Friday, June 20, 2003 | 9:25 a.m.
Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at [email protected].
"The Pit Bull of Comedy" was growling.
Bobby Slayton was recently at Bennigan's restaurant in Rochester, N.Y., eating a chicken sandwich and expressing his annoyance with the place's lounge singer, who was covering an Eagles tune -- badly.
"He's warbling," Slayton reported between bites.
That's not all the comic/actor was grousing about. It seems the 48-year-old loathes his work, the "moronic" comedy being peddled by his fellow stand-up comics and the family-friendly fallacy surrounding Las Vegas -- the latter of which inspires his performances tonight and Saturday at Catch a Rising Star at Excalibur.
"When they say Vegas is fun for the whole family, it really isn't," Slayton, the father of a teenage daughter, says in his usual raspy, New York-accented, rapid-fire pace.
"To me, fun for the whole family means the whole family can do something together ... If I can take my kid to Circus Circus, and she knocks over a milk bottle and I win a hooker, then we're both having a good time."
In case you hadn't guessed, Slayton's racy, politically incorrect, obscenity-peppered comedy is not for the faint of heart. "I like to think of it as more honest and truthful and a little bit in your face," he says.
After 25 years in the business, Slayton says he knows, "I'm never gonna become Jay Leno or the next Bob Hope because ... I have a very specific audience. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of them at any one place at one time. People say, 'Well, you can change your act.' I don't want to change my act. My act is my act."
What he would like to change, however, is his "brutal" touring schedule. For the duration of this year, he has gigs booked nearly every weekend. "But, ya know, it could be worse: I could not be working, or I could be working in a little store with a name tag asking people what size shoe they wear."
Forgive him if he seems astonished by the success of other comics, including Vegas regulars Carrot Top and Andrew Dice Clay.
"I know Carrot Top. He's a nice guy, but his act is abominable," Slayton says matter-of-factly of the prop comic. He calls Clay's routine "moronic. But then again, those guys are laughing all the way to the bank. I'm $100,000 in debt, in Rochester, eating at Bennigan's, trying to pay for my (expletive) house."
That would be the abode in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley that he shares with his clothing-designer wife of 15 years, Teddie, and 15-year-old actress-daughter, Natasha, who was among the cast of the short-lived 1998 ABC sitcom, "Brother's Keeper."
The elder Slayton is also a thespian: He's had roles in such big-screen flicks as "Ed Wood," "Get Shorty," "Wayne's World 2" and "Bandits," among others, but is likely best known for his portrayal of lounge legend Joey Bishop in the 1998 HBO movie, "The Rat Pack," which was set in Las Vegas (but filmed mostly in Los Angeles).
After the movie aired, Slayton recalls scores of aging Bishop fans filling the audiences at his stand-up shows. "I go, 'What? Do you think because I played Joey Bishop I'm gonna be like Joey Bishop?' Are people (expletive) nuts that they can't differentiate? It's hysterical."
Slayton spent two years co-starring in the HBO series, "The Mind of the Married Man," before the show recently landed on the cable network's chopping block.
"I think it was taken off because critics hated it," he says of "Married Man's" demise. "It got ripped to shreds in the papers, which I don't understand. I always thought it was so much better than 'Sex and the City,' but obviously critics didn't."
So if the comedy schedule is killing him, why doesn't Slayton simply devote himself to acting? "Because I hate both of them, so I try to divide them up," he explains of his careers. "I love doing stand-up, but I get tired of it because I do so much stand-up.
"The acting thing, it's fun occasionally, but it's a lot of sitting around. I can't take the sitting around," he says. "You're happy to have a job, you're thrilled to be working, but it's a lot of repetition ... and you've got somebody else telling you how to move your head, what to say. It's not that creative to me."
These days, the Pit Bull is craving a project he can sink his teeth into. No wonder he's looking forward to getting to work on a comedy CD, the follow-up to his 1998 disc, "Raging Bully."
"Right now, I've got a great new CD inside of me," he says. "It's gonna be better than 'Raging Bully' ... I'm older, I'm more married, I'm angrier than ever. And an angry comic makes for a good comic."
Out for laughs
NBC's summer hit, "Last Comic Standing," is scheduled to make a return trip to Paris Las Vegas on July 29 for its final competition. This week's installment had 20 comics joking it out on the hotel-casino's showroom stage for one of 10 keys to the Hollywood home the aspiring comics will share, until they are voted off by the viewing public.
Five funny finalists will shake their shticks next month, competing for a special on Comedy Central, a deal with NBC and, of course, the Last Comic Standing title. Check back here in the coming weeks for information about ticket availability for the taping.
The clean comedy of Louis Ramey takes center stage through Sunday at The Comedy Stop at the Trop. The Vanderbilt University grad's act is short on obscenities. No wonder he's a television favorite, having appeared on "It's Showtime at the Apollo" and Comedy Central's "Premium Blend." Ramey will perform next month at Montreal's Just For Laughs Comedy Festival. Also on this weekend's Comedy Stop bill: "Good Times" star Jimmie "J.J." Walker.
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