Artie Lange Discusses Time Spent at Psych Ward with Marc Maron

“I hadn’t heard about Artie Lange in months, and last I’d heard, it wasn’t good,” recently said comedian Marc Maron.

Maron and I had similar knowledge of Artie Lange, from what I can understand from this quote. This didn’t stop him from adding Lange to the guest list of a live episode of WTF at The Bellhouse in NYC, though. I, for one, say thank god for that. Lange was the final guest on the episode, and made for an exceptional cap to an exceptional episode.

Lange keeps the spirit incredibly lighthearted while discussing what could be considered one of the saddest circumstances in his life. He spent a month and a half in a psych ward and has the stories to prove it. At one point he explains that, “You haven’t lived until you’ve played scrabble with a 400 pound schizophrenic.” He then proceeds to take the audience through one of the funniest stories I’ve ever heard, in which he defends a particularly antagonistic 80 pound, meth addicted woman who refused to allow the schizophrenic patient to play an abbreviation.

While there aren’t an obscene amount of competitors, I can safely say that its the funniest story I’ve heard which includes psych wards, scrabble, or some combination of the two, and I doubt it will ever be beaten in either of those categories.

The entire episode is well worth a listen, as the guest list includes Ira Glass, Morgan Spurlock, Nick Griffin, Nick Di Paolo, Elna Baker, Wayne Koestenbaum, Joe Mande, and of course the incredibly comical Lange.

Its not often someone can approach such a despairing period in their life with such poise and eloquence as to make you laugh about it, but Lange proves he’s back to rare form, and is definitely not the type of person who comes around all that often.

You can check out some stand-up from Artie Lange here, courtesy of YouTube:

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