Marc Maron (4:34)
You can hear that full recording with a full Marin subscription. Just sign up for that by going to the link in the episode description and you can read the Full piece@Defector.com Couple other bits of business. Look, you know, as we head into the home stretch in the next few months, if you're not following me on Instagram, go ahead and do that. I am toying with the idea and leaning towards continuing doing the weekly updates that I mail out. I believe you can get on that mailing list somewhere@wtfpod.com but people seem to like those. People come up to me and go, are you still going to do the updates? Are you still going to do the dispatches? Sure, why not? Keeps me writing, keeps me engaged. But I was in New York and I had a good trip. I had a very nice trip. And I have to be honest with you, I love doing Jimmy Fallon show. All right? Being a panel guest was such an important part of my Life for so long. When I was coming up, I used to do Conan all the time, and I talked to him when I was in New York. He happened to be up at Sirius, and he was finishing up an interview with Bob Odenkirk, and he said, come on in. Let's knock one out. So I did. But, I mean, just being a guy on panel, like, you know, Richard Lewis or like Jay Leno on Letterman, I just. It was. It was a very important and very thrilling thing for me, and I. And I hardly do it anymore. So, look, I. And I'm not talking about being a guest on a podcast. There is a specific thing. I'm talking about being a guest on the Tonight Show. And look, I know it doesn't mean what it used to, and the media landscape is a scattered shit show, but the context is still what it is, okay? And you go out there, there's a way to do it. Some of it's riffing, some of it's, you know, stuff you prepared. But I'm telling you, man, Jimmy is a good host. I don't know what you think of him. I don't care, really. He's a great audience. He's excited. He doesn't. He likes when you throw him curve balls. And I was out there and we were going at it, and I was riffing a bit, and he's just a good audience of one, and his audience is good. He's. He's fully engaged in the thing, and it just makes it a fucking blast. So I enjoyed that. And you can watch that somewhere, the Fallon appearance. It's out there. And also I was there to screen the documentary. Are we good? And I do have to admit that it was screening on Saturday. That was the day of the protests. And so I was getting ready to go to a theater to watch a movie about me while all you good people who went out into the streets and raged against the machine of fascism with open hearts and tolerance and decency. I was in a room full of people watching a movie about me. And I know some of you are like, well, yeah, that adds up, Mark. But my heart was with you, and it's with you now. And I'll be out at the next one. I promise there will be a next one. But the screening of the documentary, it went very well. It was only the second time I'd seen it in front of an audience. And it was great. I mean, it was really great. It moved me because there's a lot of stuff with Lynn in there. There's a lot of Stuff that really got me squirting out a few tears and feeling the feels again. And when something goes well, it's funny to me, when something goes well, it means it got laughs in the funny places and it got feels in the feely places, and it just really played well. And I want to thank everyone who came out for that. It was a great night. And then after the. After the screening, Tracy Letts, who is my friend, moderated a conversation with me and Steve Finarts, the director. And that was also pretty fucking amazing. I mean, talking to Tracy in any situation is amazing for me. And to be honest with you, I didn't know where he was gonna go with the questions, but he had kind of a totally unique point of view about what the film was about. So the assumption, and it wouldn't be a wrong one, is that it's about processing grief. It is that me processing grief, which includes me trying to figure out how to do comedy about it, right? So Tracy, when he saw it that night, he thought the film was about work. About the work, about the work of an artist. Now, I rarely call myself that, and you guys know that, and I rarely. Rarely see myself that way, I guess. I know I am one, but it seems to be pretentious to call myself one. I've always felt that, you know, throughout my life, I'd rather just go with a comic. But looking at the film as a film about work was helpful to me in reframing my life a little bit, because I'm watching my life unfold in bits and pieces over the course of three years in this film. And my work is really how I process everything. This conversation right now, being part of that, whether it's on the podcast or it's on the stage, my life certainly up to this point, has been about processing it through my work. And the work is kind of my life to the point where I don't really live a full life. I mean, there are other reasons for that, but those are also what I process in the work. The other reasons. The reasons why I don't live a full life. And I just put it all out there, and I just kind of had this weird realization. It's like the reality of my life is a. Is sort of like a panicky farce. And the work that I do gives it definition, and it attempts to make it relatable as I work it out to make it real for me and for the audience and just to put it out there. Does that make sense? But all this sharing of it is a bit depleting. I gotta be honest with you, because the sharing of it is the work. And the work leaves me chronically exposed. And then I have to incorporate that into how I live. It starts eating itself and it stagnates the life I'm living. And I'm running out of time. People, what am I trying to say? The only choice I have after 61 years of being alive is to accept what I've called a life and try to live it differently. If that will bring me some peace, ease up on the panic, the compulsivity, the urgency, the anger, find some space and be who I am now and see where that takes me creatively. I have no idea how to create outside of myself. I am the center and project of the creation. And I just feel like the space that I'm going to be afforded, you know, if I don't fall into a pit of me is an opportunity to start putting stuff together that doesn't rely entirely on my immediate reaction to whatever is happening right now in my life. I do not know if I have the discipline to do other things. I don't have much patience and I don't always think in a fictional realm, but. But I think that's really some of where the next piece of me has to go creatively. Okay, let's bring it back down to Earth. I would say, honestly, on some level, one of the high points, if not the high point of the trip, was going to the Museum of Natural History in New York City with Kit. She'd never been there and I hadn't been there since I was a kid. So when we decided to go, I just, I couldn't. Like, I was like, we're going to see the blue whale. We're going to see the big blue whale. They have this giant life size model of a blue whale hanging from the ceiling and it's spectacular. I remember when I was a kid just waiting to walk into that room. Where's the room with the whale? It's a huge blue whale and we're going through all the dioramas and the, you know, Asian history, African history, you know, Indian history, you know, a little bit of Armenia in there, all the outfits. And then we're going through the animals of Africa, all this stuffed, sad, you know, taxidermed animals. But Kit kept saying, look, it was a different time and they were doing it for research. It was still a little sad. And just all the work, all the work that goes into categorizing and researching and studying and putting everything together, the whole world, its Peoples and its life forms, the years and years of exploration and excavation. It's just. It's all in this museum. And then I started to feel like this is all this work is exactly the kind of work that this fascist culture wants to shut down. That this. This revisionary fucking shit show wants to erase. All this stuff that was so important to define the world we live in and where we come from, and all the different kinds of people and animals is just the stuff that these entitled fucking morons want to disappear. Isn't that weird? I realize that there's an entitlement to stupidity. The entitlement of stupidity requires everyone just to be as stupid as you are, because if everyone isn't, then it's a threat to you. And that is the most fucking malignant type of entitlement there is. The entitlement of ignorance is a fucking human disaster because it requires that everybody shut the fuck up and be just as ignorant as the entitled ignorance. Look, entitlement is annoying on any level, but this aggressive, entitled ignorance and stupidity. Holy fuck. But anyways, I just had a great time at the museum. I mean, looking into that. I think they're called dioramas. The one, Noah Bombeck was affected by it as well. The squid. The giant squid attacking the sperm whale. Because it's all dark in there and it's just one little exhibit, but, man, it's haunting. And that vibe just shatters you when you're a kid. And I got in front of that thing and it was just as fucking terrifying. And it all came back to me. It was. It was great. And then the dinosaur bones. The dinosaur bones. Oh, my God, the big dinosaur bones. Kid's a dinosaur freak. And I'm. You know, you can't not just be. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit. The size of these things just wandering around. Giant fucking lizards and sharks and fish and turtles, all kinds of stuff, pterodactyls. But there's, like three huge halls of dinosaurs. And like, we were walking through one. I'm like, whoa. You know, that's big. That's cool. Holy shit. It's amazing that could fly. And I found myself, you know, just going to myself, like, fuck, where are the Triceratops? Where are the Triceratops? And we go through one big room, and it was. It was. It was awesome. But no Triceratops. Then we get to another room, there's giant other things, skeletons looking around. These are fucking scary and cool. Where's the Triceratops? And then finally, in the third room, boom, boom. Several triceratops heads and bodies, I guess, like. And, you know, I guess, honestly, I am and always have been a Triceratops guy. I don't know, you know, who you are or what your dinosaur was. I think I might have gone through a Stegosaurus period, but very little head. And I like those other ones, the lizards with the big fan on the back. Those are cool. Never been a T. Rex guy, but Pterodactyl a little bit. A little bit. But really, when it comes right down to it, set Triceratops. And then the one with the armor on it, the one that, you know, I guess was the great, great, great, great granddaddy of the Armadillos. But I'm a Triceratops guy. Now you know that about me. Now you know. All right, look, you guys, Kristen Milioti is here and she's great. The full series of the Penguin is streaming on Max. And go watch her other stuff, too. I mean, she's really a terrific actor. And this is me meeting her and talking to her.
