Late Night with Dave Attell
Now in its third season, the gritty travelogue Insomniac With Dave Attell has tied The Man Show as Comedy Central's second-highest-rated program (after South Park) but with less fanfare. Taking tips from comedy club waitresses and coked-out club owners in towns throughout the U.S., beer-fueled 37-year-old road comic Attell has for years trolled the undiscovered bars and late-night joints of America, trying to find a party, or at least a good conversation, and he's been successful. He's parlayed his wanderlust into a successful TV series, now re-running Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET on Comedy Central with encores throughout the week.
Attell is one of those rare native New Yorkers who actually likes going out of town to party. A professed loner who makes fast friends at the bars whose stools he warms, Attell prefers a dark speakeasy to a ritzy nightclub any day. "It's too loud, the drinks are too expensive and the women are just too hard," he explains. "You like a level playing field." From naked Jell-O wrestlers in Memphis to an Atlanta strip club where old strippers go to pasture, Insomniac With Dave Attell captures the fun, seedy side of nightlife you don't find in the tour books. In a Playboy.com interview, Attell tells how to train for an all-nighter ("The drinking lifestyle is kind of like a sport, although you don't have to stretch before you do it"), hold your liquor and decrease your chances of going home alone.
Playboy.com: What's wrong with morning people?
Dave Attell: Morning people. They smell different, like soap and shampoo and conditioner. They smell like yoga and yogurt and all things good. They smell like they're up for anything as long as it includes buying something like a coffee table. I always reek of cigarettes and booze, so I feel like there's a difference and they can smell it on me.... Not all morning people are bad, like farmers and fishermen. They've got to do it. But everybody else, I just think, What is the hurry?
PB: I never go to bed because I'm afraid I'll miss something.
DA: Right. There is that aspect. The one night you don't go out, there's always the guy who's like, "You should have hung out." That's when all the great stuff happens. The three-way with the Dixie Chicks. Midgets dressed as Lincoln. All that stuff.
PB: For those of us who have day jobs or go to school, how do you suggest preparing for an all-night party? Nap after work? Carbo load? A drinking regimen?
DA: If you need some kind of a recipe, it's half alcohol, half obsessive-compulsive disorder, and the rest just happens. The thing about staying up is it's mostly not really the doing it; it's the waiting to do it. The mind plays a lot of tricks. It's a long day in my mind.
PB: From your vast experience touring and taping Insomniac, what is the best party city?
A: The best party city, of course, would be Tijuana, because they have something there that we don't have here: no laws. The best American party city is really hard to say because it could be Miami, which is like a huge dance club, but if you're getting a hummer in Kansas City I guess that's the best party city. Bar culture is the best party scene, especially in towns where after two a.m. all you can do is drink.
PB: What's the best way to pick up women in bars? Alone, in a pair, or in a group?
DA: This is no put-down to women, but women really like you if you're with another woman. If you walk in with a girl or a girlfriend or a fuck-buddy, they'll be like, "Who's this guy? He's got a woman," so they immediately know he's not a loner serial killer, he's not gay, so it kind of helps them out. I usually spend all my bar time alone, so I don't hook up much. Going alone doesn't work. And the one-night stand thing, I think that takes place only in other places. They have a special town where that takes place, but I've never been to that town yet.
PB: If you go to a bar with a girlfriend, how do you let the women there know that she's not your girlfriend?
DA: A lot of my [guy and girl] friends will go out together. If the guys are looking for women and the girls are looking for guys, it's kind of like they're tag team, like buddies. They all end somewhere on a rendezvous, like one of those dating shows.
PB: Ever gotten your ass kicked?
DA: No. Just recently we were in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and we were in kind of a punk bar and somebody threw something at me. People are rubbing my head a lot, which I don't like because I'm bald. I have seen fights on the street. There's a lot of pepper spray going on out there, but I've been lucky. There's a punch in the face down the road coming my way.
PB: What haven't you been able to or unwilling to show us on TV?
DA: We don't show you the pathetic side, what I'd call third-stage drinking. They don't know what's going on, they just know they're against it. We don't show you them just being crazy, annoying, bitter drunks. Oh, you don't see me drunk at a Denny's trying to sober up real quick while the crew's taking a break.
PB: You're always pounding beers and shots on Insomniac. Do you really drink that much on the show?
DA: I do. A lot of that has to do with people who have seen the show and want to buy me a drink. After five or six of these crazy drinks, I'm a little looped, so it makes the night drag. Yes, I do really drink.
PB: Describe Insomniac for anyone who hasn't seen it.
DA: The whole show is kind of like a twisted Wild On E! for ugly people. They always show them in some really fancy bar that you could never get into drinking a $10 martini, so I always like the down and dirty version of that which is some shit-ass bar and we're drinking Jäger.
PB: What's the best hangover cure?
DA: People keep telling me that tomato juice is good. I really think that for me there's something about eggs and bacon on a roll that lets me know a new day has come. There is hope.
