From the renowned comedian, creator, star and executive producer/multiple title-holder of Comedy Central's Important Things with Demetri Martin comes a bold, original, and rectangular kind of humor book. Demetri's first literary foray features longer-form essays and conceptual pieces (such as Protagonists' Hospital, a melodrama about the clinic doctors who treat only the flesh wounds and minor head scratches of Hollywood action heroes), as well as his trademark charts, doodles, drawings, one-liners, and lists (i.e., the world views of optimists, pessimists and contortionists), Martin's material is varied, but his unique voice and brilliant mind will keep readers in stitches from beginning to end.
eMusic Review 0
04.25.11
Demetri Martin, This Is an Audiobook
2011 | Label: Hachette Audio
Short form humor at its strangest and silliest
Comedian, actor, artist, musician and humorist Demetri Martin’s star has risen steadily over the years, first as the "Senior Youth Correspondent" on The Daily Show, then with his own Comedy Central show, Important Things With Demetri Martin. After releasing a standup album in 2006 matter-of-factly titled These are Jokes, Martin follows up with a likewise wildly-named audiobook.
If that kind of wordplay and short-form humor isn't your thing, Martin’s book isn’t, either. Several longer humor pieces consider aliens who come to earth to meet Miss Universe, the life of Socrates’ publicist and couples who say "we’re pregnant." The real laughs, though, are found in Martin's one-liners, which are sprinkled liberally through the book, and employ a brand of silliness so strange that it makes sense — like the brilliant non sequitur, "This year, Americans officially became fatter than snowmen." Because the book’s not terribly long, though, Martin’s unique brand of humor never wears out its welcome.