Episode 798 - Paul Beatty / Jackie Kashian
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucksters what the fuck nicks what is happening i am mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it got a couple of people on the show today we got a
Marc:A nice talk with Paul Beatty, the author of The Sellout, a novel that kind of blew my mind.
Marc:He's also written some other stuff that I haven't gotten to yet, but The Sellout, I got to, and it's one of the funniest fucking books I've ever read.
Marc:Really just layers upon layers of funny and deep and cutting and smart.
Marc:And I needed to talk to that guy, so he's here today.
Marc:Also, my friend Jackie Cation will be here today.
Marc:She's got a new record out.
Marc:I am not the hero of this story.
Marc:It's out now.
Marc:She dropped by for a little bit.
Marc:I always like seeing Jackie.
Marc:Makes me laugh.
Marc:She's one of the people that makes me laugh.
Marc:How's it going out there for you people?
Marc:Are you all right?
Marc:Friday night, this Friday, I'll be in Austin, Texas.
Marc:Next, am I going to go to Opie's barbecue out in Spicewood?
Marc:Is that going to happen?
Marc:Do my pills erase that?
Marc:See, I haven't gotten into that mindset.
Marc:I haven't gotten into the mindset where, all right, these statins mean I can eat whatever the fuck I want, right?
Marc:I haven't gotten to that mindset yet because I haven't gotten to blood tests to see how they're doing.
Marc:Next weekend, Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theater, April 7th at the Paramount Theater, April 8th.
Marc:And those are the nearest to us as far as dates go.
Marc:So like I said, the shows have been good.
Marc:I've been having a good time stretching it out, doing an hour and a half, two hour shows, trying to find that hour 10 for the special that I'll be taping in Minneapolis.
Marc:If if you're you know, that's another thing.
Marc:Why don't I tell you about that?
Marc:If you're in Minneapolis, I'm going to be doing two shows at the Pantages Theater on April 29th for a Netflix special.
Marc:Let's assume everything will be in place in terms of the world and most of the federal government.
Marc:I'll be there.
Marc:I'll be doing that.
Marc:So come out to that.
Marc:You can go to WTFPod.com slash tour to get linked up to the tickets there and see the rest of the dates coming up in Portland and Philly and D.C.
Marc:and Madison and Milwaukee.
Marc:But yeah, we did Oakland last week with Dino, Dean Del Rey.
Marc:We did the Fox Theater in Oakland.
Marc:What a stunning venue.
Marc:What an amazing theater that was.
Marc:It was a pretty good time.
Marc:We had a good show.
Marc:Dino did good.
Marc:I did good.
Marc:But I've been dealing with some odd vocalizing in the room lately.
Marc:For some reason, I'm in the middle of my set in Oakland.
Marc:And then some guy just starts screaming, you can save John Fruscianti.
Marc:You're the only guy that can save John Fruscianti.
Marc:Have John Fruscianti on the show.
Marc:You can save him.
Marc:And I'm like, okay, I don't mind engaging with the audience a tad.
Marc:And I said, I hear you.
Marc:I mean, it might be a tall order to save John Fruscianti, from what I understand.
Marc:But...
Marc:But maybe, you know, maybe.
Marc:And he just, I thought I settled him down.
Marc:But he just kept screaming.
Marc:He kept screaming it.
Marc:And I guess they removed him.
Marc:Very odd heckle.
Marc:I don't know if I would call it a heckle as much as a disruption or a desperate plea to help somebody out.
Marc:But it was odd and it was jarring.
Marc:And I had to rejigger and reconnect and move on.
Marc:But I don't mind pleasant crowd interaction.
Marc:But then I go up to Seattle the following night.
Marc:And it was good.
Marc:It was a good show.
Marc:I love Seattle.
Marc:Saw some nice people.
Marc:I had dinner with Lynn Shelton.
Marc:She's going to be directing my Netflix special.
Marc:She lives up there.
Marc:And that was cool.
Marc:And then we go do the show.
Marc:A guy from there, open for me, Yogi Paliwal,
Marc:He did a good job.
Marc:Had to deal with a little weirdness from the crowd.
Marc:There's a lot of wooing, which is okay in context, maybe at the beginning, but you guys know how I feel about that.
Marc:But then there's a woman up front who was drunky and just kept talking.
Marc:Just kept talking to me, kept talking at me.
Marc:Most of the rest of the room couldn't hear it, but it became disturbing and disrupting.
Marc:She kept interrupting, and I would tell her to shut up in a nice way, and then I'd apologize for being abrasive.
Marc:But by the third time, I was like, you know, shut the fuck up.
Marc:Enough already.
Marc:Then she got upset, and the man she was with got upset.
Marc:It's like...
Marc:It was well-intentioned, but unnerving and disruptive.
Marc:I felt myself being kind of guarded and a little defensive, and I felt myself drifting into old habits and wanting to burn the set down.
Marc:But I did not.
Marc:I did not do that.
Marc:And all in all, it was nice to be in Seattle.
Marc:And I was very excited on Sunday to be going to Vancouver, to be flying to Vancouver, because I love Vancouver.
Marc:I fucking love that city.
Marc:I've always loved that city.
Marc:And now even more on some level, and I've talked about this before recently, just to fly in or to get off a plane in Canada to feel the cultural shift, the weight of the malignant people
Marc:kind of cultural darkness that is upon us here even if it's even if you're not looking at your phone even if you're not looking at tv you just feel the weight of the shift into this um
Marc:this tense and uncomfortable and frightening environment down here.
Marc:And then to sort of step into the world of Vancouver, which is, you know, beautifully integrated, nice and calm.
Marc:People are pleasant.
Marc:They're not just polite, but they're warm.
Marc:And maybe I'm romanticizing, maybe I'm generalizing, but I felt relaxed.
Marc:And my opener, Charlie Demers, very bright, funny guy.
Marc:And I just relaxed.
Marc:And opened up.
Marc:And then the following day, I stayed an extra day because I like Vancouver so much.
Marc:And I went to this place that makes shoes.
Marc:And I don't always go out into the world and, you know, engage or what.
Marc:But, you know, I like boots.
Marc:But these people were very nice.
Marc:They're very earnest.
Marc:And it's called Love Jewels Leather Shoe Company.
Marc:They started small and they are still really small, but it's almost like a shoe made to order place because they're in such demand.
Marc:So I went over there to this weird part of Vancouver that seemed a little industrial.
Marc:I didn't know what I was getting into or where I was or what the lowdown was.
Marc:And I go to this address.
Marc:It's an unmarked building.
Marc:I go upstairs.
Marc:It's like an artist building where there's spaces for creative people.
Marc:Well, mostly artists, functioning, working artists.
Marc:I don't know if they're functioning, but they're working.
Marc:But this Love Jewels Weather Company, the shoe company, they've got this big corner space up top where they're making boots and shoes.
Marc:Just a bunch of nice young folks, you know, artisans, leather shoe artisans making the stuff.
Marc:And I got to talking to everybody, and they measured my feet.
Marc:They're going to make me some shoes.
Marc:And it was one of those moments where I'm in Vancouver.
Marc:I like the food.
Marc:I like the people.
Marc:The scenery is great.
Marc:Could I just come up here and intern at a shoemaking place?
Marc:Could I become a cobbler?
Marc:I think that might be the next.
Marc:That's part of my fantasies.
Marc:is disappearing to some other part of the world where I just cobble, where I just work quietly and bend leather over souls.
Marc:I can do it, man.
Marc:If I focus, I can do it.
Marc:Jackie Cation is a great friend of mine, and I think she's very funny.
Marc:She's got a new record out.
Marc:I'm not the hero of this story.
Marc:You can get it now.
Marc:She also hosts the podcast The Dork Forest and The Jackie and Lori Show, which she does with Lori Kilmartin, who I also love.
Marc:So she stopped by.
Marc:So this is me and Jackie hanging out for a few minutes.
Music
Marc:How many possums do you see at once?
Guest:There's a whole family.
Guest:Whole family of possums saw him one night, creeped me the fuck out.
Marc:Yeah, they're like gargoyles.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was two possums and three baby possums.
Marc:It was kind of cute, but I stayed in my car.
Marc:That's my feeling on it is that, you know, baby possums are cute and then something bad happens.
Marc:They don't stay cute.
Marc:They just... Yeah.
Marc:There's nothing appealing about a possum, the way it moves.
Guest:It was, yeah, the waddle.
Guest:I'll tell you, it was... You know, I appreciate seeing a complete family as much as anyone.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so it was lovely to watch them, but I was not getting out of my car.
Marc:It wasn't that sweet that they're all together, those ugly, horrible things that are, I think, relatively harmless, but they're just... But super intimidating looking.
Marc:Disturbing looking.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:So, wait, now, you have the iguanas old now?
Guest:Yeah, the iguanas old.
Guest:Andy got them, right?
Guest:Back in the day.
Marc:Back in what day?
Marc:Like, what day do you buy an iguana?
Guest:He didn't.
Guest:He was working at PlayStation, Sony PlayStation.
Guest:He's your husband.
Guest:My husband.
Guest:And so you should know, before you ask and email me at jackie at jackiecation.com, what games did he work on?
Guest:Here's the famous game he worked on.
Guest:God of War 2, God of War 3.
Guest:Oh, those?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know nothing about him.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And he was part of a large, large team.
Guest:So calm down.
Guest:It's a great job.
Guest:You were correct.
Guest:But he's still a genius.
Guest:He's a genius.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it's lovely.
Guest:So one of his level designer buddies shows up at work with three iguanas that the guy Impulse bought.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's not my first... I don't buy much, but I don't think that would be it.
Guest:I wouldn't impulse buy an animal on a dare.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Don't impulse buy anything that eats.
Guest:Three of them.
Guest:Iguanas grow to be three and a half feet long.
Marc:So you've kept this thing and you can't really go like, I'm just going to let it go.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Then it'll be in the sewers of that Los Angeles doesn't have.
Guest:But the crazy thing is, is so he was like, who wants an iguana after he is alerted to this fact?
Guest:So Andy took one.
Guest:Another guy at work took one.
Guest:Those two guys, the guy who bought them and the other guy, they killed their iguanas in the first year.
Guest:They killed them on purpose?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:They accidentally... Iguanas are actually quite difficult to get to maturity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they're tiny.
Guest:They're like the size of my hand.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When they're little.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And you have to kind of make sure that they get enough light and the right kind of light and all these things.
Marc:Oh, you guys really cared for the reptile.
Guest:andy is the one i am not uh i am so now you have this sort of old galapagos looking very regal iguana he is regal he is a he is regal tiberius dracus is his name of course it is yes it's named after the roman general tiberius gracchus because andy is overeducated yeah nothing wrong with that i guess always never uh never a shortage of conversation
Guest:Right.
Guest:Never.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Never a dull moment.
Guest:So I haven't seen you in years, I feel like.
Guest:Is that possible?
Guest:It's been a year and a half easily, I think.
Guest:Really?
Guest:I think I saw you at the... My favorite times of seeing you in the last couple of years was I pulled into the comedy store.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And you yelled at me, what are you doing here, Cation?
Guest:And I said, what are you doing here?
Guest:And I'm like, I'm on the wall.
Guest:What are you doing here?
Guest:And I was like, I'm just looking for free parking.
Guest:I'm on the wall.
Yeah.
Guest:I have to be here.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:You're on the wall.
Marc:It's been prophesied.
Guest:The prophecies come true.
Marc:That's fucking hilarious.
Marc:When people tell me I say things, I'm like, what an asshole.
Guest:it actually made me laugh so hard whenever whenever anybody asked me to do that i'm always like what's the parking situation yeah because that's all i want that's all you care about it so after a certain age i'm done i'm like even if i'm like if you booked me i never worked the laugh factor either but i'm like how's the valet still there because i'll do it i'm willing to pay 10 bucks to i never work there because i don't know really where to park you know they send you behind this building and you're not sure if it's okay
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't work there because I don't know where to park either.
Guest:Hilarious that we don't work there because we're like, well, I don't know.
Marc:It's just not clear to me.
Marc:Like, cause like you drive up and then, you know, someone told me once you'd pull into that.
Marc:There's a building across the street on the same side of the street.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:You go through an archway and then you go into the back of this apartment building.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You've already lost me.
Marc:Well, but it never felt right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was one of those situations where you lock the car and you're like, you sure?
Marc:This is all right here.
Marc:Cause I'm going to get towed.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's why the improv has always been my regular club of choice because they have the Fred Siegel lot.
Guest:I'm like, Oh, I know where I'm behind the improv.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I haven't been there in a long time.
Marc:I don't know why, because like, I feel like if I get up enough at the store, if I'm in town and I can knock out three sets a week, four sets, I'm good.
Marc:You know, just to stay in shape.
Marc:So I go in the gym.
Marc:How much do I have to exercise weekly to get my, my comedy heart rate up?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, I do that podcast now with Kilmartin.
Marc:I love her.
Marc:I love you both.
Marc:How is that thing?
Guest:It's hilarious, but it's- What's it called?
Guest:It's called The Jackie and Lori Show on Nerdist.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And it is hilarious only because she wants to do three sets a night.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so she's got me in this mode of competitive, well, how many sets am I getting this week?
Guest:And who cares?
Marc:What are you guys, new comics?
Marc:Are you just starting out?
Guest:I just, okay.
Guest:Did you just pass?
Guest:The album just dropped, right?
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:I am not the hero of this story.
Marc:I am not the hero of this story.
Marc:Jackie Cation's new album.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:For the first time ever, I made all those lists.
Guest:You did?
Guest:I've never even been close to making any of those, like iTunes, Amazon, Billboard, nothing.
Marc:Congratulations.
Guest:Thank you very much.
Marc:How is that translating to sales, Jackie?
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:My father also lives and would like to know.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And so I assume I'll find out from SoundExchange two months from now.
Marc:Well, wait, you should say, but you're making it, people are buying it as on a label?
Guest:Yeah, it's on stand-up out of- Schlissel?
Guest:Yeah, Schlissel out of- How long did it take him to put that thing together?
Guest:Oh, I ride him.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:All right.
Guest:I'm just like, I recorded it December 26th or 28th.
Marc:Schlissel is a great champion of stand-up.
Marc:He really is.
Marc:And a very sort of meticulous craftsman of the stand-up record.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And sometimes bites off more than he can chew.
Guest:Like, he'll take too many projects on-
Marc:No, I've done... I think he re-released one of my albums and he did two.
Marc:So I know the Dan system.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I get those weird checks.
Guest:You get the weird checks every three or four months.
Guest:Well, and I always... My whole thing with Dan is I said, I'm going to be kind of a jackass about this because I want this to come out...
Guest:Like as far as I'm concerned.
Guest:This year.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:As far as I'm concerned, it's recorded.
Marc:Within a year of recording.
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As far as I'm concerned, just slap it together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's cut it into tracks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I've given you the art.
Guest:We'll call it again.
Marc:Well, how many shows did he record?
Marc:Four?
Guest:He recorded all seven.
Marc:Oh my God.
Marc:So he did seven shows.
Marc:So that's what he... See, that's biting off more than you can shoot.
Guest:No.
Guest:I listened to my own set five times.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And I really... I knew that it was probably going to be a Thursday night set.
Guest:And that's what it was.
Guest:And then I pulled a couple of jokes that I did better on Friday for a show.
Marc:Oh, you made these decisions and told him?
Guest:Entirely.
Marc:Oh, good.
Guest:I am a little OCD about my comedy, so it's my album.
Guest:I'm going to listen to my own.
Guest:It's going to drive me nuts to listen to my own jokes, five hours of which, and then I'm going to cut them in.
Guest:Essentially, I picked the tracks.
Guest:I gave him time code, and then he put it together and mastered it, and then he gave it back to me, and then I cut them into tracks, and then I gave it back to him.
Guest:And then I gave him the art, and then I named the tracks.
Guest:Immediate regret about some of the naming of the tracks.
Marc:Well, how'd the cover come out?
Marc:That's always the tricky one that always ends up being regretful.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Have you ever looked at stand-up comedy records?
Marc:You're like, what were they?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because I've done it too where you just do that fucking cover and you're like, this is great.
Marc:And you're like, what the fuck was I thinking?
Marc:Why am I wearing that hat?
Guest:I've only regretted one cover and it was the one that I didn't have anything to do with.
Guest:Because the thing is, I try not to regret anything that I sweated over and I just let it go.
Guest:I'm like, this one is called I'm Not the Hero of This Story and a woman who did a lot of fan art, but she's a great artist.
Marc:That's what I had ultimately.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She did, I'm dressed like Dan Frontier in front of like a Conestoga wagon.
Uh-huh.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So you did go with the comedy element.
Guest:I thought it was funny.
Marc:That's always the thing that bites you in the ass when you're looking back at your album covers.
Guest:Well, you remember Tim Cavanaugh?
Guest:Tim Cavanaugh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Remember his headshot was him tied down with a bunch of army guys on top of him, like the Lilliputians?
Marc:I do kind of remember that.
Guest:Yeah, it's hard not to see that headshot when you're working the road.
Marc:Look at that thing in the middle.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:That is hilarious.
Marc:Hit me with the two pairs of glasses and then doing the ones on the top of my head like John Lennon.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:That was my first head shot.
Guest:You should see mine had a lot of cleavage, and I used to sign it on the cleavage.
Guest:Wish you were here.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:Good stuff.
Guest:Good stuff.
Guest:Sassy.
Guest:Sassy.
Guest:Sassy.
Guest:Hilarious.
Guest:Keep writing, Kation.
Guest:Keep writing.
Marc:oh my god so dumb so what is this your second or third record fourth right yeah we just keep churning them out and you're sort of like does anyone give a shit it like when people go like who i've never heard of you i've got five six cds right i just did a nerd cruise uh with with like-minded individuals and so many people it's like i've never you were really funny i've never heard of you and i'm like i am a well-kept secret well there are like 12 those people
Guest:Yeah, they're very young.
Marc:That's what we forget.
Marc:It's like, how are they going to hear it?
Marc:They don't even have enough space.
Marc:They haven't filled their brain up enough yet.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:They've only been exposed to a narrow swath of stuff.
Guest:Yeah, I recommend you start with the Brad album, listeners of Marin, and then you go to Horcrux, and then you go to this fucking thing.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Skip circus, people.
Guest:Go back if you're jonesing.
Guest:That first album, quite honestly, it's okay.
Marc:Which nerd crews?
Guest:uh joeco jonathan colton nerd cruise and it was amazing it was there was 1780 people on a boat on a ship this is the first year that they rented the whole ship previously they were just part of a ship and then they'd huddle up like and it was cozy i guess it was cozier for nerds they're like oh there's people who just like kurt cruises i'm gonna go hang out with someone who just likes how long seven days
Marc:I can't.
Marc:I get nauseous.
Guest:Plenty of places to hide.
Guest:And, wait a minute, I should show you this.
Guest:All right.
Guest:They gave us these buttons, and the buttons said, yes, I can do friendship right now, or no, I can't do friendship right now.
Marc:Friendship.
Guest:Friendship.
Guest:Like, don't fucking talk to me, or you can talk to me.
Marc:It's helpful for nerds, I guess.
Guest:It's real helpful, I think, for all humanity.
Marc:Oh, there you go.
Marc:No, I do not want to do friendship right now.
Marc:Aw, what's the other one say?
Marc:Yes, I do want to do friendship right now.
Marc:Is this code for... For anything?
Marc:For, you know.
Guest:It's code for nothing.
Guest:For Bola keys.
Guest:No, it's not code for anything.
Guest:Oh, it's not.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, it's not going to get any... It's just a cute thing.
Guest:It's a cute thing, and it's also a... Seriously, I'm on the spectrum.
Guest:Leave me the fuck alone.
Marc:That's a better button.
Guest:Maybe next year.
Marc:Seriously, I'm on the spectrum.
Marc:Leave me the fuck alone.
Marc:Where's that t-shirt?
Marc:That's the best one I've heard.
Marc:So Jonathan's a musical actor?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You know, he wrote the... No, people love him.
Guest:People love it.
Marc:He came to- I don't know enough.
Marc:I like the guy.
Marc:I met him a few times.
Guest:Great.
Guest:Nice guy.
Guest:And he's essentially like if Weird Al didn't write parodies or if they might be giants, we're silly.
Guest:Because he wrote the final song, Still Alive, in the video game Portal.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Those are all words that you know.
Marc:That was his big break?
Guest:That was his break.
Guest:He wrote a song at the end of a video game.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was Portal and Portal is huge.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, you got to get it where you can.
Guest:Well, that's it.
Marc:And who are the other comics on that?
Guest:It was Aparna.
Guest:Aparna and Nancherla.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Cameron and Rhea.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher.
Guest:And then Janet Varney and a bunch of improv people.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Like Hal Lublin and- So a lot of entertainment options.
Guest:A lot of entertainment options.
Guest:And then the Double Clicks were music acts.
Guest:They're sisters out of Portland.
Guest:Essentially, like if Garfunkel and Oates were nerdier.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Guest:So-
Guest:If you think of Aisha Tyler, who looks like a supermodel but is constantly playing massive multiplayer online games.
Marc:Yeah, I guess so.
Marc:I guess that's true.
Marc:There can be a hidden nerd complex.
Guest:Does she just look like a supermodel or was she a supermodel?
Marc:I don't know what her whole story is.
Marc:I've never done a long interview with her.
Marc:I should probably do that at some point.
Guest:Yeah, she's awesome.
Marc:You know, it's like it gets away from me.
Marc:You know, I reach out to a lot of people.
Marc:It doesn't happen.
Marc:And then some people, I'm like, oh, shit, I should just, you know, why haven't I talked to them yet?
Marc:You know, your life just keeps going.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, on and on.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The dork forest is nothing like that, but it's like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And just because it's... And that's still weekly?
Guest:Still weekly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I recorded six on the Nerd Cruise, as you can well imagine.
Marc:Why not?
Guest:I could have recorded 1,780.
Marc:Get some in the can.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Get some in the can.
Guest:Then I just have three months off.
Marc:Now, is there a lot of food on the boat?
Marc:That's what I remember about the one cruise I was on.
Marc:It's like a bell rings and you eat.
Guest:It's terrifying.
Guest:That was my greatest fear.
Guest:It wasn't the booze.
Guest:It wasn't the ocean.
Marc:The ongoing buffet.
Guest:It was the ongoing buffet.
Guest:I dealt with it okay, but not great.
Guest:Not great.
Marc:It's very hard.
Guest:Every day with the ice creamcation?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Marc:Not cool.
Marc:Well, that's the same being on set.
Marc:You're like, what the fuck is that dessert?
Marc:exactly why is that here that's not something you can eat every day that's why i'm gonna eat it every day i'm here because it's finite it's gonna be over any minute and also i have this weird thing where it's like you just can't leave that food out someone's gotta eat it i have that too i gotta help out exactly we don't want it to go to waste yeah oh so are you on maria's show
Guest:I'm doing a bit part, sort of like I did on yours.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I have a bit part next week I'm recording with.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Were you on the first season?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They cut me, though.
Guest:I did the episode with Andy Kindler.
Guest:How'd that go over?
Marc:Did they cut Andy?
Guest:They cut Andy as well.
Guest:Oof.
Guest:Do you know why?
Guest:Because I don't know if you've seen it.
Guest:I've only seen the first three episodes myself.
Guest:really do you know why because i'm in the fourth episode right and uh i and it's funny because you know who it is it's lady dynamite right is maria's show and it's uh arrested development south park and maria bamford's act all shoved into a blender right so it's filthy weird and genius yeah all in a glurg and so there's so many layers to it that i was not surprised that they cut essentially it was she and i discussing dick jokes yeah it was like there was
Marc:Well, I, you know, I love her and I want to watch the show and I had Fred in here, Melamed.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:And, um, he's great.
Marc:He's great.
Marc:And, and, uh, you know, I talked to Andy a lot, but I, but like, it's just, I don't know where people find the time.
Marc:I don't know what I'm doing with my time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:What, like where you could be watching things.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, you know, I've just got to sit down and lock in and it's got to catch me.
Marc:It's got to grab me.
Guest:I'm reading some bullshit.
Guest:I'm rereading some bullshit.
Guest:That's what I'm doing.
Guest:I'm stopping the voices in my head.
Guest:That's what I'm doing.
Marc:What are you reading?
Guest:Right now I'm rereading Lois McMaster Bujold's space opera, The Vorkosigan Saga.
Guest:really yeah all those are words that was i don't know what that those are all just words it's science fiction and it's this woman out of minneapolis who wrote these great uh this great space opera and she's great it's one of my favorite lines is uh lead character cordelia whatever from beta yeah beta colony technological colony yeah like super tech right uh fellow that uh they end up getting together from a super patriarchal military military colony
Guest:colony called barriar they get married that guy becomes the regent it becomes space opera and um political drama sure because he becomes the regent to the to the young king right and at one point they're at a party and she's from this uber liberal tech colony and one of his uh political enemies comes up to her and says you know uh errol's a bisexual and she goes sure but he's monogamous right now
Marc:This is her husband?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the guy's like, he tried to blow up their marriage by alerting her that he was bisexual.
Guest:And she's like, yeah, I know.
Guest:He used to be with a fella in other news.
Guest:Did she know that?
Guest:She had known it.
Marc:So that failed.
Guest:It failed so much.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:If it were a surprise, like if you were with somebody and you found out after you had married them or been with them for years that they had had a relationship with the same sex, would it freak you out?
Marc:No, it's happened.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You just go, well, you're sort of like, wait, what?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:That's exactly how I responded.
Guest:I dated this one guy who told me that he used to date guys in Germany.
Guest:That's very specific.
Guest:Because they give him free, he was German, for sweaters.
Guest:He said, I'd get a real nice jumper out of it.
Guest:And I was like, is that prostitution?
Marc:What were you doing?
Marc:Well, that adds another element to it.
Marc:The guys blowing guys for sweaters.
Marc:It felt like a whole other level.
Marc:It's one thing to have a relationship, but if it's just about the sweaters... Genuinely, it did make it uncomfortable.
Guest:I was like, well, we will not be dating more than this then.
Guest:I mean, that was the only time where it really... Is that one of the sweaters?
Guest:Right.
Guest:How about that one?
Guest:That seems a nice cashmere.
Marc:well i like that the idea that uh the one thing that's interesting it seems to me about that science fiction story is that uh the human thing hasn't shifted like that you know i like i like stories that honor that like you know when you start to realize like humans in the form they're in now have been around for however long they've been around and haven't changed much no and they might not right right the committee meeting is still the worst in everybody's head that seems like a nice grounded sci-fi story
Guest:It's pretty great.
Marc:Well, good luck with the record.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I am not the hero of this story.
Marc:Jackie Cation's new CD and download.
Marc:And you've got the one you do with Kilmartin.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jackie and Laurie show.
Marc:And you've got the dork forest.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:Which if you got time, go back on and talk about something that isn't blue jeans.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, okay.
Guest:Maybe cats.
Marc:I'll come back on.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I'd love it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And then also episode four of the first season of Lady Dynamite.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:And where they cut all my lines, but I'm pictured.
Marc:Are you touring?
Guest:Like a crazy person.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Just all around?
Marc:What's their website?
Guest:JackieCation.com.
Guest:You can go to FamilyPetAncestry.com because it points to that because it made me laugh.
Guest:Don't you want to know if your cat came over on the Mayflower?
Marc:I'd love to know where my new kitten comes from because he's got an Egyptian head.
Guest:See?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You're like, oh.
Marc:Abison in something like he's exotic, like a genius cat.
Marc:It's funny.
Marc:I guess people do that with kids too.
Marc:Like this one's special.
Marc:I mean, look at its ears.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I do that joke about dogs of the American Revolution, right?
Guest:Having your dog join the DAR.
Guest:Some guy emailed me.
Guest:I did the joke on Conan.
Guest:Guy emails me.
Guest:He's like, my cat is actually a direct descendant of Truman's cat.
Marc:that's funny and I was like are you kidding I hope there's half of me that hopes he's kidding and there's half of me that's like how did you do that how did you trace it well I mean depending where he lives and what you know I mean I think like because if you go down to Key West there's all those Hemingway cats those six fingered Hemingway cats oh right then you could actually get a Hemingway cat if you wanted one well yeah they're just all over the place and they are from the original six fingered cat it's easy to identify right yeah that is a mutant cat well it's great seeing you I love talking to you thanks for having me
Marc:Jackie Cation.
Marc:I'm not the hero.
Marc:This story is out now.
Marc:Listen to her podcasts, Dork Forrest or the Jackie and Lori show.
Marc:So.
Marc:Having your mind blown by a book is one of the great experiences of being human.
Marc:So do that occasionally.
Marc:Sometimes it's hard to find the books that are going to blow your fucking mind.
Marc:But they're out there, right?
Marc:This Paul Beatty book, The Sellout, was astounding, and I was excited to get an opportunity to talk to him.
Marc:What I'm saying is The Sellout by Paul Beatty is a hilarious book, and you can't really put it down, and it's deep and layered and funny and dark and light and just brilliant stuff.
Marc:It won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for fiction last year, and it's now available in paperback.
Marc:And this is me talking to the author of that book, Paul Beatty.
Marc:All right, so you were in Boston, and you went to BU.
Marc:I did.
Marc:But we were at BU at the same time.
Marc:You would have been a year ahead of me.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:In the English department?
Marc:No.
Marc:Psych.
Marc:You were in the psych department?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Well, and you knew we had common friends, maybe?
Marc:We knew Sue Silverman.
Marc:Sarah's sister, Sue, dated a guy I knew briefly.
Marc:Who was that?
Marc:A guy named Steve Brill.
Marc:He's a film director.
Marc:And I remember meeting Laura Silverman with Sue in a ski jacket.
Marc:But I don't know, what was Sue studying?
Marc:Sue was doing psych.
Marc:She was?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now what compelled you to do psych?
Guest:i don't know my friends tell me i always said i was i wanted to be a psychologist yeah so uh what compelled me i have no idea but um it was the right call at the right time i think yeah do you find that the stuff that you learn there uh is useful still yeah absolutely man yeah yeah really it really uh helped shape how i see things how i see people you know how i see myself and uh
Guest:It really made me aware that there's so much going on at any given time.
Guest:And part of it is what you're paying attention to and what you're listening to and how you're listening.
Guest:There's just so much happening.
Marc:How is your brain getting fucked and how are you reacting to it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What are you bringing to the table?
Guest:That's exactly it.
Guest:Aware that everybody's putting their baggage on the table.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Size of the luggage and, you know, there's just so much happening.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And things happen in a moment that could have implications and repercussions that go on for a lifetime.
Guest:You know, I teach.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And, you know, when I was in school, I did something called small group processes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you just put it in a room.
Guest:It was kind of very counterculture for VU, especially at that time.
Guest:We'd drink wine and just – anyways.
Guest:But we had these phrases.
Guest:I had a beautiful professor there, this guy, Bob Chin, who I've learned a ton from.
Marc:What did he teach?
Guest:Yeah, he taught psych and social psych.
Guest:He had these phrases, the here and now, listen to yourself, listen.
Guest:All these things that just help you gauge where you are all the time.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You know, my friends would... Yeah, anyways, it's just... And it's stuff that I try to instill in my students because it's helped me.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Seeing the layering, seeing the depth, seeing the complicated shit in the simple.
Marc:And you teach writing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where at?
Marc:At Columbia.
Marc:So when you're at BU, you graduated with a psychology degree?
Marc:I did.
Marc:And where'd you go to grad school?
Marc:At BU.
Marc:You did?
Guest:I did.
Guest:For psychology?
Guest:I did.
Marc:God, you went the full run.
Guest:Yeah, man, it was...
Guest:It was a mistake in some ways, but I had applied to go to these other places, Michigan and all these places.
Guest:I think I was going to end up at University of Chicago.
Guest:What was the plan?
Guest:I didn't really have a plan.
Guest:It was the one thing that kind of...
Guest:captivated me at some level you know I had some interest in and the plan was I guess at the time I would have done that you know you get these organizational behavioral jobs at Kodak or something I don't know what these companies were really so you had workshops and all right so it was sort of things you were gonna there was a career there of a consultant career yeah that's exactly that's the word not not a have do office hours career yeah maybe yeah yeah no I wasn't thinking about teaching would you you grew up around here
Guest:Not around here so much, but, you know, West LA, I guess.
Guest:Like how far west?
Guest:You know, I grew up in Santa Monica in Venice, and then we moved to like right off of Robertson Boulevard in Beverlywood.
Guest:And what was the childhood?
Guest:What was your old man in?
Guest:uh i didn't really never knew my father oh yeah him and my mom got divorced when i was three i guess three yeah and then that was it he was out yeah he was out yeah he was out um so it was just you and your mom yeah yeah oh yeah me and my mom my two sisters got two sisters same dad same father yeah he just split on everybody
Guest:He didn't split.
Guest:My mom, she left him, I guess.
Guest:I don't know exactly what happened, but they got divorced.
Marc:He didn't go smoke a cigarette or anything.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:And you guys just, you grew up in that part of town.
Guest:We did.
Guest:We did.
Marc:Are the sisters older?
Guest:We're all more or less the same age, but they're younger than me.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we're all like nine months apart.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah, something like that.
Marc:And what did they get involved in?
Marc:What did they get involved in?
Guest:My sister Sharon, she writes plays every now and then.
Guest:She teaches.
Guest:My sister Anna works for DWP, Department of Water and Power.
Marc:So when you were coming up, when you were going to high school and shit, what do you think compelled you to this research of the human brain?
Guest:Yeah, it's just from reading.
Guest:We didn't have a television.
Guest:No?
Guest:No.
Guest:On purpose?
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:But we just never had a television for very spare moments.
Guest:But for most of the time growing up, we never had a television.
Guest:So my mom just had a library and just, you know, all of us just read all of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she had good taste, thankfully.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like, what were you getting?
Guest:Oh, we got Heller, we got Bellow, we got Updike.
Guest:You know, we got a ton of shit.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, my mom's an artist and-
Guest:So just a whole broad of stuff.
Marc:So it was sort of like she was a creative person, interested in that.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:She's interested in everything.
Guest:Is she a painter?
Guest:Yes, she is.
Guest:And she's smart as fuck.
Guest:I mean, my mom's insanely smart.
Marc:So it's...
Marc:What was the guidance?
Marc:Was she obviously encouraging to creative life?
Marc:Yeah, she never encouraged, but she never discouraged.
Guest:So she never... She didn't tell us much.
Guest:We didn't have a ton of rules.
Guest:We never had curfew or anything.
Guest:So she didn't tell us much, but everything was there.
Guest:And she just kind of dragged us to places.
Guest:Art openings.
Guest:Yeah, and just never censored us.
Guest:So we'd gone to all these movies since forever.
Guest:Did she engage you on them?
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, because I think we're not very talkative, but amongst us, we're very talkative.
Guest:And all of us have our little theories about shit.
Guest:So yeah, we talk about this stuff.
Marc:Because I know in the book, The Sellout, that the thing is just infused...
Marc:Outside of the story, the thing is infused with a depth of sort of cultural criticism, intellectual assessments of film theory, semantics.
Marc:It's interesting because all through it, all the characters seem at moments incredibly informed and sophisticated intellectually.
Guest:Sort of.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think they don't make many distinguished.
Guest:They're not very judgmental about it.
Guest:There's shit that they like and there's shit that they don't.
Guest:But it's not like they like highbrow.
Guest:They like lowbrow.
Guest:It's all fused.
Marc:That's what I mean.
Marc:It's all fused that you have like sort of like, you know, like street dialogue.
Marc:But then all of a sudden out of nowhere, you know, you've got Truffaut references.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's just language, man.
Guest:It's just language, yeah.
Guest:It's just language, but it's thought.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Absolutely.
Marc:So, you didn't start, I mean, this is your, what is it, your second novel or third novel?
Marc:Fourth.
Marc:Fourth.
Marc:But you started, like, the other place I think we could have crossed paths, but maybe not, maybe on the street, was I was on the Lower East Side from...
Marc:like uh 87 88 like 92 93 okay i was on second between a and b okay that's i mean that's where i live i live on second you know now between a between b and c so you saw the all the drug stuff i saw yeah the end yeah yeah like it was before giuliani had taken over and there was a lot of uh yeah there was a lot of drugs on the street that was it that was the street save the robots yes uh
Marc:Right around the corner.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:I never went to that shit, and I was trying to not do drugs, so I saw a lot of the behavior.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There was a doorway next to my house.
Guest:I know where you lived, then.
Guest:Yeah, I know exactly where you lived.
Guest:Like, there was this weird... You just had that line outside.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:I know exactly where you lived.
Marc:Yeah, there was a line outside that doorway and next to it was this weird garage full of cans.
Marc:There was like this garage.
Marc:I don't know what was going on there, but they were just moving recyclables in and out of there.
Guest:A little Latino guy.
Guest:Yeah, the garage is still there.
Guest:It's like a beer distributorship or something like that.
Marc:Right now, but there's a restaurant right there too.
Guest:There is.
Guest:Like an Italian restaurant.
Guest:Yeah, that's been there for a while.
Marc:Yeah, dude, when I was there, it was like insanity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you go to New York, so you know, but...
Guest:So I didn't live there.
Guest:I didn't get down there until like 90 maybe.
Guest:I was living in East Harlem, and I did like six months in Brooklyn for a while when I first got to New York.
Marc:Before Brooklyn was Brooklyn, Brooklyn.
Guest:I was deep in Brooklyn.
Guest:I was in Midwood.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But you were at the New Eurekan?
Guest:Yeah, I would read at the New York and I'd read there.
Guest:I'd read at St.
Guest:Mark's Poetry Project, you know.
Guest:But it was poetry.
Marc:Yeah, it was.
Marc:And what was it that... Because, like, at that time, it seemed to me that that slam poetry thing, that New York in, that I knew guys who were, you know, innately funny, that there was a stand-up element to some of it, I felt.
Marc:Like, I knew a guy who was a stand-up that actually went into it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because it seemed to give him more freedom than comedy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What was your... Yeah, I was just reading.
Guest:You know, I'm not very performative.
Guest:Really?
Guest:You were just reading?
Guest:I just read.
Guest:You know, I just read.
Guest:I mean, especially when the place first opened, you know, there were a lot of disgruntled poets, you know, that felt shut out of, like, St.
Guest:Mark's.
Guest:I don't know these poetry wars, but... There are, though, right?
Guest:There was.
Guest:I mean, there wasn't anything, so...
Guest:You know, and it was just an open place.
Guest:It was nice.
Guest:You know, Creeley would be there.
Guest:Just a ton of people would be there.
Guest:Bob Creeley was there?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Did he pass away?
Guest:He did.
Guest:He did.
Guest:And so for me, it was just New York had a scene.
Guest:New York had its own thing.
Guest:You could drink and talk shit and, you know, it was fun.
Guest:But, I mean, I think...
Guest:like really early on had a friend of mine saying yeah you know they're gonna have velvet ropes out here very soon like you could see that happening to the poetry yeah and it became you know it's the thing i realized i was just writing you know and it's nothing wrong with it but like your friend he's a stand-up it was it was so performative and so all these other things yeah and then mtv got hold of it like maggie a step yeah absolutely was uh doing it they were adding music to it sometimes yeah
Guest:I mean, nothing wrong with that, but that was me.
Guest:You were more of a purist?
Guest:Not a purist.
Guest:I just read.
Guest:You know, I'm kind of shy.
Guest:I look down and I just read.
Guest:And for me, I think it's important for let the page, the words do all the work.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And let that do the selling, you know, whatever.
Marc:And so the other stuff, I'm just uncomfortable doing it.
Marc:But so you're like in terms of reading poetry out loud, yeah, the words got to do it, but the pause has got to do it.
Guest:Yeah, I kind of just blurted through it.
Guest:I was so uncomfortable.
Guest:Why'd you do it?
Guest:Because I think it was part of the job.
Guest:Being a poet.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I remember when I first got to New York and trying to figure out how to write, I saw Poets Magazine, some magazine.
Marc:After you finished graduate school.
Guest:So I didn't finish grad school.
Guest:So midway through, I did my third year and I was like...
Guest:not studying for my qualifying exams and i was just like yeah i really don't want to do this you know and i was talking to my friend ruth sod actually i don't know if you knew ruth i think it's possible that you got okay maybe yeah anyways um we were just walking down i think we're on beacon and i just remember saying to her one day you know what i think i want to write
Guest:And it just clicked.
Guest:And I was like, yeah, I'm out.
Guest:And it was a good thing.
Guest:And you hadn't written.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:Not really.
Guest:But I think I had this slow thing about how much I enjoyed writing.
Guest:But it was just...
Guest:It was slow.
Guest:And the thing was, I mean, the good thing about Boston had all those great used bookstores and these great used record stores.
Guest:And I was just reading everything I wasn't supposed to be reading.
Guest:Like what?
Guest:Oh, man.
Guest:There was a bookstore.
Guest:I think it was on Beacon.
Guest:So I would just dive in there, man, and E.E.
Guest:Cummins, reading all this shit, you know?
Guest:E.E.
Guest:Cummins, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:All this kind of stuff.
Guest:And the beats play part?
Guest:No, not then so much.
Guest:I mean, I had read Ginsberg and Kerouac a little bit, you know, and I'm aware of it and stuff.
Yeah.
Guest:That stuff came more into my sensibilities when I moved to New York.
Guest:And Alan was my teacher for a while.
Guest:Yeah, at Ginsburg.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where?
Guest:At Brooklyn College.
Guest:So when I left BU, I just went to Brooklyn College and got my MFA.
Guest:I didn't know how you were supposed to do it.
Guest:And at the time, there might have been 20, 25 places where you got your MFA riding or something.
Guest:So I was either going to come back to California or go to New York.
Guest:And so I ended up getting in Brooklyn College.
Guest:So I showed up kind of never having written anything except for these little poems I kind of squealed out to send for the application.
Guest:So how did you get in?
Guest:I have no idea.
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:Who knows?
Guest:And Alan was there towards the end of his life, was he?
Guest:No, it wasn't quite towards the end.
Guest:I mean, he was up there.
Guest:So this is late 80s, I guess.
Marc:Wow, that must be like his – he's one of these guys that I sort of –
Marc:I mythologized the beats when I was younger.
Marc:And I had Alan's books, and I've got a lot of the ones that he wrote in the big collection.
Marc:And what was he like as a teacher?
Guest:He was very gracious.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah, he was very gracious.
Guest:He opened his doors and he told really good stories.
Marc:Yeah, he certainly did.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What did you learn from him?
Guest:Yeah, I think the thing I really learned from Alan is precision.
Guest:He was so big on clarity and precision and editing and wasted breath and all this kind of stuff.
Guest:I mean, I learned a lot.
Yeah.
Guest:And not so much from him, but a thing that I sort of got at Brooklyn, like these basic things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Which is like, you kind of have to be fearless a little bit, you know?
Marc:In terms of exposing yourself or what?
Guest:It's your choice.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For me, it was just not censoring myself, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm not like a very- Taking a break.
Guest:Personal writer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I don't talk about myself very much, you know?
Guest:Even though what I write is very personal- Yeah.
Guest:It's not so much about me necessarily, you know?
Guest:But-
Guest:Yeah, you know, just, yeah, I had another teacher there, Tucker Farley, who was just, she was nuts, but she really just pushed, you know, how we think.
Guest:And I had another guy, Lou Asikoff, who was, you know, close with Alan, who really encouraged me.
Guest:Because when I was there, after the first year, the professor told me to stop writing.
Guest:You know, I got like a C plus in poetry.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We sat down.
Guest:She was like, yeah, I really think this isn't for you.
Guest:And really?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so, but thank goodness I had a guy who I'm still very close with today.
Guest:It was Professor Lou Asikoff, who we used to meet with, you know, once a week for an hour and read my poems alongside me.
Guest:You know, so I told Lou, yeah, I guess I'm quitting.
Guest:I guess I suck, you know.
Guest:And Lou was like, he was beautiful, man.
Guest:He was...
Guest:He he told me you're doing something that no one else is doing.
Guest:You know, you're on to something.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was so helpful.
Guest:I can't tell you how helpful he was to me.
Guest:And he told me a thing that really slowed me down, which was people are going to learn how to read you.
Guest:Because I'd been struggling with this.
Guest:What am I supposed to do?
Guest:What language?
Guest:All these things that you talked about before.
Guest:This fusion of language.
Guest:Who needs to understand what and all this kind of stuff.
Guest:I'm really struggling with that.
Guest:And so Lou told me, yeah, people are going to learn to read you.
Guest:Don't listen to her.
Guest:Just come back and keep it going.
Guest:And it's funny because at the end of that year, I'd written a poem for...
Guest:finally a poem that i was like i kind of like this yeah you know and there was a kid in the class and i remember reading that poem and the kid was like this i don't understand this i don't get it blah blah blah this doesn't make any sense none of this is this is the worst poem i've ever read you know and so that next year yeah we had alan ginsburg yeah and so ginsburg we had the same class just different teacher right and ginsburg comes in he goes let's start from the top bring in your best poem we're going to start from there so i brought that poem
Guest:was my best poem yeah and i read that same poem yeah and that same kid was like oh paul's a genius this is an illusion of this this is a reference you know this whole thing and i had been really struggling about like what words kind of you know all this kind of stuff and i was just like flat i mean he i didn't have to say anything like he pretty much got it in the way that he got it and i remember asking him after class i said dude what happened man you hated that poem and he just was like yeah you know i spent three months in new york you know over the summer
Guest:And it just said, opened his head, opened his ears, opened his eyes.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But for me, it wasn't like, yeah, whatever I do is good.
Guest:But it was this thing of just, you know, there's so much happening.
Guest:You know, all this is shifting.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And it's like something, you know, that you learn in psych about, like...
Guest:Everyone's in a different place at a different time.
Guest:There's just so much movement in terms of your political awareness, in terms of everybody's just in different places.
Marc:Yeah, you can always get your mind blown.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you can always blow back.
Guest:I think people think of this consciousness as this progression somehow.
Marc:And also poetry, I think, as a form is something that it does grow with you.
Marc:You know, that you can read a poem and be completely outside of it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then years later, come back to it and have a completely different experience.
Guest:I mean, that's like anything.
Guest:That's like a good joke.
Guest:That's like anything.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You know, so good painting.
Guest:You know, it's that's right.
Guest:You know.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, jokes are a little more descriptive.
Marc:Like, you know, I mean, you might not think something's funny, but like, right.
Marc:I mean, I get what you're saying about a turn of phrase or a joke, but like sometimes poems have a code to them.
Marc:Jokes are not that coded.
Guest:You don't think so.
Guest:What do you mean by code, I guess?
Marc:Well, I mean that joke in and of itself, like a story or joke, unless it's some sort of Hasidic tale that has a cryptic ending.
Marc:You should at least know the structure of that's where the funny is.
Marc:And if I'm not getting the funny, it usually means it's because you don't know something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, but that's the same.
Guest:I guess that's the same.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, it's like, again, it's that baggage.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Marc:You know, like, what do you bring it to?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So what did Alan think of that poem?
Guest:Yeah, I think Alan liked it.
Guest:I mean, I think Alan, he saw something in me, I hope.
Guest:You know, I think.
Guest:You know, I kind of can romanticize all this stuff.
Guest:But he did a nice thing with, is he did this speaking series.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where he brought in all these black.
Guest:Black male poets.
Guest:I think I was kind of the only black kid in poetry.
Guest:I'm pretty sure I was.
Guest:But anyway, he brought in these guys, Quincy Troop, Amiri Baraka, Suttercat, Kofi Natambu.
Guest:And those were guys, it was fun to listen to.
Guest:I didn't agree with hardly anything they said, but it was really interesting to hear them talk about their processes.
Guest:How they thought, just where they're fit in that world.
Guest:Like, what do you mean you didn't agree with that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I remember one guy, you know, Alan, because, you know, Alan brings all this environmental stuff to the table.
Guest:He brought so much stuff to the table.
Guest:So, I remember him talking to Quincy about...
Guest:Just the world, just the physical environment.
Guest:And I remember Quincy going, yeah, that's your problem.
Guest:I just was like, whoa, that's so weird.
Guest:There's a lot of stuff.
Guest:But it was really refreshing for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It just opened my head up a little bit.
Marc:Was that the first time you really came in contact with black poets?
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:I didn't know too many people that wrote outside of school.
Guest:Amir would invite me to his things.
Guest:They weren't for me.
Guest:Why?
Guest:They weren't.
Guest:I'm not a group person.
Guest:I'm not an ideologue like that.
Guest:I'm not like...
Guest:writing is fighting necessarily it might be but i don't think of it that way you know so it's so that just stuff but you know but i respect the intellect you know i've learned so much from amuri over he's a really good writer and yeah and those guys were open you know quincy really helped me it's funny i think about that because i guess that's where i met quincy quincy gave me all these fucking great readings back in the day that you know i didn't know you could make five thousand dollars for reading some poems you know
Guest:in 1995 you know i didn't know you could do that you know so quincy was really helpful in that in the in that kind of stuff and just you know good guys yeah willing to share sure so yeah and it's very specific and it's a creative endeavor you know like poetry i mean yeah they're good guys but i mean it's like it's not a huge world no absolutely not absolutely which was good for me at the time i mean yeah yeah yeah
Marc:And when did you read, like, because at the end of the book, you know, you, I mean, like, I'm not well-versed in much of anything.
Marc:It's all sort of random.
Marc:But, you know, you do, you go out of your way to talk about William E. Cross Jr.
Marc:'s piece.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Of a Negro to Black Conversion Experience in Black World 20, July 1971.
Guest:Yeah, I read that in grad school.
Marc:When you were in grad school, when you were an undergrad, when you talk about baggage or you talk about personal baggage or growing into it, how much were you involved in educating yourself about race?
Guest:That's a good question.
Guest:I mean, I think different places at different times.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:You know, I kind of tend to hang out with who's ever close, you know, proximity.
Guest:It doesn't matter who they are.
Guest:They're nearby.
Guest:I'm kind of lazy.
Guest:So, you know, if you're in that sphere, then we're going to hang out, you know, or attempt to at least.
Guest:So, you know, I had a crew of kids, you know, this kind of lived on my floor, you know.
Guest:When you were a kid?
Guest:No, at BU.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:You know, and same when I was a kid, you know, I hung out with the kids on the block.
Guest:So, yeah, for the most part, but I had other friends, I guess through my mom and stuff.
Guest:But...
Guest:So the race thing is always there.
Guest:Everything's always everywhere.
Guest:So that was always there.
Guest:But for the most part of undergrad, most of my friends were white, I guess, except cats that I played basketball with.
Guest:I used to referee games and stuff, like intramural games.
Guest:So you met a lot of people.
Guest:And then, I don't know if you remember all this, but all the divestiture movement out of South Africa and stuff.
Guest:I don't know if you remember all this.
Marc:With Silver?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, that he had invested.
Guest:Right, there was protests.
Guest:Zin was a part of all these movements.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:You remember all this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I mean, I just live on the periphery of that kind of stuff.
Guest:Leading those protests against... Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then... Yeah, it's not like...
Guest:You know, and then I had another professor at BU, Althea Smith, who was – she was one of the few black professors that I had there.
Guest:But who was, you know, really doing interesting research and stuff around race and all this.
Guest:So it was kind of cool for me to just –
Guest:think about this stuff yeah and then so like you know the thing i was like you know at the time i guess people still people would say oh racism racism racist race and i just was like what does that mean you know yeah what are we talking about yeah and then so i was like trying to like come up with a scale like this kind of richter scale of racism you know that's a 7.5 you know because i was trying to because we use that word to mean so much and it's
Guest:And I don't know how you measure these things.
Guest:It's not like, you know, you know, like, I don't know.
Guest:That's the best I can do is come up with this Richter scale of racism.
Marc:So in the sense of measuring, I mean, like, you know, what is essentially hatred and what is essentially ignorance and what is essentially impolite or what?
Guest:Not that.
Guest:Like, just in terms of impact.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:On you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I remember I used to work at Trader Joe's.
Guest:And I always remember working at Trader Joe's.
Guest:Where?
Guest:National in Westwood.
Guest:This is right near the house.
Guest:Like one of the early Trader Joe's?
Guest:Yeah, Trader Joe's.
Guest:I think it's Trader Joe's number seven.
Guest:This is when there were no Trader Joe's.
Guest:Right, I remember that.
Guest:It was a long time ago.
Guest:So, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you worked there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember, I don't know, doing the icebox or whatever.
Guest:And I remember a black woman coming in the store.
Guest:And the white kid I was working with going, hey, do you think she's pretty?
Guest:I just went, wait a minute.
Guest:That was just so weird for me.
Guest:Like, why is he asking me that?
Guest:Is that racist?
Guest:I didn't know what it was necessarily.
Guest:But it's like all these little things.
Guest:And how did you judge that?
Guest:How did I judge that from him?
Guest:He was one of the kids who I actually didn't know very well.
Guest:So I'm like, then, I don't know, I must have been 18, 19 or something.
Guest:I don't know how old I was.
Guest:And I was like, well, you know, people come in there all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you never go, hey, hey, is she this?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, you just tell me you think she's that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like, you know, what is that about?
Guest:Like, what are you know?
Guest:That switch.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing.
Marc:And this is before any psychology.
Guest:yeah i guess so or very early on in that and just all i mean all these just a ton of little things and uh not so little sometimes yeah but just trying to figure out like where's this definite i mean it's these things all these words that i never know what they mean i never know like what are some other ones satire pride all these kind of things you know i just i don't know what these words mean you know um i know what they mean in the in the context yeah but
Guest:they're so fuzzy for me satire is kind of fuzzy yeah absolutely and like when people use these words you know like are they self-serving are they are you using them as shields are they you know it's just uh where does pride come into it yeah so pride's like one of the things i mean i lived in germany for a while really where in berlin what year was that that was like 96 97 huh yeah what brought you there didn't have any money so i went to berlin had a beautiful it was fine how long
Guest:About a year and a half, I guess.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Maybe a little bit less.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:That must have been interesting.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:I didn't go outside very much.
Guest:Didn't engage with the culture.
Guest:Yeah, I was going through a lot of stuff personally, and just, I had a hard time there being stared at, being dragged around.
Guest:Well, like, were you depressed?
Guest:I'm always depressed.
Guest:So, you know, that goes without saying.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, yeah, I was, you know, just my first novel had come out.
Guest:Like, there was a bunch of stuff going on.
Guest:And I just hadn't had any friends I had met, like, in a really organic way.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Anyways.
Guest:So, you know, I just listened to them talk.
Guest:Everyone's so goddamn smart there.
Guest:And I remember people saying, you know, they weren't allowed to say, I'm proud to be German.
Guest:I was like, oh, wow, that's wild.
Guest:You know, it's, like, almost illegal to say that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, because...
Guest:Like, what does that mean?
Guest:You know, and it just made me think about this black pride, all this kind of shit that I just I don't know what that means.
Guest:Like, is that like a constant?
Guest:Are you allowed to be proud for just five seconds?
Guest:And then the other, you know, five seconds, you don't give a fuck.
Guest:And what are the things that you feel are black embarrassments or German embarrassings?
Guest:Like, how does like what's the equation?
Guest:Like, where's this?
Guest:How does this pride needle work?
Guest:You know?
Marc:Well, I guess when it's a it's right.
Marc:I understand what you're saying.
Marc:And I think that when it's used in that broad sense that it is about kind of strengthening or diminishing an identity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or, you know, I mean, I understand, like, the need to self-affirm like that sometimes.
Guest:But, you know, that also comes with a cost.
Guest:And it also comes with this kind of hierarchical kind of sense, you know.
Guest:How do you mean?
Guest:You know, so I'm African-American.
Guest:If I have black pride, whatever that is.
Guest:What does that do for you as a white person or you as a California pride?
Guest:How do all these prides work together?
Guest:Because you're not just one thing.
Guest:There's just so much shit happening.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:It's a loaded and broad idea.
Guest:This is not going to make any sense, but I remember being on ComAv once and...
Guest:With a bunch of black kids.
Guest:And there was something happening.
Guest:These two kids got into a fight.
Guest:There was this kid.
Guest:And he was like, oh, I'm so embarrassed as a black person.
Guest:And I just remember looking at him going, wait, why are you embarrassed?
Guest:This has nothing to do with you.
Guest:But this weird kind of collective thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know how to process it.
Marc:Well, what was the fight?
Marc:Was it within the group you were with?
Guest:There were just two people doing something, and he felt embarrassed as a black guy because two other black people were doing something that he was embarrassed by.
Guest:I didn't understand that.
Marc:Oh, that we're all representing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I didn't understand that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so-
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I saw this documentary about like the OI movement in the UK.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this skinhead guy's talking and they're like, well, what appealed to you about the movement?
Guest:And he goes, yeah, you know, I had an embarrassment about being working class and that music, that scene.
Guest:And he wanted to say pride.
Guest:And then he stopped himself because he went, no, it's not about pride.
Guest:But I just wasn't embarrassed about it anymore.
Guest:And I was like, yeah, that's exactly it.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, that's exactly it.
Guest:For me, there's a distinction there somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:What was the Oi movement?
Guest:That's just skinhead music, you know, punk music.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And just, you know, this kind of thing.
Guest:Which has offshoots and sort of evolved.
Guest:Yeah, some nationalistic offshoots.
Guest:It just has some kind of music.
Guest:It has some alternative.
Guest:It has a ton of offshoots.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:Not being embarrassed.
Guest:Just not being embarrassed.
Marc:And shameless in a way.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:You know, like he was talking about like how he would...
Guest:be embarrassed about telling people where he was from and all this kind of thing, then at some point he just kind of didn't give a fuck.
Guest:But it wasn't about necessarily having pride in being from the place, but not being embarrassed about it.
Guest:That's an interesting distinction for me.
Marc:Well, it's interesting that you gleaned that information, that what delivered the goods
Marc:In terms of how to wrap your brain around some element of pride was delivered by something that is really identified as a nationalistic, somewhat white supremacist movement.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, in Germany, I had my friends who would say these things, but there was interesting ways.
Guest:That sometimes made me uncomfortable for whatever reason.
Guest:But that they did show their national pride.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, might not be flag-waving then, but there were things.
Guest:Hey, I'm not allowed to say this, but X, Y, and Z. Yeah.
Guest:You know, and I don't really, really.
Guest:And then, you know, they were still like, you know, the wall had just really been down.
Guest:And so there was this interesting thing about what German pride was.
Guest:You know, I had some East German friends.
Guest:What they're...
Guest:I'm going to use the word pride in being East German.
Guest:But, you know, this is how these identities shift and how quickly identity gets created.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And just at the time, you know, I wrote a bunch of stuff about it.
Guest:But, like, at the time, it reminded me a lot about what I had read about, you know, the Reconstruction era here in the States.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and African-American-ness and German-ness.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:There was just a lot of similarities for me, really.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:In terms of the identification of genocide.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And having no real way out of not being identified with that.
Marc:And the reconstruction in the black community being identified with this indentured servitude and moving out from that.
Guest:Yeah, and in a sense of trying to reconstruct a new kind of national identity.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And...
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And with some things that initially were good.
Guest:And then, you know, the South had these things that they want to do.
Guest:And, hey, we need to bring back segregation.
Guest:We need to draw these lines back, you know, just how identity gets shaped.
Guest:And just it was just interesting for me.
Guest:And just for me, like the heaviness of just that weight that that I'm German, I'm black.
Guest:And it comes with so much heft, you know, these words.
Guest:And it just there was a lot of similarities there.
Guest:I mean, I joke about them, but, you know, there was just a lot of similarity there for me.
Marc:And you don't have any control over what you're born into and how you sort of move through your life and realize the weight of that stuff.
Marc:That's your own thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.
Guest:I mean, you get to figure out how you want to cope.
Guest:And we were talking about my mom earlier.
Guest:I just saw my sisters yesterday.
Guest:And we're so appreciative that our mom never told us you – like I never had any conversations with her about being black or any of this when I was young.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she just kind of left it up to us to figure out how we wanted to cope, how we wanted to learn the social mores and stuff.
Guest:And we just left it up to us.
Guest:And so, yeah, my whole family is weird about this stuff.
Guest:We don't really think about these things in the way that a lot of people do.
Guest:Is that a plus?
Yeah.
Guest:uh yeah i think it is a plus for us you know because we neither of us the word my sister used the other day was boundaries we don't have a ton of boundaries about shit at least we think we don't right and uh and i think that's definitely a plus yeah so it seems like you know when i you know when i got the sellout
Marc:So I start reading this book, and it just opens with, it's just like you're right in it.
Marc:There's a dude handcuffed to a chair, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Waiting to stand before the Supreme Court.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And there's weed involved, and there's a lot of things going on.
Marc:Now, moving in from what we were talking about,
Marc:And in terms of how you're talking about identifying the meaning of these things, it seems like this book is sort of a reckoning with it.
Marc:Yeah, I guess so.
Marc:What does reckoning mean?
Marc:I mean that it is about...
Guest:race i guess i mean yeah i mean he is who he is you know i am who i am so it just shapes the it's all it always is about race so it's like oh right it's always you know right so yeah i mean but these are things that are important to him these are things that factors that have shaped how he lives his life yeah bonbon whatever his name is yeah you know and so yeah of course what is his whole name the main character doesn't have a whole i think in my head there's a name you know his last name is me yeah so uh
Marc:Yeah, I was looking for it.
Marc:I'm like, I'm about to talk to him, but I can't remember the character's name.
Marc:So it's not my fault.
Marc:No, not at all.
Marc:Not at all.
Marc:We get Foy Cheshire.
Marc:We get the old man's name.
Marc:We get a lot of people's name around him, but he doesn't have a name.
Guest:You know, he's got a nickname and he's got a surname, but he doesn't really have like a Christian name.
Marc:But when you're writing poetry and you say things like you're crafting these words, the words are important, and early on you're writing things that were not making sense to people.
Marc:And you got the support early on from one guy who said that's because you're doing something that people are going to have to come to.
Marc:But you're committing to these words.
Marc:Yeah, absolutely.
Marc:And you're thinking about absolutely.
Marc:So, you know, these you know, these there's definitely poetry in this book, obviously.
Marc:But there there are also big ideas that are driving the narrative.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, specifically, you have this, you know, this odd, you know, black character who wants to segregate the schools and reinstate slavery in his neighborhoods.
Marc:Sort of.
Guest:He doesn't really do it.
Guest:But that's the thing.
Guest:It's the power of these words.
Guest:You know, he never segregates anything because it's already fucking segregated.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that was the fun of it for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is how do you segregate something that's already segregated?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Where you don't have any white people anywhere near the place for the most part.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, how do you do that?
Guest:How do you build in that notion, that consciousness of segregation?
Guest:So that was really fun for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know.
Guest:How do you have a slave that's not a slave?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:And how do you have a masochistic slave who actually enjoys being beat?
Guest:All these kind of things are fun for me to just... I don't know.
Guest:Reckoning is not the word that I would use because it feels like there's a finality to that.
Guest:For me, it's just a rendering, not a reckoning.
Marc:You weren't looking to make a point.
Guest:No, not at all.
Guest:No, no, not at all.
Guest:Not at all.
Guest:I just, what's the point to be made?
Guest:You know, it's like, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm not trying to change anyone's mind or anything.
Guest:Make you think a little bit, make you feel, make you tingle, make you laugh, whatever.
Guest:How long did it take you to write this book?
Guest:It took like five years to write that book, man.
Guest:It took a long, long time.
Guest:What's your process?
Guest:I just had these ideas, you know, so I had an idea for the Hominy character because I had like...
Guest:I love The Little Rascals.
Guest:The old Swayze.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I love The Little Rascals.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I always thought of, like, who was next in line?
Guest:You know how it went, like, Farina, Stymie.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Did you watch The Little Rascals?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Alfalfa.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, like, for the black guys, it was Farina, then Stymie.
Guest:They kind of bring him in slowly, and then they bring Buckwheat in slowly.
Guest:And I was like, well, who was Buckwheat's understudy?
Guest:Like, who was that next person who has the racial zeitgeist change, just missed his chance at stardom?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Like, who was that?
Guest:The next black kid.
Guest:yeah exactly so i just i just love the phrase buckwheat's understudy so i had that that's all you had no i had a couple things i had that i had the sense of that neighborhood you know this place that's california dickens dickens you know that's agrarian at the same time that's whatever the inner city's supposed to be at you know all these kind of things and uh but was once a farming community
Guest:Yeah, sort of.
Guest:And so I had that.
Guest:And I had this kind of notion about segregation, but I didn't really know what it was.
Guest:But I knew I wanted to kind of figure out this idea of what segregation is.
Guest:For yourself?
Guest:Not for myself, but just to render it like in this contemporary kind of way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To talk about something that exists that we don't really acknowledge very much.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, I was talking with a friend of mine, Mexican-American guy who runs a magazine called Zizavud, Oscar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was talking to one of my students who was interning, a black kid named Chris.
Guest:And Chris was talking, we were drinking, and Chris was looking at me and Oscar's about my age, you know, late 40 or so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:Chris goes, oh, you guys must have had it so hard.
Guest:And me and Oscar, what are you talking about?
Guest:He's like, oh, all the racism you guys must have faced.
Guest:And me and Oscar just started laughing.
Guest:And we both like it almost in unison said to him, oh, no, you had it.
Guest:You have it way worse than we have it.
Guest:You know, because there's just a... What is he?
Guest:Chris is an African-American kid from Northern California, smart kid, you know?
Guest:And it was interesting to hear Oscar, me and Oscar say this thing at the same time, you know, just give this improvised riff.
Guest:I know you guys have it worse than we had it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they feel a limitation of always having to say the right thing and not being able to acknowledge anything because it means something.
Marc:You mean younger people.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And...
Guest:And for us, that was like, yeah, no, we can just spout and complain and bitch and moan, and you guys aren't allowed to bitch and moan, really, because then something's wrong with you if you're bitch and moan, because everything's in place for you to be whoever you want to be.
Guest:So anyways, and it was interesting.
Guest:And it just made me shape about just this idea of post-racial, all this fucking crap.
Guest:But I never, again, these are words that I don't know what the fuck they mean.
Marc:Well, clearly, they seem to mean less than they might have thought to have meant initially.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but it's with a lot of stuff, you know?
Marc:And so... So you think that things are relatively unchanging?
Guest:I think, no, I think that things do change.
Guest:But I think, you know, we as people remain the fucking same.
Guest:You know, it always have remained the same.
Guest:And I remember reading the old WPA slave narratives, you know, where they went around to these living slaves and to keep artists employed and they interviewed these living slaves.
Guest:What was it like?
Guest:Dun, dun, dun, tell me about your life.
Guest:And I remember reading some of those things and listening to these depends.
Guest:You could tell who the interviewer was by how they were talking, what words they used and how they did anyways.
Guest:But I remember being blown away how a lot of the slaves was, you know, these niggas, these, this.
Guest:And I was like, oh, my God, I thought black people started saying niggas in the 70s.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:But you just realize how old all this shit is.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and it helps in a weird way.
Guest:How I think about L.A.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, all these words that just don't die.
Guest:Rad, gnarly, you know, all these words, you know.
Guest:And for me, it's like more about the timelessness and about like, how do we measure progress?
Guest:I'm not saying there is no progress, you know, but it's like, how do we measure it?
Guest:You know, like, OK, is Obama progress?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:No.
Guest:How, you know, is the Civil Rights Act progress?
Guest:You know, all this kind of stuff.
Guest:For me, it's just it's fun to play with.
Marc:And when something happens like what's happening now in our culture, how does that zap your brain?
Guest:So what's now?
Guest:What's this what?
Marc:That we shift the shift from Obama to a reaction like Trump.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, these shifts happen.
Guest:I mean, there's a reason that the shift went from Obama to Trump and not...
Guest:You know, Obama to Paul Ryan or Obama to Kucinich.
Guest:You know, there's a reason why they picked this guy.
Guest:And what those reasons are exactly, I don't really know.
Guest:You don't have my ideas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these things happen.
Guest:Again, back to Germany.
Guest:Like this thing of...
Guest:people feeling censored, even though they aren't fucking censored, but they feel censored.
Guest:Somebody's telling them that they're censored.
Guest:And we were talking earlier about like, you know, the, when do you have the, the lattice work for totalitarian state, you know?
Guest:And, and I think, you know, we're so used, but these things break down, you know, Hitler was fucking elected.
Guest:They elected that fucker twice.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's about this breakdown of like how these things break down.
Guest:And that's the stuff that really gets scary for me.
Guest:Because you adapt so easily to losing things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:People, your rights, your accessibility.
Guest:I mean, you adapt.
Marc:What do you think that's from?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's from a lot of stuff.
Guest:I think a lot of it is... It's hard to acknowledge things that...
Guest:If you want to change, you're actually going to have to change your behavior.
Guest:You're actually going to have to shift your life around and make some real sacrifices.
Guest:And it's so hard for people to notice this stuff.
Guest:You have a kind of kinetic energy in your life.
Guest:You don't want to disrupt that flow.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's hard to admit that these people fucking hate me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and especially people that you've been around for so long.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And this person who was your neighbor, all of a sudden you're this person's worst enemy.
Guest:I remember when talking to a friend about OJ being acquitted.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she was talking to somebody, a woman who was a lawyer.
Guest:And she was so angry, you know, this miscarriage of justice.
Yeah.
Guest:And she went, yeah, I got to rethink my stance on affirmative action on all this kind of shit.
Guest:And I went, what does that fucking have to do with O.J.
Guest:getting off?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it's this way of associating African-American is this country whose country is it in the way that good people become bad.
Guest:Also, you know, my wife tells a story about, you know, her step grandfather grew up in Hamburg, you know, in the early 30s.
Guest:And they had this teacher, you know, this beautiful guy who all the students liked.
Guest:And they would ask him, oh, so what about Hitler?
Guest:And he'd be like, ah, don't worry about that.
Guest:There's, you know, nothing to worry about.
Guest:You know, they can't do any of this stuff.
Guest:None of it makes sense.
Guest:You know, but then one day he came in and he went, class, there's a fresh wind blowing.
Guest:You know, like at some point the rhetoric got to him.
Guest:There was something in him that, you know, and, you know, my wife's grandfather's Jewish and he has to rethink about, fuck, you know,
Guest:He doesn't even see me.
Guest:He doesn't, you know, you just.
Guest:Right.
Guest:These things happen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, these things happen.
Guest:It's not like being you press a button and then everybody's a fucking fascist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, these things click.
Guest:And some of it's fear.
Guest:I mean, it clicks for a ton of reasons.
Guest:You know, it's like I just want to be on the winning side, you know.
Guest:Right.
Sure.
Guest:Clicks for a ton of reasons.
Guest:And for me, like, there's an interesting thing about, like, who's the sellout?
Guest:Like, you know, what's the sellout?
Guest:Right.
Guest:You know, and that notion is in any kind of thing, you know?
Guest:And a friend of mine gave me a book.
Guest:It's called The Directory of Uncle Tom.
Guest:It's a fucking beautiful book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really well-researched.
Guest:When was that about?
Guest:Oh, God, that book must be from the mid-'90s, I think.
Guest:Maybe a little bit later.
Guest:Who wrote it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I don't think anybody's name is on it.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And it's such a good book.
Guest:So you name anybody, Urkel, any black person who's ever done anything in life, they're in that book.
Guest:Because at some level, this is where this person is sold.
Guest:It's just like whose sensibility, like whose sense of what blackness is are we talking about?
Guest:I love that book.
Guest:It's really funny.
Guest:It's really well-researched, too.
Guest:It's a really good book.
Guest:But for me, it's like these things aren't just tied in being black.
Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So like we were talking about the guy doesn't have a name.
Guest:And so I had this line that I liked in my head.
Guest:It was like, you know, all the Supreme Court, you know, Roe versus Wade, you know, Gore versus the United States of America, whatever these cases are.
Guest:And I had a funny thing about, oh, me versus the United States of America.
Guest:That's kind of funny.
Guest:So I have to come up with a way of, well, how do I justify this non-existent surname?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, so I go, yeah, they were the me's.
Guest:And then I use all these things.
Guest:But these examples for me, which are really interesting about mostly these Jewish guys changing their names and doing all this kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And all these comedians, all these people who I really admire.
Guest:But that process is so familiar to a ton of people.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Changing your name.
Guest:Changing your name.
Guest:To be more appealing and less identifiable.
Guest:To be more appealing.
Guest:Is that a sellout?
Guest:Is that, you know, like, what are we talking about here?
Guest:And so, that's one of my favorite parts in the book, actually, you know?
Guest:But it's like, who are his exemplars for these behaviors aren't always necessarily black, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just from all over the place.
Right.
Marc:What are your biggest comedic influences?
Marc:That's a good question.
Marc:But I mean, the anthology, I don't have it, but when you put together an anthology of black humor, it seemed like a very, at least diverse within the forms.
Guest:Yeah, well, I think Malcolm X is hilarious.
Guest:So I put in all this kind of stuff, you know, from Malcolm X. On purpose?
Guest:Yeah, absolutely on purpose, you know, because I just think he's fucking funny.
Guest:And, you know, in addition to being a ton of other things, he's just also funny.
Guest:And so there's a ton of my comedic influences.
Guest:My family's pretty funny.
Guest:Richard Pryor, of course.
Marc:you know yeah yeah sitting around listening to all those albums franklin ajai oh yeah carl reiner you know like when you sat down and listened to two thousand year old man yeah of course all that kind of stuff you know well because people like i see in like some of the the the press on the book that they they they they want to keep comparing it to stand up and as a stand up yeah i mean i i it's this goes far beyond the capability of stand up i i don't know if i agree with you there to be honest you know like you know i i can't believe that's a nice thing to say
Marc:i think no no i mean that that you have you know because of your you know all stand-ups use words and some stand-ups have great bits and some of those bits you know transcend time and are with us forever sure but in terms of of nuance uh that can you know keep pushing i'm just saying you it's a lot of writing yeah yeah yeah yeah no that part is different you're not doing bits yeah that but i think you are doing some bits yeah
Guest:No, but I mean, you know, if I think of, like, comedy that's moved me and has stayed with me, it's not about the volume.
Guest:Of course not.
Guest:You know, it's about the... The punch.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:What are some of those?
Guest:So, this is the thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, like...
Guest:You know, this concept of blackface.
Guest:Blackface is bad.
Guest:Blah, blah, blah.
Guest:You know, you don't do it.
Guest:You don't do this thing.
Marc:Yeah, there's some blackface in the book.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Because, I mean, there's a ton of legacies.
Guest:There's this Hollywood legacy, this whole thing.
Guest:So it has to be in there.
Guest:So, you know, and I remember...
Guest:You must know this.
Guest:Maybe you don't.
Guest:But do you remember this old Saturday Night Live skit where Billy Crystal plays this Negro League baseball player?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's in the blackest of fucking blackface.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's talking about smelt night and talking about... It's so fucking funny.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's one of those things where, I guess, is it racist, is it not?
Guest:I don't fucking know, but it is funny.
Guest:And I remember talking to my friend Daryl about this a lot.
Guest:And I'm like, well, how did he get away with this?
Guest:And, you know, somebody else does it and, you know, they don't get away with it.
Guest:And my friend Daryl goes, you know why?
Guest:For whatever it is, is he cared about this.
Guest:Like, there was a genuine something there.
Guest:And he was invested in a real personal way.
Guest:And you can maybe argue that with...
Guest:You know, Al Jolson maybe.
Guest:You could argue that.
Guest:But it's different.
Guest:It's different.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, two different time periods and this whole thing.
Guest:Yeah, I think everyone always has these rules.
Guest:It's this is bad.
Guest:This is not bad.
Guest:This is when you can laugh, when you can't laugh.
Guest:All this kind of shit.
Guest:And I mean, I laugh at the wrong time all the time.
Marc:Well, yeah, but that's sort of the beauty of comedy.
Marc:I mean, it's like, is it the wrong time?
Marc:Why is somebody laughing?
Marc:Those are personal questions sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And I think in terms of whatever Billy Crystal was doing and whatever Al Jolson was doing was that there was a tradition that had become inappropriate at some point.
Marc:But I don't think that if you were to ask Billy about that guy, he would say it was a blackface character.
Marc:He might not.
Guest:I don't know what the hell he was.
Marc:I don't know that he was doing minstrelsy per se.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, at some point, you know, if you put any of that black on your face, then you are identifying with the legacy.
Guest:But it's the thing of like how these words are tied.
Guest:Like, so do you remember Sarah Palin being on Saturday Night Live?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, this is just she's a coon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's the same fucking thing being forced to laugh at yourself when you really don't want to laugh.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But, you know, yeah.
Guest:And but that's your way of ingratiating yourself with your potential electorate or whatever she's doing, you know, just these weird ways, you know.
Guest:And so for me, I see these behaviors all the time in different capacities, you know, not so much always tied to race.
Guest:You know, as you said, there's different traditions or different legacies, you know, but the behavior is it crosses all that kind of stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you do that in the book all over the place.
Guest:I hope so.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the thing is that you have all these different threads of thought and identity and entertainment that you turn in on themselves by having these weird behaviors of these white girls and stuff putting on black faces, being part of this audience.
Marc:There's so much in the book, I can't remember bits and pieces.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Neither can I. I mean, like, it's pretty fascinating, the fury of pace and imagery that you get in these things.
Marc:I mean, when you say you took five years to do it, like, I can't even go through all the different tiers of, I mean, Christ, there's enough about farming fruit in there to, you know, write a whole other piece on.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, at some point, you nerded out about farming.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's growing up from, you know, it starts from these little stupid things growing up in California, you know, having a lemon tree in the backyard, you know?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It just grew out of that.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:You know, absolutely.
Marc:Well, you know, what was brought to mind was that, you know, in talking about, there was something interesting that Spike Lee did with the movie Bamboozled.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That I can't ever get out of my head was to bring...
Marc:contemporary uh uh sort of focused production values to uh you know minstrel show yeah and and to put it on in that you know with that spectacle yeah was sort of fucking mind-blowing yeah you know i love the idea of that movie god i'm usually not so critical in public of yeah but i love the idea of that movie but the problem was is that the minstrel show wasn't fucking funny uh-huh
Guest:So for me, it just debased the whole thing of this thing blowing up because I was like, I love this idea.
Guest:But the thing is, how do you really give that show some punch?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like some contemporary punch that would really make it work in that context.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I couldn't buy the movie because the minstrelsy stuff wasn't funny.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was just kind of.
Marc:It was it was actually it seemed like it was actually from the era.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:And that was probably the point he was trying to make.
Marc:It was probably a discussion, but I know what you're saying, that it would have been more powerful a movie if he had made it more contemporary.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Marc:I mean, you do that with these missing episodes of The Little Rascals.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, don't talk.
Guest:You're going to be in trouble.
Guest:But it's like, no, no, no, no, I'm teasing.
Guest:But yeah, that was the fun stuff of like, how do you take this really patently racist show and make it even fucking more racist?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:you know yeah and then like so people come up to me it's like are these real episodes you know this this whole you know but i had so much fun like really trying to amp that stuff up isn't that though that in itself is sort of a scary proposition that that people don't have the facility to understand something as broad as that yeah yeah and they're like was that was that based on truth yeah really yeah no but that you know sometimes it depends again like who asked those questions you know like where are they coming from and
Guest:I had a friend of mine who thought Al Jolson was black.
Guest:This is a very smart guy.
Guest:It's just like, whoa.
Guest:But it's like, where do you look?
Guest:It's so contextual all the time.
Guest:I think that's a big thing about how contextual all this shit is.
Marc:Everybody's got those weird blind sides that are surprising.
Guest:And so, Little Rascals, this is Boston.
Guest:Me and my friends, Kevin, would go to Beacon because Beacon would do these revival things.
Guest:The Beacon Theater?
Guest:No.
Guest:Where was it?
Guest:What are you talking about?
Guest:It might have been in Brookline or Coolidge Corner.
Guest:The Coolidge Corner Theater, yeah.
Guest:And they would do these things.
Guest:And I remember going, you'd be in these all-white things in fucking Boston, no less.
Guest:And they'd watch these the old Little Rascals episodes, you know, which are Little Rascals, Three Stooges, but the uncensored versions that we never saw.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Stymie, like over a hot pot, sweating and then wiping his brow and flinging a black splotch on a white wall, you know, in just all this stuff in the crowd laughing and all this kind of shit.
Guest:And it's just stuff that really has stayed with me, obviously, for a long, long time.
Guest:Because you're talking about how do we figure this out?
Guest:Why are they laughing?
Guest:Why are they laughing?
Guest:Why am I laughing?
Guest:Why am I not laughing?
Guest:All this kind of stuff.
Guest:What's really going on here?
Guest:Not really going on, but what's going on a little bit.
Guest:And just stuff really stayed with me.
Marc:Do you get any rest from your brain?
Guest:Do I get any rest?
Guest:Yeah, I think so.
Guest:I watch television.
Guest:I read.
Yeah.
Marc:So when you say this took you five years, why the stopping and starting?
Guest:It wasn't stopping and starting.
Guest:I'm just really slow.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm really slow.
Guest:Meticulous?
Guest:Yeah, a little bit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:I mean, the stuff's very important to me.
Guest:In terms of getting the words right?
Guest:Yeah, just in terms of getting the words right.
Guest:Because it's all the language, man.
Guest:That's the stuff that brings me joy is hopefully that the book's written well.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And all the crap.
Guest:And it takes me a long, long, long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And what is your question about what satire is?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know, man.
Guest:It's just, it's these words that people hide behind it.
Guest:Cause you get to say, Oh, something satirical and you don't have to, what does that mean?
Guest:You know, like what are we satirizing?
Guest:Am I being satirized?
Guest:You know, it's a good thing of YouTube.
Guest:It's a good deflecting word.
Guest:Like this has nothing to do with me.
Guest:I have no culpability.
Guest:Like I am out of this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's a, it's a word, but it's much, much more than that.
Guest:You know, it's, um,
Guest:you know i think about all this stuff i gotta teach this satire class oh yeah yeah anyway and i called it like too soon or not soon enough you know because like this idea of like when are things funny you know we're talking about this lubich movie you know to be or not to be yeah which is a fucking brilliant movie that of course was too close the nazi yeah yeah you know not american enough and all these other kind of things and uh
Guest:But it's a fucking classic.
Marc:And how do they react?
Marc:How do you deal with it?
Marc:What are you thinking of the younger kids?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, I mean, they're all so fucking smart.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so it's interesting to see, you know, the sense of right and wrong blur about, like, what they can do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They're so uncomfortable because...
Guest:You know, they get told, you're not, you can't use this language.
Guest:You can't do this.
Guest:You can't do that.
Guest:And just to just see, you know, especially they read Portnoy's Complaint.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And a lot of them hadn't read it, which is, you know, I mean, it's such a seminal book for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I'm like, oh, yeah, you can do this.
Guest:I know you could do this.
Guest:Good.
Guest:You know.
Guest:And.
Guest:And a lot of them were like, how do you do this as a woman?
Guest:How come women don't write like this?
Guest:Which is not true that women do or don't like that.
Guest:But it's interesting.
Guest:They just get these narrow things about what writing is, about what these things are.
Guest:And so for me, I'm just trying to give them stuff of people doing the unexpected.
Marc:Yeah, push it.
Marc:Do whatever you feel like doing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Put it out there.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:So, what has been the sort of black academic reaction to the book?
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I think... Good, I hope.
Guest:You know, I don't read a ton of the reviews.
Guest:You don't?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I kind of read them at the beginning, and then every now and then somebody will put, especially my wife will be like, you have to read this one, you have to read this one.
Guest:So, I read some.
Guest:I can't say I don't read any of them, but I think...
Marc:good as far as i can tell you know i mean i think um it was provocative i mean if they're writing about it you know the best you can hope from a critical essay is that you take a couple of hits but at least they see something maybe you didn't even anticipate yeah you know i just try to do some shit that only i can do you know and uh
Guest:Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do, really.
Guest:And I think I'm not the only weirdo out there.
Guest:I'm not the only person who feels some type of way.
Guest:So I have a thing.
Guest:It's not about necessarily black, but it's about when people pander.
Guest:So I just try not to pander.
Marc:Yeah, I understand that one.
Guest:Yeah, absolutely.
Guest:And try not to pander my own way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had a student once came up to me and she was, you know, she identified with the LGBT community.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She was like, you know, I want to ridicule all this kind of stuff and satirize all this kind of stuff.
Guest:But I'm so afraid, you know, because we've worked so hard to create what little space we have.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't want to make fun of it.
Guest:And I was like, yeah, you know, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but everything that you add.
Yeah.
Guest:whether it's accepted rejected whatever that adds to that space you know right that adds interesting yeah yeah and uh i'm just trying to because i'm really not trying to add to anybody else's space i'm just trying to you know sure get my own i think that's an interesting point you know
Marc:That, you know, that anything that provokes whatever, you know, dogmatic or structural limitations of a space that is presented as dire or a need to be maintained to guarantee that space.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If you push on it, sometimes that space gets a little sense of humor.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:A little reflection.
Guest:Yeah, a little reflection.
Guest:Absolutely.
Marc:Now, does something like this become interesting to a movie person?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I guess there's been some interest in it.
Guest:Like, I actually sold the rights, and I'm trying to... And for the first time, I've actually agreed to do the screenplay.
Guest:Like, I've always said I'm not going to do the screenplay.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:So... How do you do that?
Guest:Because that's... I have no idea, Mark.
Guest:I've started on it.
Guest:I have no idea.
Marc:It's because, like, if you look at, like, Catch-22.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Like, you know, which is pretty disjointed, but pretty stunning.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You mean the film?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just you have Garfunkel's fro.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And Alan Arkin being crazy.
Yeah.
Marc:But yeah, but like that movie, when you read that book, it's like you can never imagine the breadth of that, you know, being a film.
Marc:And then you see this film and it's a very surreal experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's a disjointed but beautiful experience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I think that's, it's like translating stuff, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's, you know, so I think you always lose something, you know, book the film.
Guest:Sometimes, you know, film the book, you lose something, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think that just goes with it.
Guest:So I'm just going to try to have fun with it and try not to rewrite the book as a movie.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Try to make it different in a weird way.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And so that's my challenge.
Guest:So I don't know what will happen.
Guest:We'll see, man.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you, man.
Guest:Same, Mark, man.
Guest:Pleasure, man.
Marc:Smart guy.
Marc:Great writer.
Marc:The Sellout's an amazing book.
Marc:I'm glad he stopped by.
Marc:It was nice to talk to him.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for the upcoming tour dates.
Marc:I'll see you tomorrow night.
Marc:Austin, Texas.
Marc:Please don't scream for me to save John for something.
Marc:He's got a... I don't know where he's at.
Marc:But come see me.
Marc:It's been good.
Marc:It's been funny.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Let's see if I can play some music here.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives.