Demetri uses a combination of comedic devices in his humour. He was one of comics on Comedy Central to be a stand-up, prop and musical comic. He is known for his dead-pan one-liners and his incorporation of props and visual aids, such as drawing, paintings, projectors and shadow puppets, and also for using a combination of musical instruments in his acts, such as guitar, harmonica, piano, glockenspiel and bells. He says he uses music to provide a relief from his rapid-fire comedy style, stating “To me, 90 minutes of one-liners is tedious…The guitar breaks things up.” (1)


Demetri’s humour is also well known for it ‘time-less appeal’. His jokes are never political and require no background knowledge on the subject, and therefore will always be funny. (2) Non sequitur plays a large role in Demetri’s line-up, in jokes such as “I started playing guitar quite a while ago. I was a street performer. It was hard because I was in the suburbs … on a cul-de-sac. Not a lot of foot traffic, but when people went down there to do I u-turn, I’d get ‘em.” Another example would be his joke about dictionaries. “I bought a dictionary. The first thing I did was I looked up the word dictionary and it said … ‘You’re an asshole’.”

Other comedic devices in his used in his act are farce and puns. He is well known for his craft in wordplay and many of his joke plots are bizarre and, in a lot of cases, improbably. His jokes are observational and have a child-like simplistic quality, “Batteries are the most dramatic object. Because other things they stop working or they break, but batteries…they die.” and this different way of seeing things makes his style very philosophical. He also tends to have an object oriented focus. Demetri states “when I looked at the pile of stand-up I had created, I thought, ‘Well, I do seem to like objects and things.’”Although in some parts of his act Demetri’s appears as though he lacks focus and has a ‘ditzy’ personality, he is in fact very clever and determined. In an interview with NPR, Demetri’s Mum tells us that he is “very focus and completely committed to whatever he’s doing at the time.” Which is obvious if you have seen his list of ‘useless talents’, including his self-taught ambidexterity. (3)



In terms of progression, Demetri’s humour has not changed, but rather ‘expanded’. He has moved from just stand-up to the use of skits and sketches and over time has a refined his technique, his jokes being presented with more confidence, more improvisation and fewer words. Demetri describes his comedic progression, stating, “it's gotten more personal and emotional. I still think incrementally and gravitate toward short things. I like things that are economical, whether it's a drawing that requires only a few lines or a song that's very stripped down with small production value. I like to use as few words as possible. In that way my style has stayed the same. Development in terms of his jokes is achieved through process of elimination, giving his jokes “up to 5 tries before” he “abandon(s) them or completely change(s) them.”
Due to his analytical nature, Demetri also analyses his own style, explaining “I used to just do all jokes straight through, but lately I’ve been trying to improvise more and stop and tell stories and be more of a human. Because I think the danger in just telling jokes is that you can be disconnected.”


Demetri’s influences include Steven Wright and ‘Far Side’ cartoonist Gary Larson. He exclaims, “I love Steven Wright. One time I saw Steven Wright and I'm going, "Wow." It struck a chord right in me.” (4) He had a similar reaction to Larson, he remembers thinking “I can't believe I'm just looking at some lines and they're making me laugh. Just the shapes, the way this guy composed something, can make this stranger in Jersey laugh."
Another influence is actor Peter Sellers. He explains, “Peter Sellers is my all-time favorite. I loved the Pink Panthers as a kid, and he still makes me laugh as an adult. And then later, after I'd become a comedian, when I was 25, I discovered Woody Allen, and Steve Martin, and Andy Kaufman. Those are all, to me, inspiring as performers and artists to see.”(5)


References -
(1)Magazine Continental, October 2007 - Read full article here
(2)Banharakh.com, 24 November 2005 - Read full article here
(3)NPR, 11 July 2004 - Read full article here
(4)NY Mag - Read full article here
(5)NJ.com, 10 February 2009 - Read full article here