-Ism It Funny? Jim Hope Finds Punch Lines in Current Issues

Few comedians who perform at the Improv in Irvine can resist taking at least one shot at the just-so neat and orderly planned community. But Jim Hope is one up on his fellow comics: He actually lives in Irvine, and that gives him some special insight into the yuppie enclave:

“I saw some graffiti on a wall in Irvine. Well, it was typed, but still. . . “

Of course, Irvine isn’t the only place in O.C. that Hope can find to laugh about. How ‘bout the time he went to Disneyland?

“I went to the front gate, gave the guy my ticket. First question he asked me was, ‘What was your reason for coming to Disneyland?’ . . . ‘Oh, I don’t know. I thought I could score some really good hashish here at the Magic Kingdom. . . . Are those hookers still on Main Street? . . . Take me to that Amsterdam section I’ve heard so much about. . . . Boy, this is the Happiest Place on Earth.”

And O.C. isn’t the only place . . .

“I was on an airplane, and I got airsick and the stewardess came by and asked me the dumbest question. I had the bag over my head and she said, ‘Are you airsick?’ I said, ‘No, I’m bulimic. I’m just not ashamed of my disorder. I’m tired of suffering in silence. Hold me.’ ”

Such routines are especially funny given his nice-guy quality and boy-next-door demeanor. “I like the incongruity of my look with my material,” says Hope, who describes his act as “a mixture of the ridiculous and the not-so-ridiculous.”

Although he considers himself a topical comic, he says he’s less interested in tapping the day’s newspaper for material than he is in talking about larger issues--from feminism to sexism to racism.

“I point out some of the idiosyncrasies in the culture and try to show how absurd a lot of these things are,” says the Los Angeles native, who majored in political science at UC Irvine in the early ‘80s.

He observes, for example, that “Bob Barker decided he wouldn’t host the Miss USA pageant because he thought the fur-wearing competition represented cruelty to animals. Yeah. I guess parading women around like prized heifers never bothered old Bob.”

He also points out that “we have Nazis in America, but we don’t call them Nazis; we call them neo Nazis. As if they’re somehow different from regular Nazis: ‘They’re new! They’re improved! They stay crunchy in milk. They’re Neo Nazis!”

As anyone who has seen Hope’s wild, tongue-darting, microphone-riding impression of a heavy metal singer can tell you, his act is definitely high-energy. “I’m a little hyperactive to begin with,” Hope notes. “That’s why I can’t work in an office.”

* Who: Jim Hope.

* When: Saturday, Dec. 26, at 8 and 10:30 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 27, at 8:30 p.m. With Don Reed and Matt Weinhold.

* 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 to $10.

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

MORE COMEDY:

Jack Marion, the “comedy sex therapist” whose adult humor focuses on dating and relationships, headlines Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 26 and 27, at the Laff Stop, 2122 S.E. Bristol St., Newport Beach. Also on the bill: Neil Edwards. (714) 852-8762.

Diminutive, balding and bespectacled Bob Nickman, who says he reminds himself of someone he almost met at a party he never went to, headlines Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 26 and 27, at the Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Brea. Also on the bill: Howard Leff. (714) 529-7878.

Rudy Ray Moore, a “loquacious master of raunch,” does his thang Sunday, Dec. 27, at Laff/Jam in Club 88 at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, 18800 MacArthur Blvd., Irvine. (714) 549-5630.