CYBER LAUGHS COME HOME COUPLE PUBLISHES BOOK OF E-HUMOR.

Byline: David Greenberg Staff Writer

AGOURA HILLS - Joke time: Clinton's mother prayed fervently that Bill would grow up and be president.

So far, half of her prayer has been answered.

Get it?

Agoura Hills residents Steve and Patty Miller-Marshall did - off the Internet.

Steve, who for 20 years has written and produced hit television sitcoms and movies - where actors gained fame delivering his punchlines - and his wife, a social worker and published poet, have teamed up to create a book from jokes circulating in cyberspace.

``The standard is - we both have to think the joke is funny,'' said Steve, 56. ``People will just have fun with it.''

The 157-page paperback, ``Laughing Out Loud: The Humor of the Internet'' (ROFLMAO Books, $10.99) was Patty's idea, is a culmination of the hundreds of jokes friends from all over the country e-mail the couple each week.

A children's foster-care social worker by day, Patty archived most of the 5,000 jokes they have received since 1996, and left it up to her husband to polish the good ones and weed out the bad.

``Jokes are very fragile things,'' said Steve. ``A lot of times we'd be reading a joke and it would be almost there, but not quite. . . . If I have to agonize over it, then I'll just get rid of it.''

The couple worked on separate computers on different floors of their home, editing and e-mailing jokes back and forth.

The book is separated into 13 categories including politics, current events, blondes, cyberspace cadets, sports, ``true stuff'' and potpourri.

Thomas Price, a manager at Barnes & Noble in Long Beach, said he and his staff enjoyed the book so much they invited the couple down for an April 15 book signing.

``I thought the book was really funny - the blonde jokes especially,'' he said. ``Some of the (jokes) are risque and some of them are not. There's a real good cross section.''

While some of the jokes might be considered politically incorrect, lines were drawn as to what is and isn't acceptable.

``The only jokes that we totally eliminated were jokes that would be painful to somebody - jokes that were racist or bigoted,'' said Patty, 46, who is also working on her first novel.

``As a blond woman, I can take a joke about PMS or being a (ding-a-ling.) It's fun when you can see a little of yourself in it and laugh,'' she said.

Both agree that their combined sense of humor evolved to some degree as therapy from traumatic periods in their lives before the creation of ``Laughing Out Loud.''

In fact, Steve and Patty met through an Internet chat room two years ago, when Patty was searching for a an online grief support group to deal with the recent death of her first husband, David Miller.

Living at the time in Spearfish, S.D., there were few resources available.

``Part of why I started archiving the jokes is to tell them to my husband, who was dying of cancer,'' she said. ``It helped him through chemotherapy and radiation. He was less miserable when he was laughing.''

Steve came from a broken home, had two unpleasant tours of duty as a Navy shipman in the Gulf of Tonkin - the Vietnam War erupted two weeks after he enlisted in 1964 - and two failed marriages from his workaholic Hollywood existence.

The two were looking for someone to share a few laughs.

``That's the common denominator among people,'' Patty said. ``It makes people relate to one another based on their similarities rather than their differences. We always agreed on what was funny.''

The couple met in Las Vegas in April 1998 - two months after their first online chat - and married the following December in South Dakota.

They moved to Agoura Hills so Patty could, to some degree, avoid the culture shock of living in Steve's native Los Angeles.

Among the hit sitcoms Steve has written and produced are episodes of ``WKRP in Cincinnati''and ``Growing Pains.''

He also wrote the screenplays for ``Revenge of the Nerds II'' and ``Nerds in Paradise'' - projects for which he now deeply apologizes.

He has just finished a draft of a screenplay called ``The Gospel According to Larry,'' about a 43-year-old Encino accountant who has learned he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and must prevent the apocalypse. Actor Jason Alexander of ``Seinfeld'' fame is considering the role, he said.

``Laughter is good for a relationship,'' said Steve. ``It was a daily dose of tonic for both of us. If a couple is laughing together, then they are not fighting. Just having a shared goal is good for a marriage and certainly sharing this book was a shared goal.''

``Laughing Out Loud'' is available at certain area Barnes & Noble stores, online at the Amazon and Borders Books sites or at the couple's Web site, www.lol-book.com, where copies purchased will be signed by the authors.

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Photo: Agoura Hills residents Patty and Steve Marshall wrote ``Laughing Out Loud,'' a book of jokes compiled from the Internet.

Tina Marie Burch/Staff Photographer