I’ve never been all that wild and crazy about Steve Martin’s Saturday Night Live years. But the essays he’s written for The New Yorker’s “Shouts & Murmurs” section over the past few years are some of the funniest I’ve ever read. The other day when I was searching for one of those articles, I came across the website The Compleat Steve, which has an enormous collection of writing by and about Steve Martin, including transcripts of speeches and the Academy Awards show that he hosted a couple years ago. It’s hard to believe that the site isn’t infringing on a copyright somewhere, so maybe you should check it out soon, before the owner gets a “C and D” letter from somebody’s attorney.
Here is an excerpt from one of my favorite essays…