Friday, Oct. 3, 2003 | 8:37 a.m.
Lisa Ferguson's Laugh Lines column appears Fridays. Her Sun Lite Column appears Mondays. Reach her at [email protected].
Geechy Guy may be the hardest-working man in comedy. Just listening to him discuss his weekly performance schedule is exhausting:
On Wednesday through Sunday nights he produces and headlines his own show, "The Geechy Guy Happy Hour," at Circus Circus in Reno. He opened the show -- jampacked with his signature, deadpan- delivered one-liners -- three years ago in Northern Nevada, where it first played Harvey's Lake Tahoe and Harrah's Reno before landing under the big top.
Take a break on "Happy Hour's" dark nights? Not a chance. That's when Guy hops a plane to Los Angeles and boards Carnival Cruise Lines' ship Ecstasy to perform a pair of shows for vacationers on Monday and Tuesday nights.
First thing Wednesday morning, he disembarks in Ensenada, Mexico, drives to San Diego and grabs a plane back to Reno, returning just in time to take the stage for "Happy Hour's" 8 p.m. show.
Guy changed things up a bit this week, however: He took tonight off (yeah, right) to come to Las Vegas and headline Golden Nugget's "The Funny Bone Comedy Showcase."
In short, there's no time for this Guy to rest, and he prefers it that way. He even works during his annual European vacation -- at comedy clubs in England, Paris and Holland.
"There were a lot of days when I didn't have seven days a week" to perform, Guy says, reflecting on his nearly two-decades-old comedy career. "There's not even any heavy lifting. The least I can do is give this all I've got."
Is he insane? Well, sort of. The name Geechy Guy (the comic declines to reveal his given name, though it's listed on cbsnews.com as Michael Cathers) is his tweaked take on a Japanese phrase meaning "crazy."
He's used the stage moniker since his college days, when his comedy career took off. Coupled with his geeky, onstage persona, "I didn't want to embarrass my mom in case I wasn't funny," he explained recently from his Reno home.
That turned out not to be the case. Guy -- a Rochester, Mich., native who dabbled in magic as a youngster, juggled as a preteen and worked as a street performer before becoming a comedy pro at 21 -- has appeared three times on "The Tonight Show," and set a Guinness World Record in 1993 for telling 676 jokes in one hour.
That feat was undertaken in Los Angeles at the request of Bud Friedman, owner of The Improv chain of comedy clubs. Guy had a week's notice to prepare to break the record of 583 jokes. In order to count, the quips "all had to get a laugh, so actually I told a lot more than that; I told about 800," he recalls, noting he averaged about 11 jokes per minute.
Guy had previously made television history when he took the stage a record 10 times as the "Star Search" comedy-competition champion in 1991. While he failed to nab the talent-show series' $100,000 grand prize, he does have the distinction of having beat the pants off fellow contestant-turned-sitcom superstar Ray Romano.
"The biggest comedian in the world, and I was funnier than him on that night, so what does that tell you about me? That's the way I look at it," Guy says.
Why is it that Guy doesn't enjoy the same sort of household-name status as Romano? "It just depends on which end you're looking at it from," he says. "There are nine other people who you haven't heard of that I beat, too, so you might want to call Pizza Hut and talk to one of them."
From 1996 through '99 Guy called Las Vegas home. He performed in a slew of production shows including "Follies Bergere"; "Country Dreamin' U.S.A." at Flamingo Hilton; "Hurray America" at Westward Ho; and "Heatwave" at the defunct Maxim. He also produced such shows as "Geechy & the Guys" at Silverton and "Geechy Guy Fun & Games Show" at Boardwalk. The former Summerlin resident credits Vegas for helping him achieve his professional goals, including landing his self-titled show.
"Happy Hour" is long on jokes, he says, told "without apologies. "In comedy these days -- not to condemn or defend what I'm doing -- but there's not a lot of jokes anymore," Guy, who is in his late 30s, says.
"There are guys with personalities going up there talking, and hopefully you like them and they're interesting to listen to. And that's fine, but that's not me ... I want to be the king of the one-liners; I want to be the most-jokes guy of the world."
Despite his success in Reno, Guy says he'd like to find a more permanent Las Vegas venue in which to perform. "There seems to be a little bit of cheesiness when people talk about lounge comics and ending up in Vegas," he says. "I'm not ashamed of that at all. I wear that as a badge. I want to be the biggest lounge comic in Vegas."
An ideal situation for the workhorse: "I wouldn't mind doing a daytime show in Vegas and a nighttime show in Reno," Guy says. "You could do a 1 and 3 (p.m. show) in Vegas, be on the plane at 5, be home by 6:30 to do your show at 8. I wouldn't have a problem doing that."
Out for laughs
Caroline Rhea, the comic-turned-actress-turned-hostess of her self-titled syndicated talk show, will return to her stand-up roots for a pair of 10 p.m. performances Nov. 14 and Nov. 15 at Catch a Rising Star at Excalibur. Local comic Mike Saccone will open the shows. Tickets are $25.
Speaking of Romano and his sitcom success, it will be an "Everybody Loves Raymond" secondary-cast reunion of sorts, when Andy Kindler and Jon Manfrellotti -- who both enjoy recurring roles on the show -- co-headline Riviera Comedy Club Oct. 20 through Oct. 26.
Harvard graduate, former Marine officer, disc jockey, karaoke host and Universal Studios tour guide. This eclectic employment history belongs to comic James P. Connolly, who takes the stage Oct. 24 and Oct. 25 at Santa Fe Station's Green Room Comedy Corner.
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