One of my favorite characters from television in the 1980s was Father Guido Sarducci.

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember him. The chain-smoking priest with the sunglasses, played brilliantly by Don Novello on Saturday Night Live. He’d also pop up on David Letterman and Johnny Carson, usually looking like he had wandered onto the set by accident.

As a kid, I couldn’t wait for him to come on.

The funny thing is, he wasn’t really telling jokes in the traditional sense.

He wasn’t loud. He wasn’t animated. He wasn’t trying to be the funniest person in the room.

He simply made observations.

Strange observations.

Absurd observations.

Observations that somehow felt true.

One of Novello’s most famous Father Guido Sarducci routines was “The Five Minute University.”

The premise was simple. Sarducci believed that two years after graduation, most people only remembered about five minutes worth of useful information from their entire college education. So he created a university where every class lasted exactly five minutes.

Why spend four years learning Economics when, years later, all you’ll remember is “supply and demand”?

Why take semesters of Business School when the entire lesson can be reduced to “buy low, sell high”?

Spanish became “¿Cómo está usted?”

That was the genius of the bit. Sarducci wasn’t really making fun of education. He was pointing out how often complex subjects eventually get distilled down to a few simple ideas that actually stick with us.

Another classic Sarducci line was:

“Life is a job. God pays you at the end.”

That joke sounds ridiculous until you realize you’ve spent thirty seconds thinking about it.

That’s what made him special.

He wasn’t really making fun of people.

He was pointing out things everybody already knew but had never said out loud.

The older I get, the more I realize that style of humor has influenced my own writing.

Not because I sit down and consciously think, “What would Father Guido Sarducci write?”

But because I’ve always loved the idea of finding the truth hidden inside something ridiculous.

Sometimes that shows up in my essays.

Sometimes it shows up in my marketing.

If Father Guido Sarducci were somehow writing content for Serpico’s Bread Co., I imagine it might sound something like this:

“People ask why our bread costs more. I tell them because we leave it alone longer. Like a good marriage.”

“The dough is fermented for 48 hours. Most political opinions are fermented for six minutes.”

“You drive past this parking lot every day. We are testing whether you’ve been paying attention.”

“A food truck is like a restaurant except the rent follows you around.”

“Every loaf starts with flour, water, and salt. The rest is anxiety.”

“The Calabrian Heat sandwich finished sixth in the world. Which sounds disappointing until you remember there are eight billion people.”

Those aren’t really jokes.

They’re observations.

And that’s what Sarducci understood better than almost anybody.

The best humor isn’t always about getting the biggest laugh.

Sometimes it’s about getting the nod.

That moment when someone hears something and says, “You know what? That’s actually true.”

Don Novello built an entire career around that idea.

Decades later, I still think about those appearances on SNL, Letterman, and Carson.

Not because they were flashy.

Not because they were loud.

Because they were original.

And in a world where everybody is trying to get your attention, there’s something powerful about someone who simply notices things everybody else miss.

Father Guido Sarducci noticed things.

Then he quietly made the rest of us laugh about them.

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