Barry funny

The great Todd Barry headlines the Lakeshore Theater this weekend.

You might have caught Todd on "Flight of the Conchords," "Sex and the City" or "Wonder Showzen." Or sparring with Sarah Silverman on "The Larry Sanders Show." Or maybe you heard his flat monotone on an animated show like "Dr Katz: Professional Therapist," where he played against type as an angry, sarcastic guy named Todd.

He's best known for his innumerable late-night television appearances, such as the series of visits to "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" that inspired his one-man show, "Icky."

In any event, a Todd Barry visit is cause for celebration, and thus we celebrate. My Flavorpill preview is here.

Actually, the self-indulgently lengthy writeup I turned in was edited for space. It originally looked like this:

The sheer variety of American standup comedy burnishes its greatness. You've got your pioneering legends (Pryor, Newhart, Bruce), old-school grandees (Rickles, Cosby, Sahl), big-name headliners (Seinfeld, Rock, Chappelle), top-tier veterans (Wright, Shandling, Rivers), A+ joke writers (Silverman, Attell, Liebman), dependable workhorses (Johannsen, C.K., Gaffigan), searching intellectuals (Allen, Carlin, Katz), brilliant flameouts (Hicks, Kinison, Hedberg), sitcom crossovers (Romano, Barr, Carey), well-connected loudmouths (DiPaolo, Lange, Florentine), celeb-roast mercenaries (Giraldo, Ross, Lampanelli), NASCAR panderers (Foxworthy, Engvall, Cable Guy), talented upstarts (Galifianakis, Mintz, Boulger) and a raft of alt-hipsters (Oswalt, Cross, Garofalo, Glaser, Benjamin, Posehn, Mirman). Falling squarely into the final camp is Todd Barry, whose picture might appear in the dictionary if there were a word meaning "snide, deadpan and consistently funny." Fresh from an appearance in The Wrestler, the New York Times Magazine essayist returns to prove that even the soft-spoken can eviscerate.

If you don't know Todd's work, get into it. The guy is hilarious.

Todd Barry performs on Friday and Saturday at 7:30 and 10pm at the Lakeshore Theater, 3175 N. Broadway, Chicago; 773-472-3492.