Episode 782 - Joe DeRosa / John Hodgman & Jesse Thorn
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What the fucknicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I don't know what's going on.
Marc:I probably know what's going on, but I am not reacting to it directly because I recorded this a few days ago before I left for a vacation.
Marc:So this might be at least a little emotionally dated.
Marc:I have no idea what's happened in the last few days.
Marc:That's not true.
Marc:Again, I probably have an idea, but I'm not reacting to it, either emotionally or literally, because if I was, I would be able to see the future.
Marc:And generally, when I think I see the future, it's not good.
Marc:So maybe I could speculate then.
Marc:Maybe I could possibly paint a picture from my imagination that might sync right up with what happened since I recorded this on Saturday, last Saturday.
Marc:But I'm not going to do that.
Marc:I'm going to say, what am I going to say?
Marc:I hope I'm having a good time.
Marc:Well, you know what?
Marc:Why not be optimistic?
Marc:I'm having a great time.
Marc:Maybe I'll pretend like it.
Marc:Fuck, another week.
Marc:Oh, God.
Marc:I don't know how we're going to get through this shit.
Marc:What a fucking... Wow.
Marc:Just try to keep your... I don't know, man.
Marc:It's just weird when everything you do that is your life and that might bring you some enjoyment just feels like...
Marc:You're holding off the inevitable or avoiding something that requires immediate and horrifying attention.
Marc:That's not that's not good.
Marc:Let's just stick with, you know, I'm I'm I'm on vacation.
Marc:I'm having a nice time as nice as I can.
Marc:I hadn't had a vacation.
Marc:I haven't had a vacation in a long time.
Marc:So I'm trying it out, trying to get my head straight, trying to breathe some air, look at some pretty, sleep some sleep, write some things down, fortify my heart and mind, that kind of stuff.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So I don't know what's happened.
Marc:Again, I'm sorry.
Marc:I'm not responding to what's happened the last few days because I recorded this a while ago.
Marc:So I could go on vacation without recording out there.
Marc:I forgot to mention who's on the show.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:There's several guests actually on the show today.
Marc:It's funny when I read the Blue Apron copy, it reminds me of my character in the Mitch Hedberg movie Los Enchiladas that apparently is not available anywhere to anyone.
Marc:But I think you can probably see it.
Marc:somewhere it's got to be out there i played the uh the menu writer i and it just it's a little close it's a little close when i read the uh blue apron uh uh copy there it reminds me of that character that's a long a long time ago making mitch hedberg's movie i got that lovely box set recently the hedberg stuff on vinyl it's great today on the show
Marc:a couple of guests right now I'm going to have a John Hodgman and Jesse Thorne.
Marc:Uh, they are part of the very, very funny day, a one day podcasting festival in Chicago on Saturday, February 11th with live performances of judge John Hodgman, Jordan, Jesse, go the flop house, stop podcasting yourself and more.
Marc:You can go to maximum fun.org for tickets.
Marc:And after John and Jesse, I talked to, uh,
Marc:The aggravated Joe DeRosa, comedian I've known for a few years.
Marc:I've never just had the time to get him in here.
Marc:It was good to talk to Joe.
Marc:I feel like we're kind of kindred spirits.
Marc:So that's a pretty loaded show for a vacation week.
Marc:Let's go now.
Marc:This is me talking to John Hodgman and Jesse Thorne here in the garage.
Marc:you would think i would have gotten a new situation fellas right jesse i mean you helped me sit up you helped me set up this situation almost nice it's a nice situation though we're in a nice situation we're ensconced particularly when the weather's cool we're ensconced in your piles and piles of books
Marc:Right.
Marc:But like, you know, I think about it myself sometimes.
Marc:I'm like, do I have to have that headphone amp just dangling off the side of another piece of equipment that I rarely use?
Guest:I like that you have this Radio Shack telephone handset here.
Marc:Sweet landline.
Marc:That's my sweet landline.
Marc:Exactly, it's a Radio Shack landline.
Marc:And that other thing under it is a Telos.
Marc:Do you know those from your radio activity?
Guest:I got a Telos.
Marc:You got one at the house?
Marc:I was just on my Telos earlier today.
Marc:But isn't, like, that is a piece of rack radio equipment that you use to record phone calls with.
Marc:Now, I have to assume that there is a technologically easier way, but no one's told me one.
Marc:I mean, is there another?
Guest:Just use that Telos, baby.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:I have it.
Guest:I think we're transitioning to Telos.
Guest:Yeah, we're switching over to Telos.
Guest:We've been trying to do it technological ways.
Guest:It never works right.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:So we're back to phone lines.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Both of you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For Judge John Hodgman, because John records in Brooklyn and I record in LA.
Guest:We have guests in a studio somewhere.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And so we are just sick of Skype failing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:The sound quality is not there, right?
Marc:And you don't want to get an ISDN line, I'm guessing.
Guest:You can't even get an ISDN line anymore.
Marc:Is that true?
Marc:Yeah, they won't put one in for you anymore.
Marc:I had one in here briefly that I never used years ago.
Guest:So that shit is over.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because they're moving towards a new technology?
Guest:No, just because it was mostly used for, you know, the theory was that it was a high-speed internet connection.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so, but it's not high-speed relative to any other high-speed internet connection in this time.
Guest:And the number of people who want to use it for broadcasting is about 10 in each city.
Guest:Oh, so I got it.
Guest:I thought it was a satellite connection.
Guest:What we need is some hipsters to start up an artisanal retro ISDN system.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Well, then you need the whole other piece of equipment that delivers the ISD.
Marc:That's a whole other piece of equipment.
Marc:You've got to get that duplexer.
Marc:Yeah, that you've got to plug the ISDN outlet into and then run it into the mixer.
Marc:That piece of equipment, which I had briefly, is actually confusing and difficult.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It sure is.
Guest:It's got like a number pad on it.
Guest:You have to type in secret codes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just want to say how much I appreciate, Mark, you're making eye contact with me during this portion of the conversation because I don't know anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Thanks for trying to keep me involved and presuming that I know.
Guest:I know very little.
Guest:As Jesse will attest.
Guest:My situation, Jesse might have kitted out your situation.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How does this compare to my situation, Jesse?
Guest:Yours is a little rough.
Guest:Yeah, right?
Guest:We're working on it.
Guest:What's the problem with my situation?
Guest:Well, John records his whole thing in his office, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:But for some reason, John- I have a stark minimalist-
Guest:aesthetic you'd think with the volume of books that john has or just the volume of books that john has written yeah there would be book lined walls and you know you would imagine john's office like with bare skin rugs carpets yeah on the ceiling with club chairs yeah no just four bare walls yeah one of which is literally a mirror he records into a window yeah
Guest:with one of these mics though it sounds like it actually just got one of these yeah yeah it sounds and no matter what he does it sounds sort of like that that one uh reverb room under capital records oh you got to put some of this stuff up yeah i got to get some foamy foams yeah i got i just got some rugs i got it i got a nice i got a nice uh cozy rug coming there you go now we're talking yeah you can stick some of these panels around the the
Marc:Original panels.
Guest:I lined all the walls with ceramic plates.
Guest:Is that correct?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Which book did you read that in?
Guest:Like old vintage plates like you see in a diner sometimes.
Guest:We should put in that kind of like those adjustable audio reflectors that change the tone from classical to jazz.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'll go with that.
Marc:So, John.
Marc:Yes, Mark.
Marc:Both of you guys, I've known you for a few years, and neither one of you had the amount of hair coming out of your faces.
Marc:Jesse seems to have really committed that he's transitioned from what I would think was sort of somewhat of a dandy into a hill person.
Yeah.
Marc:I am wearing like a chore jacket right now.
Marc:And John, I don't know what stage of evolving into, what are you evolving from into?
Guest:You know, I grew a mustache about five years ago.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:Because I was jealous.
Guest:I'm like, he's doing my thing.
Guest:I was inadvertently doing you.
Guest:I didn't mean to be copying you, but I definitely was.
Marc:Once your soul patch comes into play, that's just me and Zappa and Lee.
Guest:on red bone that's it that's right mustache without uh without soul patch though gets very quickly into um alcoholic cop oh yeah right so and i so the mustache was easy to explain because that was just i grew that the same reason all 40 year old weird dads grow their mustache it's a it's a signal to the biological mating community i'm all done
Guest:Is it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We've wrapped this up.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:No, thank you.
Guest:Mustache rides priceless.
Guest:I have put my genetic material out into the world.
Marc:I am no longer required.
Marc:I thought that was usually a weight gain thing.
Marc:I find that the mustache may not be putting that message out into the world, but I'm not you.
Marc:But generally, I thought that when you want to signal that, you just forget that you can't eat everything.
Marc:Well, right.
Marc:Exactly.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But then I decided to grow this beard because I just felt compelled to see what would come out of my face because I think everyone wants to know what kind of secret man lives inside of him.
Guest:How much do I got?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And what I learned by the secret man who lives inside of me apparently is the part-time bookkeeper at the Church of Satan.
Right.
Marc:You're a little thin on the sides, but full on the chin.
Marc:Yeah, I got a lot.
Guest:I am a natural-born neckbeard, y'all.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Natural-born.
Guest:This is all mine.
Marc:I don't have any neckbeard weaves in.
Marc:Well, that does say I'm done, the neckbeard.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But Jesse has been cultivating something.
Guest:Jesse's got a magnificence.
Marc:At first, even when I started seeing his new Twitter avatar, I was like, you know, he's in, and this is what he's doing now.
Marc:If someone goes, what's Jesse up to?
Marc:I imagine he's working on his beard and mustache.
Guest:Do you know what the honest truth is, Mark?
Guest:I wanted to have a beard since...
Guest:i can remember yeah but i couldn't i i presumed i couldn't do it and by the time i figured out that i sort of could and like my beard in terms of fullness real goddamn horatio alger story it's a b minus you know like it's not the greatest beard well no you don't have the full you don't have dense hair but you've you've grown it out yes yeah and the essentially i figured by the time i got my beard it was on the downward
Guest:trend yeah i was like seven out of ten with ten being it's so over you can't do it i figured if i'm gonna do it i better do it right oh yeah like i can't half do it right no five o'clock shadows like i have to have a full-on crazy person's beard to show yes i know what it is right i know where it is on the trend
Marc:but I'm going to do it.
Marc:Well, but, but knowing you and knowing that, you know, you have a, you know, probably a sock weave preference there.
Marc:There's certain, you know, shoe products involved that perhaps I was just thinking that the products that you've researched and figured out what to do for yourself has got to be, you know, very exciting.
Marc:So what kind of products are you working into that fucking moss on your face?
Guest:You have to use mustache wax, not because you want to have a curly Q mustache, but because otherwise, if your mustache is longer than your lip, you are constantly eating your mustache.
Guest:See, I was just about to mention that there's almost an optical illusion going on because your beard is thinner than it seems.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:But the mustache tricks you into thinking it is this full luxurious thing.
Guest:Because I'm looking at you from the side profile here.
Guest:And I'm noticing once again, and I've noticed before, that your mustache seems to grow like out at a 90 degree angle from your lip.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And is like reaching out like alien tendrils in Star Trek The Next Generation.
Guest:That's the wax.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Gotta keep it under control.
Guest:Whereas my mustache, if I were to grow it as long as yours, because those are long hairs under your nostrils, they would just immediately go directly into my mouth and then try to strangle me from within.
Guest:Just grab my uvula and in an Ouroboros type of way, consume myself.
Guest:Yeah, you got to train it.
Guest:You got to wax it and train it.
Guest:That got very complicated and elaborate poetry.
Marc:We had the Ouroboros reference.
Guest:For those who don't know, Ouroboros is the snake that eats its own tail.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:What I call a really dumb snake.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And also a fine metaphor for the world we're living in.
Marc:True enough.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I think the Ouroboros was created as an alchemical symbol of some kind, wasn't it?
Marc:Or does it go further back?
Guest:I thought that it was a reference to Jormungandr, the world snake that surrounded the Midgard in Norse mythology, the snake around the earth.
Marc:I think it's one of those odd symbols that existed for some reason in many ancient cultures.
Guest:It's very compelling, isn't it?
Guest:To think that there's a snake out there that's so dumb it's going to eat his own tail.
Marc:yeah well i but but you know as far as uh as you know when you look at the evolution of uh the the thoughts around the idea of sinning and whatnot yeah you know on a very simplistic primitive level that could be every fucking mistake you make yeah that's right you are you are you are it reminds us that we're all dumb dumb snakes exactly that are causing our own pain don't do this yeah right exactly it's like i don't know what you're talking about i don't have a tail anymore i cut that off at birth right yeah well i don't know what i'm eating yeah
Guest:I just want to promise your listeners at some point I am going to cough and it is going to be disgusting.
Guest:You got the thing?
Guest:I am under the weather, but I am naturally an aging, decrepit human being.
Guest:And listeners to the Judge John Hodgman podcast will know if they ever heard me cough that everyone goes, oh my God, are you all right?
Marc:Well, that's like an old judge should have that.
Guest:now let's see what we have here in front of us today as you dispense justice you should hear that you are not long that's right yeah that's right like not forgive my ignorance but you just produced it or are you part of it he's the he's my bailiff okay so you remember like that yeah you remember like uh the people's court yeah sure back back or judge judy they have a they have a bailiff or night court aren't they still on yeah of course
Guest:night court i just had john larquette in here did you really wonderful conversation sorry i will continue to do that that's the that was the best slap pace in network television yeah a lot of people a lot of people go to seinfeld for that but you're gonna have to go back to night court oh yeah night court was there long before and had a good run yeah absolutely shout out to mel torme like nine years that thing was on it's a
Marc:Good show.
Guest:So if I were Judge Harry in Night Court, Jesse would be my bailiff bull.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or Roz.
Guest:I get how it works.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the structure, Sean.
Guest:People are enjoying it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So he brings, well, people call in with real disputes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then Jesse swears them in, and then I walk them through their disputes, which are usually about things like... What, Jesse?
Guest:I can never remember.
Guest:Oh, my favorite one was a fight between two brothers who bought a house in rural Kansas, known forever as the Bat Brothers, because the house that they bought... In rural Kansas, you can buy a house to save money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they bought this house together to save money, but the problem with the house was bats kept getting into the house through one of the bathroom walls.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And the hole.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so the dispute was one of the brothers said, we have to fix this hole.
Guest:Bats are getting in.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then the other brother who was like completely taciturn, like a total Kansas Eeyore guy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's like, we bought this house to save money.
Guest:I'm not going to spend $1,500 fixing a bat hole.
Yeah.
Guest:His recommendation was his bat amelioration scheme was to keep a dictionary by his bed.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And if he saw a bat, smash it with a dictionary.
Guest:It was a two-part system, John.
Guest:I hate to...
Guest:I hate to correct you here.
Guest:I apologize.
Guest:But his two-part system was, number one, there would always be a phone book next to the toilet.
Guest:Phone book, right.
Guest:So that if a bat got into the bathroom, you could smash it, and they would always keep the bathroom door closed so that the bathroom would be like a bat airlock.
Guest:It would be a bat isolation chamber.
Guest:And this is a real thing?
Guest:Yeah, it was 100% real.
Guest:What do you do, one issue per show?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So I'll hear both sides of the thing, and then I'll say, what you really got to do is have a reality show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:In that case.
Guest:Did they fix the hole?
Guest:No, they sold the house, I think.
Guest:No, I think they eventually sold the house, but they had to have a jar into which they put, it was like $10 or $20 every time a bat got into the house, and were that jar to fill, they were required to patch up the hole with the money.
Guest:That was pretty wise of me.
Guest:You're a very wise man, John.
Guest:The problem is that I forget my wisdom immediately as I move on to new justice.
Guest:I've been using that case as an example of what happens on Judge John Hodgman for like five years because it's the only one I remember.
Guest:Isn't there a big plan?
Guest:Aren't you guys doing an Abbott and Costello shtick or are you doing a... Well, we've been touring Judge John Hodgman, which is super fun.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:It's fun for me because people like Judge John Hodgman, unlike any of my other shows.
Guest:So they come...
Guest:They come to live shows.
Guest:And then it's fun because we get to yell at these people in real life.
Marc:So you pull them right up out of the audience.
Marc:You get people to fill out things.
Guest:People submit cases just like they do for the podcast.
Guest:But they submit them specifically to be heard on stage in wherever we're going to do it.
Guest:And the next one we're doing is in Chicago on February 11th.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:This is going to be like a 12 hour.
Guest:It's called Very, Very Fun Day.
Guest:And it's going to be like a 12 hour maximum fun podcast and some Chicago podcasts extravaganza.
Guest:What venue?
Guest:Multiple rooms.
Guest:Falia Hall.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Do you know that place?
Guest:I do.
Guest:I feel like I know that place.
Guest:Used to be an opera house.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:It was shuttered for years and years and years.
Guest:Then some nice young men with beards came and turned it into an art space.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:I feel like I've been there.
Marc:The last couple of times I've been there, I played the Vic.
Guest:oh yeah yeah which is it's a great theater yeah but i feel like did maybe that uh the one of the festivals use falia hall that could be recently yeah that could be i feel that might be it so there's many it's been open for maybe a couple years many spaces within it yeah there's a main main theater space right which is gorgeous what are we talking 800 seater 25 000 seats that's big i think probably something along that
Guest:The Bulls played there for a while, but there weren't enough luxury boxes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Too old-fashioned.
Marc:Yeah, and they all had red velvet curtains.
Guest:Then they got a restaurant in there, and then they got a lounge in the basement where they play some smooth jazz.
Guest:Yeah, so we've got big podcasts.
Guest:It's going to be Us and the Flophouse, Jordan, Jesse Go, Oh No, Ross and Carrie.
Guest:That's two of you.
Marc:That's two Jesse Thorne podcasts.
Guest:Well, it's cheaper.
Guest:It's more efficient that way.
Guest:Are you doing a bullseye there, too?
Guest:No, we're not doing bullseye there.
Marc:Bullseye is your secret public radio treasure.
Guest:Well, it's secret in the sense that no one listens to it, yes.
Guest:What do you mean no one listens to bullseye?
Guest:It's the least successful show on national public radio, if that's what you mean by secret.
Guest:He checks the rankings every day.
Marc:I remember when you... What was the old show on public radio?
Guest:The Sound of Young America.
Marc:The Sound of Young America was one of those ones where...
Marc:I think I've told you this story before where, you know, I did that dumb thing with you in Santa Cruz when you were in college.
Guest:Like when he says dumb thing, John, I don't know if you know this, but one of the first time, maybe it was the second time I interviewed Mark, Jordan and I, who does Jordan S to go with me, we're still in college and it was a fundraising show and we were doing it from the base of the UC Santa Cruz campus where you have to drive past to get in, in our underpants.
Marc:yeah ah okay mark was on the phone yeah god bless him i but like i did it and then years later i'm in a story of queens you know making some coffee in my kitchen and i hear npr at night and it's like uh live from my living room i'm jesse thorne jesse thorne i'm like is that that fucking kid yeah
Marc:And it was in his underwear that like, yeah, he did all right for himself, that guy.
Guest:I met Jesse because I was a guest on the Sound of Young America, too.
Guest:And I remember being told I wasn't a guest.
Guest:I was on some radio college thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, this was when after you had graduated from college.
Guest:But I was still living in San Francisco.
Guest:I mean, we're looking at 2004 or 2005.
Guest:It was 2005 because it was from a first book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The areas of my expertise.
Guest:And it was before you were a celebrity.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:It was on the eve of your celebrity.
Guest:It was Celebrity Eve.
Guest:And what happened?
Guest:Well, my publicist said, do you have time for one more phoner?
Guest:And I think it was near Christmas, and I was up in the woods of New England with my family.
Guest:I'm like, well, okay.
Guest:He said, this is a woman named Jessie Thorne.
Guest:She has a podcast.
Guest:She has a podcast called The Sound of Young America.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That is also syndicated in Walla Walla, Washington and Hattiesburg, Mississippi on radio.
Guest:Shout out to WUSM.
Guest:I said, okay.
Guest:Sounds good.
Guest:And if you've ever heard the voice of Jesse Thorne and you have been hearing it, it is a beautiful and compelling radio-licious voice.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But imagine if you had been told this was a woman's voice.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:It was a very confounding.
Guest:It's hosted by the great Nina Simone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was a very confounding phone call to have, but I was immediately struck by the intelligence and preparation behind this strange man-woman voice with perfect radio diction who has only heard in Hattiesburg and Walla Walla.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I literally- Look where you are now.
Guest:Now look.
Guest:Mark, like, I literally, I booked John on the show on the basis of, ah, this is like a funny McSweeney's guy, like I'd seen his McSweeney's thing.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Is that still around?
Guest:Yeah, it's pretty funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I booked him on there and he was so funny on the show.
Guest:I mean, maybe still the funniest guest that had ever been on the show.
Guest:And my wife and I went out to his book reading just like a week later in The Hate in San Francisco.
Guest:And literally the crowd at his book reading, for which he had brought his and our friend Jonathan Colton dressed in buckskins.
Guest:And a coonskin hat.
Guest:Literal buckskins.
Guest:Jonathan, who plays guitar, is my, I'll say, definitely one of my better friends.
Guest:I refuse to say best friend because- Yeah, I've met him a couple times.
Guest:I'm from New England and I'm an emotionally stunted human, but-
Guest:Uh, yeah, I was scared to go on the road by myself.
Guest:So he came along with me and I, the, the gig was that I was, I would pretend that Jonathan was my feral mountain man, Butler.
Guest:Ah, he had a built in shtick.
Guest:So he's, so John is trying to do his shtick with poor Jonathan dressed up in this outfit.
Guest:And the crowd at this is the people that work at the bookstore.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Me, my wife, my now wife, then girlfriend, Teresa.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:A man who had driven John there.
Guest:That guy.
Guest:Oh, Frank Loria.
Guest:Shout out to Frank.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:I forgot.
Guest:And Dave Eggers and Dave Eggers' baby.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Good crowd.
Guest:Good crowd.
Guest:And a buckskin man.
Guest:Colton just walks out for his big entrance and his buckskins.
Guest:You just see him.
Guest:He's the nicest man on earth and brilliantly talented and hilarious.
Guest:And he just walks out and he's like, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm wearing the buckskins for these people.
Guest:And Edgar's baby cries.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There were one or two other people there, but that's basically correct.
Guest:I mean, literally like one or two.
Guest:And the reason I say that is that I was reading a bit from my book describing the old street con, the three-card Monty.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Now, you know what the three-card Monty is.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:But it's disappeared because there isn't.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Watch the Reds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It has not disappeared.
Guest:I saw someone doing it the other day.
Guest:Wait, really?
Guest:Los Angeles.
Guest:Stop it.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:And I also saw someone selling tiny turtles, which was like a staple of my mother's, another staple of my mother's childhood.
Guest:I remember living tiny turtles.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Living tiny turtles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Is this,
Guest:Are they doing retro street crime?
Guest:No.
Guest:Retro street scans?
Guest:Los Angeles is so sprawling that there's just parts that have never advanced beyond 1963.
Marc:They still haven't, didn't get around to it.
Marc:There's the guy with the cards, and there's the guy pretending to bet money that's talking you into betting money, and there might be one other shill there, and then there's a couple guys watching for cops.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I wanted to give, when I saw the guy actually doing it, I wanted to give him $5 in the same way that you would support someone who was keeping clogging alive.
Guest:Yeah, it's true.
Guest:It's true.
Guest:I lost art form.
Guest:Good for you, sir.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when we were, this was a thing like in our 20s we would see in New York.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I fell for it.
Guest:I did too.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my wife- Never see $20 go more quickly.
Guest:My wife never fell for it.
Guest:My wife never fell for it, but she saw it one time and her friend said, oh, it's three card Monty.
Guest:And my wife was not my wife at the time.
Guest:She goes, how do you know his name is Monty?
Guest:So adorable.
Marc:But he got that guy pressuring you.
Marc:I think I lost like $20 or $50.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:Because it's like, come on, come on.
Marc:And they're bullying you to put your money down.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then a lot of times they'll kick the thing out and split.
Marc:Because a cop or whatever, right when you can't even get the opportunity, not that you would win it back.
Guest:No, don't, Mark, you're not missing any opportunities there.
Guest:There's no winning?
Guest:No, there's no winning.
Guest:God damn it.
Guest:But I had been taken so hard and so humiliatingly, humiliatingly, anyway, that I wrote a jokey bit about it in my book and I'm reading it in San Francisco and I'm not getting any response.
Marc:Yeah, because they don't know what it is.
Guest:And I said, is it that you don't have three card Monty here or everyone in San Francisco is just so virtuous that they would never con one another?
Guest:And someone in the audience said, that's what it is.
Guest:Yeah, everyone.
Guest:All right, listener, here it comes.
Guest:How many books have you written, John?
Guest:Three books, and I'm about to write a fourth book.
Guest:Really?
Guest:What's this one about?
Guest:So, for the past couple years since I wrote my last book of fake facts and bogus trivia and goofball absurdist humor.
Guest:No one knows the difference anymore, apparently.
Guest:Well, that's why I realized I couldn't peddle it anymore.
It's good.
Guest:Well, I literally couldn't do – I stopped – basically stopped being on The Daily Show because the character I was doing, the deranged millionaire, had been based on Donald Trump.
Guest:It had been based on 2011 when Donald Trump was going on CNN and Fox and everything else peddling the birther conspiracy.
Guest:And I was – I said to The Daily Show, that's what –
Guest:That's what we should have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like that guy, just some, a rich white guy who gets to be on the news because he decides to be right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And so I said, let's turn my character into that.
Guest:They're like, okay, let's do that.
Guest:And then once Donald Trump became a reality, uh,
Guest:Going into 2015, when Trevor Noah took over the show and we were talking about, would you like to stay on?
Guest:I'd like to, but I need to think about what to do.
Guest:It's like, there's nothing I can do.
Guest:I can't compete with the long-form improv that that guy's doing.
Guest:Like, there's no, you know, everything that I've ever done comedically.
Marc:The high-risk, dangerous improv of the incoming administration.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, at that time, it was just...
Guest:It was just an absurd campaign.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was nowhere near the horrible reality.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In my opinion, horrible.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't know where you guys stand.
Guest:I'll stand there with you.
Guest:I'm an NPR journalist.
Guest:I have no opinion.
Guest:No, Jesse has no opinion.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:So I basically said, I'm out, you know, because my humor in that vein had always been like, take this and then take it to the next level.
Guest:It's logical conclusion and then take it to its illogical conclusion.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And and it's absurdist conclusion.
Guest:But Trump was already doing that and then going beyond that.
Guest:So for the past couple of years, instead, I've been traveling around doing Judge John Hodgman and then also doing my one man imitation stand up comedy show, which is just more or less straightforward storytelling from my actual life.
Marc:And does well?
Marc:You do well with that?
Guest:I do incredibly well.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:25,000 seats at Thalia Hall.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:100,000 seats.
Marc:I hear you playing 25,000 seaters everywhere.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:Everywhere.
Guest:He's actually doing six in a row in Dublin.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Six 25,000.
Guest:They love country music there, so he's very big.
Guest:The O2 Arena in London.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nine.
Marc:That's a great town, Dublin.
Marc:I just played there, too, not too long ago.
Marc:I really liked it.
Marc:I've never, you know, I've never been to Dublin or Ireland.
Marc:Ireland is one of the most beautiful places on the planet.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's, and like, I have no genetic connection to it, but I get there and I'm like, this is beautifully, I feel like I could be home.
Guest:You get it right away.
Marc:You just switch the O in my A and the A in my name, you get Moran.
Marc:yeah right be a quick switch yep and i fit right in but you're thinking about it aren't you i just i i've even when i went there when i went to the kilkenny festival i did not do well there but i was so taken by the country itself and the landscape and the people i i just felt uh so mark you know what your natural you know what your natural home in ireland is what belfast
Guest:get out of dublin get into belfast my stepmother is from belfast yeah uh who i grew up with yeah and uh that's your people really belfast is a land of just profound bitterness and bitter hilarity well okay the darkest they will go to the darkest place in a high
Marc:half a second well i find that a lot of irish will do that but not i don't sense bitterness i like the uh the the slightly defeated crankiness yeah that like you know like aggressive darkness i get it's exhausting me now i had i moved through the bitterness and now i'm sort of like where's some of the the warm kind of like the the the cranky darkness slightly defeated that kind of ends existentially pleasantly
Marc:You're moving towards something and it's okay at the end.
Guest:You have really dissected the Irish character.
Guest:it's true my uh my uncle john yeah my wife and i went and had lunch with him uh when i was in belfast last which was maybe five years ago and we met him in this nice cafe this nice organic cafe you know like a real tofu and bean sprouts sandwich and i'm looking around and i'm thinking like man there sure are a lot of pictures of
Guest:of like Yasser Arafat on the walls here at this organic cafe that my uncle has had us meet at.
Guest:And apparently he basically, he had us meet in this cafe that is like a socialist revolutionary cafe underneath Sinn Féin headquarters that used to be IRA headquarters.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Because that's, like, where he's most comfortable.
Guest:My uncle is, like, a 60-year-old, like, guy that runs the computers in an office.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But, like, his comfort zone is- Radical.
Guest:He wants to be in the radical socialists.
Guest:There has to be the presence at any time of possible- Social overthrow.
Guest:Murderous violence.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that to him is the fun, like my stepmother, funniest story that she'll ever tell you is, oh yeah, one time a police officer tried to sexually assault me and I kicked him in the nuts and then I kicked him in the face down a flight of stairs.
Guest:Ha ha ha ha.
Marc:That's the Thanksgiving story?
Guest:At the table, kids?
Marc:Listen up, grandma's going to say something.
Guest:It sounds like they are probably the best equipped people for the next four years that we know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Literally the Thanksgiving story, Mark.
Guest:They only got meat once a week.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because my stepmother's father died when she was very young.
Guest:She grew up very poor in a big family.
Guest:And had to eat them?
Guest:Her sister, yeah.
Guest:But only once a week.
Guest:They had to parse them out over many, many weeks.
Guest:Each kid got one rasher of bacon for Sunday dinner.
Guest:One ration of rashers?
Guest:One ration of rashers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my stepmother's sister tried to steal her rasher of bacon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my stepmother, who's the youngest in the family, who was like eight or 10, stabbed her sister through the hand with a fork.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:For the bacon.
Marc:For that one piece of bacon.
Guest:To protect that one piece of bacon.
Marc:See, these are Belfast Irish stories.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:They're a little too heavy for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I thought-
Guest:I thought you wanted to go to a place of- Where's the existentially uplifting darkness?
Guest:You want to focus on like a potato famine, something that's more of a hundred years in the past than 20.
Marc:Potato famine, like, you know, well, you know, we get by.
Guest:A dark imagining, but with a little affirmation at the end.
Marc:I've still got the MaxFun patch up there pinned to the bulletin board.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:From the one time I was invited.
Guest:The time that you said I was the benevolent colonel of the nerd plantation.
Oh.
Guest:And that was the best description I had ever had until I... Have you ever had Tom Arnold on your show?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Tom Arnold's kind of an amazing guy.
Marc:Yeah, you get two for one with him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:At the pace he goes.
Guest:He came on bullseye and said that I looked like the bouncer at a Hasidic strip club.
Guest:Oh, there you go.
Guest:That was the new.
Guest:That surpassed.
Guest:I don't know if it surpasses in depth.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:That's fair.
Marc:All right, so we're promoting the Chicago thing.
Guest:Yeah, we're going to have some tickets at the door.
Guest:I mean, we're going to try and do it over the summer.
Guest:If you're not in Chicago, you can listen to the podcast.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:Of course, but the big event at the Thalia, you've got a lot of seats to sell 25,000.
Guest:25.
Guest:I think there are about 24,000 left.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Advanced tickets are sold out, but we're going to have some tickets at the door.
Guest:Oh, is that true?
Guest:Yeah, totally.
Guest:Why the fuck am I here?
Guest:Bye.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:He's sick.
Marc:You drag him out from Brooklyn to do this?
Marc:So sorry.
Marc:Well, thanks for talking, fellas.
Marc:Why?
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Do you have a closing message?
Marc:Ladies and gentlemen.
Marc:Give it please the jury.
Marc:Have fun, you guys.
Marc:Thank you so much, Mark.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Marc:Those fellas.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:Right?
Marc:Go to MaximumFun.org for tickets to the thing.
Marc:The very, very fun day that they're involved with.
Marc:And, you know, that's it.
Marc:That's it for those dudes.
Marc:All right, so I'm going to talk to Joe DeRosa now.
Marc:Joe DeRosa, I met in New York.
Marc:I used to see him around.
Marc:He was on the show years ago on a live one.
Marc:You can go to JoeDeRosaComedy.com for Joe's specials and podcasts and all things Joe.
Marc:This is me and the mildly self-involved and tormented Joe DeRosa.
Marc:DeRosa.
Marc:Buddy, it's been a while.
Marc:Has been.
Marc:The last time I think I saw you, we had a conversation about whether or not we were wearing shorts or capri pants.
Marc:And who cut their fucking jeans properly.
Marc:We were both very proud that we made our own cutoffs.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:But mine went up a little higher than yours.
Marc:And then I saw the flurry of insecurity in you as to whether or not I was right or you were right.
Marc:And you decided, I think, in your heart that you'd make the right call by cutting yours off just above the knee.
Marc:See, and I thought mine were too short and yours were even shorter.
Guest:Well, yours were not, how were they too short?
Guest:If yours were any longer, they'd be capri pants.
Guest:No, mine, above the, capris go, you got like some space above the ankle with a capri.
Guest:Then you got, then there's clam, remember clam diggers?
Guest:That's not the same thing as capri pants.
Guest:That's like a little higher than capri pants.
Guest:Clam diggers, I don't know, maybe I missed that.
Yeah.
Marc:Maybe I missed clam diggers.
Guest:You weren't into shorts back in the day?
Marc:Sure I was, but I remember I did cargo shorts for a while just because they were easy and you bought them everywhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Maybe many years ago I had a couple of pairs of tennis shorts when I might have played a little tennis, but cutoffs have always been sort of the thing I did.
Marc:I've had longer shorts and
Guest:I like a longer short, so I think I could have been a little longer without being at a capri pant.
Guest:I threw those shorts away.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I wore them that one day, and I never wore them ever again.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:I just was too selfish.
Guest:It didn't feel right to me.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It didn't feel right.
Guest:Yours looked good.
Guest:Even though they were a little shorter than I would wear them, you wore them well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you had a great line, by the way.
Guest:I said, I cut mine off this morning, and you said, so did I. And I go, how'd you do yours?
Guest:And you go, I brought in a team.
Yeah.
Guest:Because I was just like, to me, there was like this whole science to it.
Guest:Like, when you're not living with somebody, how do you cut your own shorts off?
Marc:Yeah, well, you know, you mentioned this right when we got in about not wanting to be alone.
Marc:Are you all right?
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, what do you mean living with somebody?
Marc:You mean like a woman?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or just a dude.
Marc:You're like, dude, these shorts, can you come over?
Marc:Sometimes that would come in handy.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Just to have a person there.
Marc:A person to say, those are good, Joe.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I look at it as- Good job, Joe.
Guest:It's a consultant, no matter how.
Guest:It's a roommate, wife.
Marc:Am I okay?
Marc:You're okay, Joe.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Can you come over and do that for me?
Guest:I've been living alone for most of my adult life.
Guest:So I'm just, I'm getting, I'm 39.
Guest:I'm getting to the age where I'm like, am I, did I run out of time here?
Guest:Did I?
Guest:For what?
Guest:I feel like I should have been in a significant relationship by now.
Guest:By 39?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My longest relationship was eight months.
Guest:And I'm like, it should have been longer than that by now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are you panicking?
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, especially when you go, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I understand what you're saying.
Marc:I've been in longer relationships.
Marc:They don't usually end up successful.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So these are two sides of a coin here.
Marc:You haven't had a long one you think you should have.
Marc:I have had plenty that just ended up in the toilet.
Guest:But I would say that yours falls on the side of better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
Guest:Or better to have thought you have loved.
Yeah.
Marc:And left to wonder whether you're even capable of it in Lost.
Guest:Are you in a relationship now?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Which is why you get to live out in this great neighborhood, because that's what I was saying to you was, well, I mean, you get to live out here either way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I said to you when I first showed up, I love this neighborhood.
Guest:If I wasn't so terrified of being alone, I would live out here.
Guest:Well, yeah, but I had that thing.
Guest:How long you lived out here?
Marc:Three, a little over three years.
Marc:From New York.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:The first couple of years I lived here, I lived over by the old UCB up on Franklin.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So there's about two blocks of walking traffic.
Marc:like there's storefronts right yeah i think that when you you come from new york there's a natural desire to be able to walk outside walk to a store walk to the you but you're by atwater village so you can walk by there maybe wave at the guy at the place right right you buy a pastry yeah right how you doing today fine exactly and then you know go try to think you're not alone for a little while
Marc:It's an illusion.
Marc:It's a holodeck.
Marc:It's just a holodeck.
Marc:It's illusion in the sense that, you know, L.A.
Marc:is fundamentally, you know, not that kind of city.
Marc:And it is hard.
Marc:It's a hard adjustment to make.
Marc:But look, if having those four blocks.
Guest:of useless fucking stores and restaurants enables you to feel comfortable it does it does it really does i'm not going to take that away from you thank you i appreciate it it's going to diminish yeah yeah let me have my little thing uh like where do you go in the morning like you get up and you're like okay here are my rounds well i have a dog so i get up i walk my dog i try to do like an hour walk with the dog first thing really like a strenuous or
Guest:Not as strenuous, just it gets him exercise.
Guest:It gets me out.
Guest:I'm walking around.
Guest:It gets the juices going.
Guest:You think you're right, whatever.
Guest:Then I come back and I do a mile on the treadmill just to- Where at the house?
Guest:Sweat it out.
Guest:I have a gym in my building that I live in.
Marc:You live in a building that has a gym.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:In Atwater.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:So you have a full service apartment situation.
Marc:You're not renting a house or anything.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:I'm renting an apartment with all the amenities.
Marc:Oh, so you did.
Marc:That's another nice natural adjustment from New York.
Marc:It is very nice.
Marc:Like if you rented a house like most people do, you'd be like, I can't.
Marc:There's nothing.
Marc:You'd be sleeping on the floor wondering who fixes things when they break.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I rented a house when I first got here and I would call the landlord and be like, hey, so these filters are clogged and the air conditioners?
Guest:And they'd be like, yeah.
Guest:And I was like, so come.
Guest:And they're like, no, no, no, you go and you do it.
Guest:And I go, so then I'll just take it out of the rent.
Guest:And they're like, no, no, it's a house.
Guest:You just...
Marc:Try owning one.
Marc:It's a disaster.
Marc:Because I'm the same way, and because of that, things have to get pretty bad around here for me to make changes.
Guest:What we were talking about, you're sad and alone.
Guest:Sad and alone.
Guest:We can go back.
Guest:Let's circle back to that.
Guest:I mean, I feel like that's a thing that you and I could talk about for a very, very long time.
Marc:I haven't been alone in a long time, and I don't know sometimes whether or not
Marc:I stay in relationships or I'm in them because I'd rather not be alone.
Guest:I wish I had that problem because I do the opposite.
Guest:I'm terrified of being alone, yet I run.
Guest:I don't know if I've ever shared this with anybody.
Guest:When I start to approach a commitment.
Guest:A commitment of any kind?
Guest:I'd say an intimate romantic commitment mostly because I don't have a problem making friends and all that stuff.
Guest:But a lot of the time when I approach an intimate thing... Are they really your friends, though, Joe?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I think it's more like this.
Guest:Yeah, comic friends.
Marc:It's comic friends.
Marc:You all right?
Marc:I'm all right.
Guest:All right, good to see you.
Guest:That was funny.
Guest:I want to tell a quick story about you.
Guest:You can go eat.
Guest:You want to eat?
Guest:What?
Guest:The first time I saw you, this was years ago.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You were not dating the person you're dating now.
Guest:I don't know who you were dating.
Guest:It wasn't good.
Guest:You...
Guest:I saw you at the improv.
Guest:It was the first time I saw you after I moved to LA.
Guest:And the last time I'd seen you was in New York.
Guest:We did Opie and Anthony together.
Guest:And as I was leaving, you said, hey, man, if you ever need a place to stay, you call me, dude.
Guest:You're a good guy.
Guest:I got your back.
Guest:And I was like, that's really nice.
Guest:And I knew I would never ask you for that favor.
Guest:Me too.
Yeah.
Guest:It meant a lot.
Guest:It was comforting just to hear it.
Guest:So then I saw you at the improv, and I had a place to live and everything.
Guest:I just was feeling down, and I wasn't really adapting to LA.
Guest:And I walked up to you, and I was like, hey, man, how you doing?
Guest:Just moved out here finally.
Guest:What's going on with you?
Guest:And you just went, relationships are hard.
Guest:And then you walked away.
Yeah.
Marc:That was it?
Marc:That was the whole conversation.
Marc:Well, at least I wasn't mean to you.
Marc:No, you weren't mean.
Marc:It was just dealing with something.
Marc:You and I always got along.
Marc:I was always surprised.
Marc:I think initially I was surprised because you have an Italian name, Joe DeRosa.
Marc:You cut your hair kind of bro-y.
Marc:You're a little metro-y at first.
Marc:Before I knew you, I kind of lumped you in.
Marc:Not with guys I didn't like or guys I didn't think were funny, but guys who I thought were the opposite of me.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So when I met you and actually hung out with you, it was a revelation that somebody who looked like you could be as insecure and fucking nutty.
Marc:You were a portal into the reality that people who look like they're from Philly can be fucked up, insecure guys.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, I get that a lot from people.
Guest:You do?
Guest:I get it constantly.
Guest:People are like, you have this, you give off this initial first impression that you're maybe a little like meathead-y or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Or abrasive or whatever.
Guest:And a lot of that's got to do with my comedy because my comedy is not very uplifting.
Guest:Right.
Marc:uh but but it's not but it's not mean and it's not like narrow-minded it's introspective and and kind of hard on yourself yeah it's a lot of what the fuck is wrong with everybody and me and me and more everybody oh yeah but you know but it's becoming more about everybody maybe we're getting to the real thing then
Guest:Yeah, maybe we're getting here.
Guest:Let's get to the real thing.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah, but I'm serious.
Guest:I get this all the time.
Guest:People go, you're like a nice, sensitive guy.
Guest:You're really emotional.
Guest:I cry at stuff all the time.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:When was the last time you cried at?
Guest:I got a little teary watching the finale of Sherlock the other night.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I didn't watch that.
Guest:I don't know where people find time or the shows.
Guest:What is that show?
Guest:Where is it on?
Guest:It's on... I was catching it on the PBS app.
Guest:The new season was being released on Masterpiece Theater on the PBS app.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is the only time I've ever watched Masterpiece Theater.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was because I could get the new season of Sherlock.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I love the show.
Guest:It's great.
Guest:But I get teary.
Guest:I'll cry out of...
Marc:elation yeah you know like when i saw the force awakens the second to last star wars movie i cried when like han solo came back on the screen out of like nostalgia and elation sure no i get that i mean i i tear up pretty frequently i i've watched some movies lately where i teared up i could i could tear up at uh certain points during an a a pitch
Marc:very sorry people's stories yeah i cry uh you know not i don't watch many commercials anymore because i'm not watching a lot of regular tv but uh i definitely get moved all right so but all right so we cry i get it yeah we cry okay age of innocence but where'd you grow up are you philly guy
Guest:i was born in philly yeah and then i grew up outside of philly in a small town called collegeville or trap was the other name of it ironically but uh uh but uh i grew up in a in a suburban town that was very you know i have no ill will towards my hometown it's where i grew up i have a lot of love for it but it was a very what's it called the town trap how far out of philly was it
Guest:not far 20 miles or something okay so you like you but Philly was your city yeah Philly was my city Norristown Pennsylvania King of Prussia you know how old are you 39 where'd you start doing comedy in Philly Philly I started in an all-black club called the Laugh House in Philadelphia I was one of two white comedians who was the other guy big J
Guest:Jay had already moved on.
Guest:Jay started there with Kevin Hart.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Kurt Metzger.
Guest:And they all moved out of Philly about a year or two before I started.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I started with Mike Vecchione was the other white guy.
Guest:And then there was another guy, Rocco Stowe.
Guest:I remember.
Guest:I know Mike Vecchione.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And who?
Guest:Rocco who?
Guest:Rocco Stowe or Brian Stowe.
Guest:He's at the store sometimes.
Guest:You've probably met him.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's the guy you thought I was.
Guest:Like he is.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I'm not saying that as a slight.
Guest:I love the guy.
Guest:But he is very Philly.
Guest:He's very like, yeah, so what are we doing?
Guest:Huh?
Guest:What do we go?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's very much that guy.
Guest:But he's a great dude.
Guest:He's hilarious.
Guest:Why are you not that guy?
Guest:Because I'm damaged.
Guest:I'm broken.
Guest:I was adopted.
Guest:You were adopted?
Guest:Yeah, I'm adopted.
Guest:Wait, now, okay.
Guest:So how many siblings do you have?
Guest:None.
Guest:My parents couldn't have kids.
Guest:My mom wanted to have six kids.
Guest:That was her dream.
Guest:She couldn't conceive.
Guest:She got pregnant once and had a miscarriage.
Guest:And then they adopted me.
Guest:And they're religious people.
Guest:And the way they adopted me... Catholic?
Guest:Yeah, Catholic.
Guest:Roman Catholic.
Guest:And the way they adopted me was...
Guest:by some people's interpretations would have had a miracle uh element yeah element to it like so what happened was they you have you have no parents i have no parents you just appeared yeah there was no father yeah yeah it was an immaculate conception yeah no my parents were on two different adoption lists they were a secular list and a church list
Guest:And the church list called my parents and said, you have to remove yourself from all other lists if you want to remain on our list.
Guest:And my parents said, we're not doing that.
Guest:And the church said, well, if you don't, then you're going to have to take yourself off our list.
Guest:And they said, well, we're not removing ourselves from any other lists.
Guest:And the next day, the secular list called them and they got me.
Guest:So my mom saw that as a miracle that had they listened to the church at that moment, they wouldn't have gotten me.
Guest:It's a miracle in the wrong direction for a Catholic.
Guest:I know, it is.
Guest:Yeah, you see why I'm fucked up now is they're telling you it's a miracle, but then it's not a miracle because it's a miracle against the church.
Guest:Yeah, the church wanted you to turn your back on the possibility of Joe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So that was the beginning.
Guest:Were you newborn?
Guest:I was like nine days old.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I never remember being told I was adopted.
Guest:I always knew.
Guest:So they told me from an early age, I mean.
Marc:And what did your dad do?
Marc:What was the family business?
Marc:What did you grow up in?
Guest:My dad worked in computers and later became a deacon of the Catholic Church.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's what he does now.
Guest:He's a deacon.
Guest:Now, where is that in the hierarchy?
Guest:That's one step below priest.
Guest:One step below priest.
Guest:Yeah, and he has told me if my mom dies, he would probably become a priest.
Marc:Wow.
Marc:So a deacon, though, what, did he make enough money in the computer racket to not worry about that, or did he get pretty good pay?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:They used him and chucked him out after 40 years or something like that.
Guest:They laid him off after 40 years with nothing.
Guest:He had to work at Home Depot until his retirement, whatever, kicked in.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we were real paycheck to paycheck growing up.
Guest:We didn't have a lot of money, but my parents...
Guest:uh you know it was like typical 80s typical 80s trap bullshit they bought the house that was out of their price range out in the suburbs right gotten all this credit card debt and their jobs let them down and you know what'd your mom do
Guest:Just administrative stuff.
Guest:She was a secretary, mostly, here and there.
Guest:But they really were into the church.
Guest:They still are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They still are.
Guest:My dad is particularly very religious, but not in a Bible-thumper way.
Guest:He has said in defense of me, you need to find your own way.
Guest:This was my way.
Guest:It doesn't mean it's your way.
Guest:He's very righteous in that sense, which is refreshing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you didn't get it laid on you, the hell thing?
Yeah.
Marc:i did in school and stuff but as i got older it that that that sentiment got a lot more reasonable do you remember the the the um the moment where you decided like this isn't for me uh from the beginning i never it's like i talked to catholics and sometimes like some some people are are lapsed but other people are like early on they're like no
Marc:Not buying it.
Guest:Yeah, it never moved me.
Guest:I was terrified of it because I did believe, because I was a kid, so I believed in the supernatural idea of there's a pit of fire you'll burn in or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it never moved me.
Guest:I never enjoyed church.
Guest:I was always stomping my feet having to go to church.
Guest:And I was also depressed from a very young age.
Guest:My neighborhood where I grew up, the environment I grew up in was very cookie cutter.
Guest:It was very uninspiring.
Guest:There was no diverse culture or anything there.
Guest:And I knew from a very young age, I'm talking third grade, like I got to get the fuck out of this place.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Like I got to get the fuck out of this place.
Guest:You were ready to go?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was like, and I just knew that it was going to be so long until I could do that.
Guest:And that made me terribly, terribly depressed.
Marc:Well, in yourself, in your introspection, what do you think the being adopted, what does that imply to you?
Marc:I mean, have you ever tried to find... No.
Marc:No desire?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, no, no desire.
Guest:No.
Guest:I pretty much took the hint when they abandoned me.
Guest:Oh, see?
Guest:You can hold on to that.
Guest:That's an old bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's... No, I...
Guest:Well, to take you through it properly, it meant nothing to me in the beginning.
Guest:I didn't think it, it didn't bother me.
Marc:Being adopted.
Guest:Yeah, I didn't, I didn't even think about it.
Guest:I didn't care.
Guest:Then when I was 12, my mom broke the news to me that I was not Italian.
Guest:Right.
Guest:By blood.
Guest:I was actually, when I found out later, Middle Eastern.
Guest:But she thought I was Egyptian because that's what the adoption people told her.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of my parents was Egyptian.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So I found out that I wasn't what I had thought I was for 12 years.
Guest:Italian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you can pass.
Guest:I can pass.
Guest:Yeah, it's good enough.
Guest:So that was like a sort of a cage rattle at that point in my life.
Guest:And it kind of fucked me up a little bit.
Guest:It's kind of exotic, though.
Guest:Exciting.
Guest:You might be half Egyptian.
Guest:I love my mom dearly.
Guest:I don't say this to criticize her.
Guest:And I know she was trying to protect me.
Guest:But my mom said to me at that time, don't tell anybody.
Guest:Because we lived in a sort of there were a lot of racist people where we lived and she didn't want and she was so because of this thing where they wanted all these kids, they couldn't have the kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then they had this miracle in quotes adoption.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It becomes like a sort of a smothering situation.
Guest:She was overprotective.
Guest:She was so terrified she was going to lose me.
Guest:uh to the point of giving me advice in hindsight which wasn't great which was don't tell people what you are ethnically because they might after you you found out at 12 yeah they might harm you or yeah right and i was also getting bullied a lot in school why i don't know i just was probably because i wasn't the uh guido meathead that you wanted me to be yeah you know like i i don't know like but how overprotective was your mother
Guest:Overprotective in the sense that she said, don't tell anybody you're Egyptian because why add fuel to this fire, but not overprotective when I would cry and say, please switch me to another school.
Guest:She said, no, you have to face your battles.
Guest:You can't leave.
Guest:Do you remember why you were bullied?
Marc:You were just one of those guys?
Marc:I had one of those faces.
Marc:I had one of those faces.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Were you bullied as a kid?
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't think so.
Marc:Not really.
Marc:I think as a young kid, no, I probably tended towards the other side.
Marc:I might have not been the main bully, but I might have been one of the kids behind him going, yeah, fuck that guy.
Guest:Congrats, you're the first comedian I've ever met that was on that side of it.
Guest:Every comedian's always on the other side of it.
Marc:I was always odd and always outside of things, but I think that I had a certain amount of, you know, like...
Marc:I remember, I never quite felt like I fit my own skin or fit in anywhere, so I would attach myself to people.
Marc:And they weren't really bullies, but I definitely always felt alone in the crowd, you know what I mean?
Marc:But I was never really majorly bullied.
Guest:Well, I think we all, not we all meaning comedians because I hate that shit where it's like, you know, us comic.
Guest:But I think people that don't fit in all feel like that, obviously.
Guest:And then we all react to survive in our own way.
Marc:I would probably disagree with you.
Marc:You may not have met any comedians that were bullies, but I think there's a few out there.
Guest:Yeah, I'm sure, yeah.
Guest:I was just being facetious.
Guest:Right, right, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, I could name a few.
Guest:They're still doing it.
Guest:That's a great point, actually.
Guest:Now a lot have really come to mind.
Guest:I retract the statement.
Marc:You know, I'm sure we all felt odd and uncomfortable or that we didn't fit in.
Guest:That's usually what I hear.
Guest:Well, I think people that feel odd and uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Take it out of the context of comics.
Guest:Just people in general that feel like that.
Guest:I think you survive in your own way.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:And I think that it's true.
Marc:If you are putting that out in the world, you know, you're vulnerable.
Marc:Like, you know, some people can't hide their vulnerability.
Marc:And I guess that's what you were saying.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I kind of steered into the curve and was like, well, why puff my chest out when I could just curl up in a ball over here?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And that at a young age, because in all fairness, I was kind of a mama's boy because I was raised with such fear.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She was afraid.
Marc:You know, it's weird.
Marc:A lot of times, I just thought of something.
Marc:I was very sad.
Marc:Like, here's how I was bullied.
Marc:If I was bullied, it was this way.
Marc:And this is unique, and you might be able to relate to this.
Marc:Because I think we have something in common.
Marc:I'm not sure what.
Marc:but a temperament yeah but like I would work really hard to become part of a group of friends like I would say like those those guys are cool so I would do everything I could to ingratiate myself or find a way in to hang out with them you know I was not naturally charming I was not the guy that everybody wanted to hang out with I was the guy kind of like I need to be with those hang out with those people right
Marc:So a couple of times, like once I finally kind of pushed myself into the social situation, they would treat me like an asshole.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, you know, like when I finally made these friends, like I, you know, I really wanted to be friends with this guy, Dave.
Marc:And, you know, once we started to become friends, you know, we would make plans and he wouldn't show up that kind of shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, well, that's interesting because when I got into high school, and my high school started in ninth grade, when I went, I immediately became friends with all the baddest kids I could find.
Guest:I became friends with all the- Like jail yard thinking.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I became friends, and they were all the hip hop kids with the puffy starter jacket, trench coats, and all that stuff.
Guest:And I loved hip hop, so that was fine by me.
Guest:But those are all the kids I hung out with.
Guest:And same thing.
Guest:At first, it was great.
Guest:I got in and they really liked me, whatever.
Guest:And then I became the run of the litter.
Guest:And then I was the guy that they fucked with all the time.
Marc:Yeah, I was sort of that guy too.
Guest:Yeah, that's interesting.
Marc:And then what ultimately happened with me is I just found my own way.
Marc:Like that was high school.
Marc:And then when I started hanging out down by the university, I got a job down by the university and started to meet like people that were, you know, way above and beyond, you know, what was interesting to people in high school.
Marc:And I started focusing on art and talking to the guy who worked at the bookstore.
Marc:Like I realized there was another world out there and I didn't have to be tethered to, you know, drinking and driving every Friday and Saturday with a bunch of wackos.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:See, I didn't fully discover the other world until college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I got out of... I did eventually make real friends in high school, and I did eventually have a nice time.
Guest:What was your thing in high school?
Guest:Music.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, I played music.
Guest:What did you play?
Guest:Well, I started out playing drum.
Guest:Well, I played saxophone in grade school.
Guest:Then I switched to drums in high school.
Guest:And then I started playing in bands, I guess, in 11th grade or something.
Guest:So by the time I got to 12th grade, I had a couple bands and people thought that was cool.
Guest:Drummer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One of them I drummed in, one I sang in.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:You sing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I wouldn't say I'm, you know, that implies being paid to do it.
Guest:But no, yeah, I can sing.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Like rock, you know, indie rock.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, that kind of stuff.
Guest:Like what songs were you covering back then?
Guest:We weren't really covering songs.
Marc:You were writing your own music?
Guest:Yeah, we were doing- You were writing songs?
Guest:Yeah, we were writing songs.
Guest:You wrote some songs?
Guest:I still write some songs.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I do like- Are they sad?
Guest:Logic.
Guest:If you listen to the lyrics, they are, but on the surface, they sound pretty fun.
Yeah.
Marc:So you're at home in Atwater with your dog writing sad songs?
Marc:Do you ever stop on the treadmill to write down a lyric?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I got to hit pause at the workout.
Guest:We're all running, but there's no end in sight.
Guest:Where's the finish line?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Wow, it's really shaping up to be a fine portrait of you.
Yeah.
Guest:I haven't done it much lately.
Guest:With the songwriting?
Guest:Yeah, I still do it as a hobby.
Guest:I put the stuff out once in a while, but it's nothing that I pursue.
Guest:But I did it one time.
Guest:I thought that's what I was going to do, and the reason I started doing comedy was because I got tired of... I was always a fan of comedy, but I got tired of having to cooperate with three or four other guys and get...
Guest:everybody on the same page.
Guest:The band.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And I wanted to express myself more easily.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I thought I can go up on stage without lugging drums everywhere.
Marc:But, all right, so did you go to, so you had your music guys in high school.
Marc:You found your way into an indie rock band.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, or hardcore.
Guest:It was hardcore music at the time.
Guest:Hardcore?
Guest:Yeah, like a lot of screamy.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like punk?
Guest:Like post-punk, post-hardcore stuff.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Like bands like Quicksand and Into Another.
Guest:So it's screamy and singy.
Guest:It's a little bit of both.
Guest:So you're screaming and singing.
Guest:Screaming and singing, you know?
Marc:Isn't that just- Much like now.
Marc:Yeah, that's the core of what you are.
Marc:So did your band, were you popular or did you?
Guest:No, no.
Marc:No, we were, you know, it was-
Marc:Would you have four songs in a rehearsal space?
Guest:We had 10 songs.
Guest:We had enough to play like a half hour set and we would go and do shows and nobody would show up.
Guest:And then sometimes we'd get on a decent show at like some kind of punk house in Philly somewhere and there'd be a bunch of bands and you'd meet some girls and drink some beers and whatever.
Guest:But it was fun.
Guest:But it was typical.
Guest:When you're at that age, you're like, we got to make it, man.
Guest:It's the band.
Guest:It's the band.
Guest:And then all my band members quit.
Guest:And then I was like, oh, okay.
Guest:I'm the only idiot thinking this has a chance.
Guest:So then I joined another band.
Guest:And then I started to back away from that band and get a lot of shit from those members.
Guest:So then I was that guy.
Guest:And that's when I started to be like, you know what?
Guest:Fuck this, man.
Guest:I just want to be alone, and I don't know how to play guitar.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I better figure out another way to get on stage by myself.
Guest:Really?
Marc:That was it?
Marc:You had no real passion for the comedy necessarily?
Guest:I did have passion for it.
Guest:Did you know comics?
Guest:Had you seen live comedy?
Guest:I was an avid fan of comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Avid fan, and I had a huge passion for it, but my passion was for the expression side of it.
Guest:I never got off...
Guest:back then as a fan I used to love laughing at it and I enjoyed that but I never got off at the idea of getting on stage and making people laugh I got off on the idea of getting on stage and expressing yourself it was Carlin that that made me want to do it when I was 12 years old I saw Carlin and that's what planet that's funny because that's another thing we have in common yeah I never thought of myself as an entertainer I thought well I'm going to get up there and uh you know figure out who I am
Guest:yes yeah yeah it's that i remember when i first started my dad said my dad pulled me aside and he goes how's the comedy going and i go it's good it's good it's you know it's it's hard but it's good and he goes are you getting something out of it therapeutically and i go yeah and he goes good and that was the whole conversation so he knew he was like you need some kind yeah yeah well that's weird because if that you know then if we have that in common there was some sort of um
Marc:Some sort of like lack of sense of self.
Marc:Well, that was with me.
Marc:I had a hard time.
Marc:I played some music and stuff, but like I said, I was the guy that was trying to be friends with the people.
Marc:I was the guy that felt outside of everything.
Marc:I have a feeling, and I've tracked it to how I was brought up, but I think as I entered life and got older, I just didn't have a cap on my personality.
Marc:And I needed to sort of like,
Guest:own some space right right somehow well i've always had that problem yeah since i was a kid yeah it was an identity crisis my manager said to me very recently to stop because i have i slip into it still she said to me recently she goes don't think don't try to think of the thing you need to do that's going to make everything okay think about the thing you just want to do
Guest:Because I'll still sometimes slip in and I go, well, what if we did this?
Guest:And then that could lead to... And she's like, don't think like that.
Marc:Here's how I phrase it.
Marc:And I say this, I just got to figure out... Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:My buddy Jerry's always like, yeah, maybe you don't have to figure it out.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I got to figure it out.
Guest:I think that's a common trait with guys like us is we think that it's a puzzle to figure out, which goes back to...
Marc:the i mean i'd like to think that i'm working on a puzzle but really i just think that i'm you know like i don't feel right so i gotta figure something out you know yeah it's like i don't have the foresight to see the puzzle it's just like in a moment i'm like i gotta fucking figure this shit out then do you ever like does it ever are there moments where you where that works for you that approach
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:You know, it's like a lot of things have worked out that I didn't think were going to work out.
Marc:And, you know, there are some things that I'm not as worried about as I used to be.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But, you know, I find a lot of it is just has to do with with kind of like, you know, if if you're if you're kind of.
Marc:trying to figure things out and always pushing and pushing and pushing.
Marc:I don't know if that I take enough time to be grateful.
Marc:I don't know if I take enough time to like, I'm constantly moving through bits.
Marc:Like when I perform, like I don't like to know exactly what I'm doing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You know, I like to, you know, so there, I still am.
Marc:I don't think I'm addicted to the adrenaline of that, but I liked, it takes a lot for me to get out of my head and into the present and the things that I do innately.
Marc:to do that, which is like improvise on stage or do what we're doing right now, are very sustaining to me, because they get me out of my head.
Marc:But once, if I spend too much time in the head, all bets are off and I gotta figure some shit out.
Guest:I'll make, yeah, I'll get way in my head and I'll make decisions where it's like, what were you thinking?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like I'll be running,
Guest:I'm trying to get this set ready to hopefully do a late night show.
Guest:And I had to record it a bunch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was recording it at a bunch of shows last night.
Guest:And they were all pretty small shows.
Guest:So I had good recordings of it.
Guest:But they were small crowd recordings.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You could just hear that the jokes were working.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I finally end up at a show at the improv.
Guest:It's packed.
Guest:It's sold out.
Guest:And I go, all right, this is the show where I'm really going to get it.
Guest:You know what?
Guest:I'm going to change the opener.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:yeah i'm gonna change the first and i go up i do the and it doesn't work and i'm just like fucking idiot yeah why because i got in my head i was like wait a minute that this is what i've been doing wrong on it's like you weren't doing anything wrong right did the rest of it work i bailed out of it i bailed out of it bailed out of the new set yeah because i was like i'll just send one of the other recordings that's it like i bailed out of it i told the audience i was trying to record a set i'm not doing that anymore uh i don't feel like doing this so like let's just do jokes other jokes
Guest:yeah see why'd you see like i've done that in my life but what you know like what what was the set for uh i'm trying to get on to conan to promote this special that i have coming out right yeah so well you know um so hopefully it works but they needed to hear the set as a set
Guest:So I recorded it, but I was recording it.
Guest:And I got a good recording of it, but it was in front of us.
Guest:No, they just wanted an audio to hear the flow of it.
Guest:And I got a good recording in front of a small crowd.
Guest:But then I thought I can get a recording in front of a big crowd.
Guest:And then there's nothing to worry about.
Guest:Again, the puzzle.
Guest:If I just do this, it'll be perfect.
Guest:And you bailed after the first joke.
Guest:Got the first joke, didn't hit.
Guest:And I was like, well, I can't send them a set where the first joke doesn't hit.
Guest:And it's packed over there.
Guest:And it's also a different joke than I've been talking to them about.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's this joke they've never heard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I got in my stupid head.
Guest:It's fucking nuts, those four and a half minute sets.
Guest:It's so hard, man.
Guest:I got it down to 530.
Guest:I don't know how to make it any shorter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm just like, can you guys just tell me what to do, please?
Marc:Well, they can.
Guest:That's usually who you work with over there, JP?
Guest:Yeah, but I've never done the show, so I'm hoping to do it for the first time.
Guest:Oh, you got to do that show.
Guest:Why not?
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:I've never really done Late Night.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I did Pete's show when I was working over there, Pete Holmes' show.
Guest:I did Carson Daly years ago, but I've never done proper- Big credits.
Guest:Fuck off.
Guest:I have other credits that are good.
Guest:I just don't have good late night credits.
Guest:Yeah, I got to get a proper late night credit.
Marc:I don't need to.
Marc:I just would like to.
Marc:It's fun to do Conan, I think.
Marc:I've only done panel over there.
Marc:I haven't done one of those four and a half minute jobs in a few years, quite a few years.
Marc:I try to get into the panel situation as much as possible.
Guest:See, I want to get, how many years did it take before you got to do a panel?
Guest:Because I said last night to somebody, I said, I feel like I'm cut more from the Jim Jeffries, Stan Hope, Marin, you know.
Guest:Sure, thanks for throwing me in.
Guest:No, I'm just, the only reason I didn't is because I didn't want you to think I was comparing myself to any of you.
Guest:And it was particularly embarrassing because I'm sitting across from you.
Guest:But I have a great respect for you.
Guest:I appreciate that.
Guest:You sound like you do.
Guest:What do you want me to say?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Do you?
Guest:do you joe thank you um but like i always related more to guys like you than the guys that write succinct yeah quick jokes whatever don't you envy them though i do envy them god damn it you guys all went right to panel you guys never did like sets really i did sets when did you do sets
Marc:I did four of those fucking sets on Letterman over two decades.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I did early on with Conan.
Marc:Conan's really where it started.
Marc:You know, I did stand up sets on Evening at the Improv, Jon Stewart's show.
Marc:I did stand up sets on Caroline's comic.
Marc:Like, I did a lot of those.
Guest:Well, I did a lot of those things.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I just haven't done proper four and a half.
Marc:And it's like it's such a bad representation of me.
Marc:And I like I there's a couple Letterman sets that I did.
Marc:You know, they were very spaced out, but they were great and they didn't fucking make any difference at all.
Marc:And it wasn't until, you know, I got one panel shot with him and it was like a highlight of my life.
Guest:I saw that.
Guest:It was great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it was, you know, and it was just I with Conan, like when he started in New York, I did the show probably the first or the second year in.
Marc:I did two stand up spots and I was in town and I, you know, and then I said to Frank Smiley, I'm like, can we do a panel spot and maybe do a bit on the panel?
Marc:I think one of my first times on panel, I did a shtick.
Marc:We had a plan.
Marc:I think it might have been the John Lennon thing where we'd produce a bit where we'd throw to something.
Marc:And then I just became a panel guest because it was just easier for me because it also was situational in that I was in town
Marc:And they knew I built a dynamic with him.
Marc:So if they had a fallout or someone could make it, they'd be like, well, maybe Marin has got something.
Marc:Because a lot of the times on the Conan panels, those bits aren't even finished.
Marc:But they were funny enough to have a conversation with.
Marc:And that's the best way to do it, I think.
Marc:It is, but what's funny is, and this happened to me later, is like, even my manager was like, well, maybe you ought to remind people you're a comic.
Marc:Because when you're doing panel and people don't know you, they still don't know you.
Marc:Like, you know, most of the time when someone's doing panel, people are like, oh, that's the guy from the thing.
Marc:He's just talking.
Marc:Sure, sure, sure.
Marc:But if you're a comic, there's an argument to be made that you should establish yourself as that.
Guest:I, uh, I, I just, it's, it's that four and a half minutes is so hard.
Guest:It's so hard as in straight standup.
Marc:I mean, as you've already asked you about that though, because with me, with these joke things, like I can write a joke and sometimes they happen naturally.
Marc:And I'm very aware when something I've written has, has a, you know, is just what you're talking about guys who do jokes.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, it's my joke, but it is a joke and I can feel when they happen.
Marc:But like, you know, once I do them a few times, I'm like, I guess that one's done.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Whereas as opposed to something that's part of a longer conversation or exploratory or has room in it.
Guest:Well, that's what happens to me is for some reason, the only short jokes ever write are horribly inappropriate for television ever.
Guest:I don't know why I can't think of any one liner or short thing that isn't offensive in some way.
Guest:So so that never happens.
Guest:And then what happens is when I try to do one of these, put one of these sets together.
Guest:So JP and I went through sweeping sections of my special.
Guest:JP the booker over there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We went through sweeping sections of my special and he was like, okay, maybe if you took this joke here and connected it to that joke over here.
Guest:That's why he was like, I got to hear this to hear if it flows because we had to cherry pick so much.
Marc:Well, that's what you got to do when you long form and you do a short set.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Unless you want to be ballsy and do one bit.
Guest:I'd rather do that.
Guest:I've done that before.
Guest:I did that on the Gotham TV show.
Guest:I went out and I did one story for eight minutes and it killed.
Guest:And everybody told me, don't do it.
Guest:If you get stuck in it and they don't like it, you're fucked.
Guest:And I was like, I'm just doing it.
Guest:And I did it and it fucking killed.
Guest:And it was one of the best TV sets I've ever had in my life.
Marc:I did that on John Oliver was the first time I committed to a, like, 11-minute bit.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:But I knew there were jokes in it.
Marc:That's when you start to identify what you do.
Marc:Is that, like, you know, if you're a long-form guy... And this was... I...
Marc:realize this recently that you have jokes within it sure that's what keeps it going yeah and they're solid you know and if you start to look at it as like well that piece should get that joke needs a little work or what i need something there whatever absolutely then there's no reason not to have confidence in it if you got your beats right absolutely yeah i i think long form it's funny because correct me if i'm wrong but i i think guys like us uh
Guest:would scoff at the joke book, comedy teaching book, whatever textbook approach to comedy where they say, well, there should be a laugh every 30 seconds.
Guest:You know, that's the kind of thing that would make a guy like you or me go, oh, fuck you.
Marc:Well, it used to, it used to, but like lately I'm sort of like, well, why can't I do that?
Guest:Well, that's what I was going to get at is when you start to work in long form and really start to dissect it, you are doing that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because then you go, well, I can't just go on a tirade about murder for 10 minutes.
Guest:There has to be laughs every minute.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Not just a murder tirade?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Believe it or not, they don't want to hear that.
Marc:People don't want to hear that.
Guest:You want to punch it up a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, you want to punch up your murder bit.
Guest:His famous murder bit.
Marc:well i think that like i don't i don't know that i had a lot of confidence as a joke writer because i didn't write like that like guys who write jokes i could tell you know he's like you know he's like working on a never-ending almost like physics equation of jokes like you know when he's sitting there doing nothing he's writing jokes he just writes jokes that's how he that's what he does yeah and they're great yeah there's no one better than him at writing jokes right but i don't sit there and do that like i never had the discipline to be like now i'm gonna write my jokes
Marc:I've never written down a joke in my life.
Marc:I write lists of things.
Marc:But the thing is, is I still envy the joke.
Marc:But when you're a joke guy, if you're just doing jokes, right, that aren't long form jokes, you've got to lock into that thing.
Marc:And that's got to be satisfying to you.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Like, you know, like to know that like I created this little laugh package.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I will deliver it.
Marc:That laugh package worked like one after another.
Marc:You don't have to have a lot of personal investment other than delivering the joke.
Marc:Right.
Marc:That's got to be satisfying to you.
Marc:Some guys are like, but then I had a revelation in the last couple of years.
Marc:with shandling because shandling reveals a lot about himself in his little jokes and his timing is unlike anything else and there's a vulnerability to it and that sort of blew my mind recently and there's a couple of jokes i'm doing now where i think about shandling and think about you know the joke is it is enough it's it's as much as any piece of poetry yeah it can't yeah and it's funny because
Guest:the last hour this last hour was all long form it was like four subjects yeah uh now i'm find myself writing much shorter things yeah that have the point quickly but it doesn't have to be this big global whatever you know politicized yeah applying to you know whatever tirade but it's okay to just be entertaining
Guest:Yeah, and you could still have yourself in that.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Well, you're probably going to be more yourself in that.
Marc:When I finally just sort of let go of feeling like I had to make a point and just talk about my thoughts about things non-aggressively, I'm funnier.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Because then you can be naturally funny.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Well, you've been in that position, I'm sure, where you'll say something very honestly on stage and it gets a laugh and you're like, oh, shit, I didn't even realize.
Marc:I do that all the time.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Then you try to repeat it and it never works again.
Marc:How do I get that moment back?
Marc:What was it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What the hell happened there?
Guest:It's the hardest thing.
Guest:Now, do you find, aside from the four and a half minute sets being tough, I find also sometimes even the 12 minute sets are a little tough.
Guest:Now, you're in a different position than I am because you've made quite a name for yourself.
Guest:Yeah, I barely want to do anything anymore.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But I find sometimes when I'm going on at the improv or wherever and you only have 10 minutes, I'm like, I cannot waste seven minutes on this bit about whatever.
Guest:What if they don't like it?
Guest:Then I'm going to be digging myself out of my own hole for seven minutes.
Marc:Well, I think that eventually you have to get to a point where you don't give a fuck about the 12 minutes.
Marc:And the thing is that the only thing that changed that for me was making the comedy store my home club.
Marc:I don't bother with the improv.
Marc:I don't bother.
Marc:I don't give a fuck.
Marc:If anybody in the business sees me and decides that I'm anything, I don't care anymore.
Marc:Right.
Marc:When did that happen, though?
Marc:I guess after I started to do... Once I built my audience, whatever they are.
Guest:Well, there you go.
Marc:And I'm going to these clubs really to use them to work out.
Marc:I want to work out.
Marc:So it might not work.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:At some point, you got to look at those sets as just either to try new jokes or to stay in shape.
Marc:But to do it only for the audience on a 12-minute set on a showcase night, meh.
Guest:Yeah, no, and I think that's the beauty of having... Because I still am in the zone where I'm like, I still need this place.
Guest:I can't totally go, well, fuck it.
Marc:But what I'm saying is that eventually, hopefully, you find a comfort in the place to where it's not... I guess they could tell me I can't work there anymore.
Marc:Maybe they'd be doing me a favor.
Marc:But I usually... When you're comfortable in a place and you're comfortable in yourself as a funny person...
Marc:You know, you can be funny if you don't do nothing.
Guest:This is my identity problem again.
Guest:I am comfortable in the place.
Guest:I've gone off stage there and been beating myself up, and the booker's like, I love that.
Guest:That was great.
Guest:What do you do?
Guest:Yeah, they're lying.
Guest:they saw how upset you were and they're just trying to make you feel better um but like they've been so that's my home and as far as i'm concerned in la that's my home like the improv is where i perform the most and and they're really great to me and i have no reason whatsoever to ever think they wouldn't continue to support me but i still every time i walk off stage go is that going to be the it's terrible it's a self-esteem thing well it
Marc:But you're still putting it on other people.
Marc:Like you're saying like, you know, that's the one that's going to get me less spots.
Marc:Right.
Marc:What I do is like, look, I know when something doesn't land.
Marc:I know when I had to struggle and I know when it's me and when it isn't.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And when it when it is me, like I just have to reckon with that.
Marc:But I had to literally train myself.
Marc:Right.
Marc:to say like dude it's one set so what you know sleep it off right as opposed to like spend weeks right wondering what the fuck happened right or beating the shit out of myself yeah yeah looking for a reason to beat the shit out of myself yeah yeah i find other reasons now i don't have to yeah i keep that in my personal life
Guest:I've gotten much better at not throwing a barrage of whatever at myself afterwards.
Guest:And I've gotten a lot better at going stop it.
Guest:It's one set.
Guest:It's an evolutionary thing.
Guest:Yeah, it is.
Marc:How long have you been doing it?
Guest:15 years.
Guest:So not terribly long, but not terribly short.
Guest:That's long, Joe.
Marc:You're in.
Marc:You're a veteran.
Marc:What's longer than that?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I saw Louie at a festival in Scotland, and he was like... He goes, how long have you been... Because I was like thinking about something.
Guest:I was like, should I do this or this or that with my career?
Guest:And he goes, I was thinking about moving back to New York.
Guest:And I was like, I don't know.
Guest:Maybe, maybe.
Guest:And he was like, how long have you been doing it?
Guest:And I go, 15 years.
Guest:He goes, it's nothing.
Guest:It's your baby.
Guest:20 years.
Guest:That's the...
Guest:And that's like the Seinfeld thing, where he's like, you've only been doing it.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:Whatever that thing is.
Guest:You're an infant until your comedy age is your whatever.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:I mean, you know, I guess.
Marc:I mean, you know, maybe career-wise.
Marc:But I mean, 15 years doing something is not nothing.
Guest:No, it's not.
Guest:And I don't think he meant... He didn't say it condescendingly like you're nothing.
Marc:No, I know what you mean.
Marc:He's trying to make you feel better.
Marc:But yeah, I mean, the thing is you just got to keep... Fuck it.
Guest:What just happened?
Marc:It's just like, you know...
Marc:Like, you know, you've been you've been hammering at it for 15 years.
Marc:Are you a baby?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's like there are guys have been doing it 15 years.
Marc:We're doing great.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like I've been doing it 10 years that are doing great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's just like I think you get better.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:But like, let's figure out why the fuck are we so hard on ourselves?
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:uh i i think that every i don't know that this is the answer but my explanation for myself has always been that when you do this type of job when you do this type of job whether it's you're self-employed okay now look at this when i say this type of job i mean it could be that you have a contracting landscape okay whatever
Guest:But when you say I'm putting it all on me, I'm betting on myself, nothing on anybody else, and my hustle is what's going to put a roof over my head and feed a family one day, you start out organically with a slave mentality.
Right.
Guest:The audacity that you would ever scoff at a job or not take a job or not swallow wretched abuse.
Guest:How dare you?
Guest:It's a slave mentality, really.
Guest:And I think as you progress through the business, you get better and better at shaking that off and saying, no, I've earned a certain place now for myself and I am allowed to call certain shots and have certain stipulations for myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's it's hard and it's a long journey.
Guest:And as you know, I think anyone we all know that.
Guest:Well, we don't all know this, but I know this and I know you know this.
Guest:Any one significant event is not going to make or break your career.
Guest:We're aware of that.
Guest:But that doesn't mean that anyone unless it's on Twitter.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:But that doesn't mean that any one significant event can't make you feel for a couple of days like you're back to square one.
Marc:But the weird thing is, is for me, like, you know, like I, you know, I didn't make it as a comic.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Well, you did.
Marc:Yeah, I was always around and doing TV and stuff, but I didn't build a draw.
Marc:So like, you know, by the time I started this thing, I'm like, you know, I was looking at a, you know, a life of, you know, headlining B rooms and, you know, maybe, you know, like it wasn't good.
Guest:you know and it wasn't until people got to know me in a bigger way that they would come out you know because of the podcast and now the tv show or whatever but it wasn't just my comedy you know it left to my own devices you know i was not uh selling tickets sure sure i think that's i think a lot of that is just the climate that we're living in right now um i you know it's it's just it's a different world it's it's a different world and i think you've done some writing i have done some writing and i do podcasts is that you have a podcast
Guest:Yeah, I have two.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I have two.
Guest:One's about to launch with Kurt Braun and myself called Emotional Hangs on Feral, which is about two grown men exploring the vulnerability of an adult friendship and like letting the guard down and not doing macho stuff and, you know.
Guest:Is he married?
Guest:He's married now, yeah.
Guest:Does he have a kid now?
Guest:About two.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:His wife's, yeah.
Guest:I think they're doing like March or something.
Guest:Well, that ought to add a little something to the dynamic.
Guest:That has absolutely, yeah.
Guest:It's spiced things up a bit.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah, in a good way.
Guest:A lot of you going like, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Guest:no that's exactly what we're talking about like i've said to him on the podcast i'm a little jealous of your kid because you're like you're gonna have this kid and you're and i'm not gonna get to hang out with you as much you know but uh but i also get it and i'm happy for you but like i'd be lying if i didn't say to you it's
Guest:You know, something takes your friend away from you.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And then I have a horror movie podcast called We'll See You in Hell that's already out now.
Guest:It's like a Siskel and Ebert, except about horror movie.
Marc:Well, how was the writing experience for you?
Marc:Because that was something I just, I would never, I never even prepared myself at all to write for other people or hang out with other people in that way.
Marc:Until I did my own show, I found it satisfying.
Guest:All these things were incremental steps in the greater goal.
Guest:So it was good for a while.
Guest:I'm glad I did it.
Guest:I got a lot of experience out of it for about two, two and a half years.
Guest:Writing for Pete.
Guest:i wrote for pete show for both seasons uh i wrote for wet hot american summer the netflix series not the movie oh yeah i wrote for jeff and some aliens which just premiered on comedy central i i wrote for moshe kasher's pilot which isn't it was picked up but the show's not out yet um and so i've written for things but moshe's you act you were on breaking bad right better call better call saw yeah yeah so coming back on that one i don't know yeah it's all very secret did you go to new mexico to shoot
Guest:We did.
Guest:Yeah, that's where I grew up.
Marc:Where'd you eat?
Guest:Oh, you did?
Marc:Over in Albuquerque.
Guest:I had this place called Chipotle.
Guest:It was great.
Guest:Oh, good for you.
Marc:Really digging into the local cuisine.
Guest:Well, let me tell you something.
Guest:Every single time I've gone, I've said to somebody, hotel, transport driver,
Guest:Guy at the record store.
Guest:Where can I get some Mexican food?
Guest:Every time they go.
Guest:There's a place called... Chipotle's right up there.
Guest:Nobody has once ever said, you gotta go to this place.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I don't know why.
Guest:Who the fuck were you talking to?
Guest:Were they not from there?
Guest:I was talking to... The person was wearing a Chipotle t-shirt.
Guest:Oh, see.
Guest:Maybe they were on break.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:The... No, I don't know.
Guest:So, but...
Guest:So you're spreading it out.
Marc:You got a talent.
Marc:You're applying it in other places.
Marc:You're earning some money doing that.
Guest:Yeah, I directed my special, which was pretty cool, that Comedy Central let me do that.
Marc:This one coming out now?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:You Let Me Down.
Guest:There you go.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's a spot-on title.
Marc:Do you ever find that perhaps, and this is just something I learned with myself, that
Marc:If you have these unresolved emotional problems and you feel righteous about them and your sense is that everybody must feel these things, I found that not everybody necessarily does.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:And also, you're not necessarily entertaining them.
Marc:They might feel a little bad for you.
Guest:That does happen.
Guest:Well, when I bailed out of my TV set last night, and I went, guys, I'm not doing this.
Guest:This isn't working, right?
Guest:And they all went, oh, no, no, no.
Guest:Come on, Joe.
Guest:I was like, no, it's fine, everybody.
Guest:Let me just please.
Guest:I'm just...
Guest:We'll have fun.
Marc:Let me just, you know.
Marc:So in your mind, given that you're, you know, you obviously seem to be having a bit of a career as a writer and doing these other things, can you surrender to that or is it still like, nah, stand-up's the thing?
Guest:uh i i know i have learned i've been learning that lesson and it's been affecting the way i approach stand-up uh and which lesson the lesson you're saying about like maybe these problems maybe every one of your problems isn't relatable and sometimes it's a long journey up that hill but like i i have been open to that there was a time where i wasn't at all because i was young and naive and stupid uh and arrogant quite frankly but the older you get you know you go you know
Guest:You don't have to open with depression.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:It's not the thing.
Guest:One of the jokes I pitched to Conan, and I was opening with this in Edinburgh, and then I moved it to the middle, and then it started working when I moved it to the middle of the act.
Guest:But I pitched this to Conan thinking this is an appropriate joke for late night TV.
Guest:I go, I'm 39 years old.
Guest:The greatest lesson, the greatest realization I've had in 39 years is that it's really stupid when people go, oh man, if I only knew then what I know now.
Guest:Right.
Guest:If I knew then what I know now, I would have fucking killed myself.
Guest:This hasn't been worth the effort at all.
Guest:And that one, how's that do?
Guest:JP was like, this is two, what are you doing?
Marc:This is two.
Right.
Guest:But it does well in my act, but you got to bury it.
Guest:He's like, you can't walk out and tell the audience you're going to kill yourself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But then in my head, I'm like, no, but I'm joking.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:And then you learn the lesson.
Guest:Maybe everybody doesn't think that's funny to just throw around, I'm going to kill myself.
Marc:And maybe we're doing it to get some weird fucking...
Marc:We're defying them to emotionally engage with us.
Marc:I mean, because like maybe that's the problem.
Marc:Like I know there's a problem I have is that like, you know, in terms of relationships that like I'm not great at being as loving as I might want to be.
Marc:And a lot of times I don't trust when people like me or love me.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:So then I push them.
Marc:Like, you know, do you love me now still?
Marc:You still love me?
Marc:Like, you know, I think that, you know, that may be a funny joke, but it also garners a certain amount of sympathy and that maybe this guy could use a little help.
Marc:Maybe he needs to be taken care of somehow.
Marc:Maybe we're looking to the audience as opposed to looking for love.
Marc:We're like a lot of guys.
Marc:They just love to perform for people.
Marc:Yes, yeah, no, yeah.
Guest:But we're sort of like, you know, I dare you to love me.
Guest:Yeah, no, I agree with you.
Guest:I think a lot of comics go on stage like, thank you for letting me perform for you.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And I think there are guys like us that go up there and it's more just like, can you just fucking listen for a second?
Guest:Just, God damn it.
Guest:I'm in trouble.
Guest:Give me a minute.
Marc:Just hold on.
Marc:Trying to get some shit together.
Yeah.
Marc:I need you to ride this out.
Guest:I mean, I can't imagine.
Guest:I just got anxiety.
Guest:Not a ton, but I got a little bit of an anxiety flutter or whatever you want to call it when you just said the thing about, do you still love me to the girl?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:because i just that scares the shit out of me in a relationship what that i get that i that i would not be able to get more than six or eight months or a year in whatever without constantly being like am i gonna fuck this up does she still love me did she cheat on me is she gonna you know what i mean like like right and that and then if you keep talking about that it uh it does fuck it up
Guest:How long have you been in this one you're in now?
Guest:Three and a half years.
Guest:Oh, Jesus.
Guest:All right.
Guest:That's very substantial.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Well, why do you say it like that?
Marc:Because I feel like a lot of times I'm spinning my wheels.
Marc:I still am not getting to that level where I'm open and everything's great.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:So that's disappointment in yourself when you go, I know.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah, and I'm getting to an age where,
Marc:I don't know if I can fix it or if I want to fix it because the effort to, you know, to fix it becomes this whole other thing.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Like, I guess it's surrendering to to cynicism.
Guest:Look, you know, I will say this, Morgan, and this is not me trying to give you some sort of a pass.
Guest:And I might be really wrong.
Guest:yeah but i might be right yeah i think sometimes all it comes down to is two people being compatible you know it's like if you were if you witnessed a relationship where the couple literally fist fought one another yeah and then you said that's not healthy and you went over to them and you were like hey guys and they were like get the
Guest:fuck away we this is what we fucking do you'd be like hey guys i guess if that makes you happy like fist fight each other i don't know if that's what's working for you and you'll grow to be 95 years old together then hey god bless i don't know i guess but but then there's the issue of like you know what if they could get past those obstacles that would make that seem like love to them and
Marc:to where they wouldn't keep attracting people that would do that with them and they could experience something different.
Guest:But I'm saying, what if they didn't need to?
Guest:No one needs to.
Guest:Well, nobody needs to.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I'm saying sometimes...
Guest:I was just talking yesterday.
Guest:I know what you're saying.
Guest:Life is short.
Marc:Maybe this is what you got.
Guest:Well, it's like the thing in Annie Hall where he walks up to the couple and he goes, I don't understand.
Guest:How do you do it?
Guest:How are you a happy couple?
Guest:We're both superficial.
Guest:We don't ask a lot of questions.
Guest:If that works for you, great.
Guest:If Kanye and Kim Kardashian works for them, great.
Guest:Enjoy yourselves.
Guest:You know, I think we have a habit as people to always... And I'm not saying there's no such thing as bad behavior or toxic behavior or abusive behavior or anything.
Guest:That's not what I mean.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I do think as people, we always think... It's almost an ego thing.
Guest:We've got to get to this deeper thing so it's more of an exploration.
Guest:And it's like sometimes it's just not that, man.
Guest:Sometimes it's just...
Guest:Hey, my wife and I don't talk, but we love each other.
Guest:And she's fine with that, and I'm fine with that.
Guest:That's okay.
Guest:Our best friends, they talk all the time.
Guest:Good for them.
Guest:We don't do that.
Marc:Yeah, I guess it's okay if you're not sitting there every day going like, why don't I talk?
Guest:Well, but here's the thing.
Guest:You're saying that.
Guest:But my point is, is if you're not talking and that's sort of your natural thing and your lady isn't going, why aren't you fucking talking?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then there's no problem.
Guest:If she's like, Mark, I don't care.
Guest:I love you.
Guest:You don't talk.
Guest:I don't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But sometimes like the dynamic that you find yourself in for years is them going, why aren't you talking?
Marc:That's not the dynamic I have, but that's what I'm saying.
Guest:That's when it's a problem and that's when it's either I have to figure out how to change this or this person isn't right for me.
Guest:Then you find the person that goes, I don't care that you don't talk.
Guest:Never talk to me.
Guest:I love you.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And they mean it and you go, oh shit.
Marc:You'll find something wrong with that.
Marc:Huh?
Marc:You'll find something wrong with that.
Guest:I'll find something wrong with everything.
Guest:I have a problem with what I'm saying right now.
Marc:Are you dating anyone?
Guest:Probably not after this podcast.
Guest:No, nobody's serious.
Guest:I'm trying to...
Guest:I'm very actively trying to have less flingy situations in my life, and I really do want to substantially or date somebody and have a substantial thing.
Guest:So it's not to say that I'm above anything lesser than that, but I'm trying to do that.
Guest:I'd like to find somebody I can really spend some time with.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Well, I don't have time.
Okay.
Marc:Or I would try, but I just don't.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So when's the special premiere?
Guest:February 3rd on Comedy Central at midnight.
Guest:Second play is February 5th.
Guest:1 a.m.
Guest:is the replay, and then those are both uncensored.
Guest:And then the record and, you know, where you can download the special, February 7th.
Guest:It'll start streaming, I think, on the 3rd.
Guest:Okay, all right.
Guest:You know what I mean.
Guest:A lot of numbers.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know.
Guest:You'll be all right.
Guest:Thank you for having me.
Guest:Nice seeing you.
Guest:This was really, really lovely.
Guest:Thank you, buddy.
Guest:I mean it.
Guest:I'm glad we did it.
Guest:I'm really glad we did it.
Guest:I'd like to just start coming over here and just kind of, you know.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Well, you know, text me first.
Guest:I'll just, you know.
Guest:Some days you open the garage door.
Guest:I'm in here.
Guest:No, don't mind me.
Guest:You're just going to sit over here.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I have coffee.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I believe you.
Guest:I promise I won't do that.
Guest:All right, buddy.
Guest:Thanks, Mark.
Marc:All right.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's me and Joe.
Marc:I'll be talking in real time-ish or at least the night before next week when I'm back.
Marc:I hope everyone's hanging in.
Marc:I think I will.
Marc:I'll play a little guitar.
Marc:Just some hard rock.
Marc:Probably redundant, but I'll do it.
Marc:Boomer lives!