Until recently, stand-up comedian John Heffron‘s career was effortless. “Now I have to work at it,” he laughs. Since winning the second season of NBC’s Last Comic Standing, the Detroit native has breezed through gig after gig, capitalizing on his reality-TV title. Then came the quickly assembled third season of the show — which is sorta like American Idol, but intentionally funny — and Heffron’s surprise elimination early on. “I was the Last Comic for like two weeks,” he says. “Even the prom queen gets to be queen for a year.”
June 14-15, 8 p.m.; June 16-17, 8 & 10:15 p.m.; Sun., June 18, 7 p.m.

This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2006.