Paul Mecurio

Back in the mid-'90s, before Paul Mecurio was a successful stand-up comedian and TV writer, he was just another struggling comic, slumming it in some of the grimiest nightclubs in New York City.

But Mecurio was different from other comics in one important way: While his peers were sleeping in past 10 a.m. to recover from late nights performing, Mecurio was waking up at the crack of dawn to make it to his job as an investment banker on Wall Street.

For months, Mecurio kept his evening gig a secret from his Wall Street colleagues. But after a particularly grisly club appearance, Mecurio's secret life began to get too strange to hide.

"I was performing at a place called Downtown Beirut II," Mecurio recalled. "And before I went on, there was this guy playing 'Blowing in the Wind' -- badly."

"And then all of the sudden, this guy in the audience starts screaming, 'He cut me, that son of a bitch cut me!' And he's got blood all over him, and he's obviously drunk.

"Some other guy -- somebody he apparently knew -- had slashed his neck with box cutters. Meanwhile the folk singer keeps playing. He ain't stopping for nothing. And then the cops come in the place with walkie-talkies and everything."

Standing offstage, Mecurio pondered his options. READ MORE...

"For the normal person, that would have been God's message to get out of there. But I stayed. I was obsessed with doing my set," he said.

"So I go on and say, 'It's nice to be here at Downtown Beirut II. I've always wanted to follow a slashing.' And the guy who got cut heard me say 'slashing.' He'd been standing there with a bunch of cocktail napkins wadded up to stop the bleeding. And he yells, 'Are you talking about me?' and then charges the stage and throws this clump of bloody napkins at my white, clean Brooks Brothers shirt."

Bloodstained shirt notwithstanding, Mecurio finished his set. Afterward, around midnight, he jumped in a cab and headed to his office.

"There was a deal that we'd been working on that had just blown up," he said. "I get into the office, reeking of beer and cigarettes. And then my boss is like, 'Why do you have a huge bloodstain on your shirt?' And I was like, 'It was a really hostile deal. I don't know what to tell you.'"

"That was the point when I decided I had to do something," he continued. "I either had to do it strictly as a hobby or quit my job and do it fulltime -- or blow my brains out."

So, much to his parents' dismay, Mecurio quit his job.

"I sold my apartment, sold all my suits and moved to a rooming house that was like a halfway house for ex-cons," he said.

It was from that lowly point that Mecurio made his long ascent from dive-bar comic to filming his own stand-up special on Comedy Central, writing for "The Daily Show" and becoming a regular contributor to "The Bob and Tom Show," where he's "The Image Makeover Guy."

"Bob and Tom are great because they allow comedians to be who they are," Mecurio said.

Mecurio usually visits the popular Q95 comedy team when he comes to town, which he'll do for the second time in two years when he visits Crackers Comedy Club in Broad Ripple this week.

"My show is theatrical," he said. "I see people look at me and wonder what I'm doing -- they don't expect it. That's what I want."

Comedy is an art form, Mecurio said, and like in any art form, originality should be the comic's ultimate goal.

"The trick is to have people want to come back to see you because they know they're going to see something no one else can do."