There's a reason Red Buttons has been around so long: The guy is funny. Really, fall-down funny. This is not the case with a number of comedians who've been performing for several decades. And worse, a lot of them don't know when to stop. A few months ago, I was at a party and Red got up to say "a few words." The words got an awful lot of laughs and, with the unerring (but rare) skills of someone who knows when to stop, he closed out his speech at just the right moment and sat down to thunderous applause. In admiration, I hereby plug his new website at www.redbuttons.net, where strange things are happening…
Mr. Buttons is especially well-known for his performance in the curious, almost-extinct show business ritual known as the "roast." Proof that roasts are a dying art can be found by watching any of the Friars Roasts televised the last few years by Comedy Central. According to this article, the recent one for Chevy Chase (which airs 12/1) pretty much drives the last nail into ye olde coffin. Why am I not surprised?