Jim Gaffigan’s humor appears to be getting darker as he ages.
Reviews of his latest comedy special, “Dark Pale,” agree that the comedian delves into some material fans might not expect from the family-friendly comedian. It’s not that Gaffigan’s special is dirty or blue. He simply explores some unexpected topics.
That shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise. Comedians evolve. And much of his new material grew from a dark time – the COVID pandemic. Most reviews praise the special for it’s humor.
Give it a look this weekend, and make your own determination.
The Stand-Up Spotlight heads into the weekend with a review of a recent Jeremy Pivens show; a list of the greatest comedy specials of all time; and a story about Arsenio Hall’s memories from his days at The Comedy Store.
Get ready for a funny weekend.
STAND-UP SPOTLIGHT – August 4, 2023
Have we gotten Jim Gaffigan wrong all along?
A Midwestern-born father of five, Gaffigan is known for clean, family-friendly stand-up on the most inoffensive subjects (kids, food). He’s safe enough to open for the Pope and regularly grouse on “CBS Sunday Morning.” But his consistently funny new special “Dark Pale,” his 10th, pushes against that vanilla image. The pandemic, he tells us, has made him question mortality, and in one wonderfully macabre bit, Gaffigan, dressed in a black suit and shirt, imagines his own funeral. He wants an open casket, with him sitting up, crumbs on his shirt, arms occasionally rising like a marionette while a recording of him says, “Don’t worry, I’m in a better place” before adding, “Just kidding. I’m here.”
Stuck in the Aughts, Jeremy Piven’s Stand-Up Channels His Inner Ari Gold
The guy sitting behind me at Jeremy Piven’s Saturday night stand-up set — mid-40s, a belly born of beer-chugging, ready to whoop — was mostly reserved for the first third of Piven’s act, maybe as surprised as I was at the self-deprecating comedy on display. Piven worked his recent move to stand-up comedy for jokes at his own expense, goofing on an acting career that has cooled considerably since he won three consecutive Emmys for his role as Ari Gold in Entourage.
The 30 greatest stand-up comedy specials of all time
Stand-up comedy is so much more than telling jokes with a microphone in hand. For seasoned masters of the art, it’s an exploration of everything right and wrong with humanity, all at once, from the way we have sex to the way we buy groceries to the ways we hurt each other and even, for certain brilliant comic minds, the ways we die. A lot of people can do it well, but only a handful of stand-ups are able to trace the full range of human experience in their performances, and even fewer are able to do all of that in the course of a single night of performance. Those are the comedians we’re honoring right now. From foundational legends to modern masters, here are the 30 best stand-up comedy specials of all time, in chronological order.
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Arsenio Hall: Richard Pryor popped my cocaine cherry while oblivious Stevie Wonder played piano nearby
Among Arsenio Hall’s treasure trove of iconic life stories is his first experience doing cocaine.
The moment the legendary comedian took the stage at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles, Calif., Monday night, he pointed to a small booth in the far back corner of the packed room.
