Did Marc Maron Shamelessly Steal One Of My Most Defining Jokes?
To define the summer between my junior and senior year of college as “self-destructive” would be doing a disservice to the definition of the word. I was a twenty-one year old subsisting on a blogging job that paid a lofty $200 a week, and a typical night involved taking advantage of the technically illegal happy hour at a bar near my apartment in Boston before grabbing a couple of slices of cheap pizza and sharing a handle of 60 proof blue raspberry vodka with one of my roommates while we worked our way through the entirety of “The X-Files.”
It was during one of those nights that a rabbit hole of Google searches somehow led us to the website of renowned adult film actress Tori Black, where we discovered we had the option to purchase an autographed poster of a scantily clad Tori striking a tasteful pose— along with the chance to add a personalized three to five word message for a nominal fee.
Realizing the valuable opportunity we had in our hands, we scrambled to figure out the funniest possible combination of words we could get a porn star to write in close proximity to her exposed buttocks. After at least an hour of debate fueled by sugar-filled vodka, we finally settled on what we both agreed was objectively the funniest option: “I like pudding.”
I can’t tell you why we decided this was the route to take, or why it felt so right. We just knew that the personalized poster would serve as the perfect centerpiece (and conversation piece) for the dorm we were about to move into.
25 percent of my weekly paycheck and seven to ten business days later, a tube arrived at my doorstep. After unrolling the poster, I saw Ms. Black has written her own editorial note in addition to the phrase we’d requested:
We thought about sending it back for a copy meeting our original demands, but ultimately decided her implicit endorsement of our decision was worth hanging onto (especially considering it contained the word “goofy”).
We scoured Amazon for the gaudiest gold frame that we could find, and when it arrived, our masterpiece was finally complete. If the “exposed buttocks” line from earlier didn’t tip you off, you might not want to scroll down to view the following picture if you’re in a setting where there are people around to judge you:
We eventually positioned the portrait directly under a light in a prominent location in our dorm’s common room , where it served to make most people who passed through over the course of our senior year hopelessly confused, and— in many cases— fairly uncomfortable. Unfortunately, some people just don’t have the ability to appreciate art.
After graduation, the poster was carefully transported to the archives better known as a dark corner in my parents’ basement, where it has remained ever since, waiting for a retrospective that will likely never come.
I’d almost forgotten about the picture until I recently received a text from my roommate containing the following clip from Marc Maron’s eponymous IFC show:
For those of you who are unable to watch the clip (and in case Maron ever has it taken down to in an attempt to cover up the truth), it features a woman uttering the phrase “I like pudding” in what is undoubtedly the sultriest way those words have ever been uttered (there was unfortunately no option have Tori Black record a personalized three to five word audio message for comparison).
Now, there are a few possible explanations concerning the origins of the operating line in this scene. The most obvious one is that Maron, a comedian by trade and a veteran one at that, also understands “I like pudding” is one of the funniest possible three-word combinations in the English language, especially when paired with overt sexual undertones.
The second is that Maron is a closeted Brony who borrowed “I like pudding” from an episode of “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic” (an episode that apparently aired long before we decided to put the phrase on a poster). For the record, I had no idea this clip existed until I wrote this article, but I’d like give the “My Little Pony” writers credit for being well ahead of the curve when to comes to jokes related to the appreciation of pudding.
The final possibility is that Maron somehow stumbled across a picture of the aforementioned masterpiece somewhere on the internet, and was so struck by its brilliance that he had no choice but to figure out a way to incorporate it into an episode of his show. If that is indeed the case, I’m honored to have provided the inspiration, and all I ask in return is that he puts in a good word for me with the Writers Guild of America.
To answer the question posed in the title: No, there is close to literally no chance Marc Maron actually stole one of the best jokes I’ve ever made from me. But it’s probably what got you to click on this, and if you’ve managed to read this far, I guess I did something right.
