Carrot Top brings his shtick to Spokane

Carrot Top’s dad is a retired rocket scientist.

Bet that smacked you awake faster than a quad-shot soy latte.

It’s true – the red-headed funnyman famous for inventing sight gags out of everyday fodder is heir to a NASA name.

“My dad’s pretty proud of what I do now,” Carrot Top, aka Scott Thompson, said last week from his Orlando, Fla., home. “But it’s always like, ‘You know, I worked at NASA.’ ‘Oh yeah, well I’m building stuff out of duct tape and glue.’ “

Not that the career gap is anything to be ashamed of for the 37-year-old whose press packet calls him a “red-headed wunderkind with a trunk full of giggles.”

After all, the guy’s a fixture of the comedy world. Since he started doing stand-up while attending Florida Atlantic University in the mid-1980s, his act has grown from two props to a huge road show, which he will bring to Northern Quest Casino on Sunday at 8 p.m.

Thompson’s unmistakable orange-red mane and quirky style have made him an easy target for other comedians and comedy shows.

For example, David Cross and Bob Odenkirk’s cult-classic HBO sketch comedy series, Mr. Show, included a bit featuring a popular blue-hair college comic “Blueberry Head.”

“I’ve been (a pop culture reference) for a while,” he said. “I don’t know, it’s kind of fun to use my name for a fill-in joke, or whatever. They’ve been doing that forever.”

And since his string of 1-800-CALL-ATT commercials, he’s become even more of a pop-culture punch line.

But there’s one thing Thompson says about people who satirize his shtick: They don’t quite get it.

“Every time they spoof me in one of these shows, they never really spoof me right,” he said. “It’s always a pun … They go ‘look, it’s a shoe horn,’ and it’s a shoe and a horn, and that’s not what I do. So it’s flattering, but they never spoof me where I’m like ‘that’s what I do.’ “

No matter. With celebrity endorsements in heavy rotation, spoofs on “The Family Guy” and appearances on Comedy Central’s “Reno 911,” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out Carrot Top’s achieved success.

Whether you like his style, his persona’s become as recognizable as the heavies: Seinfeld, Cho, Crystal, Rock.

But where those comedians rock a traditional stand-up style, Carrot Top has a shtick to worry about.

Sure, the son of a NASA scientist probably won’t run out of inventions, such as his early-career “high heels with training wheels for young girls.”

But Thompson’s nearing middle age – could Carrot Top go gray?

“You know what, I found a gray hair last weekend,” Thompson said. “I was on a boat, and my friend was like, ‘Dude, you’ve got like 10 gray hairs.’

“I don’t mind going gray as long as it goes gray right away. I don’t want it to be like where it’s that nasty-looking, spotty-looking stuff. But if I go, like, all white, that would be cool.”

Thompson claims he wouldn’t resort to dyeing his hair red to remain Carrot Top, and quitting the game is too extreme. Maybe he could change his name.

“Yeah, to like Cotton Top or something,” he said. “I’ll have to cross that road when I get to it. I guess it’s inevitable that something’s going to happen to me. But right now it’s pretty red.”