Stand-up comedians can run on fumes for years before hitting the skids. Case in point: Gallagher has an entire tour of arena shows booked from March 3 to April 30 right now (don't believe me? Gallaghersmash.com.) And what's he doing -- incisive satire? Hell no! He's smashing melons -- SURPRISE! Though he's one of the most notable cases of a one-note comic playing his one note for every penny it's worth, the machine doesn't operate on perpetual motion. Many similar comics have done the same for years only to fade away -- and it's usually not a bad thing.

Stand-up and the hack cycle seems to pair two flawed processes perfectly. While the field allows plenty of geniuses to flourish in their own ways (Bill Hicks, for instance), it's less taste-sensitive than music or cinema or even television. For one, there's not a prominent complex of criticism in stand-up. The guys who get their audiences to laugh night-by-night are assumed to be competent, and the rest get weeded out naturally. So if some comic is really irritating, but really popular, he rarely suffers for it. Contrast that with, say, music -- one bad review in the right place and you may be seriously set back (except Pitchfork Media -- bad press there usually means your music is good). With that in mind, here's my theory: Larry the Cable Guy is the exact second coming of Dorf.

What, you don't remember Dorf? Dorf, the dense, uncoordinated golfing dwarf whose fairway follies doubled an entire generation of litigators over in laughter in the late 80s/early 90s? Seriously, I'm getting embarrassed trying to explain Dorf now, and I was mostly too young to remember the dude. From 1987 to 1996, Tim Conway -- aka "Dorf" -- wrote and starred in a half-dozen straight to video films featuring a diminutive, determined, incompetent lout trying to make sense of life in various athletic-themed situations. The plots were minimal, the gags were plentiful, and the character was as unsubtle as a seven-iron in the back of the head. Hmm ... that reminds me a lot of Dan Whitney -- aka "Larry the Cable Guy."

Now, there are contrasts. Dorf was like the midget bowling buddy you never had. Larry is like the sweaty, noisy cable guy you never wanted. And the accents (Dorf's vaguely New York/Upper Midwestern slur versus Larry's grits 'n' gravy Southern grunt-squeal) couldn't be farther apart. But both characters rely on being so bumbling, tactless and exaggerated that one must wonder if the actors behind them are purposely unfunny and that's the real joke at play.

It goes without saying ... I hope ... that Larry the Cable Guy's schtick is exclusively lowbrow. His punchlines rely on backwater spoonerisms that mostly seem to involve, in the words of David Cross, "Bertha Chudfarter's farting grandma." I mean, how complicated is it to run Larry the Cable Guy's act? To use his own possible future punchline, it's "easier'n a bowlegged queer on Valentine's Day in San Franciskee" -- which, as far as I'm concerned, is simply too easy. After all, I've lived in San Francisco. And those bowlegged queers clean up around February 14.

Of course, that begs the question: will Larry the Cable Guy go the way of Dorf? Will the embarrassing stereotype of a character (albeit a hick, rather than a "little person") linger only in the memories of remorseful former fans and snarky college students with unpaid writing gigs? God, I hope so.

But then again, Gallagher's playing the Capitol Arts Center in Bowling Green on March 18.

Cameron Ferguson is a history sophomore. In the spirit of fairness, we should probably mention the recent failure of HIS comic persona, "Cameron the Vending Machine Guy," whose catchphrase, "Git 'er stocked!" never caught on with audiences.


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