Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 3, 1992 TAG: 9201030274
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Jeff DeBell
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
KING OF THE ROAD
Frank King spends so much time on the road that his adopted middle name is "The Possum."Really. It's on his business card, right under the likeness of a possum with tread marks across its back and a very surprised look on its face:
Frank "The Possum" KIng.
Road comic. Have jokes, will travel. Appearing through Saturday at the Roanoke Comedy Club.
King used to be an insurance man in San Diego, Calif. He indulged his need to perform by dabbling in community theater, but satisfying parts were scarce.
Then he did five minutes on amateur night at a La Jolla comedy club and found the magic.
"There's nothing like that live feeling," he said by telephone from a Holiday Inn in Lugoff, Ga., where he was working a club called The Comedy Zone. "You never know what's going to happen."
King liked it so much he gave up the insurance business and became an itinerant comic. His first road gig was at the Roanoke Comedy Club, just after Christmas 1985. He's been trolling for laughs ever since, testing his material every night on a new crowd in a new club somewhere down the road from where he was the night before.
The comedian has no home, unless you count his answering service and a post office box in Los Angeles. It's a life of motel rooms, comedy clubs and hours inside the cab of a 1988 Toyota 4 Runner with nearly 200,000 miles on the odometer.
There are no complaints, and the money's OK - currently about three times the income of King's best year in the insurance game.
"We make a living," he said.
King can use "we" because his wife, Wendy, travels with him full time. He believes himself to be the only comic so privileged.
"She's the co-driver and co-writer," he said. "She hears all the jokes before anyone else."
King first saw her in a California grocery store. He handed her his business card - the one with the squashed possum on it - and said, "Give me a call if you ever need a laugh."
She thought it was dial-a-joke. Instead, it was King's answering service. He returned the call, and the rest is road-comic history.
They've been married 4 1/2 years. King did three shows on their wedding night in Raleigh, N.C. The next morning, they left for a job in New Orleans.
"That was our honeymoon," he said.
Besides sharing the driving and helping King compose his jokes, Wendy makes up a one-woman support group. It comes in handy on those ego-bruising nights when nobody thinks "The Possum" is funny.
"A comedian is only as good as his last show," King said.
The couple spent Christmas morning in Nahunta, Ga. They acknowledged the day by hanging a small plastic wreath from the rear-view mirror, then took off for a job in the town of Sumter, S.C.
"That's Sumter without a P," he said. "It's like the fort, except this particular Sumter isn't worth fighting for."
King's Toyota is equipped with a refrigerator and microwave oven to help the couple avoid fast-food and stick to their vegetarian diets. They also carry a juicer and blender, and there's a VCR for Wendy's exercise tapes. King is a jogger.
"We're sort of the June and Ward Cleaver of comedy," he said. "We decided early that either you get the road or the road gets you."
What would happen if a little Possum came along?
"We'd probably step up to a mobile home or a nice trailer," the comic said.
King, 35, is a son of North Carolina. He was born in Raleigh and is a political science graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He comes by comedy naturally. Both of his late parents were funny, and his sister can fire a zinger too.
In school, King says, he was more class wit than class clown: "I didn't jump off things or throw spit wads, but I would say things."
King writes new material every day, sometimes tossing ideas back and forth with Wendy as they roll along their endless pavement trail, and the jokes tend to be topical. USA Today is a favorite source.
"It's a great comic's paper," he said. "The stories are short and there are lots of quotes."
Road signs are another source of material. King photographs them while traveling and makes slides that are part of his act. With a photo of the street signs at Church and Hooker, for example, he'll make a joke about having run into Jimmy Swaggart at the intersection.
Though occasionally off-color, the material is suggestive rather than obscene. King writes his jokes as though they were going to be used on television - which, in fact, they have been. He has had the pleasure of hearing about a dozen of his jokes used on "The Tonight Show" by Jay Leno, a comedian he greatly admires.
King's hope is that the contributions eventually will lead to his own appearance on "The Tonight Show" and perhaps to a position as one of Leno's writers when the comic succeeds Johnny Carson as permanent host of the program.
His long-term goal is to be host of a game show. It's something he's always wanted to do, perhaps because of the interaction with the audience, which is an important part of his comedy act as well.
"I like to do the topical stuff and then dive into the audience to see what will happen," he said. "It raises the degree of difficulty, but if you can make a great joke off of something somebody says, they think you're a genius."
As much as he'd like to work for Leno or be tapped as the next Bob Barker, The Possum King isn't one to wait around for the call. Instead, he's happily tooling down the road to the next club.
"They call me the Energizer bunny of comedy," he said. "I just keep going and going and going."