Friday, October 31, 2003 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Still Standing

`Last Comic Standing' comedian Ralphie May headlines new Sahara show

Comedian and "Last Comic Standing" runner-up Ralphie May, outfitted in his Supperman costume, is performing with fellow "Last Comic Standing" contestant Rob Cantrell through Nov. 16 at the Sahara. Photo by Craig L. Moran.

There's a joke waiting to happen when Ralphie May says his upcoming stand-up comedy DVD will be the first double-disc for a comedian.

But don't expect him to go for it.

"I don't do the stereotypical fat jokes," says the 500-pound comedian who came to sudden fame in the summer on the NBC contest/reality series "Last Comic Standing."

"I'm in the business of making people laugh. I'm not in the business of making any of my audience members feel weird," he says. "You see a lot of fat people come to my shows because they know I'm not going to humiliate them. There's a trust built up."

The fact that he actually lost the TV contest hasn't slowed the 31-year-old May, who headlines a new Sahara show called "Last Comic Standing Live," which reunites him with fellow contestant Rob Cantrell through Nov. 16.

May says he is enjoying the same opportunities as Dat Phan, the 28-year-old who turned out to be the show's surprise winner with 35 percent of the vote.

"He pulled heartstrings," May says of Phan. "But after the show, I became that family at Christmas that gets robbed, and the whole community comes together and builds them a house."

"Last Comic" led to a DVD through Dreamworks, a sitcom development deal and, of course, this job on the Strip. It also generated the invitation for a just-completed USO tour of Iraq, during which May says he and his girlfriend stayed in Saddam Hussein's palace and swam in his pool.

"We got mortar fire while I was performing," he says. "I never stopped. I said, `Until I start seeing explosions real close and you guys start running, I'm going to keep on telling jokes.'

"We had so many guys come up to us and say, `I'd forgotten how to laugh.' I wasn't about to let them snap back to reality that quick. I did an hour and a half."

Back on the home front, May says he's shaking every hand and signing every autograph he can in a campaign to repair his image.

"The show did me a great service by putting my name out there and putting my comedy out there. But it also made me look like a real jerk," he says. "I've got ground to make up and I'm conscious of it."

"Last Comic" was a curious mix of "American Idol"-style talent contest and reality show in the vein of "The Real World." The comedians faced off in front of judges, but they also had to live together.

"I wish they had showed more of the comedy," May says. "There's a story line. Reality shows aren't reality. They're dramas with amateurs."

Though most viewers considered him to be the front-runner, May says he could tell by the way the episodes were edited that Phan would generate viewer votes because of other comedians picking on him.

"Dat got the majority of the air time, and the majority of the sympathy," he says. "Comedians mess with each other. That's what comedians do."

The editing "was always designed to make me look like a cocky bastard," he adds. "When they asked me if (I) thought I would win, they cut it right after I said, `Yeah, I think I'm gonna win.'

"They cut the rest that said: `because it's a competition and that's the only way you can think. If you don't come in with a winning attitude, you've already lost it. Comedy is 90 percent confidence.' "

May also notes Phan had to repeat material on the show, which he and other more seasoned comics didn't have to do.

Phan will "see the immediate rewards, but there's no shortcut to the top of the mountain," May says. "He'll still have to put in time. He'll never get the respect that he'll eventually earn, because he bypassed the whole route."

May says he was in the same boat when he turned pro on the Houston club scene at 17. His comic inspirations included late cult icon Bill Hicks, Thea Vidale and Las Vegas-based Ron Shock, who May says "squashed a lot of stuff with the other comics" about him not having paid his dues.

By the time "Last Comic" came along, May already had worked Harrah's Las Vegas Improv club and opened for the TV show's creator and host, Jay Mohr, at Paris Las Vegas.

When Mohr insisted he fly in from a gig in Hawaii to audition for the show, May couldn't understand why he had to pop for an $800 plane ticket: "I've opened for you for years. You know my stuff," he insisted.

But Mohr told him the NBC legal staff wanted everyone to audition on equal ground to avoid accusations of favoritism. May's girlfriend, Lahna Turner -- who performs in the Sahara shows as an unbilled guest star -- put the plane ticket on her credit card.

"That single act of kindness and that faith she had in me launched my whole career," he says.

He hopes to repay the favor when he undergoes a gastric bypass procedure on Nov. 18, two days after the Las Vegas stint ends. It's the procedure publicized by pop singer Carnie Wilson, and takes stomach-stapling one step further: attaching a portion of the small intestine to the stomach so that food passes directly from the surgically created gastric pouch into the intestine.

May blames his weight condition on an auto accident when he was 16 that left him with several broken bones. He says an earlier stomach stapling has come undone and his current weight restricts his mobility to exercise.

"I've asked my girlfriend to marry me every month for nearly five years. But it wasn't fair," he says. "It was kind of selfish, because I'm asking her to make a lifelong commitment to me and I'm not making a lifelong commitment to her because my life wouldn't be that long."

If the surgery is a success, he could trim down to 200 pounds. "I just want to buy clothes at the mall," he says.