Laughing Out Loud on the Strip

There's stand-up comedy.

And there is sketch comedy.

And now there is Tim and Eric.

The stars of Adult Swim's "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" reverse the usual path, coming to The Comedy Festival this week as multimedia stars who developed a live act only in response to the breakout success of their Internet and cable TV videos.

The live version of "Awesome Show" on Thursday is but one of the ways the festival is reaching beyond stand-up to acknowledge new trends in comedy, or staging unique events for television. Both were stated goals when the four-day event at Caesars Palace, produced by HBO and AEG Live, set up shop three years ago on a Strip that's already flush with big stand-up names.

"Variety," once declared as dead as "The Ed Sullivan Show," is a key word in descriptions for both "The Vegas Va-Voom Variety Spectacular" hosted by Steve Schirripa on Wednesday and "Ellen's Really Big Show" with Ellen DeGeneres on Thursday.

"Desperate Housewives" star Eva Longoria and Nadine Velazquez from "My Name is Earl" are billed as part of a Saturday sketch ensemble called "The Hot Tamales Live!" Velazquez is supposed to serve up imitations of both Longoria and "Earl" co-star Jamie Pressly.

DeGeneres' show is a TV special airing Monday on TBS. The cable channel, part of the same Time Warner Inc. conglomerate that owns HBO, is branding itself to comedy with the tagline "Very funny." The channel is using the festival to mount two other specials on a short turnaround: "Frank Caliendo: All Over the Place" is staged Thursday to air Friday, while "Blue Collar Comedy: The Next Generation" hosted by Bill Engvall tapes Friday and airs Saturday.

"In the first two years, as a network in terms of programming, we were more reactive than proactive," says Michael Wright, senior vice president of Turner Entertainment Network's Content Creation Group. "We were looking at what was already part of the festival and saying, 'We can point some cameras at that.'

"This year, maybe we're getting a little bit smarter in terms of how we use the festival to reinforce our own brand."

Engvall already has a TBS sitcom, while Caliendo's stand-up special sets the stage for "Frank TV," a sketch comedy show debuting Nov. 20.

The festival does have its share of stand-up concerts from big-ticket names: Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock on both Friday and Saturday, the Las Vegas debut of British cult favorite Eddie Izzard on Saturday and Howard Stern's sidekick, Artie Lange, on Thursday.

But Thursday's schedule reflects how comedy, like everything else in life, has been changed by the Internet. Fans can see a double-feature of "Broadband Theatre" at 5 p.m. and "Tim & Eric Awesome Show Live!" at 8 p.m.

"We do like to say we were pre-You Tube," says Tim Heidecker, who has been working with Eric Wareheim since the two were film students at Temple University in Philadelphia. "We were putting our stuff online and that's how people got to see it, and got it passed around. We kind of respect the power that has. We make bits that work well on the Internet, that are short and pack a punch and we know are going to get passed around."

Their work is described as absurdist and surreal. In one of their first high-profile shorts, "Humpers," two office drones chat in an urban street, oblivious to people making like excited dogs with inanimate objects all around them. Another short begins as a familiar spoof of a cheap local-TV mattress ad, then makes a left turn into the pitchman's nightmarish dreams of cannibal zombie attacks.

"Awesome Show" doesn't choose between juvenile or sophisticated comedy; it combines them. It's both "Monty Python" and "Benny Hill," or "SCTV" meets "Hee Haw."

"Sometimes something can be really dumb and you're not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing," Heidecker says. "Like, 'Is this dumb enough? Or is it not dumb enough?' " Their work swings for the fences, but the two try not to "make it weird for the sake of being weird," he adds. "We just want to make stuff that's funny."

"Our show may seem very random to a causal viewer but there are very specific rules," Wareheim adds. "Certain comedians have just not worked because they're too big or they can't encapsulate the vibe of the entire show."

Heidecker clarifies the duo's deadpan style: "We can't have people on being funny because that kind of spoils the fun. ... In the end you get funny performances when you ask people not to be funny."

Translating "Awesome" to the live stage requires a six-person ensemble that will include cult favorites such as Neil Hamburger (Gregg Turkington).

"We want some of the live bits to be a new experience rather than what you'd see a sketch troupe doing live. There's a lot of really weird band (parodies) that we do live, and songs," Wareheim says. "I'm really happy we didn't grow up in the sketch scene, just to kind of clear our minds and do our own thing."

"What these shows end up turning out to be is sort of like a club that people are a part of," Heidecker adds. "You have to be a specific kind of person to be a fan of ours. You've got to be a little odd yourself, probably."

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0288.