Comedian Jim Gaffigan has carefully perfected a slothlike image as a guy who eats Ben & Jerry’s ice cream by the tub before bed, considers Hot Pockets and McDonald’s fries major food groups, and proudly trumpets laziness as his life’s work.

But the truth is that Gaffigan, these days, is a seriously busy dude. Amid his Fully Dressed world tour, which hits the upcoming JFL NorthWest comedy fest, he’s juggling talk-show appearances, TV ads, a role in Season 3 of FX’s cult-hit Fargo series, and a new Netflix standup special called Cinco. Over the past few years, he’s also written two best-selling books (Dad Is Fat and Food: A Love Story), stepped into Darrell Hammond and Norm Macdonald’s old shoes as Col. Sanders in KFC TV ads, and appeared in a bunch of movies. Oh, and you know he has five kids, right?

“Look, sometimes they travel with me, but sometimes I gotta sleep,” quips the comedian, whose brood is well-known to TV viewers thanks to his dryly witty Chrysler Pacifica commercials. (You know, the ones in which he feigns forgetting one kid’s name, presumably because he has so many.) “It’s mostly my wife, right? But there’s a lot of logistics to figure out and we have a lot of help. When we just had three, my career was at a different point. With five, it’s so overarching that you’re in some crazy zone the entire time.

“My kids are understanding,” he continues, speaking to the Straight over the phone from the Big Apple. “When I’m in Vancouver, I’m missing a father-daughter dance, but I’m able to take that daughter to a concert she wants to see.”

As noted, Gaffigan seems to pop up everywhere you look. The night after we talk to him, he appears on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, rocking the old-school ’stache he’ll be wearing for the Fargo role of police deputy Donny Mashman.

Gaffigan says he loves acting, but standup is clearly where his heart is, and he’s amazed that it has become such a viable career. Among other things, comedy has famously allowed Gaffigan to move his seven-member family out of a two-bedroom apartment and into a bigger New York house in recent years.

He says the standup game has changed a lot from what it was when he started out three decades ago, and the teen years he spent listening to Steve Martin, George Carlin, and Bob Newhart on vinyl.

His audience now reaches far beyond comedy-club die-hards, thanks to his hit Netflix specials, books, and the based-on-his-real-family TV series, The Jim Gaffigan Show.

“It’s kind of expanded the type of people I perform for, and I think this is the same for all comedians,” he observes. “Look at the experience of a 15-year-old today: he has access to an entire library of material. I mean, I have five specials on Netflix. So it’s pretty fascinating how standup comedy has changed in 10 years. And it’s fascinating because I think it will still change again. It was [Jerry] Seinfeld who said comedians are being paid more not to be in movies. Before, if they were lucky, they’d take the path of Steve Martin. Now you’ll make more money doing standup.”

Those Netflix standup specials do, however, tax an already busy comedian who’s expected to come up with new bits. “There’s a certain liberation that comes from ending the special. Like a panic,” says Gaffigan, who finished taping Cinco in September before turning his mind to his live tour. “I said to my manager, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to write a show.’ I do have a new hour now—and it’s a good hour. But I’ve been so busy writing books and TV shows, and having that lifted off me provided me with material that I really like. I’ve been doing standup for 100 years, so it should come easily to me.”

The comic is enjoying his success, but in a candid moment, the inner Hot Pocket–popping homebody briefly reveals himself. Gaffigan loves the creative side of the biz, but he’s not about to up and move his family to Hollywood anytime soon. “I’m not interested in being more famous,” he says. “In my 20s I think I would have been more excited about this level of fame.” Today, though, it’s all about that freezer full of Ben & Jerry’s.

JFL NorthWest presents Jim Gaffigan at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre next Friday (February 24) for two shows at 7 and 9:30 p.m.