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Back to Black: The Comedy Central star does it all

It’s hard to read the breathlessly absurd essays in “My Custom Van” (Simon Spotlight Entertainment, $23.95) without hearing Michael Ian Black’s rich deadpan delivery in your head.

The book, containing pieces titled “Do Not Buy Tundra From a Door-to-Door Salesman” and “Taco Party,” and Black’s hosting job on Comedy Central’s reality-show parody “Reality Bites Back,” have been keeping the 37-year-old Chicago-born comic busy.

Black’s blunt humor and natural charm have made him a Comedy Central fixture since the early ’90s, as well as a pioneering talking head for various VH1 specials.

He’s starred in and written for such wacky sketch comedy shows as “The State,” “Stella” and “Viva Variety,” a send-up of European variety shows. He also co-wrote the script for the hit comedy “Run Fatboy Run.”

We spoke with the jovial fellow by phone from Connecticut, where he lives with his wife and two kids, about his awesome vocabulary, the difference between shops and shoppes, and hamsicles.

Q: The word “badinage” is in the intro to your book. I had to look it up. How do you know that word?

A: The reason I knew “badinage” is because it was the name of my high school literary journal. They called it “The Badinage.” I found it means “playful banter.”

Q: In your essay, “A Series of Letters to a Squirrel,” why do you call a squirrel a “painted whore”?

A: It was a natural extension of seeing a squirrel, thinking it looked cheap, but taking it one step further.

Q: Your book also contains an essay called “One Day, I’m Going to Open a Scented Candle Shoppe.” What’s the difference between a “shoppe” and a “shop”?

A: My feeling is that a “shop” is merely a place where business is conducted, but a “shoppe” is a place, where yes, business is conducted, but also, friendships are formed, butterscotch candies are given out. Maybe a dish of milk is left out for any stray kittens who wander by. There has to be a cat who lives in the “shoppe”!

Q: Is Woody Allen’s humor writing, such as in “Getting Even” and “Without Feathers,” an influence?

A: I definitely grew up knowing Woody Allen’s books, and Steve Martin’s book “Cruel Shoes.” I don’t know if anybody with a brain would compare me to Woody Allen, unless it was unfavorably. I just sort of can’t put myself in the same sentence.

Q: Were you a big George Carlin fan?

A: I wrote a blog about how he influenced and informed me, and then two days later, when I was checking Amazon.com book sales, I saw that his books were outselling my books. And I wrote a blog post saying, “I know it’s too early for this, but F- George Carlin.” (I was) thinking to myself, “He would appreciate that.”

Q: Is it fun to order folks around and make them humiliate themselves on “Reality Bites Back”?

A: It was actually more fun than I thought it was going to be. I wasn’t sure going into it how much fun it would be, but it turns out torturing people is kind of fun. I was really brought in at the last minute when they couldn’t find anybody else to host it. That’s sort of the way my career works.

Q: I watched some promos of it on ComedyCentral.com and I heard something about a “hamsicle... .”

A: That was in the episode called “The Biggest Chubby,” where the contestants are trying to gain as much weight as they can. So one of their coaches has these hamsicles that he’s trying to get them to eat, which is just a block of ham on a popsicle stick.

Q: What is your favorite reality show?

A: I don’t like any of them. I don’t really watch reality shows. There are some that I kind of like that are the more documentary ones, like the “Deadliest Catch” (on Discovery Channel.)

Q: What do you watch?

A: I’ve been watching the (New York) Yankees. I just got a new TV. I just got HD for the first time, so I watch anything in HD now. That’s my only criteria for a show: Is it in HD or not?

Q: You are a pioneer of VH1 talking heads. What makes your head so good for talking?

A: Hopefully, it’s what comes out of the mouth of the head, and not necessarily the head itself. ... Look, I have a very attractive cranium.

Q: What are you doing next?

A: Isn’t it enough that I’ve written an international best-selling book and that I have a new television series on? ... I am working on a pilot for Comedy Central. That’s the only network that will employ me, and it’s with my friend Michael Showalter. And I just wrote a children’s book that’s coming out in January. It’s called “Chicken Cheeks,” and it’s about animal butts.