Greeted by the roaring applause of laughter-hungry college students, Demetri Martin took the stage for a second time at the Barrymore Friday night. After his 8 p.m. show sold out at incredible speeds, a second show at the theater was added to his “Telling Jokes in Cold Places” tour. This being Martin’s first time in Madison, he opened the show with some local material: “Why can’t you drive on State Street?” Martin said, posing the sentence as a comically annoyed statement rather than a legitimate question. “That’s bullshit.”

After letting the chuckling crowd settle, Martin plowed forward through an onslaught of jokes in his signature deadpan style. Martin’s comedic brilliance lies in his seeming lack of a filter or forethought. During the two hours of his show, Martin blows up the concept of a train of thought and leaves his audience laughing at the disconnected, flaming pieces of the railroad track.

The funny aspect of Martin is that his jokes are pure and unfiltered, like a glimpse into the inner workings of the comedian’s mind. Martin says the ordinary, benign things his audience always wondered (Why do humans make houses for birds?) but with a thought-provoking twist and a laugh (“Why do humans make bird houses when birds make nests for themselves? Isn’t that arrogant?”).

The appearance of Martin onstage after his opener made the comedy of Levi MacDougall seem amateur. The opener’s jokes lacked adequate punchlines and, like his closing poem, lasted much too long. In comparison to someone like Martin who, armed with a bowl cut and emotionless face, exudes humor, MacDougall was left with only one memorable bit involving a beer bottle and a unicorn horn.

Martin, on the other hand, gave his audience so much material it proved impossible to remember it all. In addition to his usual rapid-fire barrage of jokes, Martin shared personal anecdotes after asking his audience if there was anything they wanted to talk about.

He revealed he is not truly ambidextrous but merely got bored on a plane one day and talked about his change of profession from law to comedy (Martin, who is best known for his stand-up and show produced by Jon Stewart, is actually a graduate of Yale). Martin also took some time to describe his role as a gay man in Taking Woodstock, wherein he had to shoot a kissing scene with another straight man in front of his girlfriend.

Throughout the show, there was hardly a dull moment. Only when someone pulled out a camera phone as Martin began to show his sketches did the comedian pause to say “Can you not film me; it freaks me out” did the show not entertain. After flipping through his sketchpad full of shenanigans (including a horrifyingly funny do-I-laugh-or-do-I-gasp plan for a “baby silencer”) Martin slipped on his guitar and played while releasing a final battery of one-liners.

Demetri Martin’s “Telling Jokes in Cold Places” was a huge success, giving a few hundred college students and lovers of comedy a brief break from the freezing February night with some side-clenching, warming laughter.