Two Comedy Pros Explain Stand-Up to an Idiot (Me) | Laura Kightlinger & Tony Camin

About this episode

I’m a pretty good comedian. Not great. Pretty good. So this week I brought in two people who really know what they’re doing to tell me how to get better. Laura Kightlinger has done just about everything in comedy. She was a featured player on Saturday Night Live, wrote for Roseanne, and spent years as a writer and producer on Will & Grace, where she also played Nurse Sheila. She created and starred in her own IFC series, The Minor Accomplishments of Jackie Woodman, and she’s turned up in Anchorman, Shallow Hal, Lucky Louie and PEN15. She has stand-up specials on HBO and Comedy Central, and she directed an award-winning documentary. Tony Camin got his start on Bay Area college radio and at San Francisco’s legendary Holy City Zoo, where Robin Williams used to play. He has done stand-up on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and at Just for Laughs. With Arj Barker and Doug Benson, he co-created The Marijuana-Logues, which ran a full year Off-Broadway. His album is called Ass Pocket of Whimsy. I pitched them a brand-new bit and asked whether I’m doing this all wrong, and I got some answers I wasn’t ready for. Laura tells the wild story of surviving a brain aneurysm, including what she said