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Friday, May 03, 2002

By Scott Mervis, Weekend Editor, Post-Gazette

You know people are desperate for some type of live representation of "The Howard Stern Show" when Stuttering John and Friends is selling out all over the country.

	Stuttering John and Friends WHERE: Funny Bone, Station Square. WHEN: Tonight and tomorrow. TICKETS: Sold out; 412-281-3130. COMIC'S SITE: www.stutteringjohn.com

Even J-J-John is surprised.

"People are actually scalping tickets, which is an incredible compliment," he says, speaking from a cell phone and rarely stuttering as he navigates the streets of New York. "I didn't think people would ever scalp for my show."

More likely, they would want to scalp him. That's part of being Stuttering John Melendez, who became a celebrity in the early '90s by ambushing other celebrities with the kind of obnoxious stammering questions that even Stern would hesitate to raise. He blipped onto the media radar in a big way in 1992 when he asked Gennifer Flowers at a press conference if Clinton wore a condom and whether she would be sleeping with any other presidential candidates. Since then, he's hounded everyone from Chevy Chase to Barbara Walters to Liz Taylor to our own Mister Rogers ("Would you like to machine-gun Barney?").

"I've been punched by Raquel Welch and Morton Downey Jr. and strangled by Lou Reed," John says. "I asked him if he still masturbated. He just grabbed my neck."

Juvenile thrills aside, the revelation of Stuttering John's art is in finding out how humorless even funny celebrities could be when faced with such an irritant.

"When a comic has a funny comeback, Howard likes that," John says. "But it's also funny when they get all [mad]. It's a win-win situation. It's the weirdest thing, like Billy Crystal, he got so angry, he's supposed to be a comedian. But sometimes these guys can't laugh at themselves. Joan Rivers had one of the best responses to my questions. I asked if she thinks retarded people should be allowed to have children, and she said, 'No, and I told your parents that.' "

The drawback to celebrity stalking is that the more famous Stuttering John has gotten the more difficult his work has become. Publicists and celebrities all over New York are armed with a mental picture of the celebrity stalker.

"One time I got makeup done by a guy who did prosthetics. I got a fake nose and fake teeth, wig, mustache, all this. It took four to five hours. I go to this press line and the security guard looks at me and goes, 'Hey, John, what's up?' I've tried going as a woman, everything, but at this point, they know my voice and my face."

It's put the burden on John to diversify his talents, not the easiest thing in the world when you're Stuttering John, who was dubbed by Stern co-host Robin Quivers "The Hero of the Stupid." But he does have a DJ gig on K-Rock and a band, which is currently inactive and he's found other ways to cause trouble within the Stern show itself.

"I was reading a news group that said I was the supervillain," he says. "I'm the guy who finds dirt on the guys in the cast and brings it up on the air. To me, it's my favorite part of the show to find out that Artie is drinking a ton of alcohol and eating Nestle's Crunch bars and stuff during his diet. I love stuff like that."

He's also gotten himself mixed up in a much-hyped real-life celebrity death match with Crazy Cabbie, another K-Rock DJ, who outmatches John in the size and the hostility department. John is scheduled to fight Cabbie on May 31 at a location still to be determined.

"I've been training almost every day," John says. "You won't even recognize me. I shaved my hair, lost weight."

In the meantime, the buff new John is on this tour, which has sold out six shows at the Funny Bone this weekend. It opens with a clip of some of John's interviews, followed by 25 minutes of standup "on my interviews, on my stuttering, on my wife, the fact that I'm a father. I talk about fat girls and bathroom attendants and all the things that are my life."

Then he brings out Jim Florentine, the guy who terrorizes telemarketers; New York comic Modi; and Artie Lang, who's taken over the Jackie Martling chair on the show. Somewhere in the midst of that, John says, comes the "tragic relief, 'Melrose' Larry Green. He's supposed to do six minutes, but he hasn't gotten past two. He gets booed off the stage in every market. As soon as they start booing him, he starts screaming at them and cursing at them. It's very funny. You watch him break down in front of your eyes."

John tops off the evening with a beer-guzzling contest against five lucky members of the audience. All with their shirts off. You won't get that in the Cultural District.

"It's just a fun show, and so far, people are digging it," John says. "I never had people show up like this for my band gigs."