Transcript
Marc Maron (0:00)
Lock the gate.
Nick Thune (0:09)
All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the Buddies? What the nicks? What's happening? I'm Marc Maron. This is my podcast. Welcome to it. What is happening? I have been out here. I've been on the road. I'm still on it. I'm in it. I'm living it. I'm recording this in a hotel room. Not even my hotel room, because my hotel room's not ready yet. So I had to borrow the space from my opening act, Ally Makofsky. We just checked in. She went for a walk somewhere over in lovely Charleston, South Carolina, which is where I'm reporting from. I'm coming to you live from Charleston, South Carolina, where I have no sense of anything other than very Southern. But, you know, in the glamorous Southern way. It seems very specific, and people love it. People love it here. I. Maybe after I do this, I'll get out and walk around. I think I walked around last time. I don't remember. I was probably in some state of panic. But I have to tell you, that is receding a bit. I'm not sure why, but I have to assume it's a good thing. But what can I tell you before I get into where we've been and what's been going on? Nick Thune is on the show today. Nick Thune has been on the show twice. He was on episode 189 and episode 780. Both episodes. I talked to him a lot about his Christianity, which is interesting. We're now at a point with this show where people that were on that long ago have had entire chunks of life. Entire chunks of life, and a lot of stuff has transpired. And Nick has been through the fucking ringer that, you know, brought him to the. To the edge for sure. Not just to the edge of his faith, but I think really, to be honest, after talking to him, it sounds like to the edge of his life, literally. So it was great to catch up with him. He's got this new special out called Born Young, which is available on YouTube. I believe it's produced by Nate Bargetze. He tours with Nate. This morning, we were leaving the hotel in Charlotte, and there was a couple checking out, and they recognized me. They're like, hey, you know, what's going on? Good show last night. Yeah, we're heading out. And the woman was like, yeah, we heard that you, you know, on stage, you talked about you stopped at a Dunkin Donuts on the way. On the way down at a truck Stop. And I'm. And the guy was like, I didn't. I thought you guys be on a tour bus. I thought you guys like, you know, you just stopping at Dunkin Donuts at truck stops. I'm like, yeah, don't tell anybody, but that's how I roll. I rent a car where I land and then I drive around the region. I'm performing in just me and who's ever opening for me in a car for hours? No tour bus. Everybody assumes we're rock stars. I don't even. I don't have a road manager. I don't have nine guys I'm on the road with. I don't even know what I would do with a tour. But I felt a little bad that maybe this guy was a little disappointed or maybe he wasn't. I don't know. This is how I do it. This is the way that is most practical for me to do it. I don't need a bus. I don't need a bus for just me and my opener. You know, there's part of me that thinks like, well, maybe you should just do it to do it. But it would be sad. I think it would be a little weird to roll up on a theater and just me and Ali climb out of the bus. Where are the rest of the guys? Not. This is it. We just needed the whole bus to carry. We have two bags each and one's a carry on, so. But we thought probably be easier to take the bus and just put the shit in a trunk. Anyway, look, I wanted to mention something. This guy that I had on the show years ago, he's got something coming out. Drew Friedman is his name. He's a cartoonist, an artist. He's one of my favorite. I guess it would originally be underground comics. He's just a brilliant portrait artist and also comic artist. And there's this big documentary about him. It's called Drew Friedman, Vermeer of the Borscht Belt. It's directed by Kevin Dougherty. And Drew and Kevin are gonna be screening the doc at the Arrow Theater in Los Angeles this Saturday, March 29th. There's a panel discussion afterward with Dana Gould, Cliff Nesteroff, Leonard Maltin, Meryl Marco, Steven Weber, and screenwriter Scott Alexander. And you can get tickets at the Aerotheater or go to americancinematech.com I imagine I'm going to be out of town. Yes, I believe so. Or I would have been part of that, right? I would have been part of it also tomorrow I'm at Largo in Los Angeles. That's Tuesday night, March 25th. Then Skokie, Illinois. I'm coming to the North Shore center for the Performing arts on Friday, March 28th. Joliet, Illinois. I'm at the Rialto Square Theater on Saturday, March 29th. Grand Rapids, Michigan for the GLC Live at 20 Monroe on Friday, April 11th. And then Traverse City, Michigan at the City Opera House on Saturday, April 12th. Also, new dates announced for Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles. Monday, April 14, Saturday, April 26, and Tuesday, April 29. Those are all at 7:30pm I'm coming to Toronto, Vermont, New Hampshire and Brooklyn, New York for my HBO special taping at the BAM Harvey Theater on May 10. Go to wtfpod.com tour for all of my dates and links to tickets. So it's been, it's always kind of enlightening to be out here. You know, I get all worked up about the South, I get all worked up about politics. But ultimately, you know, I have plenty of people that come out to see me at these shows. Even here in Charleston. It didn't sell as well as Charlotte or Durham, which was great. Got, you know, over a thousand people there. Durham and what a great town. Saw some people I knew there and you know, had good food and then we drove out to Charlotte and I'm always like nervous about Charlotte and I don't even know why. I'm like, you know, what is Charlotte? It's like a bank city. I don't know why. I've got this weird thing. And then when I get to these places, I realize, man, I've been here more than once, more than twice, probably three or four times one way or the other. I think I did the Oddball fest, the first Oddball fest in Charlotte. And I don't know why. I have this thing in my head. I knew Raleigh, Durham was going to be fine, but I had this thing in my head in Charlotte. And then I just, I realized that sometimes you can't identify why a place or something makes you uncomfortable until you like get there and you're like, oh yeah, I didn't think, I didn't feel great about my show last time. It was that simple. It had nothing to do with the socio political population of Charlotte or the nature of the region or anything. I just remember getting the theater and I was like, oh yeah, this theater was a little hard to tell to keep your pace going because the laughs didn't come back at me like you expect them to. And I realized like it was one of those nights where I thought like oh my God. Every joke is a journey, Every joke is a mountain. But this time we just. We did. It was great. I mean, it was. It was just. It was great. We. I mean, you get the hang of it. But that's what I realized that the thing was, that was what was in my head and it kind of fucked me up. It's just weird, you know, you get out and you talk to people and things become kind of a different game. Like, I went to this place. It was sort of interesting, you know, I went to this place, I was trying to find vegan food in Charlotte and I looked at. I found this place, it was like a soul food plant based thing. And I went to this place called the Kitsch. And I've never been to these places where you just walk in and there's a wall of screens and you order on the screen and then somebody brings it to you from a door and several different restaurants. So I imagine it's just like an industrial kitchen behind that door with stations for each of these different types of food or restaurants. But there was sort of like a regular counter and seated restaurant, a brick and mortar restaurant connected to it. And I wasn't loving what I was seeing on the plant based thing. And then I started talking to the guy. It was a Japanese restaurant. It was called Dozo Japanese American Kitchen. I'm talking to the guy there, the guy who owns the place. And you know, he started with a food truck. He said he could. He didn't have any real vegan stuff on the menu, but he saw that I was kind of frustrated or. And he recognized me. He's like, you're Marc Maron. He said, I saw you at the Comedy Store a few months ago. You were great. And I'm like, thanks. I'm like, I don't know if I want to eat that food. He's like, I'll fix you something, man. I'll make you something vegan. And he. He just set out and he kind of cooked me a fresh batch of like mushroom and tofu fried rice. And we talked to. I talked to him about stuff about the business, about moving from the truck and into a restaurant and how that was going. And then we just started talking about the nature of the state and about Charlotte being blue and the state being red and being what it is. But then it was sort of interesting about him running a business. And when he was younger, he didn't really have a sense of the impact of politics or what's going on necessarily his life or his business. But now, you know, the talk was about what are these tariffs going to do? What is this new economic policy going to do? Is he going to be able to survive as a business with food prices being jacked, getting produce from Mexico? So it is kind of fascinating how many people are relatively detached from the impact of politics on their life and sort of consumed with the satisfaction of ideological actions taking place that make them emotionally satisfied. Like if you're cruel and intolerant, and the idea of hundreds of thousands of people being thrown out of the country because, you know, Trump said he was gonna do it, it's satisfying. You know, when you read about it and go like, yeah, fuck yeah. I mean, it's hard for me to empathize or get into the brain of that, but. But nonetheless, it's just an emotional reaction to bits and pieces of information or news or policy that is, you know, it's completely destroying the fabric of our government and our, and our society. But some people are satisfied by that. But the actual trickle down effect of like connecting the dots between how these policies and how the tone of the country affects your life, I don't know. I don't know if it's gonna happen to everybody. I don't know if people are still gonna be satisfied. But it was interesting to talk to somebody who just had this moment of like, oh, this has a direct impact on my livelihood. And obviously everybody's fired from the federal government and people are deported and that too. But this guy, not, you know, he's just running a restaurant. Anyway, it's good to talk to people. I feel like that's been some kind of theme of how I'm approaching dealing with this stuff in my life. You know, talking to people becomes essential. All that said, it's been, you know, it's been okay. I don't know what's going to happen tonight. You know, like I said, Durham was great, Charlotte was great tonight. You know, by the time you listen to it, it'll be done. But I'm looking forward to this. It was kind of a weird situation the time I was down here last time, but the weather's been perfect and I don't know, I'm just trying to tighten up that set. It's very, very tricky to be doing like an hour and a half hour, 40 on the regular, and I got to get that down to 70 or 60 or 70 for the special. And you get very attached to these bits and I got to pull out some major chunks to get this kind of kind of singing at the length of Time necessary for the special. Last time I talked to you, I said I went to the get the eval and get the medicine. And I talked to you about how the just having the label or the condition named, you know, obsessional anxiety. It brought me some relief, but it didn't last long. But nonetheless, now I'm in that zone where I'm going to try the medicine, I'm trying it, I'm on it. I'm on it right now. Can you tell the difference? Does it feel different? Do I feel like a whole new person? Does it sound like I'm just taking it easy, that I'm keeping. I'm taking everything in stride and keeping things in the right context in my brain, compartmentalizing properly, not letting one or two miserable fucking things that I let into my brain destroy the rest of it for the afternoon. Does it sound like I'm doing that? Can you tell that I've taken the load off, that I'm no longer that self conscious or aware of exactly what's going on in my mind at every given point in time and try not to react to that as if it's a reality? Does it sound like it's working? Is it working? But because I've had this. I started talking about it on stage the other night, just this idea that my resting mind doesn't rest. And there's this. I think I may have talked about this before and certainly it's not an unknown thing for people that do this. I think your brain, if you have a brain like this, is going to imagine the worst. You're going to play it out in your head and then anything that happens short of that is, you know, fucking victory. It's a relief. And I realized I've been doing this thing that's kind of. It's kind of nuts. And I'm. I don't know why I started doing it, but, but along those lines, I've been doing this thing where when I fly now, like getting to the airport and all this stuff just, it's aggravating. It's anxiety. And even though it's my life, just converging on the point of departure causes me a lot of stress. There's a lot of things to do. There's. There's a lot of things to get through and there's, you know, there's the whole act of leaving, whatever that entails for anybody. But, you know, it's just normal flight stuff. But when I get on a plane, and I used to be a guy who I was terrified of flying for years. For years, I would have to stay up all night. I would drink, I would do drugs. I would do whatever it took to try to just, you know, not be terrified to take off in a fucking airplane. And it was taxing. And when you lived like that, you know, you'd get to wherever you were going, and you were immobilized from just what you had to do to get through the fucking flight. And at some point, I let go. And I thought it was a spiritual moment. I thought, you know, if I'm going to understand the concept of powerlessness, this is a great example of that. And I do that. But the steps I take in my brain just to fly on an airplane, like, once I get on the plane, I'm like, all right, dude, you can still get off. Like, if you have to, you can still get off. If you got bad feeling, you can still get off. You know, you can. You can stop everything right now, tell them to turn back and let you off the plane. It's not. You know, it's still possible now, but then once it hits the Runway and, you know, the engines go and, you know, we're taking off, you know, that shifts. And then. Then I go into, well, you can't get off now. And you know what? You have no control over what's happening. You know, you signed up for this. You got to get to where you're going. It's out of your hands, dude. You're in the fucking air. And then for a few minutes, what I do is I just picture very graphically the plane. The plane crashing. Like, I've just picture, like, that moment where everyone around me realizes it. This is it. And just the screaming and the terror and the feeling of what it would be like to, you know, go out that way. How much time would you have to think about things? And then just the. The black emptiness of death and just the chaos and terror surrounding me. I picture it graphically to the point where it's just horrifying. And then somehow or another, I relax into flying. Now, I could live without those. Those two steps. I really could. And I don't know how it really falls into or under the rubric of thinking the worst. So anything happens is better than the worst. Because, look, I mean, let's say the worst thing happened and the plane starts going down. And am I going to be sitting there like, you know, I knew this was a possibility, and I know exactly how this is going to go, so I'm good with it. I don't think so. And again and the other thing about kind of trying to deal with this psychological issue that I have around this brain, there's always the question of, like, well, dude, what if that's all you are? What if that's who you are? What if this is how you think? Maybe this is where you understand things in this mode of, you know, heightened anxiety. Maybe this is your process. Do you want to fuck with that? What if it diminishes your ability to sort of generate or process or understand in the way you do? Because a lot of that's pretty good. What if my life is really just, you know, panning for gold in a river of panic, just waiting for those nuggets? What if that's it? Well, to answer that question, I think we have to go with age. And, you know, where I'm at in my life. And I think the answer to that, what if that's what it is? Is, okay, well, maybe that's true, but I've had a fuck. Enough. I've had enough. I'm tired. I've had enough. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. And from the first day we started this show, I didn't know anything about how to make a website. I used to have to send everything off to someone to have them put it on the site. They'd deal with any alterations or updates or bugs. But that all changed when we started using Squarespace. Now we run everything in house, updating the site whenever we want and letting Squarespace handle all the additions and upgrades. With Squarespace, you can showcase anything you want with a customizable website designed to attract clients or fans and grow your business. Squarespace has cutting edge design tools. Anyone can build an online presence that suits them perfectly. 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