Published: November 8, 2002

A hard day’s night
Comedy Central show hits the streets to bar-hop with the locals in ‘Insomniac with Dave Attell’

BY MEGHAN GALBREATH
of Pulse 

Dave Attell enters the television universe late at night and shows the weird side of American city nightlife. In a world populated by hookers, strippers and junkies, Attell hunts for the common man in nude karaoke bars, coal mines or police ride-alongs. 

Attell is host of the popular Comedy Central series, “Insomniac with Dave Attell.” The show, which starts its third season Dec. 5, has kept people up late with its inside look at “regular people with regular jobs.”

“I find that the most interesting thing about the show,” Attell said in a recent phone interview. 

“It’s the how and why people do it that is what the show is.”

“Insomniac” can best be described as a collection of road stories — best told over a few drinks. After all, the show’s main activity is bar-hopping.

“I think it’s all the drinking that we do that makes the show so popular with college students,” Attell said. “We’ve all had our drunken, stupid moments — mine are just on tape. And now that I’m 37 years old, I’m nearing an end to my ‘drunk years.’ It’s a wild ride, alcohol.”

In each episode, the host drinks an unbelievable amount of alcohol, but the show, Attell says, is a testament to a comic’s life. Each 30-minute episode begins with a short stand-up segment introducing the audience to his coarse humor, but the real heart of the show is when he explores the host city, whether it be Chicago, New York, Boston, Miami or Montreal.

The cameras follow him as he descends into the nightlife and talks with the people of the city or, in most cases, jokes at their expense. When the bar crowd leaves, he hits the streets and stops folks for friendly conversation or women flashing him from the crowd. Then the host seeks out workers on the graveyard shift to explore “little jobs that don’t get much respect.”

He has toured the Boston sewage treatment plant and remarked how similar it smelled to his own house, ridden with a Manhattan traffic-copter team and visited a race-announcer at an all-night Miami dog track. But, his favorite — and weirdest — late-night moment was watching a cow being artificially inseminated.

After viewing the show, it’s hard to believe that everything is spontaneous or real, but Attell insists that the camera depicts an accurate account of the night.

“We do have people that call ahead to places and get permission to shoot, but everything else just happens,” he said.

But, now that the show is gaining popularity, especially with college-aged viewers, it is sometimes harder to get in to the bars with a camera, Attel said.

He said he would love to play in Peoria, but usually plans what cities to visit based on local events, like the Porn Awards in Las Vegas or the Fantasy Festival in Key West — both which will be featured in the upcoming season. Attell and his research staff do rely on viewers’ e-mails because he and his team are “always looking for a wild time.”

As season three is nearing its premiere, Attell promises that the show will feature more wild, drunken times. The show’s first location is Myrtle Beach, SC during Bike Week. Some of the season’s highlights will feature Attell and his crew drinking during the summer solstice in Alaska and a visit with a crime scene cleanup crew.

Attell admits that the show is a “drunk guy show” and “Insomniac” has allowed him to reach the target audience of his stand-up comedy routines. 

“I enjoy the show, it’s good to see programming that doesn’t just educate. It entertains, too,” Dave Attell fan and Bradley senior psychology major John Korntheuer sarcastically said.

Dave Attell says he is a man who is truly only good at two things: drinking and stand-up.

A graduate of New York University, he says he fell into the business after performing at various amateur nights to craft his crude comedy.

Attell, acclaimed as one of the 30 most brilliant artists under 30 years old by The New York Times Magazine in 1994, began his career with Comedy Central as a correspondent with the “Ugly American” segments on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” He is currently one of the nation’s top stand-up performers and does his routine at college campuses and cities all across the country. He also had a small role in the movie “Pootie Tang.”

The third season of “Insomniac with Dave Attell” premieres Dec. 5 at 9:30 p.m., and airs in that time-slot with encore viewings on Sundays at 10:30 p.m., Mondays at 12:30 a.m.; and Wednesdays at 10:30 p.m.