A memorable evening with Steve Martin

Jul 23, 2016

Went to see Steve Martin and Martin Short in Vancouver last night. Great show, lots of fun. And there’s a really good story here. The setup is a little complicated, but hang-in there: the punchline is precious.

A few months ago, when my wife Kim first heard about this tour, she was really excited and described it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Steve Martin. Kim’s a huge fan and Steve’s getting old (70!) and might never do this again. So she was pretty revved up about it: “We have to see him!” Okay, sure, but there’s just one problem…

It won’t be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, because, sweetheart, we already saw Steve live, in late 2009. And it was a big deal for Kim! But here she was talking like this show was going to be the first time, like she had no memory of it. And that’s when I realized that might literally be the case, because late 2009 was just a couple months before her terrible accident in Asia, with a major head injury (among much else). So I gently brought it up…and things got a little weird.

She didn’t believe me. She thought I was pulling her leg. Kim has zero memory of her accident, and she’s had a lot of memory problems ever since, but always trivial stuff. (She really can’t remember movies we’ve seen, like at all. On many occasions I’ve re-watched a good movie an extra couple times, because she can’t remember that we’ve even seen it, let alone what happened. I think we’ve seen Live. Die. Repeat. about 8 times now…)

I think we'll probably remember this show.

But Steve Martin is important to Kim and she could not believe that she couldn’t remember seeing him. With some effort, I managed to dig up proof: a tour schedule and a selfie in the Orpheum on the right night. We were there! Kim was amazed, because this truly meaningful thing had somehow gotten away from her, stolen by head injury. Poignant, right? She was so lucky it wasn’t worse, but still. But then there’s this...

The name of Steve Martin’s current touring show is… wait for it… this is so good…

…

“An Evening You Will Forget.”

ROFL. Kim thought that was so funny that she sent a message to Steve Martin telling him the story. It’s unlikely that he actually got it, but if he did… definitely his kind of joke!