Diane and I drove to the Sheas’s Performing Arts Theatre at 5:00 P.M. and joined 2000+ Jim Gaffigan fans for Gaffigan’s Barely Alive Tour. Gaffigan had five performances in Buffalo–including an 8:00 P.M. show after our 5:00 P.M. show–and all of them sold out. Clearly, Western NY is Jim Gaffigan Country.
For those of you who watched Gaffigan’s 2023 Dark Pale comedy “Special” on AMAZON Prime Video (you can read my review here), some of those routines were recycled on the Barely Alive Tour stand-up comedy.
Gaffigan repeated his jokes about Pat Sajak of Wheel of Fortune and told the story of his family getting a dog…despite his wife’s allergies to dogs. Gaffigan also explained his weight loss. He’s on Mounjaro (“Way better than Ozempic!”). However, people come up to Gaffigan’s wife asking, “Does Jim have cancer? He’s lost so much weight!”
Ted Alexandro, a comic who told us that he’s been doing stand-up for 30 years, 6 of those as the opening act for Jim Gaffigan, had the audience laughing for about 25 minutes. Most of his jokes concerned the life-style of being a 60 year-old comic married to woman who does psychic readings. They also have two toddlers.
Alexandro, followed by Gaffigan, delivered about 90 minutes of humor to an appreciative audience. Are you a Jim Gaffigan fan? GRADE: B
So, the live standup was a lot better than his Amazon Prime show? I like him well enough, but his Wal-Mart ads are pretty lame.
Fred, Diane and I liked Gaffigan’s live standup act better than his AMAZON Prime Video show. The AMAZON show had a long, rambling story about a hot air balloon that wasn’t funny and seemed pointless.
I like his tv specials—although I didn’t see the Amazon Prime show which, iirc, was universally panned—and I’ve never seen him live (the twins went to one of his shows a couple of years ago and loved it). Humor can be a very subjective thing, dependent on so many elements, but Gaffigan (in 60-minutes doses) usually makes me laugh.
Deb, Diane and I have gone to standup performances with opening acts…and none at all. When we saw Jerry Seinfeld, he just walked out on stage and had us laughing for 70 minutes.
Yes, big Jim Gaffigan fan. I bought and read his book, DAD IS FAT. I didn’t think hsi last special was quite as good as previous ones (B is about right), but I’d watch any new one he did.
Over the years we have gone to see a number of comics live, though not Gaffigan – Robert Klein, Rodney Dangerfield (both of them more than once), Steve Martin (after “King Tut” – also twice), Lewis Black, Judy Gold (not strictly a stand up routine, but her one woman shows), probably others. Who doesn’t like to laugh? And laughter is good for your health. One of the people who made me laugh the hardest with his outrageous material was the late Robert Schimmel. I literally could not breathe.
Besides “King Tut,” we saw Rodney do “Rappin’ Rodney.” A lot of comics are frustrated singers, and Robert Klein always ended his set with a couple of songs. After all, he started as a singer with the Teen Tones, and he claims they lost on Ted Mack’s Amateur Hour to a one-armed accordionist.
We’ve also seen:
Elayne Boosler – free concert. She was funny.
Jackie Mason at the height of his Jewish shtick before he went totally Trumpster. He was hilarious.
Lewis Black was still doing his Starbucks stuff then
The first time we saw Steve Martin was ca. 1978 at what was then the Garden State Arts Center in New Jersey. He was doing the “arrow through the head” and “let’s get small” stuff. He was, believe it or not, the opening act for Andy Williams, of all people, and most of the crowd was there to see him. There were a few of us Steve Martin fans scattered through the crowd, some with arrows through their heads, and we made a lot of noise.
Then Andy came out with his backup singers and started doing the theme from Rocky “Gotta Fly Now” – and we and our friends left.
Then “King Tut” came out and Steve sold out Radio City Music Hall. Now who’s out of place?
Jeff, sadly, I’ve seen very few comics live. Diane likes Steve Martin and I like Martin Short so we went to their live event at Shea’s a couple years ago. We saw Jerry Seinfeld live twice. He was great!
The last standup comic I saw was George Carlin circa 1973! Gaffigan’s name is familiar but I’ve never seen him, hermit that I am!
Bob, you need to get out more.
Most of my live comedian shows have happened after I was pulling down enough, after the first few years at TV GUIDE, to be able to budget for this…most often at this point, I’ve seen Jackie Kashian, Maria Bamford, and everyone else is a pretty distant third, though I’ve caught shows with Nikki Glaser, Michelle Billoon, Tig Notaro, Jimmy Pardo and Matt Belknap (the latter, as his co-podcaster, is more comedian-adjacent), Todd Glass, Eddie Pepitone and others. I like both Gaffigan and Alexandro pretty well, but I wouldn’t pay the fee to see them in the kind of place they’d perform, I suspect.
And it’s odd that I managed to forget Jackie’s podcast partner, and definitely a comedian, Laurie Kilmartin. One of the relative few that Alice and I have seen live, as Alice until recently has been Very Much Not a Night Owl (and she’s still not nearly as much of one as I am).
This week’s JACKIE AND LAURIE SHOW: https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/jackie-and-laurie-show/