Episode 978 - Fahim Anwar
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it how's it going are you all right you know i i gotta be honest with you i uh it's nighttime here and
Marc:It's obviously before the day that this came out.
Marc:And I've just been shooting glow for about 13 hours today.
Marc:Now, that wasn't a work intensive day necessarily, but you're there.
Marc:You're in the studio.
Marc:You're eating food.
Marc:And you're just it's there's something about that time that is exhausting.
Marc:So I'm a little loopy.
Marc:But so if I sound a little tired, it's not because I'm depressed.
Marc:It's not because I'm lethargic or sad or despondent or despairing.
Marc:I'm actually none of those things.
Marc:I do feel a little a little bloated.
Marc:That's what's happening.
Marc:Too much food around.
Marc:And, you know, I actually lost all the weight that I lost specifically to start shooting glow because I knew there'd be food all around.
Marc:So now I'm just going to have to accept that eventually I'll break down and I'll be stuffing donuts in my face and eating whatever the fuck they put out and lots of it.
Marc:I've been stifling, been stifling.
Marc:I actually held a piece of a donut today, looked at it intensely, smelled it, connected with it.
Marc:I looked at the donut and I was like, you know, I can really put you into perspective.
Marc:didn't say this out loud there are other people around but i was like i understand what you'll do for me i understand the sensations i'll get and the excitement of of just shoving all of you into my face and and just tasting the old i was talking to an old-fashioned donut and um you know and they they know things there's a wisdom to the old-fashioned donut
Marc:But I was like, you know, I think we understand each other, but I'm just going to have to let you go.
Marc:And sadly, because I'm holding you, that's going to be in the garbage.
Marc:I could put you back in the box.
Marc:Maybe no one would see it, but I'd know.
Marc:We'd know together.
Marc:If you entered someone else's face, you'd be like, you don't know this, but some other guy had me in his hands.
Marc:Yeah, but you wouldn't be able to communicate that.
Marc:I could probably just put you back in the box, but I didn't.
Marc:I threw it out, and I felt like I was somehow a hero, somehow victorious.
Marc:Somehow that was a major achievement.
Marc:Sometimes it's good to just kind of get connected and sort of really express yourself emotionally in a moment or two to a half a donut in your hand.
Marc:All right?
Marc:That's going in the book.
Marc:I don't know what that book is, but it's going in it.
Marc:Fahim Anwar is on the show today.
Marc:Very funny guy.
Marc:Didn't know him that well.
Marc:Seen him a few times.
Marc:Very good comic.
Marc:And he's a writer and cast member on that show, Goatface, which you can watch on ComedyCentral.com or the Comedy Central app.
Marc:You can go to cc.com slash goatface to check it out.
Marc:But Fahim is here.
Marc:We had a very nice comic chat, but also an interesting life story.
Marc:Was an engineer.
Marc:For Boeing.
Marc:Yeah, he's got that kind of brain and you can see it in his comedy and that's a compliment.
Marc:We'll get into it.
Marc:Also, I let's pick up this narrative because something nice happened.
Marc:I talked about the teapot I bought last week about the perfection of it and the beauty of it and how I long to have a craft.
Marc:You know, I always think of that.
Marc:This is my point of reference in terms of changing your life.
Marc:I think of that very last frames of Breaking Bad where Jesse is just in a wood shop.
Marc:I'm like, hey, man, if Jesse can do it, I can do it.
Marc:But I got an email.
Marc:I don't know how she found me.
Marc:Subject line from the, in parentheses, German potter and maker of your new teapot.
Marc:See, now it's all adding up.
Marc:Hi, Mark.
Marc:Thanks for including our little interaction from last Saturday in your fabulous podcast.
Marc:You really hit the mark in a thoughtful, kind and extremely funny way.
Marc:Let me know if you need some teacups.
Marc:I'd be happy to make some in the suitable color and form.
Marc:All the best.
Marc:I don't know how you say her name.
Marc:Heike, I think, H-E-I-K-E.
Marc:I think, I don't know, but she's a potter, a ceramicist, ceramics, with a K at the end on her business card.
Marc:But yes, I think I may want some teacups.
Marc:If we're talking teacups, Molly's up for some teacups.
Marc:Seriously, though, I mean, I don't...
Marc:Oh man, I don't know if I'm ever going to really know how to use my car's sound system.
Marc:Is that troubling?
Marc:I got a new car.
Marc:It's not a fancy car.
Marc:It's a little fancier than the one I had.
Marc:It's a 2019 Toyota Avalon.
Marc:But it just seems to be getting more and more complex.
Marc:Do I need Wi-Fi in the car?
Marc:Do I need to do their thing, their insurer thing or whatever it is that connects you to, I guess, Toyota HQ?
Marc:So you're being tracked by a satellite.
Marc:They're already doing that with your phone.
Marc:Not going to get loopy on some paranoid trip.
Marc:I mean, we're volunteering for it.
Marc:Yeah, know where I am all the time.
Marc:Could you please?
Marc:Just in case someone needs to know where I am all the time or I go off the grid, you might want to figure out what happened.
Marc:Did a sinkhole swallow me with my phone?
Marc:You need to be on the grid.
Marc:Something following us all the time.
Marc:Right now, I got my phone in the pocket.
Marc:I'm trackable.
Marc:I'm on the grid.
Marc:I'm a point.
Marc:I'm a dot on a large thing that some guy's watching and he's saying, yeah, I'm on Marin.
Marc:We got him.
Marc:But in my car, I don't know.
Marc:And I keep saying to myself, just read.
Marc:What would it take?
Marc:What would it take to master just the sound system in my fucking car?
Marc:I mean, I got the book right there.
Marc:What would it take?
Marc:Do I need all that shit?
Marc:Do I need half this stuff?
Marc:I long for simplicity.
Marc:I think that has something to do with the teapot thing and just whittling, which I'm not doing enough of.
Marc:But, you know, it's just some days it's just I'm so my brain is so drawn out.
Marc:It's so spread out and interactive that it annoys me.
Marc:I think there's only a few solutions to that to reground myself.
Marc:I felt pretty far away from myself the other day.
Marc:I think what I need to do and I've done this before and it's been a while and I haven't done it at the new house.
Marc:I think after I record this, it's late enough.
Marc:It's after 10.00.
Marc:I think it might be time to walk around my house naked.
Marc:to just feel it, get undressed, step outside, it's dark, and just take a loop, take a loop around the house slowly, feel the grass on my feet, feel the wood of my stoop, of my porch, and then perhaps walk myself out of the house.
Marc:See where that ended up?
Marc:I think it was a decent spiritual endeavor to wander outside naked,
Marc:within my yard and then I'm locked out and then it gets exciting and then it's meeting the neighbors in a unique way it's not the first way you want to meet your neighbors is knocking on their door naked saying I locked myself out I was just out walking so can you help me out can I call can I call Sarah the painter she should be up painting she's making some nice paintings and
Marc:Fahim Anwar is a guy who I see at the comedy store, but I'd seen him and then I wouldn't look at his stuff.
Marc:And he's a very meticulous comic.
Marc:He's a very orchestrated, very organized.
Marc:He does all the things he moves.
Marc:He does voices.
Marc:He acts things out.
Marc:He has good jokes.
Marc:He's a, he's very organized and very funny.
Marc:And I envy that.
Marc:And you know, I, I think he's a great comic and,
Marc:And we had a nice conversation.
Marc:It was kind of interesting because we kind of he's one of those guys you see around and we don't know each other, but we are comedians.
Marc:And we we did that talk.
Marc:The talk we have here sometimes on WTF.
Marc:We did that one.
Marc:Fahim is the head writer and cast member on Goat Face, which you can watch on Comedy Central dot com or the Comedy Central app.
Marc:You can go to cc.com slash goat face to check it out.
Marc:And this is me talking to Fahim Anwar here in the garage.
Marc:I went on stage with a drink and a straw in this comic Frank Santa Maria.
Marc:I don't remember who it was.
Marc:I don't even know if it was a comic.
Marc:They just said, don't ever drink with a straw ever again on stage.
Marc:You lose your power.
Marc:It's like the opposite of wearing a suit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know exactly why.
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I can see that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because, like, you're making this point, you seem all macho, and then you purse your lips together.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Yeah, Frank Santarelli actually did that bit on stage, but it was a concerned audience member who came up to me and was like, you can't, you just don't.
Marc:Take away your edge.
Marc:Yeah, don't do it.
Marc:I don't know what it was.
Marc:Have you performed in a suit before?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:I've performed in everything.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Not naked.
Guest:Yeah, I would never do that.
Guest:I've been asked to do a Wii.
Guest:I don't like when it's too specific.
Guest:Like, hey, we're all doing PCP and then doing a set.
Guest:Or you got to do a trapeze act and then you do... No one just wants to do a straight comedy show anymore.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:You get butt naked and then do your jokes.
Guest:They have that.
Guest:I know, like in New York, but I would never.
Guest:I don't even do it in my underwear.
Marc:No, I won't do it at home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You don't even run bits in the show.
Marc:No, I don't.
Marc:But I mean, it's like, why would you?
Marc:Isn't it hard enough?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Stand up with all the right variables is hard enough.
Marc:I can't stand when it's any sort of theme where you got to, you know, like they do it at the store upstairs all the time.
Marc:You know, we're just doing a show about people's experience buying shoes.
Marc:You're like, what?
Guest:I do.
Guest:The performing in a suit is kind of, I always, I have this joke one time where like I bombed in a suit, you know?
Guest:Oh yeah.
Guest:And there's nothing worse than bombing in a suit because people know that you thought it was going to go a different way.
Guest:Like it's so premeditated.
Guest:Like if you show up in a hoodie.
Guest:You're all dressed up.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Like they picture you ironing your pants and everything and just like, ah, they're going to love me.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It's a special night.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:But if you just rolled up in a hoodie, they'd be like, oh, that guy just walked off the street and tried some things.
Guest:He ate shit.
Guest:He didn't give a fuck.
Guest:He ran with it.
Marc:But his suit, it's like, yeah, you think it's Vegas.
Marc:Walking off in his tie.
Marc:Look at that.
Marc:I don't, I think, I've worn him on TV.
Marc:I did for my first, when I did Seth, it was my first late night performer.
Marc:Seth Meyers?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you wear a full suit with a tie?
Marc:I wore a full suit, yeah.
Marc:just because did you go buy it for that or did you have it for a family event i bought it yeah yeah that's that's the good part it's a good way it's a good way to collect suits just do late night sets no but like how how many suits did you have before that like one right it was baggy and yeah it was shitty old suits you're like i'm gonna do something nice for myself i'm gonna buy this suit and then and that's the other thing is going on tv with clothes that really aren't yours yet you have them you haven't made them yours it is kind of
Guest:odd as well too where you you practice or you do stand up day in and day out with regular clothes and you're like oh the biggest performance of my life let me wear a suit let me rein it in it's kind of when like some of our peers and stuff they'll do specials and we see them in the clubs in and out and they know the beats of the clubs and they're like let me do madison square garden for the biggest performance of my life and it's just a totally different or like a giant theater oh yeah it's just a totally different thing
Guest:I've been, I've made, how long you been doing it?
Guest:16 years.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That's the trouble with like starting so young is that people just think that you're like six years in all the time.
Marc:I don't know that I noticed you until recently.
Guest:Why is that?
Guest:I lurk in the shadows.
Guest:Like I don't overstep my bounds.
Guest:But you're around?
Guest:I'm around, you know, I'm at the store.
Guest:And you say hi to me and shit?
Guest:Yeah, I'll say hello, but I'm forgettable.
Guest:I'm the same way with Rogan and stuff.
Guest:I'll say hi, but I would rather someone not know who I am than to know me and have a bad impression of me.
Guest:You'd rather people not know who you are?
Guest:Yeah, I don't want to overstep my bounds.
Guest:I'd rather someone not know who I am than for them to know who I am and have a bad impression.
Guest:Because one, you can come back from.
Guest:The other, you can't.
Guest:It's so hard to...
Guest:Well, you're saying that if somebody's like, that guy's a dick, you never- Like the first time I saw you at the store, if I was like, hey, Mark, I love everything you do in the podcast, changed my life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you inspired me to get- I'd feel bad for you because the voice- Can I get you a number?
Marc:Your voice would be weird?
Marc:Yeah, my voice would be weird.
Marc:But all the passion- I know what you mean.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You just lay low until somebody says, like, hey, man, you're pretty good.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Wait for it to come to you.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're at the store all the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When the time is right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was that way with Sebastian, like, because I've been at the store for a while, and, like, Neil Brennan, too, just wouldn't just do my thing, head low, whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's supposed to happen.
Guest:It's supposed to happen.
Guest:And then I think I was doing one of the shows in Montreal, and he was, like, hosting the gala.
Guest:Who, Neil or Sebastian?
Guest:Sebastian.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that was the first time we talked.
Guest:Ever.
Guest:And we'd seen each other at the store.
Guest:He's also one of those guys, too, who's just kind of like- He's in and out.
Marc:He doesn't talk.
Marc:In and out.
Guest:Yeah, he's not there to socialize.
Marc:He goes through the kitchen.
Marc:He doesn't- He won't even do the- The Scorsese movie.
Marc:Right.
Marc:His life is a- I don't know what it is, but he parks his car, and then I don't- The last couple times I've seen him, he goes through the kitchen door, not even dealing with the hallway.
Marc:He doesn't even want to deal with walking into the club in the public way anymore.
Guest:He doesn't want to exchange any words unless a microphone is.
Marc:But he's quiet, though.
Marc:He's a nice guy.
Marc:Yeah, he's a very nice guy.
Guest:But he's very much in and out.
Marc:But on the clothing front, I've been doing this for a long time, like 30 years or something, and I've made a lot of horrendous mistakes with clothing.
Guest:I remember you were talking about wearing a scarf was suggested.
Marc:Oh, that was Mitzi, yeah.
Marc:Did you do it?
Marc:Sure, I wore it for a little while.
Marc:Did you do beret at all?
Marc:No berets.
Marc:I wasn't asked by Mitzi to wear a beret.
Marc:She said you should wear a scarf.
Marc:Did she tell Sam to wear a beret?
Marc:You're a poet?
Marc:No, I don't think she did.
Marc:I think Sam had a problem with the fact that he was balding, and eventually he locked in
Marc:to a beret and then later a bandana of some kind i see when the times changed yes when his times changed he decided it was time for a bandana but i've been on i was on letterman in a very shiny suit that i for some reason every time i look at those old tastes myself i'm like how did i look at myself and not realize that the suit was shiny like how did i it was a shiny suit yeah i thought this is great time though
Marc:I guess it was.
Marc:I went to Calvin Klein.
Marc:They'll sell you on shit.
Marc:Was it like NBA draft suits?
Marc:I don't know what it was like.
Marc:It was a fancy two-piece suit, and I wore a tie, but it definitely had a sheen to it.
Marc:Then there was another.
Marc:There was a five-button suit that was in fashion for like a month.
Marc:I wore that.
Marc:Leather pants on Conan.
Marc:Leather pants.
Marc:Yeah, I did leather pants.
Guest:You were a bad boy back then, right?
Marc:No, no, it was a mistake.
Guest:It was a mistake.
Guest:How did it feel in the moment in the leather pants?
Guest:Were you like, this is a mistake?
Guest:Was there some squeaking?
Guest:Was there some humidity?
Marc:Well, I was like, you know, like, hey, dudes do this, you know, rock and roll, man.
Marc:It was a leather pants and a Nehru jacket.
Marc:Nehru jacket.
Marc:Oh, jeez.
Marc:Yeah, I don't.
Marc:Look, man, a lot of mistakes.
Marc:I remember.
Marc:I'm just telling you, man, don't make the mistakes I made with the clothing.
Guest:I was going to do leather pants.
Guest:I had one coming up.
Guest:This is good that we banged this out.
Yeah.
Guest:I'm gonna have to text.
Guest:I said, Nick's on the leather pants.
Guest:But do you remember coming through Giggles at all?
Guest:Because I started in Seattle.
Guest:And I remember you coming through there.
Marc:How long have you lived here?
Marc:Have you lived here?
Guest:I moved fall of 2006 because I had a job out here in Long Beach.
Guest:So I was in Long Beach at first.
Guest:Doing what?
Guest:Engineering.
Guest:Oh, so you were still doing that well into... I was engineer for like four years at Boeing while I was kind of... But the thing is I started in Seattle when I was 18.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I've been... I spent a lot of time in Seattle, but let's go... Where were you born?
Guest:Everett, Washington.
Guest:Oh, in Everett.
Guest:Yeah, no one really knows Everett.
Marc:I kind of know Everett.
Guest:Evergreen Hospital, shout out.
Marc:Yeah, but your parents are... Afghan, yeah.
Marc:But they're immigrants.
Marc:They came here from Afghanistan.
Marc:Do you have family in Afghanistan?
Marc:Not that I know of.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So they just cut out and that was it?
Marc:They didn't tell you about it?
Marc:They didn't want you to know about it?
Marc:I mean, they tell us little bits and pieces and stuff like that.
Guest:But they're done with Afghanistan.
Guest:Yeah, they're done.
Guest:I think I had a chance to do a USO type thing.
Guest:Maybe not that.
Guest:You know how there's different tiers of USO?
Marc:If you got a chance?
Marc:I did.
Guest:I did get a chance a few years ago.
Guest:And they were just like, we got out.
Guest:They're just very overprotective.
Guest:They're like, we don't know.
Guest:I'm like, I'd be safe to be on a base and all that.
Guest:But...
Marc:What town were they from?
Marc:Kabul.
Marc:Really?
Marc:And you don't know the history of what they were doing there or anything?
Marc:No, I know.
Marc:I'm not saying that's suspicious.
Marc:No, not at all.
Marc:They're all the up and up, guys.
Guest:I'm here legally.
Guest:Don't worry.
Guest:They were ISIS freedom fighters.
Guest:No, I'm just kidding.
Guest:We call them freedom fighters over there.
Guest:I used to have the joke, like I go and like I did, I perform for the troops in Afghanistan.
Guest:Then I hopped the fence into the other side just to like double dip, just to get double the payday.
Marc:But, but cause I have no sense of it and I was hoping that you did, but you don't.
Marc:Oh, no, I do.
Guest:I just know kind of like how they came to America from there.
Guest:Like what happened?
Marc:What year?
Guest:My dad came like in the early, he came two times.
Guest:First when he was 18.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like in the early seventies.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then.
Guest:Oh, way back.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he came for college.
Guest:So he came to Minnesota and then North Dakota.
Guest:I don't know which was the first or second.
Guest:So he went, got a mathematics degree, and then he went back to Afghanistan.
Guest:And then he was working there, I think, in an insurance company.
Guest:And then did a year of military, because you have to do that.
Guest:And then he could kind of see how the communism was taken over, how it was changing the country a bit.
Marc:Oh, so when the Russians came.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Before they pushed them out.
Guest:So it was kind of like before it was hot in the 80s, he'd kind of see how it was turning.
Guest:So he's like, let me go back to America and get an engineering degree.
Guest:So then I think he got to Minnesota and got a degree there.
Guest:And then asked my mom to marry him.
Guest:They knew each other from Afghanistan.
Marc:And they were both in Minnesota, coincidentally?
Guest:No, she was still in Afghanistan.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:He went back and got her?
Guest:Well, he didn't go back.
Guest:He was able to say, will you marry me?
Guest:And then she was able to get a visa to visit her fiance.
Guest:But she had no intention of ever coming back, really.
Guest:People were like, oh, give us this when you come back from America.
Guest:And she's like, yeah, give me a list.
Guest:But knowing very well.
Guest:And it was hard because there weren't a lot of visas going out at the time.
Guest:It was kind of clamping down.
Guest:It was getting harder to get out of the country.
Guest:And luckily, she was able to meet up with my dad in America.
Marc:So they got in under the wire.
Marc:Kind of under the wire.
Marc:When the first shit hit the fan.
Guest:Yeah, because my mom was telling me stories about how people who have been to America, just any loose ties, they could say anything, and it was just a scary time.
Guest:What do you mean?
Guest:Like, whoever's coming into power, like the communists and stuff, they could just claim something like, oh, he's part of this party or whatever, and then you don't see them anymore.
Marc:Killed or imprisoned.
Guest:Jail or, yeah, killed or something like that.
Marc:Yeah, I can't.
Marc:But I don't know much about almost any other country, sadly.
Marc:I know a little bit about this country because I live in it.
Marc:But even when I talk to people from London, I'm like, what's going on?
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:And you're surprised.
Guest:You don't care about Trump as much as all the papers here?
Guest:They do, though.
Guest:Not as much as here, though.
Guest:But like Afghanistan, I have no fucking idea.
Guest:yeah i have a buddy uh guy who i do my podcast with who's that uh ollie ollie baluch he's not a comic he's just a cool afghan dude just an afghan dude yeah he's an afghan american like me just um and uh he's over there right now just filming some stuff so i'm following him on instagram and seeing like stories yeah just his you know how you post stories on instagram yeah so it's cool to get a little slice of life of
Marc:but he can just come and go yeah they let you do that and everything like like i have this mythic sort of like i know i don't really like if i wanted to go afghanistan i don't know where i'd have to fly into right but i mean a lot of brochures there's not i mean kabul is like a real city right i mean sure yeah yeah people have jobs it's not just like it's it's not all taliban craziness right right right right yeah
Marc:I mean, I imagine that's sort of like, oh, yeah, that happens, but it's in the other part of town.
Marc:It's the other side of the country, but I have no sense of that, the menace of just living in Afghanistan.
Guest:Yeah, I have no idea.
Guest:There are people who would do it, but it just boggles my mind how to do it.
Marc:And then you come, you guys, your dad settled in Seattle?
Guest:No, so I think they were in Minnesota or North Dakota when he was finishing up his degree.
Marc:Or North Dakota.
Marc:This is the big thing.
Marc:I should really talk.
Marc:What's in North Dakota?
Marc:I'm going to say Minnesota.
Marc:Good, that's better.
Guest:That's better.
Marc:So he's finishing up his degree in Minnesota.
Marc:That's nice.
Marc:North Dakota.
Marc:I don't know what's going on.
Marc:Yeah, that's not good.
Marc:Now I'm going to get shitty emails from North Dakota.
Marc:Hey, it's cool here.
Marc:Yeah, a little condescending.
Marc:I don't know if you know about this.
Marc:It's better than South Dakota.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:We're up top.
Guest:I don't even know what the capital of North Dakota is.
Guest:That's how bad we are.
Marc:We're Sioux City.
Guest:That's Iowa.
Guest:I did a show there one time.
Guest:In Sioux City?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was trying to get my hour ready, and it was kind of late in the game.
Guest:And so they just had some weird markets for me to play.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:But they have a club there, right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And how was that?
Guest:It was all right.
Guest:It was just performing for a room full of white people, very, very white people.
Marc:They must have loved it.
Marc:They did.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Except for certain parts.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You feel the resistance?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Don't you find that sometimes?
Guest:Sure, you'll have everybody love you and all that stuff, but you might have a slightly politically leaning bit.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Not with crazy teeth, even if it's kid gloves.
Guest:I think it was just so tense at the time that even if they get a whiff of,
Marc:Oh, you just feel it in your heart.
Guest:Like you're not sure if it's- Yeah, something that would crush in a blue state where you're expecting a standing O is the exact opposite.
Guest:And you're reminded, oh, America's different.
Marc:Yeah, like right at the beginning, but you're like, I'm in.
Marc:I've got to keep going.
Marc:I'm in too deep.
Marc:Yeah, I can't pull out now.
Marc:I'm just going to have to sit in this weirdness and see if like, and you can almost, you just sort of like, it's going to break a little bit, just a little.
Marc:And then if it doesn't- Do you pivot or do you just plow through it?
Marc:well i mean i haven't like the i just started doing more politics in the last year or so do you get some walkouts at all or i've i've had people i've gotten emails and like i've had uh minor walkouts but not major ones i feel like you have your fans at this point no no that's the thing but like you know but people do it's weird that how people get triggered and they just behave like children it's like you really couldn't sit through the four minute bit about that you couldn't make it through
Guest:You know, it's crazy.
Guest:I know you're talking about like, I was at the OR the other night and sometimes I'll have a joke that, uh, that's the original room for people listening.
Guest:Sorry for the shorthand.
Guest:I just think everyone has a comedy store regularly.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:Me too.
Marc:And I, uh, and I've just recently gotten emails.
Marc:It's like, maybe you should give last names of people.
Marc:We don't all know who Phil is.
Marc:Oh, that's true.
Marc:And then I'm like, I don't know who Phil is.
Marc:Who is I talking to?
Marc:But go ahead.
Marc:Original room.
Guest:Yeah, so sometimes you'll be doing just jokes and everyone's having a good time.
Guest:And then you might do, be a slightly un-PC joke, but it's a comedy club.
Guest:It's not a, and then, and people will like it for the majority, but there might be like, you'll see a pocket of people who just like, they turn off and they're no longer into you anymore.
Guest:They were loving everything, but now you're a monster.
Guest:and i just kind of had this thing that it was a good set overall but i wanted to end on just kind of a little message i go like guys um so not every joke is for everyone like just like not every song is for everyone when you listen to an album yeah maybe you like three songs of this drake album let's say yeah you don't because you don't like the rest you don't tune out and be like fuck drake yeah what an asshole but you don't listen
Guest:You don't tap out and you hate the artist because of one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Jokes are songs.
Guest:Maybe sit that joke out.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Jump back in for the next one.
Guest:Right.
Guest:We're not monsters.
Guest:These are all just like ideas we're slinging.
Guest:Did they connect with that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think there's a faction of people who want that or who just want jokes to be seen as jokes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because they're not anymore.
Marc:But did you notice, though, that sometimes, I mean, almost always, there's about maybe an eighth of the audience that isn't laughing properly anyways?
Marc:That if you're in the OR and you're killing, if you're in the- Do you zero in on the guy who's not?
Marc:Sure.
Marc:You look at the back, as far as you can see in the back, you're like, what are those people even doing back there?
Marc:Are they paying attention?
Marc:It's not that they're talking, but you always zoom in on the people that are like, nope.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Not happening.
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I gloss over.
Guest:I'm like, oh, it's very hard to make.
Guest:I mean, for the majority, you'll have most of the room laugh.
Guest:But then there's also people who just have strange taste.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:That's it.
Marc:You can't account for that.
Marc:And I was talking about last night on stage or sort of because your initial reaction as someone inside of you is like, why is that guy mad or whatever?
Marc:And you don't know their life.
Marc:I mean, what do you think?
Marc:They come to the comedy club and all of a sudden, like the rest of their life is just on hold.
Marc:That guy could be sitting there like, no, this isn't working.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:it this is an odd profession though i've always found like to go to the comedy store you have to pay two drink minimum a cover it's it's a night out it's it's it's a pretty penny you know especially if you bring a date it seems like it's it's reasonably priced or it wouldn't be so crowded i mean what are they really paying don't they get isn't it isn't it like a ten dollar admission fee it's not it's a pretty reasonable ten or twenty cover charge minimum and then you gotta pay for your date as well so i mean it's a it's a night out yeah you don't want to
Guest:But it's always so odd.
Guest:So they're paying this money.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they're dressing up and all that.
Guest:But stand-up is almost the only art form where they pay all this.
Guest:And if they don't know who you are, like, you know, you're Marc Maron.
Guest:So it's a different thing.
Guest:But, like, I'm a cusper right now.
Guest:Like, I might be a funny guy, but nobody knows who the fuck I am, really.
Guest:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, some do.
Guest:Like, my few fans or whatever.
Marc:But you do the job.
Marc:You're very funny.
Marc:Thanks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But, I mean, Bill Burr talks about it in his come up, just how killing an obscurity.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Because I'll get offers to do gigs somewhere, but the money's not great.
Guest:You kind of have to get some TV stuff, some movie stuff, some credits before the money reflects kind of where you're at in the game.
Guest:It takes so long.
Guest:And I'm not a diva about it.
Guest:I don't need a ton of money.
Guest:I live in a studio apartment in Koreatown right now.
Guest:Good for you.
Guest:I live very modestly.
Guest:I'm not like balling out of control and I need crazy money to go somewhere.
Guest:But I just need it to make sense.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:To justify your work.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And that's not coming.
Yeah.
Marc:No, it is slow.
Marc:I mean, everything's a slow burn.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Comedy.
Marc:But you do realize that at any given time, there's only about like nine or 10 comics that are like massive.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I always look at standup comedy.
Guest:It's like tennis.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's so hard.
Guest:It's so hard to be number one forever.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And there's so many variables.
Guest:You can be in the top 10 and yeah, but the board shuffles a bit.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And if you, if you can still play the circuit for a good amount of money and you still got some name value and maybe your own sneaker, you're all right.
Guest:For sure.
Guest:But back to my point about like, when people come in, they pay this money and then you just sit with their arms crossed.
Guest:Like you're paying so much money.
Guest:You're like, who's this guy?
Guest:Think he's going to make me laugh?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Hey, you paid money.
Guest:Defiant.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:What do you got?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Like no one goes to the doctor and says, this guy thinks he's going to fix me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Right.
Marc:We'll see doc.
Marc:Well, yeah.
Marc:Well, you kind of do though, don't you?
Marc:No, I trust my doc.
Marc:You do, but they don't always know what's wrong.
Marc:I know.
Marc:And they tell you what, they tell you what it might be.
Marc:They're like, well, this could be a couple of things.
Marc:Like, how do you not know?
Marc:Like, how long have people been around in doctors?
Marc:You should know.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:This is a weird thing.
Marc:I've been in the hospital one time, and then- For what?
Guest:Oh, I shouldn't be saying this.
Guest:My mom's going to listen.
Guest:Is she?
Guest:Yeah, she's a big fan.
Marc:No, she's not.
Guest:She listens to everything that I- Oh, of you.
Guest:Of me.
Guest:Not of WTF.
Marc:She loved your Josh Brolin interview.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She's a big man.
Marc:You don't have to tell her.
Marc:What was it, embarrassing?
Guest:No, just because she's so overprotective.
Guest:I had pneumonia.
Guest:So I was in the hospital for like two.
Marc:Oh, she didn't know you didn't tell her?
Guest:Yeah, that's one of the things you learn about Middle Eastern moms is like, you don't tell them everything because... You don't know about every mom.
Guest:I guess so, but this is even more so.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, because...
Guest:When you get sick, your brown mom will think that it's your fault.
Guest:Your what mom?
Guest:I'm not brown.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:You know, whatever.
Guest:It's a shorthand.
Guest:I don't know if that's offensive or not, but I think it's okay.
Guest:It'd probably be offensive if I said it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I have carte blanche to say brown.
Guest:But just whenever I would get a cold, she would be like, I told you, like I'm not allowed to get a cold.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:She told you what?
Guest:Like, how could I have prevented it?
Guest:Like, life happens.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when I was in the hospital, these doctors from different departments come in on checking you.
Guest:You're like, this is so-and-so from this department.
Guest:This is so-and-so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then they're on the bill.
Guest:Like, they were just running a train on you.
Guest:Like, just like a medical financial train.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:So, you got, what, you got SAG insurance?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, that's the thing.
Marc:Like, I noticed that, too, recently.
Marc:It's like, well, you know, we don't know.
Marc:This is a little weird.
Marc:We're going to do, like, 100 tests.
Marc:100?
Yeah.
Marc:And then you realize, like, that's the racket.
Marc:It's almost like chum in the water.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like, yo, so-and-so's in room 35.
Guest:And, like, everybody, like, endocrinology comes in, like, oh, how are you feeling?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they touch your forehead.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Cha-ching.
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:That's the racket.
Marc:It's sort of like one time...
Marc:But that's also the benefit of having good coverage.
Marc:See, we can't be too cynical.
Marc:We're going to sit here and complain that I go to the- Well, we're fortunate enough to- That's exactly.
Marc:I go to the clinic and three doctors see me.
Marc:It's a fucking racket.
Marc:But if we didn't have it- It'd be horrible.
Marc:I'd be homeless right now.
Marc:I like having all the tests.
Marc:It just didn't really dawn on me that some of them were unnecessary until recently.
Marc:Yeah, a lot of them are.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like when I go to a fancy hotel, just being in this business-
Guest:I'm not wealthy, but sometimes you'll book a role and you are like pretend wealthy for a week.
Guest:They'll put you up in a really first class, fancy hotel.
Guest:I was staying at this hotel.
Guest:This was for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, a Tina Fey movie.
Guest:So I took my mom to the premiere and everything.
Guest:And we're staying at the hotel by Columbus Circle.
Guest:I forget what it's called, but it's so nice.
Guest:In New York.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Right there.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And I would never stay at a hotel.
Guest:The big one.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then I just realized everyone wants, can I get your bag?
Guest:Everyone who says, can I get your bag?
Guest:Give me money.
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:So like towards the end, I'm just clutching my bag.
Guest:I'm good.
Guest:I'm fine.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:I do that too when I get out.
Marc:It's so fucked up because I carry a duffel bag and if they send a car for me and I get out at the hotel and the two guys are like, I'm good.
Marc:I got the door thing.
Marc:Don't worry about it.
Marc:But you can give them a dollar, but sometimes you're like, how much?
Marc:I'm not there yet.
Marc:I need a dollar.
Marc:No, you don't need a dollar.
Marc:I need to do laundry.
Marc:It really comes down to how much do they expect?
Marc:What does a bag cost?
Guest:And if I gave him a dollar, he'd be shitting on me with his boys, you know?
Marc:That's the other thing.
Marc:How do you know what you're going to get into?
Marc:You're better off just handling it yourself and being a dick, a cheap asshole, as opposed to like, that's the dollar, dude.
Guest:And it's too much exposition to be like, I know I'm staying at a very fancy hotel, but I am not very wealthy.
Guest:I just got a very little role in a movie.
Guest:I might get cut out.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:We'll see.
Guest:There's not enough time for that.
Guest:You could make the time.
Guest:Maybe I'll just like print it out on a note and just hand it out.
Guest:Like a deaf guy in a train.
Guest:Trying to sell some pens.
Marc:Please don't ask me for money.
Marc:I've just got to roll one of it.
Marc:This is a good way to expedite my life.
Marc:Okay, so they settled in Seattle after North Dakota or Minneapolis?
Guest:Yeah, my dad was finishing up his degree and my mom was saying she was really sad just because it's not home.
Marc:Did she get a degree?
Guest:No, she just... Yeah, she studied French literature in Afghanistan.
Guest:And then Boeing came by and they had brochures.
Marc:You have brothers and sisters?
Guest:I have one brother.
Marc:Older, younger?
Guest:Older, dentist.
Marc:A dentist?
Guest:Killing it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, my parents are one for two.
Marc:Well, you should talk to him about the racket.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:I think that's different.
Marc:It's just a mouthful of money, man.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:Are you kidding me?
Guest:I think they joke around.
Guest:They go, like, drill, bill, and fill.
Guest:What kind?
Guest:Does he do root canals and shit?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:It's very cool having a dentist brother in the family.
Guest:It's like having a mechanic, just someone you could trust and...
Guest:and you and you've got you go to him go to him i haven't had to have any dental work done so i'm kind of lucky he'll check on it really yeah i just cleanings 34. huh nothing nothing no cavities the fuck yeah i do wear retainer at night though oh you do i do why just had braces when i was a kid and i just want to i want to uh maintain your straight yeah maintain i'm in hollywood baby
Marc:Yeah, you seem like a little show business.
Guest:Nah, not that.
Marc:I mean, a little bit, I guess.
Marc:You seem like you got it together.
Marc:You got, you know.
Marc:Yeah, I'm trying.
Marc:You're not all fucked up.
Guest:Yeah, I'm not a child star.
Guest:I'm okay.
Marc:But yeah, no.
Marc:Yeah, but it seems like you manage yourself pretty well.
Guest:I think the engineering thing helps, just having had that structure.
Marc:Yeah, let's get to that.
Marc:All right, so your dad's in North Dakota or Minneapolis, your mom's bored, and then Boeing does what?
Marc:Boeing comes by, they're trying to recruit.
Marc:To North Dakota or Minneapolis?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:We don't know.
Marc:Yeah, we'll say Minneapolis.
Marc:Some words, vague.
Marc:Minneapolis.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:They're looking at colleges for... Just to recruit some fresh blood, right?
Guest:And your dad's doing graduate work in engineering?
Guest:No, just getting his four-year degree.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:Because I think he just had to... Because he already had a mathematics degree.
Guest:He just needed to be in college for two more years and he'd be able to get... He had an Afghani mathematics degree?
Guest:No, because he came the first time to America.
Guest:Oh, and he did that.
Marc:And he needed two more years to knock out.
Guest:To get an engineering degree.
Guest:Because I guess there's a lot of overlap.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So he gets the degree.
Guest:Boeing comes by, like, job fair stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My parents see a brochure of Seattle.
Guest:They don't really know what Seattle is or, you know, but it looks nice on the brochure.
Guest:And this is the 80s?
Guest:Like, late 70s, I think.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Marc:Yeah, or maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think late 70s.
Marc:So before it blew up.
Marc:All that's there is Boeing at this point.
Marc:Pretty much.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah, there's no Amazon.
Marc:There's no Microsoft.
Marc:I mean, Boeing is, yeah, exactly.
Marc:So Boeing was like OG.
Marc:Right, and it was still like a small city, kind of full of drugs and weird and grainy.
Marc:Yeah, that's why they went, you know?
Marc:Because all the opium in Afghanistan.
Guest:They're like, oh, finally, we're home.
Guest:My parents were mules, is what I'm trying to say.
Marc:They both came with an ass full of heroin.
Guest:I'm trying to adapt their life into a screenplay.
Guest:It's sounding good to me.
Guest:A lot of good classic rock, you know?
Guest:Yeah, sure.
Guest:So I think the brochure seemed like a good deal.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my dad goes to Seattle, my mom as well, and they start their life.
Guest:My brother's born.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And that's it.
Marc:Seattle, Boeing.
Marc:Here I come.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then like, well, that's a lifer job.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For sure.
Marc:Is he still there?
Guest:It's like the coal mine.
Guest:He is.
Guest:He's been there so long.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And then I got a job at Boeing.
Guest:It's like we're both working at the coal mine.
Marc:I think you're exaggerating.
Marc:That's true.
Marc:It's the egghead coal mine.
Marc:This is how you alienate those people, the working people of this country.
Guest:I heard coal is the energy of the future.
Guest:Yeah, again.
Guest:Again?
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:It's the energy to end the future.
Guest:Oh.
Marc:Oh, I misheard.
Guest:You misheard it.
Guest:I'm sorry.
Guest:I do that a lot.
Guest:Maybe it's like late onset dyslexia.
Marc:We almost had a future, but then someone decided Cole needed to come back.
Marc:Yeah, but it's clean.
Marc:Oh, yeah, sure.
Marc:It's very clean.
Marc:It's very clean.
Marc:But, all right, so you grow up in Seattle.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:In the middle of all that.
Marc:Pretty much.
Marc:Sub pop is happening.
Marc:There's music.
Guest:Sure, but you know, grunge was hitting when I was a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I was too young to really appreciate, or I cared more about- You seem more hip hop oriented.
Guest:yeah i mean less so now but but in my youth i was all about 90s gangster rap like dre snoop yeah you dog dog food by the dog pound yeah you've woven that into the fabric of your or your act i guess so yeah it's there it's a little bit i'm trying to think do i have hip-hop stuff in my from what you caught
Guest:no you do a whole bit about 90s hip-hop oh back in the yeah i guess on my special my last special but not when was that i did it on for see so like two years ago that's not well that's not like a million years ago don't talk to me like you know oh man that's the old man oh that's the old man you haven't seen the new me dude i'm like a butterfly now you saw me when i was a caterpillar
Marc:But no, my point is that, because I've talked to people that, I mean, you were obviously born here, but you grew up as a Afghani-American, right?
Marc:And when I talked to Jimmy Yang, there was something about hip hop and about that life and about the language of that, that really taught him about America, about like, you know, sort of how to fit in or like what, it was an encultured thing.
Marc:You make a choice to sort of like dig into that as a way of communicating, right?
Guest:yeah for me it was my peers my friends right we're listening to that more so popular music yeah yeah and i'm sure there was other kids at school who were into nirvana and yeah i can appreciate nirvana and all that but it wasn't embedded in my dna yeah yeah yeah like like dray the chronic and yeah those were big albums for me and everything but you weren't smoking a lot of weed i i smoked weed for the first time like uh three weeks ago see that really 34 yeah
Marc:So this is what I mean about managing yourself.
Marc:You knew well enough not to get fucked up somehow.
Guest:I guess so.
Guest:It was just part of my identity for so long that I never did it.
Guest:And then for some reason.
Marc:Your identity of not doing this stuff, you mean?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, but listening to hip hop and living the life.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, to live everything about the hip-hop lifestyle except for the smoking weed.
Marc:Yeah, that part.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:So you smoked it for the first time three weeks ago?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And was it a controlled environment?
Marc:Were you with people you trusted?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I did shrooms before weed because Ari Shafir, somehow he found out I had never done marijuana.
Guest:He said, you should do shrooms before weed.
Guest:No one's done that before.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:He just wanted to do it as a novelty.
Marc:Be a groundbreaker.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, he wanted me to be a pioneer.
Guest:And I just always wrote it off, and I'm like, eh, I don't know, whatever.
Guest:And then something happened where, you know Benji, Benji Aflalo?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, so his grandma has a beach house in Malibu.
Guest:So we did it there.
Guest:Just I wanted to, part of being an artist is kind of just experiencing a little.
Guest:Sure, you've got to explore.
Guest:At 30, what, how old are you?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Take your time with it, you know, don't.
Guest:Yeah, don't rush into it.
Guest:I'm going to tell my kids, if you want to smoke weed, wait until you're 35.
Guest:Don't do what I did.
Guest:I did it one year too early.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Wait until there's no way it can define your life or be a big deal.
Marc:Yeah, I like that.
Marc:And I think it's smart.
Marc:So how old were you when you did the mushrooms?
Marc:uh like 32 31 or 32 so just a couple that was too scary like i would never do that again you're at the beach house with benji and who uh benji matt edgar ari shafir yeah that's everybody's gonna do them yeah they went with the way they went with the intent no just like put me on display like i'm an animal oh yeah let's see what happens to him it's the first time he's done it he's in his 30s yeah
Marc:So you all tripped and you got outside.
Marc:You weren't confined.
Marc:Yeah, there was a balcony.
Marc:But you didn't go down to the beach?
Marc:At the beginning we did, yeah.
Marc:That's a good thing about when you do them, you should have the freedom.
Marc:It shouldn't be at night.
Marc:It should be during the day.
Marc:And you should be able to move around a bit.
Marc:Take a walk.
Marc:Go sit at that place.
Marc:I don't want to sit here anymore.
Marc:Let's go down to there.
Marc:Yeah, the wind.
Marc:I never felt wind really before.
Marc:But on that, on your face...
Guest:Yeah, so you locked into the wind?
Guest:I locked into the wind.
Guest:Yeah, and did you freak out?
Guest:Yeah, first half of it was just very scary because I'm analytical and I try to understand everything.
Guest:I was trying to understand the universe and God stuff and all that.
Marc:Oh, you really went, you heard.
Guest:I went down.
Marc:You'd heard that that's the right trajectory to take.
Marc:I don't know.
Guest:I don't know what's right or what's wrong.
Guest:You just did that naturally?
Guest:Yeah, my brain just went there, and it was just like, I didn't have the answers, and it was just scary.
Guest:No answers for the engineer.
Guest:No answers.
Guest:It's bad.
Guest:Well, I'm a human.
Guest:I'm trying to understand things that you cannot.
Guest:Yeah, math wouldn't help you.
Guest:All the Pythagorean theorems in the world, all the Fibonacci sequences.
Guest:Weren't going to help me.
Guest:Weren't helping me at this point.
Guest:All the quadratic equations.
Guest:No, no help.
Guest:Were failing me.
Guest:That must have been very scary for you.
Guest:It was very scary.
Guest:I was like, I need chalk.
Guest:and a blackboard yeah quick i need a goodwill hunting this before i drown did they have to kind of reel you in or uh benji would benji would be like hey man what's going on i was like i don't know man just feel weird and then he's like you're supposed to because you're on drugs yeah but i'm i'm glad i did it experienced it um that's done not for me yeah no not again the second half though i was just like laughing so much just things were so funny
Marc:Oh, that's good.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who is funny?
Marc:Because I can't imagine.
Marc:Just things.
Marc:Things become so absurd.
Marc:Not any of the comics you were with.
Marc:All of that, too, conversation.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you got that out of your system.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did you get any resolution on the universe or God?
Marc:I mean, as an engineer, did you realize?
Guest:Many years later, though, I just kind of had this epiphany.
Guest:I go, like, it's okay not to know.
Guest:We're not supposed to know.
Marc:Oh, wow.
Marc:That's a big deal.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For you.
Marc:For me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hmm.
Marc:But you can't overthink that either.
Marc:Can't overthink it.
Guest:Because then you get released.
Guest:And I do still consider myself Muslim at heart.
Guest:Muslim?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I don't pray for Adam's Day.
Guest:I'm not the best.
Guest:I'm not the most.
Marc:Do you have a mat?
Guest:I don't.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I wonder if we do.
Guest:Do we call it a mat?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:I'm asking you.
Marc:It's a prayer rug.
Guest:I've just never heard it referred to as a mat.
Guest:Like we're going to bang out some warrior too.
Guest:Where's my mat?
Guest:Where's my mat?
Guest:Hey, don't fucking pray on my mat, dude.
Guest:That's mine, all right?
Guest:Get your own mat.
Guest:What's it called?
Guest:A prayer rug?
Guest:Probably.
Marc:What do you mean probably?
Guest:A ginomaz.
Guest:Is that what it's called?
Guest:A ginomaz?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, that's just in Farsi, I think.
Guest:They call it that.
Marc:I'm never actively... Like, I saw... I was in New York, and I was just at the Whitney Museum, and...
Marc:And I went outside.
Marc:There were people selling.
Marc:There was a guy in the corner selling hats.
Marc:It was getting chilly.
Marc:And then there was a dude doing his prayers in the middle of the day just on the street.
Marc:That's OG.
Guest:There's Muslims like that just like, hey, I'm going to drop down anywhere.
Guest:But for some reason.
Guest:At an arcade.
Guest:Like it's time to.
Guest:Yeah, it's time.
Guest:It's time to bang it out.
Guest:Which way is Mecca?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right, good.
Guest:Just bang out the compass.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:On their iPhone.
Marc:Or just asking everyone, like, hey, do you know which way?
Marc:But no, but I'm just happy that I'm not the kind of person that's sort of like, what the fuck is happening?
Marc:Like, I'm just, you know, it's like, all right, that's what that guy does.
Marc:Because then you go across town, they're just Jews doing their thing, you know, in their outfits.
Marc:And it's like, all right, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's part of me that sort of envies the discipline of it, the ritual of it.
Marc:You know, what's my ritual?
Marc:Like, I'm going to make a smoothie.
Yeah.
Guest:You're like, well, I've had three cups of coffee.
Marc:I guess I could do that again.
Marc:Just popping into Starbucks as you're praying five times a day.
Marc:But that's the way capitalism works.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you've still got that in you and you're on mushrooms and you realize you're still a Muslim at heart.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or just trying to figure, you know, because like when you're a kid, I think it's just, you just sort of like bite into religion when you're a kid.
Marc:You have to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And you kind of, you don't realize until you get older.
Guest:that's like a life preserver an existential life preserver your parents toss you so you can develop you know like it's like what happens to us when we die oh like jesus is up there and all your all your grandma's up there oh great yeah right because it feels good it's just to keep the lid on your head yes to keep the lid on because if you're like well no one really knows
Guest:You know how you don't remember before you were born?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Might be like that after you die.
Guest:You're like, oh.
Guest:I'm going to die.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All right.
Guest:Well, have a good day at school.
Guest:Yeah, I get that.
Guest:So.
Marc:I don't think I ever thought about it like that.
Guest:But you just buy into it so, or just like, you don't even question it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You were brought up pretty religious.
Guest:Not hardcore, but my parents, I realized as I got older, they weren't as like hardcore as I thought they were.
Guest:They kind of like, it was rocket fuel.
Guest:It was rocket fuel when I was a kid, so I could feel like they did their part.
Marc:Well, that's good because that's the kind of Muslim that a lot of people who don't understand it don't think exists, that there is this sort of middle.
Marc:There is, yeah.
Marc:Of course there is.
Marc:There has to be.
Marc:Are you fucking kidding me?
Marc:I mean, listen, man, I'm getting defensive about it.
Marc:That whole idea that all Muslims are just one YouTube video away from radicalization.
Guest:Like we're all on monkey bars getting ready.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like Neil Brennan has a great joke.
Guest:He goes, everyone's afraid of Muslims.
Guest:He goes, you know how you're not great at your religion?
Guest:Right.
Guest:They're not great at theirs either.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah, I think they just see CNN or whatever and think it's all hard-lined people and...
Guest:What really is unfortunate, though, I think whenever an attack is carried out by someone who looks Middle Eastern or something like that, or doesn't even look Middle Eastern, they just are, but it's a guy in plain clothes, they'll beat up some woman in a hijab or some guy in a turban who's like a caricature of a Middle Eastern person.
Guest:It'd be like- He's not even a Muslim half the time.
Marc:It's usually a Sikh.
Guest:And the guy who carried out the attack was just wearing jeans and a shirt.
Guest:It'd be like-
Guest:if a white guy like named rob stole my wallet and i just beat the shit out of a guy in a cowboy hat and cowboy boots because he's the most white caricature right that i could think of right and but yeah but you'd have to be in a country that those people were a minority yeah just wearing cowboy hats in like saudi arabia one of the four guys yeah
Guest:Yeah, that is that's pretty incredible, though, just the amount of fortitude it takes, like with that climate and to still draw that much attention to be that devout where you're like, I'm still wearing the hijab and it's tough.
Marc:Well, I think that they're usually it.
Marc:I definitely feel for them if they don't have a community in the place where they live.
Marc:You know, usually I think what keeps it together is that you have a mosque or at least a community to where you're like, you know, after your day of being looked at like you're a freak, you can go to your neighborhood where it's like, oh, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But it would be so easy for people to just say, oh, I don't want to deal with it anymore and just kind of dress more American.
Guest:Over generations.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I respect the layer to be like, no, I'm still like that choice is still incredible.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Well, yeah, I think it's whatever you believe.
Marc:I think it determines the religion survival ultimately, right?
Marc:I mean, somebody's got to be doing that or everybody's going to be like, no, we got away from that because all religions get away from it eventually.
Marc:You know, Jews, we got to figure out how to pass.
Marc:Maybe we should stop talking like this.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:don't wear the yarmulke outside yeah even with me and my brother i think uh you know my parents are from afghanistan but we were born in america so you're gonna it's gonna slip away a little bit like obviously i have that it's still part of me i kind of walk this line of east and west and it's a dichotomy but over time it's we are in america now so it's gonna become more and more american with generations
Marc:Yeah, of course.
Marc:Right.
Marc:So, but, but you, your folks, they just kind of did what they thought they should do to kind of get you guys at least sort of in the lane.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like culturally, it's kind of more culturally though.
Guest:Like this comedy thing, I'm not, I shouldn't be doing it.
Marc:But wait, but did you have a mosque that you guys went to?
Guest:No, that was like my mom would teach.
Guest:We went like a couple times when we were kids, but then me and my brother, we really didn't want to go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We're like, no, we'll learn it.
Guest:We'll learn it at home.
Guest:Just, you know, like, no, we'll figure it out.
Guest:Come on.
Marc:Were there holidays though where you had to go?
Marc:No.
Marc:Oh, it doesn't work like that?
Marc:It's not like Jews.
Marc:It probably is.
Marc:No, so you really just.
Guest:We just really didn't want to go.
Guest:We just didn't want to go.
Guest:We're like, no, we'll learn it.
Guest:Just teach us mom.
Guest:We don't want to.
Marc:But was there an Afghani community in Seattle?
Guest:There was.
Guest:So it wasn't so mosque based, but my parents would have this.
Guest:There were some other Afghan families in the area.
Guest:And every month they would kind of alternate having a party, just like a gathering.
Guest:With familiar foods.
Guest:Familiar foods, people, and just, I think it was a way for them to have their kids not lose touch of their culture.
Guest:Do you speak it?
Guest:A little bit, like kamak.
Guest:Kamak is a little, like salam mark.
Guest:That's it.
Guest:Just pleasantries.
Guest:So they didn't speak it at home.
Guest:they did i like to blame my brother because my brother didn't talk for kind of long like he was a late bloomer and my parents were worried and they asked the doctor to go how come he's not talking and the doctor said oh he's probably he's confused between english and and like you know farsi yeah so maybe just speak english so they spoke english around the house yeah and then when i came along that's just what everybody was speaking i
Marc:And then we spoke Farsi when they didn't want you to understand what they were saying.
Marc:Did they do that thing?
Guest:Yeah, or when they got mad or when my mom would say, like, clean your room.
Guest:And I would understand, like, commands and just certain catchphrases and stuff.
Guest:But carrying a conversation is terrifying for me because I am Afghan.
Guest:I look the part, like, and if it gets into advanced interactions, I just seem like I eat paint chips or something.
Guest:because i could be like and then when it gets like deeper i just like stare at them they're like what the fuck is wrong with this guy whereas if i was a white guy they'd be like oh he's trying yeah yeah oh that's great but you can you understand it as maybe i can understand i can understand more but what do you do with that nothing just give the thumbs up nod
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it sucks having a, like, because my grandma, I love my grandma, but she doesn't speak the best English, you know?
Guest:So that's one of my regrets is that I kind of have to talk to my grandma through my mom or like a translator.
Guest:And, you know, it'd be nice to have a conversation with your grandparents.
Marc:So the idea of being a stand-up comic in this, I mean, I've talked to people who come from immigrant parents a lot of different kinds, and there's a lot of pressure to get a secure situation.
Guest:Yeah, me and my dad were at odds for quite a bit when I was doing stand-up.
Guest:It was kind of like a big issue.
Marc:But you decided, you pursued engineering without a question.
Marc:You went through your non-weed-smoking hip-hop life and youth, and when you went to college, you're like, I'm going to do this.
Guest:Well, what happened was, I mean, I was in, I was in video productions.
Guest:I always kind of had that gear.
Guest:Like I loved comedy and I would, I was in drama for like a year or two in high school and my parents were totally cool with all that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Where'd you pick up all the dance moves?
Guest:Just, uh, I was really into Michael Jackson when I was a kid and I would, I would record music videos.
Guest:I would slow them down.
Guest:That's just watching Michael Jackson.
Marc:Cause you go out of your way in most of your, uh, hours to dance at least a bit.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:You know, somebody... What do you mean, guess so?
Marc:I just watched you dance three times.
Guest:What did you watch?
Guest:A bunch of different clips.
Guest:Oh, clips, clips.
Guest:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Marc:What do you mean?
Marc:It was from No Business Like Show Business.
Guest:Right, right, okay.
Guest:Sometimes you'll do these things and you don't know what people have seen.
Guest:Well, how many specials have you done?
Guest:Just one.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But I don't know if you saw me in the OR or what you've seen, you know.
Guest:I don't see, there's not a lot of room for dancing in the OR.
Guest:But more so than New York.
Guest:I was thinking about like New York comics and I think that style is a product of.
Guest:The pacing style?
Guest:Just sort of like the stand and deliver.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Because a lot of the clubs are downstairs.
Marc:That's possible.
Marc:They don't have a lot of room.
Marc:The old improv had a little bit of room, but yeah, the cellar's tight.
Marc:And Catch a Rising Star back in the day had a little bit of room.
Marc:But no, I mean, yeah, I get what you're saying.
Guest:Yeah, sometimes I think that if I was a comic in New York, I don't know if I would be the same comic, just from the environment.
Guest:It's just kind of interesting to think about.
Marc:You'd probably go to dance.
Marc:You'd be like, I'd be dancing right now.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:I can't, yeah.
Marc:You'd figure out a way to do it, I think.
Marc:You like to dance.
Guest:Yeah, I'll throw it in there.
Guest:I won't hold back.
Guest:I just kind of find like act outs or anything like that is just kind of like seasoning.
Marc:No, you're good at it.
Marc:And it's like, it's a unique thing to be able to lose yourself in that stuff.
Marc:Because like either you're going to go, there's guys who can act out.
Marc:But like...
Marc:But you thought of it as a skill you wanted to do when you were... Because for me, it was crowd work.
Marc:It's like, you better know how to do it.
Marc:There are guys that just can't do it.
Marc:The OR taught me that before I was very rigid.
Guest:Just moving through your bits.
Guest:Part of the system at the comedy store, which you don't really see when you're a young comic, you just kind of...
Guest:you fight it, they put you up so late.
Guest:Like when there's five people in the room and you're like, why am I?
Guest:You can take it one of two ways.
Guest:It can make you great or it can make you bitter and toxic where you're like, where the fuck am I here?
Guest:There's five people, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:But then you kind of realize like, oh, there's zero stakes.
Guest:It's 1.45 a.m.
Guest:There's five people.
Guest:And then also you realize,
Guest:they're here yeah they're sitting like they want to be here like if they didn't want to be here they'd be gone yeah and so you just real you have this epiphany that oh there's zero stakes there's five people you I could just have fun and I could be a human being I don't have to do this right the veneer of a set like I'm
Marc:Well, yeah, you can learn what you can and can't do on stage.
Marc:You can learn the parameters of what you're capable of because there's no risk.
Marc:You can dip into the now.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:You can just be three-dimensional.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:And that's a gear that I didn't have until coming to the comedy store many years ago.
Guest:It's important, man.
Guest:I liken it to like a wild horse in water.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, when they're thrashing around and everything, it just kind of like teaches them to slow down.
Guest:Don't panic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Just before you're a wild horse and just you're wound up.
Marc:A lot of people learn that on mushrooms, but not you.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:No, I go the other way.
Marc:No, I mean, I was fortunate enough in my pain to...
Marc:You know, when I started in New York, I couldn't get on at the big club.
Marc:So the only club I could get on most of the time was the place called the Boston Comedy Club.
Marc:And that was the way the evening started was with six people.
Marc:You would walk in on Wednesday and be like, what the fuck?
Marc:Just be like five people spread out.
Marc:Like, all right, we got a crowd.
Marc:Let's go.
Marc:Let's do it.
Guest:I used to be terrified by that.
Guest:But now I kind of love it.
Guest:And when I want to develop new material, I'll ask Adam at the store.
Guest:Oh, can I go up on a Tuesday or a Wednesday?
Guest:Just late.
Guest:yeah just late because then i could just be on my phone and i can throw out some ideas that's a good idea yeah because it's becoming harder to try out new stuff at the store because it's in this renaissance right now i know it's packed and there's all these it's like you burr joey d as rogan yeah and then if i'm next it's like you don't feel it i'm on the chopping block you know what i mean are you though well there's this expectation you just they've been but it doesn't seem like it seems like your act is kind of bulletproof in a way
Guest:Well, there's different things I'm trying to do with different sets.
Guest:Sometimes I'm like, let me build, and I would never do that after you or something.
Marc:Right, because you got to survive.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Well, I'm not hard to follow, but I know what you're saying.
Guest:No, I think there's, and that's the lesson I learned very late in my comedy career of knowing what to do when.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because before I used to chase, the thing I love about stand-up comedy the most is when something works for the first time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like the puzzle of it.
Guest:Maybe it's the engineer thing where I'm like, oh, something was nothing and now it's everything.
Guest:I can tuck it away.
Guest:It's part of my arsenal now.
Guest:And just chasing that I love.
Guest:And I would do it almost to a detriment where maybe it was on a showcase and I'm like, oh, let me try this new thing.
Guest:When you realize you have to make impressions first before you can...
Marc:And also you get, when you get good enough, you realize like if you drive it into the dirt and it doesn't go anywhere, you can still save yourself.
Marc:Isn't it great?
Guest:I was just thinking about this too, like reaching a point in your career where you're not, you don't have to prove yourself.
Guest:Like people know who Mark Maron is.
Guest:They know you're.
Guest:Sometimes.
Guest:Well, not just that.
Guest:I'm not saying from like an audience point of view, but just sort of like your peers and industry, like you are an entity.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:You don't.
Guest:when you're a young comic you're just like you're trying to prove to everybody that you're as funny as you think you are and things are kind of a threat but now you can just be and even you just trying an idea out it's just fascinating to watch someone so comfortable even if the idea's not completely fleshed out yet
Marc:Because it's a process.
Marc:Yeah, because then you've got to say things like, all right, well, that one's going to come together, not tonight, I guess.
Guest:Sure, but there's just something captivating about someone who's been doing it for so long.
Guest:And I almost feel like 90% of comedy is just, I don't know, this is bad ratio.
Guest:But a big part of it is...
Guest:editing yeah just some of the greatest stand-ups aren't like sure they're brilliant all that stuff but just being a good editor because your audience does all your work for you if you are actually perceptive you don't have laugh ears right right but do you ever have those bits where you like they never work but you have to do them because you like because you love them yeah
Guest:Yeah, I might have, but it'll be like one tag.
Guest:Like they'll all be laughing and it's just a throwaway for me.
Marc:Right, right.
Guest:Like maybe one out of 50 it'll hit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, all right.
Marc:That guy knows.
Guest:Yeah, I'm gonna keep it.
Guest:Yeah, it's almost like an inside joke.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:So, okay, so you're doing a little theater in high school and then you, what, college?
Guest:so oh yeah so what happened was you're already straddling your desire to be in kind of my parents just thought it was something i was doing right for fun when i'm a kid yeah but then once i i came to my parents and i was because i i think i was 17 and i wanted to get on snl so because i just loved that show growing up yeah and i researched i'll go how do people get on this show it was it was through they were all improv performers from ground link second city ucb or they were stand-ups right so it was like
Guest:two paths and then i researched groundlings and and used to be oh you have to pay money they're in la they're in new york they're they're in chicago i'm just a kid in seattle and you have to pay money and i just i don't think my parents would be into it especially paying money and then stand-up was just you yeah
Guest:I go, I think I could do that.
Guest:I can rely on me.
Guest:I don't need a team or anything.
Guest:It's just up to me whether I succeed or fail.
Guest:Right.
Guest:All right, let me do stand-up.
Guest:But then, oh, before I had that epiphany, though, I think I wanted to do theater, you know?
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And my dad was like, no, I'm not going to pay for college for a theater degree.
Guest:So it just kept on getting more watered down.
Guest:I was like, all right, what about English?
Guest:And he was like, no.
Guest:And then I was like, all right, what about film school?
Guest:He goes, no.
Guest:So we kept on having this bargaining until I got to mechanical engineering.
Yeah.
Guest:He wrote off on it, but he actually didn't like that I was doing that.
Guest:He wanted me to be a doctor.
Guest:He really thought that I'm just capping off my potential.
Guest:I could have been a dentist or a lawyer or a doctor and I'm just doing this to do this other thing.
Guest:To appease him?
Guest:Yeah, because in my mind, I just wanted to be out of school in four years.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I could do this.
Marc:But he also wants... Usually they're just... They want you to have some sort of practical skill.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And in hindsight, I'm very glad that he did that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I don't think a theater degree would have really helped me do... I could do what I'm doing without that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But when you're 17, you think you need a theater degree to be Jude Law.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or to be Chris Hemsworth.
Guest:No, weirdly, you just need a sort of natural kind of ability.
Guest:You fall into it.
Guest:Sometimes you just find out these...
Guest:these people who you admire and say you want to do that you hear their life story and it's all happenstance yeah or just that they have a natural talent they have a natural talent but there is a big element of stars aligning like when you listen to there's a podcast i like called how i built this yeah and they'll just talk to people like um like the the woman from angie's list or the guy from patagonia and you listen to their like how they got to where they are it wasn't like i'm gonna start
Guest:a jacket company.
Guest:It's never, it doesn't, the germ doesn't start from knowing exactly what they want to do.
Guest:They just kind of float through life.
Marc:This happenstance meeting.
Marc:Yeah, believe me, I know.
Marc:I had no idea that I was going to do a podcast or that.
Marc:I thought it was done.
Marc:Life is funny that way.
Marc:Yeah, if you're lucky, something lines up.
Marc:If you sort of stay in the game long enough.
Guest:But if you're, yeah, if you're in the pool, you're around long enough for it to kind of align and bounce around until it narrows into a successful avenue.
Guest:Hopefully.
Marc:You've been doing this 16 years.
Marc:You look around, you're like, well, that didn't align for that guy.
Marc:True.
Marc:Why is that?
Guest:But look, SNL was the dream, you know?
Marc:Sure.
Guest:And I'm not doing that, but I'm still very happy.
Guest:You can still do SNL.
Guest:I guess I could.
Guest:Like, Neil Brennan got me an audition.
Guest:Oh, he did?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is kind of around the time when the goat face, we were working on that.
Guest:The troupe, the group.
Guest:The troupe.
Guest:Oh, troupe sounds so unfunny.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Just in terms of words.
Guest:The sketch comedy unit.
Guest:Come watch my troupe.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:We got a lot of great skits.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we were doing that on YouTube.
Guest:Go Faces You and Hasan.
Guest:Hasan Minhaj, who was on Daily Show and then now Patriot, I've got Netflix.
Guest:Yeah, I've watched it.
Guest:Aristotle the Theorist and Asif Ali.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So we were all friends in LA and trying to make a go of it because we would see each other in auditions and it's all for like cab driver shit.
Guest:But you wanted to go with sketch.
Guest:You didn't want to do an access of evil comedy thing.
Guest:uh i love sketch you know and i think like just being a stand-up who does sketch it's kind of political because this is a show i wanted to do a long time ago but if you don't come from ucb or second city or or groundlings it's they kind of don't they don't paint you in the same light you got to come around the side it's not a natural evolution so i think it's kind of cool about this sketch shows that we're for stand-ups who i think do sketch very well
Marc:Yeah, no, I watched some of your bits.
Marc:Oh, cool.
Marc:But I don't think they were goat face bits, but some bits where you're doing characters.
Guest:Oh, I see, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And how many have you shot?
Guest:It's a one-hour sketch special.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:So it's just a one-off.
Marc:But are you looking to make it?
Guest:I would love to, you know, because stand-up and sketch is just...
Guest:I think what I do naturally, everything else when they're like, oh, do you have a half hour?
Guest:Do you have a movie idea?
Guest:It just seems like so much more work.
Guest:Whereas these other things just come to me.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Hanging around with three other dudes going, yeah, let's do that.
Marc:You know, it's like a three minute thing.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's not like a fucking.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:It's not like a 90 page to 120 page thing that could eat up four years of your life.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:No, I get it.
Marc:That's a comic brain.
Marc:I imagine that's sort of relative to a math brain, too.
Marc:I think that once you get all your equipment in place mentally to work problems out, you're not looking to spend a year on the problem.
Guest:Yeah, I like how nimble you could be, too.
Guest:You're like, okay, I'm doing...
Guest:like an action sequence.
Guest:All right, now I'm doing like an indie film parody.
Guest:You can really do a lot of things in a short amount of time and it scratches that creative itch.
Marc:And it's satisfying that it's not gonna take for effort.
Marc:You're not gonna get bored, really.
Marc:But so you get a full engineering degree?
Marc:I get a full engineering degree.
Marc:What is it?
Marc:Mathematical engineering?
Guest:Mechanical engineering at University of Washington.
Marc:What does that enable you to do?
Guest:What are the jobs?
Guest:Quite a bit.
Guest:That's a big umbrella.
Guest:Mechanical allows you, because you'll do thermodynamics in there, so you can get into HVAC, which is like heating and cooling systems.
Guest:You can get into civil if you want.
Guest:You can get into aerospace.
Guest:You can get into automotive, like Toyota.
Guest:You can get in like JPL, you can do like Tesla, Elon Musk company.
Guest:And what would your job be at those places?
Guest:It depends.
Guest:Like for me, I got the job at Boeing in Long Beach.
Guest:Because your dad got you in?
Guest:Kind of, but in a very roundabout way.
Guest:It wasn't because he was like super senior and he was like, my boy's coming in.
Guest:Treat him right.
Guest:And just like a pat on the back.
Guest:Yeah, no.
Guest:Because I think my dad, he's kind of slipped through the cracks at Boeing and he should be...
Guest:There's this episode of Masters of None.
Guest:I don't know if you've seen it.
Guest:I think it's episode four where it just kind of shows a window into the immigrant experience, like when you first come to America.
Guest:And I'm fortunate enough to have been born here.
Guest:I talk a certain way.
Guest:I dress a certain way.
Guest:I'm accepted by America.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I never really give a lot of thought to this because it's my dad, and you just think of your dad as your dad.
Guest:You don't think of him as a functioning member of society.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But that episode really was kind of a mindfuck.
Guest:It made me think about when my dad probably worked at Boeing, and he's literally from Afghanistan.
Guest:is probably trying to learn english a little better or doesn't have as much of a grasp as it i mean he speaks perfectly english but there's an accent and there's we're not as woke you're only as woke as the year you're in yeah so the the politics and of him trying to climb a company and yeah in the the positions he was overlooked for and right so it's kind of that's an interesting uh that's a very uh powerful thing to learn from a tv show the the kind of like
Guest:maneuvering your brain to an empathetic place for your father's life experience yes yeah because it's easy to think of your parents as just these set pieces sure they're parents they're parents and yeah yeah and i maybe it's cliche that you learn as you get older that they're they're people trying to figure out as well yeah they don't have all the answers yeah i i thoroughly believe that my parents were just these people i grew up with they're not
Guest:but it's it's it's kind of great to have that epiphany just yeah so yeah so my dad didn't have that like a ton of weight to throw around the clout to say see my boy and all this stuff right but what he did he had access to the rolodex of like all the managers and stuff like there's this proprietary it's a contact list yeah so he could find out who the managers are in boeing and he says like email this guy
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like they won't know how I got his email or whatever.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I basically got a contact list of some people to hit up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I emailed a couple of Boeing managers saying, hey, you know, I'm graduating with a mechanical engineering degree from University of Washington.
Guest:Here's my senior project.
Marc:And, you know, did you say your dad worked at Boeing?
Guest:i don't know if i did maybe probably i did yeah yeah and uh and when you're a kid you think this is old 1950s thinking like ah it doesn't work this way dad i got you gotta know someone yeah but he's right sometimes your parents are right yeah and i got a i got an email back and and then i got a conference call when i was back home and they just interviewed me over the phone and then a few hours later i got an offer to work at boeing in long beach and
Guest:And I only applied to jobs in Southern California because I knew I wanted- You could do comedy?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Because I was trying to get here.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And was it a good job?
Guest:It was great, yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was always a means to an end.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It's not pouring cement or anything.
Marc:No, but you could have stayed there.
Marc:Where?
Marc:At Boeing.
Marc:My soul wouldn't have allowed me to.
Marc:No, no, no, but I mean like they set you up pretty good.
Marc:The offer was solid for new engineering.
Guest:Sure, but the thing with engineering is that you get this thing called salary compression where you come in at a pretty nice rate compared to your friends who are graduating in different fields.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I was coming in at 62K, let's say, which is good for the time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But year by year, your salary doesn't really increase that much.
Guest:And then new hires start making as much as you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Or even more.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But are there like hot shot engineers?
Guest:Do you mean just the fact that you said that?
Guest:Maybe Elon Musk was the only one, really.
Guest:Right.
Guest:There's not a lot of hot shot engineers.
Marc:But like your job security isn't like, there's a new kid that can turn this inside out.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, and if you are, you're very rare.
Guest:Right, he can make a plane without wings, this guy.
Guest:Yeah, it's just a tube flying through the air.
Guest:Yeah, no one knows how he's doing it.
Guest:Yeah, there's less rock star.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I mean, there are some of them, but I think to excel in that field, you have to really love it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:When you clock out, you're reading manuals, and I think it's true of any field.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The people who excel are the ones who it's not worked to them.
Marc:So you're doing that gig and you're doing the comedy.
Guest:I'm doing that.
Guest:I'm engineering by day.
Guest:I'm driving to Hollywood and being a ghost at every comedy club.
Guest:People walking through me.
Guest:Walking around the hall.
Marc:Just loitering.
Marc:Yeah, but you seem to, you say you don't mind that.
Guest:Well, because I'm at a certain level now where it's fine.
Guest:I'm getting up at the comedy store.
Guest:Look, it'd be great to have a better rapport with you, but I'm not going to push it.
Guest:Well, we're going to have one now.
Guest:True, true.
Guest:But I like the way that it's worked out.
Guest:I wouldn't have liked, you know, can I pick your brain?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Well, that's a different kind of person.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:You're not that guy.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I mean, there's definitely people like that.
Guest:You know, I kind of fucked up because like, not with you, but...
Guest:I asked Burr to do that, but not too early because he had sent some really glowing things about me in print.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I did this.
Guest:Well, he's a good guy.
Guest:Yeah, but the thing is I would have limited interactions with him, never at length.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So it was always perplexing when I would hear from other people like, oh, Burr really likes you or he mentioned you in this article.
Guest:And I did this festival in Ireland, this Vodafone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And the guy was like, oh, yeah, Burr was here and he was talking you up.
Guest:So it was just like...
Guest:fucking with my mind like how have i not had a conversation at length with this man and and he's saying all these nice things about me yeah i'm gonna be cool to have a little bit of a rapport yeah so then so then i got his number and i was like thank you for you know the the ireland thing and he's like oh yeah don't mention it and i was like yeah i love
Guest:I don't know, I'll get a coffee and pick your brand, literally said that shit.
Guest:Yeah, and?
Guest:And he's like, oh yeah.
Guest:He wanted to, but he's so busy, and I can just say what's up at the store.
Marc:I don't need to eat his day.
Marc:But it's just weird with comics, is that we have this community where we see each other, and we probably talk enough.
Guest:you probably you're right you're right like we're not the type to like set time we'll see each other in the club i'll see you in the green room we could bang it out there right and maybe if like you know it's late night so you want to eat you want to go to canner's for sure yeah diner sesh yeah right right yeah there's no let's get coffee are you gonna tell me you're terminally yeah right what's the matter
Marc:you know it's weird though because it's not like we're busy but we have time during the day but it's always a little awkward when you're you know yeah and he has a kid and he has a wife so just and it was one of those like late in life bonehead blunders not it's all right i mean i'm beating myself up more like i mean i'll go like i'll go hike with ryan singer and sometimes and like you know i mean it happens but it's just a it is kind of an odd thing you gotta slip into it we don't like to plan anything unless it's necessary
Marc:That's funny though.
Marc:Are you sick?
Marc:What do you need?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:If a comic wants to have coffee at a certain time.
Marc:Did something happen?
Marc:Lay it on me.
Marc:Yeah, it's going to be heavy.
Marc:But when you finally quit your gig, is your old man proud of you now?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:We'll see when I go back for Thanksgiving.
Guest:He's been the longest holdout.
Guest:And, like, my mom is loving it since I took her to the premiere.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:She got pictures.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, she got a picture with Margot Robbie and, like, Tina Fey.
Guest:So she got to see the best of the best.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I hide a lot of stuff from...
Guest:It's tough because when you're out here, especially in the early years, she'll be like, you know, what's new?
Guest:And you're doing things, but they're like an audition.
Guest:You're not going to tell your mom about an audition.
Marc:That's the worst, dude.
Guest:It's the fucking worst.
Guest:You can go through the yo-yo.
Guest:You're built for it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But your mom isn't.
Guest:You don't want to take them through that because then they're just like, why are you wasting your time?
Marc:Or they're just like, I just did a fucking scene.
Marc:I just did a scene with Robert De Niro in The Joker, right?
Marc:That's awesome.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, but I'm telling my mom, she's like, oh, so you're in the movie.
Marc:I'm like, yeah, but it's not.
Marc:Because you know they're going to go and they're going to wait.
Marc:And then it's sort of like, that's it.
Guest:But you don't know.
Guest:You don't understand how.
Guest:Yeah, it's your mom.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, she's happy.
Marc:But I know when the movie comes out, she's like, I thought you were going to be in it longer.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:you know like one of the greatest things of your career like yeah i thought it was gonna be longer experience you know and i but i i've got it all i've got it in a good perspective in my head but i know what you're saying you can't say like i'm up for this movie because then they'll be like why didn't you get it or they'll keep asking yeah
Guest:And you don't even know.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know if I get it.
Guest:More things don't happen than happen.
Guest:Yeah, that's right.
Guest:So it's hard early on when they say what's going on and you have nothing, you go, nothing really?
Marc:I hate it.
Guest:And it just seems like you're twiddling your thumbs, but you are, you're just protecting them from the yo-yo of Hollywood.
Marc:Yeah, and also, like, no matter, it's like, and now, what really matters?
Marc:I mean, with my parents, there was a generation, like, if everybody doesn't know who you are, then in their world, it's like- Yeah, Tom Cruise or Buzz.
Marc:Right, who are you?
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:It's like, I don't know, what is that show that you're on?
Marc:You know, it's like Jerry Seinfeld, we know him.
Marc:And then everything else is sort of like, oh, I don't know what Conan is.
Marc:Yeah, they don't know Shades of Grey.
Marc:They don't.
Marc:And it's like, it wears on you a little bit.
Guest:Yeah, but after that premiere, my mom was into it.
Guest:Oh, that was it?
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:It was funny because she wanted a photo with Tina, and there's a lot of people at this after party.
Guest:She's, like, literally pushing me towards Tina.
Guest:Like, I'm going to bump in.
Guest:She's literally like a linebacker or something just blocking me.
Marc:You're trying to be cool?
Guest:It was crazy.
Guest:I've never seen my mom push Tina.
Guest:push me to get to somebody she was like swim moving and everything and then what was kind of neat though was like it's my mom of course they're gonna take it it's so lovable it's not just some random guy like I love you Tina can I smell your hair yeah and Tina was cool yeah she took a photo and my mom like she hangs it and
Guest:So what's your... My dad is kind of more, it's kind of, I think, a cultural thing, too.
Guest:Like, what will people think?
Guest:And he's just very old school.
Guest:And I think it must be kind of novel.
Guest:For me, I like that there's other Afghans who will talk to my dad and be like, oh, you must be so proud.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then for that switch to go in his head, like...
Guest:should i be proud yeah yeah that's kind of nice but i think he just understands money and like a house and cars and uh not in a gaudy way but just kind of stability right and what i would have if i were a cardiac you know surgeon right he's still judging you he's still waiting for that yeah he gave this arbitrary number he's like if you make 50 million dollars it will have been okay
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Just some random, not in a mean way.
Guest:It's just so absurd.
Guest:I go, dad, I would never make that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's nothing you could do.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:What do you, so we'll see.
Guest:It's every year.
Guest:It's like still like kind of, here's the kind of cool and sad thing.
Guest:It's becoming less and less harping and kind of like, I think he just always thought that I was putting my real life on hold.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That what I was doing.
Guest:It's a phase.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The longest phase in the world.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Up top, it was just sort of like, okay, he can still go to medical school.
Marc:But that's the problem with having an actual degree.
Marc:Like, you know, I have an English degree.
Marc:So after about a decade, there was no phase, but there was no other thing.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:It was this or bust.
Marc:Right.
Marc:There's nothing you're going to fall back on.
Marc:Like, you know, you've got that other.
Marc:No, you don't.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:Good luck.
Guest:But he didn't even want engineering, though.
Guest:He wanted me to go to medical school or like dentistry.
Guest:And so I was always putting my life on hold kind of in his mind.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And early on, when I was really getting into comedy and stuff, I would hide my joke book and stuff.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:Just anything that would remind him that I'm doing this thing would kind of enrage him.
Guest:Not throwing me downstairs and everything, but just kind of like throwing your life away, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Why is this still happening, pulling up a notebook?
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:Most people, it's opioids.
Guest:It's the same thing, honestly.
Guest:Just he didn't like any reminders that I'm doing this other thing.
Guest:I think we were driving to maybe Lake Chelan or just some family vacation.
Guest:We're in the minivan, and I'm reading, I'm just trying to like, I'm reading like Steve Martin's memoirs.
Guest:I'm reading Jay Leno's Leading With My Chin.
Guest:yeah yeah so the books open like that and I just picture my dad looking in the rear view mirror and just seeing Jay Leno with his like chin on his fist with his ball of anger yeah yeah he's like what the fuck is that Jay Leno really yeah yeah so he was kind of upset about that
Guest:But over time, it's kind of sad, just like time has tempered him.
Guest:You know, you can't maintain that level of rage.
Guest:That's not sad, that's good.
Guest:Sure, it's good for me.
Marc:But it just reminds you, your parents are getting older and all that.
Marc:But also, a therapist years ago once told me that at some point,
Marc:Your parents want to have a relationship with you that's genuine.
Guest:I make it sound like he's Joe Jackson or something.
Guest:We love each other, we talk, but this is just this side thing that we don't, it's sort of like Professor X and Magneto have common ground, but they still were friends at this point.
Guest:Does he come to your shows?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:But my mom doesn't either.
Guest:I'm very weird.
Guest:Oh, you don't have that name?
Guest:Yeah, I just have hangups about it.
Guest:That'll go away.
Guest:You should let that go away.
Guest:I should let it go away.
Guest:My mom really wants to come.
Guest:I should let her come.
Guest:But my dad would be, I kind of feel like for my dad, it has to be this triumphant, like out of a movie or something.
Marc:But did he watch your special?
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe my mom showed.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, you should, I mean, I know how that feels, and I was like that too, but my dad gets such a kick out of coming.
Guest:Yeah?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I just can't fathom my dad being like, when is your next show?
Guest:Can you put me down for like 8.30 and 10.30?
Guest:I want to bring Abdul.
Guest:I have a tag for you.
Guest:He's already given you a bunch of tags.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't talk about him as much.
Guest:And I mean, in my, in my early days, you kind of talk about what, you know, and I talked about my dad more, but that's how I learned how to be a comic.
Marc:He's just one of those guys.
Marc:He's so narcissistic and weird.
Marc:That'll just make fun of him to his face.
Marc:And he just dies.
Marc:He just loves the attention.
Marc:So like, I'll just, you can go too far with it.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:And I'm sure you wouldn't do this given your relationship.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But he would charge the stage and beat me up.
Guest:Just a flashback.
Guest:Oh really?
Guest:No, I'm just kidding.
Guest:Like he takes his shoes off and just spanks me.
Guest:Start throwing shoes at you.
Guest:My fans can't see me this way.
Guest:I have the power.
Guest:I'm sorry, Bubba.
Marc:Yeah, but that's the thing that's in your head.
Marc:See, that's why you can't have him there, is that you've got him built into your head, and you're going to go on stage knowing he's in the room.
Guest:It's a very Middle Eastern thing, this power separation.
Guest:Dad is dad.
Guest:It's weird.
Guest:I can't fathom laying into my dad.
Marc:Oh, no, yeah, I get it.
Marc:No, I understand the respect, but you'll have an event big enough, maybe they'll come and turn.
Marc:Maybe.
Marc:Like your mom had the premiere.
Marc:Right.
Guest:What's gonna be for my dad?
Guest:My dad loves Steve Martin.
Guest:That's what's interesting, though.
Guest:He's such a huge fan.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:They love art.
Guest:They're really tapped into it.
Guest:They love poetry.
Guest:But they don't want their kids.
Guest:Yeah, but they don't want their kids to have any part of it.
Guest:These are all just artists flown in from somewhere.
Guest:Sometimes people will come up to you after a show and be like,
Guest:Wow, I don't know how you do what you do up there.
Guest:They think that you just woke up.
Guest:Right.
Guest:You don't ask a helicopter pilot, like, how do you do?
Guest:Oh, fuck, man.
Guest:Like, I wish I could be you.
Guest:How do you... No.
Guest:How do you even... Like, it's a process.
Guest:It's a long process.
Guest:I've always thought about stand-up that...
Guest:like people think they can do it some people because on its surface you're like oh i've made people laugh right i can hold a microphone i've yeah sure i can get up there yeah and on its surface sure but when you look at a an nfl player who's just like jacked in 300 pounds yeah people know because you could see the work the work is on their body he's a monster
Guest:Look at them.
Guest:They look at the muscles and they know why they can't do that.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But with stand-up, all the muscles are in your brain.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And no one can see it.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:And I hate when people trivialize it.
Marc:Like, you know, now everyone's a comic because they've done one mic.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:You know, and they've got a business card.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Or hecklers.
Guest:They'll just be like, yeah, let me get up there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Come on.
Guest:Yeah, you want me too?
Guest:Everyone claps.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then you just see them clam up up there.
Guest:Yeah, just see them buckle.
Guest:I want to do this character where it's like confident open miker because you'll see these bringer shows.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Whereas they're like, oh, you know him from the die theta beta fraternity.
Guest:And he has like some jack in a backwards hat.
Guest:And it's this fake confidence, you know, where you could tell he's like, I'll just exude confidence.
Guest:But through the breathing and like the swallowing, you could tell that he's just living on the edge.
Guest:He's like, yeah, what's up?
Guest:Toby's in the house.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Fuck, you guys ever notice when... It's funny.
Guest:It's just hilarious as a comic back.
Guest:There you go.
Guest:That's not a normal breathing pattern.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:All right, buddy.
Guest:Well, this was good.
Guest:Thanks, man.
Guest:Goatface.
Guest:Goatface.
Guest:It's a one-hour sketch special, Comedy Central.
Guest:I think Comedy Central has my one-hour special that was on CISO.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's up there now.
Guest:It's called There's No Business Like Show Business.
Guest:It's funny.
Guest:Then I have a podcast called Fahim Anwar Dance Hour.
Guest:Good talking to you, buddy.
Guest:Thanks for having me, dude.
Yeah.
Marc:Okay, that was good.
Marc:I like that guy.
Marc:Funny guy, smart guy.
Marc:Oh, my God, I'm talking.
Marc:I'm having a hard time recognizing my own voice in my head.
Marc:So that's that.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com.
Marc:You can check my tour dates.
Marc:I've got a few coming up that are on there at the Wheeler Opera House in Aspen and also at the Boulder Theater in Boulder, Colorado.
Marc:You can also pick up the audio version of Two Real right there on the homepage at WTFPod.com.
Marc:And I wasn't planning on playing guitar.
Marc:It's a little late.
Marc:I'm a little tired.
Marc:But I think I'm rethinking it because I plugged in the Telecaster.
Marc:Maybe I'll just go clean.
Marc:Why, why, why, why, why, why?
Marc:All the cool guys are playing with their fingers.
Marc:Just their thumbs.
Marc:Oh, man.
Marc:I'm going to do two fingers.
Marc:Clean in.
guitar solo
Thank you.
Guest:Boomer lives!