Comedian Lenny Clarke hits the South Point

Lenny Clarke is Boston's most storied comedian, a former wild man who once joked "I tried cocaine to lose weight, it just made me eat faster," but for 18 years Clarke has been living thinner among blue bloods in Martha's Vineyard, where "Jaws" was filmed.

"It's 'Jaws,' and it's where Kennedy drown the girl. It's where Obama vacations every summer," Clarke jokes with me in a brash movie-Boston accent which assures us that, despite whatever cardiac statistics haunt comedians with drug pasts, Lenny Clarke lives.

"As a matter of fact," he says, "Obama is vacationing on my road" in Martha's Vineyard this summer.

That means Clarke, 61, has been investigated by the Secret Service. They checked out his home for 45 minutes.

"They were very nice, but they were very happy that I would be going away" on tour, Clarke says.

Then he tells me a Kennedy-Chappaquiddick joke.

Clarke is in Las Vegas this weekend, performing at the South Point hotel Friday-Sunday in a not-for-lightweights triple-bill of acid-tongued comics: Bobby ("Pitbull of Comedy") Slayton, Jim Florentine, and Clarke.

Clarke loves Vegas but doesn't party like he used to.

"No, I don't, oh my God no," he says. "Thank God for all of us. Thank God for the people of Vegas."

Another of his old jokes was, "I tried cocaine once, for, like, nine years. But I only did it to learn the metric system."

He tells me, "I used to be a very, very naughty boy. But I worked out a deal with the government. I don't drink, they don't lock me up. So far, so good."

It may seem hyperbolic to say he's Boston's most legendary comic, considering Boston has spawned, either in part or in whole, Joe Rogan, Bobcat Goldthwait, Steven Wright, Denis Leary, Bill Burr, Louie C.K., Dane Cook, Jay Leno, Patrice O'Neal, Paula Poundstone, Janeane Garofalo, Kevin Meany, and Barry Crimmins, to name a few.

But Clarke is the most Boston-mouthy Boston comedian; shaped by four decades of talking on stage and doing naughty things off stage; revered and gossipped by various Boston comedians; and validated by TV co-starring credits in "Rescue Me" and "The John Larroquette Show."

TV executives have tried giving Clarke his own shows, but many failed after launch episodes known as "pilots."

"I've had more failed pilots than the Iraqi airport," Clarke says.

The only stage trait Clarke seems to have backed off of is politics. His crowds aren't up for divisiveness.

"The best you can do is 50-50" by telling political jokes, he says, "but that means you've got to kill with 50 percent of the crowd, and the other 50 percent of the crowd wants to kill you.

"I find myself self-editing even when I'm in a conversation by myself with myself. It's nuts," Clarke says.

But he clarifies: A big reason audiences are politically shy is, they're allergic to any news of any kind, the way he tells it.

"I used to love to be able to get up there and talk about what's in the news," Clarke says. "But a lot of people don't give a (expletive) about the news."

He's hoping this trend with people's delicate flowerness is cyclical.

"I really think things will change again, and if they do, I will (expletive) be reinvented, because listen, I started doing comedy, getting on stage, and saying (expletive) that seemed so (expletive) outrageous that people wondered if I'd lost my mind."

I've often wondered if he lost his mind. He either has not lost his mind, or he lost it so long ago no one can find it.

He still talks fast and raw, so anyone who goes to see this Slayton-Florentine-Clarke line-up shouldn't show up with their sensitive ears on. This is probably the fiercest trio of old-guard attack comics you can find combined on a marquee in America.

Example: Clarke and I were talking about comedian Amy Schumer, and Clarke Bostoned her with this shiv, "She's one cheeseburger away from going over 200 pounds."

Schumer is a comrade of his. Imagine what Clarke says about people he doesn't care for.

Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous