The world is still on fire, and trying to make sense of it is almost futile. Good news is though, Marc Maron seems to be on the same plain, so at least we can all commiserate with a few laughs while we watch fascism unfold in real time.
Upon the first run through Maron’s latest special, Panicked, which landed on HBO Max earlier this month, he surely does come across as the title would suggest. On the second time through, however, the minutiae of what makes Maron something of not just a grizzled and wise elder statesman of the industry, but also an actual modern-day comedy disciple of the Book of Carlin and Hicks shines brighter as the 73-minute offering rides on. It’s a hell ride for sure, with very few beats in between most of his thoughts and jokes, but it’s a ride nonetheless, and one that is desperately needed in times like these.
Differing from his previous special, From Bleak to Dark, Maron has a few more bullet points on his mind this time around. The “huckster clown king” in office, his cats, soy milk, his “demented dad,” Hugo Boss, Hitler, processing trauma, Taylor Swift’s “Bigger Than The Whole Sky” (which he recently performed a poignant and beautifully done cover of at Largo) — Maron patrols the outfield of this hour and change with frantic precision, but perhaps with the help of a musically-forged inclination to craft a smoothly flowing solo, he also gives every topic on the table room to breathe enough to where nothing feels rushed or simply peppered in. Like Stevie Ray Vaughan, but instead of crooning about Texas floods, it’s about the Cali wildfires and squeezing his cats into amazon boxes.
With every high-octane thought that Maron offers, the line that divides our own personal worries and anxieties from those of his own blurs rather quickly, almost to the point of arriving at, but not quite committing to asking ourselves:
Are we Marc Maron? Is Marc Maron us?
…and the answer is no. Not quite. Maron is a one-of-a-kind. While the world could certainly benefit from more than one edition of comedy’s unofficial cool, guitar-playing uncle who has cats that he treats like his children and holds a multitude of well-rounded diatribes just behind his mustache at all times, we should appreciate the swirling aquarium fish tank of well-read, or really at this point, poetic rage while we have it coming from the source.