April is Lame/Cool month-- the month I'm taking to explain (drive into the ground) the concept of things that are so lame they're cool.
Let's all take a look at Jim Gaffigan over there on the left, before we consider how I'm kind of cheating here.
What do you think? Granted, comedians are not exactly the most photogenic bunch of people. They probably developed comic abilities as a protective mechanism against people picking on them or turning them down for dates or otherwise rejecting or criticizing them. (I got rejected and picked on plenty, but never developed the comic abilities that some great comedians did. I did develop a pretty healthy set of neuroses, though, and those neuroses serve as their own form of protection.)(I hope.)(Those neuroses also serve to make me realize just how crazy I am, such as when I'll decide to have a bite-sized cookie, just one, at 9:00 p.m., and just after I swallow it, my collar feels tight, and my neck feels fatter, and I can almost feel my chin swell up, as though the cookie never even went down my throat to my stomach but instead just took a short cut to where it was going to end up anyway and bulked out my chin a little more.)
(I can handle almost everything about being 9 months away from 40. The two things I can't handle are the fact that my neck just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and that the kind of music I like is turning up more and more often in gross Taco Bell commercials. 40-and-up will be intolerable for me if I have to sit around with my bulbous neck watching Taco Bell wreck the images I have in my mind when I listen to my music.)
Jim Gaffigan just looks lame. He doesn't even look comedian-lame; he looks dorky. He looks like the kind of guy who should be the assistant manager at that indie-sub shop down by campus, the one all the college kids go to for lunch and which does really good business but which will never be franchised or really successful because the owner uses it as a front for dealing some dope, and the assistant manager is a guy who looks like Jim Gaffigan.
(I'm not trying to be mean to Jim. Let me throw myself under the bus here: You'll remember that I recently was almost offered a senior citizen's discount. I also recently made a deal with myself that I won't have to go on a diet until my black pants no longer fit me. And the secretaries at work offer up unsolicited tips for dealing with the bags under my eyes and where I can get a "good" haircut. So I can sympathize, Jim.)
Likewise, there's no reason that Jim Gaffigan's comedy should work, and the first time I heard it, it almost didn't. I was rocking one of the Babies! to sleep and searching for something to watch, and stumbled across his stand-up act, and only paused because I recognized him from those soda commercials. His routines put me off at first, but I was tired and I'm lazy, so I left him on, getting irritated at the way he did voices and pretended to be a member of the audience commenting on the show.
But the more I watched, the more Jim Gaffigan came all the way around The Coolness Continuum and had me laughing, and laughing hard. He's just so skewed. Almost everything he says, like all the best comedy, is true but in a really weird way:
My favorite holiday is Halloween and not just because ladies look at it as an excuse to dress up like prostitutes...
and just as you get used to the truth and the humor in it, he throws some weird curveball at you, saying he's into Asian girls because one of his parents was a panda.
He also, and this is maybe the essence of his act, throws in those asides that at first are so offputting, talking in a higher or quieter voice and commenting on his own joke, like when he makes a joke about thinking you're smarter than Spellcheck, and then adds in a high voice "Thanks, spellcheck. He was talking about spellcheck" as though it was a whisper from one audience member to the other.
Those asides and comments actually make Jim Gaffigan more than just a single comedian; he breathes life into these imaginary characters that he never identifies or explains about, and even though he doesn't give much info, you begin to feel like you know them, the old lady who gets offended by his religious jokes, the old man who doesn't want him to work blue. It's like watching a group of comedians perform. Or, more aptly, like watching one really funny comedian while you sit in a group of people who you will make fun of later.
I've become overwhelmed by Jim Gaffigan's comedy in recent months, since I first saw his standup; I watch it over and over and (lamely enough) throw his quotes into conversation, and find myself cracking up at jokes he's told when I find myself in situtions mentioned in those jokes: at the grocery store or church or while watching the Food Network with my pants off -- you'll have to listen to him to get that last one.
It gets worse, though, than just quoting him and watching him and laughing. I've started to feel like maybe I would be better off if I lived in Jim Gaffigan's world. Like my life would be better, or funnier, or I'd be a better person, if I were to recognize myself as the fat guy on the news, or put a ham sandwich on my burger and use doughnuts as the bun, or be given candles as presents for my birthday and re-gift the Statue of Liberty.
That's when I knew that Jim Gaffigan was cool -- because cool makes you want to be part of it. Jim Gaffigan moved from his assistant managership to the leader of a world that I wanted to be part of and feared I never would be, a world where there are Hot Pocket Hot Pockets (they taste just like Hot Pockets) and people sometimes think they are oranges (the people think the people are oranges, not the Hot Pockets. They think the Hot Pockets are Hot Pockets.)
I'm not in that world, but I can hang out near it and maybe they'll let me in, eventually, if I suck up enough. That's why I decided to cheat and throw him in here. It's "cheating" because there's already a "Best Comedian" on here -- Ellen-- but using the magic of Lame/Cool Month, I can nominate a second comedian as the Best of a kind of comedian, and spread the love a little and maybe get into that world.
So go watch Jim Gaffigan, the Best Comedian Who's So Lame He's Cool. Do it now. Chip chop chip.
I, too, do not even know what that means.
Let's all take a look at Jim Gaffigan over there on the left, before we consider how I'm kind of cheating here.
What do you think? Granted, comedians are not exactly the most photogenic bunch of people. They probably developed comic abilities as a protective mechanism against people picking on them or turning them down for dates or otherwise rejecting or criticizing them. (I got rejected and picked on plenty, but never developed the comic abilities that some great comedians did. I did develop a pretty healthy set of neuroses, though, and those neuroses serve as their own form of protection.)(I hope.)(Those neuroses also serve to make me realize just how crazy I am, such as when I'll decide to have a bite-sized cookie, just one, at 9:00 p.m., and just after I swallow it, my collar feels tight, and my neck feels fatter, and I can almost feel my chin swell up, as though the cookie never even went down my throat to my stomach but instead just took a short cut to where it was going to end up anyway and bulked out my chin a little more.)
(I can handle almost everything about being 9 months away from 40. The two things I can't handle are the fact that my neck just keeps getting bigger and bigger, and that the kind of music I like is turning up more and more often in gross Taco Bell commercials. 40-and-up will be intolerable for me if I have to sit around with my bulbous neck watching Taco Bell wreck the images I have in my mind when I listen to my music.)
Jim Gaffigan just looks lame. He doesn't even look comedian-lame; he looks dorky. He looks like the kind of guy who should be the assistant manager at that indie-sub shop down by campus, the one all the college kids go to for lunch and which does really good business but which will never be franchised or really successful because the owner uses it as a front for dealing some dope, and the assistant manager is a guy who looks like Jim Gaffigan.
(I'm not trying to be mean to Jim. Let me throw myself under the bus here: You'll remember that I recently was almost offered a senior citizen's discount. I also recently made a deal with myself that I won't have to go on a diet until my black pants no longer fit me. And the secretaries at work offer up unsolicited tips for dealing with the bags under my eyes and where I can get a "good" haircut. So I can sympathize, Jim.)
Likewise, there's no reason that Jim Gaffigan's comedy should work, and the first time I heard it, it almost didn't. I was rocking one of the Babies! to sleep and searching for something to watch, and stumbled across his stand-up act, and only paused because I recognized him from those soda commercials. His routines put me off at first, but I was tired and I'm lazy, so I left him on, getting irritated at the way he did voices and pretended to be a member of the audience commenting on the show.
But the more I watched, the more Jim Gaffigan came all the way around The Coolness Continuum and had me laughing, and laughing hard. He's just so skewed. Almost everything he says, like all the best comedy, is true but in a really weird way:
My favorite holiday is Halloween and not just because ladies look at it as an excuse to dress up like prostitutes...
and just as you get used to the truth and the humor in it, he throws some weird curveball at you, saying he's into Asian girls because one of his parents was a panda.
He also, and this is maybe the essence of his act, throws in those asides that at first are so offputting, talking in a higher or quieter voice and commenting on his own joke, like when he makes a joke about thinking you're smarter than Spellcheck, and then adds in a high voice "Thanks, spellcheck. He was talking about spellcheck" as though it was a whisper from one audience member to the other.
Those asides and comments actually make Jim Gaffigan more than just a single comedian; he breathes life into these imaginary characters that he never identifies or explains about, and even though he doesn't give much info, you begin to feel like you know them, the old lady who gets offended by his religious jokes, the old man who doesn't want him to work blue. It's like watching a group of comedians perform. Or, more aptly, like watching one really funny comedian while you sit in a group of people who you will make fun of later.
I've become overwhelmed by Jim Gaffigan's comedy in recent months, since I first saw his standup; I watch it over and over and (lamely enough) throw his quotes into conversation, and find myself cracking up at jokes he's told when I find myself in situtions mentioned in those jokes: at the grocery store or church or while watching the Food Network with my pants off -- you'll have to listen to him to get that last one.
It gets worse, though, than just quoting him and watching him and laughing. I've started to feel like maybe I would be better off if I lived in Jim Gaffigan's world. Like my life would be better, or funnier, or I'd be a better person, if I were to recognize myself as the fat guy on the news, or put a ham sandwich on my burger and use doughnuts as the bun, or be given candles as presents for my birthday and re-gift the Statue of Liberty.
That's when I knew that Jim Gaffigan was cool -- because cool makes you want to be part of it. Jim Gaffigan moved from his assistant managership to the leader of a world that I wanted to be part of and feared I never would be, a world where there are Hot Pocket Hot Pockets (they taste just like Hot Pockets) and people sometimes think they are oranges (the people think the people are oranges, not the Hot Pockets. They think the Hot Pockets are Hot Pockets.)
I'm not in that world, but I can hang out near it and maybe they'll let me in, eventually, if I suck up enough. That's why I decided to cheat and throw him in here. It's "cheating" because there's already a "Best Comedian" on here -- Ellen-- but using the magic of Lame/Cool Month, I can nominate a second comedian as the Best of a kind of comedian, and spread the love a little and maybe get into that world.
So go watch Jim Gaffigan, the Best Comedian Who's So Lame He's Cool. Do it now. Chip chop chip.
I, too, do not even know what that means.
Here's some other stuff that's so lame it's cool:
"Bring It On."
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