Comedian Bruce Baum, Las Vegas Sun, June 24, 2005

Columnist Lisa Ferguson: With veteran comic, Riviera drops a Baum Lisa Ferguson Friday, June 24, 2005 | 8:27 a.m. Bruce Baum isn't who you probably think he is. "It's amazing how many people think I'm David Crosby," he says. And with good reason: The stout, wavy-haired, bushy-mustached comedian, who headlines Riviera Comedy Club Monday through July 3, bears a strong likeness to the musician of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame. For years, "I've been mistaken for him, and I've also had people mistake him for me," says Baum who, coincidentally, before launching his comedy career, "actually started out as a singer-songwriter, but since they were laughing ..." Although the two have never met, the comedian says he and Crosby have chatted on the phone. "He's invited me to a couple of his shows to come walking out and freak people out, but its always been on a night when I've got to like fly off to Chicago or something" to perform stand-up. Baum was the one freaked out when, several years ago, it was revealed that Crosby donated his sperm to father the children of rocker Melissa Etheridge and her partner. One national news program, in teasing the story, was "showing on their commercials file footage of what they thought was David Crosby. It was me," Baum explained recently from his home in Ventura County, Calif. "I started getting calls from all over the country -- 'I think that's you on the commercial.' I turned it on here and my wife goes, 'That is you.' " These days, Baum uses the uncanny resemblance to his advantage. He recently produced a DVD of his stand-up and sketch-comedy material, including a bit in which "it's kind of like David Crosby punking people. It's me, but I'll run by and pants somebody, and (the victim's) friend goes, 'Wow, I think you just got pantsed by David Crosby.' " During his 30-plus years in comedy, Baum has created and portrayed onstage, screen and television such characters as the overgrown diaper-wearing Babyman, Chiaman (think Chia Pet) and Dimples the Cow. His Web site, www.brucebaum.com, features audio and video clips of his comedy and characters. Though the Babyman character has since been retired ("You don't want to see me in diapers now," he jokes), Baum still climbs into a bovine getup for an impression of Crosby "as a gay cow," and sings "Cowifornication," an original song parody on which he's backed by a group he calls the Red Hot Chili Heifers. "It's kind of like a 210-pound circus with a mustache," Baum says of his act, which remains as silly as it was in the late '70s when national audiences first witnessed him as a regular performer on the TV game show "Make Me Laugh." Prior to that, in 1970, he played freshman football at UCLA before transferring to the University of California, Davis, where he earned a degree in political science. "The day I got up there, I started hopping up on stages" at Davis-area folk-music clubs to perform stand-up, Baum recalls. "There were no comedy clubs," so he improvised: "I would run into the (campus) library with a washboard and make a whole lotta noise, and everybody would stop and I'd do three or four minutes of material and then I'd run out." Same went for the school's dining commons. "Then I would write letters to the student paper saying there was a guy running around." Baum later returned to UCLA, where he earned a master's degree in film making. At the same time, he began performing at Los Angeles' famed The Comedy Store alongside the likes of Jay Leno, Howie Mandel, David Letterman and Robin Williams (the latter two appeared in some films Baum produced as a student). He recalls the "early days of 'Make Me Laugh' and The Comedy Store" as "just a real special time. Comedy was new to everybody. Stand-up didn't have many guys -- there were like 30 or 40 of us. It's been real interesting to watch how different guys have gone in different directions." Baum has continued working in front of and behind the camera. His list of television credits is lengthy, with appearances on "Northern Exposure," "The Simpsons," "Hollywood Squares," "Growing Pains" and "Full House" among a slew of other shows. He spent two years in the early '90s as the resident short-filmmaker on Fox's "Sunday Comics" series; regularly appeared on the network's "Comic Strip Live" program; and ABC's "America's Funniest People," on which he wrote, directed and appeared in weekly segments. In 1997 Baum also helped develop and appeared on a remake of "Make Me Laugh" that briefly ran on Comedy Central. More recently, he served for three years as a creative consultant on ABC's "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" starring Drew Carey. Baum, in the late '80s, produced a flick titled "Adventures of Babyman," which featured cameos by such comedians as Kevin Pollack, Bob Saget, Bobby Slayton and George Carlin. "I did it on a shoestring budget -- in my tennis shoes," he quips. "The whole process and the intensity" of filmmaking appeals to Baum, as does "watching a crowd laugh at it. I guess when you're into comedy, you like to make 'em laugh all ways -- written, visual and live." He claims to be in the process of pitching to Hollywood execs a sitcom pilot based on his Dimples the Cow character. "It's basically like 'Lassie,' only it's a cow," he explains. "She can rappel down cliffs; she can catch Frisbees." "I'm always writing, always working on different things," the 53-year-old comic says, and is "always adding new stuff" to his act. "I don't want to ever rest on my laurels. In fact, I don't even know if I have any laurels. I could use a good, comfy laurel -- something to rest on." Out for laughs Wayne Brady plays at pair of shows at The Mirage's Danny Gans Theatre at 9 p.m. tonight and 10:30 p.m. Saturday. Tickets are $65 plus tax. Comic Nick Griffin, who has previously taken the stage at The Improv at Harrah's, guests tonight on "The Late Show with David Letterman" (11:35 p.m., Channel 8). Traci Skene -- who with her husband, Brian McKim, is editor and publisher of online comedy source Shecky magazine (www.sheckymaga- zine.com) -- performs at 9 p.m. Monday as part of the "Divas of Comedy" lineup at Sahara. In October, Skene and McKim will share the stage at Riviera Comedy Club. Russ Nagel, profiled in the April 22 installment of Laugh Lines, plays Palace Station's Laugh Trax Wednesday through July 1. archive