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My mother didn't know who Tim types is due bothto Tim Ta_ylor's vul-Allei was at first. "Tim Allen ... Tim nerability and to his wife Jill's (Patri-Allen...' cia Richardson) no'nonsense attitude

.She tried gamely to remember, toward him.having asked me about my workwhile I was visiting. Just then mystepfather grunted something like,

Butwe a6ri't rte trratiriow [e-'s on.s' reDregents that do-it-

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Imprbvement,"wasthe.onlybonafide paft Ol eyefy guy Ihit among last season's newcomers, 'r__ ___ . - -,,landing in"the top 10 from the moment KDOW, mySerf

host of a cable do-it-yourself show, ithas made the 39-year-old Allen a

Tool Time!

Allen is very much the regular guy

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seemingly instant success. He hasbeen a stand-up comic on and offsince 1980, and prior to landing the se-ries he had done a couple of Showtimespecials. But it wasn't until he trans-planted his stage persona to a sitcomthat Allen became a star - and madehis trademark guy's-guy grunt the an-them of dads and stepdadseverywhere.

nTo discuss why you laugh gets soesoteric, it can seem so stupid," Allenreflects at his hiatus home in subur-ban Detroit, where he lives with hiswife of eight years, Laura Deibel, andtheir 2-year-old daughter, Kady. Allenis pretty much a reg'lar guy himself,not given to apparent airs or ego.That, he thinks, may be the appeal ofhis Tim Taylor character, host of thefictional "Tool Time."

"At least he's gonna be a- g!ry,whether that's wrong or right," Allensays. uNot like Archie Bunker, whereeven other guys were saying, 'I'm ndtgonna be this guy.' But Tim Taylor is astereotypical male - he representsthat do-it-yourself kick that's part ofevery guy I know, myself included."

To his credit, Allen does say "ste-reotypical" and not "typical." Afterall, there are plenty of guys who carenothing about football and pickuPtrucks, and Allen's own craft of stand-up comedy wasn't exactly one of thecrucial survival skills of American

"The relationship between Tim andJill is pretty believable," Allen sug-gests. Indeed, many call it the show'sitrongest point. uThey're eguals, theyhave a good sense of humor, theY havea real sort of relationship going. A lotof it is right there on stage. Pat's sucha good actress, it's very disarming tobe in a scene where I think she meansthis stuff! Especially when she's an-gry, which reminds me of when mYwile is angry with me. And I react tothat. I'll start crying in a scene be-cause she'll be so sad, and people willsay, 'Tim, what's wrong?' and Pat'llsay, 'Tim, I'm only acting.' "

Allen has been learning how to acthimself, as have other comics-turned-sitcomics. Some, like Harry Andersonof the late "Night Court," simply con-tinue doing a toned-down version oftheir stage persona. But others, likeRoseanne Arnold, quickly pick up thenuances of expressing a range ofemotions.

"I'm not an actor," Allen muses."I'm a comedian. I'm becoming an ac-tor, I guess. But being a comic for 20

+years, I've seen guYs come uP who in ayear, year-and-a-half, they're good.And that shakes you up, when it takesyou 20 years to feel that waY aboutvour own act."" It's intriguing that Allen says hehas been at this 20 years: He never got

onstage until 1980, when buddies BillLudwig and Eric Head urged him totry a routine at Detroit's ComedYCastle. Then his nascent career got in-terrupted for 28 months while heserved time for cocaine possessionand distribution. ("It was a mediumsecurity prison,o he says of the Sand-stone Correctional Institution in

. Sandstone, Mich. "A minimum wouldhave had no fences. This had fencesand armed guards in little towers.They would shoot you if you jumpedover. But they'd probably know yourname before they did.J

No, although Allen has been a pro-fessional comic only a decade, the 20-year-remark suggests he alwaysknew that was what he was. "I wantedto be on Johnny Carson since 1977," hesays - three years before his stand-up debut. "I didn't know it would befiom comedy - I didn't know what Iwanted to do with myself - but Iknew I wanted to be on that show.Then when I did do stand-up comedy,I thought,'Yeah. This is it.' " He even-tually played Carson's "TonightShow" twice.

Now Allen's own show, after havingspent its first season in a Tuesday-night hammock between "Full House"and uRoseanne," has moved toWednesdays, opposite NBC's critical-ly acclaimed "Seinfeld."

Tim Taylor versus Jerry andGeorge? It should be an interestingbattle, between stereotypical'90sguys who are absolutely nothingalike.

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