Neil Hamburger a champion of tastelessness

Neil Hamburger and Todd Barry with Brendon Walsh

Spring Value Tour… Neil Hamburger and Todd Barry with Brendon Walsh

Spring Value Tour 2011

Saturday at 10 p.m.

The Smiling Moose

412-431-4668

Tickets: $20

21+

Comedian Neil Hamburger thinks most of today’s stand-up acts suck.

“They come out dressed like slobs with mustard or ketchup down their trousers, and you get a half-an-hour monologue about a guy sitting on a toilet seat,” an in-character Hamburger said. “And generally a half an hour into this monologue, you get the weakest joke you’ve ever heard in your life.”

The stand-up artist with a cult following plans to buck the aforementioned norm this spring alongside his current partners in comedic crime, Todd Barry and Brendon Walsh. When the three perform at The Smiling Moose on Saturday, each performer will bring his own brand of humor to create a decidedly unconventional performance.

“They’re real showmen,” Hamburger said of Barry and Walsh. “They take the time to put on a nice shirt, nice shoes … that kind of thing, and actually tell some jokes and keep it entertaining and put on a professional show.”

Hamburger’s comedic contrarianism, however, has often incited polarized reactions to his work — or, at the very least, perplexity.

In Pittsburgh last November, for instance, Hamburger opened for Tim and Eric’s “Awesome Tour, Great Job!” performance with purposefully ill-timed and poor-taste jokes about Michael Jackson, Metallica members’ haircuts and the general disrespect he thought the audience was showing him. Most people understood the humor, but a few remained confused.

This was, of course, hardly an isolated incident.

“I think the best show of his I saw was at a festival in Dublin,” Barry said — he and Hamburger have crossed paths a number of times over the years. “Half the people in the audience hated him and half the people loved him, so it was a spectacle on and off stage.”

In addition to his stand-up work, eight comedy albums and television appearances with Tim and Eric and comedian Tom Green,  Hamburger recently sang as a guest vocaliston a 7-inch single, “American Exports,” by Australian punk group the Hard-Ons.

“I get asked by these lowlifes, these degenerates to do records for them,” Hamburger said. “And I turn them down. In the case of the Hard-Ons, they’re very nice guys and I like what they’re trying to do.”

All the comedians in Hamburger’s circle boast a diverse set of interests. Todd Barry, for instance, has a passion for acting, which eventually landed him a part as Mickey Rourke’s 9-to-5 manager, Wayne, in the acclaimed 2008 drama “The Wrestler.”

“I dabbled in it during college,” Barry said of acting. “I guess it’s just nice to mix things up.”

Make no mistake, however: For Barry, acting is no substitute for comedy.

“I like doing stand-up,” he said. “I consider myself a comedian above everything else, but it’s good to have other projects to break it up.”

When he isn’t involved in movies or television shows like Adult Swim’s “Delocated” and FX’s “Louie,” Barry dishes out jokes that leave listeners wondering if he’s commending or condemning the subjects.

“There is a downside to every city,” he quipped on the “Late Show with David Letterman” in 2009. “And the thing about New York is that you will get arrested for criminal activity.”

Accompanying Hamburger and Barry on the tour is Brendon Walsh, an up-and-coming comedian who’s as much their fan as he is their colleague.

“Neil and Todd are psychos,” said Brendon Walsh. “I’m just some guy trying to make his way … I am a fan of both of those guys, at risk of sounding insincere.”

Walsh’s recent projects include work on a six-part series on HBO Canada called “Funny as Hell,” “John Oliver’s New York Stand-Up Show” on Comedy Central and an appearance on “Conan.”

“I thought I saw a couple of teenage girls checking me out,” Walsh said in his stand-up performance on “Conan” last November. “But when I passed them, I heard one of them telling her friend, ‘There goes your boyfriend Sheila, hahaha!’ … I’m not Sheila’s boyfriend!”

“I’ve been a fan of Conan since he started,” Walsh said. “I was the third comedian on the show, and it’s definitely a feather in my cap.”

You might expect the comedically forward-thinking Walsh and Barry to be social media-savvy, but you can also find the decidedly old-fashioned Hamburger taking jabs at the likes of Axe body spray and Taco Bell via Twitter.

“It’s certainly better than jogging,” Hamburger said of Twitter. “I don’t know if you’ve tried jogging, but that’s very, very unpleasant.”