NOTHING BUT GOOD TIMES AHEAD, by Molly Ivins, Random House, 255 pages, $23.

Molly Ivins, the well-known syndicated columnist and Texan “arthur,” reminds me of that unique guest who always shows up at the family reunion — you know the one I mean.

Ivins is like that loud-mouthed, second-cousin-twice-removed of yours, the one who always leads the conga line.

You remember, she’s the one who went up to your Uncle Howard last year and told him, in picturesque but unrepeatable language, that he looked terrible in his new rug, that his suit looked like something from a clown outfitter’s, and that he was a total jerk for leaving your Aunt Shirley after 33 years of marriage and taking up with that blonde bimbette who keeps leaning over the banquet table and dragging her chest in the clam dip.

You’re awfully embarrassed that your second cousin said all that, but awfully glad she did. After all, somebody’s got to set the record straight.

In fact, that’s a very good reason for going right out and reading Ivin’s latest book. She certainly does set the record straight, whether it’s about George Bush’s speaking style (“I’ve been listening to him since 1966 and must confess to a secret fondness for his verbal dyslexia. Hearing him has the charm and suspense of those old adventure-movie serials: Will this man ever fight his way out of this sentence alive?”), or Ross Perot (“a seriously short guy who sounds like a Chihuahau”), or Clinton’s three-day inaugeration bash (” … any group of folks willing to make asses of themselves in pursuit of a good time should be commended and encouraged: The spirit of human frolic needs all the help it can get.”)

Unfortunately, I can’t repeat everything she says about all the topics she’s tackled. This is, after all, a family newspaper. You really gotta read her stuff verbatim to get the full flavor.

For example, I can’t tell you everything Ivins said about how the 73rd Texas Legislature repealed a homosexual sodomy law, and I can only partially quote Ivins quoting a Texas Ranger on the Branch Davidian disaster in Waco (also known as “the great testosterone contest”).

“Son,” said the Ranger a la Ivins, “the three most overrated things on earth are ————, Mack trucks, and the FBI.”

As I said, you gotta read the book.

Ivin’s pungent political remarks (would a hot-salsa comparison be appropriate here?) are best when she’s either fed up, disgusted, incredulous, or rip-roaring mad, which she clearly is, frequently.

But Ivins, a clear-headed civil libertarian and dedicated populist, is also eloquent. Just read her essays on Henry Cisneros or Sam Houston: “One reason we all admire Sam is because he waited until quite late in his life to reform, and even then, you could never be sure it had taken all the way.” And you really gotta read about the Great Alta Vista Hog Hunt. Only Ivins could wax poetic and be so deeply insightful about a great, hairy hog that wandered through her neighborhood one day.

One nice thing I learned recently is that Ivins, who works out of the Austin, Texas, bureau of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, sure seems as authentic in voice as she appears in the pages of her second book. After only a few minutes into a telephone interview, Ivins was calling a strange reporter from a cold New England state, darlin’, and letting loose with several long, deep, rumbling laughs.

Raised in east Texas “in a town so small it’s not worth mentioning,” Ivins said she had a been a reporter and observer of the political scene “for many, many years.” Ivins went north for her education, and graduated from Smith College and Columbia School of Journalism and studied in Paris (that’s in France, not Texas or Maine) before getting her first job in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle. Doesn’t that seem like a strangely auspicious beginning?

Asked if she had always been outrageous or just grew into it, Ivins laughed one of those long guffaws and said, “I think it was about half and half,” adding that her style became fully developed while at the Texas Observer. She later worked for the New York Times, covering politics out of the newspaper’s Albany bureau and then its Rocky Mountain Bureau in Colorado, she said.

Her thrice-weekly column purveying the Texas perspective of “gummint” and “bidness” began in 1982 while she was at the Dallas Times-Herald, “a half-assed liberal newspaper.” When that folded last year, Ivins spent several months at the local Texas Employment Commission (where she “enjoyed reading about George Bush’s discovery that we’re in a recession”) before moving to the Fort Worth paper.

Ivins admitted that she now gets a lot of her stories by frequenting a certain Austin restaurant, La Zona Rosa, which she called “a major hangout of mine.” (She also recommended the No. 2 dinner for Tex-Mex fans.)

While she hasn’t ever been censored, “I’ve certainly been edited,” admitted Ivins. “When I was at The New York Times, it used to happen all the time.”

Ivins once wrote about “a fella who had a beer gut that belonged in the Smithsonian,” and some Times copy editor fixed up the phrase so it came out that the man had “a protuberant abdomen,” she recalled.

Ivins, whose first book, “Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?,” was on The New York Times bestseller list for more than 12 months, said she follows Maine politics “a little bit” and was up here “very briefly.”

“It’s my great hope to visit up there sometime — in the summertime, of course,” she said.

Drippin’ pure Texas tones, Ivins told me her favorite Maine story, about some bureaucrat who wanted to get funding out of the Legislature for some buses for a home for retarded children. He was, unfortunately, hopelessly unsuccessful.

A local military base was going to close down (she couldn’t remember which one — there’ve been so many lately), and an auction was being held to get rid of all the equipment. So the night before the auction, the bureaucrat climbs over the fence of the military base and hot-wires a bus and tries to drive off.

Of course, he’s arrested, and of course, just by coincidence, every television station in the area is there to film his arrest, related Ivins.

“As he was handcuffed and dragged away, this fella said, `I only did it for the children, so the children could have a chance to go to the zoo or go on a picnic once in their lives,”‘ said Ivins. “And there was an avalanche of guilt, and the Legislature funded the buses.”

Sure sounds like our Legislature.

And what does Ivins think about some of our more prominent politicians, such as, let’s see, Sen. George J. Mitchell?

“Not enough Elvis,” she said. “His Elvis quotient is way down there.”

And Sen. William S. Cohen?

“Now he’s a little bit more zippier, but he’s not double-digit on the Elvis scale. He’s really low,” said the columnist.

And Rep. Olympia J. Snowe?

“Now, she’s fairly peppy,” said Ivins, not going into the congresswoman’s Elvis quotient, maybe because it’s a lot harder to be a female Elvis impersonator.

Ivins said she’s been doin’ the arthur thing lately, and touring the country to promote this second book, which is doing “fairly well,” making the local Top 10 book lists. The publishers are pleased, she said.

Well, they oughta be. Just the other night, my husband started reading Ivins’ book, and he kept quoting passages to me, and laughing, and falling out of bed.

Completely spoiled the whole evening.

Jeanne Curran is a NEWS staff writer.