ALLISON BLY HAS HEARD all the blast jokes hundreds of times: She’s a dynamite lady. On a date she’s a real blast. Her explosive personality is the result of a short fuse. A real bombshell, that Allison.

Fortunately, she doesn’t mind the corny puns. It goes with the territory. You see, Allison Bly is the Dynamite Lady, a spunky, spirited, sexy package of raw nerve right out of the P.T. Barnum school of showmanship. Nothing gets Allison more excited than blowing herself up in front of 15 million TV viewers in Japan or 100,000 fans at a Monkees concert in Utah.

“Sometimes it’s better than sex,” says the Dynamite Lady.

That may be, but some of the people who pay to see Bly as the opening act at a concert or the sideshow at one of those good ol’ boy tractor extravaganzas want to see the sexy Dynamite Lady and violence. In that respect, they are similar to auto racing fans who go to the Indy 500 hoping to see a spectacular crash and pieces of driver flying all over the track.

“People are pretty sick-minded,” Bly says. “But I’ve gotten over them. I know what I’m doing.”

IT IS JANUARY IN THE ORANGE Bowl, the old ballyard where Larry Csonka and later Dan Marino used to whip 75,000 Dolfans into a froth on a Sunday afternoon. With the Dolphins now playing football at Joe Robbie Stadium, the Orange Bowl gets tractor pulls and mud racing, with the Dynamite Lady as an added attraction.

The crowd of more than 30,000 stirs with anticipation. Bly emerges from the lockerroom, an explosive package (it’s simply unavoidable) wearing a red, white and blue outfit so brief it wouldn’t cover a stick of dynamite. She pirouettes in white boots as the theme song from the movie 2001 fills the stadium. The whole thing feels odd. Bly, 24, is as cute as the girl next door, but she’s packaged like a sex kitten in Playboy. And now she’s going to blow herself up?

“Folks,” the stadium announcer shouts into the public address system, “the little lady is gonna squat on four sticks of dynamite … Yep, she’s gonna sit on top of the stuff!”

Allison straps on her helmet and waves to the crowd, which roars its approval. Then the Dymamite Lady folds herself into her “coffin of death,” a Styrofoam box 2 feet by 4 feet that’s lined with plywood.

“The dynamite is right between her legs now!” the announcer shouts, as if everyone in the stadium has been asleep. “Let’s count …”

Everyone stomps their feet until it sounds like a herd of buffalo stampeding down I-95.

“10, 9, 8, 7 …”

In the bleachers, a drunk sucking on a bottle of booze snarls, “Blow her in two! We wanna see some legs fly!”

“… 2, 1 …”

KABLOOEY!!!

A brilliant strobe of light, a cloud of smoke, and bits of Styrofoam raining down like confetti obscure everything. Paramedics rush to the prone Dynamite Lady. She’s moving! She’s OK! The drunk is disappointed. Allison wobbles a bit, then waves and blows kisses to the crowd, which again roars its approval as she walks triumphantly to the lockerroom, having survived blast No. 122.

Moments later, Allison Bly, wearing a “Dynamite Lady” sweatshirt and an Ace bandage on her right foot, emerges from the lockerroom to greet her fans and make a few bucks, on top of the $2,000 she earns for each blowup. She hobbles to a concession stand to boost the sales of “Dynamite Lady” products, including fingernails, T-shirts, key chains, halter tops, and lace panties called “Dynamite Lady Boogie Britches.”

Then she starts autographing free pictures of herself. For one 12-year-old fan: “Hot flashes! Allison.”

“At first, little kids think I’m a robot,” Bly says. “I have to shake their hands to show them I’m real. After I blow myself up they’ll be crying, thinking I’m hurt. They’ve got these real big eyes when they come up to get my autograph.”

THE OLD COME-ON LINE NEVER WAS more appropriate than when put to Allison Bly. What’s a nice girl like you doing in a job like this?

“You might not believe it because of how short I am (she’s 5-foot-3), but I’ve been a model and I photograph well,” Bly says. “I’m ambitious. I regard the Dynamite Lady as a stepping stone, maybe into television or acting.”

The Orange Bowl show has been over a couple of hours, and Bly is unwinding with a rum and coke at the Alibi Lounge in Miami along with many of the mud racers.

“Maybe after No. 150 I’ll be where I want to be, so I don’t have to blow myself up anymore,” she says. “Every time I get out of the box I say, ‘This has gotta help me make it big.’ I love it. I like people. I’m a ham.”

Exploding things was second nature to Allison when she was a tomboy growing up in Plant City, Fla., the “strawberry capital” of the nation.

“I used to make bombs as a little girl,” she says. “We used gunpowder and wrapped it in kerosene rags and then lit it. A friend blew two fingers off his hand, so that was the end of that.”

The accident didn’t dampen Bly’s spirit of adventure. As a teenager she became an aerobics instructor on SeaEscape cruises out of Tampa. And later, following an argument with her mother, she joined the Army Reserves at age 18. Bly learned to drive an 18-wheel truck during basic training. She was also issued, appropriately enough, a grenade launcher. But she never fired the thing and defended her country behind the wheel of a truck in Florida and Georgia.

Deciding that she couldn’t be all that she could be in today’s Army, Bly began pursuing her entertainment career after fulfilling her obligation to the service. (She’s still a member of the reserves.)

In 1985, she answered a newspaper ad placed by Jim Lawrence, a promotor and agent in Tampa. At one time, Lawrence held the Miss Universe Pageant franchise for Texas, produced several action-adventure movies for drive-in theaters, and during the Vietnam War worked as a disc jockey in Saigon.

“I was looking for a tall, 5-7 Wonder Woman type,” he says. “Because Allison is short, she dressed in a vertical striped outfit, put her hair up and wore high heels. She was the only one who didn’t back out when they learned dynamite was involved.”

Lawrence took her to the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa for an audition. This was nothing new to Lawrence. He had studied the stunt, which was invented in 1946 by Captain Frank Frakes, a legendary stuntman who flew his old airplane into exploding houses.

To show Allison how the exploding box stunt worked, Lawrence wired a box and put a doll inside. “Then we stood behind a tree and he pushed the button,” Bly recalls. “The box blew up, but the doll was still there, so I got in the box next. I was scared to death.”

Fortunately, she didn’t go to pieces. She was hooked, and the little girl whose father still calls her “Sissy” went on to become “the only dynamite girl in the world.”

Blowing yourself up does have its liabilities — both physical and emotional. Dating, for instance, can be as touchy as walking around with a pocketful of blasting caps.

“I want to be the next famous stunt person,” Bly says. “I want to be more famous than Evel Knievel.”

And she’s not about to let any man stand in the way.

“Some guys are reluctant to ask out a woman who knows her way around explosives,” she says. “But that’s their problem. Some get excited and want to climb in the box with me. Others want me to stop. That’s when I say goodbye. My career comes first.”

After coming close to marriage four times, it looks as though Allison might go through with it this time. She and a landfill inspector named Billy Joe Suttles, who lives in North Carolina, are engaged to be married in May. Just so long as Billy Joe remembers the ground rules when it comes to Allison’s career: “He doesn’t have any say-so.”

“I HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO EXPECT the first time,” says Bly, still sipping on her rum and coke in the Alibi Lounge. But I psyched myself up, then fired the explosives. After the smoke cleared, I thought, ‘Wow, this is great!’

“I’ve wanted to do something like this since I was born. I’ve been scared every time, but I believe the important thing in life is to face your fears.”

Even so, the act makes for some restless nights. Bly has this recurring dream in which she blows up over and over again. “I never see the outcome,” she says, “but it sure wakes me up.”

Bly, who is licensed by the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, mixes the explosives before the show. The exact ingredients are a trade secret. Whatever the mix, it’s the equivalent of four sticks of dynamite.

“It’s enough to blow apart a 5-ton safe — or a 118-pound girl,” Bly says, laughing.

Not everything always goes according to plan. Last Halloween night at the Auburndale Speedway near Lakeland, Bly nearly blew herself to pieces in front of 1,000 people during blast No. 118.

“I’ll never forget that number,” she says. “I was scared to death because I couldn’t figure out what I did wrong.”

She later determined that she had arranged the charges a quarter-inch off their usual mark.

For a couple of moments, she lay unconscious. Nobody rushed her to the hospital. Nor did she want them to.

“When you’re out in the spotlight, you don’t think of that,” Bly says. “I smiled and bowed to the audience. My arm was just hanging, but I went into the crowd and signed about 500 autographs.”

Hours later, after arriving back in Clearwater, her home at the time, the pain became too much to bear, so she went to the hospital. She had broken an arm and a leg, and remained in casts for more than two months.

But, like a rider who falls off a horse and gets right back on, Bly got back into the box for blast No. 119.

“I had my eyes closed,” she admits now. “I usually have my eyes open. But this time I put my head between my knees. And everything went fine.”

She’s a lot more careful today than she was for her first blast in Auburndale, she says.

“Before I explode I run down a check list. I used to have a good luck charm, but I think it got blown away. I meditate five minutes before my act. I do not fear death.”

At 24, the Dynamite Lady still has a whole life to lead. Why take such risks? She thinks for a moment, sipping the last of her rum and coke. “Well,” she says finally. “I guess everybody’s a little bit crazy.”