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| Is dad fat? Dad is fat. Fat is dad. Is fat dad? |
Last month my wife and I and another couple from our church went to see Jim Gaffigan live in Champaign, Illinois. I guess it was a bit of a pilgrimage of sorts, as a lot of people we knew were there as well. If I could make a recommendation it would be this: go see a top-of-the-line standup comedian sometime or at least try to spend an evening laughing as much as possible. It is good for the soul and good for the body. In my opinion nothing provides more minute by minute laughs than standup comedy (over than say a sitcom or a comedic film), but whether it is having fun with friends or reading a joke book (do people even do that?) give yourself some extended time to just laugh. (I can see it now, my new self-help memoir "Eat, Pray, Laugh, Love"...)
I tend to be the analytic type and so right in the middle Gaffigan's set I stepped outside the present moment of receiving his barrage of tightly packed 10 or more jokes per minute, in order to do some thinking. I became increasingly aware of how as my brain connected with the jokes it was simultaneously affecting my body, my actual physical condition; that the joy I was experiencing was at once psychological and sensual; that my pleasure was both in the mind and of the body. What I was coming to terms with was the utter physicality of comedy. In this, I am not referring to physical comedy, where a comedian or actor does something with his or her body to get some laughs (think the slapstick of Jerry Lewis or The Three Stooges), but the actual physical effect humor has on a person who is listening to and watching a comedic routine.
I will say more on my physical experience of the show later, but first I wanted to make some observations about Jim Gaffigan himself.
