Attempting Normal (2 page)

When I returned from New York City after my last stint at Air America Radio I had already done the first several podcasts. We called the show
WTF
because that was the angle, that seemed to be the most important question to me. I asked a fellow podcaster, Jesse Thorn, what mics I needed. He told me Shure SM7 mics are the mics he uses. I ordered a couple. He showed me how to use GarageBand on my Mac and that was that. A dude I knew who worked at a sound studio brought me some acoustic foam panels he had lying around. There were only a few and I put them up randomly around the garage. One on the ceiling. I have no idea if they even have an effect.

I started asking people to come over and talk to me amid the clutter of my life. People came, hundreds now. The podcast evolved into a one-on-one interview show. I shared many powerful conversations revealing things about the people I was talking to and about myself that I would never have known. Things that will never be said the same way again. It happened organically. I needed to talk and people talked to me. All I am after in the garage is authentic conversation. I don’t prep much for interviews. I prepare to talk, to engage, to be emotionally available for an authentic exchange. If I got one of those per episode I’d be happy but I usually get many more than that. Hundreds of thousands of people have joined in on these conversations as listeners, which has affirmed one of the strange beliefs that has shaped my life: People want to share but they usually don’t.

People don’t talk to each other about real things because they’re afraid of how they’ll be judged. Or they think other people don’t have the capacity to carry the burden of what they have to say. They see the compulsion to put that burden out in the world as a
show of weakness. But all that stuff is what makes us human; more than that, it’s what makes being human interesting and funny. How we got away from that, I don’t know. But fuck that: We’re built to deal with shit. We’re built to deal with death, disease, failure, struggle, heartbreak, problems. It’s what separates us from the animals and why we envy and love animals so much. We’re aware of it all and have to process it. The way we each handle being human is where all the good stories, jokes, art, wisdom, revelations, and bullshit come from.

I have met or come in contact with a lot of people over the almost thirty years I’ve been doing comedy. There are very few people I am not one degree of separation from. I also have a strange heart quirk: I develop oddly deep emotional connections to people in my life that are one-sided. I may be just a passing character to them. I don’t know what that is. I don’t know why that is. I can have one encounter with somebody and feel connected to them and read a lot into that. They become very important people to me, but to them I may just be like, “Oh yeah, we talked that one time, right?” To me it’s a life-changing moment that bonded us; to them, it was a five-minute polite chat in passing. I bring that bond to the talks I have with people. I think if there is any skill to what I do as interviewer it’s assuming an intimacy that is probably very one-sided.

That said, it was not like that with Conan O’Brien. I was 165 episodes into my show when he finally said he would do it. I know he is busy. He does a daily show and that is insane, but I really wanted him on. I am very aware of the differences in our lives and work. I have been appearing on his show since 1994, when he was in his first year at
Late Night with Conan O’Brien
. I did standup twice and then wanted to move to panel—the guest on the couch—because I used to love the dynamic between Letterman and his panel guests like Richard Lewis and Jay Leno. I wanted to have that with Conan. He let me, and I have appeared as that guy
three or four times a year ever since—except when he hosted
The Tonight Show
that one year, but we are now back at it. I’ve been on with him upward of forty-five times. What I am trying to say is that Conan and I have a relationship and have since 1994—on camera. We’d never hung out. We never really talked much except a hello in the dressing room and during commercials. Our rapport evolved, but it was always professional. He’s been good to me over the years and I always appreciated and was grateful for the times he had me on.

When Conan agreed to come to my garage, it was huge to me. I was nervous. I live in a small house. I was anxious about him judging my life. I felt like I should clean, or move, or build an addition before he got there. I’ve known him for almost twenty years and he doesn’t know my life other than what I tell him on his show. I wanted to make a good impression.

When he came over it was dark out. I opened the door and realized I had never seen him out of makeup or out of the studio. It was bizarre for me. It was a little stilted. He’s an awkward guy anyway and he’s also very tall. I wasn’t sure he would even fit in my house once he walked in. I wanted to get out to the garage as quickly as possible, because I knew in that moment that I had an uncomfortable reverence for Conan. Some part of me felt like I was imposing on this important man who was doing me a favor and we needed to get on with it.

Once we got behind the mics it all flowed very easily. It wasn’t about what was said, it was the fact that this was the first time I had really talked to him. He told me stuff that wasn’t part of his public narrative and I got to know him a bit. It was emotional for me, because I had always wanted to be his pal in some way, and even more so because he was doing the podcast and that meant I was doing something relevant. I felt proud. I wanted to do a good job because I respected him and in some way it was a turning of the tables.

When we finished we went back into the house and Conan was just sort of lingering. He was looking at stuff on my table, on my walls, and it was awkward again. Not in a bad way, but we were both back to our roles. I was a guy whom he let appear on his show and had a good television rapport with, and he was a star who, in my mind, had better things to do. That might not have been the case. We have a history and we had just had this great talk and now I knew I couldn’t say, “Okay, we’ll talk tomorrow.” Or “Let me know when you want me to come by the house for dinner.” Or anything real friends say to each other. It literally got to the point where I was wondering how to get him out of my house because I didn’t know what do say or do. It was time for him to go back to his life and me to get on with mine.

But what was important about that situation was that I felt like Conan and I met as equals. I didn’t feel small. And it’s because I was doing the thing I needed to do. In our interview, Conan said something about the secret of his success: “Get yourself in a situation where you have no choice.” And that’s what I’m doing, because I had no choice. I was broke and broken and lost when I started
WTF
. I didn’t plan it this way. I would’ve done it the other way if it had happened or I had been allowed to, but it didn’t and I haven’t. In retrospect I’m not even sure I could have. So I’m stuck with me and that’s okay, most of time. That struggle is what I put out into the world.

This is who I am: I overthink and I ruminate. I’m obsessive. But what I really want is relief. Most people are the same. We’re all carrying around some shit. When you hear the things that people have gone through and realize you’ve gone through the same, it provides an amazing amount of relief. It gives us hope. And I think that’s what we’re supposed to get from each other. The hope that, maybe, just maybe, we’re going to be okay. Maybe.

  1  

I had a bad run-in with myself on a plane recently. I had just flown from Dublin to Chicago and hadn’t slept much. I was strung out. Tired. Tweaky. I changed planes in Chicago to fly to Los Angeles. Things were vibrating and I was edgy. I was in the exhaustion zone, feeling the kind of tired you can’t sleep off because you can’t sleep, because your blood is pumping caff einated dread and loathing.

I was seated at the front of coach in an aisle seat, directly behind the first-class dividing wall and the flight attendant service area. It’s my favorite seat on a plane. I like watching people get on the plane so I can judge them. I like judging. I didn’t see any real problems among the passengers who awkwardly clumped onto the plane, but I definitely felt like I was in a better place than some of them, which helped take the edge off my mood. Judging works.

We took off. The flight attendants were strapped in almost directly in front of me, facing me. I always scan their faces for fear. I rarely see it. When I do see something dark flicker across their
faces, it usually seems like it has nothing to do with the job. More likely something personal that followed them onto the plane. But then again, what do I know. I project. Then I judge.

The crew seemed pleasant. One woman in particular seemed genuinely nice: blond hair, about fifty, pretty in the classic California way. I always wonder when I see older flight attendants if they’ve been at it since the seventies, when things were crazy. Did she ever have sex in a cockpit? Did she survive a crash? Get tied up in a hijacking? Did she ever have sex in a bathroom with a passenger? With the pilot? I like to give my flight attendants a bit of backstory. I decided she was an out-of-control instigator of major in-flight mayhem back in the day. She got through it disease-free and didn’t end up in rehab. She started a family, her husband had a drug problem he couldn’t kick and left her, but she did all right. The husband had a lot of money, so she’s good. Humble and wise. She lives in Topanga with a few big dogs. Her kids are in college. Only a few people know her from her old life and one of them is the pilot on the flight I am on. That’s who I made the flight attendant up to be.