Insomniac with Dave Attell was one of Attell's television shows. Described by Attell as "Wild On E! for Ugly People", it featured Attell walking the streets of America's (later the world's) greatest (and some not-so-great) cities late at night, meeting the people in a haze of ecstatic inebriation. The show occasionally went overseas.
The American cities featured on the show were Albuquerque, Anchorage, Atlanta, Austin (2 times), Baltimore, Boise, Boston, Charleston (WV), Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Columbus, Honolulu, Houston, Kansas City, Key West, Las Vegas, Little Rock, Long Island, Memphis, Miami, Myrtle Beach, Nashville, New Orleans, New York City (4 times), Oakland, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Reno, San Francisco, and Salt Lake City.
The foreign cities featured on the show were Amsterdam, Dublin, London, Montreal, Tijuana, Toronto, and specials that took place in Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, and Tokyo.
The most common activity (besides roaming the street aimlessly and visiting bars) was visiting workers on their night shifts. Instead of spending time with gas station attendants, he went searching for odd professions to highlight. Among them were crime-scene cleaners, bail bondsmen, cow-milkers, brothel-hookers, bicycle cops, coal miners, and porn overdubbers. Memorable episodes include a visit to Chicago's world-famous The Wieners Circle, where the staff routinely got in cursing matches with their customers, and a visit to a Phoenix nudist camp.
Throughout the run of the show, Attell carried around a one-time-use film camera and took pictures of random events, which would be shown during the end-credits.
Attell has said that he decided to more-or-less end Insomniac because the show had gotten too popular to establish a level of spontaneity. As soon as he would walk into a bar with a camera crew, crowds would surround them, desperate to be on his television show. He has said, though, that people aren't so aware of his show overseas, so he would more than likely do a few specials in other countries.
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