JUDY, JUDY, JUDY : Tenuta Asks: Why Should a Love Goddess Wait for Others to Worship the Ground She Walks On?

Judy Tenuta, the self-anointed “Love Goddess,” was talking by phone from her hotel room somewhere in Hollywood. Exactly where, she preferred not to say.

“Like I don’t have enough obsessed fans,” she said, breaking into her trademark growl. “That’s all I need--Dahmer Jr. coming over for a rib sandwich.”

The accordion-toting “Petite Flower,” who’s headlining through Sunday at the Irvine Improv, was in top form last week during an interview that was as freewheeling as her stand-up act. Between bites of a fruit cocktail she touched upon everything from George Bush (“That guy’s no President; he’s a substitute teacher. That squid!”) to a TV commercial that is ripping off her “It could happen” catch phrase (“I’m gonna call my lawyer!”).

Vogue magazine has said that Judy Tenuta “is to female stand-up comics what Carrie was to high school girls.”

For the uninitiated, she is “giver goddess, fashion plate, saint, earth mother” and creator of Judyism, a self-styled religion designed to “help you forget about your problems and think about mine for a change.”

With her secondhand Grecian-style gowns, accordion arpeggios and penchant for referring to the men in her audience as “love slaves” and “stud puppets,” she’s a comedy original whose monologues, as Time magazine put it, “alternate between airy twittering and truck stop sarcasm.” To a guy who tries to pick her up in a punk-rock bar, she growls in her act: “I was lookin’ for someone a little closer to the food chain.”

Tenuta’s off-the-wall comedy--”You know what scares me? When you have to be nice to some paranoid schizophrenic . . . just because she lives in your body”--has earned her an American Comedy Award and generated a comedy album (“Buy This, Pigs!”), cable TV specials (“Worship Me, Pigs!”) and a series of psychotic Diet Dr. Pepper commercials.

Tenuta, one of eight children who grew up in a Polish-Italian home in suburban Chicago, claims she majored in “pre-Colombian taxidermy and speech and theater” at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and then worked a variety of jobs, including singing waitress, before taking a course in improvisation at Chicago’s Second City comedy cabaret. In the mid ‘70s she began performing stand-up in Chicago’s blues clubs.

Tentuta said her “very strict Catholic” upbringing, with its “subtext” that women should be men’s servants, provided the inspiration for her comedy by turning it around to say: “Women are love goddesses and men are slaves.”

But don’t get her wrong:

“I love all stud puppets,” she said, “and I think they all should have a chance to be our furniture.”

The Aphrodite of the Accordion developed a cult following, particularly among men, by reportedly working on the road more than 40 weeks a year in the ‘80s.

Does she still spend that much time on the road?

“Who cares?” Tenuta said, dismissing the question. “The most important thing is I’m the goddess of the galaxy, I’m the goddess of the universe. And I’m the only one with a religion, the only with a redeeming value. Everyone else is a troll.”

As a performer, Tenuta is no stranger to Irvine, which, she observes, “is so yuppiefied.” That’s not to say she doesn’t count yuppies among her fans.

“Oh yes, I have yuppies,” she said. “But, let’s face it, the people that really need me now are the people who need healing : These damn women with leaks. These women with Silly Putty breasts.”

Launching into a discourse on the silicone gel breast implant controversy, Tenuta observed that “now all the petite flowers are leaking. So that’s my mission now, helping the petite persons with their Silly Putty breasts. And I’m the only one anyone can believe in any more. Jimmy Swaggart--that pig can’t even even hike up his boxer shorts without going to the Saddle Slut Motor Inn.”

Was the Love Goddess ever tempted to augment her divine dimensions?

“No! Gross me out,” she said. “Listen, here’s what I think: Women should go back to Kleenex . . . .I’m tired of this crap. We’ve been told to be obsessed with having these big gigantic milk glands. . .”

Like so many of her fellow stand-up comedians, Tenuta acknowledged that she’d like to have her own TV series. She concedes, however, that the networks so far haven’t been receptive to a performer who is so, ahem, different.

“Excuse me for making me an icon,” she said. “You either need to be a guy with tools or a whale with kids. Listen, ‘Roseanne’ and all that, that’s fine, but there should be room for alternatives. Everything shouldn’t be a guy with tools or a woman with kids.”

One thing Tenuta can list among her credits is “author.” Her book “The Power of Judyism,” which allows readers to “discover the cowlike joy and fulfillment of becoming a Judy zombie,” was published in November by Harper Perennial and is already in its fourth printing.

“It’s a bible and a must-read for all Judy love zombies,” said Tenuta, explaining that “it’s a guide for life.”

Might the spiritual leader of Judyism share a tip or two?

“Oh, right!” she growled. “Like I’m going to tell you that so you don’t have to spend $12.50.”

Tentuta admitted it’s not easy being a love goddess, the center of an entire religion.

“People are always stealing my garbage. I have to have Fawn Hall shred all my papers,” she said, adding that even at her shows “people fight over sitting in front. Especially men because they want me to spit my gum on them. There is a fight over that always. Always! Seriously. Also in each town I have at least one rabid fan that always brings me some kind of goddess offering. Little things like socks. Or stuffed animals. Or flowers.

“And people tell me how I’ve changed their lives--how they were once a troll without a purpose and now they’re a troll with a purpose.”

Does she have any parting words for her Orange County audiences?

“I just want to tell them all that if they believe in Judyism they will have no worries,” she said. “And, of course, I will heal them of their fears, including having flash floods. And silicone implants. Nice! I will perform some baptisms and they will have a whole new enlightened lifestyle. I’m sorry, it’s going to be a little more than mother-in-law jokes. Excuse me.”

And for love slaves who plan to bear offerings for the Goddess, she provides this incentive:

“The ones that bring me the best offering can kiss the hem of my gown.”

Who: Judy Tenuta.

When: Thursday, Feb. 27, and Sunday, March 1, at 8:30 p.m.; Friday, Feb. 28, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, Feb. 29, at 8 and 10:30 p.m. With Bobby Tessel.

Where: The Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine.

Whereabouts: In the Irvine Marketplace shopping center, across Campus Drive from the UC Irvine campus.

Wherewithal: $7 to $10.

Where to call: (714) 854-5455.