TVSquad

If you've been watching Comedy Central, you may have noticed one of the roughly several thousand ads for the new show, Important Things with Demetri Martin. We also gave you a glimpse of it last week. All the hype can sometimes be a sign of a show in need of propping up. Not so with Important Things. I got a hold of two episodes in advance, and the show is worth watching, or DVRing, if you're one of those people who sometimes leaves the house. The show premieres February 11 at 10:30 PM.

Martin is a talented comedian whose act is built around offbeat one-liners (in the tradition of Steven Wright and, later, Mitch Hedberg). But he's also an artist and musician, incorporating his drawings (through and easel onstage) and songwriting into his stage act. Important Things is a great extension of that, allowing Martin to animate some of his drawings or pay attention to details that couldn't be seen onstage (like a view of the letter "R" from behind that shows its tiny "R" butt), in addition to musical pieces and sketch comedy.

The biggest compliment I can pay to comedian Eugene Mirman is that he's my favorite comedian now that Mitch Hedberg is dead. That may seem like a back-handed compliment, but there's nothing wrong with second place, especially when you're first.

Anyway, a post on CC Insider hepped me to Eugene's new Web series on SuperDeluxe.com called "Space Talk from Dimension Eugene." If you've never experienced the indescribable comedy of Eugene Mirman, watching his videos should help you not understand him just a little bit better. If you have a penchant for smart and weird (or as I call it, "smeirdt") comedy, Eugene has exactly what you need. Also, many of these videos can be found on his Web site, and on YouTube. Really, if you don't watch at least one of them, you're just being lazy.

Jonathan Katz, like Norm MacDonald, is someone who I knew quite well from his stand-up comedy long before he ever carved out his little niche on television. Katz's brand of comedy was very dry and very subdued, and certainly not everyone's cup of tea, since Katz was, in his own words, "a comedian trapped in the body of an accountant." His quiet demeanor and razor wit wouldn't quite jibe with audiences until Dr. Katz, Profesional Therapist came along and he was teamed up with a comedian as equally dry, H. Jon Benjamin. I assume that all this comedic dryness caused some kind of respiratory problems and that a humidifier had to be brought into the studio to correct this. This is the darker side of comedy not many people talk about anymore. Anyway, Katz was recently interviewed over at The Onion's AV Club where he talked about his stand-up days, Dr. Katz, and continuing to work while dealing with multiple sclerosis.