Ron White

Like a lot of us, Bill Engvall wishes he could take a time machine back to golden-age Vegas: "I would have loved to have been at the level I'm at now back in the '50s and '60s," he noted recently.

But it's Engvall's Blue Collar Comedy pal, Ron White, who unquestionably would have run with the Rat Pack. White understands that if it was once a matter of course to smoke and drink on a Las Vegas stage, times have changed so much you get laughs just by doing it.

In fact, stage lights focus down to pinpoint a bottle of scotch on a stool as White walks out to greet it. The heavyset Texan, who turns 53 on Dec. 18, puffs a cigar and occasionally taps the bottle for another refill when he's not talking about oral sex.

By all rights, White belongs with us, here, on the Strip. But he is America's reprobate now. So we take him when we can. Two weekends of the National Finals Rodeo is not the limit of his work on the Strip, and hasn't been for three years.

White closed Saturday's Mirage set with a yarn about a rodeo week as Jeff Foxworthy's opening act in 1996. Foxworthy had hit the big time, and the two went out with Engvall for the first time with "the all-access pass," after years of saying, "Maybe one day we'll be the big comics in Vegas."

That day is now. White reigns as the most famous survivor of Houston's 1980s comedy scene, where the late Bill Hicks and Sam Kinison also combined their staunch defense of personal freedoms with a Texas way (in White's case, a slow-cooked one) of turning a phrase.

"Tiger Woods," White announces as his opening salvo. "That's all I got."

That's because White isn't one of those comedians who draws observations from the outside world. Sure, there's the genealogical explanation of why people in Kansas are ugly, or the notion that the United States should buy Mexico, fix it up and flip it to solve the budget deficit.

But nothing is funnier in White's world than White himself; at least during the 70 minutes you get to hear him tell it.

"I've been trying to stay out of trouble, and I truly suck at it," he explains to set up a routine about his arrest last year for marijuana possession.

Then there was the show-threatening "alcohol-swimming pool incident" on a previous Mirage visit, which resulted in an emergency trip to a Mormon dentist. "Never let a Mormon (mess) with your buzz," he says of the hand in control of the laughing gas. "They're guessing, and they're not good guessers."

Much of Saturday's set can be heard on "Behavioral Problems," White's latest concert CD and DVD. But he rearranges the order and takes different detours to get there.

The mental images that go with the long stretch devoted to White's sex habits aren't going to get any cuter as he ages. But comedy may be the last place where middle-aged ticket-buyers can drink in the company of contemporaries, without it feeling like a nostalgia trip.

And as long as they pay to see White on the Strip, Vegas will keep the bar open.

Opening act Alex Reymundo goes way back with White and provides good contrast: He's fast-talking and animated as he talks about his Kentucky in-laws and how "three things in life should be free: water, oxygen and sex." With the arrival of oxygen bars, "Our dumb ass pays for all three."

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