Titus grew up in Fremont and Newark and began his stand-up career in South Bay comedy clubs like Rooster T. Feathers in Sunnyvale.

"I remember going there when there was a sign at the door that said, 'Check your knives and guns at the door.' It was crazy. It was a hardcore redneck biker bar," Titus recalls during a telephone interview. "That's where I started comedy. When I changed my act to talk about my mom shooting her husband and stuff like that, they were really supportive of it."

Titus will do five shows at downtown San Jose's new Improv club from Dec. 26 to Dec. 31 (with a special New Year's Eve countdown show at 10 p.m.).

Cancelled last spring after losing viewers because of its constantly changing time slot, the TV series had a cult following and was based on Titus' 1998
breakthrough one-man show Norman Rockwell Is Bleeding. During the theater piece, the comic talked about his mother Juanita's mental illness, his father Ken's drinking and womanizing and other sordid details of his family history (Ken, who was played by Stacy Keach on the TV series, died last year).

Titus says that before he reshaped his stand-up act to include his signature material about his screwed-up family, he considered quitting comedy after performing for a decade.

Tired of doing what he calls "the 'You ever notice...' stuff," Titus decided to make his act edgier, following in the footsteps of comics like his idol Richard Pryor, the late Bill Hicks and Chris Rock, who all had pushed the envelope with their controversial material.

"One night, my agent took me aside after an audition at the Montreal Comedy Festival, and he started screaming at me upstairs, 'What the hell are you doing? You were talking about your mom in the mental hospital and you're talking about it like you're happy? What the hell's your problem?' " Titus says.

For Titus, finding the humor in tragic situations like his mother's institutionalization wasn't easy at first. He remembers getting choked up the very first time he did the bit about his mentally ill mother while onstage at a club in Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

"About the 10th time I did it, all the choked-up-ness was gone, and it was becoming jokes, so it really helped me," Titus says.

Titus says he has found that talking about his problems to an audience is better than sharing them with a shrink.

"I went to therapy for three sessions. My therapist was also treating the Menendez brothers at the time. He kept asking me what I thought. I was paying this guy 150 bucks an hour: 'I wanna know what the hell you think for that kind of money.'

Titus will record his San Jose performances for a comedy CD. He is also working on developing an hour-long action comedy series for NBC, in which he'll play a disgraced cop who teams up with an ex-con to form a bounty hunter business.

He doesn't believe in repeating himself, which is why he avoided developing another sitcom and changed his stand-up act once again. His new material will focus on his opinions about world events that have taken place since his wife, Erin, gave birth to their daughter, Kennie Marie—16 days before Sept. 11.

The updated act will include riffs on the U.S. military's failure to track down Osama bin Laden, the Winona Ryder trial, the sniper attacks and the Catholic priest molestation scandals.

Through his new material, Titus is trying to make sense of a world that appears to be nearing apocalypse—hence his stand-up tour's title, "the Fifth Annual End of the World Tour." He says America has turned into a nation of self-loathing whiners and victims dependent on shrinks like TV's Dr. Phil, whose popularity both puzzles and amuses him.

"It's like someone gave a blue-collar car mechanic the right to give you therapy, and it seems to be working," Titus says. "I like to think of myself as Dr. Phil, except with people drinking really hard in the club."

Christopher Titus will perform Dec. 26­31 at the Improv, 62 S. Second St., San Jose. For more information, visit www.improv.com or call 408.280.7475.