Comedy

Four and a half questions with Dave Attell

Julie Seabaugh

What are your traditional roaming grounds in Vegas?

There’s always something new there. I want to go to the Bodies exhibit and bet on the bodies, whether they were prisoners or not. I feel like now that I’m older, the gambling, whoring and drinking has kind of been done. I’m probably going to stay a little longer and see some people and go to a show or something. Cirque [du Soleil] is like, what, $500 a ticket? But you’ve got to think, the money that people pay to see me all goes to the town: the strip clubs and the gambling and everything. But with Cirque, that goes right to terrorism. They’re foreigners, right?

They’re Canadians.

Well, there goes that theory. It goes to health care and hockey zambonis back north. But I’d definitely like to see a show and just hang around. It’s way warmer there than it is in New York. I think everybody should live in Vegas one time. I haven’t, but everybody should.

How many USO tours have you done now?

Three or four, I believe. I’d like to do a big show for the troops, for those Wounded Warrior guys, but we haven’t gotten that together yet. That would be a good thing to do and a fun show. We could do it in Vegas. But in Vegas you’ve got to do things early, before people go broke. I’m going to throw that line in onstage: “You’ve got money during the day, then you’re broke at night.” Or they’re broke the next day. I’ll figure it out.

Where did the idea for Dave’s Place come from?

It came from me having my road money and feeling guilty about not doing my own stuff. I keep saying I want to do my own things, and eventually you’ve got to just step up. And to give everyone who’s seen it a heads-up, I’m trying to do more episodes, trying to figure out what the show is. Some people think it’s too weird, but I like it, and I think that it will do really good on the Internet if we can keep it going—comics drop by the fake bar and have adventures and talk and hopefully watch videos. But as time goes on, me wanting to be on camera seems to be less and less, so maybe we’ll cast somebody else in there. Maybe it’ll be Harold & Kumar’s Place.

Do you ever feel pressure to be more political with the elections looming?

Everybody has a joke about Obama now, and Hillary. I have one or two jokes, because it’s in your face all the time. I don’t know in the past if people were as interested, but it seems like for a long time people just didn’t care, and now there’s something at stake. People are connected to it. It’s kind of like the first year of Lost; you didn’t know where it was going. Now it’s like, “Is this ever going to end?” –Julie Seabaugh

February 29, 8 p.m., $25. House of Blues, 632-7600.

  • Get More Stories from Thu, Feb 28, 2008
Top of Story