COMEDY REVIEW : Gagsters Plumb the Old, the New and the Dirty

It was a case of the old turk and the young turk getting together for some laughs. The young lines and the old lines.

Veteran Kip Addotta and newcomer Scott Henry, playing through Sunday at Comedy Nite in Oceanside, represent the two ends of the comedy spectrum.

Milwaukee-born Henry, in his early 20s, bounded on stage Wednesday night looking like a surfer dude from the Midwest who just moved to Manhattan Beach. He wore the de rigueur uniform of blue jeans and a white shirt with wide, gray horizontal stripes.

He captures the young turk image well. He gained the crowd’s confidence within seconds, talking about jobs and alarm clocks, bemoaning mothers who act as alarm clocks. “They have no snooze buttons.”

Addotta, 45, looked more like a bad ad for clothing. He wore a bright royal blue shirt hanging out over black baggy pants. His 60-minute headliner set wore well, but it had more of an edge to it. Ironically, however, some of his best stuff was in his occasional observations on life’s more mundane subjects and offbeat moments.

He wants to know how we know when there is new, improved and better-tasting dog food?

He talks about man’s inhumanity to man in a piece about his watch, a family heirloom. “My father was on his deathbed, and he sold it to me. I gave him a check.”

Though his keener material was in the PG area, he ventured often into blue areas that weren’t as insightful. As is often the case, however, the blue jokes got the easier laughs, despite the fact that his best work is in the tamer areas of everyday experiences.

A good example of this is a takeoff on driving and freeways. Addotta, who resembles a younger, slimmer Rodney Dangerfield, refers to the bumps separating lanes on California roads as a Braille system that lets people drive with their eyes closed. He compares our easy-driver system with Pennsylvania’s freeways, where they just have painted stripes. “Those drivers must be gooooood,” he says, his blue eyes opening wide to accent the point.

With slow, deliberate moves and a confident stage presence, Addotta relates well with the crowd.

In the last part of his show, he turned to X-rated scenarios and worked the easy laughs. This portion of his performance is not for the faint of heart.

Addotta has appeared about 20 times on the “Tonight Show.” His comedy career took root in Los Angeles in the early 1970s, and he mentioned that he has 5 1/2 hours worth of material. It would have been interesting to draw out more of the good material and less of the easy laughs, which many comedy fans find boring.

Henry was anything but boring. He has opened for top national acts and played most of the country’s comedy club circuit.

Moving lithely and casually around the stage in his 30-minute set, his subjects are more than just bedroom and anatomy humor. And his forays into these areas are generally limited to one-liners, not in-depth theses.

He talks about new cars, for instance. “I just got a new Honda. It gets 3 states to the gallon.”

Henry kept the crowd of about 220 interested by including a slight from a kindergarten teacher who called him immature. “C’mon. I was 5 years old.” He then goes into a funny little routine about how a mature 5-year-old could have gotten a better grade. Expanding that bit wouldn’t hurt his show.

He punctuated much of his material with lots of little smiles, evil little smiles at times. He rarely let himself laugh.

Henry kept the show moving at his pace and in his direction--while still having fun with the audience without being insulting. Not an easy trick for stand-up comics.