The Short Five
Week Six • Spring • Year One
Each Friday, I publish The Friday Five, a weekly ledger drawn from the shop floor, the windshield, and the workbench.
The structure borrows its language from the old farmer’s almanacs, those annual guides that combined observation, wisdom, tools, and seasonal preparation in one place.
c/o NYT
Performance. Grief. Joy. Professionalism. Absurdity. Precision. Generosity. Kindness.
The listed contents of the Multitudinous Martin Short are as long as they are illustrious. The older I get, the more I appreciate men who grow softer rather than sharper with age, and there may be no better modern example than Mr. Short.
This week, after a much-needed monthlong pause, the entirety of the Five belongs to him.
Proverb
“There were laughs. That’s the point.”
— Martin Short
Martin Short says this in discussing the years in which he lost his brother, his mother, and later his father in quick succession.
Not laughter as denial, but laughter as survival.
Tool
The Nine Categories
The Course Load of Life
by Martin Short
Self
Immediate Family
Original Family
Friends
Money
Career
Creativity
Discipline
Lifestyle
For decades, every Monday, Martin Short grades himself in nine categories of life. I first learned of this via his 2014 autobiography I Must Say: My Life As a Humble Comedy Legend whose audiobook is a valuable listen. In applying it to my own life, what strikes me isn’t the rigor of the system so much as its generosity: if one area of life is a struggle, with focus, I worked harder at another: never focus on punishment; rather, seek balance.
Short discusses The Nine Categories in Track 10 on Spotify.
Text
Marty, Life is Short, directed by Lawrence Kasdan.
What makes the documentary moving isn’t just its revelations of the man; it’s the accumulation of a life: friendships maintained across decades; home movies; song-and-dance numbers rehearsed for Christmas parties; the repeated evidence that warmth, properly tended to, compounds over time.
Signal
A performer aging into affection rather than into arrogance or standoffishness and thusly away from relevance.
That used to happen more often. There’s little irony left in Martin Short’s work now… little coolness… little distance between performer and audience, and it is, perhaps because of that, people love him more deeply now than they ever have.
Weather Advisory
Head toward the lights in your life: toward friendship; toward lengthy dinners brimming with conversation; toward the people who make laughter easier and more honest.
This is a good week to stop confusing cynicism with intelligence.
On the Workbench
Colorful bow ties; not whether they’re “allowed,” but a thought of narrow band of current situations in which they still feel correctly joyful rather than frivolously performative.
Originally published in The All Plaidout Almanac on Substack, May 15, 2026.