Actor-comedian Hal Sparks said he always vowed to visit Pittsburgh before the end of his Pittsburgh-set Showtime drama, "Queer as Folk." He made it just under the wire, playing here at a benefit with his band on the night the series finale aired in 2005.

Sparks acknowledged that "Folk" was set in a Pittsburgh unrecognizable to denizens of the real thing. The series never filmed here or used local establishing shots or reflected many realities of life in the Burgh.

"I thought, it's gotta matter to somebody, but the producers were like, 'Nah, that doesn't matter,'" Sparks said, affecting the voice of a distracted TV producer. "Pittsburgh is a steel town, it's not going out on a limb to think they probably don't have rainbow benches. 'Don't worry about it. Sit down.' It's a little silly. At the same time, the show was trying to create a utopian concept of what it could be like. It's almost like they're using The Secret or something: Let's make a Pittsburgh we want to have. What if every town had its own gay area that's actually cool, like the gay area version of Chinatown, which it will."

(Sparks won't be the only "Folk" vet in town this weekend, according to this blog post.)

Sparks is relieved to take a break from serious drama, but he's keeping busy. He'll appear next in VH1's "Celebracadabra!" (celebrities compete to become trained magicians) at 9 p.m. on April 27 and VH1's "I Love the Millennium" in June. His metal band, Zero 1, is touring and he voices a cartoon character for Nickelodeon ("Tak and the Power of Juju").

And then there's his stand-up act, which he brings to The Improv at The Waterfront in Homestead with shows at 8 tonight, 8 and 10 p.m. Friday, 7 and 9 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday.

"I call it my word-of-mouth tour because of the nature of my material," Sparks said. "Language is very important to me. It's the central point of all my jokes, really, because I think communication is the first area we screw up."

An example: Sparks drinks plain iced tea, not unsweetened tea.

"What kind of [jerk] unsweetens beverages? Show me the machine that unsweetens the tea. How do you bitter it back up?" he said. "What kind of idiot comes up with a five-syllable word to replace 'plain'? They'll defend the word at Starbucks until the bitter end, no pun intended."

Fans of Sparks on VH1 won't be disappointed as he promises to offer his own skewed take on celebrity culture, which he said goes against the grain of conventional wisdom.