Want to interview someone interesting? It was a few weeks ago when I was asked that question, and on a whim I said, "Of course." Then, sitting at my desk, computer open, phone to my ear, I found myself in an open phone interview with a man whose name may not be the most known but whose work is watched by millions nightly. His name is Rory Albanese, and his claim to fame is his role as executive producer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Now, many of you are probably wondering, as I did, "If he has such a big role in making The Daily Show, why would his name not be readily known?" It's because he, along with just over 100 other employees whom viewers rarely see or hear, works from behind the scenes to make sure the show runs smoothly every single day it airs. Usually a background player, Rory is getting his own personal comedy out to the public in the form of a 30-minute comedy special, his first televised stand-up act, which premiered April 2 on Comedy Central. The interview took place before his special aired, and I could instantly tell that he is very funny just from our short conversation. Between making fun of me for being Canadian and sharing his the secret to being funny on a bad day (cocaine and hookers), he imparted many anecdotes from his more than 10 years in the business: tales of growing up wanting to be a comedian and getting rough starts by bombing, bombing and bombing again before finding the recipe for success.

"I always knew I wanted to be a comedian since I was a kid," Rory said, "I used to sit around in class making jokes, and when I found out that you could actually get paid to sit around and write jokes, there was no stopping me. The only other profession I would think of being is the world's greatest action star. A piece of advice for the future: If you set your back-up goals to be unattainable, you can't help but achieve what you set out to do."

While it sounds like the American dream job, like all things in life, comedy also takes some work. Once he got into comedy, Albanese realized that failure comes at you hard and fast and the only way to overcome it is to "just get up and do it. It's never hard to try it and when you get older and have a little patience under your belt you might just succeed. It took me five to six years at The Daily Show of doing jobs that weren't funny and creative, but if you do things well and stick to it you can go somewhere."

With a successful job, he has won four Emmy awards during his time with The Daily Show. So why did he choose to pursue stand-up comedy?

"I love my job and I am in a good position, so stand-up is an outlet for things I want to say that I can approach from my point of view with my voice. . It gives me an outlet to express my own stuff. It's an exercise in staying sane for me [but] without having to hide behind the guarantee that Jon [Stewart] will take the idea and make it work."

His work on The Daily Show is much different from his stand-up. On the show, he and all the other writers have a daily meeting with Stewart in which funny ideas are drawn upon, with funny faces and sound bytes added later until the final product we see every night is shown. With Albanese's own stand-up, even after 10 years of experience, you need to publicly fail to sculpt material into a solid set.

He recounts, "I did a show with Lewis Black at a club in New Jersey, and . [it] was the longest seven minutes of my life. Needless to say, I really bombed. After my set ended, I went backstage ready to apologize to Lewis and he was just sitting there laughing as hard as he could. I was like, 'What are you laughing at? I just bombed out there!' He said to me, 'I know. You were supposed to.' You are good at comedy when you can go out and bomb a set and not really care because it is taken as a learning experience. If you bomb and still want to do stand-up, you have the disease. . It makes stand-up exciting. I went back to the club to face the toughest audience I ever had again before my special, and they really enjoyed it. That was how I knew I had something good."

After seeing his special on Comedy Central, I realized how correct he was. The whole set was hilarious, with jokes ranging from American superiority to growing up on Long Island and the shame of never being a true New Yorker (but always feeling enough satisfaction that he isn't from New Jersey). The first step in going from contributor to star is getting yourself out there, and if the special is any indication of what is to come, Albanese doesn't have much to worry about-except for a group of angry Canadian, British and New Jersey natives throwing trash at his head. At the end of the day, it's all fun and games, and as he said, "It's comedy: The first step is to not take yourself too seriously.