after graduating and "was horrible at it". Career Stand-up Gaffigan moved to New York in 1990 to pursue comedy, a move that was inspired by his admiration for fellow Hoosier David Letterman. He found a job in advertising, and he would work during the day and take acting classes at night. During this time, he was cast in Blockbuster Video's "Entertainment Squad" series of commercials. His career began in earnest when a friend from the class dared him to take a stand-up seminar that required a live set at the end. He fell in love with stand-up, and began to play comedy clubs nightly—after his evening acting classes—until the wee hours of the morning. He was often found sleeping on the job; his boss had to wake him up to fire him. For the first seven years of his career, he tried various styles, ranging from angry comedy to impressions and voices. Also, live comedy was in decline following its peak of the 1980s, further affected by the increased popularity of cable television. After periodically auditioning for The Late Show with David Letterman for six years, he then had a successful stand-up routine on the show in 1999, and his career took off. Gaffigan's style is largely observational, and his principal topics relate to laziness, eating, and parenthood. He is famous for his Hot Pocket routine, which was inspired by a commercial he saw that he mistook for a Saturday Night Live sketch. Also, during his routines, he will sometimes perform soliloquies by using a high-pitched voice and—in the third-person—deliver negative feedback on his own performance, such as after making a diarrhea joke in his 2012 special "Mr. Universe" using the voice and saying "Really, he’s using diarrhea jokes?" He says "that inside voice is my connection with the audience". In an interview with the Duluth News-Tribune, he explained that the voice was developed over time, beginning as a teenager when he would disarm people by talking for them in their presence. He also used it as a way to fend off hecklers earlier in his career, when he says that comedy clubs were more combative. He cursed early in his career, and he added cursing to his comedy album Doing My Time, at the request of his label, in the hopes of drawing more teenagers. However, he has largely removed profanity from his routine, as he feels that his