You have at least three jobs technically: journalist, stand up comedian, and professional dater. Can all three continue to be done in tandem? Or do you feel like you don't have enough time for stand up, since you're writing so much or vice versa?
Yeah, it's kind of rough. I'm also working on a book through William Morris and blog fairly regularly. It's mostly about prioritizing. I've said for about the last two years that my goal is to replace Conan O'Brien. Like, when he goes to Leno's spot in 2009. That's my goal. Why not? You need big goals in life. The cool thing is that everything has tended to work well together. Like, right now I'm dating someone who's making me really, really happy - happier than I've felt in a while, and that tends to fuel writing, that tends to fuel comedy, that tends to fuel all the rest. I'm never going to be a great pure stand-up. But I would be a great talk show host. I'm much more on-the-fly improvisationally funny. When I did one of the shows on the "Opie & Anthony" channel as the guest comedian, Jim Norton heard me and thought I was funny. We became friends after that and it was a huge thing for me - to have a comic I adored like my stuff. And that's really a medium where I shine a lot more because it's similar to being a talk show host. On the radio, I'm reacting, improvising. In stand-up, it's more a tool. It forces me to write, forces me to perform, but I'm never going to be a traveling comic who has an uber polished set. Like my friend Hannibal Buress, he's a comic who's got it down to a polish. And that's great. When I have to do it, I do though (having an uber polished set that is). Like when I auditioned for Montreal this year, I got my set down to a tight set. Would I have been funnier if I had just been myself on stage reacting to the moment or improvising with someone else versus doing material? Yeah, most likely.

This year I'm emceeing the Funniest Reporter contest through the New York Underground Comedy Festival and I've been talking to Eddie Brill, who's Letterman's booker and a longtime stand-up comic. He's been giving me advice re: stand-up and one thing he said is, you know (and actually Conan said this to me when I interviewed him back in '96 when I was a college student at Northwestern) that the goal is to be yourself on stage. If you're naturally funny, the journey - the process - the thing you are working toward getting to eventually is to be able to translate that. Some of my funniest writing comes from writing about my life and my love life (like a hero of mine, David Sedaris does) and so I actually think the dating column works well with that. But yeah, to be a killer standup you have to be getting up 4, 5 times a week. Realistically, that's impossible for me. I work my ass off at the Post, which obviously I should be doing, and for right now - it all tends to work together. I'm really proud of the stuff I write there -- it's funny, it pops versus so much "humor writing" for newspapers which, dude, is terrible.

You're covering the Flavor Flav roast this weekend for the Post. Do you think Flav is going to try and urinate on you the way Andy Dick tried? Who are you looking forward to chatting with there?
Dick never tried to urinate on me. He just peed in front of me. The door was open, he peed, and I saw his thingie. I think Flav is not a walking trainwreck like Andy Dick. I'm looking forward to chatting with everyone there. I'm a huge Kimmel fan so I can't wait to hear his stuff. It's a weird lineup this year. Like, Carrot Top is on the dais. Should be fun, though. It's Comedy Central's biggest event every year, money-wise, and it always seems to pay off.

I sympathize with you being a victim to Andy Dick's bizarre behavior, but I felt slightly bad for Andy after the incident last year--the press was especially brutal to him at the time. When the news of the Jon Lovitz beatdown came out, it made me think though that Dick isn't merely the victim of a bloodthirsty media: this guy either gets off on the bad press or he's straight up killing himself. Your thoughts on Andy?
Yeah, I really have NO IDEA at this point. I mean - what he did was inexcusable. I could have gotten him sent to jail that night. But I also feel like that would have been a retarded reaction since when he bit me he didn't actually break the skin and when he grabbed at me and tried to kiss me. I mean, what did I write in my blog at the time when the Washington Post came out with that retardedly sympathetic article about him where they didn't even mention him biting me - they were just like "allegedly groped", ha, like I was asking for it - I think I said something along the lines of he is a brilliantly funny guy. And brilliantly funny people Take Things Too Far. I can do that. I can go over the top in terms of putting a laugh over kindness, etc. But he does it, I think, by knowing that his behavior will be viewed as both buzzworthy and hysterical--I mean, someone biting a reporter? That's funny. It's also terrible. He's kind of an enigma to me. I hope he gets his act cleaned up. That Phil Hartman story made me sick, though. Phil Hartman is one of those pure, true, beautiful people in comedy to me - like, there's nothing to dislike about him - he's just joy. Like a Steve Colbert. And to hear Lovitz's story about Andy giving the wife coke, it made me hate Dick almost more than I did after he attacked me.

Keep up with Mandy at her blog @ mandystadtmiller.com.