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January 15, 2006

Refreshingly Remembered Roasts

I've been keeping really busy for the last several days working on the house I closed on exactly ten days ago and moved into four days later. I mean, I'm transforming this wonderful red brick ranch style house into my permanent home and, being only a semi-patient man, I am doing so at what some might call an accellerated pace.

Jeff has the living and dining room floors about 1/3 done, laying new oak floors in their stead, then he'll be doing the den. In less than twelve hours, carpeting people will be here to lay 122 square yards of exactly what I want and the next day, DirecTV will be doing a lot of installation work here. Furniture will begin flowing in on Tuesday. So a lot's going down on my modest 1/3 acre of the planet.

Modest, sure, but at least I have six big trees on my property, and coming from a city/apartment kind of background, that's a major detail!

But that's not what I'm posting about, it's partially a valid excuse as to why I'm still in this scarce posting period but mostly about still another reason I miss the 1960s and 1970s so much.

Early last week I ordered the entire DVD collection of Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts. They arrived two days ago, and I've been watching them almost whenever I'm not doing things to the house.

They are male tuxedoed and formal womened groups of top stars of every ilk sitting along a daiz, taking turns giving good natured, super-funny insults to whoever the man or woman of the week happened to be. They were televised.

What I love about them is that most of the toasters and toastees were friends and acquaintances from that era's Hollywood and 'Vegas crowds and they were completely confident that they could go as low, as funny or as irreverent as they wished, political correctness{the dreaded "PC"} not an issue.

No one entertained any fear of being sued for their comments at the roasts, which believe you me could be rather extreme, they knew it was all in fun.

We're talking the likes of Dean Martin(of course), Milton Berle, Ruth Buzzi, Nipsy Russell, Don Rickles, George Burns, Rich Little, Flip Wilson, Foster Brooks, Lucille Ball, LaWanda Page, Jimmy Walker, Phyllis Diller, Jack Benny and so many other comedians of yore who, without using a single profanity, could get as adult as you dare while uttering nothing that a child could be "enlightened" by and behysterically funny utterly hilarious to where your most recent sip of coffee or other beverage spews across the room before you have the opportunity to swallow it and your sides ache from your hard, uncontrollable laughter.

The atmosphere was patriotic, none of the leftist entertainment industry output we encounter today. When those people went wrong, they did so big time.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts really bring me back to a time when things were much more clean and honest in the entertainment industry, before they brought on the Marxism and PC many of their number had once privately embraced, to today's extremes.

Today's comedy isn't nearly as original and is, in many cases, too PC, but unfortunately too many of today's young people don't even know that, because while it's out there, they need to give it a chance.

The Dean Martin Celebrity Roasts are so completely, awesomely hilarious to watch without all the PC baggage and otherwise lawsuit-motivated sensitivity that they easily bring back a more pleasant era that existed before the liberals in America decided that it was time to separate Americans from one another by emphasizing their differences and controlling their use of the English language and its vocabulary.

Young people who were born within the last quarter century have absolutely no idea how funny those Rat Pack era comics could be, they need to go here ASAP and get a clue.

Posted by Seth at January 15, 2006 07:03 PM