COMEDY : HEAVY METTLE : Comedian Elayne Boosler Is One Tough Gal; Just Ask the Tulsa NRA--or the Queen

Without a little controversy or excitement in her life, Elayne Boosler would be just another comedian with big hair who was born female.

Whether she’s goading stand-up audiences in this country or earning a foreign nation’s scorn, the Brooklyn native likes to shake up the status quo. Boosler’s command performance for the queen of England a few years ago still best sums up her irreverence and love of anarchy. Not to mention an attraction to danger, considering a goodly portion of the populace wanted to make her the next Anne Boleyn after the show.

“It was fun, and it was before all the scandal, so they were still pretty impressive as a royal family,” the topical comic said earlier this month over lunch at a Universal City restaurant. “Actually, I take full responsibility for their demise. I think after my act, they started cheating and (having affairs) and paying off their valets.”

The occasion was a fete for the queen’s 42nd wedding anniversary, with a list of entertainers that included Tina Turner, Janet Jackson and Jerry Lewis. What the 5-foot-4 Boosler did was break most of the royal taboos. Her curtsy (or weak-kneed attempt thereof) angered the press. She wore tails instead of a dress. She talked about . . . sex and single women (“Verrry interesting” was all the queen would say after the show, Boosler recalled). And she addressed the queen directly--a real no-no.

“It was a four-hour show, and there’s some rule that the queen has to be home at 11 or else she turns into a commoner. I don’t know. Anyway, I hadn’t seen the papers yet the next morning, but my phone rang, and it was Jerry Lewis. He said, ‘I will love you forever.’ I asked how come. He said, ‘Because I’m the one they usually skewer the next day.’ ”

When Boosler finally picked up a paper, she found that Lewis had understated the backlash. She was definitely not London’s cup of tea.

“It called for my death.”

But for Boosler, who’s coming to the Orange County Performing Arts Center on Saturday, that’s all part of being a comedian who likes to challenge people. Safe humor has no appeal to her. And neither does writing jokes in a vacuum.

“I can’t write stand-up at home,” she explained. “I don’t write stand-up at all. For me, it just unfolds on stage. Little by little, new material replaces old material. I just try all the time to keep it coming and keep writing and keep trying to find out what I think today. And what’s on people’s minds today.”

When she’s getting ready for a cable special, she needs loads of material and hits the road for about 50 straight weeks. Normally, however, instead of tours, she spreads out six months’ work over a year, a few stops at a time.

“I guess I go to work every day like everybody else, but I just go farther--mostly theaters, a little corporate stuff. I’m not as whitebread as all that requires, but if they ask for me, I’ll go--with a warning. And the warning is a reminder that I didn’t ask them.”

But the theaters are the main focus for Boosler, who hasn’t worked clubs regularly in about eight years, which is fine with her.

“I think people get more and a better show in a theater,” said Boosler, who just returned from dates in Arizona and Florida. “In 90 minutes to two hours, you can really build a whole wonderful story that weaves in and out--and has closure and a balance. It’s not just gunshots. I guess the focus is to be entertained, as opposed to drinking and smoking and talking. That’s how I like to see a comedian I like. I’d much rather see Richard Pryor or Jackie Mason in a theater than in a club.”

To fill that much time and keep her material fresh, Boosler turns to newspapers wherever she’s playing, going cover to cover to localize her show. It’s not unusual for her basically unscripted performance to include 30 minutes on the day’s happenings, whether good news or bad.

“The message of great art is to disturb,” she said. “I think good comedy should do the same thing. I think the whole point, for me personally, is to shake it up a little bit. I go to the the Midwest, and people say, ‘Well, do you change your material?’ I say, ‘Oh, yeah.’ Whatever they are, I give them much more of the opposite because they need me. My proudest moment was getting picketed by the (National Rifle Assn.) in Tulsa.”

On that occasion, in the group’s honor, the feisty Boosler did far more material than usual on guns, including her classic take on hunters’ saying automatic weapons shouldn’t be outlawed: “You know, if you need 100 rounds to kill a deer, maybe hunting isn’t your sport.

“I’m not there to make friends,” she explained. “They didn’t come out to hear me agree with them. They came out to see what I was going to say from someplace else, stuff they don’t get to hear at home every day. That’s the whole point, and people love that.”

But lest it sound as if Boosler is an attack comic, consider this:

“I don’t go after anyone, really. I like to go after the foibles, basically of beliefs that are held without question. If people still want to believe in their stuff after that, that’s great--as long as they just have a chance to step back and look at it for a second. Sometimes, you don’t even realize what you’ve been thinking for 20 years.”

Boosler sees herself as the perfect provocateur.

“I think I’m pretty average, education-wise, life-wise and the way I live, so I think if things stick to me after I’ve read the paper, that’s pretty much what a lot of people might be thinking,” said Boosler, whose schooling included a stint at the University of South Florida, “but not really.”

“I was just waiting to turn 18 so I could leave and be a waitress. I don’t think I ever went to a class in anything. Really. I don’t think there’s much of a record of my being there at all.”

After reaching the magic age, Boosler headed back to New York, where she held a succession of low-paying, ill-suited jobs for a couple of years, including waitressing. None of her choices seemed to fit.

“I was fired from more restaurants. . . . I think I could call Guinness, and they’d bear it out. I was just the worst waitress. I would bring food and always forget the forks, and by the time I’d return, the people had made jewelry out of the shellfish.”

But the unfocused Boosler, who had taken a few painful steps in ballet and also tried singing, was in no hurry to find her future.

Ironically, when her calling came calling, she didn’t even recognize or appreciate it.

“Comedy was so easy, I thought it was valueless, that it was worthless because there was no strain. And everyone was trying to explain to me what a gift it was. I said, ‘No, this is nothing. I’m going to sing.’ They said, ‘Oh, please, don’t sing anymore, please,’ ” she said, with a laugh that punctuated much of the interview.

Her introduction came at an evolving time in stand-up, especially for women. Role models were few, and it was a male-dominated business on both sides of the curtain.

This was well before Roseanne and Ellen hit their marks. When Boosler, who gives her age as being in her “late 20 tens,” got into the field in the early 1970s, Joan Rivers and Phyllis Diller were among the few women doing stand-up. The comedy explosion, with its wide-open targets and gaggle of wanna-bes, was still 10 years away, and the hang-dog husband style of humor was the norm, with Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Vernon and others.

“I guess Lenny Bruce really turned that around,” Boosler said. “And then Richard Pryor and Robert Klein picked up that flag and ran with it. (Stand-up) became the town crier and the state of the union--as opposed to this marriage.”

By the time Boosler tried her luck in 1973, she said, Richard Lewis, the late Andy Kaufman, Jimmie Walker, Gabe Kaplan and a cadre of others were talking about school, dating, the price of things and work.

“So that’s what I walked into at 19 years old. And I thought, ‘God, this is just great! And I felt like the (female) counterpoint of that. So I got up and talked about dating and school and growing up. It was so revolutionary because it just hadn’t been done.”

If being in the forefront of things was tough, being an attractive female of the forefront of things was even tougher.

“You can’t imagine the things that you had to go through in those days. It was the same stories as being black and having to go to the back of the bus. Don’t say this. Don’t say that. It’s too smart. It’s too . . .”

More than 20 years later, stand-up remains her main muse, mixed with writing projects and five Showtime specials. Taking the step into sitcoms, however, is neither priority nor goal.

“Not every ballplayer opens a restaurant,” she said. “It’s a different life. It’s a 9-to-5 job I never wanted. That’s getting up and having to eat lunch and breakfast and be out when it’s light. TV is total committee. Total other people in charge. It’s dependent on so many other things as opposed to immediate audience response and fun. Stand-up is anarchy. It’s great. I go up and do exactly what I want, and if I don’t have a good show, it’s my fault.

“I’d like to just be great, the best comedian ever. I’d like to be able to do bigger and bigger concerts, that more people could come out to. And I’d really like to be the best I can be at that, which is always what I’ve wanted, which is to do great concerts. And I like the fact that when you’re done, you’re done. I like the fact they just kind of fade like skywriting. You had to be there. In life, there’s so little that’s spontaneous.”

In addition to comedy, Boosler enjoys sports and indicated several times that should she make a career change, she would love to do play-by-play for a major league baseball team, especially her beloved Mets (assuming the strike ever ends and there is professional baseball again). She has sung the national anthem at a New York Mets home game and has thrown out the first ball a few times. Once, when she was performing in Seattle, she got to throw out the first ball and do three innings of play-by-play. Unfortunately, she lost track of the time and was half an hour late to her show.

“I just really care more about baseball than most things,” she said. “When we still had the Sports Channel in L.A., I was doing play-by-play with Duke Snider for the Dodgers, and I kind of plan my tours to follow the Mets’ schedule in the summer.”

But Boosler, who maintains homes in New York and Los Angeles, does more than just sit around spectating. She’s an exercise freak in tune with her body. Witness her lunchtime outfit--biking shorts, T-shirt and tennis shoes--and her order: four pieces of wheat toast with butter on the side (a comedian’s digestive system doesn’t usually call for food until 6 p.m. or so, she explained).

“I love to swim,” said Boosler, who grew up near a beach in Brooklyn and moved West in 1976. “When I don’t swim for a long time, I swim in my sleep. I dream that I’m actually swimming and my hands are touching the road and I’m going up streets in Manhattan. I’ve always swam but not like when I got out here and the weather was nice all year.”

Swimming also helps her on the road.

“It became the great equalizer. You knew that if you could get that in, somehow your timing came back. You got air back in your blood from flying. That became my grail whenever I got to a city. Where’s the pool? Where do you swim? Where’s the Y?”

A few years back, Boosler expanded her regimen and started running; now if she’s traveling and can’t find a pool, she can always find a road to help cope with life away from home and her two dogs.

“It’s just getting up, getting to an airport, getting where you’re going, being exhausted, going for the sound check, falling asleep for half an hour, doing your show and repeating it. I think it was Spencer Tracy’s line: ‘They don’t pay us for the acting, they pay us for the waiting.’ So the bad thing is if you have 20 cities in 20 days, then you’re really really tired. That’s physically painful.”

But time away from home does have benefits. Not having a daily grind with a significant other extends romance.

“I always found my best relationships were when I was on the road 50 weeks a year and I only saw someone a couple times. I was with someone for four years who I thought was the love of my life.”

So she took a month off.

“After two weeks, I said, ‘Who the hell are you?’ We broke up like that. It’s much better to be away all the time. I used to say, ‘Oh, you can have a personal life on the road, you just have to have it with strangers.’ I’m not 4 years old. I meet people who have money to come with you to the fun cities and stuff like that.”

At home, Boosler’s routine varies.

“Sometimes it’s writing, sometimes it’s meetings trying to sell a movie, sell a project. I don’t think there really is a typical day, except that somewhere in there, there will be some exercise, something with the dogs, perhaps some liquor involved.” More laughter.

She also enjoys the occasional vacation trip, like last month, when Boosler, six friends and three dogs headed to Mammoth Lakes for a ski trip. On the last day, Boosler and the pooches went out for a jog near an ice-covered pond and wound up going for an unexpected swim as well.

The first wave started when her feisty year-old black Lab took the plunge, followed by his two curious pals, who broke the ice when they went to investigate.

“I thought it was a little teeny pond with a few ducks,” Boosler said. “Of course, the Lab went flying in on purpose to chase the ducks. He’s a lunatic. The whole thing was a lake. The dogs couldn’t get out. I had to go get them. There was nobody around. It was scary, but I held the camera up, and I do have the pictures.”

After plucking the canines, it was Boosler’s turn for an impromptu breakthrough.

“As we were leaving, I was talking to them, and I disappeared. We were still on the lake, and I didn’t know it. It was pretty funny. It was funny because I wasn’t over my head.”

Such mucking around with no safety net is not atypical of Boosler and her live performances, no two of which are alike.

“I like being able to stand there and truthfully say I have no act,” she said, laughing again. “Sometimes I don’t know where the hell I am. And other times you get real lucky, and it works.”

But always the challenge and the vitality are there.

“I like drawing the line in the sand in the first second. I think it’s just fun. Everybody’s kind of more awake. I just always think the best acts skate on a little bit of danger.”

* Who: Elayne Boosler in “An Evening of Comedy in Concert.”

* When: Saturday, Feb. 18, at 8 p.m.

* Where: Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa.

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to Bristol Avenue exit north. Turn right from Bristol onto Town Center Drive. It’s straight ahead.

* Wherewithal: $16 to $32.

* Where to call: (714) 556-2787 (box office) or (714) 740-2000 (Ticketmaster).