Hey, Dude

Men — you know them — those grunting, garage-dwelling, ­television-loving Neanderthals women so graciously put up with because women are so...well...magical. Rob Becker created Defending the Caveman, the one-man show that more or less defines men and women this way. Since the early '90s, his cellophane-deep script, which is most of all a TV-style stand-up routine about the battle between the sexes, has been traveling the globe. It has been translated into 16 languages, and operates like a franchise, with shows popping up all over the country; there's apparently also a permanent production in Vegas. Becker can even lay claim to writing the "longest-running solo play in Broadway history" (two years in the mid-'90s, if you're curious). That's a whole lot of hoopla for a little bit of silliness.

The caveman delivering the jokes and "observations" in the Houston production is a sweetly affable, slightly paunchy, rosy-faced Raymond McAnally. Never mind that at moments he seemed either a little bit new to or a little bit rusty on some of the lines — most of the audience liked the dude from the get-go. And his delivery was certainly grin-worthy. By the end of the June 4 show, some folks were laughing so hard they looked like their faces were hurting, which is a little bit odd since just about everything Mc­Anally said seemed like yesterday's news.

The entire piece is shaped around the idea that in caveman times, men were hunters and women were gatherers. Thus, men needed single-minded concentration, while women used their entire "amazing brains" to take in a vast landscape as they picked their way across the globe, looking for berries and whatever else gatherers gather. Becker's piece fast-forwards to modern times, arguing that in the Mall Age, things haven't changed much.

Take, for example, talking. According to Becker's "studies," men speak an average of 2,000 words a day, while women speak 7,000. That's because hunters needed quiet, while gatherers needed to communicate. Today, that translates into women calling each other on the phone to make dates to just talk, while men have to be doing something to spend time with each other. McAnally got some big laughs when he delivered Becker's idea of fishing, saying it's fine for a man to call another guy to go fishing, "something might happen," but it would be really weird to phone up anther guy saying you just want to go sit by a lake to talk.

The jokes about shopping got more big laughs. Becker connects a man buying a shirt to a caveman going in for the kill. That's why men want to get in and out of the mall. Women, on the other hand, like to "gather" as they go. So that's why women can spend days at the mall. Get it? We're all still hunters and gatherers in our DNA.

That's why women "cooperate" and cook together, while men "negotiate" who's going to have to fill up the chip bowl.

According to Becker, sex too is about hunting and gathering. The 20 or so minutes McAnally spends talking about lovemaking are all very PG, and it's all about sex between a husband and a wife, but even that breaks down to men hunting down that one big orgasm (that's why they don't like to waste time on foreplay), while women gather as many as they want.

These stories and jokes are all set against a Flintstoney set — a Stone Age easy chair and a Stone Age TV. Two large images appear on the backdrop — one of a prehistoric man with a spear, a bison and an erection, the other of the Great Goddess of Laussel, who, according to the program, dates back 25,000 years.

All this was mildly amusing to me, if kind of wrong. I thought of many men I know who like shopping, can talk for hours and don't fish. But when I gathered the men I brought with me to get their feedback at the end, they smiled, shrugged their big shoulders, nodded at me and grunted a few words about how true it all was. Then they suggested we hunt down some dinner.