MORE POWER TO HIM : In Concert, Tim Allen Takes All That Men Stuff to Its Fullest Comic Extremes

Six years ago Tim Allen was a moderate success on the stand-up circuit, scoring with routines such as the one in which he pondered what it would be like if men had women’s bodies, and vice versa: Picture a gruff-voiced macho man complaining, “My (breasts) are killing me,” and his buddy whining, “Yeah, my fat pants don’t fit.”

But while he had “moved up quickly into the ranks of the comedy world,” Allen concedes “I was nothing special.”

Then one night on stage in Akron, Ohio, he started talking about things that really mattered to him: tools, garages, cars, the joy of visiting hardware stores on Saturdays. Men stuff.

“These guys loved it,” Allen recalls. “They started hooting and hollering. The more I talked about it, the more these guys responded.”

Unwittingly, Allen had stumbled upon a virtually untapped comedy mother lode. He ran with it, adding his “men are pigs” tag line and his trademark grunting Neanderthal persona.

In the end, he had created a testosterone-laden universe in which his idea of heaven is visiting the tool section at Sears and his ultimate ambition is to rewire everything from the garbage disposal to the blender. For what, class? More power!

The self-described “masculinist” whose tool Pegboard is his “altar to maleness” eventually caught the attention of Walt Disney Co. executives, and the rest is the stuff of TV Guide cover stories.

As the star of his own Top 10-rated sitcom, ABC’s “Home Improvement” (9 p.m. Wednesdays on KABC Channel 7), Allen plays a domesticated version of his stand-up persona: Tim Taylor, the swaggering but lovable host of the cable TV show “Tool Time.”

At the Celebrity Theatre in Anaheim on Saturday, however, fans will get the full-power Allen (Arhhh, Arhhh, Arhhh!) as he presents his “celebration of men’s stuff: gunk, gaskets, Lava soap, aluminum boats, bass fishing, V-8s and blowing your nose with your thumb over a nostril.”

Officially billed as “Geno Michellini and the Five O’Clock Funnies Present Tim Allen In Concert,” the sold-out show reunites Allen and host Michellini, the KLOS-FM disc jockey who first saw the relatively unknown comic’s act at the Ice House in Pasadena in the late ‘80s, taped Allen’s “men are pigs” routine and began playing it on his popular afternoon drive-time show.

“I give him most of the credit for breaking me into this market,” says Allen, speaking by cordless phone from the back yard of a house he is renting “somewhere in L.A.” (He wouldn’t say exactly where, except that it’s “near a hill. In a hazy part of L.A.”)

Allen and his wife, Laura, still own a house in Michigan (“outside Detroit. Near a hill. In a hazy part . . .”). Asked how long he’s been married, Allen pauses then says, “this is embarrassing. . . . God, I think eight years: 1984, I think. Are you a sports fan? Well, Jack Morris pitched a no-hitter (for Detroit) the day I was married.”

Between fielding call-waiting beeps and skimming leaves from the swimming pool, Allen reflects on his meteoric rise to household-name status.

Timing played a big part in his success in stand-up. At the time he began talking about men stuff in his act, Allen says, no one else was doing it.

“It was new,” he says, “and it was so obvious. It was sitting right there.”

As for the key to generating laughs from vehicle maintenance and lawn care, Allen says, “it took somebody, No. 1, who was really interested in it.” But being interested in a subject, he adds, is no guarantee it will generate laughs. His interest in car races, for example: “Some things I like so much, I don’t find them funny.”

Comedy-wise, Allen says, “I’m not as bright as Jay Leno or Jerry Seinfeld, but I think my performance abilities are as competitive. That’s really what I geared on: voice inflections, eyeballs, faces and that kind of stuff.”

Men, not surprisingly, are his biggest fans.

“People make jokes about guys all the time (passing gas) and burping,” Allen says. “But what’s even funnier is that women get mad, gays get mad and blacks get mad (when the jokes are on them), but men as a rule don’t seem to care that we make fun of them: ‘Yeah, we’re stupid; Oh, yeah we are. ‘ “

Allen says he makes “fun of us as men because there is a lot to make fun of, but there is a lot, in a funny way, to be proud of.” He adds that he enjoys “hanging out with guys,” although “I probably enjoy the company of women better than guys.”

As for his “men are pigs” signature, Allen acknowledges: “I’m that guy now. The more popular the ‘men are pigs’ thing became, the more it became--without my design--a tag like Foster Brooks’ drunk (character).”

Not that Allen’s complaining.

“It is cool,” he agrees. “As a purist--and we (comedians) all like to think of ourselves as purists--I’m more like a pop comedian than a Seinfeld or one of these guys who comes up with new, inventive stuff.”

He pauses, then laughs: “I was going to say I’m the Barry Manilow of comedy. I don’t know what singer I’d be. But obviously there is a difference between mass appeal and art.”

It’s the same with his TV series. It’s the “if the public likes it, it can’t be good” mentality, he says. “ ‘Roseanne’ has never gotten (a best comedy) Emmy and the show’s been No. 1 forever. Obviously, it’s got appeal, but because it’s mass appeal” it is overlooked when it comes to handing out awards.

Despite his overnight success as a TV star, the former creative director of a Detroit ad agency seems to be taking his own good fortune in stride.

“I’m still kind of a conservative guy,” Allen says. “My wife and I are waiting for the bottom to fall out, or the network to decide we’re going to go against ‘Sixty Minutes.’ ”

In show business, he says, “you’ve gotta be prepared for change.”

Is he surprised by the show’s success?

“I didn’t consider it all that much,” he says. “It was . . . Hey, don’t you look cute! “--Allen explains that his 3-year-old daughter has just walked outside, having had her hair put into pigtails. But as for his show’s success?

“I didn’t consider it all that much, I guess, because it was so much work,” he continues. “I knew it was funny, but it’s best if you keep your eyes on the road. It takes enough concentration to do the show. But I’m delighted.”

Unfortunately, he says, he’s “swept up” into being constantly worried that it will “plummet” in the ratings.

“That’s why I like doing the concerts,” he says. “It’s a great release. And it’s what got me here. . . . Oh, did I bust this thing? Cheap little toys.”

Now it seems that he’s broken one of his daughter’s pool toys, “a little dolphin that swims around and squirts water at the kid.” He then launches into a discourse on the pros and cons of “buying cheap things that can’t be fixed” as opposed to buying more expensive toys that can be repaired.

Naturally, America’s favorite tool man prefers the kind he can repair.

“I bought a little remote control car, ostensibly for her, but actually it was for me,” he says. “It’s so fast! It took me three days to build; there was a lot of parts on this son of a (deleted).”

But back to the TV series . . .

“The show is definitely fun,” he says, adding, however, that the concerts give him more freedom: “It’s my show. I don’t have to worry about writers, producers or censors. They (audiences) just get the full bore.”

Sounds like his new act.

Allen is, he says, “doing a lot on military stuff, bigger machines, just more of a relationship with machines. I’m going to discuss my own theme park, Timaland, where you can drive tanks and bulldozers, shoot machine guns and shoot skeet the real way.”

He calls it Power Skeet Shooting: “You fling Volkswagens and shoot ‘em with a Howitzer. Now, that’s skeet shooting!”

Arhhh, arhhh, arhhh!