Episode 803 - Baron Vaughn / Moshe Kasher
Guest:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck, buddies?
Marc:What the fuckineers?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I'm Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my podcast, WTF Welcome.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:Everything okay?
Marc:Did you get through the weekend?
Marc:How was your Easter?
Marc:Did you do candy?
Marc:Did you do eggs?
Marc:Did you do Pesach?
Marc:How was your Pesach?
Marc:Is everybody alright?
Marc:For those of you who are...
Marc:Actual believers, for those of you who are half believers, for those of you who are just hanging on to the cultural traditions of whatever religion you may have practiced or cling to, kinda, as you get older, for family reasons and for the children.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:Baron Vaughn is here.
Marc:Baron Vaughn is a comedian and also he is featured on the new show, Grace and Frankie.
Marc:Moshe Kasher stopped by.
Marc:He's been on the show before.
Marc:He's got a new series coming out, Problematic with Moshe Kasher.
Marc:That premieres Tuesday, April 18th on the Comedy Central.
Marc:Those are the guests today.
Marc:On my last show, Buster Kitten had pushed a screen out and gotten out.
Marc:And it was upsetting.
Marc:I like that guy.
Marc:I like Buster.
Marc:I've been through a lot of cats and a lot of cat issues.
Marc:But I was starting to like him.
Marc:He's a crazy little fuck.
Marc:He's a little demon.
Marc:I actually assumed because of the timing that he showed up.
Marc:And also just because of his very nature that there was a good chance that he was an actual demon.
Marc:I'm not convinced that he isn't.
Marc:But nonetheless, he got out.
Marc:I went outside and I called and called.
Marc:And then he was under the deck and took a little cajoling.
Marc:But I got him.
Marc:I grabbed him and I brought him in.
Marc:Now, here's the part of the story that I didn't want to tell you.
Marc:because i felt like an idiot so i i thought i nailed the screen in properly and the next day i took a nap and then i went out back and i noticed that the entire window was off and i was like you got to be fucking kidding me and then i walked around front and i knew buster was out but then i saw monkey bolt under the fence i'm like what are you fucking serious the old guy's out too
Marc:So then I went around back and Monkey came around back.
Marc:I'm like, what are you doing?
Marc:Come in the house.
Marc:And he was like, no.
Marc:And he went in the house, which was rare, but he came right back in.
Marc:But no buster.
Marc:And this time I thought, well, that's it.
Marc:I mean, that's it.
Marc:He wants to live outside.
Marc:Then I guess he'll be an indoor outdoor cat.
Marc:I don't know if he's coming back.
Marc:He came from the outside.
Marc:Maybe he's returning to the outside, sort of like throwing a fish back.
Marc:But I didn't really want to accept that.
Marc:But you just don't know what cat's.
Marc:So for the whole day, I was like, well, fuck him, fuck it.
Marc:And I know some cat purists and some big hearted cat people are going to be like, well, you asshole, you should have secured the screen.
Marc:Well, I thought I did.
Marc:And it's not easy for me to admit this.
Marc:In the middle of a fearing nuclear holocaust, I got to worry about Buster the Cat and also go out and do comedy and balance a lot of things in life.
Marc:Two, I guess, two main things this weekend was the missing cat and the terror of nuclear war.
Marc:And, you know, they kind of were up and down in taking up importance in my brain.
Marc:So.
Marc:A whole night goes by and then a day and nothing.
Marc:Then I drove up the driveway and Sarah and I in the car.
Marc:We thought we saw him.
Marc:We kind of did.
Marc:And then we ran out and then we called for him.
Marc:We heard him meow.
Marc:So we knew he was still alive.
Marc:So I put some food out and then I went and did comedy.
Marc:And then this morning, which would be Sunday morning, I get up, I go call him.
Marc:I was sitting outside last night, you know, trying to shaking mice, throwing things, doing everything, putting food out.
Marc:by myself in the driveway there and this morning i go out and i call him and i hear him he's got a very weird almost you know high-pitched uh meow and then i'm like where are you what's happening and then nothing i don't hear him i look around i call and i go in the house and i come out back and there he is just standing there i walk out i'm like come on let's go and he runs off and i'm like well fuck all right this is how this is gonna go and then i step outside i'm going buster buster what the hell come on man
Marc:with that tone i try not to get angry and then he just runs by me and goes under the house so now i know he's under the house but i don't know if i'm gonna get him in the house there's nothing you can do with cats this patience and and hope and i'm sitting there and i'm calling him and i'm shaking mice and i'm putting food out i'm on the ground and uh nothing and then right when i'm about to give up at least you know i i'm look i'm glad i knew where he was but uh
Marc:But I was like, all right, well, this is just, at least he's around and I'll just feed him out here.
Marc:Right at the point of giving up, he just walks out from under the house, covered in spider webs, and he comes up to me and just, I pet him and I go, you're done?
Marc:Is Rum Slinger over?
Marc:Are we good?
Marc:Are you a grownup now or what's happening?
Marc:And he rolled over on his back and I pet him and I took him in the house.
Marc:And that's the Buster saga.
Marc:So I was hoping that I would have a closure like this because if I just came back with the he got out again because I'm an idiot who didn't fix the fucking screen right, I would have been embarrassed.
Marc:I would have been embarrassed.
Marc:But he's in the house for now.
Marc:Oh, the other thing I want to share with you that I thought was interesting and exciting and kind of wild is I don't know how regular a listener you are.
Marc:But when Jeff Ross was on the 800th show, he talked about his family's catering business in New Jersey, you know, for years and years since the 40s or whatever.
Marc:It was a place called Clinton Manor that his family had been in the catering business for decades in New Jersey.
Marc:And so the other day, like Friday or Saturday, I get a text from my mother.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:Listen to Jeff Ross interview.
Marc:Great.
Marc:Do you know I was married at the Clinton Manor?
Marc:Guess his family was Decatur.
Marc:It's funny, huh?
Marc:Mom.
Marc:My parents were married at Clinton Manor, which means I called Jeff immediately.
Marc:He's like, no fucking way.
Marc:He said, my Uncle Murray probably made the fruit salad.
Marc:The Murray that we talked about with the Mel Brooks story probably made the fruit salad for my parents' wedding.
Marc:So now I'm trying to get hold of my parents' wedding album so Jeff can sort of reminisce about the place that he grew up in, working, and his family was involved with.
Marc:The only problem is that my parents are no longer together and the wedding album seems to be missing.
Marc:I think my brother has it.
Marc:Somebody has to have it.
Marc:Big black and white pictures of my dad kissing my mom pre-nose job at the Clinton Manor.
Marc:And Jeff's like, maybe my grandparents are somewhere in the background.
Marc:My Uncle Murray's somewhere.
Marc:I'm going to try to find it.
Marc:I thought that was an odd coincidence.
Marc:But not so odd.
Marc:New Jersey's New Jersey.
Marc:So Moshe Kasher, I've had him on the show before.
Marc:I tend to be antagonistic with him, but for no real reason.
Marc:I think I project onto poor Moshe, but he's a bright guy, funny guy, and he's got this new series, Problematic with Moshe Kasher.
Marc:As I said, premieres April 18th on Comedy Central.
Marc:This is me and Moshe having a little chat.
Marc:First of all, Moshe Kasher, I have not seen you in years, and I believe you, are you still married?
Marc:You got married?
Marc:Yeah, I'm still married.
Marc:Still married.
Marc:That's holding up to Natasha.
Marc:It's not going well.
Guest:We're having deep problems.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:No, we're good.
Guest:I mean, sorry, that would have been a better interview.
Marc:No, no, but I mean, maybe minor problems?
Guest:No.
Marc:I mean, you're both comedians.
Marc:I did that once.
Marc:How long have you been married?
Marc:About a year, a year and a half.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, let's see how you go at three.
Marc:More to come.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, no, I love her.
Marc:I love you.
Marc:I know you're touring together, which that's got to be great, huh?
Marc:Wait, it feels sarcastic when you say it like that.
Marc:Wait, you're...
Guest:It was completely sarcastic.
Guest:It is great.
Guest:The road is so lonely.
Guest:I know.
Guest:And so if you take away the loneliness and substitute it with your lover, I mean, it's great.
Marc:Well, I mean, that seems to be the good side of it.
Marc:So you're saying there's no downsides to touring with your wife on a double bill?
Marc:I don't see what the issue is.
Marc:What, a bruised ego?
Guest:When people are there to see her?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, no.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Let's talk it out.
Guest:I don't feel that way.
Guest:You don't?
Guest:No, because I never felt in competition.
Guest:I've never understood people that feel in competition with their female comedian partner because it's like, we're not going for the same roles.
Guest:Well, you're kind of girly.
Guest:I mean, sometimes.
Guest:But wait, that actually reminds me of a story that does relate to you.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:uh because i remember speaking of the comics ego and jealousy okay i heard about a uh i heard about casting for glow and it was for a woman like obviously because you're the only aren't you like the only man yeah pretty much it had nothing to do there's one other guy it was a woman that had been cast as a wrestler and i got and i felt a pang of jealousy
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I was like, that role is not available to me.
Guest:The woman's wrestling.
Marc:Well, you know, they always do that thing where it's like, hey, they don't know what they're looking for.
Marc:Yeah, just go in for it.
Marc:But it's like the guy's supposed to be 90.
Marc:Yeah, it's an African-American.
Marc:Yeah, but they don't know.
Marc:It's one of those parts can go either way, which I guess is true sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, I once got a role that was, they were trying to go diverse and then they decided to go with me instead.
Guest:That was a nice feeling to finally crush the person of color beneath my feet.
Marc:Oh, do you know it was a person of color?
Guest:No, I just know that they were like, they want to go diverse and then they were like, it turns out it was you that they wanted.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So what have you been doing for the last couple of years?
Marc:I know that you, like, it was weird because you're one of those guys where I'm like,
Marc:What's he going to do in show business?
Marc:That's a nice thing to say.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I always wanted that about you too, Mark.
Marc:I was like, where's this going?
Marc:Believe me, we're not the only one.
Marc:That was my question for 25 years.
Marc:I didn't think it would be in the garage.
Marc:No, but because like, were you going to be like, were you going to do a sitcom or were you like in standup when you get into it, you're either going to find something to host or something to star in or you're going to write.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, that's it.
Marc:So like, you know, when I started hearing that you were doing more hosting stuff and then this thing evolved, I was very happy that you found your path.
Guest:Well, thanks, man.
Guest:Yeah, I feel really good about this.
Guest:I feel like I'm, I remember there was an announcement for a show that was a show about like internet comments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Some like, you know, some new show that was coming out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And speaking of jealousy, I didn't feel jealousy.
Guest:I felt like,
Guest:oh, I don't think I would want to do that show.
Guest:I don't think I would take that job.
Guest:I feel like that's a big marker of evolution in a comics career.
Marc:Saying no is a great marker of evolution in anybody.
Marc:Like knowing that you're like, no, that's not for me.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:I mean, I didn't say no.
Marc:They didn't offer it to me.
Guest:Maybe I would have subjugated that feeling immediately.
Guest:This would be a different conversation had they offered it to me, those fuckers.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I would be on here going, dude, here's the thing.
Guest:Internet comments are wacky.
Guest:And I'm here to talk about that wackiness.
Guest:I mean, I remember once I got offered an audition.
Guest:It was for a show that was described as it's like Tosh.0.
Guest:But instead of funny videos, you're commenting on footage of people playing the video game Halo.
Guest:that's it's pretty specific yeah and like i don't even know what that is it's like tosh.o except they took away the fun part and it's just you commenting on stuff well it's just halo audience it's it's all that's pretty much it's a pretty niche audience but maybe everybody plays that except for me and i wanted it i wanted the job i remember i went in and i got called back in the casting the producer called me and he goes okay you're you're really close you know
Guest:It's down to you and a couple other people.
Guest:But we want you to be just a little cooler.
Guest:Just be a little cooler.
Guest:And I'm thinking like... Don't be all intense and slightly aggressively neurotic.
Guest:I'm thinking to myself, I'm the coolest dude.
Guest:I'm the coolest dude around.
Guest:I mean, I'm so cool.
Guest:What kind of cool are you talking about?
Marc:Look at my pants.
Guest:And he literally said, you know, cool, kind of like a Greg Kinnear character.
Guest:You know, Greg Kinnear cool.
Marc:The classic.
Marc:Dickish and detached.
Marc:King of cool Greg Kinnear.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, I think he's maybe referring to like a cool character, not like hip cool.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:But it was just a funny thing that I was like, oh, I can be Greg Kinnear.
Guest:You need Greg Kinnear?
Guest:I've been described as a young Greg Kinnear.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that was interesting, though, because in the talk zone, in the talk format, like he was he very early on.
Marc:You know, it seemed like this cookie cutter kind of guy.
Marc:But a lot of dudes who, like my friends, took a shine to him.
Marc:They liked him because he was... You couldn't read him.
Marc:He was snarky and seemingly seething under this exterior that was... That seemed pretty, you know...
Marc:mainstream, middle of the road.
Marc:So he really became this kind of weird force because, I guess it's cool, but it was more like this snarky detachment.
Marc:Did he have a talk show?
Marc:Yeah, dude, that's how he started.
Marc:I didn't know that.
Marc:That's why they were referring to it.
Marc:He hosted later, and then I don't know which came first.
Marc:TalkSoup was, I guess that sort of made him a star.
Marc:But he started in that slot that was like after Letterman.
Guest:Yeah, well, anyway, my show is called Looking Back on Greg Kinnear.
Guest:It's an hour-long talk show where we just talk Greg Kinnear.
Guest:That's great.
Guest:Not too specific.
Guest:Everybody will enjoy it.
Guest:No, it'll be cool.
Guest:Talking Greg.
Guest:It's on AMC.
Guest:It's called Talking Greg, and it's after Talking Dead.
Guest:Great.
Guest:And we just talk Greg Kinnear.
Guest:Yeah, and then when you run out, you can talk Greg Proops.
Guest:Yep, Greg can talk Greg, and then we'll have Greg Barrett.
Guest:And Greg Kin.
Guest:Oh, great.
Guest:He'll bring the guitar.
Guest:Just close with him.
Guest:Wait on that.
Guest:Actually, he's not doing well.
Guest:Apparently, his life is in jeopardy.
Guest:Mark, it's been great being here.
Guest:Thank you so much for having me.
Marc:And that's the kind of wit you're going to see on the new show.
Marc:What's it called?
Guest:It's called Problematic.
Guest:And it's talk, but it's a little bit more substantive.
Guest:What we're actually trying to do is somehow recreate daytime talk, but in a Comedy Central.
Marc:Break it down for me.
Marc:What are the segments?
Marc:What is the structure of the show?
Guest:Pitch it.
Guest:Okay, so the top is a conversation with an expert.
Guest:Last week we talked cultural appropriation with Kenya Barris, the creator of Black-ish.
Guest:And then the second... Back up.
Guest:Yes, sir.
Marc:I'm sure I understand what you're saying, but I'd like to know the definition of cultural appropriation, please.
Guest:Okay, so the literal definition of cultural appropriation is... What you used to do on stage?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Got it.
Guest:That's a literal definition is what Moshe used to do on stage.
Guest:You got to know a lot about me to get it.
Guest:Moshe was basically a disgruntled white rapper.
Marc:I was happy and everything was good and I was happy to open for you and...
Marc:Were you though?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Maybe it's just because you were so intense that I mistake that for unhappy.
Guest:Well, you're such a mellow guy.
Guest:When you see someone intense, you're like, what is this?
Guest:No, I'm very intense.
Marc:And when I see someone more intense than me, I'm like, that guy's got problems.
Marc:I did have problems.
Marc:I'm feeling really good.
Marc:No, you look seem good.
Marc:So, oh, so that's it.
Marc:Literally cultural appropriation is, it goes either way.
Guest:It's the idea that like, yes, white people borrowing, you know, but it's specifically white people.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I would say that actually the theme of the episode that was interesting was that really what it comes down to is, and most people roll their eyes at a lot of white people.
Guest:Roll their eyes at the cultural appropriation conversation.
Guest:Me included.
Guest:Big time.
Guest:I've had a real difficult time with it.
Guest:Where does it go?
Guest:Why?
Guest:Because it's absurd.
Guest:It's absurdist areas are absurd, right?
Guest:So when you go like, you shouldn't dress like another culture.
Guest:You go, well, everybody's wearing jeans.
Guest:So that's totally insane.
Guest:And we're not all minors.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:Should Japan, who is now the center of the denim-creating world, is that inappropriate?
Marc:Yeah, I get that.
Marc:You say yes?
Marc:No, no, I say that that one's a little broad.
Guest:The issue is, I think that it becomes painful for people when there's the white power dynamic involved.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so that was really the theme of the night.
Guest:It becomes painful when Nazis are rapping people.
Guest:What I'm saying is basically, you know, like the automatic thing you can do is you can go, oh, well, what about that?
Guest:This is actually the theme of the outro monologue.
Guest:It's like you see a black dude in khakis and go, look, that's cultural appropriation too.
Guest:But there's a differential because of power.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And as I said, white power.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I never thought I'd get to say on TV.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So, you know, that was the theme of the.
Guest:Also called white privilege.
Guest:Are we separating?
Guest:I mean, I'm not separating at all.
Guest:That seems to be a semantic... Semitic.
Guest:It's a Semitic argument, which all arguments are Semitic when you think about it.
Guest:If they go on too long, yeah.
Guest:If you are a non-Jew and you argue for a long time, that's actually cultural appropriation.
Marc:You know, people who refuse to admit they're wrong, or no, it would be just sort of like vague arguing about bullshit, about food.
Marc:If you argue about food for too long, that's a Semitic argument.
Guest:I've heard about some people having allergies, and I'm like, that's ours.
Guest:That's our thing.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:That's actually inappropriate for you to have that.
Guest:I don't have allergies.
Marc:Or just being neurotic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Okay, so that seems like pretty heady shit, man.
Guest:It's heady shit.
Guest:And this week we're talking how the internet, speaking of heads, is how the internet is changing your brain.
Guest:We have Nick Carr coming on who wrote the book The Shallows, which is like a, basically a deconstruction of how information technology and social media is changing the way our brains function and operate.
Guest:i like this stuff yeah so i know that yeah every week's a different topic and basically this is where it's going to be on comedy central wow it sounds a little heady for comedy central i hear you i hear you that's the big risk huh that's the roll of the dice i haven't cashed out my 401k yet right uh no i think that comedy central like everybody else is realizing that people are thirsty for real conversation i mean you're a classic example yeah people
Guest:podcasting and you, I would say, as sort of maybe even the epicenter of it, is a prove out that people care about big conversations.
Guest:And I think TV is now going like, oh, we should catch up to that.
Marc:Well, no, I'm happy that you're doing that on a network that seems to, I don't really know what the audience is or what the identity of Comedy Central is, but if it is young people and you're having these conversations, it's provocative and hopefully it catches on.
Guest:Well, speaking of that first... Thank you, by the way.
Guest:And speaking of that first realization that I didn't want to do the internet comment show, it's like I would rather fall on my sword to do a show like this than be successful doing a show that made me want to die every day.
Marc:Yeah, no, I've done one of those.
Marc:Have you?
Marc:Yeah, but it didn't catch on.
Marc:I was lucky.
Marc:So, but how do you...
Marc:How do you keep it buoyed?
Marc:I mean, like, why not HBO?
Guest:You tried.
Guest:They didn't offer.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, no.
Guest:I mean, Comedy Central... I didn't try.
Guest:Comedy Central came to me and was like, we'd like to do a show with you.
Guest:What do you have in mind?
Guest:And me and this guy, Alex Blagg, who was one of the creators of At Midnight, were trying to...
Guest:we came up with this idea and it's connected loosely to my podcast where we have the hound tall discussion series yeah where we have an expert on we kind of riff over that person sort of like a ted talk meets mystery science theater right a panel of comics yeah uh do that so so we kind of wanted to find a an intellectual middle ground between at midnight and the daily show right the daily show being hyper political at midnight being hyper fun right something that would occupy the space in the middle and it might be
Guest:It might be teetering a little bit more towards the heady, but there is a lot of fun.
Guest:We've had a lot of fun and a lot of real silliness.
Guest:Like Ryan Singer can come on after a conversation about cybersecurity and how you have to have two-factor authentication.
Guest:He can talk about jerking off to a con artist in the Philippines, and we can all have a good time.
Marc:Yeah, you got to find that funny real stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so you set up, you have the conversation, then what's segment two?
Guest:So segment two has generally been some sort of prove out, right?
Guest:So like some sort of real time.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, like you go, you hit the streets or you find examples.
Guest:No, an in-studio thing.
Guest:Like, for example, we did one of our test shows that we are going to do for the real thing is that we did the dark web.
Guest:And we have an expert come and sort of deconstruct what the dark web is.
Guest:And then in Act 2, we actually put the Tor browser up on the screen and show the viewer at home how you can log on to the dark web.
Guest:The dark web is where all the black market business happens?
Guest:Yeah, but a lot more than that.
Guest:That's one of the interesting things about the dark web is that...
Guest:What is it exactly?
Guest:Well, everybody thinks about the dark web like it is the place where you go for child pornography.
Guest:It's sort of its alpha and its omega.
Guest:You go there to buy heroin or child pornography.
Guest:But it's way deeper than that.
Guest:All it really is is it is an anonymized browser called Tor.
Guest:which is a system.
Guest:It's basically like Google Chrome, except that no one can track you because your computer has an IP address that says, this is Mark Maron's place.
Guest:This is who's scrolling through all of this stuff.
Guest:Mark Maron is looking at boots.
Guest:We know he likes boots.
Guest:But it'd say you didn't want people to know your boot buying habits.
Guest:You would go to download the Tor browser and you would look for boots there.
Guest:But that's not that important to you, Mark.
Guest:You're not a criminal or you don't live in an oppressive regime.
Guest:So it's not for boots.
Guest:It's for bad things.
Guest:No, because suppose you lived in China.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:And all you want to do is get on Facebook and say the Chinese government has been repressing me.
Guest:Well, you would go to the Facebook browser, the dark web Facebook browser.
Guest:You would take Tor.
Guest:The interesting thing about Tor is that the way that it works is your IP address is hidden and you log on to a computer.
Guest:somewhere in some other country that a volunteer has set up, a server that some IP address far off in some other land has set up, which then pings to another IP address that another volunteer in another country has, ping, ping, ping, all around the world, so there's no way to find you.
Guest:So, yes, it is used for nefarious, fucked up things.
Guest:But also it's used for journalists to dump stories so that people can, like government officials in the Trump administration or the Obama administration can dump stories in the Tor browser so that journalists can find them.
Guest:It's good for whistleblowers, you're saying.
Guest:It's great for whistleblowers.
Guest:It's great for people that live in repressive regimes.
Guest:And it is great for people that want to buy heroin without leaving their house.
Guest:In bulk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In bulk with reviews.
Guest:There's reviews, Mark.
Guest:It's so funny.
Guest:It's really, it looks like Amazon.
Guest:It does?
Guest:It's straight up.
Guest:It says high quality China white heroin.
Guest:And then you go in and it's like yummy product.
Guest:The guy was real respectful, sent it to my house.
Guest:Good.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And that's, it's really funny because it's, everybody's anonymized, right?
Guest:So there's no way to verify that the drug dealer you're buying the drugs from is legit.
Guest:So the only thing that you can go on are reviews.
Guest:If this person has 100 reviews, then he'll stay in business with his heroin selling business.
Guest:So what ends up happening is you can buy really good drugs.
Guest:It's the best place to buy drugs in the world.
Guest:The problem is you have to have them shipped to your home address.
Guest:I don't know why somebody would do that.
Guest:Maybe the P.O.
Marc:boxes, that's a good time for a mailbox, etc.
Guest:The et cetera is heroin.
Exactly.
Marc:Well, that sounds pretty good.
Marc:So then you do that and then you close with a monologue?
Guest:Close with some sort of like final.
Guest:Oh, I forgot the most important part.
Guest:The panel.
Guest:There's a panel?
Guest:No, the third act is Phil Donahue style.
Guest:We're in the audience and people are asking questions on camera.
Guest:So anybody that wants to come to a taping can come and be on camera and ask a question and get in.
Guest:Of the guests or guests?
Guest:Yeah, of the guests and just about the topic in general.
Guest:So like when we did cultural appropriation, we invited a bunch of people.
Guest:We invited a local Native American community leader and he spoke about what cultural appropriation, how it affected Native communities.
Guest:And then we had this guy who has a taco stand in downtown LA called White Boy Tacos.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he talked about why white people sell tacos in Los Angeles of all places.
Guest:What's going on with, are you still doing the podcast with Brennan?
Guest:With Neil, no.
Guest:We stopped doing it about a year ago.
Guest:And I mean, look, this is going to sound very weird, but I really do think... I know that we started... I really feel like that podcast was important.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think that we started a lot of people's podcasts.
Guest:A lot of our old guests...
Guest:uh now have their own podcasts that are really successful and thriving yeah and i and i don't think it's not because of us well yeah well i mean well first of all i i'm glad you feel that way about yourself and your contribution sounds terrible no no it's nice but like almost everyone has a podcast no i know and this is going to get into some weird territory but like probably not
Guest:Our podcast was, as you know, it was me and Neil, two white guys interviewing black celebrities.
Guest:And when we started, it was years ago.
Guest:It was five years ago.
Guest:And a lot of the guests had never been on.
Guest:A lot of our guests had never been on or even really familiar with podcasting.
Guest:And at the other end of it, a lot of them were like, this is awesome.
Guest:We should start them.
Guest:And there's one of our own.
Guest:And a lot of the podcasts right now that are really popular and new and exciting are former guests.
Guest:Now, I don't know if we had anything.
Guest:No, it's nice.
Marc:No, of course.
Marc:Well, no, I mean, the fact that a lot of times people come and they're like, oh, I can do this.
Marc:Do you know what I mean?
Marc:Like there is a freedom to it and a simplicity to it.
Marc:And are you still doing the hound's tooth?
Guest:Is that what it is?
Guest:I'm doing, yeah, hound tall.
Guest:It's a bad name.
Guest:Hound what?
Guest:Hound tall.
Guest:Bad name.
Guest:I mean, I'm just going to, hound tall, like a tall dog, like a tall hound dog.
Guest:Yeah, I don't know what the fuck you were thinking with that name.
Guest:It's a bad nothing.
Guest:It's a spoonerism, which I found out.
Guest:A what?
Guest:It's spoonerism, which is like a word that, like hound tall town hall.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, I get it.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:I didn't even know that.
Guest:Remember earlier when it was obnoxious how proud I was of myself?
Guest:I'm the opposite of that when it comes to the name of this podcast.
Guest:But I actually asked the people, the listeners, like, should I change the name?
Guest:Should I just call it Moshe Cashier's Town Hall Series?
Guest:And they all said that we've come to love this terrible name.
Guest:All of them.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:The ones that contacted me.
Guest:Well, it's memorable.
Guest:Yeah, it's something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, I still do that one month and I love it.
Guest:It's monthly?
Guest:Yeah, it's monthly.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And that's why I started this show is because I did this monthly podcast where I was guaranteed to have, I'm sure you relate to this, guaranteed to have a good conversation at least once a month.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:quantum physicists on and I've had you know historians on and psychologists and intellectuals and it's just really fun for me to have that kind of conversation especially from my approach which is kind of like this sort of buffoon
Guest:Really?
Guest:You think you're a buffoon?
Guest:I think that the, it's like highbrow, lowbrow.
Marc:Well, you're coming to it with curiosity and no real knowledge of how to talk about it.
Marc:That's exactly right.
Marc:Yeah, I think that's just a person.
Guest:Yeah, I think you're a buffoon.
Guest:A curious person.
Guest:I guess this speaks to my relationship to humanity.
Marc:Yeah, I don't know.
Marc:Maybe, but I've had a few conversations in here and I like to do that occasionally.
Marc:where it's not about personal stuff, but it's really about, like I had Sam Quinones in here to talk about heroin.
Marc:He wrote that book, Dreamland.
Marc:He's a journalist, and it was spectacular.
Marc:I love those kinds of conversations.
Marc:Yeah, Reza Aslan came in and talked about faith and belief.
Guest:Reza did our show as well.
Guest:That was a really awesome episode.
Guest:It had this intersection of real comedy and real emotionality.
Guest:Yeah, he's good.
Guest:Yeah, he's great.
Marc:Yeah, he's got a good story about his life and real curiosity and scholarly approach to faith and belief and stuff.
Marc:I think conversations are vital right now.
Marc:Vital and evolving and require sensitivity and vulnerability and tolerance.
Marc:There's a tremendous lack of tolerance in a world where everyone has a platform to be a dick immediately.
Guest:Well, that's actually what, that's actually what the internet changing our brains conversation has come to is like, there is a reason that political discourse has gotten simultaneously so toxic and so shallow, right?
Guest:It's because we, what happens is because of the internet feeding us the information it knows we want in order to keep our brains and our eyes locked on our screens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's not going to give us stuff that'll make us push the computer screen away and say, I can't deal with it.
Guest:It slowly feeds you.
Marc:Or worse yet, or, uh, this is boring.
Marc:Oh yeah, exactly.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:And also you can respond immediately before the information you get is even processed.
Guest:There's no processing.
Guest:It gives you what you want and you're following after.
Guest:There's this very stark and dire quote, uh, that I saw recently, I heard recently, which is that if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.
Guest:Oh yeah, that's like, yeah, the product is you.
Guest:The product is you, and so when you're on Facebook and you don't pay for Facebook, understand you are not the customer.
Guest:The customer is the... It's like that joke I used to do.
Marc:Oh, what was it?
Marc:It was on my 95 HBO special.
Marc:It's not a tool, you're a tool.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:And it's got, I mean, imagine how much more stark it's gotten since 1995.
Guest:I know, I was the guy that said it was a fad.
Guest:Yeah, wow.
Guest:Oops.
Guest:W. Kimmel Bell was a guy that said that there'll never be a president named Barack Hussein Obama.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then look what happened.
Guest:Then look what happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then look what happened.
Guest:And then look what happened.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Which one is the anomaly?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, time will tell.
Guest:We're in anomalous times.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's for fucking sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it is so funny in a terrible, I'm weeping at the edge of the earth as the ice caps melt away, that we thought we had broken through to the ultimate new layer of tolerance and understanding with Barack Obama.
Guest:And then it's just like, oh.
Guest:Okay, sorry.
Guest:Here's your backlash.
Guest:Whoops.
Guest:Welcome to America.
Guest:Yeah, welcome to whatever this is.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Guest:So, right, you're the tool.
Guest:Good.
Marc:Well, it sounds great, man.
Marc:I'm happy for you.
Guest:April 18th is our debut.
Marc:So it's a Tuesday?
Marc:It's on Tuesday.
Marc:Let's try this.
Marc:I'm not sure when this goes up.
Marc:Tomorrow night.
Marc:Okay, sure.
Marc:Or yesterday.
Marc:Or two days ago.
Marc:Good talking to you.
Marc:Thanks, Mark.
Thanks, Mark.
Marc:Moshe Kasher, watch Problematic, premiering Tuesday, April 18th on Comedy Central.
Marc:I like Moshe, and he seems to be doing well.
Marc:It makes me happy, because I remember when these guys were kids.
Marc:I remember when they were kids.
Marc:So Baron Vaughn is about to enter your head.
Marc:I've known Baron a while.
Marc:He's been around.
Marc:I've been kind of half watching him here and there.
Marc:We've talked about maybe him coming on the show.
Marc:I had my issues with him initially, but who don't I have issues with initially?
Marc:You can see Barron on Grace and Frankie, which is now in season three and on the new Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Marc:Both are streaming on Netflix right now.
Marc:And also, I should mention Barron made a documentary for Fusion about finding his father called Fatherless.
Marc:And we talk about that.
Marc:You'll hear us talk about it right now.
Marc:This is me and Barron Vaughn.
Marc:Barron, this has been a long time coming, kind of.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:I've held you back.
Marc:I've held you off.
Marc:I've kept you out of here.
Marc:You kept me in third grade when I should be in sixth.
Marc:Well, I mean, I had to wait for you to be in sixth.
Marc:I don't know if you should be in sixth.
Marc:Perfect.
Marc:No, I mean, it was, you know, I'll cop to it.
Marc:I guess I was thinking about what it was.
Marc:When did I fucking first meet you?
Marc:Canada?
Marc:I felt like it was at a festival.
Marc:It was not a great performing situation.
Marc:Was it Vancouver?
Marc:Might have been.
Marc:Dave Foley was around.
Marc:I feel like there was a bar.
Marc:You were doing a show.
Marc:Maybe it wasn't the first time I met you, but it might have been the first time I noticed you.
Guest:That you paid attention, yeah.
Marc:The thing was, it was this dumb, old-timey pet peeve I had.
Marc:And you can either...
Marc:Qualify it or not.
Marc:Early on when I saw you, I thought you were good on stage.
Marc:You did different voices.
Marc:You had some characters.
Marc:You did a thing.
Marc:I could people the stage.
Marc:I know that line.
Marc:Where'd you learn that line?
Marc:From you.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, you were talking about Cosby back before we knew he was a monster.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I ripped that off, though.
Marc:I mean, I didn't make that up.
Marc:That was in a critic.
Marc:Critics said that about Bill, and I think it applies to Lenny.
Marc:It applies to a lot of people of that era.
Guest:Right, exactly.
Marc:I love that thing.
Marc:So when I watched you, there was part of me, my initial thought was like, this guy's an actor who wants to be a comic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This guy's an actor who's using comedy as a way in.
Marc:Yes.
Guest:That's what a lot of comedians of your generation thought about me and wrote me off until they started to listen and being like, oh, he's actually saying some stuff up there.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:It wasn't.
Marc:You were funny.
Guest:Actually, Todd Lynn, may he rest in peace.
Guest:You know, he said a similar thing to me.
Guest:Of course, me and Todd Lynn would be the guy.
Yeah.
Marc:out of all the fucking people in a fucking pod i got i hope not but yeah i was like one of those weird people that todd liked and it was always sort of a curse so i guess you know why do you like me i really because you know you know what's up and i'm like uh
Marc:So he said that, too.
Guest:He said that to me.
Guest:Yeah, because I mean, look, I was an actor.
Guest:I am an actor.
Guest:I went to theater school and all that stuff.
Guest:But all of that, in a way, was a distraction from the fact that I always wanted to be a stand up.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Because I grew up watching stand up.
Guest:I was a comedy nerd.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I guess that's what it is.
Marc:The chops come through.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, you know, acting chops come through because even somebody like Robert Klein, who went to Yale, you know, he's actory, you know what I mean?
Marc:Like, and he's another guy that I have sort of a, it's not a wall, but like, you know, he's a, you know, you're a comic, he's a comic, but you can see the chops.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And that's, I mean, I'm not saying it's a bad thing.
Marc:You're here, we're hashing it out.
Guest:Yeah, but that's always why I've always thought I was kind of like a perfect guest for you.
Guest:I'm like custom made because you kind of see me and you go, I'm sure you're a thing.
Guest:That's kind of always how I felt.
Marc:Like you definitely, you know, you do a lot of different, like there's also an envy there.
Marc:Like, you know, you're able to go in and out of these characters and, and, you know, you've gotten funnier, but it was just, I think it is something generational where there's some sort of chip on the shoulder of older guys who saw a sort of, especially out here, you know, like what you start to realize about standup is that, you know, if you're an actor, you know, it's hard to get seen unless you get called in.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But if you're a standup, you can get seen almost anytime you want.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's then.
Marc:So you have this influx of people who are taking up the stage time.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then you get diehards like me.
Marc:You're like, you know, if you're actor and you're if you're a comedian, your soul shit, you know, whatever.
Marc:But, you know, but where did you where were you from?
Marc:I was born in New Mexico.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:I lived there.
Marc:I lived in New Mexico.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I looked you up and it said Portales and I'm like, what the fuck?
Marc:Yeah, Portales, New Mexico.
Marc:That's nowhere near where I grew up, but it's over by Texas.
Guest:Yeah, it's closer to Texas, kind of the eastern part of New Mexico.
Guest:Born in Portales, I was born in 1980.
Guest:My...
Guest:My parents is a whole situation.
Guest:That's actually part of the reason I'm here, because I made a documentary about finding my father and all this stuff.
Guest:I left before I was born.
Guest:My mom was 19.
Guest:He was like 21 or something like that.
Marc:Must have been right before you were born.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, he did the thing, so there's only a nine-month window there where he can-
Guest:Cut out.
Guest:It was when it was revealed that my mother was pregnant.
Guest:That's when he was like, not it.
Guest:Really?
Guest:As far as I know.
Guest:Is that true?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But why would I doubt that?
Guest:But why Portales?
Guest:Well, there's a college there called Eastern New Mexico University.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So that's where they were both attending.
Guest:Oh, so they were students.
Guest:Yes, they were students.
Guest:And where were they from?
Guest:My mom was from, well, a littler, smaller town called Tucumcari.
Guest:I know Tucumcari.
Guest:Now, Tucumcari is the first place I remember.
Guest:That's really where I grew up.
Guest:Odd places in New Mexico.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Small town, probably population 5,000-something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wonder what brought her family there.
Guest:Well...
Guest:um prosperity you know kind of looking back in the past i'm learning a little bit more about my family's past yeah another one of the reasons i these are things that have been interesting to me yeah as i've gotten older right i'm working on myself sure going to therapy right finding out like oh we never talked about the past ever right like i just didn't have any information like where my mom was born i didn't know simple things right did you find out uh no
Guest:Is she still around?
Guest:Yeah, she's still around.
Guest:She won't cop to it?
Guest:She was born in, you know, see, I don't even remember.
Guest:We don't talk about it that much, but I'll ask her.
Guest:I think she was born in New Mexico.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:She thought she was born in Germany on a military base.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But she wasn't.
Guest:She was born in New Mexico.
Marc:So there's military back there somewhere.
Guest:Yes, my grandfather, her father, was in the military.
Guest:So New Mexico.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's interesting because, like, there's another element to it.
Marc:It's like, I don't, you know, African-Americans in Tucumcari.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a lot.
Marc:There were a lot.
Guest:And there were a lot in Portales, too, I think.
Guest:You know, it seems to be that the history of my family looks like we started in North Carolina.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Slowly kind of made our way west, you know, through Tennessee, then Oklahoma, Texas, then New Mexico.
Guest:Right.
Marc:I guess there was a movement west.
Marc:Slow migration, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, because Texas, there's a lot of black people in Texas.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:Well, in the south.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know why, though.
Guest:I don't know why there would be a lot of black people in the south.
Marc:You didn't go that far back historically?
Guest:No, no, no.
Marc:There's no history.
Guest:No context on why there would be a lot of black people in the south.
Marc:You don't know where your mom is born, and you don't understand why there's other black people in the south.
Marc:No, just said, nah.
Marc:You don't go too deep with it.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's not my problem.
Marc:I don't need to know about it.
Guest:No, obviously.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, like, Tucumcari's a small town.
Guest:A real small town, yeah.
Guest:Route 66 was the main street.
Guest:Yep.
Guest:We were there.
Guest:I was there a couple months ago.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, making this dock.
Marc:Oh, so you're tracking the whole thing.
Marc:You're going.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My mom took me to Portales, showed me around.
Guest:Like, the place I was born, but I don't remember it at all.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You didn't live there.
Guest:No, small, small, small baby, but not where- Where'd you go after that?
Marc:Chicken carry.
Marc:Oh, so that was, okay.
Marc:So she went back there.
Marc:Her folks were there.
Guest:Well, it was, my mom was 19.
Guest:Everyone was mad at her for having this baby.
Guest:Are you the only baby?
Guest:Then I was.
Guest:I have two little sisters now, but there's a 13 year age gap.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:My grandmother, super progressive, was like, get an abortion, finish college.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My great grandparents were like, you had sex outside of marriage.
Guest:God is mad.
Guest:yeah but you gotta have it yeah well yeah i guess but then they kind of all abandoned her a little bit yeah left her to her own devices yeah two years after that my great grandparents holy shit came and got me from where from tucumcari they came out to portalis got me and raised me themselves great grandparents my great grandparents i was raised by them in a little house in tucumcari new mexico until my mom got out of college about 85
Marc:and she took you back she took me and then we moved to las vegas nevada oh my god yeah and that's where i mostly grew up i was in vegas until i went to college at boston university where i went where you went so we already got to new mexico and we got the boston university yeah now it's weird so now like i know why you're here so your great grandparents what were they like i mean that must i mean i imagine that's probably a good situation on some level
Guest:Yes and no.
Guest:I mean, they were hard people.
Guest:They're like classic black Southern Baptist people.
Guest:Very strong church people.
Guest:Church was literally in the backyard.
Guest:I mean that.
Guest:Like it was there.
Guest:They were on the land that the church owned.
Guest:So they built a house right there on the land.
Guest:My great grandfather built it with his own hands.
Guest:He worked in a lumber yard.
Guest:He was a carpenter.
Guest:He knew all the stuff.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Like a quote unquote man's man.
Guest:Is the house still there?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes, it is.
Guest:Was that a trip?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes, it was.
Guest:And we went up to it and there's a family living in it that we actually knew.
Guest:They lived across the street.
Guest:So when my great grandparents passed away, my grandmother sold the house to them.
Guest:So several generations now, a couple of generations.
Guest:Well, we walked up and they, they saw my mom and they were like, Oh my goodness.
Guest:And then they saw me.
Guest:They're like, what?
Guest:You were five when we saw you last.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's crazy.
Marc:It's crazy stuff.
Marc:And so, so you, you leave New Mexico when you're five and,
Marc:Yeah, about five or six.
Guest:Your mom married another man or what?
Guest:No, no, we just went to Vegas because- I can't even, I can't even, the thought of going there now bothers me.
Guest:Well, it's very different.
Guest:First of all, my grandmother was already there, right?
Guest:My mom had mostly grew up in Vegas, went to school in Vegas, and then spent the summers in New Mexico.
Guest:That was kind of her pattern, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So we went there because at the time we moved, especially like the mid 80s to the early 90s, Vegas was the fastest growing city in the United States.
Guest:Sure job.
Guest:Very low cost of living.
Guest:Jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs.
Guest:Where'd your mom work?
Guest:My mom, when we got there, she had probably two or three jobs at different retail clothing stores.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then the Mirage opened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And when a casino opens in Vegas, it's like, and now here's 5,000 jobs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So she got a job there about 89, I want to say, something like that.
Guest:At the Mirage.
Marc:At the Mirage.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So did you grow up like, because that's what I just don't, I don't have a sense of Vegas, you know, as a place where people live.
Marc:Well, let me give you a sense, Mark.
Guest:It's hot.
Guest:I'll tell you that.
Guest:I know that.
Guest:But that's a big reason that it's weird there because there's not a lot of outdoor stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To me, it feels like when people try to do outdoor stuff, try to impersonate the suburbs.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:It's 125 degrees.
Marc:Grass doesn't even want to grow.
Guest:This little league game, everyone's going to be exhausted.
Guest:Dehydrated.
Guest:Dehydrated.
Guest:Sun burnt.
Guest:So people just kind of stay inside in their air-conditioned home, run outside to their air-conditioned car, go to another air-conditioned home.
Marc:Yeah, my brother lives in Phoenix.
Marc:It's similar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, Phoenix is also as hot as Vegas.
Guest:The only place that's hotter is Death Valley.
Marc:Yeah, I kind of like it.
Marc:I like being out in that for a while because I don't do drugs anymore.
Marc:If you're out in that desert heat for about a half hour, you're fucked up.
Marc:You start to see things.
Marc:Yeah, oh, hell yeah, yeah.
Marc:Oh, the shaman's here.
Guest:Yeah, oh, thank God.
Marc:Take me to the CVS.
Marc:I got some questions.
Marc:So you're in Vegas, and what are you doing in high school?
Marc:Do you go gamble?
Guest:Well, I mean, my mom worked at the Mirage.
Guest:She didn't work in the casino part of it.
Guest:She worked in the retail warehouse.
Guest:All the merch comes there, right?
Marc:But how do you get into trouble?
Marc:You don't seem like a get-in-the-trouble kind of guy, but I'm sure you're hiding something horrible.
Guest:You know it.
Marc:I do.
Guest:Sorry, Danny.
Guest:The secret comes out now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was a latchkey kid you know yeah so it's like it was me and my mom and she was at work and I'd usually have two or three hours at home by myself after school yeah from third grade you know on to 12th and then my grandmother moved in with us at some point.
Guest:yeah so it was me my mom and my grandma yeah and uh then we moved to a different part of vegas and me and my mom my grandma my grandma and i shared a room i slept on the floor she slept in the bed until she got a bunk bed then it was super cool you and your grandma me and my grandma in a bunk bed she got the top bunk i got the top how dare you i would not make her climb those stairs very nice of you
Guest:uh we fought we fought over it yeah um so yeah bunk bed from eighth grade to twelfth grade with your grandmother with my grandmother never invited anyone over i wonder why um i didn't yeah so it's a small place it was it was an apartment yeah it was a two-bedroom apartment um so yeah i mean vegas is it's a strange place you know to grow up um i
Guest:I was out by myself with, you know, just kind of around the neighborhood.
Guest:The neighborhood we were in was kind of rough.
Guest:Did you have friends?
Guest:I did, yeah, from the apartment complex, definitely.
Marc:You'd go out into the courtyard or whatever, the apartment, the parking lot.
Marc:Yeah, basically.
Marc:Throw a ball around, break some windows.
Guest:Yes, and broke my arm.
Guest:Broke my arm playing football with some friends in third grade.
Guest:Yeah, like a swimming pool was usually there, which was, you know, a disgusting apartment complex swimming pool, but it was ours.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know?
Guest:So it was difficult living.
Guest:It was okay because we were always keeping our head above water financially.
Marc:Because your mom was working.
Guest:My mom was working.
Guest:Were you working?
Guest:No.
Marc:Not yet.
Marc:Were you young?
Marc:I was young.
Marc:When did the second man come in?
Guest:Well, my stepfather probably came in about seventh, sixth, seventh grade, somewhere around there.
Guest:Good dude?
Guest:We didn't really get along that well.
Marc:I don't think you're supposed to.
Guest:That's part of the step process, right?
Guest:From everything I've heard, it's a tough road.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, look, we can hang out, be in the same room with each other.
Guest:But it wasn't abusive.
Guest:Ah.
Guest:There's some abuse in my childhood, definitely.
Guest:What, like physical?
Guest:Physical, mental, emotional, yeah.
Guest:Right, from that guy?
Guest:Well, from my mom and him, yeah.
Guest:After he showed up?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, your mom was always a little...
Guest:She was, well, look, she had been probably abused herself as well.
Guest:And in a church family, that's kind of like, just pray on that.
Guest:You know, don't talk about it.
Guest:So a lot of pent up stuff, which turned into some addiction later, you know, when I was a kid.
Guest:Kind of like, you know, elementary to middle school and some middle schools when it started getting pretty like, I noticed it because I was getting older and I understood what it was.
Marc:What was your thing?
Guest:What do you mean?
Marc:What addiction to what?
Guest:um the drink oh yeah the drink yeah and so the legal stuff yeah that's uh you know it's at least it's a little more you can wrap your head around it it's dangerous but it's not sorted necessarily it's easy to get that's right you don't have to go down like horrible paths to get it right and get horrible people all the time
Guest:um and she was also kind of did it on her own you know i'm sure she had some buddies that she went out with sure she would kind of there was a time where it was like she would come home from work self-medicating right yeah sit there you know in a in locked room and when she came out it was a different person yeah sort of that pattern not a fun person i guess not a fun person sometimes fun yeah depends on the day for a little while right yeah
Guest:But, you know, but I'm also a walking reminder of the fact that she was abandoned.
Guest:So that kind of, you know, is a kind of a concoction that turns a person to a comedian.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But that's interesting.
Marc:Is that something you were able to identify later, I imagine?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:In the last couple of years.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's pretty deep, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I apparently look like my father a lot.
Marc:Did... Was... Did they... Were they...
Marc:I guess they were so young it's hard to know how substantial that relationship was other than... And they see it differently as they would.
Guest:But that is the most important piece of the puzzle to me is that they were young.
Guest:They didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Guest:Suddenly there was this reality that they couldn't deal with.
Guest:Both of them were like, my parents are going to freak.
Guest:And their respective parents did.
Guest:And so they both dealt with it in their own ways.
Guest:But, you know, because when I was telling people I was going to go meet him, people are like, are you mad?
Guest:How could he do this to you?
Guest:I'm like, he didn't do it to me.
Guest:Actually, I wasn't even alive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This happened to my mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I came later.
Guest:And and, you know, because of the circumstances that she was in that turned her into the person she was in, it became a thing for me later.
Guest:You know, but her and I, we healed.
Guest:You know, we we made peace in college and stuff like that.
Guest:So I consider her one of my best friends now.
Guest:oh yeah very you know she's been sober for a really long time all these all these great things oh yeah you have a good relationship but still it doesn't negate what happened sure because i'm still learning like oh that's my mommy issue like stuff that still keeps showing up well yeah i would have to imagine that at some point the abandonment issues do play into your own story as well you know not having that that father figure early on right
Guest:Absolutely.
Guest:And that has to do with my relationship to my maleness.
Guest:You know, this is actually where comedy comes in because this is when I started to look to TV for models.
Guest:Like how old were you, you think?
Guest:This is probably fifth, sixth, seventh grade.
Marc:And when you got all that time on your hands.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like the Merv Griffin show and those afternoon shows.
Guest:Well, actually, back in New Mexico, I was a big fan of Nick at Night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which would show not only all these old black and white sitcoms, but the original SNLs.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The original five years.
Guest:SCTV.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:laughing carol burnett you're right right and uh and flip wilson show flip wilson so i would i'd be watching all that stuff absorbing it uh-huh and then as i got older moved to vegas it was sort of the time that comedy central was starting there was you know as you remember yeah comedy channel and ha yeah they combined short attention span theater watching it yeah mystery science theater 3000 watching it yeah wienerville
Guest:Taking it all in.
Guest:Mark Wiener and his puppets.
Guest:Taking it all in.
Guest:So I started to see comedians, especially black comedians that I was kind of looking up to.
Guest:People like Pryor, Eddie Murphy.
Guest:And you're seeing all the young guys too at that point.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Warren Hutcherson.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Warren Hutcherson.
Guest:Lance Crothers.
Guest:Dave Chappelle, obviously, Chris Rock.
Guest:All those people were kind of starting to come up.
Guest:I was already looking up to Pryor and those.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Those are the established ones.
Marc:But at that time on Comedy Central, the great thing about, you know, the era that I was on.
Marc:which you know i didn't appreciate but that there were just so many clips of young comics because they shot us all for different things and they'd repurpose it so there's just this never-ending stream of you know eight to twelve minute pieces yeah of all these young cats who are now like you know i used to love warren and you know he's a he went on to be a big writer but his like his bits were great i should talk to him yeah i'm on the podcast do you know him around personally around no yeah i don't know him personally
Marc:So that's all soaking in.
Marc:You're like, this is a way to deal with the world.
Guest:Yeah, and actually we had HBO as well.
Guest:So I was watching Dev Comedy Jam.
Guest:I was watching HBO specials.
Guest:I was watching the HBO comedy Half Hours.
Guest:So I was absorbing all that.
Guest:And then probably the most important thing for me.
Marc:I love Hughley's Half Hour.
Guest:D.L.
Guest:Hughley's, his old one.
Guest:That first one, that real old one where he's kind of angry.
Guest:It might actually be up on HBO Now and HBO Go.
Guest:They put up a lot of those old specials and I'm like, what?
Guest:It's pretty amazing to see.
Marc:I just remember noticing this fury in his face.
Marc:But he was doing pretty mainstream stuff.
Guest:But he was very intense.
Guest:I'll have to watch that again.
Guest:Probably the most important thing that I saw is Robert Townsend had a special called Partners in Crime.
Guest:He did a couple of them.
Guest:And it was like stand up.
Guest:And so you'd see like Tommy Davidson and like Sinbad and some people.
Guest:But then he would do these short films, which were sketches.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was sort of pre In Living Color because it would have all the Wayneses.
Guest:It'd have Paul Mooney.
Guest:It'd have Robin Harris.
Guest:It'd have like, you know, LaWanda Page, I think, would show up in it.
Guest:Robin Harris.
Marc:oh yeah all these comics in one place yeah and it was sort of like two generations and i and then of course i followed in living color when that started because i was like oh i just saw those guys and he did that movie that he was like that how to shuffle yeah the one who you know the first guy to get all that press for stringing along his credit cards that you know the independent self-made movie that was a good movie and what was the black community like where you were growing up
Guest:Well, there is a black community in Vegas.
Guest:We were in North Las Vegas, which was kind of more of a black enclave, you could say.
Guest:But then we moved, when my mom got the job at the Mirage, we moved closer to the Strip, so her commute wasn't insane like it was before.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:um i i didn't really have a sense personally of a black community around me well i mean i think that's what you get from those shows you know that's what i got from the shows yeah that there is one and there's a defined sort of uh i was just watching it in sitcoms right then i was outside yeah that's interesting though
Guest:But it's also, it's a little bit of, now I know that my mom was really paranoid because of the neighborhood we lived in.
Guest:She was really paranoid about me being outside, didn't want me to be outside.
Guest:Because it was the early 90s and it was like every single news story was like, he's black, he's angry, he's coming, and we don't know why.
Guest:It was at five.
Guest:And I'm like, what?
Guest:That's everyone I know, including me.
Guest:So there was this fear of violence all of the time, which dissipated.
Guest:And I didn't because, you know, a big thing is that we didn't go to church once we moved back to Vegas, like the kind of the the relationship to church was over.
Marc:Was it plowed into your head pretty strong?
Marc:I mean, were you, you know, was it second nature to you?
Marc:Were you a believer?
Guest:You know, what I believed in was performance.
Guest:Like my, the preacher that I had was the first comedian that I liked because he was on stage entertaining an audience.
Guest:That's how it starts.
Guest:And that's, that's where I got the bug for real was wanting, I used to want to be a preacher, you know, but it was really that I wanted to be on stage talking to people.
Marc:I think a lot of them do too.
Marc:It's like, you know, it's a good racket, you know, it's a good racket for a lot of people.
Marc:True.
Marc:You can work the road.
Marc:Well, I don't worry.
Marc:Got to bring a tent with you.
Marc:You know, you got to go to your preacher open mics.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I guess there are preacher open mics, but usually it's just you get a, what is it?
Marc:I guess a lesser position.
Marc:You're the associate pastor.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The associate.
Guest:There's people on Hollywood Boulevard right now.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:With speakers going like, listen to me.
Guest:That's the open mic to be a preacher.
Guest:It's a tough gig.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So how do you find yourself, you know, going to Boston?
Guest:How did that happen?
Guest:Well, I was in middle school.
Guest:Okay, so I've always been really educated.
Guest:It was important to my grandmother, education.
Guest:Good student.
Guest:Until I got made fun of.
Guest:Until a teacher was like, everyone needs to be more like Baron.
Guest:And then I got bullied.
Guest:I'm like, all right, that's it.
Guest:Nothing but bees.
Guest:When was that?
Guest:This is like...
Guest:This is elementary school.
Guest:Oh, you buckled.
Guest:In the middle school.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:I don't want to stick out in any sort of way.
Guest:My grandma taught me to write cursive when I was in kindergarten.
Guest:I was like knowing things that other kids didn't so I could read really well.
Guest:Middle school-ish, I could read off the page without making any mistakes.
Guest:So we'd have like English class and be like, Baron, read.
Guest:And then I would do voices and do all this stuff.
Guest:You were ahead of the curve.
Guest:I was ahead of the curve.
Guest:So I was in eighth grade and the librarian at my middle school was the wife of the principal of the brand new performing arts high school in Las Vegas.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So they were like, you need to audition for that place.
Guest:I went and talked to her, Mrs. Gary, and then got my application, learned a monologue, had no idea what a monologue was, went and auditioned for this high school.
Guest:And then I ended up going to high school there.
Guest:At the Performing Arts High School in Vegas.
Guest:Las Vegas Academy.
Guest:Well, that's a fucking gift.
Guest:Yes, it was.
Guest:Thank God for that, right?
Guest:Especially because I had some kids that, for the school I was supposed to go to, I had kids I knew, they're like, when you went high school, I'm killing you.
Guest:I'm like, okay, I need to not go here.
Guest:So, and it was its first year, huh, that you got in there?
Guest:I was probably around for like maybe two or three years before I got there.
Marc:So, it was exciting and probably, you know, well-funded and, you know, things were happening.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, people were excited about it, and it was one of the top high schools.
Guest:I don't know how it is now.
Guest:It probably still is.
Guest:Just because it's an art school, so kids test well.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because when you make learning fun, guess what?
Guest:People retain knowledge.
Guest:But you had to learn other basics, I imagine.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We had regular high school classes, but then we would have our major.
Guest:We'd have two of those classes.
Guest:Yeah, and what was your major?
Guest:Theater.
Guest:Theater.
Guest:So you were doing the acting?
Guest:I was doing acting, watching stand-up all the time.
Guest:Singing?
Guest:Did you sing?
Guest:I did sing a little bit, yeah.
Guest:Some musicals?
Guest:You know I did it, Mark.
Guest:I know.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Which ones?
Guest:You know, I never got cast in the... I want to say that the biggest part that I played in high school was Fagan and Oliver.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:If you remember that at all.
Guest:I do.
Guest:And then I was kind of in some other stuff, Little Shop of Horrors.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fame.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And then I, in high school, probably about my junior year, when people, everyone started talking about college, I was like, oh, what am I going to do?
Guest:And then I realized that you can actually study theater at college.
Guest:You can actually study acting.
Marc:So you looked around.
Marc:Because Boston University has one of the better theater programs.
Guest:It's not known for it, I don't think.
Guest:Maybe it is now, but it was good.
Guest:It is to actors.
Guest:We were supposedly in the top three schools when I went there, and that's one of the reasons I applied to nine schools, because I'm like, it's subjective.
Guest:Someone's going to think I'm sucked.
Guest:Someone's going to think I'm great.
Guest:um so where'd you apply um nyu juilliard big ones carnegie mellon yale uh no not yale yeah yale doesn't have a discernment undergrad that's right that's right um where else uh webster university carnegie mellon nyu those are big juilliard smu yeah like you know university evansville indiana all these schools that i had researched about the theater about theater yeah um
Guest:So Boston University, even though it was one of the more expensive schools, they luckily gave me a good little scholarship.
Guest:Nice.
Guest:I ended up being able to afford to go to it, even though I'm still paying some loans off.
Guest:And you did four years?
Guest:I did four years of acting, yeah.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I know where that is.
Marc:I took an acting class or two up there.
Marc:Did you?
Marc:But I was an English major.
Marc:Who did you take?
Marc:I was in stage troupe, so I was in the non-acting major stage thing where we'd put on shows.
Marc:Did you take any classes from acting teachers?
Guest:Just Robert Young, and I don't know if he was there still when you were there.
Guest:There was a man named Jim Spruill.
Guest:Yeah, I remember him.
Guest:Oh, you do?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He was very adamant about teaching acting to people who weren't there to study acting.
Guest:He thought it's something that everyone should know.
Marc:I think he was the head of the school for a while, wasn't he?
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know if he ever was.
Marc:I just talked to Mike Chiklis.
Marc:He's a graduate.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:From BU.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:Yeah, they turned out a couple of people that you know.
Guest:Yeah, Julianne Moore, Alfre Woodard, some people that I liked.
Guest:But yeah, I went there and it was probably my junior, it was the summer between my sophomore and my junior year, I started doing stand-up.
Guest:In Boston.
Guest:In Boston.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Dick Thority's Comedy Vault.
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:The Vault.
Guest:The Vault right there on Boylston.
Guest:And I was in and out of it because it was like theater school was so demanding that I could only go to one show on Sunday or Monday that I could go to.
Marc:To perform?
Guest:To perform.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I did stand up in Boston probably for about a year, year and a half-ish before I moved to New York.
Guest:When you graduated.
Guest:When I graduated.
Guest:When did you graduate?
Guest:2003.
Guest:So you've been doing comedy for 14 years?
Guest:Well, let me think.
Guest:I think it was the summer of 2001.
Guest:So yeah, about two years in Boston.
Guest:So coming up on 16th.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:You're totally surprised.
Marc:No, it's not that I'm surprised.
Guest:Maybe you are a comic after all.
Marc:Maybe I'll change how I have you framed in my head.
Marc:Please.
Guest:So you go to New York to do comedy.
Guest:I go to New York for various reasons.
Guest:I mean, I graduated school and I ended up going to this thing called the Williamstown Theater Festival right after school.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:In Williamstown, Mass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Western Mass.
Guest:With what?
Guest:There was a theater festival there and they- Were you performing?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I had like a little internship, like an acting internship.
Guest:And I was able to audition for stuff in New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Casting directors came there.
Marc:Right, okay, I get it.
Marc:One of those things where it's like, if you do this, you'll get seen by them.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then ended up getting cast in this small part in this play on Broadway.
Guest:And that was my first job in New York.
Guest:And what theater?
Guest:It's the Manhattan Theater Club.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Biltmore Theater.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Which I think was new at the time.
Guest:It was cool because Alfre Woodard was in it, another BU alum.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Anthony Mackie, a couple different actors.
Guest:Alfre Woodard's great.
Guest:Yeah, she's fantastic.
Guest:We keep in touch.
Guest:You do?
Guest:We do, yeah.
Guest:Oh, that's cool.
Guest:She's great.
Guest:And I had a bit part in that, and I moved to New York doing that, and then it was over after like three months, and then I was just in New York.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:Without a job.
Guest:Another guy who's an actor.
Guest:My roommate being like, the rent, though.
Guest:The rent.
Guest:Where's that?
Guest:That was when you were living in Astoria?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, that was the first place I lived.
Guest:It was in Spanish Harlem.
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:And it was like a three bedroom that four of us were living in.
Guest:I lived with a, I had a roommate and literally we shared a room and I had an air mattress.
Guest:Bunk bed?
Guest:No, I had an air mattress.
Guest:I had an air mattress that someone had gave me and then one day someone stepped on it and it like undid the seam.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So then there was this huge hump in the middle of the air mattress that I just slept on for like another five months or something like that.
Marc:You couldn't afford an air mattress.
Yeah.
Guest:Could not afford an air mattress.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:And then a friend gave me a bed.
Guest:Tough times.
Guest:A friend from Long Island gave me like an old trundle bed that they had.
Marc:It's always nice when someone just gives you a bed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I gave my big futon bed to the guy across the hall from me when I left the Lower East Side.
Guest:Oh, nice.
Marc:I'm like, here you go.
Marc:He was appreciative too, wasn't he?
Marc:He was a painter, swept on the floor.
Marc:Ah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I did.
Marc:I gave him a big old bed.
Marc:I had this studio apartment on Avenue 2nd Street between A and B in the 80s.
Marc:Ooh, and it was scary.
Marc:It was still scary a little bit, just at the end of that.
Marc:But I bought this huge futon frame.
Marc:It took up the entire thing.
Marc:It was on the floor.
Marc:I'm like, I got a little money.
Marc:I'm going to buy a frame.
Marc:And it took up the entire room, this frame.
Marc:But it turned into a couch, right?
Marc:No, no, it was like straight up.
Marc:Like frame, like a bed frame.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Marc:A big wooden frame.
Marc:Pretty.
Guest:So it didn't move.
Marc:No, no.
Guest:It was just there.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Taking up space.
Marc:The whole room.
Marc:Ooh.
Marc:Yeah, whatever.
Marc:I gave it to the guy.
Guest:Okay.
Marc:Yeah, he was happy.
Marc:I don't know if it changed his painting.
Marc:Maybe it ruined him.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:It might have.
Marc:Maybe it was his downfall.
Guest:He was painting from his pain, and now he could get a good night's sleep.
Marc:Yeah, he was living this ascetic life, sleeping on the floor like a monk, and I gave him luxury and just toppled him.
Marc:Just, that's it.
Guest:I had no idea.
Marc:You could see the comfort in all his brushstrokes.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, it's over.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:But, all right, so how long are you in New York before you get the first, what type of gig were you getting?
Marc:How much time did you have as a comic at that point?
Marc:Like 20, 25, what?
Pfft.
Marc:Oh, man.
Guest:I mean, I got to New York.
Guest:I was doing bringer shows and open mics.
Guest:And then what?
Guest:Like the ha?
Guest:I was doing them at stand up New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the old Gotham.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The one on 20 seconds.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I like that room.
Guest:It was just a perfect room.
Guest:Yeah, it always get better than the new one.
Guest:Beautiful.
Guest:Yeah, the new one's too big and the ceilings are high and it's a box.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:Sounds weird.
Guest:But it's like that old one was like acoustic.
Guest:It was kind of good.
Guest:It's a jazz club now.
Guest:That's how good the acoustics are.
Guest:Yeah, it was kind of good.
Guest:So I was doing those and then I kind of started to meet a couple comics that were younger that were doing independent shows.
Guest:And then I started doing more of those.
Marc:Were you around for the Eugene Merman dominated scene?
Marc:Eugene was just a little bit before me.
Marc:Bring them up or whatever.
Guest:Yeah, invite them up.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The Rafifi and all that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:The thing about your generation is you guys actually did stand up in comedy clubs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So and then you started to do that stand up in places that weren't clubs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then the generation behind you were just doing only the places that were the alternative.
Guest:Right.
Guest:They weren't doing clubs.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's interesting when you really think about the like because like people like Hannibal and Holmes and Kumail.
Marc:They did clubs.
Guest:they're my generation they're chicago guys and canane those chicago guys i think did clubs well that's what happened is that the third gen we came and the the alt scene before us the second wave right was was more exclusive than the clubs right so then we were oh we had a hand in both we had a foot in both right because i would do stand up new york like i said in gotham and then i would do ha here and there yeah when comics opened i became like their house mc for some reason um that might have been where i met you
Guest:Yeah, I might have opened for you there.
Guest:I think that's right.
Guest:Fort, over in the meatpacking district, yeah.
Marc:That was a very, that was a luxurious club that just didn't last long.
Marc:Didn't last.
Marc:Everyone was always like, how is this place still open?
Marc:That is where you opened for me, I remember.
Guest:Yeah, because I opened for, I got to do a lot of shows there that I was really happy to do, you know, like I opened for you.
Guest:I remember opening for Tompkins, Larry Miller.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was really interesting.
Marc:Yeah, that's too bad that club didn't fucking make it.
Guest:Yeah, it was a nice little club.
Marc:It was ambitious.
Guest:It was a tough market.
Marc:Maybe too ambitious.
Marc:Tough market.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, they were paying.
Marc:It was almost like, I don't think you should be paying this much money.
Marc:I mean, I came up in New York.
Marc:I'm like, it's probably too much money.
Guest:Well, and you know, because that's the other thing about New York is paid spots.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So me showing up to a show, I'm literally taking money out of comics pockets.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the older generation are like, you're taking a spot from me.
Guest:That's my $50.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:When you do a guest spot or something?
Guest:No, if I get passed into a club.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's like I am now in the way.
Marc:That's no way to look at it.
Guest:I'm not saying that's how I looked at it.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:I'm saying that I think some of those guys looked at it that way.
Marc:I guess.
Marc:I mean, you know, I don't.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, but that's more on the club.
Marc:That ain't on you.
Yeah.
Marc:That doesn't mean I didn't internalize it.
Guest:That doesn't mean I went like, oh, I don't belong, you know?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Because I didn't chase the alt scene.
Guest:You know, I kind of, I randomly met Nick Kroll, and then we hit it off, and I said, hey, you had a show over at the thing, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's like, yeah, come do it.
Guest:And then suddenly I was doing a lot of those shows.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then the generation came.
Guest:So you were in between.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, because I was... But you never locked into the mainstream scene.
Guest:Yeah, I never locked into the club scene, but I did meet a lot of great comics that started to come over because I was in New York already and doing shows when Hannibal showed up, when Eric Andre showed up, Kumail, Pete.
Guest:I met Pete early.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:I remember when John Mulaney started.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it's like I was already around and then Schumer showed up and all these different people, right?
Guest:So it's like, and Julian McCullough and just all these people.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You were of that crew.
Guest:Of that crew, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And are you getting acting parts?
Guest:Are you going out for parts?
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:Well, at the time, I think I was working at a law firm, actually.
Guest:After the Broadway show ended, I was working at a law firm for like two years.
Guest:That before the colleges?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I was auditioning for commercials and stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You were doing the acting thing.
Guest:I was doing the acting thing, got a commercial, was able to quit my job, booked a few other commercials.
Guest:What commercial?
Guest:It was like an AOL commercial, if I remember correctly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And because remember when they had commercials or when they had AOL?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And then I was able to support myself off of that, quit my day job and was doing stand up all night, auditioning during the day, doing stand up all night.
Guest:And then
Guest:slowly transitioned into doing colleges.
Guest:And then colleges started to dry up about 08, and then started transitioning more into actually booking acting roles.
Guest:Did you get any good ones?
Guest:Acting roles?
Guest:Early on.
Guest:Not any good ones.
Marc:You're in New York still.
Guest:Yeah, I had, I was doing bit parts on shows here and there.
Guest:And like, you know, and of course there was the VH1 talking head shows.
Guest:And then like that was at the pinnacle.
Guest:Like I love the 80s and best week ever were like hot.
Marc:It was just like some sort of cultural bottom hitting.
Guest:Well, it was like everybody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:They wouldn't pay.
Guest:They only paid certain people.
Guest:And it was like, you're going to get exposure.
Guest:And I was like, but no one cares who I know.
Guest:No one cares about me.
Guest:it was the biggest racket in the world it was a hell of a racket no money but boy you'd be on tv but boy people would be like that five seconds that guy was on tv let's get him so you did all that shit yeah i was doing all that stuff and then probably 2009 is i actually booked a pilot like a a role on a show yeah the show didn't go right but it was a nice paycheck what what pilot was that
Guest:It was called Canned was the name of it.
Guest:It was like the, what's it called?
Guest:The recession had taken hold.
Guest:And so people were writing shows about people dealing with that.
Guest:This show was about like a bunch of investment bankers who all got fired on the same day and had to kind of like redefine their lives.
Guest:It was an ABC multicam sitcom.
Guest:You got a little experience, huh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I had theater experience so I can do multicam.
Guest:I can memorize lines quickly.
Marc:Yeah, but being in that machine of like doing the- Exactly.
Marc:Stopping and starting and rewriting and working it.
Guest:Rewriting five pages.
Guest:Here, do it now.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:In front of an audience.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm like, oh, okay.
Guest:And then the next year after that, I booked a pilot that ended up going to series.
Guest:And I went to Vancouver to do that.
Guest:Shoot it.
Marc:That's why- Which one was that?
Guest:It's called Fairly Legal.
Guest:It was a USA show.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Marc:How long did that stay on?
Guest:Two years.
Marc:So you were working.
Marc:I was working.
Marc:So you did like what, 22, 23 episodes?
Guest:Yeah, maybe like 20 episodes.
Marc:You had pretty good, just above, your quotes were just above entry level.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It was great and horrible at the same time.
Guest:It was great to be employed, but when I went to Vancouver, that's when I learned that I have some really intense depression and anxiety.
Guest:Because I was sitting by myself in a city I knew no one in a lot.
Guest:And just like not getting out of bed for weeks, eating Cheerios.
Guest:Except to work?
Guest:Yes, basically.
Guest:I didn't know anyone.
Guest:And I had no stage.
Guest:I didn't know any comics.
Guest:So I was like, I can't go up.
Guest:Fell into yourself.
Guest:You could have went out and...
Guest:Yeah, but I also was like, I don't want to big dick my way on the shows.
Guest:Being like, hey, people know me in the States.
Guest:I just didn't feel like that was classy.
Guest:See, that might be where you're not quite a comic.
Marc:That might be the one flaw that you have.
Marc:Are you sure that the depression and the anxiety don't get me there?
Marc:They'll get you in.
Marc:Okay, perfect.
Marc:But the idea that you wouldn't go some ways and go, where's my, how do I get on?
Guest:I just, you know, it's like, I knew that there was a scene in Vancouver.
Guest:It's humility.
Guest:It's not a bad thing, buddy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But because also like, what if they hate me?
Guest:You know, what if I like don't do well and like, oh, this guy said he was big in the States.
Guest:I guess no one's good there.
Marc:I guess I don't know how much of that I have, but you sort of hope, you know, you go meet a couple of comics and, you know, without being, you know, swinging dick, you know, you just sort of, they eventually will go like, well, you want to get on, you know?
Guest:Well, and the next year that I was there.
Marc:In Vancouver.
Guest:In Vancouver, there was a guy on the crew who happened to know a lot of comics.
Guest:He hooked me up with some people.
Guest:And so the second year I was there, I ended up doing a lot of spots.
Guest:and then ended up doing that that comedy festival in vancouver as well right which ended up being um that's another reason i probably got super depressed i was not doing any i went i didn't go on stage for like five six months yeah it's bad and i'd never taken that so how'd you handle the depression what did you learn did you what happened
Guest:Well, I didn't know I was depressed.
Guest:I just thought this is how I feel.
Marc:Yeah, I'm like that too, yeah.
Guest:Right, and then I was talking to a friend of mine who is much older than me, about 20 years older, a comic, and I was telling her like, yeah, I just don't want to get out of bed, and I've been sitting in bed for like two weeks, and I've been showering with dishwasher soap and eating nothing but Cheerios, and she's like, I think you're depressed, and I'm like...
Guest:oh that's what oh yeah i just thought the world was heavy okay okay i thought it was reasonable well you know because also like i was staying in this this apartment where if i was in the back bedroom i could get internet i can get a good signal and i could be instant messaging with my friends all day yeah so what i started doing to solve this problem is i left my computer in the living room so if i go to the living room yeah
Guest:because it would be at the bed yeah and i would open it up and sit in bed all day oh my god but just getting out of bed to go check my computer that was step one it was step one and i'm like well i'm up i might as well take a shower and then i take a shower like well i took a shower i might as well go outside no then go back to bed but then i did okay i would go outside so you handled it maybe it wasn't clinical depression as much as it was just alienation
Guest:Yeah, it's a little bit of all that stuff.
Guest:But also, yeah, I've never been diagnosed depressed.
Guest:Like, I don't know that I get on the medicine, a chemical thing.
Guest:No, I didn't.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you're just, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Lonely and sad.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And I was lonely and sad and being like, oh, man, I'm really lonely and sad.
Guest:This is how I feel when I'm with others.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then started kind of trying to handle that.
Guest:And so you do that.
Guest:They cancel the show, but you made some money.
Guest:Canceled the show.
Guest:I made some money.
Guest:Unfortunately, I had a business manager who stole it.
Guest:Oh, shit.
Guest:And that's how that story goes.
Guest:Really?
Guest:At that level?
Guest:Usually that happens at much more money level.
Guest:I was still green.
Guest:I didn't vet.
Guest:Someone was like, oh, I know a guy.
Guest:Did you take him to court?
Guest:I filed my charges because there's a statute of limitations.
Guest:I'm still within my rights to file charges, but the dude's missing.
Guest:oh really he's gone like he's just we can't keep track of him you know we can't find him can't track him down so it's like and also like here's the other thing he spent the money yeah like it's not in a mattress waiting for me it's just it's gone how'd you get in touch with this shitty business manager a friend of mine put me in touch with him um the friend also was horn swaggled that's how easy it is
Marc:Yeah, but it's a pretty short con.
Marc:You got to get a couple guys and know your number and get out.
Guest:And that's what he did.
Guest:He did the short con.
Guest:He kind of played a bunch of people, took a lot of my money, and then bounced.
Guest:Sorry, buddy.
Guest:Well, you live and learn.
Guest:Is that when he moved to L.A.?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I moved to L.A.
Guest:after I got that Vancouver show.
Guest:And because I was like, well, it's the same in the West Coast.
Guest:It's three hour flight.
Guest:So I moved out here and then, yeah, got involved with that.
Guest:And then after the show was canceled, I didn't work for like two, two and a half years.
Marc:Just kicking around here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Doing comedy, though.
Guest:Doing comedy and doing the road, you know, and feeling like I.
Guest:Came home one day and there was a summons on my front door.
Guest:I had been sued by Boston University for a defaulted student loan.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It wasn't even that much.
Guest:It was a lot to me.
Guest:But like for a university to sue me for this amount of...
Guest:money and then someone told me oh it's actually phenomenon there's like a bunch of schools who if they gave you a government loan the government is on them because it's still the recession right the government's like where's our money boston you and the boston's like oh we lend it to this guy we'll sue him and so i got sued and i was like i do not have the money to pay this so i remember falling to the ground and being like that's it
Guest:I'm done.
Guest:I'm done with comedy.
Guest:I'm done with acting.
Guest:I'm going to move.
Guest:I'm going to get out of here.
Guest:But I ended up like just kind of in that bottom, if you will.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Quote unquote.
Guest:I sort of was like, I needed an attitude adjustment.
Guest:And so started kind of going toward the path, I guess, to mental health and like...
Guest:trying to have a better attitude, trying to figure out what is it that I want to happen.
Marc:What are you reading books?
Marc:You talking to a guru?
Marc:You going to therapy?
Guest:Well, it was mostly talking to a lot of my friends who were intelligent.
Guest:But yeah, reading books, going to therapy here and there, and then more normally now that I can afford it.
Guest:That's the irony.
Guest:How'd you deal with that summons?
Guest:Um, well, they sued me in Boston where I don't live.
Guest:And so I didn't show up to court.
Guest:So they were awarded amount that was twice the amount that I even owed in the first place.
Guest:By who?
Guest:By this creditor.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:They sold my credit.
Guest:They sold my debt to this lawyer.
Guest:So the lawyer in Boston sued me, took me to court.
Guest:I didn't show up.
Guest:And they were like, oh, well, you automatically default win, so we're going to give you twice as much as the award.
Guest:So I worked out a payment plan with them a little bit.
Guest:But because the money was being stolen at the same time, it kind of took a while to figure it out.
Guest:Bad times.
Guest:It was all that stuff was kind of happening at the same time.
Guest:I had been robbed.
Guest:I was being sued.
Guest:I didn't have a job.
Guest:I was living by myself, you know.
Guest:But you're crawling out of the wreckage.
Guest:I crawled out of it, yeah.
Guest:Did you have a girl?
Guest:I had a girlfriend at the time who was also very depressed.
Guest:Great.
Yeah.
Guest:And a huge pothead.
Guest:So I started smoking weed a lot.
Guest:Yeah, it's perfect.
Guest:But smoking weed from the depressed place isn't the healthiest.
Guest:No.
Guest:It could just send you further down that hole.
Guest:No, everything slows down.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So it's like, oh, I'm depressed, but now it's going to last for a long time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, man.
Guest:Turn on the television.
Guest:Yeah, like I'm living inside a pillow.
Guest:And that's what it was.
Guest:And then I started to crawl my way out of that little by little and started to put some stuff together.
Guest:And it's kind of like it took four-ish years.
Guest:Luckily, being employed on the Netflix show, Grace and Frankie, helped get me out of the financial hole.
Marc:Yeah, and that must be amazing.
Marc:You didn't land me Lily, but you got you here.
Guest:I have...
Marc:Tried and tried.
Marc:I know.
Marc:We're trying, too.
Marc:I don't quite understand it.
Marc:But, you know, people get to a certain age.
Marc:They're like, do I need to do that?
Guest:You know, but also it's like I think that she also, like, she's just not as connected to phones and emails as we are.
Guest:She's the generation.
Marc:Well, what's it like working with them, with Jane and Fonda and Lily, Tomlin and Martin Sheen?
Marc:I mean, that must be like this is really your first, in a sense, you know,
Marc:You know, although working with Alfre Woodward when you were a kid is one thing, but now you're a regular on a show with these legends.
Marc:It's got to be kind of astounding.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For better and worse.
Guest:Yeah, they're pretty amazing, you know, to be around.
Guest:Lily is a hero of mine as well.
Guest:Like I watched Laughing when I was a youngin', a youngin'.
Guest:One ringy dingy.
Guest:Oh man.
Guest:She did that character.
Guest:I was telling her how much I loved Ernestine is the name of that character.
Guest:And then she like did the snort laugh and I almost cried.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, Oh, that was really important to me.
Guest:She goes out and sort of, uh, still does one woman shows.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Curates like a greatest hits type of thing.
Marc:I think she does.
Guest:She's got shows coming up.
Marc:Yeah, because she was at some theater that I was at before me or coming up.
Marc:And I think she does a mixture of film footage and live things.
Guest:I get it, Mark.
Marc:You play theaters.
Marc:All right.
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:I was just like, I always wonder what they're doing.
Marc:I'm just messing around.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Does she just do a straight stage show like she used to?
Marc:But I think she actually does sort of a retrospective.
Guest:Yeah, I haven't gotten to see it yet.
Guest:You know, it's funny, too, because we had a talk once because I asked her about, like, kind of her path in Hollywood and all that stuff, and she was telling me when she got off laughing and she did a bunch of, like, specials on, I think it was, like, ABC and CBS.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Variety shows.
Guest:Yeah, variety shows.
Guest:That's how you got your own sketch show.
Guest:She did Richard Pryor's show.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And then she had Richard Pryor on her show as well.
Guest:But she said that, like,
Guest:A lot of the people that were in her generation, like that were laughing, they all had to go do Hollywood squares.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the match game.
Guest:Well, that's what was available.
Guest:Now we have our own versions of that.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:But she said that for her, she could go on the road.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So she didn't get oversaturated.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So that was like her saving grace is that she could always go on the road.
Marc:And she did real acting too at some point.
Marc:Like I think she did some Altman movies, didn't she?
Marc:Nashville.
Marc:Right.
Marc:She got an Oscar nomination, I think.
Marc:And she was also in the other one, Shortcuts.
Marc:She was great.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Love Shortcuts.
Marc:With Tom Waits.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Her and Tom Waits.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It's great stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Jane, it's good to know that- Real pros, huh?
Marc:I can hold my own- Sure.
Marc:With them.
Marc:But you can also see the history that they come from.
Marc:It's interesting working with older actors- Yes.
Marc:Where you're like, who have done the big stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And they carry that with them.
Marc:There is a sort of respect and a weird quirkiness to them, I imagine.
Guest:It's also that they were on sets before cell phones.
Guest:So it's like now on a set, when you're in between a shot, people will go look at their phone or look at their computer.
Guest:But they talk to each other.
Guest:They still like, oh, did you read the thing about the stuff?
Guest:And then they have a conversation.
Guest:It's like, oh, this is how you can be.
Guest:You can actually have a conversation and get to know the people you're working with instead of like, all right, bye.
Guest:Be a community.
Guest:What did Twitter say?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's a good lesson to learn.
Guest:Definitely, yeah.
Marc:So that's going well for you.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And now you got cast in the remake of a show that you were a fan of as a child.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:With Joel Hodgson's, when's that going to go, the MST 3000 reboot?
Marc:April 14th it comes out.
Marc:It's just pretty much like the old one, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's me and Jonah Ray and Hampton Yunt, and I'm the voice of Tom Servo.
Guest:Hampton is Crow, and Jonah's playing a version of himself, right?
Guest:The guy who's imprisoned on the ship.
Guest:And it's...
Guest:It's a tribute to the originals, but we've updated it, kind of made it more modern.
Guest:It looks completely different, obviously.
Guest:And Joel's doing it?
Guest:Yeah, and Joel's at the helm.
Guest:How's he doing?
Guest:He's doing great, man.
Guest:He's a really cool dude.
Guest:He's super relaxed.
Guest:He's very, very zen.
Guest:Great to work with.
Guest:He's great to riff with, yeah.
Marc:He was a comic way back.
Marc:We actually were talking about you recently, too.
Marc:I think he might come on.
Guest:Yeah, that's why I think we were talking about you.
Marc:So but now let's get full circle here.
Marc:Now, when do you decide that you got to seek your dad out?
Guest:I mean, it's a combination of things, man.
Guest:You know, like like I said, like working on myself, going to therapy and stuff like that and seeing how much of my identity is grown out of not having a man around to show me what being a man is.
Guest:Not that that will get you everything in the world, but that's the hole that I was always trying to fill in some sort of way.
Guest:And also feeling like I can't fill it.
Guest:I'm not manly.
Guest:Or also internalizing the idea that this deep male shame I have about like, well, men, what do men do?
Guest:They hurt my mom.
Guest:They hurt my grandma and they start all the wars.
Guest:And I'm one and kind of believing deep down in some way that I can only disappoint.
Marc:Well, that's interesting because some other people go different direction with that.
Marc:There are some people that have absent fathers that go out and just overcompensate the shit out of everything.
Guest:Right, and I undercompensate.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:I guess it's the other direction.
Guest:Yeah, I went sort of the more internal hatred, self-loathing direction.
Guest:And so that's the kind of stuff that it doesn't serve me anymore.
Guest:It doesn't help me out.
Marc:So when you started identifying all this stuff in therapy, do you think that...
Marc:That you were going to get closure by meeting this man?
Guest:Not necessarily because I don't know that there is a closure to have because the events.
Guest:You're already wired.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I'm already who I am.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And also whatever happened already happened.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's more that I've never known what happened.
Right.
Guest:i've never been told a version of the story and you kind of want to look him in the eye right yeah and i wanted to see not only hear it from my mom because this is the first time my mom ever told me what happened around the about the circumstances around my birth she doesn't talk about it because it's painful for her but luckily you know she's come a far way as well and sees that like oh you know i've healed a lot and let go of this stuff so it was really good experience for her you can handle it now
Guest:And I can handle it like I'm not going to go crazy.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And he's like a guy I know now.
Guest:Who?
Guest:My dad.
Guest:So where do you go find him?
Guest:How did you find him?
Guest:Combination of things.
Guest:I mean, making this documentary was the excuse I gave myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I probably wouldn't have done it even though I knew I needed to.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But kind of making it a thing where I had to answer to some people and there was an expectation and some deadlines.
Guest:Sure, sure, yeah.
Guest:I like forced myself into a position of having to do it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Having no idea how I was going to feel.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so he is in Albuquerque, of course.
Guest:Is he?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He's from Albuquerque.
Guest:Your dad is?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:So he lives in Albuquerque.
Guest:That's where I met him.
Marc:So that's fortunate for the doc and budgetary reasons.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:The drive from Tucumcari to Albuquerque is not that big of a deal.
Guest:We went Portales, Tucumcari, and Albuquerque.
Marc:So what do you know about him before you meet him?
Marc:Nothing.
Marc:But you know where he works or where you... No.
Guest:What was the first communication?
Guest:The first communication was a week before we met.
Guest:I called him on the phone.
Guest:Had a private investigator track him down.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Because...
Guest:You know, I had seen a picture of him when I was a kid.
Guest:Didn't remember what he looked like.
Guest:I remember what his name was.
Guest:The private investigator found him pretty quickly.
Guest:I'm telling you like an hour after we talked.
Guest:He's like, well, I found the guy and I called him and he said he's aware of your existence and he would love to talk to you.
Guest:I'm like, what?
Guest:That's I wasn't expecting that.
Guest:So we talked on the phone, you know, and it was probably about a month.
Guest:I called him and left a message and then he called me back.
Guest:It's probably about a month after that that I called him back.
Guest:where I was busy, busy, quote unquote, but also- Freaking out.
Guest:I was freaking out a little bit and I also didn't know, I started asking myself like, what do I actually want out of this?
Guest:What am I gonna get?
Guest:What's this gonna be like?
Guest:Am I okay?
Guest:Am I gonna be okay?
Guest:And so called him, we talked.
Guest:briefly he was a really relaxed guy he even told me some of the things that like i wasn't expecting to hear just about like who he was because that's i was more i'm more curious about who he is as a person yeah because look here's how i look at it mark um
Guest:My mom and my father did the best they could in the circumstances they found themselves in.
Guest:So I was curious about what are the circumstances?
Guest:Who raised you?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:Who raised you to make this be the only decision that you can make in this moment?
Marc:Okay, I mean, I hear that.
Marc:I would argue that it was not the best they could.
Marc:It's what they did.
Marc:But those other questions you're asking, I think, are valid.
Guest:And what they did is the best they could.
Guest:The best doesn't mean it's good.
Guest:It just means that, like, that's as much as they can do.
Guest:That's as much as they can handle.
Guest:Fine.
Marc:let's mince words let's get into it no but no this is just my approach to that like you know because i think that's what we do to make you know to sort of like detach from it without it being too horrible for us to say they did the best they could but they did what they did well i'm saying they did the best sure no i know i've said it too but i've i've redacted that
Guest:Yeah, well, and that's fine.
Guest:I guess semantics, but I'm saying, yeah, they did what they did.
Guest:Nothing else happened.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:That's the only thing that happened.
Guest:They did what they knew they had.
Guest:They did what they could.
Guest:Yeah, they did what they could.
Guest:With the background that they had, with the background that their parents had, whatever expectations were heaped on their shoulders.
Marc:Getting around that, so what did you find out about your old man?
Marc:Was he contrite?
Guest:um what do you mean contrite I mean was he did he feel remorse yeah he has some remorse you know he said like you know I missed out you know I made these mistakes I made these decisions it's what I did you know but like now we have an opportunity to you know to to to know each other was he financially present uh in my life yeah no
Guest:Nobody was.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My mom was on her own.
Marc:So what was his story?
Marc:So you get on the phone with him, you have this first conversation, it's better than you thought.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And when you sit down with him, what happens?
Guest:Apparently one of the first things I asked was who he liked as a comedian.
Guest:Was this on tape?
Guest:Yeah, it's on the dock.
Guest:It's on the dock.
Guest:Okay, okay.
Guest:So anybody who wants to see it, Fatherless is the name of the dock.
Guest:Is it on iTunes?
Guest:It'll be out in Fusion.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:So yeah, we sat down and again, I was interested in just kind of knowing what he's into and how he thinks and how he's absorbed this whole thing into his own life and what it makes him today.
Marc:Who was his favorite comedian?
Guest:Well, he actually named Pryor and Red Fox in Mom's Babely.
Guest:So I was like, okay, we can talk.
Guest:We can talk.
Guest:Did you cry?
Guest:No, I didn't cry.
Guest:I'm not a big crier.
Guest:Why is that?
Marc:What are you holding back, buddy?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I've been asking myself that exact thing.
Guest:It's really hard for me to cry.
Guest:I think there's a self-consciousness about it.
Guest:I also...
Guest:I kind of shut down is more, I more dissociate.
Guest:So when the feelings start to get too overwhelming, I just kind of go, the whole thing kind of turns off.
Guest:Oh really?
Guest:I yell.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I know.
Guest:It can be scary.
Guest:I'm fortunate to have never been on the other end of that for real.
Guest:I've been hidden it.
Marc:I'm better now.
Guest:That's true.
Guest:No, I've been literally listening to you get better as a person listening to this podcast.
Marc:But it's interesting, though.
Marc:So, well, what answers did you get?
Marc:What did you come away with?
Marc:I know it's in the doc and people should watch it, but, I mean, did you find some peace?
Guest:Yeah, peace is the word.
Guest:Not closure.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But peace.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because...
Guest:I wanted to understand what happened and what happened.
Guest:It's that again, they're young, they were young and they were scared.
Guest:It's as simple as that.
Guest:I don't actually need to know all of it because people get scared and when people get scared, they do, they do dumb things.
Guest:They make bad decisions.
Guest:They make fear decisions.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:And they run or they shut down or they come up with all sorts of stories to justify what they're about to do.
Guest:And that's fine.
Guest:It sucks, you know, if you're caught in the middle of all that stuff.
Guest:But that's how people work.
Guest:You know, we're all just trying to like get to the next thing and not feel too badly.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Do you have siblings you didn't know about?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:How's that?
Guest:I've only met one of them.
Guest:There's four of them.
Guest:And he said he's slowly telling the family about me.
Guest:I was in Albuquerque in December and ended up meeting up with him.
Guest:And one of my little brothers had just heard about me two days before that and wanted to meet me.
Guest:So he came to the lunch as well.
Guest:How was that?
Guest:It was fine.
Guest:That's wild.
Guest:There's no other way to describe him except that he was a solid young man.
Guest:Like, he had just gotten out of college.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:He already had a job, like, less than a month out of school.
Guest:What's your old man doing?
Guest:Geez.
Guest:He's retired.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:He's a military guy.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:He's an army guy.
Marc:So, now do you feel that this is going to be an ongoing relationship?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:It's still... I...
Guest:don't call him dad right to his face right it's still weird sure to say it right like my like it's like i've never said it and can you do the my biological father my biological father yeah uh i do say father yeah a lot right
Guest:but you don't call him dad yeah right not yet sure who knows right because it's like he's a guy i'm getting to know all right as opposed to his feelings like right right what he thinks to me is really important like i didn't grow up with him so no anger um not really i don't i don't see any use for it
Guest:All right.
Guest:The anger's gone.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:The anger is already passed.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:From a long time ago.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:Thank God, right?
Guest:I guess.
Guest:Quite a trick.
Guest:But you know what?
Guest:That's an interesting... A lot of people ask me that.
Guest:Are you angry?
Guest:You know, like, do you... Oh, do you want to... You want to punch him in his face?
Guest:I'm like, I don't really...
Marc:know what i'm supposed to do from that because i even when i talked to him i was like look i think you know it might be it might be easier to maintain anger you know when they're shitty but in your life yes like you know this was the transgression was that he left yeah so you can only be angry about one thing in a way
Guest:I was angry at the concept of men and being one at the same time.
Guest:The concept of?
Guest:Of men.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Of dads.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But for someone who has to live through their dad's shit year after year, day after day, that anger is probably always a little close to the surface.
Marc:It's a simmer.
Marc:But the absencing, it's like you're mad because he wasn't there.
Marc:So on some level, you got spared a lot of the shit that could have been really bad.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:See, that's a big point that I've made.
Guest:A lot of people are always like,
Guest:How can a man leave?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, you know what?
Guest:A lot of dudes are right.
Guest:Like some of them are like, I can't handle this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they leave.
Guest:And that's probably a good choice because they might have been shitty, abusive people if they stayed present.
Guest:You never know.
Marc:Right.
Marc:It's a crapshoot.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, a lot of things going on, buddy.
Marc:I'm doing it to it.
Marc:You made it out of the hole.
Marc:Gotta.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Good talking to you, Barron.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, that's it.
Marc:That's me and Baron and me and Moshe.
Marc:And that's our show for today.
Marc:I don't think I've ever closed like that.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:I got a lot of posters still.
Marc:A lot of Carnegie posters.
Marc:I got all kinds of posters.
Marc:And also my tour dates are there for the upcoming six or seven dates I have left on this tour.
Marc:So if any of that interests you, get on the mailing list.
Marc:I'll mail you something every week.
Marc:I'm about to go write that now.
Marc:But maybe I should play some guitar first.
Marc:been listening to a uh african music anthology of some kind i think it's leaked into my head so
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives!