If you like your stand-up smart, adventurous, quirky and sometimes surreal, you’ll love Brent Weinbach. The evidence to back up this perhaps overly-glib assurance is plentiful in his career mileposts--both positive and not-so-positive. For example, he’s appeared at HBO’s U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, been spotlighted as a “Name To Watch” in New York Magazine, has performed as sort of an adjunct member of The Comedians Of Comedy, the ultra-talented and bright brigade of stand-up comics (Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn, Maria Bamford, Zach Galifianakis form the core) featured in the acclaimed documentary film of the same name and performing at select venues and festivals; indeed, Brent joined the COC for a show at 2007’s internationally-renowned Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival. Another 2007 festival appearance--not tied to the COC; he landed this one just by his lonesome--was at Bumbershoot, Seattle’s venerable (it started in 1971) music and arts festival, sharing a stage with Eugene Mirman and “Saturday Night Live’s” Fred Arnisen and on a bill also featuring the likes of Greg Proops and Janeane Garofalo. Gee, this all sounds thoroughly impressive and positive--where are the not-so-positive mileposts you started off talking about? Oh, yeah, well most of the Weinbach saga is positive and impressive, including--in terms of his comedy artistry--what might otherwise be viewed as a setback: In March of 2006, he taped a stand-up set on “The Late, Late Show With Craig Ferguson,” which apparently went well, generated a strong audience response--but a CBS executive “didn’t get it,” and Brent’s set was not aired. Yikes! There are a hundred things one might say about that experience, but the first is that this puts him in pretty good company of comedians whose sets were excised from late-night network television. (Did someone say Bill Hicks?) . Or as Time Out New York phrased all this far more succinctly: “weird, scary, hilarious.”

With Moshe Kasher