O.C. COMEDY PREVIEW : On Stage or Off, Tenuta Practices Judy-ism : Humor: The self-styled cult goddess, who opens a six-night stand at the Improv tonight, says she bears little resemblance to standard stand-ups, and she goes to extremes to prove it.

Some comics are soft-spoken, serious and even a bit shy offstage. But when Judy Tenuta steps out of the spotlight, she brings her persona with her.

At least that was the case during a telephone interview last week from Tempe, Ariz., as Tenuta set off on a rambling discourse in a voice that ranged from trilling falsetto to gravelly bark. In movie terms, try Glinda, the good witch in “The Wizard of Oz,” and Linda Blair in the latter stages of possession in “The Exorcist.”

Tenuta, who opens a six-night stand at the Improv in Irvine tonight, points out with something less than professional courtesy that she bears little resemblance to the standard breed of stand-up comic: “Toads telling their McDonald’s jokes,” she calls them. “You might as well watch the Weather Channel.”

Onstage, she is given to long Grecian robes in Day-Glo colors, with an omnipresent accordion labeled “J U D Y” her most prominent accessory. “An astronaut with fashion sense,” is how she describes her appearance. “Buzz Aldrin if he knew how to dress.” In interview and performance, she peppers her talk with third-person references to herself, with “giver-goddess” and “petite flower” running neck-and-neck as her two favorite labels.

She mugs and moves with an abandon onstage that suggests an “I Love Lucy” routine gone terribly wrong, stomping about with her accordion as she belts out such ditties as “Love Slave.”

And then there’s Judy-ism, a self-styled religion wherein abuse from the giver-goddess is the main tenet--”An insult from me is like a blessing from above,” go the words to her set-opening song. Whereupon, she has her followers repeat an oath that includes the line: “I promise to destroy all pigs who do not worship Judy.”

Tenuta’s cult of fans does worship Judy, even the men--”love pigs” and “stud puppets”--who take the brunt of her verbal assault. “They realize that I’m the one true religious leader,” Tenuta deadpanned during the interview. “Unless you feel pain, you are not alive.”

She claims (distinguishing fact from fiction with Tenuta can be a tricky) that audience members are now coming to her to be healed--like a guy in Phoenix who came onstage during the current tour, seeking a cure for his gambling addiction. Judy says he told her that he lost $9,000 in Las Vegas--having forgotten, in his gambler’s haze, that the chips represented real money.

If he was looking for sympathy, he came to the wrong place. This, after all, is the comic whose standard exit line is: “You people mean nothing to me.”

“This guy, he looked like an eggplant with teeth,” Tenuta relates. “They give you these chips and you don’t know what they are? What did he think, they were Doritos? You crunch ‘em and they make more?”

The biographical facts on Tenuta are hard to squeeze out from talking to her but can be assembled secondhand: According to her press kit, she is 34, grew up near Chicago, attended college and held a variety of jobs before taking a course in improvisation at Second City. She has spent much of the time since on the road, building a solid following with her . . . ah, distinctive stage presence. She has appeared on several HBO comedy specials, cut an album and starred in a very strange series of Pepsi commercials.

And where does Tenuta make her home these days?

“Seat 13-A of Air Turkey,” she says, “because I spend so much of my time astral projecting.” Natch.

Judy Tenuta performs today through Thursday at 8:30 p.m.; Friday at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday at 8 and 10:30 p.m. and Sunday at 8:30 p.m. at the Improvisation, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine. Admission: $10 to $15. Information: (714) 854-5455.