Clare Stephens

But before I explain Martin Short's ritual, a little bit of background.

So this came up in a profile in the New York Times called Martin Short and the Secret to Finding Joy While Surviving Tragedy.

He is on the publicity trail for his new Netflix documentary, Marty Life is Short, which explores his life in show business against the backdrop of what has been a lot of tragedy in his life that people probably wouldn't know about given his...

kind of very out there, very funny, very happy persona.

So the piece begins, when Martin Short was 12, his oldest brother died in a car accident.

Five years later, his mother died of cancer.

Three years after that, his father had a stroke and passed away.

It goes on to tell us that then in 2010 he lost the love of his life, his wife Nancy, to ovarian cancer.

She was only 58.

And in February of this year, this is the headline people might have seen about Martin Short lately, his 42-year-old daughter Catherine died by suicide after struggling with mental illness.

So he says in the piece that his experience of these tragedies has reminded him that life is short and that you develop really important tools in moments of disaster.

So for decades, he has done the same thing every Monday morning.

Hmm.

He reflects on the week and he gives himself grades in nine categories of his life.

Do we want to know what the categories are?

He appears to do like ABC because he did reference in the article that one of them, I think it was discipline.

Oh, no, his lifestyle was like a B at the moment.

Okay.

And that's very American, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.