And then suddenly it was all over. Martin stopped doing stand-up and then began concentrating on making movies and writing.
Don't get me wrong, folks. I'm not complaining. I'm still a huge fan of Steve's film work. "
Roxanne " (Which Martin wrote) is a sweet little gem of a movie. Likewise his valentine to living in Los Angeles, "
LA Story." And who can forget "
The Jerk," with all of its great little absurd bits (Mexican cat juggling, anyone?) as well as its brilliant extended set pieces ("I don't need anything. Just this ashtray and this paddle game and the remote control ...")?
I'm also extremely fond of the plays that Steve has written (like "
Picasso at the Lapin Agile" and "
The Underpants ") as well as Martin's novels ("
Shopgirl" and "
Pleasure of My Company") and that collection of his short stories ("
Pure Drivel").
But that said, I still miss Steve Martin, stand-up comic. More importantly, I'd always wondered why -- when this guy was white-hot, working at the very top of his game -- he just ... stopped.
Well, I finally got an answer to that question when I read Martin's memoir, "
Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life " (Scribner, November 2007). Which Steve describes as being " ... not an autobiography but a biography, because I am writing about someone I used to know."
But better than that, thanks to this beautifully written book, I now have a much better understanding where Steve Martin came from. More importantly, how he came to be such a unique talent.
Of course, to hear Steve tell the tale, he owes a lot of his success to the days he spent at
Disneyland as a 10-year-old guidebook salesman. Once he's sold all of his books for that day, the young Martin would hurry on over to ...
... Pepsi Cola's Golden Horseshoe in Frontierland, where
Wally Boag, the first comedian I ever saw in person, plied a hilarious trade of gags and offbeat skills such as gun twirling and balloon animals, and brought the house down when he turned his wig around backwards. He wowed the audience every
"Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life" isn't your usual show biz bio. In that it doesn't feature any juicy gossip or lurid behind-the-scenes stories. But what it does have is some really beautiful writing. Take -- for example -- this section of the book. Which describes that day when Martin -- long after he made a name for himself in stand-up and the movies -- felt compelled to return to Knotts and make one last visit to the Bird Cage.
I tugged at the theater door; it was locked. I was about to give up when I remembered a back entrance in the employees-only area, a clunky, oversized wooden gate that rarely locked because it was so rickety. I sneaked behind the theater and opened the door, which, for the millionth time, had failed to latch. The darkened theater flooded with sunlight, and I stepped inside and quickly shut the door. Light filtered in from the canvas roof, giving the bird cage a dim, golden hue. There I was, standing in a memory frozen in amber, and I experienced an overwhe
lming rush of sadness.
time.
Even When You’re a Star, Comedy Isn’t in his lean, incisive new book about the trajectory of his life in comedy,
Steve Martin describes some of the danger signs that made him realize his career in stand-up had peaked. In 1979 he was booked solid for the next two years and playing auditoriums too large for his sly, intimate stage act to be understood. And the critical backlash had begun: he had gone from being a wild and crazy guy, in his own phrase, to “a mild and lazy guy” in the none-too-original minds of reviewers.
.........When he went to a hospital in the midst of one of the panic attacks he had begun suffering, a nurse asked him to autograph a printout of his EKG. When he spoke with friends, conversations “often degenerated into deadening nephew autograph requests.” He was perceived to be so funny that he might get a laugh simply by asking, “What time does the movie start?” And he could take a woman to dinner and discover that yes, she had a boyfriend — and the boyfriend liked the idea of her dating a comedy star.By 1981, he writes, “my act was like an overly plumed bird whose next evolutionary step was extinction.” And he deserves credit for not having beaten that poor, tired, figurative bird into the ground. Perhaps it was a methodical approach to humor that saved him. “Born Standing Up” does a sharp-witted job of breaking down the step-by-step process that brought him from
Disneyland, where he spent his version of a Dickensian childhood as a schoolboy employee, to both the pinnacle of stardom and the brink of disaster. Since then, he has spent more than 25 years using fiction, plays, movies, short humor essays and albums to escape the professional inertia that nearly led to his undoing.
Mr. Martin describes “Born Standing Up” as a biography rather than an autobiography, “because I am writing about someone I used to know.” He need not specify that he has spent years dissecting that long-lost someone, since this book is written in the straight-from-the-couch voice of a dutiful analysand. That does not make Mr. Martin myopic or dull; it simply gives him more than the usual degree of insight into why his sense of humor evolved the way that it did. Sure, he had a father who told a newspaper that “Saturday Night Live” (on which Mr. Martin has appeared many times) was the worst thing on television and whose own thwarted ambitions as a performer led to stone-faced disapproval of his son’s success. But the younger Mr. Martin is more interested in gaining insight than in settling scores.
Born in 1945, Mr. Martin grew up at a pivotal time in comedy history. As a boy he loved the lariat tricks and gimmicky props (most notably the arrow-through-the-head device, which would turn up on room-service waiters trying to amuse him in his adult superstar days) that were the epitome of that era’s magic acts. But he also grew up with a sense of imminent change.
With
Mike Nichols,
Elaine May,
Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl to listen to, not to mention E. E. Cummings and Lewis Carroll to read, he developed an eagerness to experiment with new premises for how the comic and the audience might interact. “I have decided my act is going to go avant-garde,” he wrote to a girlfriend in 1966. Though he claims that he still does not know what that meant, his book is fearless in charting the awkward stages of his comic breakthrough.
After early stints at such unpromising places as Knott’s Berry Farm, Mr. Martin (who grew up two miles from Disneyland, which he refers to as his version of Versailles) wound up footloose in San Francisco. One early job simply called for him to be onstage in a comedy club so passers-by on the street would think something was going on indoors. But in such anything-goes settings, he was free to ask himself interesting questions about how jokes worked: “What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it?” Although some of his answers, as reprinted here, are decidedly unfunny, Mr. Martin was able to concoct an unusual comic strategy. “And for the next eight years, I rolled it up a hill like Sisyphus,” he recalls.
Eventually he would ditch the turquoise and adopt a white three-piece suit for his stage act. He had the same kinds of lucid reasons for this as he did for other pivotal decisions. He wanted to be visible from a distance. He wanted a vest to keep his shirt from coming loose. He wanted to escape the politics of the period, finding it funnier to look “like a visitor from the straight world who had gone seriously awry.”
And he wanted to honor a piece of advice about audiences that he had heard early on: “Always look better than they do.” 
δεν σας κανω πλακα αυτη ειναι καμπανια για προφυλακτικα και την αφιερωνω στη Καρίνα επειδη κανει και κοινωνικο εργο και μοιραζει δωρεαν προφυλακτικα στη παρασταση με διαφορες γευσεις....Μηπως να βαλουμε και ενα χορευτικο??!! bad joke
press on the screen below to see the clip
Ειναι τελειο Μια ομάδα άγνωστων ανθρώπων να γελούν σαν μια παρεα.Σας ευχαριστουμε 
How many of you out there remember Steve Martin, stand-up comic ? That absurdist in the white three-piece suit who -- as he was leading audience singalongs -- would say:
lming rush of sadness.
γατα με πεταλα 20/12/2007 10:17:43 μμ σουπερ γελιο
"Comedy is a serious business. A serious business with only one purpose — to make people laugh." The teary-eyed laughter that flooded the American University Dubai's (AUD) auditorium could certainly confirm this old W. C. Fields' quote. Making an audience of 700 people laugh to their heart's content is no easy feat, but Ahmad Ahmad, Maz Jobrani and Aron Kader, on the Middle-Eastern leg of their pioneering Axis of Evil comedy tour, made it seem effortless. They each took to the stage for a few minutes of the show as a preview of what was to come, getting straight to the laughs by using a mixture of physical comedy (which Aron undoubtedly has a penchant for!), contemporary stories (Maz had Dubai traffic nailed!) and a commanding audience appeal (Ahmad did not even flinch in the face of hilarious, unexpected technical failings). Competing for comedy The boys then had the tables turned on them as they watched more than a dozen AUD students express their comic talent at the open-microphone event held on December 1. Organised by the AUD's Palestinian Cultural Club (PCC) with a little help from Showtime Arabia, the programme gave the students a chance to air their talents on international television. While an Arabic-speaking South Korean who can belt out an Abdel Halim Hafiz number is not a sight you see everyday, the students collectively stole the show. Performing in front of a tough crowd they bravely awaited on-the-spot feedback from the Axil of Evil judges and the announcement of the winner. The students, an eclectic mix of nationalities including Egyptian, Pakistani, Lebanese, British and Iranian expressively used their comedy to counter stereotypes and tackle various issues, drawing on family, friends, education, politics and other life experiences to make the audience laugh. The stand up scene "We don't have much comedy going on and I would love to see more of this happening," said Dr. Linda, the coordinator of the PCC. "It breaks the tension and I hope this is the beginning of more shows where we can use humour as a powerful, effective tool to deliver ideas." Ahmad said, "This is an under-developed industry in the region. Despite that people do have a sense of humour and do laugh at themselves. Comedy is simply about having a point of view and going for the funny." Kader added that "there was a lot more potential in Dubai" than he had seen in other places. Best Performance The winner of the night, George Saad, earned a 25 per cent scholarship for AUD's Spring 2008 semester and got the chance to perform with the boys at their sold-out show at the Mall of the Emirates. "This was an amazing experience, but you still want to win even if you're happy with doing well on stage. It was very tense and very exciting. I couldn't believe it!" Advice to budding stand-up comedians Maz: Get on stage as much as you can, and write a lot, keep writing. Ahmad: Stay interested, be animated with your story telling … and know that you will be married to this career. The worst stand-up faux pas: Aron: Don't blame the audience! The purpose of comedy: Maz: It's when you try to expose hypocrisy, but you do it in a funny way. Ahmad: It's like the saying, there's nothing funny about comedy — it is always taken from real life. For us, we add humour the whole concept of being from the Middle East, bearing in mind that we can't be too one-sided because we are also from the US, and owe it to this country to be fair. Comedy — is it nature or nurture? "Both. It is important that you have it from within." — Manisha Hirani, AUD "Nature. Making people laugh is a talent inside the person." — Karim Soubra, business, AUD "Nature, because it is not what you say but how you say it." — Mina Botros, electrical engineering, AUD "Some people are funny, some aren't. It's how you portray it." — Ahmad Sadawi, marketing, AUD "It's nature. You don't need to prepare material." — Rany Metri Deskoores, engineering, AUD Biggest on-stage faux pas for a comedian? "Being abusive when on stage." — Shilpa Asnani, AUD "Being racist." — Anshul Purohit, management finance, AUD "Things that shouldn't be talked about, comedy is funny, certain topics just aren't." — Khalid Jasmi, IT, AUD "Being rude on stage, there is a difference between crude and funny." — George Saad, communication, AUD
ap and doing something positive. There's nothing more positive than seeing a bunch of Middle Eastern people laughing, especially considering the current situation and the tension. We gladly accepted that role of being political agenda activists… concerned people, I guess," he said. Courage Growing up as the only kid of Arab heritage in his neighbourhood, Kader decided to be proud of where he comes from. "Instead of feeling insecure about my heritage, I was going to wear it on my sleeve like a badge of honour. I was my friends' only example of Palestine. I gave it a positive image," he said. But adds that the situation in his motherland bothers him greatly. "I wish the way they [Palestinians] respond to certain situations wasn't so violent. You get pushed so far to the edge that anything will set you off. I understand where they're coming from, but it takes more courage to turn the other cheek and be non-violent. "I wish the Arabs could have one voice and be unified. And I wish they could respond with humour. You can finish the job with humour. You gotta have hope," Kader said. "Martin Luther King once said, if you're not part of the solution, then you're part of the problem." Maz Jobrani: Proudly Iranian His mother can't understand why he keeps dying. Well, when you play the part of a terrorist in American movies, that's pretty much bound to be your fate. But he's had enough and now refuses to contribute to the stereotypical depictions of Arabs in cinema. Maz Jobrani is on a quest of his own to change those negative connotations in the media and entertainment industry. The actor/comedian has been in several big hits, including playing alongside Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn in The Interpreter, and appearing in the Ice Cube movie, Friday After Next. First hero Now he has written his own movie script — Jimmy Vestvood: Amerikan Hero — about a character (played by himself) named Jimmy Vestvood, who's "pashions" are things like backgammon and milk and cookies. The name of the character comes from the fact that, according to Jobrani, Iranians can't pronounce the letter W. Hence, Vestvood, and not Westwood, a place in California. "I want it to be one of the first Middle Eastern heroes in American cinema. He's like a bumbling idiot, but in the end he saves the day. It's a subliminal message, but if I can do this movie, and Americans can go see this and go, 'I love Jimmy Vestvood', that's another step forward. "I want him to be stereotypical with an accent and just lovable," Jobrani said. Who's the threat? Jobrani was born in Iran and moved to the US when he was 6. But he's still very much in touch with his roots. He speaks Farsi and loves Iranian food. At the same time, as an American, he finds it necessary to talk about his Iranian ethnicity on stage. "I want to step up and say, I am Iranian, and if you think it's OK to attack Iran, you're attacking me and my fami
ly," he said. "I just saw a poll which said something like 77 per cent of the people in the US don't want to go to war in Iran. The media is saying Iran is a major threat in the world. But a poll done in the rest of the world said that most people feel like America is the bigger threat. Who's attacking other countries? America is. But as an American, it's funny, because I feel like I need to defend America too," Jobrani said. He says he enjoys coming to the Middle East because the audience he performs for is different from in the US. "Here people are a lot more savvy on what is going on internationally than your average American crowd. I mean, there are great American crowds too, especially in the bigger metropolitan cities like LA, San Francisco, New York and Washington DC," he said. But being a comedian, he realises that some subjects should be approached in the right way. Important "Freedom of speech is obviously very important to somebody living in the West, especially for a comedian. But there are comedians who think they are edgy, and I look at them and think, 'you know what, you're hitting it too hard'. "As an audience member, I am a lot more impressed with the comedians who are not obvious about what they're saying. I am not impressed with comedians who are in your face," he said, which is something that all three of the comedians from Axis of Evil have managed to master. They're funny while talking about important issues. "The reason why we're talking about this is because it means something to us. It comes from me, not because the community needs me to do this," Jobrani said. 
Παρασκευη 8 Δεκεμβριου στο Κομεντυ Κλαμπ Ευχαριστουμε ολους Ευχαριστουμε τον Παναγιώτη Βερδη για την ιδεα και για τη γενναιοδωρη προσπαθεια του για τη διοργανωση..Στο επανιδειν!! 
Χθες, ηταν ενα άλλο βραδυ. Ολοι νομιζω ευχαριστηθηκαν κι εμεις και το κοινο . Ειχε ερθει και ο προεδρος και μιλησε με την Καρινα για το cybersex και μετα του δωσαμε το βιβλιο "συμφωνια χαρακτηρων", γιατι μας ειπε οτι θυμαται οτι το …… της καρινας μιλαει! Του το δωσαμε πραγματικα χωρις να ξερουμε οτι αυτος ειναι ο προεδρος! Ευχαριστηθηκε και θελει να μας καλεσει,λεει, να δουμε αυτους 
να δραματοποιουν πραξεις απο το "συμφωνια χαρακτηρων".Του Παναγιωτη
ο κ. Λουπασακης τα εχει πει ολα. Το γελιο ειναι θεραπεια. Μας το χαρισατε`χθες βραδυ, παιδες. Ευχαριστουμε ιδιαιτερα, γιατι τωρα ειμαι αισιοδοξη και να ξερετε οτι πραγματικα επιτελειται βαθυ κοινωνικο εργο! ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΩ για την ομορφη , πολυ κεφατη βραδια.
οι κωμικοι Αλεξης Κυριακουλης ,Κωνσταντίνος Πασας,Ευγενια Σασσαλου και ο Μπεμπεκος επαιξαν δυο βραδυες με μεγαλη επιτυχία στο Μεγαλο Ψαρι στο Ηρακλειο της Κρητης με γκεστ τον Σανκαρα και τις Παπαρουνες
Να μην ξεχνάτε να δίνετε γέλιο και χαρα Να ζήσετε όσο τα χαμόγελα μας Μ.Φ Μου φτιαξατε τη διαθεση που τοσοι πολλοί χαλάνε.Μου αρεσαν όλοι πολύ και αυτός με τη Πούψη απο τη διαφήμιση που ειναι αγχωρική γιατι η δοση του δανειου μεγαλώνει Βάσω 
εσεις γραφετε στο βιβλιο εντυπωσεων μετα την παρασταση..εμεις σας ευχαριστουμε...
