Highlights from the Joan Rivers Friar's Roast

Via Michael Musto's blog:

​We've had a couple of days to recover from Comedy Central's roast of veteran funny lady Joan Rivers, and now that the wonderfully putrid air has cleared, we can look back and remember the choicest bits of appallingly hilarious indecorum (not all of them aimed at Rivers, by the way.)

Among the most memorable:

Kathy Griffin: "Tonight's going to be gayer than that kid from American Idol this year--Ryan Seacrest!"

Greg Giraldo: "What's with the surgery, Kathy? You've been stitched up thousands of times, but you're still sad to look at. You're like the AIDS quilt."

Giraldo to Mario Cantone: "You're the only guy who takes a stepladder to a glory hole."

Jeffrey Ross, referring to Griffin: "When did Howdy Doody f**k Pippi Longstocking? Kathy, I wouldn't f**k you with Chastity Bono's new dick!"

Jeffrey Ross re Robin Quivers: "Face it, without the Howard Stern show, the only thing you'd be saying into a microphone would be, 'Welcome to Popeye's. May I take your order?' "

Jeffrey Ross to Joan Rivers: "Kanye's mother had a better surgeon. Look at her. She's a cougar. Freddie Cougar!"

There were also cracks about Cantone's T-cell count and about how, when a director told Cantone "Take five," his boyfriend shoved a fist up his ass. I also thought every word out of Whitney Cummings's mouth was pricelessly funny. (I wonder if she's who they got when Lisa Lampanelli declined to do it. If so, it paid off big time.)

Joan--who's long elevated self-deprecation to an art form--must hav

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Updated On: 8/11/09 at 04:29 PM

Gilbert Godfried had the best set out of them all. (Save for Joan herself)

Whitney really went for broke and I loved it! The only one I thought was a BIT much was the T-Cell joke.

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Updated On: 8/12/09 at 05:10 PM

I was also surprised at how many jokes boiled down to a "you're gay!" punchline.

I dunno. Some of it was funny, but overall I just found it kind of ugly.

That's exactly how I think of Joan: Just vulgar, not funny.

A roast isn't mainly about being funny. It's about insulting them worse than they insulted you.

Roast was great. The jokes are supposed to sting. Get a life, people. I thought the dais was a bit less than stellar considering that Lily Tomlin and Robin Williams were supposed to come and then canceled.

Mario is so unfunny. His routine was tired and old. Bette Davis and Judy jokes? Come on.

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Updated On: 8/12/09 at 10:21 PM

Amen fflagg!

"The jokes are supposed to sting. Get a life, people."

Yep, being as horrible as humanly possible has always been the M.O. of the Friar's Club roasts. And they used to be behind closed doors where it was just an old boys club of "guys being guys." But times have changed. They aren't invitation only events anymore. And it's not the frigging Frank Sinatra generation anymore. Except for Joan, those guys are all dead.

Viewers have every right to comment on the content of shows that are on, and to point out the jokes they took issue with and why. That doesn't mean they don't have a life. That signals they do have one, interior as well.

So I see making fun of Kanye's mother's accidental death due to surgery was fair game. Were there lots of hilarious jokes about Edgar offing himself to get away from his shrieking harridan of a wife? Let's face it, Kanye's mom's death was an accident but Edgar CHOSE that.

Soulless, horrible, awful Joan.

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i like when they roasted Michael on The Office.. haha

I don't remember anything being said specifically about him killing himself, though they say Carl Reiner would see him soon, and they made a joke about a nice Jewish girl should marry a doctor, not support a doctor. Or something like that. To the best of my recollection, there were no jokes about Edgar's suicide.

Updated On: 8/12/09 at 11:52 PM