The rest of the story alluded to in my last entry was that for being such a good sport as "William Shatner", Jeff Ross offered to try to get me tickets to the roast. I gave him my email address and figured I'd never hear from him again, but the next morning he wrote to get my full name and to confirm my interest, and then he wrote back on Friday saying that I was in, along with a guest. I figured the only decent thing to do was to offer the plus one to the guy who got us the seats at the Improv, and so we went last night to the taping.

Being at a taping like that is cool, but not so much as you might think, for the running into people factor: Hey, that's that guy from Reno 911! Hey that's that other guy from Reno 911! Hey are there any actual famous people here?!

I feel like it would be wrong to spoil too many jokes, so here's a quick rundown of what to look out for when it airs next Sunday on Comedy Central, and then about 175,000 subsequent times since it's Comedy Central:

• a strong set from Greg Giraldo to lead off
• an OK performance from Jeff Ross, but not his best work (although, to be fair, I was hearing most of it a second time)
• good videos from Leonard Nimoy, Ben Stiller, and Jimrah Kimverman (i.e.: Sammy Silmel).
• a nice try by Nichelle Nichols
• a million billion gay George Takei jokes
• many of them in Takei's own set, which killed
• assorted weirdness from Andy Dick that will hopefully be cut down in post-production
• since Richard Belzer didn't show up for once, Andy Dick showed up looking exactly like Richard Belzer to a creepy degree
• solid work from Patton Oswalt, including the history geek line of the night
• good stuff from Betty White, both giving and receiving
• some Artie guy from Howard Stern who didn't interest me
• some long boring stories from Kevin Pollack that will hopefully be cut down in post-production
• Lisa Lampenelli just absolutely killing, and I've never liked her before
• Shatner taking it like a man, and dishing it out pretty well in the end.
  

All in all it was worth it, although I was reminded again about the adage about loving sausage and the law and seeing them made. The first rule of taping: four hours without a bathroom break sucked. I was actually thankful we were in the bleachers and not at a table getting wine.