For those of you who find jokes about alcohol upsetting, you may not like him. If you’ve been known to think that laughing about drug use is, in fact, no laughing matter, it’s in your best interest to avoid his comedy. If you find two parentheses enclosing an upside-down exclamation point offensive, then please, look elsewhere for laughs. However, if you don’t mind a little dirty, gritty humor, Dave Attell is one hell of a comedian.
Currently, Dave’s most popular role comes as writer and host of Comedy Central’s show “Insomniac with Dave Attell,” roaming the streets and bars of popular cities (read: bigger than Troy) and meeting people who stay out equally as late as him. Before each show really starts, a short clip of Dave’s standup routine from that city is shown, giving you a pretty good idea of just how hilarious the guy is without the aid of sleep-deprived, mostly drunk people.
I went to Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA to catch his show there—one in a series of college visits—as part of a crowd of more than 200 rowdy college kids packed into a typical, all-to-well heated college auditorium.
Dave came out to a huge applause and immediately started right into his hour-long set the minute he had the microphone in his hand. Unlike most comedians, he didn’t try to win the affection of his crowd by doing some university-specific jokes, instead opting for ones that would be more accepted by a general audience, such as ones touching on Iraq’s lack of facial hair styles.
Following that, he brought out the drinking jokes, including “tell me what you’re drinking, and I’ll tell you how your night is gonna end up,” where he asks the audience to just yell out the name of any drink and he’ll do as advertised. For instance, a girl yelled out “cosmopolitan”, and he responded “you’ll go home, alone, watch ‘Sex in the City’ and yell ‘that’s so us!’” The audience really got into this part of the show, and it seemed like he even improved a few of the endings, still keeping them just as awesome as the rest. And if his “frat guy that can’t vomit yet” impression doesn’t get you, I don’t know what will. Except maybe his parrot-training bit.
If you like to laugh, I highly recommend that you try to get to one of Dave’s standup shows; it will not disappoint you. If you can’t make it to a show, then just plant yourself in front of the TV and watch “Insomniac,” as it’s got most of the humor and no travel time. But it’s still basically just Dave Attell lite.