Jeff Stern

Jan 9

“There’s a kind of personal writing that argues for this kind of subjective experience that says, “I don’t have children and so it’s really important not to have children.” Or, “I do have children so it’s really important to have children.” Or, “I like cheese, so it’s really important to like cheese.” I never understand the point of that kind of writing. To me, you’re trying to find some objective position on your own experience, you know? Just because we felt it doesn’t mean that it matters at all. That’s my feeling.”

Zadie Smith in The Rumpus.

I tend to write like this because to quote Jo March, “This is what the newspapers want, Freidrich! Thrilling stories!”, but I would actually like to let Ms. Smith know that I would personally typify my style as actually being, “I don’t have children, so it’s really important to like cheese.”

So, there.

(via megsokay)

Yup. You’re both right. Cause you’re both saying the same thing, actually.

That your subjective experience is completely unrelated to anybody else’s, really. Or even your own. Cause…whatever. Just write about it.

(via stupidoldishlikelettersandsodas)

Dec 29

johncassavetes:

When Falk first offered Mikey and Nicky to Cassavetes, John agreed to do it so fast that Falk thought he wasn’t taking it seriously. When Falk told him he wanted to tell him the plot and give him a copy of the script, this is how Falk recounts Cassavetes’ outrageous reaction:

What do you think? I don’t know Elaine May can write? I don’t know you can act? You need to pitch it to me? You think I’m one of those businessmen! You think I am like you and have to have everything figured out before I begin something? That I have to have all the details in place? That I’m afraid to take a chance? That I have to play it safe? Elaine’s making it; you’re in it; that’s all I need to know.

(via outlaw)

Nov 29

Finishing up Wittgenstein’s Mistress in book club, and we tried reading the Tractatus as a prequel. Even with help from @greenideas, I’m pretty sure I didn’t get a lot of it.

But yeah, this philosophershaming tumblr is neat.

(Source: philosophershaming)

Nov 11

“As a result, it estimates that Mexico’s traffickers would lose about $1.4 billion of their $2 billion revenues from marijuana. The effect on some groups would be severe: the Sinaloa “cartel” would lose up to half its total income, IMCO reckons. Exports of other drugs, from cocaine to methamphetamine, would become less competitive, as the traffickers’ fixed costs (from torturing rivals to bribing American and Mexican border officials) would remain unchanged, even as marijuana revenues fell. Legalisation could, in short, deal a blow to Mexico’s traffickers of a magnitude that no current policy has got close to achieving. The stoned and sober alike should bear that in mind when they cast their votes on Tuesday.” Legalising marijuana: The view from Mexico | The Economist (via rafer)

(via fred-wilson)

Nov 2

Letters of Note: People simply empty out

lettersofnote:

In 1969, publisher John Martin offered to pay Charles Bukowski $100 each and every month for the rest of his life, on one condition: that he quit his job at the post office and become a writer. 49-year-old Bukowski did just that, and in 1971 his first novel, Post Office, was published…

Jul 6

“Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.” The ‘Busy’ Trap - NYTimes.com (via michaelikesit)

(via michaelikesit)

May 16

READ THIS YOU DUMB TWEENS.

jakefogelnest:

“I have no interest in making R-rated studio comedies with the sole purpose of entertaining teenagers. I hate teenagers. I think most of them are fucking idiots. Christ, I hated teenagers when I WAS a teenager. Besides, I will be 50 this year, so how the hell would I know what teenagers like? I make movies that me and my friends like, with actors I like working with, and on shoestring budgets far outside the system.”

— Bobcat Goldthwait

Bob’s movies are among my favorites to discuss.

Mar 10

bijan:

quite moving.

reblogged via padbury:

“And suddenly, I looked at the bull. He had this innocence that all animals have in their eyes, and he looked at me with this pleading. It was like a cry for justice, deep down inside of me. I describe it as being like a prayer - because if one confesses, it is hoped, that one is forgiven. I felt like the worst shit on earth.”

This photo shows the collapse of Torrero Alvaro Munera, as he realized in the middle of the his last fight… the injustice to the animal. From that day forward he became an opponent of bullfights.

jakefogelnest:

Tonight my friend Jodi Lennon asked me to introduce a screening of her documentary Marc Maron: The Voice Of Something. It’s a short film following a typical day in Marc’s life… a week after September 11th, 2001. Jodi held on to this footage for ten years and she and Nick Mougis cut together something extremely special.

Here is what I read tonight before the screening…

—-

I’m sure a lot of us in here tonight have formed an intimate relationship in our own heads with Marc Maron by listening to his podcast twice a week. This is something that I believe Marc would be delighted by, but also would find completely unsettling.

I’m sure he’d be charmed by the fact that there’s a lot of us in this room who know exactly who Boomer, LaFonda and Monkey are, but would want to make goddamn sure that we had our facts straight about them. Boomer is the dirt cat, LaFonda doesn’t like being photographed, and I don’t know enough about Monkey to even feel comfortable making any kind of statement in a public forum.

This is the kind of shit that happens when you have a guy talking directly into your head for a few hours every day for a couple of years. You begin to think about Marc Maron and his cats.

Even as I’m reading this to you, I’m thinking, “Fuck, should I be doing this? Should I be on stage in Staten Island talking about Marc Maron’s cats? This is gonna get back to him. Someone’s tweeting him right now and the context is all fucked up. No one could convey it in 140 characters and I’m gonna get an angry e-mail:

From: Marcmaron@aol.com (He probably doesn’t have AOL)

To: jakefogelnest@aol.com (I certainly don’t have AOL, I just don’t want you writing me)

<no subject>

What the fuck are you saying about me?

—-

That’s it, that’s the whole e-mail – not even signed.

That would be TERRIFYING.

What could my possible response be?

Marc,

It’s no different than me talking about Katy Perry’s cat on stage. You know she has a cat named Kitty Purry, right? I wonder if Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda would get along with Kitty Purry? LOL. I hope you’re good.

-Jake

We all know that would not go over well.

The reason why I bring up the relationship in my head with Marc Maron’s cats — I think it speaks to the wonderful thing he’s created with WTF, something that so many of us have become invested in every week. I really care about what’s going on in Marc’s garage. Not just the one Marc tapes the podcast in, but the garage that exists in his HEAD that he’s been cleaning out in front of us for 20 years.

Marc is a big part of a lot of people’s lives now and that makes me very, very happy. Probably because he’s been in my life since I was a kid. More than he knows.

The first time I met Marc I was eight years old. Just for a moment, I want you to imagine Marc Maron interacting with me as a child, a wide-eyed fresh-faced kid staring up at him with innocence and wonder. Just imagine him staring back at me going…

“So, we good?”

That’s actually not how our first encounter went, because I was an incredibly cool kid. Don’t worry the coolness would eventually lead to heroin, because everything in the 1995 Larry Clark film Kids was true. Much like Marc, I’m now sober many years.

I grew up in Philadelphia and would visit my Dad in New York City on the weekends and he would take me on wildly age inappropriate misadventures.

“Hey, Dad! What’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show?” I’d ask him.

“Oh, the campy 70’s transvestite musical? Sure, I’ll take you to that! That’s a perfectly acceptable thing to take an eight-year-old to! You mind if I get high first?”

“Hey Dad, Hairspray was a great movie! What else has John Waters’ made?”

“Oh son, you gotta see Pink Flamingos! I know you’re only eight years old so I’m gonna do the responsible thing and fast forward past the scene where two hippies fuck a chicken to death.”

Let me just say right now, the chicken fuck scene in Pink Flamingos is traumatizing enough for an adult at regular speed. To an eight-year-old in fast-forward?

“Hey Dad, I like comedy!”

“Oh let’s go fucking see stand-up at The Village Gate. A young Marc Maron, just coming out of his Sam Kinison doing coke at The Comedy Store years is working out some shit on stage!”

So, I would see Marc do stand-up in New York City a lot. I actually found an old journal of mine. This is what an eight year-old Jake Fogelnest had to say about Marc Maron:

“Marc’s an incredibly raw talent with a unique voice, reminiscent of early Lenny Bruce, but far from a Bruce impersonator. Whatever room you’re in, you can bet Maron’s gonna be one of the edgiest, smartest guys in there.”

Truthfully, I wrote that like an hour ago, but if I had kept a journal as an eight year old, it probably would’ve read just like that. And by nine I would’ve been cutting it up and rearranging like William Burroughs.

Again, growing up in the city is weird.

Marc was always really cool to me as a kid, engaging my Father and I in conversation from the stage but also after the show, because he was curious to learn, what lunatic brings a child to a nightclub? I’m 33 and I still don’t have a straight answer from my Father. Even as a kid, he was my favorite (Maron, not my Dad). I don’t remember any of the other comics that used to go up at the Gate. Maron always stood out.

Now that Marc has been consistently in my head for a couple hours twice a week, I’ve found myself wondering, “God, what did he think when that eight year-old kid was now a sixteen year-old with an MTV show and the same manager as him?”

I have this image I completely manufactured in my head of Marc on the phone in 1996 screaming at Dave Becky, “What the fuck, man? I’m fucking drowning over here and you’re busy on with fuckin’ SQUiRT TV? What do I gotta be a sixteen year old with a haircut thing going on, saying, ‘Oh I like The Partridge Family hahaha!’ Fuck you, Dave! Lock the gate!!”

At 33 years old, the idea that I had a show on MTV when I was sixteen irritates ME. I cannot imagine what Marc Maron was thinking back then.

Of course the truth of the matter is, Dave Becky wasn’t on the phone with either of us. He was talking to Chris Rock.

It was around that time that I would see Marc at Luna Lounge and I genuinely look back on that time and his work there as one of the coolest moments in comedy history. It’s the closest I will ever get in my life to being one of those guys who gets to say, “Oh yeah, I saw The Velvet Underground at Max’s.” It really was that special.

And I love that from listening to Marc’s podcast that he seems to have NO idea that he was, as Tom Scharpling put it, “like the Fonzie of Luna.” He was always pretty nice to me, sometimes nicer than others, but that’s Marc. Or that was Marc in the late 90’s. Marc in 2012… it’s a really good Marc Maron.

On his podcast, Marc always asks people, “Who are your guys?” Who are the people that influenced you? That you really liked when you were younger. I saw him about a month ago in San Francisco and it was great. I told him: “Hey. You’re one of my guys.”

Then he made some sort of condescending comment about me being a disc jockey.

No, he was great and I watched him do one of the best sets I’ve ever seen. If you only listen to the podcast, fuckin’ please go see him do standup because what he does is rare.

To me, Marc Maron has always been the voice of SOMETHING.

That’s the title of the documentary you’re about to see. I think it’s perfect. Jodi will tell you more about it. Thanks.

Oh, before I go, tonight’s show is sponsored by audible.com, if you want a free audiobook download, just go to audible.com and enter code: WTF. DO IT!!!!

Feb 29

tumblinerb:

bueller:

Too $hort on Lil B

I have been working on a Lil B and Young L as Lennon/McCartney analogy but I’m not quite there yet.