Comic Attell Stays the Coarse

While growing up on Long Island, N.Y., Dave Attell dreamed of a profession that would allow him to travel to exotic places such as Thailand. Perhaps a job as a news cameraman would satisfy this itch, he thought.

Now 33, Attell does plenty of traveling as a stand-up comedian. But instead of visiting mysterious, far-off lands, he finds himself making frequent stops in such wondrous places as Pittsburgh and Chattanooga, Tenn.

A life unfulfilled? No way. Blue-collar America has proven to be the perfect setting for Attell’s aggressive stage personality and off-color humor. And there’s nothing this veteran of the comedy-club circuit, who performs tonight through Saturday in Irvine, would rather do than entertain a roomful of rowdy, beer-guzzling patrons.

“When I go to these small towns, people are shocked [by some of my adult material], but they’re also the same people who after the show will go, ‘My cousin did exactly the same things [described in the act],” Attell said in a recent phone interview from a Houston tour stop.

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“It’s really like down-home for them. These people have the best time. The guy who works at a Jiffy Lube all week, he gets my humor. I perform for people who work all week and who go out for a big night. I’m sort of the pressure valve there.”

Attell’s shows would certainly offend those with a low tolerance for freewheeling attitudes toward sex and alcohol. But going to work in a shirt with your name stitched above the pocket is not a prerequisite for appreciating his humor. In 1994, both the New York Times and New York magazine recognized him as one of that city’s premier comics. Last year, one critic raved, “Attell achieves the near-impossible: being tasteless with charm.”

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Indeed, Attell’s gift for self-deprecation keeps him from being the total “pig” he claims to be. On stage, he may skewer the losers he knew in high school or talk in graphic terms about being drunk in a sex shop. But the next moment, he may poke fun at his own balding dome or his inability to find Ms. Right.

“I believe in the philosophy that for any person there’s another person they’re meant to be with,” he says in one stage routine. “I feel I’m always just missing my special person. I’ll be in a bank; she’s in a deli. I’ll go to a strip club; she’s not working that night.”

Attell juggles his stand-up work with a new sideline as a two-days-a-week writer for the sitcom “Everybody Loves Raymond,” starring his friend and former Manhattan stand-up Ray Romano. Attell crafts jokes rather than dialogue for the CBS comedy, which is a challenge since “Raymond” is basically a family program.

Attell, who comes across as the quintessential New Yorker, has also had trouble adjusting to living and working in laid-back Hollywood, where the show is produced.

“I like doing stand-up better than I like to write, even though writing [TV] is better money,” he said. “On the road, you’re involved with people who are drinking and smoking. It’s like people are partying like it’s 1976. There are these weird women where their guy is locked up in jail and they’re trying to finish school and raise two kids. Then you go to L.A. and you’re writing a TV show and there are all these writers making 300 grand a year and complaining about there being no bagels in the morning.”

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Attell, who also briefly wrote for “Saturday Night Live” in the mid-’90s, is far more suited to the uncensored world of cable television. In 1996, he made a half-hour special for HBO; it captured him in his natural element: on stage barking at an appreciative audience. He also has a development deal with HBO.

Ironically, Attell says he was a shy overweight kid who always befriended the funny guy at school, rather than trying to be the center of attention himself.

“[Performing] is like a therapeutic thing because I always felt as a child that no one listened to me,” he said. “So I guess I like being in situations where people have to listen to me until they get their checks from their waitress. That’s why I think I picked this profession.”

Attell had a job as a research assistant at the Discovery Channel office in New York when he first started participating in various open-microphone nights 11 years ago. He claims he bombed not only on his first night, but for three years.

An admitted perfectionist, he says he is always trying to improve his shows.

“I’m not as good a comic as Sam Kinison was,” he said of the star who died in a 1992 car accident. “Before he got into drugs, before he became a caricature of himself, he was a great comic. No one could touch him. I’m not at that level. I just keep doing this to get better at it. If you keep doing it, you get better.”

* Dave Attell appears at the Irvine Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Suite 138. Today-Thursday, 8:30 p.m. $10; Friday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. $12; Saturday, 8 and 10:30 p.m. $12; Sunday, 8 p.m. $10. (714) 854-5455.