WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 852 - Waiting For The Punch

Episode Date: October 4, 2017

Marc presents a special audio version of the first chapter of Waiting for the Punch: Words to Live by from the WTF Podcast. This chapter features thirty WTF guests talking with Marc about growing up. Hear from Conan O'Brien, Sir Ian McKellen, Kevin Hart, Mel Brooks, RuPaul Charles, Jim Gaffigan, John Oliver, Maria Bamford, Paul Scheer, Norm Macdonald, Molly Shannon, John Darnielle, Ahmed Ahmed, Dave Attell, Russell Peters, Joe Mande, Ron Funches, Allie Brosh, Gillian Jacobs, The Amazing Johnathan, Jon Glaser, Amy Schumer, Wyatt Cenac, Aimee Mann, Tom Arnold, Bruce Springsteen, Leslie Jones, Terry Gross, Dan Harmon, and President Barack Obama. 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.

You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now.

Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed,

how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates!

Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck, buddies? What the fucking ears? What the fuck, sticks? What the fuck, nicks? What's happening? I'm Mark Maron.

This is my podcast. How are you? It's been a horrendous few days. When I talked to you on Monday, I'd recorded that Sunday. So I had not witnessed. we had all had not witnessed all the horrors that happened over the next few days my heart goes out to everybody in Las Vegas everybody had family everybody in this country that had to watch another lunatic with a arsenal, lose his fucking mind, and kill people.

And then later that afternoon, Tom Petty was taken to the hospital and kept on life support for a little while, and then he died. and kept on life support for a little while, and then he died. And a lot of people know,

who watch my special, that I had sort of brought Tom Petty up as a guy whose music connects all people, despite of political or affiliation or differences, and really represented what America can be when it's great. He was great. He was a great American singer

and songwriter and great performer and it was just gutted by the end of that day, man. Next couple of days are bad. There's no more good news. It doesn't seem.

Just no more good news. There may be stories that provide some relief for a little while, but there's just no more good news. I don't know when that turns around. But I'll tell you, petty was great and his music is still here all of it and i can tell you this too i saw him on the 22nd at the hollywood bowl the second to the last show that he did in his life and he was having a great fucking time i it and it couldn't have been an act i think all of them were just thrilled to not only for the tour to be over but to be together as long as they've been together to have all those great songs to perform for people that love them the heartbreakers but tom looked like

he was having a great fucking time i can tell you that i did witness that and i've been listening to his music for the last couple days and that music will will forever be here even though Tom is no longer with us. He should have been for longer, but he isn't. And again, the disaster in Las Vegas, it just, we live in a country where any fucking idiot can get a gun or 50. And this happens. It's a real fucking horror show. And again, my heart goes out to everybody who lost people and uh city the country man just uh when is there going to be some good news how about now this is a unique show

how about now this is a unique show today because uh we're going to be doing basically an audiobook version of the first chapter of waiting for the punch words to live by from the wtf podcast it's a book that brendan and myself have put together it comes out next tuesday october 10th. So this is a special thing we're doing today. This was the thing with the book. We had some interest in possibly doing a book of interviews with a few different book publishers. And some of the ideas were to publish interviews as whole entities,

as the entire interview. And then we didn't really like that. We didn't see what the point of that was. And then we sort of really like that. We didn't see what the point of that was. And then we sort of come upon this other idea where we would break the book into themes that are often discussed on WTF and then utilize our tremendous catalog of interviews to pull bits and pieces from conversations

I've had with people that fit the theme. There's about a dozen themes in the book. And, uh, and I'll tell you, man, when I read it over it, I had a very profound experience because I don't remember everything I've said to everybody.

It's been over, we're in between 800, 900 episodes here. And I was reading a lot of the bits and pieces. I'm like, I don't remember having this conversation. I thought to myself, and not only that,

it really hits you in the guts, this fucking book. Like all of it is very, when people talk, having this conversation i thought to myself and not only that it really hits you in the guts this fucking book like all of it is very when people talk it comes at you at a different intensity than when people write when you can craft a paragraph or a page and cut and paste and edit and grammatically correct everything it's different than when someone's when someone's just talking talking to you it goes in a different. So the way this all sort of moves this book when you read it, it's just, it's sort of a beautiful experience to read about 150, 160 different people's experience with these themes. And you kind of move through them

all through their personalities. It's an amazing experience to read the book. And the reason we're doing the episode like this today is because there is no audio version of the book. It really is a unique experience as a book. And we wanted to have a life on the page. We made the book so it could be like its own thing. You know what I mean? Not just an extension of the podcast, but as a way to give everyone a taste of the book

today, just so they can get an idea of what it's like we put together the first chapter as an audio collection this is close to how the book is executed not exact but very close chapter one is growing up the other chapters of the book are sexuality identity relationships parenting addiction mental health, mortality, and life lessons. There are dozens of different people in each section, 158 total people. And how I'm going to do this today, I'm going to identify the speakers in this chapter by announcing their name the first time you hear them. But if they come up more than once, you'll only hear their name the first time. That'll help it flow better, more like the way it does when you're reading it.

So I'll read my intro. I do an intro to every chapter. John Oliver did the intro to the book, the foreword to the book. I wrote a little intro to the book. Let's do it. I'll read, I'll start with the first chapter and I will read my intro and then you will be engaged in the flow of people talking about growing. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get snowballs on Uber Eats, but meatballs and mozzarella balls. Yes, we can deliver that.

Uber Eats. Get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category.

And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Chapter 1. Growing Up. The Smaller Place It Came From. I had my adventures and misadventures growing up, but it's the varying mixture of what I did or didn't get from my parents that really leaves a mark. The relationship we have with our parents explains how we engage with the world and other people.

Sometimes bad experiences can lead us to a place of self-realization or, at the very least, give us a great story. Sometimes our childhood experiences take a lifetime to process, if ever. These stories define us, they haunt us, but they also can liberate us. I am positive I did not grow up properly. Does anyone really? Something is definitely off. There are obviously many reasons

for whatever emotional flaws I have as an adult, and I can trace most of them to my parents. I have grown into a place of gratitude rather than resentment toward them because it is essentially those flaws and my struggle with them that make me who I am. It is not really sympathetic or attractive to be actively mad at your parents after a certain age. You have to let it go at some point. It was 50 for me. My parents left me hanging in the providing the boundaries necessary for me to take chances and succeed and fail with the support and guidance

necessary to define my character department. I had to put my sense of self together from scratch. I spent a good part of my life moving through the world like a kid lost at a mall, looking to other grown-ups as role models. I learned which cigarettes to smoke from Keith Richards. I dressed like Tom Waits for most of my junior year of high school. I looked to Woody Allen to understand what it meant to be smart and funny. My mother was a bit sarcastic and could be a little cutting. She was funny. She was always expressing herself in a creative way. My father was unpredictable and explosive at times. Sometimes that explosion would go in, sometimes out. He thought he was funny, but he wasn't. They both had a lot of energy. These are the things in the plus

column. It's always good to learn about the struggles other people went through while they were growing up. I like that Paul Scheer felt comfortable sharing with me the very difficult situation he found himself in after his parents' divorce. Same with John Darnielle from the Mountain Goats, who is still dealing with the pain his stepfather put him through. I was able to laugh in disbelief at Molly Shannon's story of complete parental irresponsibility when she got on a plane without an adult and flew to New York City accompanied only by another child. I'm glad people still tell these stories about their childhoods. It took years of me talking to people in my garage to finally get some perspective on things I went through as a kid and stop them from undermining me as an adult. Well, that and a little therapy and some specific reading and age.

Conan O'Brien. I think I was an anxious kid. I was, you know,, it's not a glamorous. I was not the class clown. I was funny for my friends, but quiet in the classroom. And I worked really hard and I was kind of grim. And I have to say, I didn't really enjoy my childhood. Socially uncomfortable?

I was not socially uncomfortable, no, because I could make my friends laugh. But I just, I was not easygoing. From fourth grade to when? Till till like now sir Ian McKellen the first three years of my life I didn't sleep in a bed I slept on a mattress under a metal table in our downstairs room in case a bomb knocked the building over so and blackout material so that the lights didn't really attract any German bombers that were coming over. Do you remember that? Oh, clearly.

And not much to eat, but quite healthy eating. Rationing. Yeah. But, of course, you don't, when you're growing up, know that that's not the norm. And I was well looked after. A lot of love in my house. Kevin Hart. Grew up in Philadelphia, PA.

Like what kind of area? What kind of neighborhood? My neighborhood's shit. North Philadelphia, 15th area. You know, crime city. You know, right now I think we third in the world in deaths, probably. Yeah. New Year's, we opened it up with five murders in my city.

Yeah. Happy New Year. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's not the best place in the world, but I love it. It's home for me. Mel Brooks. My mother, Kitty.

Yeah. Kitty Kaminsky. Kitty Kaminsky. Yeah, Kitty Kaminsky. Raised four boys. You know, those days, diapers. Sure. You had to wash them.

Yeah, they brought them and it was cloth. I'll never forget one time I wanted to see a movie and I didn't, I, you know, she gave me three deposit bottles. Yeah. Each one three cents a piece. Milk bottles.

Milk bottles. Yeah. And so that was nine cents. You needed a dime. Yeah. And she went to, this is true, she went next door to Mrs. Miller. Yeah. And borrowed a penny. Yeah. so I could make the dime.

But she was, you know, I don't know if she was typical, but she was a wonderful, loving, caring, beautiful mother. RuPaul Charles. I was watching a kid the other day. He must have been about four years old, and he was so happy to be in a human body. He's just jumping around and going up upside down. And he was running over there. And he came around and was like, oh, my God, it's great.

I'm a human. Look at me. Look, I can do this. I can do it. That's what I want to do. For no reason. Just to do it. Just to do it.

Just move your hands, jump around, roll on the ground. Exactly. With an exhausted parent going, yes, you can. You can do that. Exactly. Exactly. But unfortunately, when I was a kid, you kid, my parents were in their own melodrama. And I really couldn't do that as much as possible.

Well, selfish parents make you, they don't provide a place where you can feel comfortable to be yourself even. Right. You just get steamrolled. Absolutely. They don't pay attention. You don't get any reaffirmation or any affirmation at all. Like, good for you, kid. You know, that's great.

You just sort of wallow in. Luckily for me, though, my sister, Renata, who's moving to Louisiana, who was my soul sister, whom I moved to Atlanta with and who got married at 17, her, she was my soul. She was the one who said, you're great. You should do this. Why don't you do that? I had that in my sister. So that was great. You should do this. Why don't you do that? I had that in my sister. So that was great.

Jim Gaffigan. Four boys and two girls, and I'm the youngest of six. What was, what, how, what's it, how old's your oldest brother?

The oldest in my family is my sister Kathy, and she's, I don't know, she could be like a hundred and I wouldn't know. And then my brother Mike is, I don't know, 50s? Yeah, somewhere in there. It's all a blur, you know?

It's like, who cares? Well, you kind of know. I mean, I kind of know that, you know, there's six kids over like seven or eight years. They're just old. Now they're old? They're older than me. Yeah, but like, well, how old were you when you saw them all leave, I imagine? Yes.

Yes. I always wonder about that. Was that difficult? Do you remember? Yeah. Yeah, it was a little bit. You're leaving me here with these people that are crazy. Your parents.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, there's a little bit of, you know, the enthusiasm wanes. Yeah. Right? At six? Oh, you're still here you know, the enthusiasm wanes. Right? They're like, oh, you're still here. Yeah, I'm still here. So there was some of that.

But there was also, and I, you know, when I started off, I used to, there's such an amount of distrust that develops in parents of that generation. They had been lied to by so many teenagers by the time i got there they were just like you're guilty and i was like i didn't do anything wrong and they're like just go to your room and you're like all right john oliver when my dad first started taking me to games i would wear to liverpool games i would wear i would make him let me wear my full liverpool kit so this is me at eight, nine years old. My full Liverpool kit underneath whatever I was wearing because there was a part of me as a child that felt if someone got injured on the field,

they would just turn to the ground and say, does anyone have a kit so that we can carry on? And I would say, yes, my name is John. I'm eight years old. And clearly somewhere in me, I think that this is going to turn out well. That this eight-year-old is going to be able to physically compete

with this 29-year-old super fit athlete. But that's the dream. That's touching. I wish I had that. I wore cleats to the game as well. You could hear this clip-clop of this eight-year-old kid going, let's do this.

I used to play the violin. I was very good at it because of the game as well. You're ready to go. So you just hear this clip-clop of this eight-year-old kid going, let's do this. Maria Bamford. I used to play the violin. Really? Was very good at it because of a weird, you know, you start when you're three so you're all of a sudden... You were playing violin at three? Yeah, yeah,

because my parents... Forced you? Well... Did they take your hands to the strings? It was forced in a way that I, you know, was not...

I was unconscious of what was happening until I was around 11 and then I said, oh, I think I'd like to quit. And they said, no. Oh, no. You cannot because we have put in a lot of time and

money and wow, you're freakishly good at it, so why not continue? So I was good at it, but I did not enjoy it at all. Paul Scheer. My mom took my Weird Al Yankovic in 3D album and broke it over her knee because it was a song was on there. It was called Nature Trail to Hell. And it was on one of the devil worship lists that the church had given them.

Your children have any of these albums, and one of them was a Weird Al album. You must find this and destroy it. She destroyed it in front of you. Yes. And what did you do? That and my LL Cool J album. Oh, shit. Yeah.

And it was terrible. I was crying. Like, no, my Weird Al album. Did you ever tell Weird Al that story? I did, actually. I got to tell Weird Al that story, which was awesome. And a great full 360 there. Oh, my God.

How did he respond? He just thought it was insane because it's the song is called nature trail to hell in 3d about going to a drive-in to see a horror movie called nature trail to hell in 3d like it's there's nothing i mean there's nothing satanic about weird al yankovic at all like in the greatest stretch of the imagination but like you know and i'd listen to in excess my, and my mom's like... But that might be Satan. It might be. You never know.

You never know. They're very cunning, charming. And that's it. That was very funny, yeah. Satan comes in Hawaiian shirts. Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah.

But my mom took all my action figures away and gave me Ten Commandments figures. I had Moses, literally a Moses action figure, and he had two tablets in his hand, the Ten Commandments. Oh, come on, are you kidding me? Oh, no. What did you do with those action figures? I would play with them like I would play Batman or G.I. Joe. Playing Moses?

Yeah, I would. I'd make Moses swing down a pole and get into a Batmobile. My head's still the Batmobile, so Moses drive a Batmobile. We were hardcore Catholic growing up. Church every Sunday? Yeah growing up yeah my parents are yeah the whole nine yards it's in my bones i mean as much as i've tried to uh evolve past it in certain ways uh it's in my bones what are the liabilities of it carrying it with you in your mind body shame really yeah Really? Yeah. Just, you know, it's funny because- On what level? I've been accused over the years of, oh, you're so, you know, you're self-deprecating and that's your act. And I was like, you know, it really comes from finding myself, you know, very flawed.

I think that's at the root of Catholicism is we're just flawed. And so- There's nothing we can do about it. And there's nothing we can do about it. there's nothing we can do about it and so i grew up just you know having a very dark self-view too tall or too what too skinny too tall you know my dick's too big you know it's just gonna hurt somebody well i don't want i hate to get that out there as a rumor but do you know what i mean my my dick is huge it's a lot of got a lot of birth. You don't want to hurt people. You don't want to hurt people. Well, no, the thing is,

and I was so worried for a long time, and I actually had doctors say, you're going to hurt someone with that. And then it was only later in life that I found out that, you know, this is a great gift, but... For years. For years.

But for years, I lived with the shame of this, you know, my penis is too big. I hope no woman ever finds out. Handicapped. Horrible handicapped. And so, you know, you live with these things things and then you eventually learn to work with them i was not a hypochondriac but i probably feigned illnesses to get my parents attention but i don't think i was uh i didn't believe i had the illness i just you know when you're one of six you want you you got to do anything to get some

face time so i was not beyond trying to just uh you know uh have something i mean i remembered envying i read death be not proud yeah with uh the john gunther jr's story john baseball player no death be not proud is about the boy who's like 14 and he gets a he gets a brain tumor oh and um it's really touching and everyone, you're supposed to read it when you're 13, 14 years old. You're supposed to just feel so terrible for the boy. And I read it and I thought, man, that guy's getting so much attention.

I remember envying a kid with a brain tumor and he dies at the end of the book. And I remember thinking, man, brain tumor, that's the way to go. The presence he got. Yeah, that's bad. Norm MacDonald. When Icdonald when i was very young i was very very very shy and very afraid of everything i mean people say they're shy when

they're kids but i was like it was a pathology aren't you still afraid everything i am i mean i try i try to hide it and deal with it but on a day-to-day basis i i know i'm not afraid of everything i'm afraid of very few things like what uh illness yeah yeah how'd you get how'd you get peace of mind out of the other shit well when i was i um when i was very i this is a weird thing that happened to me when i was young yeah i don't know if this means anything let's try it i remember it but it was a moment i had that was uh it wasn't religious or epinephic or anything but it transformed me to some degree is that i was always fucking so afraid of everything and if i went to a store i'd have to walk around forever

before i could even face a person in the store to buy a pack of gum i don't know why the fuck i was like this yeah but anyways when i was nine um there was a blind, we lived in rural Ontario and there was a blind friend of my dad's that I had to, he said, take him to the store. And I was like, what the fuck? Like I have to take this blind fucker? And I'm already shy and shit.

So I'm taking him to the store and then the fucker wants me to explain everything, describe everything to him. So i'm like there's some grass over here and now there's a lamppost and this guy's all happy oh what about the lamppost i mean it's just a lamppost yeah so it goes on and on but some thing happened to me during this sounds bizarre but something happened to me where i was actually instead of always looking inward which i think i'd always done before that one time, I was looking outward.

Anyways, while I was talking to him, I suddenly had a sort of hysteria. Like I was laughing. I started laughing and stuff. And I don't even know why I'm remembering this, but I started laughing about everything. And everything seemed like very, very funny to me. And then a couple a couple weeks later i saw a homeless guy and he was talking about he was he was talking he started talking to me yeah and he was talking to me about john d rockefeller he's like i was at john d

rockefeller's funeral yeah and all this shit yeah i was laughing at him and shit and then he started laughing and i was like it's all fucking crazy shit like Like, something came to me where I started. And so now I find everything funny except, like, death and shit. Molly Shannon. I was raised by my dad from the time I was really little. We were in a really bad car accident when I was really little. I was four, and my dad was driving, and my mom was killed, and my little sister was three, and my cousin.

So it was very hard on my dad he had to recover he he was very badly injured so we went to live with my aunt so it was very complicated it was a lot of sadness from a very young age but then also my dad was like a real survivor he he was uh he he drank when we were little but then he got into recovery. Oh, good. I think it was that generation of, you know, he was very Catholic, but repressed in a lot of ways, so there was some sadness with that. But he was also really charismatic and fun and would do anything, and he was real wild.

And really. Like what? That was such a great buildup. Like, we're going to go on the roller coaster with no seat belts. We would do crazy stuff. We would go to the airport and we'd be like, let's take a mystery trip. And we would have no suitcases or anything.

It was when they had those airlines where you could pay right on the airplane. Do you remember that? People's Express. You didn't have to even fly under your name in the old days. Anybody's name. So we would go to the airport, pick a city, and just fly to the city

and then borrow clothes when we got there or buy clothes. Like crazy stuff. And my dad would call in sick for me to school. Like very... Sounds like a great father.

Come on, fuck school. We're going on an airplane. He had depression and I think he would also could be really, he'd go up and down. Sure, that's exciting. So I think he had fun. I have one of those.

It's very exciting. Yeah, yeah. Like you literally went to cities, and you just not, you didn't have clothes, so you'd buy clothes. Yeah, I'd borrow a bathing suit from the woman that worked behind the counter. And you know, like crazy, crazy stuff like that. And then I hopped a plane when I was 12. We told my dad, me and my friend Ann, we're like that and then I hopped a plane when I was 12

we told my dad me and my friend and we're like we're gonna hop a plane to New York and he was like he dared us yeah

so we went how old were you we were like 12 oh good that's good we went to the airport and we had ballet outfits on and we put our hair in buns

and we wanted to look really innocent and this was again when flying was really easy you didn't need your ticket to get through apparently you didn't need an adult either.

And we told my dad and we were just like, we saw there were two flights. We were either going to go to San Francisco or New York. And we thought, oh, let's go to New York. It's leaving early. So we went. We said to the stewardess, we just want to say goodbye to my sister. Can we go on the plane? And she was like, sure. And then she let us on. And it was a really empty flight because it was out of Cleveland, Ohio.

And we sat back there and then all of a sudden you just hear like the plane takes off. We were like and we had like little ballet outfits and buns and I was like, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou, most holy, blessed are you and she is the only Mary, mother of God, pure person, is now the

only child of the earth. And then the stewardess that had given us permission to go say goodbye to my sister came by to ask if we wanted snacks or beverages. And she was like, can I get you ladies something to eat? She looked like she was like, oh, motherfucker. You know, so we wondered if we were going to get in trouble,

but she ended up not telling anyone. And then when we landed in New York City, she was like, bye, ladies. Have a nice trip. It's such an exciting story but the irresponsibility of all the adults in this story is somehow undermining my appreciation of it. You were 12 year old girls in fucking ballet outfits

and everybody's sort of like, have a good time. What world was that? It was a crazy world. What did you do in New York? And now you're just like, we got drunk and we went to a... Well, again,

because I had a crazy childhood, we called my dad. We were like, we did it. And he was like, oh, dad, Molly. Oh, jeez. Well, try to... So basically,

he couldn't say... Try to what? He didn't know what to do. He said, try to see if you could stay. Go find a hotel that you could stay in. Oh, my God. Me and Mary, my sister, will come meet you. We'll drive there.

So basically, we were like, all right, we'll try to find a hotel. But he was kind of excited because he liked crazy stuff. But basically, we didn't have that much. We just had our ballet bags and a little bit of cash. So we went to a diner, and we dined in Dash, and we stole things. We were like little con artists. Wait, did you actually make it to the city?

We made it to the city. We just asked people. I was like, how do you get to Rockefeller Center? Because I had just seen TV. And you're still in your ballet outfit. Ballet outfit, yeah. Nobody said, are you girls lost? Nothing like that?

No, nothing. They went into a bar, and got, drink up, ladies. Yeah, yeah. So we did try to go to hotels and my dad would call and ask, could they just stay there till we get there? And none of the hotels wanted to be responsible. Oh, my God. So he was like, all right, you got to come home. And he was like, but I'm not paying for it.

So try to hop on one on the way back. So we tried to hop on many planes, but the flights were all so crowded. So we ended up having to have him pay for it, and he made us pay it all back with our babysitting money. So that was the big punishment? Yeah, there was no punishment. No, I know.

I mean, clearly, was there any sort of like, oh, you survived, I was just testing you. He loved that kind of stuff. Like I said, he was wild. He used to, in his drinking days, he would, you know, go to bars. And if somebody didn't let him in, he'd be like, damn it. You know, he'd go into the bar and knock all the glasses down. He was like a kind of guy who could maybe get arrested.

Like, it was crazy. I love the sort of strange, nostalgic excitement you have for this borderline child abuse. Yeah, it was complicated. Oh, now you're going to say that? Yeah, there's just one story that's complicated. But he was also a very loving parent. I think it's complicated. He was also really supportive and kind of made me feel like I could do anything.

And so in that way, it felt really free and wild. But then in other ways, I had to learn the rules of how regular people live. From other people, I'm taking it. Yeah, from other people. Like professionals. Like people you pay. You know what I mean. John Darn darneel okay so i want you to think yeah wherever you were when you were five right yeah where was it uh wayne new jersey oh

man and with both parents yeah do they still own this house or have they oh no no no no we live there we left when i was about six but it was a red brick apartment complex. Cool. Okay. That's where I first saw the harmony guitar. That's where I first remember it being played. Oh, that's an amazing memory. But when you think of it, when you think of yourself standing in it, does it seem like

you have room to run around and to be a kid? No, not really. Not really. My place seemed big to me in my mind. The hallway. Yeah. I remember running all the way to the end of the hallway and running all the way back down and being exhausted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, man, I'm running all the way to the end of the hallway and running all the way back down and being exhausted yeah oh man i'm running all the way to the to the heater at the

end and back that's two steps right now that i've been in the house it's two paces and i remember running down that hallway and the distance between my room my parents room which i remember being a walk it's like if i have to go see dad to talk to him about something i'm gonna walk down the hall i'm gonna get a talking to you know right that's two steps so those memories were like of what three years old four years old four yeah four three and those are the only things

you really remember I remember well the thing is like we had added a room while I was there and it was called the front room and I remembered it being a cavernous big room

with very high ceiling it's a fucking garage really it's the tiniest it's where the students live now because now it's a rental unit there was a fucking poster of Biggie and Tupac in on the front door i was so stoked and uh and i was like well these

people won't mind if i knock on their door so did they know who you were no they never heard of me i was glad that would have been really awkward so uh oh my god oh really this is my old house could i come in and feel sad about shit you don't mind if i come in and weep in the hallway do you no that was what i did i walked in i looked around and just went whoa so this is a bedroom now because this is the front room we had a piano in there and a stereo were you telling this to whoever a little bit but for the most part i was just i mean i didn't want to see you sort of like the weird old guy that yeah kind of came by and now the weird permanently young guy who came back but uh no it's like i try i i try i wanted to keep it uninvasive i wanted to go i know this is strange but i lived here when i was a child and i am a musician i happen to be playing in town

if i could just come in just to see the house i used to live in just for a second that would be awesome and they let me right in i looked at the backyard i looked at my old room and i nodded and said thank you and then you know then told my therapist about it when i got home but it wasn't that traumatic it was like it was just it was interesting it was kind of sweet in a way it's good to see it's when when you feel like you're okay with of sweet in a way it's good to see it's when when you feel like you're okay with where your life is at it's good to see the smaller place it came from ahmed ahmed then my dad my parents immigrated to uh to the states i was a month old uh-huh yeah i was like a lion king yeah i would have gone to america um and then we ended up in riverside

california which is where I was raised. And we were the only Arab family, not only on the block, but in the whole, almost the whole city, really. All white? What is that? Wow, yeah. Well, you know. Latino? It was interesting because we ended up in this little, like, cool little suburb inside of, you know, L.A. and Riverside and close to the college campus ucr it was very um like middle

class and a little bit lower middle class mostly white families but then our high school was really racially diverse yeah black mexican yeah uh asian and we were sort of considered like the thug high school like you know athletes would come and do really well there, but there was also some gang violence and that sort of thing. Right. But when I was in high school, you know, I blended in perfectly. Like, nobody really, they were like, you know, what is it, where are you from? You mean if you didn't say your name?

Even when I'd say my name and they'd hear Egypt, they were always sort of mystified by it. And I'd get the little jokes like, you know, did you come in on your flying carpet? And did you climb a pyramid? And do you have camels? And like all those jokes have changed now. Generic, yeah.

Now it's like, do you fly planes? Are you good in chemistry? Yeah. Do you use fertilizer every day? Yeah. How many wives do you have? I remember growing up when I was a kid thinking, my family's weird. We're just weird.

I don't know how to put my finger on it. I grew up thinking we're not, and maybe everyone grows up that way, but I remember thinking we're kind of like an Irish Catholic Adams family. Like there's something off with us. So I very much grew up feeling where, now my mother would be horrified.

She'd say, that's not true. Oh dear. My mother is Margaret Dumont in the Marx Brothers movies. Well, I don't know why you would say that. That's not true. But that was the feeling that my brothers and sisters all had. We're an odd family, and we never quite knew what we were. The kids would come over to my house,

and this is a joke I used to do because it's a true story. One of my friends walked in, and my parents were praying, and it's a joke I used to do. Cause it's a true story. One of my friends walked in and my parents were praying and he looked at me and he said, what are they looking for? And I was like, I go, Oh, they're, well, they're praying. And he's like, to who? And I'm like, so I always had to explain what Islam was and talk about, you know, the, the belief of it all behind it. We were like the Arab Munsters. We were like the Arab Adam family. We were. We were like the weird family on the block.

Because my mom was always cooking stuff with spices that Americans weren't used to, like cumin and stuff like that, garlic. And all these weird fumes would be- And you'd bring friends over and you'd have to explain. Yeah, what are they? What's your mom cooking? Cow brains? Or, you know, whatever.

And my dad, you know, he was a night owl. So he'd sit up until 3, 4 in the morning watering the grass, smoking cigarettes by, you know, watering by hand. So the neighbors were always like, what are you doing out there for? So you were religiously odd and then actually odd. And on top of that, because my parents only ate halal food or kosher food, they didn't sell it back then in the 70s at stores. So my dad had to drive to Fontana, California with our station wagon and load up. He'd go to a farm and load up the station wagon with chickens and ducks and rabbits.

And do it himself? And they'd bring it back. We had a live meat locker, basically, in our backyard. Really? And every day around five five my mom or earlier my mom and dad would go out to the backyard and they'd pick out a chicken and my dad would hold it down and say the muslim prayer please bless this soul and let our family have sustenance no and my mom would do the there's a way you sacrifice they say cut the head off so the animal doesn't

suffer and uh you know and she you know it's like Clash of the Titans. She's holding up this head and she's got blood all over her. It was like, ah. And we were eating dinner by, you know, by 9 p.m. The funny thing was the kids would come over during the day from the neighborhood and play with the rabbits or the chickens or whatever. And they'd come back to find their favorite rabbit they're playing with. And it was gone. They're like, what happened to Fluffy?

Yeah. We ate him. We're eating his sister tonight. Dave Attell. I do mostly my dad on stage. I used to work for my dad. So I do like how he- What does he do?

Work where? My parents had a bridal dress tuxedo rental shop. And I worked there from the time I was like 16 till I was, I guess, 19. And which is, I guess, slave know underage whatever right no i guess not 16 but i was like what was your job there like getting shoes i cleaned the store i was head of shipping and receiving i sold shoes you're ahead of shipping and receiving yeah it was me and my grandpa so i was his boss and um my dad used to the way he used to talk to me i would i i do that

on stage as my control voice yeah which it Which helps me. What is that voice? You know, the sarcastic, whatchamacallit, biting, cutting dude. Yeah, yeah. It works. It definitely works. Because I realize that's how men talk. Yeah. My dad was a man, and that's how men talked.

And they didn't give, you know, they would do things. I one time saw my dad with diabetes,-blown you know like diabetes lift uh like 150 pound cash register like one of these old cash registers just by himself and i was the guy who was like working out you know back then i you know every kid in long island lifted weights and practiced karate i couldn't lift it and he like just fucking lifted it put it over there lit a cigar and said like okay what what next what do we have to do next i'm like only a man can do that because he knew it had to be done russell peters my dad was a meat inspector really yeah he worked in a chicken plant oh my god so you know he he just fucking did you ever go to work with him no he he has to wear what he had to wear whites and rubber boots and a hard hat and

horrendous and he would come out stinking every day it's horrendous and my mom worked in the cafeteria at kmart no remember those cafeterias that you said in the back with the salisbury steak yeah and now a great day for us would be when there was salisbury steak left over my mom would bring it home no yeah are you serious or hot dogs like yes special night yes oh my god so there was nothing there wasn't ever like the, you know, everyone always asks me, what about being a doctor or a lawyer? I'm like, there's none in my family. Joe Mandy. Both of my parents were trial lawyers.

So I just, there was a few years where I just didn't talk to my parents because they would just, oh, man, between my sister and I, we would just get cross-examined on everything. Oh, my God. That was just how we were raised, just constant. So always looking for the lie? They were always looking for the lie even that it was just it was crazy so and my parents are much they never said that my client my son basically i mean like we would be sitting at a dinner table if they smelled anything fishy they would they were back on the clock and just grilling us until they figured out what the issue was or whatever and so oh my god and my sister and i both handled that in different ways because i think from seventh to

tenth grade i just basically just pleaded the fifth on everything you know i mean i just didn't talk to them because i didn't want to incriminate myself so i really like there's a few years i hardly ever talked to my parents just out of fear of being uh grilled yeah and my sister on the other hand she uh she sort of just pled insanity my sister was just this like wall of noise she just like everything was just anytime my parents tried to confront her and she'd just scream and slam her door and that was i kind of jealous actually that's a much better tactic i just internalized everything ron funches i remember my first day of school, my mom was just being like, hey, like some kids are going to like you.

Some kids are not going to like you for who you are. Don't ever change who you are for them. Just like if kids like you, cool. If they don't, fuck them. She said that? Mm-hmm. God damn. I wish I had your mom.

She made her own mistakes. But she's pretty awesome. In high school, they thought I had the most severe case of IBS they'd ever seen. She made her own mistakes. But she's pretty awesome. In high school, they thought I had the most severe case of IBS they'd ever seen. They thought it was stomach cancer. Because I literally, for about four years, woke up every morning with just explosive diarrhea. Just every morning. That was just part of my routine. Have you got any good shitting in public stories in your pants?

There was one time. pants uh there was one time actually there's one time i was on a conclave sorry being insensitive no it's fine i that's it's my life you know shitting all the time uh i was at this thing for my jewish youth group when i was like 15 jewish youth group story yeah and we were on a bus in wisconsin and we had just uh Yeah, and we were on a bus in Wisconsin, and we had just gone to Taco Bell. So, I mean, already, red flags. Did you know when you were eating it that? I mean, yeah, it's always like sort of Russian roulette with Mexican food.

Yeah. Mexican roulette. Yeah. And immediately, I just knew I had to go, and it was like in a school bus. Yeah. So, there was no bathroom, and I had to go up to my rabbi, the front of the bus and say, you know,

uh, bad things are happening to me. We really need to pull over the next rest stop. And, uh, he was like, yeah, I'll make sure of it. So we went back,

I went back to the back of the bus and, you know, the rest stop was five miles ahead and I'm just like, you know, pacing and, and then the bus driver just blew right past it and the next rest stop wasn't for like 45 miles and i didn't know i i my body was going to explode you know and i and to this day i can't listen to tom petty without thinking of uh

i put on the wildflowers album and like the only time I've ever successfully meditated. But I meditated for those 45 minutes to the next rest stop and ran. And my friend was in the bathroom, and he said he's never heard a human body make those kinds of noises. I was in there for, everyone on the bus is waiting for me.

I was in there for like 35 minutes just evacuating. So that is an amazing testament to the power of meditation and complete fear of peer judgment. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I probably hurt my body in the long run the way I was clenching every muscle. Because that is a superhuman feat. That is almost... I still, to this day, I don't know how I did it because it was bad. This is not my nose. My nose was completely rebuilt. Shattered. No, it was. I was beaten up not my nose my nose was completely shattered no it was I

was beaten up uh I ran into like yeah I'm not kidding I ran into a street gang who and I was wearing a t-shirt that had the Irish flag on it and I they were Italian uh and this was right near the aquarium in Boston down and I was with my yeah I was with my friend at the time John Medeiros and this is late high school. So it's near the North End, kind of. Yeah, and they beat the shit out of me. Got hit him too? No, left him alone,

because I was a little bit of a wise guy. They said they wanted 50 cents, and I said no, and they said, why not? And I said, I don't feel like it. And just as I finished that it, the ta sound, I got hit so hard in the face. Did you fight back? I mean, I got hit a bunch of times so hard in the face

that I don't think I did much, I don't remember. And I remember it was over pretty quickly and then I had to have my, I went to the emergency room and the doctor, I'll never forget his name, Dr. Constable. He had a British accent, and he looked kind of crazy. He had crazy hair, and he looked like the poet Ezra Pound. And I said, is my nose broken?

And he said, broken? Good God, man, it's a bag of bones. I'll never forget that. That's a true story. In ninth grade, I took Spanish in high school. It was the only non-honors class I ever took. And I showed up the first day, ninth grade, so I was very short and braces and sweater vests. I don't know why I wore sweater vests. Who made you do that? What? I thought it was cool.

And I got into Spanish the first day of class, and it was just me and the JV basketball team. That was the class, basically. Right. And I was like, it'll be fine. I listened to Outkast or whatever. And I sit down, and they were just ruthless. They would make fun of me. They would call me names.

They would choke me. I got choked a lot, but it was never violent. They just would come up from behind when I wasn't expecting it and like rap sometimes it was like piano wire i don't like they had piano wire they would like wrap wire around my neck and i would freak out obviously yeah and then they would let go and just crack up they'd be like ah ha ha you stupid yeah yeah you know he's like oh he's writing for the right reason right what an idiot right what an idiot i was like how stupid of me to freak out. Yeah.

So it was just, it was bad, and they would throw like empty cans of soda at my head and stuff. It was just, it sucked. And the teacher just let this happen? Yeah, our teacher, that Spanish teacher was so broken, you know, she was so done with life that she like,

it was chaos. Like she was an older public school teacher. Yeah, she looked like Newman from Seinfeld, so everyone called her Newman. They would call her Miss Newman, and she would respond. I mean, it was bad. And then that December, our principal made this big announcement that no more gambling was allowed in the hallways. Was there gambling?

Yeah, people played dice in the hallways and stuff. Oh, my God. We're kind of fucking hype was this? It was crazy. There were active dice games? There were active dice games. Like, come on, seven! The Asian kids would have breakdance competitions in between classes.

In the hallway. In the hallway. And I actually started doing this thing. I do it on stage sometimes, too. I got really good at making it look like i was about to start break dancing because actually i was just trying to get through the hallway right but i would get in the middle of this like big circle and it would be like my turn and i would start like moving around to the to the music and like you know pumping my shirt and making it look like i was about and i

would just do it until they realized i was never gonna start break and i would go for like two minutes without actually doing any dancing before they like pushed me out of the circle. But anyway, but back to the story. So our principal, she instituted this no gambling policy. And I, I saw an opportunity and I went up to these kids in the back of my class and I was like, you know, I can teach you a gambling game that you'll never get in trouble for playing if you just stop choking me right it

was that clear there was a negotiation yeah it was a clear negotiation and they thought about it and the next day i brought i taught them how to play dreidel for money stop it i swear and so for like a good month outside my spanish class you would walk by and just see these black kids and like avarex jackets huddled over a top. Yeah, just like, yo, that's a W, motherfucker. Pay up. Ali Brosh. I was never a cool kid. Right.

They sort of like made an attempt to maybe like, maybe I could be in that group, but I was too scared. They reached out. They sent a representative. Yeah, they reached out. And I was too scared. I was, no, I'm not going to do that. Not cool.

Too much pressure. Yeah. I'm going to have to keep up with music. Yeah. I didn't figure out what people are wearing so you felt like an outsider oh yeah yeah i um i was always an awkward kid i just never i was always behind never knew what to do with myself or like how to be uh i feel like I got most of my, so my friend, my best friend, this is this kid named Joey.

He was a cool kid and I never was and I always felt very intimidated by him and much of my early life was defined by trying to get him to think that I was cool. And he would give me advice on like how to dress. So I spent my early preteen years wearing like JNCO jeans and baggy shirts. Yeah. Totally. Sure.

Like rocking the skater guy look. Yeah. Yeah. And you never felt comfortable? I mean, I didn't fit into anybody but him. Like he didn't know what he was doing either is the thing. Like he didn't know what he was doing. So he was pulling it off.

To me, he looked like he knew what he was doing. So he confided in you that like, look, I don't know what's going on either. He didn't confide in me. It's just now that we're adults, I can clearly see that. You're still friends with him? Oh, yeah, yeah. Really? So it lasted.

Yeah. That's great. And initially it wasn't a dating thing. It was just pals. No, no. You just felt like outsiders. Yeah. I was like the tumor on his life.

He saw that I wasn't meshing with like he found this life. He saw that I wasn't meshing with, like he found this group of cool friends and I wasn't meshing with the cool friends. What do you mean we're meshing? How does that happen? Like what moment signifies that for you? The unmeshing? They could just tell,

like they, cool kids have this sense where they can just know that you aren't one of them, right? And they can see like and okay so it also didn't help that about three months earlier my friend joey had dared me to shave my head uh oh you did that i did that um because because he dared me to and i didn't want to look like people that don't know who they are can't shave their heads yeah exactly and i didn't

know who i was and i did that i i hadn't i hadn't worried about it up till that point really and what happened well so so this was i was 13 i think when i shaved my head uh and this it was like it was really bad timing it's about two weeks before i discovered that i'm interested in boys yeah i i had no like no view of self before this no like no self-consciousness, nothing. Then I shaved my head and I discovered, wow, I'm not pretty. And it was pure.

Like this was unadulterated. No distraction with hair. Yeah, it was nothing. And oh, and I had giant braces. You know, when you do something like that, like when you do something that's so obviously like, it just shows that you don't know how to fit, you know, do the things that show people you can be one of them. Like they see you and they're like this. There's something wrong here.

My dad sent me to a Dale Carnegie training course on how to win friends and influence people. For 18 weeks, I went with some businessmen and women and and it saved me. It saved me. Yeah. Like like i was super depressed was like sleeping all day through school and and i was like okay and i totally did all the things and suddenly like i was able to have friendships you know like where just had like a format of how to talk to people and because i had so much anxiety and so you, you know, I would say, Hi, Mark. Mark, it's really great to see you. You know, Mark, your set was so great last night, Mark. I really, I mean, so what?

And then you listen to people and then you tell the person back what they just said, but with a positive spin on it. And it was fantastic, I tell you. And like immediate results. Really? Yep. And then it all crashed down.

I went to college, and people on the East Coast were like, why are you talking like that to me? Why are you all, just calm down. Oh, no. Where'd you go to college? I was at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. And I think there was an air of hysteria with my Dale Carnegie techniques in college because I was very afraid. So I'm sure they were telling me to calm down for good reason.

So you're smiling a lot and very wired. Oh, very nice. Gillian Jacobs. My interests were always very different than what other kids my age were into so I think that we didn't really have a lot to talk about and I think the more they didn't understand me the louder I talked about what I was into so they just

didn't know what to make of me did you wear costumes and what not? I didn't wear costumes to school no but my mom would only let me buy clothes that she approved of so I had like I wore a lot of sweater sets in high school because she liked sweater sets and in high school yeah you couldn't fight that didn't no no i remember i remember like going to an outlet store and wanting to buy a skirt that my

it was not a revealing skirt it was a floor-length skirt but my mom was like i don't like it the material looks cheap and she wouldn't let me buy it. So you were stuck in sweater outfits? I was stuck dressed like a middle-aged woman, yeah. The Amazing Jonathan. I used to be able to bend spoons. I figured out how to bend a spoon using my mind, but it was just misdirection. I would make them look away for a second, and I would bend it.

Is that what most sweaty hand is? Yeah, yeah. But I did it really well, and I did it for my physics teacher, who I really admired, and he said to me, is that real? Are you really doing this, or is it a trick? Yeah. And I was really unpopular in school. I was not standing out at all. Yeah. So I lied, and I said, yeah, I can really do it, thinking that that would be the end of it.

Yeah. Nah, the next hour, I'm sitting in class, I hear on the speaker, Jonathan, John Zellers, please come to the principal's office. I'm like, shit, this has something to do with the spoon bending. I know it does. I walk in there. There's my mom and my dad. They call out of work. There's a bunch of spoons on the desk and a local reporter from the Macomb Daily paper. Yeah. And I'm like, fuck. This is not good, man.

So the physics teacher set you up to this? Yeah. He asked me if it was real, and I lied to him and said, yeah. So he called, and they got a reporter to come down. They wanted me to demonstrate my powers. My mom took me aside before this. I said, can you really do this or are you just lying? And I looked her straight in the eye and I said, I can really do it.

It's like a snowball going down. I said, I can really do it. And so I proceeded to bend all the spoons and they freaked out. And then I thought. You succeeded in the trick at all times. Yeah. I bent everything and the reporters he's chomping at the bit

to do this great story about a psychic kid but I had to figure a way out of it because I figured that the magicians local magicians would bust me on it

and make me a fraud but they can't they can't give away the trick why would they they would say I'm lying this is what he's doing like magicians do

you know magicians they bust Uri Geller for doing it they'll bust me tooeller for doing it. Yeah. They'll bust me too. I mean, if it's in the paper,

you can bet someone's going to come forward and go, that's bullshit. He's just tricking. Right, right. So I had to figure a way out of it. And this is how I got out of it. Yeah. I told my mom that I did want to be a normal kid.

I didn't want to be a freak in school. I just wanted to be a normal kid. I didn't want everyone looking at me like I was weird. And she bought it. They all bought it and nobody did the story but it leaked. This is the good part.

It leaked out and I didn't get that press which I didn't want but everyone thought I was this mysterious and I got mad pussy. I got mad pussy in my senior year.

I did, yeah. Oh, because you were like the wizard. Yeah, I was like the man who fell to earth. Yeah. So. And that's when you knew show business was the thing yeah yeah man if a chick thinks that you can read her mind or anything like that you're in did you try to do that with chicks oh yeah

would they go to the bathroom like going through their purse take their license out get their birth date no there's zodiac sign i have all the details we could put it back real fast in their purse they come back and we'd be doing lines let me touch your forehead for a minute boom you're a virgo john glazer i remember my stepdad telling me about that when he and my mom told me they were getting married i was in high school and he said he was he said he was actually very impressed about how i handled it like they just told me they were getting married. I remember those, both of those moments. When my mom and my stepdaddy got married,

I was probably 14. And he said, I just sort of like sat there quietly. Yeah. You know, took it in. Kind of just got up from the table, went upstairs, put on like shorts and t-shirt and my running shoes and just went jogging but it wasn't like i could go like running somewhere and then come back right lived in this apartment complex right that sort of had a loop so like they told me

they were getting married and then i just left and they watched me run laps around the building but yeah but he said he was well it was like around five buildings yeah it wasn't just like like quick laps right but he said he was like oh that's i'm very impressed how he's handling this city's dealing with it yeah but also when my dad i remember when he told me he was getting remarried the first time yeah um i was in sixth grade and i was taking violin lessons doing i think the Suzuki. And he picked me up and my mom always picked me up. So right away I'm like, all right.

Okay. This is after their divorce, obviously. Yes. Yes. They live close by. How old were you when they got divorced? I was probably eight. Yeah.

And so now sixth grade. Was that devastating? It was pretty weird. I have vague memories of it, but I remember being, just crying and sitting on the steps and just being really upset and yelling, but I don't remember the moment. Right. It's just all kind of vague,

but I do remember it being upsetting. But when he was getting remarried the first time, I do remember, yeah, picking me up from violin and that was already something, I know something's up, something's not right. Yeah.

And then, hey, I thought we'd go get a bite to eat you know anywhere you want to go i was like all right the fuck is going on yeah and there was a sub shop ironically enough because i know i do all this sandwich humor stuff which people are probably like all right we get it you like sandwiches but there was a place that i liked right across the street i just it was more about like oh let's just go there like i didn't it wasn't like i was gonna say oh great let's go to this great place i just it was more about like oh let's just go there like i didn't it wasn't like i was going to say oh great let's go to this great place i just knew something was up yeah so we went there but it wasn't a sit-down place so we get these sandwiches and just go sit in his car right in the parking lot yeah and it's like you're not gonna fit his face in the school across

the street and i'm just sitting there kind of you know very kind of tight you know you're saying my sub and it's right next to me and you know tight to my chest and i just i kind of felt like i knew what was coming yeah the more i'm just think trying to think about like what is going on yeah and i'm like oh i think i know what's about to happen so we're sitting there and kind of quietly eating and he's like hey so you know i got some news for you and uh just wanted to let you know that you know shelly and i are decided to get married and i can just you know feel my body just crunching the sandwich super tense and just not sure you just didn't know how to handle it but it was upsetting yeah and it shouldn't have been you know it should have been like oh great yeah you know you're great good for

you did you like shelly she was awesome yeah she was so cool but i was just like didn't know how to handle it and so i just i did not say a word i just sat there just eating my sandwich probably not even eating it just but just kind of and we just sat there in silence and then he eventually started the car and drove me back to my mom's it was really fucking weird and i don't think we've ever even talked about it. Not because we're avoiding it. I always just forget. But I always just, I want to, I feel like I have to just, what was he? So just to know what he was thinking in that moment, how he felt.

Yeah. So weird. Amy Schumer. Okay. So mom leaves dad. Yeah. Has an affair with my best friend's dad. Oh man.

Breaks up their family. And I'm in school. We're trying to still be best friends. Like, we were best friends. It was crazy. It was crazy. Because it always happens in the community. People forget that.

Like, you know, when you stick your dick into something that's, you know, nearby, the ripple effect is going to be fairly profound. Yeah, like, that vagina is going to be at a PTA meeting with your wife next week. Yeah. Yeah. It sucked. So, the whole town was affected by it. Yeah.

And so she was like, you know, she was has to print. She was. And maybe that's like sort of where it came from. Like I was like, well, I love my mom. She's my family. So fuck you guys. And then years later, I was like, mom, how could you do that? You know, but not till a while later.

Did you say that to her? When I was 16, I got angry. I was was running away i started when i started really stealing a lot yeah uh so yeah it was funny i um i played volleyball like pretty seriously right i was on this club team and it was like uh preliminaries for the junior olympics and uh my mom was a chaperone we need to go to san jose from new york to san jose and uh i got caught stealing at this tournament so i was benched the whole tournament and she just like so i'm standing there with my knee pads around my ankles and my mom's just like standing there there for the whole weekend having to stare at me with hatred but i could always stare right back at her and be like yeah but you

ruined my life my dad uh had a drug problem for a while and then which drug uh i'm assuming a few but mostly cocaine oh yeah yeah oh so he so that's why your parents split up because of the drugs so your mom was like fuck this i'm going to chicago with the kids will you get your shit together give me a call yeah okay and so he didn't call for several years yeah he wanted to really finish up whatever he was working on it's a business too yeah yeah but he started getting in touch a little bit later and he was going to portland to work in construction and chicago wasn't working out too well for me he's got his own things going on we don't really talk that much you don't no Why? It just was never a positive influence for me.

Like anything that I wanted to do. Like he wasn't there to parent me, but he still wants to, you know, then offer advice. I'm like, you don't. He was like, wants me to be a super Christian. Like he wants me, you know. Oh, really? He's one of them? He's one of those.

When did that come around? After the drugs left? Yeah, of course. You got to always replace one thing with another. Replace Coke with Jesus. I think that's a slogan. And then out of the high school, just hanging out and working at canneries or Chuck E. Cheese. Canneries?

What's canneries? You know, we can groceries or can beans and broccoli and stuff at a factory you put it in cans they have those in portland yeah well they had them in in oregon yeah in salem is that i didn't know it was known for that they're known for being cannery yeah they're like a flavor right flavor right the you know any type of frozen peas place oh yeah yeah that's where they come from and did you uh what would you operate machinery? No. Never.

I would just have to pick out stalks of broccoli and put them in a chute and avoid putting my fingers close to blades. And then one day my job was to pick out like rats and snakes out of the stuff. And yeah, that was the last day I went. Come on, man. Out of the vegetables? Mm-hmm. Really? Yeah. Dead ones? Yeah. Out of the vegetables? Mm-hmm. Really?

Yeah. Dead ones? Yeah. What, because they'd steam them? Because they just kind of get rooted up. They're not plucked out by individual farmers. They're just put all together. And so when they're originally dumped, they're just dirt and rocks and vegetables and dead rodents.

Really? I let a lot of rats go through. You did not. Oh, yeah. No, I'm not. Do I look like a person I let a lot of rats go through. You did not. Oh, yeah. No, I'm not. Do you think I look like a person that touched a lot of rats? No. No.

Wyatt Cenac. I was born in New York. New York City. New York City. I was born in New York, and I lived there for a little while. My mother and father lived there, and then they split up when i was about a year old oh really young yeah my mother remarried and then maybe when i was about three my mother stepfather and i moved to texas and we moved to dallas texas what was he where what happened with

the uh original old man uh he like where is he now yeah he was murdered when i was four but you had a relationship with him yeah i mean he was i i would still go visit my grandmother my maternal grandmother lived in new york so i would spend time with her and then i would spend time with him as well and his brother uh who lived in new york as well like i would see them all and my grandmother even after he got killed like my grandmother did a good job of trying to keep you in the fold keep well at least keep talking about him because once he once he died my uncle left and moved back to grenada which is where my father was from. Really? Yeah. He just got murdered? Yeah. He was a New York City cab driver, and he took a fare up to Harlem, and then they robbed

him and shot him. God damn it. Yeah. No, it's pretty intense. I just recently, like about maybe two years ago, a friend of mine connected me to an NYPD detective who pulled up the file and I got to see everything. They had pictures of the scene? They didn't have pictures of the scene, but there was, I always knew where it happened, but then this sort of laid it out in this way of, oh, well, the car, you know, once he was shot, he died on this, you know, instantly. And then his foot was on the gas and it the car went across the like the median and crashed into some cars. And so and then there were some witness accounts and stuff like that. It was really amazing and then through it by at the end of it all there is the there's

the guy like they caught the guy and I had his whole rap sheet and it's it was weird to just see that and to just get a fuller picture of that that guy and he lives in he lives in Brooklyn and there's like a whole kind of weirdness of just oh oh, wow, this person, like I've seen his whole life. I see his rap sheet. He didn't stay in jail after murder? No, he did. He got a really short sentence for it. He was, I think he was 16 when he did it.

And so even that, it's kind of amazing because I just think about like he was 16 and this thing, like it just set him on a path. Weirdly enough, was doing time in North Carolina at the same time I was in college in North Carolina. Where'd you go? I went to a university in North Carolina. But it's just strange, these little sort of intersections of life where it's like oh yeah we were both in the we're both in north carolina at the same time different institution yeah exactly yeah different different state-run institution both not the best football teams really underperforming football teams in both situations but wait so now the dude who murdered your biological father lives in the

same city as you yeah as a free man yeah do you have any uh compulsion to meet his murderer not really yeah no i and people have asked me that once i once i've sort of discovered it and everything and i kind of i was just like i don't really have anything to say to the dude like it And people have asked me that once I sort of discovered it and everything. And I kind of, I was just like, I don't really have anything to say to the dude. Like it's, if anything, there is a part of me where I look at him and what he did. And there's a sense of, you know, he is partially responsible for me being who I am in a good way kind of yeah yeah i mean it's it's i've actually joked about it on stage because it is this thing where it's like i'm not gonna send him a father's day card but there is this element of like oh no this this was a traumatic event that changed me in the way I saw the world.

And you're the person that did that. Who knows how differently my life would be? I'm assuming I'd probably still be in the same place. Right. But maybe my father would have been the deadbeat that uh he was to my sister to me and maybe i would have dealt with that or maybe i'd have gone to new york and lived with him and it would have changed my impression of him in that way or something trajectory yeah who knows you know like if you grew to favor him over your mother who the hell knows where that

would have went yeah but it's but so in that way it is like oh yeah this one thing like that idea of the butterfly effect or something like that like oh this is that one instance of oh yeah here it is amy man you know my childhood was pretty fragmented my mother left when i was three years old There was a lot of drama around that because she ran off with a guy and he was married and they took me and my father didn't know where I was. And, you know, it was just like a lot of... Really? Yeah, it was a lot of drama. How did that play out? I was eventually found and brought back, but, you know, it was probably like nine months later. So you were a three-year-old. Yeah yeah your mom kidnapped you with this dude that she ran off with who was also married and took you to another state or

out of the country really yeah am i supposed to know this no i mean we mean like should you not know it well no no no no i mean like i i don't know if we ever talked about it before but that's i don't think so i don't know that's like where, so this is from Virginia. Yeah. And where'd they take you? I think we wound up in England, but I think we spent some time in Germany. I remember being in Amsterdam.

What was the plan? I don't know what the plan was. I think he was going to get a job. The guy was? And just move. Yeah, they were moving there. Just overnight-ish? Yeah. Did they both get divorced before they did this there. Just overnight-ish. Yeah.

Did they both get divorced before they did this? I don't think so. Wow. And he took his kids because he had kids. Yeah. So it's like, here's your new family. Yeah. Was this a guy from the neighborhood, somebody that your father knew?

Somebody who worked for my father. Oh, my God. I know. I know. There's a lot of drama. There's a lot of drama. So did someone have to go international to get you? My father had hired a private detective, but I think he found out where I was by accident because, you know, he was in advertising. He was in the same business.

Yeah. how I was found was that my father just, you know, in the course of doing business had run into a guy who said, Oh, I, I saw that, uh, saw that guy that used to work for you. And it was him. Okay. So, so does your father fly overseas and get you? I don't, you know, I don't know. I think she flew back with me and then I, and I was taken to my grandparents for a month, which is crazy. Like, I mean, it's all fucking crazy. Have you ever kind of like sat them down or him down and gotten the deets on this? Yeah, he's told me he told me most of this. She obviously doesn't.

I know her now, but I didn't you know, I sort of didn't really see her until, you know, I got back in touch with her in my mid 20s. But she obviously doesn't really want to talk about it. So she was out of the picture that whole time? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah. It's bananas. Oh, here's another detail.

Yeah. I think we were all staying at a hotel or something, and I was three years old playing by myself in the parking lot and he hit me with a car and knocked me unconscious the other guy yeah the guy the boyfriend on purpose i'm i probably not oh my probably not but he did yell at me for causing an accident for for causing for being in the street in front of his car. That's right. So that is some... I've never heard of child

abuse where the child was hit by an automobile. You were not just hit, you were hit by an automobile and then blamed for that. Yeah. Well, look, it was only a VW Bug. Oh, so, you know, you could have won. I could have won.

Tom Arnold. When I was 10, he married the next-door neighbor, and she had a couple kids, and that was terrible. It was terrible, because she'd come from a very corporal punishment background, and I was the oldest, and she was going to tame me. And it made my life, it was not a pleasant

experience i get along with her now of course um i i know it was hard for her because i was like oh my god you're taking my dad but he did he did ask me if he could marry her yeah and i remember saying well yeah because of course but she beat everybody up yeah yeah i mean she had a chart on the fridge and check marks during the day for when my dad got home, and this is how many whips you'd get. And the saddest thing, and I just thought of this recently because my son's born, was the times I was in bed, man, I was loaded up with the extra underwear, the padding, because I knew it was coming, because there had been a lot of check marks next to my name.

And he would say, oh, come on, Ruth, I don't want it. She goes, God damn it, it's him or me. And so you're 10, and you're hearing that, oh, come on, Ruth. I don't want to. She goes, God damn it. It's him or me. And so you're 10. Oh, my God. And you're hearing that. And you're like, oh, my God. I don't want my dad to get divorced. So you march on down there and say, let's do it.

Yeah, I want my dad to be happy. I'll take the hit. Yeah. Bruce Springsteen. How could you live in a house where there was so much kindness and great cruelty? It was very, very difficult to understand those things. where there was so much kindness and great cruelty. It was very, very difficult to understand those things, and it set you very on edge.

You had your own little local minefield that you had to walk every single day, which caused a great deal of anxiety and neuroticism in me. You were always on edge. You were always waiting for, you know, you had this one great thing, but then you were always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Made me a very nervous kid. My mom got divorced three times when I was a kid growing up. Yeah. Yeah, that was a little rough.

We lived a lot in small apartments and moved around Long Island. Just weird stepdads? Yeah, weird stepdads. I remember I had one stepdad who refused to let me call him by his name. His name was Cordell. I could not call him Cordell. I had to call him. He made me call him Daddy, which is, in retrospect, weird.

But, yeah, you know, the craziest thing. I'll be embarrassed if my dad is probably going to listen to this. But my dad got into a fistfight with my stepdad in front of me when i was a kid stepdad two yeah yeah uh and uh that was crazy as a kid to see like your real dad and your stepdad like fight like fucking go for it i was young i was like i was like nine or what was that about it was like i remember seeing it like my dad and i come back from apple picking and back from apple picking sitting uh coming in seeing my stepdad who's in a bathroom my stepdad was a truck driver for a supermarket you know and

and uh my dad came in and he goes you don't say fucking hello to me bill and my dad's like my dad's like i said hello to you it's your fucking fault you didn't hear it then all of a sudden my stepdad picked up a coffee mug fucking wailed it at the like my dad said my dad duck and it exploded on the wall and then then all of a sudden like they just went at it like a grappling thing around my kitchen table my dad's the the most nice you know well-adjusted guy and then then all of a sudden, apples are flying. So I'm throwing apples. My dad is throwing apples.

And they fight until they literally leave the house, outside the front door. That kind of fighting. My dad's a pharmacist. And again, my pharmacist fighting a truck driver. It was something out of a Clint Eastwood movie. It was like, boom, boom. It was insane, insane stuff. That was like, yeah.

How did that resolve itself? It resolved itself very cheesily, which was hours later, I got on the phone, and Cordell was on the phone in my house, and my dad was on a pay phone. And they apologized to each other while I was in the middle. For your benefit? Yeah, for my benefit, and they apologized to each other while I was in the middle. Like, you know, because I could be like – For your benefit? Yeah, for my benefit to hear them apologize to each other. They all decided probably on your mom's instruction that this wasn't a good thing for the kid to see? Exactly.

So they had to, like, get together and apologize over me. So that was – yeah, like, looking back on that, that was pretty terrible. Do you remember being upset? What was your reaction? Were you crying? Oh, yeah. I mean, it's... It was all just chaos?

It was chaos and also crazy because it's like you're watching your dad get into a fight. Did you like the guy? I didn't like this. My dad loved. My stepdad hated him. It was like the abusive fuck of a dude. Oh, your dad is Bill. My dad is Bill, yeah.

And your stepdad was... Cordell. Oh, that was Cord the abusive fuck of a dude, like a terrible dude. Oh, your dad is Bill. My dad is Bill, yeah. And your stepdad was? Cordell. Oh, that was Cordell? That was Cordell. And he was just an abusive, bad dude. But, yeah, you know, he'd come home, like, literally an arm and a cast because he got into a fight, you know, at, like, work, you know. Did he beat you up? Yeah, like, a little bit.

I mean, like, I say it very cavalierly, but, yeah, like, I mean, we would get into some fucking fights. I can't even imagine that. Like, I lived on a farm and, like, we had horses and dogs and stuff. And, like, I would talk back a lot. Like, that was my thing. That's what comics do. Yeah. And so that's how we find our voice.

Yeah. I was talking to, like, people this weekend. I was like, I got to a lot of... I was talking to people this weekend. I was like, I got into a ton of fights all until like eighth grade. And I was like, oh, I got to stop this. Did you win? Yeah, because I was fighting a 40-year-old guy at home. Like, that's why I was getting good at it. I get so funny.

Out of all the people in the world, I would never assume you were a scrapper. Oh, God. Big time. Because you fight this big fucking 40-year year old dude, this fat dude who's strong and like literally like throwing a pitchfork at me, like, and dodging a pitchfork. Get the fuck out of here. Like, but I, because of that kind of style of fighting, I think I never realized how strong I was.

So like when I was in a dodging pitchfork style, yeah, well like it was like, you know, you just learn to be like more of a grappler, you know, it's like, you you know a lot of like just slaps and runs or punches in the stomachs and runs and uh but when i was in sixth grade i got into this fight with this kid and he like gave me like a sixth grade punch like blue you know punch in the face i remember i oh no this is ninth grade i'm sorry yeah he grabbed and i grabbed him by the neck and we were by a car and there was like a car fender there i was like whap whap like his face into a car fender we're both suspended from school yeah you know and because he started it i got to go back and he got kicked out but it was but like that kind of like did not realize like i was

fighting for a much you know yeah you're going for the fucking money you're gonna did you have to they have to pull you off him uh i remember that was the time where my knuckles were bloody from just punching. I was a bruiser as a kid. I had no fucking idea. Paul Scheer, badass. But I stopped. You had to give it up? Went to comedy.

Just turned it into a different direction. I remember honestly just being like I think at one fight when I was a kid, and this is like an early, like 10th or 11th grade, being like, I don't want to do this anymore.

I don't like this. I had fresh earrings when I was 14 or 15, and that pissed him off to no end. I hadn't consulted anybody about it. I think I got mom to sign off on it. Right. He just hated that. He was a left-wing political activist who beat his wife and

child and was kind of homophobic. And I was getting girly at 14 and 15. I was growing my hair long. I was trying to eyeshadow and rouge and stuff like that. What was the influence there? Who were the musicians? David Bowie and Lou Reed. I mean, I was into it. I was very into it. So I remember the day that he knocked me

hard enough to actually knock out an earring and the post dug into my neck. And that was the day that I wound up getting thrown out of the house. I had to go live with my dad, dad. How old were you? 14 or 15. So that was just a fucking mess. It was a mess.

And the thing is about that period of time was that I had, at that point, a strong network of friends. Like for the first time, I was close enough to grown up that my friends weren't just my friends. There were meaningful people in my life who I talked to about my life and who I was constructing that amazing teenage life that you get with. They know your struggle. And suddenly, there was this big blow-up day,

about which I remember only that he did that. He was slapping me around the face hard enough to make the earring dig into my neck and make me bleed and i went back to my room and just sat there listening to music and my mom came down the hall to see it was time for dinner and i'd been sitting there for half an hour contemplating what i was going to do to express yeah that i didn't deserve this and the extent of the rage so i punched my window i put my fist through the window right it felt like a million bucks i never felt so good in my whole life it was like holy shit and the house melted down right it was like there was this immediate you know my stepfather screamed that he was gonna

beat everybody's ass even worse and my mother's my sister's crying is a whole terrible scene you're losing oh yeah yeah bleeding all up the arm and i just felt like a million bucks i never i mean it was like you know what i mean it just felt so good to show them what it felt like a million bucks. I never, I mean, it was like, you know what? I mean, it just felt so good to show them what it felt like inside. You know, there was no way of getting it through their heads. And also it's sort of a way of trumping the pain that they inflicted or that he inflicted. Yeah, no, that's right.

It's like you- You win in some weird way. Exactly. No, that's right. That was my victory. But bar none, I think this is the end of the, the beginning of the end for us was uh there was a loaded handgun in our house and i remember cordell having my mom like held like a hostage with a handgun and seeing that as a kid what

during a fight during a fight and that was like i remember like going what is going like that you know as a kid and as a i can say it now and i go wow like even thinking about now i'm And that was like, I remember like going, what is going like that? You know, as a kid and as a kid, I can say it now and I go, wow. Like even thinking about now, I'm like, wow, that was crazy dark. Like that's insane. But like as a kid, it doesn't register. I don't think it's like, what's going on? You just probably sense that your mom's in danger. Yes.

And that was like, and I remember like, you must've just been crying all the fucking time. Yeah. And I remember saying to my mom, like, we got to get out of here. Like, I mean, my mom's like, no, no, no, it's okay. It's okay. I was like, we got to go. We got to go. Did he hit her too?

Um, yeah, he hit me, hit her. I mean, I, but you know what? Never to the point of like, we never were hurt. So I think that was like my, like, that was always my kind of, uh, like line. Like, oh, well we don't have broken arms or we don't have this or we don't have that was there some party that felt bad for him um like no no he wasn't no i thought of it like he he didn't even he didn't cry and apologize and fucking he would apologize but he was like a like he was like an older brother instead of a yeah uh dad like so it was like

that kind of relationship so it was a lot of like yeah a lot of like and a kind of relationship. Competitive. I think he was competitive for my mom's affection towards me, which is insane. It's like, well, that's a mother and a son. That's not... You're a husband. It would come out a lot in Indian Burns. That kind of stuff, which would really hurt.

I do remember calling... We called Child Protective Services at one point. And they came to the house and they interviewed our parents side by side. And they were like, does this happen? And my mom was like, no. Cordell and your mom. My mom.

And they were like, no. And they talked to me and I was like, yes. And they were like, oh, well, the kid's lying. The parents are telling the truth. And then she got beaten for that? Yeah. Oh, yeah, well, the kid's lying. The parents are telling the truth. And then you should get a beating for that? Yeah. Oh, yeah, of course. Like, my mom, I think, rebelled in the most crazy way.

Because my dad's so nice and great. And the man she's married to right now, also wonderful and great. So you're saying that, okay, so Cordell was like your mom's fuck you to your dad. Yeah. I think that she didn't. She was like, I want something different. And she got something insanely different. You know, like, and then my mom kind of wised up at a certain point.

She's like, oh, we're out of here. Yeah. And. Guy's throwing a pitchfork at my kid. This guy has more guns than he has shirts, you know. Holy shit. How'd she shake him? That sounds like it would have been hard to shake that guy.

You want to hear how you shook him? This is a crazy thing. My mom created, she pretended that he won a trip, a hunting trip. She created these envelopes and was like, Cordell, you won this trip. She did the layout and everything? She did everything. She got him plane tickets, got him a hotel, and created this whole fantasy seven days away from him. and created this whole fantasy seven days away from him.

The minute he left the house, a moving truck pulled in, and we got all of our shit out of the house, and we took off. You left Cordell's Farm? Yeah, we left Cordell's Farm, and we moved into a small one-bedroom apartment or two-bedroom apartment, and just that was it. My stepfather died. He died, and my sister called in the middle of the night to say Mike's dead. And then I went on tour a month or two later and stuff started to crack open. It was really amazing.

I just started to feel free with my feelings, you know. In general? Well, no. with those, with just my vision, my ability to think about that time and how far I'd come. I lived in Iowa at the time. You think that some impact was that the abuser was dead? Yes, absolutely.

I mean, I tell people, I tell survivors when they come up to me in the merch line, it's like, you know, they'll say, well, I survived an abuser. Has your abuser died yet? And they will say, you know, no. And I say, I want you to be ready. Cause it is, I mean, I hate to say this because you don't wish death on anybody. It's wonderful when your abuser dies. It's wonderful. It's like nothing in the world. It's like you are free. Yeah. I mean, there's a feeling that you

will never be free of what you were, you know, there's that, but there is this, you know, even though my stepfather was helpless at the end of his life, but to know that the person who used to hurt you no longer can is very, very, very deep. It's, it's unbelievable. You forgive him? No. Which I hate about myself, but, but I don't. My biggest fear, and it was a fear that I had as a kid, because there would be times where, as a kid, my mother might show up this this girl that I was seeing at the time we're gonna go to Six Flags amusement park so I was supposed to leave my car on one side of town Six Flags on another side of town both far from where my folks live and so

I go pick up the girl she's like we should drive to Six Flags together. It would be romantic because we were supposed to ride with her sister. And I was like, well, I don't know. My mom says I should. And then she kind of like touched my leg and was like, okay, let's do it. We drive and I had to take the highway. And I think that was like my folks didn't want me on the highway. Get there, fine fine come back and my mother used to make me carry around this cell phone one of those big big ass car phones

phones ringing non-stop the girl answers it and I and I'm just like I immediately hang it up and I'm like what the fuck are you doing yeah and then I eventually answer it my mother's like you know why didn't you pick up the phone I was like I don't know if you called the right number this is the first time it rang and I dropped the I dropped the girl off and I get home and as I'm pulling into the driveway I see my stepfather has been tailing me at some point My stepfather has been tailing me at some point and his car is coming behind mine. And so he somewhere picked me up on the road, followed me back to our house. What I learned is that my mother sent somebody to go see if my car was where it was supposed to be. And this is what she tells me later.

She goes to see if my car is where it was supposed to be and this is what she tells me later she goes send see if my car is where it's supposed to be when it's not she calls the police knowing i took it she calls the police thinking that the police will pick me up and i'll learn a lesson how old were you i was probably 17 and so so there was and so and then I get home, like she has sort of opened up all of like all my papers, anything that I had like locked up. And like I used to keep like a briefcase where I could kind of lock things up. All that stuff is spread out on her bed and on the kitchen table. And it was one of those things where it's almost like the police have come in and raided the place and they're just going through everything. It's like violating. Violating in a way that was like, this doesn't even have anything to do with the crime at hand.

The crime was that I took a car on the highway. You're now looking at this as like, well, let's go through. His diary. Yeah, let's basically go through all this shit. And so there was always that sense of violation and that's what i lived with was this constant sense of you never know who you never know who's your real friend like there was there was a there was a girl i knew she's actually she's uh uh she's a girl i grew up with she at one point told me that my mother had asked her to befriend me just to keep an eye on you yeah and just to report information but yeah and she did that to my roommate one of my roommates when i lived out here and she was like tell me like just keep me in the

loop on stuff and it was just like this very strange paranoid distrustful house halfway through my first semester i remember i was failing out yeah and then they sent uh they sent like they would send like a midterm report to your house and so i'm in the shower and my roommate comes knocking on the on the door of the bathroom and he's like hey your folks are on the phone and i was like well i'm on the shower i'm in the shower i'll call him back and so and he goes back and a minute later he's like they're not getting off the phone they're saying get off the shower get out of the shower and so i'm just like oh shit like you know i'm thinking did somebody die like what the fuck is going on yeah i go in and uh I don't even have to put the phone next to my ear.

My mother and stepfather screaming so loud about my grades at that point. And just like, you're failing out of everything. We will come down there. And my roommate and his girlfriend can hear the whole thing. And it's just this very strange. It was like, it was this thing of, oh shit, I have to get my act together because I don't want to go back there. Like that was.

That was like, you know, I'm not going back. Yeah. And that was, I mean, that house, like it was, you know, there was a lot, there was a lot of distrust. There was a lot of yelling. There was a lot of that stuff. So it was like, oh, right. I don't want to go back but i'm also not this student that she wants me to be

i have to figure out who i am and i've got to figure out like the classes i need to take to make this work so i never have to go back there leslie jones so you okay so you left here you got a scholarship to fort collins now colorado is probably the whitest state in the world though what absolutely and probably still is the white you know what i'm saying i'm not white enough for colorado they will kick you the fuck out they'd be like yeah you got some engine or something in you son they got some jew in there there was some jew what's going on you ain't here you ain't pure no it not only are there is the very whitest town it's the very purest they have only the purest air there too i think they check your lungs when you pass the border at that motherfucker that's how

when we went when i went up there and was working out that shit was killing me the air because it's too high altitude killing me well i mean you get sick you get tired you can't breathe oh my god it was killing me and I was I was I still was the best basketball player on the team we're the only black player yes I was the only black player mr. Marin yes I was the only black player well there was a light-skinned girl but she really didn't count yeah and she didn't come to the next year so but how but how did that make you feel how were you treated first of all i hated every i complain literally i got there and i didn't know that i was going to be the only black girl on the team

literally i was like i i am fucking in this is this is i don't know if how this is going to work out because i'm very militant too so i'm very outspoken so yeah what what did you you know i'm that and so it's like when i walked into basketball practice i walked in with a radio yeah so i'm the stereotype on these shoulders like i was going to the park to play ball because that's where i played is at the park yeah so it was you know it was an adjustment for me and i I was very lonely. I was in Colorado. A lot of times I was like, oh, I was rebelling on all levels. So my coach knew that I was like at the point where I was I wanted to go home because he came to my apartment. I had my mattress in the living room because I just was like, I just was like, this was so new to me. Like I had my own place. I was like this. If I oh, God oh god if i could go back if i could go back with my mind now oh god i would have ran that place i would have ran colorado do

you understand me why'd you have your mattress in the living room because i was scared i didn't want to sleep in the room it was nobody in the apartment with me you know i was fucking alone i was scared so i'm a kid i was like 18 so when he came to the apartment, he was like, oh, my God, you got to meet people. You got to meet other black people. So he found the BSU on campus, the Black Student Union. Yes, there's a building full of black people on the campus. And I'm sending you there. This is where we keep them.

And this, if you was to talk to him today, he would say that was the worst thing I ever did because I completely became a party animal. ever did because I completely became a party animal my folks left me in 1969 which was a little unusual usually you leaving them but they left me in New Jersey in 1969 and went to California right um so that sort of left you on your own to continue parenting yourself as best as you could and uh uh you know your life was your life was yours from that point on right you know and and uh uh that suited me yeah you know it it was it was it was just one of the things that for where I was at, I was independent already. I had the band. I had my own little community that I was a part of. I was making a few bucks on the weekends so I could survive.

And I was happily independent. Right. Not making a lot of money. No. Of course, you're making $20. Right. But anybody that couldn't live on $20 or $40 in 1969, having no dependents, anybody could do that.

It was a different time. Yeah. I mean, you ate for $3 a day. $4 a day was all you needed to eat. So it was just enough money to get by and have a good time on. Terry Gross. Well, my parents, when I decided to hitchhike cross country, they were very, very upset

about it. I'm upset now. Well, now, now that, now that I'm the age that I am, I think like, my gosh, no wonder they were so upset. But my attitude then was, you know, you're not telling me what to do. Right. Fuck you, right? I'm an adult. Right.

Yeah. Right. It's like, you don't control me anymore. Yeah. Dan Harmon. For those of us who are not prodigies, who are not blowing minds by 15, you know, I think it's better to grow up in a smaller town where you can just, you have this sandbox

where if you decide at 22 that you want to do stand-up, you want to be a writer, you want to do, in Milwaukee, if you stood on a street corner and said, I'm a welder, and you did that three days in a row, sooner or later someone's going to give you a job welding. Like, it's just, it was, and that same went for writers. I mean, you didn't get paid anything.

Right. But in the five years from when I declared myself a writer to when I was leaving for LA, I was like working for the mayor. I was doing like radio shows. Like within Milwaukee, I was given every opportunity that I thought that I wanted. You know what I mean? You made it to the top. If I wanted to write a play, I could write a play.

If I wanted to do a radio commercial for Bacardi, some ad campaign would come through and they wanted a cheap writer. It was a nice place to cut your teeth. President Barack Obama. I started keeping a journal when I was around 20. Yeah. And kept it up until I went to law 20. Yeah. And, you know, kept it up until I went to law school. Yeah. So for about seven years, sometimes I go back and I read this stuff

and I'm still the same guy. Yeah. Which is good. Emotionally or not, obviously not emotionally, but I mean, there's moments where you can sort of lock in, like what parts of your journal are you like, oh, like, are there still struggles that you were having then that you have now? Well, that's where stuff's changed in the sense that stuff that was bugging you by the time you're 53, either you worked it out or you just forgiven yourself and you've said, look, this is who I am. Oh, I got to write that down. So I can just forgive myself. Well, you know, assuming that you're not

hurting anybody. No, but you know what I mean? I think that you at that age, you're still trying to figure out who are you? How do I live? What's my code? What's important to me? What's not important to me?

And you're sorting through all kinds of contradictions. And by the time you get into your 50s, hopefully a lot of those have been resolved. You've come to terms and come to peace with some stuff. And then some stuff you've just said, well, you know what? That's just who I am. I've got some flaws. I've got some strengths. And that's okay.

I think I had a good escape back then, though, in a way. Like, I feel like, I don't know. Like, I love TV and movies. And I really got into, like, comedy. Moses and the Batmobile. Yeah, Moses and the Batmobile. But, like, I really got into movies and TV. And the comedy was a real reprieve.

Comedy, yeah. I listened to, like, Smothers Brothers albums. Like, I had all my dad's old Smothers Brothers albums. It was fun to kind of sit and hear that. And I remember even reading an article. I think it was a Smothers Brothers article where I think they had some messed up parents. And I remember going like, oh, okay. Well, that's cool because maybe they had messed up parents.

I had messed up parents. It evens out. I hope that was a good experience for you. That was a chapter one of waiting for the punch words to live by from the WTF podcast. If you're interested in the book, please go ahead and pre-order it. Now go to markmarronbook.com and you can still enter the sweepstakes to win a Casper mattress or Away Luggage if you upload your pre-order receipt. If you're in New York City, come out to the Union Square Barnes & Noble on the day the book comes out. Tuesday, October 10th at 7 p.m. Brendan and I will talk and do a Q&A and sign books.

You don't need a ticket. Just get there early enough to get a seat. We'll also be in San Francisco at the Alamo Drafthouse as part of Litquake. That's Friday, October 13th at 9pm. There are a few tickets left for that, so go to Litquake.org to get your seats. Okay?

Alright. Should I play some guitar? Should I? I can. I don't have anything planned. I can play a little Boomer lives! Boomer lives! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead

courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com.