For now, this Boston-bred comic finds his laughs in LA

Warning: The following words, spoken by comedian and Marblehead native Rob Delaney, may shock the East Coast-centric among you who have come to demonize Los Angeles for its soulless entertainment and cocky sports teams (well, team).

"I'm a giant fan of Los Angeles," Delaney says by phone from that city. "I think it's a wonderful, wonderful place."

Delaney, who will play the Comedy Studio tomorrow and a benefit show in Salem on Wednesday, grew up delivering The Boston Globe on the North Shore, rooting for the Red Sox, and watching Lenny Clarke and Steve Sweeney at the Comedy Connection. He'll even play an upcoming all-Boston lineup with the Walsh Brothers, Erik Charles Nielsen, and Ron Lynch at El Cid on the Sunset Strip.

But right now, his heart is in LA and has been since he moved there seven years ago. His apartment is a quick walk from the beach and a short drive from a national forest, and he's surrounded by like-minded people who want to make people laugh.

"Don't get me wrong, I'll move back to Boston, I'll grow old there," he says. "But in LA, what's not to like? I kind of feel like it's heaven on earth, to tell the truth."

Delaney (right) left the Boston area at 18 to pursue acting at New York University and found inspiration in the Upright Citizens Brigade. Until then, it hadn't occurred to him that he could make a living as a comedian. "I just didn't have the exposure to comedy quite yet in Marblehead," he says. "So once I got to New York, then I knew, 'You can get paid for this? I should try that.' "

At NYU, Delaney made a few short films with classmates Andy Samberg, a "Saturday Night Live" cast member, and director Nate Pommer, with whom he recently made another film called "Nature of the Beast," which has been making the rounds at film festivals. But he didn't get serious about comedy until he got to LA and started studying at Improv Olympic.

"I did enjoy making people laugh," he says. "I thought I may want to be an actor at first, and then I realized kind of throughout that process that I enjoyed saying things that I thought of myself more than things that came out of a script or somebody else's brain."

His improv training helped Delaney think on his feet and helped him define his stand-up (he describes himself as a young Fred Willard). He likes to play the alternative rooms like the UCB Theatre or Largo and the less traditional comic community those rooms foster, but Delaney says the competition in LA means a comedian has to be funny everywhere.

"There're just a staggering amount of very funny comics out here, which is really nice," he says. "It's really encouraging. You have to write every day. You can't just go and phone in a hokey set. You'll get crushed. You'll get throttled and thrashed."

Delaney realizes he is still at the beginning of his career as a stand-up and a writer, and that the odds of success are daunting. But he is committed, perhaps in every sense of the word.

"I say the only reason to do stand-up is if you can't live if you don't do it," he says. "If it's any other reason, then don't do it, you know? If you have any other motivation, go do something else. You have to want it so bad that you're basically unbalanced in your brain. Because that's what it takes to succeed."

Around town

Bob Gautreau kicks off his weekly Christmas in July shows tomorrow at the Spiegel Auditorium in Cambridge, with Bill Campbell, Joe Dahlquist, and Brian Gale. . . . Shaun Bedgood, Andy Ofiesh, and Renata Tutko are on Sunday's bill at the Comedy Studio. . . . Giulia Rozzi and Margot Leitman bring their "Stripped Stories" back to ImprovBoston Wednesday, with Myq Kaplan, Alison Becker, and the Steamy Bohemians.