This Comic Keeps His Back Against Wall : Stand-up: Todd Glass’ portable stage--complete with Improv-style brick backdrop--makes him into the Mobile Comedian. There’s no telling where he’ll try his shtick.

There are a lot of comics working the clubs out there, but Todd Glass must be the only one who has performed for a herd of cows.

Glass, who has dubbed himself the Mobile Comedian, has a portable stage--complete with Improv-style brick wall--on the back of his truck, so he can do his stand-up routine when and wherever he wants.

His impromptu bovine gig came somewhere on the road between here and Salt Lake City. Glass thought that the cows looked kinda bored and, well, a little comedy seemed just the thing to perhaps liven their day. As he asked rather rhetorically during a recent interview at the Improvisation in Irvine, “When do you think the last time they got a show was?”

The Fountain Valley resident also does al fresco performances on the beach and even outside the clubs where he performs. He has performed at colleges, at parties and outside the Department of Motor Vehicles. He tried his shtick in moving traffic, but a cop put a stop to that.

“To be driving down the road and see an eight-foot brick wall is a strange sight,” Glass allows.

The 25-year-old started his Mobile Comedian gigs in April, not as a gimmick or to get more work, he says (he’s a regular middle act at the Irvine Improv and other Southland clubs), but just because he thought it sounded like fun.

“It’s, like, the corniest idea in the world. I know it’s stupid,” Glass admits.

But, he says, people seem to respond: “They see this guy trying to do something new, and they support it.”

Unlike his more structured stage act, Glass’ Mobile Comedian performances rely heavily on audience interaction and a man-on-the-street approach.

Glass’ freewheeling style and quick wit have a risky side: Comedy club audiences may be prepared for his sometimes-pointed remarks, but what about the unsuspecting public at large?

“Sometimes you totally annoy somebody,” Glass says, but, he adds: “They’re so few that they’re funny. And of course, I only get more annoying and louder and more obnoxious.”

Most people, though, catch on quickly. “Everyone knows the brick wall from TV,” Glass says, and they associate it with the prototypical comedy club.

While Glass started the project as a lark, he’s beginning to get wise to its promotional possibilities. He envisions the Mobile Comedian taking on a persona of his own and paving the way for TV work. In fact, camera crews from the Comedy Channel followed Glass around San Diego last month and will begin airing brief segments during commercial breaks and between shows.

Many comics say they disdain TV, but Glass freely admits that he’d love to land a regular gig on a TV show, no matter how bad.

“Everybody’s goal is to get into people’s living rooms,” Glass says. “Even if it’s the worst thing in the world, I would be in people’s living rooms.”

In the meantime, though, Glass is not ready to let the Mobile Comedian overshadow his regular stand-up act. On the contrary, he is apt to use his impromptu outdoor shows to promote his stage appearances, in which he covers material ranging from his jealousy of traffic cops (“That’s my dream in life--to drive real slow and have no one pass me”) to impersonations of the painfully contorted expressions his dad took on when smoking.

Glass is also given to rushes into the crowd, as he does in a bit where he parodies a fan who relates a little too strongly to the comedian on stage (Comic: “I was talking to my girlfriend the other day . . .” Fan: “He has a girlfriend?! I have a girlfriend! This guy is just like us!”).

Glass sees the Mobile Comedian as a logical adjunct to his stage career, which started when he began frequenting open-mike nights in his native Philadelphia at age 16.

“I’m a stage hog,” he says, “and I can’t get enough stage time.”