COMEDY REVIEW : An Angry Holden Caulfield : Goldthwait Gets the Hollering Over With, Then Slings Satire in Dukeville

Bob Goldthwait speaks more softly these days and is even less inclined to carry a big shtick.

The comedian--whom many might identify as “not Sam Kinison, but the other guy who screams”--has tuned down the bellowing and turned up the thoughtfulness.

The shift was telegraphed during the very first minute of his show at Anaheim’s Celebrity Theatre Saturday: “Bobcat” greeted the crowd with some trademark hollering, then quickly added, “OK, we got the obligatory screaming out of the way.

“I’m a little nervous about being in Anaheim,” he then confessed. “Anyplace where John Wayne has an airport--hmmm. Yeah, my (stuff’s) gonna fly big here in Dukeville.”

Swigging his ever-present Tab while prowling the Celebrity stage for the next hour, Goldthwait continued to make local references, to depart from his prepared material and to address current events, all filtered through his increasingly refined, reflective anger.

Goldthwait’s style and material do not fall into any one pigeonhole, but overall, he’s like a contemporary, highly enraged Holden Caulfield, railing frequently and most vehemently at phoniness and hypocrisy--but doing so in a way that’s smart, insightful, funny and endearing.

Shortly after the “Dukeville” line, he was barely into a bit about some Doofus trying to tell him a joke when suddenly, he shifted to last week’s protests over “The Last Temptation of Christ”:

“Like Kreskin’s out there with a picket sign: ‘I haven’t seen it yet, but I’ve read the mind of the director, and I know it’ll be evil.’ ”

Big applause.

“I don’t know--organized religion protesting that movie? You know, organized religion is just usually upset whenever anyone else is making money off of Christ’s name.”

Bigger applause.

From there, he segued into televangelists: “Apparently God’s broke. I see all these TV evangelists and they’re raising money for God. If God was broke, I don’t think he would have these guys raising money. If God was broke, he would have Donald Trump raising money for him--not some bonehead cracker in a bad suit.”

He moved on to the circumstances surrounding Jimmy Swaggart’s “I have sinned” episode. “That’s not sinning. . . . Sinning’s when you steal $140 million a year in the name of Christ. That’s sinning.”

Biggest applause.

“Well, thank you for applauding my dogma,” he responded; the “endearing” part of the Caulfield comparison came into play. Like Holden, Goldthwait reserves a large share of his sarcasm for himself. Many of his remarks were refreshingly self-aware--and self-deprecating.

It seemed clear that Goldthwait, with his growing success and rising profile (he has done several films, he recently released an album called “Meat Bob” and he has obviously moved beyond playing clubs), does not want to lose sight of who he is and where he came from.

When he spied a beefy member of the Celebrity’s security force scampering across the lip of the stage, he exclaimed: “Yikes! . . . It’s so weird now being a performer because I used to be the guy at the concert who saw the security (and said,) “Oh, (bleep) they’re coming!’ ”

Of course, there’s a downside to being a young (he’s 26) Everyman’s Comic who’s now headlining large venues: Some audience members think that it’s appropriate to yell out and heckle, to participate in the show--to the point where Goldthwait kind of needs security people.

One heckler was so persistently obnoxious that Goldthwait confronted him directly, told him to shut up and warned him that if he spoke again, security would eject him--but not without refunding his money. Even when livid at a heckler who was clearly hurting the show, Goldthwait came across as a thoroughly humane gent.

While many of his contemporaries on the stand-up circuit routinely indulge in gay-bashing, Goldthwait--noting that there’s “a lot of homophobia out there”--instead bashed the gay-bashers with a wonderful piece exploring the connection between their mentality and sexual insecurities.

Similarly, he’s irritated by such rabble-rousing talk-show hosts. “Can you tell me what Morton Downey stands for? Absolutely nothing. He would do (a particularly heinous act) for ratings. . . . I’m glad there’s guys like Wally George and Morton Downey out there, because white trash needs a new hero.”

His fast and freewheeling approach allowed for lots of hit-and-run observations: “Apparently Elvis is our new Bigfoot. . . . I watched ‘thirtysomething,’ totally by mistake: I just thought it was like a really long Nissan ad. . . . Do you realize how many times my kids are going to hear ‘That’s your dad? I hate that guy.’ ”

The set was not without flaws, including one that came at the very end of the set: Goldthwait’s impression of U2’s Bono singing “With or Without You” was dead-on physically but not vocally and would have been far more effective if shorter.

Still, with all the generic, vapid comics around these days whom we can barely stand to hear, Bob Goldthwait stands out as one whom we need to hear.