South Ozone Park Couple’s Work Is Definitely A Laughing Matter

   Chances are most people don’t remember where they were at 1:30 a.m. on September 5th, 1983. Jim Mendrinos does.
   That was the first time Mendrinos, then 19, stepped onto the main stage of the comedy club Catch a Rising Star in Manhattan. It was also the last time he would ever think about doing anything else professionally.

   “It changed my life. There’s nothing like performing. It’s an all-consuming art-form, and it’s impossible to do this well if you’re not in love with doing it,” said Mendrinos, now 39.
   Mendrinos’ wife, Leighann Lord, is also a comedian, and the South Ozone Park couple recently returned from the Montreal Comedy Festival, where Lord spent the week performing and Mendrinos publicized his new book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Comedy Writing.” The book is the latest in the popular series that uses experts to teach regular people how to program computers, fix a car and learn American History.
   Mendrinos was approached by the series’ editors and given a three-month deadline to, essentially, lay out a road map for breaking into standup performing and sitcom writing. He woke up every day at 6 a.m. to write so he could simultaneously fulfill his regular duties, which include performing and occasional television work. Lord provided tips and plenty of Diet Pepsi, and 90 days later the text was done.
   When asked what “The Complete Idiot” would first need to know about comedy writing, the veteran comic said that most jokes develop from an emotional connection to the material. Successful comedians build an emotional relationship with the audience—and the best ones exploit it for guffaws.
   “You have to build something to make people laugh. There has to be an emotional trigger. It’s a very primal art form. It’s not something people think about. It has to be accessible to the audience and have an emotional undercurrent. If you don’t have that, you won’t get a laugh. Everything else is built upon that,” he said.
   The book helps the reader “develop instincts and mine comic gold,” but Mendrinos still called it a “foundation book. It can’t teach talent. You need to bring that to the table yourself.”
   The husband-and-wife team, who perform separately, have been bringing their talent to the table for 32 combined years. Lord, a South Jamaica native, remembers the day she told her father, Lee Lord, that she wanted to be a standup comedian.
   Expecting a rebuke, she got support. He was ecstatic. “I don’t know how many parents are thrilled that their children want to do standup,” she said.
   She also remembered her first performance, at Manhattan’s The Comedy Shop, at 11 p.m. on March 31, 1992. The date rolled off her tongue like a one-liner.
   So does praise and affection for her husband, whom she has known professionally for years and who she married three years ago at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church in Forest Hills.
   “He’s very smart, very funny, and he knows the business, and what he talks about. And he’s a nice guy. I’m incredibly proud and the book makes other people proud too,” she said.
   Lord, “in her early 30s,” recently travelled to London to tape a performance for Comedy Central’s “World Stands Up” program which will air September 10th. She, like many professional comedians, leads a quasi-itinerant existence. She has performed in 45 states and completed a USO tour of Afghanistan, Saudia Arabia, Pakistan and Oman in 2002.
   She is both a stand-up comedian and a monologist, but she said she cannot go more than a month without performing stand-up before she gets anxious to sling jokes again. “I can’t even wrap my head around stopping, even for a little bit. I’d miss doing standup.”
   She will perform at Queensborough Community College in Bayside on August 5th for New York’s Bravest Night of Comedy, where firefighters and professional comedians raise money for a scholarship fund for deceased FDNY members. Lord’s father is a retired FDNY firefighter.
   Mendrinos will perform at the Queens Borough Public Library in October, where the New York City Underground Comedy Festival will hold five nights of comedy throughout the borough. For now, he’s working on a new television project and hawking his book. That’s a far cry from his starving artist days, when putting food on the table required taking most of the jobs he was offered.
   Now he can pick and choose his assignments, and the book is the latest step forward on the journey that began in September 1983. “Through the years it has been a constant struggle. When you pay your bills through art, it’s difficult to say no to something. But if I didn’t start saying no to things, I would not have gotten good gigs.”
   Even a complete idiot could understand that.