COMEDY : Bobby Slayton Is Out There, but He’s Not <i> Too </i> Out There

He’s ba-a-a-a-ck.

Bobby Slayton, whose caustic wit and rapid-fire delivery takes aim at racial, ethnic and sexual stereotypes, is headlining at the Irvine Improv through Sunday. The abrasive-yet-endearing comic tried toning down his act a while back, but it’s not easy keeping the so-called “Pit Bull of Comedy” on a short leash.

“I think it was a period where I was just mellowing a little and decided to be a little more mainstream and acceptable,” the ex-New Yorker said by phone from Los Angeles last week in his trademark “Dead End Kid” rasp. “But I get so incensed every day just picking up the paper and reading about the anti-abortion morons and the gays picketing ‘Basic Instinct’ because they have nothing better to do--I could go on and on. . . .

“Then I just get angry again and I want to go out and yell at people when I get on stage. And I’m right back to where I was.”

As a comedian, Slayton said, he sort of falls between the cracks: He’s not as “out there” as Andrew Dice Clay or Sam Kinison and he’s not as “nice” as Jerry Seinfeld.

“The bottom line is I’m just going to keep doing what I do,” he said. “I don’t want to get on the ‘Bob Hope Young Comedians Special.’ I don’t need to kowtow to anybody.”

Politically correct he isn’t.

“There’s nothing that annoys me more than that,” he said. “It bothers me so much that everybody is so afraid to offend other people.”

Slayton said his current act covers “a wide range of stuff, from the pedestrian--airline flying and my child--to whatever’s going on in the news.” In the process of talking about those topics, he said, “you ruffle some feathers.”

Take the death penalty: “Everybody talks about the criminally insane,” he said, mentioning that “all these guilty liberals” complain that crazy or retarded people shouldn’t be given the death penalty.

“My argument is if they don’t know what they did, then they don’t know that you’re going to kill them. Put them into an electric chair and tell them it’s a ride.”

Slayton said he also talks about being married--about “how much I love my wife and how stupid marriage is.

“My whole attitude about marriage is that it had to be a woman’s idea. You know some stupid guy was sitting there (saying), ‘This is great, honey. So, I can’t sleep with anyone else ever again-- for the rest of my life-- and if things don’t work out you get to keep all of my stuff.’ ”

Slayton, winner of the 1989 American Comedy Award for Funniest Male Comedy Club Stand-Up, has been branching out into acting. A few months ago he taped an episode of NBC’s “Nightmare Cafe” series in which he stars as a tabloid newspaper reporter who dresses up three dwarfs as Martians to frighten the residents of a small town in order to get a big story in the paper. The episode airs Friday at 10 p.m.

A big horror movie fan, Slayton was thrilled to work with the series’ creator, Wes Craven, who wrote and directed what turns out to be the sixth and final episode of the series.

“I play such a lowlife,” said Slayton. “It’s a fast-talking, obnoxious tabloid reporter. They told me when they saw my (audition) tape (they said), ‘This is the guy!’ ”

As an actor, Slayton said, he recognizes that he’s “not a guy that’s going to play ‘Tootsie’ or gain 50 pounds to play in ‘Raging Bull.’ ” But he is well-suited to play fast-talking hustler types, con men, drug dealers, disc jockeys and sleazy record executives--”stuff that’s not that much of a stretch.”

The two weeks he spent working on “Nightmare Cafe” were a welcome break from doing stand-up comedy, he said.

“To me, (stand-up is) one of the bottom rungs of show biz,” he said. “There are so many mildly talented people doing it.”

And he doesn’t buy stand-up comics being told they’re “artists.”

“I’m a comic: just a big mouth who tells jokes,” he said.

Hanging out with Craven, who directed the recent horror film, “The People Under the Stairs,” inspired Slayton to add a bit about horror movies to his stand-up act.

The routine is about how Slayton’s wife prefers watching movies such as “Fried Green Tomatoes” or “The Prince of Tides”--movies about relationships, kids and love. Slayton tells her that they already have a relationship, a kid and love. “But we don’t have people under our stairs eating other people.”

Who: Bobby Slayton.

When: Thursday, April 2, and Sunday, April 5, at 8:30 p.m.; Friday, April 3, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, April 4, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.

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.