BYLINE ROBIN MYRICK

When Bill Hicks tells you he was "born jaded" you begin to wonder just what made him that way. Could it have been his upbringing? Maybe it was his mother, the woman who delights in describing a relative's untimely death at the hands of a ceiling fan while Bill is at the dinner table, then encourages him to eat more cranberry sauce. Or perhaps it was his father, who in consoling Bill when he got a college dictionary for Christmas when his friends all got go-carts, said, "Well, look son, "go-cart" is in it ..." Whatever it was, it has made Hicks a paralyzingly funny comedian. If Tuesday night's opening performance at The Comedy Workshop was any indication, Austin is in for a week of big laughs. The sell-out crowd was filled with Hicks fans, cheering wildly at his entrance and yelling out their favorite bits as time got short. Hicks has built a following through hip, often wickedly black, comedy so funny that even the offended must crack a smile, whether at Jerry Falwell ("Never trust a man that says "I think what God meant to say...' ") or his experiences working in an occult book store ("Excuse me, where's your devil-worship section?"). Hicks often makes you laugh at things you might dislike to laugh at, but his humor is too on-target to deny you found it funny. Some of his jokes make you feel a bit shameful for laughing at them, but he reassures you by asking "So how many people here think I am the anti-Christ at this point?" to which he replies "Sorry, it's two sixes and a nine." We don't feel the least bit ashamed of laughing about Hicks' school experiences, though. Hicks started doing comedy while he attended high school and college in Houston, and many of his school experiences show up in his act. In his high-school shop class his teacher gave him a 3-by-6 board and told him to make something out of it, so he made a 2-by-4. His troubles increased when he went on to college and had trouble making it to his eight o'clock class - at night school. Hicks' real education has come from numerous gigs over the past eight years. He has worked at all of the major comedy clubs, opened for musical acts and acted in a television pilot for ABC. This last year has been particularly successful in that he's made two appearances on Late Night with David Letterman, with another possible appearance next month. Pretty impressive credentials for a guy who failed public-speaking class, but Hicks still considers himself on a minor level of success. He plans to go to New York or Los Angeles at year's end to try and get back into television in a comedy format, but in the meantime he can be seen starring in the low-budget movie Ninja Bachelor Party, directed by UT radio-television-film student David Johndrow. For the moment, though, you can catch him at the Comedy Workshop being practical ("Two things will survive a nuclear war: Keith Richards and bugs"), philosophical ("Think there are moths on their way to the sun right now?"), and doing fresh, inspired comedy. Bill Hicks, at The Comedy Workshop through Sunday. Call 473-2300 for reservations.

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