JSOnline.com Review
By: Dave Tianen - jsonline.com

Somehow Jim Gaffigan has built a sellout comedy act on the common clay of Hot Pockets, garbage, furniture and hammocks, without even a whiff of profanity. Sex didn't make it into the show until about a 60-second stretch at the very end. Even the man's physical presence is gloriously mundane: middle-aged, pale, pasty, balding and slightly pudgy. Sunday night, Gaffigan faced another sellout crowd at the Pabst Theater, and he embraced his mundaneness in his first words: "We paid $40 and he's not even that pale. I thought he'd be like that CD where he looks like a pedophile." Those kinds of asides, where Gaffigan takes the voice of an audience member, are a running thread in his show. At one point, he described it as self-heckling. On paper, it doesn't seem like it should work, especially with the 20- and 30-somethings who packed the Pabst. After all, how funny can you be talking about escalators and bacon? As it turns out, much funnier than you might have thought. Part of Gaffigan's skill is mining the everyday inconsistencies and irrationalities we don't even think about. Like putting bacon on salad: "It's like smoking while you jog," he noted. Or the logic of paying $200 for a tent so you can sleep on the ground, or, as Jim put it, as much as you'd pay for two nights in a motel: "Some places, you have to pay to camp. You have to pay to sleep outside. That must be insulting to the homeless." Some of the Gaffigan persona is built on his quest to keep physical activity to a bare minimum: "When I see an escalator, I get excited. . . . 'Sweet. All I gotta do is keep Read More...