I wanted to write about… um… yeah.

Usually, I write down little things here and there during the day, especially if I’m at work. My mind is like a chalkboard; every twenty minutes and you have to wipe it down, cleaning it clear of whatever was on there before, so if I happened to see something while I was driving to work that inspired me to think about it as a writing topic, if I don’t jot the note down, it’ll never come to light.

Which is how I got to write about tonight’s topic: The William Shatner Roast.

In actuality, this simply brought my attention to roasts in general and how they simply do not compare to roasts of the past. I was actually listening to a radio show a few weeks ago and Lisa Lampanelli was a guest. They asked her if she even knew Pamela Anderson when she roasted her, and Lisa said she didn’t.

Not surprisingly, she also didn’t know Shatner, which blows my mind. George Alexander, the host of the roast, introduced everyone on stage as a bunch of people that didn’t even know who Shatner was outside of his acting, except for a couple of people like Betty White and George Takai. But Artie Lang? Andy Dick? Come on…

I thought about some of the older roasts, the original ones Dean Martin hosted, where everyone knew the roasted guest star. The comedy was filled with love and character, based on stories experienced by both roaster and roastee, and the laughs were genuine.

Comedy Central did a roast for Chevy Chase a few years ago, and he never faced the roasters. Not that it mattered, since he probably didn’t recognize most of the presenters.

Chase’s chair was set to face the audience, but it might as well have been faced against a wall. It was pretty obvious that he hated it: the jokes were cold, the reaction was mild, and he just fidgetted and fumed until it was finally over.

The Pam Anderson roast featured footage of Courtney Love that never made it to air (and eventually ended up in the hands of the court as proof Courtney violated her terms of probation). She slurred and danced and fell to the cheers and gasps of the audience, it made for good television, and it made for great entertainment news fodder for weeks afterwards.

Not to let anyone down, Farrah Fawcett decided to do her part to try to ruin the Shatner roast. In what looked like a staged bit, she almost balked and ran off stage, with Jason Alexander running back to help her with a joke… that she screwed up. After the initial jitters, she went on to joke number two, and she ended up having to stop three or four times to regain her composure before finally getting to the punchline. Much like she did on her reality TV show “Chasing Farrah,” she looked… “frazzled” at times. That’s Hollywood talk for she’s probably got more drugs in her than a pharmacy.

But the part that bothered me the most was that most of the jokes were about the other roasters and not about the guest of honor. I know you’re supposed to rake everyone over the fire, but you could tell they knew each other, to the point where it sounded more like a roast for Andy Dick than it did for William Shatner.

Insert snore here.