Comedy Central Roast Of William Shatner

I used to love to watch the old Dean Martin roasts when I was a kid.  I didn’t understand a lot of the jokes, and I didn’t know a lot of the roasters, but they were fun, and they appeared to be having fun. I would later learn about the Friar’s Club roasts which were not aired on television and tended to be very blue.  When Comedy Central started doing roasts, I thought it was a great idea to bring back this type of entertainment.  The roast would air on Comedy Central edited for television, and then later they would air it in their “Secret Stash” uncut with all the profanity and sexual comments intact.  Later still they started releasing the roasts on DVD.

I was looking through Big Lots the other day and they had gotten in a bunch of Comedy Central DVDs.  In addition to seasons of Dr. Katz and Sarah Silverman, I also found the Comedy Central Roast of William Shatner.  I decided to pick it up.  I had seen most of the roast in various chunks on television, but this was billed as an extended edition.  I popped the disc in and hit play.  They introduced roastmaster Jason Alexander and he introduced Shatner and I sat back and scratched my head and wondered where the bit with Shatner calling Leonard Nimoy about doing the roast went to.  I know I saw that when I watched the show on television, and I was almost positive that it opened the show.  Surprise, that bit wasn’t on the DVD for some reason.

As for the actual roast some of the jokes were funny, some were repetitive.  Everyone had some form of a gay joke about George Takei and Andy Dick.  Lisa Lampanelli was the target of jokes about her size and her penchant for having sex with black men.  Farrah Fawcett looked stoned and took lots of shots over her looks back in the 70s on the iconic poster and her looks today.  Not a whole lot was really said about Shatner with the exception of some toupee jokes.  The one thing that really stuck out was that after each of the roasters finished with Shatner they all said how honored they were to be there with him…  all of them but two; George Takei and Nichelle Nichols.  There has long been stories about the backstage animosity between Shatner and the supporting actors on Star Trek.  Much was made of the fact Takei personally did not invite Shatner to his wedding.  So looking back now when Takei ends his roasting by telling Shatner “F**k you”, it’s clear that Takei was being honest rather than ironic.

One other observation I made while watching the DVD was how many of the attending celebrities were no longer with us.   Farrah Fawcett, David Carradine, and Greg Giraldo all were prominently featured, and they are all dead just 4 years later.  I admit I found the roast much funnier when I first saw bits of it on Comedy Central.  I’m not sure if the bits seem funnier in small doses or if the jokes just don’t hold up to repeated viewings, but I was nowhere near as enthusiastic about the roast as I once was.  After this viewing, I’d give it  2 1/2 stars.

Doug Stanhope: No Refunds

I had heard the name Doug Stanhope, but I really wasn’t familiar with his comedy.  I knew him mainly from his time on The Man Show after the original hosts left the show and from a Girls Gone Wild commercial that aired incessantly for several months during late night programming on Comedy Central and Spike TV.  When I saw the DVD at one of the pawn shops I frequent, I decided to pick it up and give it a shot.  I was pleasantly surprised.  I don’t necessarily agree with Doug on everything, and his material is definitely adult in nature, but there is an intelligence to his comedy that is belied by his drunken and slightly aggressive at times delivery. 

Stanhope spends the entire show with a lit cigarette in his hand, puffing away.  He also drinks quite a bit during the show.  He claims that he is funnier when he is drunk.  It’s hard to tell with some comics whether what they say is part of an act or if they truly believe everything they say.  Stanhope claims that guys from AA have even pretty much told him not to quit drinking because he’s not as funny when he’s sober.  He rails against no smoking laws and flaunts the fact that in New York it is illegal to smoke inside unless it’s part of a theatrical performance, which he naturally claims his act to be so that he can smoke.

Stanhope is not politically correct by a long way, and if you are easily offended, stay away from this disc.  On the other hand if you understand satire and can laugh at things that might make you uncomfortable, Stanhope is one of the funniest guys I’ve seen in a long time.  The DVD case compares him to Lenny Bruce and Bill Hicks.  Those are some huge shoes to fill, and I’d need to see some more of his stuff before I weigh in on those comparisons.  What I will say is if the rest of his work is as well done as what is presented on No Refunds, it’s possible a case could be made for the comparison.

I plan to keep my eye out for other Stanhope DVDs.  No Refunds gets a 10 on the Hight Flight scale.

Dave Attell Captain Miserable

I got hooked on watching Insomniac with Dave Attell through late night hotel television while I was traveling doing training for my job.  I would come back to the hotel room with nothing better to do than flip on the tube and enjoy my usual dinner of honey barbecue chicken strips from Wal-Mart and a Diet Pepsi.  Insomniac was one of the shows that always seemed to be on along with a show about a college age guy that worked elaborate pranks on rich businesses to get stuff for free.  Of course without MTV or Comedy Central picking up the tab for the set-up as well as handling any legal issues after the fact, I’m not sure how many of his plans would have worked out without him ending up in jail.  But Insomniac was a different story.  Comedian Dave Attell would perform a comedy set and then head out on the town in whatever city he was performing getting plenty of drinks, lots of pictures, and a fairly steady stream of other gratuities.  Along the way he would visit and show us the night life of these various cities.  Sometimes it was an all-night sandwich shop.  Sometimes it was hunting sewer rats.  You never knew where Dave was going or what he was going to do.  It was a lot of fun and he seemed like a fun guy to hang out with.

Captain Miserable was a full length comedy special that Dave shot for HBO.  In Insomniac we only got to see Dave perform a couple of jokes and those were usually heavily censored.  HBO let Dave run for an hour and didn’t censor him at all.  What we got was a very dark at times, very dirty most of the times performance that ranges from scatological discussions to pondering whether pedophiles get cravings like cigarette smokers since they claim their problem is an addiction.  Genitalia is another subject Attell covers quite thoroughly discussing his new favorite porn series and describing the cover of the latest title in the series as featuring a woman with half her face covered up by a monster black male member.  He describes it as being like the mask in Phantom of the Opera. 

Some of the bits are quite funny, but sometimes they run just a bit too long.  Other times the jokes just seem to drift a little so close to surreal.  And sometimes I wondered if he hadn’t crossed the line into plain vulgarity.  Of course that line is in a lot of different places for different people.  For some people it may be the bit about a blind man climbing Mount Everest that leads into an oral sex joke (“Why does this icicle taste so salty?”).  For others it may be a discussion about having sex with his couch and finding two M&Ms stuck to his genitals when he pulled out.

I’m not easily shocked, but I also don’t give up the laughs that easy either.  I found Captain Miserable moderately amusing, but didn’t really find any one moment that I could point to and say that it made me laugh.  I think I prefer the slightly drunken but affable tour guide of Insomniac to the Dave Attell of Captain Miserable.  I give the show about a 6 on the Night Flight scale.

The Amazing Johnathan Wrong On Every Level Uncensored

I saw part of The Amazing Johnathan’s special on Comedy Central one day as I was getting ready for work.  I thought it was pretty funny, and wished that I had more time to watch it and that it was censored.  Imagine my surprise when I was looking at Books A Million on Saturday and ran into the uncensored DVD of the show.  I snatched it up (along with a copy of Howard The Duck) and added it to my collection.  Of course since I still needed to watch a DVD for Saturday, guess which one I chose.  Yes, The Amazing Johnathan Wrong On Every Level Uncensored.

If you’re not familiar with The Amazing Johnathan, he is a comedian and a magician.  His magic is pretty good, but he never lets it stand in the way of a good joke.  He starts a card trick at one point, but he has no intention of actually performing a typical magical card trick.  The whole set up is part of a joke, actually a series of jokes, all based around magician’s card tricks. 

Johnathan is not afraid of a little blood and gore either.  His ring trick ends with his “volunteer” getting his tongue ripped out and blood flying everywhere like watermelon at a Gallagher show.  He does tricks with razor blades as well.  His act is not for the squeamish.

Another part of Johnathan’s show that I really enjoyed was his ditzy sidekick Psychic Tanya (Penny Wiggins).  Penny allows for Johnathan to do some dumb blonde jokes, but she also delivers a very funny bit involving Blue Man Group tickets.  The first time I saw it, I laughed my ass off. 

The DVD is a great bargain as it also contains a bunch of deleted scenes, Johnathan’s performance on Premium Blend and his other Comedy Central show, Comedy Central Presents The Amazing Johnathan.  If you like stand up and you like magic, I can’t recommend this enough.  It’s hilarious.  At 42 minutes, Wrong On Every Level earns a 10 on the Night Flight scale.