Steve Martin & Martin Short crack up Conan, Marc Bernardin talks world-building

Plus accidental nudity and bad job interviews on Armchair Anonymous

First of all, let’s just get this out of the way: I am still obsessively listening to the “Subspace Rhapsody” soundtrack.

Somehow, despite the need to rewatch the episode—I’ve now arrived at the stage where I skip the dialogue between the musical numbers—and listen to the songs over & over, I have found time for some excellent podcasts.

Martin Short and Steve Martin talk on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend

So like a lot of other people, I’m a big fan of Only Murders in the Building. If you’re not watching it, you should be, dammit.

I’ve always loved Steve Martin, ever since my grandfather gathered us all in front of the TV in Florida where they had HBO (which hadn’t arrived yet in Toronto), because he had something IMPORTANT to show us. It was Steve Martin’s comedy special.

“This man is going to be a huge star,” he told us.

From there, we discovered his comedy albums, stayed up late to catch his SNL appearances, and went to see all of his movies.

Martin Short, however, is sometimes hilarious and other times… well, sometimes when you are imitating an annoying thing, you become just as annoying as that thing, and he’s been guilty of that. But ask actors and comedians about him, and they’ll all say he’s the funniest person they’ve ever met. Hey, he killed it on Smartless a while back.

Conan got both Steve and Martin on his podcast, and they, as my daughter would say, slayed. Here’s a bit of it:

Not only was I laughing my ass off, I was also riveted by the stories they told. They’ve all met a ton of famous people. Steve Martin talked about meeting Elvis Presley, who didn’t seem to understand his comedy but offered to show Steve his guns. (Steve said yes. How could he do otherwise?)

Martin Short talked about getting introduced to Frank Sinatra by Dinah Shore (don’t you wish you had an anecdote that started with that?) at a party at George Schlatter’s, and I managed to love the story despite my intense dislike of George Schlatter. Sure, he produced Laugh-In, but he also yelled at me once, so screw him.

Yeah, he hated a special I produced for Comedy Central and was super mean about it.

Anyway, it was still a great story, as was the one about Lorne taking Conan to a baseball game and picking up Jack Nicholson on the way. “If you want to be anonymous,” said six-foot-four Conan, “walk next to Jack Nicholson.”

And Steve’s Meryl Streep stories are excellent. (She’s on the show with them this season, along with Paul Rudd. I’ve never met Meryl, but Paul was on the same flight as me once. I told him he was awesome as I passed by first class on my way to coach, as one does.)

I totally forgot, I have a Martin Short story

When I was at VH1, Martin Short came in to talk about his Broadway show and was being interviewed by a very green, very sweet VJ who I was producing. He sensed right away that she wasn’t very confident and tried so hard to help her. He’d say things like, “You know, the craziest part of doing a Broadway show is all the crazy B-list celebrities who come backstage,” and she’d say “That’s great” while my inner voice begged her to ask please ask him who, please! He could’ve been really mean to her, and he chose to be sweet. So yeah… he’s hilarious and he’s a lovely man. Why was I complaining about him?

Shut up, Laurie! Let everyone go listen.

Worldbuilding on The Writers Panel

When my time on the treadmill whips by because the podcast I’m listening to is so absorbing, I know I need to share it in this newsletter. Marc Bernardin has Star Trek cred (intern on Deep Space Nine, supervising producer on Picard), general nerd cred (he co-hosts the Fatman Beyond podcast with Kevin Smith and has written a lot of comic books), and loads of entertainment industry and journalism cred. After picketing with Writers Panel host Ben Blacker, he agreed to come on the podcast to discuss the challenging process of world-building.

He talked a lot about how to find the “rules” as you’re creating, and brought up this excellent quote, although he couldn’t remember the source:

The enemy of art is the absence of restrictions.

I also loved his conversation with Ben about the challenge of writing the middle of your story. I recently got some great advice about this directly from Dan and Kevin Hageman, creators of my beloved Star Trek: Prodigy, who told me that if you keep writing the beginning and the end, eventually you will get to a point where you see exactly what the middle has to be to connect them.

Smarties.

Naked in public and worst job interviews

I’m just barely getting caught up on Armchair Anonymous, but I listened to two gems over the weekend. The first was about being naked in public… by accident. The stories were all pretty great, and my favorite is a toss-up between the woman sleepwalking in a boutique hotel and the woman who went parasailing in a bikini. Great storytellers all around!

The bad job interviews were equally entertaining and even more surprising, believe it or not.

My favorite GOOD job interview was probably the one with rock journalist Bill Flanagan at VH1. I didn’t get the job, but during the interview, Bill got a call from Neil Aspinall, who was the Beatles road manager back in the day, and asked if it was okay for him to take it. Of course it was! I got to eavesdrop on that, plus I was thrilled to meet Bill, who was very nice. He wrote a book I love, a collection of interviews with many of my favorite songwriters.

Other recent highlights of Armchair Expert include the return of Kristen Bell—in which she and Dax broke down their famous misadventure at Logan airport and puzzled over the weirdly hostile reaction—and a fun interview with psychologist Dr. Wendy Mogul, who I’ve been quoting ever since I listened.

Still singing…

We didn’t do an All Access episode last week, and I still haven’t caught up on everything else except The Delta Flyers. I’m way behind on Smartless and The Syfy Sistas, and if I could stop listening to that Star Trek musical, I’d probably have more time for them. So be it.