The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - Jim Gaffigan - HoneyGaffigan

Episode Date: August 14, 2023

My HoneyDew this week is comedian, Jim Gaffigan!  (Dark Pale, Comedy Monster) Jim Highlights the Lowlights of growing up 1 of 6 kids and the death of his parents. SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://youtube.com/@rsickler SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew What’s your story?? Submit at [e-mail] CATCH ME ON TOUR https://www.ryansickler.com/tour August 18th & 19th: Tampa, FL September 1st & 2nd: Springfield, MO September 15th & 16th: Tulsa, OK September 29th & 30th: Pheonix, AZ October 20th - 22nd: La Jolla, CA October 27th & 28th: Salt Lake City, UT November 10th & 11th: Batavia, IL December 8th & 9th: San Francisco, CA SUBSCRIBE to The HoneyDew Clips Channel http://bit.ly/ryansicklerclips SUBSCRIBE TO THE CRABFEAST PODCAST https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crabfeast-with-ryan-sickler-and-jay-larson/id1452403187 SPONSORS: Mindbloom -Get $100 off your first six sessions when you go to https://www.Mindbloom.com/podcast/honeydew

The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to The Honeydew, y'all. We're over here doing it in the Night Pant Studios. I'm Ryan Sickler, ryansickler.com. Ryan Sickler on all your social media. And as I say every week, thank you. Thank you for watching this show. Thank you for watching this show. Thank you for supporting this show.

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We just had a guy on who his parachute didn't open and homeboy hit the ground and lived. We had an old aunt and uncle get taken hostage and the uncle got away, got a gun and subscribe. And you'll hear how the rest of that goes. It's five bucks a month. That's it. There's no tears, no levels. If you sign up for a year, you get like a month of episodes for free. You get the honey do a day early. You get it ad free at no additional cost. All right. And if you were someone, you know, has a story that has to be heard, please submit it to honey do podcast at Gmail dot com. All right. Thank you guys for supporting the special lefty son. It's up there. Go watch it. Share it. Comment on it. the special Lefty Sun. It's up there. Go watch it, share it, comment on it. And if you're looking for a new podcast to listen to, I'm telling you, go listen to my old podcast that I used to do with Jay Larson called The Crab Feast. It's every single person you know and love in podcasting. Tom Segura, Burt Krasher, Christina P. They're all on there with different stories. It's a great,

fun podcast. All right. August 18th and 19th, I'm in Tampa. Steve Simone will be joining me for that. September 1st and 2nd, Springfield, Missouri. September 15th and 16th, we're in Tulsa. And September 29th and 30th is Phoenix. October 27th, 28th, Salt Lake City. And December 8th and 9th, San Francisco, California. All right.

All your tickets are at RyanSickler.com now that's the biz and you guys know what we're doing over here we're highlighting the low lights all right i always say these are the stories behind the storytellers and i'm very excited to have this guest on here first time on the honeydew ladies and gentlemen please welcome jim gaff again welcome to the honeydew jim gaff thank you so much bring you in strong jim gaff that was that was a good one you don't even know dude uh first before we even get into everything we're going to talk about please plug promote everything and anything jim gaffigan that you'd like and i know there's a lot well i mean i guess uh you

know i have this new uh amazon special that is uh begins streaming on july 25th it's my 10th comedy special um amazing right i'm an old man that's not 10 yeah right isn't that crazy and then i uh have uh i'm on tour this fall uh with the barely alive tour which is different material than than that and then i'm alive in a live tour you're barely alive and then uh i'm in this new max uh mini series called full circle which uh and i get to play a postal inspector and i uh it's it's a steven soderbergh show so it's good stuff and zazie beats and uh claire danes and timothy oliphant and uh um i can't think of some of the other names but and then i'm doing some dates this fall with a young comedian named uh jerry seinfeld oh yeah that kid so i heard good things about him doing chicago san francisco st louis and la but i'm excited to

be here you know what i mean it's like i feel like i'm meeting the mayor of of maryland well i said to you like so first of all i'm a huge huge fan and I'm like beyond respectful and I like I pay attention to the game and I I had released a comedy album out and for a hot second it bumped you down to like number two for 10 seconds and you started following me on Twitter and I was like wow Jim Gaffigan fucking follow me and then the night that i met you at the comedy store which has been a second now um they'd say gaffigan's coming i'm like oh my god i fucking love jim gaffigan i can't wait and you come through the back and i have been standing out the doorway on sunset smoking a joint i was not expecting you to be there that

quickly and when you come through i was like hey jim i'm ryan i shake your hand you're like oh you're from baltimore right and i was floored by that but also i felt so self-conscious and terrible because i blew weed smoke all over jim gaffigan this is my first meeting you know what i mean i'm like oh my god then we go back we talk we hang out you tell me a great david tell joke that i still repeat do you remember it no no um do you want to tell it will you tell it if i tell you it's the hitler in the hollow at the halloween party that's amazing i tell everybody you want to tell us you tell it you tell it i'll see if i can remember it so um there's a guy who's throwing a halloween party and everyone's hanging hanging out having a great time they're drinking dancing party and

it's a good time the dude's going around making sure he's like oh great great great and then crossed the way he sees a guy who looks identically like Adolph Hitler he's dressed like Hitler he's like what the hell is this guy doing at my Halloween party dressed like Hitler so he goes over to say something he's like hey man hey, man, you can't wear that here. You can't be here like that. And he's like, what if I tell you that I'm actually Adolf Hitler and I've returned to kill 10,000 Jews. Six million more Jews. Six million more Jews.

And three clowns. And three clowns. Okay, I go with two, but I'm going to change it up. What if I'm here to tell you I'm here to kill six million more Jews and three clowns? And he's like, what? He goes, I'm actually Adolf Hitler. I'm back from the dead. I'm here to kill six million more Jews and three clowns.

And the guy goes, why three clowns? And Hitler's like, see, no one gives a shit about the Jews. It's unbelievable. I tell everybody. I'm like, Jim Gaffigan is telling me a david tell joke like that you're like david tell told me i'm like jesus even better right so such a great time meeting you and then my brother's like i'm pretty sure i've seen him in church in maryland i'm like i don't think so i don't know maybe maybe his wife and now you're telling me before we start recording you actually do have people there yeah no my uh my mom's family is from iowa but my grandfather got a job in dc and he uh so my aunt

lived in in maryland she lived on the eastern shore for years and uh so i've been going to maryland every summer for like i don't know my entire life for like a week or and you know eating you know like the crabs and the and the you know like there's so many it's maryland is so such a unique microcosm in itself. A hundred percent. Right? It is. And so. This little tiny state that's got all these things.

Mountains. A dangerous city. Yeah. The bay. The ocean. The crabs. The seafood. It's wild.

It was like a border state, but it really wasn't a border state. It's, you know, the fact you say y'all you know it's it's southern right and then and um but so there's the family connection but also uh you know when my wife and i started having kids we ended up meeting this other couple that ended up because i have five kids and so this other couple ended up having five kids and the husband is from maryland i got it's from baltimore too so that would so we ended up the maryland connection was so consistent and then uh you know and it's just the proximity yeah i mean it's not far it's the start of the, the,

you know, I call the Northwest, the Northeast corridor, that a cell line. I call that the corridor of hate because everyone is so angry on that line. Right. And so it's, it's kind of,

it's in about how many fights I've been in the state of Maryland. It's an angry place. Oh my gosh. I remember one time we were on the eastern shore and my wife and and our friend the the wife of my friend were in the bathroom and it was we were in this bar that was kind of empty and this woman came in and tried to start a fist fight with them it's like these are you know the mothers of five children. It was not a CD bar. She's like, I got that.

Yeah, it was just this woman was on a tear. But it's the whole Northeast is like that, you know, in. Boston, yeah. Nantucket. Everybody's angry, yeah. You know, like I remember one time I was in Nantucket for some festival thing. And my wife and I were in a bar and we're like, this is very preppy.

And I was like, what's that bell for? And they're like, well, when there's a fight, we ring the bell. So the, the bouncers know to come in and I'm looking around and it's all just rich people in preppy outfits.

And I'm like, how often ding, ding, ding. And there's just these, these guys in like these Nantucket pink pants punching each other. And you're like, what is going on?

What is going on? The Corridor of Hate is such a great name. All the way up Philly. Yeah. Philly. Fucking New York, Jersey. All the way up. You're not wrong.

All the way up. Yeah. You know, New Haven. It's just, it's just combat. Yeah the way up. You're not wrong. All the way up. Yeah. You know, New Haven. It's just combat. Yeah. Providence. So tell me about your upbringing. You're from Indiana originally.

That's where you're born and raised too? I was born in Illinois, but we moved to Indiana when I was in the middle of fifth grade. My dad got fired and he got a job uh in indiana what was he doing in illinois he was a banker he was i think he i think he kind of told his boss to fuck off oh yeah and you know now you do that and people are like you know you shouldn't do that and back then people were like you're gone and so but i think he didn't get a promotion and he was really pissed and so he got a different job in northwest indiana and northwest indiana it's like hard to describe it is i mean i have such affinity for northwest indiana but it is

the stepchild of chicago like people i used to have a joke when i would perform in chicago where people and you tell someone from chicago because it goes chicago and then northwest indiana is right there and if you said hey i'm from northwest indiana people in chicago would be like where's that you're like it's 10 it's 15 minutes away yeah but it was such kind of like the area of riffraff and also like when i would do shows in chicago i could always tell when there were people from northwest india because i do meet and greets after the show and they would be in sweatpants it would be like saturday night and they're like showing up in sweatpants but they're good sweats they're good they're good sweats but they're like you know this i'm not at work yeah

i'm going to a show yeah but um so i grew up i i identify as someone from northwest indiana which is which is the calumet region which is different from real indiana like people think of real indiana as uh you know the whole it's it's so like northwest indiana is kind of a a mix of a lot you know gary african-american city ethnocentric uh i mean ethnic catholics you know, Eastern European, you know, Mexican. And so I had moved from Chicago, which was kind of the this lily white suburb of Chicago to Northwest Indiana. So it was a culture shock. And it was pretty brutal. It was a pretty rude awakening. Like, I think I was like, the strongest kid in fifth grade and then i arrived and i was like nothing and so that's where i think i really i had your sixth grade basically

your middle school years you start in indiana yeah in the middle of fifth grade and i had some jokes that we you know had you know you learn as little kids so that was i was trying to get an adjective before pale you know what i mean so it was like the funny pale kid right right you know that new pale kid the new pale you know so it's that new real white kid so i was trying to add an adjective i always say when they're that white they're white you gotta hit the h on that like yeah white yeah and so it was uh it was a it was strangely uh informative to how my my whole life would go so it's like that's where i really felt like an outsider ironically you know obviously compared to like someone who's truly been like oppressed it's nothing but like i was uh so i had to develop kind of i had always been funny but

like comedy was a tool to kind of gain uh approval i'd used it you know being the youngest of six kids to kind of because it was just combat for food when I was growing up. You know what I mean? Like my parents were there, but it was just it was not like what we see today. It was, you know, like I know where my kids are at all times. I know when they're sporting things are happening. And specifically versus like, oh, they're out. They're out playing.

Versus like, yeah, see it 6 p.m yes yeah you know what i mean uh you ever deal with the parents i don't mean to interrupt you but this trips me out once i had a kid i started realizing there's different styles of parenting like i remember going to a three-year-old's birthday party we're taking our daughter to this three-year-old's birthday party and some of the parents just show up and they just fucking leave their kid like what time you want me back four all right and they leave and i'm like wait we can do that you know what i mean like yeah just bait you're using this as a babysitter right now yeah well that's wild and the point is that they're three yeah it's not like they're and it's not eight or nine it's like oh good i'm gonna go take a nap you're like no no you're this is three this is still like all hands on deck a hundred percent yeah yeah well that's you know

you got kids it's like the the other parents that is that is you know that's one of the catastrophes of being a parent is the other parents. They don't care. Yeah. You know, they don't care or they care too much. So by comparison, you're the worst parent ever. I see that guy leave and I'm like, I ain't doing so bad. You know what I mean? I'm pretty good.

I'm going to eat some Little Caesars. I'm pretty good. Okay. So you're using comedy to sort of ingratiate yourself in this new community. Yes. And are your parents together at this point? Yes. Everyone's together.

All eight of you then. Yes. But it was definitely – there's conflict and I'm the youngest of six and my different siblings are reacting differently to this move. Like, definitely the move. It's so interesting because when we walked in and you're describing the premise, I didn't realize that it was such a life-altering thing for me and my siblings, this move. life-altering thing for me and my siblings this move because it was a culture shift and uh and it was just kind of like you know it's one thing to fend for your own when you were raised there and you knew every neighbor but like when you're kind of thrown in there and uh it was a different thing and i I think my mom was miserable initially.

So that was traumatic. I'm surprised to hear it to you. I know about Gary, Indiana, but I didn't know about Eastern Europeans being there. I didn't know about even Mexican culture being there as well. Well, it's Rust Belt. Yeah, but are a lot of them trickling down out of chicago a lot of people too yeah some of them but it's some of it is you know like the rust belt if you consider like detroit is where all the cars were made and you know pennsylvania was where all the

steel was made and then but like northwest india like gary was like the first of the rust belt to die like supposedly gary in 1938 was considered the most beautiful city in the world world yes i think it was in time magazine and so gary was gary like white flight had been so immediate and dramatic and it was so overshadowed by the collapse of the steel mill industry and the automotive industry and people had left you know so like that people had kind of like people would literally drive through they would drive from chicago through the ind Indiana part where I'm from to get to Michigan because Michigan was beautiful and people had their summer houses there. But like where I'm from, northwest Indiana was this strange stepchild that was not accepted by Indiana and not accepted by Chicago. indiana and not accepted by chicago so it was it was a weird thing to kind of i think it affected everyone that lived in northwest indiana so who or are both of your parents very catholic was it

dad mom my dad upbringing well my dad you know my dad was the first one to go to college in his family and he was uh and i you know if i understand this correctly so like it used to be you would if you were a kid a poor kid or whatever you would go into the seminary like he almost became a priest but i think i realized later on that you go into the seminary so that you can get free higher education and so he went into the seminary got uh you know a free education and then then switched then went to college but it's weird it's like it's kind of i mean but you know maryland is like was created as this state for catholics like they're like let's stick all the catholic yeah let's stick all the catholics there it's maryland they're obsessed with mary you know i mean we'll call it maryland and all the catholics are like all right let's go let's go there and lord baltimore

was i think he was it was all it might been, I should know this because it's interesting. But it was kind of his whole idea, I think. And I think also the Jews went there, too, because they were like. There's a big Jewish population. Where, like, we don't have to deal with, you know, these. Because, you know, by the way way and i did that finding my roots thing both sides of my family were and to answer your question neither of my parents were that catholic like my dad was kind of a some you know it was kind of a way to get out of springfield illinois

and then my mom was kind of a cultural cath. But both sides of my family, when they did this finding the roots, like one of them, my mom's side of the family, settled in Maine, and then during the know-nothings, where they would literally just kind of hunt down Catholic priests and kill them, they kind of fleed to the most western part of where settlers had been, which was Iowa. So my mom's from Iowa, and then eventually her dad got a job in D.C. But my dad's side, they came from Ireland, and they worked in coal mines in Pennsylvania. And then they worked in coal mines in Springfield, Illinois.

And so it was generation and generation of working in coal mines. And my grandfather was the one that kind of broke it by making dentures. Is that what he did in D.C.? No. So that's my mom's side of the family. Oh, your dad's side. When my mom's side of the family they had when they went to iowa i think they like opened a store or something but it's just so weird that like iowa was the western frontier at one point it's just bananas do you know what i mean yeah it's as far as anyone got it's like also you know they could have gone they probably could have gone to Maryland, but they didn't.

So I don't know. So your dad sort of used the seminary the way some people use the military then. Absolutely. Education, all that. Yeah. And then said, I'm out of here, and I'm definitely going to have sex, and I'm going to have six kids. Yeah, I'm going to have six kids. But he was – it's weird you know

like the the era of my parents being i mean the the catholic church has understandably been decimated but during the 50s there was the most important person in a small town was not the mayor. It was, particularly if it was a Catholic community, it was the priest. Right. So, like, you literally are kind of, you know, you never have to pay for a meal. Like, it's like you, the appeal of being a priest which is so uh understandably tinged was it was the most highest status position you could have in a community it's so weird how that picture i have out there the old baltimore colts all kneeling down before a game has the priest in there with

them before they go out you know you got the priest you think about the rocky movie before he goes to drive to his fight he pulls over and he yells up to the father and he's throwing some blessings out the window before he heads off yeah it's so interesting it's uh but so yeah so i would say but when i was thinking about you know pivotal moments and uh probably the biggest you know like i think i lost my dog when i was 13 how or maybe uh you know we think the neighbor was dealing with like raccoons and so they put poison out but we don't know you know some of his dogs just eventually die it's tragic what kind of dog was this he was like a mutt you know uh was his

name buttons yeah and he smelled horrible but he was but that was like the first thing in my life that had been uh this like i was in shock i was like a mess and you know my siblings were kind of like it was interesting because they dealt with it differently i think they were i was a sensitive child no but it was uh it's weird you know it's like in some ways it's like i probably didn't process it that well but i remember being caught off guard by it but when i was in my so i grew up in this family that was my father was the first one to go to college the uh you know it took us tons of generations to get to the middle class upper middle class so the concept of you sought security and security was wearing a tie to work. And so and I was the youngest and all my siblings had kind of studied, you know, Spanish terrorism and, you know, just ridiculous.

And so by the time I was getting ready for college my dad was like you're studying finance or accounting and i was like yes sir you know i mean like i just would i had been very compliant and i played football my brother but i mainly played football because my irish twin brother who's kind of you have a twin well no he's like irish maybe you know 15 months older than me and you know we just were dressed identical for the first 12 years of our lives and he um but he was the athlete but i just kind of went along so in other words i always had this attitude like all right you want me to do this i would just listen and so i studied finance thinking no that's what you're supposed to do.

This is it. And I hated it. And so then when I was 24, 25, my mom died. And it was just like, whoa. I wouldn't expect you to say that. That's young. Yeah. And so it was ovarian cancer. And it was pretty.

And it was pretty, and again, it was just, you know, one of those things where it was, you know, I don't think I processed it well. the story that I had been sold or the life rules that I had been sold, which is get a job with a tie, do that till you're 65, play golf, and then you can kick it, you know, is kind of a lie. Because she was only 53, and it was young. And, you know, my dad was the boozer and you know it was like there was just incredible injustice that uh this would happen to this person so that made me kind of reevaluate or even i guess think, think about what I wanted to do. I think it's not rare for people to just kind of go, I don't know, like they just follow people, right? Like often people don't really consider like, what do I want to do? Like, I think I remember

in high school, there was a point where I think a teacher was like, you guys should think about what you want to study. And I was like, well, and I was like, you know what? And I thought of things I was interested in. My dad was like, what are you fucking kidding?

You're not doing that. And so, I mean, granted my parents paid for college, you know, in full disclosure. So it was like, he did have some authority in it.

You know what I mean? It wasn't like I was paying. but yeah yeah so that was the big uh i would say that was the big life event where i from then on i challenged kind of everything and i think that is the the kind of the through line of all comedians is kind of challenging the acceptable notion. And it goes in different stripes, you know. But that's why, you know, we're all kind of conspiracy theorists. You know, we're all, you know, highly suspicious of basic rules.

of basic rules right it's so funny you say that because it wasn't until i just might have been in the last four or five years i was in therapy and i was talking about uh i don't know dating or whatever and and she said are you jealous and i said i'm not i said i and she goes you're not you're suspicious and i go that's fucking it. I haven't been able to throw that out myself the whole time. I go, that's what it is. I'm suspicious of everything. I'm like, I'm always. I've had no parents since I was 16. And I'm very suspicious of people.

I'm very suspicious of intentions. I'm very suspicious of intentions very suspicious it's not jealousy or it's a little bit of distrust or or you know but suspicious is the right word yeah yeah it's just and and by the way i mean that's kind of necessary for developing a point of view in comedy for developing a point of view in comedy like you you know i had uh you know material on mexican food and it's it's just you should you know mexican food which is my favorite it is you should you should be suspicious it's essentially the same ingredients in just with a different name 100 you know it's refried beans like yeah you know like it's just like it's like a burrito and a taco it's not that different especially if it's flour yeah

it's just a bigger tortilla it's beautiful it's perfect but it's just a different name. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so, but that's where I think, I mean, I'm so grateful that, you know, doing stand-up, that we get access to that. Do you know what I mean? Because it is, some of it is we get to, you know, there's a communication with the audience. And, you know, not everyone gets that. I look at my kids, and I'm just like, they've got to process all this stuff. There's no quick fix for anxiety and depression. It's not finding a new therapist. It's not starting a new exercise routine.

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Right now, MindBloom is offering my listeners $100 off your first six-session program when you sign up at mindbloom.com slash honeydew and use promo code honeydew take the first step and break free from your anxiety and depression with mindbloom mindbloom.com slash honeydew and use promo code honeydew now let's get back to the do before we start we were talking about the haircut thing oh Oh, yeah, yeah. I want to bring this up because in this special Dark Pale. So, like, there's been times when I've. So, like, we were talking about, you know, you have your person. You go there every two weeks, which is what an intelligent.

What an intelligent, thoughtful person does. And I'm the kind of guy who uh like i like when i try on shoes people are like how does it feel and i'm like i don't know this is my shoe size i guess they fit and they're like you just feel your feet i'm like i don't know and so but when it comes to getting a haircut because i i i love acting and because I was broke for so long that I got in the habit of I would wait and get a haircut when I would get an acting job or a commercial or something. And so I would never have to pay for a haircut. How long has your hair been at its longest in between gigs? It's, you know, blonde.

You look like Ben Franklin. in between gigs it's you know blonde my hair is like ben franklin i don't have much hair but it was like definitely you know like thin blonde white blonde hair doesn't look good in a mullet and so uh i um essentially so i never really there might be times when i'd establish a relationship with someone cutting my hair. And in fact, there is this guy who, um, who's cut my hair in these village was great. And, um, and, and I used to go to him, but sometimes I call and he has, of course, now he has like five businesses. He has his barbershop, he has his edible businesses, you know, all this stuff. And so if I call and he's not there, I have to, because I don't plan ahead. I'm like, I got time for haircut. Hey, is Ari there? No,

he's not. All right. I'll go to this person. So I went to this, where my sons had gotten their haircut. It's this old Italian guy who cuts hair and it's in the east village in manhattan and there's there's italian americans and italians that come to this guy i'm like this guy's real he's a real authentic and so i'm like all right great because i'm getting ready for this special i need a haircut and so i go and i call and i go can i get a haircut no because it's in the middle of the day because we have this weird schedule where like we're free at 1 p.m. And, you know, most barbers, people come after work or at lunch. So I call and they're like, yeah, come on in.

They're like, come on in. Yeah. And so I go in and the old guy who's cut my son's hair for forever is not available. But there's this young guy that works with him and i'm like well he's his trainee he's great and you know the old guys with scissors and you know there he's talking to his friend who's reading an italian newspaper and i'm like i'm set so i sit in the chair and the young guy takes out you know like there's some people that just cut hair with like a trimmer. He's like, yeah.

And so he starts my barber. Terrace all scissors. Yeah. And so he starts cutting my hair. But again, I'm like, this is the it's it's a it's a it's a haircut place. It's not a barbershop, but it's like this guy knows what he's doing. But the weird thing is, it's like my hair. I don't have much of it left but like you got plenty of hair oh my god i got a nice flesh yarmulke but it grows out kind

of like this and so like what you have to do is you have to kind of cut underneath it i'm getting to a point so then i'm trying to communicate to this the guy. I'm like, you know, it's like my hair kind of underneath here. You have to trim it. Or I'll get like these clown edges. And he goes, yeah, yeah. And just goes, vroom, vroom. And I'm like, uh, uh, and I go, that's not what I said. And so you'll see on my special, Dark Pale, that my hair.

Wait, this is the haircut you got for the special? This is the haircut for the special. And so the hair. The trainee haircut. I look at, you know, during the edit, I'm just like. Can you guys do something with the hair? And I'm like, geez, that hair looks bad so you'll look at it and i'm like god it's forever too and i was ridiculous yeah and so it's just it you'll just

see it and you'll go i can't wait to watch now his hair looks like shit and it does look like shit and that's literally i got a haircut like four days before and it was just a bad haircut it's just because you told your great story oh man that lady dyed my hair and it turned out black as these microphones man i was like yeah what are you doing and do you want to dye your eyebrows no i don't want to do that either. By the way, so I had a thing where on the Jim Gaffigan show when I was doing it. Because I have blonde hair. But essentially when blonde hair, when you get old, essentially it doesn't turn gray. It turns white.

White, yeah. Like Andy Warhol white right and so what happens is in acting projects the director of photography is like you got to do something to your hair man it just it hits the light and and blonde hair is really thin so the the light hits it and you know like you can do do the Mike Pence thing where it's really tight to your head. But if you have any hair standing up, it catches light and it kind of flares. So essentially this guy who was the director of photography on this show, the Jim Gaffigan show, he's like, because I don't want to overstep my boundaries. But like your hair is like,

it's like invisible. It's like, you just got to dye it blonde, which is, doesn't seem noticeable. And I'm like, yeah, yeah,

sure, sure. And so, so we go, my wife was the show runner and she goes to the hair person. She goes, yeah, we need to dye his hair blonde.

And so this is similar to your story. So then the guy is dyes my hair and he dyes it red and so it's kind of strawberry blonde and so i don't know anything about like hair dye or anything but apparently like blonde is type of uh it's a shade of red or whatever and so uh we did it and i was like this is kind of red and he's like no it's not that's blonde and so i go and so then i'm like all right i'm dumb so maybe it is maybe it is blonde but i see red so then i go out and i show my wife and she goes your hair is red like he just said so then we go back in we're like it's red and he goes it's blonde and they're like

so we're like all right fine it's red it's blonde but can you make it more blonde so he does it again and i don't know if you've had your hair dye it's like your skull's like stinging from this dye and so then it's essentially it's still strawberry blonde we just reinforce what this guy views as blonde and so on my imdb page you know like they have characteristics you know like it would be and and one of them it says strawberry blonde hair when i don't have strawberry blonde hair it's just like i'm not even a redhead i'm not even a redhead i've been this blonde my entire life it's called champagne blonde no i've been this but i just thought that was funny because it's you know not only we've all gotten bad haircuts and we've all you know people with the best intentions will mess up but like now it was like a characteristic you know his pale skin with his strawberry blonde hair i'm like strawberry blonde so specific so stupid um i want to go back

to talking about your mom for a second can we um so ovarian cancer i'm assuming you guys that was a slow uh thing and not sudden did you yes did you were you able to see your mom were you still there at the time yes i was i was living in new york it's before i had started stand up um but i remember uh you know there was something about i mean i was kind of such a uh so it was you know my family's not good at processing things like that so we would talk but it was what i remember when i because i graduated from college and i moved to where'd you graduate i went to georgetown oh. Hell yeah. We got a Hoya at the table? Were you there when Ewing was there? I was.

You were? I transferred in. I transferred in. By the way, that's the school my dad went to. My dad went to Georgetown. My older brother, my kind of Irish twin, went to Georgetown. After Buttons died, eventually we got another dog. That dog was named Hoya.

I had always wanted to go to Georgetown. I applied, didn't get in. So it was like, not only did I not get in, I had a dog named Toya. You had two relatives. And so it was. Who had given you all money. It was pretty but that kind of rejection that appetite because i think the entertainment industry is about it's not just about how you handle success it's how you handle

the constant humiliation and if you don't have a bit of an appetite for shit you're gonna have a hard time amen do you know what i mean and so so real quick you where did you go first what college purdue all right so you went to full-on purdue not iupui purdue all right but you know by the way uh so i applied to all these colleges didn't get in got waitlisted at some of them but back then in 1987 at that time you could apply to purdue by submitting a postcard because i was an indiana resident i see and it was i just submitted the postcard and i got in so now why transfer into georgetown was it a fuck you because you really wanted to do it was it one of those things you thought you should because dad and brother had done no it was it was definitely

because you could have gone anywhere it was definitely i knew that i wanted to get to the east coast i mean i loved indiana but i think when i was a teenager i didn't look i mean i love indiana now but like as a teenager i was I was like, there's been a mistake. I'm not supposed to be here. Like I would look around and I had a friend of mine who now lives in Maine who we used to talk about like there was some kind of disaster, you know, that we ended up here. disaster you know that we ended up here and so then of course i eventually get to new york city after all this stuff and i'm like i made it to new york and everyone in new york's like you're the most midwestern looking person i've ever seen you're like it's a strawberry blonde i was like so it was like but i think a lot of comedians that is, you know, they're constantly struggling with identity in some ways.

Like they're trying to either, you know, it's a cranking of a dial on the identity. It's either, you know, like we were talking before. It's like I love Dave Attell, but it's like you'd think like if you know Dave Attell, you'd think, what is this guy? Is he from the thirties? Did he grow up with the Bowery boys? It's like, he came from a nice community on Long Island. He's, he's authentic, but like some of it is, there's different identities of comedians. You know what I mean?

Like they crank it up or they crank it down. You know what I mean? And some of of it is it's thrust upon you so in other words i you know the reason i'm uh you know people are like you're the most midwestern person in the world is because i look midwestern and so when i would go on stage in in new york city in the early 90, all these comedians would go on stage and be like, my mother's Jewish, my father's Italian, you know, da, da, da, da. And so when I got on stage, I was like, I'm white and I'm white. And there's, you know, I'm Irish, but like, not really. You know what I mean? And so there was my ethnic identity was Midwestern or, you know, trash.

You know what I mean? Are there any conversations that you have with your mom that still stick with you or stand out before she passed? Oh, yeah. No, there's. Anything she said to you? Any advice or anything she even just said to you? Anything she admitted to you or told you? Did you get one on ones or six of you?

Yeah. No, there was plenty of time. I mean, never enough time. But like there was definitely conversations. And then, by the way, then there's, you know, I don't know if you know anyone who's lost someone through like like say uh you know a losing battle with cancer and they're on pain medication what they're saying on pain medication you kind of sometimes give that a weight that you shouldn't do i mean yeah so we are like oh is she talking about saturday night live to me or did she just, is it Sunday?

And she was watching it last night. But for me, it was, I think my mother was somebody, there was, she was the one person in my life that was, I had no doubt about her love and support and you know some of it is like you know uh my dad you know there was a bit of combativeness with my dad he was a you know there was a fatigue you know he had six kids he's like what the fuck you know i mean i another one and so like there was uh and he was of a different era i describe him as uh the pre phil donahue era do you know i mean like it was phil kicked all that talk show stuff yeah you know i mean like he was like you know, and he was a compassionate guy. And he was, you know, progressive for his era.

But he was, like, definitely, like, I'm not making dinner. Do you know what I mean? Yes. Yes. I'm not. I brought the money home. You know what I mean? I'm not, you know, the chaos is, you know.

And he wasn't, you know you know again for his era he was like very much uh you know he ended up running this bank in northwest indiana and he made a point of making sure like hiring the first vice president that was african-american and people were not thrilled about it but he also did that and he did it in a way where it was like uh he knew it was important do you know what i mean so like i do give him credit for but there was also other stuff where he was just like you know just really set in his ways and uh was he older than your mom about the same age a couple years older a couple years older and how how did he change when your mom passed oh i mean he was

i mean i think that he was like was he a little lost he was a little lost he ended up getting remarried but you have to understand my dad was and i thought you know growing up you think all your parents do that all parents do this but like my dad would come home and have a vodka and uh on the rocks and then he would switch to scotch at a certain point of the evening yeah and i remember things because half the times i would be like all right i'm trying to bring that scotch you know what i mean and you know like i if i have like so he would over the course of the night, at minimum, three or four drinks. Like, if I had four drinks in a night, I would be like a mess for a couple days. And he was just fine.

Like, that generation knew how to put it away. Yeah. But also, it's just like, I think of like the sheer amount of money wasted yeah yeah do you know what i mean yeah it's just so like there is and it was just like a different era it was like before um mothers against drunk driving yeah seat belts all that stuff it was you could drink and drive you could do it yeah he was like he was in a drunk driving accident he's like that sorry and it wasn't like what there was no public shame right yeah yeah it was just like yeah it was just and then later on he you know i think he he stopped he tried he

stopped drinking he you know he went to aa but then when he you know got sick he's like if i'm out i'm gonna have some cocktails so like when he knew he was uh dying he went back to it no yeah he said fuck it so he knew what did he get cancer as well yeah i mean but these i mean my parents were consuming he was 63 still young but yeah but he was you know he was consuming at least two packs a day cigarettes and alcohol three drinks and two packs just like it was you know it was a sheer amount of and he also when my mom died he you know like growing up poor he you know steak was such a you know like you would have but on special occasions so and he would uh we would have steak maybe once a week but like when my mom died he's like steak every night yeah we're

having steak every night and i'm like all right steak yeah and now i'm kind of like keto and shit now i'm like yeah he was right he was right you know what i mean but yeah the so when he got the news he was like i'm going back to drinking why not yes he was like i'm done i gotta say i think i would too though you know what i mean if you if you know unless they're like hey we were wrong you're like oh shit you know well it's also i think it was cancer's gone yeah it was also one of those things where it was i think it was lung cancer and cancer that was gonna get to the brain it was it was not happy why you watched both your parents pass from yeah then yeah Jesus yeah so but I think in my family

how old you know I'm 57 and are you busy it's insane it is insane are you staying I'm 50 but my father died at 42 and it was very weird when i hit 42 because i actually almost i clotted then and almost died at 42 his a same situation but i made it and then now i still feel i don't think i don't care if i live to 103 i'm never gonna feel older than my dad does that make any fucking sense like yeah i know i've lived eight years longer than that man did on this planet but anytime i think of him i still think of him as an elder you know what i mean he's that senior figure i don't it's so crazy because i think also in my family like i grew up maybe to the age of, I think my grandmother died when I was 10. But when I was born, the three other ones were already dead.

Like in my family, people go out early. Yeah. And some of it, I think, is the partying. Are you watching your health? Are you at the doctor's? You look great. I mean, no, but thank you. I mean.

But I'm not you're not in your yearly physical you're doing at least i'm doing i'm doing that yeah but like i also and i don't know how i dodged this but like i have a very addictive personality personality which is and I you know but my addictions you know it's like food nicotine gum I'm addicted to but like you used to smoke I did oh you did ago you did yeah so I'm addicted to the gum but like it's you know I'm 20 years on the gum are you really yeah and so could you stop the gum i could have you ever tried this probably 5 000 pounds in a day i just need to be chewing you know what i mean so i uh yeah no i mean it is a compulsive you know it is but So, like, but I'm so thrilled that I dodged the booze. You know what I mean? Like, the booze is just, like, if you look at my family history, it's like, it's, you know, it takes people out early. You know what I mean?

So, I think, and, you know, it also, you know, obviously it could be any drug. Right. And so it's terrifying having kids because I'm trying to communicate them. I'm like, we don't. With fentanyl now, I was told, I was corrected this weekend in Appleton, Wisconsin by a doctor. I always say fentanyl. And he said it's actually fentanyl. Oh, really?

Like NyQuil, not like Tylenol. And I said, all right, I'll try to start saying it right. But I keep hearing fentanyl everywhere. like nyquil not like tylenol i said all right i'll try to start saying it right but i keep hearing fentanyl fentanyl everywhere but that's what scares me i've my daughter's eight and we see it on the sides of buses and a good friend of ours daughter was died from it so there's been no hiding you had asked me earlier too if my daughter knew i smoked cannabis or anything and she does after the hospital stuff and they told me that's all i was allowed to do yeah i sat her down i I was like, listen, you're about to get an educational marijuana that no one in your class is probably going to get. And I recorded the surgeons talking

about how it's met and can be used as medicine and everything. And I was like, these are the doctors saying this. So people don't, you know, if you ever say anything about your dad and they're like, he's a loser for smoking weed, whatever it is, you know the truth over here. Oh, wow. That's brilliant. Yeah. I played that for her and let her listen to that. And, you know, there was no way to hide it.

She said, what happened to your friend's daughter? And I was like, you know what? We were driving back from Ocean City, Maryland to Philly because we flew into Philly. And I was like, we we're gonna have a real adult conversation and now we're seeing it on the sides of buses on the way to school and everything so i'm i don't care that it's a little early i'm trying to educate her on that because i would be devastated if it 10 she ate a gummy or some that was laced and didn't even know that's what's you know that's terrifying that's what's crazy is that, I mean, I think that it is, because my kids are 10 to 19.

And, you know, there is, you know, and my kids, you know, I live in New York City, but there is something about what's happening, because I think it's even scarier. Let me bring up this scary fact please is that they're you know since these kids that are dying from it there's shock and shame and so you know as your daughter gets you only have one kid? Yeah, her brother's my stepson. Okay. And so like, because what happens in when a kid gets older is that essentially in high school or in middle school, there'll be an email that will go out and say, so and so, the tragic loss of so and so, you know, someone in a different grade someone sibling of someone that goes to school and you'll realize later on sometimes it was suicide sometimes it was um uh you know some fentanyl related thing and what's terrifying is that under and you can

understand the logic of it, these families are devastated. Like there was a kid in New York City where the parents were, the kid had gotten into Notre Dame. And he, you know, I think he was a partier. And he had, he was, they were kind of celebrating. They were with some friends. They had kind of like a weed pen or whatever. It wasn't even his weed pen.

He was like, let me have a hit of that. And he took a hit of it. And then he, and I don't know all the details, jumped off a building. What? Yes. And so the thing is, is that, so like this kid was going to notre dame this kid was not a fuck up the kid who had the pen and gave the pen from what i understand was not a fuck up he was kind of like i'm a senior in high school i've kicked ass I'm going to get a pet you can get it so easily in New York City which is a problem because of course among comedians well we you know I spent the last

20 years doing these benefits on legalizing pot and stuff like that so the problem is is like I think in LA they enforce it a lot more but in New York it's just decriminalized and so like there's essentially it's the wild west but what happens is so this family that lost this son the only reason we know about it is a friend of a friend but otherwise they don't want to go to the police they don't want the friend they don't want them to get in trouble so what happens is it's not reported it's not like a gun death right it's not like um you know um you know where they're on meth and they're living in an abandoned house it's they are these pretty normal kids that whereas like when we were growing up we might have gotten might have drank some uh

some kind of really cheap beer that was warm and gotten buzzed they're getting exposed to like this laced pot that will kill them that will kill them and but i think the fascinating thing is these parents in their grief you know it's not like the you know their kid was shot at newtown or whatever it was it was this because teenagers make dumb mistakes we all did right listen if i was a teenager and these vape pens were around i definitely would smoke them i'd be an idiot we had we had cigarettes and i smoked cigarettes for you know it's my our doctor and you know some of it is this sounds like anation, but I didn't realize the vape pens, we talked a little bit, the vape pens, and again, I have a highly addictive personality. But, like, because you're inhaling oil, it destroys your lungs. So, like, there's these kids that have been vaping since the age of 12, and then by the time they're 20 they need a lung transplant yeah

popcorn lung some of that stuff they call it pop this is what i learned about in the hospital because i was like okay am i done with cannabis and they were like you can have cannabis i just choose not to smoke the infused stuff because it just makes me cough so much more um they told me no vapes tobacco or th THC, like none. No alcohol because of the blood thinners, but no tobacco products, no cigars, no blunt wraps, none of that stuff. Because it's just so much, you know, there's so many toxins in all that. It's just the chemicals, right? Yeah.

I want to ask you this before we wrap up. Two questions. One is how do you keep your parents alive with your children? Do you tell stories? Do you have photos around the house? What do you do? I know I have pictures around. I tell my daughter stories all the time, especially if she's busting my chops. I'd be like, no, your grandfather would actually join in on that with you for sure

yeah the uh yeah you know that's really interesting because there is part of me that is my family culture was very much like don't talk about it and don't uh you know unnecessary emotion is um you know it's kind it's like these these midwestern catholics aspired so much to be waspy that they're kind of like don't deal with emotions you know i mean yeah and so but to answer your question i mean my daughter my oldest daughter is named after my mom that's nice and um and then my son uh michael's named after uh he's named after the archangel but also my father's name is michael and i have a brother named michael but yeah it's it's weird because i feel like i should talk about it but it's not part of our family culture. And I regret kind of not having discussions.

I mean, but my sons did. During the pandemic, there was, you know, when everyone was on lockdown, there was some kind of needlepoint assignment. And I explained to my kids that my mom won some neil point aside so like there is family lore that i'll bring up but it probably not enough probably not enough and some of it is just that's i think in my family it's perceived as i don't know bragging i don't know it's weird it's so funny my daughter says that to me i'm like did you tell your friends that you did this in the camp or in Summervick? She's like, I can't, Dad.

That's bragging. I'm like, is that how everybody looks at it? Is that bragging? Just tell them why I went to this? I get it. Well, you know, there is something, by the way. I mean, I think that, I mean, one of the great gifts my mother gave me, and, you know, my 12 my 12 year old son is pretty

good at basketball and but like the the family culture of like never bragging and never you know never gloating is like something that i uh my mom kind of reinforced and then i see myself uh doing that with him i'm like yeah if you are good that's good but like you don't gloat act like you've been there you know i mean and you there's no need to show emotion you have the joy inside you if you make a basket you don't need to rub it in you know you have to manage these things and it's like if you see other kids doing that that's fine but like you don't do that i remember um walter payton before he passed his son played at university of miami he was a running back and he scored he got in a touchdown in the end zone he started dancing and all that shit and he said he heard this whistle

from up in the bleachers and he looked up and it's his dad walter payton he just he heard this whistle from up in the bleachers. And he looked up and it's his dad, Walter Payton. He just went like this. Uh-uh. We don't do that shit. And he said, never again. Never again. I didn't think in college you could even do that. You go back and watch old footage of Walter Payton.

It was just flip the ball to the ref. After one of the most amazing runs you've ever seen, just act like you've been there before. We're not going to dance and all that stuff. Yeah. You know? All right. Last question. After everything we've talked about today,

I always ask the guest their first time here, advice you would give to your 16-year-old self. What would you tell 16-year-old Jim Gaffigan? Wow. Yeah. I, yeah, I mean, there's so much, I mean, I've been through like eight different lives, but I would say, uh, there's going to be some ups and downs, but, uh, it's, you're going to learn from every kind of crisis.

Do you know what I mean? And that the humility that you kind of, in hard work, you approach things with is going to be valuable. Do you know what I mean? Because I think that's one of the things that i you know i was one of those students that like i had to work really hard to get a b plus yeah me too you know i mean and it's like it was frustrating because a lot of kids things just came naturally to them and so things are harder um but that's not to say that i don't have you know i didn't have privileges or whatever but like um that some of those disappointments like that that devastation

of not getting in a georgetown or the humiliation of those first nine years of doing stand-up were in a way a gift right and if it sounds corny like it's 100 i think about all these bad things and then where you are on the other side i'm like i guess that kind of had to happen yeah and it's like if you can be a decent person about it, it's like how you – you know, because I feel like when there's big crisis, like even when the lockdown happened and, you know, I mean, now we know it was nothing. But, like, I mean, it wasn't nothing, but it was like I wasn't freaking out. I was like, all right. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, there is, like, the more high-stress situation I'm in, and I don't know if this has to do with sports, but I'm like, I don't get thrown by it.

That's not to say that I'm not aware of the stress of the situation. situation but i'll get more angry at somebody cutting me off driving somewhere than i am of like oh all right i just lost a hundred thousand dollars do you know what i mean yeah do you mean i'm not like somebody like ah there's been a world disaster that's happened i'm like all right you know and when my kids mess up they i think they know they can come to me I'm like hey it's pretty bad you know but we'll we'll get through this yeah I mean and so that's where I would say that the punishment of life is some lessons right yeah that's great I can't tell you enough how excited I was to have you on here. Thank you for doing this.

Of course. Please plug everything again. Well, you know, I've got the Amazon special that's on Prime. If you have Amazon account, you probably have Prime. And then I'm in this Max streaming show called Full Circle, which is if you have Max. And then I'm on tour, always coming up with new material. I love it. And I'm doing a handful of shows with Seinfeld, which is surreal. That is crazy.

You two out there together. That's nuts. It's just. But he's also i mean comedians the relationship comedians have is it's weird because it's like the shorthand the the praise and the amount of shit that we've eaten and uh talking about comedy they're the like-mindedness it's you know it's not like you know we you know i jokingly say well i wanted to help out jerry so jerry seinfeld it's much more of like i'm excited because after the shows i get to pick his brain on stand-up. You know what I mean? Yeah. And comedy in general.

Because he is kind of this Aristotle figure on comedy that he has somehow, he has like a zen-like approach to it where he removes emotion. Whereas I think that we're all kind of, comedy is weird because you have to take things personally to have a point of view. But if you take things too personally, then you're raging against the machine and not doing the job. Great. Thank you so much. As always, Ryan Sickler on all social media.

Come see me on tour. All tickets available at ryansickler.com. We'll talk to you all next week.