I Love NYC.

People!

I’m on a plane watching ‘Best in Show’ as I write this. Hilarious. Fred Willard is a genius, but so is everyone in the movie, actually. Just thought I’d tell you that. In case you didn’t know. Also, I’ve interviewed three of the people in the cast. I’m going to try to get Christopher Guest, Jane Lynch, Eugene Levy, Bob Balaban, Jennifer Coolidge and John Michael Higgins on the show. See, there are a lot of people I want to interview. I’m sure I’m missing a few just from that film.

I have a few dates coming up across the pond. I will be in Dublin at Vicar Street on September 2nd and in London at Southbank Centre on the 3rd and 4th. I’m excited. I’ve never been to Dublin and it’s been years since I’ve been to London.

I’m flying back from Fort Worth, Texas. I gave a little talk/interview at Podcast Movement. It was great. There are a lot of people excited about podcasting. Before that I was in NYC for a couple of days. I went head to head with Charlie Rose on his show. Well, that’s a bit dramatic, but he interviewed me. It was exciting to me. He is the interview guy. The smart, long-form TV interview guy. We had a good talk. It was kind of wild waiting to go on, sitting in the green room area, watching him talk John Sununu. There was no beat between the two of us. They finished. I walked in the room. He said goodbye to John and I sat down. I watched Charlie look at his cards, load up his head, look up at the camera and mispronounce my name in the intro. I corrected him. We started over and had a nice chat.

That night Brendan McDonald and I went see Annie Baker’s ‘The Flick' at the Barrow Street Theatre. I can’t remember the last time I saw a play. I forget that it’s fucking essential to see theater a few times a year, at least. It somehow connects me with myself. The vulnerability and immediacy of the experience of seeing a play is elevating and completely organic simultaneously. The play itself is very subtle, very funny, but very challenging in its simplicity. It won the Pulitzer so it has to be reckoned with and we reckoned with it. It was a good night in NYC. We had a couple of slices, saw an award-winning play, walked across town talking about it, broke it down, hashed it out, did the big work and called it a night.

Then I hung out at the bar at the hotel and ran into Jason Segel, who was staying there as well. We had some laughs and I crashed. I love NYC. The next night I had some breakfast with guitar’s Matt Sweeney who brought along Matthew Johnson of Fat Possum Records. We talked blues, ate Moroccan food, then went to Rivington Guitars, played some classic rigs through some old tranformers and Sweeney laid some riffs on me. That night I saw Blake Mills summon the tube spirits at City Winery in a fucking wizardly one-hour 15-minute set closing with a cover of Dylan’s ‘When I Paint my Masterpiece.' Spectacular. Did I mention I fucking love New York?

The last time I was in NYC I ran into Harmony Korine, the filmmaker. He was in town for a screening of the film ‘Kids’ on the 20th anniversary of the film. Some of you might recall he did a live WTF in Austin that was a little dicey. I asked if he wanted to do the show and he agreed. It was a good talk that I put up today. On Thursday Jason Bateman and I have a loose, funny talk about the challenge of growing up in show business among other things. Good talks.

Enjoy!

Boomer lives!

Love,
Maron