Black humor

From comedy-troupe touring straight out of college to VH1's I Love the 80s: Strikes Back, from failed indie movies to giving utterance to the infamous sock puppets of Pets.com advertising, comedian Michael Ian Black has experienced just about the entire gamut of the media and entertainment business.

Hailing from Hillsborough, N.J, Black has been on the road and performing since the tender age of 17. His first major project, for which he is best known, was the popular MTV sketch-comedy show The State.

Black is hard at work on his current television project, Stella, an eight-year enduring hobby that met with huge success and now a stand-up comedy act turned television show. In this production, Black joins fellow comedians and co-stars David Dwain and Michael Showalter in acting the parts of what The Hollywood Reporter calls "modern-day Marx Brothers who face absurdist obstacles."

Working closely together for well over a decade, the trio attended NYU and also appear together in the movie Wet Hot American Summer.

When asked about the progress being made by Stella, the comedian was optimistic.

"On a scale of one to 10, about a four," joked Black. "It's actually going very well. And I'm eating a lot of salad and granola."

He breaks only occasionally from this engrossing endeavor to tour college campuses throughout the United States.

Saturday night, Black will be performing a sold-out show in Meany Hall. He doesn't know yet what kind of material he will be presenting.

"I hope it will be entertaining and anecdotal about my life. I will tell jokes, stories, not so many songs," he promised. "You have to write about what you know, so I am going to talk about myself."

His life, career and experiences in show business provide him with ample material, the primary sources of his comedic inspiration.

And as a harbinger of things to come, Black provided plenty of fair warning: "I'm not going to lie -- I get kind of bawdy."