Dave Attell, one funny bastard

Since me and a few other blogites went and saw a right funny guy, Dave Attell, tonight I figured I would get the first shot off now before they wake up tomorrow and scoop me.

Dave has a show on Comedy Central called Insomniac. To put it simply, Dave goes out drinking in a town he is performing in and films his encounters with the locals. Maybe it should be called Alcoholic instead of Insomniac. It's different than other reality television because he doesn't belittle the other drunks he meets. I'm not saying that he doesn't poke fun at them, he just isn't cruel about it. Many of the jokes he makes on the show are self effacing so it all equals out in end.

Anyway, we saw Dave tonite at the Comedy Zone. I went with Super W, Bookpimper, James and the One Big Loud Guy. There were three opening comedians. They were all OK. Not great. They did better than I could in front of a crowd of people but most of their stuff was pretty standard stand up. One guy even did his what was obviously his signature joke and then told us he had t-shirts and bumper stickers for sale with his signature joke on them. We know you are trying to make a living, dude, but at least wait until the end before you hock your shit. He's bucking for a sitcom, I can tell.

Dave was very funny the whole evening. He must have been onstage for more than an hour. He did a few bits I had heard before but, much to his credit, he didn't repeat them word for word unlike lesser comedians like Pinkard and Bowden who I saw do the same exact show three times in a row in a two year period. Dave's show was pretty unstructured. He definately has a good number of set pieces he will jump into but I would be willing to bet that he does not do the same show every night. I would compare his approach to that of a good band that may play the same set of songs but not all of them every night and not in the same order.

It appeared to me that a couple of times he felt like he was losing the crowd because we didn't laugh uproariously at a couple of jokes. What he didn't notice was that although the crowd didn't scream at every joke they were listening very closely. It reminded me of a story that John Cleese told about the first Monty Python tour of the U.S. He recalled being a perturbed by the lack of response from the crowd. He mentioned that backstage and someone told him to look at the crowd while the next skit was being performed and he saw that the crowd was mouthing the dialogue. The reaction to Dave's jokes may not have been what he expected but we were with him the whole way.

Dave said 'fuck' a lot.

He said if you have sex with a horse you are guaranteed a ride home.

He said that a good name for a child would be Pizza Pussy Santa since everybody likes at least one of those things.

He said that eggnog is elf cum.

He said that some smells don't go together. Like cotton candy and whiskey. That smells like somebody just got done fucking a clown.

He compared his fat belly to getting a tattoo.

He said a pack of cigarettes cost seven bucks in New York which causes you to think, hey, for three more dollars I could be smoking crack.

He said that since the drug ecstacy makes you want to hold people you shouldn't take some right before you go to jail.

Dave is funny.