His liver and lungs probably look like charcoal by now.

The Comedy Festival starts tomorrow at Caesars Palace. Even though Jerry Seinfeld and Ellen DeGeneres are the big, splashy headliners, the heart and soul of comedy is its dark underbelly. Now move along before we mix another metaphor. Veteran stand-up Dave Attell through four seasons of Insomniac was America’s dark tour guide through that underbelly. Except, you know, not in a Crypt Keeper kind of way or anything.

Attell, who put out Captain Miserable special for HBO and followed it up with a Gong Show revival for Comedy Central — which held auditions here in May — plays the Palace Ballroom Saturday night at 11:30. We found the time to talk to him about playing Vegas, magicians and egg nog.

When you do a festival like this, it’s got a lot of real mainstream headliners. Do you get an audience you wouldn’t normally have?

To tell you the truth, man, the cool thing about working Vegas now is that there’s so many cool locals that I don’t think that they come out to – either they’ve seen it or they work for all the entertainment that the tourists go for. It’s great to get whatever people staying at the hotels, but if you can get some of the locals to come down, they usually are the better crowd. They’ve seen it all and heard it all. If you can get them laughing then you feel like you’ve accomplished something. … There are some really big acts coming and I guess I’m just glad they asked me.

So you don’t have to worry about tailoring your act for the Ellen holdover crowd?

Oh, fuck them, no. There’s enough Cirque du Soliel, High School Musical bullshit in the world. They can go see that.

The last real big show you did here was the Insomniac tour with Greg Giraldo and Sean Rouse. You had Dane Cook on that bill, who’s headlining the Comedy Fest. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who would fit with your style of comedy. How’d you wind up getting involved with him on that, and is it weird or different to have him headlining this thing you’re doing now?

No, he’s a power act. Basically, I think Dane had a deal with Comedy Central and I had a deal. I really wanted to bring out the guys who I actually tour with a lot, but I believe Dane was a super huge act so they wanted to get him on there so people would actually watch the special. I’m glad he did it because he is a great performer. I didn’t know he was headlining this festival, so that’s great. I’m sure he’s going to sell out. We have different styles of comedy I guess. I’m more dirty than he is.

I’m not sure the audience is – I don’t believe I have the same audience he does. When I did that special, I saw the audience and they were really young and good looking. That was something that surprised me, because my audience is usually older, more jaded, drunk. I like my audience. They’re good drinkers. I think people think we actually toured. We just did a couple of dates and then we did the special. His Tourgasm thing was his tour. All I can say is I know this festival has a lot of big acts. My act, I’m not Seinfeld or Dane or anything, so it’s kind of a left turn I guess.

It seems like you have a pretty strong following with the comedy nerds, but your act itself is very blue collar and it should hit home with the regular working stiffs, not necessarily with people who obsessively follow comedy – but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of overlap.

I don’t know. I don’t see a lot of comedy nerds as I see mostly young couples now. I guess the Insomniac crowd has grown up and gotten married and now it’s a lot of guys who partied, watching me in college, and they bring their girl down. And the girl has that kind of look of mystification on her face, like “What? This is the guy you were telling me about?”

I’m not exactly sure what’s up with some of the people who come see me. For a while there it was real like dirty job, blue collar, third shift kind of people. They’re really the kind of the people I was doing it for, because they come into the life I was living. The bar life and all that. Comedy nerd-wise, I don’t know. That’s a great compliment. We live in a golden age of comedy, especially with the women. The women comics are finally getting their due. Politics aside there are a lot of great acts out there. Hopefully, people come down and see it and appreciate it, but I don’t see any comedy nerds coming to my show.

The best compliment you can get after the show is like, “Hey man, I saw you a year ago and I saw you now and you’ve got all this new stuff and I love it.” That makes your night. When people bring up the Insomniac show, you’re like “Thanks a lot. I just did an hour of live material.”

Post-show, what’s the rest of your night look like in Vegas? Do you go to a lot of the fringe places around here, or do you hit the tables, call it a night?

I wanted to talk about that for a second. On The Gong Show, which wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, the way they put it out there, the Vegas fringe movement really helped me out. I know you’ve got Beacher’s thing, and a lot of other stuff going on that’s not mainstream, showgirls, big things in Vegas. I think that’s great that Vegas has now this huge underground scene. That was the best part of The Gong Show was bringing out these Vaudeville, un-Vaudeville people and giving them a moment. I don’t know if I’ll be able to hit a fringe thing, but of course I’ll gamble because isn’t that what we’re all supposed to do? By that I mean I’ll buy real estate. I think I’m going to go out and buy a condo.

The Gong Show, it just wrapped recently. Are you guys picked up for another season, or do you know what’s going on with that?

We’re waiting to hear, but I say it’s pretty unlikely. It’s really up to how the network does. They had an amazing election moment. They’ve got some good shows on there. If they do bring it back and they let me do some of the things I wanted to do, then I’d be kind of happy. I do want to host a game show, I really do. Maybe I’ll work something out in Vegas, because that would be a cool town to live in. I love Vegas because it’s the one town where if you’re a magician, you are the shit.

What do you think of the Criss Angel, Danny Gans, Terry Fator kind of acts they have here? It seems weird because people come here for an element of risk, but they make the safest entertainment choices possible.

People do make safe choices, but you’ve got to think Vegas keeps changing all the time. It’s an evolving town. I guess snow the the hip thing is these magician, wizard, rock Jesus guys. I would say that I don’t know if Criss Angel is worth $100 million. Maybe if he could find bin Laden he would be. I don’t think other than that. I like the Vegas I kind of grew up with where it’s sleazy, dirty and you’ve got like, if you feel like putting on a suit and tie there’s some class thing to do. Now it seems like Vegas, I think they’re getting rid of the kid element now, which is good, because that was slowing everything down. When you walk into a hotel and the lobby is full of gigantic flowers, it makes you feel like you’re in a Sid and Marty Krofft fucking flashback. I think Vegas is like the truth of it, which is if it sells tickets, people will come see it. It doesn’t matter if it’s dirty or clean. What will bring the people into the seats?

You wound up doing the Apatow movie, right? Funny People?

Yeah, I did a scene, it was me, Norm MacDonald and Sarah Silverman. We played comics. It was great. There were no lines to be learned. I don’t know if I’ll make it.

Norm MacDonald said his plan going in was to try to fuck up everybody’s shit.

Mission accomplished. Norm is another guy who’s an underrated comic, and a lot of it has to do with his own style. Is he going to be at this festival?

No, he’s not going to be here.

See, that’s the thing. Why don’t they have Norm there?

He was here like a month ago, at the House of Blues.

OK. Either way, Norm, the comics love Norm and I think the audience should listen to the comics. He’s one of the most unique guys out there. He’s super funny. In terms of doing a scene with him, the best thing to do is sit back and try not to laugh. You can’t really improve with Norm.

After Insomniac, where you come across as very accessible on the show, do you find yourself in situations where fans don’t respect the boundaries anymore?

I don’t know, man. I try and do a good show. Especially now, because I’m not drinking. I’m getting old and I’m down to one kidney. There’s still an element that expects a wild drunk time. I’ve toured with Artie Lang, and let me tell you something, when Artie Lang tells you to quit smoking, you know it’s time to. Artie I think is the last of the guys who does the drinking, party show. He goes up there and he just goes crazy. I think now even he’s not drinking, so we’re all getting old. We’re old men. Boundaries-wise? Hey, after the show I usually hang out. Anyone who wants to take a picture and say hey, that’s cool. I feel like you can never do enough for people, and maybe that’s why I’m a sad clown. I’d say it’s 99 percent, everyone’s pretty cool to me.

You say no one’s really doing a party show anymore, do you you think anyone needs to pick up the torch and carry on?

The Insomniac thing?

No, just when you talk about the drinking and partying show.

Well, I think there’s been a couple of versions of it, but you know. I think I’m ready again to do another reality-based show, but I want to do it overseas. It’s really hard when everyone knows who you are, it’s really hard. I think Borat was great, but it’s hard to keep something like that going. But, he made like $100 billion. They paid me in Carlos Mencia merch and hugs.

So when are you going to develop some new egg nog-related material?

That’s funny, because that first CD I did, Skanks for the Memories, people quote it to me, which is so cool, but I’ve done three hours since then. I guess I hit it good the first time. I’m with people, because I did the DVD, the Captain Miserable thing, and it was good, it was really hard to come up with material so quickly from the Insomniac tour. I sweat out pretty much every joke. I’m working on it pretty much every night.

I agree with the crowd that CDs are better, because you can play it while you’re driving. You can play it while you’re smoking pot. You don’t have to focus your eyes on it. You can have sex to it. Whatever you want to do to it, it’s better because then it’s like just a disgusting old man’s voice is in the room instead of having to watch me. Egg nog jokes? I think we’re past egg nog. America has to learn to move past it. Now the whole thing is absinthe, which is the anti-egg nog, which is now legal. I’m sure there’s got to be some bars in Vegas that are doing that whole thing.

Yeah, it’s big out here.

It’s so evil you have to drink it through a clown’s eyeball to get out the evil.

You turn around a lot of material. What’s your process like?

I don’t know. People on like MySpace or whatever, they ask, “How do you do it? How do you become a comic?” It’s really just go on stage, tape your stuff, go home and listen to it and see what works and what doesn’t. It sounds pretty simple but it’s emotionally pretty hard hearing yourself bomb night after night. In the beginning especially, you listen to it and throw the tape recorder across the room because you’re like, “I can’t believe I said that” and “What was I thinking?” To me that really helped not only to write jokes but to learn what a joke is and see timing and things like that. I guess for other people it’s different methods. I do believe the process is doing stand-up. You can always tell when someone hasn’t been doing it for a while because they seem rusty. It’s true. It’s like, you’ve got to keep doing it if you want to keep growing as a comic. I need to get more set-ups. Punchlines come eventually, but the setups are hard. Now that the political thing is over, what does everyone want to talk about. Maybe we’ll loosen up as a country and we won’t have to be so politically correct.

Yeah, I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

That’s the thing. When you get groaned in Vegas it’s a little different. In the Midwest, you realize hey, maybe some of these people are like church people or whatever. In Vegas you’re like, “What?”
Were you doing political stuff?

Everybody has to have a couple of political jokes, but I’m not a political comic. I kind of get it, but it’s not my forte or my cup of tea or anything. Political jokes, especially toward the end run. Some people are great at it like Lewis Black, but the rest of kind of have our three or four jokes. But it really did kind of energize the whole young crowd to go vote, and that’s great.

Speaking of Lewis Black, were you ever approached for Root of All Evil?

No, I think I was doing The Gong Show at the same time they were doing all that. I know Lewis really well, and I think Lewis is a guy who few people know, but he spent like 20 years on the road driving himself to like shitty little gigs all over America playing bars and stuff like that. The fact that he’s built on that to the Daily Show to being a Grammy winning, national touring theater act is amazing. He’ll kill me if I say this, but he’s not a young guy. The fact that he has the energy to keep doing it is amazing.

I thought these Vegas comedy festivals, I was there when Don Rickles was there. That was great. They should constantly bring in the classic acts, the vintage guys to show us what it’s all about.

By Jason Scavone

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