Playing the room for laughs and a good meal

WRITER, stand-up comedian and social satirist Marc Maron mines humor from such serious subjects as politics, death and religion with a unique storytelling style. He performs frequently at area comedy clubs and has been seen on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” and Comedy Central’s “Tough Crowd.” He is also launching a morning show on Al Franken’s talk radio network at the end of the month. While this transplanted New Yorker has lived in L.A. barely a year, he relishes the charms of his new home.

Bowling for a song

Occasionally my girl and I will go over to All Star Lanes on Eagle Rock Boulevard with some friends. The bowling alley hasn’t been updated for probably 20 or 30 years so all the equipment is really beat up and sometimes you have to walk down the lane to get your ball. My fiancee likes to do karaoke. And I like to sit there and watch, wondering why -- given what I do -- I can’t find the courage to get up and sing a stupid Beatles song.

On Sunday mornings I go to the Hollywood farmers market and buy all this food. Ultimately, in my best of lives, I would be a really amazing chef. I’ve been doing stand-up for 20 years and sometimes I wish I had the guts to just quit and go to cooking school. It’s so much more immediate. If you flip the egg and it doesn’t break, you win.

I’m pretty basic with the cooking, but I’m learning a lot of new stuff. I think if I had my ideal life on the weekend I would visit the restaurant that I run and have a meal. I’d cook for myself, say hi to the staff, then sit in the corner and eat. Then I’d leave and go do some stand-up.

Schools of laughter

I still really like going to watch other comedians work. In the last 20 years of my life I’ve spent God knows how many hours in the back of comedy clubs watching other people perform, but there’s something great about it because every once in a while somebody surprises you.

The three major clubs have very different vibes. The Laugh Factory is much newer and brighter so it’s a more youthful, energetic place, while the Comedy Store is a very intense, dark, beautiful place that has intense, dark comics. People don’t seem to go there as much anymore, but you can always see some very visceral, honest, out-there comedy. And the Improv is the Improv. It’s where you go to watch your heroes have a drink at the bar.

Culture is out there

I recently bought a house in Highland Park, and generally on the weekends I cook for us and we read the papers. I guess I’m sort of a homebody; I do a lot of reading. I swear if it wasn’t for my fiancee, I’d never leave the house.

There’s a bakery on Avenue 51 and York that makes tamales on the weekends, and they’re really the best tamales in the world. This couple has owned the place for 30 years. These days it’s getting harder to find places with any integrity whatsoever, unless you live in a neighborhood that can cater to it.

Many people from New York complain that L.A. is this cultural vacuum, but I have not found that. New York City is like an ant colony: It’s a very confined, electric place where you become part of this larger organism. Here things are so spread out there’s a lot more potential for cultural discovery. You just have to put forth the effort to go out and find it.

-- Chris Barton