Hello, All.
Few plugs out of the gate here. I will be in Dublin, Ireland on Wednesday, September 2nd. Then I will be in London England on Thursday, September 3rd and Friday the 4th at the Southbank Centre. There are definitely a few tickets left for Dublin and you’ll have to check on London. I will be making a quick trip to Australia in October. I will be in Sydney at The State Theatre on the 15th, Melbourne at the Palais on the 16th and at Brisbane City Hall on the 17th. I’m excited to come but a little sad I won’t be able to hang out much anywhere. Just be there long enough to totally fuck my body clock up.
I think my appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher went well. It’s sort of astounding how out of touch I am in terms of politics and how quickly I can get back in touch enough to feel okay about going on that show. I used to be entrenched in the day-to-day political dialogue and I can't begin to tell you how much better my life is now that I am not. It wasn’t like I made any deep political points on Maher or that I was even really trying to but I thought I picked my moments well, got some laughs and said a couple of smart, funny things. That’s all I set out to do. Listen and find the moments. I used to spend the day before a taping like that working every angle I could find, writing jokes for all the topics and generally panicking about whether or not I would get any out or would seem too desperate to get them out and whether or not they would seem to even fit the conversation. I didn’t do any of that this time. I talked to Brendan about what was going on in the world of politics. Understood it. Then I just rolled the stuff around in my head a bit. When you have a propensity to be self-righteous, strident and underneath it you are fundamentally angry, you can get pretty annoying, pretty quickly. I know that about myself. The rush of self-righteous anger feels like a hit of crack. I avoid crack. I know it’s not good. I have come to avoid self-righteous anger as much as I can. I want to honor myself in all my encounters and exchanges. I want to avoid becoming a monster in a moment. The vigilance of self-management when a good part of you works outside the box with the specific agenda of destroying the box is recommended. If the box is you, protect the box.
Oddly, when I went out to dinner after taping ‘Real Time’ and doing a set at the comedy store I was consumed with self-righteous anger in a conversation I had with a couple of dudes. One was my old friend Tom Rhodes who I hadn’t seen in a while. The other was another guy who I won’t mention because he was the dude I got mad at. Look, I don’t care what you think of Maher. He’s a difficult person but he’s the real deal. He’s a comic who paid his dues, does the real comedy and built something sustainable for himself and for television. I was sitting with a guy who is trying to make a go of it in comedy and he says, ‘I don’t think Bill Maher works hard enough on his comedy.' He said some other stuff, again and again, until I snapped. ‘Who the fuck are you to shit on a lifer?' is what I said, among other things. I felt the rush of the anger. Almost couldn’t let it go. You can have an opinion but if you are going to shit on someone’s craft and output you better have something to show for yourself or step away from the table. It was an ugly moment but it felt GOOD.
Today I talk to Jerrod Carmichael. He’s a new comic with some real juice. On Thursday me and Peter Bogdanovich talk about his long journey in film. Pretty amazing talks.
Enjoy!
Boomer lives!
Love,
Maron
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