did it.
And it's every week.
I'm talking about like on a Tuesday.
This is Monday.
The cellar, Boston Comedy Club and the improv running all over New York.
That's a Monday night.
Every fucking night.
That's all I did.
And I still fucking do it.
I've got it written into my brain.
I got to go out and do comedy every fucking night.
Last night I did two spots.
Here's the Aqua Lounge, York Beach, Maine.
No recollection.
Here's the Tipperary again.
Oh, it was in Worcester.
Fuck.
It was in Worcester, the Tipperary Pub.
Not a great performing situation.
The Village Gate, Captain Nix, a gunk with Maine.
I opened for Nick DiPaolo there.
It was one of my first paid gigs.
Apparently, I went there pretty regularly.
Here's the Epicurean again.
Wow.
I guess it was because I was an opener.
It didn't matter if I went back there every few weeks.
Oh, there's Dorothea's phone number.
That's an interesting story.
She was a waitress at one of the clubs in Boston.
And I think back in 90, 91, she was seeing me and Joe Rogan.
that's a we have my eskimo brother joe yeah here you go nixon brockton no recollection of that one nixon randolph no recollection of that i knew they spread out they put nicks all over the place but these mondays and tuesdays catch a rising star the comedy seller at 1205 here's an improv spot on a sunday at 230 in the fucking morning
Wow.
Village gate.
That was great.
Let's see if there's another trigger of something.
The hot tin roof.
That was on... Was that on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard?
Was it Nantucket?
Why do I feel like it was on Nantucket?
It was an island gig that you had to sweep over there.
You had to take a boat and sweep there.
I don't remember where it was.
I think Carly Simon owned the place.
I remember doing it with Garofalo and Mike Donovan.
And then the next night is Johnny Yee's.
Johnny Yee's was down in Yarmouth on the Cape.
That was a big gig.
This huge obese guy named Wayne used to run it, used to run the Polynesian dance show before the comedy show.
They had this...
The stage, it kind of went back into itself.
There was a dance floor, and then the stage came out of the wall or something.
It was a big operation, big enough to put a band on.
And they used to do comedy there.
I guess it was on Friday nights.
And then back up Pure Platinum.
Jesus Christ.
Oh, that must have been when I was with Sarah.
See, her name's right there.
Sarah at 515.
So that was August 1991.
August 10th, I did Pure Platinum with Sarah Silverman, and I stayed over at her place with her parents and met her family.
Wild, I remember that.
What else we got here?
LA Improv, fucking nightmare.
Pick up tickets at LaGuardia, Flair Travel.
Flair Travel.
Flair Travel.
Flare Travel was this operation that Barry Katz was tied into.
You never quite understood it, but you could get these airplane tickets for almost nothing.
But you had to meet a guy with a limp at the airport.
It was the weirdest thing.
I have no idea what was going on.
You couldn't refund the tickets.
You couldn't go to the ticket counter.
I don't know what the deal was or how it worked.
It always looked like half a ticket, but you had to meet the guy with the limp, pick up the ticket, and then just go to the gate.
Don't try to change one of those tickets, which I did.
I tried to change one of the flair travel tickets, and I think I was almost arrested.
I don't know what was going on.
I don't know what was going on.
I don't know what the racket was.
All right, well, this has been the 91 calendar section.
The Cambridge Hyatt.
Oh, my God, that was terrible.
That was terrible.
December 1991.
I remember that.
I was just an angry guy.
And I did like 20 minutes.
I talked about, you know, being afraid of getting AIDS.
I talked about, you know, drugs.
I was I had no I couldn't manage my talent in any way.
And a lot of times I'd get these gigs that look at three shows at the Boston Comedy Club in New York.
And then I go back for the Cambridge Hyatt.
This was a private gig.
I'd get these private gigs that people would cancel.
Like Barry Katz's company, Boston Comedy Club company, would book big names on these gigs and they'd cancel and then they'd throw me in.
And I did.
It was a private gig.
I get there.
There's an ice sculpture.
There's a buffet.
There's a dance floor.
But on either side, there are people sitting.
And then there's like a microphone just there.
And I don't know how I did this shit.
A woman comes up to me and goes, you're the comedian?
I'm like, yeah.
She's like, well, do you talk about sports?
They love sports.
And I'm like, I'm so fucked.
And I went up there and I bombed so badly in front of that ice sculpture for a half hour and I ran out.
There was a lot of running away from venues.
1991.
Big year.
Big year.
Here's the other weird thing.
I'm taking a lot of supplements because I think some of you heard the tale of me and the Chinese medicine guy who's not Chinese.
We all want to be hustled.
We're all marks, but we also want to feel better.
We want to believe.
So like months ago, I would say six months ago or so, I started receiving a regular shipment, a monthly shipment of the supplement Sam E. I don't know what this was.
All right.
You know, Sam E. Hold on.
I'll look it up.
I know it was something... It's S-adenosylmethionine.
Adenosyl... Adenoid?
Adenosyl?
Adenosylmethionine.
Also known under the commercial name of SAMe.
SAMe is a common co-substrate involved in methyl group transfers, transsulfuration, and aminopropylation.
Although these...
Anabolic reactions occur throughout the body.
Most SAM is produced and consumed in the liver.
So let's see, what is SAMe good for?
It's a natural metabolite that the body needs more of as we age or if we become ill.
SAMe is generally safe and evidence-based for the treatment of depression.
It's also promising neuroprotectant and may be helpful in treating ADHD.
Okay.
Whatever.
Sammy.
The point is, this was something that my partner who passed away, Lynn Shelton, was, you know, used Sammy.
And when after she died, I had to get rid of like dozens of boxes.
I mean, she was sort of a supplement hound and had a lot of stuff.
that she used to stay steady in her mind and in her body.
But Sammy was one of them.
And I remember she sort of panicked at one point because she wanted to get some more Sammy.
She was feeling more depressed than usual.
And she had grown to rely on this when she didn't feel, when she felt depressed.
She wasn't on it for a while.
But then I remember she got some.
But I don't know what the deal is.
But for some reason, I'd started receiving a monthly shipment of a box of 200, I guess, milligrams tablets of Sammy and also a box of 400 milligram tablets of Sammy.
They just started coming, two boxes.
One of 200, one of 400 every month.
So I called Amazon.
I said, is there a mistake?
Why am I getting this?
And they're like, no, it's not a mistake.
And I'm like, can you tell me where it's coming from?
And they're like, we can't.
I don't know.
I don't know what you just, you know, give it away, do whatever.
So that just seems to be being delivered to me.
And I don't know.
And I never took it until yesterday.
Yesterday I took it, and I don't know if it's doing anything, but I'm kind of jacked.
I'm kind of wide-eyed.
I don't know what it's supposed to be doing.
Maybe I'm taking too much.
Maybe I should take two 200s throughout the course of the day, not one 400.
I don't know.
I wasn't that depressed, but maybe I was.
I don't know.
I took it, and I feel good, but I don't know if it's this or the coffee.
I'm drinking Timmy's.
I just got another tub of Timmy's.
But here's the thing.
I'm starting to think that maybe it was some weird glitch and it was an order that Lynn actually put in place.
that I'm receiving this because at some point Lynn ordered the subscription to it.
I don't know why it would be stuck in limbo for a year and a half or whatever or less or a year or maybe someone will come forward and tell me if they set me up for this thinking that I would just take it because I didn't know really if I needed it or I wanted to take it.
But in my mind, I think it's because Lynn sent it to me now and that maybe I should be taking it.
So I'm taking the Sammy that I believe Lynn has prescribed for me.
And maybe maybe there's a key to it.
I don't know.
It's made me closer to her again in a in a non grieving way.
But but it's very odd.
I don't know why I'm getting it.
Maybe someone out there knows.
I don't know.
But the guy who went to Cracker Barrel, I guess Cracker Barrel, put plant-based sausage on their menu, and morons lost their shit.
Oh, I guess you're going woke.
You lost me as a customer.
Changing your politics, you're forcing...
woke meat on us woke meat wow people's brains are fucking broken even the dumbest fuck knows that you know that comforting garbage you shovel into your dumb face
at Cracker Barrel is unhealthy.
Even the dumbest fucks know that.
And look, I'll have some biscuits and gravy occasionally.
I'll eat some slab bacon.
I'll shovel eggs into my face.
I'll love it.
I'm not taking a tone here.
I'm not being condescending.
I enjoy filling my fucking guts with comforting garbage.
I love it.
I love it.
Ice cream, fuck it.
But I also know that's clogging my heart.
I know it is.
And I know it's not good for me.
I know it makes me fat.
I know it causes inflammation.
I know it increases the odds of me dying sooner than later.
A lot.
But God damn it, it's good sometimes.
But I know that when I indulge in comforting garbage, it might be hard for me to pull myself out of that particular barrel.
Cracker barrel.
So they're just throwing you a bone, man.
If you're a cracker barrel person, many of you are, even if your politics are correct or righteous for real or tending towards democratic, you don't have to be a red dum-dum to enjoy cracker barrel.
I don't go there because it's the consistency of the dumb shop that bothers me.
It's the consistency of the fake atmosphere that bothers me.
I've been there in a long time.
I don't think to go because I know it's bad for me.
I'll go eat something bad somewhere else.
I'll fight it on the road.
It might be breakfast time, but I'll fight it for something better.
And then it doesn't happen.
Point being, there's no woke meat, you dumb fucks.
If you're going to politicize alternative food options that are healthier.
What?
I don't understand.
They're not trying to push politics on you.
They're trying to give you a healthier option so you can continue eating comforting garbage at their dumpster longer.
You dupes.
You marks.
Wow.
Thank you.