Consider the career of Sarah Silverman, typical '90s "alternative" comedian -- which in her case means a nice Jewish girl with a sweet delivery and a dirty mouth. A middle-class New Hampshire kid from a family with four daughters, Silverman is, yes, the class clown. She starts doing open-mike nights early. By age 17 she's playing the old Stitches next to the Paradise on Comm Ave. When she gets to NYU, she works every weekend for a year leafleting for New York's Boston Comedy Club on Macdougal Street, where many adventures ensue. On the corner with Sarah every weekend is a guy in a chicken suit working for the Pluck You all-night chicken stand. One night a bunch of drunken high-school guys start to hassle the chicken. The insults turn into a shoving match and suddenly, instinctively, Sarah's between the chicken and the thugs, telling the thugs to back off. "Believe me, in no way did I think I was being heroic or gallant. I just figured I'd be adorable and they'd stop." Instead, she gets cold-cocked -- boom, flat out cold on the sidewalk.