The insomniac is back.
Dave Attell, the intrepid explorer who for nearly four years has taken basic-cable viewers into the milieu of after-midnight city life at points around the globe, arrives in town Saturday at the Wiltern LG to headline a show with much better hours than he's used to.
"Comedy Central Live Presents Dave Attell: The Insomniac Tour" allows the Bronx native to kick things off at the relatively cock-a-doodle-dooish hour of 7 p.m. with a show that also features comic Dane Cook.
Attell's talents have been a work in progress for nearly two decades, but with the "Insomniac" TV show and strong demand on the concert circuit as well as for his series' DVDs, he's hitting on all cylinders now.
"I think it was Richard Lewis who said that it takes a comedian about seven years to figure out what exactly it is that he does," Attell, 40, said. "I'm a straight-ahead joke comic, if anything. I'm not political, I don't hypnotize anybody, and I don't do characters or balloon animals. I just do what I do and hope there's an audience for it.
"Thanks to 'Insomniac' on Comedy Central I've been able to headline shows all over the country. I'd shoot the shows and then go out on the road. But for the last two years I've been doing different kinds of shows, hooking up with people like Lewis Black and Mitch Hedberg. That takes a lot of the pressure off me and makes it more fun. I'm a team player."
Noting the recent death of the 37-year-old Hedberg and the reported career apprehensions of Comedy Central colleague Dave Chappelle, Attell acknowledged that there are aspects of the comedy game that are nothing to laugh at.
"I'm taking a break after this tour because there's always that pressure to come up with new material," he said. "People pay a lot of money to see your new show, but comedy is one of the few art forms, if you want to call it that, in which people are disappointed if they hear what they came to hear. You can't tell the same jokes they saw you do on TV or on your last tour. When you go to see the Stones in concert, you expect them to do 'Jumping Jack Flash,' but for comedians, it's the total opposite of that."
Attell also points out that comedians who do characters, such as Chappelle, have a different dilemma.
"He almost can't get a thought out before someone in the crowd is screaming out for him to do Rick James," Attell said. "That can be tough."
