Friday, May 7, 2010

The Podiwan Review 7 – WTF with Marc Maron

NYC to Southern California transplant (and soon to be moving back to NYC) Marc Maron is completely neurotic. Not in the socially crippled and emotionally dysfunctional manner of Woody Allan or George Costanza but more like every other person you know who has one or two issues, except that Marc has all of them. As fodder for his WTF podcast, whatever issue Marc is currently stressing over you can be sure that he will rant on it for as long as necessary to make sure that every last drop of festering ooze is expressed. The points are usually cogent, coherent and well written (or at least well organized) and sometimes while not outright funny, they are at the very least amusing. Recently he has been proactively trying to be a “better human” so many of his issues come with the caveat that this is "his problem" with the world, not the "world’s problem" and he has to do a better job of dealing with it. During the opening portion of the show while Marc is monologue-ing, don’t expect a lot of laughs but do expect that you will recognize his talking point as relevant to your life. As soon as he finishes that you’ll get to hear from his guest.  Sometimes the guests are in his home studio but more often they are interviewed remotely via studio hookup or telephone. His connections in the comedy world allow him to grab fairly high profile A and B list comics for one on one interviews that don't seem like interviews; they're just conversations. Depending upon the chemistry it can either be very funny or downright painful but the balance almost always tips towards entertaining. After the guest interview, Marc calls his father, a practicing physician in New York. The father son banter is refreshing in that these two guys who seem to genuinely like and respect each other and only happen to be related.


70 episodes in the library averaging about an hour each, all available at itunes and wtfpod.com and you can follow him @marcmaron.


My rating scale
Is this podcast entertaining? - Mostly
Am I likely to listen to the next podcast? – 50/50
Do I recommend this podcast to friends? – not yet but probably someday

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