COMEDY : JUGGLING WORDS : After Years of Tossing Indian Clubs, Chris Bliss Decided to Get Verbal--and Topical

Orange County’s reputation as a conservative audience tough on comedians with a viewpoint doesn’t faze social observer Chris Bliss. He has a simple credo: Smart comedy transcends politics and narrow-mindedness.

“I look for what’s funny to me and then try to make it as funny as possible for other people,” said Bliss, who is the middle act at the Irvine Improv through Sunday, then returns Jan. 10 as the headliner. “The idea is to communicate some ideas without being preachy. I don’t believe in comedy that is accessible only to the comics at the back of the room, unless it’s one of those nights when the audience is on life support. Then it’s OK to be hipper than thou.”

He sees his task as not unlike the court jester of yore, pointing out that the emperor is naked. His goal is not to take cheap shots, but to open a dialogue, make a connection.

“I don’t want to be a comedy vulture feeding off the corpse,” said Bliss, who grew up in Washington, the son of a corporate lawyer. “The reason I’m on stage is I have a strong desire to communicate. What good is intelligence if you can’t communicate? And it has to be funny.”

Irony and absurdity count, too, and Bliss need go no further than a bankrupt Orange County to underscore that point.

“It’s not funny, but is it ironic? You bet. They got taken by their own people, the brokers.”

But for perhaps the ultimate irony, the veteran cable-TV performer turns to fallout from the Vietnam War.

“For 19 years the Vietnamese were living off shrapnel. It was the second leading export. They sold the shrapnel to Japan for cars, which (the Japanese) sold to us. That is unbelievable, as sweet an irony as you can find. The emotion is out of the cycle at that point. They’re just selling us back our bombs. Something in there shows how we’re all tied together. I’m always looking for some symbol of unity.”

Bliss wasn’t always so verbal and keenly aware of life around him.

Many people still remember him as a world-class juggler who set his act to music--with black lights and strobes, but no words.

His sister taught him the basics when he was in his teens, and it became a way to kill time for the self-described (back then) egghead and acerbic guy before he entered college and studied comparative literature in the early ‘70s.

By the early ‘80s, he was tossing Indian clubs around the globe, and in 1984 he opened for Michael Jackson’s Victory Tour. But a couple of years later, while touring with Julian Lennon, he tired of being a variety act and decided to try his hand at stand-up.

“The hardest part of doing stand-up was to walk away from something I was excellent at,” the Van Nuys resident said earlier his week after returning from Cleveland to a pile of junk mail. (“It’s the gift of the information age. There’s a reprocessed redwood on my table.”) “I was doing 15 minutes of bad stand-up and 15 minutes of great juggling. It finally hit me that I was really, really bad.”

But with constant work, the comedy soon overtook the juggling portion of the show, and Bliss was headlining on comedy alone. For a while he abandoned juggling altogether, but has restored some of it to the routine as he gained confidence in his humor.

“In the last two years, I’ve found a voice as a comic,” said Bliss, who is on the road 30 to 35 weeks a year, flying about 50,000 miles. “I wound up back in the verbal world. And I like it here.”

More recently, he has found something else to like: his first “Tonight Show” gig. He appeared in the middle of September, after being bumped a few weeks earlier by Max the Sea Lion, who played Andre the Seal in the movie “Andre.”

“He had a picture, and I didn’t,” Bliss said. “I understand it. There’s a pecking order.”

Besides, he still got paid and had a fine time--such a fine time that Bliss expects to do his second “Tonight Show” set within six weeks of completing his Irvine shows.

“It was completely professional. They make sure you are completely comfortable, completely welcome. Basically, your questions are answered before you can ask them. There’s nothing to think about except your performance.”

Part of Bliss’ motivation comes from his frustration at watching society function in an Us-vs.-Them manner. He rails against the powerful who perpetrate that structure. He’s afraid they don’t understand the divisions such an adversarial approach opens in society.

He brought up a show he did after last month’s elections, when a man in the audience yelled out, “We’re the taking the country back!”

“From whom!?!?” Bliss asks, incredulous. “He was just some dittohead in the Us-vs.-Them mentality. I don’t think it’s a very good way to run a society. What works in business doesn’t necessarily work in society. It’s more like a family-run business. Nobody understands where the other person is coming from.

“It disturbs me in this country we have people living separate realities (who) can’t relate to anyone different. They have views, not facts.”

Not knowing the facts and blindly accepting the status quo worries Bliss. That tells him no one is thinking. And that’s not helping the democracy run.

“When the Gulf war was happening, it was very inspiring. Who wants to toe the party line? The propaganda machine? I mean, tie a yellow ribbon around the Exxon pump. There was nothing funny, but a lot was absurd. I can smell a falsehood in Denmark or Limbaugh Land. These things make you have a point of point of view. The L.A. riots give you a point of view.

“(Comedians) are not curing cancer, but we can put a few dents in ignorance.”

* Who: Chris Bliss.

* When: Tonight, Dec. 15, at 8:30 p.m.; Friday, Dec. 16, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 17, at 8 and 10:30 p.m., and Sunday, Dec. 18, at 8 p.m.

* Where: The Improv, 4255 Campus Drive, Irvine.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Jamboree Road exit and head south. Turn left onto Campus Drive. The Improv is in the Irvine Marketplace shopping center, across from the UC Irvine campus.

* Wherewithal: $7-$10.

* Where to call: (714) 854-5455.

Chris Bliss on:

* Flying flags at half-staff after Richard Nixon died: “I kind of thought 18 1/2 minutes of silence would’ve been more appropriate.”

* Life after death: “If there is reincarnation, don’t you think we should reconsider the death penalty?”

* Hunting: “One of mankind’s deepest instincts. Case of beer, fifth of Jack Daniel’s, high-powered rifle. Sounds like a weekend to me.”

* Cloning dinosaurs: “The animal-rights people would be in a mess. Those things eat six species a day.”