Jimmy Pardo brings his Pardcast" to the Punchline"

• Robyn Von Swank
• GOT YOUR POD RIGHT HERE: Jimmy Pardo

With his weekly “Never Not Funny” podcast, fast-talking stand-up comedian Jimmy Pardo brought a little polish and snappy patter to the slapdash standards of comedy podcasts beginning in the spring of 2006. Today, “Never Not Funny” has enough subscribers to boost Pardo’s stand-up career, while he also enjoys his “day job” as the opening act for Conan O’Brien on first “The Tonight Show” and now “Conan.” For his visit to Atlanta, Pardo hosts a live recording of “Never Not Funny” on April 28, followed by two days of straight-up stand-up the 29th and 30th.

You call your job with “Conan” the “opening act” before the broadcasts begins, as opposed to the “warm-up act.” How is it different, since there’s obviously some warming up going on?
I’ve described it as the greatest day job in the world. Look, my paycheck says “warm-up.” That’s the job I was hired to do. I’m grateful that they didn’t want the guy who throws out T-shirts and fun-sized candies, and asks the audience if they know TV theme songs and gets them to sing along. They told me to hit a few beats for legal reasons — point out the fire exits, turn off the cell phones — but otherwise, they hired me because they like what I do and think I’m funny. I’ll go out for a minimum of 10 minutes, but it’s been as long as 22, because one night they had a technical problem. And believe me, they were over me that night: “We can to see Conan! Why is this man still talking?”

Sometimes I think the comics who warm up studio audiences are the unsung heroes of TV comedy.
I’m lucky that I don’t have to keep doing it during the commercial breaks. Other warm-ups, it’s almost like babysitting the audience, keeping them focused instead of actually entertaining them. And there’s a skill to that, especially the ones at a taping of a sitcom, who’ll be there for five hours. It’s not something I’d ever want to do, but it’s totally necessary.