Imagine how difficult it is to get two people who get up for work at 3:30 am to go out on a Sunday night. It’s nearly impossible. But Jim Gaffigan decided to make a tour stop in London’s Centennial Hall on a Sunday, so, what could we do? We bought front-row seats. We literally had the best seats in the house.
The New Yorker makes a career out of self-deprecation. He takes shots at himself for his paleness, his inability to control his eating (bacon, Hot Pockets) and his wife’s fertility: they’re expecting baby number five. He’s a comic’s comic, hand-picked a few years ago by David Letterman to star in a production of Letterman’s company, the TBS sitcom My Boys. Gaffigan’s an everyman who somehow manages to keep it clean and still have an edge. An example:
“My wife gave birth to all of our children at home. Telling people that always makes them uncomfortable. They don’t know how to respond. ‘Oh, you had your baby at home? Yeah, we thought about that but we wanted our baby to live.'”
At one point in the show Jim pretended to make a phone call but instead of just doing a short, fake conversation and moving on, he continued talking into his clenched hand for a longer stretch, explaining to the non-existent person on the other end that he was annoying a live audience at the time and he had to go. I don’t know if it works in the translation but it was ridiculously funny. The audience was “with” him for the whole show.
Jim’s latest taped show, Mr. Universe, is just $5 for download via his website. As a big fan of his work I was thrilled that he did a lot of new material last night at Centennial Hall. Whales with distorted self-images, finding excuses for getting out of awkward family reunions – there’s a wealth of material with Jim that’s truly funny and doesn’t descend into a single four-letter-word. A rare talent, indeed.