WTF—I Lost My Phone!

What I find most fulfilling about work is my relationships with clients, people I find interesting like comedian and podcaster Marc Maron. We’ve worked together since 2010, when his now-famous WTF podcast was still in its infancy. He’s funny and smart and we have quite a bit in common. He can be a pain in the ass, but he’s made of the good stuff.

“You can’t believe for some reason initially when it happens that your phone is gone. As our lives are now, it’s not just a phone. It’s really a good portion of your brain. Everything is on there, you think in that moment. Oh my god everything is on there! Everything! My emails, my address book, my music that I’m listening to right now. My important personal information. Is that really on there? I don’t know. But there’s this panic because we are so phone dependent.” —Marc Maron

When his phone was stolen ten years ago, he freaked out in a big way, and understandably so. We can all resonate with the feeling of losing something so personal.

Marc Maron poster in the MacMan office.

How Marc and I met
I’d gone to Largo at the Coronet, a comedy store in L.A., to see Sarah Silverman do a live set, and Marc was opening for her. I ordinarily don’t like comics who tell jokes. I like the ones who are real, and Marc had me in stitches. After the show Marc came out. I said, “That was really hilarious. I don’t know how you do it.” I gave him my card and told him I’d love to work with him. He asked if I made housecalls. A few days later he left me a voicemail asking me to stop by. I’ve been his MacMan ever since (he later connected me to Sarah too).

Before passcodes were a thing
Marc’s phone was stolen in 2014, which seems so long ago. Back then our devices weren’t as secure as they are today, but we didn’t have credit cards stored on our phones either. You could steal an iPhone and either use it or sell it.

How we’ve grown: iPhone 4 (like Marc’s stolen phone) and iPhone 16, from 2024.

Our constant companions
Our phones are even more of an appendage now than they were a decade ago. We rely on them for photos, messages, banking, social media…pretty much everything. They connect us to our work, our family and friends, the latest news, and countless memories. It’s no wonder losing a phone feels so devastating.

“If you were pushed to the edge and asked who you are really closest to in your life, if you really thought about it, it might be your phone…it’s not just an iPhone, it’s an organ.”—Marc Maron

The good news is that stealing an iPhone these days is pretty much a waste of time. You can’t even unlock it. Once the owner realizes it’s gone, you can have a phone disabled remotely in about two seconds. And, our data is typically stored on the cloud. As soon as you get another iPhone set up, you’re good to go.

I’m reminded of how far Apple’s technology has come in the areas of privacy and security. What would be seriously worrisome in the early days of smartphones is now as easy as a few clicks to get you back in business (as long as you keep your hardware and operating systems up to date).

A special shoutout
After the phone incident, Marc gave me a shoutout on his podcast:

“Out of love in my heart for my Mac guy, for saving my ass and shutting my phone off from space, here ya go Jeremy: macmannow.com. If you’re in the L.A. area and need Mac assistance, Jeremy is very attentive and he’s a smart guy.”

Thanks Marc, the feeling is mutual (from one pain-in-the-ass Jew to another).

MacMan’s collection of Marc Maron podcasts, from when CDs were still a thing.

Listen to the entire podcast on WTF with Marc Maron.

Transcript of stolen iPhone segment (adult language):

Someone had stolen my fuckin iPhone out of the dressing room at the theater. Now I was livid on a lot of levels. Where was the security for the situation? How did someone get through into the dressing room of the theater to take my iPhone. Why would someone want a fuckin iPhone 4?

That was the first level. You can’t believe for some reason initially when it happens that your phone is gone. As our lives are now, it’s not just a phone. It’s really a good portion of your brain. Everything is on there, you think in that moment. Oh my god everything is on there! Everything! My emails, my address book, my music that I’m listening to right now. My important personal information. Is that really on there? I don’t know. But there’s this panic because we are so phone dependent.

Really I think if some of you were pushed to the edge and asked, like, who are you really closest with in your life right now, who’s the most important person to you in your life, if you really thought about it, it might be your phone.

They’re an appendage. They’re an organ. It’s not just an iPhone, it’s an organ. It is something that I require to live, so you think, So there it was, gone. And once I establish that it was gone, then the panic sets in. Who’s got my shit? Now I knew my phone locked immediately and I know there’s a way to track the phone, so we get on a computer. This is at intermission, alright. I’m losing it, not making it pleasant for anybody. We have another hour of the show to do. I don’t want to be that much of a fucking freak and buzzkill everybody, but this is a major crisis. I’ve lost an organ.

So we tried to track it on the Find your iPhone thing because I remembered my password, for once, I remembered my fucking password. It wasn’t trackable, like that wasn’t going to make a difference. Then someone goes let’s call the cops.I go that’s not going to help me, you know, I’m bleeding. Please help me. Some part of me is dying right now, my phone is gone. I don’t know if I’m going to survive this, mentally or emotionally.

Here’s what’s interesting, when you lose your phone what do you do first? You got to check to see (if it’s an iPhone) if you can find the iPhone. I couldn’t find the iPhone. What was my first thought? Well fuckin I don’t want Moon to think that I’m icing her. So, in the middle of the crisis, on intermission, before the second act of the show, I emailed Moon and I’m like I lost my phone, aaah I don’t know what’s going to happen, I hope I live through this, um, what’s your phone number? I’ll call you from the hotel when I get back. What’s your phone number?! I don’t know anyones fucking number. So that was my first thought. Better let the woman I’m seeing know that I didn’t die or lost or kidnapped. Just my phone has been taken. My phone has been kidnapped.

Then what’s the next order of business? Holy fuck what if someone is Tweeting as me? That would be a crime against humanity, that would be horrible, if someone was , like, making un-clever or Tweets that weren’t like me, I’d have to assume that if they were Tweeting as me that they weren’t going out of their way to make it in my voice, right? So that was my second panic. These are important things. Not like, is there credit card information on there? Is my social security number on there? Are other people’s social security numbers on there? Is there a way to get into my back account? No. God forbid someone tweets as me, cuz that’s what’s important. I can wake up tomorrow and my bank accounts could be empty, but thank god I changed my Twitter passcode in time so someone didn’t represent themselves as me. That sterling of my identity was more upsetting than my bank account being drained. God forbid someone misunderstands something on Twitter and I am robbed that way.

Then I call my tech guy, or I emailed him and he was like (god bless him, if you believe in that kind of thing), Jeremy over at Macman. What’s his… let’s give him a plug because he fuckin went above and beyond the call of duty that guy. macmannow.com if you’re in the LA area and you want a Mac guy. This was Valentine’s day, the evening of Valentine’s day. I email Jeremy, I’m like dude my phone got stolen. He’s like, no problem. So he does some techno-wizardy and e reaches out to the sky. With his magic, he reaches out to the space. He reached out to space and he tells the cloud to turn my phone into garbage. He reaches out to space and he tells my cloud to make my (what he called my phone is now a brick). Now I’ve got a dead phone out there that was once connected to me. An organ. My organ is gone.

But, here’s what I wanted to get to, I wanted to toot my own horn. Because, in the middle of all this chaos, once I knew that the phone was shut off from space, I went back out there for the second act, and behaved as a professional. I mean my main instinct was to get out on stage and go, “I know that this is radio show, but one of your fuckers took my phone, and this bullshit, and Jason’s not going to play, Amanda’s not going to play fiddle, and I don’t care what John wants to do, he can shut up, until someone steps forward, I’ll give you this one opportunity, and we’ll all be proud of you. As a group, as an audience, we will support this, if you come forward and just give my phone and cry.”

I did not do that, because I knew that it was not all about me, and that we had a show to do, and the show must go on.