Comedian Nick Swardson loves to party. The name of his debut CD with Comedy Central Records released last week alludes to that fact with its simple and to the point title: Party.

Swardson said the CD should have debuted a long time ago, about four years, but he wanted to make it perfect and kept pushing back the release.

"I have been trying to put out a CD for a while, but I'm such a crazy perfectionist," he said. "I would record a CD and wouldn't like it."

Swardson said he has been doing stand-up comedy for about 12 years, but that it wasn't always a career goal. He only started performing in high school because he wanted to get an easy A by taking a theater class.

He said the crowds at the Minneapolis inner city high school he attended were reminiscent of the Apollo during school plays, complete with yelling at the performers and throwing various objects on stage, but after his first performance, the atmosphere was completely different.

"I did this show, and literally, the audience was dying, and they didn't throw anything," he said. "That was pretty crazy."

At that moment, he said, he knew for the first time that he wanted to make people laugh for a living.

Swardson not only does stand-up, but also has acting and writing credits under his belt.

He has a recurring role on the hit series Reno 911! as Terry the male prostitute and has co-written and starred in Malibu's Most Wanted, Grandma's Boy and The Benchwarmers.

He said one of his best friends in the industry and one of the most influential people in his career is Adam Sandler. They met after Sandler watched one of Swardson's stand-up acts. After his performance, Sandler asked him to help rewrite Grandma's Boy.

"He gave me all these opportunities," he said. "Anything I wanted to do, he believed in and got behind. An experience like that is like a dream."

Another influence in Swardson's career was the late Mitch Hedberg. He said they met after both performed a show in Minnesota and their acts could not have been more different. Swardson, at the time, tried to be dynamic and not stop moving his entire set. When Hedberg went on stage, however, he just told a joke and let the audience laugh while he stood completely still.

Although he says a lot of his comedy bits are too ridiculous to be true stories, some of them are based on events that have actually happened in his life.

He said he loves to go out drinking with friends and has many stories of his drunken escapades. One of the skits on Party is called "Blackout" and is a series of voicemail messages following a night that ended in a blackout.

One story involved Swardson leaving a club blacked out, breaking into his friend's house and getting into bed with his friend's mother.

"I have no idea how I broke into his house," he said. "I guess when I'm drunk I'm the world's greatest cat burglar."