In Search of a Name...

The other night I -- for some reason that modern science cannot yet discover -- watched Comedy Central's compilation/promo show of the "most outrageous moments" of their Comedy Central Roasts. Since Joan Rivers will be roasted next weekend, the special serves to promote it as well as soak up airtime at very little cost.

Now, the thought behind the roast is that guests, many of whom will be the honoree's friends, co-workers, etc., will tell humorous stories about the honoree, some of which may not be true. They will also aim insults at the honoree and other guests. Most, if not all, of these comments will be the kind of thing that would draw an angry glare and maybe a poke in the mush if they were said outside of the context of the roast.

The New York Friars' Club and Harvard's Hasty Pudding theater group host well-known roasts. Dean Martin had a series of celebrity roasts in the 1960s and 1970s and if you want to watch them, my dad has the videotape edition of several. Which brings us to Comedy Central's program.

Never have I watched an hour of television that made me want to laugh less. The speakers had the insult part down, and the utter lack of restraint and good taste as well. But they'd overlooked the one thing I figured would be a no-brainer for a channel called Comedy Central: humor. I used to write for a newspaper and I wasn't always in the line of work I'm in now. I don't cover my ears and faint when I hear crude remarks or jokes. Say something that's vulgar and funny and I'm as likely to laugh as the next guy provided you haven't said it in an improper context, like in front of my mom.

But if these were the highlights of the Comedy Central Roasts, then sitting through an entire such event is the kind of thing that would make Tomás de Torquemada say, "You just can't do that to people." Relentlessly unfunny variations on jokes about genitals, sex habits, age, race, repeated ad homicidem.

The Bob Saget roast (no, I don't know why anyone would roast Bob Saget, unless we're speaking literally) featured dozens of jokes about Saget molesting the Olsen twins who played his youngest daughter on the show Full House. Everybody cracked up until they cried, because sexually assaulting children is funny! Oh, it's not? Well, someone will have to tell the couple hundred people who attended the Saget roast, then.

It also featured 78-year-old actress Cloris Leachman breaking up the crowd by declaring she was present not to roast Saget, but to have sex with his Full House costar John Stamos. She didn't say, "have sex with," of course, she used the one-word form that George Carlin pointed out can't be said on TV. Again, mighty were the guffaws of the crowd, because it's funny when dignified older ladies say the f-word! You remember how often Margaret Thatcher used to drop the F-bomb to keep Gorbachev laughing too hard to use his A-bombs.

Of course, humor is subjective. It's certainly possible that all of those people got the joke and I don't. But I'm pretty sure I've told a joke or two or gotten a laugh here and there over time, and I may have cracked maybe a couple of smiles during the entire show. So I'm in the hunt for a new name that Comedy Central can use for their roasts. They can keep the "roast" part, of course, but since "Comedy" implies that someone will say or do something funny, it's got to go.