Gottfried comes clean about his dirty reputation

Gilbert Gottfried's voice is instantly recognizable. About as smooth and comforting as a mouthful of broken teeth, it seems to be omnipresent -- from the voice of the Aflac duck to Digit, a bird of unidentifiable origin on PBS's ``Cyberchase," to Iago the parrot in Disney's ``Aladdin."

Speaking by phone from New York, however, Gottfried is soft-spoken and mellow. The coarseness comes out when he laughs or when he flashes back into his onstage persona to tell a quick joke, but it's only a faint echo of his usual shtick. Fans who approach him walk away puzzled.

``I seem to have cornered the market on birds," says the comedian, who plays the Comedy Connection tonight and tomorrow. ``I think people are surprised I'm not covered with feathers."

Perhaps more surprising was the reaction to Gottfried's appearance in ``The Aristocrats," last year's hit documentary on a particular dirty joke. Gottfried says he received some of the most respectful reviews of his career when the film debuted, all for telling a joke at a 2001 Friars Club roast of Hugh Hefner . After all of the voice-over work and guest appearances Gottfried's done, many critics seem ed to rediscover him as a comedian.

``It's very easy, the stuff I do, to forget I'm a comic," he says. ``It was funny, but they would write these raves and single me out. It was an amazing time."

Gottfried was happy to get the good reviews, especially from a film he viewed as a vanity project when first approached by filmmakers Penn Jillette and Paul Provenza . ``They said they were going to do a whole documentary based on this and I thought, oh, that's cute, a nice little documentary for you and your friends," he says. ``So I was surprised when it reached the success that it did."

The film has helped redefine Gottfried's career. His act has never depended on the blue material celebrated in ``The Aristocrats," but he is a frequent guest on the talk- show circuit because of his general inappropriateness. His latest CD and DVD, ``Dirty Jokes," takes advantage of his reputation.

``I'd gone to the fence and had been dirty," he says. ``But it's funny, because most of my act is really clean. But I know a lot of old dirty jokes and I like telling them. I just decided as an experiment to go into a nightclub and record me doing dirty, stupid jokes."

Gottfried says sometimes he thinks he'd like to break his typecasting, maybe with a Christmas special where he comes out smoking a pipe with a big family and singing "Silver Bells." Being loud and inappropriate can wear you down, but it's a living. "I always say where I want my career to be is anyplace where they wave a check in my face," he says.

Gilbert Gottfried plays the Comedy Connection tonight and tomorrow. Call 617-248-9700 or visit www.comedyconnectionboston.com.

Brian Copeland, ``Not A Genuine Black Man," Hyperion : Copeland felt out of place almost everywhere as a kid. When he was 8, his mother moved the family from their mostly black neighborhood in Oakland to the Los Angeles suburb of San Leandro . On his first trip to the local park, he wound up running from local kids and getting picked up by a police officer who considered his baseball bat a weapon. When he got home, he was the man of the house, feeling the need to look after his sister, mother, and grandmother (who was more than capable of looking out for everyone). Copeland pulls off a neat trick in his first-person narrative, capturing the powerful effect racism has had on his and his family's life with humor, wit, and grace without ever breaking into a diatribe, even when relating a story in which anger would be more than a little justified. The book is based on his one-man show, which just closed in New York City.

Brian Kiley plays Jimmy Tingle's Off Broadway theater tomorrow . . . Steve Sweeney headlines Steve Sweeney's Comedy Cafe tonight and tomorrow with Alison Maroney and Jake Daniels . . . Myq Kaplan hosts Andrea Henry , Tuck Tucker , Maggie MacDonald , Todd Sharek , Rich Gustus , Chrissy Kelleher , Sean Sullivan , and Dan Sally tomorrow at Yerardi's Restaurant in Newton.