On January 31, 2010 I saw Jim Gaffigan perform at the Chicago Theatre. I’ve seen him before on his Comedy Central special “Beyond the Pale.” Previous to seeing him live, I thought he had a funny style. He speaks in his normal voice for the most part, but sometimes he’ll speak in a much higher voice to capture a sarcastic opinion of the audience. It’s a very original style that I’ve never seen before, but is very comically entertaining. He has very many different bits mostly revolving around commercial food and public decision. An unusually interesting attraction to making fun of major franchises products. For example, he was defining Dominos new trademark bread bowl and he commented, “I'm on this new diet, that Domino's Pasta Bread Bowl Diet. It's a bread bowl, filled with pasta, covered in cheese. They should have just called it 'You're about to die.’” He covered many other different topics including hotel pools where he said, “A hotel pool is very relaxing until anyone else shows up. At that point there isn’t anything you can say that isn’t creepy. I mean you can’t say something like ‘Hey, hop in!’...What room are you staying at?...I didn’t shower before I got in here, kinda count this as a bath.” However, one thing that I noticed was that he only spoke in observational humor, so he never told a story that was too engrossing like many comedians base their routine off of.

I haven’t seen a comedian live before I saw Jim Gaffigan, and I was skeptical at first. After seeing many rock concerts, I understood the live factor that falls into play, but I didn’t understand how a comedian would be funnier live vs. On TV. However, seeing a comedian live adds a certain energy of the crowd that a TV set couldn’t compare with. My first account of the show was that he would tell a joke that would make you laugh until the next joke he said, which essentially left me and my friends laughing throughout the entire performance. I remember constantly being out of breath from laughing so hard.

Having never seen a comedian live before I didn’t know that they came out with openers before their act. I knew that it was the openers responsibility to entertain but not drastically impress the crowd before the main act. The opener did a good job of telling funny stories, but not showing up Gaffigan’s style at all.

Overall I would give Jim Gaffigan four out of five stars because I thought it was constantly hysterical throughout the entire act, but never captured the undivided of the audience and will not be remembered forever.