I personally have no interest in being a star or a celebrity. I want my stand-up comedy and how I think as a comedian to be recognized and successful.

Jim Gaffigan

Categorized in : Thinking Successful Stars

For me, stand-up comedy is a conversation between me and the audience. I have to keep them listening. When I'm making jokes about cake for twenty minutes, I have to make sure my audience is interested and following where I'm going.

cake humor funny

You ever find yourself being lazy for no reason at all? Like, you pick up your mail, you go in your house, you realize you have a letter for a neighbor. You ever just look at the letter and go "Hm. Looks like they're never getting this. It'll take too much energy to go back outside. I'm gonna get that to them later on. Right now I gotta watch some 'Love Connection.' They got some new host on there."

humor house funny

I never have free time, I don't know about you. You ever go to the cash machine, there's two people in line in front of you and you get kinda flustered, you're like "Forget it! I'm not standing here for 40 seconds. I got things to do, okay?"

humor funny two

Sometimes being lazy can get you in trouble. You ever not take a shower all weekend, just lounge around, then you're running late for work on Monday? There's always one person at work: "Something smells like smoke in here!" "Uh, I went to a barbeque on Friday night. Only had 48 hours to take a shower. Busy."

friday running funny

You ever look for the remote control, but you can't find it, so you just decide, "Ah, guess I'm not watching TV. I'm not gonna take two steps and turn it on myself. I'll go to the gym if I'm going to work out."

humor funny two

Every morning I hear the alarm, it's like "BEEP BEEP BEEP" For second I'm like, "I could get used to that, just dream I'm in a techno club, or something."

dream morning funny

It's strange how interesting your dreams are, but when someone tries to tell you their dream you're just like "WHATEVER! Why don't you send me an e-mail so I can delete it?"

humor dream funny

They always give you three ketchup packets. When you go back up and ask for more, the guy handing them out always treats you like you're taking from his personal stash. "Looks like my kids aren't having ketchup tonight."

giving funny kids

Well my chocolate is so good I could sell it in an obnoxious pris... by Jim Gaffigan

Well my chocolate is so good I could sell it in an obnoxious prism shape.

prisms chocolate shapes

What kind of life are you leading where you consider ketchup fancy? "Well, we ain't rich folk, but on special occasions, I'll break out the ketchup. Grandma's birthday, make her feel special"

grandma special funny

Wouldn't it have been weird to go to high school with the Pope? You know, somebody did, someone's sitting at home, watching TV in Poland, they see the Pope, they think, "That guy was a jerk! He was so mean to me and now he's Pope? I got a swirly from the Pope!"

home funny school

I don't want to be a TV star for the sake of being on TV. I want to have a TV show that's based around my comedy.

tv-shows stars want

Deep frying a Twinkie makes it healthy, right? by Jim Gaffigan

Deep frying a Twinkie makes it healthy, right?

For stand-up comedians that go onstage and get to write and perform and direct, and do all these things, the allure of a television show is still there but if it doesn't offer a level of creative fulfillment, it's oddly unappealing.

comedian creative writing

Comedy is a very lucrative business now, but when everyone first went into it, it didn't make sense from a financial standpoint.

comedy financial firsts

The whole idea of celebrity is flattering - it helps you get into restaurants and stuff - but once you obtain some creative fulfillment, which you do on a nightly basis as a comedian, it's hard to give that up just to be the wacky neighbor on a show.

creative giving ideas

I can't believe we got grades in gym class. I've never used anything I learned in there. "All right, I'm standing in front of a room full of strangers. Based on what I learned in gym class, I will throw a red ball at a fat guy."

class funny believe

How did we get to the point where we're paying for bottled water? That must have been some weird marketing meeting over in France. Some French guy's sitting there, like, "How dumb do I think the Americans are? I bet you we could sell those idiots water."

water funny thinking

I was able to make the jump to theaters without having a TV show. My passion for getting a TV show just plummeted. It was like I had already achieved what I wanted to achieve.

tv-shows passion able

People need to write articles and they need to have angles in them and I'm grateful when people are doing articles, but I always say there's not a great mystery to stand-up comedy.

grateful writing people