SOARING PRICES AT THE PUMP HAVE COMEDIANS SCREAMING WHAT A GAS!

Byline: Brent Hopkins Staff Writer

Gasoline prices have gotten so high, crooks are knocking over service stations and demanding ``your unleaded or your life.''

There's a barrel of dark humor in three-buck-a-gallon gas and $50 fill- ups, so comics across the nation have seized on the topic people can't stop talking about. With politicians on summer recess and no high-profile celebrities on trial, the gallows humor of gas prices has become a staple of comedy routines.

``The Daily Show'' mocks drivers by sending out correspondents in a stretch Hummer. Late-night monologues abound with wisecracks on the price of crude. And everyone seems to know some variation of the guy whose wife wanted an expensive night on the town, so he took her to the local gas station.

``Because of these high prices, I've actually changed to an electric toothbrush,'' quipped Tom Stern, a Woodland Hills comedian and comic strip artist. ``There are other ways to save gas, you know - I'm always pretending to break down, just so people will tow me places.

``And if anyone's hitchhiking, you'd better stick a thumb out with one hand and a gas can in the other. You'll get a lot more rides that way.''

Hitchhiking sounds a little more appealing these days, with the Automobile Club of Southern California reporting that drivers paid a record high $2.801 for a gallon of regular Friday. That's up almost 22 cents in the past month and nearly 74 cents higher than it was a year ago.

On ``The Tonight Show,'' Jay Leno has trotted out the gas jokes more often than the Dancing Itos made famous in the O.J. Simpson trial. Nearly every day this week, he led off his monologue with a gas barrage attacking oil companies, $5 cappuccino-sipping whiners from Beverly Hills and Vice President Dick Cheney, whom the strong-jawed comedian said has switched to a hybrid ambulance.

``Officials are now backing off a statement that terrorists were planning to use fuel trucks for attacks in major cities,'' he said, opening a show earlier this week. ``Apparently what happened is fuel prices are so high, the terrorists can't afford it.''

Fake news outlets such as ``The Daily Show'' and The Onion have leaped into the act. A recent headline from the satiric newspaper declared that President George W. Bush had vowed to end America's dependence on foreign oil by 4920, while it reported in another article that scientists are researching ``whateverthanol,'' an alternative fuel made by mixing random liquids.

Even normally businesslike price watchers are getting into the act. Denton Cinquegrana, markets editor for the Oil Price Information Service, said when his wife wants to go for a drive, he instead suggests having a drink in the backyard. And as someone immersed in the oil world, the humor is beginning to wear a little thin.

``This one shows up in my e-mail every time prices go up, even if they're just a penny: You see the gas price board with one price for an arm, the next one, it's a leg,'' he said. ``The first time I saw it, it got a chuckle. By now, it's the stupidest thing I've ever seen.''

But he's probably going to have to get used to that joke. Though oil prices have calmed a bit lately, closing at $65.35 a barrel Friday, the market has been kept unusually high by speculators and experts see little substantial relief in coming months.

That's forced aspiring actresses to grant romantic favors to directors just to get a ride home, according to comedian Argus Hamilton. And they're not the only ones making sacrifices.

``It's out of hand,'' he quipped. ``A British Airways flight in Chicago couldn't take off Thursday until the pilot got the passengers to chip in twenty bucks apiece for gas.''

Brent Hopkins, [phone]

brent.hopkins(at)dailynews.com

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2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) no caption (ARM, LEG gas sign)

Dusty Plunkett/Associated Press

(2 -- color) Talk show host Jay Leno

Paul Drinkwater/NBC