If you’re like us, you’ve probably wondered what everyday stuff famous people add to their carts — like hair spray or an electric toothbrush. We asked comedian Matteo Lane — who is currently on tour — about the espresso machine, eye drops, and high-quality spaghetti he can’t live without.
I am through and through Italian. I need a cappuccino in the morning. I like espresso, and I used to use what the Italians call una moka — that silver coffee-maker you put on the stove, and when it starts screaming like Mariah Carey, it’s ready to go. Ugh! I was doing that every single morning. And then, of course, you spill espresso beans and this and that, dah, dah, dah. I was so tired of it. I went to Italy a couple years ago and I was sitting in my friend Francesca’s kitchen, and she had really nice espresso-maker. And I go in Italian, “You’re using a machine? Not the moka?” She goes, “I’m just too fucking tired to do it. This is just more responsible.” And I thought, You know what? Fuck it. I’m doing what Francesca does.
So I looked up the nicest quick espresso-maker that I could find. It’s not the world’s greatest coffee, but it’s way better than the espresso you get at, like, a hotel or whatever. It really has made my life so much easier, and it has that frother! I put milk and sugar in, and you can hear the sugar melting into the milk. It comes out like a sugary cream. And then I make my cappuccino. I have that every goddamn morning, and I look forward to it. It’s my favorite time of the day. I’m an old man now, so it’s my favorite thing. And then around one or two in the afternoon, I’ll have just a single shot of espresso, ’cause you can’t have a cappuccino after 12 p.m.
I have to take one every day. I have the worst heartburn. At one point, it was so bad that it was affecting my vocal cords. I went to an ear, nose, and throat doctor, and she prescribed me extra-strength Prilosec. I was like, Jesus Christ. The issue is that coffee makes a part of your esophagus go into your stomach and expand, so then acids get through. If I didn’t wanna have heartburn, I’m gonna have to stop drinking coffee. But I do need coffee, so my battle with heartburn and coffee is a daily thing.
I started playing Fortnite during the pandemic with my buddies. I became so good at it, but I was playing on a Nintendo Switch, and the graphics were not it. So I finally got a PS5, and it looks so beautiful. Everyone’s like, “Oh, what games are you playing?” I’m like, “Literally just Fortnite.” During the pandemic, I feel like people made a choice. They were like, we’re doing Animal Crossing, Call of Duty, or Fortnite. And I was like, “Girl, I’m going Fortnite.”
I use it all the time on my forearms. I don’t know if it’s because of working out so much, or texting, or Fortnite, or because when I hold the microphone, I’m holding it so tight that it’s locking my arm into place. I have so much pain in my forearms. After the gym, I take the massage gun and just rip apart my forearms. I just sit there, just watching the news.
It’s not necessarily made with ingredients that are better than, like, a Barilla pasta — even though there’s no GMOs and no chemicals in it. But the way that they press it through the machine takes longer, so it comes out looking almost grainy on the side of a pasta. That usually indicates that the pasta itself is a better-quality pasta. It’ll release more starches, which help adhere the sauce to your pasta. Everyone in my family loves rigatoni and it’s a fight every Sunday, but I prefer spaghetti. It’s my favorite type of pasta shape. And I really just can’t get behind linguine. I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why people like it. It’s not fettuccine, it’s not spaghetti, it’s not bucatini. It’s this weird in-between. The sauce falls off. It has no place in my home. I’m over linguine.
It makes my eyes look white. That’s it. I probably use it once or twice a day. I use it when I’m shooting something or before I go onstage and I don’t want my eyes to look really red. It helps brighten them up and makes you look awake. I think I have what they call dry-eye syndrome, which is an inflammation in your glands. To relieve the pain, they could do a type of laser around your eyes, but the process of doing it is so horrific I’m like, “Fuck it, I’ll just use Lumify.”
Half of my beard is gray. It’s weird because the gray goes straight from below my lip down to my chin. It’s a strip of gray. When I was doing my podcast, everyone’s like, “Did Matteo do something to his chin? Did he get, like, a chin implant?” And I realized the gray hair is creating an optical illusion that makes my chin look thinner — like the same thing when you put highlighter on your nose. Even when I was getting Botox, my plastic surgeon was like, “Oh, yeah, I did notice in your podcast your chin looks really pointy.” So I put a beard dye on it and it went away. I use it pretty much every day because I don’t wanna walk out with, like, a witch chin.
As you know now, I’m Italian, so I have some pretty insane eyebrows that I have to groom and trim and cut. I pluck, but there’s a few hairs that grow so long I call them my Gandalf hairs, so I have to cut those, too. If I didn’t pluck, I’d have one eyebrow. But it’s nice to have thick eyebrows because when you use something like the brow gel, it kind of shapes them a little bit. Helps them have some sort of guidance, you know, and that’s pretty much it. The clear works because I’m literally managing. When I do my eyebrows, it feels like I’m trying to herd cats. It’s just managing a problem. So my beauty care is make my chin not look pointy, make my eyebrows not look bushy.
My forehead gets so shiny and oily that I can see my own reflection in it. It looks like that Simpsons episode where Homer put his head in the bowling-ball cleaner and his forehead came out a mirror. So every time I go onstage, I have to blot the shit out of it. It’s so humiliating. I put, like, one blot down and it’s immediately transparent. I’m like, come on. I have to use a ShamWow on my forehead? This is ridiculous.
Any comedian that drinks Diet Coke can be traced back to Colin Quinn. Colin Quinn is a very well-known, funny comedian. He is a good friend of mine, and he is obsessed with Diet Coke. At the Comedy Cellar, he’s always sitting down with one. And it seems so refreshing, you know? So I started having a Diet Coke here and there. Now I love it. I don’t drink it every single day, but it is in the fridge just in case. I don’t know what Coke flavor really is. I have Coke Zero in Italy sometimes because they don’t have Diet Coke. I don’t really feel that much of a difference, but there’s something more steely-tasting about Diet. Coke Zero is arguably better in every way, shape, or form, but whatever they’re putting in Diet Coke — I’ve picked sides.
A lot of times, the way I consume peanut butter now is just as a snack on a spoon in the middle of the day. I’m just like, Hmmm, I’m hungry and in between meals. What can I eat? And then I just scoop a spoonful of crunchy peanut butter and move on. But I love peanut butter and Diet Coke. I sound so trashy. I know I should eat healthy peanut butter, but then you gotta mix oils, and that’s work in and of itself. I like Jif. Skippy? Oh, the indignity. If anyone eats Skippy peanut butter, you’re a sociopath. I don’t know what happened to you. And then there’s Peter Pan. Why does Peter Pan, a fable, get his own peanut butter? That’s weird. If I’m going for peanut butter, I’m obviously not trying to eat healthy in the first place, so just give me the shitty one that I like and grew up with as a kid. I want crunchy. Just put it on a spoon and call me trash. I know it’s hydrogenated oils. I’m sure it’s giving me cancer. But fine.
My entire background is in drawing and painting. I used to be a storyboard artist and fashion illustrator for TV commercials and fashion ads. I was drawing commercials for Lexus and 7 Up and doing fall and spring campaigns for DSW, the whole thing. Once I started doing comedy, I kind of gave up painting and drawing, but then my brother — who works for Apple — showed me the Apple Pencil before it came out, and I was like, This is kind of interesting. I use an app called Procreate, and now I can fly on the plane and draw and paint and color. It helps time fly by, and I can keep up with my skills and create cartoons and comic books. I keep it handy with me at all times. I very, very, very much love it.
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