It was Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice, who famously said, "If you can't say anything nice about someone, come sit next to me."

Andy Kindler would qualify for a seat aside Alice. A "deconstructionist" comic -- one of the founders of the '90s alternative comedy movement -- he got his start blowing the whistle on the hacky tricks of standup, and has cultivated a pop-culturally-savvy following for his willingness to diss the popular and Hollywood powerful.

His chief means of career-suicide: his annual State Of The Industry address at Montreal's Just For Laughs fest, an event in which the audience is several hundred standup comics, falling over laughing at vicious jokes aimed at network CEOs and superstars.

It was there that I first saw him offer $1 million for video proof of Whoopi Goldberg being funny, and claim that Jay Leno was in the Guinness Book of Records for "going the longest time without an authentic moment."

These days, the amiable pop cultural hitman -- who plays the "alternative" venue Comedy Bar this weekend -- says he's getting requests for the first time. That would be for his Dane Cook rant, wherein he compares Cook's rise to that of Hitler, mitigated by the fact that "at least Hitler had a point of view.

"I go to clubs and people are saying, 'Do the Dane Cook bit.' I do have to give it up for him because he must be in very good shape to run around the stage the way he does. I do an impression of him and I'm winded in two minutes.

"But that energy is all about 'Please be with me, please love me, don't tune me out for even a single second.' He's like Robin Williams that way, he'll go to a stock bit rather than suffer a single moment of silence."

Silence isn't something Kindler fears. If he offends, he usually embraces the awkward moment. "It's in my nature to constantly comment," he says. "I hope when I finally die, when I'm laid in the ground, I do not continue commenting. I do say that I was in the deconstuction business before I was in comedy. I never built any houses, I'd just comment as people were building them."

He loves to pull back the curtain on comedy ("Like how comics will say something just came off the top of their head -- 'Oh, oh, oh, here's something else I just thought of for the past 35 years.' Or they pretend the guy in the front row is stupid -- 'I came here in a car. A car, sir, is a vehicle that gets you around town.' ").

I suggest it's analogous to what Penn & Teller do with magic. So why do comics love Kindler and magicians hate P&T? "I think that's just a reflection of how unfriendly Penn Jillette is," he quips. "'You're upset about Penn revealing the magic?' 'No! I just find him obnoxious!' "

The secret to Kindler's oeuvre is his modest success level. He had a gig for a few years as "Andy" on Everybody Loves Raymond, and was a regular on Lewis Black's Root of All Evil. These days he's a "special correspondent" on Late Show with David Letterman.

At the State of the Industry address, "I say negative things about people other comics don't get to. You can make fun of Michael Jackson for 75 hours in a row, but as soon as you start on another comedian, everybody tightens up. It might hurt their career."

Ultimately, he finds the entire comedy-club experience mockable. "It's absurd that you come to most comedy clubs not knowing who the comedians are. It's like telling people, 'Come to the movie theatre. You like movies, don't you?' "

Speaking of theatres, he says, "It is true that you can't yell 'Fire' in a crowded theatre. Although you can yell the entire phrase 'Fire in a crowded theatre,' because that's just confusing, not illegal.

"But you can also yell 'Fire' at any screening of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, because those are people that deserve to be trampled to death."