Inside Joke with Zach Galifianakis

Standing room only for last week's Inside Joke, which featured Zach Galifianakis.

After an opening bit from Dave Hill about Osama bin Laden and an elephant of the same name, it was time for the show, and your host Carl Arnheiter. The title, Inside Joke, may clue you in to the interview format, but when you add a live audience and a lively comedian, who knows exactly how much interview and how much showcase you'll get. Galifianakis said the recently finished Funny or Die tour with Will Ferrell, Demetri Martin and Nick Swardson was good, and joked that "the tour was going to be called two Greeks, a fag and a successful guy."

Then we went inside. His first paid gig was in a strip mall in Maysville, Kentucky and he talked about starting in the back of Hamburger Harry's in Times Square. He talked about his short-lived late-night talk show on VH1 -- nine weeks! -- and how he turned down an 11-day gig worth $700,000 to be the spokesman for Time Warner Cable.

And then he showed his new Absolut ad with Tim and Eric. He has been showing this video for weeks now at various shows, but it finally went online over the weekend.

Galifianakis told me a few weeks ago how he admired Tim and Eric, and he said it again on this night. "I really do think it's the funniest, most creative thing on television...It reminds you of when you were a kid. You'd laugh at a stupid fart joke. They're two big farts!"

On another short-lived TV show, Dog Bites Man: "I got to talk to the Grand Wizard (of the KKK) if he's ever seen Big Momma's House 2."

On being an SNL writer for two weeks, in which he tried pitching a sketch to guest host Britney Spears. Galifianakis thought he'd been hired to be on the show, and instead, he was hired to write for Molly Shannon.

He talked about smoking so much pot in Vancouver, B.C., that he couldn't remember his lines for Tru Calling. The secret to getting that TV gig? "Don't care." He reportedly got the job not because of how well he read his lines, but because in the audition, he wrote a joke on the back of his script pages. Arnheiter closed this show with a surprise for the audience, introducing Janeane Garofalo to hand out his Rice Krispie Treats and then help read an unaired scene from Tru Calling with Galifianakis.