Blood and Guts

I'm not even going to say the thing about how i haven't posted in a long time okay? we all know that and so - there's really no point in pointing it out. Just because it's on my guilty conscience doesn't mean i have to tell everyone that i feel bad about it. Because no-one else really cares about it except me. It's sort of like the time when i spilled the beans to my mom that i was unemployed because i don't have a dishonest (read self-preserving) bone in my body. Except that she trumps my guilty conscience with all her 'LOVE' and 'CONCERN'. C'mon! She asked how my day was at work! Total sneak attack. anyway...

Last night i went to see the brilliant, slightly disturbed (and i thought i had a tendency to be negative and self-absorbed) comedian/writer/performer/thinker/man-on-fire Marc Maron in his solo show 'Scorching The Earth' which essentially focuses on his divorce and the events surrounding. Let me just preface this by saying that my boyfriend, who is also a stand-up comic, ADORES Mr. Maron. Ever since we started dating I've gotten an earful of how AMAZING and GENIUS and BRILLIANT and HONEST this guy is. So even though I've only met him once, he pops into the conversation once in a while: playing the part of the successful but emotionally tormented older brother or the popular guy at school who also happens to be a poet and closet intellectual. He is all that but after seeing him in this show I would also throw in tortured and brave and also a bit of a douche (i think he would be the first to cop to the douche assessment folks). I don't think i have ever seen someone on stage wrestle with their demons the way this guy did. He laid it all out there for us. It was like he made a clean, precise incision from heart to guts and let it all spill out in a bloody mess while carefully cataloging it all. Essentially he was a clothed naked man. One moment particularly resonated for me and i woke this morning still thinking of it: he was describing his former wife 'she was an ANGEL' and just let the hurt hit him as he doubled over and let out a sad cry. It was one of the bravest, openly narcissistic, brilliantly crafted pieces i have ever seen. I was entertained by him, he's sharply, funny- but it was also like sitting down for a drink with a family member you know peripherally who seems to have it together until without warning they start ripping into the maw of meat that is their heartache, over and over again, with a dull knife while you butter your piece of bread and stuff it in your mouth waiting, wide-eyed and rapt like an asshole, for them to take you to the basement level of their pain.

So go see it. Although, you might never want to get married after you do. No, seriously, the man is amazing. And tragic. And probably getting laid every night.