He always thought he could tell a joke

Artie Januario hosts a showcase at Giggles that allows him to get in jokes of his own. (cary shuman)

Long before he started stand-up eight years ago, and before he started hosting Wednesday nights at Giggles, Artie Januario had a few brushes with comedy. He remembers playing flag football in 1978 with "this lunatic who was dating this girl I knew from Revere," who ended up inviting everyone there to his show that night.

That lunatic turned about to be Lenny Clarke, who will play his show at Giggles this Wednesday. He went and enjoyed himself, but didn't go to another comedy show for 20 years. Visiting Las Vegas with his family in 1995, Januario, now a pharmacist, found himself walking the strip by himself when he wandered into an empty comedy club at Harrah's.

"I went inside, stood onstage, and I started making up some stuff, singing some songs, all by myself," he says. "There was nobody there, but then I hear applause, one person clapping way up in the back, and it was the cleaning woman."

He had an idea he might perform in front of an actual audience one day and even told his three kids as they were passing the Comedy Connection one day that he would be up on that stage telling jokes. He wanted his kids to know they could be whatever they wanted to be, and to prove it, he got up on a bench at Faneuil Hall and told jokes to his kids and strangers. "My kids gave me a big round of applause," he says, smiling.

He's not sure what made him finally take the plunge and call for a spot at an open mike in 2000 - he was never a big fan of comedy on TV, and he had a good job as a pharmacist. All he remembers is how it made him feel. "When I got onstage and I put my hand on the microphone, there was this weird feeling that came over me like I'm where I'm supposed to be," he says.

Now 52, Januario is hosting a showcase show at Giggles that matches veterans like Clarke, Tony V., and Ken Rogerson with young up-and-coming comics looking for stage time. Giggles owner Mike Clarke (Lenny's brother) is thrilled to have the show in his club, to give Januario a place to work. "He's a guy that came up through the ranks and went to the open mikes," he says. "He was always hanging around, he'd do five minutes even if he wasn't scheduled."

And Januario couldn't be happier. He has no aspirations to move to New York or Los Angeles to get discovered by the entertainment industry. "I'm too old for that," he says. He just wants a place to play.

"I want to make people laugh every Wednesday night," he says. "And then tonight at Giggles and tomorrow in Brockton, and next week it's a fund-raiser for cancer or something. And then I'm happy."

No place like home
Mike Dorval thought he could find happiness in Los Angeles. At first, he thought that meant finding an agent. When he got that, he thought finding regular work in a bigger room would do it. Then he started working the Improv and thought if he could just land a pilot, that would be it. He got that, and it turned out to be, he says, "the least funny 30 minutes ever committed to film."

That's when he realized he had to come back home to Boston, which he did in 2006. "I just don't want my life to be about chasing these things that I hope are going to make me happy," he says. "Doing the work makes me happy, and in Boston I get to do the work, and I get to be around people who appreciate it."

Dorval, who now splits time between stand-up and theater projects like "Sheer Madness," will be doing his first full headlining stint in Boston tonight and tomorrow at Mottley's Comedy Club.

"That's one of the things I love about being back in Boston," he says. "I can act and I can do comedy, and I don't really have to choose between the two."

Around town
Craig Ferguson is at the Wilbur Theatre tonight and tomorrow. . . . Cheech & Chong play a sold-out gig at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom tonight. . . . Frank Santorelli headlines the Shaw's Center in Brockton tonight with Christine Hurley, Paul Keenan, and Annette Pollack. . . . Sean Sullivan, Joe Madaus, and others play the Bethany Van Delft Show Sunday at the Comedy Studio.