"My family was into making each other laugh, a lot of joking. I was into this idea of humor. It was kind of odd that I was this young girl who was into joking around. That's not normal. The class clown's for the boys. I felt outside of things. I would tell these hilarious stories to my friends, but I was in a tutu. Things didn't match up."

She’s got a trunk full of insecurity that comes standard with the vehicle of stand-up. She fights for acceptance in an arena where she’s outnumbered by men. She expresses the headache, nausea, and heartburn/break that is family. When you wrap it all up nicely with brown paper and string and a Grey Goose on the rocks you have Ophira Eisenberg, a talented comedian I spoke with recently.

Ophira and I got together at a Starbuck's downtown, then thought better of it and moved to Shades of Green, a bar known simply as Shades to the locals. Clever locals.

She's been performing for ten years and has appeared on Comedy Central's Premium Blend and VH1's Best Week Ever. She's also co-host of Sweet Paprika, a weekly show at the D-Lounge on East 15th Street. Even with her gradual success in stand-up’s toughest market, she seems to be in an uphill battle with her own self confidence.

“Paprika started at The Village Lantern in Greenwich Village two years ago. One night we had some really bizarre people up front. I was hosting. It wasn't going particularly well. A guy, late 40's, seemed like a problem from the get-go. He stood up and said, ‘You're horrible.’ He said it over and over again. Then he started rambling about Lenny Bruce and politics. I ushered that guy out. But, hee kept yelling, ‘Buy the book!’ It rattled me. It was every worst fear come true. He was like the critic in my head. 'You're horrible!'"

Two years later, Ophira and Allison are trying to carry a show with a small subdued crowd. As co-hosts they play off one another very well through a combination of talent and camaraderie. Ophira, the warmer, lighter of the two. Allison, tougher; the Rhoda to Ophira’s Mary Tyler Moore.

"I really respect Allison Castillo. I work with her all the time. She's brilliant. She's got a really amazing energy. Then there's Roger Hailes. I quote his material all the time. Every time I see that guy, it's so funny. Josh Comers, he has a great bit. Very dry. ‘College basketball is like my religion. I'm completely indifferent to it.’ Really dark. I like people who are dark."

Ophira and Allison present a traditional piece where they discuss how they dress up for the show and name their outfits. Allison, sporting a black and metallic top belts out, “GOLD-ZINGER!” (sung very well) Ophira counters by saying, “I'm still wearing summer clothes because I don't feel like going underneath my bed.”

This persona Ophira has, that she is one of us just trying to get by, is reminiscent of Ellen Degeneres’s early work. She’s doesn’t come off as cynical as a lot of comics and her conversational style is very welcoming.

Though she always had a fondness for humor, she didn’t always want to do this for a living. "I thought show biz and entertainment was only for idiots. I got an anthropology degree. When I was in college, I wanted people to think I was smart. All I ever got was that I was funny."

"I grew up in Calgary. When I grew up there, it was like a mixture of Texas and Denver. Cowboys, oil, ranchers, skiing. It would be a RED state. It's a conservative province. Both my parents were immigrants. My dad is from Israel. My mother is from Holland. They left Israel when it was Palestine, just before the War of Independence because my mother was sick of wars. They moved to Canada."

"I went to McGill in Montreal. People spoke French there. You could get by with just English, but you couldn't read a sign. It was a real awakening. I finished college, then, two years later, I started doing stand-up. I had no idea what to do with my life. I thought about going for a Master's. I moved to Vancouver where my sisters lived. Eight months later, a comedy festival came to Vancouver. I thought, 'I'm not really doing anything with my life, except smoking pot.' All of a sudden I had this deep desire to do comedy. I volunteered for the festival, ushering people to their seats, working alongside amateur comedians. They said, 'You should come to the class.' It was a weekend workshop that cost $400. I didn't have the money but I went and thought I'd duck out. The teacher told me to get on stage and do some material. I didn't have any material. I got up, told a story, and he said, 'You have that quality. You have raw talent.' I thought, ‘I do? Really?’"

"So I put together some material, called in sick to my job at Kinko's, and did a showcase. It took me six years to get to New York. It took me a while for me to take it seriously. I moved to Toronto, spent four years there. I did some television there, got an agent, and learned about the business. Then, I finally got the guts to move to New York."

“What sets Ophira apart and makes her extremely funny is that the audience relates to her as if she is a long-time friend recounting crazy tales of hilarious insanity. The stories are very well-crafted but Ophira relays them in a seemingly spontaneous way that takes the audience wherever she wants them to go. Of course, being Canadian doesn't hurt. (Oh, wait. Did I betray a slight bias?)”
– Kevin Janus, host of Comedy Igloo

"Walking alone is the best state to come up with material. It's hard to sit down for half an hour and say, ‘I'm going to write some comedy.’ I'll do it, and it will be totally unusable. Some people, I really like talking to. We're each other's muse and something will just come up in conversation. That's my favorite. You're writing jokes and don't even know it."

"I don't have anything else going on (other than stand-up for work). I was working a part-time day job up until a month ago. When I moved here I had no money, so I got a job fixing computers. But I wanted more time for writing and comedy, so I quit. I'm not focusing on the road so much anymore. I love New York audiences. They're so smart and fun and dark. I love the idea of playing to my people. You go on the road, the frame of reference isn't the same, especially in a less cosmopolitan area. Maybe they're just dumb. That's often the case. Artistically, I often wonder if it's worth it."

That topic of New York audiences versus suburban or smaller cities; trying to put the finger on why some shows go so wrong, is one that we discussed and Ophira looked at it psychologically. "So many possibilities. One, you might expect it. I think that's a huge thing that happens for me with material. It's such a complicated brain frame to get into; pretending that you don't know how the joke is going to work. I feel like the audience is a drug-sniffing dog, so sensitive to every little thing you do. And if you are just off your game a tad, they're on it. There's that great thing where you're making connections in the air, going from one to the next and it's all working out, fairly magical. It's this state of ultimate comfort that you let yourself, like meditation, get to that place, it has to happen naturally. Or that audience on the second night is idiots. Or they're tired."

"People who aren't funny can't tell jokes. Maybe they're great poets, or cooks, or just fun to be around. Maybe they're curmudgeons. But, the people who think they're funny and aren’t; they just ruin it for all of us. They go to comedy clubs and think, 'I'm funnier than you.' Every once in a while, you get a heckler that's funny, but has no outlet. My cousin thinks she could be a stand-up comedian. She's very bright. Very clever. Not very funny. She's a professor. Everybody thinks they can do it."

"The funny person at a party, telling a story, and someone who tells that story on the stage – two different worlds. You find that out immediately. I want to believe that the ability to be a stand-up comic is something you’re born with; that sort of innate talent. But I know that with hard work, if you watch and really listen, you can learn how to write jokes. I think they're formulaic. It may not be natural if you have this drive."

"You can make a theory as to why people develop a certain personality. Maybe they're the odd person out, or trying to compensate to make people like them."

Edie Falco. That’s who Ophira Eisenberg reminds me of when discussing topics close to her heart. She gave me that stern look Carmela gives Tony when discussing the struggle women face in certain clubs. "You have to fight harder as a woman to gain authority over a bunch of guys who may try to overpower you. They're insanely insecure because they didn't get into the frat house of their choice. I want them to have fun. I don't want to tell them to fuck off, because then you have to take care of the rest of the audience. They might not entirely be on your side. It becomes a tennis match where they just sit back and see what happens. Where's the ball now?"

"Everyone keeps telling me, 'Oh, they're always looking for funny women. You're so lucky.' I have yet to find these people who are so desperate. It's stand-up. Either you're good or you're bad. Maybe I was in a bubble in Toronto, but I didn't notice gender differentiation as much. When I moved here, I really noticed it. I don't know why that is. I'm not going say Canada is amazing and gay people can get married there. Their ideas are just a little different in general."

"You are still hard pressed to find five women on a show with two guys. It's not going to happen. Women don't like watching women. Men aren't going to trip over themselves to watch women. Gay guys, maybe? It's really hard to figure out what that audience is. Women are too competitive. Some women are totally cool. It's a blanket statement, but if you see a woman in the crowd with their boyfriend or husband, and the man laughs, then you're OK. In New York, it's pretty good. But, the further you go away... I played Indianapolis and there was a lot of white trash and bikers there and I just thought, 'This is not going to go well. They are not going to appreciate the subtle humor.'"

When I caught her set at Comedy Igloo a few weeks prior and I noticed that her expression also changed when she spoke about her family. I asked her if it it's easy to make your family seem funny to others? "It's always what I've done. I've never been any good at observational humor. I don't think I've ever been good at political humor. What works for me is to speak autobiographically. I think I have a unique life. Everybody probably thinks they have a unique life. I like making fun of things that are true. Not dreams, not the fantasy world; I like things that are on the earth. I'm scared to death of my family seeing my set, but they don't really have that much access to it."

"When I'm talking about my sister, I feel that the underlying... it's fucked up. It's like every comic. I'm fucked up. They're fucked up."

"The idea of traveling around, doing shows, is strange (to my family). They haven't seen me perform in a long time. I don't do a show in Canada when I visit. They know I have a comedy special I taped in Canada about six years ago, so I know they've seen it. It (the family thing) kind of sucks. But, would it better to have totally supportive parents asking, 'What jokes are you going to do?' I don't know. I never had that growing up. This is what I know."

Ophira has a boyfriend. Wait, congratulations are in order, fiancée. “He grew up listening to comedy albums, knows more about it than I do. He’s always gone to a lot of comedy. He probably never thought he'd date a comic, but he likes it. Being on the road is tougher on me. I don't like being out of my comfort zone. He likes his space. But, the whole lifestyle is hard on the relationship.”

“It's hard to say, ‘I know you've got this important event in your life on this date, but I've got a show.’
‘So, cancel it.’
‘Uh, no.’
‘How much money are you making?’
‘Maybe nothing.’
That argument is still a work in progress. I try to be flexible, but don't want to. That's compromising.”

The point where things really started to happen for Ophira, where her stand-up career turned the corner here in the states, was when she was booked on Comedy Central’s Premium Blend. "I got to know Joann Grigioni & Anne Harris who booked for Comedy Central. They're very visible. They do a lot of stuff on the scene. They go to a lot of shows. They're fun and will hang out a little bit. They're the kind of industry people you like. I did a taping show at Caroline's. I asked them to come and they showed up and I had a great set. I felt like I was getting closer to my goal. It was a goal I had set that I was going to achieve and that was the end of it. I thought I wasn't going to get it and I tortured myself. I just went through every, ‘You're a piece of shit! What the fuck are you doing with your life? What are you going to do now?’"

“Then Joann Grigioni called me one night at 7 pm. I dismissed it as some condolence call because it was so late in the game. I called her back at two in the morning and I was tanked. She was in another city, another time zone, which didn't make it seem crazy. She told me I got Premium Blend. I had spent a month tearing myself up because I didn't reach this goal. I put a lot of pressure on myself for some reason. It was a big relief. I don't know how big it is to the world, but to a comic, you've reached a new stage of maturity. My bat mitzvah."

"Some people would book you blankly because you have a Premium Blend credit. I don't know if that's the case now with Live at Gotham. I feel like half the game is to have this tape, this elusive tape. Premium Blend gives you a television quality tape to send out.”

Now, she’s on stage four or five night a week. Is she concerned with getting burned out? “Definitely. I do my material four times and I'm bored with it. But, I've learned that I can't do that. When I was pursuing Premium Blend, I learned you really have to work on seven minutes for a year to make it perfect. You have to be able to say, 'I know how this works and you can count on it.' Then they'll say, 'Of course!' I used to try something new every second day and that was great. But I never honed stuff. Jim MacAleese, a comic from Canada, once told me, 'It's called a routine for a reason.'" Simple message that makes a point.

"There are a lot a Canadian comics I like that no one here has heard of, like Wayne & Schuster. They did a variety show that I was obsessed with.

"I've done some film work and a meager amount of acting on television. I would love to do more.” She’s just completed a one-woman show in November, called Vanilla Mistress.

“After a show I did, a woman from Marie Claire came up to me and asked for a pitch on a sex stunt. Sex writers always have to be comedians. So I came up with this idea that I was going to be a dominatrix; ingratiate myself to the S&M world of New York. They said, ‘Great.’ So, I did that for a month. I was such a fish out of water, asking men, ‘Are you ok?’ I went to classes and groups. I wrote the article and thought it would be good fodder for a show. In the club situation it has nothing to do with sex. It might be nudesque. It's all about these power games. Some dark stuff. As I found out, there’s not much of a sense of humor in those circles. Very serious. I was finally using my Cultural Anthropology degree."

"I got a director for the show. It made me wish I had one for stand-up. I watch tapes of myself and say, ‘Bad! Awful! What's going on with your hair? Terrible!”

"I'm not economic with my words. It's always something that I have to work on. I'm more conversational. The punch line's coming. C'mon everybody! Stick with me! Brace yourself. I try to find something that I feel sounds like me; not something crafted and written and would never come out of my mouth. Sooner or later I will type it out and get very upset with how many, 'like's' there are."

"I don't have a formula. The only thing I do to psych myself up to do well; I usually just say, 'Fuck 'em. If they hate me, too bad. This is what I do. It's too late to change now. There's no changing. No more studying for the exam. I'm doing it. And if what I'm doing is not what they're into, fuck 'em.’"

To learn more about Ophira Eisenberg and where she’s performing, visit ophiraeisenberg.com or sweetpaprika.com