#4 - Marc Maron

Throughout the entire tenure of Conan O'Brien's Late Night, Marc Maron appeared as a guest 44 times, and I can't think of a time he wasn't funny. Of course, on the east coast that meant you could only have seen him after 1am, or else waited until a few years later when youtube was invented. So you may have missed him, but it's not your fault. Unlike most mainstream comedians, Maron hasn't done any television or movie writing or acting in a very long time. His non late-night guest appearances are limited to a brief stint as host of Comedy Central's Short Attention Span Theater in the early 90s and a 2002 run as host of the VH1 game show Never Mind the Buzzcocks that literally lasted for 1 month. Lately he's been associated with a few podcasts and radio shows in the Air America Radio family.

The reason I think Maron's success as a comedian is limited to stand up appearances and other spoken word formats is that he seems to be funny only as a product of a seriously skewed world view and depression. I don't mean to say he doesn't write jokes, just that the jokes he writes need to be explained and are only funny in the correct contexts, which for him are best explained and explored straight on as stand up comedy instead of re-interpreted as sketches or plots. As a result, you'll hear him say "hear me out" at least once a set, as he strings the audience through his thought process. Like David Cross his topics tend to skew toward the religious or political, but only because he finds a way to see a tongue-in-cheek "conspiracy" in all of the forces that act on his life. He's highly funny and grossly underrated as a comedian, but I understand why. Any one of his 3 CDs is absolutely worth checking out.

Here's a 2001 appearance on Late Night in which Maron is disappointed with modern technology and also somehow offends Adam Sandler fans everywhere.