It is 7:35 on a Saturday night, and a ready-to-laugh Comedy Catch crowd fills the dark showroom with applause as the voice of club co-owner Michael Alfano introduces his opening act.
As the lights come up, a dark-haired entertainer in a button-down shirt bounds onto the stage, grabs the mic and thanks the crowd for the warm welcome.
"My name is Moody Molavi. It's short for ..." and a 20-syllable, foreign-accented name rolls off his tongue to a smattering of happy laughter. "I know, right?"
Then he says, "I'm from Iran."
And there is dead silence.
"This is the kind of reaction I normally get," he says. There is lightness in his voice, but his face is stoic.
The crowd's laughter slowly begins to roll again as he comes back with what he presumes they're thinking: "He's a big boy. Hope he's not 160 (pounds) and the rest of that is not some sort of (detonating) vest."
And slowly, the comedian has the crowd back, drawing laughs as he explains his American-Iranian heritage and the cross-cultural surprises it leads to.
"I was born there (Iran), and I (later) became a Christian. I'm an Iranian Southern Baptist."
The laughs explode as he calls out in his best Middle Eastern Baptist voice, "Hal-la-la-la-la-lujah."
Because of his faith and his hopes to break into corporate comedy, Molavi has set his sights on doing clean material.
"I was told when I first got into comedy, that if you work clean, you'll get a lot farther in this business," Molavi said.
He began by working open-mic nights in 2010 and branched into local dinner theater shows. He still has his day job as an IT professional for an area textile manufacturer.
Since September, Molavi, 40, has performed steadily as an opening act at The Comedy Catch. He's drawn the attention of more experienced comics. He says recent headliner Dan Whitehurst has invited him to open for him at the Whistle Stop Grill, part of the Bonkerz Comedy Club chain, in Blue Ridge, Ga. It will be his first 30-minute feature set.
Molavi has known what he wanted to do since he was 6 years old.
"Aw, man, when I was a kid, I'd sneak downstairs at my home and I would watch 'An Evening at the Improv,' which was on A&E, and record it on my VHS tapes," he says, relaxing in Giggles Grill between recent shows.
He recalls that at age 18, he would visit the Brainerd Road club to watch and learn, wondering when he would get the nerve to someday stand up and tell jokes.
He says he's energized by the audience's laughter.
"It's the best drug to have ... to know that for a few minutes a night, some other person is lost in whatever is coming out of my head. That's why I do it."