BY BRIAN JARAMILLO

THEY HAD BEEN warned, these comedy consumers, by the disclaimer hanging near the door at Laffs comedy nightclub, a simple sign that read:

CAUTION!!! THE COMEDY YOU ARE ABOUT TO ENJOY IS LIVE AND FOR THE MOST PART, ADULT IN NATURE AND UNCENSORED...

The sign - most every comedy club has one - was posted because of "blue" comedians, the industry term for artists who shape their stand-up routines with four-letter words and odes to explicit topics such as masturbation and anal sex. These corrosive comics often need disclaimers and warning labels, much like their predecessors, the high priests of uncensored comedy: Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce.

Comedian Emery Emery says the object of comedy is to make people laugh. Light humor does not get killer laughs."

In the 90s, the decade of family values, political correctness and Tipper Gore in the White House, blue comedians continue to roil the conservative waters and pitilessly stretch the limits of free speech, like the blade-runners before them.

Blue comedians will admit they're offensive. They talk explicitly, shock sensibilities and mock taboos. Which is why, with few exceptions, they've been shunned by television, blacklisted by various comedy clubs, and worse, they say they've become a breed that is dying.

Blame the usual suspects. blame an increasingly sensitive coalition of politically correct gatekeepers, cultural censors and government hall monitors, a coalition which the owners of Laffs do not pledge loyalty.

In its seven years in Tucson, Laffs has always featured talented comedians who happen to work blue. No questions asked. "There are certain comedy clubs that try to tell the comedians what part of the act they can and can't perform," said Rick Bessett. Laffs assistant manager. "We don't do that."

That is why Emery Emery, on this night, is the headliner, the featured act, the guy with the reputation that precedes him. Emery Emery is a blue comedian. Unabashedly blue. He uses much profanity, yes. But more important, he uses the stage, his act, as a forum to speak out against racism, political correctness and censorship.

And know this: Emery Emery (his real name) can tell jokes without cussing and still get killer laughs. "I don't have to be X-rated," he says. "But I try to book myself as blue so that there's no confusion," Indeed, on the last day of a recent six-day stopover in Tucson, Emery Emery told PG-13 jokes at a fund-raiser benefiting a local charity. Otherwise, his "dark and dirty" humor, the humor that defines him as an artist, will not be sanitized or censored, though many have tried. "Fuck that!" he says.

No, there's no confusion with Emery Emery.

On a Wednesday night at Laffs, just past 9, he stepped on stage, a brick wall behind him. He talked first about the oddities of Tucson, then shifted to did-you-ever-notice" observations - turf often covered by clean comedians such as Seinfeld and Leno. He used four letter words like exclamation points, "fuck" being his favorite. The crowd was laughing pretty good, playing along, Emery had a shitfire grin and of course, he was just getting started.

Up next: candid talk about the national pastime for male teenagers - not baseball . Emery boldly led the audience to a gray area between what is pleasing and what offends, a line somewhere between prude and pornographic

"Sir, do you jack off?" he asks. "You jack off, don't you? Everybody jacks off. Show me a guy who doesn't jack off and I'll show you a guy with no arms." Wild laughter. Emery then laughed at himself explaining his own sit alone sexual habits. "I've been jacking off since I was 2; had to wait for my arms to grow that long."

The monologue careened to other subjects: homosexuality, oral sex, speculation on Michael Jackson's sexual habits. When the crowd groaned after a vulgar description, Emery, an occasional Tonight Show writer, said, "Fuck you! It's funny." Then, with a devious grin and a dejected tone, he said, "You want to laugh but you don't want to go to hell with me."

A few minutes later, after an impromptu Jeffrey Dahmer gag, the crowd was again moaning. "Fuck you" he said again. He then whined playfully about the ground rules: "You can't laugh and then moan. Fuck off... get the hell outta here."

This was in-your-face comedy. Abrasive. Dirty. Politically in correct.

The crowd loved it

For Emery, this was a typical night His improvised jokes were right on, and his routine earned loud, extended laughs - what he calls "killer" laughs; other jokes provoked groans and uncomfortable shifting. With Emery, you wince as you laugh, squirm as you smile. But his comedy, he would say afterward, was not intended to be mean-spirited. That's not what he's about He simply talked about hush-hush subjects with unflinching honesty, making sure not to bash - today's trendy minorities women or gays. (He did deflate Rush Limbaugh, calling him a "fat bag o' shit," but the crowd seemed to forgive him.)

"He has a right to do what sells," a woman named Melinda said after the show. "Yeah, some of the jokes bothered me, but you have to balance that with the First Amendment right to speech. I don't think he crossed the line... If I didn't like it, I would have walked out"

No one left early. They stayed and listened as the diminutive, ponytailed comedian set them on a giddy, sometimes uncomfortable edge. reminding them, "This is fiction, folks."

Finally, the free-for-all ended. Emery Emery stepped off stage and slapped high-fives as he walked away from the spirited applause. He had done his job sent the crowd home laughing. Laughing hard. Or in the parlance, he "killed." Ten minutes later, he was sitting on a stool in the Laffs bar, eager to defend his craft and discuss what he stands for as an artist.

"Comedy is comedy," he said. He was at once angry and articulate. He wore owlish glasses, a black dress shirt, and gray, acid-washed jeans. His girlfriend, Beth, sat next to him. The object of comedy, Emery was saying, is to, "make people laugh and make people laugh hard. Light humor does not get killer laughs."

Nevertheless, dirty comics, most notably Andrew "Dice" Clay, are often labeled as talentless creeps who can only get a laugh by being crude and vulgar. Others say blue comedians choose their explicit style because it's easier to perform. Emery bristles at the stereotypes. Angrily, he said, "Any comic who says that you're taking the easy way by being blue can, for starters, suck my crank! There's no truth to that"

Emery and his blue colleagues also face prejudice from the television gatekeepers, cable channels included. On rare occasions, Emery said, when a pay channel such as HBO or Showtime do call, the message Is this: You'll do it our way. Emery, a graduate of Ed McMahon's Star Search, has never appeared on cable television.

"Nah, I don't give a fuck (about television)," he said. "I prefer what I'm doing. I have so many friends who have done VHS, Comedy Tonight on the Road... Bill and Ted's Excellent Comedy Schmooka. It sucks. all of it sucks... I won't do any of those cable shows.

"I won't do their little, piddly, cut-up-the-comic bullshit. It's an art, man, and when you put a knife to it, you butcher it. They butcher you and they censor you.

The guy Knows. In 1992, Emery was fired by a Seattle club owner because Emery Insisted on using the word "nigger" in a polemic about the stupidity of racism "I was furious, just furious" Emery said. "It (was) censorship based on a concern that people might be offended and you can't do that, not in an art-oriented industry."

Shaken and upset, he telephoned Carlin for advice and finally went public with the incident. He fired off a press release, did a radio show and watched as his anti-censorship, anti-racism message was relayed nationally in newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times. He blames the incident, the "censorship," on a control-driven club owner, and the politically correct atmosphere, which he says is the worst he has ever seen it. Political correctness, he said, is "really just censorship."

"Political correctness (was) a great idea, a brilliant idea, a wonderful idea in its design, but it turned out to be an Edsel," said Emery, 30, who lives in Costa Mesa, California. The idea was to be more caring and more aware of the plight of people who are being treated unfairly... but then it gets out of hand.

"If you use a word, you have to consider its content. (But) political correctness... has made people hair-trigger (sensitive) to words, and, they're just words.

On stage at Laffs, three nights later, Emery gave political correctness a symbolic middle finger, closing his show with same piece that triggered his firing in Seattle. In the piece, he uses the word nigger because the people he mocks, in particular "redneck" club owners in the south, use the word as an epithet. ("That's how bigots talk, "he said.) So there he was, in a state that many have labeled as racist.

Here, though, his gig was not gagged. He had unspoken permission to use his words, the words he has found so effective in conveying his message, a message that has made him an angry martyr in the free speech debate.

Then he closed his Saturday show not with a joke, as he did earlier in the week, but by telling the crowd a true story. The Seattle story. Call it Censorship in Seattle.

"I had the club owner of a comedy club... come up to me and tell me that I was not (permitted) to do the piece I just did for you, the anti-racism piece Emery told the Laffs crowd. "I said 'I'm going to do it anyway' and he fired me." Emery's face showed the disgust. He paused for a moment, gathered composure and emotional velocity, then spoke.

"I was censored and I was fired over the word nigger " he fumed. "Ladies and gentlemen, the word nigger is a word of hate, a word of ignorance, a word of bigotry, and that's why I wrote this piece. When we're living in a society that censors people who are speaking out against ignorance, then we're moving backward in time.

"So if I leave you with any message, it's please during your lifetime, do everything you can to fight and stop censorship so that we can fight and stop the other in this country. Thank you. And good night.

Emery Emery stepped off stage. This time his manner was serious. His powerful statement was out there, a poignant that prodded people to take action against censorship. The crowd responded.

Gave him a killer ovation.