COMEDY REVIEW : Cartoonist Points to Obvious Without a Pen

When Steve Kelley gets up on stage at the Improv Comedy Cafe in Pacific Beach every Monday night and launches his stand-up routine, regulars have learned not to expect the typical barrage of bathroom jokes, jolting non sequiturs and outrageous sexist ravings that lace the routines of other hot acts on the comedy club circuit.

Kelley, a 29-year-old GQ poster boy in a button-down Oxford and tie, offers deadpan and often dead-on observations of the ironies and incongruities of everyday life.

Talking about the signs over fast-food restaurant entrances that read, “These doors to remain unlocked during business hours,” he questions the genius behind the signs and invents the conversation that may have led to it.

“You know, Bob, we’ve been open for two months and we’ve spent a lot of money on advertising, yet we haven’t sold a single burger. Do you suppose we ought to unlock those doors?”

Kelley can’t understand why pet food manufacturers make dog biscuits that “clean your dog’s teeth and help freshen his breath.”

“Here’s an animal who drinks out of the toilet, eats out of garbage cans, and spends most of his free time licking himself,” Kelley says. “I just don’t think good oral hygiene is Fido’s top priority.”

Commenting on the quality of food served on airplanes, Kelley wonders, “How many bulimics got their start on the frequent-flier program?”

Yugoslav Yugo cars, he maintains, were introduced to American consumers just so “Pinto drivers can look down their noses at somebody .”

The reason college football players are opposed to mandatory drug-testing? “It’s the only test in college they have to pass.”

“My idea of a comedian is someone who sees things everyone else sees but isn’t really aware of,” said Kelley, who appears tonight at the Improv. “So, what a comedian should do is point out the obvious, thereby getting people to smack their heads and say, ‘Oh yeah, he’s right, why didn’t I see that before?’ ”

In many ways, Kelley said, his career as a stand-up comedian is a lot like his other career as editorial-page cartoonist with the San Diego Union.

“My cartoons tend to be humorous observations about current events, and that’s largely what my stand-up routines are, too,” he said. “The only difference is the way you present your idea.

“When you’re drawing a cartoon, you have to set up an actual graphic image on paper. And when you’re telling a joke, you have to create a picture in the audiences’ minds with words. But the gag itself can be the same.”

Kelley, a native of Richmond, Va., studied art at Dartmouth College and in July, 1981, became one of the youngest editorial cartoonists in the country. A few years later, he learned that a local comedian was incorporating some of Kelley’s cartoon captions in his act at the Improv.

“I went down one night, introduced myself, and offered to start writing comedy for him,” Kelley recalled. “But when I gave him my first batch of jokes, he said he would feel guilty taking my material and suggested I come down on amateur night and get up on stage myself.

“So I gave it a shot and it was terrible. I sweated profusely, my voice quivered, and my timing was bad. But I got enough laughs, from two or three jokes, to bring me back, and each night things got better.”

Things kept getting better all the time. For the past year, Kelley has been a weekly amateur-night regular at both the Improv and the Comedy Store in La Jolla. He’s also landed weeklong professional bookings at the Improv clubs in San Diego and Irvine and at Charlie Goodnights in Charlotte, N.C.

The week before the Super Bowl, Kelley opened for super-hot comic Jay Leno at Steve Garvey’s “Say No to Drugs” fund-raiser at the La Jolla Marriott.

“At this point, my comedy career is still a little limited, since I can’t exactly go on the road for very long because of my duties at the Union,” he said. “Besides, it’s going to take awhile before I start getting more, and better, national bookings.

“But someday, I’d like to pursue it on a more regular basis. I can envision traveling around the country five or six weeks each year, doing stand-up and express-mailing cartoons to the newspaper.

“The beauty of comedy is that you only perform a couple of hours each day, and that’s at night. So there’s no reason why I couldn’t read the newspaper and draw a cartoon during the day and then be at the nightclub by 8 p.m. to do my set.”