Stand-up comedy, with a brain

February 11, 2009|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

Despite his boyish mop-top haircut, circa the Beatles' "Revolver," Demetri Martin is quite intense. This guy is really far into his comic trip, his digressive journey into everyday absurdity and hyper-literal thinking. If you follow in Martin's tracks, and I recommend that you do, you'll find yourself standing in some mind-bending and even erudite places. He'll have you playing little games with the universe.

His new show, "Important Things With Demetri Martin," which premieres tonight at 10:30, is not what it professes to be, exactly. Although Martin has done stints on "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," he isn't a comedian of political outrage and media criticism. For him, "important things" have more to do with spelling tricks, psychological puzzles, and YouTubey gags. His show is like "Laugh-In" with a brain - it's a toy box of stand-up comedy, wordplay, irony, philosophy, semiotics, and, lest you fear this is all too heady, good old juvenile high jinks.

The humor in each fast-paced episode is united by a theme - tonight, it's "timing," next week it's "power." But the half hours pass with a natural, zigzag feel, from observational jokes about the curious aggressiveness of owning pet birds to a pre-filmed sketch about a "Time Gigolo" who sleeps with Mary Magdalene and Betsy Ross. His monologue material is punctuated with silly, offbeat shorts, too - of Martin as an awful slam poet or of Martin playing with a beach ball as "a guy who is way too early for a rave."

"Important Things" is packaged with an extreme consciousness of language, which is Martin's trademark and what distinguishes him from other slacker comics. Words run across the screen frequently, interacting with the action or the images. Before a sketch, we'll see the word "Watch," or before a commercial, we'll see his hand press a paper that reads, "Pause Show." It all has a multitasking atmosphere. Martin, who has written for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," loves to give Power Point presentations that play with anagrams and invent words. In one segment, he reveals how phrasing changes can keep Christmas cookies on the market year-round; in another, he explains the meaning of "millenivanillium," which has to do with Milli Vanilli, milliseconds, and the millennium.

Does it all sound too clever, too meta? Martin's low-key ease protects "Important Things" from getting mired in preciousness. His deadpan is warm, and sometimes he actually smiles. He's 35, but he comes across like a kid who's reached that age when he challenges his parents' instructions like a little lawyer, taking apart their words to point out the loopholes. But he seems like a happy kid, too, and one that can make you smile.

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.