Don King is Roasted by Donald Trump and the Friars
Everyone with the least ambition for fame should be made to sit through a Friar’s Club Roast. If you don’t come away with a healthy appreciation for a life of quiet obscurity, then you deserve all the celebrity you can handle.
Friday at noon 1400 people gathered at the Hilton Hotel’s immense ballroom to witness the public excoriation of Don King, fight promoter and felon. The “RoastMaster” was Donald Trump, and the Master of Ceremonies was Friar’s president Freddie Roman. Sharing the dais were sixty or so luminaries, David Dinkens, Michael Spinks, Fred Klein, etc., all lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery. It turns out that at a Roast, anyone within earshot is meat for the grill. I was glad the Hilton was only one block long.
Freddie Roman got first crack at them, introducing most with a respectful list of accomplishments. Then he turned the lectern over to “The Donald” and away we went. With the sound over-cranked, the air in the Hilton turned suddenly blue. Among the dozen comic talents that he introduced some produced a few great moments of hilarity.
My favorites - Stuie Stone dissing the Donald for getting a million bucks to teach people how to get rich. . . “What do you know about it? Your father gave you $40 million!” And “Donald, I think your hair is turning prematurely orange.”
Lisa Lampanelli said: “Abe Vigoda is here. . . I’m just saying that so he’ll know. . .” One of the few remarks from her that can be repeated in public. (Somehow, the Friars roast with 1400 people in the Hilton ballroom is not really in public. . .) Ms. Lampanelli was the only one of her gender to speak, but she understood the game for sure. With a vocabulary that would blow the doors off a porn shop, she just about won this strange race to the gutter.
Dick Capri thanked Don King for saving his life “from a vicious gang of Hassidim.” Leroy Neiman presented the honoree with a five-by-seven inch portrait that he had painted. Freddie figured it must be worth “eight to twelve bucks.”
Norm Crosby was great - pointing out that Canadians prefer making love “doggy-style because that way they can both watch the hockey game.” Al Sharpton sounded a protest on behalf of all the black tenants in Trump Tower . . .
Roasting was as perilous as being roasted, it turns out. Some of the greatest humiliation was self-inflicted as several of the comics crashed and burned. One even threw a little extra gas on the fire by continuing to drone on through a page of weak one-liners after he had gotten a big round of applause for saying “Maybe I should just shut up and sit down.”
Ironically, after being the target of this pie-throwing contest (with cow pies, yet), when Don King rose to speak, he was almost preacher-like in his response. He acknowledged the invective hurled at him with dignity, while admitting the pain he felt, particularly in front of his son. “There is no pain without gain,” he said. He spoke with justifiable pride of the distance he had come from his beginnings, and called himself a patriot who wears the Screaming Eagle in homage to the 101st Airborne. After the load of insults he had listened to, he sounded grateful and a bit surprised that there actually was a watch in the box he was given.
Now I graduated high school a long time ago, served a hitch in the U.S. Army, fought a war and made my living surrounded by theatre people, so there’s almost no depredation I haven’t become acquainted with. I’m no wuss. I too, have paid my dues, acted like a jerk and said unworthy things. I understood that this Roast was going to be a raw event with foul language and every sort of hostile, sexist, racist, scatological, anatomical, just plain dirty bit of Beavis and Butthead adolescent crap imaginable. As an actor I know there is nothing harder than comedy and nothing easier than criticism, but I left the Hilton Friday feeling like I’d been shot at and missed and shit at and hit. I’m sorry, but the ratio of actual humor to groans, cringes and gorge-raising images was disappointingly low. I was glad I had not brought a woman with me. I’d be hard pressed to explain why grown men must sift through so much manure for so long to find so few seeds of wit.
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© 2005 Mike Landrum
Friday at noon 1400 people gathered at the Hilton Hotel’s immense ballroom to witness the public excoriation of Don King, fight promoter and felon. The “RoastMaster” was Donald Trump, and the Master of Ceremonies was Friar’s president Freddie Roman. Sharing the dais were sixty or so luminaries, David Dinkens, Michael Spinks, Fred Klein, etc., all lined up like ducks in a shooting gallery. It turns out that at a Roast, anyone within earshot is meat for the grill. I was glad the Hilton was only one block long.
Freddie Roman got first crack at them, introducing most with a respectful list of accomplishments. Then he turned the lectern over to “The Donald” and away we went. With the sound over-cranked, the air in the Hilton turned suddenly blue. Among the dozen comic talents that he introduced some produced a few great moments of hilarity.
My favorites - Stuie Stone dissing the Donald for getting a million bucks to teach people how to get rich. . . “What do you know about it? Your father gave you $40 million!” And “Donald, I think your hair is turning prematurely orange.”
Lisa Lampanelli said: “Abe Vigoda is here. . . I’m just saying that so he’ll know. . .” One of the few remarks from her that can be repeated in public. (Somehow, the Friars roast with 1400 people in the Hilton ballroom is not really in public. . .) Ms. Lampanelli was the only one of her gender to speak, but she understood the game for sure. With a vocabulary that would blow the doors off a porn shop, she just about won this strange race to the gutter.
Dick Capri thanked Don King for saving his life “from a vicious gang of Hassidim.” Leroy Neiman presented the honoree with a five-by-seven inch portrait that he had painted. Freddie figured it must be worth “eight to twelve bucks.”
Norm Crosby was great - pointing out that Canadians prefer making love “doggy-style because that way they can both watch the hockey game.” Al Sharpton sounded a protest on behalf of all the black tenants in Trump Tower . . .
Roasting was as perilous as being roasted, it turns out. Some of the greatest humiliation was self-inflicted as several of the comics crashed and burned. One even threw a little extra gas on the fire by continuing to drone on through a page of weak one-liners after he had gotten a big round of applause for saying “Maybe I should just shut up and sit down.”
Ironically, after being the target of this pie-throwing contest (with cow pies, yet), when Don King rose to speak, he was almost preacher-like in his response. He acknowledged the invective hurled at him with dignity, while admitting the pain he felt, particularly in front of his son. “There is no pain without gain,” he said. He spoke with justifiable pride of the distance he had come from his beginnings, and called himself a patriot who wears the Screaming Eagle in homage to the 101st Airborne. After the load of insults he had listened to, he sounded grateful and a bit surprised that there actually was a watch in the box he was given.
Now I graduated high school a long time ago, served a hitch in the U.S. Army, fought a war and made my living surrounded by theatre people, so there’s almost no depredation I haven’t become acquainted with. I’m no wuss. I too, have paid my dues, acted like a jerk and said unworthy things. I understood that this Roast was going to be a raw event with foul language and every sort of hostile, sexist, racist, scatological, anatomical, just plain dirty bit of Beavis and Butthead adolescent crap imaginable. As an actor I know there is nothing harder than comedy and nothing easier than criticism, but I left the Hilton Friday feeling like I’d been shot at and missed and shit at and hit. I’m sorry, but the ratio of actual humor to groans, cringes and gorge-raising images was disappointingly low. I was glad I had not brought a woman with me. I’d be hard pressed to explain why grown men must sift through so much manure for so long to find so few seeds of wit.
# # #
© 2005 Mike Landrum
posted by Mike Landrum at 5:32 AM
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