Sibling Revelry

Shawn Wayans began doing stand-up at age 17 and, a few years later, in 1990, joined “In Living Color,” the popular Fox sketch-comedy show headed up by big brother Keenen and featuring three other Wayans siblings.

A few years after leaving “In Living Color,” Shawn scored his own WB sitcom, “The Wayans Bros.” Now concluding its third season, the comedy features him and younger brother Marlon as siblings with wildly different personalities.

Shawn and Marlon also co-wrote and co-starred in 1996’s “Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood,” a feature-length spoof of such films as “Boyz N the Hood” and “Menace II Society.”

Last year, Shawn, 27, collaborated on “150 Ways to Tell if You’re Ghetto” (Dell), a takeoff on comedian Jeff Foxworthy’s “You Might Be a Redneck If . . .” books. (Sample: “You know you’re ghetto if . . . Your first name begins with Ta, La or Sha.”)

The 27-year-old Wayans, who performs his stand-up act at the Brea Improv tonight through Saturday, recently spoke by phone about his life and work.

Question: What was it like growing up in a family with 10 children, half of whom became comedic entertainers?

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Answer: It was a lot of fun. We didn’t have no money, but we made the best of our time cracking jokes. All of us were the class clown all the way through school [in New York City]. It’s just that half of us decided to pursue a life in comedy.

Q: Everyone must have been competing for attention at home.

A: I never looked at it that way, but maybe that could have been. My pop worked like six jobs, and my mom was home with the kids. But she gave each one as much attention as she could. And we kind of gave each other attention.

Q: How did “150 Ways to Tell if You’re Ghetto” come about?

A: Chris [Spencer], Suli [McCullough] and I were shooting ‘Don’t Be a Menace,’ and we were bored because it takes time between shots and stuff. We just started talking and throwing out these one-liners, and it started getting real funny. We thought it would be cool to do it as a book.

Q: If you had to boil down the book to a few essentials?

A: I have a couple of favorites: You know you’re ghetto if you take a bubble bath with dishwashing liquid. You know you’re ghetto if the bar of soap in the bathroom is the size of a Tic-Tac and you still use it. You know you’re ghetto if you keep food stamps on a money clip.

Q: Doesn’t ghetto behavior transcend boundaries?

A: Yeah, I always explain to people that ghetto has nothing to do with where you come from. It’s a state of mind. If you do these things--whether you’re black, white, Spanish, Asian, whatever--you are considered ghetto. So it isn’t about a ‘hood thing. Everybody does these things.

Q: You’re doing feature films and your own TV show. What keeps you onstage doing stand-up?

A: It keeps me fresh in all the other things that I do. . . . You’re always reinventing yourself. Not only does it help me generate ideas for other projects, but when I come up with the ideas, it helps me think funnier.

Q: What things will you be talking about tonight?

A: I talk about everything from relationships to Bill Clinton to drugs.

Q: What about Clinton?

A: My thing is, I don’t care what he does in his spare time. He’s a good president. I just wish he would sleep with some cuter girls. All his girls look like the cartoon drawings that you get at Magic Mountain. That’s the best he could do?

Q: As a solo performer, you get all the glory or all the blame.

A: I don’t like to bomb if I’m doing a show like at the Brea Improv. But if I’m at the Laugh Factory or the Comedy Store [in Hollywood], and I’m working out new stuff, I don’t mind bombing. It’s part of stand-up, and you have to embrace it. Actually, the more you bomb, the better you become.

Q: “The Wayans Bros.” has gotten some criticism for not being more story-oriented, like “The Cosby Show.”

A: It’s very annoying. It’s very frustrating. But you have to stop and ask yourself why you’re doing the show. We’re not doing our show to get a pat on our back from the critics. We do our show because we love what we’re doing, and we’re doing it for the people who watch the show every week. We want to make them happy.

Q: Did it hurt that even the NAACP slammed the show for its supposedly stereotypical portrayal of blacks?

A: No. People like that we don’t care about. If the NAACP is watching our show, they ain’t doing their job. There are many other things the NAACP is supposed to be fighting, not the sitcoms on the WB. There’s the East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry they could be working on. There are a ton of things. We ain’t shooting each other!

Q: Do you think these critics lack a sense of humor?

A: I think it’s a lot of that. Everybody isn’t the same. Everybody didn’t grow up the same. So you can’t expect us to have the same comedic perspective as Bill Cosby. We respect what he does. But if we copied what Cosby is doing we would probably bomb. People wouldn’t expect that from us.

Q: What was it like being on “In Living Color”?

A: It was the best experience of my life. It was comedy college. You were around [brothers] Keenen, Damon, [sister] Kim, and there was Jim Carrey and David Alan Grier. All these people who had been doing it for so long and who were so good. Me and my brother Marlon both learned a lot being on the show. Nobody had a teacher’s stick and a blackboard. They showed by example the way they did things. I was very observant. I watched them. I sat in on their meetings; I heard them talk; I watched their work ethic. The most important thing that I got out of it is, you’ve got to have discipline and work ethic. That was going to take you where you need to be. it’s not about being caught up in the Hollywood scene and partying.

BE THERE

Shawn Wayans appears at the Brea Improv, 945 E. Birch St., Suite A. Today, 8:30 p.m. Friday, 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. Saturday, 8 and 10:30 p.m. (714) 529-7878. Tickets are $20.