COMEDY REVIEW : Diceman Becomes the Niceman at Pacific Amphitheatre

“Andrew Dice Clay is a male chauvinst pig and I really don’t like him,” said Tammy Gantry, 19.

Not an unexpected remark from a woman, considering that the leather-clad comedian has made his fortune by heaping the crudest of abuse on the gentler sex.

But why, then, was the Cerritos waitress lining up to see Clay Friday night at the Pacific Amphitheatre?

With a frown, Gantry pointed to the man standing next to her, her boyfriend, Anthony Luciano. Displaying the telltale sneer that graced the faces of most men at the show, Luciano, 21, concurred with his date:

“That’s right, I beat her into coming. Dice is a male chauvinist pig all right, and I love him for it.”

His braggadocio swelling, Luciano went on to insist that he had seen both Clay’s briefly released concert film, “Dice Rules” and his feature-length flop “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane,” about 40 times apiece, memorizing their dialogue as a sort of a personal mantra. “I’ve got video machines all over my house, and Dice’s movies are running all the time,” the Brea auto broker said.

Other men shared Luciano’s enthusiasm for the Diceman’s interpretation of male-female relations.

“He talks straight about girls,” said Jerry Villegas, 21, of Huntington Park. Along with five similarly dateless buddies from the Eastside of Los Angeles, Villegas came hoping to hear Clay propound the villainy of contemporary womanhood.

“Everything he says is the truth. The (stuff) he says, it happens, man,” he said. Summarized Villegas’ friend, Freddy Verduzco, 22: “We’re here to hear him talk dirty about girls.”

But Clay, whose 15 minutes of fame seemed perilously close to expiring after the shock value of his misogyny wore off, had a surprise in store for the faithful.

“Now I know what the guys are thinking,” the baritone Brooklynite said upon taking the stage. “They’re thinking, ‘I’m so glad I brought my wife, cause he (Clay) is going to say all the things that I’ve always wanted to say to this dumb . . . (woman).’ And maybe I will,” he sneered as the audience exploded with laughter and applause.

“But then again,” he continued, “maybe I won’t.” As feminine squeals drowned out masculine chortles, Clay announced: “We may be able to dish it out guys, but you gotta be able to take it a little, you know what I’m saying?”

With this, Clay commenced a 50-minute routine that applied the Diceman’s vulgar sensibilities to the most politically correct of agendas.

Trawling the deepest gutters of the English language, Clay reeled in line after line of unspeakable profanity, taking men to task for their treatment of women.

“I’ve been talking to the women lately, man, and they’re (upset with) you,” he told the men in the audience. “Fellahs, man, they’re sick of it. . . . Women are sick of the bull. . . . They’re sick of you tellin’ ‘em to come to bed with the sexy nylons and the G-strings . . . and you’re wearing white socks and black . . . boxer shorts,” he chided.

America’s women, Clay said, had come to him with their complaints about men. And, newly appointed as their spokesperson, he felt duty-bound to condemn the masculine sex for a gamut of offenses, from poor bedside manners to an indifference to personal hygiene.

Clay even apologized for his own role in eroding chivalry and legitimizing the use of barnyard vulgarisms in workplace chatter.

“I don’t know, is it my fault? Maybe I said a few things in the past,” he conceded in an unexpected mea culpa . “As you can see, I’m pretty delicate. I’ve changed my ways.”

Notorious for disparaging ethnic minorities and social outcasts in his past shows, this Andrew Nice Clay paid vulgar homage to overweight people and to blacks. He spoke on the sensual charms of larger women, praising their lack of pretense. And, after “hanging out with some of the brothers,” he had come to so admire the ways of people of color that “I turned black about eight months ago,” Clay said.

And although he didn’t get around to honoring other groups, Clay left such longtime targets as homosexuals and the handicapped largely unscathed.

In deference to the frustrated men who made up much of the audience, Clay did trot out some of his chestnuts, briefly reviling women as “pigs” and reciting a stream of indecent nursery rhymes.

Yet though these familiar routines brought some of the loudest responses, Clay evinced a tad of creative frustration with them.

“I feel like Englebert Humperdinck doing his greatest hits,” he said with some distaste.

The crowd accepted Clay’s equal-opportunity obscenity with relish, and women in particular said they were pleased he had turned his wit to their advantage. “I love how he ragged on men,” said Brenda West, 23.

But a few of Clay’s admirers saw the Diceman’s newfound sensitivity as a troubling omen for an already precarious entertainment career.

“People will get tired of this,” said Michael Krummenacker, 34, a New York salesman attending a company seminar in Laguna Niguel.

“Five years from now, the Diceman will be history.”