For Amateur Comics, Jokes Aren’t Always a Laughing Matter

So, you’re a real cutup around the office water cooler. You can really make the guys and gals down at the gym bust a gut.

Fine. But just remember it’s one thing to tell your friends a joke that begins “Did you hear the one about the three nuns . . . “ and quite another to get up in front of a room full of paying customers.

Impersonations of your obnoxious boss and jokes about your wife’s cooking won’t cut it. A couple of bad jokes and half the audience will start wondering what they are missing on television. If you’re really bad, they will leave to find out.

Comedy is like juggling chain saws--rewarding when it goes well, but done badly, a bloody disaster.

Which brings us to a night of competition in the eighth annual “Funniest Person in the Valley Contest” at the L.A. Cabaret in Sherman Oaks.

The “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” had fewer gruesome deaths.

For 10 consecutive Tuesday nights, amateur comedians competed to qualify for 20 spots in the semifinals Tuesday. From there, five go to the finals the following Tuesday. The audience votes with ballots handed out at the door.

The winner receives $3,000 and is crowned “The Funniest Person in the Valley.” Tommy Davidson, a regular on the Fox television show “In Living Color,” won the contest in 1987, although he probably does not boast about it to his friends.

The comics ranged from a middle-aged housewife with a degree in psychology to a burned-out, over-the-hill, let’s-legalize-pot hippie. The topics included everything from the mundane (getting old, losing weight, dating) to the provocative (breast implants, riots, gun control) to the outright crude (dogs with gas, yeast infections and bestiality involving one of the Brady Bunch girls).

The audience on a recent Tuesday night was mostly youngsters on dates who seemed to respond well to jokes with profanity or gags about sex. They also enjoyed impersonations but only so long as profanity and sex gags were included.

Political jokes didn’t go over too well.

For example, Marti, a middle-aged, redheaded, bespectacled woman, said: “For $15 we will soon be able to buy a Dan Quayle doll that is anatomically correct: It has no brain.” Silence followed. For once, a Quayle joke, the drowning comic’s lifesaver, fell dead.

Jokes about cute things that children say or do also bombed. Take Jerry, a dark-haired woman in jeans who said that when she uses hair spray her children say, “Oh, mom, you don’t really want your hair to stay that way.” More silence. More death.

Comedian Steve Martin used to say that comedy is not pretty. This was downright frightful.

But as the night drew on and the audience consumed the two-drink minimum and started putting away a few more, the amusement threshold dropped dramatically.

Johnny, an Ohio native who explained that Ohio is east of Sepulveda, got some laughs when he joked about how often postal workers go on murderous rampages. “Guns don’t kill folks, postal workers do,” he said. “Now we know what the hell dogs have been barking about all these years.”

Then there was Howard, who got big laughs because he was the joke. A pale, short man with a receding hairline and sunken eyes, Howard’s game plan was to have the audience laugh at him, not with him. The plan worked.

“I had a weird childhood,” he deadpanned. “Everyday after school I would get beaten up. I eventually talked to my parents and I said: ‘Stop it.’ ”

One comedian who called himself “Chief Eagle Eye,” wore a straw hat, a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and long, unruly hair and a beard. He tried Howard’s technique with less success. It’s probably because people have had their fill of hippies joking about getting stoned from the “Cheech and Chong” movies. Perhaps the Rebuild LA people can teach him some skills so he will forget about being a comedian.

The winner for that night was a young black comedian named Larry who did raw, in-your-face jokes about police brutality, Moses of the Old Testament and the Olympic “Dream Team.” He joked about Rodney King filing a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles, asking for $1 million for every time he was struck by the four police officers. “I would take a beating for $57 million,” he said. “You go outside and get a stick because I want a $57-million . . . whipping.”

Bobby, a long-haired, young man in a Rolling Stones T-shirt, had a woman in the back of the club screaming with laughter. But she also had about six empty beer bottles in front of her.

“My doctor gave me anti-inflammatory drugs,” Bobby said. “I think they are working because I haven’t burst into flames yet.”

And then there was Doug, a long-haired young dude in a black T-shirt emblazoned with a skull and crossbones. Poor Doug was in the bathroom when the emcee called him to do his act. He rushed on stage, his belt still unfastened and dangling from his waist. He was so flustered that he forgot one of his props, a potato-shaped puppet named “Spudman” who, he explained later, would be part of a bit involving Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown.

He did the bit anyway, using a clenched fist as the puppet. It did poorly. He probably should have stayed in the bathroom.

After nearly four hours of comedy, Peter, the last comic of the night, admitted that he probably is not the funniest comedian in the Valley but surely the funniest between Balboa Boulevard and Haskell Avenue.

Who knows, Peter? That’s a pretty large area.