EUBANKS MAKES JOKES, A LIVING OUT OF HIS LIFE

Mark Eubanks is the traveling salesman of stand-up comedy.

His wares are stories about his own life, which he finds much funnier than most of the jokes he has heard.

His marketplace is the string of comedy nightclubs around the country where he has been appearing regularly for seven years. And his brash, hard-sell pitch is characterized by a quick wit, any number of cloying facial expressions, and the ability to talk faster than a livestock auctioneer.

“Whereas a lot of comedians base their strength on their material, I base my strength on my stage personality and my delivery,” said Eubanks, 27, of Vista, who performs tonight and Sunday at The Improv in Pacific Beach.

“It’s one thing to write a good joke, but it’s another to take something that has happened in your life and make it funny. It’s pure sell--and that’s a lot more difficult than just getting up on stage and rattling off a series of one-liners.

“My wife and I have three cats,” he said. “We came home one day and found that one of the cats had pooped on my pillow. So I grabbed the first cat I could find and started swatting him back and forth.

“My wife comes in and says, ‘Honey, that might not be the cat that did it.’ I said, ‘It doesn’t matter--if he’s not, then he’ll tell us who did.’ ”

When he first held his newborn daughter, Eubanks said, “I wanted to say something so meaningful to her. So I looked at her and said, ‘So far, you’ve cost me $6,231--you’re 2 minutes old, get a job!’ ”

Eubanks even manages to find humor on trips he and his wife make to the grocery store.

“They had these little packages of pre-scrambled eggs for 99 cents,” Eubanks said. “Who buys this stuff? People who are too inept to scramble their own eggs?

“Or plant rentals. What’s this? For people who want house plants but can’t handle the commitment?”

The impish Eubanks, who could pass for a grown-up version of Dennis the Menace, turned to comedy in 1980 after a three-year hitch with the Army.

Unlike most comedians, he never really paid his dues. At his mother’s urging, he said, he entered an amateur contest in an Ohio comedy nightclub and beat out 14 other contestants.

His prize: A weeklong paid booking.

Ever since, Eubanks said, he has never had any problem finding work. For two years in Columbus, Ohio, he was part of the comedy team of Rathbone and Eubanks, which toured the East Coast “roughly 45 weeks out of the year,” he said.

He went solo in 1982 “because comedy teams are sort of like marriage without sex,” he said. For the next three years, he continued touring, handling his own business and travel arrangements.

“It’s funny--people think entertainers spend all their time partying and staying out late at night, but all that has changed drastically in just the last five or so years,” Eubanks said.

“Now, it’s very important that you conduct yourself in a businesslike manner. You have to know a lot about how the whole business side of the entertainment industry operates, or you won’t succeed.

“And that’s hard sometimes. When you’re working in a bar six nights a week, the temptation is always there to party, sort of like being in a candy shop and snacking on the candy. But you can’t do that--people no longer want to deal with entertainers who are all screwed up.”

Eubanks generally performs as a headliner and has opened shows for such big-name pop acts as Yes, Nicolette Larson, Eddie Money, the Association, Juice Newton, and even the Plasmatics, a hard-core punk-rock band.

“Opening for the Plasmatics was one of my strangest gigs ever,” Eubanks said. “Before I went on, the band’s manager took me aside and told me not to mention anything about the way lead singer Wendy O. Williams wears her hair or how she dresses because she’s very sensitive.

“I thought to myself, ‘This woman wears Band-Aids on her nipples and humps microphones on stage, and she’s sensitive?’ But I decided not to press the point when I realized I would be arguing with a middle-aged man who had green hair.”

In 1985, Eubanks moved to San Diego and a year later won the second annual “Laff-Off” contest at The Improv, where he now performs regularly whenever he’s in town.

In his spare moments, he’s working toward a career as an actor, which he sees as a natural progression for any stand-up comic.

“You would be surprised at how many actors out there began their careers in show business doing stand-up comedy,” Eubanks said. “Jackie Gleason, Bob Newhart--the list goes on and on.

“Doing stand-up prepares you for almost anything because it’s the hardest of all the performing arts. You don’t have a band or anyone else up there with you; your success or your failure depends entirely on you.

“Will Rogers once said, ‘A comedian lives and dies by his every line.’ And a good example of how true that is came the other night. For 15 minutes, I was hammering--people were laughing nonstop.

“Then, I hit one joke that somehow wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and boom--the laughter died, and I had to start all over again to regain my momentum.”