If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.

Framed as a riff on the proverb “Variety is the spice of life,” the line uses a deliberately unromantic image—leftover canned meat—to puncture idealized notions of marriage. The joke hinges on contrast: “variety” suggests novelty and pleasure, while “leftover Spam” implies monotony, repetition, and a sense of being stuck with the same thing. As with much of Carson’s marital humor, the exaggeration is comic rather than literal, playing to a late-20th-century stand-up tradition in which domestic life is mined for one-liners about routine, compromise, and diminished excitement. The humor depends on shared cultural familiarity with Spam as a symbol of bland, processed sameness.