By ROBERT W. BUTLER
The Kansas City Star
Comic Ron White first came to national attention as part of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour featuring Southern funnymen Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall and Larry the Cable Guy.
But White — who typically performs with a lighted cigar, ice bucket and decanter of scotch — never really seemed at home with the other Blue Collar fellas. They were playing to a family audience, while White seemed to be fighting to keep it PG-13.
He was like the reprobate uncle struggling to behave at a wedding.
Now we have “Behavioral Problems,” a concert that airs Sunday on cable’s Comedy Central. The DVD that came out this week has much of the same material, except that it’s 40 minutes longer and a whole lot dirtier. Which is to say it’s pure, undiluted White. Families need not apply.
The guy’s stage persona fascinates me. He may speak with a Texas drawl, but White feels more like a jaded hipster than a good ol’ boy. (If you’re old enough to remember the Southern-cool comic Brother Dave Gardner you have a head start.)
Between sips of hooch and puffs of smoke, White ruminates on moments from his life, which sounds like hell on wheels.
He devotes one priceless bit to how he fell in love with the bidet in his hotel room: “Fifty million gay men can’t be wrong.”
He tells a funny story about his bust for possessing 7/8 of a gram of marijuana: “When I have 7/8 of a gram of marijuana, I consider myself to be out of marijuana.”
White describes an electronic airport check-in system that allows passengers to choose their seats on a computer monitor: “What would make that a great idea is if there was a photo of the person sitting in the next chair.”
He pays tribute to Norman Mailer, who died at 84 after a life in which the writer drank daily, smoked pot, was married six times and stabbed his second wife: “I’ve never read one of his books but I gotta tell you — I’m a huge fan.”
White observes the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain, and suggests that for all the stupidity on display it should be renamed “The Thinning of the Herd.”
And he finds great irony in the fact that “the stuff I spray on my sofa to protect it should I spill a drink is actually called Scotchgard.”
He’s frequently politically incorrect, complaining that airport security guards will frisk 10 grandmas so it won’t seem like they’re picking on a guy in a turban (“Buy a John Deere cap for travel days,” White suggests), and talks about sex with an eye for ribald detail equal to that of Richard Pryor.
And then, just when you think the guy is all leers and lewdness, he describes a visit to an Army hospital filled with Iraq war vets — and moves you to tears.
In short, Ron White is nobody’s idea of a role model. But I’m glad he’s doing his thing. In fact, I’ll drink to it.