Marc Maron's Blog, page 6

Season 3 premieres.

Hi, Folks



I’m letting myself get pudgy. Just wanted to let you know. I’ll focus on unpudging when I get off the road. Just can’t worry about it or I’ll beat myself into a pudgy pulp.



Season 3 of my IFC show ‘Maron’ premieres this Thursday! Yay. Watch it on IFC if you can.



I am just a bit worn out from all the traveling. Something happens on the road, some kind of stupor. It requires donuts and sugar and bread so it won't crumble my disposition. It has to be stopped. I need to make some vegetables and run. I know I could do that on the road but I am not in the routine and it is hard to establish a routine. I am now exercising my ability to rationalize and justify my heart clogging behavior. I don’t want to live like this, but god, it is so good to eat donuts.



Seattle was amazing. Thanks to all who came out to The Neptune Theatre. They were loopy shows. It felt like everyone was loopy. There was a lot of riffing. Things happened that will never happen again. That’s the way I like it.



I am leaving Vancouver as I write this. I decided to take the train up because I thought it would be pretty. It was. It was still a train though. I wanted it to be relaxing but like any mode of transportation, eventually you just want to fucking get there. I am happy to report there were no problems at customs and the weather was beautiful but things go a little weird at the show at The Vogue in Vancouver. As I was walking to the show I ran into a pleasant young looking family who were on the way to see the show. The parents were excited to see me and introduced me to their teenage boy and girl. Apparently all shows in Vancouver are all ages. I didn’t know that. It shouldn’t matter except I get a little filthy on the road. I have reintegrated a bit of honest filth into the set. I like it. It feels good to be filthy. When I was talking to the nice family I told them I was happy they were coming but it will be filthy. They said what all parents say who take their kids to things that might be inappropriate, “I’m sure they’ve heard it before.” Well, I’m sure they haven’t. As they walked, the mom looked back and said, “How filthy?” And the dad said, “Clean it up, Maron.”



I did not. I wrestled with it but I was not going to change a club act to accommodate teenagers. ‘They have to hear it somewhere’ was my justification to me, my rationalization.



The bigger issue about the ‘all shows are all ages’ idea is that at some point in the first 25 minutes of my show a women with an infant sat up front. AN INFANT! It was astonishing and amazing. It made me uncomfortable and weirdly excited to deal with a situation I had not dealt with. I had an exchange with her. Asked her why she brought the baby. It was funny. Then the kid started making baby noises and she left. I thought. From the back of them room, sporadically throughout a good part of the show, you good hear gurgling baby noise from the back of the room. I was being heckled by a baby. That was a first. Thanks for that Vancouver.



Check the new tour dates on the schedule. See I’m coming to a town near you. Don’t bring your babies.



On Monday I talk to another SNL person. Kenan Thompson and I talked in NYC about the SNL stuff. I show him some video I acquired of Lorne Michaels on Canadian TV in the early 70s in a comedy team. Mind blowing. Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster also stop by the garage to chat about the stuff going on with The Best Show. On Thursday I do kind of a double header with Greg Proops and Richard Lewis.



Enjoy!



Boomer lives!



Love,

Maron

The 600th episode is upon us.

Yes, People, I’m in NYC.



I hope you are all not offended that occasionally I don’t tell you exactly what I am doing at every moment. I don’t mean to leave you out but there are some things I just want to experience privately and then share them. Is that okay? It’s going to have to be.



First off, there are tickets available for all of the shows I added to the tour. Click here for cities and links.



Secondly, I will be interviewing the amazing Terry Gross at a live event at BAM for Radio Love Fest. She should be interesting. She is the preeminent interviewer of our time. She is the inquisitive voice of NPR’s Fresh Air. She is the industry standard of modern interviewing and she has agreed to have me interview her. Should be interesting. I’m curious. You? I don’t think anyone knows much about her. It’s actually very exciting. We will post it as a WTF episode.



Thirdish, our 600th episode is upon us. This milestone will be marked by a standard WTF interview with a guy who was there before the beginning, Sam Seder. Sam and I were hosting a doomed streaming video show at the last incarnation of Air America when we were fired. They didn’t kick us out of the building and Brendan and I started doing WTF in the studios after hours. I’ve known Sam a long time. He’s really one of the funniest people I know and one of the most difficult to work with. Needless to say he wasn’t part of WTF, thank god, but he was there at the beginning and this interview was a long time coming. Sam will also be appearing on an episode of Maron on IFC this season playing himself. We have a pretty set dynamic. It’s not for everyone but it’s definitely a thing.



Fourthster, the third season of Maron on IFC premieres on May 14th. I don’t mean to offend any of you radical cord cutters when I ask you to get IFC for the run of my show. Watch it however you want. I’m very proud of this season. I think it’s the best one we’ve done and I just want people to watch. Ratings mean something to the network. I mean, I know you are going to watch it however you are going to watch it: iTunes, DVR, BitTorrent, Netflix next year, etc. BUT if you watch on IFC you get counted and I’d like the numbers to be good. So, if you can, do it. If not, no big deal. Just watch it. It’s good.



Lastly, the other reason I came to NYC is for the VICE newfronts. I will be doing a show for the new VICE TV network. It will be called VICE Portraits with Marc Maron. It will be an interview show. It will be shot out in the world. I will be talking to the type of people I talk to in environments that are either important to the subject or challenging to them. We will also be shooting the journey to and from the talks. Should be exciting. I’ve been looking for a way to try to do what I do in the video format and this feels like it. I will let you know more details like when and where you can watch when I find out.



Today on the show I talk to the amazing Parker Posey in my hotel room in NYC. On Thursday I talk to Sam Seder on our 600th episode.



Enjoy!



Boomer lives!



Love,

Maron

All meated up.

Howdy, Folks!



I’m in Texas. I’m all meated up.



I have a growing love for this state the more I come back. I grew up with a Texas aversion because I lived in New Mexico and there was some kind of unspoken tension. It’s all going away. The more time I spend here the more I appreciate the terrain and the people. There is nothing like the country of Texas.



The Moontower Comedy Festival show at the Paramount was amazing. Filled it up. The crowd was great. I did a nice, long, weird set. Felt good. I was also working on a belly filled with Opies BBQ. I went out there during the day with some comics. We had a full clown car going out there with me and Kurt Metzger and Todd Barry and Nate Bargatze. It a blast. I’ve said this before but the greatest thing about being a comic is hanging out with other comics. To be around people who are professionally funny and can’t help but be funny and brilliant is the best. The following night I had dinner with Blaine Capatch and Dana Gould. Again. Hilarious. It’s always great to spend time with friends you’ve known for decades but don’t get to see that much. I also caught Maria Bamford’s show. I hadn’t seen her stretch out for while. It was amazing. I can’t always sit through an hour of comedy but I didn’t want to get up AND I had to pee. That’s a great show. She is by far the best and most interesting standup performer out there. It was a real pleasure to watch her, except it makes me want to stop. She’s that good.



I’m adding dates to the Maronation Tour. Here they are. Tickets go on sale later this week.

June 5th - Cleveland at the Playhouse Square

June 6th - Chicago at the Vic Theatre

June 7th - Minneapolis, The Pantages

June 25th - Port Chester, NY at The Capitol Theatre

June 26th - The BAM Opera House in Brooklyn

June 27th - Huntington, NY, The Paramount Theatre

June 28th - Red Bank, New Jersey at the Count Basie Theater

July 10th and 11th - Portland, Oregon, the Aladdin Theatre and Revolution Hall, respectively

July 24th - Boulder, Colorado at the Boulder Theatre

July 25th - Denver, Colorado at the Paramount Theatre

I’ll keep you informed about ticket sales!



Today on the show I talk to Zach Woods. He is a brilliant comedic actor and improviser that you may know from The Office or Silicon Valley. Amazing talent.On Thursday you’ll her the conversation I had with the inimitable painter, Robert Williams, in the office of the Gallery at the Barnsdall Art Park where a retrospective of his work was hanging. Great talks this week.



Enjoy!



Boomer lives!



Love,

Maron

Out doing the shows.

It’s growing back, folks.



My face is almost, once again, properly hidden by hair. Actually, it’s very covered. I will have to trim and carve out the configuration that has been established over the last few years. I kind of want to rock the full beard for a while though because I’ve put on a few pounds of road weight and maybe I can do the burly bear look for a while. Well, not that much weight. I’d be a slightly emaciated bear but a slightly chubby bearded me. We’ll see.



I’ve been out doing the shows on the tour. They are going very well. It is interesting to me to feel how it goes venue to venue and what makes one feel different than the other. Like I said, they are all going well but some are kind of magic and it’s hard to tell whether it’s me on a given night for whatever reason or the venue or the audience. It's probably some mixture of the three.



The best thing that can happen from where I am standing on stage is something that’s never happened before and probably won't happen again. I like to improvise and reach a level of stream of consciousness that is completely without obstacles I put there or the audience puts there (although that is really my projection, usually). It’s a comfort thing. Honestly, I can’t always get a crowd of 1000 or so people to come into the type of intimacy I really love to perform in. I can get them there 80 percent of the time but the other 20 I have to fight a little and push. I know that’s part of the gig and I’m not sure the audience would know that I am going through these deliberations unless I mention it, which I do sometimes. It’s probably all on me, right? There are no bad audiences. Hah. What a bullshit line that is. I’ve been lucky there haven’t been any bad ones on this tour! Some are a little more amped than others and some have intense expectations but none have been bad---quite the opposite. Some of the venues have been a little challenging sound-wise but we transcended. I really appreciate you all coming out for the shows! Madison was magic, Pittsburgh was haunted and magic and Detroit I had to rock hard. Writing this from Toronto. I’ll let you know how it goes.



Today I talk to my old friend Kevin Pollak for a bit about his new documentary, ‘Misery Loves Comedy’ which I am in. I wouldn’t talk to him otherwise and that’s why he put me in. Kidding. I would talk to him even if he didn’t put me in solely so I would talk to him. Also, the lovely Rose Byrne hangs out for a while to talk about acting and Australia. On Thursday the guitar virtuoso Blake Mills give me a lesson and talks music for a while. Wizard. For. Sure.



Enjoy!



Boomer lives!



Love,

Maron

Patent Trolls.

It is happening, People!



The Maronation Tour has commenced. I did a show in DC, two in Philly and two in Boston. They were amazing. I’ve got a newbie, Ashley Barnhill, opening and the show is killer. I believe it’s the best hour or so I’ve done. If you don’t have tickets for one of the shows check here if there are any for a city near you.



I have to be honest. It is staggering, humbling and awesome to return to cities I have played in the past in smaller venues—sometimes poorly attended and rough—and do these bigger venues to full houses of people that dig what I do. I really never thought it would happen and it is. I’m fucking thrilled and beside myself that you folks are coming out. It’s a blast. I’ve put almost three decades of my life into this calling and it is being answered. I hope to see you out there.



Big ass news! As many if you recall I couldn’t shut up about podcasting being under attack by a patent troll that went by the shell company name of Personal Audio LLC. The patent they had was basically a schematic drawing of a nonexistent machine that they tried to retrofit onto part of the technology that facilitates (in a fairly removed way) the distribution of podcasts. They claimed they invented podcasting before it existed. They came after us. I got letters that implied future lawsuits if I didn’t cough up a licensing fee of their choosing. They were suing Adam Carolla and they were using him as the example in their shakedown scheme.



Patent trolls are an ongoing threat to businesses of all kinds. Podcasters rallied. We reached out to the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and gave them the heads up. We reached out to each other to try to figure out how to fight this threat to our medium. We didn’t have lawyers and we were scared. The EFF found it appropriate to file a re-exam of the patent with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). We put out a battle cry for funds to make the re-exam happen. It was funded overnight because of your support. We encouraged Adam to fight and he did. We put out a battle cry for his fight and many of you responded. Ultimately they laid off Adam, half-promising to leave us alone, too. It was on paper but the language left the door open for them to bring it all back up again. Well, last week the USPTO ruled in our favor.



“In petitions filed with Patent Office, EFF showed that Personal Audio did not invent anything new before it filed its patent application, and, in fact, other people were podcasting for years previously. Earlier examples of podcasting include Internet pioneer Carl Malamud's "Geek of the Week" online radio show and online broadcasts by CNN and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).”



See the entire article and ruling here.



We did it with your help! Thank you for supporting podcasts. Apparently a WTF listener, Jeff Haynes, supplied some of the ‘prior art’ necessary to take the patent down. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks again to everyone who was with us in this fight.



On Monday I have a beautiful chat with The Fonz, Henry Winkler. On Thursday’s show Spoon’s Britt Daniel talks about the evolution of his band and the struggle of music. Also on Thursday the brilliant Jon Ronson talks a bit about his new book, ‘So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.’ Great week of talks.



Enjoy!



Boomer lives!



Love,

Maron

Not in a million years.

Rock and Roll, People.



I haven’t talked to you all since the things happened. Since I talked to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Since I talked to my childhood heroes. Is my life different now? Well, yes. I talked to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on my home phone in my garage. The both called my house. Did I ever think that Mick and Keith would call me at home ever, for any reason? Was it even imaginable? No. Not in a million years.



So, that happened. It was amazing for me. I hope that someday I will get to sit down with Keith for a long conversation. I don’t think it can happen with Mick because from what I understand he is a very private person. I think Keith would like to talk. We’ll see what happens. In the mean time I guess I’m going to San Diego see the Stones as Mick’s guest. That is, if he is a man of his word. Which I assume he is.



I’m sick of being sick. I just got over that nasty snotty cold thing that I was fortunate enough not to have in my lungs. I had a good week of feeling good. I took a run the other day and after it I felt knocked out. It thought maybe I gave myself heat stroke or something. Then I was a little feverish and now I just feel buggy for the last couple of days. I’m kind of achy, little tightness in the chest and my tummy hurts. What the fuck is that? Some vague, not all-consuming but nagging bug? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad its not worse but it is annoying.



The Maronation Tour starts in earnest this Thursday at The Warner Theater in Washington, DC. This is the first time I’m doing big rooms for an entire tour. It will be my task to make a big room fit me. Bring it in. I’m excited about. A little nervous. Not too bad. If you live in the Bay Area and want to come to the show you should get tickets. I’ll be at Davies Symphony Hall on May 10th. It’s really the biggest room I’m playing and it's about half sold. So, just a heads up that I will be there and I could stand to move some seats. Those who bought tickets will definitely not be alone. There are over 1000 sold but might be nice to have some more company.



Today I spend 10 minutes talking to Keith Richards. I don’t think I could’ve emotionally handled anymore. It was amazing. Also, on Monday I talk to actress and poet, Amber Tamblyn about her new book, Dark Sparkler. On Thursday I have a fun chat with record producer John Agnello and a short talk with Maz Jobrani about his new book.



Enjoy!



Boomer lives!



Love,

Maron