‘Laugh Glutton’ Keeps ‘Em in Feeding Frenzy : Comedy: Richard Jeni, who opens tonight in Irvine, will ‘throw myself on the floor and be stupid’ during stand-up acts to get laughs. He’s also working on movies and in TV.

After Richard Jeni nearly brought the conversation to a halt earlier this week with a few yawns and a soft shuffle of a voice that suggested he was about to fall asleep, it begged the question: Big weekend?

Not really, he said. Turns out it just more of a long, damp one. Jeni had just returned from Arizona after performing stand-up at the Tempe Improv. And it rained most of the time.

“But you know Arizona,” Jeni deadpanned. “It was a dry rain.”

For the Brooklyn native, who’s coming to the Irvine Improv for a three-night stand starting today, stand-up gigs remain a key part of an ever-expanding career. He’s working on a movie for New Line Cinema and developing a sitcom for the Fox Network. He also just re-upped for another season as the host for “Caroline’s Comedy Hour,” which airs Sunday nights on the Arts & Entertainment channel.

Keeping all this straight, however, is not a problem.

“I focus on whatever is going on at the moment,” Jeni said during the recent phone interview from the home he bought three years ago in the West Hollywood hills. “My main thing now is getting the sitcom off the ground.”

As with most development deals, Jeni couldn’t say much about the project--only that he was heading over to Fox later in the day to figure out what the network wants to do and that it will probably make a pilot.

They’re also going to discuss his yet-undefined role as host for Fox’s New Year’s Eve special from Times Square.

“I guess I’ll be something like the Guy Lombardo of Fox.”

Jeni, 36, got into comedy in 1981, when he was persuaded to attend an open-mike night at Pip’s, a Brooklyn club. He thought the acts were terrible and that he could do better. Later that year, he put his mouth where the mike was.

As luck would have it, the owner’s son was making a rare stop at the club, liked Jeni and asked him to come back. After that, he performed around town before heading West in 1986.

Jeni’s act consists of driving home a point, with rapid-fire punch lines. He prefers stringing together joke after joke on a topic, as in this take on testosterone: “I love when guys first walk in to the Red Lobster, saying, ‘It seems sort of cruel, boiling a lobster.’ Three beers later, though, he’s the emperor of Rome. ‘Bring me the brown one. . . . He amuses me. SEIZE HIM! QUICKLY! The table next to me is a bit noisy. BOIL THEM AS WELL!’ ”

By fully covering one subject before moving to another, he said, he doesn’t have to constantly jump-start his audience. Once they’re moving, he keeps them moving.

“That came about because I’m a glutton, a laugh glutton,” Jeni explained. “I don’t want to just amuse and entertain. I want them to leave clutching their sides. I want their shirts to be wet from crying. That’s why I’ll stick with a topic. They’re not laughing when you change subjects. I stay with it as long as I can.”

It helps that he’s a skillful writer, uses theatrics and gets physical to wring out the laughs.

“I’ll do whatever I can. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll be dirty or throw myself on the floor and be stupid. The how isn’t that important. What’s important is the audience really, really cracking up.”

In his movie that’s slated for summer release, “The Mask” with Jim Carrey (“In Living Color”), Jeni plays Carrey’s best friend, a Milquetoast totally baffled by women, until a momentous discovery.

“Jim gets hold of this ancient Viking mask,” Jeni said of the film, which is based on the Dark Horse Comics series. “When he puts on the mask, he becomes a super-cool dude. He can do magical things. I’m the ‘Let me tell you how chicks really are’ type of guy.”

*

For his shows this weekend, he’ll draw about 60 minutes of material from a quiver that holds about four or five hours of jokes.

“I’ll mix some old stuff and some new stuff, usually about half and half,” he said. “If you don’t do any of your greatest hits that’ve been on TV, people feel they’ve been ripped off. If you do all new stuff, they feel they’re missing something. I try to keep them off-balance.”

Jeni didn’t start out to be a comedian. In fact, he didn’t know exactly what he wanted to do when he graduated from New York’s Hunter College with a degree in political science.

“There is no natural segue out of political science. You can either end up as secretary of state or as a counter boy at McDonald’s. There’s not much in between.”

Jeni thought about attending law school, but didn’t feel like spending three years discussing torts and taunts. But because he is a good writer, he focused on what he could do with that ability. Public relations was the answer.

He landed a good job with Hill & Knowlton but wasn’t inspired by the work. Finally, he took the open-mike bait.

Since then, Jeni--who won cable TV’s prestigious ACE award as 1992’s top male stand-up comedian after being nominated five times--has done three stand-up specials: “Boy From New York City” (a half-hour 1989 Showtime broadcast), “Crazy From the Heat” (an hour in 1991, also on Showtime) and “PlatypusMan” (an hour in February this year on HBO, which has a larger audience).

Though Jeni is making inroads into TV and film, he doesn’t see stand-up, as the many comics do, simply as a stepping stone to larger audiences and larger paychecks.

“I’ll do stand-up forever,” he said, before putting parameters on the statement. “Or for as long as anyone wants to hear me do it.”

* Richard Jeni will perform two shows nightly, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m., today through Sunday at the Irvine Improv, 4255 Campus Drive. Hal Spears opens. $15. (714) 854-5455.

Richard Jeni on . . .

* Los Angeles’ recent troubles: “L.A., my town, what a town. The city that is to peace and tranquillity what liposuction is to Somalia. One thing after another. First, riots. Then just when you relax, fires and mudslides. Why can’t we just have a different disaster every night for three weeks then get back to normal? If Chevy Chase did it, why can’t we?”

* Marriage: “They should replace ‘The Wedding March’ with the theme from ‘Mission Impossible.’ To marry, or not to marry? To go out nights and listen to a lot of (stuff) I’m not interested in, or stay home and hear a lot of (stuff) I’ve heard before?”