Pardo never not funny

Comedian Jimmy Pardo loves Cedar Rapids. No joking.

Before he found fame working the crowds in Conan O'Brien's audiences and working his friends and comedy colleagues through his popular 'Never Not Funny” podcast, Pardo was packing 'em in at Penguins Comedy Club.

He's coming back for more with 8 p.m. shows Nov. 4 and 5.

'I've been very lucky, in that for whatever reason, Cedar Rapids was one of the very first cities to respond to my nonsense,” Pardo, 50, said from Los Angeles, where the Chicago native has lived for nearly 23 years.

'I went from still being a nobody to Cedar Rapids responding to me as if I was somebody special. I would have pretty full rooms when other comics weren't, or I'd go to other cities and hope to God there'd be an audience, and Cedar Rapids was always pretty jammed - and they were all there to see me, which was pretty cool.”

He's been playing Penguins for about 25 years, from its first basement location along First Avenue SE to its current subterranean site facing Second Avenue SE. He's become such good friends with founder Jeff Johnson that he can't resist the urge to do some good-natured ribbing.

'I did three New Year's Eves at that old location,” Pardo said. 'When it came to the new location, my opening line was something like, ‘You gotta wonder what the real estate agent said to Jeff Johnson; and Jeff insisted, Where's an awkward basement? Sold!' He just insists on being underground, doing comedy.”

Pardo took his comedy underground, too, as one of the early podcast pioneers.

He didn't even know what 'podcast” meant when his co-host from a University of California talk show suggested branching out. Ricky Gervais had one, so Pardo decided to take the plunge, too, interviewing his funny friends and colleagues.

A 20-minute format turned into 30 minutes, then an hour. Now, each episode of 'Never Not Funny” gets 50,000 downloads, and if someone like O'Brien comes into the studio for a chat, the numbers spike to 100,000.

'People caught onto it really fast,” Pardo said. 'I think it's because I was a professional comedian, not just a guy talking into my computer. It was funny, and luckily iTunes took a liking to it right away. They started featuring us a lot - there wasn't a lot to feature. When we started, we would battle it out. It was me, Ricky Gervais and The Onion. We were the top three podcasts for a long time.

'That's how it started - a guy who was admittedly the last guy to join Twitter, I was one of the last guys to join Facebook. I felt like, ‘I don't know what this is, but I'll take the chance, and maybe this is the one thing that happens.' And I'm glad that I did.”

He uses the same talk-show format of the comedians he grew up admiring, such as Johnny Carson and the Chicago-based radio duo Steve Dahl and Garry Meier. Pardo doesn't script his in-studio podcast interviews - they're built on free-flowing conversation. That's the same tactic he's used when working audiences for O'Brien and on the club circuit.

'The one time I did any research was for Ty Burrell, and all I wrote down was his character name of ‘Phil,' because I couldn't remember it for the life of me,” Pardo said, speaking of the actor who shot to fame on television's 'Modern Family.”

'And that was it. We're not a stop on the PR train. This gives (the guest) the opportunity to come in and just chat. If we talk about your career, great. If you have something to plug, certainly we're going to plug it. But it's a place to come and just riff like you're in the green room of a TV show or comedy club, as if nobody's listening.”

Luckily, lots of people are listening.

They've been listening for years, as others have told him he was funny as a kid.

'I don't know when I figured it out, but I saved myself from getting my (expletive) kicked a dozen times by outwitting the bully,” he said.

Today, he bounces ideas off his wife, comedy writer Danielle Koenig. Nature and nurture are a powerful combination in their family. The couple's 9-year-old son is well aware his grandpa is cool, starring as Chekov on 'Star Trek,” first on TV, then in films.

'He thinks it's the greatest thing in the world,” Pardo said.

(Eastern Iowa trivia: Born in Chicago, Walter Koenig attended Grinnell College as a pre-med student before transferring to UCLA and earning a bachelor's degree in psychology.)

The 'Star Trek” saga lives long and prospers in the Pardo household, too. Armed with an iPad, Pardo's son gets his friends together to shoot the 'Star Trek” episodes he's written, continuing the mission to explore strange new worlds - with technology that makes his father shake his head.

IF YOU GO

Who: Jimmy Pardo

Where: Penguins Comedy Club, 208 Second Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids

When: 8 p.m. Nov. 4 and 5

Tickets: $20 advance, $22.50 door, (319) 362-8133 or Penguinscomedyclub.com

Artist's website: Jimmypardo.com