Small things delight Demetri Martin. The mop-topped comedian and long-time contributor to The Daily Show upholds the fine tradition of surreal comedy, while sharpening it for today's informed slacker. Where comics once made jokes about airline food and relationships, Martin focuses on more arcane Gen-Y minutiae.
To wit: “Most castles in America are located in fish tanks,” said a completely deadpan Martin recently. “About 99 per cent are located underwater. So we have what is called a submerged monarchy in the United States.”
Such observations are typical fare from Martin, who possesses the rare ability to appear both bored and bemused before an audience. He may resemble a character from That ‘70s Show, but he has the Steven Wright sensibility down cold.
And however low key, he's also today's hot comedy player, as evidenced in recent cover stories by Entertainment Weekly and Rolling Stone. His Daily Show reports and stand-up clips featuring trademark easel-board presentations are among the most downloaded on YouTube. (At 35, Martin also looks about 18, which possibly explains his appeal to the largest slice of the viewing demographic.)
The inevitable next rung for Martin has been loudly announced lately on billboards and in print ads: Important Things with Demetri Martin, presents the lanky satirist with his first weekly comedy series, starting tomorrow.
“It's a good show, and it's thing-oriented,” he said in an interview. “It's not a topical show in as much as it covers news, but more that it covers a simple thing, like an object or an emotion. I try to treat things very broadly in that sense.”
Created for Comedy Central by Jon Stewart's production company, the seven-part series allows Martin wide-open comedic range, through sketches, animation and musical performance. At one point, the ambidextrous host simultaneously plays a guitar, three bells, a chord organ, a harmonica and a tambourine, while turning pages on a flip chart.
The first show's theme is timing, to be followed by Martin-style treatises on power, anger and other abstract human-condition issues. “We have an entire episode on chairs; that's probably my favourite,” said Martin.
In a nod to followers, Martin will also bring out a marker and flip chart on occasion to demonstrate some of his patented “product ideas,” including one he came up with recently on an airline flight.
“It's called a baby silencer,” he said. “It's kind of a funnel the baby wears over the nose and mouth. There's a tube going to headphones that go to the baby's ears, so when it's crying, it's going right back to his ears, like, ‘Wah – ow, God, that hurts. That's me. I should stop.' And then baby stops crying. That's still in development.”
This type of reflections occur naturally to Martin, whose world view was shaped by his working-class upbringing in Toms River, N.J., where his Greek-American parents ran a diner (his father is also a Greek Orthodox priest). An outgoing teen, and high-school president, the young Martin was drawn to the stand-up routines of Bill Cosby and Wright, and was particularly fascinated by the works of cartoonist Gary Larson.
“I loved The Far Side,” he said. “They usually left a situation hanging, so you could visualize the next part in your head. There was something in the economy of just lines or words that had a certain elegance to it, for my taste of comedy. It kind of led naturally to doing it onstage.”
Higher learning was important, too. Martin studied history for several semesters at Yale before switching to legal studies at New York University on a full scholarship. With one year of law school to go, he made a fateful life choice.
“One day I just decided, ‘Yeah, I'm going to be a comedian now,' and dropped out of law school,” said Martin. “I hadn't really tested if stand-up comedy was a viable career option.”
