TiVo Alert: Bacon Comedy!

House of Silvanas: Heavenly Filipino Sweet Treats in D.C.

SF Weekly Has a New Food Critic: It's Jonathan Kauffman

It's Local Dungeness Time! Here's Where to Score a First Taste

By Meredith Brody in Brody, Food on TV

Tue., Mar. 31 2009 @ 11:57AM

Pale blond Irish Midwestern comedian Jim Gaffigan likes to talk about food in his act.

As Bonnie Hunt introduced him on her show: "He has a wonderful fascination with bacon."

Cut to Gaffigan's stand-up, an excerpt from King Baby, currently showing on Comedy Central:

"Even the frying of bacon sounds like applause."

(Makes bacon-frying noise, which segues into "Yay!"):

"You wanna know how good bacon is? To improve other food, they wrap it in bacon. If it weren't for bacon, we wouldn't even know what a water chestnut is."

(In a posh-sounding voice): "Thank you, bacon. Sincerely, Water Chestnut the Third."

Sitting down with Bonnie, she says "They call you the bacon guy."

"I love bacon. It is that good. I bet if you put bits of bacon on a strip of bacon, you could travel back in time...It would be kind of redundant for me, because I would just travel back to when I was eating bacon."

Bonnie heartily agrees: "I've gotta tell you, I always like to have bacon for the writers -- when everybody gets here in the morning, the staff and the crew -- I think just the smell of it when you walk in to the office puts everybody in a good mood."

"Yeah," Gaffigan says, "the pig is an amazing animal, when you think about it. You feed a pig an apple and it makes bacon. Let's see Michael Phelps do that!"

Bonnie points out "Your wife, in a very loving gesture, is a vegetarian."

Gaffigan replies, "You know, she's a vegetarian, but I find most vegetarians -- I'm obsessed with meat, you know. Vegetarians, you know, for people that don't like meat, they seem to eat a lot of vegetables that are mashed up and shaped to look like meat. It's like, 'I find meat repulsive -- I'll have the veggie burger with fake bacon, and can you send it to me dressed like a cow?' 'I don't like meat, I just like to call meat up late at night and hang up.' 'Does meat ever ask about me? I don't care.' (Singing): 'I ain't missin' you at all...' "

For more of Gaffigan on bacon, meat, hot pockets, and more bacon: King Baby shows tonight, March 30, at 10 p.m. and tomorrow at 3 a.m. (or 7 pm and midnight tonight if you have a satellite feed.) As they say: consult your local listings. Comedy Central runs its shows in perpetuity.