NIGHT MOVES / The Hot Zone

The hat alone was enough. A faux African mudcloth beret set back on his head with a rakish tilt. Still, there was more. His jacket was a sumptuous green velvet, emblazoned with zodiac signs and shooting stars. He wore a goldenrod silk shirt, black slacks, pumpkin-colored cowboy boots and a hipster’s smirk. He was a comic’s dream come true.

Michael Williams, owner of the Comedy Act Theatre on West 43rd Street and Crenshaw Boulevard, spotted him the moment he walked in. Smiling broadly, Williams approached the man and his party, “Oh, are you in for it,” he said. “Follow me.” Pacing near the bar in the rear of the room, a gang of idle comics stopped mid-drink and gawked. You could almost hear the punch lines zinging. The spotlight swept the room. Even the audience knew where the group was heading: to the most notorious tract of comic real estate this side of Venice Beach. Tables 6, 7, 11 and 16--front row at Michael’s.

About as wide as a jury box, the front row is the club’s free-fire zone: a ferocious arena of comedic competition over who will be the ultimate straight man, comic or goat. If you start to sputter onstage, the front will blow you off. But if you get up from your seat and head for the john, you will wind up a moving target. When both crowd and comic are on, the scene can be a pure free fall--and lovely.

The fashion plate and his guests were seated directly under the mike at 16. Then, one by one, the comics took the stage and questioned the man’s sanity and his sense. “Did you dress in the dark?” asked Speedy, the evening’s emcee. The fop guffawed, took his lumps and challenged every comic who was wack. “Aw, you ain’t funny, man. Sit down.” When the night was over, Speedy brought him onstage and awarded him free passes to the club for being such a good sport.

When the late Robin Harris--a revered figure in Los Angeles’ black comedy scene--worked the room, no one but the ignorant or the bold sat at the front-row tables. “The ones who want to be seated in our front row, then and now,” says Williams, “are the ones who really want to have fun. Or they are setting up friends and family members who have lost jobs, have terminal illnesses, are going through divorce or having a birthday.” Williams tells a story about a man who passed $20 to Harris and said, “Here. I’m bringing my brother down front. The doctors say he will be dead in a week. I want to make sure he goes out laughing.”

Ricky Harris, emcee for the club on Thursday nights, has worked his way up from front-row to center stage. “I was a real wise ass,” he says. “Somebody told me, ‘I bet you won’t go to the Comedy Act Theatre and try that.’ So I went to the Comedy Act Theatre and started baggin’ on Robin. That’s when I learned the difference between who got the microphone and who don’t got the microphone. Robin said, ‘Shine the light on him.’ I had a Jheri curl in those days, and he called me a ‘Jheri curl drippin’ juice junior.’ He talked about my butt for about 15 minutes. He killed me.”