WTF with Marc Maron (it's a podcast)

Oh yeah, "I'm doing this for the kids" as safety blanket is really otm. It's also incredibly poignant, I think, especially considering how often he reverts to juxtaposing kids today (i.e. that story about seeing those two boys in Boston) with his own youth, where he almost seems apologetic when he says that he was ok and his family loved him, AND YET the obvious anger when he says he "didn't get to have a youth."

I also loved Maron, being his close friend, expressing surprise and gratitude at this whole new side of him that he can finally talk about. That's always a response I like hearing, though it's not as prevalent obv: this idea that when someone comes out, their friends have this new aspect of their personality to get to know. It can be a wonderfully intimate thing.

Yeah, absolutely. The stuff he kept going back to about his parents actually did get me thinking, that in a way a supportive household is good, and sure he *should* be comfortable with his sexuality but it just highlights that disconnect that you can't just be gay in your own house, that from what he saw or the way he interpreted everything outside of his house, he could absolutely NOT be gay. And really, it kind of drives home what a huge *mental* leap it is to come out. Not just wrestling with your family and friends being okay with it, but you yourself being okay with it.

I could talk about it for hours, I was very moved by the psychological insights of that interview. Which is kind of gross-sounding, I don't mean to sound like a scientist and a labrat but it made me think a lot about my gay friends.

My husband kind of laughed at me when I told him about the Glass interview, he had never heard of him and was like 'he came out on a podcast, wtf'...but that's the thing. It wasn't even the actual coming out that was notable, as the process, and the emotions of doing that laid out right in front of you, which is something a lot of people might not have much experience with. Including me.

Anyway, tl; dr

I was having dinner with my recently-divorced friend and we were talking about movies we'd seen in the past few months; I brought up the British film Weekend, which was a nice segue into talking about the Todd Glass interview as they both deal with the politicized aspects of identity--of public v. private, marginalization from "mainstream" as well as the marginalization within the "mainstream" of one's own subculture, and the discomfort of straddling complex social lines.

Really when I say that I haven't been able to stop thinking about Glass it's because of how his emotions remind me of my own when I was coming out at 18, and so in a cyclical way it makes me relive a lot of my own coming-out process and its attendant anger and activist tendencies and ambiguity.

I don't know that it's gross-sounding to be moved by the interview; I feel like why it's so special is because we've been inundated with many rote "coming out" narratives, but none of them seem to have gone into such in-depth analysis of someone's neuroses (I mean, he still has trouble saying "gay"!). It was really thrilling because you hardly ever experience someone figuring out themselves right in front you, and finding the words to say all those things he has never been able to.

I really enjoyed both Todd's and Bert's episode. Bert I knew about from his constant appearances on Jay Mohr's show.

xpost, Yes, you nailed it.
It was interesting how he wrestled with the idea of the 'femme' gay, vs how he saw himself...there was definitely an otherness there, that somehow his own 'type' of gayness was quite separate from "that".

please sban me for overuse of airquotes

done :)

Pete Holmes' laugh gets under my skin fer some reason. I can never tell it apart from somebody faking it.

xpost thanks hoy

its my pleasure :)

(i didnt rlly and never could!)

never say never, lol

paul feig's voice sounds like weird al

It was really thrilling because you hardly ever experience someone figuring out themselves right in front you, and finding the words to say all those things he has never been able to.

OTMFM. What a great episode. I want to talk about it for hours.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! Have y'all heard his "follow-up" on his own podcast? In some ways it's much less interesting because it doesn't have that same sense of urgency, even if it has his same manic passion. There is a bit of progression re: his comfort level, though Sarah Silverman guests and provides a nice counterpart in a different way from Maron; where he tried to prod him through his process, she seems to gently confront him on some of his stances.

Todd's episode with Chelsea Peretti was great, especially her Home Shopping bits.

Thanks for the tip, Billy - I will check out Glass's podcst. I'd like to hear the followup!

Sure! I'd be interested to see how you respond to it vs. the Maron one, since it seems to be more about refining his language/views than figuring them out, which is part of what made the Maron interview so exciting. At the very least, he seems like a fascinating, complicated guy.

I've been meaning to listen to that episode w/ Peretti. I assume anyone who writes for Parks & Recreation is going to be hysterical.

The glee with which Maron and Jimmy Kimmel discussed the night Jimmy went on Jay Leno's 10pm show and publicly shamed him to his face and to the audience's approval was so fun to listen to. Otherwise, Jimmy Kimmel is fairly uninteresting.

The viciousness with which Kimmel treated Leno that night was pretty damn great. In case you've never seen the clip:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axwO6BkCtIo

fuck this matt graham guy. wanted to yell at him several times "maybe all this bad stuff happens to you cause you are an insufferable prick" and then he breaks out that he feels that all women are satan's helpers here to suck the life out of me. good luck on okcupid, dickhead.

lol. 1 of my takeaways from it was at least he used 2 take ghb himself rather than dose chix w/ it

I bailed halfway through because I was getting a real whiney woe is me vibe from him...is it worth listening all the way through?

it got WAY worse. Stay away.

Looking forward to tomorrow, though.

Bill Lawrence. I hope he talks less about Scrubs and Cougar Town and more about Clone High!

What does that voice that sounds like Don Pardo in the intro say? Sounds like "uh-ma-JOOK-ee-ev" and drives me nuts!

double you tee eff

It's Nick Kroll as El Chubacapra saying W T F with a spanishy twist, lol

drove me nuts for a longtime too

I think it was from this appearance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_frQMqxdvUw

Jo soy un bay beeeee

I could watch that clip all day

It's weird to actually see Nick doing this stuff

Thanks Janet

Funny, I've never seen Maron's recording setup before that clip.

bill lawrence ep was great, although idgaf abt any show hes ever done

didnt know his wife is christa miller! v jealous tbh

I love that Marc Maron does his podcast on a Powerbook and the same p.o.s. Ikea table that I have.

I love that the whole premise of Cougar Town was devised as a hilarious joke, and that ABC was all over it.

Twitter says he's interviewing Wayne Coyne today!

Bill Maher on Thurs!

I loved the Bill Lawrence interview, dude seemed v cool

The Nick Lowe interview is relaxing.

I'm looking forward to it!

i've been enjoying wtf a lot lately, but wow that matt graham interview was just torturous.

I skipped Graham. Nick Lowe was fun, but Marc was steering the convo too much toward Elvis Costello (even after he apologized for doing it).

I feel like Maron sometimes has trouble listening to people not from his world of stand-up. He kept kind of finishing sentences for Lowe incorrectly and trying to steer him toward stuff he was familiar with or already had a mythology about. His attention seems to flag when someone is going away from the direction he wants them to go.

Yeah, he's better than he was but def with "outsider" guests like Lowe it's clear you'll never get the interview you want from Maron. Not that it's a bad thing, per se.

The thing with Nick Lowe wasn't so much Maron's Costello worship, even though Lowe deserves a huge amount of credit for producing This Year's Model alone, it was Marc trying to steer the conversation toward addiction, and Lowe being totally uninterested in the topic. He's just not a guy with that many problems. He's an older gentleman. And though you can't see it in the interview, obviously, he has the most striking head of snow-white hair in all of music. We should all go grey so gracefully.

i haven't listened to any nick lowe (or much elvis costello), but there's a good interview with him in last month's Tape Op.

maron is pretty overrated as an interviewer in general imo. i've talked about it before, but he'll constantly steer the conversation to his bugbear topics even when they've been hashed out, try to fit everything into his "i used to hate you but now we're cool" paradigm even when it doesn't fit, tells the same stories he's told 10 times before, etc. he pretty much gets by on his connections and (now) his reputation. he's best when he realizes that he's got a good interesting guest, asks simple questions, and lets the guest talk (like steven wright, norm macdonald) but when it's someone he's not connected to or doesn't know about, he panics and reverts to his boring, annoying tricks.

I'd agree with much of that. I haven't heard the Lowe interview b/c I don't have much interest in listening to Marc Maron interview musicians.

but i also don't find maron particularly likeable or charming so ymmv i guess

The thing with Nick Lowe wasn't so much Maron's Costello worship, even though Lowe deserves a huge amount of credit for producing This Year's Model alone, it was Marc trying to steer the conversation toward addiction, and Lowe being totally uninterested in the topic. He's just not a guy with that many problems.

I wonder in some of the interviews if Maron makes connections through AA/NA--because he can have guests who have cleaned up, but it's just not something they talk about publicly.