I have, somewhere or other on the web, remarked that Steve Martin often is not funny these days. He takes himself too seriously, and resents having to appease the many-headed with, you know, humor. But Steve still can be funny, with David Letterman, for example. Hanging with Dave, who is, of course, as self-pitying and egoistically grandiose as the Steveman himself, allows Steve to unleash his near-limitless anger and contempt on Dave rather than us, his real target, which, of course, would not be all that funny. But when Dave is on the receiving end, we can laugh, because he’s as rich as Steve is. He can take all the piss all us poor schmucks can’t handle.
All this is a bit of a lead-up to a funny article in the New York Times about a mighty egg that Stevo laid on the stage of the 92nd Street Y,* in New York, New York. If you’re not hip to the ways of the Big Apple, you may not know that the stage of the 92nd is where the Elaine’s† crowd goes to party. Steve was engaged in a dialogue with a pal of his, Deborah Solomon, who writes a weekly interview column for the New York Times Magazine, which makes the whole contretemps doubly inside, and perhaps trebly amusing.
It seems that Steve has written a new novel—such a genius he is!—about the Manhattan art world, An Object of Beauty, a world about which he knows not a little, and about which Debbie knows too, so they spent the evening rapping about art,‡ which apparently was not what the paid-fifty-bucks-for-a-ticket crowd wanted to hear, to the extent that the 92nd sent the following statement to all the attendees:
“We acknowledge that last night’s event with Steve Martin did not meet the standard of excellence that you have come to expect from 92nd St. Y. We planned for a more comprehensive discussion and we, too, were disappointed with the evening. We will be mailing you a $50 certificate for each ticket you purchased to last night’s event. The gift certificate can be used toward future 92Y events, pending availability.”
The entertainment value of the Times piece is helped along not a little by bitchy, whiny quotes from both Debbie and Steve.
“Frankly, you would think that an audience in New York, at the 92nd Street Y, would be interested in hearing about art and artists,” “Ms. Solomon” opined. “I had no idea that the Y programmers wanted me to talk to Steve instead on what it’s like to host the Oscars or appear in ‘It’s Complicated’ with Alec Baldwin [a film in which an unwilling Steve gets an unwelcome closeup of Alec’s big, fat, naked ass]. I think the Y, which is supposedly a champion of the arts, has behaved very crassly and is reinforcing the most philistine aspects of a culture that values celebrity and award shows over art.”
For his part, Steve found the Y’s action “discourteous” believing that the Y owed him a “consultation” before deciding that an evening of Steve on art wasn’t worth fifty bucks. To let the hotshots at the Y know he was still the Man, Stevo closed with a zinger: “As for the Y’s standard of excellence, it can’t be that high because this is the second time I’ve appeared there.”
Afterwords
Despite all the mean things I’ve said about Steve, I heartily recommend his autobiographical Born Standing Up, a touching, funny book. I also heartily recommend Kathy Griffin’s autobiographical Official Book Club Selection (funnier than its title), in which she recalls her first and only meeting with Steve, describing him as “not so much a dork [or was it a “douche”?] as someone imitating a dork [or “douche”]. I suspect that Steve felt that Kathy was not quite worthy of his time, an emotion that I further suspect he often entertains for his fellow humans.
*How can a YMCA be hip in New York? Because it’s not the YMCA. It’s the YMHA (the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, you philistine), which, somewhat bizarrely, operates what is just the hippest pre-school in Gotham. Back in 1999 the 92nd Street Y pre-school received a $1 million donation from mega-mega-bank Citigroup, a donation arranged by Citigroup Chair Sandy Weil to encourage the Y to accept the two young daughters of Salomon Smith Barney telecom analyst Jack Grubman, part of Citigroup, so that Jack would re-evaluate his negative take on AT&T, which negative take was providing the Sandman with some severe financial angst. When the story blew up later, poor Jack lost his job and withdrew his daughters, but the Y kept the cash. Oy vey, eh? Why didn’t Sandy lose his job, or even go to jail? Because Eliot Spitzer wanted to be president, sez Charles Gasparino here, in a post that was put up before Eliot himself got busted. Welcome to New York, motherfucker!
†Is Elaine’s even still in existence? Your guess is as good as mine. Better, probably.
‡How much does Steven know about art? In 2006, he sold an Edward Hopper painting he owned, “Hotel Window,” for $26.8 million! That’s what I call some serious walking around money, girlfriend!
