Lesson 1: stop trying to be funny: Franklyn Ajaye, a comedian who has kept us laughing since the movie Car Wash, returns from Down Under with a smart, how-to manual on his craft.

If he had taken a tip from a gradeschool teacher, Franklyn Ajaye would have graduated directly from cracking her up in class to a career as a comedian. Instead, he was determined to become air attorney--until he got to Columbia University Law School.

"That first day, I knew I was not going to be able to make it through," he recalled in telephone interview. So rather than flounder until administrators applied a bootprint to his backside, Ajaye cobbled together a comedy routine on his way out the door, and hit New York's club scene.

Today, he's been in the business some 30 years, performing stand-up as well as teaching it, and adding big-and small-screen credits along the way, from Car Wash and Hollywood Shuffle at the movies to In Living Color and Politically Incorrect on TV.

Recently, Ajaye, who divides his time between Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia, published Comic Insights: The Art of Stand-Up Comedy (Silman-James Press, September 2002). It features his own advice along with that of 17 of his colleagues, including Chris Rock, Ellen DeGeneres, Jerry Seinfeld and George Wallace. For the backstage angle, he talked to comedy club owners, talent agents and personal managers. He's found the book to be a hit on the comedy circuit.

For the young kid making the leap from class comic or for the older life-of-the-party type who always wanted to give comedy a go, Ajaye's book is a practical primer. The volume focuses intently on the wood-shedding process required to take the notions swirling inside one's head and transform them into a routine worthy of an audience.

The author, himself, learned how to craft material by studying the albums and live shows of George Carlin, Bill Cosby, Richard Pryor and many other old-school stand-ups.

Ajaye gives low marks to many of the comedians currently coming up. "They highlight profanity a lot more than anything," he says. "Richard Pryor had a lot, but he was also a social commentator." Ajaye favors routines that reflect intelligence rather than simply poke fun, and he calls comedy a "thinking person's profession."

Inspired by the arts at large, he is known as the "jazz comedian" for his loose, improvisational delivery, and because he plays clarinet, sometimes with his brother, Eric, a bassist and saxophonist. The duo proved a popular pair, performing at comedy and jazz festivals Down Under. It was Eric who followed Franklyn to Australia, which both brothers found to be a highly literate and racially tolerant society with scant violence.

The most useful bits of advice in Comic Insights come from notes Ajaye took performing during the past few decades. Perhaps his most surprising revelation is that comedians don't get good until they stop trying to be funny, and instead identify their own personal point of view, mining the humor within that. Ajaye writes: "There's nothing more exciting than going on stage, armed only with your observations on something ... and having the audience erupt in laughter after you point out the previously unnoticed--but now abundantly obvious--absurdities."

The book is thorough, offering guidelines on how to up one's game in terms of delivery, order of material, performing when one doesn't feel funny, bouncing back after bombing and tapping the unconscious in the writing process.

The interviews Ajaye conducted with his peers are strongest for the way they demystify how comedians think, while pointing up similarities and differences. Some, for instance, write down every word, while others go out on stage and let it rip. Though the interviews' actual take-away advice is less plentiful, there are some bons mots, such as:

* Elayne Boosler on striking her own deals. She accepts "no personal checks, no cashier's checks--only certified checks, only bank checks, always paid before the last performance."

* Chris Rock, who is the grandson of a minister, relates how he improved his delivery: "When I started doing comedy. I bought the albums of orators like Dr. King, Malcolm X and J.F.K. just to listen to them talk, and see how they commanded audiences."

* Ellen DeGeneres talks pacing: "If you're nervous, you'll have a tendency to speed up, so I've learned that, no matter how slow you think you're going, go even slower, because it appears that you're in control and not nervous. Then the audience will give you the respect that you're trying to gain from them."

If there is one significant criticism of Comic Insights, it is that the interviews are long in the tooth. They were conducted somewhere between the mid-'80s and late '90s, with perhaps a third done in 1992--more than a decade ago. (Ajaye interviewed several of his subjects when they came to speak at a class he once taught at UCLA.)

Rather than chuck what he had and start from scratch, he might have asked a few additional questions to freshen up the older material and allow his subjects to reflect on the twists and turns their careers have taken since the initial conversation, and what they've learned in the interim.

With three black males and three white women in the volume--the other 11 comedians being white men--the absence of women of color weighing in on humor from their particular corner of this warped world left a hole. He would have done well to include Mo'Nique, Wanda Sykes and/or Margaret Cho, who is Asian American, to balance out the material.

As Ajaye approaches this next phase of his career, where he'll likely spend more time in Los Angeles to take advantage of a variety of entertainment opportunities, his bottom-line goal is to "work at full capacity mentally."

All in all, Ajaye's grade-school teacher could likely give him a gold star for all his efforts. (He says he's finished writing a new book of humorous essays, including one called "Dictators in Denial.") The advice in Comic Insights is timeless. If the book continues to make the rounds, we should soon have strong, new set of comedians providing us with smart, bold humor that will have us doubled over in our seats.

Pamela K. Johnson is coauthor of Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories.

Pamela K. Johnson is the coauthor of Tenderheaded: A Comb-Bending Collection of Hair Stories. She is completing a novel inspired by her childhood love of The Jackson 5. Next May, "God willing and the creek don't rise," she says, she'll graduate with a master of free arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. Johnson catches up with comedian and musician Franklyn Ajaye in this issues SPOTLIGHT, on page 58.