WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 836 - Mike MacDonald / Jon Ronson

Episode Date: August 9, 2017

Canadian comic Mike MacDonald survived four decades in comedy, drug abuse, Sam Kinison, chronic illness, psych wards, and a liver transplant to make it to the garage. Mike takes Marc through his early days doing comedy in Canadian punk rock clubs up to his return to the road after recovering from a major organ transplant. Also, writer Jon Ronson returns, this time to talk about porn, which he explores in his new audio series The Butterfly Effect. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series, streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required.

T's and C's apply. Lock the gate! All right, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuckaholics what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it what's happening i did it i did it yesterday was my 18th sober birthday. I can toot my own horn once a year, get my coin. Sarah the painter, she gave me a coin. It was nice. Got some nice congrats from people on the Twitter and in my family and friends.

In my family and friends. 18 years without a cocktail. A puff of weed. A line of blow. However you do meth. No nothing. Just this goddamn nicotine lozenges and this goddamn coffee. But nothing that makes my life unmanageable and destroys my health and world and ability to cope and do things. Yes. Yes. I'll take it.

18 years yesterday sober. I made it. Today is just another day. We're back to it. We're back to a day at a time. How are you people doing? I still don't feel physically great, and I do believe that it's going to come down to me. I'm probably going to have to get off of these nicotine lozenges again and probably the coffee. And some of you have been with me long enough to know what that's like. We've been through this before.

But I'm surprised at the parts of the addict brain that I still have. Let me tell you, I was working out with the lady that helps me work out today. And she's like, you just got to do it. You just got to go cold turkey. You got to just get off the nicotine, the caffeine. And I defended it like a goddamn junkie. I was like, no. She goes, do you want to? I was like, no, I wouldn't.

She goes, do you want to? I'm like, no, I don't. I don't want to. It was that tone. She's like, don't you want to quit those? And I'm like, no, I don't. I don't know how the hell I'll cope. I don't know what the hell I'll do.

I don't know how I'll feel okay about life in the world. It's already hard enough without caffeine and and and those nicotine uh suckers i don't know what the fuck i don't what the fuck am i gonna do don't know i do not justified it justified my low-level self-medicating like a goddamn junkie i'm sober from the bad shit but this stuff is i don't know i think it's making me queasy something's making me queasy maybe it's just stress and fucking insanity in the goddamn world maybe the trump reign of terror is starting to crush me uh on a neurological level that's the plan right you get about a third of the country that loves

you no matter what the fuck you do no matter who the fuck you bomb or who you hate on or what chaos you unleash on the world on the country and then you got about the other two thirds of people just terrified and that just makes that one-third laugh and excited that maybe they'll one day get us all to leave or watch us die yeah that kind of stuff all this nuclear saber rattling yeah that maybe that's making me queasy does that sound like a reasonable reaction to that let's not dwell i've been 18 years sober but that doesn't change the world it doesn't change anything it's just another day where i don't drink or use drugs and try to deal oh let me tell you who's on the show we got a little bit of a double header going

my old pal john ronson is here the very intelligent witty and uh smart writer uh john ronson has a new audio series for audible it's called the butterfly effect the entire series is available for free at audible.com slash butterfly effect and then after him we've got uh canadian mike mcdonald old comic i don't want to call him too old. He's probably about 10 years older than me, maybe a little less, but I do have to qualify him as Canadian Mike McDonald, not Mike McDonald the singer, not Mike McDonald the comic from Boston. Mike McDonald? Not that Mike McDonald. I'm doing a bad impression of a guy that most of you don't know. Mike McDonald. No, it's canadian mike mcdonald

he's been through the uh war of the road has some physical issues a survivor a real comedy life survivor who i met years ago who has been around for a long time and he had some health problems and stuff and then he he's doing a some sort of filming thing around here and i came over and we talked for about an hour he's a real uh comedy warrior mike mcdonald so he's coming up but let's read a couple of pleasant emails this one i don't mean it to be a plug but you can certainly take it that way uh waiting for the punch is the subject line that's the name of the WTF book coming out that you can pre-order now. I really had no intention of doing a plug, but it is a nice email.

Hi, Mark. I work at an indie bookstore in Connecticut and was able to get an advanced copy of Waiting for the Punch. I wanted to tell you that it was great. I was apprehensive at first that it was just blurbs from episodes that I've already heard, but the book is so finely curated and the excerpts are so impactful. I was barely aware I was reading from interviews I had already heard. Attempting Normal, that's my other book, had a huge impact on me and helped me through a tough divorce. And this new book comes at a time of transition for me as well and had a similar impact. I just wanted to tell you your comedy and your books have gotten me through some really dark days and I'm forever grateful for that. Chris wrote that. Well, good, Chris. I'm glad

you got a copy of that. That seems to be the way people are responding to the book and I'm glad to help out. And I'm glad you had that reaction to the book, which you can pre-order at WTFpod.com. Just click on that book thing. Yeah, click on it. Go get it. Go get it before it comes. This is an email that I never, never anticipated. I didn't think this would happen.

I don't know what to do with it. I don't know what to do with the feelings that this email brings out of me. It says, meet baby Marin. That subject line will grab you. Like, I knew this was going to happen. Oh my God, how old is it? He or she? Where did this happen? Where are you from? How much do you want? What's happening? Not that kind of email. Hey, Mark, my name is Wally. My wife, Chanel, and I are huge fans and truly love your work. We live in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and we listen to the podcast. We love your TV show and just recently saw you live for the first time at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. My wife is especially endeared to your no bullshit, brutally honest and vulnerable approach. On to the point though, when thinking

of unique names for our second child, one of the first things my wife thought of was Marin and it stuck. What? It wasn't a pregnancy without its struggles and baby Marin proved to be just as difficult to deal with as you portray yourself to be at times. He wound up being nearly two weeks overdue, required a C-section to deliver and at nine pounds, two ounces,

I doubt she would have wanted to push the hulking beast out of herself anyway. She's been through a lot and as currently as I write this, still in hospital recovering. Both mama and baby are happy and healthy as I come home to get some sweet before having to go back to my day job as a welder in the morning. It would mean the world to me if you could just give her a shout out on the air and give her a little extra boost of morale from her favorite cranky little man.

I write that lovingly. All right, Chanel, good job. I'm glad you had to get it out of you somehow. And I'm glad the kid is out and he's doing all right. Is it a boy? Yes, it's a boy. I'm glad little Marin is good. I'm glad it's

not mine uh but only in namesake and i'd like to welcome little marin into the world and best of luck with it and i'm glad you're okay and here he says i've included photos of your infant namesake and i dare say he may be just a touch cuter than you big marin all the best wally oh that kid so that happened there's a kid out there with my name my last name is his first name and i hope it's it's easier for him coming up with that name it's very flattering and very um i i can i could i can feel no other way other than uh honored and in and i'm and i'm glad uh that the kid's all right so let's uh let's move into it so this is um me talking to john ronson about his new uh audio series called the butterfly effect it's on audible and it's available for free

at audible.com slash butterfly effect. Enjoy. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance,

you're probably spending more than you need. That's why you need to switch to low cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that.

An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required.

T's and C's apply. Joy. So I haven't seen you in a while and apparently you're doing things. Yeah, since I saw you last. The last time I saw you, I was in the midst of my public shaming. Public shaming. Oh, yeah.

How did that? I imagine that book changed lives. Yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of pushback, though. Like we were just talking about Randy Newman. What was the whole name of the book again? So You've Been Publicly Shamed. Yeah, I read that book.

I've read most of your books. You're one of the guys that i read the books and when i prepare i read them thank you you and sam quinones and uh bruce springsteen that's where i feel i belong uh yeah thank you i yeah so that was the last time i saw you what was the pushback oh did they try to shame you was that yeah weird the backlash of writing a book about public shaming is that you were going you were trolled and shamed yes really yes it was a pain in the fucking neck what happened well like because my book is like i'm it's it's against the sort of culture of shaming so obviously people who enjoy shaming people. Oh, you fucked with their hobby? Yeah. I fucking did. I fucking did.

You buzz killed the assholes? Yeah. The troll army? The army of unfuckable hate nerds came after you? And it was noisy. Oh, I bet. And it was relentless. Oh, boy.

It was a relentless noise for about a year. No kidding. Like, what was the angle? Oh, every angle you can possibly think of. Because one of the people I was nice about in the book was this woman, Justine Sacker, who's like, you know, on the surface of things is like a kind of privileged white woman. Oh, the one who did the South Africa thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I then became like, oh, Jonathan's only nice about privileged white people.

Oh, they were accusing you of virtue signaling? Yeah. Well, virtue signaling on the, well, both. Oh. Both sides. Oh, you got it from all angles. Yeah, I got it from all angles. You got the righteous trolls and just the monster trolls.

Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah, I got the lot of them. There's so many unimaginative people that live to start shit. That's their creativity is causing problems. I was thinking a lot about consequences. Yeah, because of working on the shame book. Yeah.

Yeah. Like I asked this guy one time who'd started this onslaught against this woman, like a Gawker journalist. I said, how did it feel to have started the onslaught against her? He said it felt delicious. I hate the way they use that word. Yeah. And then he paused and said, but I'm sure she's fine now.

And I happen to know that, you know, she was depressed and she wasn't leaving her house. You know, she was probably having suicidal thoughts. Yeah. But for cognitive dissonance reasons, you know, you have to think that they're fine. You don't want to think there's consequences because, you know, you're a nice person, yet you've just destroyed somebody's life. So to make that work inside your head, you have to pretend that they're fine. Or you have enough kind of sociopathic detachment to think that it just happens online and that's it. It's like a person who rages.

When they're done yelling, they're like, are we good? Yeah, exactly. So I was thinking about like how, you know, for the Internet to work, you have to sort of not think about the consequences of your actions. And I thought, where else does that exist on the Internet? And the place where I thought it really existed is porn. So a few things happen. Could I tell you these things that happened? Yeah.

Okay. I, for my shamed book. You went on a porn set. Yeah, I went on a porn set. Yeah, I remember. Which was great. I'm actually in a porn set yeah i went on a porn yeah i remember um which was great i'm actually in a porn i'm briefly in a porn film called public disgrace because it was my first ever porn set and i

wanted to like see what was happening so i leaned i kind of leaned in yeah this was a woman was getting her genitals electrocuted and i thought for real for real yeah because in a break from the filming everybody like thought well this can't be real because real, yeah because in a break from the filming everybody like thought well this can't be real because it was like set in a bar in the valley and the conceit

was that Princess Donna the porn star was pulling in this woman called Jodie Taylor and would then like electrocute her genitals in front of everybody in the bar

so during a break What kind of porn is this? Well it's weird porn it's humiliation porn. Okay. And so everybody was like testing the electrocution machine during a break. And it really was giving electric shocks. It was real.

So I like kind of peered in. So somewhere in a film called Public Disgrace, there's like a tweety gentleman holding a notepad, like peering in. Like I'm just hoping that for somebody out there that's a cool... That's a nice promo for that film. I remember my big memory of that night. I have two memories of that night. One is the

like it started late. It started like 10.30 and I was still on New York time. Kind of hazy. So like 1am I was just thinking, please ejaculate so I can just go home. And then I thought, God, I'm like thousands of women before me. Please ejaculate so I can go to sleep.

Let me just get closure on this. Some messy closure on this situation. I'm tired. And my other memory was that when I was meeting Princess Donna. So I was staying that night at this fancy Los Angeles hotel, the Chateau Marmont. Yeah. So I was in my room and the receptionist phoned up and said, your guest is waiting for you downstairs. Yeah.

So I went downstairs and everybody else in the lobby was just like exactly like i'm dressed now and like kind of james purse yeah gray hoodies celebrity hiding yeah yeah exactly like a celebrity burka like a gray hoodie which i just sort of hide underneath them and uh it makes everybody go is that i don't know is it yeah yeah but except for princess donna who was dressed like this kind of great mad peacock. Yeah. She looked like so otherworldly. Hollywood.

Yeah. And I wore porn. And I walked towards her really interested in it. Like, she was interesting to me. Peacocks are interesting. Yeah. So I, especially in the context of grey sweatpants. Yeah, yeah.

So, and I looked around and I noticed the receptionist as I was walking towards and the receptionist was looking at her. And the look he didn't realize anybody was looking at him. Yeah. And the look on his face was one of contempt, disgust. And it made me think, well, like she, it made me think that some people are only comfortable with porn people when they're on their computers and not in their vicinity. Sure. And so I became curious, like after my little mini porn experience. But do you think he knew she was a porn person?

I think he knew she was some kind of sex worker. You know what, even if... It's weird though, because that street, you know, at a different era, was just like a parade of that. When I was at the comedy store in the late 80s, it was all over the place. Yeah.

Go ahead. Well, you know, I could have misread. It's possible that I misread the situation. He probably just was, he thought she was being a little bit much for the chateau. And funnily enough, I brought this up with another porn star a couple of weeks later. And she took the side of the receptionist.

Oh, yeah. Fuck her. Well, Ben basically said, well, she should have dressed more demurely. But anyway, and I might have misread the situation, but it did make me curious about the lives of porn people. And so I started reading their blogs and so on. And what were their concerns? And what I realized was that a lot of porn people were concerned about the very same, very specific thing. And it was a man called Fabian. Yeah.

And I became really interested in Fabian. What does that mean? Fabian's a guy called Fabian Tillman. Yeah. And he's a Brussels entrepreneur. And when he was a teenager called Fabian Tillman. Yeah. And he's a Brussels entrepreneur. Uh-huh. And when he was a teenager, he had an idea. And the idea was basically to get rich from giving the world free porn online.

Oh. So he didn't invent porn. I am personally grateful. Right. Well, you and 75 million other people every day. The weird thing that, just I know I'm getting ahead of you, but what it enables you to do is is not invest as much time you know internet porn free porn enables you to

use it as a drug which is what it is like you know it's like i got six minutes whatever you know what i mean like you have to invest in a story you don't really have to fast forward there's plenty available like yeah you know i'm not proud of it i'm not saying i'm compulsive about it but it's nice knowing it's there, right? Right. Well, it's certainly taken off in a big way. The business itself, whether it's free porn or not, must be a massive business still for somebody. Because there is literally, not unlike troll culture or social networking, is that the globe, and America in particular,

has become completely pornified and almost embraces it. That coming out of the 80s where there was a commission put together to fight it, that now it's sort of like it's just matter of fact. How does that happen? And to me, it must be about money. Yeah, well, I can answer all of those questions. I'm now an expert at Pornhub economics. Yeah.

So Fabian, by the way, got so rich from owning Pornhub and basically buying up the entire San Fernando Valley pretty much. Like at one point in about 2012, 80% of everybody in the world who watched porn was watching it on one of Fabian's sites. But then wasn't that, then doesn't the model become more of a YouTube model for performers? Well, eventually it sort of turned into that. But the foundation, I should explain, by the way, Mark, that all of this isn't, I've just made this audio series called The Butterfly Effect.

And the flap of the butterfly's wings is Fabian giving the world free porn and the entire series is about the consequences oh and it goes out and out and out um so to the strangest places yeah like our our sort of challenge to ourselves is if you follow consequence through to consequence like from fabian giving the world free pod, where the fuck are you going to end up? And you end up with a man in Norway having his expensive stamp collection destroyed by three women. So that's like one of the places we end up by chasing this butterfly. But let me tell you about...

That's one of those weird things where it's a spoiler, but it's so compelling and you cannot figure out the story. Where the fuck are you? How the fuck do you get from one to the other right exactly so uh so fabian um fabian bought porn hub when it was like a fledgling company owned by these guys up in montreal uh and um he wanted to expand like that wasn't enough for him. So he got a bank loan to expand. Now, one real irony, like Pornhub was, the foundation of Pornhub was pirated porn.

Like they didn't upload pirated porn themselves, but they kind of allowed a space for users. Pirated meaning not original? Stolen. Yeah. So, you know, some, you know company would would make a porn film and then the day it's released on dvd yeah somebody would just upload it onto porn hub and it would stay on porn hub but everybody would watch it for free right so all the mom and pop porn production companies would have to close down porn stars would have to go into like escorting to pay the

rent and everybody was watching their porn for free on Pornhub, pirated. Now, if anybody said to Pornhub, can you take down our, this porn belongs to us and it's illegally uploaded, they'd go, oh, sorry, we'll take it down. And they'd take it down. Right. But by then, like, all the porn in the world was like on Pornhub for free. So, you know, it was like trying to cut down a forest with a butter knife. It's a lot like YouTube.

Yeah. Yeah. So Fabian got, Fabian wanted to bank loan to help him expand a band clone a bank loan bank loan yeah like a loan for me i thought you were talking some tech term that i didn't know bank loan yeah bank loan got it now one irony in all of this is that if you're a woman in porn if you're a porn performer yeah and you go to a bank manager and ask for like a checking account they might turn you down because it's like you're deemed disreputable. Yeah.

But Fabian, he wasn't like a porn performer. He was a tech entrepreneur. So he got a $362 million loan to build an empire based in part on the handling of those women's stolen porn. Yeah. an empire based in part on the handling of those women's stolen porn yeah so with this loan he bought up like you know loads of like porn production companies in la and within a year he was like he owned like all of it yeah he owned all of it for all i mean not all of it but he owned so so it was no longer the quaint family business it once was no like it's sort of like the transition from you know the in boogie

nights that that shift from you know the theaters to the video yeah exactly and also like it was also documented a bit in the tales from time square when when you know it moved out of the theaters into the the quarter slot into the coin-operated booths. There's been several different evolutions of it. And I imagine David Simon's new series is going to talk about that. Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. That was like Times Square. But what's happening now is, you know,

the sort of porn DVD culture turned into like free porn on Pornhub. And I was really interested in the consequences. Like no one who worked up at porn hub hq ever went on a porn set right but like so initially you were interested in personal consequences or it seems like this thing kind of came around the side for you that you that you it seemed like what you were looking for was something shame based and then it kind of became this yeah other thing well consequence based consequence yeah like to eat the meat, you need to ignore the slaughterhouse.

Yeah. And I think nobody, like everybody was watching porn for free on Pornhub and nobody was thinking about the consequences. And I wasn't, like I didn't know anything about it. I had no idea what impact it was having on people. So I just became curious for that reason.

And so I discovered, like you can imagine like some of the consequences are what you'd expect. Yeah. Like, you know, poor women having to take a best-scooting, for instance. But then as we dug and dug and dug, we found these other consequences which are kind of mind-blowing. Like? Well, one of my favorites is, from the ashes of the old style business. This new phoenix is rising and it's the world of bespoke porn.

Bespoke. Yeah. So like if you're if you have a porn film in mind. Yeah. That just doesn't exist anywhere in the world. OK. You can get like a team of professional porn people to make a porn film just for you. Oh, yeah. But the bespoke porn world

is unexpectedly... You like this one. You like the creativity of it. Well, it's like such an insight to people's inner lives because you wouldn't believe some of these bespoke porn films

that are being made. Of course I would. I mean, you just told me one about a woman who gets her genitals electrocuted and that was mainstream. Yeah, that's mainstream.

This one is a company. Okay, so one porn film that we found, one bespoke porn film, was a man in Norway. I alluded to this earlier. A man in Norway. Same guy? Yeah, he spent his life amassing an incredibly valuable book of stamps. And his bespoke porn film, just for him,

was to pay porn performers in the San Fernando Valley to destroy his stamp collection. And by throwing it into the fire while chanting, burn, burn. So the sexual element is subverted somehow. I mean, that's the guy's... Not quite submissive, but he won it. He definitely he got sexual pleasure from seeing this stamp collection, which he clearly lifelong obsession.

Yeah. Which he regretted. I think he feels like he made a mistake. Spend at least he's got the film of it. Yeah. Ten films. He's made ten. He's made his commission. yeah 10 films he's made 10 he's made 10 he's commissioned 10 how much does it cost to commission something like that like to have somebody to have some women you know naked women come over and burn my garage down what would that what would that well you need a fire marshal so that's a little bit more but you know i like ten thousand dollars i reckon that's not bad yeah i know some porn performers and maybe you know they maybe cut me a deal they'll give you a deal not long ago we had one bespoke porn producer tell us um that a man had just emailed them and said he was requesting

a video and his video was for a porn performer to sit cross-legged on the floor fully clothed and saying to the camera you are loved things may be bad now but they won't always be and suicide is not the answer like a known porn performer um well i think in that particular case like they got to choose their own that's pretty touching yeah it kind of uh it's almost uh worthy of uh of museum work yeah video yeah it's art piece It is an art piece. Well, they wrote back to him and said like, this really moved them.

Cause obviously, well, it would. And so they wrote back to him and said, well, we can shoot this really soon. It was pressing. Now,

before you kill yourself and he didn't write back to them. So then it was like, what do we do? So they made it, they made it for him anyway they paid the porn performer and made it for him anyway and sent it to him and and they haven't heard back and the video is basically this woman sitting on the floor in a house in the valley it's like this white mansion saying you know basically please don't kill yourself i mean i think the only it's a beautiful video the one error i could possibly say is that like they chose this kind of white mansion it looks like heaven from a movie so it's maybe

not the best idea to make a bespoke porn film in which you're kind of convincing somebody to not kill themselves on a set that basically looks like heaven from an 80s film but she's sort of um she's sitting cross-legged on the floor and she's saying, you know, lots of people love you. I love you. I have thought about dying myself in the past, but, you know,

I've pulled myself back from that. And, you know, please don't do it. You know, please stick with us. And then she blows a kiss at the camera. And they sent the video to this guy and who knows? Well, John, I'm disappointed in your reporting video to this guy and who knows well john i'm not disappointed in

your reporting what do you mean who knows well i mean i guess we could track the guy down yeah what are you talking about you're not going to do follow-up you're just going to end on the horrible sad existentially sort of provocative possibility that he's that he hasn't got back to them because he's dead or hasn't got back to them because actually he just wanted to get off on a video of a woman telling him But where's the follow through Ronson? I don't like it

Isn't the not knowing in itself? Yeah there's poetry in that but you're kind of half a reporter Hold on I'll fucking find out. That's right, you'll find out. You better find out on the next bunch of butterfly effects

or is this it? No, there might be more. Before we get off that other topic, the thing is that if you did your due diligence as a reporter, either end of that story is not going to diminish what happened there. You're just going to have to handle the worst of it.

But if it did pull him back or the guy does become interested, the worst that could happen is the dude's just sort of like, I just want to see if they do it. That's the worst that could happen. Any other thing, any other outcome is another good story. You know, even that story's a good story.

I got emotional and now I'm mad at you., even that story's a good story. I got emotional and now I'm mad at you. Well, that story's a good story because he massively moved these porn people. As they were making the video for him, they were themselves crying because obviously it was kind of triggering stuff from their own lives. A lot of them are very sensitive

people, the women that I know. Oh, yeah, no question. So even if this guy was just fucking with yeah mark he have you got tears in your eyes i did before they went away right no yeah they what yeah the the fact that you don't know the guy yeah you know you don't know what happened no we don't know what happened yeah i get choked up i'm uh yeah i'd get choked up a lot in here yeah yeah i'm sorry what are you sorry about i'm i'm sorry i choked up a lot in here yeah yeah well sorry about I'm sorry I think it's a powerful bit of business yeah yeah I'd now I gotta

listen to it yeah I should have done that before I talked to you but it's better this way sounds like a very compelling series there John oh mark you wouldn't believe well I mean I could talk about porn for a while I've got my own ideas the accessibility of it has in the fact that porn addiction is a very real thing that you know you are creating some sort of psychologically chemical change in your brain oh no it's absolutely a compulsion i know guys that are lost in it man yeah and you know erectile dysfunction rates have like shot through of course because a therapist of mine like put it uh like we were talking about he's also been a guest on the show that when you are a compulsive masturbator your

primary sexual partner is yourself yeah so you know and you have a lot of control in that situation yeah you know um it's neutering a generation of men yeah my producer lena, Lena, met a sex doll manufacturer at the AVN, you know, the adult industry. He said, like, his business is going through the roof since free streaming porn. Because it's so much harder. Like, if you watch porn constantly on, you know, tube sites, it's much harder for you to have sex with an actual human.

Well, you don't get outside. You don't know how to talk. You don't know how to get there. So more and more people are buying sex dolls. Right, so now it's like a pseudo-necrophilia culture. Yeah, or just, you know, just compliance and perfection. You're talking about, you know, like an emotionless doll that has a compelling vaginal feature and oral feature is perfection? oral feature is perfection?

Well, it looks like I met this guy in Louisiana who, like, he's probably in his 50s now. When he was like in his late teens, he was in love, desperately in love with this girl called Darlene. And they were going to get married and he loved Darlene more than anyone in the world. And then one day Darlene dumped

him, like just left him and refused to explain why. And it broke his heart. And cut to like 40 years later uh a friend of his says go on this website and he finds a sex doll that is identical looking to darlene oh so he buys her and um it's a love story he said that she's better than darlene because like when he shared a bed with darlene he'd wake up and live night and darlene was like right the other side of the bed. Yeah.

Which was like a clue to the fact that their relationship was good. Right. Whereas the sex doll, he wakes up and live the night and she's draped around him. Yeah. Or on the floor and then he just pulls her back into the bed. Yeah. Okay. It's very sweet.

Isn't it? It sounds like a compelling bit of business that I'm not sure the the arc of it is is an indication of anything good no it's not right it's really not the arc of it is basically tech people are taking over the world one of fabian going back to fabian one of fabian's employees said to like, don't think of me as a porn person. I'm not a piece of garbage peddling smut. I'm a tech person. Well, this is the same type of detachment that enables a troll to not think they ruined someone's life. Exactly. Tech people taking over the world.

No one really cares because they're giving us what we want, which is free porn on the Internet. It's all the revenge of the nerds. We had no idea it would be apocalyptic. Exactly. That's the heart of the story. It's tech nerds taking over our lives. We don't care. And the consequences are boundless.

How does the economic model work now for like YouPorn or Pornhub or whatever the other ones are called? How are they making the money? Well, you know, you're right. There's like, you know, you can set up a page or Pornhub or whatever the other ones are called, how are they making the money? Well, you know, you're right that there's like, you know, you can set up a page on Pornhub where you can like, you know, sell your own stuff. But as Mike Quasar said to me,

this old style director said to me the other day, like this incredibly famous porn actor called Janice Griffiths. Yeah. Said to him the other day, you know, how can you be anti-Pornhub? griffiths yeah um said to him the other day you know how can you be anti-pornhub like my page on you know maybe like three thousand dollars last month yeah and she's like one of the most successful porn stars and mike said to her like 20 years ago you'd have made like 30 grand yeah so they don't know like they they don't know that they're part of this business that's just uh that's that's just eating away at the kind of money that they used to make this is all very

specific to uh to who you talk to and to you know this business model but i mean if you go on to any of these sites you're like there's plenty of people making fuck movies there there's no short to the point where i'm like i don't know what my neighbor's doing right now you know yeah which by the way is part of the problem because you've got like this massive influx of women in the valley like in the old days in the 90s there was a kind of you know if you wanted to get into porn you were like bonnie and clyde you know there was a kind of there was a sort of outlaw status and and but sure you just you needed a doctor to give you your the pills for you know whenever you get manageable sexually transmitted diseases and he just was part of the liability of the work

right but now the valley is full of this kind of massive influx of 18 year old girls who grew up on porn herb think that looks like fun and an easy way of making money people who are detached from uh the input area well that's it, that's an interesting sort of idea. You know, Wilhelm Reich had, you know, when he kind of hot-rodded Freud's ideas about sexual repression and neuroticism, you know, pictured a world where, you know, sexuality would be completely untethered. Right, and destigmatized. From its Victorian constraints, and that it would make for a better world.

And you know what? That world is kind of starting to happen, and that's the plus side, I would say. I'm with Reich on this. That's the upside of it. The downside, though, is that, you know, thousands of young 18-year- girls like arrive in the valley without feeling any stigma about porn. And fucking for money.

Yeah. They work for like a month and then they don't need nobody needs to employ them anymore because there's another bunch of girls getting off the bus. So the downside is that they got to enter the workforce workforce with Pornhub videos on their resume. Yeah, and yes, and they come here with all those hopes and dreams and they get a month of work and then they're fucked. Well, I mean, but let's...

Do you really want to call them hopes and dreams? I mean, like, you know, the thing is, is that it's still a very male-dominated business. And, you know, there's a lot of these 18-year-old girls that I don't know they necessarily really know what they're getting into. And they get abused and fucked up and strung out.

Look, I mean, everyone's got free will. But I mean, we are talking 18. It's legal, but it's still young. Well, we, my producer, I mean, we are talking 18. You know, it's legal, but it's still young. Well, we, my producer, you know, we embedded ourselves in the side of the porn industry in the Valley where, you know, there's much less exploitation, where the sets are kind of respectful and the women earn good money. So, you know, we didn't want to go to like the sort of hot girls wanted sort of sleazy side of the industry well again due diligence ronson i'm glad you've got a balanced bit of uh no because we know because like i wanted our series to be about the tech takeover of the board so i didn't want it to be about the little dark corners of the now you've opened up a can of worms though man, man. No, I stand by that because I never make stories

about goodies and baddies, but in this story, if anybody's a baddie, it's the faraway tech entrepreneurs who fucked everything up from afar. So we just wanted to concentrate on that particular story. Okay, I'm on board.

I think that's cool. I mean, I'm sure there's going to be... I'm fine with it. I just like it. It's a very... It is something that I don't know has really been... Like the evolution of porn

and the nature of it and our own sort of, you know, kind of conflicted feelings about sex workers in general or how they're characterized. Like, you know, I got an email recently that, you know, that I sort of condescend, you about the nature of strippers or hookers or how they're sort of characterized.

And I know sex workers and I certainly accept them and the work. And I have a different, I still do jokes sometimes, but I don't, I understand the business and that there is respect involved there but it is still a a fairly unexplored uh you know notion the the the state of the contemporary porn industry totally that's why you know i i really wanted to make that decision to not follow in the footsteps of films like hot girls wanted which are about the sort of you know seedy aside no i think you're right it seems like you're riding a line i like it and i i like your follow in the footsteps of films like Hot Girls Wanted, which are about the sort of, you know, seedy side of the industry. No, I think you're right.

It seems like you're riding a line. I like it. And I like your work, and I was just pushing back a little bit. But I should find out what happened to that guy. I will. Thanks, man. There you go.

Sounds like a compelling bit of business. I always like talking to John Ronson. So, look, Mike McDonald here. Like, a lot of you may not know him, but I've known him, and he's been around for a long time. I remember seeing him on a very early, I think it might have been a Young Comedian special. I'll talk to him about that. But he was one of these guys that, you know, was sort of on the periphery of American comedy a bit. And he, you know, he he ran with some of the hardcore dudes that that I looked up to and I got tangled up with.

And, you know, you get to a certain age in this business where if somebody survives and they're still at it, you know, you're like, good for you, man. You're also, you know, if somebody survives and they got out, you're also like,'re like good for you man you're also you know if somebody survives and they got out you're also like oh good for you what a fucking relief that would be if you can live with yourself but but mike's not one of those guys he's the other guy he's still in it he's still doing it he's uh persevered through some uh serious health issues and uh you know i'm glad i'm glad i got to talk to him because I was afraid he was going to die. And he didn't. And he's doing all right.

This is me and Canadian Mike McDonald. Now, am I wrong in remembering that you were once referred to as the doctor? Was that you? No referred to as the doctor? Was that you? No, not the doctor. Maybe I'm making it up. I don't know why I would have. But at some point I remember talking about Sam, about Kennison.

Oh, right. Coming up to Canada. Yeah. And finding you. Did Sam Kennison call you the doctor? I believe on that night, yes. Because I was, yeah, he had never shot heroin before. Oh.

You were the guy? I had everything ready and stuff. And knowing that the first time you do it, and a lot of people for every time they do it, they get sick. Throw up, right. And then they get high. Yeah. So knowing that he was like that, as soon as I hit him up, I undid the band. And when the sensation got up to about his neck, I grabbed him and I said, one more soul and I get mine back.

I threw him towards the ground. He goes, oh, you bastard. Oh, you son of a bitch, McDonald. And then he went out. Yeah. Oh, my God. Those are, see, we're laughing about that. But I think the most.

Heroin addiction. Ah, funny. Most mortals would be like, what the fuck are they laughing at? Yeah, exactly. Those monsters. I'm glad those days are over. I think when I hit 30, I decided to quit everything. Was it 30?

Yeah, around there. Yeah. I don't think I've seen you in a long time. And you're not living in Canada, though, are you? I had to virtually go back. I was living in Glendale, and I was fine and everything was great, but then I got sick. What was the sickness? What is the sickness?

Liver disease. And you're shooting a documentary now? Yeah. And is it my understanding, I don't know how to put it bluntly, that time is short? Or are you, I was pitched this as like, he could go any second. Yeah. Well, there's always a chance you can go any second. But yeah, this is more of a, I'm finally back to where I was before I got sick.

Oh, really? So you're doing good? Yeah. Oh, thank God. So I'm back on the road, back doing my actual time. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'm so relieved.

Because what I had misunderstood the documentary to be was like, he's got days, maybe weeks to live. Well, yeah. Well, actually, they're hoping, because that would be the big finale to the document. And then he died. He didn't make it. They're counting on it. Well, I mean, look, the thing about you is I don't know how many people know exactly who you are.

But you've been doing comedy for as long as I can remember watching comedy. Because I remember the first time I saw you you like it was on like a catch rising star young comedian thing yeah yeah and at that time though right but at that time you're like these the new wave come yeah the punk comedian yeah yeah but like you were doing edgy yeah well you were doing weird bits like abstract bits yeah that was the angle yeah at the time i just thought oh anything that's funny and yeah there was a lot of drug fueled stuff but then like i saw you years later you know i i think i saw you at catch a rising star when i was in boston but then i saw you years later and you were just this angry sweaty mess you're like like i'm like what happened the new wave guy you're like oh fuck that fuck this right the

evolution the bitterness had taken hold yeah that was always my uh my thing that attracted me to a lot of comedians when i was a kid it was the yelling and stuff because my father would yell and i always thought it was great that you could laugh at yelling as opposed to being afraid of it devastated by it so where did you grow up though uh and a number of places because my dad was in the air force so every canadian air force yeah every two three years we move somewhere else but like tell me some places in canada because i don't know about canada i'm thinking about living there soon yeah nova scotia at one point in greenland you're in greenland yeah and do you remember it? Yeah. Oh, yeah. My favorite

posting, he was in Ramstein, Germany, which was NATO headquarters at the time, 1964 to 69, which was a great time to be there because of the music alone. Sure. You were like what? You were like 13? I was nine, 1964, when I got there.

I remember them taking me on vacation and we were in Amsterdam and there's a little coffee house and it said Jimi Hendrix live tonight and I went oh my god really and that's when I realized oh if I was 18 I'd be having the time of my life but I'm 12 and I have to go with my parents to the ice capades you know it's like oh god I never forgave them for that I could have seen Hendrix and you didn't. I missed them. God damn it. But you were into music like that at that age?

Oh, yeah. Do you have an older brother? No, no, that's the thing. I mean, a Jewish kid in my grade five class turned me on to Jimi Hendrix. Listen to this, Purple Haze. And I went, oh, my God, that's so different than the Beatles and everything else that we were listening to. I flipped out on it. So that was in Germany, in Greenland.

Like, is it pretty? Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's great. And they have a base there? That's not Canadian territory, though, is it? No, I mean. It's its own place?

Well, they used to have more stuff there in the past, but now they don't. I don't think so. So when did, do you have brothers or sisters? Two younger brothers yeah how they doing uh they're doing okay one's one's a lounge singer uh he goes by johnny vegas which is weird i know him i saw him in london yeah that's your brother no there's a bunch there's a johnny vegas in every country in the world i was gonna say that guy he't look like it. He's the Canadian one. He's the Canadian Johnny Vegas? Yeah, he's the Canadian Johnny Vegas. So they do a kind of like disrupted, chaotic lounge act? Yeah.

And what's the other one do? The other one end up out of show business? I'm not sure anymore. You don't know what the other brother does? Oh, I thought you meant the other Johnny Vegas, because I saw him a long time ago in Edinburgh. Yeah, right. That's where I saw him. I haven't seen him since.

That might have been where I saw you. Was that like 2006 or something? Yeah, that might have been where i saw you was that like 2006 or something uh yeah it could have been around there yeah what's the other brother do uh my other brother he's a drummer in a band y'all ended up in show business yeah it was weird what is he in a big band like rush uh is he neil pert no no he's he he'd be more like walking into tom petty and the heartbreakers that kind kind of band. Oh, yeah? Yeah. They're Canadian?

Yeah, basically. Do they have an interesting, just short of a good name, Canadian band name? Yeah, it's called the Awesome Brothers. It's just like, oh, well. Someone doesn't want to make money. I don't think any of the three of us were any good at titles. So what rank was your dad? Was he like a big shot or no he was called a warrant officer it was like the uh one step uh before becoming a uh an actual officer

yeah and uh so you know like people would ask me did he fly a plane no he flew a desk but he's one of the best desk pilots he was nice and safe in the canadian air force and what'd your mom do just deal with you guys she yeah she was a traditional stay-at-home mom and stuff for a long time and then she started working as a medical receptionist in a hospital so where did it start leveling off though because i have no sense like i think you're the first guy of your generation and you were like uh you know you were you were part of the you know i think the that 80s stand-up boom yeah where everyone could make a buck yeah i mean it was amazing back in those days you could make uh you know four thousand dollars a week without

having a sitcom it was amazing because there were so many clubs yeah it was it was great and you were sort of a known guy up in canada yeah right yeah to a point yeah well like what was the canadian scene though like when you grew up where'd you grow up mostly like once you got old enough to start giving a shit about things um i started high school in ottawa which was my dad's last posting and we stayed there for a long time and that's where i started doing stand-up and then i moved to toronto and then toronto to. What's the scene like, though? How old were you when he started? I think I was 22, 22, 23. Did you go to college?

No, no, no. No. I barely made it through the 10 years in high school. But, yeah, no college or anything. I had a series of odd jobs before I decided to become a comedian. I actually thought at one point it was going to be like I played the drums, and I thought music was going to be the ticket. Yeah, yeah, sure.

But then when I realized that in comedy I didn't have to have four other people agreeing with everything I said, I could do it myself, so the comedy sort of took over. But at that time, what were the odd jobs? Like, what were you? Well, at one point I was a dance instructor for Fred Astaire Dance Studios. Stop it. Come on. Come on. It was during the disco phase and we'd dance all day and then we'd dance all night and I was making like $5,000 a week. So you knew the disco dancers?

Yeah, it was weird. It was a weird time. And then when the comedy started i actually started at what turned into the punk club scene in ottawa and uh boy there was an audience that you learned the uh the possibilities of good editing because if they didn't like something they'd let you know so like so we're talking like what year like you're 22 and what year? It was 1978. So like these punk rock clubs, were they real punk rock clubs or were they? Well, there was only one. And yeah, it was definitely the punk scene. It was, you know, groups like Teenage Head from Canada.

I don't know if you heard it. They were like our version of the Ramones. Oh, yeah. And they were like really good. I really enjoyed seeing a lot of the band. I was really into the music still, obviously, but the comedy thing just took off. But for you to choose that club over, like, you know, why that place? Like, were there comedy?

You were in Toronto at this point? Well, no, I was in Ottawa still. Was there Yuck Yucks there yet or anything? No, Yuck Yucks would come in about two and a half years later. So there was nothing? No. There was no official comedy club whatsoever. Well, what compelled you?

Who did you see that made you think that? A friend of mine was recording local bands and stuff, and he called me in to do something comedy because he had heard this album called Derek and Clive Live. Yeah. It was Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. And they got really drunk, and they turned on the tapes, and they got all this stuff.

And some of it was okay. Like, I still remember the joke about, what's the worst job you've ever had? Well, I used to pick lobsters out of Jane Mansfield's bum. You know, stuff like that. So my friend, you know. That's the one that sticks. Yeah.

So my friend who had the studio in his basement, and I'd been in the band with him before, he said, well, why don't we do something with comedy too, but instead of alcohol, we'll get really high. Yeah. And we recorded like 18 hours of tapes that if they heard them now even, I would have to leave on the next shuttle.

I couldn't stay on the planet. You know, like I see what people are getting in trouble now, and I go, no, that's nothing compared to these tapes. Oh, my God. What were you guys doing? We were just, we went anywhere. And on the top of it off, we had the engineer guy, his name was Carl Schultz, and he was German, right?

And for me, the same way that Monty Python used to make fun of Belgians, my go-to was German. Sure. He used to just do the Nazi stuff to death. Yeah. He would always make them frustrated. Stop making jokes. Why? You got to get some more Jews in the train?

It was like all that stuff. Oh, man. You know, we just, oh, just hammering this guy. For hours. Yeah, for hours. And it was just a bunch of state a bunch of stuff on tape that we should never release oh you should but you know just put a box set together so that so it was inspired by like uh like hearing records and

yeah yeah and of course you know the the comedy albums i had when high school and stuff i remember the first one that really made a big impact was Richard Pryor's Was It Something I Said. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that was like a brilliant album. And that's the album that my father came in and said, what the hell are you listening to? Right.

Because he heard the N-word really loud one day. And so it was like I had to hide his records. And it was just like the little Richard Pat Boone thing where I had to hide the black records my dad couldn't hear them was he wrote that he's a real conservative dude yeah a little bit on that you know he just thought it was shocking that i would listen to anything so somebody's saying the n-word over and over that was was he called for or is he a nice guy you get along with that guy it was well actually in his family he was the one that broke the mold and left and some some

some people in his family were were racist yeah so he was the one that had a more worldview but uh racist canadians yeah he he didn't want to hear me listening to somebody yelling out the n-word loudly i have such a stilted or fucked up you know idea of what what's up in canada i mean was it that diverse a culture to where you know racism would be oh yeah i mean i i think uh in when we when we were stationed in halifax i noticed racism for the first time in canada yeah and it was like you know one black student in an entire school right and he got into a lot of trouble and a lot of stuff. The one guy.

But the main thing at the time, you know, you're talking 1962, 63, it was mainly Catholics against Protestants. Right, that's what I thought. And French people against non-French people, right? That's always been there, yeah, too. Catholic against Protestants. That was weird. Like my mother would tell me to go to the local store to get some milk and stuff,

and I'd have to leave the base to go to the store. And on the way to the store, people would grab me and go, What are you, Catholic? And I'd try to guess right. Yeah, yeah. What were you, Catholic? Protestant. But I never liked religion to begin with,

but I always tried to say the right answer when they asked me i'd look oh the guy's got a cross catholic i'm cat all right get some milk and get out of here so you're doing comedy and punk clubs and and that's sort of where you begin to to get that style which was like because like for me like you were you presented yourself that way but i remember in that special you were wearing a striped shirt, I think. Is that possible? Well, it was a multicolored shirt. It was like the bit was the rock star bit with the tennis racket.

Oh, that's right. So you did some mild prop usage. Yeah. Yeah. But it was definitely sort of surreal. You didn't get the sense of character that you have now. Yeah, it was totally different. I mean, I look back and I go, what the hell was I thinking?

And it was totally different back then. But at the beginning, I think, primarily, the influence was Steve Martin at the beginning. And then when Richard Pryor, the first concert film, came out, I remember seeing that three, four times a day. Was that like 79 or something? Yeah, watching it and then going on at night. That was a big influence. So after you do the punk clubs, do you start doing more venues that aren't comedy clubs? I started going all the local, like the folk bars, the heavy metal bars. I played in all kinds of music venues.

Well, that makes sense. So you had to grab them pretty quickly. Yeah, you had to be. But it was also the luxury back then. You know, 1979 in Ottawa, most people had never seen live comedy at all. Right. So it was kind of a treat. And I had tapes and music and all that stuff. It was like more performance art.

Yeah, yeah. You know, without the attitude. Yeah. But, you know what I mean? But they just thought it was thrilling to see it live anywhere. And then finally, the people from Yuck Yucks Toronto, they came down to visit because they want to see who's this kid making noise in Ottawa. And I brought them to the punk club where I started. Was that Breslin?

Yeah, Breslin and another comic by the name of Steve Brender. And I remember them sitting there watching the punk crowd, you know, bouncing around, all this, you know, Clash playing really loud in the background. And they turned to me and they said, you do comedy here? And I went, oh, yeah, every week. It's great. They love me here. Okay. This is different.

And did they book you? Oh, yeah. different and did they book you oh yeah and and then uh it was a line in the sand because when i got to toronto there was a whole group of comedians not a big group like 30 30 comedians who were they like howie mandel came out was he one of the guys oh yeah he was he was like he was like your generation at the time and then jim carrey jumped in and later on you know but howie was the first big breakthrough but who were the other core guys there like when you were there that you remember there's a bunch of people that you wouldn't recognize the names let's give them some love give a few of them some love are they still at it uh very few like most of

them are behind the scenes now i mean there's still a couple like i think steve brenner still does it evan carter and there's a couple a couple of still do stand-up, but for the most part, most of them are either behind the scenes or they dropped out. But it's also a thing, too, that the problem with Canada is they have that mentality of, you know, socialized medicine is okay, but socialized entertainment where they go to you,

well, you've already had your turn. What do you mean I've already had my turn? Oh, right. What do you mean I can't do another special? The last one, you know what I mean? Like, I had three specials up there on CBC and three down here on Showtime, and I thought if I was just in the States doing it for a network here, they would have a piece of paper that made me sign not to go anywhere else. For a year, anyway.

But for Canada, their attitude was like, okay, you've had three, you've had your turn. Come back when your body changes. Wait a minute, that's a crazy attitude. I wonder if it's still that way. A little bit for a lot of us. I mean, it is certainly for me. They consider me having had the turn. So when you get down to Toronto, when you're doing yucks

and you're part of the crew of guys, did he open up all those clubs across Canada at once? Yeah, I mean, I actually open up all those clubs across Canada at once? Yeah. I mean, I actually open up, in the early days, I open up the majority of them. I was the first act

to play there. And then after me, of course, you had people like Norm MacDonald and Jeremy Hotts and stuff. Yeah.

So they brought up the second wave. Do they all look at you as like one of the granddaddies of modern Canadian comedy? A little bit. You know, it was a little, like having an older brother one grade ahead kind of deal. So when does the drug start?

Immediately, as soon as I got to Toronto, what's this? And all of a sudden you get offered like all these drugs and I couldn't believe it. And yeah, Toronto was like, you know, Toronto always tried to be like New York. So we had a little bit of introduction, all the debauchery. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, being able to come down to LA, like the only reason we got down to LA was Evening at the Improv was co-produced with a Canadian company. And one of the stipulations was each show had to have one Canadian act.

Is that true? Yeah. At the beginning? So that was our reason to be in the States, and our first U.S. television exposure was What was that? Early 80s? Mid 80s? When did that start?

Oh, yeah. Early, early. Early, right? Early 80s, yeah. Because I remember doing it in 89, and I think it was already about done when they were shooting them down at that Westwood Improv. Yeah. Like the huge one where

they just they treated the tv show like just another night yeah like i was doing my first tv appearance and like i think spade was there and he's like nah i've done a few of these and like it was just like no big deal and to me it was like the biggest deal yeah it towards the end of the 80s it really got saturated on tv there were so many many stand-up shows that it had to die down a little bit. Yeah, I did my first, the first appearances were in 89. Yeah. But it was nice.

But coming out to, you know, L.A. and meeting people like Sam Kinison and stuff, yeah, there was an introduction to do the debauchery down here, which was on a higher level, obviously, because he had more years to practice. More years to practice and more, I would imagine... Started in the 20s here, apparently. Yeah. level obviously because he had more years to practice more years to practice and more i would

imagine started in the 20s here apparently yeah if you read some of the fatty art buckle what the hell happened you know i mean way back yeah yeah yeah way back the documented debauchery we don't know about the undocumented debauchery except for the parties we were at but um but but so you're too like you're a big acting candidate uh i i'm i'm known to a certain amount of people like when people ask me if i tour i go like lady gaga tours i just show up and occasionally at certain places yeah yeah you know but like the like but like at the time like when you got down here because i guess i i think i met you over the years you know different places and you were definitely you seem definitely, you seemed pretty good.

You looked pretty well. You seemed relaxed. But, like, there were times where, like, I was just happy to see a guy that seemed more angry than I was at the time. Because I was just a kid. But also just sort of, like, you know, offstage, there was, like, you were, like, just frenetic. And just fucking, like, oh, my God. This guy's about to pop. Yeah, there was that period.

You get on stage and right away it was like, oh, Jesus, what's happening? And it was a lot of peer group pressure. Like I'd read, John Belushi did what? Well, I got to try a speedball. I got to try, you know, like everything Pryor did. Well, I got to try that because Richard Pryor. You were that guy? Oh, yeah.

Kennison was like that too. Yeah. This weird sort of like, you know, I'll show them. Yeah, I got to try it. I'll represent my group. I think Kennison actually went up to the Chateau to do it. Like that was where he was like that. So did you get strung out?

I was a heroin addict for a couple of years. But then again, when other comedians would ask me how I quit, and I'd tell them. I got on my knees. I prayed. And the obsession was lifted. I didn't even go through withdrawals. It stopped. Really?

Like the following week, I played at a club in Atlanta, which was notorious for paying us off in drugs. And I just, no thanks, I quit. And I was very lucky. I don't know really how it happened. Did you stop everything or you just stopped that? Yeah, everything. Really? Yeah.

And that's been a long time? It's been, what, 30 years almost with no hard drugs whatsoever. No shit. I mean, after my liver transplant, really asked my doctors if it was okay to smoke pot and i was surprised that the the head doctor toronto general hospital he said we we'd prefer you to eat it than smoke smoke it so yeah so now occasionally i'll have a brownie or something that's it so was the liver thing was that from drugs uh yeah It seems like a long time back. You must have really packed it in. I contracted Hep C, and then that caused the liver damage. Oh.

And when I went public with it, a whole bunch of people from that era, the punk scene in Ottawa, they contacted me and said, I have it too. I have it too. I have it too. But when I asked them how they got it, and they said, well, I never used needles. And then I thought, well, how did we all get it from the same time period, and half of us didn't use needles? It was from the saliva on the dollar bills that we passed when we snorted any drugs. Seriously?

Yeah, the blood, you know, Coke was cut with a bunch of stuff to make profit. was cut with a bunch of stuff to make sure make profit and if you had a a a cut in your nose the saliva and the blood really would would you know and and as soon as you make contact with somebody else's blood welcome to the club yeah part of the hep c but i was surprised it lay dormant my body for almost uh 20 23 years he had no idea he had it. Yeah. I was just going along. I thought I was getting tired of being on the road a lot, but my wife suggested I go for a checkup when I visited my father who was in the hospital in Ottawa, and a Canadian doctor found out the real problem within one or two blood tests. Really? Yeah.

LA doctors had totally, well, you're just tired from being on the road. They didn't find out the reason. And how long ago was that diagnosis? I had my liver transplant March 2013, so it was about two years before that when I was diagnosed with the hep C. You just missed the cure. Yeah. So I literally had to stay in Canada. When I was diagnosed, my father, who was still in the hospital, he said, you can't go back to the States because you'll die. And I said, yeah, you're right. So my wife had to endure doing renovations to sell her house in Glendale for a whole year by herself. And then she rejoined me in Ottawa a year later. and then she rejoined me in Ottawa a year later.

So let's backtrack a bit because you had a house in Glendale and you're one of these guys, not unlike Scheidner and some other cats, that were really able to make a living during the 80s. But once you moved down here, what year did you move down here? I think it was 88, 89. So kind of late after the boom. So you were living in Canada but touring America, right? Well, actually, even when I lived down here, the majority of my stand-up was done in Canada because I was just more well-known and it was easier to get gigs.

But was there opportunities that happened down here? Did you get deals and shit? A little bit, but I have a whole history of the bad luck i mean one year i was put on a holding deal with cbs and i was given sixty thousand dollars sixty thousand dollars for the holding deal sixty thousand dollars to write a pilot went through the whole rig and just before we shot the pilot the the cbs president says no and he says no to the independent producer who's been channeling me through. Right.

And the reason was this guy had been the president last year. Right. And he had treated his right-hand man poorly. So now the right-hand man who's the current president said this is all. And so I'm sitting there going. Collateral damage. Yeah. Collateral damage for 120 grand.

And this is how Hollywood works? Oh, my God. But you got the bread, right? Yeah. Collateral damage for 120 grand. And this is how Hollywood works? Oh, my God. But you got the bread, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I had a series of bad luck, stuff like that. You know, like I got a new agent and he said, okay, we're going to put you where you belong. I got my two biggest clients, Steve Martin and John Candy, work for the next five years.

Let's concentrate on Mike now. And I go, oh, great. We finally found somebody. Three days later he gets up in the middle of the night has a drink of water has a heart attack and I'm going oh my god

he's dead? yeah so I have a series of three or four people that have died once they realized that I was good that I would be good for them

and so the joke after a while was don't like me too much because if you want to live maybe you were being truthful with Sam maybe the souls he needed the souls so you could live. Yeah, I had a string of bad luck. I never understood. And then, of course, there was the stuff that I used to hate

was going on these auditions where the manager and agent would say, oh, yeah, they asked for you. They saw your special. They love you. And I'd go there and there'd be 15 Chinese guys. And I'm going, what the hell am I doing? And then the casting guy would come up, and you are? Yeah, of you. And I'd go there, and there'd be 15 Chinese guys. And I'm going, what the hell am I doing? And then the casting guy would come up, and you are? And I go, why you?

Yeah, it takes a long time to realize they're lying to you. Yeah, I just couldn't handle that. And then I was diagnosed in 1993 with bipolar manic depressive, and that just flipped me out. The moment I realized. I remember that. I remember running into you like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When I couldn't get on Letterman to promote the third special and I was listening to my manager on the phone and their attitude was, oh, we don't care that it's this third special. We don't need him on the show. And that's when I realized, oh my God, comedy's not like sports.

No matter how good we are, there's no guarantee that we'll be playing on a team. Oh, no. It's not a meritocracy. No, no. It's just like, and that flipped me out. It's the worst. Yeah.

I wanted to check out at that point. I tried suicide a couple times. You did? Yeah. And then fortunately, I had a good experience in a psych ward in Glendale at the Adventist Hospital that turned me around. But I've been struggling with it ever since. Wait.

Keep in check. So you think that all the drugs outside of wanting to match your hero's usage. Well, I certainly believe in the theory that the drugs escalated the effect of the mental illness. Right. But do you believe that you're self-medicating? Oh, yeah. Yeah. For a lot of it.

Yeah. Because were you always depressed? Did you actually have mania? Well, my cycle, I would get really, really angry. I'd blow up. That was your mania? Yeah. It wasn't like you didn't go buy shit?

And then I would get really depressed and want to kill myself. For months on end? Yeah, very simple cycle. And I would just have these these what my wife would call episodes she'd stay with you through all this shit yeah that's the amazing thing i've been with the same woman for 30 years and she's seen me at my worst and my best you know wow so so when you say you tried to kill yourself what do you mean you really tried to well you know the thing in california i had this thing where i would get mad and I would storm out of the house because I didn't want to, you know, lay it on my wife completely.

Well, that was like proactive. Well, a little bit. I mean, but it took a while before I just go, I better get out of here. So I drive and I drive by the gun store in Glendale and I'd say, oh, my God, if I would have signed up for it last week, I'd have the gun now or I could kill it. But it's that stupid seven-day waiting rule that they have. Right, right. Which was, it's a very good law because most people calm down after seven days. Right, right.

You know, they don't stay in that state. Well, it's like that Jimmy Tingle joke where the guy goes in to get a gun. It's like, I need a gun. And he says, well, there's a waiting period. And the guy goes, how long? And he's like, seven days. It's like, well, the guy will be gone by then yeah exactly so so finally one time i was i was mad again i was having an episode and i said okay i'm gonna go in there and sign up for the gun because

i will get mad again right planning ahead yeah yeah but so when i went in there you know glendale's a republican stronghold. Yeah. And I realized that immediately when I walked into the gun store. There was a poster of the Clintons with crosshairs on their faces. Really? I went, ooh, Republican gun store. Yeah.

And then I'm looking at the guns. I'm really shy because I'm not a gun person. Even though they're under glass, I got my hands behind my back and I'm like looking at them. And the guy comes over, oh, you're looking for a gun uh for what purpose and i said security which is you know the safe word for those people of course security yeah he pulls out this gun and he goes uh don't be fooled by the size it has 14 in the clip and one in the chamber and i said oh in case there's two of them and nothing nothing from the guy He's just deadpan. Like, all right, let's look at this other guy.

And finally, he pulls out this card and he says, look, I run a target range on the other side of town. Why don't you come, you know, buy some ammo, rent some guns, see which one you feel comfortable with. And then that's when it hit me. No seven-day waiting period. If you'd kill yourself at the range? Yeah, at the target range. So I thought, oh, this is the plan. This is foolproof.

Yeah. And the only thing that saved me was that thing in the back of my brain that my mother don't get caught with dirty underwear. So I had to go home and shower and change and stuff. Really? And while I was doing all that, my wife had left the house. She knew I was overboard. She phones my manager, and I'm just about that, my wife had left the house. She knew I was like overboard. She phones my manager and I'm just about to leave to go to the Target range.

I wrote the note and everything. And it's my manager on the phone. And fortunately, he also represented Dr. Drew Pinsky. Yeah, yeah. So we had Drew on the other line and they talked me into going to the hospital. And my attitude was like, yeah, sure, I'll go to the hospital. But I've got that card. I can go anytime I want., yeah, sure, I'll go to the hospital. But I've got that card. I can go anytime I want.

So, yeah, yeah, I'll go through the motions for you guys. And thankfully, it was a great experience at the psych ward that made me think, okay, maybe I'll give the medication a shot. Pinsky stepped in? Yeah. He's a smart guy. Yeah. He convinced me to go to the hospital. I went, and I actually had a good stay.

I mean, I was supposed to be there for 72 hours, but at the end of the 72 hours when they wanted to release me, I said, I really like it here. It's been great. I participate in group therapy. I'll have to take a shower a day and fill out the food thing. And it's fun. These people are great. And I've got everybody's button. I can make everybody laugh. like you know jack nicholson in the cuckoo's nest i had everybody's button there's this one kid all i had to go was and he go oh that's a stay be laughing like crazy you're killing yeah i was i was weird i was and no one could come you know no one could phone me no one could visit me unless i said so so it was the first time i had complete control over anything like that in your life yeah

and so at the end of 72 hours they go okay well we have really they diagnosed me as bipolar manic depressive they gave me a prescription I said well I really like you there is there any way I can stay and the doctor goes well I can't answer that question morally ethically and I went oh I, I understand. I still want to kill myself. Sign here. I stayed for two weeks, 72 hours at a time. But two weeks, I still want to kill myself. How long were you in there total? Two weeks? Two weeks, yeah.

Best vacation I ever had. It was like, you know, some people like to go to the beach. I like going to the psych ward. So they checked you in for the observation thing. Yeah, well, it's a mandatory suicide watch for 72 hours. So you got to the point where your manager knew, too, that you were. Yeah, I mean, yeah, when my wife told them all the stuff that was going on. And I was very lucky that I couldn't manipulate them to get out earlier

because that's what happened with Richard Jenney. At one point, he talked his way out of a 72-hour mandatory suicide watch. And later, when we found out, we went, well, how did he get to that point? They should have kept him in. They shouldn't have let him walk out in the middle of a 72-hour thing. He had the real manic episodes, right? The paranoia.

Yeah, it was very unfortunate because here was another guy that- Your generation, you knew that guy. Yeah, he was a great guy yeah you want to know something fucked up i was doing his weekend when he did it wow that he was in bad enough shape that he canceled it and it was just in one of these weird ass coincidences the saturday night we found out you know and like i didn't draw you know i guess they gave everyone the heads up. But it's a crazy thing. Like I say to my act. But he had a lot of guns. You're lucky you didn't have any.

Well, yeah. I didn't know other than going to the target range. That was my big Eureka plan. That was your big plan. It's like, I'll show them a target. I'll show them what a good shot I am. And it was weird because I debated whether or not to bring it out on stage because I didn't want to influence somebody to go do it. then 60 minutes came out with a piece about it and there's

apparently eight people a year do it in the united shooting ranges yeah and my first thought was only eight you know i mean i was i was surprised it was such a small number was your was your other thought like i thought that was my idea wait a minute but i i figured if if they talked about it it's okay to say it. And I mentioned, you know, like, you know, don't kill yourself at the end. So you did bits about it. Yeah, of course. I mean, everything was fodder for the act.

Always. Always. Once you got rid of the tennis racket. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I learned a long time ago, I play the cards that I've been dealt. So I was dealt the addiction card. I was dealt the manic depressive. And i was i'm dealt the transplant thing wow it's like you're you're

lucky man you're you're very lucky but on a lot of levels you know you have this bad luck that you think you have in show business but on the other side yeah the the marriage thing i've been very lucky that way so yeah i've had i have my good luck and i've had my bad so when you got out of uh the psych ward what year was that was that i think 93 oh yeah something like that yeah 94 and by that time you're not using any drugs but you know so they got you on some sort of medication that worked uh for a while and then they said okay we have this new drug that you don't have to go through the same like on lithium originally i had to take you don't have to go through the same, like on lithium. Originally I had to take a monthly blood test to make sure the levels were.

So they had a new drug that came in that, uh, you didn't have to do all the blood tests and stuff. So I said, okay, great. I'll try that. And then there was a couple others. I tried one that, um, it really affected me doing the standup where I was in a corp gig in Florida with, you know, old people. And I just went blank, white noise, and just, I couldn't remember a word of my act.

And I was so fortunate that after the gig, the guy who booked me, he's saying, what the hell, you know, you stopped five minutes into it, you couldn't do the show, what's wrong with you? Oh, I'm on this new drug Topogal, or whatever it was called uh topamax i think it was and he said oh my wife's been on that she's been in bed for two years now she can't function oh okay you know what i mean oh yeah i was lucky again yeah the guy understood and said okay how old were the people in the audience did they know the show was short oh yeah they were they were really uh angry that i had stopped and i was saying to them as they were leaving disgruntled saying oh this is unprofessional

but yeah and i said look if this is the worst thing that happens to you today god bless you but think about from my end i i don't know what's going on i i can't function now it's like i think i have the worst of this. And what did they do to level you off? Are you leveled off now? Yeah, they switched me off that drug to something else. You know, the whole drug thing, it's like a crapshoot. You know, you find, hopefully you can find something that has the least amount of side effects for you and it works.

But sometimes it takes trying three, four different medications before you find the one that works for you and it works, you know, but sometimes it takes trying three, four different medications before you find the one that works for you. Did you always do a lot of corporation, corporate gigs? To a point, you know, but it was always like, I used to always think it was funny because I would tell people, I can clear this room without saying fuck, you know, it's not that those swear words are not the ones you got to worry about. It's the ideas that you, you know, I can clear this swear words are not the ones you got to worry about it's the ideas that you you know i can clear this room without swearing at all yeah that's a point of pride i can make everybody so sad and uncomfortable but it was funny though in florida with the old people i

did the i used to always do the joke when i did a corp gig yeah the guy that booked me he said don't say the f word don't say the f word. Don't say the F word. What the hell? I'm going to say it. Funeral. All right. Boom. And everybody's happy and everybody calms down and enjoys the show. But I mean, it's ridiculous when they go, you know, like a person who's 98 years old. Do you think they can't handle somebody saying fuck out loud? Well, that's true. Yeah.

The old guy's been through the war. Yeah. Yeah. A couple of them. Yeah. Did you know Rodney? I met him briefly through sam and i was one time i was in new york he was there and rodney was doing the headline set

and sam goes yeah you want to meet him i go yeah you know of course you know rodney yeah you know we go in there and he doesn't even knock he just opens the door rodney's in the bath bathrobe with the towel around his all sweaty and he's doing a line of coke right he looks up he goes hey sam he goes hey how you doing and then he looks at me and he goes to sam like oh who's this guy yeah and sam goes no he's cool he's cool and then i go oh i'm mr den you feel i just it was a fantastic set like every bit worked i loved it and there's a lot of i had never heard before yeah and then he turns to sam he goes i thought you said he was cool you know and i thought all right i shouldn't say anything else for the rest of the night i overstepped i was i was a fan i thought you said

he was cool that must have been great So you hung out with Sam a lot? Occasionally. You know, like I could get his attention by, like, a lot of people at the time, they would get his attention by imitating Dice. But they would always imitate the certain voice. And I would go, you know, Dice had two voices. Yeah. So I would tell him, why is Sam so upset with me?

And that would make him turn around and go, oh, McDonald, oh, you bastard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think Sam was the quintessential. Remember on the Ed Sullivan show, they had these acts, the spinning plates? Yeah. They have the little band.

Sam was like that. Sam would go into a party and he'd go, oh, how you doing? Oh, Mark, how you doing, you son of a bitch? Oh, McDonald. He'd spin all the son of a bitch? Oh, McDonald's. He'd spin all the plates. Yeah, he was a charming motherfucker. And then all of a sudden, people would realize he's not in the room anymore.

He's somewhere in the bathroom doing drugs. And all the plates would fall. Where's Sam? What's going on? I thought I was going to get some drugs. I thought it was on the inside. Everyone thought they were on the inside. You know, I had to reckon with a lot of that shit.

Look at that. That's an old picture of me and Sam up there when I was way out of my mind. But he really fucked with you, man. He's a real brain fucker, that guy. He was funny. I mean, he was one of those guys that made me laugh out loud. It was fun to be around him when he wasn't fucking attacking you or you weren't on his bad side. But there's plenty of times now I wish that Bill Hicks was still around.

I wish Sam was still around. Because I'd like to hear their interpretation of what's going on now. Yeah, absolutely. And we need a couple more voices on our side talking about it right now. Well, everyone's talking about it, though. And big mainstream guys are talking about it, and some of them are holding the line pretty well. I was very surprised.

I'd be curious how Sam would feel about this guy. I don't know what side he would fall on, to be honest with you. You know what I mean? Yeah, there could be a 50-50 on that. I could just see him at the inaugural ball. Oh, you pussies, I wouldn't perform. Oh, you son of a bitch. You could. Bruce Springsteen, fuck you. Right. You could. I could see see him at the inaugural ball. Oh, you pussies, I wouldn't perform. Oh, you son of a bitch.

You could. Bruce Springsteen, fuck you. Right. You could. I could see him doing that. You could definitely. I know what side Bill would be on, but Sam's a wild card. I think that he and Trump are a lot alike in some ways.

Sam would spin his plate really good, maybe. Well, I think that he and Donald would love each other. I really do. Happy wine. But yeah, I do miss that renegade force in stand-up that you don't see it much. I mean, you know, Doug, you know, Stan helps out there doing his thing, you know, and I think he's definitely of that ilk, you know, and has real balls in that area. But the weird thing is it was never a mainstream activity.

So Sam was the only guy that broke through because he had the gimmick. And then he'd trick you because it's like, oh, shit, he just tricked us into thinking that was funny. Holy shit, am I fucked up? But Bill was always outside of it. So who are those guys now? There's only a handful at a time, but I don't know who they are. Are you?

Yeah, well, I don't think there's anybody that matches the intensity of Sam now. Oh, no, no, no. And that was always the yellers. That intensity of emotion was always attractive. And he had those preacher chops. Oh, yeah. And the times that he would go into the preaching thing to show the audience that he used to do it. I was a preacher chops oh yeah and you know the times

that he would go into the preaching thing to show the audience that he used to do it i was like oh yeah this guy could have been you know he could have been jimmy swagger he could have made a ton of money that way that was the plan originally and the same debauchery would happen you know what i mean but not as public yeah just be low-key yeah yeah which was not his specialty low-key was not the trick that was not the deal so now let's let's talk about you're still performing now you're back at it yeah yeah full-time again yeah and where do you go usually uh usually just in canada you know there's i i keep finding work yeah is brazilian still run you uh to a point you know there's a certain amount

of gigs that are yuck yucks but uh i have a thankfully i'm very lucky to have a couple of people that somehow they find these gigs for me and they you know and i really appreciate it and i you know yeah and they open for me and stuff like that but uh yeah that's good it's nice to have people in your corner well walk me through uh i've never said this before but now and now i i want to know walk me through, I've never said this before, but now I want to know, walk me through a liver transplant. So you find out that your liver's rotten, and what are the steps that have to happen? Well, it's a weird thing because there was a window of opportunity that you had to be sick enough to be moved up the list. Yeah. But you also had to be well enough to be moved up the list. Yeah. But you also had to be well enough to survive the surgery.

Yeah. So there was a point there where they said, you have about two, two and a half months to live without the transplant. Yeah. It's now or never. I remember when it happened. I remember you needed help. I like to think I helped.

I was very surprised that they had a night at the Laugh factory right and jamie and everything they put together this thing where they sent me a check that i survived on for like five months yeah i don't remember was it was there a kickstarter or somewhere to send something you know yeah but i i got a check that was way bigger than any canadian conglomerate kind of and it kept you going sorry so yeah you got two months to live with the liver you have and i got the call two months to live with the liver you have. And I got the call and said, hey, we got the liver. So I had to drive to Toronto. They said, you got eight hours to get here

or else we have to give it to the next person. So I looked at my wife. My wife said, let's pack. And she drove me to Toronto, which was like a- From where? From Ottawa, which is like a six-hour drive. So you're up there because you were sick. You had to be to be up there yeah i was living with my mother at the time and you know my wife joined me finally but uh yeah they uh they phoned and uh we had to zip to toronto in record

time and we got there and everything but i had no idea like the liver doesn't get the press the heart and the lungs do you know but the liver controls not only everything physical but everything mental. So although the transplant was a total success, my bipolarism was, you know, it hit the stratosphere with the reaction to all the drugs I had to take for the transplant. So within three weeks of my initial release from the hospital, I was readmitted to the Toronto General Hospital Psych Ward. I spent 26 days. So you got the liver. Yeah, I was catatonic suicidal again.

You got the liver and it's taking. Yeah. Everything was a success as far as the actual operation. Okay. But then the mental health thing complicated everything. And there you are, scarred and weak, and you got to go back to the psych ward? Canatonic. You're back in the psych ward, and they couldn't do anything for me.

But they knew they were able to connect the fact that you had the new liver with... Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There were still the procedures I had to follow for the new liver and stuff. Like I had to take six to eight pills twice a day type of thing. But who made the connection that the liver had some impact on the brain? It was like immediately when I saw a psychiatrist. Oh, really?

They said, oh, he's the liver. Yeah, that's the reason. We got to get him in here. But they had no idea how to do it because I didn't want to participate in anything. I didn't want to talk. I said one or two words the whole day, and they just freaked out. They put me on Ritalin, you know, just to get me emotional about anything. I was just sitting there going, I don't care.

The doctor would come in and go, have you had any suicidal thoughts today? And I go, not till you came in. And he'd write that down, not till I came in. And I go, if you don't know that was a joke you're not gonna look at how you people are idiots you know we have a great health care system in canada but we have room for improvement when it comes to mental health i think in general like the whole world is that true needs to up its game with the mental health so how long are you in like sort of like that zone of like, is this going to take? It was a good six months before I even tried to make a joke or feel normal again. And then it was like another year before I got comfortable on stage.

But in terms of like it actually not rejecting, how long does that take? Well, it's, there was never i mean that took right away but i also realized the importance of i had to take the anti-rejection drugs twice a day every day for how long uh well for the rest of my life oh really oh yeah it's it's uh no kidding either you're in you're out you know what i mean right right but i i resigned myself long time ago with the mental health thing that yeah if a pill works, I'm taking it. Sure. I'm not one of those people that have problems taking the pills.

With the edge? You're going to lose your edge? You had enough of your edge. Yeah. But the weird thing about after the transplant, I completely forgot everything I'd ever written. Really? I couldn't remember a word of my act. And one night in the hospital, I came to in the middle of the night, and I left the TV on, the little hospital bed TV.

Yeah. And I looked at it, and it was me just for laughs like 10 years. One of those goblets? Yeah. Yeah. And I was watching, and I couldn't believe that I was saying all these things in a row, and I couldn't understand how, what am I doing? And I thought I had nightmares about having to get a day job. And what am I qualified for?

A security guard. That's about it. Right. And that's, you know, it was. So you had to re. Yeah, I had to virtually start over. And the only nice thing about it was when I went to these open mics every night, they were thrilled that I was there. So you actually really started over.

So you got your psych meds leveled off. You're on your anti-rejection drugs. You know that you had an act at some point, but that was gone. So you got to go to open mics. Yeah. And you're feeling it out. And the only thing I can remember was the jokes I wrote about the recovery. And thankfully, most of them worked right away.

So I was lucky that way. And then the people at the open mics, they would let me do as much time as I wanted because they were just thrilled that I was there. I went to everything. I mean, like the most out of the way, like small little 30 people, whatever, I'd go and I had to start over. And this was like 2013? Yeah.

No shit. Yeah. I had to start over. It took a good year to get anywhere near comfortable on stage again what did you feel fear or was it just sort of like you know you didn't think you were funny like what what was it was just weird and you know like i i had to go back and watch tapes to learn to be myself again and the only nice thing was i would laugh out loud at something and then i'd realize oh, oh, wait a minute, that's mine.

I can do it again. Oh, great, the greatest hits. So I got the new stuff. I got the greatest hits. All right, we're ready to headline again. So everybody got to watch. Yeah. You put it back together.

Yeah, and they were all amazed that I came back because I looked really deathly before I got the liver transplant. There was plenty of exposure on the Canadian media and news shows. They followed the story. Were you orange? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I look at pictures now.

There was a point where three months in a row, I took a picture of myself every day. Yeah. And I look at those pictures now and I go, oh my God, I really was dead. People thought I was, you know, going to be dead. They were going to pick up the paper and read that I was dead.

I remember hearing that you were going to be dead. Yeah. It's unbelievable. People making bets on it. Sure. Yeah. Stan Hope's death pool.

You beat it. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, you look healthy. You look, you know,

full of life. It's not bad. Yeah, I'm hanging in there. I like to lose a few pounds right now that that'd be the only thing but yeah for the most part yeah and you're living back here uh no i'm still still living in ottawa that's where i had to resettle and stuff but being here for the week this is the first time i've been anywhere in the united states in five years oh

yeah and uh being back in la and stuff there is that itch there is that thing oh let's try it again you know don't do it to yourself i'm worried but i think i'm gonna try the outside pitch and i have a couple of scripts that if i can get one of those yeah anywhere then maybe i can stay outside of hollywood and don't come here without a reason without some money exactly some incentive but like what's is it nice to be back in ottawa i mean like i go to canada Don't come here without a reason, without some money. Exactly. Some incentive. But like, is it nice to be back in Ottawa? I mean, like I go to Canada now and I'm like, whatever I used to think about it, I'm like, this is comfortable. Well, yeah, it's a little, you just feel safer.

You just feel everything is calmer. And yet we have everything like what I call the best of the United States. We have HBO. We have all the movies and the games and everything. But the murder rate, no, you can keep that. No, we only want a quarter of that. Yeah, well, it's like America without the constant anxiety, without the panic. There's just an intensity here.

I used to think when I got to Canada, well, this is odd. Why are these people sitting outside? It's's nighttime this guy's just riding his bike the fuck is happening it's 10 30 at night exactly doesn't he know there's trouble at every turn somebody could kill this guy exactly like i was like what is happening you're an easy target they're just walking you just open up your wallet. You're outside. What do you do? Right, exactly. But now I go up there, I'm like, this is all right.

Yeah. You know, people aren't like freaked out. Everybody's hiding this freaked out. It's just a little calmer. Exactly. And it's ironic

when you see the statistics like per capita, more Canadians have guns than Americans. Yeah, but they're not nuts. But yeah, the shootings are, you know, the difference in the stats is amazing. It's fucking fascinating. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't, do you know why that is? Oh, they're just a little calmer. Just a little laid back. You know, like when you say somebody from Canada, you go, oh, Canada's a great country. Oh, thank you. We try. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you say America's the best, you're fucking right it's the best. Yeah, yeah. Fucking love it or. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you say America's the best, you're fucking right it's the best. Yeah, yeah. Fucking love it or leave it, buddy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, easy. Yeah, but I still wonder. I imagine growing up generationally over the years with the knowledge that you will get healthcare, whether it's good or bad or what you just know that it's

part of your life that you know that that's not a question no i think that means something yeah it's like the the deal breaker in canada is that people don't mind paying high taxes because they know it's going to go for things like you know health care and infrastructure yeah that's that's the thing that americans I think they forget. It's a good thing to pay tax. It's not something to admire the fact that Trump didn't pay any taxes for X amount of years. It's more admirable to, yeah, pay taxes because we all want people to live and, you know, have an education, this and that.

You know, there's things that you pay for. Yeah, not so much here. The education and the living here, it's sort of like, come on. Here it's like, oh, I got away with it. I got away with it. I got away with it. Right. It's not a thing to be admired.

I agree. That you got away with it. I agree. And what do you think of your guy, that Trudeau fella? Well, I've never been like a big political comedian. But just live in there. I mean, you know, is he all right or no? political comedian but just live in there i mean you know you're right or no yeah you know of course there's people up there that swear that he's the worst thing ever and baba and they and

then the other go oh yeah but the last guy was worse and this and that and it's always these arguments sure i i think the thing i hate the most about social media now is people have this intense desire to let people know what they don't like i don't care what you that's all of it like just tell us what you like let me react to something in a negative way it's just uh there's this intense desire but when you see that on a like a tweet or on facebook it's like having a great day today it's like then it's like then everyone's like ah fuck you yeah that's the response what what are you trying to pull well i'm glad you're doing well mike response. What are you trying to pull?

Well, I'm glad you're doing well, Mike. It was nice to see you. It was great talking to you, finally. Great, man. Thanks. There you go. Some hardcore comedy show there. That's what that is.

That's what this was. So what do you want to do? You go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs. You can pre-order the book. You can get on the mailing list. Hopefully we'll all be alive next week, tomorrow, whenever. Maybe I'll play some guitar that probably sounds familiar because I no longer know if I'm repeating myself, but I only play three chords in some variation and occasionally add a chord so I'm

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