Russell Prefers to Irk Without a Net : Humor: The political satirist, who can be seen on PBS specials, likes to perform live. He’ll be in concert Sunday at UC Irvine.

Veteran political humorist Mark Russell is no stranger to Irvine, where he’ll hold forth at his trademark grand piano Sunday afternoon at UCI.

“The last time I was in Irvine,” says Russell, “was at a fund-raiser for Alan Cranston; it was held under a table.”

Actually, Russell’s performance at the Bren Events Center will mark his fourth visit to UCI.

The star of his own long-running PBS comedy specials has been making forays into the hinterland the past 10 years--ever since he quit his job as satirist-in-residence at the venerable Shoreham Hotel in Washington. There, he was a favorite of the Capitol Hill gang for two decades.

Russell, 58, enjoys performing on the road.

“Last week I hit my 50th state,” he said by phone from his home in the nation’s capital. “North Dakota held out for some reason all these years. I kept dropping hints on talk shows and things. I thought maybe nobody invited me because they didn’t have public television, but then I thought about it for a while; maybe they do have public television.”

As PBS viewers know, the irreverent Russell is known for dispensing humor of a distinctly nonpartisan nature. “I’m an equal opportunity offender,” he said. “It’s basically cowardice.”

Despite being a familiar face in Washington since the end of the Eisenhower Administration, Russell did not become nationally known until he did his first PBS special in 1975. The shows, filmed on campus at the state university in his native Buffalo, air “egg-on-the-face” live on the East Coast (and on tape three hours later for West Coast viewers).

Russell prefers working live. “The material sometimes has the shelf life of Thunderbird wine,” he said. “It can turn to vinegar any minute.”

Although a show he had taped six months ago in London recently aired, Russell’s latest live PBS show was Feb. 20, just three days before the start of the land war in the Persian Gulf.

“So I was sweating,” said Russell. “I was, quite frankly, glad the land war didn’t start that particular day. It would have made the audience and me a little more nervous not knowing what was going to happen.”

Given the brevity of the war and the low number of American casualties, Russell said, “in hindsight you can say it was safe for comedians” to joke about the Persian Gulf War.

“The audiences were with us. At no time did they say, ‘You can’t talk about that.’ Just speaking selfishly, the comedians were lucky. But it was kind of one-dimensional.

“The only targets were Saddam Hussein and the media. That was it. If the war had continued--if we had gone to Aug. 2--it would have turned a little sour, and the anti-war jokes would have come around. So it was just one-dimensional. It was just a thousand different ways of saying (bleep) Saddam.”

Asked to share one of his Saddam Hussein observations, Russell jokingly countered with, “Give you a joke that you will print and the audience will read before my show?” But then he good-naturedly relented, saying: “Saddam Hussein really does believe that he won. And so he will have the first underground ticker-tape parade in history.”

Given George Bush’s strong-willed leadership during the war, it has been suggested that the President has finally shed his “wimp” label.

“Yes,” Russell agreed, “he’s been taking massive doses of the over-the-counter drug, Wimp No More. If they’re smart, the White House will use the same military tactics addressing domestic issues: They’ll order desert-camouflage uniforms for the Cabinet. They’ll hold their budget meetings in a tent.”

How does Russell think Vice President Dan Quayle fared during the Gulf crisis?

“Quayle fared well,” he said. “I don’t know if you caught some of his speeches lately, but his voice got a full octave deeper. He kept his military bearing. Better late than never, I guess.”

Of the widespread media coverage of the war in general, Russell noted that, in the end, members of the Iraqi army were even surrendering to reporters: “And I always thought Sam Donaldson took no prisoners.”

Russell, whose next PBS special airs May 1, is already looking beyond the Persian Gulf.

“I’m glad the war is over so I can get back to sex scandals, bribery and conspiracy, where I belong,” he said. “Bush has a 91% (public) approval rating. That’s a little freaky. Where does the 91% presidential (approval) rating begin and democracy end?

“And frankly,” he added with a laugh, “I don’t like it.”

Russell’s musical and comedic tendencies date back to his youth.

Russell, a bespectacled kid (“I was born with the glasses”) who grew up in Buffalo in the ‘30s and ‘40s (“I remember Pearl Harbor, but I don’t remember what she did”), was inspired by radio comedians such as Jack Benny and Fred Allen. He also idolized his uncle, a band singer with the staff orchestra on a Buffalo radio station. (“He was the only one in the family who had been an entertainer.”)

At 7, Russell started taking piano lessons. At 14, he earned $10 for his first professional gig: playing piano with a bass player and a guitarist on New Year’s Eve at an Italian restaurant. (“We knew 10 songs and kept playing the same songs over and over.”)

After a stint in the Marines as a radio operator stationed in Japan and Hawaii in the early ‘50s, he worked briefly in his father’s gas station in Virginia, where his family moved shortly after Russell graduated from high school.

As for career goals, he recalled, “I had none. I did want to be in entertainment of some kind.” While he flirted with the idea of becoming a jazz pianist, he says “my musicianship is an embarrassment. I can’t do much about it, but I’ve put those three chords that I know to pretty good use.”

In fact, in the late ‘50s he was hired to perform in the bar at the Carroll Arms Hotel, a smoke-filled “little political hangout” on Capitol Hill frequented by senators, congressmen and lobbyists.

“I was hired just as a piano player and whatever else I could do,” he recalled. “I told jokes and did other people’s material, but I couldn’t get their attention until I started talking about what they did in politics.”

Russell always acknowledged the political VIPs in his audience. “I figured if they weren’t in a mood to be kidded a little bit, they wouldn’t be there: ‘So-and-so’s here, so we know he’s clean.’ ”

His 1961 move to the Shoreham--”at the time, it was the biggest, fanciest hotel in Washington”--was a major career boost.

Like being skewered in an editorial cartoon, being the butt of one of Russell’s barbs became something of an honor. Politicians would even ask if they could borrow some of his lines. That still happens, he said, only now politicians are less likely to go through the formality of asking.

“Washington is a hotbed of joke thievery,” said Russell. “My daughter heard some politician make a speech the other day and she said there were three of my lines in it. So you’ve gotta be very careful; you’ve gotta get your name attached to it somehow.”

As a warm-up of sorts for his UCI engagement, Russell will be in Hollywood tonight to perform at the American Comedy Awards.

“For me now, a Chamber of Commerce audience is a better audience than the Hollywood audience. It’s just the opposite of what the myth is--that you bomb in the sticks and do great in New York and Los Angeles. Not me.

“But I think I’m going to get it right this time around. The only political figure I’m mentioning is Madonna.”

Mark Russell performs at 4 p.m. Sunday in the Bren Events Center at UC Irvine. General admission: $15. (714) 856-5000.