"Holy Shit, it's Marc Maron!"

This last weekend I finally got to see Marc Maron perform, and man, it was worth the wait. For those out there who may not know who I'm talking about, take a look at the picture below and we can move on.

Now, when I was a kid, I liked who I like to call the "Usual Suspects" of comedy; Cosby, Carlin, Pryor, Hicks... you know, the "Big Guys". But around 1990 my family and I started to watch "An Evening at The Improv" on A&E to see who was new and on the rise, and amongst this varied group came several young comics with original and funny material, but mainly three comics in particular struck me as the funniest: Doug Benson, Patton Oswald and of course Marc Maron. I'm sure some people are thinking, "Hey, isn't being 'Original' enough?" Well, in the case of comedy... no.

You see, being original means that you just go on stage and do your thing, but it doesn't necessarilly mean that 'Your Thing' is actually worth watching. During the late-80's through the early-90's, there was a wealth of hack comics who flooded many of the comedy clubs and TV Shows, and that was primarily because of the need for entertainment from the masses who streamed into the clubs at that time. Eventually, that died off, but instead of just killing off the hack comics, it also claimed many of the most talented comics around at the time.

For a long time, I didn't see much that Marc Maron was involved in, and it started to piss me off... I'm sure that he was out on the road like most comics are, but there was a 5 or 6 year period of time that he virtually vanished off the mainstream scope. Now, Marc wasn't the first or the last to disappear during this time, but to me, he was one of the most talented to disappear.

I remember comedy bits and sets rather easily, and for me there was always a unique form of delivery to Maron that separates him from his contemporaries; He wasn't afraid to just sit on a stool and tell you what he thinks. Sure, it was always funny, but more important than that, it was honest and personal, which in stand-up comedy nowadays is getting pretty rare. Sure, Dane Cook is pretty funny, but in the end I'm not a very high-energy kind of guy, so I find people who go so far out of their way to be physical and energetic to be irritating. Also, Dane, as popular and talented as he is, just tells jokes while revealing nothing of who he is on the inside, and that to me is a hollow form of comedy.

Sure, I know that I'm not a professional comic, but I am a fan of the medium, which means that I study stand-up comedy as well as do Open Mics in order to further my own knowledge for the sake of not making myself look like an ass. The last thing you want when you get off stage is have someone accuse you of biting material off of comics that you've never even heard of. That's never happened to me before, but I look out for those pitfalls in advance for my own sake just as much as the audience.

Maron is one of those comics that you would never hear an identical conclusion joke come out of his mouth. A lot of comics come to similar conclusions on certain subjects, but they try to put their own spin on it in order to make it theirs. Marc has a meandering style of delivery that makes you pay attention to what he says, and in the end that's the main thing that I like about his material; you have to know what he's talking about. The subject-matter of his sets range from personal observations to family and friends and from Politics and Religion to teen-age girls. He doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator of the room like Larry the Cable Guy, he talks to those of us that like to read books and newspapers.

So when I heard that Marc Maron was going to be on Air America Radio a couple of years back, I got excited. I live outside of L.A. so I was able to get AM 1150 (riddled with static and full of lame commercials as it is), but they replaced Morning Sedition with the Stephanie Miller Show... that's like getting an ice cream cone and only getting one lick off of it before someone slaps it out of your hand. Stephanie Miller is alright, but she's no comic, and frankly, I'm tired of only having three choices of what to listen to in the morning when it comes to radio stations... so I typically listen to the stuff on my iPod. Morning Sedition eventually came to an end last December when that dickhead Danny Goldberg refused to renew the contract for Marc.

I was really happy when I heard that Danny Goldberg was fired a couple of weeks back... I'm sure that Air America lost a lot of listeners when they cancelled Morning Sedition.

Anyway, back to the performance. Marc did a great job, and I got to shake his hand twice in the evening; before the show and after the show. As I was walking down the hallway, I said hi to Marc and let him know who I was. I'd only written him a couple times, but I guess he either remembered me or pretended like he did, and I'm cool with either one. At first, I didn't want to be the guy that says, "Hi, I'm a big fan, Mr. Maron!" but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. You don't typically get to meet a person that you look up to in Comedy that often, so you might as well take advantage when you get the chance.

Here's the interesting thing about after the show: as I was standing out on the sidewalk waiting for Kristi to get done in the Ladies Bathroom, I saw Marc talking to a bunch of guys off to the side of the little bar area inside of the Improv. Kristi came out a couple of minutes later and we started walking back to her car, and Marc comes out to shake my hand and thanked me for coming to his show. I told him it was a great show, and thanked him as well. But there was a joke that I especially like that he closed the show with, and it goes like this:

"I'm getting to the age where teen-age girls don't even acknowledge me as a sexual being... don't get me wrong, it's not that I want to have sex with teen-age girls...

... ahh, who'm I kidding?! Of course I want to have sex with teen-age girls! That's why they made it against the law!"

I told him that I appreciated the joke at the end, and that it has been one of my favorite jokes since I was a kid, and he thanked me again. If you don't believe me, ask my girlfriend.

The main point I'm trying to make? Marc Maron has class. He thanks his fans, like entertainers used to do, before they started making 20 Mil to pretend to be someone else for two hours of film time. I know that Maron hates Blogs, since he thinks that all we do is hate on other people, but I don't do that, especially to people that I admire... so here's to ya, Marc! You finally got a positive Blog column written on you!

Thanks for the great show and the hand-shake, man... those little things mean a lot to your fans.