Jim Gaffigan: Beyond the Pale

by Dylan P. Gadino

Over the years, Jim Gaffigan has used three major themes in his stand-up act: food, his appearance and what he describes as the “inner voice.” These tools and the way in which Gaffigan fashions jokes from them have made him one of the nation’s most popular stand-up comedians, consistently selling out theaters and popping up in commercials, TV shows and movies.

In Beyond the Pale, Gaffers proves there’s no reason to alter the formula. He spends 80 percent — if not more — of his set at Chicago’s Vic Theatre talking about food. Throughout the set, he also peppers riotous comments about his appearance — he’s getting fat; he’s totally pale — usually in the character of “the inner voice,” a slow-paced, high-pitched breathy aside spoken from a female audience member’s perspective. Examples: “He’s the fattest crackhead of I’ve ever seen” and “This guy talks a lot about food.” The results are hilarious.

He does grace us with some newer material that kills. He likens the act of putting up a Christmas tree to something a drunk man would do. “We’re gonna decorate it for Jesus!” he exclaims. He also expounds on receiving odd birthday gifts, like a flask: “You seem like a drunk on the go” or a bathrobe: “What, are we about to shoot a porno?” And he amusingly barbs people who give verbal “birthday alerts” to co-workers and friends.

Dedicated fans should also know that there’s plenty of material on Hot Pockets, spiced up with new flourishes and variations. For those less familiar with Gaffigan, his act generally features more than a few minutes of material about Hot Pockets, which he considers both vile and delicious. He calls it “a Pop-Tart with nasty meat” and sings the Hot Pockets jingle as a slow, creepy and side-splitting refrain throughout his performance.

Beyond his stellar stand-up documented in Beyond, most of the DVD extras are worth a view. In “Mr. Chicago,” Gaffigan tours some of the city’s famous sites, each time trying to convince locals that the Indiana native and current NYC resident is a Windy City celebrity. Also, one should not miss “Eat Dinner with Jim,” a kind of faux-interactive segment in which “Jim” makes awkward dinner conversation with you while he dines on — you guessed it — a
Hot Pocket.

Just for Laughs: A Look Back (2006)

by Dylan P. Gadino

Reflecting on this year’s edition of the world’s biggest comedy festival
By the time my parents caught Bill Cosby: Himself on HBO and committed one of its showings to videotape, I was nine years old. I had never before seen a television program where one man stands – or, in this case, mostly sits – on stage and talks to a crowd for nearly two hours. Truly, it wasn’t a formula for entertaining kids’ programming.

I remember thinking that his suit was ugly, a terrible flat brown thing. I also thought the stage was too dark. Every now and again lights would hit the back wall based on his inflection or to signal transitions or story segues. I definitely could’ve done with more lights.

He talked a lot about his relationship with his family, about his wife giving birth, about then dealing with his many offspring. I couldn’t relate to any of these topics. And maybe I took literally a lot of the exaggerations he used to make the crowd chuckle. In other words, I wasn’t part of the target audience.

Regardless, I watched the video constantly and laughed every time. I had no idea that this was an art form, that it had a name – stand-up comedy – or that this wasn’t just a one-time thing. I did know that it was funny.

A few weeks ago in Montreal, as part of the 24th edition of the Just For Laughs international comedy festival, I was in a large theater (Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier) with nearly three thousand people; Cosby was on stage sitting on a chair. He was an hour and forty-five minutes into his performance when he began talking about his experiences with the dentist. He first told me about the dentist 20 years ago. This was a bit I watched countless number of times at home, in my parent’s living room as a child, as a pre-teen, as a teen; in my dorm room as a college student, as an adult with a real job.

It was a bit that was just as funny and just as relevant as the day I first watched it on video. A chill ran up my spine. As I listened to the familiar story, I realized that my experience with comedy had come full circle.

It became obvious as well, that I had started to form new circles with other comics throughout the years and even throughout the previous few nights as I watched comedians showcasing their wares at much smaller venues at Just For Laughs. That’s part of the beauty of this festival: The organizers seem to have the wherewithal to book some of the world’s funniest up-and-coming comics and keep the legends and future legends coming back. It makes for an amazing comedy experience.

These days, there are a lot of comedy festivals, especially in North America. There’s Aspen, Las Vegas, Washington DC, New York City, Boston and more. The thing about Just For Laughs,Jason Alexandar however, is this: It really does take over the entire city. For an entire month (the second half of the fest presents most of the English speaking acts) 700 performers invade the city.

The first shows of the night generally started at 7 p.m.; the last ones started at midnight. So there was a lot of opportunity to see big names and new names. Along with Cosby, Margaret Cho hit the Place des Arts at Theatre Maisonneuve. John Pinette also returned to the fest after selling out 10 shows at 2004’s Just For Laughs.

The likes of Jason Alexander, John Cleese and Craig Ferguson hosted some of the fest’s six galas— shows that highlighted performances by, among many others, Drew Carey, Jimmy Carr, and Cory Kahaney. As part of the new Flying Solo series, up-and-coming comics like Demetri Martin, Stewart Lee and Tim Minchin were given full-length sets to air out their unique brand of comedy.

By the way, the festival’s headquarters is housed at downtown’s Delta Montreal hotel on President Kennedy. If you consider yourself even a moderate comedy fan, someone who could recognize a professional comedian in a lineup, this is where you should be. This place is like staying at a fantasy baseball camp— except replace second and third-rate has been athletes with well-known comedians. At all hours of the day you could run into half a dozen comics you’ve seen on Comedy Central or late night television.

They’re hanging at the bar, lounging in the lobby, running out to their night’s performances, chatting with their managers.

Geographically speaking, it’s a good place as well as you are within walking distance of most of the theaters and clubs. (Keep in mind what Steven Wright once said: “Everything is within walking distance as long as you have the time.”) A quick walk from the Delta will bring you to Montreal’s bustling St Catherine, a turn downhill to the left will bring you closer to the Place de Arts (where some of the bigger shows happen) and to the street festival, where one can experience a barrage of bizarre stimuli.

An enormous stretch of road is completely taken over – side streets included – by throngs of onlookers. Families, couples, teens out for a good time, seniors, everyone is represented. Some are dazzled by street performers: One musician plays a violin as a disembodied hand creeps through the surface of a table and dances to the music. Anthropomorphic lobsters on stilts roam the streets hugging bystanders. A contortionist contorts on a stage. A live funk band plays on the street. A trio of odd foam rubber creatures with giant genitals prance around.

This is something Willy Wonka would’ve dreamed up had he not been so preoccupied with candy. It’s also the type of thing that you could spend hours at doing nothing and still find great amusement.
It’s not exactly stand-up comedy, but it was entertaining. Again, I wasn’t sure if I was the target audience for such a thing. Though, I figured what did it matter. I laughed at Cosby when I was nine. I laughed at him again a few weeks ago. And I’m sure I’ll find some laughs at whatever Just For Laughs is planning for next year’s edition.

— Dylan P. Gadino

Robert Hawkins: Smackin’ Kittens

by Jessica Agi

Robert Hawkins dives right into this 45-minute album without any introduction: “Today is seven months, 10 days, no cigarettes for me.” The crowd applauds his accomplishment, and Hawkins admits to appreciating the congratulations. But he feels “guilty because you don’t know what else I do. You’re clapping now, but I’m at the house later getting it on with a cantaloupe and smacking kittens.” Hawkins forms an immediate connection with the crowd.

Throughout Smackin’ Kittens, Hawkins’ second comedy album, this Hollywood, Fla., native proves he can perform with extreme versatility while maintaining a steady stream of laughs. He drops oddball one-liners between short stories, and he jumps from offering real-life commentary to making hilariously inane observations.

“I like to buy a bag of M&Ms. I take two of the M&Ms out of the bag at a time, and I squeeze them together really slow between my fingers until one of them cracks,” he says. “And the other one goes on to the next round.” He also sets the record straight on whether men are actually scratching their crotch during those moments when men do not actually scratch themselves. “The only thing you can do if you have an itch in your nuts is pinch-and-roll nuts; you’re not scratching them.”

His outlook on everyday life is intelligent but not pretentious. And with so much knowledge on so many topics, he bounds with insight. In one case, he advises to “find a way to use your environment to have a good time. If you just act natural, you can swim in any hotel pool anywhere for half an hour.”

He ends Smackin’ Kittens with a simple fart joke. Result: a room full of laughs.

Watch video of Robert Hawkins at RooftopComedy.

Marc Maron: Tickets Still Available

by Dylan P. Gadino

At the start of Tickets Still Available, Marc Maron opines about how he’s tired of comedy albums that are simply funny, that there should exist at least one that makes listeners uncomfortable and sad. Midway through the hour-long disc, you realize he was only half kidding.

Unless you’re in a Prozac haze when you listen to Tickets, you will feel, at the very least, brief flashes of sadness. All good pop music albums have giant hooks, big beats and spirited refrains. Good comedy albums usually have one requisite: they need to be funny. Pop albums that become great, however, take you on a trip where expressions change and emotions are dynamic. If we apply that logic to comedy albums — and we should — then Tickets is a great comedy album.

Beyond it being evenly hilarious throughout, Tickets gives listeners a raw view inside Maron, a sensitive, liberal-minded guy who’s into politics but maybe even more interested in examining the interactions between his loved ones.

Maron, who recently rose to prominence — based mostly on his political views — as the former co-host of Air America’s Morning Sedition and is current hosting The Marc Maron Show on the network, does pepper politics throughout this set. But it’s his more personal material — some about his wife and his manic-depressive father — that is most funny and endearing.

Maron illustrates with a story that has his Dad calling him at 3 a.m. to tell him about how he wants to open a theme park called Maron World. Maron promises his father he’ll work there but only if he gets to run the “bipolar coaster.” “Call me when you’re crying,” Maron says. “I love you. Don’t kill yourself.”

His intellectually zany approach to nontraditional topics works so well that when he does approach the typical stand-up fare — marital quandaries, for one — it’s actually a welcomed respite from otherwise intense themes. He deftly describes the anatomy of a fight between man and wife, noting that these battles really exist because there’s a 7-year-old trapped inside of us just crying for our mommies.

“If you’re lucky right at the right moment,” Maron says, “the adult inside you will grab hold of that 7-year-old and go, ‘Shut the fuck up. Don’t you realize she can just take her vagina and leave? So start crying, you little fucker and make it good. We don’t want to lose this one.’”

Throughout Tickets, Maron is smart without being pretentious, insecure without being whiny and relates well to us all without insulting our intelligence. The combination makes this disc worthy of repeated plays.

Andy Andrist: Dumb it Down for the Masses

by Dylan P. Gadino

No matter how anti-status quo we consider typical alternative comics today, the truth is they rarely turn on their audience so much that they make the customers cringe or squirm in their seats. Although listeners can’t see the audience at the Skyline Comedy Club in Appleton, Wisc., on Andy Andrist’s Dumb It Down for the Masses, you get the feeling that in addition to laughing heartily, the people are doing plenty of cringing and squirming.

Though Andrist spends too much time at the start of his set getting cheap laughs by imitating retarded people or using retarded people as the punch lines of his jokes — frat boy comedy at its best (or worst) — he does largely redeem himself through the rest of the performance.

Andrist pays little attention to pacing or timing. But his sauced-up, stream-of-consciousness style fits well with the myriad X-rated thoughts running through his twisted head. He attacks guys in the audience who won’t admit to being “sock jackers” and gives props
to those who fess up.

“Why do you do it?” he asks, before answering , “Because it’s got a hole in one end and it’s easy clean up. And the rest of these guys are fucking liars because they’re trying to impress a girl they’re trying to finger fuck later. But we don’t have to. We can go peel off a shoe and be into some pretty good pussy. And every time you do that, you lose a little chunk of your soul. But I do it.”

The former writer for Comedy Central’s The Man Show also has a poignant solution for ridding the country of pedophiles: send them to war. “Hey, Afghanistan,” he says. “You want your kids fucked in the mouth? That’s how we fight. We don’t fight the conventional war. That’s not our style.”

Pointing out the absurdity of Bible literalists, Andrist also presents
a new interpretation of the book of Leviticus — including the phrases, “fondle his balls” and “plants his seed up in your ass” — that will leave you with a gut that’s totally busted.

Judy Gold: Breaking the Sterotypes

by Dylan P. Gadino

The versatile comic spent five years traveling the country interviewing Jewish mothers. By her journey’s end she had enough material for her one-woman show and, in the process, learned a lot about herself.

By Dylan P. Gadino

It’s not too hard to find a Jewish stand-up. Finding a practicing Jewish, lesbian stand-up with two kids, however, is a bit more daunting— unless you know Judy Gold. Until somewhat recently, she hadn’t made all of the preceding facts of her life a significant part of her stage act. But then things happened; life, for her, angled a bit. Her 20-year relationship with her partner, Sharon ended. Her relationship with her 83-year-old mother, Ruth – who has always been a huge part of her act – got even better. And her sons, nine-year-old Henry – had by Sharon – and four-year-old Ben – had by Judy – became more aware and proud of their family dynamic.

The combination urged Gold to not only use some of this in her stand-up but also to expand her creative endeavors. Though, she’s really no stranger to performance beyond comedy clubs. A trained pianist with a music degree from Rutgers College in New Jersey, Gold has appeared in many small screen shows (Sex and the City, Law & Order) a few movies and in The Vagina Monologues.

This month, the former Rosie O’Donnell Show writer/producer — for which she won two Emmys — opens 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, her one-woman off-Broadway show written by playwright Kate Moira along with Gold. After spending five years interviewing Jewish mothers across the country, Gold collected enough material to actually become these women on stage, where she answers the questions she had first asked them. Punchline Magazine caught up with her recently to discuss the show right after she had repaired her dishwasher and right before she decided what to eat for lunch. Her choices: scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, turkey sandwich, tortilla wrap with cheese and salsa or cottage cheese and pineapple. Exclusive: She goes with the tortilla wrap. You heard it here first.

Does this one-woman show spell the end of your stand-up career?
I love doing stand-up. If couldn’t do it I couldn’t live. It’s like my soul and my breath. A lot of people use it as a vehicle to get to other things or they kind of hate it. I love it. But I hate the traveling and not seeing my kids.

What made you want to do 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother?
I had been criticized in some of the Jewish press after I had done
The Tonight Show. I got some calls with people saying that I promote the stereotype of the Jewish mother. Also sometime after the appearance, I was at some jewey Jew function and a woman from some magazine said, ‘why don’t you leave Jewish mothers alone?’ And I was like, you know, shut the fuck up! I’m doing my mother. That’s who my mother is. And I was telling Kate about all this. So she said, ‘why don’t we do a show about these Jewish mothers?’ But I didn’t want it to be one of these trite ‘my uncle diddled me when I was six years old’ type of thing. So we initially started interviewing these mothers to see if there really was a Jewish mother stereotype.

How did you go about interviewing these women?
We started in 2000 with a friend who grew up in this enclave of Orthodox women. Then we interviewed their daughters and started to ask if they knew anyone else who would be interested. We started traveling the country visiting local synagogues. We had a list 25 questions and we interviewed four to six women at a time. One of the more telling questions was: ‘What would you have done with your life if you hadn’t had children?’

Did you get any off-the-wall responses to that?
One woman said she would’ve been a country western singer. You can’t get any more miserable than a Jewish country singer.

So did you find the Jewish mother stereotype was true?
Not at all. During the process it became about me trying to find out how I fit into this world. I’m a gay, practicing Jew and I’m a mother who’s also a comic. I’m out all night on stage cursing at people and then dropping my kid off at Hebrew school in the morning. It doesn’t make any sense. So in the end, the show became about people and their families and acceptance. It’s about how there’s no clear path. There’s no one answer. You can answer to any fucking religion you want and then have so many things come out of left field that’s not explained in your holy book.

There was no Jewish mother stereotype at all?
The only thing these women had in common was that they spoke to their children at least once a day. Some of them talk five times a day. There’s a maternal bond that these women can’t and can live without.

How did your relationship change with your own mother after you interviewed her?
It got so much better. I learned a lot about why she’s so fearful and worries a lot. There was a family tragedy that no ever talked about. I can’t tell you too much because it would take a lot away from the show. No one talks about anything in my family. Everything is a big joke. We’re all funny people. But there’s never any really intense conversation. We all go to therapy— except my brother.

There are a lot of stereotypes about female comics. What’s your favorite one?
That we all talk about the same things. This couldn’t be further from the truth. People say that we all talk about our periods and shopping. I don’t talk about any of that shit. If you’re looking for variety you’re never going to find it in a white male comic. Some of my favorite comics are while men but a lot of them are quite derivative of one another. I think the ratio of shitty female comics is the same as shitty male comics.

I also hate when club owners say that a woman can’t headline a show because they had one female comic who did poorly. It’s like if one does poorly in that room it means all female comics are not funny. Humor is such a subjective art form. It’s like your sense of eating. You either like it or you don’t. The other thing I love is when there are three female comics on the bill and it becomes a special event, like it’s women’s night at the comedy club. Meanwhile, I have so many straight guys and teenage boys at my shows.

Really? So then there’s something in 25 Questions for straight males?
If you have a family and a mother, you’ll love it. Plus I’m really hot.

For more information, visit judygold.com.

Zach Galifianakis: Look Who it Isn’t

by Dylan P. Gadino

There are three possible conclusions one can render about Zach Galifianakis by the end of Look Who It Isn’t : Galifianakis is egomaniacal to the point of dragging us through his successful career; Galifianakis, as he writes on the DVD’s back cover, really does think failure is funny and is showing us clips of his defunct VH1 show Late Night with Zach — “watched by 23 people” — to simply make us laugh; Galifianakis is not egomaniacal enough to just put out a DVD of what he’s best at — stand-up comedy.

Through this faux-sullen retrospective of the comic’s past three years in the business, Zach steals the stale art-film formula to mock the genre and himself. Check out Zach alone at a bar drinking a pint and shooting pensive stares to no on in particular or sitting alone in a cavernous bingo hall looking forlorn or walking — hands in pockets — along a highway, a low-flying jet directly above him tearing toward Zach’s origin. Though rarely funny, it’s odd enough to keep your attention.

The second half of the disc — after a few mostly painfully dry Late World sketches and a few gems: see Sarah Silverman interview a vaginal rejuvenation doctor and a purposely awkward Adam Goldberg interview in front of a one-person audience — features Zach doing stand-up at two unnamed joints. Though the audio is so bad — and maybe that’s the point — you can still hear him squeak out quickies like: “I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort” and “That’s the look my parents had when I told them I was getting an abortion.”

If you’re new to Galifianakis, Look Who it Isn’t may not be the greatest introduction. Rather, pray that Comedy Central replays his 2001 Comedy Central Presents special soon; it’s superb. For hardcore fans, this disc is a must, if only to see Zach outside the stage, TV and film. Or buy it and consider yourself a minor humanitarian. The proceeds go to the Sri Lanka tsunami-relief effort.

D.C. Benny: Funny Mother Flower

by Dylan P. Gadino

In an effort to convince the audience that they are really just talking to friends, not performing a string of premeditated jokes, some comics stock their sets with bits based on believable premises. The idea is that whether these bits are pure fiction, 100 percent true or a combination of both possibilities, the listener theoretically should believe every word coming out of the comic’s mouth. As in, it’s funny because it’s true.

Other comics deal in the absurd, abandoning realistic constructs in favor of bizarre musings. On Funny Mother Flower, Brooklyn-based comic D.C. Benny combines reality and absurdity — many times in the same joke — and proves the marriage of these strategies makes for a valuable formula.

This recipe is strong in effect when Benny tells the crowd at the D.C. Improv about the time he took a yoga class at his wife’s urging. Forced to wear pajama pants because he had no clean sweats, things go awry when a heated exchange with another class member results in his dick popping out of his pants.

Absurdity also meets reality when Benny tells his hilarious taxi story, wherein a New York City cab ride turns into an “Indian Nascar event”  when another taxi driver challenges Benny’s driver to a race across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Benny also finds humor in the mundane, like when he chews over his experiences with his dentist: “The dentist brings me into the office and starts digging in my mouth. He’s like, “There’s some bleeding from your gums. You must not be brushing.” Benny’s response? “That wouldn’t have anything to do with that metal fucking hook, would it?”

And if you’ve seen Benny’s Comedy Central Presents, you’ll recognize his now-classic bit about how he was forced to take Luwanda, a 300-pound cheerleader, to the prom. Hint: That’s what happens when you grow up poor in Washington, D.C. and Popeye’s biscuits — which were as good as cash or better there — are used against you.

Throughout Funny Mother Flower, Benny does a great job of grounding his material in situations his audience can relate to, then adding hilarious fantasy in
a way that his fans could never do on their own. The result: plenty of belly laughs throughout this nearly 40-minute disc.