I’m early – but so pressed for time!
In three days I board a plane to fly to New Orleans to board a ship to goof-off in Belize, Honduras and Mexico –and the Tortuga Twins paid for it all. I contemplated writing this funny, weird, eclectic post to clear out my folders of all the funny notes, photos and links I collected thru the year that I haven’t found a way to use yet. Instead I’m going to do what Riki suggested when I asked him to review this letter I’m sending out to Marc Maron, host and creator of the WTF podcast. I promise that next month’s journal will be chock-full of personal photos, anecdotes and stories but you can also learn a lot just by reading this sales pitch. Enjoy!
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Hello Marc Maron!
First, take my money, cash my check and let me tell you why:
I’m a fan of your show and I have been for a two or so years – maybe more. In my line of work I spend a lot of time on the road and I do a lot of what my grandparents called “puttering†too; construction projects and whatnot. I have an irrational aversion to silence and your podcast, one of my favorites, is both entertaining and enlightening. I came late to the WTF nation. People had been praising it for years but it wasn’t until about a year after the New York Times piece that I finally added you to my playlist. My first two episodes were Todd Glass and Russell Brand so I was of course hooked. I have been working my way through what is available on iTunes mixing it up with older and newer episodes. So-far so-good right?
So why am I giving you some of my hard-earned dough?
Because early-on in my new found passion I discovered that only the most recent 50 podcasts of WTF are available in the iTunes store. Clearly I wanted to listen to the older ones especially when you teased the controversial shows featuring Mencia and Gallager.  So I did what any tech savvy individual in the 21st century would do – I downloaded illegally your first 200 episodes – more than you even have available for sale. Unfortunately now I feel the tiniest bit guilty. I’m not overwhelmed – believe me I can deal – but enough that it amused me to write you this letter. More importantly it appeals to something perverse in me to send you a check out of the blue.
Now I’m pretty sure that you’re going to make more moolah off of me this way than If I had actually bought the packaged and produced DVD (Which I cannot even find on the site currently) so everybody wins except for the proverbial middle-man. If you’re still mad - as is your right - I’m also sending along one of the DVDs from my show – go ahead and put that up on a torrent site for others to steal; it’s only fair. I can take it.
So that brings up the second reason I’m writing you:
 I’d like to suggest that you invite me to be interviewed on WTF.
I’m not just a perversely honest and verbose fan, I am also the lead comic, point man and partner in “The Tortuga Twins†arguably one of the best-known acts at Renaissance Festivals all over the US –
I am absolutely not a “big-enough deal†to be on your show. What I am… What The Tortuga Twins are; is a really big fish in the tiny and removed-from-the-real-world-pond of Renaissance Festivals.
Big. So big. Like, “shark-from-Jaws†big.
My partners and I have been touring professionally for over 25 years earning a pretty comfortable living. We’ve fought and scrapped and paid our dues in this colony of hippies, this “Island of Misfit Performersâ€, sweating our asses off four or five shows a day; weekends only; for two months in each town. We’ve worked in the rain for six people and for standing-room only crowds of over 3000 fans screaming our name and letting us get away with horrible things.
What fun.
We’ve built up a fan base and a rabid following doing audience participation, sketch and improv comedy; all of it only very loosely having anything to do with the historical period we’re allegedly recreating.  We generally work six or eight festivals a year – some of them we’ve done for over two decades returning like the proverbial swallows to Capistrano to make people laugh and lower the property values. We have six different scripts we can choose from on festival days though we retired one that we’ve outgrown. We have done three touring theater shows, we’ve produced and sold nine different DVDs and a CD over the years and we completely failed to sell any of the ideas we pitched at the big NATPE convention we attended in Vegas a few years ago.  My troupe and I are all over YouTube – though dear God some of the videos are horrible. We have pretty good following on social media – though we only have 19k likes on Fb to your almost 60k… so you win!
We’re well regarded professionally, adored by our fans and just famous enough that in some towns we can’t leave the house without someone stopping us to tell us that they think we’re wonderful.  We’re recognized enough that we could never get away with committing a crime - or picking our nose at a stoplight - in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Phoenix or Charlotte, North Carolina. Once; my wife even had a hilarious exchange with her gynecological nurse - a huge, giddy fan of ours - while her feet were in the stirrups no less. Well, hilarious to me – she was mortified. Yet again, outside our fans no one seems to know who we are.
So we could talk about what it takes to have a successful three-man partnership. We could talk about raving fans and groupies.  We could talk about people whose lives we have touched; whether it’s folks who have gotten engaged on our stage because they met their future spouse in our audience or the people who celebrate their cancer survival anniversary with us each year. We can talk about our second, and now third, generation fans or talk about soldiers who brought our DVDs to Iraq and Afghanistan… and then plastered our stickers all over those countries. We could talk about our lifestyle on the road. We could talk about breakdowns on the highway in Iowa and living in tents in Colorado. We could talk about career expectations and hard work and the idea that sometimes a regular paycheck in this line-of-work can be more of a curse than a blessing. We could talk about that incredible feeling of “right†when you step out on a stage and there’s a roar so loud you fear your heart is going to tear and I’d LOVE to tell you about our worst on-stage experience. I could tell you about some of my own, odd fan encounters over the years – being approached for an autograph while standing at a urinal or being recognized at a fairly vulnerable time in an infamous swingers club are two highlights. We could talk about a lot of stuff comparing and contrasting our style of performing - and our history - with the trials and tribulations of stand-ups like you - especially since I have just launched myself haltingly into that realm as well.
Again - I am absolutely not a big enough “deal†to be on your show. I thought I might be until your IFC show came out and that nail was really driven home when I heard your initial response to Dean Delray’s request to be interviewed.  BUT like Delray; I too have had a pretty interesting life.
I suspect that if I AM on the show – I’ll be one of the few interviewees who have ever served in the US Navy on a submarine. I’m also pretty sure that I’d be the only one who was battle stations supervisor for the Missile Fire Control Division; one of the five people necessary to actually push buttons to launch real-life nuclear missiles. I could tell you fascinating and surprising things about life on a submarine and in the nuclear weapons program. Ask about using a toilet on a sub for sure! While I was still serving I was a nuclear weapons security guard – literally authorized to use deadly force and I had a security clearance beyond Top Secret. I can’t even tell you the NAME of that clearance unless you too had a security clearance.
Funny, no?
I’m absolutely positive that I’m the only interviewee  to appear on WTF who - after hitchhiking on military airlift flights to visit Australia and getting stranded in New Zealand on-the-way - only returned to the states so I could convince then I government I was crazy – specifically so that I could run away and join the circus that is “Renaissance festivals†.
Not all of my stories are navy-related.
I have had a fairly chaotic and often unconventional upbringing. By the time I was 18 I’d been to fifteen different schools. We bounced back-and-forth between Florida and New Jersey so many times that I’ll say both†Y’all†and “Youse guys†in the same sentence. I am pure bred honest-to-goodness white, trailer-park trash and much of my early upbringing is Florida strip mall culture and living off welfare. I’ve had fun and I have had it tough. Like you, my dad split when I was young leaving Mom to do it alone long before such things became common place. We were poor, hand me down clothes and food stamps and free lunch program in school. Mom started-out with no job skills and no experience and she hustled to get by. She was a spokes model for Wink soda; a grapefruit –based soft drink no one remembers. She had a series of waitress and bartending jobs, leaving my brother and me to fend for ourselves more than most latchkey kids at an absurdly young age. It was kind of an exciting time – mom was doing what we can only assume was a lot of speed back then and many mornings we woke up to find that she had redecorated our apartment while we were sleeping. Cork and mirror tiles, weird paint choices and Tarzan reruns on our TV (with bunny ears!) sums up many weekend mornings in the ‘70s  for me Marc.
Mom never quit but she didn’t always succeed and she helped forge me stronger through these experiences.
It’s no surprise that I was an outcast and class clown; that I was labelled “too smart†for school and dosed-up with Ritalin back when it was called “being hyperactive†instead of the more trendy “AD/HDâ€.  I did comedy TV shows in school as part of the weekly morning news program produced by the AV class even though I never imagined I could eventually make a living being funny. I somehow, at some point, became the man I always wanted to be when I grew up.
Like you I’m a recovering addict. I did more than my fair share of powders, hallucinogens and lovely, lovely Ecstasy. From the episodes I’ve listened to so far it seems like you don’t have your guests relate a lot of drug-fueled anecdotes. Pity – I’d love to tell you about the nice charming couple terrified when they encountered my then-girlfriend and I frolicking naked in the local park. Good times.
We could talk about playing characters on stage and the different levels of truth you can and wish to reveal to your audience. We can talk about the fact that I’ve been chastised and criticized for being gay AND for being straight and then discuss the reason why I just don’t answer the question about my sexuality in public. We could talk about an audience’s inertia; I’m still considered a sex symbol by my fans and I have no idea why – especially as I get ever closer to fifty and ever thicker around my waist. It’s really hard to hide that while your shirtless and wearing nothing but tights and tall boots. We can talk about creating opportunities and the sacrifices we’ve all made to keep the show going and you and I can both wonder aloud how things would be different if we had made other choices.
We can certainly discuss all the odd jobs and hard work I had to put in “back in the dayâ€; how hard I had to work in the winter to support my summer touring habit. I’ve been a strip club DJ – there’s a ton of stories there -  a horrible telemarketer in a magazine sales scam and I’ve waited on a shit-ton of tables in my life. I’m glad that we’ve reached the level of success that that’s no longer a necessity both because I secretly suspect I’m above it now and also because the last time I worked as a waiter some fans came and sat in my section. Their disappointment was palpable.
We could talk about the transition from touring slut to happily married man, we could talk about becoming a father late in life and the wonderful trade-offs that requires. We can talk about my rocking wife – and how half her job seems to be keeping my ego in check; keeping me grounded. Mostly though: The ego thing.
Here’s what I propose:
I’ll be in Phoenix until around April first or so. If you want to schedule an interview I’ll make the six hour drive out to L.A. – that’s where you are right? My season officially begins February 8th and even after that I have a lot of flexibility during the week. So why not invite me out, give me an hour and if you use my interview; great! If you find that I’m not as interesting as I think I am all you’ve lost is part of an afternoon.
Marc, I don’t have an agenda. I don’t really have anything that needs to be promoted. I have websites and Facebook pages for both myself personally and our show. I write a blog – actually I write a funny and irreverent advice column – but c’mon, we all do that don’t we? We never have to mention them on-air if that’s your preference. I don’t have anything to prove, not really. I’m just a former sinner (funny phrase for an atheist!) telling dick jokes in a silly costume for a living - but I do think I have some interesting stories and some insights and perspectives you might enjoy discussing.
I’m pretty sure that appearing on WTF won’t hurt my career– no matter how much truth I reveal. I’m also pretty sure that no one hearing your show is going to say “Get me that long-haired fellow with the squeaky voice, I want to make him a star!†I don’t need, or want to do any “bits†for you – that’s not real, but like all of us storytellers, a lot of my life is related as bits. You’ll like the one about my mugging. I’m comfortable on the microphone – I’ve done so many promotional appearances on radio and television that I have genuinely lost count… it’s got to be in the hundreds in the past 20+ year. And let me say again – I have actually been inside and honest-to-god nuclear missile and I used to live in a school bus… that’s got to be a first for WTF!
I’m perfectly willing and ready to accept the same “it’s not going to happen†answer that you initially gave to Delray. I’d just ask that you be kind enough to drop me a line letting me know that you got this letter and you just don’t think I’d work for your program so that I’m not losing sleep wondering if you’re gonna get back to me.
So spend my scratch, pirate my DVD (if you watch it skip ahead about ten minutes past the warm up and silly crap) and think over my proposition please-and-thank-you.
Thanks Marc
Ronn Bauman
The Tortuga Twins
