.Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias' (@fluffyguy) One Show Fits All
Stand-up Comedy is one of those things I found when I was a teenager that helped me survive being a teenager. It started with George Carlin and spun out from there into a hobby and interest I've kept up with ever since. However, it wasn't until about four years ago that I actually saw a stand-up comedy concert live. Up until then, I'd only ever watched recorded specials and listened to albums. The contrast between the two experiences, however, is astonishing.
To an extent, Stand-up is the verbal equivalent of Jazz. There is a certain structure to it, a scaffolding that keeps everything together, but the real magic of the performance is spontaneous, unique to every on stage appearance. Just as a Jazz album only records a single performance, so too does a Comedy Special. It's one version of a show that, though it had someone of a skeleton to it, nonetheless remains a free-form entity.
This realization came home to me when I watch Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias' most recent Stand-up Comedy Special One Show Fits All, on Netflix this past Tuesday.
Gabriel is that rare exception in my pantheon of favorite comics: a comic who both my family and I think is funny. We've loved his humor ever since I discovered his first Comedy Central special Hot and Fluffy years ago. After that, any time I heard he was doing a new special, I tuned in, from I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy, to Aloha Fluffy, to The Fluffy Movie (his stand-up concert film), to his previous Netflix special, I'm Sorry for What I Said When I was Hungry (that's a mouthful). We've loved everything he's done.
So, when we heard that his last tour--titled One Size Fits All--was going to pass through St. Louis in April of 2018, at the Peabody Opera House, I bought tickets
.
By that time, I'd been to several live stand-up shows. I'd seen Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, and Kathleen Madigan at the Peabody two years before. I'd see Tig Notaro and Anthony Jeselnik at the Pageant. I'd even gone to see Louis C.K. perform a stadium gig at the Civic Center (this was before his public downfall). So I thought I knew what to expect at a comedy show.
All of the comics I mentioned above came to St. Louis, with an act already formed. In other words, they came, they performed a show with material they knew how to perform to get the most laughs out of the audience, and after an hour, they said goodnight. It's this difference that made Fluffy's show so different than all the other show's I'd been.
When Gabriel came on stage, he told us all that he was still figuring out what he was going to say to us. He was still trying to figure out his act.
Now for someone who'd never seen stand-up before (and who'd likely never watched Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian), they might've been unimpressed with Fluffy's show. And if they really didn't like it, they probably left that show PO'd. I can hear them now: "What they hell was that? Was that supposed to be a show? A shit-show's more like it. I didn't pay good money to watch some big-ass Mexican fumble around on stage." Those are the haters, and they're gonna do what they do.
But for a comedy nerd like me, it was doubly exciting. Now only was I getting to see one of my favorite comics perform, but I was getting to see the process in public.
Some comics--old schoolers like Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Rodney Dangerfield, and even Carlin--actually wrote out material they believed to be funny and then went on stage in front of an audience and learned how to time their delivery to get their laughs. Essentially, they learn how to perform their jokes, but they know their jokes. Gabriel, however, isn't one of those kinds of comics. He "writes on stage," meaning he figures out what he's going to say and how he should perform it while performing. It's the trial by fire method of stand up, and I was seeing it in real time.
Gabriel was only supposed to perform for an hour. Instead, his St. Louis show lasted three, and by the end of it, he had the bare bones of his One Show Fits All special.
He told us his story about his "Fluffy Going Puffy" interview with Snoop Dogg, as well as his story of his son's "movie-watching" habit. He followed that with his story of how he met Chris Rock backstage at a show, and followed that with his story about his 'Murican Bus Driver, Dave. And he closed everything out with his stories about his encounters with Non-PC Australians and his mother's meeting with Vincente Fernandez. In between those stories, he chatted with the fronts rows of the audience.
The hour and a half you see in One Size Fits All is the same we saw, just in unrefined form. And even then, it was hilarious.
My favorite part of his Peabody performance though was his finale (which I'm not sure if STL can take full-credit for helping him develop), a version of which appears in the special in with the Huston audience.
In the very front row, right near the lip of the stage, of the Peabody was a person who'd come from out of town (and I mean super out of town, like Arkansas or Oklahoma). And this man--I could see that, even from my nose bleed seat in the Mezzanine--had apparently, never seen a Fluffy show. He didn't know who he was, and he'd never heard any of his classic jokes.
(Crazy right? And he was in the front row. Like WTF?) The reason I know this is that Fluffy started talking to him from the stage and told the audience. Needless to say, this slightly rankled with Fluffy...because he started making fun of the guy. And rightly so. What are you doing at a show if you don't know the act?
So the guy had the audacity to ask Fluffy to perform some of his "Greatest Hits." And initially, Fluffy didn't want to--because the theatre was full of hardcore Fluffy Fans (some white people, some black people, and every Hispanic within the St. Louis Metropolitan area), who knew the jokes. But finally, as the crowd cheered him on to do it, Fluffy started doing so.
He performs the famous Krispy Kreme Drive-Thru bit:
He follows that with his Volkswagen Beetle joke:
And he caps it off with his joke about his son Frankie's elementary school principle:
And the crowd--myself included--starting finishing his jokes.
At the very end, Fluff was on stage, doubled-over laughing, and he told his stage hand to let his dog--his little Chihuahua--run on stage because he knew he couldn't top the audience doing his own jokes after that.
"Just because you have a difference in opinion, it doesn't mean that you can't have respect for one another, that you can't have love for one another, that you can't have incredible friendships with one another. It's our differences that make us special."
To an extent, Stand-up is the verbal equivalent of Jazz. There is a certain structure to it, a scaffolding that keeps everything together, but the real magic of the performance is spontaneous, unique to every on stage appearance. Just as a Jazz album only records a single performance, so too does a Comedy Special. It's one version of a show that, though it had someone of a skeleton to it, nonetheless remains a free-form entity.
This realization came home to me when I watch Gabriel "Fluffy" Iglesias' most recent Stand-up Comedy Special One Show Fits All, on Netflix this past Tuesday.Gabriel is that rare exception in my pantheon of favorite comics: a comic who both my family and I think is funny. We've loved his humor ever since I discovered his first Comedy Central special Hot and Fluffy years ago. After that, any time I heard he was doing a new special, I tuned in, from I'm Not Fat, I'm Fluffy, to Aloha Fluffy, to The Fluffy Movie (his stand-up concert film), to his previous Netflix special, I'm Sorry for What I Said When I was Hungry (that's a mouthful). We've loved everything he's done.
So, when we heard that his last tour--titled One Size Fits All--was going to pass through St. Louis in April of 2018, at the Peabody Opera House, I bought tickets
.
By that time, I'd been to several live stand-up shows. I'd seen Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, Ron White, and Kathleen Madigan at the Peabody two years before. I'd see Tig Notaro and Anthony Jeselnik at the Pageant. I'd even gone to see Louis C.K. perform a stadium gig at the Civic Center (this was before his public downfall). So I thought I knew what to expect at a comedy show.
All of the comics I mentioned above came to St. Louis, with an act already formed. In other words, they came, they performed a show with material they knew how to perform to get the most laughs out of the audience, and after an hour, they said goodnight. It's this difference that made Fluffy's show so different than all the other show's I'd been.
When Gabriel came on stage, he told us all that he was still figuring out what he was going to say to us. He was still trying to figure out his act.
Now for someone who'd never seen stand-up before (and who'd likely never watched Jerry Seinfeld's documentary Comedian), they might've been unimpressed with Fluffy's show. And if they really didn't like it, they probably left that show PO'd. I can hear them now: "What they hell was that? Was that supposed to be a show? A shit-show's more like it. I didn't pay good money to watch some big-ass Mexican fumble around on stage." Those are the haters, and they're gonna do what they do.
But for a comedy nerd like me, it was doubly exciting. Now only was I getting to see one of my favorite comics perform, but I was getting to see the process in public.
Some comics--old schoolers like Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Rodney Dangerfield, and even Carlin--actually wrote out material they believed to be funny and then went on stage in front of an audience and learned how to time their delivery to get their laughs. Essentially, they learn how to perform their jokes, but they know their jokes. Gabriel, however, isn't one of those kinds of comics. He "writes on stage," meaning he figures out what he's going to say and how he should perform it while performing. It's the trial by fire method of stand up, and I was seeing it in real time.
Gabriel was only supposed to perform for an hour. Instead, his St. Louis show lasted three, and by the end of it, he had the bare bones of his One Show Fits All special.
He told us his story about his "Fluffy Going Puffy" interview with Snoop Dogg, as well as his story of his son's "movie-watching" habit. He followed that with his story of how he met Chris Rock backstage at a show, and followed that with his story about his 'Murican Bus Driver, Dave. And he closed everything out with his stories about his encounters with Non-PC Australians and his mother's meeting with Vincente Fernandez. In between those stories, he chatted with the fronts rows of the audience.
The hour and a half you see in One Size Fits All is the same we saw, just in unrefined form. And even then, it was hilarious.
My favorite part of his Peabody performance though was his finale (which I'm not sure if STL can take full-credit for helping him develop), a version of which appears in the special in with the Huston audience.
In the very front row, right near the lip of the stage, of the Peabody was a person who'd come from out of town (and I mean super out of town, like Arkansas or Oklahoma). And this man--I could see that, even from my nose bleed seat in the Mezzanine--had apparently, never seen a Fluffy show. He didn't know who he was, and he'd never heard any of his classic jokes.
(Crazy right? And he was in the front row. Like WTF?) The reason I know this is that Fluffy started talking to him from the stage and told the audience. Needless to say, this slightly rankled with Fluffy...because he started making fun of the guy. And rightly so. What are you doing at a show if you don't know the act?
So the guy had the audacity to ask Fluffy to perform some of his "Greatest Hits." And initially, Fluffy didn't want to--because the theatre was full of hardcore Fluffy Fans (some white people, some black people, and every Hispanic within the St. Louis Metropolitan area), who knew the jokes. But finally, as the crowd cheered him on to do it, Fluffy started doing so.
He performs the famous Krispy Kreme Drive-Thru bit:
He follows that with his Volkswagen Beetle joke:
And he caps it off with his joke about his son Frankie's elementary school principle:
And the crowd--myself included--starting finishing his jokes.
At the very end, Fluff was on stage, doubled-over laughing, and he told his stage hand to let his dog--his little Chihuahua--run on stage because he knew he couldn't top the audience doing his own jokes after that.
You guys watching the special are seeing the polished final performance of a long tour. What we got to see that night in St. Louis, and I'm sure what many others got to see as Fluffy toured, was the "director's cut". If you want to see a masterful comic do his thing, you seriously need to go watch One Show Fits All.
To end things, here's a great quote that Fluffy didn't come up with in St. Louis, but I think is something we could all keep in mind with the world being what it is right now:
"Just because you have a difference in opinion, it doesn't mean that you can't have respect for one another, that you can't have love for one another, that you can't have incredible friendships with one another. It's our differences that make us special."
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