The Compleat Steve :: About Steve :: Actor :: Master of Ceremonies :: Guest



				About Steve :: Actor :: Guest Appearance Funny Numbers December 15, 2002 Herbst Theater Funny Numbers Conversation with Robert Osserman Sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute
			http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/17/DD25871.DTL San Francisco Chronicle Comedians + math a brilliant equation Robin Williams joins Steve Martin, scholar in zany 'Numbers' program Jonathan Curiel, Chronicle Staff Writer Tuesday, December 17, 2002 The event was advertised as a "Funny Numbers" conversation between comedian Steve Martin and mathematics scholar Robert Osserman. They were going to chat about equations and film and writing, in a cafe-style setting on the stage of the Herbst Theatre. But when it was over, the audience was amazed at what else they'd witnessed: Martin taking out a banjo and playing the instrument like a country music star; Osserman saying some things as wittily as his famous guest; and -- halfway through -- Robin Williams suddenly walking onstage, where he bantered, imitated, cajoled and gesticulated (about math, Trent Lott, French people, etc. ) as only Robin Williams can do. It was a mostly unscripted exercise in comic madness -- all because of math. Or, rather, in spite of it. Berkeley's Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, where Osserman works, hosted the Sunday night talk (in conjunction with City Arts & Lectures) to raise its profile and public awareness about the role of math in society. Martin played along but digressed every chance he got -- much to the capacity crowd's delight. "In high school, I used to be able to make magic squares," Martin said, referring to the patterns of numbers in a square that add up the same in all directions. "I like anything kind of 'jumbly.' I like anagrams. What else do I like? I like sex." Martin really does like math, and he's been friends with Osserman for about a year, after meeting him at a philosophical society. A professor emeritus at Stanford, Osserman helped Martin flesh out a math-oriented character for his new novella, "The Pleasure of My Company," which is being published next spring. "The character is slightly neurotic, has compulsions and is struck by anxiety, and one of the ways he calms down is to go home and create a magic square," Martin said before reading a passage from it: "Making a magic square would alphabetize my brain. Alphabetize is my slang for 'alpha-beta-ize,' meaning raise my alphas and lower my betas. . . . During moments of crisis, I've created magic squares composed of 8, 16 and even 64 boxes, and never once has it failed to level me out. . . . Benjamin Franklin was a magic square enthusiast. I assume he tackled them when he was not preoccupied with bopping a Parisian beauty -- a practice I do not have." So, in Martin's world, math and sex are frequently related in thought. Same with Williams, who at one point pretended to be a lascivious math geek in a boudoir, saying, "Yeah, baby. I'm getting ready to bisect that angle! . . . Oh, obtuse! . . . Come on and show me that diameter!" The crowd howled with laughter. So did Osserman, whose best lines were explaining how banjo frets have the exact same specifications as slide rules. "Slides rules and (the frets of) banjos are divided into even parts where each integral is a fixed fraction," Osserman said, "so if you want to multiply two numbers and you don't have your slide rule or calculator, you bring out two banjos, slide them next to each other, and multiply." "This," offered Martin, "would be so much more convenient." Martin, who shared a Grammy Award for his banjo playing on Earl Scruggs' "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," has been playing the instrument for more than 20 years. He practically got a standing ovation for his brief song on Sunday night, but it was when he called Williams to the stage that comic mayhem broke out. Among their best moments: -- Williams reminding people that Europe had no concept of zero before going to the Middle East for the Crusades and appropriating Arabic numbers. "Up to the Crusades, the number zero didn't exist!" Williams bellowed. "Zero was a primal concept. (From then on), you could go negative!" -- Martin playing Pablo Picasso and Williams playing Albert Einstein as they read from Martin's hit play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" -- only Williams read the lines as if he were Jack Benny, Marlon Brando, Peter Lorre, Elmer Fudd and other notable figures. -- Martin, asked how he would explain the big bang theory to a 5-year-old, saying, "Well, (I'd say) 'There was nothing and suddenly there was everything. Now go wash up.' " -- Toward the end, Martin chimed in with Williams, who was dominating the stage, saying sarcastically, "Sorry to interrupt." "It's your night," Williams said. "Was," replied Martin. -- Williams getting handed a white towel for his sweat, putting it over his right hand and pretending he was Michael Jackson dangling a baby over a hotel balcony, then that the towel covered up an Afghan ventriloquist's doll. When it was over, there was a buzz as people walked out of Herbst Theatre -- the sort of excitement that happens when people believe they've witnessed brilliance. The night was brilliant. The audience got its money's worth (tickets were $21), and Martin, Williams and Osserman were all smiles as they left the stage, knowing they had put on a good show that was worthy of Broadway. The three men had proved a maxim of sorts: Numbers by themselves aren't funny; it's the people using those numbers who can bring real humor to a subject that -- for many people -- is dull and tedious. "It was wild and all over the place," said David Eisenbud, director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, in something of an understatement. "I'm very pleased with the way things went."
			http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82%257E1865%257E1057749,00.html Actor + math whiz + comedian = 1 hit By William Brand, STAFF WRITER SAN FRANCISCO -- It was about as unlikely as Pablo Picasso hanging out with Albert Einstein: Actor-director Steve Martin discussing "funny numbers" on stage with UC Berkeley mathematician Robert Osserman, and comedian Robin Williams unexpectedly walking onto the stage to toss in outrageous asides. The meeting between the young Picasso and the fledgling Einstein happened only in a play written by Steve Martin, who besides starring in film classics such as "LA Story" and the "Little Shop of Horrors" writes plays and humorous articles. But Martin, Williams and Osserman did indeed talk about math to a sold-out and convulsed house Sunday night in San Francisco. The event was sponsored by the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at University of California, Berkeley, one of the nation's most prestigious think tanks, where theoretical scientists regularly probe math's most puzzling questions. It also is an organization that tries gamely and with a great a deal of success to prove to the public that math can indeed be important, relevant and -- fun. Previous sessions included Osserman talking to playwright Tom Stoppard about Arcadia, his play on solving a mathematical theory. But this evening went far beyond fun, bordering at times on the outrageously funny. Martin, who admitted his math education stopped somewhere between high school geometry and calculus, brought the house down reading from his article, "Hillbilly Scientist Postulates Three Dimensional Universe." Members of the audience, aware that three dimensions are common knowledge, chortled in delight. "Hillbilly scientists working in a shanty in the Ozarks have raised the possibility," Martin read. "They have postulated this in American Hillbilly Science. "This amazing discovery came from our study of worm holes (in a cabinet)," he said. "We noticed the worm holes went in and out. We turned them on the side and noticed they went up and down and sideways," he said. Osserman, former head of Stanford's math department and now special projects director at MSRI, good-naturedly endured endless rounds of teasing about the fact that mathematicians still can't accurately define the area of a circle because the solution results in an approximate number, called Pi. "Pi doesn't work," Martin said. "I've tried it. You're looking at the universe, you mathematicians and physicists ... and Pi doesn't work. Isn't that true?" "You're right," Osserman admitted. "So my question is, are these two things -- the universe and math -- not really related?" Martin asked. Osserman's answer was lost in the laughter. Robin Williams became a walk-on, called to the stage from the audience by Martin halfway through the 90-minute session. "Robin digs math," Martin said. "You think I'm kidding, say something intelligent, Robin." "Well, despite the limits of Pi, I'll apologize for Mr. Lott," Williams said in a Southern drawl, imitating the U.S. Senator from Mississippi, whose inference last week about segregation is still causing an uproar. "So Pi didn't work out, huh?" Williams asked. "Robin and I have a question for you," Martin said to Osserman. "Does this mean we do not know the area of a circle?" "Well, yes," Osserman said. Osserman said he met Steve Martin at a party in Berkeley a few months ago. He had seen Martin's play, "Picasso at the Lapin Agile," about a fictional conversation between Picasso and Einstein in a Paris bar in 1905. So when he was introduced, the subject moved quickly to math. "Steve then mentioned he was writing a new book and he asked me if I would check the math in it," Osserman said. "I said 'sure' and he e-mailed it to me. "I asked him if he would be willing to do one of these evenings," Osserman said. Martin said yes, and because Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley was unavailable on the dates Martin had open, MSRI booked Herbst Hall and hooked up with City Arts & Lectures The 900-seat hall sold out in one day. MSRI Director David Eisenbud noted that MSRI celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and wants to do it in style. Sylvia Nasar, author of "A Beautiful Mind," about Nobel Laureate John Nash, appeared at an MSRI event earlier this year, in conversation with Columbia mathematician Dave Bayer, Eisenbud said. Bayer, who is left-handed like Nash, wrote the equations filmed in the movie version of the book. MSRI also helped found the Bay Area Math Olympics for student mathematicians, he noted. Math theory is used in every manner of things, said Eisenbud, who is president-elect of the American Mathematical Society, from the reconstruction of the human genome to cellular phones. The City Arts & Lectures program will be broadcast on KQED-FM radio, 88.5, on Sunday, March 16, 2003, at 1 p.m. and again on Tuesday, March 18 at 8 p.m. More information on MSRI can be found at www.msri.org
			San Francisco Chronicle It's the Robin Williams column Leah Garchik Friday, December 20, 2002 http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/12/20/DD103445.DTL Enough informants have been laughing at, applauding for and spying on the hometown hero to make this official declaration: We live in the Robin Williams Era. If he's reading this, he can call the phone number at the end to describe any activities not mentioned (what kind of toothpaste he favors, for example). Williams was on KFOG's morning show last week, promoting his "Robin Williams: Live on Broadway" DVD (there, TIC plugged it, too), talking about why he loves living in the Bay Area: "I can go anywhere and people go, 'Oh, hey,' or (I can) ride my bike and get on it and go over the bridge and head 40 miles for the whole Tiburon Loop and people go, 'Move it, fat ass! Way to go! Why don't you shave your legs, you'll move quicker?' " On Saturday, he stopped by, unexpected, and did a 45-minute guest set at the Marsh's Mock Cafe (seating capacity 47 people). And on Sunday, as reported, he leaped to the Herbst stage to join Steve Martin in talking about math. (A spy at dinner at Jardiniere afterward sends proof of Martin's savvy with numbers: He left dinner rather early, explaining that he had to get back to Los Angeles, and returned 10 minutes later, saying he'd just come west from the East and miscalculated the time difference.) Josh Kornbluth, who was at dinner, too, said Williams was particularly hilarious responding to Nobel laureate Don Glaser's description of meeting with the pope to lobby for his support of genetic research, Williams pretending he was Tony, a friend of the pope's. Martin and Williams are "both really well-read and cultured people," said Kornbluth, who said he'd had a wonderful time at dinner in the elegant restaurant, where "people seemed really happy to be among the people not yet broke during the downturn." P.S. Gamescape staff members were mum, but there are talkers in game circles. They're saying Williams likes to play Warhammer 40K, a "fantasy miniatures battle game." Spies say he has an army of miniature orcs, creatures from "Lord of the Rings" (and perhaps they're somehow related to his breakthrough TV character, Mork from the planet Ork).
			San Francisco Examiner 12/17/2002 Formula for laughter BY ANNE CRUMP http://www.msri.org/media/MediaInfo/33/articles/show_article The sold-out crowd at the Herbst Theatre Sunday night got quite a lesson in mathematics. They learned that math (a) is a laugh riot and (b) has surprisingly little to do with numbers. At least that was the case in the hands of Steve Martin, and, unexpectedly, the poster boy for chaos theory himself, Robin Williams. Martin took the stage at the request of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, a Berkeley-based think tank for the numerically minded, for a City Arts & Lectures program titled "Funny Numbers." The idea was for Martin and MSRI special projects director Robert Osserman to converse onstage about things math-related. It started out that way. Sort of. "I have no idea why I'm here. I think it's because ZsaZsa wasn't available," Martin said. But Osserman gently reminded him it's because math- and science-themed topics appear frequently in his prolific writings. (In fact, it was a discussion of "magic boxes" -- the mathematical equivalent of crossword puzzles, which figure prominently in Martin's soon-to-be-published new novel -- at a cocktail party that led to Sunday's Martin-Osserman matchup.) Osserman started the discussion by producing an historical French volume of numbers games and then asked Martin to read from his piece "Hillbilly Scientists Postulate a Three-Dimensional Universe." "And I thought this was going to be dull," Martin dead-panned. Dull it was not. Martin had the middle-age-skewing crowd fighting for air with each quip, even as Osserman steered the conversation mathward. He even offered a musical interlude, pulling out his banjo for a couple songs. "We figured out the banjo was mathematical," Martin said, prompting Osserman to explain how the frets on two banjos could be used for calculations in the absence of a slide rule. "And that would be so much more convenient," Martin added. If the house was pleased with Martin's multifaceted performance, however, it swelled with giddiness when the comedian invited his friend Williams to join them onstage. Outfitted with a microphone, a bottle of water and a stool, Williams made himself at home and launched into a series of stream-of-consciousness riffs on everything from math to politics to "Rain Man." "You know, we can go now," Martin said to Osserman during a rare moment's pause in Williams' routine. Martin didn't cede the spotlight, though. He held his own against livewire Williams and even helped rein him in when the comedy began to stray off course. Osserman, on the other hand, wisely sat back and let the comics run wild -- literally, with Martin strewing papers across the stage and Williams tossing apples ("The mathematicians are trashing the room!"). Osserman took passive control of the proceedings, briefly, by having them read passages from Martin's play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" -- Williams as Albert Einstein and Martin as Ernest Hemingway and the bartender -- which at least kept Williams to a script (though he experimented with vocal stylings ranging from Marlon Brando to Elmer Fudd before settling on a German-Yiddish blend). The evening's celebrity cameos didn't end with Williams. The audience also got a peek at a celebrated forelimb when Martin turned the spotlight -- or, rather, raised the house lights -- on the hand model who scribbled formulas on the big screen in "A Beautiful Mind." It was about as deep a mathematical connection as was established all night. Not that anyone was complaining. Steve Martin, Robin Williams, banjo-picking, staged readings and ad-libbed routines from two masters -- that's a pretty impressive formula right there.
			Back to Top