The prestige of Harvard law school is on its way to getting knocked down a few rungs the Ivy league Ladder thanks to comedian Greg Giraldo. Giraldo, who describes his standup as “mostly dick and fart jokes,” is a graduate of the school. After some time as a lawyer, Giraldo decided to make the drastic jump from courtroom to nightclub. Now, just getting off a stint on the Insomniac tour with Dave Attell and Dane Cook, Giraldo has “Friday Night with Greg Giraldo” – his own television show airing on Comedy Central. Pulse talked with Giraldo about his Harvard background, some possibly compromising movies and his thoughts on his comedic divination.

Rob Lombardi: How has your work on Comedy Central been different from your work before the show?

Greg Giraldo: The show itself is a two-and-a-half hour block of standup, so I don’t have a lot of control over it. If you happen to like a ventriloquist and he’s on that week, you’ll love that part of the show. If you don’t, I’m screwed with that particular segment of the audience. So that’s the part that’s different.

RL: In terms of your legal background, how do you draw on your past experiences?

GG: Well, you know, we are all a sum of our parts, and our experiences are what makes us . and Jesus saves, and crack is whack and stay in school. So, everything I’ve gone through in my life obviously has gotten me where I am now, but I don’t know if it helps or doesn’t help. I’ve never not gone to law school, but I don’t do a lot of stuff on tortuous interference. I used to do a 15-minute closing bit about rule against perpetuities, but now I just do regular comedy.

RL: How did you make the transition from Harvard law to standup comedy?

GG: Well, I didn’t go from law school right into comedy; there was a two-year period when I was doing mostly gay porn. That wasn’t for me either, with the not being gay and all. I was a very bad lawyer – that’s how it happened. I wish I had a good highbrow, artistic reason for having ended up here, but basically it was like, ‘Well, I don’t really want to have a real job, you drink for free and sleep all day, I’m pretty funny – I’ll give that a crack.’

RL: How do you prepare for nights that you just don’t feel like being funny?

GG: Crack-cocaine. You usually don’t feel like that; it becomes kind of second nature. I can’t help it – everything I say is hilarious. So there’s nothing I can do one way or the other – that’s just the way I am. It’s a blessing and a curse. Some nights when you go on stage, there’s a weird phenomenon that happens – especially if it’s a good crowd – everything just sort of stands still. I’ve been really sick, and then you get onstage and it stops and when you get off you go, ‘Aw s—, I’m sick.’ Most of the time you just drink and that makes you forget all your problems. It’s what I always recommend to all college kids.

RL: The comedy business is tough to break into, but when did you know that you made it?

GG: Last night, during the middle of the taping of our show, there was one point when I thought, This could work out – and I’m only half-exaggerating. It never stops, that’s the beauty of it. Anybody that wants to get into comedy can doom yourself to a life of complete insecurity and panic, and that’s kind of why comics are all completely f—ed up. Realistically, if you’re not completely neurotic, if you step back and look at your career, I realized, I guess, I could earn a living – worst-case scenario – on a cruise ship or something.

RL: I know a lot of your standup is not necessarily political. But when you look at Washington and all the scandals going on, as a comedian, do you celebrate that kind of thing?

GG: Do I celebrate the fact that the people responsible for keeping me and my family safe are irresponsible f—ups? Yes, I get thrilled every time I realize people in control of the fate of the planet are not qualified and corrupt. It puts me in a good mood because I know I’ll get a good dick joke out of it. It’s like the Monica Lewinsky thing, when people said it was the best thing to happen to comedy ever. Really? I guess if you have no f—ing imagination. Basically, if you’re talking about things that are going on in the world – there is always shit going on, so you don’t need your government to be a complete disaster to be funny.

RL: Last year, you came out with the Underpants Song. What the hell was that about?

GG: Well, that was my life’s work distilled into music. Thanks for shitting all over it. That was me. I was drunk at the Comedy Cellar in New York and a friend of mine who knew these guys from the group Aqua – they did that song ‘Barbie Girl’ – they made millions off that and retired in London. They were at the Comedy Cellar and they liked my stuff, so we went out after and got really f—ed up and then they told me they had a plan for a weird album they were doing that was techno-type stuff. They were going to travel around the country taking snippets of American thinkers and all this crazy bullshit. So I went to their hotel and they raped me. Literally and figuratively. They had a portable recording studio there and they released it on Universal Motown. It went gold in Australia, was KROQ’s most requested single and I haven’t seen one f—ing penny of it. I feel like I’m one of the black Mississippi blues men that were ripped off by Elvis Presley or something.

RL: Outside of your wife and kids, what influences your work?

GG: Well you know, Jesus. That goes without saying. I think of myself not as much as an artist, but as a vessel for God’s work. You mentioned my bitches bit, and as proud as I was to take some praise for my bitches material, it’s really God’s material. That was God and Jesus speaking through me. I’m inspired divinely; I don’t do anything – the bitches thing came to me right from heaven. I think that [influence] is probably the most overarching of all.

RL: Now that you’ve secured a spot for yourself on television, where do you plan to take this opportunity down the road?

GG: If I was the kind of person that sat down and had those kind of focused plans, I probably wouldn’t be telling jokes in bars for a living. I hear about people writing screenplays . holy s—, how do you stay interested in something that long? I don’t know what the goals are really. The goal is not to suck, mainly. The business keeps changing all the time, as with what the different ways to be seen are. I’m really just hoping to get on a lot of ring tones.

RL: Your standup is pretty erratic. Do you have trouble with people trying to pigeonhole you in a particular type of comedy?

GG: That’s part of the problem. Are you a political or social commentator or just a dick-joke specialist? I like to dabble in all of them. Sometimes you talk about the bitches, sometimes you talk about NAFTA. The hardest part is what enough of the audience is going to appreciate, so you have to make it accessible. If you get known as a political comic, you don’t have to explain who Scooter Libby is – people are already boring enough to know that.