2 Servings of Jeni for the Price of 1 : Comedy: He has a TV career cooking with his new sitcom, ‘Platypus Man.’ Still, his first love is stand-up, which he’ll do tonight and Saturday at the Coach House.

Comedian-actor Richard Jeni looks at stand-up as his home and hearth. His film and TV work is just something to get him out of the house.

“I’m not your typical actor with a beeper running around Hollywood for every audition. I’m really more like a comedian,” said the 14-year veteran. “I can’t ever imagine giving up stand-up. I still really, really enjoy it.”

Not that Jeni doesn’t flick on his beeper now and then. After a successful turn last summer as Jim Carrey’s sidekick in “The Mask”--”Think of an Italian Barney Rubble,” he says--Jeni ambled into a starring role in “Platypus Man,” a sitcom in its first season on the new United Paramount Network.

This latest trip out of the house has cut into his stand-up time, but that’s fine with him. It puts him closer to his goal.

“The ideal situation would be to have both going--half a year doing stand-up, half a year doing a sitcom,” said Jeni, who will bring a mix of new and old material to the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano tonight and Saturday. “In the right situation, (a sitcom) has all the advantages of stand-up without the disadvantages.”

Traveling is high on the list of disadvantages.

“It’s hard to have a so-called normal life,” he said earlier this week by phone from his L.A. home. “You fly a lot to places you don’t necessarily want to be. The actual doing is the easiest and best part of the job, and writing and being on stage consistently makes me happy.”

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In “Platypus Man,” which premiered Jan. 23 and airs Monday nights, Jeni plays the bachelor host of a cooking show geared to the kitchen-impaired. It’s based on a Jeni bit called “Bill the Belching Gourmet.”

In one episode, he throws away a recipe for canard a l’orange . “Way too complicated,” he says in that scene. “This is a cooking show for any moron who ever tried to make tuna fish on toast and wound up in a burn unit with mayonnaise in his hair.”

The chef’s sputtering love life is the other part of the show’s recipe.

“I like the sitcom, but it’s not easy. Stand-up is really the ideal creative situation; you’re responsible. Sitcom is collaborative; it’s very hard for people to agree on what’s funny. It’s a very pressurized situation. If you succeed, everybody gets really rich. If you fail, everyone gets nothing. And 80%, 90% of the shows fail.”

But when a show succeeds, a stand-up comic can’t ask for much more. The exposure generally packs the live shows. (And sometimes the fees they command go up.)

Jeni estimated that his 1993 Cable ACE-winning “PlatypusMan” special on HBO has reached about 7 million homes to date after repeated airings since its premiere two years ago. According to A.C. Nielsen figures, last week’s “Seinfeld” episode was beamed into just more than 20 million homes in a single night.

Though the boy from New York City is having a great time doing the series, there is one chafing point. He longs for more creative control. He realizes, however, that the money people are reluctant to let performers with no sitcom track record make many decisions. And, unless you’re a Roseanne or have a top-rated show, your input will be minimal.

“That’s the $64,000 question: how much control,” he said. “I have meetings with producers, make suggestions and write a certain amount of jokes, but I don’t have (the power of) approval. It’s subject to interpretation how much control I have. And at this point, it’s not totally in my favor. Until you’re the best alternative at your time slot, it’s hard (for producers) to turn over control.”

Where the show goes from here is anybody’s guess. Jeni has “absolutely no idea,” but he figures the producers will need to give some indication by the end of May to start gearing up for fall.

“You only get two reactions: ‘You’re brilliant’ and ‘You’re canceled.’ You never get anything in between. I’m sure (Fox executives) were telling Chevy Chase they were happy with his show.”

Though Jeni is pleased with the show’s content, he remains philosophical about whether “Platypus Man” will go the way of Chase’s ill-fated late-night talk show.

“There’s a certain amount of luck involved. So many things have to fall into place. . . . You can have good writing but poor casting. Good writing and casting but a bad time slot.”

But he’s not panicking. To him, no news is no news.

“People are just trying to get a handle on what’s going on. They’re testing out a new show as well as a new network.”

The show’s 13 episodes were filmed from late fall through January. A typical week, Jeni said, included writing, rewriting, compromising and finally filming the resulting 22 minutes from 7 p.m. to midnight on Friday.

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With taping behind him, Jeni remains busy. After this interview, he was heading out to do a promo for the sitcom and later tape a Showtime stand-up spot. On Monday, he was in Las Vegas earning a standing ovation from 1,000 Sony executives at Caesars. And 1992’s top male comic at the American Comedy Awards is continually doing publicity.

Does he ever slow down?

“I have like three modes: work, think about work and rest from work,” he said. “I haven’t really cultivated any other area of my life. It’s not like I’m waiting to finish here so I can go tend my roses.”

* Comedian Richard Jeni appears tonight and Saturday at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. 8 p.m. $19.50. (714) 496-8930.