So last week, I was totally kicking it with Paul Rudd. I mean, we didn’t, like, talk to each other, but we were only five feet apart. Swoon!

That’s because I went to a wicked-fun party thrown by the folks at My Damn Channel, a website/entertainment studio that hosts artist-driven web series created by people like Harry Shearer and David Wain. (Shearer is a voice actor on The Simpsons. Wain is behind movies like Wet Hot American Summer and cult TV shows like The State.)

The event, which celebrated My Damn Channel’s redesign, featured live reenactments of previous episodes of David Wain’s show Wainy Days, and one of the guest reenactors was… you guessed it… Paul “Hot” Rudd.

After the jump, I’ll dig into Wainy Days, which tickles me in a very particular way.

Each installment of the series focuses on Wain’s abortive attempts to find a girlfriend, and I’ll admit… it isn’t for everyone.  Some of my friends love Wain’s work, and some of them haaaate it. Like, more than they hate intolerance. That’s largely because his comedy relies on randomness, which can be infuriating.

Most of Wain’s writing—he’s writes, directs, and acts—takes a traditional set-up, prepares us to believe something specific is going to happen, and then implodes our expectations by doing something bizarre. So for instance, in this episode of Wainy Days, co-starring Amanda Peet, we get a standard comedic premise (woman is attracted to something most women don’t like) that devolves into chaos.

I appreciate the riskiness of ending with David’s nonsensical request for a Rogaine pizza and with Peet’s left-field kiss-off of “I like small penises but yours is too small.” It amuses me to be caught off guard. There’s also something out-of-control bubbling beneath these jokes, as though Wain is two seconds from impulsively setting something on fire. Comedy with a little danger is always engaging.

My only hesitation is that the chaos does have an extremely repetitive structure, as I mentioned above, and if I absorb too much of Wain’s work at one time, the structure is all I see.  Eventually, I start predicting where the next non sequitur will be, and when a physical bit will go off the rails.

Taken in small doses, though, that pattern doesn’t bother me. So one five minute episode of Wainy Days per week is just about right.

What do you all think of Wain’s humor? Of this show? Of that scene in Wet Hot… where everyone leaves camp for a wild drug binge in town?