MTV VMAs host Sebastian Maniscalco might be the hottest comic in America: "So why is it entirely possible you have never heard of him?"

The New York Times

Maniscalco, 46, sold out Madison Square Garden four times in two days earlier this year. Last year, he sold out Radio City Music Hall five times. And tonight, he'll have his highest-profile gig as host of the MTV Video Music Awards. Yet Maniscalco isn't somebody who has received a lot of media attention. "Partly it’s because he built his huge fan base gradually and under the pop-culture radar — not through a splashy movie vehicle or a television breakout, but via a hustling touring schedule and two decades of nightly performances," says Jason Zinoman. "He isn’t catnip for the press, since he steers clear of the zeitgeist in his act, preferring to stick to evergreen subjects like his tense but affectionate relationship with his father, whom he regularly portrays, with dramatic hunch and gesticulations, as a classic Sicilian immigrant patriarch, old school, driven by a ferocious work ethic, casting a long shadow." Tonight's hosting gig isn't an obvious one for Maniscalco, who spent a month pondering MTV's offer. “I don’t know much about music, today’s music, and I don’t know musicians,” he said, sounding a bit nervous about hosting his first televised awards show. “Kevin Hart might know Drake or Jay-Z so he can make fun of them. But I can’t start making fun of people when I don’t know who they are.”