Newsmaker

Every Friday, we choose an alum who has been making headlines—for better or for worse.
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Demetri Martin ’95

He dropped out of law school to do standup comedy, but Demetri Martin ’95 has not neglected his education. The mop-topped jokester taught himself to sew his own costumes; to play guitar, piano, and harmonica; and even to draw (well, sort of) on an easel pad to enhance his “sketch comedy.” This week, Martin learned what it’s like to headline his own show: Important Things With Demetri Martin made its debut Wednesday night on Comedy Central. Already known to Comedy Central viewers as Jon Stewart’s “youth correspondent,” Martin also stars in the upcoming Ang Lee film Taking Woodstock, based on the memoir of concert promoter and gay-rights activist Elliot Tiber. Important Things punchlines revolve around naked women, self-castration jokes, and supertitles reading “ASSH**E”—not exactly egghead humor. But in a Yale Alumni Magazine interview last year, Martin proved that he has not lost his intellectual edge: Getting laughs, he said, is “probabilistic… like quantum physics. In a sense.”

Filed under comedy, tv, performing arts
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