YOU’D BEST LAUGH WITH ‘WILD’ WILLY

“Wild” Willy Parsons is a menacing Goliath of a man with a mane of curly red hair and a neck as thick as an average man’s waist.

His Harley-Davidson belt buckle underscores a fondness for motorcycles, beer and the movie “Easy Rider.”

His appearance alone would send Bigfoot scampering back into the forest, or evoke a cry of “uncle” from a cowering Hulk Hogan.

But that doesn’t mean you should be afraid to laugh at him.

Instead, you should be afraid to not to laugh, because for the last year and a half, the 27-year-old Parsons has been one of San Diego’s more popular stand-up comedians. As a result, the screams he’s accustomed to hearing are not of terror, but of laughter.

“Most of the time, people laugh even before I open my mouth,” Parsons said. “They don’t expect a guy like me to up on stage and tell jokes. They expect guys like me to be terrorizing the town, or robbing banks.”

He paused. “But I gave all that up for comedy,” he said with a smile.

A wise choice. In recent months, Parsons’ renegade biker image has landed him bookings at such prestigious comedy clubs as Catch a Rising Star in New York City, the Comedy Store in Hollywood and the Improv in Dallas.

Locally, he’s a regular at both the Comedy Store in La Jolla and the Improv in Pacific Beach, where he performs this week through Sunday.

One of his biggest boosters is Sam Kinison, comedy’s hottest new commodity, who asked Parsons to open his recent two-week engagement at the local Comedy Store.

“People really take to my character,” Parsons said. “To my knowledge, there isn’t another biker comic to be found anywhere in show business.

“And since I do look the part, I play on the biker image as much as I can.”

He certainly does. Dressed in a black T-shirt and blue denim jacket and jeans, Parsons saunters up on stage, beer in hand, as though he owns the place.

His processional is “Born to Be Wild,” Steppenwolf’s classic biker anthem of the late 1960s.

When the music stops, he glares at the audience and barks, “I hope you’re in a good mood tonight, because I’m not. I was on my way to the club when my bike ran out of gas. I thought I had siphoned off enough to get here, but I was wrong--so I ended up taking the city bus.”

Parsons pauses. Then, shaking his head, he delivers the punch line: “I tell you--those things are a bitch to drive.”

When the laughter subsides, he continues.

“You guys are probably wondering what a guy like me is doing, trying to be a comedian,” he says. “But I’ll be honest with you--there aren’t a lot of jobs that a guy like me can get.”

He points to a young man sitting at one of the front tables. “Sir, would you want to go into Benihana’s and have me slinging knives at your table? I think not.”

Parsons was born and reared in Imperial Beach. Before he became a professional comedian, he worked a variety of odd jobs, including stints as a bodyguard for heavy metal superstar Ozzy Osbourne and for a troupe of strippers on the local bachelor party circuit.

On a lark, he did a five-minute set at one of the Comedy Store’s weekly amateur nights in April, 1985, and for the next year polished up his act at private parties and more amateur-night appearances.

His first professional booking, also at the local Comedy Store, was in April, 1986--a record for local comics, he noted proudly, who generally take at least three years to progress from amateur to professional status.

Now, with more than a dozen national bookings already behind him, Parsons said he feels certain that his two eventual goals are not far off.

“I’d like to be a guest on ‘Late Night With David Letterman’ and pose for the cover of Gentleman’s Quarterly magazine,” he said with a laugh.

“I want to be the one to bring blue denim jackets and Harley-Davidson belt buckles back in style.”