I’ve been laughing with Steve Martin since I was in junior high school. That would be during the arrow-through-the-head years. Turns out there’s a lot more to the funny man than “King Tut.” He’s a writer with a wry look at the world (if you haven’t read Shopgirl, please do), a playwright, an art collector, and a Grammy-winning banjo player. Steve Martin lines about everything from Googlephonics (“the highest number of speakers next to infinity”) to McDonald’s (“sluuuurp…hamburger…sluuuurp…malt…”) to dentistry (“You’ll be a den-tist! You have a penchant for causing things pain–AAUGH!”) crop up with regularity in household conversations. Plus, he’s not ashamed to dress up in cowboy clothes and plan a stickup with water pistols (the above scene from the Ron Howard movie Parenthood, filmed practically in my back yard). Yep, just about the perfect dinner guest, I’m thinking.