COMEDY REVIEW : Team Takes a Stab at Stereotypes : Comedy: Jim O’Brien and Alex Valdez get their humor across with sensitivity and intelligence.

When Jim O’Brien met Alex Valdez about 10 years ago doing stand-up comedy in Orange County, it ended up being a case of the blind leading the clumsy.

The two comics--who are playing the Comedy Isle in Mission Beach through Sunday--were working solo that night, and O’Brien invited Valdez, who is blind, to a local nightclub to hear some blues.

“I had never led a blind person before,” O’Brien explained, laughing. “We were knocking tables and chairs all over the place.”

Valdez finally took the lead.

“I knew the place,” he said matter-of-factly.

Though this story doesn’t fully explain the comedy of the two, which teamed up three years later, it does underscore the essence of their act: Being disabled doesn’t mean having to be led around all your life.

“It’s just how I am,” said Valdez, who went blind in one eye from glaucoma at age 4, and in the other due to a detached retina at age 7.

Although the thought of laughing at a blind person may be unsettling, Valdez immediately erased any such feelings Wednesday night.

“People ask me why I don’t wear sunglasses or shades,” he told the crowd. “I tell ‘em I’ve never seen a deaf person wearing earmuffs.”

That set the stage for the rest of the night. The pair’s funny and intelligent routine continually poked innocent fun at Valdez’s blindness as well as O’Brien’s less-than-affluent Irish-Catholic roots and Valdez’s Latino origins.

And they did it with a sensitivity that let them tread awkward territory without crossing the line into viciousness or hypocrisy.

They got their humor across with sound effects and impressions, by playing a little music, and by poking holes in stereotypes.

The duo’s innate sense of timing and perfectly matched personalities come from working together for seven years. They are proof that two heads are better than one.

The musical portion of the evening features Valdez on guitar with O’Brien on harmonica doing something called “White Trash Blues,” a song, O’Brien says, that is about “families on either side of us, across the street and down the road” when he was growing up in Chicago.

O’Brien, dressed casually in a blue silk shirt, grinned and laughed constantly while keeping an eye on Valdez to make sure he didn’t fall off the stage. Valdez, dressed impeccably in shirt, tie and suspenders, alternately played the foil or the antagonist throughout the 55-minute set.

When one joke fell flat and the audience groaned, O’Brien protected himself: “Hey, the Mexican said it.” Valdez, who wasn’t about to take the blame, came back: “But the white boy wrote it.”

The synergism was infectious. The two took a listless opening-night crowd of about 50 that had just suffered through two earlier acts and woke it up with their mixed bag of humor.

But the comedy veterans--who have worked extensively in television, radio and on the club circuit--eschew any label of being crusaders. They just want the world to wake up. They find it stunning that the disabled are still looked at and treated differently.

“Even in the ‘90s, people are afraid to take chances with the disabled . . . unless they’re

sitting behind a piano, where they can’t hurt themselves,” Valdez said after the performance, referring to show business.

“We just want to be funny with a unique hook,” said O’Brien, who in the mid-1970s worked with Jay Leno, David Letterman and Robin Williams in Los Angeles. But he also made it clear that they also want to get their message across.

The performers, both 37, let the audience know it’s OK not to be 100% able. It’s OK to laugh a little at the hand you’ve been dealt. And that, through comedy, maybe people can see through their prejudices and fears.

Jim O’Brien and Alex Valdez perform through Sunday at Comedy Isle at the Bahia Resort, 998 W. Mission Bay Drive. Shows are at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. today and Saturday and at 8:30 p.m. Sunday. 488-6872.