Taking the 'Slow Arc'

Stand-up comic Moody McCarthy has finally released his first comedy album, although he isn't promising this means he has stopped being a slacker about doing business things.

The Syracuse native notes it took him about six months after taping a performance last summer before he got around to having it pressed onto the CD, which he has titled "The Night It Went Well."

McCarthy jokes that he drags his feet so his career doesn't peak too soon. He waited until 1997, when he was 30, before becoming a full-time comic.

"I tell people, by the time I'm 80, I'm going to have a hell of a career. I'm on like a slow arc," he says.

The album is packed with McCarthy's easygoing blend of self-deprecating humor and observational comedy, which touches on subjects as diverse as school cafeteria food and time travel.

Taping in Canada at the Absolute Comedy club in Ottawa, McCarthy made sure to throw in a few jokes that go over well in that country. He mentioned how Canadians favor the more scientific Celsius scale because zero degrees is the temperature at which water freezes.

"In the states, we went with Fahrenheit because zero degrees Fahrenheit is the temperature that a gun jams," he said.

The album includes several routines that have been in McCarthy's act for years, including some he used in his national TV appearances on the NBC reality show "Last Comic Standing" last June and on CBS talent show "Star Search" in 2003.

He got a long laugh from the Canadian audience joking, "I love a woman with a raspy voice. ... Men love that. We hear a woman with a raspy voice, and we think, hey, maybe she's all done yelling."

The CD features a passing reference to McCarthy hailing from Syracuse, and it includes several stories about growing up in a family of seven children. McCarthy said he knew as a child his father was getting tired of all the kids.

"I used to go on those field trips in school and gave my dad a permission slip," he said. "It's got that question: 'In case of emergency?' My dad would write, 'Do not resuscitate.' "

Despite the implication of the album's tongue-in-cheek title, most nights onstage do go well for him, Moody says in a telephone interview last week from New York City, where he now lives.

He's drawing enough laughs that stand-up comic and former "Full House" co-star Dave Coulier recently invited McCarthy to join a comedy tour expected later this year and limited to a few comics known for clean humor.

McCarthy says he's also planning to audition for the upcoming season of "Last Comic Standing," although his dream job would be to write jokes for a late-night TV talk show.

McCarthy says he recently taped a video performance he hopes will be out this year on DVD.

But he's not promising.