You know him from his hilarious podcast, Never Not Funny, or perhaps as the host of GSN’s National Lampoon’s Funny Money some years back. Or maybe you know him as the co-host of AMC’s Movies At Our House. However you know him, and especially if you don’t, Creatively Speaking is thrilled to have Jimmy Pardo on board today to divulge all there is to know about the comedy racket, and even offer some tips for those looking to break into the bizness.

So without further ado, let’s get right into it.

DI: I’d imagine it’s not really a choice, comedy, because, let’s face it, why would anyone DECIDE to try and make it in this crazy arena. It must have chosen you, no? At what age did you become aware you possessed the power to make people laugh?

JP: I’m told I was always the kid making people laugh… but I would probably say around 12 or 13. I was a short kid who either had to make the girls laugh to get “dates” or use my wit to avoid getting beat up. And yes, it did choose me (as pretentious as that sounds). I had a great job at MCA Records that I left to make $150 a week doing stand-up. Thankfully my price has gone up dramatically since then.

DI: Once you figured out you had the gift, what did you do next to pursue the dream?

JP: I did the usual theatre and choir stuff that one would do through high school, and when I turned 21, I went to my first open mic. I was great out of the box… and then stunk for a long time.
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Thanks for perusing today’s mental_floss Brain Game. Don’t forget to check out our other great features on mentalfloss.com, including the daily 5 Questions trivia challenge. And if you’re not already on board, please do your part to keep the fun coming (and get a lot of other great entertainment besides) by subscribing to our wonderful print magazine. Or if you prefer your fun in 0s and 1s, save a bit with a digital subscription. And tell them Sandy sent ya.

What follows isn’t just a stack of letters. Each numbered set of three letters represents the title of a hit feature film with ALL of its vowels removed. JWS, for instance, would be JAWS. (These aren’t quite that simple, of course.) Can you decipher all five? Good luck!

12 foods that should be stocked in every healthy kitchen. Please read this while I have some more bacon.
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Do you remember Count Chocula and Frankenberry’s lesser-known relatives? Here are 10 breakfast cereals you may have forgotten. (Disclosure: I wrote this.)
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Take a look at Manhattan in 2009 vs 1609…the year Henry Hudson opened an all-night bodega.
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In honor of the upcoming movie, 10 innovations inspired by Star Trek. (Romulan Ale and Tribbles not included.)
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Tempest! BurgerTime! Dig Dug! Here are 95 old school games you can play online (You’re welcome.)
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It’s beautiful outside, but you don’t have a backyard. Check out these tips for a great apartment garden.
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Advice on how too live a long, healthy life from a 97-year-old doctor.
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And here are 6 Sci-Fi TV Shows You Probably Didn’t See, including The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang (”Richie, the Fonz and their pals get stuck in a time-machine and have adventures in different times while trying to return home to the Milwaukee of 1957.”)

Picking a name for a newborn can be an agonizing process for parents, but it’s a whole lot easier than naming a racehorse. While Thoroughbred owners may not have to worry about the risk of subjecting their foals to ridicule on the playground, they must select names that sound good when shouted but that also meet strict guidelines. Here’s an overview of the naming process and an explanation behind the names of some of the horses in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.

The Jockey Club

Since 1894, the Jockey Club has been charged with maintaining The American Stud Book, a registry of all Thoroughbreds foaled in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico, as well as Thoroughbreds imported into those countries. North American breeders register approximately 37,000 Thoroughbreds each year and the Jockey Club has an online database of more than 430,000 names in active use, all of which must first be approved by the organization’s censors.

One of the most common naming conventions is to combine the names of the foal’s sire and dam. For instance, 1995 Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch was the son of Gulch and Line of Thunder. A cleverer example of this sort is the name Inside Information, which was derived from Private Account and Pure Profit. Of the roughly 60,000 name requests submitted annually, about one-third are rejected because they fall into one or more of the Jockey Club’s 15 classes of names that are strictly forbidden.

The Guidelines

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Sandy and Kara originally posted The Quarter Backs Quiz on July 2, 2007. The quiz has been taken more than 1.16 million times, from nursing homes to middle schools. It’s by far our most popular challenge. As coin quizzes go, it’s a movement.

We’ve received emails requesting a print version, so computer-illiterate friends can get in on the action. People have actually complained about states that were excluded. And over 900 folks left comments to report their scores.

So if you’re not one of the 1.16 million, it’s time to test your knowledge of spare change and state iconography.

Take the Quiz: Quarter Backs

I like hot stuff, to a certain extent. I can’t tell you what my tolerance on the Scoville scale is or anything, but I’m usually down with some spice. My theory is that because I have no sense of smell, I like things with extreme tastes, whether that be extreme sour, extreme sweet, extreme bitter… you get the point. That being said, I know I can’t handle Habaneros other than a little sample, which means I definitely couldn’t deal with the #1 pepper on our list. Could you??

1. Naga Jolokia (or Bhut Jolokia) is about as hot as a pepper gets at 855,000 to 1,050,000 Scoville units (a scientific measure of how hot the pepper is). It’s not at the very top of the scale because that spot is reserved for pure capsaicin, the component in hot peppers that make them have that “burn.” At the time the pepper was tested for the Scoville scale, the Red Savina was the hottest pepper in the world, and the Bhut Jolokia was found to be nearly twice as hot as that. Yikes! It’s reported that just eating just one seed from this scorcher can make your mouth hurt for up to 30 minutes after you consume it. And you had better not get it in your eyes. Just a few weeks ago, an Indian woman set a new Guinness Record (we think… it hasn’t officially been recorded yet) by eating 51 of these things in a mere two minutes. No word on if her stomach lining survived or not.

2. The Red Savina was specifically grown to be a super-hot chili. Frank Garcia of GNS Spices in Walnut, California invented it (or bred it, I guess, would be more accurate), but people have been having trouble growing the Red Savina up to the level of hotness Garcia did, even when they have a certified Red Savina seed. Even so, you can find most Red Savinas somewhere between 350,000 and 580,000 on the Scoville.

3. Habaneros are as about as hot and I’ll go, and even then, I don’t enjoy them; I can just tolerate them. They’re believed to have originated in the Yucatan and have a bit of a citrus flavor to them. The Bhut Jolokia is often mistaken for a habanero, but you would know the difference as soon as you bit into one, I think – the habanero is only (only) 100,000 to 350,000 Scoville units.

4. The Datil pepper can be called a sweeter, fruitier version of the habanero. But just because it’s sweeter doesn’t mean it packs less punch – it can go up to 300,000 units on the Scoville just like the Habanero can. But it can also be milder, going all the way down to 100,000 units. You can find lots of Datil peppers in the St. Augustine, Florida, area. (more…)

I’ve been enjoying Schott’s Vocab, a new blog from the New York Times. It’s about words and word usement (sorry, LA Story reference). Word-nerd Ben Schott has a passion for “lexicographical trifles,” and is attempting to document language as it evolves, day-to-day. Today the blog is about the swine flu — just like every other piece of media in every paper everywhere. But Schott’s article isn’t about deaths, epidemiology, or where to get a SARS Guard; it’s about the language used to describe the current flu. Here’s a sample (minus a bunch of embedded links Schott uses to reference his sources):

Pork producers, for obvious reasons, also favor the (non-porcine) term Mexican flu; the European Union’s Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has advocated (the already out-of-date) “novel flu“; and World Animal Health proposed (the curiously specific) “North American flu.”

The non-profit SaveCalifornia.com decided that what A (H1N1) needed was an alarmist prefix, and promptly re-branded the disease “killer Mexican flu.” British Professor John Oxford went one step further, warning that swine flu could combine with avian flu to form an “Armageddon virus.”

Satirical Web site The Spoof suggested that, to reassure tourists, the virus be called “Miss Piggy Flu” – which was disturbingly close to The Sun’s recent headline, “Piggies in The Muddle.”

Read the rest or check out the main Schott’s Vocab page for a great look at today’s words.

As panic mounts over the increasing number of swine flu cases, it looks like the world is ending, with a sniffle and sneeze. But this certainly isn’t the first time humanity has had to gird itself against the threat of pandemic and, luckily for all of us, lived to tell about it. Here’s a little background on four 20th century outbreaks.

1. The Spanish Flu of 1918: Don’t Blame the Spanish

The absolute worst flu pandemic in recent memory was the so-called Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. Somewhere between 20 and 50 million people died from the Spanish Flu – more than the number of people who died in World War I.

But don’t blame the Spanish. In fact, the virus was likely spread by US soldiers shipped off to fight in World War I – the first recorded case of the flu came on March 11, 1918, at Fort Riley, Kansas. Within a week, the virus had made the rounds through the unsanitary military base – 522 men reported to the camp infirmary, all suffering from the same illness. The flu moved on from there, primarily through military channels, popping up all over the southern Eastern Seaboard, in California, and other states throughout the Union, infecting 28 percent of Americans. Military transport ships then became floating Petri dishes, incubating the disease and then releasing it on arrival in France. From there, the flu ravaged the rest of Europe, already in a weakened state after years of devastating war. And this particular strain of the flu was terrifying – sufferers often succumbed to total respiration failure within hours, essentially suffocating to death in the fluid that filled their lungs.

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Most other nations of the world use different colors and sizes of bills in order to distinguish the values of their paper money. By comparison, it can be difficult to tell a $5 from a $50 bill at a passing glance. Granted, the new designs and color shades adopted by the U.S. Treasury have helped a bit in this regard. Still, the notes look quite similar when one examines only certain elements. In this case, we’ve extracted the buildings depicted on the back of five U.S. currency notes; can you identify their values?

Take the Quiz: Bill Backs

I’ve focused on a few other photographers here on the blog, including Troy Paiva and his amazing night photography, and Garry Winogrand’s legendary street work. This time I’d like to focus on a friend of mine, Natalie Obermaier, who just happens to be an amazing photographer. What I find interesting about her work as a whole is that she has two completely different styles; if you saw examples of each side by side, you might never guess they were created by the same person. Foremost, perhaps, are her subtle but touching black-and-white portraits (the subject of a recent gallery show in San Francisco), which artlog describes as “studies of children [which] evoke the modern malaise of growing up too quickly.”

Her subjects are marooned but coping in a world of lawns and floods and raking afternoon light where adults have left them to fend for themselves. Obermaier maintains a light touch; she seems to have just arrived on the scene, never contriving and never judging. Her effect is modest, but her impact is profound.

That is, photos like this (titled, aptly, “flood”):

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