#comedian Marc Maron

[good-to-drive]

This may sound dumb but I feel like people are willing to acknowledge that a writer or musician or director or pretty much any other kind of artist can touch you and change your life, but they still struggle to see how that can happen with a comedian. But I can honestly say that the alchemy of turning pain or anxiety or just the sheer everydayness of life into a spark of joy has impacted me just as much as any other art form, and in some ways I think shared laughter can actually create more insight and compassion than shared despair.

[beefbungus]

I’m literally crying from this pic

[standupcomedyhistorian]

Oh WOW! The newest WTF podcast episode with Jesse David Fox is an absolute must-listen for comedy nerds like myself.

And Marc Maron dropped a fun tidbit I had NEVER heard before: He had asked Bo Burnham to direct his comedy special! 🤯

Here's my transcription of Maron on Bo and his brilliance:

You had, you frame it in the final, the beginning of the latest, uh, version of what you would call alternative comedy and it has its place, but you know, outside of Bo Burnham, who I think had out of all of them as, as a comedic visionary. Well, he's the guy.

You know, like that thing he did during the pandemic and also all his stuff. That this is a guy that takes emotional risk, but also is insanely talented, like you said.

And intellectually, uh, up for the challenge...And I asked Bo to direct my last one just cuz I thought well maybe you could do something interesting with me because I'm actually a fucking bleeding wound half the time, but he was polite and said he was in a deal with Netflix. Why would he want to? I was condescending to him.

So that was exciting to hear! Maron and Jesse also go into Rothaniel and the contentious interview with Jerrod Carmichael, the art form of the special irself, and what vulnerability is in comedy.

Highly recommended, and I now have to read the book knowing Jesse discusses some of my favorite comedians (and calls Maria Bamford one of the best of all time—love it)!

Enjoy the podcast, and keep it here for more comedy fun! ✌🏼🐔

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Well here's a fucking Chortle headline for the roundup:

Holy fuck. I cannot believe that. Never for a moment did it cross my mind that this might happen. It's been nearly ten years since he left, and this never once seemed like a possibility.

I remember exactly when he left. I know it was announced in February 2015, because I was sitting in my bedroom in the city where I lived in 2015, where I'd moved to join their bigger and more impressive sports team and ended up just being miserable and lonely for two years because I did not have any of the skills required to fit in there. Anyway, it's fine, not the point of this post. The point is I know it was 2015 and I know it was February because I vividly remember sitting in that bedroom and scrolling on Facebook, and seeing a mock Valentine's Day card that said "May Jon Stewart be the only man to break your heart this week." And that's how I found out he'd announced he was leaving The Daily Show.

I know when he actually left, too. It was August 2015. Because Donald Trump walked down that fucking escalator in June 2015, and announced he'd be running for president. I remember watching The Daily Show that night, and Jon Stewart, incredibly pleased at the comedy gold mine that was about to befall all political comedians, looked into the camera and said to Donald Trump: "Thank you for making my last six weeks the best six weeks." Then he stayed on for six more weeks and made Trump jokes every night, then he left, and the world immediately ended. Looking back with a bit of perspective, Jon Stewart really did happen leave the show right as the Western world was on a precipice of having the norms as we thought we knew them all crumble at once. I'm thinking of that timeline that says 2000-2015=nostalgia, 2016-2019=2016, 2020-present=plague. Those are pretty much my life's eras. And Jon Stewart was there for a hell of a lot of that first one. (Not actually the first era of my life, there is also 90s=childhood, but I'm pretty sure everything was fine then, right?)

It's a bit weird to me now to see Jon Stewart as having an individual career, if that makes any sense at all. If you'd asked me in 2009 who my favourite comedians were, it wouldn't have occurred to me to say Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, even though I watched them both every night and loved those shows. I hardly even though of those as things that people had to make by being comedians and writers. They were just fixtures. Part of the landscape. I was so confused when he left the show, I didn't think it could exist without him. It didn't really feel like television could exist without Jon Stewart coming on at the end of the night. I remember learning some time ago about Marc Maron's feud with Jon Stewart over their days on the comedy circuit, and that was so weird. Jon Stewart didn't have days on the comedy circuit. He didn't have a career you could object to or admire, or opinions you could agree with or disagree with. He was just a fixture in the landscape.

I remember the first time I saw Jon Stewart. I think it was probably 2006, maybe 2005. I was really into Rick Mercer, this Canadian comedian who did TV shows where he made fun of the news. My mother put on a TV show, pointed to the guy behind the desk, and said, "That's Jon Stewart, he's like an American Rick Mercer." It only occurred to me relatively recently how funny it is to call Jon Stewart "an American Rick Mercer". But anyway, I watched that episode with my mom and then I kept doing that every night for many years.

I remember watching his final Daily Show episode with my mother, in August 2015. Bruce Springsteen came on live and played him out. My mother and I both got fairly emotional.

I kept watching The Daily Show for a long time after Jon Stewart left. I even followed a lot of the similar spinoff shows by its correspondents. I watched Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show, and Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act, and Michelle Wolf's The Break. Obviously, I followed John Oliver to Last Week Tonight (and would also if necessary follow him to the ends of the Earth, but that's beside the point).

I quite like Trevor Noah too; when he took over the show I read his autobiography and watched his stand-up specials and the documentary about him. I even saw him live in 2019. So I wasn't one of those people saying the show could never recover from Jon Stewart leaving. I watched a lot of the Trevor Noah years, and only dropped off from following it so closely fairly recently. It was around 2022, I think, when I just stopped keeping up with it. I had so much Britcom going on, and the world was so fucking depressing, getting all my news from actual news sites (as everyone should always always do, do not get your news from comedians, use political comedy as a way to lighten the mood of the regular news that you should first get from actual journalists, for the love of God please do not let the industry of actual journalism be steamrolled by entertainment) was stressful enough and I didn't want to keep having this other way of going over it.

So, those are a few disjointed memories that came into my mind when I saw that story this week. Here's another memory: I remember reading an interview with Jon Stewart from just after he left The Daily Show, in which he was asked if he would ever watch Fox News again. He replied that if he were ever in some post-apocalyptic scenario where Fox News was the only way to find out where to find vital life-saving information, he still wouldn't watch it. Because doing that job that required him to watch so much Fox News had destroyed him mentally and he could not wait to never ever ever ever ever do it again.

I was one of those people, after he left, saying, "I get it, it's high-pressure and difficult, I see why he wants to move on and have a break. But I would pay to have Jon Stewart just broadcast once a month in his sweatpants from his living room couch. He can't just be gone. He needs to keep telling us about the news, what will we do without him?"

We did do without him for nine years, and the world we thought we knew has crumbled around us in about twenty-five different ways since then, and I have absolutely no idea how the fuck Jon Stewart could fit into the landscape as it exists today. Like. I don't know what to do with this information. It wasn't on my radar. It's like finding out they're rebooting Buffy with the entire original cast and writing crew. Or if the girl I had a crush on from the ages of 9 to 14 showed up and told me she was in love with me. Of course it's what I wanted, but... what? Really? Why? Why now? Do I even still want this? You mean everything pre-2016 wasn't just a dream and we still technically exist in the same world as that one and the things in it are still out there and could just come back?

...There are people like @lastweeksshirttonight who actually know things about the US late-night comedy show scene, who have always understood that Jon Stewart is a person with a backstory who entered and then left an industry that also had a backstory and those things affected each other and this will have a significant effect on the ecosystem. Those people will have intelligent takes on what's happening right now. But I do not. Jon Stewart was on TV when I was in high school. He can't be on TV now because I am no longer in high school (even though I was 24 when he left in 2015). What the fuck?

[thetavolution]

More Minty! Although that info is from her original incarnation for @thebonnevillegame but a lot of it still carries over! She's my little weirdo and I love her. She just doesn't have a supernatural podcast in BG3 like she does in The Bonneville Game.

What would podcasts in the BG3 universe even be like? Minty would still do one with Ingrid and Laura, but it'd probably be about their adventures and telling people their findings. As for what everyone else would listen to....

Gale would be an NPR guy.

Karlach would be love audio dramas and My Brother, My Brother, and Me. She'd struggle to pay attention though. MBMBAM kind of matches her attention span for them best.

Lae'zel would have no interest in them.

Wyll would love comedians with podcasts, like Conan O'Brien or Marc Maron. He'd also listen to news and political podcasts to keep up with current events. He'd listen to podcasts that cover "the other side of the argument" but then just be angry about it all day when someone said something hateful.

Shadowheart would listen to stuff like Normal Gossip and Why Won't You Date Me? with Nicole Byer.

Astarion would listen to true crime, legal podcasts, and he would also like Normal Gossip. Then he'd talk about it with Shadowheart and then probably submit a story of his own about his companions.

Halsin would probably listen to some of them, but only the ones people recommended to him. He'd like the ones about nature/the environment and he'd keep up with news. Outside of that, he'd stick to the "feel good" ones. He would struggle to understand the appeal of true crime.

Jaheira does not have time for them. She'll turn one on after someone recommends it and be pulled away immediately.

Minsc would be too distracted to listen to any of them. If you turned one on around him, he wouldn't retain any of it.

Minthara spits on your stupid podcasts. Stop recommending them to her.

[colesterstrudel]

I'm so sorry to be this guy, but Whomst The Hell is this moustache man you keep posting?

Marc Maron! He’s a comedian anddddd was in Glow! And also another show on Netflix, Easy!

[beginningspod]

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to comedian and director Bobcat Goldthwait. Originally from Syracuse, Bobcat's career is so full of hyphens that "multihyphenate" doesn't even scratch the surface. From acting in films like Police Academy and Scrooged to directing TV for shows like Community and Jimmy Kimmel to directing comedy specials for folks like Marc Maron and Patton Oswalt to directing his own films like World's Greatest Dad and God Bless America. But since the start of his career, Bobcat has been a stand-up. His special with Dana Gould Joy Ride was released in 2021 and his latest album Soldier for Christ was just released at the end of April by Pretty Good Friends, and it is great!

I'm on Twitter here and you can get the show with:

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[de-temple]

The Internet was born into a world where many people had already lost their sense of connection to each other. The collapse had already been taking place for decades by then. The web arrived offering them a kind of parody of what they were losing—Facebook friends in place of neighbors, video games in place of meaningful work, status updates in place of status in the world.

The comedian Marc Maron once wrote that “every status update is a just a variation on a single request: Would someone please acknowledge me?”

~Johann Hari

[sgokie2024]

The Internet was born into a world where many people had already lost their sense of connection to each other. The collapse had already been taking place for decades by then. The web arrived offering them a kind of parody of what they were losing—Facebook friends in place of neighbors, video games in place of meaningful work, status updates in place of status in the world.

The comedian Marc Maron once wrote that “every status update is a just a variation on a single request: Would someone please acknowledge me?”

~Johann Hari

(Book: Lost Connections https://amzn.to/4dQkW5T [ad])

(Art: Photograph by Antoine Geiger)

[beefbungus]

OKAY MARC

[part2of3]

At some point I remember the comedian Marc maron making the joke that you only really need two friends in life. You just need the main guy, and then the other guy when the main guys used up and tired of you.

My main guy died last year. And I still haven't really recovered from that loss. And my other guy is tired of me at the moment.

[jmunneytumbler]

I Am the Best Comedian

I Am the Best Comedian

May 6, 2013-May 7, 2013 – I was being honored as the best comedian. This was taking place during Futurama times. I was with Marc Maron. There were several other people standing around. We processed from the top of the room to our seats, which were on the right front corner. I started giving my acceptance speech. My intention was to say a bunch of odd things in an unidentifiable speech pattern. I…

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Listened to a few new podcast episodes today. The Comedian’s Comedian podcast has just put out a double episode with James Acaster, which was very interesting. I think it’s his sixth and seventh time on the podcast, having previously done one single episode and two double ones. The single one was quite early in his career, then he did a double one around the time that he released Repertoire, and another when he released Cold Lasagne. Now he’s done one to talk about Springleaf and Heckler’s Welcome, and they get into Off Menu a bit. I almost didn’t listen because I haven’t heard Springleaf and I’m not into Off Menu, but I have been lucky enough to hear Hecklers Welcome and it’s absolutely excellent, so I listened to the podcasts anyway for the discussion of that, and they ended up being great. Really worth a listen.

They get into the basic Acaster story that people know if they’ve been following him enough – used to get really angry at hecklers, reached a breaking point before the pandemic, realized during the pandemic that actually he was happier not performing, then slowly started doing it again anyway but with a weird heckler exposure therapy show that is also about therapy. And in a way that was meant to be really low pressure and he’s going to just talk about what he wants and let people yell at him instead of trying to craft the perfect thing that cannot be interrupted, but in the process I think he might have created the best show he’s ever done. Maybe. It’s hard to say, since Repertoire was such an absolute masterpiece and doing the shows all together made them more than the sum of their parts. But Heckler’s Welcome might be better than the individual shows in that, I think. It’s hard to compare since they’re so different, thematically and stylistically. They’re all very good.

Anyway, James Acaster talked about that on the podcast, and I’d basically heard it before, but I thought he covered some angles I hadn’t previously heard (also, I listened to his relatively recent Marc Maron episode late last year, where he discussed basically the same stuff because it’s from the same point in his career where he’s promoting the same show, and being able to compare the two conversations really emphasizes how good Stuart Goldsmith is at interviewing and how shit Marc Maron is). They also had the time to get into other stuff, like what it’s like to be as wildly successful as James Acaster and how you decide what to do next when you’ve seemingly done it all. Acaster was, as usual, thoughtful and insightful and grounded and interesting.

There was some chat about “I realized what I was doing for my whole life was making me more scared and frustrated than happy and I was so much more relaxed when it stopped for COVID and then I asked myself why I don’t just keep feeling relaxed all the time by stopping doing it, but also it was my identity and I don’t want to be without it and maybe the only thing worse than doing it is not doing it and what if I give it up and never find anything better?” that resonated pretty hard with me personally, though I don’t think James Acaster said it with the intention of reaching someone who’s deciding whether to continue coaching 14-25-year-old amateur wrestlers at the regional to national level.

I then listened to John Robins’ first appearance on RHLSTP, because he mentioned on his radio show that he was doing it and I wanted to hear him talk for a while without the radio-friendly restrictions. I wasn’t disappointed, it was an interesting conversations. Fairly different from the Acaster one – when James Acaster talks on podcasts, he sounds like he’s choosing every word very carefully, wanting to make sure he conveys exactly what he means, to always recognize the important caveats and check his own privilege and be humble and fair. While John Robins can just barely be bothered to be careful with his words enough to avoid swearing on the radio (I haven’t actually heard him swear in the 100-ish episodes I’ve heard so far, though I do wonder if he’s ever done it and they cut it from the podcast, because I have heard him fuck up in just slightly less bad ways).

This episode also got into a fair bit of stuff I’d heard before – the basic story of Robins, which was spending years as a less successful comedian than he wanted to be/than his friends were, being upset about it, quitting and then relapsing on alcohol and gambling addictions and ruining career and relationship prospects in the process, then he finally got a radio show and that went all right. Deeply bitter about everything. There was a fairly long discussion about how he doesn’t find anything in the world more annoying than himself and he gets exhausted because he’s the only person who never gets a break from it. It got pretty darkness of Robins-y.

There was some Stewart Lee chat too, as I figured there would be, given the interviewer. That was fun, because the few episodes I’ve heard of RHLSTP I’ve heard before (Tim Key x4, Acaster and Gamble together, and that trainwreck when Stewart Lee went on) suggest that this podcast mainly consists of comedians making fun of Richard Herring for the fact that Stewart Lee doesn’t like him (which, to be clear, Tim Key and Acaster and Gamble did in a very funny way). So it was a fun change to hear Richard Herring get to have someone on his side, or at least very much not on Stewart Lee’s side.

John Robins got uncharacteristically careful with his words, and said he doesn’t want to comment too much beyond what’s in his Lee-based routine from his stand-up show, because he genuinely did have a problem with Stewart Lee, and thought about saying so on Twitter, but then decided this is something he wants to address more thoughtfully, so he avoided lashing out about it while drunk on Twitter or some shit and instead wrote his thoughts into a carefully worded routine, and he likes that that stand-up routine is the only thing he’s ever said publicly about Stewart Lee, so if Lee wants to take issue with it, he’ll have to respond to that routine and nothing else. Which was a pretty good stance to take, I think, though definitely not one he stuck to in subsequent years when he did his fairly ill-advised Twitter rant that compared Stewart Lee to Joseph McCarthy. Which Stewart Lee has responded to fairly easily, because I think John Robins has a point about him in many ways, but he isn’t Joseph McCarthy.

I also enjoyed the part where Richard Herring tried to sort of defend Lee by minimizing how successful both he and Stewart were, and John Robins was having absolutely none of it. I’ve always thought it’s a bit odd how both Lee and Herring, in their very different ways, characterize themselves as not all that successful (Herring playing more classically low status, Lee just complaining about not being mainstream), even though they both did some of the most famous comedy in Britain in the 90s and 00s. John Robins immediately shut that argument down, pointed out that they can’t be bitter about not winning the Perrier when they were too famous to be in the running for it, and then commented that in their generation everyone was going to win the Perrier just due to mathematics because there were only ten comedians who’d all win it across ten years since you can’t win it twice, and that is the kind of Robins I want to see go off on Greg Davies during Taskmaster soon.

Anyway, I also listened to the new Bugle today, and it was on top form, getting in Nish Kumar and Nato Green, two of my favourite regulars, to be highly pessimistic about everything. Good stuff. I had time to do all this today because I had a bad reaction to a COVID vaccine and called in sick to work, and I spent it listening to a lot of men be eloquently and humorously unhappy about a variety of things.