listen to this interview- it’s only about 20 minutes.
There are quite a few pretty insightful remarks and it includes some stand up jokes- so a little more engaging of a listen than an academic lecture or a lot of other public radio.
I've posted some relevant sections from the transcript below. . .
I've posted some relevant sections from the transcript below. . .
JESSE THORN: That process of learning a trick has always fascinated me about dudes that are into skateboarding, because skateboarding is this culture that is built around being slightly dropped out. It's like the classic slacker culture, possibly second to weed culture, but interrelated; and yet, when I think back to the people I knew when I was a teenager who were into skateboarding, what they did with their time was practice over and over, work so hard, fail so much, to learn to do something that at the end of it, outside of the context of skateboarder culture, wasn't even that cool looking or anything.
DEMETRI MARTIN: It's true, and for me that's a big similarity to standup. It might be because I'm a joke teller, but there's a diligence to it. All these comedians I look at from the outside might seem like slackers or guys who are kind of barnacles on the real world of work and stuff, but when you’re in there with them, you're seeing guys and girls - - women, I'm not trying to be a sexist comic here...you're seeing people who are working really hard at their craft, at what they do. It could be fart jokes, it could be very personal stories, it could be one liners that are kind of absurd. But by in large, you're going to find people that are like these skaters.
That's what I mean almost with the repertoire, you see this guy trying to land this trick over and over again, and then he gets it, and you think oh cool, this guy can do a double kick flip. For two weeks every day he was sitting there kicking the board, picking it up, trying again. It could be just some random bit about dogs or something, but you see this guy one night, oh, he's prepping this thing about a dog, then oh, he's doing it again, there he goes. You either get it or you don't. But there's a similar diligence which to me is great, because I'm over 13 years in standup now and I'm not bored yet. I still like it.
. . .For me, possibility, progress, growth, those things are very - - they feel very good. It doesn't usually come with negativity. I don't really mind sucking at something as long as I'm getting a little bit better at it along the way. I don't know if I'll ever be a master at anything, but I think that's a mistake for me personally. I don't know how much it's about the journey, but it's more about the process. I like short jokes, I like puzzles, there's an incrementalism, I say, to that stuff. You get into one little problem, and then you get your way out of it, you find a solution, or maybe you don't, but you can move on to the next one. Over time, maybe the goals, the results, are just the by products of approaching things with a certain process, a certain approach.
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