He’s everywhere these days. He appears regularly on talk shows like Late Night with Conan O’Brien and is the “Trendspotting” correspondent for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
Demetri Martin performed last night in Stewart Theatre to a full house of eager students waiting to hear his obscure brand of comedy.
“The way he delivers is just goofy,” Carolyn Steele, sophomore in communication, said. “That’s it. He’s goofy.”
Others waiting in the line that stretched into the Talley Student Center Ballroom came to see a comedian they enjoyed on television and wanted to see in real life.
“I saw him on Comedy Central and thought he was really funny,” Waylon Walker, freshman in First Year College, said.
The theater filled quickly with fans in anticipation of Martin, but before he came out, comedian Mellow Mike warmed up the crowd.
Mellow Mike was a stark contrast from Martin’s brand of creative pop-comedy. Mellow Mike’s more traditional comedy focused on the differences between the white and black races. Mike, a local black comic, recalled growing up in Cary and the treatment he received from his white friends.
His friends would say things like, “February should have been longer,” in reference to Black History Month, and he enjoyed playing games with his friends — except hangman.
Mellow Mike’s set lasted only 20 minutes and was quickly followed by a DVD played on the large screen to introduce Martin.
A short cartoon by Martin about unknown mythical creatures got the crowd ready for his imaginative comedy.
Martin wasted no time and began his routine by talking about how even the theater at an ACC school is basketball-like and made jokes about things around the stage.
While the crowd found his improvised jokes hysterical, it was his routine they were ready to hear.
“Most signs are like ‘STOP’ or ‘EXIT’,” began a typical Martin joke. “But ‘WET FLOOR’ goes that extra mile.”
His jokes weren’t all clean, though — especially when he began talking about weird things he saw in society.
“Part of the problem with kiddy porn is that it sounds cute,” Martin said.
Martin’s blend of comedy could not be described as straightforward, man-behind-a-microphone style delivery. Martin describes himself as “a prop comic,” and he divided his show to use different props and media.
He gave a presentation of findings in graph form, like percentages of different people who owned Hummers and the correlation between how good-looking a woman is and how much he “can listen to her talk about how intuitive her cat is.”
He also performed remixes of his jokes using a keyboard and glockenspiel to an applauding crowd.
