Thurs. April 10 

Newton-based comic Jonathan Katz. who plays the Somerville Theatre Thursday April 10, last year decided to put out his very first CD of standup comedy. Why then? "I've been recording my voice since I was seven," says Katz, "and since I started doing my act a friend said 'You should record every set you do, and be willing to let go jokes that don’t work.' I got the first part right, but I couldn't let go of the jokes. I just did one on 'Conan' that’s very chance-y. I'll read something or see something on TV that gets me crazy like this: 'There was this farmer in upstate New York who had to give up farming and get into telephone sex, so he cut off the lips of his cows and sheep and now you hear 'moo' and 'baa' without the lips.' That was met with dead, utter silence. I said, 'Try and say 'moo' and 'baa' without moving your lips.' That got some laughs. Conan said, 'That's the strangest joke I ever heard.'"

So that's the answer you get when you ask Katz why he released the "Caffeinated" CD. Katz's mind moves in a slightly surreal way. For instance, he's out with his wife and she's shopping for girly things, so he uses the cell phone to "call everyone I know, everybody from Aaron Aaron to Renee Zellweger." He's always, as he says, "working the room, whether it's a comedy club or an elevator. I can't stop making jokes. The two things I do compulsively is make jokes and drop names. I have a minature poodle named Bongo, and when I told my best friend David Mamet that, he said 'Didn't you mean 'sub-standard'?" (Note: That is a true story.  Mamet is a friend and collaborator; he acted in "State and Main," "Things Change" and "The Spanish Prisoner." Katz also co-wrote "House of Games." But if you look at the joke, the punch line is Mamet's which Katz ruefully admits.)

Katz was part of the Boston standup boom of the 1980s, but he may be best-known, nationally, for the squiqqly animated series he did on Comedy Central from 1995 to 1999 called "Dr. Katz: Professional Therapist." That went down amicably, Katz says, when he agreed to stop doing it and they agreed to stop paying him. (That is, they cancelled it and he had no other choice but to accept it.) Katz has done a number of TV, film and radio gigs - and still does some - but his way back to standup went through a gig he agreed to do two years ago at the Cutler Majestic Theater with Lewis Black. Black beckoned Katz to the stage. and Katz fretted about how long it was going to take to get from the wings of the stage to the center. That's because, in 1997, he was diagnosed with MS and he's not as mobile as he once was. But he grasped his cane and thought, "If you're funny, that’s what they’re gonna remember, not the limp."

Does he have the type of MS that is progressive? "It's always progressive," says Katz. "I’m kind of enjoying walking lately. MS challenges everything to do with coordination, things we take for granted. I became better at sitting down. It's a fine art. I'm writing a book, “Finding the Disease That Is Right for You.” I spent a year writing 80 pages" but he put it aside because "I found it too depressing." Now he's working on a book with frequent collaborator Bill Braudis, "501 Things You Never Want to Say Out Loud." Like ...  “If you’re a crowded elevator with strangers, you wouldn’t want to say 'Why don’t they just call them smelevator?' I like doing things that make me giggle." His comedy, he says, "always starts with truth and then it takes a weird turn." How so? Well, he says, "You are the thinking man's Jim Sullivan." I think I like that.

 Katz is a gently subversive comic - which made him mind-mannered during the '80s  with Lenny Clarke, Denis Leary and Bobcat Goldthwait battering down at the fences of most everyones sensibilities. "I’m a pretty silly guy." says Katz, "which makes my wife nervous and proud." Do you embarrass her? "Daily. I never know what will strike her funny." Tickets: $25.

55 Davis Square, Somerville, www.ticketmaster.com