George Wallace

There is a presidential seal on the podium of George Wallace’s stage. It might be a head-scratcher to those who don’t remember one of many promotional campaigns over the past six and a half years at the Flamingo Las Vegas.

Wallace tells the crowd he didn’t get a single vote in his run for president. But make no mistake, this comedian is still a man of the people.

And that’s really the most important thing you can say about him. Wallace’s bond with an audience explains why a career stand-up comic of midlevel fame — one who never hit big with a sitcom — finally found his niche at this unique American crossroads.

“I have the most diversified show in Las Vegas,” the comedian points out so late in the show it’s hardly necessary. It starts with “Where you from?” crowd work and ends with him passing out money to people willing to belt the “Dreamgirls” anthem “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.”

Doesn’t matter where you’re from or where you’re staying. He knows the good restaurants in every city and has jokes about Aria (“Y’all stayin’ there by yourself?”), Bellagio (It’s so expensive, “I came back over here to pee. I wasn’t touching nothin’  ”) and Vdara (“VD? It sounds like a clinic”).

This crowd this night was skewed toward Las Vegas locals, and they are covered, too. He turns a generic 7-Eleven joke into a specific location at Pecos Road and Harmon Avenue: “I’m the only customer in there and the cashier says, ‘You next?’ ”

Wallace speaks the universal language of suburbia, singling out familiar, but less-obvious targets such as Quizno’s (“I don’t eat there because I can’t stand the smell. They’re always burnin’ (stuff)” or Sam’s Club (“Anyone here need a deodorant? I didn’t know it came on a palette”).

Internet sites list his age as 57, but he doesn’t mind playing it 10 years older. He dresses down “late-ass” people still being seated and goes off on grumpy-old-man tangents about how police, firefighters and airport security all “need their asses kicked.”

Age also gives him an authority to get away with a seemingly random structure, where you sense he’s only dipping a few cups into the deep well of his repertoire each night.

If you know any factoid about Wallace, it’s probably this one: He is Jerry Seinfeld’s best friend and early-days roommate.

Knowing that, you can pick out jokes both could easily tell: “How much sharper does a razor blade need to be?” Or, if you have a foot problem, “Why is the Dr. Scholl’s all the way in the back of the store?”

But each of them makes the jokes inseparable from his own persona and delivery; Wallace’s is full of Redd Foxx and Georgia spice.

(He does a bit about Sen. Harry Reid’s “Negro dialect” comment about President Obama. “What is a Negro dialect anyway?” he asks, then pauses. “Most of y’all are lookin’ at me. You know damn well what it is.” But it’s a fake out to set up a “hifalutin’ ” voice of old stereotype.)

Wallace touches only lightly on topical and political material but makes it clear you won’t hear him jab Obama. What do those who say he is not doing enough about the oil spill want to do? “Put his skinny ass in a life jacket and send him down in the ocean? He’s president. He ain’t Aquaman!”

Wallace started at the Flamingo with a 90-day run in 2004 and tells the audience he has signed for another three years.

His tenure there has included unbilled guest stars and experiments with different formats. For a time, there was a game show element. For another long stretch, he featured the vocal group Mosaic.

This time it was all Wallace. And because he doesn’t wind it tightly, that threatened to become too much of a good thing after an hour or so.

By then, however, when Wallace is trading “Yo’ mama” jokes with the crowd? He’s really not the comedian you paid to see as much as the buddy you remember to look up when you’re in Vegas.

Contact reporter Mike Weatherford at mweatherford@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0288.