As part of Amazon’s monthly $5 MP3 Album Deals, Jim Gaffigan‘s latest stand-up comedy album Mr. Universe is currently on sale for only $5.

In an age where there are possibly more stand-up comedians than people gainfully employed by the private sector in the U.S. – and I could just be guessing there – Gaffigan is one of those rare comics who seeks only to make his audiences laugh. He is an anomaly, a visually pleasing homespun anomaly at that, who embraces digital media and social networking even though he could do almost as well in his career without them and can perform entire sets without using one swear word in common usage. He does not seek to become famous by abandoning the comedy stage for the surefire easy paychecks that television sitcoms and hacky movie comedies bring in, even though he tried the former a few times with negative results. You can check out the track listing here below.

Gaffigan does not yell, inspire hostility in his audiences (unless there is a good story involving a heckler confrontation I am not privy to), traffic in an endless string of dick and fart jokes, or fall into the kind of third-rate material that hacks like Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia attempted to pole vault their way to success using with mixed results. Gaffigan’s humor could hardly be seen as traditional, yet neither could it be categorized as hip and alternative. He can take innocuous subjects like cake, holidays, and – in one of his most famous comedy routines – eating Hot Pockets and build masterful comic arias on our national obsessions with food, organized religion, and embracing any kind of assembly line product that be easily sold with a catchy jingle.

That is the core appeal of Gaffigan’s humor: he can tell seemingly safe and clean jokes while cleverly subverting them at the same time. He will probably never sell out Madison Square Garden, star in his own mega-successful TV show, or pull down $20 million salaries for starring in movies where he plays his own sister, but he does not need to do that. Recorded on February 25 of last year at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. and self-distributed by the comedian on his website for $5 the following August, Mr. Universe finds Gaffigan a little older and seemingly wiser but completely in his element when he is putting his own warm and humorous spin on the timeworn comedic topics of raising children, getting into shape, or staying in hotels while simultaneously indulging his love for food-based humor. It is classic Gaffigan that shows the comic is capable of evolving his attitudes towards adult responsibilities while maintaining his gift of pulling absurdly funny jokes out of that beautiful, bulbous, blonde head of his. Jim Gaffigan is living proof that true comedy is not built on foundations of incessant profanity and vulgarity but of jokes that are actually funny, not that I ever had a problem with profanity and vulgarity. They are two of the main reasons why I find the inner strength to rise from my comfortable bed each and every morning.

Track Listing

1. 4 Kids
2. Disney
3. Photos
4. Working Out
5. Bodybuilders
6. McDonald’s
7. Shoes
8. Hotel
9. Hotel Pools
10. Whales
11. Domino’s
12. Subway
13. Vitamins
14. ExtenZe

You can also purchase Mr. Universe on CD for just $7.99.

Note: when you purchase MP3s through Amazon, it stores your purchases to Amazon’s Cloud Drive; from there you can stream the music right from their online player. Also, if you have a Kindle Fire, your MP3 purchases will automatically be available for you to stream on your device. All your purchases are backed up and available for you to download at any time. You can download the files to your computer to load to an MP3 device and to your iTunes account if you have one. If you’d like to gift these MP3 purchases, you can – just click the “Give album or song as gift” button on the right on the product page. From there you enter the recipient’s email address and then select either specific songs to gift or the entire album.