No subject is taboo for Schimmel in LV

Friday, June 11, 2004 | 9:01 a.m.

Who: Robert Schimmel.

When: 10 p.m. tonight and Saturday.

Where: Monte Carlo's Lance Burton Theatre.

Rating (out of five stars): **** 1/2

Comedian Robert Schimmel wastes no time in savaging Siegfried & Roy in his performance at the Monte Carlo's Lance Burton Theatre.

The foul-mouthed comic, a four-year cancer survivor, opens his 90-minute show with a 10-minute verbal assault on two of Las Vegas' most revered personalities.

Apparently some of the reverence has faded since Roy was injured last year by one of his tigers during a performance. Much of the audience roared with laughter as Schimmel made light of the magicians.

"If I had to bet who was going to get hurt, I would have bet on Roy because Siegfried doesn't do a (expletive deleted) thing," said Schimmel, speaking to a theater filled with fans. "For him to get equal billing, what the (expletive deleted) is this guy doing?

"Roy is in the pit with the tiger, and Siegfried is as far as you can (expletive deleted) get away from the both of them and still be legally on the property -- and he's got a mike in one hand and a doorknob in the other."

It was an evening filled with expletive deleteds -- and side-splitting, tear-jerking humor (if you don't mind the profanity, the tasteless observations, the often crude comments).

Robert Schimmel is a more refined version of Andrew Dice Clay, except that Schimmel is funny and deals with subjects beyond the adolescent stage.

Schimmel's crass performance is rife with vulgarity, to put it mildly. If he cut out the four-letter words, his show would be shortened by half.

But it is the vulgarity and his anti-establishment, brutally honest observations that have made him the darling of millions of fans of shock jock Howard Stern -- Stern is the executive producer of a television series being prepared for Fox, and Schimmel often appears on Stern's radio and TV show.

Schimmel's opening act is Wendy Liebman, a very talented comedian who is the yin to Schimmel's yang. By comparison, Liebman is a Pollyanna (even though she slips in a couple of expletive deleteds of her own).

"I used to strip," she said, and then added under her breath, "cars."

"My mother is a ventriloquist," Liebman said. "Not professionally, just around the house. Like for 10 years, I thought the cat was asking me to kill my father.

"I got my brother to do it."

After Liebman got the crowd into a laughing mood, Schimmel emerged onstage, looking like a cross between Lenin and Freud and sounding like Lenny Bruce.

"Thank you very much," he said. "It's great to be here."

Very few sentences after that did not contain an expletive deleted.

Most of his Siegfried & Roy jokes were directed at Sieg- fried.

"Siegfried is a freak," Schimmel said. "The only thing I can think of is seeing him on TV going, 'The reason the tiger attacked Roy was because some woman in the audience had a weird hairdo and the tiger freaked out.'

"Now, I'm not an authority on animals, but I have a different theory. It's like the tiger is a wild (expletive deleted) animal and they belong in the jungle ... not on a stage in Las Vegas where like 2,000 people are in a showroom with three exits and a 900-pound eating and (defecating) machine."

Schimmel noted that in the jungles, tigers have to hunt down their prey.

"They've got to chase down a gazelle or an antelope, kill it, drag the body off and eat it," Schimmel said. "But not at The Mirage. At The Mirage the tiger can sit on his (rear end) and the prey will walk right up to it."

He commented on Siegfried's statement at the hospital that Roy couldn't talk.

"It's hard to talk when your head's in the third row and the tiger hasn't (expletive deleted) out your voice box yet."

After the series of non-stop Siegfried & Roy jokes, Schimmel went onto many other subjects, some safe and some that might be considered controversial.

"Things go in cycles," he said. "When I was growing up it was Batman and Robin, you know, a 44-year-old guy living with a young boy. Now, it's Michael Jackson, a 44-year-old man with young boys.

"I feel bad for him. I don't think he did it. His only mistake was he paid off someone the first time, and now these people ... I've got kids, sons. If I thought someone was (expletive deleted) them I'd be in jail for manslaughter, not somewhere waiting for a paycheck."

Schimmel says Jackson should be left alone.

"He's (expletive deleted) up," Schimmel said. "(Jackson) said, 'What's wrong with having milk and cookies with the kids?'

"It's not the milk and cookies, it's the (expletive deleted) them that he's being accused of."

Viagra is a favorite topic for Schimmel.

"The commercial says if you have an erection that lasts more than 8 hours, contact your doctor," he said. "Why? Is he going to (expletive deleted) me? I'm going to call a whorehouse."

And he jokes about Cialis, a drug similar to Viagra but whose effects last 36 hours.

"Who can (expletive deleted) for 36 hours?" he said. "You take one of those and you're going to miss work -- and you don't call in sick, you call in (expletive deleted). 'Yeah, I can come in, but I'm going to have to (expletive deleted) somebody.' "

The final minutes of Schimmel's show were devoted to joking about his cancer.

He said he was elated when doctors told him he should smoke pot during the treatment.

"The only thing that could have topped that was if the doctor had told my wife, 'Your husband has to have a threesome -- it's the only thing that can save him.' She would have said, 'Well, he isn't going to make it.' "

Schimmel said when a testicle was removed for a biopsy and after eight months of chemotherapy, he was told he would never have children.

To demonstrate how wrong they were, Schimmel brought out his 1-year-old son, Sam. And then he brought out his mother Betty, a breast cancer survivor for 15 years.

Schimmel closed his hilarious show on a somber note.

"I know I should end the show on a big (expletive deleted) joke," he said. "But I just want to say that cancer doesn't mean the end of the world. A lot of people make it ... Don't write somebody off just because they are diagnosed with cancer.".. Don't write somebody off just because they are diagnosed with cancer."