You can't fix stupid, as comic Ron White likes to say.

But you can fix your comedy show. White —- the genially caustic stand-up whose career took off after the Blue Collar Comedy tour earlier this decade —- did a test run of his show at the 260-seat Funny Farm on Wednesday night. He's set to perform three sold-out shows at the much larger Fox Theatre this weekend.

"I haven't worked in two weeks so I need this as a warm-up," White said Wednesday morning. "The show is like an hour-and-20-minute tongue twister. It's easy to miss one word and get totally lost."

Indeed, a rusty White flubbed a few lines Wednesday night. But he was able to weave those flubs into comic gold.

While describing a trip overseas to entertain American troops in Belgium and Germany, he accidentally said "UFO tour" instead of "USO tour."

He started chuckling when he realized his error. "The jokes translate poorly from one galaxy to the next," the Texas native drawled, with his signature cigar in his right hand, a glass of Scotch whisky in his left.

The crowd laughed. He paused, grinned. "They were legal aliens!" The crowd guffawed.

"But oddly enough," he added, "they still speak Spanish!" The crowd applauded.

"He just ran with it," Deron Boyles, a Georgia State education policy professor and longtime fan, said after the show. "The funniest stuff came when he ad-libbed."

As Funny Farm general manager and fellow stand-up comic Marshall Chiles said, 51-year-old White blends three powerful ingredients: He's likable, he's naturally funny, and he's incredibly confident onstage.

And for Chiles, White's appearance was a midweek windfall. On Tuesday night at 8:30, he sent an e-mail blast to regular Funny Farm fans about White's surprise show. By 4:30 a.m. Wednesday, all seats were gone. By 8 a.m., the show was oversold by 150 tickets and Chiles had to spend the next few hours doling out the bad news.

White's all-new material blends thoughtful observations about life post 9/11 (he mocked the color-coded "states of awareness"), bawdy jokes about his intermittent style of lovemaking, and stories about his wife, Barbara Dobbs, who was Jeff Foxworthy's interior designer.

White owns a home in Atlanta, but he and his wife are separated. He now spends most of his time at his residence in the Los Angeles area.

Besides touring, White last year nabbed a regular role on a new comedy, "12 Miles of Bad Road," which was set to debut on HBO later this year. The show about rich Texans stars Lily Tomlin and is produced by Linda Bloodworth and Harry Thomason, who made their mark with the 1990s sitcom "Designing Women," fictionally set in Atlanta.

But as he noted in rather colorful, FCC-unfriendly terms, HBO recently dumped the show after shooting six episodes and spending more than $20 million.

"I play a rich Texas guy who plays golf, drinks scotch, smokes cigars and owns a jet," he said. "I basically played myself. Bloodworth fed me funny lines and framed me in great shots. I'm [peeved] it's not going on HBO."

Local syndicated talk-show host Neal Boortz brought the comic to WSB-AM studios Wednesday morning. Boortz told White he fantasized seeing White hosting Foxworthy's TV game show "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?" and verbally smacking down celebrity participant Kellie Pickler, who didn't know Hungary was a country.

But White said there's zero chance Foxworthy would ever have him as a guest. "First of all, he likes children and I don't," White said. "I'd curse out those fifth-graders in a minute.

"He doesn't want me anywhere near that show!"

COMEDY THIS WEEKEND

Ron White

Today at 7:30 p.m. $38.75. Bell Auditorium, Augusta www.ticketmaster.com; 404-249-6400

Fox Theatre on Saturday at 7 and 10 p.m., Sunday at 8 p.m. (all three shows sold out)