Dean of Fun : An Ice Cream Parlor Cutup Graduates to Living Room Humor

When comedian Howard Dean starts talking to his audience, there’s no telling where it might lead.

Dean, who’s headlining at the Laff Stop through Sunday, just returned from Atlanta, where he put a young man on the spot by asking him if he loved the young woman he was with. The man said he did. Dean then asked the woman if she loved the man; she said that she did.

But the man became embarrassed and tongue-tied when Dean asked him if he would ask his girlfriend to marry him.

“That’s OK,” said Dean, “you’re a little nervous. I’ll help.”

After bringing the couple on stage, Dean pumped up the man’s courage by taking him aside and having him grab his crotch and repeat, “I’m the man! I’m the man!” Then, standing behind first the man, then the woman, Dean manipulated their mouths as he uttered flowery words of endearment to each of them. Before he was through, Dean had the man down on one knee asking, “Will you marry me?”

“I put the mike in front of her and she says, ‘Yes,’ and the whole crowd goes nuts,” reports Dean. “I actually did that a couple of years ago in San Jose, and this guy comes up and says, ‘Hey, man, remember me?’ I did exactly the same thing with his girlfriend and they ended up getting married.”

Dean says he doesn’t really consider himself a comic. “I just get up there and really have a lot of fun,” he says. During his act he may sing, do impressions, improvise with the audience, or just stick to his stand-up routine.

The emphasis is on playing it loose. Even when he does impressions, he tells the audience to yell out anybody’s name they want and he’ll attempt to do it. If he doesn’t know how to do it, he fakes it, doing a “parody of the parody.”

It’s not easy translating Dean’s act to paper. Much of his humor relies on facial expressions and body language.

“I’m not a punch-line kind of guy,” Dean said by phone from his home in Santa Monica last week. “The way that I would describe what I do is that the audience is like a light that I’m drawn to, and I just want to hug them all. It’s not really performing for me. It’s like having a bunch of friends over in my living room.”

Dean, who has been in the business nine years, may be the only stand-up comic who honed his comedy style and audience repartee by working in an ice cream parlor for several years after graduating from high school.

“I’d have people lined up to sit in my section because I would do pratfalls and I would squirt whipped cream (on customers) and take paper menus and buff a bald guy’s head with it,” he said. “It was a constant circus in my section. And I never got in trouble. They always left me a big tip and they always came back for more.”

In one of his signature routines, Dean talks about how men always want to have sons--so “we can do manly things together--fishing, camping, making bathroom noises.” The bit builds up to the labor room, where the man is still pitching for a son as he coaches his wife through labor.

Then the doctor announces, “It’s a girl!” and the man responds with, ‘He’s what? . . . ‘Oh, well . . . That’s great. . . . Oh, no, I don’t need to hold her now. . . .’ ”

Explained Dean, who has a 5-year-old daughter of his own: “The dad holds the baby and he looks at her and he falls in love with her right there in front of the entire audience. It’s a very vulnerable, poignant moment and some nights I’ll look at the audience and I’ll see them wiping tears from their eyes.”

“The thing with my characters is that they’re not silly people,” he said. “They’re you, they’re me, they’re the guy you see on TV.”

In fact, he said, “I can equate it with ‘The Andy Griffith Show.’ I believe the success of that show was based on the fact that each one of those characters was so rich. We all know a Barney Fife type: The know-it-all, but when it comes down to it he doesn’t really have the confidence. We all know an Andy Griffith--the cool head, good-father figure. We can even relate to Floyd the barber if we needed to. And that’s kind of what my show is.”

Who: Howard Dean.

When: Thursday, June 13, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m.; Friday, June 14, and Saturday, June 15, at 8 and 10 and 11:45 p.m.; Sunday, June 16, at 8:30 p.m.

Where: The Laff Stop, 2122 S.E. Bristol St., Newport Beach.

Whereabouts: From the Corona del Mar (73) Freeway, take the Irvine Avenue/Campus Drive exit onto Bristol Street and go south one block.

Wherewithal: $7 to $10.

Where to call: (714) 852-8762.