stand-up

Summer days call for light reading, and I've been cruising through quite a number of books already this summer-one standout has to be Steve Martin's Born Standing Up, a memoir of sorts detailing Martin's career in standup from his teens in the 1960's to his enormous success in the late 70s/early 80s.

Much of the book focuses on his time at Disneyland, working selling programs, or in one of the park's magic shops-magic and old-school punchlines formed much of the early repertoire-through years of sketch shows and tiny empty clubs. Martin placed an ultimatum on himself at the key age of 28 (hmmm...) to either make it at 30 or move on, and the next couple years of course led to bigger things.

A fairly minimal portion of the book focuses on the arena/stadium years, where Martin played to thousands on any given night, completely exploding the scale of live comedy to a level never seen before-and perhaps not surprisingly, it's pretty lonely at the top.

A quick and very enjoyable read.