Review: Watching MLB.TV While Listening to WTF

As both (a) science and (b) residents of the American South are able to confirm, there’s more than one way, reader, to skin a cat.

So it is, then, that, with this revelation, we discover yet another way in which skinning a cat and enjoying baseball are similar — for there are numerous ways of doing the latter, as well.

Some of those — like watching a game while enjoying one of America’s great public spaces or listening to a game while playing the crap out of one’s PlayStation 3 — have been documented in these very pages. But some is the operative word here, for the list of ways to enjoy Our Fair Sport is close to, if not entirely, inexhaustible.

Allow me, then, to submit for the reader’s consideration another way in which I’ve recently enjoyed baseball — namely, by watching MLB.TV while also listening to comedian Marc Maron’s WTF podcast.

“Who is Marc Maron and what precisely is WTF?” maybe you’re asking.

To which I reply: “Um, obviously I was gonna discuss that. Via bolded subject headings, in fact.”

To wit:

On Who Is Marc Maron
Marc Maron’s a (predominantly stand-up) comic who’s been active, in some capacity, since the mid-1980s.

On What Is Marc Maron’s Comedy Style Like
Maron’s comic style, generally speaking, skews angry and self-loathing-y.

On What Is WTF
WTF is a podcast hosted by Maron in which he (i.e. Maron) interviews basically every comedian.

On, Like, Which Comedians Exactly
These’inz (in order of whim): Louis CK, Larry Miller, Jimmy Fallon, Amy Poehler, Dan Harmon (creator of Community), Conan O’Brien, Laura Kightlinger, Michael Showalter, etc. — and that’s just a selection from the most recent 20 episodes of the 180-plus that exist.

On What Is Marc Maron’s Interviewing Style
It’s very possible that the things which make Maron difficult as a stand-up (for this author, at least) make him pretty excellent as an interviewer. For, as a comic, Maron suffers from almost debilitating, frequently recursive, introspection. It’s difficult (again, for this author) to ever feel as though Maron’s I could be my own I (as opposed to Louis CK’s, for example, who has a special gift for m

On the other hand, it’s this fascination for human frailty (and, increasingly for Maron, human strength) that aids Maron-as-interviewer. Maron’s style seems, whether it is or not, largely improvised and unprepared, but he possesses such genuine curiosity in his interviewees that his level of preparedness is basically moot.

On What It’s Like Listening to WTF While Watching a Game
Like it’s Joy:30 all the time?

On Where to Find All This
Here. Here. Here. (Or iTunes, I guess.)