WOULD-BE KING OF COMEDY AIMS HIS HUMOR AT YUPPIES

With an ingratiating smile and a pat on the back, Frank King gamely hands out his business cards to other comedians he encounters on the road, then stands back to watch their reactions.

“Most of the time, they’re amazed that any comedian would go to the trouble of having cards printed up, much less pass them out to everyone he meets,” the San Diego comic said.

“But the way I see it, comedy is a business, and if you’re in business, you’ve got to have business cards, right? One of these days I’m going to break out my letterhead and stationery.

“That will really leave them dumbfounded.”

While King’s business acumen might dumbfound his fellow stand-up comics, it has helped him become one of the more promising young comedians in the country, less than three years after he first got up on stage on amateur night at the Improv in Pacific Beach.

King has just returned to San Diego from a 21-month national tour he booked himself, in which he performed at such top comedy nightclubs as the Punch Line in Atlanta and the Comic Strip in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

His corporate approach to comedy also forms the basis of his act, which his business cards describe as “white-collar comedy” and “humor for the pin-striped personality.”

Appropriately enough, the 30-year-old King’s description of his target audience is riddled with demographics: “I try to appeal to the yuppies,” he said, “the 25-to-55, upper middle-class, college-educated, newspaper-reading crowd.

“Nearly all my material is topical; it comes from what I read in the newspaper and from my own life’s experiences--as a yuppie, I suppose.”

When he appears on stage--always wearing a Navy blue blazer and a burgundy tie--he tells jokes like these:

“When Gary Hart pulled out of the presidential race, they asked his wife if she was disappointed at not being First Lady. She said, ‘First Lady? I’d be happy being the only lady!’ ”

“There was an ad in the lost and found section the other day: ‘Lost: One medium-size, dark-brown pit bull. Reward.’ What kind of reward? Medical insurance? Free artificial limbs, perhaps?”

King has made comedy his business since the fall of 1984, when he first decided to take a detour from the path of selling insurance. He had been following that path since 1979, when he graduated from the University of North Carolina with degrees in political science and industrial relations.

Before auditioning at the Improv, King said, he spent several nights each week, for more than three months, in the audience, watching the other comics and “formulating my marketing plan.”

“I realized that none of the comedians was wearing a sports jacket and tie, or talking about topical issues, or being completely clean,” King said. “So my strategy was to create a character who would fill that void, who would essentially be a spokesman for the baby boomer, or yuppie, generation.”

After his first amateur night appearance in February, 1985, King’s “white-collar comedy” schtick went over so well that Improv owner Mark Anderson soon made him a paid regular.

The following April, King bested more than 30 other local comics to win the Improv’s first annual Laff-Off contest. It was then that he decided to try his luck on the road.

“I told myself that if I could find 10 weeks of solid work, I was going to quit my job selling insurance and just go for it,” King said. “So I flew to Atlanta and auditioned at the Punch Line, and they hired me right away.

“After that, it was easy. Comedy is like the insurance business: You put together a good product, and you rely mostly on referrals to maintain your pace. It’s mere speculation, but in my case, it paid off.”

In the coming months, King plans to move from San Diego to Los Angeles “because that’s where the action is.” He will continue to appear regularly at the Improv along with such other San Diego-based professionals as Rick Rockwell, Russ T. Nailz and Rene Sandoval.

“All my yuppie friends are being very encouraging,” King said. “A buddy of mine is an attorney who has always wanted to be a comedian, but he’s got a family and a successful practice, so he’s pretty much missed the opportunity.

“Yet he’s one of my biggest supporters, because I’m kind of fulfilling a dream for him. However, my analogy is that he’s standing safely on the beach, while I’m waste-deep in shark-infested waters, and he’s yelling, ‘Go for it!’

“Still, that’s what I plan on doing. As far as this comedy business is concerned, I’m a lifer.”