When Jason and Randy Sklar perform their standup show Friday night at Turner Hall, they’re the first to admit that Milwaukee is a basically a Bizarro version of their own hometown, St. Louis – and not just when it comes to sports fans.

The venue for the first-ever Adler’s Fall Comedy Classic is right in the wheelhouse for the 43-year-old twin brothers, who span every genre of comedy – but especially shine when it comes to smart and observational commentary rooted in "insider baseball" sports talk.

From their critically-acclaimed series "Cheap Seats," to spots on "Curb Your Enthusiasm," to their successful podcast, "Sklarbro Country," fans can expect the show to be densely-filled with laughs and improv. They’re bringing along Nikki Glasser and Jon Dore, too, to the 8 p.m. show, for which general admission tickets for $24.40 are currently on sale.

Speaking of "insider baseball," in this admittedly deep-cut interview, we asked the Brothers Sklar about the Brewers-Cardinals rivalry (from the other side), working with Sterling Archer, and what makes a good podcast – and trust us, doing an audio interview with identical twins is harder than it looks. If you’re a long-time fan of Randy and Jason, you’ll want to read on.

OnMilwaukee: What should Milwaukee expect on Friday?

Randy Sklar: We're really excited. First of all, we love the Midwest. We recorded our comedy album in Madison. There's something about northern Midwest people: they're smart. They're sports fans. They appreciate things. They're not jaded to a point where they it's like "impress me."

Our standup is two-man comedy; a post-modern take on the comedy team. There isn't a straight man and a funny man; it’s more organic the way we are hopefully funny in life. It's stuff that happens to Jay and stuff that happens to me, and the way we work it out together on stage. To me, I feel like we're getting ready for our next hour special.

And we're excited to bring that to a theater-y type setting. I hope the people come out because we'll have a great time. Plus, Nikki Glaser's on the show. She's an incredible comedian.

Jason Sklar: I think the show is going to be great because the three comedic acts are so different and yet I think kind of similar in the way that we all push the limits of what comedy is. Nikki is such a great joke writer. She's a really talented, funny young comedian.

OnMilwaukee: And everyone in Milwaukee will be drunk. That's kind of what we do here.

Randy: That's regular for Milwaukee. I don't anticipate it any differently. Then we're all going to Kopp's for a giant burger afterwards. We want the show to sell out because we want to do a good job for Adler. We want to do a good job in Milwaukee. We want to keep coming back to do theaters.

Jason: We travel around a lot. In this increasing age where people are on their phones or listening to earphones and not interacting with each other, it's different than even going to see music. The communal sound of everybody laughing to me is like a 15-foot jumper in the NBA. It's slowly dying and we need to preserve it in some way.

OnMilwaukee: My first exposure to you guys was when I accidentally turned on the mockumentary, "Utility Man," not knowing what I was watching ...

Randy: Yeah, Jose Oquendo belongs in the hall of fame.

OnMilwaukee: I didn't know what I was getting into but I realized very quickly that I found the more funny, successful St. Louis Cardinals versions of my friends and myself, basically.

Randy: That's a huge compliment.

OnMilwaukee: Yeah, except for the fact that you guys won. The Brewers not only lost in '82, but also lost in 2011.

Randy: Yeah, I know, I know. That was hard to take. This year was hard, too. When we were coming through Milwaukee to do a show at The Pabst Theater years ago, the Cardinals were actually playing the week that we were there at Miller Park. We finagled ourselves into the Sausage Race, which was so fun, yet we didn't realize for many people in Milwaukee, that's a bucket list thing.

OnMilwaukee: It's very smelly. Very few people actually get to do it.

Randy: So smelly and so unwieldy.

OnMilwaukee: It hurts your back after a while, too, I found.

Randy: I imagine this would be what it's like to hang out with Hulk Hogan. Very smelly, very unwieldy and too large to enjoy.

OnMilwaukee: When I found myself in St. Louis on a road trip after college, I felt like I was in the belly of the beast. I was furious because the 1982 World Series was still really weighing heavily on me.

Randy: I get it.

OnMilwaukee: I imagine you guys don't necessarily feel that way having beaten down the Brewers over all these years.

Randy: No, but Milwaukee and St. Louis, especially in '82, were in many ways like mirror cities, almost. River running through it and being like a central part of the city. Once we hung out in Milwaukee we realized it's like a smaller Chicago.

OnMilwaukee: That's what people say.

Randy: That's what it feels like. Also, it's a northern city, so more progressive, more artsy, kind of a better scene than St. Louis in many ways. Cities that love their baseball and also have the brewery thing. Budweiser versus Miller. That was a whole thing.

OnMilwaukee: Tell me about it.

Randy: It felt like a brawl between two Midwestern brothers.

OnMilwaukee: My second exposure to the Sklars was "Cheap Seats." I saw every episode, but specifically, I wanted to know if you know who performed the bumper music for "The Cheapies."

Randy: That was our buddy Matt Crocco. There was a great, hilarious puppet show on MTV in the 2000s called "The Sifl and Olly Show," and Liam Lynch, who directed the Tenacious D movie. He's a fantastic musician. He did all the little songs, like "Heartache."

OnMilwaukee: People should remember that "Cheap Seats" was pre-YouTube. Maybe now people can just Google ridiculous old sports and get arm wrestling footage at your fingertips, but I imagine you guys probably had to really search for that stuff, right?

Jason: Our staff came from ESPN, and they did such an amazing job of culling ESPN's libraries. They would request all the things that sounded weird or funny. The old spelling bees, dog shows, etc. They did a really great job of cutting out the stuff that didn't matter because some of these thing were three, four hours long. It was a collaborative process. Those guys, I give them so much credit for finding the most amazing source material.

OnMilwaukee: Maybe people don't realize that Sterling Archer – H. Jon Benjamin – was on the show.

Jason: Yeah. We had Nick Kroll on the show. Scott Aukerman did a sketch on the show. Harris Wittels, he was part of that sketch. He was on that show. Patton Oswalt and Brian Posehn played adult versions of kids who were putt-putt champions who were brothers and rivals.

Randy: Paul Rudd did a hilarious sketch on the show. Zach Galifianakis played a guy who was fighting Title IX.

Jason: David Cross played a guy who was a competitive eating champion who had lost a ton of weight. Much in the way of Jared from Subway would constantly hold up his pants, but not in the way of Jared, himself, where he stayed away from …

OnMilwaukee: Probably for the best. But that’s quite a legacy of alumni. Those guys weren’t huge back then.

Randy: I love what we created with that show for a lot of reasons. Number one, because it was on a small network like ESPN Classic we were able to do four seasons and 77 episodes and really figure out the voice of the show and get it to a place where it was humming along at the best possible clip that it could be. There are episodes in the third and fourth season that I think are really what we intended that show to be. It took us all that time to get to that place. We did actually go to a point where there was a studio audience that was forces upon the show.

OnMilwaukee: Was that an actual, real studio audience or a laugh track?

Randy: That was a real studio audience of about 50 people. What that audience did allow us was to get a guy like Jon Glaser who is fantastic and did the show "Delocated" and "Conan" and everything.

Jason: Our audience warm up comedian was Mike Birbiglia.

OnMilwaukee: Yeah, that's not a bad guy to have doing warm up.

Randy: It was just an unbelievable time. Jay and I love the idea of a comedy community. To have a show where we could dole out as many things as we could to friends that we loved to be a part of. Write toward them and their strengths and what they do. What's crazy is that it did exist pre-social media. I feel like if this show had been around during social media it might still be on.

OnMilwaukee: You left on a high note. All of a sudden the show was over. What happened here?

Randy: We'd almost done 100 episodes, which is in the television industry is massive. We were able to do it in a very clear version of our vision and the vision of the people who worked on it. We feel it was not really cluttered and the message came out the way it did. A lot of people who come up to us while we're on the road or now that we're on social media all the time, say, "I wish you two were back." For a lot of people it was their favorite show. To us, that is the ultimate sign that we should keep creating things, to trust ourselves. It really was a special experience for us.

Jason: I think what we've learned since then is that you think about all the sports comedies that have existed – most have just been narratives: "First and Ten," "Arli$$." "Sports Night" was more of a drama-dy.

Our show – a variety sketch mixed in with all kinds of stuff – I don't think there's been another one like it since or really before. For that, we're super proud. We packed it with jokes. If TV show makes me laugh three or four times in half an hour, I think that's one of the funniest shows up there. We felt like "Cheap Seats," hopefully had three or four. Whether it was a joke we made over the action or a sketch or something we had at least three to five big laughs in every episode.

OnMilwaukee: I don't want to only dwell on the past here but I think that you guys strike me as two funny dudes who love sports and get to go do this for a living, whether it's the podcast or stand up. But you’ve also had roles like "Entourage," or "Always Sunny." Does the direction of your careers ever surprise you?

Randy: The "Entourage" thing was really fun. Jay got the initial role, then they wrote this bigger episode for us. When they wrote that for us we were acting with Jeremy Piven and Mary J. Blige, there is a moment where you have to say, "Oh my God, this is amazing."

By the same token, I would say there was a moment when we were doing "Law and Order" in New York. We were in this scene with Dennis Farina. That was the moment when we looked up and said this is just amazing. It's amazing that our careers have taken us to this place where we can do this right now. Yes, you have to take stock of all those moments. Even the hard ones. Even the difficult ones you have to enjoy those as you're going through it.

OnMilwaukee: The thing that amazes me most, being in the online media business, is we did a lot of podcasts that didn't work. I was ready to write them off. You guys have an incredibly successful, awesome podcast. There are only a few people who are doing it really, really well. Why have you been successful in that genre where other people, us included, have not been able to pull it off?

Jason: I don't know why the stuff you guys were doing wasn't successful.

OnMilwaukee: Maybe because it sucked.

Jason: I do know. You guys just didn't care enough.

OnMilwaukee: I think you're right. Low production quality.

Jason: You guys were doing a lot of cocaine at the time. You were trying to jam a whole hour episode into 11 minutes and that's what the cocaine will do. No, you know, I think, Randy and I, our background when it comes to broadcasting, is in radio. Our attitude was like, we got write for this. We got to prepare for it. Even if it feels off the cuff, we got to write jokes. We got to make sure that we can't just turn the microphones on and be like, let's scroll down what's going on in the NFC East.

Not only do we get to talk about sports, we wanted to use sports as a portal into our attitudes and comedic points of view towards the world. We're constantly looking for what is weird and what is interesting in the world of sports. How does that get reflected in our point of view about the world? That to me is a pretty layered and deep approach. More than just turning the microphones on and saying let's just have fun. By the way, some podcasts can do that and are incredible.

I think about what Pete Holmes does on "You Made It Weird," and I think about what (Mark) Maron has done. Those guys are two interview people. They research and they prepare and they bring to the interviews a certain level of depth. Both those guys are just really talented interviewers. I think that's why those guys are so successful and they've gotten big guests. Obviously the bigger the guest they deeper they can go with them and the better it is.

For us, let's make it a show. Let's write the material and make sure the top monologue or dialogue between Randy and I are super funny. Let's make sure the interview is funny and has an angle about sports so it feels different interviews they've done. Then let's add a funny character bit that we create with all these amazing character actors at the end. By the end of our podcast people feel like they've gotten a show. I think that's helped us be successful in this world.