Legendary comic Steve Martin, interviewed in a recent issue of Smithsonian Magazine, recounts a major breakthrough in his development as a performer that happened to take place on the Vanderbilt campus:

Because I was generally unknown, I was free to gamble with material, and there were a few evenings when crucial mutations affected my developing act. At Vanderbilt University in Nashville, I played for approximately 100 students in a classroom with a stage at one end. The show went fine. However, when it was over, something odd happened. The audience didn’t leave. The stage had no wings, no place for me to go, but I still had to pack up my props. I indicated that the show had ended, but they just sat there, even after I said flatly, “It’s over.” They thought this was all part of the act, and I couldn’t convince them otherwise. Then I realized there were no exits from the stage and that the only way out was to go through the audience.

So I kept talking. I passed among them, ad-libbing comments along the way. I walked out into the hallway, but they followed me there too. A reluctant pied piper, I went outside onto the campus, and they stayed right behind me. I came across a drained swimming pool. I asked the audience to get into it—”Everybody into the pool!”—and they did. Then I said I was going to swim across the top of them, and the crowd knew exactly what to do: I was passed hand over hand as I did the crawl. That night I went to bed feeling I had entered new comic territory. My show was becoming something else, something free and unpredictable, and the doing of it thrilled me, because each new performance brought my view of comedy into sharper focus.
Martin doesn’t mention the year of this performance, but I’m guessing it must have been the early 70s. I would love to be able to witness what that show must have been like firsthand.

Note to Vanderbilt fans: I really am talking about Steve Martin, not Commodores football coach Bobby Johnson. (Scroll down to the fourth row of photos if you follow that link.)

The Toronto Globe and Mail has a good read on the Preds and their critical road trip through Western Canada that begins tonight, a slate of games that may determine whether they make the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. The article observes that the “plucky” team’s “surprising” season has come amid much turmoil off the ice.

The Preds are tied with Vancouver and Colorado at 74 points with the final two playoff spots in the West at stake. “If we can get out of this trip with a decent record, then I think we stand a good chance of getting in,” said Nashville head coach Barry Trotz.

Rewind the season 66 games before the puck was dropped and one would hard-pressed to believe the depleted Predators would be tied for the last playoff spot in the West with one month to go in the regular season. When Peter Forsberg, Paul Kariya, Scott Hartnell, Kimmo Timonen and Tomas Vokoun left town last summer, the pundits were quick to predict a spring with no playoff hockey in Nashville.

“Going into the season, everybody thought that there would be no way we would recover from all the losses and the situation with our hockey team (sale) and all that,” said Trotz. “I think our team took a lot of personal pride in terms of trying to prove people wrong and show we’re still a pretty good hockey team.”

The Preds aren’t a given either to make or to miss the playoffs as the season draws to a close, but they are right about where I thought they would be: fighting for seventh or eighth in the West. What’s “surprising” to me is not the Preds’ performance on the ice this season, but instead how quickly and universally the hockey experts wrote this team off before the puck even dropped on their opening game.

It was logical to expect a dip after so many departures, but many pundits ignored that a talented core stayed behind. In the wake of lukewarm attendance and an aspiring owner’s failed attempt at an Ontario exit, I guess it was easy to keep piling on. Here’s hoping the Preds keep piling on the points right back to the playoffs … and hopefully to the second round, too.

Speaking of those ticket sales, if you have what it takes to seal the deal, the Preds are looking for sales reps and all kinds of  interns right now.