Marc Maron is a host on Break Room Live (and former guest on What's So Funny?). He's also full of existential angst, self-hatred, brilliant and really funny. Jim Gaffigan is a comedic force. And a pale one. He's in films (Away We Go hits the theatres soon), sells out theatres all over the place and has hit CDs and DVDs. Of course, any self-respecting comedy nerd already knows that.
There's some great stuff here. The Caroline and Costaki they reference are Canadian comedian Caroline Rhea and her hubby Costaki Economopoulos ("the biggest name in comedy"), who recently created a human. Maron is a single, childless man while Gaffigan is a father of three. Maron has been putting off visiting the baby because, well, he's not interested in kids. Gaffigan says he should. They discuss.
As a father of one (in fact, my wife was pregnant with ours when we first saw Maron in concert), I'm gonna side with Maron on this one. While my child is endlessly interesting and fun to me, I could care less about other people's kids. I mean, some of them are cool, but I don't need to meet them or interact with them. And since many are far from cool, why risk it? I can wait until they're more fully-formed human beings.
Gaffigan spoke of how great it is to be a parent, even with all the worrying. It reminded me of what Louis CK told me just five days before my son was born. CK crystalized the parental conundrum for me. It's must-reading for anyone who doesn't get having kids:
Here's the thing about it: It sucks on paper. If you write down things you're going to have to do and the way your life is going to change, there's just no way to justify it. It's the dumbest thing in the world to do.You can read the whole interview with CK here. While we're at it, here's one I did with Gaffigan, too. And let's not forget Maron, who I first interviewed in February of 2004.
But it doesn't matter because you'll be happy to do all of it. There's nothing going to be imposed on you. You're going to completely, voluntarily change your life in a way that if you could look in the future and see it from now, you would say, "Why the fuck would somebody do that to themselves?" But that's how powerful a force it is to have a kid. And it isn't like, "Oh, but they're so wonderful" and you're paid off for every hard moment with them giving you a daisy and saying "I love you, papa" -- although that happens, and it's pretty great. It's just that it's so important to you. It's such a big deal to have a kid that it just changes your motivations. It changes everything.
Now here's the Break Room chat:
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