A quick recommendation. Not long ago, comedian Jeffrey Ross visited Iraq as part of a troupe of comedians headed by Drew Carey. Ross took along a video camera and shot footage which he edited into a diary/documentary called Patriot Act. It runs incessantly this month on Showtime and it's well worth watching. The narrative nicely eschews the attitude of "Look at the wonderful thing I'm doing" which is too often present when Show Biz folks do something like this, and Ross seems to have a nice, honest perspective on the people he's entertaining and what a tour like that means to both the audiences and the performers.
And a quick non-recommendation. Mr. Ross is also part of this year's Comedy Central Roast, which this time is of rapper Flavor Flav. I'd never heard of him before and one suspects that at least a third of the roasters hadn't, either. I have to learn to stop watching these things. (If you haven't, it airs again tonight and tomorrow night.) For some reason, the dais always includes one rather clueless non-comedian who everyone decides to dump on relentlessly…to the point where it bypasses Funny and gets into the realm of picking on someone because they can't fight back. In this one, it's actress Brigitte Nielsen who's sitting there, forcing a grin as she's called an untalented whore. She appears to not understand all the insults hurled her way — that's the real embarrassing part — but she also seems to get enough of them to be very uncomfortable.
The most interesting thing about this roast — and obviously, this isn't a lot — is that someone at Comedy Central has apparently decided that the "s" word no longer has to be bleeped but the "f" word still does. No one will object. One or two of Mr. Carlin's other verboten words have already made it and the rest will soon follow. And almost no one will object.