COMEDY CENTRAL Live Starring Mike Birbiglia: I'm in the Future Also Tour Begins 8/15 In Newport, RI

Comedian Mike Birbiglia hits the road this summer with his "COMEDY CENTRAL Live Starring Mike Birbiglia: I'm in the Future Also" Tour. The nationwide stand-up tour featuring Birbiglia's captivating storytelling-style of stand-up kicks off in August with sponsor Smirnoff Ice and travels to more than 20 cities, with additional shows to be announced.

For tour info and links to purchase tickets, viewers can log onto www.comedycentral.com or www.birbigs.com. Tickets for "COMEDY CENTRAL Live Starring Mike Birbiglia: I'm in the Future Also" are on sale now.

"COMEDY CENTRAL Live Starring Mike Birbiglia: I'm in the Future Also" marks the third stand-up tour that COMEDY CENTRAL has produced with Birbiglia as the headliner, but the first time that he and the leading brand in comedy have taken to the road exclusively in theaters. Previous tours were booked in and around college markets (2006's "The Medium Man on Campus" tour and 2007's "The Secret Public" Tour). In addition to the tours that Birbiglia has headlined for COMEDY CENTRAL, he also appeared on several dates during the "COMEDY CENTRAL Live Starring Dave Attell and Lewis Black" tour in 2003. In 2008, he performed at "COMEDY CENTRAL Park," a night of free stand-up comedy live from Central Park's SummerStage to a capacity crowd of 5,000.

In addition to sponsoring the tour, Smirnoff Ice has partnered with COMEDY CENTRAL in a national sweepstakes running from April through September in which Smirnoff Ice will award 20 winners a VIP package to an "I'm in the Future Also" performance, including four tickets and $1,000 in cash. For additional details or to enter the sweepstakes, visit the Smirnoff Ice Web site at www.smirnoffice.com.

In 10 years, Mike Birbiglia has grown from struggling comic to a popular talk show guest to a groundbreaking, original storyteller. The results? Two critically-acclaimed CDs, three COMEDY CENTRAL specials and a Nathan Lane-produced Off-Broadway show called "Sleepwalk with Me" that was recently nominated for both a Drama Desk Award and an Outer Circle Critics Award for "Best Solo Performance." One thing has remained constant: Birbiglia puts out one of the funniest live shows in comedy: different every time and unique from any other comedian or trend in comedy. Said Nathan Lane of Birbiglia, "Every once in a while, someone comes along who renews your faith in the art of stand-up comedy. It happened when I first saw Mitch Hedberg and it happened again when I saw Mike Birbiglia."

Birbiglia's comedy built him a cult following in colleges, then clubs, then concert halls nationwide. And has earned him fans in the most unlikely of places. Ira Glass, host of the Peabody award-winning radio show This American Life said of Birbiglia in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune: "I feel he's a big rising star. He's somebody I feel, like, whenever we have him on the show I just feel, like, wow, he's gonna be so much more famous than all the rest of us."

Birbiglia isn't dirty nor is he a prude. He isn't shocking or forgettable. He simply tells stories from his life in the most honest way possible, sparing no painful detail: Stories like trying to shake the hand of a sports writer he didn't realize was blind or meeting his girlfriend's parents in high school and then realizing that she had another boyfriend, and then meeting his parents. Sometimes Birbiglia's details are so painful that the audience audibly gasps - to which Birbiglia often replies, "I know. I'm in the future also." Thus the name of the tour was born.

What held Birbiglia back early on are some of the strengths of his present live show: his difficult to pronounce last name, (he was once introduced as Mike Bahooski!), his awkwardness (Birbiglia: "I have a habit of making awkward situations even more awkward.") Birbiglia has made numerous appearances on "The Late Show with David Letterman," "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," "Jimmy Kimmel Live," and recently, yes, "The View." Birbiglia's popular blog, called his "Secret Public Journal," chronicles his awkward adventures on the road. In 2007, Birbiglia released a live rendition of his favorite stories via COMEDY CENTRAL Records entitled, "My Secret Public Journal LIVE," which both Time Out New York and Time Out Chicago hailed as the "Comedy Album of the Year."

In 2008, Birbiglia teamed-up with award-winning director Seth Barrish and producer Nathan Lane on "Sleepwalk With Me," a passion project he'd been developing under the radar for the previous four years. "Sleepwalk With Me," is a painfully funny one-man show about first love, denial and how the sleepwalking disorder that nearly killed Birbiglia might have saved his life. The New York Times called the show, "simply perfect." And The Boston Globe called the new stories "as honest as any Richard Pryor confession, and as engaging and inclusive as an old Bill Cosby record." It's that inclusiveness that has made Birbiglia a popular contributor on shows as diverse as "This American Life" and "The Bob & Tom Radio Show" and has continued to make Birbiglia one of the most popular touring acts with audiences of all ages.

About Diageo

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Photo credit Linda Lenzi

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