COMEDY REVIEW : Life in Slow Lane Perfect Cotter Fodder : Stand-Up: Daily grind provides refreshing material for comedian in Pacific Beach.

The audience almost couldn’t believe it. And even after the show was over, most of the full house at the Improv on Tuesday night still weren’t convinced.

Here was a comedian who didn’t pounce on them. A comedian who was actually courteous and respectful, with no thoughts of shredding any of the 310 comedy fans. Once, he even apologized for missing someone’s remark.

Welcome to the world of Wayne Cotter, a 35-year-old stand-up comic who boasts one of the cleanest and most refreshing acts on the circuit.

He wonders why his refrigerator door only has 10 egg holes “I have to eat two eggs immediately when I get home.”

Or why men would rather drive lost around the tip of South America than ask for directions--until “God speaks to us personally.”

Wearing blue jeans, a purple David Letterman T-shirt and a black dinner jacket, Cotter was the picture of a friendly, unassuming comedian with a comforting voice that just wanted to reach out and touch someone, not ravage them. His voice is reminiscent of a young Jimmy Stewart.

Cotter’s rare harsh words were reserved for airlines, and with good reason.

On Monday, the comic flew from Los Angeles (where he lives) to Baltimore for a benefit that night before spending all day Tuesday flying to San Diego, then “fishtailing into the parking lot” for the Improv show with just the clothes on his back because the airlines lost his luggage.

But he seemed more concerned that the airplane lacked a Row 13. “Does that make you feel good knowing the airline is superstitious? In the cabin they got rabbits feet all over.”

Nor is he fond of airlines that do things on the cheap. At the end of most trips, flight attendants wave and say, “Goodby. Goodby. So long.” But on this one, particularly cheap airline he singled out, the flight attendants prefer: “Spare change? Spare change?”

Cotter attributes a share of his success to Jay Leno, whom he calls a mentor. Besides their choice of material, that relationship is most noticeable in the comedians’ paternalistic attitude toward their fans. It’s a peaceful coexistence, a mutual respect. “I didn’t come here to tear you from limb to limb,” Cotter kept reminding the audience.

He was about 5 years old when he got hooked on comedy, memorizing Mel Brooks’ and Carl Reiner’s 2,000-year-old man routine. He went to the University of Pennsylvania on a scholarship to study electrical engineering, doing stand-up on the side, before taking a job programming computers for four years, then turning to comedy full time.

Cotter, who has been married to a painter for almost five years, spends 40 to 45 weeks a year on the road. He has been on the Tonight Show six times during the past year and a half and the David Letterman show four times in the past three years.

During another part of the 55-minute show, Cotter spoke about a frozen-egg custody battle and how a baby can now have five parents. A card company is going to jump on that, he says, making “some Sunday in July ovum donors’ day:

“I want to take this chance to say, / You have a way with your DNA.”

Like Leno, Cotter avoids blue material and takes an innocent glance at life in the slow lane, taking a look at anything from ringing phones to words, to hospital stays to pets. And odometers. Cotter got excited when his odometer was at 3-3-3-3-8 and ready to turn all 3’s. But he got so excited he drove into a ditch, where he sat until a state trooper asked if there was anything he could do to help: “Yeah. Push me another two-tenths of a mile.”

Warming up the crowd for Cotter was Dave Dugan, another veteran of the comedy club circuit.

Speaking with a clear, deep voice, Dugan said he is pleased that he has a roof over his head these days, albeit at a picnic shelter, but he is “getting tired of all the unexpected company on the weekends.”

And he couldn’t believe he was almost kept off a plane because he had a pair of short, blunt scissors in his bag. “We’re going to Cuba,” he said sarcastically, “or someone’s getting a bad haircut.”

Dugan’s act is similar to Cotter’s in subject matter--both focus on the life of the common man--but they overlap only minimally. He provided an ideal segue into Cotter’s act and did a good job himself, including a skit about Capt. Jerry, the DJ pilot.