Cruel Shoes

A woman enters a shoe store and asks for "cruel shoes." The salesman brings out shoes designed to cause maximum pain—shoes with thumbtacks inside, shoes made of broken glass, shoes that are just two blocks of wood with nails.

She tries them on. They're agonizing. She loves them.

The bit reads like a New Yorker humor piece (Martin was, in fact, a New Yorker contributor). It's literary comedy performed as stand-up—a surrealist short story told in three minutes. The humor isn't in punchlines but in the absurdity of the premise and the deadpan commitment to its internal logic.

"Cruel Shoes" represents the intellectual side of Martin's comedy. While "Happy Feet" was pure physicality, this was proof that he could write with the precision of a humorist. He later published it as the title story of a best-selling book, proving that his comedy could survive the transition from stage to page.