As Doug Wilson on Showtime's Weeds, comedian Kevin Nealon nurses a crippling dependency on pot, embezzles mammoth sums of money from the town government and has a nasty bout with steroids.
And as Franz in an iconic '90s Saturday Night Live skit, the 58-year-old actor is a bullying, overly-muscled Austrian bodybuilder.
So in the case of Kevin Nealon, it may be difficult to find an instance of life imitating art.
The SNL alum—slender, Connecticut-bred and free from marijuana and steroid addicitions in reality—was slated to stop by the Nyacks this weekend for a spate of stand-up shows at the Levity Live Comedy Club at the Palisades Center.
And though the nasty weather, flooding and general havoc brought on by Sandy have postponed the show, the club is working to rescheduled a date—and get Nealon back to the river villages.
"I've never been to Nyack before," Nealon told Patch Tuesday. "But I know it's supposed to be a really pretty area."
Nealon noted fans expecting to see Doug Wilson on stage will have to recalibrate.
"[My stand-up] is a little bit of everything," Nealon said. "People won't be seeing Doug Wilson of Weeds—they'll be seeing me. They'll see what I've become over the past 20 years of comedy."
"Stand-up is like being a blues musician—it takes years to come up with soulful material," he added.
Still, Nealon said he peppers some familiar personas into his routine—like Franz, or Mr. Subliminal.
When Nealon does make his way back to West Nyack, fans can expect a more intimate show, due half in part to Levity Live's atmosphere, and half to Nealon's performance preferences.
"I would much rather a small room than a large venue," Nealon said. "My stand-up is conversational, it's disarming. I like to call it verbal magic—it takes you in one direction and then another, it keeps you on your toes."
Despite the real Kevin Nealon performing on stage, however, he notes there's a subsection of folks that still project Doug Wilson's personality—and antics—onto him.
"There are some people expecting to see Doug Wilson," Nealon said. "People will offer to share blunt with me."
He routinely declines.
"These are the same people who go up to actors in The Sopranos with a loaded .38 and say, 'want to whack someone after the show?'" Nealon joked.
For those ticket-holders that want some humor to hold them over until a new Levity Live date materializes, Nealon's Twitter could be a fix. He tweets regularly and often, viewing his handle as a sort of comedic testing ground.
"I think of [the tweets] and throw them out there—if I get a lot of retweets, its an area to work with," he said. "Once you start second guessing and putting a lot of time into your tweets, it takes away from what that whole service is—it's very spontaneous, I think."
