One-liners and nonsequiturs will fly at the June 13-17 Viareo Great American Comedy Festival in Norfolk, Neb., where the late comic great Johnny Carson grew up. This annual celebration of the funny side is equal parts competition, workshop and roast. Its home base is the Johnny Carson Theatre at Norfolk Senior High, where the legendary Tonight Show host graduated. The event welcomes professional stand-ups from around the nation vying for cash prizes. Paula Poundstone is the headliner. Jimmie "JJ" Walker is the "legend" recipient. Past Legend honoree Dick Cavett hosts a comedy magic show. New this year is a June 14-15 Omaha showcase at the Holland Performing Arts Center featuring the fest's standup contestants in 7:30 p.m. shows. Poundstone and Cavett, long ago paid their comedy dues. They represent different generations in the craft but well identify with the vagaries of starting out. She broke in during "the comedy renaissance" that saw clubs sprout in her native Boston and everywhere in the late 1970s-early 1980s. Open mic nights became her proving ground. "They were just coming into being. I just lucked out in terms of time and place," she says. "They had shows with guys who had no experience and they were awful but because there was no one else around nobody knew they were awful, and I got in on the awful train – when you could suck and it didn't really matter. Now I think it's a lot harder to get stage time." She was only 19 when she took the first of two cross-country Greyhound bus trips on an Ameripass, stopping to perform at open mics in places like Denver, living out of a backpack and catching zs on the road between gigs. "Odd but genius. It was pretty bold. I mean, I look back on it now and think, Whoa, boy, that could have gone bad. It was my nineteeness that saved me. You think you're invincible...That helped a lot."

read more: Great American Comedy Festival Presents Lineup of Up-and-Comers with Legends Paula Poundstone, Dick Cavett, Jimmie “JJ” Walker