Rio comedy shows prove raunch still gets laughs

Some comedians make working clean a point of pride, not having to talk sex or drop in casual profanity to get a laugh.

Very admirable. Especially when your kids are in the room.

But they are not in the King's Room at the Rio, and neither are your kids. But you are there to be reminded that the history of civilization has generated more dirty jokes than even four people can remember.

And that a cheap laugh is still funny.

Some jokes even get repeated in the back-to-back (but separately sold) comedy shows, Grandma Lee and "The Dirty Joke Show," sharing this former steakhouse.

Lee is a 78-year-old who made it to the finals of "America's Got Talent." She sits crouched on a stool and her delivery wavers. Yet it's her age, overall countenance and one really bad haircut ("I look like (expletive) Moe") that help her get laughs by the mere act of F-bombing a creaky one-liner.

Geechy Guy also performed on "America's Got Talent" in a different season but didn't make it to the finals. He's younger but also spends most of "The Dirty Joke Show" sitting - on a beer keg. But he adds strength in numbers, drafting two other stand-ups to aid his premise of comedians hanging out in a back alley between shows, one-upping each other with one-liners.

This particular night, both shows included a variant of one of the cleaner ones, about the doctor telling a patient he will need a urine, stool and semen sample. To which the patient replies, "It would be faster if I just left you my underwear."

Yes, raunch is a ticket back to an earlier era of comedy, when it was perfectly kosher for stand-ups to tell stories, or "street jokes" as they are called in "Dirty Joke," before monologues became individual and confessional.

Guy writes his own material but delivers it in ba-dump-a-bump style: "My eyes were bothering me so I went to an optimist. He says, 'Don't worry, you'll be fine.' " You get a few minutes of this at the outset of "Dirty," which he first created at Hooters casino in 2010.

It goes to follow that the show unfolding once the curtain opens is gamed in Guy's favor. The other two comics (on this night, Rob Sherwood and P.J. McGuire) are more to spell him and set him up for runs, such as 18 doctor jokes in a row.

Still, the theatrical interaction (pretending to ignore the audience) is crucial to making this work, and three is the magic number. McGuire is a good Ed McMahon-style chuckler, and Sherwood comes in at just the right time with a raised-eyebrow, wiseguy kind of "Scoot in closer, I got one for ya ..." attitude to offset Guy's dorky extrovert.

All three gents could get off those beer kegs once in a while; some tables spent most of the show looking at Guy's back. And the hour is a straight line of fire, a joke barrage with a strong beginning, a weak ending and no middle arc.

Still, no title carries more truth in advertising. The trio bombard you with jokes about hillbillies, newlyweds, golf, newlyweds playing golf, priests, pilots, stewardesses, blondes, Snoop Dogg and ducks.

Ducks? "A duck walks into a store to buy Chapstick and says, 'Put it on my bill.' "

"That's a kid's joke!" McGuire protests.

"The last one was too, but it had a 'Get the (expletive) out of here!' " Guy replies.

It's a tactic well-known to Grandma Lee (aka Lee Strong), who simply adds profanity, fun names for body parts and the mileage of her many years to stock material about husbands, daughters-in-law, grandchildren and 11-year-old "white thug wannabes."

Age often brings wisdom, but with Lee the saving grace is attitude. None of the young fellers in "The Dirty Joke Show" could sell the following retort to "I wish I was adopted," which was all about the delivery:

"You were. They just brought your ass back."

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