Southern Pride

Making a name for yourself in the world of stand-up comedy is supposed to be tough. But for Georgia native Pam Stone, 29 and now a regular headliner at Los Angeles clubs, it was easy.

Four years ago, she was waitressing at a club called the Punch Line in Atlanta when “the other girls suggested I get up one night,” she says.

Six months later, Stone was good enough to be tapped by comedian Jay Leno as his opening act. The two spent three weeks on the road touring clubs together.

“Jay was my role model,” Stone says, claiming she gained a year’s worth of experience by working with Leno, who watched and critiqued her show for her every night.

“What a nice gesture to do for someone who’s up and coming,” she says. “Well, I wasn’t even up.”

But her career was taking off. She moved to Los Angeles (with her horse, Moose) and was soon performing at the stand-up comic’s mecca, the Improvisation on Melrose. She’s also appeared on the Fox network’s “Late Show,” the “Showtime Comedy Network” and ABC’s “George Schlatter Comedy Special” this fall. She’s appearing at Igby’s in West Los Angeles this weekend.

Stone says her tall ( 6-foot-1), willowy blond looks have helped her stand out in the field of women comics that is still dominated by “Jewish women from New York.” And she has developed deadlier observations since her beginning days, when she relied on her belief that “everyone would rather be someone else’s height and have someone else’s hair.”

Drawing on her Southern upbringing, much of Stone’s act consists of observations on Southerners. There is the Tennessee redneck who says: “Well, hell, at least here in Tennessee we don’t drive all over our freeways and shoot and kill people.”

Answers Stone’s tart character: “No, but you should.”