Episode 839 - Brent Weinbach / Ms. Pat
Marc:I am not at home.
Marc:I am away.
Marc:I am on a vacation.
Marc:I'm inland.
Marc:I'm off the coast.
Marc:Some fears are alleviated.
Marc:I have a lot of time, a lot of space in my mind.
Marc:Obviously, things in the world are difficult and horrible, and we lost a great comedic and social activist warrior two days ago.
Marc:Dick Gregory died.
Marc:He was an old man, but he was very vital and very... It's important.
Marc:To have that generation of creative activists around as a point of reference, as a force of nature, it's always upsetting when great people that have made an impact on the life of our culture and our individual lives pass away.
Marc:I had the privilege of interviewing Dick Gregory with Sam Seder years ago in 2009 when we did Break Room Live.
Marc:I don't know that we interviewed him.
Marc:I think we got a lesson.
Marc:I think that Sam and I, looking back on it, sat there and listened to a wise, angry, righteous old Buddha who had come to the show, had come to the studio with a can of Alpo dog food.
Marc:To make a point to us that and it was a very articulate point and it was based on packaging and social evidence, numbers, cultural understanding that a good deal of the dog food sold.
Marc:in inner city and urban areas was not being eaten by dogs.
Marc:And it was a painful point, but it was, and there was some humor in it.
Marc:But as many people, I think, who followed Dick Gregory know that, you know, he was one of the first real social satirists, one of the first people to integrate political criticism into his routines, along with Mort Saul and Lenny Bruce and some others.
Marc:Mort Sahl is still alive in his 90s.
Marc:Lenny obviously has passed.
Marc:And now Dick Gregory is gone.
Marc:But as his career went on, he focused more on activism on a lot of levels and chose to fight that fight in that way.
Marc:Marched in Selma, was part of the civil rights movement at the time and always all through his life.
Marc:It just...
Marc:Whether you kept up with him or not, or whether you know his history or not, it's something you should look into.
Marc:His records are hilarious, and also his life was important.
Marc:And you should connect with that if you can.
Marc:I mean, I need to more.
Marc:I need to now look back at the career of Dick Gregory.
Marc:But these guys who are that age of that generation are gone, and times are bad, and you wonder who's going to fill that void.
Marc:So rest in peace, Dick Gregory, you're important and what you stood for is important and still important and you will be missed.
Marc:If you can sense a slight tightness, you know, in my chest or in my voice, it's because I am where I grew up and later this afternoon, I'm going to go to the source and
Marc:I'm going to go to where it started.
Marc:I'm going to go see my father.
Marc:And something happens to me mentally.
Marc:I don't know about you guys, but something happened.
Marc:I know I got to be fortified.
Marc:I got to be on point.
Marc:I got to be not ready for a battle, but just sort of like protected, insulated, no openings, no vulnerabilities, but yet pleasant and respectful.
Marc:That's how I handle it now.
Marc:Stay tough, be pleasant, be respectful, and try to see where he's at and what's going on, what he needs, and just get out without falling apart.
Marc:I don't know if that's a great father-son relationship, but that's the one that I have.
Marc:And I'll let you know how that goes.
Marc:Today on the show, doubleheader, it's Ms.
Marc:Pat and Brent Weinbach.
Marc:Two extraordinarily different individuals and comedians, but both very interesting, that's for sure.
Marc:The first being with Miss Pat, who you've heard before here on the show.
Marc:A little while ago, we talked long and hard about her life and about growing up as a young drug dealer in a crazy environment.
Marc:And and now she's got a book out.
Marc:It's called Rabbit.
Marc:The Autobiography of Miss Pat's available now for preorder and is in stores tomorrow, August 22nd.
Marc:I love talking to Pat because you talk to her for a little while.
Marc:There's a whole new world for her coming from what she came from, you know, coming from the ghetto and coming from horrendous adversity and then making her way into a comfortable, relatively comfortable middle class existence where she takes care of a lot of children, hers and others.
Marc:And it also became a successful comic because she was able to elevate her personal stories of horror, sadness, violence, insanity into something that people can understand and relate to and see into a world that many of us don't know because we haven't experienced it.
Marc:We can pretend like we have an idea or pretend or possibly have empathy or compassion, but to really hear it and to know it and to feel it.
Marc:is something that a lot of us are not privy to.
Marc:And talking to Pat is always funny, but an education.
Marc:But now she's in this situation where they're working on developing a show for her.
Marc:The book is about to come out.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:So it's sort of interesting to talk to her at this point where she's in this whole new world of potential success.
Marc:She doesn't quite feel comfortable there.
Marc:And and also just to sort of play that against, you know, her life and what she comes from is great.
Marc:I just I love seeing her.
Marc:I love talking to her.
Marc:And yeah, I hope it I hope it all works out.
Marc:I think it's a it's very exciting possibility.
Marc:So this is me talking to to Miss Pat.
Marc:Enjoy this.
Marc:so the book is like this is exciting very exciting it's just called rabbit just called rabbit and that was your nickname that was my we talked about it yeah now this is uh like you know obviously you've been doing stand-up a long time but the book the process of writing a book that must have been sort of a new thing how did it work man it was
Marc:This is going to be the last one, Pat?
Guest:Yes, Lord.
Guest:It was rough, and I didn't write the book by myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I'm not going to sit here and lie.
Guest:You know, like I said last time on your show, I dropped out in eighth grade.
Guest:Hey, I can count money, but writing is not my thing.
Guest:A lovely lady by the name of Janine Amber in New York heard me on your podcast, Yours and Ari, and came up and said, I think I can write a book.
Guest:And I'm from the streets, and first thing I said, well, get out of my face before I slap your head off of that bullshit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But she turned out to be real.
Marc:And so you she basically wrote it with you in the sense that you tell her stories and put them together.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was a process because, you know, trying to call back to, you know, I'm from I'm from the inner city of Atlanta.
Guest:So you calling those people from your past and accidentally talk to somebody about writing a book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And she's a very well spoken black lady.
Guest:And the first thing they would always ask.
Guest:she white i ain't talking no white woman i said she black and my brother was like well he said he asked he said are you black she said yes i'm black he said well damn you got all your education we just dropped the phone we couldn't stop laughing so i had to warn her hey these people gonna say what the hell they want to say and it's gonna be a little shocking but there's some honest people and then i had to warn them that she was black and it's okay to talk to her yeah
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:So, that was a process.
Guest:So, I was like, can you put a little more slang in your vocabulary?
Guest:She would be on the call with these people from my past.
Guest:Beg your pardon?
Guest:What you mean, beg your pardon?
Guest:I'm hanging up.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:She mean, excuse me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How many people did you guys have to track down?
Guest:Oh, quite a few.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, we had quite, me, my old, the old guy who I was partnership with, he didn't want to talk to her.
Guest:He was like, uh.
Guest:I was like, yeah, tell her how much cocaine we saw.
Guest:Uh.
Marc:No, what happened?
Marc:They don't want to get in trouble.
Marc:You changed the names though, right?
Guest:Yes, I did.
Guest:I changed everybody's names.
Guest:You got it.
Guest:Once we made them comfortable, they started to talk.
Guest:That was a process.
Marc:So how far back do you want all the way back?
Marc:All the way back to your memory?
Guest:All the way back to my childhood.
Marc:Did you find people that you didn't know were still alive or you knew they were all still alive?
Marc:Wait, were you surprised to find some people?
Guest:Yeah, I was surprised to find some people that was still alive.
Marc:I really was.
Marc:Yeah, I bet.
Guest:And I was surprised to find stuff about me, like with my old partner.
Guest:He was like, yeah, you started, his mama was a big Christian.
Guest:He was like, yeah, you started my mama selling drugs.
Guest:And I was like, no, I didn't.
Guest:there was a lady who went to church every sunday he's like yeah you she's uh pay her to hold your stuff i was like for real i kind of felt bad when they started telling me stuff about myself you didn't remember some of the stuff i didn't remember i did not remember putting his mama in the drug game because she went to church every sunday so that was that was i learned a lot about myself you were a little a little worse than you thought you were
Guest:Yes, I was.
Guest:Yes, I was.
Guest:My husband, it was shocking to my husband, too, after he read the book, because a lot of the stories I never told him.
Marc:Oh, that's always weird.
Marc:That happens like a lot of times in here.
Marc:I'll talk and my girlfriend's like, I didn't know that about you.
Marc:Or sometimes people when I talk to them, people who know them, they're like, I had no idea.
Marc:And I've known him for 20 years.
Marc:Yeah, it's weird.
Marc:Like what?
Marc:Like, what didn't he know?
Guest:Um, he didn't know.
Guest:Like I told, I said, well, I really wasn't into, to, uh, to stout guys.
Guest:My husband wasn't fat, but he was thick.
Guest:I said, but I needed my rent paid.
Guest:And so, you know, that was one of the reasons why he was a nice guy.
Guest:And he's like, I never knew that.
Guest:I said, but I thought I told you I didn't like you, but you had a job and you could read.
Guest:So we was going to work this thing out.
Guest:He's like, you never told me that crap.
Guest:You never told me.
Guest:Never quite put it like that.
Guest:You probably had a little more game than that.
Guest:And it was a lot of stuff about my ex that he did not know.
Guest:The old man?
Marc:The one who knocked you up when you were 14?
Marc:13.
Guest:Yeah, he didn't know a lot about him because we never discussed it.
Guest:One thing my husband always said, Mark, he said, look, I am not your kid's father.
Guest:I'm stepping in, but do not put him down.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Don't put the other guy down?
Guest:Yeah, don't put him down.
Guest:If he's not here, at least leave a door open so they can get to know him when they get older.
Guest:So my husband didn't know a lot of the stuff he had done to me.
Guest:When he read the book, he was like, fuck that dude.
Guest:I had never heard him ever in 23 years, 24 years.
Guest:He's never, ever spoke bad about that guy until after he read that book.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:Did you track that guy down for the book?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But he wouldn't really talk.
Guest:He wouldn't.
Guest:You know, he wouldn't really talk.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:No.
Guest:All he was saying is, I'm going to sue you.
Guest:I said, well, good, because if you do use behind on your child support, I get it right back.
Guest:I've been trying to get you caught up for years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:One thing I learned out of writing this book, when you've been hurt, a lot of times you will protect the people that hurt you.
Guest:And I had no idea that it was two people in my life that I was constantly protected.
Guest:It was him and it was my mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, no, don't write my mama that away.
Guest:She's like, but that was your mom.
Guest:No, I don't want people to see her.
Guest:But that was your mom.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it's like when when we when I finally come to realization that, you know, when you 21 year old, 21 years old and you get a 13 year old girl pregnant, really, you a pedophile.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:That's right.
Guest:She was like, he's a pedophile.
Guest:No, he's not.
Guest:He's not a pedophile.
Guest:And she said, stop protecting him.
Guest:And I had to realize.
Guest:Well, you know, maybe he is a pedophile.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Shouldn't no 21, 22-year-old married man be sleeping with no 13-year-old girl.
Marc:No, no, it's definitely against the rules.
Guest:And come to the hospital and sign a birth certificate and nobody says anything.
Marc:That's a systemic problem.
Marc:There's a lot of people having a problem there.
Marc:I remember you talked to me about that when you were here last time.
Marc:I still couldn't understand it.
Marc:I guess what are they going to do?
Marc:They don't want to get involved, right?
Marc:Is that it?
Marc:They just sign it off?
Marc:I don't understand.
Guest:Today they will get involved.
Guest:Today they would get involved.
Guest:And then I try to look at it with like, well, is it because the 80s and nobody gave a crap about young black girls?
Guest:And I say sometimes if I was white, would they have stepped up?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's a dark story.
Guest:But you can laugh.
Guest:You can laugh.
Guest:You're going to cry.
Guest:You're going to get mad at me.
Guest:You're going to get mad at them.
Guest:But in the end, it all comes together.
Marc:Yeah, you did.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:OK.
Guest:And that's what we wanted.
Guest:So that's, you know, when I read and I was like, wow, I didn't I never looked at my life like this.
Guest:This is what I was searching for.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And we talked the other night and you said that the first version was a little too dark.
Guest:Too dark.
Guest:And the editor was like, get rid of it.
Guest:And we was finished.
Guest:So I'm like, oh, oh, wow.
Guest:We finished the book.
Guest:Thank you, Jesus.
Guest:She's like, no, put it in the trash and start over.
Guest:I was like, no, I'm going to need my check because I already spent that money.
Guest:You know, I'm poor.
Guest:I got my six lairways waiting to come off out of the department store.
Guest:You say, no, I got to go cancel my lairways.
Guest:And boy, I was heartbroken.
Guest:I was heartbroken.
Marc:But didn't you keep some of it?
Marc:Yeah, we did.
Guest:We switched some stuff around.
Guest:It took another year, but she did.
Guest:I got to say, over at HarperCollins, Julia made the right decision, and I'm glad she did what she did.
Guest:At first, I didn't understand it.
Guest:I was ready to pull off my hair and go to New York and say, we need to talk.
Guest:I'm going to need your credit card to get my layaways out.
Yeah.
Marc:And you thought it was the right thing because you wanted the story to be balanced.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:You didn't want to drag, you didn't want it to be too dark, too relentless.
Guest:I didn't want you to put down the book.
Guest:I want you to say, I want to see how this turns out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I want to see somebody totally from the bottom and, you know,
Guest:The great part about it is I don't whine in this book.
Guest:I don't fault anybody for what I went through.
Guest:I don't pity.
Guest:It's no pity party for me.
Guest:It's just straightforward.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:How I dealt with it?
Guest:Why I did what I did?
Guest:And then we get to where I'm at today.
Marc:And now we also talked about you developing a show over there.
Guest:At Fox, yes.
Guest:That's another hard can.
Guest:Oh, Jesus Christ.
Guest:TV ain't no joke.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know how they put out stories like, this actor is crazy.
Guest:And I'm like, hell, I see why they crazy.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:And I'm just at the beginning.
Guest:I haven't even shot the pilot yet.
Guest:And it is very hard.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's just...
Guest:I, I've always taken care of myself, Mark, ever since, you know, from day one, as I can remember, even when, you know, after that first child, that's when my stuff really started to kick in for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, I don't, I don't like no.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I feel like I can always turn my nose into a yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I can get out there and bust my butt.
Guest:In my mind, Mark, I really think that I can sell more books out of my trunk than the internet can because I know how hard I'm going to work for Miss Pat.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's because I sold a lot of drugs.
Guest:So if I can sell that out of my trunk, truly, you can load my book.
Guest:You can give me a trunk full of books and I'm going to sell.
Marc:Well, hopefully it won't come to that.
Guest:Hopefully it won't.
Guest:I hope it don't.
Guest:But, you know, with TV, you just got you got all of these people involved and then they tell you what they want and you think you give it to them.
Guest:Oh, that's not what I want.
Guest:And I'm like, well, I don't get it.
Guest:This is what you asked for.
Guest:So it's just so much back and forth that I'm not.
Marc:So many people involved, so much negotiating.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:And you want to try to hold on to your story and do it the way you see it.
Marc:And there's all these other people that are afraid of that or whatever.
Marc:They're afraid of their job.
Marc:Who the hell knows what?
Guest:Yeah, I'm like, do you want the Miss Pat story or you just want a story where you can just pop in some big black girl?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, honestly, you know, as a comic, you want it to happen.
Guest:Hell yeah, I need it.
Guest:I got four crack babies I got to raise.
Guest:You know, I don't know how this health care thing going.
Guest:They might be losing their health care.
Guest:I need money, but...
Guest:Sometimes, you know, I always say if you if you ain't willing to stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:Well, you know, it's hard.
Marc:It's hard when you you kind of you make your own way to to sort of realize what the difference between compromising too much.
Marc:Yes.
Marc:And just negotiating with people.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a give and take to it.
Marc:You know, it's a delicate process.
Marc:And, you know, you told me you were working with Ali for now that, you know, there's ways to sort of like, well, that's a good idea.
Marc:But, you know, OK, we'll take that idea.
Marc:But but hold on to other ones.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like, you know, it becomes a sort of process of sort of like, well, let's give him that one as long as we can keep this one.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:Like, we'll keep this part of it, but we'll let them go.
Marc:We'll say that they did that.
Marc:That's a good idea.
Marc:And sometimes that works.
Guest:Sometimes I feel like, you know, like with this process, I mean, I got a great team behind me, Lee.
Guest:Daniel, Imagine, 20th and Fox.
Guest:But, you know, sometimes I get the feeling like we losing the sense of who Miss Pat is, and that's what you guys bought.
Guest:You didn't buy no big mouth loud, roll your neck tight, roll your eye tight black woman.
Guest:You bought a straightforward person with a pass.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And sometimes I get a sense that, are we losing?
Guest:Am I going to let these people not tell the Ms.
Guest:Pat story?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are we losing there?
Guest:That's what scares me sometimes.
Guest:Then, you know, as a comic who's never been in this predicament, I never had a deal like this before.
Guest:You don't want to lose the deal.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You don't want to lose the deal, but you also don't want to be set up to fail.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I don't want to be set up to fail.
Guest:I mean, I'm not in the streets anymore, so I just can't go around the round table slapping the shit out of people.
Guest:Listen to what I'm trying to say.
Guest:You can try it.
Guest:Yeah, they'll haul my ass up out of there in a straitjacket and I'll never get out of jail.
Marc:And the whole process of it, like the show business, like you're at the next level where it's like real in the sense that like you got to go to these offices, you got to deal with these people.
Marc:You're telling me that story the other night, they put you up at the Beverly Hills show.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:They spend top dollar to make you feel like you somebody to tell you, get the fuck on.
Guest:This didn't work.
Guest:I put me up at the Beverly Hills all the time.
Guest:That's a pretty woman hotel.
Guest:I mean, you got them Russian women running through there with black women lips and booties.
Guest:And I mean, I just feel so out of play.
Guest:Really nice hotel.
Guest:And I appreciate it.
Guest:Treat me like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I go in the first time I get there.
Guest:Well, I pull up in a car.
Guest:I run a car.
Guest:I pull up.
Marc:You rented a car.
Guest:Well, they rented me a car and I pull up in Malibu.
Guest:Brand new Malibu.
Guest:Nice car.
Guest:Pull up and they open the door and put these two old white people in my back seat.
Guest:Uber, are you Uber?
Guest:I said, hell no.
Guest:Get out of my car before I take you to Compton.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't fit in for two days over there.
Marc:Yeah, I gotta admit, that's happened to me before too.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Sure, if I pull up, because I drive a Corolla, if I pull up at the comedy store, like two times people have gotten into the car.
Marc:I'm like, I'm not Uber.
Marc:I'm not.
Marc:They just think anybody drives.
Marc:Isn't it weird how quickly people just get into a fucking car without even asking, you know, just sort of, it's crazy.
Guest:And Uber has your picture in your name.
Guest:I didn't say anything.
Guest:Two days they put old people in my mouth.
Guest:And I said, look, I know I don't look like I'm staying here.
Guest:I don't have on no heel and my eyes ain't pulled back.
Guest:But I'm staying at this hotel.
Guest:Then I get into the lobby.
Guest:It was so funny.
Guest:As I'm coming out, the guy who does Trump.
Guest:oh yeah yeah the oh uh alec baldwin alec baldwin was leaving with his family yeah so i go into the front desk and i tell them who i am and i check in and she said we're gonna need your card so i give her my card now i mean i use it for incidental yeah i don't i don't have a credit card i use my card yeah i don't like to pay people back yeah so she's i said hold on how much you putting on my card she said sixteen hundred dollars i said give me my goddamn card back
Guest:Give me my card back.
Guest:I said, what you think, I'm going to steal the mattress?
Guest:Give me my card back.
Guest:Nobody's putting, I ain't even got $1,600.
Guest:Give me my money back.
Guest:I called over, I called John Rowler.
Guest:He's the executive who heard me on your podcast.
Guest:I had to phone a white person.
Guest:I said, get over here.
Guest:These people just asked me for $1,600.
Guest:I'm about to faint.
I'm about to faint.
Marc:That's probably just for the mini bar.
Marc:What are they thinking?
Marc:That's a lot.
Guest:That's crazy.
Guest:I said, ma'am, do you think I'm going to steal the mattress?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I walk in the room and they got Ciroc, Patron.
Guest:It's like a party up in the M&M Pringles.
Guest:M&M's was $10 a pack.
Guest:I had to take it and take a picture and send it to people in the real world and say, this is why...
Guest:Rich people need a tax break because they waste their money on stuff like this.
Guest:I understand Trump fight for taxes for the rich now.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I ordered a ginger ale 1.5 ounces.
Guest:They come to the door with the ginger ale and ice.
Guest:I said, how much is it?
Guest:Twenty two dollars.
Guest:No, I grabbed the ice and slammed the door in their face.
Guest:$22?
Guest:$22 for a 1.5-ounce ginger ale.
Marc:I'll tell you, I've eaten a $10 M&M's before.
Marc:I'll admit to that.
Marc:Not me.
Marc:I get there late at night.
Marc:Not that hotel, but hotels.
Marc:Sometimes you get done with doing a comedy show, and you want to reward yourself, and you didn't make it to the 7-Eleven.
Guest:That's all I probably made, Mark.
Guest:You made more money than me.
Guest:My budget ain't going to allow me to pay no $10 for no M&M.
Guest:When I know I can walk down to the corner store, and if I don't get snatched up, I can pay 99 cents for a pack of M&M.
Marc:You're right.
Guest:You're right.
Guest:I mean, I don't make enough money to do that.
Marc:Look, I don't feel good about it.
Marc:I mean, I don't know that the money is a principal thing.
Marc:It still shouldn't be that much money.
Guest:Well, I pay $500 for my hair.
Guest:You probably would never pay $500 for your hair.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:We've got our things.
Guest:Yeah, we got our balance.
Guest:So you eat the $10 M&M, and I'm going to rock the $500 hair.
Guest:But I could never put $10 worth of M&Ms in my... I'm sorry.
Guest:I'm going to need a truckload of M&Ms.
Marc:M&M for that.
Guest:Yeah, at least a bucket.
Marc:Did you say hi to Alec Baldwin?
Guest:I said, hey, I appreciate your Trump impersonation.
Guest:He just smiled.
Marc:Yeah, he's doing... But we talked about...
Marc:You know, Trump is scary.
Marc:It's obviously horrendously scary, you know, for all of us.
Marc:But for the black community, you know, obviously I don't live in that community, but it must be just terrifying.
Guest:Let me tell you something, Mark.
Guest:All jokes aside, being a black parent in this country is scary.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Especially when you're a black parent of young men.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, like I tell everybody, I said, I'd rather battle breast cancer than to think that my child could be next.
Guest:I read about my child every day being shot by the police.
Guest:And people are like, oh, well, don't exist.
Guest:Well, you cannot stop nobody who's just downright evil.
Guest:who came to kill.
Guest:Like that, the last dude who was shot with the baby in the backseat.
Guest:Did you ever watch that video?
Guest:I cannot pull myself to watch those videos.
Guest:Because I, you know, I look at life like this.
Guest:The police is here to do a job.
Guest:And a lot of them have families.
Guest:All polices ain't bad.
Guest:All polices are not bad.
Guest:It's bad.
Guest:It's bad apples in every job.
Guest:It's bad.
Guest:But when you just see somebody pull out their gun, when they ask you for your ID and shoot you that many times,
Guest:I constantly, my dentist is a big Trump lover.
Guest:And I tell him, I say, you know, just be glad that you white.
Guest:I say, because you don't have to go to sleep worrying about is your child going to return home from work.
Marc:I said, that's a fear that just because he gets pulled over for a stop sign or something or whatever.
Guest:I said, you don't want that fear.
Guest:You don't want that fear.
Marc:What did he say?
Guest:You know, he never can say anything.
Guest:And I told him I was with his nurse one time and she started crying.
Guest:I said, when you got the fear, when you go to bed at night, you rest easily knowing that that your little white baby going to be all right.
Guest:I said, my son work at Chick-fil-A and get off at 10 o'clock and I'm scared to death.
Guest:I do not go to sleep till I know both of my sons is in the house, and one of them don't even live with me.
Guest:I said, you never have to sit down and have the police talk to your son.
Guest:I'm so scared.
Guest:I was at the dealership that has this thing where you can keep your registration in, and I talked to my 17-year-old.
Guest:I said, never reach.
Guest:I said, always turn on the inside light.
Guest:Always say yes, sir, because if you got an asshole walk up to you, try to defuse it.
Guest:I said, let me fight while you're alive.
Guest:I don't want to fight while you're dead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't don't don't don't say I'm not giving you my ID.
Guest:And, you know, we don't have to give them our idea if they don't have a reason to stop.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I said, but let me fight for you while you are alive.
Guest:So I gave him this thing and I said, just hand it to the police.
Guest:That's my license.
Guest:That's my registration.
Guest:Always be mannerable.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Always keep your hands on the wheel.
Guest:Don't ever reach.
Guest:And I tell my son that every day, Mark, he's so tired of me.
Guest:He is.
Guest:He's like, Mama, I know.
Guest:I said, but son, you don't get it.
Guest:You live in this all white community.
Guest:You don't really see what's going on in the world because you play a video game.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm scared shitless.
Marc:And this is your 17 year old.
Guest:And I have a 30-year-old that I talk to all the time, too.
Guest:He lived not far from me.
Guest:Son, if the police pull you over, put your hands on the wheel.
Guest:Yes, sir.
Guest:Be nice.
Guest:You know, just don't do no confrontation.
Guest:He asked you to step outside the car.
Guest:I constantly say I will fight for you, but I don't want to fight for you while you're dead.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's just heartbreaking.
Guest:Yeah, and it's something that, you know, you have a lot of people say, well, make them cooperate.
Guest:Well, then sometimes you can cooperate, and then it still don't matter.
Guest:They still be.
Guest:You seen the two officers who ran up on the boys in Georgia, and he got out of his car and said, what's wrong, officer?
Guest:He just punched him in his damn face.
Guest:They fired him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He had no reason to hit somebody like that.
Guest:And I tell people, you know, you always want to support the police.
Guest:I support the police, too.
Guest:But at least me think about when they kill somebody.
Guest:Think about if that was your child.
Guest:I always I don't say nothing about no other shoe.
Guest:What most heartbreaking to me is a 12 year old that they killed in Cleveland.
Guest:They killed a 12 year old kid for being in a park, Mark, with a toy gun.
Guest:I live in a white community in Plainfield, Indiana, and I see white babies all the time playing with a gun.
Guest:And it's just me to pull up and shoot a 12 year old.
Guest:Think about if that was your child.
Marc:Yeah, it's horrible.
Guest:Somebody love these people who you think is thugs and bums and criminals.
Guest:Somebody love.
Guest:This is somebody's family member.
Guest:Open your mind and think about that.
Guest:Just be black for five minutes and say, what if that was my child?
Guest:And don't say it can't happen because it can happen to you.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Just be black for five minutes.
Guest:They ain't going to want to keep it another five minutes more.
Guest:They're going to give it back.
Guest:Hell no, I don't want to be on this side.
Marc:I made it 45 seconds.
Guest:Yeah, 45 seconds.
Guest:I'm out of here.
Guest:I don't like it.
Marc:But I think that's a good sentiment.
Marc:I think that empathy is lacking.
Marc:And, you know, something like that, that just to say that, just be black for five minutes.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Just to sort of like to engage the empathy, just engage the ability to be in somebody else's shoes for a minute.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And really think about it.
Marc:It's a lot of people are very self-involved and empathy is not always a natural thing for people.
Marc:So you live in an all-white neighborhood.
Marc:Do you talk to people who voted for Trump?
Guest:Yeah, my neighborhood.
Guest:Very conservative.
Guest:But you know what, Mark?
Guest:Like, my dentist is very conservative.
Guest:And I have a police friend that's in the neighborhood.
Guest:And I'm not lying.
Guest:I think he would.
Guest:I think he'll lick Trump hairpiece if he let him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He loves him some Trump.
Guest:But my husband's like, how do you talk to these people?
Guest:I don't judge people because of who they voted for.
Guest:You know, I feel like we can still be friends.
Guest:That's what's great about this country.
Guest:You know, you think one way, I think one way.
Guest:You like yellow, I like black.
Guest:But that don't mean I got to choke the shit out of you because we think different.
Guest:And I'm still their friend.
Guest:I mean, I like to hear, you know, why they think a certain way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not that I'm trying to change them.
Guest:Then I like for them to hear why I think a certain way.
Guest:Now, I've had people that can't talk to people who vote.
Guest:I can't talk to you.
Guest:I'm like, why?
Guest:They're human.
Guest:That's their right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's their right to have their opinion.
Marc:Have you had arguments?
Guest:Yeah, not big arguments.
Guest:I mean, I don't let it go there because, you know, got to remember, I'm talking my conservative friends are police officers and doctors.
Guest:So if I get really loud, oh, you scared me.
Guest:So, you know, but, you know, we don't have arguments.
Guest:We just he stayed his opinion and I stayed mine.
Marc:Well, what was that?
Marc:What was that conversation with that guy after the show?
Guest:Oh, the guy after the show, I did a show and he come up and he started talking.
Guest:And the whole thing was I could feel I could feel his energy.
Guest:So I said, what's wrong with you?
Guest:And he was telling me how he grew up in Lafayette, Indiana.
Guest:And, you know, where he come from, you didn't mix race.
Guest:And then I said, well, do you feel still feel like that?
Guest:He's like, I don't know.
Guest:So I said, well, what's really going on with you?
Guest:He said, well, my wife divorced me and married a black man.
Guest:I said, you pissed off now, ain't you?
Yeah.
Guest:And so I said, he got to talking about it.
Guest:Guy said, do we have dreads?
Guest:And he's like, yeah.
Guest:I said, is he educated?
Guest:He said, yeah.
Guest:I said, you know what?
Guest:Your wife went out and married.
Guest:He was like, what?
Guest:I said, a woke nigga.
Guest:He's like, what?
Guest:I said, that's a black man and know everything what white America have done to them.
Guest:I said, so he going to drop nothing but knowledge on you.
Guest:He was like, I try to get him to argue.
Guest:He just won't argue.
Guest:I said, he will probably beat your brains out.
Guest:I said, but he probably like killing you with knowledge, too.
Guest:And then I said, what's your problem?
Guest:He said, Miss Pat, where I come from, you just don't mix race.
Guest:I said, it's 2017.
Guest:I said, my mama told me years ago that white people was better than me.
Guest:Never look you in the eye and you're the devil.
Guest:And that was a damn lie.
Guest:I said, so you got to overcome that bull crap people put in your head as a kid.
Guest:I said, there's nothing wrong with your wife being married to a black man.
Guest:I said, your problem is, you know how racist you was before she went out and put this black man into your family.
Guest:I said, everything you hated about us, now one has helped raising your white baby.
Guest:And his wife, I said, do your kids like him?
Guest:Yeah, they love him.
Guest:They always bragging about his chicken.
Guest:I said, well, dude, you can't compete with no black people chicken.
Guest:You want to go out and make your kids a piece or something.
Guest:You just ain't going to win on the chicken aisle.
Guest:Yeah, right, yeah.
Guest:We had a long conversation.
Guest:You know, he actually started crying, Mark.
Guest:He actually started crying.
Guest:He teared up.
Guest:And I told him, I said, it's going to be all right.
Guest:I said, it's all about change.
Guest:Open your mind.
Guest:Open your mind.
Guest:Stop seeing a certain race of people a certain way, a certain way, because that's how you was raised.
Marc:Wow, it's an interesting situation, man.
Guest:I like them conversations.
Guest:Like, my husband, other people won't have those conversations, but that's what's wrong with this country.
Guest:We won't talk about touchy shit like race.
Guest:Come into my world, because I want to come into your world.
Guest:I want to understand Mark Maron.
Guest:Like, I want Mark Maron to understand Miss Pat.
Marc:Yeah, and you got through to that guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, you know, you follow me on Facebook and I say, anytime you want to talk, any question you want to have about your kids, step black daddy, I'm here for you.
Marc:Have you heard from him?
Guest:Yeah, he did.
Guest:He hit me up and say, I really needed that.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He said, I really needed that because, you know, especially with white people, they don't want to be called racist.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So you got to be you got to be real careful who you talk to about race because, you know, you can have somebody you're racist.
Guest:And I don't say that like my dentist.
Guest:I told him, I said, I told him, I said, I said, you're not.
Guest:I said, I said, you're ignorant.
Guest:You don't want to open your eyes.
Guest:I said, I don't want to call you racist, doctor, but you're ignorant.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't want to open your minds because he had this whole thing about affirmative action.
Guest:I was thinking about it today because now they're attacking affirmative action.
Guest:Why?
Guest:Why?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why would my white kid have to fight?
Guest:Why do my white kid have to get looked over for some black kid?
Guest:I said, because white people have a 400 year head start.
Guest:Plus, you're rich.
Guest:So they're going to let your child in any damn way.
Guest:Shut up.
Guest:I tell him that all the time.
Guest:So your white baby is not going to get denied because you're rich.
Marc:You got to tell him to be black for five minutes.
Guest:Yeah, I try to tell him to be black for five minutes.
Guest:He's scared.
Guest:And then, you know, I got a black friend.
Guest:I don't want to.
Guest:I said, you ain't got no black friend like me.
Guest:You got them black friend who read and agree.
Guest:Y'all read the same book.
Guest:And both of y'all like your chicken unseasoned.
Guest:You ain't got no black friend who going to put season salt on her chicken.
Guest:And you going to come over to the house and we going to treat you like everybody else.
Guest:You going to get your stale white ass up and dance to too short like the rest of us.
Guest:You don't have no black friend like me.
Marc:He must love when you come for your teeth cleaning.
Guest:You know, I was in his office when Obama, he hated Obama and he would just get so red.
Guest:Oh, Obama is a communist.
Guest:Obama is this.
Guest:I said, look, look, doctor.
Guest:I said, let me say this.
Guest:I said, you worried about Obama so much, but you say you believe in God.
Guest:I said, if you believe in God, then your God is going to take care of you.
Guest:I said, if you keep on talking about Obama, you're going to have a heart attack.
Guest:I said, when you have a heart attack, I'm not going to pay my copay.
Guest:I'm going to step over your ass and go out the door.
Marc:That's what I told you.
Marc:Well, I hope you're right.
Marc:I hope everything's going to be okay, and I'm glad that things are working out for you.
Guest:Things are working out, Mark.
Guest:I mean, I'm happy.
Guest:I'm blessed.
Guest:Sometimes I wake up and can't believe that I'm here in my career.
Guest:You know, as a comic, you've been around, you told me the other night, 30-something years.
Guest:You know the ups and downs when you're like, man, I need
Guest:quit this this ain't gonna work out oh i should have took that prostitution job in 82 maybe i could be a madam now i'm just kidding y'all it's just it's it's really hard working and i i truly i truly believe that it's finally paying off yeah and i and i hope the book's a big success and i'll tell you what i did you gotta do the audio
Guest:I did the audio.
Guest:It was long.
Marc:It's hard.
Guest:Oh, my God.
Guest:It was I was like my voice went out and it was so crazy because I think I told you this other day.
Guest:In special chapter five, that was really touching for me.
Guest:For me to tell that story that I never told anybody.
Guest:And I called my sister and I said, just tell me that this happened.
Guest:And she said it did.
Guest:And my husband was even shocked.
Marc:Which story is that?
Marc:We don't want to spoil it, but what's it about?
Guest:uh it's about it's about it's a violation story and so my husband's like she never told me that story and that was something that when I decided to write this book and I talked to her about it and I was like what are you thinking she's like you should tell it and I was like I'm scared I'm gonna be embarrassed and then I started to realize it's so many other people out there that have been through what I've been through why not tell the story and it was a healing point for me Mark because that was pain that I kept hidden
Guest:That was pain.
Guest:I kept a smile on my face, but I never talked about that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Never until we wrote this book.
Guest:And I've been married over 20 some years and he never heard that story.
Guest:It was only me and my sister knew about that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So when I when I when I went to go read it, it was when I went to go read, I was like, oh, Lord, chapter five.
Guest:And I cried so much.
Guest:And the guy who was listening to New York was crying.
Guest:And the guy who was in the studio crying was crying.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:I'm starting to cry.
Guest:I don't even know what it is.
Guest:And it was, I mean, but it was beautiful.
Guest:I mean, when I'm reading the book, you can hear the pain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Then after I come out of that chapter and then, you know, I start to, you know, perk back up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But that was some real pain for me.
Guest:It was a healing point.
Marc:By sharing it, did it free you a little bit?
Guest:It freed me.
Guest:You know how when you got secrets and it's always there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you don't tell anybody.
Guest:It's like a not.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was a I was able to bust that not.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, finally, I'm free.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So now my husband, no, my, you know, like I said, I never told him.
Guest:He still loves me.
Guest:Yes, he do.
Guest:Yes, he do.
Guest:You know, even my kids, even my kids is like, you never told that story.
Marc:too painful no it's too painful and shameful it was very it was both so but i mean i'm good now i mean i'm you know what mark i'm looking for a way to make a joke out of it well i mean the but the fact that one thing i know from doing this is that when you share those parts of yourself it does help a lot of people yeah because there's a lot of people walking around with shame and
Marc:Walking around with secrets that they shouldn't be ashamed of because a lot of times it wasn't their fault at all.
Marc:And, you know, when somebody else does it, they feel less alone.
Marc:They feel more maybe able to put it out in the world and free themselves.
Marc:So it's a great service that you do with that.
Guest:And I mean, I realize this.
Guest:I'm not.
Guest:I thought it just happened to black girl.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But no.
Guest:No.
Guest:I thought teenage pregnancy only happened in the ghetto.
Guest:When I became a comic and started talking about me and my daughter is 14 years apart.
Guest:Women of all walks of life will come up to me.
Guest:I had my baby young.
Guest:I was like, what?
Guest:Did she happen to everybody?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was comedy was eye opening for me.
Guest:And that's why I started.
Guest:I just I wanted to share so much to let people know it's not about how you start.
Guest:It's about how you finish.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's what it's all about.
Guest:You know, it was a rough start.
Guest:I was born on a broken foundation.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and you rebuilt.
Guest:I rebuilt that foundation.
Guest:And that's what it's all about.
Marc:Well, that's a beautiful way to end.
Marc:Thank you, Pat.
Marc:Thank you, Mark.
Thank you.
Marc:All right, again, that was Miss Pat and her book, Rabbit, the Autobiography of Miss Pat, is available now for pre-order and is in stores tomorrow, August 22nd.
Marc:What can I say about Brent Weinbach?
Marc:Well, I can tell you this.
Marc:For most of the interactions I had with him for years, he just made me uncomfortable, a little nervous.
Marc:I found myself a little off-center around him.
Marc:He kind of occupies a unique time zone that is his.
Marc:And I always thought that there was some...
Marc:Some other element to him that I took personally, that I manufactured, according to him, that there was a certain amount of fuck you to him making me uncomfortable or making audiences a little uncomfortable.
Marc:And it was something I wanted to talk to him about.
Marc:And we eventually got to it.
Marc:It turns out he's just a very sort of unique intelligence.
Marc:He's got a unique take on things and unique intelligence.
Marc:And, you know, he's a very funny guy in a very specific way that is his own.
Marc:His stand-up special, Brent Weinbach, appealing to the mainstream, is now available on Amazon Prime and on CISO for as long as CISO is still around.
Marc:You can follow him on Twitter to find out other stuff he's doing.
Marc:But, you know...
Marc:It was good conversation.
Marc:Not unlike many conversations that I have going in.
Marc:I don't always know what it's going to be.
Marc:But sometimes I have prejudgments about the person.
Marc:Many times I don't necessarily say what they are.
Marc:But in this case, I tell him what was on my mind.
Marc:And he alleviated my concerns about the part of his personality that I thought was mocking me.
Marc:So this is me talking to Brent Weinbach, the comedian.
Marc:You know, it's interesting, Brent, that it's you.
Marc:So now I'm having this mild, little bit of a frenetic, emotional moment here.
Marc:And out of all the people to have show up for that...
Marc:I wouldn't have thought that, you know, you'd be the guy that was going to get it.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Why?
Marc:Well, I don't know.
Marc:You and I don't talk much.
Marc:And like, you know, my own projection of what I think you might be, what you're probably wrong is sort of like, yeah, I don't know, you know, that guy's emotional spectrum necessarily.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I actually, I'm very interested in your emotional spectrum.
Guest:You are?
Guest:Well, I've asked you about it in the past, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What have you, how have you framed it?
Guest:I've asked you if you, because you, I, I've,
Guest:I don't know why I asked you this at one point, but I asked you if you ever cry.
Guest:And do you remember that?
Guest:The conversation we had about crying?
Guest:I do cry.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I was curious.
Guest:What did I say?
Guest:You said you cried when Greg Giraldo died.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, I don't know.
Guest:I had questions about why you crying.
Guest:Cause I'm, I don't know.
Guest:It's interesting to me.
Guest:The thought of you crying is interesting to me.
Guest:You really?
Guest:Well, yeah, because you seem like kind of a, a hard kind of guy and I,
Guest:or kind of almost tough in a way.
Marc:That's interesting.
Marc:You know, this is interesting because, like, and I think this will be revealed about both of us, is that, you know, the people that really know me, you know, see through that shit pretty easily.
Marc:And I think I'm fairly transparent.
Marc:So it's a front, kind of.
Marc:No, it's not a front.
Marc:It's just natural defenses, right?
Marc:I wouldn't call it a front, but you're a comic.
Marc:You've been with one a long time.
Marc:We're sort of a ragtag group of swaggering, insecure, sensitive people.
Marc:So how those insecurities manifest in any one of us is what it is, right?
Marc:So yeah, I can be a little intense and a little intimidating and crabby and maybe a little hostile.
Marc:But you're soft on the inside.
Marc:I'm a very sensitive person.
Marc:I cry more than is probably necessary.
Marc:How often do you cry, would you say?
Marc:Would you cry once a week, you think?
Marc:A little.
Marc:I mean, at what degree of crying?
Marc:Like uncontrolled?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:I don't do that too often anymore.
Marc:Wait, did you used to do that often where it's uncontrollable and you're making noise like that?
Marc:I don't think I've done that in a long time.
Marc:I can't even remember if I ever have.
Marc:Have you?
Guest:I mean, I did when I was a kid, but no, I don't cry often at all, and I think I'm probably not that emotional, or at least I kind of keep my emotions in check in some kind of weird way.
Marc:Okay, so that's what I would assume about you, but you got a little waffly at the end there.
Guest:Obviously, I mean, I'm conscious of that.
Guest:It's not like I'm devoid of emotion or incapable of it.
Marc:But that's your front then.
Guest:Yeah, or something.
Guest:Yeah, maybe I think that emotions are corny or something.
Marc:Right, so you stifle them intentionally.
Guest:Maybe, yeah, maybe so, yeah.
Marc:But I guess I got choked up
Marc:I got choked up yesterday.
Marc:You know, I was watching a Vietnam documentary.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:Just watching a movie or something.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And I, you know, when people talk to me in here, a lot of times I get choked up.
Marc:Do you really?
Marc:All the time.
Marc:Kate, so you've cried almost or got choked up on the podcast.
Marc:Many times.
Guest:What was an example?
Marc:Well, it's just when people are telling me stories about their life, even if they're not, you know, tragic or even that necessarily, you know, just people's personal struggle.
Marc:Something sweet or compelling, yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, just moments.
Marc:Like, if somebody I'm talking to gets emotional, I'll get emotional immediately.
Marc:Like, a lot of times when I've had to stifle it.
Marc:But, you know, tears have run down my face.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah, with Jenny Slate, with the...
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:Michaela Watkins.
Marc:People, like if people were talking about their family or about a story about their life, you know, I'm very emotionally invested in it.
Marc:And like I get, you know, I can feel it.
Guest:That's interesting.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I don't know why you would think, I don't think I'm tough.
Marc:I think I'm, you know, I can be intimidating and a little bit
Guest:Well, you know, here's an interesting thing is that you, I don't know, some people have this thought of you being abrasive or something.
Guest:I'm abrasive, sure.
Guest:I've actually always known you to be a nice guy, actually.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:To me, at least.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You've always been nice to me, at least.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But maybe that's a front.
Marc:I don't think I'm fronting at all.
Marc:I mean, I think I'm reacting.
Marc:Fronting is a weird word, which would mean, which would imply that there's some intention to it.
Guest:In fact, you know, there was my first encounter with you, which was a one-sided encounter.
Guest:It was just me going to see you perform.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It was in the early 2000s, you know, around the time I was starting comedy.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I usually would leave open mics.
Guest:Are we recording, by the way?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:I would usually, in those days, I would stick around for the whole open mic just to be- Part of the community?
Guest:Yeah, just to kind of be supportive.
Marc:To act like you were a person capable of hanging out?
Guest:No.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, I liked hanging out.
Guest:There was a camaraderie between the open mic comedians and stuff.
Guest:But anyway, I would leave early if I wanted to see a show at the Punchline.
Guest:I started in the Bay Area.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:As you, I don't know, may or may not know.
Guest:No, I knew that.
Guest:And if there was a headliner I wanted to see and I would leave early and I'd feel kind of bad.
Guest:And anyway, when I told the guy who ran the open mic, his name was Tony Sparks, I remember telling him, oh, sorry I have to leave early and you know how I'd like to stay, but I wanted to catch the show at the punchline.
Guest:He said, oh, who's performing?
Guest:I said, oh, Marc Maron.
Guest:And I hadn't seen you before.
Guest:But I wanted to.
Guest:And he said, oh yeah, he's really funny and also really nice guy.
Guest:So my first impression of you, your personality, was like, oh, this is going to be a nice guy kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that stayed that way, you know, actually, as long as I've known you, actually.
Guest:Then we had a regular-sided conversation in, I think, around 2005, and it was backstage at the Steve Allen Theater.
Guest:We were going to do Ron Lynch's show.
Guest:And actually, at the time, Craig Anton and Brendan Smalls show as well.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And you were back there, and this is before you started the podcast and stuff, and I don't know, it was just the two of us back there, and you were just, you know, you asked me how I was doing, and I just thought, yeah, this guy's a nice guy.
Guest:I don't know, I just, you know, so, you know, and then later I started hearing, oh, yeah, he's kind of like mean or something, and I was like, I don't know, I always thought you were a nice guy, so there you go.
Marc:There would be no reason for me to be mean to you.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Just on instinct, my instinct about you was like, well, this guy's operating in a slightly different time zone than the rest of us.
Marc:Like the future?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:No, I'm just kidding.
Marc:Well, no, just in the sense that you're a guy that my interpretation initially, and then after seeing you do the work you do, I think I went through some...
Marc:some like there was probably some struggle with with how I interpreted you like you know there are guys that do the kind of things that you do who you know who are who are actually doing it to overcompensate somehow you know to like you know like look how weird I am like because you know they don't necessarily have the confidence or or the skill set to to you know do the step before that which is try to construct something like if I'm just really weird you know then
Marc:you know, I will transcend, uh, criticism.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, and they're like, I know those guys, they're, they're kind of, they're, they're, they're emotional, uh, con men in a way.
Marc:Um, I don't know if that's quite right, but they're, they're, they're avoiding something, right.
Marc:By doing weird shit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But, you know, once I got the hang of you and after I first saw you, you know, upon meeting you, I knew that you were like sort of an awkward, bright guy, you know.
Marc:But after seeing you, I like, you know, I respected you because I'm like, well, this is the way this guy thinks.
Marc:He's not trying to do anything but who he is.
Marc:I mean, that's true.
Guest:I mean, you know, but the truth is, is I...
Guest:If I was to ever... I never really did comedy in a sort of more conversational way or like... Right.
Guest:No, I remember seeing you early on.
Guest:Only because I was never... That didn't feel natural to me, you know, to be kind of just casual on stage, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I always... Do you do that in life?
Guest:Well, I mean, I'm obviously more casual talking to you, but I think that probably deadpan is sometimes a way people might describe me, even just on a personal level sometimes.
Marc:Yeah, but not your performance,
Guest:No, but I always thought of standup as a performance though.
Guest:And I always kind of, I felt, it felt more natural for me to treat it more like a presentation and be more deliberate about the way I performed rather than being kind of conversational casual.
Guest:Cause that just didn't seem natural to me.
Guest:It didn't feel, that didn't feel natural.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It just didn't feel comfortable.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So, right.
Marc:So you weren't, you know, really necessarily interested in exploring the nuances of your personal struggles or, or your parents or, you know,
Guest:Yeah, well, no, but I think, actually, I think I do express my personal experiences, but it's in a more abstract way, and through whatever the bits I might do.
Marc:Okay, so you grew up in the Bay Area?
Guest:No, I grew up in Los Angeles.
Guest:You did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where?
Guest:In Hollywood, in Laurel Canyon.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And are your parents in show business?
Guest:Yeah, my dad was.
Guest:He was a writer and producer.
Guest:For?
Guest:For movies, smaller budget movies.
Guest:In fact, I noticed that you have a picture of Todd Browning's Freaks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And my dad apparently made the first movie since Freaks to use real sideshow freaks.
Guest:What movie was that?
Guest:It was called The Freakmaker, also known as The Mutations.
Guest:And I think it came out in 73, I think.
Guest:Was he still around?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, you grew up in the house with him?
Marc:Yes.
Marc:How many siblings you got?
Marc:There's four of us total.
Marc:I have three.
Marc:And you're the oldest?
Guest:I'm the oldest, yeah.
Marc:You are?
Marc:I'm the big brother, yeah.
Marc:And your folks still married?
Guest:No.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Your mom's still around?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:They're both still around, yeah.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:And she lives here too?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:They both live here?
Marc:Yeah, they live in Hollywood.
Marc:They live in separate houses now, but yeah.
Marc:Okay, right.
Marc:Now, was your dad, so he was kind of like a, are you telling me he was a B movie writer, producer?
Guest:One might categorize it as that, yeah.
Guest:I mean, he made another movie, but he actually got some pretty good names in the movies.
Guest:I mean, in that Freakmaker movie, Donald Pleasence is in it.
Guest:It was directed by Jack Cardiff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Tom Baker of Doctor Who was in it.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And he made another movie called Blind Man's Bluff, otherwise known as A Cauldron of Blood, which actually starred Boris Karloff.
Guest:And so there's some people.
Guest:He also apparently made the first- He directed them or he- He didn't direct any of them, but he produced them and wrote them.
Guest:He wrote them.
Guest:And he supposedly made the first movie about LSD.
Guest:I mean, he claims it's the first movie about LSD called Hallucination Generation.
Marc:So were you part of that?
Guest:This is all pre my time around.
Marc:So you weren't old enough to have, he was probably part of that whole Laurel Canyon community?
Marc:He was in New York for a while.
Marc:I mean, he was kind of all over the place, yeah.
Marc:But were you guys hanging out at the Zappa house or anything like that?
Marc:No, no.
Guest:No, no.
Marc:I would have liked to.
Guest:I wouldn't have appreciated it until I was older, but yeah.
Marc:So you grew up with your father that by the time you were conscious, he had this history.
Guest:What was he doing by the time you were- Well, he was still trying to make movies in the 80s, and he did actually have some of the freaks from The Freakmaker come over sometimes, you know?
Guest:Which ones?
Guest:This guy named Popeye.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Not those ones, but the ones from his movie.
Guest:No, those guys were probably past.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This guy, Popeye, he goes by Popeye.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He pops his eyes out of his sockets.
Marc:Oh, he's got that Marty Feldman disease?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I guess.
Guest:No, but I feel like Marty Feldman had a different thing going on.
Marc:But he could bug his eyes out?
Marc:They would pop out?
Marc:They would actually pop out of the sockets.
Marc:So they were glass eyes?
Guest:No, they were real eyes.
Guest:They would dangle?
Guest:They wouldn't dangle even because the sockets would still kind of hold them, but he would be able to pop them out of the sockets.
Marc:How old are you when you meet Popeye?
Yeah.
Guest:Probably six or seven, I don't know, something like that, eight.
Guest:That must have been both frightening and exciting at the same time.
Guest:It didn't bother me.
Guest:I wasn't scared, no.
Guest:Then there was this woman named the alligator woman who would come by.
Guest:Sure, with the skin, I imagine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Skin problem.
Guest:She had some sort of skin thing.
Guest:Leathery.
Guest:Leathery skin, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, she would hang out too?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And your dad liked them?
Marc:They were fun to be around?
Marc:Yeah, my dad had a lot of weird, interesting friends, yeah.
Marc:So was that how, I'm trying to get a sense of, I'm trying to project a whole world onto you.
Marc:Does your dad have a lot of memorabilia?
Marc:Around?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Some, some stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But not like clutter.
Guest:I know he has clutter.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:He has a lot of, I mean, but his, the stuff he has around is more just, I don't know, weird little antiques and things.
Guest:Not antiques, but just little gadgets and things.
Guest:Just, you know, like a fake bird or something.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Is he still working?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:A little bit.
Guest:What happened in the eighties is he mainly, he decided to, he bought some land in the seventies and started building houses and,
Guest:Oh, so he got into real estate.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I guess you could call it that.
Guest:And he rented them out, and that's kind of what he does.
Guest:He did make a movie.
Guest:So he got some rental properties.
Guest:Why do people do that in LA?
Guest:It seems to be a smart thing to do.
Guest:Well, the land was really cheap in the 70s.
Guest:And he bought in really underdeveloped, like non-developed areas.
Guest:The house that I grew up in, mainly, well, we moved in when I was five.
Guest:He started building it in the 70s and got this land for really cheap.
Guest:There was no houses up there at the time.
Guest:It was just a dirt road.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:I don't know, he had a, yeah.
Marc:Sort of adventurous, huh?
Guest:Yeah, he was like a door-to-door salesman for a while.
Guest:He's done a lot of weird things.
Guest:You should have him on the podcast.
Guest:You get along with him?
Guest:Yeah, we get along okay.
Guest:I'm closer with my siblings.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Are they all here too?
Guest:Not anymore.
Guest:They moved away.
Guest:They kind of followed me to the Bay Area and then I left the Bay Area.
Guest:When did you go up there?
Marc:So you went to high school?
Guest:I went for college.
Marc:Yeah, what college did you go to?
Marc:UC Berkeley.
Marc:Now what were your focuses?
Marc:When did you decide that?
Marc:Stand-up comedy?
Marc:I heard that show business was a thing.
Marc:Were you always a performer?
Guest:I started playing piano when I was 15.
Guest:I played jazz piano for a while.
Guest:Seriously?
Guest:I got, wait, are you saying seriously or like asking if I did it seriously?
Guest:If you did it seriously.
Guest:I thought you were saying maybe, perhaps saying, seriously, you were doing that?
Guest:No.
Guest:I played, yeah, I was playing seriously.
Guest:Well, I definitely got serious about it in my later teens and kind of somewhat early 20s because I was playing professionally for a while, actually.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:In jazz bands?
Guest:Mainly solo and background music at hotels and stuff.
Guest:Oh yeah?
Guest:Yeah, it wasn't the most glamorous job, but it was, I did it for a full time living for a while, actually for a few years.
Guest:It seems like 15 is almost like late to be getting to piano.
Guest:It is, it is.
Guest:That was actually why I got so into it, I think, is when I was, actually it was really when I was 14, I started getting into jazz and particularly Brazilian jazz, Bossa Nova stuff.
Guest:and I started learning pieces on the piano.
Guest:My mom used to be a classical pianist, and so she kind of helped me through some sheet music when I was 14, and I was really into that, and then my parents said- You learned how to read music, you mean?
Guest:My mom kind of taught me how to read music a bit, and she was kind of helping me through the sheet music to some- Where's she from?
Guest:Showbeam stuff.
Guest:She grew up in Torrance, but her family's from the Philippines.
Guest:She was the only one born in the United States.
Guest:She's Filipino?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that part of your act is true.
Guest:Actually, pretty much everything I say is true on stage.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:But it might be some abstraction of truth, though, in some way.
Guest:But anyway, yeah, so when I was 15, they offered to pay for lessons for me, jazz lessons, and I said...
Guest:all right i'll see they said you know you can see if you like it and if you don't like it you know yeah move on and i ended up really liking it i got into it so you know i they never forced me into playing piano when i was like a younger kid yeah and since i kind of got into it in a more organic way i really got into it and i got really into jazz because of that so when you were in high school were you uh at 15 you're picking up on this shit which i imagine was sort of off the beaten path of most other kids
Guest:Yeah, but a lot of the stoners were into jazz also, and I played with them.
Guest:We played music together and stuff.
Marc:You weren't a stoner?
Guest:No, I never did any kind of drug ever in my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I had a lot of friends that did in high school and stuff.
Guest:Yeah, those kids were into music.
Guest:A lot of the kids who were into...
Guest:You know, punk and rock and stuff liked jazz, too.
Guest:And the closest thing you could get to sort of being in a rock band or something in high school was jazz band.
Guest:So a lot of rocker kind of kids were in jazz band because it was kind of the closest thing.
Guest:And you were in jazz band.
Guest:And I was in jazz band, too.
Guest:And so I kind of associated with them because of that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's interesting.
Marc:So you learned how to play with people and you know, did you guys, were you guys, um, I had a little band in high school.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But the jazz band in of itself, like I, I got, I got, I signed up for jazz band and I was told I could be in it if I learned how to read music.
Marc:I was, I was brought in as the bass player.
Marc:Oh really?
Marc:You played jazz band in high school?
Marc:I didn't last because I never learned how to read music and I didn't know what was going on.
Marc:And I thought I could just, I literally thought that, well, the bass isn't that important.
Marc:They won't notice if I don't know what I'm doing.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's ridiculous.
Marc:That's very important.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's so important.
Marc:Bass is one of the most important parts.
Marc:Yeah, it was like, I don't know what the fuck I was thinking.
Marc:This other kid was there, and he didn't know how to read music, and he was a bass player, and he was high all the time.
Marc:I think I lasted a matter of weeks.
Marc:The guy was very mad at me.
Marc:All you need to know is your scales.
Guest:If you learn your scales, you could have survived.
Marc:Yeah, I know now, but I regret that I didn't sort of lock in then and apply myself to it.
Marc:I think I've just, I don't know, I thought I could get away with it.
Yeah.
Guest:It was very embarrassing.
Guest:I mean, it is pretty low register, too, sometimes, and sometimes you can get away with it.
Guest:Not really, because the rhythm section is kind of the... Oh, you know what you do?
Guest:You do what you were talking about earlier.
Guest:You just kind of be really confident about it, and it's devoid of criticism, you know?
Guest:Just act as if you're like... I'm doing my own thing over here.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah, I'm improvising.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:I'm an innovator.
Guest:Yeah, you're taking it to the next level.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah, some people get away with that.
Marc:You better have a full genius act.
Marc:yeah to pull that shit off well yeah so you're playing in bands what was uh what was your band it was a jazz band also you know we just played jazz stuff you know and how good were you at going like did you get out there i mean could you like were you a monk guy were you uh i liked omar jamal i liked oscar peterson although i could never play as well as oscar peterson bill evans
Guest:Bill Evans is definitely like, I think if you heard me play, people would think I was influenced by him.
Guest:I was mainly, I used like the similar voicings to the way that he would play, but.
Marc:Voicings, what does that mean?
Guest:Just like chord arrangements and stuff, you know, just the way that the, usually playing kind of compacted ways of playing chords, you know, so that there's kind of a little more dissonance maybe or something, just like playing notes really close to each other.
Guest:Do you still play?
Guest:I play for fun every now and then, you know.
Marc:but it sounds interesting thing to me because like I've talked to other people that were like Eric Andre and yeah he studied bass yeah and you know Brendan Small has figured out a way to fully integrate his virtuosity into his comedy as well
Marc:So you're in a jazz band of your own and you're playing jazz band at the school, so you were pretty serious about it, right?
Guest:I was pretty serious about music, yeah, at one point, but I always actually wanted to do comedy.
Guest:Why would you want to do that?
Guest:I loved comedy.
Guest:I always watched it.
Guest:Any chance I could watch stand-up comedy on TV, I would watch it all the time in the 80s and the 90s.
Guest:Who did you like?
Guest:Who did you gravitate towards?
Guest:In the 80s, stand-up-wise, I liked Charles Fleischer and Harry Basil and Mark Curry.
Guest:This one you were in high school.
Guest:Even before that, I would say elementary school and junior high.
Guest:Fleischer makes sense.
Guest:Yeah, well Fleischer's special, there was a special he did, and I just, it was really multimedia, almost kind of, he was playing instruments and stuff, and doing a lot of voices and stuff.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:I always really liked visceral comedians, you know, and Harry Basil did that as well.
Marc:Well, he did more of a, more mainstream sort of prop-driven, like he did the- I always loved props, you know.
Marc:You do a little prop work.
Marc:Yeah, a little bit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:He, like, yeah, Harry would do the Risky Business Dance.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, he did a lot of movie references and stuff.
Guest:Fleischer was something to watch.
Guest:He was just really just, I just love fun, silly stuff.
Guest:Have you been fortunate enough to meet Charlie?
Guest:Yeah, I did a show with him maybe once or twice.
Guest:Yeah, that was cool.
Guest:It's cool to meet these people that I admired when I was younger.
Marc:But it feels to me that you guys might have a good vibe between you.
Marc:Did you talk to them?
Guest:We didn't really get a chance to talk too much.
Marc:I mean, whatever.
Marc:Yeah, he's an interesting guy.
Guest:He's kind of quirky, huh?
Marc:That's a nice word, sure.
Marc:Yeah, you know, he invented, he invents things sometimes, and, you know, he was, he definitely has a, like, he's really that guy, not unlike you, you know, you don't think he's, like, you know, he'll repeat himself as people with acts do, and as we all do, but, you know, he's really an odd good dude.
Marc:Do you know him pretty well?
Marc:Was he on the show before?
Marc:He did a live one.
Marc:Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And, you know, I've seen him at the comedy store, and I've talked to him, and, you know, when I was a doorman at the comedy store, I,
Marc:He was already over the arc of, it was already the mid 80s, late 80s.
Marc:Roger Rabbit hadn't come out yet though, right?
Marc:I think it had.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Yeah, but he would do his thing, but it was always really good.
Marc:You would only know that it was repetitive if you've seen him over and over again.
Marc:But he would do a type of crowd work that was always pretty funny.
Marc:He had a built-in kind of method of doing crowd work in a certain way.
Guest:So he was pretty controlled and calculated about what he did?
Marc:Well, he had a context.
Marc:I think within it he could play.
Guest:I liked Rowan Atkinson a lot.
Guest:He was one of my biggest influences.
Guest:I mean, not really probably known as a stand-up comedian, but just his performance bits that he would do.
Guest:Yeah, he's very funny.
Guest:He had an HBO special that I think is one of the funniest things.
Marc:Yeah, he's very physical, but subtle physical in a way.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, just, yeah, funny faces.
Guest:I mean, really, the first thing that I really loved was the Marx Brothers and Harpo Marx.
Marc:Yeah, did your dad turn you on to that?
Guest:Yeah, my dad did, yeah.
Guest:And, you know, I saw all the Marx Brothers movies when I was younger.
Guest:Those are kind of the, that was like my first comedy thing that I really loved the most, you know.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Marx Brothers.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And Harpo was always my favorite until I got into my 30s, and I started realizing that I think Chico is my favorite, actually.
Marc:Chico is the guy.
Guest:Yeah, because he's kind of underrated between the main three, you know?
Guest:Don't you think?
Guest:It's either Groucho or Harpo that people like, right?
Guest:But Chico, no one really says that's their favorite, but I realized he's actually the funniest one in a way, because he's kind of a straight man to Harpo a lot.
Guest:And he's abrasive, and he's got that weird Italian accent.
Guest:The fake Italian accent is so funny to me.
Guest:I mean, I took it for granted when I was a kid, but looking at it now, I'm thinking, that's just so ridiculous.
Guest:He's a straight man, yet he has this ridiculous Italian accent for no reason other than that it just sounds funny.
Guest:That's so funny.
Guest:plays piano too yeah that's kind of cool yeah and then there's those rare people that that that miss zeppo you know the there there's a zeppo marks it was maybe one or two movies monkey well my he's in my favorite one which is monkey business yeah that's that's the ultimate yeah zeppo yeah but zeppo's like definitely the straight man to the to the rest of them to the chaos yeah but um yeah chico's really the the gem of the hidden gem of the marx brothers that's funny kind of i think
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I talked to, like, it's funny when people go off the, you know, off, you know, the expectation about favorite, you know, like, I guess specifically with you and Chico, but, like, I have Billy Weston here who's a Larry Fine fanatic.
Guest:Oh, well, yeah, I could see that.
Guest:Let's see, because, I mean, either people like Curly because he's, like, kind of the stupidest one, I guess, and then Moe is the meanest one, and Larry is this in-between guy.
Guest:You know, Larry is the Chico of the Stooges, I think, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, you should talk to Billy.
Guest:Yeah, I actually get that, though, too, actually.
Guest:By the way, you know, come to think of it, and I didn't really start appreciating the Three Stooges until I was, like, older for some reason.
Guest:When I was a kid, I, for some reason, thought it was too big for me.
Guest:It was too... Too broad, too... Something, you know?
Marc:Too childish in a way?
Marc:I don't know, or something.
Guest:But I didn't really like it when I was a kid.
Guest:But as I got older, I started revisiting Three Stooges, and I was like, this show is really funny.
Guest:And Larry is actually really funny because he's so... First of all, he just looks ridiculous with his hair.
Marc:His bald... And he was always slightly befuddled and kind of like the last guy to get something.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:He's definitely underrated.
Guest:Yeah, Larry's underrated.
Guest:I like Larry.
Guest:Yeah, no, now that you mention it, yeah, definitely.
Guest:I totally get that.
Guest:Larry and Chico, Larry and Chico.
Guest:They should do the cop movie.
Guest:That should be the name of your next show.
Marc:Larry and Chico.
Marc:Yeah, just a sort of deconstruction and Weinbachian analysis of Chico and...
Guest:In a way, they're kind of, in a way, the most nuanced, in a way, or something.
Marc:I think that's true.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I think that's true.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, like, it could get by you.
Marc:You see them as just a, you know, part of, they're the middle of the process to get to the thing.
Guest:Right, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it's like, because, you know, okay, with the Marx Brothers, Groucho, and not to dwell on this for too long, but Groucho is very, he's very cerebral and witty.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Harpo is playing to the visceral and, you know, guttural kind of thing.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Chico is this in-between thing, which is so cool, actually.
Guest:He's the best of both worlds, actually, when you think of it.
Guest:Because he's both, I think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that's cool.
Guest:It is.
Guest:That's a good revelation, actually.
Guest:I'm glad we had that.
Guest:We had a breakthrough.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:So you're playing the music.
Guest:But anyway, no, I always liked... I mean, but I was writing material in high school.
Guest:I always wanted to do... In what form did that...
Guest:I mean, I was trying to write a stand-up act because I always watched... I mean, I watched Russell Simmons' Def Comedy Jam a lot.
Guest:Any stand-up show on TV, A&E, Evening of the Improv, whatever, I was always watching it.
Guest:So I always wanted to do it and just didn't know how to approach it in my own way.
Guest:I always thought I kind of needed to do it like Seinfeld or something, you know?
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:But yeah, but at one point I realized I didn't need to do that.
Guest:Even though there was people like Andy Kaufman and Stephen Wright who, you know, I thought, I don't know why it didn't occur to me that I could do it more like they did it.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:And they ended up being influences too.
Guest:But for some reason, Seinfeld, I always thought, I thought I needed to be Seinfeld for some reason.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it just, that wasn't right.
Guest:You know, that never was really, that wasn't me, you know.
Guest:So I was like, I think I just had it in my mind that I was, that I could be Seinfeld or it could be like Seinfeld.
Guest:But it just took a moment to realize that.
Guest:I'd like to see you do like, you know, one Seinfeld bit.
Guest:Well, the original stuff I was writing was in the vein of a Seinfeld type.
Guest:And eventually I ended up doing it as a bit in my regular act.
Guest:as somebody I'm not.
Guest:So you thought of that.
Guest:As a response to maybe perhaps a criticism of me not acting natural on stage, what if I acted like this?
Guest:That's actually in my special that is.
Guest:The new one?
Guest:The new one, yeah.
Marc:So it's been around that long that bit?
Guest:A lot of the material in this special that just came out is stuff from earlier material of mine.
Guest:This is the appealing to the mainstream special.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Where can people see that?
Guest:On CISO, which unfortunately I heard is not maybe going to be around.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:That's a rumor I've been hearing more and more is that it might not be around.
Guest:Do you have it on stored?
Guest:Do you have it?
Guest:I have a copy.
Guest:You have a copy?
Guest:I have a copy, but hopefully it will end up somewhere else, that if it does go away on CISO, you'll maybe be able to find it on Hulu or something.
Guest:hopefully.
Guest:So anyway, yeah.
Guest:So yeah.
Marc:So that, that bit that was, you know, a seed of that bit was planted when you were in high school, high school.
Guest:And then, um, yeah.
Guest:And then even in part of like the early half of college, you know, I was like, this is how I'm supposed to do standup, you know?
Guest:And it was, but I eventually turned it into like a bit that, and it's in the special and it's like, you know, it's kind of acting like a more observational.
Guest:I mean, sure.
Guest:Uh,
Guest:No, I probably do observational stuff anyway, but I mean, just a more classic kind of Seinfeld-esque comedian.
Guest:But it's more like a generic comedian character.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:It's to make a point.
Guest:And it makes a point about that that's not natural for me to be like that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And two, there's just, it's also just about kind of just some common tropes that you see in stand-up comedy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Just a lot of common isms, you know, like that you see.
Guest:No, I get it.
Marc:That's calling attention to that.
Marc:Well, I think that's a tricky road to hoe when in the sense that, you know, like because you are so specifically yourself and you have a style which is, you know, absurd and engaged and abstract,
Marc:that you gotta be really good at it, which you are, to at some point go like, this is what all the other idiots think is good.
Guest:I mean, something, I don't know.
Guest:It was just definitely an early response to just like, this isn't natural for me to be like this.
Guest:It's natural for me to be like this, the way I'm doing it, which is deliberate and presentational.
Marc:Well, so you're already working on bits and you're writing bits in high school, but when did you start working as a musician for real?
Guest:Well, I started actually even a little bit doing it as a senior in high school and then in college I did it on and off.
Guest:I was working at- Which school again did you go to?
Guest:UC Berkeley.
Guest:So there was actually a club.
Guest:What were you studying there?
Guest:I majored in film studies and I minored in music.
Guest:And there was a jazz club in town called Mr. E's.
Guest:It's owned by Pete Escovedo, the Latin jazz musician.
Guest:And his daughter's Sheila E. I don't know if people knew that.
Guest:Sure, I know her.
Guest:The percussionist.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:But that's what the E stands for, Sheila.
Guest:It's Escovedo.
Guest:Oh, cool.
Guest:Did you ever play with her?
Guest:No, but I went to her birthday party once, and Tony, Tony, Tony performed at it.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It was kind of a funny, surreal thing.
Guest:But I would play at happy hour there at the club.
Guest:So the old man liked you?
Guest:Yeah, he seemed to like me.
Guest:That was nice.
Guest:They had a big family.
Guest:Was it a Latin-themed club?
Guest:No, they had some Latin acts sometimes, but it was all different kinds of jazz.
Guest:But I played on and off, but then I started playing full-time after college at hotels playing just background music and stuff, and I did that for a few years.
Guest:Which hotels?
Guest:Primarily the one I worked at the longest was the Argent Hotel in San Francisco, which is no longer there, but I think it's actually called the St.
Guest:Francis Hotel now or something.
Guest:Oh yeah, that's fancy.
Guest:It's on Third and, it's a little south of, it's Third Market basically.
Guest:I worked at the Mark Hopkins Hotel.
Guest:And you were just a guy in the lobby bar?
Guest:Mm-hmm, lobby lounge.
Guest:Playing standards?
Guest:Standards, yeah, all standards.
Guest:Although sometimes I'd slip in non-standards.
Guest:Sometimes I'd slip in my own original work, and then sometimes I'd slip in 80s video game music, but jazz it up and stuff.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Every now and then.
Guest:Which video games?
Guest:Castlevania, Zelda.
Guest:Would people notice it?
Guest:Sometimes people came up and be like,
Guest:wait is that the music's a tetris and well yeah give me a tip you know that's what i was playing for those guys sometimes that was your idea sometimes sometimes no i actually was really uh not a really fulfilling job because most of the time people were not listening and um you know it was just purely background stuff sometimes people would sit down next to the piano and watch and that's nice when did you uh did you did you graduate college
Marc:Yes.
Guest:With a degree in film studies?
Guest:Film studies and music, yeah.
Guest:I was kind of working on stand-up.
Guest:I didn't get serious about stand-up until right after college.
Guest:What did you do your first shot up?
Guest:I was doing, I did, I just talked about, I had these jokes about semen and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And like spreading semen on toast and stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I talked about wet dreams.
Guest:It was like a semen-based set, basically.
Marc:Those were your first ideas, like, I'm gonna go on stage.
Guest:Well, that weren't my first.
Guest:I mean, it was an idea I felt like, oh, let's try this.
Guest:I don't know why, but it was very- It's visceral and it'll have an effect.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I think that another thing that was, I mean, it wasn't really about the content.
Guest:It was about the delivery, and I was kind of really kind of trying to emulate this radiomonologist named Joe Frank.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I listened to him a lot in college, and I really liked him, and I kind of thought, yeah, you know, this is... I kind of feel like the way he's really deliberate, that's how I feel like I would be a stand-up comedian, is deliberate like that.
Marc:And Joe Frank was like, you know, he sort of spawned a type of radio documentary, right?
Marc:That's Joe Frank?
Guest:Some of it's just fictional...
Guest:Yeah, I mean, you're right.
Guest:I mean, some of... Yeah, or some of it's like fictionalized... Like, I know that he's got a huge following.
Marc:Like, Ira Glass thinks... He's that guy, right?
Marc:Thinks he's a hero?
Marc:I mean, he's huge, yeah.
Marc:I mean, in the radio world, yeah.
Marc:Right, I don't know his stuff.
Marc:He's one of those guys where it's like, it's a blind spot for me, and people have told me I should listen to him.
Guest:Well, I mean, no, his stuff is... I mean, he... Some of it is, I guess, you would say is nonfiction, but it's a lot of fictional...
Guest:storytelling stuff, and very kind of moody kind of stuff.
Guest:And he has this voice that he kind of sounds like this.
Guest:He kind of talks like that.
Guest:And he's not a stand-up comedian, obviously.
Guest:Some of his stuff is humorous, but a lot of it's not.
Guest:But there was a deliberateness to it that I was, I thought that kind of spoke to me and I thought that's kind of felt like that's how I would do stand-up, I think.
Guest:And so my first set was really intense.
Guest:My persona was like way more, I think it was way more exaggerated than the way I am now, I'd say.
Guest:But I think that it's good to exaggerate your personality on stage in some way or another.
Guest:I think it's almost inevitable.
Guest:Yeah, I think that if you're going to perform, you have to be an exaggeration of yourself.
Marc:So you were that conscious about that.
Marc:The idea was not, you were not so much hung up on the idea of relatability as much as you were performing.
Guest:Well, relatability wasn't, yeah, that wasn't a concern really, but performing was, yeah, definitely.
Guest:It was always about finding a voice.
Guest:That's what was important to me, finding, establishing the way I wanted to.
Guest:Establishing someplace to land, because you do other voices and you do other.
Guest:Going to other personalities, sure.
Guest:It was important to, I think finding a voice is the most important thing in stand-up comedy.
Guest:So that was always what made it hard for me to get serious about comedy.
Guest:was not knowing what my voice was until it clicked all of a sudden.
Guest:It kind of clicked through listening to Joe Frank.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, listening to somebody else's voice is kind of what clicked through me.
Guest:Sure, I mean, something's gonna inspire you.
Guest:Yeah, something, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, how was it for you?
Marc:Because I came up with Cross, with David Cross, and I think you guys are similar in some ways.
Marc:In that, not so much personality, but that in once you locked into the bit, no matter how it was going, you were in it.
Guest:Definitely.
Guest:I never, I always never like to show weakness on stage.
Guest:If I'm having a bad set, I never call attention to it.
Guest:Because I feel like then you're going to like, I don't know, it's like, that's just going to make it worse, I think, you know?
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, you're but you weren't engaging that part of your personality up there anyways.
Marc:You weren't going to be the guy that was going to like, you know, make light of the fact that you weren't doing well in order to turn the boat around.
Guest:I want to turn the boat around a different way, though, without having to acknowledge that I'm doing poorly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I and sometimes, you know, successfully would do that.
Guest:What's your go to save when you're bombing?
Guest:Well, this isn't a go-to anymore, but one go-to I had developed at one point, this is actually, I developed this some years into doing stand-up, was I would call out a table and say, I like these guys because they're kind of rebels like me.
Guest:I do kind of unconventional comedy, and I kind of do unconventional audience work in that they don't laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and um and i like that i relate to that because i'm you guys are rebels like me i like you guys are so why we connect to that i wish it's like so how boring is it that all these all these other people are just laughing even though they wouldn't be i just right i kind of make it sound like every like they were they i just blame one table so that everyone else would actually start to think that they don't want to be like that table or something yeah it's kind of a did it work did it save you yeah yeah it worked that works actually but
Guest:But I would say like, oh, it's so boring that these people are just going to come to a comedy show and laugh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:How predictable.
Guest:So predictable, exactly.
Guest:And that would actually get the crowd, that would actually kind of, that was a good save, actually.
Guest:But I mean, that didn't always work.
Guest:But you came up doing those one-nighters, which I like, is that you had to survive them.
Guest:Definitely, no, but you know the truth is though, is if one might perceive my standup to be different or something, I think, I feel like I didn't really have much of a challenge with crowds out in the middle of nowhere than anyone else really, you know?
Guest:Because you were like something they've never seen before.
Guest:Not just that, but when you get down to it, I'm really just doing jokes and I'm doing stand-up.
Guest:I'm just doing comedy and I came up doing clubs and working these one-nighters and stuff.
Marc:I'm sorry, do you feel like I'm pigeon-hauling you?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Guest:Obviously, I do some things that are somewhat different, but when you get down to it, I'm really just trying to make, my goal is to make people laugh.
Guest:I never want to challenge the audience in any way.
Guest:um i don't know what the the agenda was not to defy them to laugh i mean there's been times where i've gotten upset with an audience for not being more on board and then i'm like and i think to myself and i don't do this anymore but i i don't i would think if you don't like that i'm gonna give you something to really not laugh about you know what would that be just something really abstract and just that just me repeating a word over and over again that until it devolves into just a sound and
Guest:You know, or something, you know, or just making just some weird noise on stage for, you know, like two minutes, you know.
Guest:Just because, you know, but that's not responsible as a comedian to do that, though.
Guest:I would do that.
Guest:I've gone through periods of doing that, but I don't think that's the way to approach bombing, you know.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Especially if you're headlining and you're being, you know, I feel like if you're headlining a show, you're responsible for really trying to make this audience have a good time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know.
Guest:When did that hit you?
Guest:when I started headlining.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it's just, yeah.
Guest:But I've always cared about the audience.
Guest:I've never really done jokes just for me.
Guest:Right.
Guest:My goal is really to try to please the audience as best as possible, but also do it from a genuine place.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:What was your first big bit where you're like, this is it?
Marc:What was your closing bit?
Guest:Well, you know, I used to be, you know, I also worked as a substitute teacher for a period of time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a lot of material about substitute teaching and that went over really well when I first started.
Guest:Because people connected with it.
Guest:Yeah, I used to do a lot of urban rooms when I kind of started.
Guest:Oh yeah?
Guest:Those were my first booked shows.
Guest:Where?
Guest:Like at Kimball's East.
Guest:Where's that?
Guest:In Emeryville.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:Which is in Oakland, basically.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or like Mingles in Oakland.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And these were just like, the audiences were pretty much entirely black crowds.
Guest:And...
Guest:The material, the substitute teaching stuff really resonated with those crowds for some reason.
Guest:Those were kind of my big bit.
Guest:That was my big bit was the substitute teaching stuff.
Guest:And then stuff about gangster.
Guest:I used to have a bit.
Guest:I still do it.
Guest:Actually, I do bits that are 15 years old because, I don't know.
Guest:I think when there's a new audience, it's always fresh to me.
Marc:I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't.
Marc:And also, it's not like...
Marc:You know, there's like depending on how big you are and what the expectations are.
Marc:I mean, outside of your own sort of like pressure you put on yourself, you know, there's no reason to do older great bit.
Marc:There's no reason not to do older great bits.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If, you know, like you're just a guy working a room and no one's there necessarily to see you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've let so many fucking bits go that I'm mad about.
Marc:I don't even know if I could retrieve them at this point.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:Oh, because they're just like, they were not recorded in any sort of way.
Marc:Well, they were, but I think that I come from the school of thought where it's like, well, I recorded it, so it's over.
Marc:And it's so stupid.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You know, because I did some bit that I worked for fucking six months on.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:On the John Oliver stand-up show.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:That took a long time to write this plane crash bit.
Guest:Also, people want to see the stuff they've seen before, too.
Guest:I remember that was a thing to get used to was the bits I saw on TV of comedians that I would see at the punchline.
Guest:I'd always go, anytime, you know, when I started, every week I would see the headliner.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come there, you know, to watch them.
Guest:And I was, like, waiting for the bit that I'd saw on TV somewhere.
Guest:Because you want to see if it worked again?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No, I just like... You like the bit?
Guest:It's like, I don't know.
Guest:I think a lot of times bits don't... They can be repeated and you can still appreciate them like a song, I think.
Guest:I think so too, sometimes.
Guest:I think some people argue that if you know the punchline, you're not going to laugh as hard or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:going back to Arch Barker, for example, sometimes he has these really long setups and then the punchline comes.
Guest:If you know the punchline, it makes the setup so much funnier because you know where he's going with it and you definitely can re-watch stuff and still appreciate it.
Marc:Right, and I think also, too, with somebody who's so performance-based as you are, that they want to see you do the crazy thing.
Guest:Yeah, again, the visceral quality makes it more musical, and you can definitely appreciate, at least I'd like to be able to do bits that you can appreciate more than once.
Marc:Yeah, I wonder about that, because I hold myself to some standard, and I did it all along before I had anybody who gave a shit about who I was or anything, where I wouldn't do any of these old materials.
Marc:I just got done doing a new special, and I got it down to a nice, tight 70 minutes.
Marc:It was smooth, and it worked.
Marc:and once i recorded the special like i stopped you know touring it where i should have toured another three months with it but i was tired but like like now like part of me is sort of like i don't even want to deal with those bits anymore if you don't want to do them then you know why why why wouldn't i you know well maybe they're just kind of you feel tired about it or something but yeah like to me and i do you know about bits but sometimes if i do a bit i do a bit and it's maybe it's a crowd it hasn't seen or something
Guest:yeah there was a bit I remember I was doing at one point and I remember this this one guy was laughing in the audience so hard at it that it reminded me that it was fun to do that bit you know or like I lost sight of the bit a little bit right and then this guy was appreciating in this way that made me feel like oh yeah this this
Marc:is funny you know and that that's like that's the that's the the payoff yeah yeah of it is it's sort of like you work these bits out and then you do them and if you're like me it works it works and then eventually it drifts away but then when you re-engage it and where you don't have to like not so much is invested in it the things are already fucking this tight piece of thing you can like well i'm just gonna do this and i'm just gonna do like put it out there because i know it works you know i have to fucking you know sweat over this bit
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it's just sort of like, I made this.
Marc:Enjoy.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, as long as you like doing them or there's new audiences to appreciate them, it's fun for me.
Guest:Well, you've done, what, four CDs?
Guest:I guess there are four now.
Guest:There's one that just came out.
Guest:But the one that just came out is sort of like an audio version of the special that came out.
Guest:But yeah, I would say three, really.
Guest:Three and a special.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you just made an allusion to the musicality.
Marc:Yeah, musicality, yeah.
Marc:So you see the process of your bits and act as having that quality?
Marc:Absolutely, yeah.
Marc:Because I know you do some music.
Marc:You use recorded music sometimes, and you play music sometimes.
Guest:Yeah, well, playing music is a one-time thing.
Guest:I wish I did play more music in my comedy, but for some reason I always felt that they were kind of separate.
Guest:No, yeah, definitely musicality.
Guest:I mean, I've always, you know, tried to make comedy that's more, less sort of cerebral and more visceral.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:More visceral, you know, more on the Harper Marx end of things, you know, just because I just like the guttural, I like the nonverbal kind of, you know, interaction, you know.
Guest:I just think there's a pureness to that, the comedy.
Guest:The comedy of, there's a... Like, give me an example.
Yeah.
Guest:I don't know, like an example just being physical comedy.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:You laugh at it in a way that you would laugh.
Guest:You don't have to think.
Guest:I just don't like having to think about... Maybe do math while you're watching comedy.
Guest:If you just watch someone make a funny face, for example, or say...
Guest:something funny in a funny way, you know?
Guest:As opposed to the logic.
Guest:Yeah, as opposed to the logic.
Guest:Turning a phrase.
Guest:Yeah, as opposed to like putting two and two together to get a joke.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's much more of an immediate response and it's just a real purity to that, you know, and I really like that about comedy.
Marc:Do you find that if you look at your life that you're a cerebral person, wouldn't you think?
Marc:uh yes so that the element of making these performance choices were you know to i guess not only challenge yourself but to transcend your own fucking trapped mind thing well kind of i mean yeah well i just know that when i what i respond to the hardest is the visceral aspects of stand-up comedy you know as a performer as an audience oh yeah you know as an appreciator of comedy and
Guest:and it's and so i'm thinking well then that's that's how that's to me that's just that's what i i love about comedy is the visceral aspect so i should do that too and i and actually i enjoy perform the performance aspect of it more than the writing aspect of it you know yeah yeah like you know because i i think that then there's definitely like a turning not a turning point but i realized more and more as i did stand-up comedy that i was more interested in the sounds of words rather than the words themselves you know
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, I think I've seen you do that.
Marc:I think I've seen you do the thing where you repeat something until it becomes... I mean, I probably do it a lot in different ways.
Marc:Until it becomes noises.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, maybe.
Guest:Yeah, you probably have.
Guest:Yeah, maybe.
Guest:But I just think sounds and visuals, they just tap into something that goes beyond language and then you, I don't know, you appreciate it in a more childlike way in a way.
Marc:Yeah, no, I totally get that.
Marc:Yeah, I wish I did more of that stuff.
Guest:Well, I think that your visceral thing is your sort of persona.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I think it sums up in this funny, I don't know, there's this memory I have of you in a car.
Guest:I think I've probably brought this up to you a couple times already.
Guest:But do you know where I'm going at with this?
Guest:No.
Guest:um we were in this it was at some comedy festival oh yeah yeah we were in a shuttle and you're sitting up in the front the the front passenger seat i was right behind you and you almost seemed like you were talking to yourself you were kind of talking to us but you were kind of talking to yourself in a way yeah there was like all these it was a friday night or saturday night and all these kind of younger people were out on the street and they you know they just look like clubber kind of people and i remember you just just kind of staring out the window and you just said look at these fucking idiots yeah
Guest:Or something like that.
Guest:And it just cracked me up so much.
Guest:I was like cracking up the rest of the ride back to the hotel.
Guest:But I just like thought, that's your visceral thing.
Guest:It's just being that, you know, that energy, you know, and exuding that kind of energy on stage.
Guest:I think that's your thing.
Marc:I think I've softened up a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:I kind of remember that.
Guest:What city were we in, dude?
Guest:Chicago, maybe.
Guest:Was it Chicago?
Guest:Maybe it was Chicago.
Guest:I'm not sure.
Guest:Like years ago, though.
Guest:It's probably quite a while ago at this point, yeah.
Guest:Or I don't know, it might have been six years ago or something.
Marc:Right, and it was just one of those streets where it's just like dumb young club people.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And it's like such an alien landscape to me.
Guest:That just so cracked me up.
Guest:Also, what was funny is like I totally got it, too.
Guest:I know what you meant, you know?
Guest:It was just so funny.
Guest:I was cracking up.
Guest:But there was a visceral quality to that, but I think that's the visceral quality in your stand-up that I think is... Well, yeah, I throw myself into the present pretty hard.
Marc:You know, I'm not sweeping through anything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, that's, yeah, that's, that's definitely a thing.
Guest:Oh, by the way, I don't, I actually like people to be cerebral about my comedy after the fact, you know what I mean?
Guest:But I think in the moment, I think I don't want, I don't really want people to think too hard.
Guest:You know, I don't want people to think at all, actually.
Guest:I just want them to react.
Guest:And I think sometimes that is an issue or was in the past where maybe people were thinking too hard.
Guest:Like, wait, what does he mean by that?
Guest:Or it's like, it doesn't mean anything.
Guest:It's actually as stupid as it looks and just,
Marc:Well, I think that's an interesting sort of, like, the idea of absurdism in general.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:You know, like, because, you know, there's very few people who can do it well, and you do it well, but, like, it's not a standard path because I think it is challenging to do it for the reasons that I said earlier, which is, like, is this an affectation of somebody who is just, you know, wanting to be seen as, you know, like someone who's, like, a genius?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or is it something that happens in earnest, which is what you're talking about and something is very deliberate and thought through like you're talking about.
Marc:But the nature of absurdism, I think, is to is actually to to, if not initially confused, but to defy any sort of explanation.
Marc:So you're forced into the moment, and your brain wants an explanation, but it has to relax into the fact that there isn't one.
Guest:Yeah, well, that's precisely the crux of what I like to do is make comedy that people don't understand necessarily in their head, but they just understand on some other level, or they don't need to understand why.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:It's funny inherently.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That, to me, again, goes back to comedy in its purest form.
Guest:That's the journey.
Guest:It's just, you know...
Guest:But not that I don't appreciate well-crafted literary bits and stuff.
Marc:But I think there is some analogy to jazz improvisation in its most extreme, right?
Marc:Definitely, yeah.
Marc:Not unlike you do with comedy.
Marc:Having done those gigs, having played with the form, having talked in a general way about things.
Marc:It's like, how do we get to this pure place at the risk of people going like, I don't fucking get it.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:I mean, it's always been a goal for me to bridge that pure place to an audience that will connect with it, too.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Well, I mean, that's why you chose comedy.
Guest:Yeah, well, it's also comedy over music, at least.
Guest:It was just so much more immediate and fulfilling in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because you could just write stuff or come up with some bits.
Guest:Go right up there.
Guest:And do it that night.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And also, not just that, but get an immediate response where you know exactly how people are appreciating it rather than with music.
Guest:It's a little more ambiguous to how people, if they're listening, are they connecting with this or what?
Guest:Yeah, because no one's going like,
Marc:I like that chord.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Guest:Yeah, they're not snapping their fingers.
Guest:Nice note.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh, good note.
Guest:Good note.
Guest:Good note.
Guest:Very good note.
Guest:No, but you just, the connection is a lot more apparent with comedy.
Marc:What's your favorite bit of yours to do?
Marc:How does it go?
Marc:How does it work?
Marc:The favorite bit?
Marc:Like, what's the one where you're like, I'm excited to do this one?
Guest:Well, I don't, I mean, this is a really old bit, but I, it's still fun to do.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's hard to say.
Guest:I mean, it changes.
Guest:I mean, always the new stuff is fun to do, you know?
Guest:Yeah, because you don't know.
Guest:It changes all the time, but like, I don't know, something that's lasted over time.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I always used to do this bit, and this was like a closer for a while, but it was kind of like the opposite response to acting natural was acting, people maybe criticizing me for being too creepy on stage.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So then I'd act kind of creepier and kind of do a thing, and it's in the special as well, but kind of rub my head on the microphone stand and then kind of just do some kind of weird one-liners and then just kind of go into the audience and smell somebody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's just a fun bit because people get in.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:People just, that's always been a fun one to do because more of the response, I guess, and people being into it.
Guest:And you go into sort of a character.
Marc:Yeah, it's a character piece.
Marc:When you go into character, because I can feel it, but do you, because what impresses me about you and about guys who do what you do is that commitment.
Marc:We all commit.
Marc:Once you get the hang of it, when you enter a long bit of any kind, you're like, well, there's no ejecting.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But when you like kind of get lost in a character, which I've done for moments, it's sort of like there's that mixture of being all alone and knowing that you're in some like almost like a different territory.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And it's almost like that, especially if there's room to improvise in it, like you're saying.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where you're like, it's completely fucking immediate.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:right yeah yeah yeah yeah but do you lose yourself completely or when you're in it are you like okay i'm gonna go do this you know i mean i think i'm probably i don't probably lose myself ever you know i'm probably always there but i definitely want to create the illusion that it's somebody else you know like i definitely want it to feel believable you know right right uh or like i want it to feel really real you know and not feel like i'm
Guest:I want it to feel like this is a new person, you know?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Because I just feel like, you know, if I'm fully committed to something, the nuances really shine.
Guest:And, you know, that's just going to make for good comedy, I think, you know?
Guest:Yeah, definitely.
Guest:Like, I just think commitment is just really important.
Guest:Stay in it.
Guest:I think...
Guest:Because I hate it when... I don't really like... I mean, winking always just takes away from a joke or a bit.
Guest:If somebody's doing an act out and they wink that it's like... Or they laugh at themselves.
Guest:Unless the laughing is really coming from a genuine, spontaneous place.
Guest:But when they're doing... If you see the same comic, do the same laugh point for their self, show after show.
Guest:And it's... I mean, I don't know.
Guest:That's just...
Guest:I mean, that's just winking, basically.
Marc:Yeah, I think it's a weird habit that happens out of insecurity.
Marc:I don't think that most of, you know, and I've done that in my career.
Marc:Oh, you did fake laughs?
Marc:Not fake laughs.
Guest:No.
Marc:But it just becomes sort of like this habit.
Marc:You know, it becomes integrated into the bit.
Marc:Oh, the laugh.
Marc:Kinda.
Guest:Oh, so just out of habit, you were laughing at a bit.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Oh, that's interesting.
Marc:Because like any other part of a bit, like, you know, when I smoked a lot of pot,
Marc:i would have a different disposition on stage where like i would be getting a real kick out of myself and i think i honestly was but i do think that you know that was also a method to get them laughing yeah for sure definitely you know i think it is a bit disingenuous and i think it is a trick but uh but i i don't think it's as you know dubious or calculated as much as it just it just becomes the way you do that bit yeah you know it just becomes a beat in the bit yeah
Guest:Yeah, okay, yeah, interesting, yeah.
Guest:But, you know, I don't think it's a good thing.
Guest:Well, there's another one of those kinds of things that comedians do, which is after they'll say a punchline, they'll say, and I, which is to kind of create the illusion that it's off the cuff almost that they said that, you know, but it's not, you know, because they say that every time.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the and I is a cue for, like, now is where you laugh, you know?
Guest:So it's like, blah, blah, blah, punchline, and I...
Guest:And the and I, uh, is the, that's the cue for you.
Guest:That's now, that's the cue for you to laugh.
Guest:Have you ever improvised with just that?
Guest:That word?
Guest:And I, uh, and I, uh, and I, uh, and I, I use it in that, in that, the bit about the, in the, the comedian, the generic comedian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I, uh,
Guest:But that's, but that's, you know, that one.
Guest:And they don't finish it, you know, but that's.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, right.
Guest:But that's, yeah.
Marc:But that's, and that's the other cue.
Marc:Yeah, then during the laughs, they're like, and I, yeah, you know.
Guest:So, yeah, right.
Guest:So, I don't know.
Guest:I kind of think of those as kind of signal, like artificial signalers, you know.
Guest:They're like these kind of contrived ways of signaling the audience when to laugh.
Marc:So, you're an assassin.
Marc:An assassin?
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:Well, you'll pick apart the mundane and find out what it hinges on and then sort of turn it in on itself.
Marc:There's a little bit of fuck you to you.
Guest:Uh, no, no, no.
Guest:I, I just, I just, no, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just a fan of comedy and I, I just, I pay attention to a lot, a lot of the details of what people do as comedians.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then there's things that I, I just sort of see certain things and I see, I notice certain patterns and then some of those patterns I think.
Guest:You're not compelled at all by like, you know, I'll show you.
Guest:No, no, no, no, no, no.
Guest:No, not at all, no.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:I'll keep it positive, you know?
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's things I definitely, there's things I don't like, there's certain things I definitely don't like in stand-up comedy.
Guest:Right, sure.
Guest:I really don't like it when comedians feel the liberty to start getting really physical with a crowd, you know?
Guest:You know what I'm talking about?
Guest:Like what?
Guest:They'll like sit on them or something or like touch their, start touching, you know, just being really touchy.
Guest:Does that happen a lot?
Guest:It's, yeah, it's kind of, you know?
Guest:I feel like sometimes people feel like because they have a microphone, they feel a liberty to just do whatever they want.
Guest:I don't like when people bring people up on stage.
Guest:Oh, I do that a lot.
Guest:I know, I know.
Guest:You're joking?
Guest:Are you serious?
Guest:Well, no, sometimes like I'm trying to remember how you do it.
Guest:What was the context?
Guest:I mean, there's a different, there's, I do it in different ways, but one of them is in the special there's, I'd bring someone up to sing happy birthday to them in a very sort of, well, that's nice.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:It's like in a very kind of, you know, R and B kind of way, you know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Um,
Marc:Well, no, there's something about, like, I don't mind it if people, if the comic takes care of the person.
Guest:I do not, I don't like making audience members feel uncomfortable.
Guest:Contrary to what someone might actually think, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, anytime I involve an audience member, I really want them to be comfortable.
Guest:And if they aren't comfortable, I don't want them to come up, actually.
Marc:Well, have you ever seen that thing where someone brings somebody on and they use them for the joke but don't really dispatch them properly?
Marc:To where the person's just sitting there like, do I...
Guest:I mean, yeah, well, I don't like mean stuff, you know?
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:There's an element of them not knowing how to react that could be kind of funny.
Guest:And if they're volunteering, why not?
Guest:It's like a hypnotist.
Guest:I always say, if I ask to bring them on stage, I say, if you're not comfortable, don't worry about it, you know?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they'll either opt out or not.
Guest:Because I don't want anyone to feel uncomfortable.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I don't want to, you know, I'm actually just really conscious of the audience's comfort level.
Guest:I don't want them to be uncomfortable.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes, I mean, absolutely.
Guest:I just don't, I want them to just have a good time.
Guest:But you write a line.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:I mean, I understand.
Guest:Okay, there's a line, yeah, a little bit of like,
Guest:Yeah, a tiny bit of uncomfortability is okay as long as they're willing to be uncomfortable a little bit.
Guest:But that's only when I'm doing kind of a little bit of interaction.
Guest:Really not, to be honest.
Guest:I really kind of want them to just come to the show and have a good time and just have fun.
Marc:There's no part of you that's sort of like, this is going to fuck them up a little.
Guest:No, no, no.
Come on.
Guest:No, not really.
Guest:I mean, there's an element of like, oh, they're gonna like this one.
Guest:It's more just like, I want them to like it and have fun with it, you know?
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But not an element of like, I wanna put them off or something, you know?
Guest:No.
Guest:No, no, I don't wanna put, I never wanna be off-putting.
Guest:I don't wanna be offensive in any way either, you know?
Marc:But I think that it feels to me that some part of you, just from watching you the few times I have, that there is a tone set that is not initially comfortable.
Guest:Well, that's just me being myself, really, which I can't change.
Guest:I don't want to be phony on stage and be somebody else just so that they like me more.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I also don't want them to dislike me, you know what I mean?
Guest:I get it.
Guest:It's kind of like, it might be by nature off-putting to some people, but it's not- But once they get the hang of you.
Guest:Yeah, but I would, I mean, ideally-
Guest:from the get-go, they won't be put off, you know?
Guest:No, I think that's true, yeah.
Guest:I just, I can't be fake about, like, I'm not gonna be fake about warming them up to me, you know what I mean?
Guest:I just have to be real about it.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Well, that's respectable.
Guest:It's like a balance of, like, being real and being myself and also pleasing the crowd, too.
Guest:And, you know, you just, I mean, yeah.
Guest:Hence the title of the new special.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, that's very much part of, yeah, that's definitely a theme, yeah.
Marc:Well, it was good talking to you, buddy.
Marc:Well, yeah, thanks so much for having me on.
Marc:Appealing to the mainstream on CISO, right?
Marc:Which hopefully will still be.
Guest:Yeah, hopefully.
Marc:What have you heard, like tomorrow?
Guest:No, I actually have no idea.
Guest:But look, Appealing to the Mainstream is the title, so it'll eventually just find that, and then it'll bring you to.
Guest:Right, all right.
Marc:Well, it's good to finally talk, Brent.
Guest:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, certainly, yeah.
Marc:All right.
Marc:All right, that's it.
Marc:That's our show.
Marc:I do not have a guitar.
Marc:I don't feel like playing mouth jazz.
Marc:I'm going to just get my mind straight.
Marc:I'm going to focus in and deal with the dad situation, have some food, and try not to freak out and ruin my vacation.
Marc:All right?
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Boomer lives!
you