On Saturday, Sept. 29, Freddie Roman, the dean of New York’s Friars Club, stood before audience members in the Grand Ballroom of the New York Hilton and asked them to familiarize themselves with the fire exits.

Then, because he’d said that “these are very different times for us all,” he attempted to answer a question that people had been asking him. Mr. Roman’s Vulcanesque eyes and brows scanned the audience before him. The question sounded a little like something that would be asked at Passover. “Why have a night like this in times like these?”

Mr. Roman was referring to the Friars Roast, the club’s yearly ritual of profane humor and insult that was about to get underway with Playboy founder Hugh Hefner in the hot seat.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on New York, the Friars organization and Comedy Central, the cable network that, for the last three years, has taped and televised an expurgated version of the roast (this one will debut on Nov. 4), had, after some debate, decided to go ahead with the event. “It’s time we get back to normal, like Mayor Giuliani and President Bush have asked,” Mr. Roman said. “And for the Friars, this is normal. Telling dirty jokes, making fun of people. That’s what we do, and we’re proud to do it for you,” he said. “So you can get some laughter back in your life and into your hearts.”

While the crowd waited for the cameras to start rolling, Mr. Roman eased into the task at hand.

“A couple married 48 years. Wife takes sick and passes away. Funeral at the Riverside, 78th and Broadway,” Mr. Roman said. “After the service, the pallbearers pick up the coffin. As they’re leaving the building, the coffin hits the wall.” From inside the coffin, he said, the woman’s voice could be heard.

“They open the coffin--it’s a miracle,” he said. “She stays married for another two years. Gets sick, passes away again. After the service, the pallbearers lift the coffin. As they start to leave, the husband yells, ‘Watch out for the wall!’”

The laughter sounded grateful. Mr. Roman got the high sign to introduce Mr. Hefner. A small group of Playmates led the flesh magnate--who looked frighteningly robust and wrinkle-free for a man in his 70’s--to the big red swivel chair on the stage.

Behind Mr. Hefner, stretching out like the wings of a B-52 bomber, was the event’s dais, a roster that only the Friars could put together: actors Danny Aiello, Keith David, Vincent Pastore and The Sopranos’ Joe Pantoliano in a newsboy’s cap; MTV personality Carson Daly, looking lost; mentalist the Amazing Kreskin, artist LeRoy Neiman, developer Donald Trump; actress Diane Farr and Dr. Joyce Brothers; comedian Dick Capri, former kidnap victim Patricia Hearst, onetime Playboy pictorial subject Kylie Bax and makeup-less Kiss member Ace Frehley.

Friar Club’s Abbot Alan King’s eyes shone in the spotlight.

“The Friars have an age-old motto,” Mr. King said. “‘We only roast the ones we love.’ Tonight, we give lie to that bullshit.”

His gaze shifted to Mr. Hefner, in mid-chuckle. “Not only don’t I love him, I never met this putz before in my life: Hugh Hefner, who likes to be called Hef--but in Hebrew, spelled backwards, it’s Feh!”

Our “leaders kept telling us,” Mr. King said, “we must get on with our lives, and laughter is a very important part of our lives. And who better to laugh at than our guest of honor,” a man “who made jacking off a national pastime.” A guy who “has smelt more beaver than a furrier. A man who makes Donald Trump look like Elie Wiesel. A man who thinks the early-bird special is eating pussy before 6 o’clock.”

Mr. King stared down the crowd. “Who better?” he said.

Yes, who better to ease this crowd back to its favorite blood sport than Mr. Hefner, a man whose soul had escaped his body decades ago via his vas deferens? The Friars weren’t roasting a man, they were roasting an abstraction: a square-jawed, silk-robed symbol of American priapism, who, at 75, wanted us to believe that he was bedding down nightly with more than a half-dozen human equivalents of Jessica Rabbit.

For a city that had crossed its pain threshold weeks ago, Mr. Hefner was a fortunate choice. It’s hard to eviscerate a man whose only innards are a hyperdeveloped reproductive system, and who, up there onstage, looked as burnished and ageless as a publicity still, emitting his affectless, Teflon chuckle.

The table of Mr. Hefner’s alleged paramours and Playboy Playmates seemed to have been placed strategically in front of the podium as a symbol of what was at stake should any joker go too far. At the Comedy Central after-party at Beacon restaurant, comedian Jeffrey Ross agreed that some comedians had pulled their punch lines when it came to Mr. Hefner. “I’ll tell you why,” said Mr. Ross, who was wearing a bow tie that Buddy Hackett had given to him. “Because they’re afraid they won’t get invited to the mansion. They were all backstage going, ‘I know it’s funny, but do you think this will piss him off?’”

The roastmaster of the evening was Jimmy Kimmel, co-star of Comedy Central’s The Man Show. “I could go on and on,” said Mr. Kimmel, “but what could you say about Hef that hasn’t already been mumbled incoherently by a thousand young women with his cock in their mouths? I’ve read just about every issue of Playboy since I was 15 years old,” Mr. Kimmel continued. “Not once did I ever see a Playmate say one of her turn-ons was fucking a 75-year-old man.”

Rob Schneider, whom Mr. Kimmel said “is so short he doesn’t even have to bend over to kiss Adam Sandler’s ass,” was the first roaster on the podium. Mr. Schneider told the crowd, “We’re here tonight to honor a man who personifies why these terrorists hate us. If it were up to them, women couldn’t read, couldn’t work, get fake tits, go to school, pose nude to help their career. Hugh Hefner believes that women should be able to do all those things--except read.”

Mr. Schneider was the first comic of the night to approach the topic that was foremost in everyone’s thoughts. The laughter seemed hesitant and restrained.

Jeffrey Ross went up to the podium. “Hasn’t there been enough bombing in this city?” he said into the microphone.

“Ooooooooooooh!” the crowd erupted.

Mr. Ross was up next. The Buddy Hackett bow tie seemed to be working. “My good friend Abe Vigoda’s here,” Mr. Ross said. “Last week, Abe tried to enlist in Old Navy.” Mr. Ross looked over at Mr. Vigoda. “Abe, enough getting old. Just fuckin’ die already, all right?”

Eventually, Mr. Ross got around to Mr. Hefner.

“Hef has fondled more playmates than Michael Jackson,” Mr. Ross said, which got him a big laugh. “Personally, I think it’s awesome, awesome that you sleep with seven women,” he told Mr. Hefner, “because eight would be ostentatious.” And then the comic explained the real reason that so many women were required: “You know, one to put it in, and the other six to move you around.”

Sarah Silverman, in a stylish black number, replaced Mr. Ross at the podium. “Jimmy Kimmel, everyone,” she said to the crowd after Mr. Kimmel introduced her. “He’s fat and has no charisma. Watch your back, Danny Aiello!”

The crowd loved that one, and Ms. Silverman, who was the only woman to roast Mr. Hefner, proceeded to lay waste to a few more of the men on the dais. She told Mr. King that a nursing home in Florida had just called. “The last person who thinks you’re funny just died.” And gazing at the gray-bearded face of Dick Gregory, she said: “Is he the guy from the rice or the cookies?

“Well, let’s talk about the whores--the Bunnies,” she continued.

“I think they should be role models in society--if only for the fact that they wax their assholes.” Later, The Transom asked Playmate Michelle Winchester what her fellow Playmates had thought of that particular joke. She replied with a smile: “Actually, that’s true!”

Ice-T made his second speaking appearance at a Friars Roast. “I just wanna rob all you white motherfuckers. And for some reason I don’t, and it fascinates you,” he told the crowd, which gave him a healthy laugh just in case he was serious. But there seemed to be some confusion in the crowd over whether his line that Mr. Hefner’s “dick is busier than an orthodontist in fucking Japan right now” was actually funny.

The civil-rights activist and nutritionist Dick Gregory told a couple of jokes. “Black folks,” he said, “know this is a great nation” because of the success of Michael Jackson. “Where else can a poor black boy be born in utter poverty in Gary, Ind., and end up being a rich white man?” Mr. Gregory said.

But Mr. Gregory had come to praise Mr. Hefner, not roast him. He cited Mr. Hefner’s courage for hiring black entertainers to work the Playboy Club when no one else would. And then he delivered an inspirational speech about New York and the United States.

“Fear and God do not occupy the same space,” Mr. Gregory told the crowd. “If you stop and think about what makes America great, it’s not soldiers--it’s the firemen that left home this morning and intended to come back tonight and ran into a building when everybody else was running out.”

The crowd gave Mr. Gregory a standing ovation, but the quick-thinking Mr. Kimmel steered the event back to its profane moorings. “So anyway,” he said, “I was reading your magazine the other day,” and he described what he was doing while he was reading. The crowd exploded with laughter. “Someone forgot to tell Dick this was a roast,” Mr. Kimmel said, adding: “Boy, does that make me feel like a piece of shit.”

Gilbert Gottfried was the last man up to the podium. In his $11 gray shawl-collar tuxedo jacket with tails, black bow tie and Caesar haircut, Mr. Gottfried looked like he had just come from band practice.

Mr. Gottfried grasped the podium with both hands and, squinting out at the audience, he began the screeching parrot-like delivery that is his trademark.

“Ice-T did my whole act,” he said. “So I’ll do it anyway: I’m going to follow you white motherfuckers home and rape you fucking white bitches.” Mr. Gottfried paused while the crowd convulsed. “You see, it’s such a strong bit it still works,” he said.

“Dick Gregory did the rest of my act,” he continued. “I want to say--a lot of you young people don’t know, but years ago, Jews were not allowed in comedy!”

Then Mr. Gottfried started in on Mr. Hefner. “Hugh Hefner doesn’t need Viagra. He needs cement! He needs to take ice-cream sticks and tape it around his dick and use it as a splint!” Mr. Gottfried screamed. “But in all fairness to Hefner, he really had to fight for free speech, so we could say things we couldn’t say before. Like: ‘Die, you senile old bastard! Die!’”

Mr. Gottfried was killing. It was time to push the envelope.

“Tonight I’ll be using my Muslim name, Hasn’t Been Laid,” he said. This got a big laugh. Then Mr. Gottfried began a routine that had worked extremely well for him at the Richard Belzer roast.

“A woman is on her deathbed,” Mr. Gottfried said. “The husband is sitting at the corner of the bed. Her hair’s all dried out. Her skin’s all white. All of a sudden, she goes, ‘Please, honey …. ’” Mr. Gottfried described the woman’s verboten sexual request.

The comedian paused. Some of the audience members were looking around.

“This is a clean one,” he said. The husband complies and, Mr. Gottfried said, “the color returns to her skin; her hair looks healthy. She jumps up in bed. She’s sexier and healthier than she ever was before. She looks down. Her husband’s sitting at the corner of the bed, crying. She goes, ‘What’s the matter?’”

Mr. Gottfried waited a millisecond. “He goes, ‘I could have saved my father!’”

The laughter came in gasps. There were gurgling sounds in the air and people hung doubled over, sucking air through hoarse throats.

The man in the gray tuxedo jacket looked out over the crowd. “I have a flight to California. I can’t get a direct flight,” Mr. Gottfried said. “They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first.”

There was a silence. Then hissing and hooting flooded forward.

“Too soon,” a man could be heard saying in the back of the ballroom.

When the booing started, Mr. Gottfried responded: “Awwwwwww, what the fuck do you care?” Silence fell once more.

Mr. Gottfried had his answer. Up on the podium, he began making strange movements with his arms, as if he was working some sort of invisible machine that could take him back in time to the moment right before he had pushed too far. Seconds passed.

“O.K.,” he continued. His voice was not so loud.

“A talent agent is sitting in his office. A family walks in. A man, woman, two kids, their little dog, and the talent agent goes, ‘What kind of an act do you do?’”

At the father’s signal, Mr. Gottfried said, the family disrobes en masse. “The father starts fucking his wife,” he said. “The wife starts jerking off the son. The son starts going down on the sister. The sister starts fingering the dog’s asshole.” Mr. Gottfried’s voice was growing stronger. “Then the son starts blowing his father.”

The Hilton’s ballroom filled with the sounds of sudden exhalations. The comedians on the dais were bug-eyed with laughter and recognition. Some of the men had dropped to all fours. Mr. Gottfried was beaming.

“Want me to start at the beginning?” he asked.

He kept going, turning the joke into an extended bacchanal of bodily fluids, excrement, bestiality and sexual deviance. Mr. Gottfried plumbed the darkest crevices he could find. He riffed and riffed until people in the audience were coughing and sputtering and sucking in great big gulps of air.

Tears ran throughout the Hilton ballroom, as if Mr. Gottfried had performed a collective tracheotomy on the audience, delivering oxygen and laughter past the grief and ash that had blocked their passageways.

Then he brought it home.

“The talent agent says, ‘Well, that’s an interesting act. What do you call yourselves?’“

Mr. Gottfried threw up his hands. “And they go, ‘The Aristocrats!’”

There was a sound in the room that went beyond laughter.

Mr. Gottfried had gone to “The Aristocrats,” the comedy equivalent of the B-flat below high C that Leontyne Price had sung at Carnegie Hall on Sunday. “The Aristocrats” is one of the definitive inside jokes among comedians. It is so definitive that comic Paul Provenza and performance artist Penn Jillette are making a digital documentary about the joke. “Every comic makes it their own,” Mr. Provenza said. “The set-up is the same and the punch line is the same,” but the comic puts his or her “own stamp” on the material in between.

Mr. Gottfried had used it to save himself, but also to lift the crowd to another place.

A few minutes later, Alan King paid him a high compliment.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m just still a little touched by that asshole Gottfried.”

Even as she entered her 90's, Ms. Hepburn never lost her youthful sweet tooth. The paper documents Ms. Hepburn's standing order, which looks as if it were hastily torn from a notepad however many years ago:

Dark

Pecan Turtles

Molasses Chips

Butter Crunch

Dark Orange Peel

Champagne Truffles

Dark Almond Bark

Every month, beginning in 1981, Ms. Hepburn would be brought to the store by her driver, and she would order a two-pound assortment of her now-documented favorites.

"She preferred dark chocolate rather than milk," said an employee who asked to be identified by his first name, Jack. A Polish immigrant in his early 50's with a smile that revealed a web of wrinkles around his eyes, Jack has been at Mondel's for 12 years and helped Ms. Hepburn with her monthly candy order until she stopped visiting the store in 1995. He is an advocate of Ms. Hepburn's chocolate preferences.

"I assume that's why she lived that long," he said.

One time, Jack had to help Ms. Hepburn with the door; she couldn't figure out "whether to pull or push," he said. "She was a very nice old lady.

"I thought she would be much taller. Maybe with age she shrunk a little," he said.

Although Ms. Hepburn stopped coming herself in 1995, she didn't stop satisfying her monthly longing for pecan turtles. Until three months ago, Ms. Hepburn's niece, Katharine Houghton, was ordering the chocolate and having it delivered to her house in Connecticut.

Jack has no intention of taking down Ms. Hepburn's list of favorites.

"I'm very saddened," Jack said. "Not because she was a customer, but because she was a great, great star that just passed away. It's sad."

Ms. Hepburn's preference for Mondel's was well known among her tight coterie of friends, including Lauren Bacall-who, three years ago, showed up at the shop and "bought a little present for Ms. Hepburn," Jack said.

The shop contains one other nugget of Hepburn memorabilia, Scotch-taped to the glass next to the shop's register. Written on the stationery of "Katharine Houghton Hepburn," it arrived six years ago, when the store sent a special package of turtles, truffles and bark to her Connecticut home to commemorate her 90th birthday. The note reads:

"Dear Mondel Chocolates,

Thank-you for the delicious chocolates-how very thoughtful-Ms. Hepburn was pleased."

-Jake Brooks

Buddy Hackett, 1924-2003

Here's one of the last jokes Buddy Hackett told:

"I met this beautiful young girl, and my doctor said to me, 'You better be careful. If you have sex with her for 30 days in a row, it could be fatal.' I said, 'Well, I've been going with her for almost 30 days. Little does she know, she dies tomorrow.'"

Mr. Hackett left it on the answering machine of comedian Jeffrey Ross on June 29, the day before his death.

"He just told me this fucking dirty joke and the punchline is 'She dies tomorrow,' and then he died the next day," Mr. Ross said from Los Angeles. "It was pretty weird. That was not his usual type of message. His messages usually sound like this .... "

Mr. Ross played The Transom a message from his answering machine, in Mr. Hackett's distinctive voice.

"It's the Big Kahuna! Are you in town or did you go away or whaa-aat? See, tonight I'm sitting here, I'm thinking I would take you some place nice to eat. Boy, I'm getting kind of hungry. All right, bye-bye."

Beep.

"That was my wake-up call every day," Mr. Ross said. "He'd read me eye-doctor jokes two days in a row, and then he'd switch over to a hooker joke. Then one day he wouldn't say anything funny-he'd just say, 'I'm at the beach house, call me there.'"

The two comedians met at the New York Friars Club in 1995.

"I'll never forget it," Mr. Ross said. "I was in an elevator going up to play poker, and there he was! 'How ya doin'?' I said, 'Mr. Hackett, it's an honor to meet you-I'm a really big fan'. He shook my hand and he said, 'You know who hates farts the most? Midgets. They live at ass height.' And he walked off the elevator. I mean, you knew he was a little crazy."

How smart was Buddy Hackett?

"The smartest guy I knew. If I was ever gonna get him to sit down and write a book, it wouldn't have been about comedy. Because that was about the fourth or fifth thing he was an expert on."

What else?

"Being a man. He knew what it was. He had stage fright, but he had no life fright. He'd get a flat tire or somebody would pull a gun on him or somebody would break his heart-he could survive all that, and he could teach other people how to do it. He was a real tough guy. He knew everything about women ... girls loved him. He's been married 40-some-odd years, but he still sort of had that mojo."

Mr. Ross had a good, raunchy Buddy Hackett joke: "One of the ones that I'll always love is, he said: 'I've been with blondes, brunettes, redheads, short, fat, skinny, young, old-except it's all been the same cunt.' He's been married 48 years. It's just his delivery and the fact that you knew he loved her and that he didn't mean it as a mean thing. He was just trying to get a rise out of me."

Recently, Mr. Hackett was appearing on the Craig Kilborn show.

"He'd call me all week: 'I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna say that.' He'd try out 20 jokes, he'd really get them honed, and then he'd go on the show and he wouldn't say one word of any of it. He would just completely improvise. It was this sort of planned chaos that was his life and his act. He always knew what he could do, but he never knew what he would do, if that makes any sense. I learned that from him."

On June 28, Mr. Ross spoke with his friend for the last time. He ran some jokes by Mr. Hackett that he planned to use for the following day's roast of MTV personality Carson Daly.

"You know I can't do a roast without trying them out on Hack. And he doesn't know who the fuck I'm talking about ... you're trying out Nelly jokes!

"I just loved that. Even though he cared more than anybody I ever met about the audience, the illusion was that he just didn't give a shit," Mr. Ross said. "And that incredible aloofness, that cool that he had: He taught me about dignity in comedy, which you don't hear a lot about. Even if he being blue, or even if he was being silly, he did it with dignity. He didn't like pranks and things that embarrassed people. He was really not into all these pranks and reality shows and stuff that sort of exposed people in a way that they didn't want to be. He would never do anything like that. He taught me that concept of being dignified and still being funny."

-George Gurley

Moondoggle

"How many blond role models are there?" asked novelist Amanda Brown. The author of the book that inspired the film Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde was at the June 30 premiere at Christie's.

"Thank God there's Hillary!" she exclaimed.

Ms. Brown, herself a strawberry-blonde who attended Stanford Law School and now lives in San Francisco, feels greatly inspired by her two dogs-one a Wheaten terrier named Gomez, the other a Bijon named Underdog. "Underdog was really my only friend in law school," she said.

In Legally Blonde 2, the dog character gets more screen time than Ms. Witherspoon's co-star, Luke Wilson. The movie follows the further adventures of ebullient Bel Air native Elle Woods, now a young lawyer who goes to Washington to lobby against cosmetics testing on animals.

In addition to her fight on Capitol Hill, her makeover of several Congresswomen and her struggle to plan a wedding while away from home, the movie traces-perhaps most poignantly -her acceptance that her Chihuahua, Bruiser (played by film veteran Moondoggie), is gay.

"I didn't know it was going to be all about dogs, but that was the main thing that kept me so interested, because I have a little dog," said Tommy Tune at the Christie's after-party. Other attendees included LeAnn Rimes, David Copperfield and Frédéric Fekkai.

The display windows lining the outside of the auction house featured Reese look-alikes wildly waving at passers-by. The usually pristine white auction house had been revamped in all things pink, from the seating to the petit fours. Lounging on a white sofa, Mr. Tune sat next to Animal Fair founder Wendy Diamond, who nuzzled her Maltese, Lucky. Lucky wore a boa produced by a pet-products company called High Maintenance Bitch to the screening.

"She was barkless," said Ms. Diamond, a believer in gay-animal rights. "Lucky is a lesbian! She has a girlfriend named Minuta."

"Ophie, my former dog, was homosexual, and he had a lover named Tiger," offered Mr. Tune. "They're both in heaven now. Maybe they're making mad, passionate love there! Tiger was a Maltese and Ophie was a Yorkie, and Ophie would force Tiger to give him head, and I'd watch and say, 'O.K., whatever.' But little Shubert [Mr. Tune's current dog] isn't gay, so that shows that being gay doesn't necessarily mean your dog will be gay, too."

A lesson to us all. Nearby, Yana Syrkin of the canine label Fifi and Romeo stroked her Chihuahua, Yoda. Ms. Syrkin, formerly in charge of wardrobe for Ally McBeal, designed all the dog clothing in the film, and developed a special bond with Ms. Witherspoon's four-legged sidekick.

"I think Moondoggie really played himself," she said. "Except I'm not sure if he's gay or not. I think he's neutered."

To The Transom's disappointment, Moondoggie was not present at the fête, although Ms. Witherspoon-wearing a black shawl-was there with her entourage, which included pal Breckin Meyer and hubby Ryan Phillippe.

"I don't have to say anything to anybody anytime!" Mr. Phillippe barked when asked whether he was supposed to say he liked the film. Next to him, his wife signed autographs for her adoring teeny-bopper fans (many of whom were dressed as her character in the movie, and had been manicured and blow-dried in a candy-filled, pink-curtained room at Christie's).

Also present was Jennifer Coolidge, who played Paulette Bonafonté, Elle's large-lipped, busty best friend. She wore all black and had her yellow hair blow-dried straight.

"I seem to be in every dog movie ever made," she sighed. (Ms. Coolidge also appeared as a lesbian poodle owner in Best in Show, although she's probably best-known for her performance as Stifler's Mom in American Pie.)

Standing near a table of cherries, strawberries and mousse was another blonde, one whom Amanda Brown might also cite as a role model of sorts -Tina Brown. She attended the screening and party with her 17-year-old son, George Evans, and a nephew.

"My daughter is at camp, and she's a Reese Witherspoon fanatic. I feel like a traitor having come to see it without her. I'm going home to e-mail her all about it," said Ms. Brown.

The Transom asked her about her blondeness.

"I think it's easier for blondes to be winning, you know?" she said. "I think they can play the blonde whenever they want to, and it works better than for a brunette."

The young Mr. Evans, devastatingly handsome with his reddish-brown hair, suddenly lit up.

"I love blondes, and that's why I think I'd like to be a blonde!" he said. "I think I'd have more fun."

Would Ms. Brown be taking her son to her colorist, The Transom asked?

"He's out of control," she said.

-Anna Jane Grossman & Alexandra Wolfe

The Man From V.E.R.S.A.C.E.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde also has its fair share of product placement. For example, Elle Woods carries a "Pan Am" Hogan bag and does her work on a custom pink Gateway computer. (Even Frédéric Fekkai makes a cameo.)

But the strangest bit comes from Versace, the House of Donatella currently outfitting Christina Aguilera, which gets a rib-tickling every so often from Saturday Night Live.

At an early point in the movie, Elle discovers that her Chihuahua Bruiser's family is being used for animal testing at Viable Entropy Retraction Systems and Corporate Enterprises Inc., which can be abbreviated as V.E.R.S.A.C.E. Elle wants the dogs to come to her wedding, so she vows to get them out. But when she arrives at the animal-testing headquarters, she mistakenly identifies it-and who wouldn't?-as the clothing company, and shows the security guard her customer-appreciation card, which only those who have shopped at more than six Versace boutiques can get. When that doesn't do any good, Elle suggests that the security guard call Billy Daley, the Versace "customer-service representative."

For fashion insiders, this is the biggest joke in the movie. Mr. Daley is, in fact, the senior publicist on the Versace account at KCD, a public-relations firm with offices in New York and Paris that is known as the gatekeeper for the most glamorous fashion shows in New York, with clients like Marc Jacobs, Anna Sui, Zac Posen and Helmut Lang.

Reached in Paris, Mr. Daley said that he had indeed heard that his name was featured in the movie. "I just thought no one would catch it," he told The Transom.

"The whole thing happened really innocently." KCD and Versace worked closely with the Legally Blonde 2 production, sending products and clothing to MGM and to the set. Several scenes involving the brand-including a few with Elle shopping at a Versace store, and another where she finds Bruiser in front of a Versace boutique-didn't make it into the movie.

Just the animal-testing scene.

"We know that corporation is not Versace," Mr. Daley said, speaking for every American moviegoer out there. "There's no issue with our cosmetics and skin care. It's a stylistic fashion film, and it's almost better than her wearing the clothes, because they say 'Versace' two times in the first 10 or 15 minutes."

But back to how he got in the movie: "Someone said to the writer [Kate Kondell], 'This guy Billy Daley's been great,'" Mr. Daley said. "And the writer said, 'That's a great name-why don't we use it?' People always say my name is very American. They shot the scene, and they asked me to sign a release. I thought it would be reshot and the name would be changed to Vladimir Something.

"I'm sure my mom's all abuzz about it up in Boston. Regular people never think they're going to make it into a movie."

-Marshall Heyman

Lapps of Luxury

As summer heat finally begins to grip the city, many New Yorkers' daydreams turn to waves lapping against the southern shore of their Long Island getaways. But on Wednesday, June 18, chef Alain Ducasse and his girlfriend, Gwenaelle Gueguen, were dreaming of a different vacation destination: scenic Lapland.

Dressed in a pink suit, Ms. Gueguen emerged with the quiet Mr. Ducasse to speak to guests, including publicist Susan Magrino and Vogue food writer Jeffrey Steingarten. Mr. Steingarten had just cheerfully stowed a special menu, designed in honor of the third anniversary of Mr. Ducasse's first New York restaurant, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House.

The six-course meal included a breast of squab with foie gras and glazed turnips; pasta with lobster and rock octopus; and some deceptively thin French fries that popped with tomato pesto when you bit into them.

But Ms. Gueguen was thinking of climates where the victuals weren't quite so tasty.

"The food was awful!" she said of their stay, now eight years past, in Lapland. "And it was so cold! You could not walk more than 40 steps before your face .... " Here she stopped and pulled her skin back across her cheekbones, miming cold, frostbite or possibly a high wind. "It was the most wonderful vacation: We stayed in bed the whole time and slept. I actually want go back."

But the couple won't be returning to deepest, darkest Lapland for some time. Rather, they will split their summer between Mr. Ducasse's other restaurants, which are everywhere from Paris and London to St. Tropez and Mauritius, before returning to New York in mid-September to open Mix, a 90-seat eatery on West 58th Street.

-Rebecca Traister

Wife-Beaters?

On Wednesday, June 25, supermodel Tyra Banks, the Victoria's Secret angel and current producer-cum-host of UPN's America's Next Top Model, was out on 71st and Madison with her mother and another woman, bearing up under the heat in heavy blue jeans and a newsie cap.

Among the fans gazing after her was Baruch. The 17-year-old Ramaz student, dressed in a blue pinstripe suit, asked for her autograph and snapped a photo.

"You're very articulate. I like the way you speak," she said to him, according to Baruch.

Baruch slipped the paper into his briefcase and proudly told The Transom that this was his second autograph on his walk home from 85th Street: Jack Nicholson was filming the as-yet-untitled Nancy Meyers project just a few blocks away and had given him one as well.

The Transom waved goodbye to the young gentleman and continued along behind Ms. Banks into the teen-trendy boutique Intermix, between 77th and 78th streets on Madison Avenue, where she tried on a short, fitted leopard-print skirt by Moschino.

Her companion ooh'd and ahh'd while her mother sat outside the fitting rooms, chatting on the cell phone and resting on a bench in the shoe section. But the store was missing a crucial wardrobe element:

"Do you have wife-beaters?" Ms. Banks' companion asked a salesgirl.

Indeed they did, and once she tried it on she was pleased, saying that it made the outfit look a bit more casual and was "good because it's not too sexy."

She joked that her hair was fried (it looked it) and complained about her extensions.

"I'll probably have to wear a hat with this," Ms. Banks said, referring to her television show. "I'm so sick of these frickin' wigs."

-Lucy Teitler & Alexandra Atiya

Rich or Richie?

Denise Rich may be trying to become the next Lionel Richie. Ms. Rich has co-written-along with Cedric Samson, the South African answer to Michael Jackson-two new songs to be released on July 22 on the compilation album Songs for Life, a charity effort whose proceeds will go to fight H.I.V./AIDS in Southern Africa.

The album, spearheaded by well-known entertainment lawyer Paul Marshall and King Mswati III of Swaziland-the founder of the Royal Initiative to Combat AIDS-was launched last Wednesday night in the Delegates Dining Room at the United Nations Building.

Swaziland, described to The Transom by a couple who had recently traveled there as "a land-locked nugget" between South Africa and Mozambique, has been decimated by H.I.V. and AIDS in recent years, thus prompting King Mswati III to take action and begin RICA.

His Majesty, who arrived around 6:30 p.m. flanked by a large, intimidating entourage, provided the element of intrigue as he was joined at brief intervals by Mr. Marshall, producer Phil Ramone, R&B singers Gerald Levert and Freddie Jackson, singer Becky Bealing, as well as Whoopi Goldberg and Miss Universe Amelia Vega.

When The Transom first spotted Ms. Rich (clad in a tight Dolce & Gabbana floral-patterned dress), she was undulating on a pair of glossy white Manolo Blahnik stilettos and clapping her hands to the soulful stylings of Mr. Levert as he sang his contribution to the album, "It's Gonna Be O.K."

After taking advantage of photo-ops with the prepubescent country-singing sensation Billy Gilman-"He is going to be huge," she later prophesied-Ms. Rich found a moment to speak with The Transom.

"I think it was a few years ago that Paul Marshall called me up and he said: 'Listen, do you want to write for this project, for Africa, for AIDS?' And I'm like, 'Sure,'" Ms. Rich explained, purring the "sure."

She later joined up with Mr. Samson in Los Angeles, and they quickly wrote "Children of All Nations," a little ditty reminiscent of the '85 anthem "We Are the World."

The Transom asked where the inspiration for the song came from.

"Just, you know, from life," Ms. Rich said. "I have a song coming out on Jessica Simpson. I have a Spanish song on Marc Anthony. I have a song coming out on Geri Halliwell's new album. I'm very excited."

She's also excited to be working with Mr. Ramone, who was brought onto the project by Mr. Marshall.

"The king got with Marshall and they started [Songs for Life]," Mr. Ramone said. A native of Fort Worth, Tex., Mr. Ramone-shod in a pair of aged cowboy boots and wearing a leather jacket of presumably the same vintage-spoke in a lyrical drawl that emerged from behind an orange-and-gray beard. "And I thought that's a great way to spend your life-part of it."

Songs for Life will include tracks from Britney Spears, Patti LaBelle, Judy Collins (who sings Ms. Rich's anthem "Children of All Nations") and the ever-popular Joan Osborne and Simply Red.

A Live Aid-esque concert is in the preliminary stages, and although Ken Kragen has been replaced, in this case, by a king from Swaziland, some things will never change.

"I mean, you know, really-the world needs so much hope and light and love at this time," said Ms. Rich.

-J.B.

"This woman-let's call her Stumpy-she goes, 'Hey, I was attacked by a shark!'" Mr. Attell said. "What are the odds-here I am, talking about shark attacks, and there is somebody in there who was attacked by a shark?"

The room laughed.

"So before we continue," Mr. Attell said, "has anyone here ever been raped at a rodeo?"

The room paused, as if briefly shocked. Then: an eruption of laughter.

Mr. Attell, bald and barrel-chested, charged on.

"Having a job is so important now, isn't it?" he said. "You got to look out when you look for a job because they falsely advertise. You ever see this ad in the paper: CALL UP NOW FOR YOUR DREAM JOB? YOUR DREAM JOB IS A PHONE CALL AWAY. I call up and I'm like, 'Hello, is this the chocolate factory run by big-titted hookers?'"

Another eruption.

"Ladies, is it the size of a man's penis that matters?" Mr. Attell asked.

A chorus of female voices responded. "Yes!"

"Well, the whores have spoken!" Mr. Attell said.

Dave Attell has been a comic for 16 years. He's played thousands of clubs, told thousands of jokes, lobbed thousands of insults without fear. His act is a darkly abrasive stew of cursing and bawdy talk about subjects like men, women (or the lack thereof), masturbation and pornography. He is crude and smart at once; he specializes in what he calls the "educated dick joke." At their best, Mr. Attell's performances are raging, X-rated verbal operas-brilliantly unafraid and twisted, a combination that the television host Jimmy Kimmel compared to "a party clown jacking off into a birthday cake." And his TV show allows Mr. Attell to drink and smoke on the air more than any performer since Dean Martin.

The public is just coming around to Mr. Attell because of Insomniac, but stand-ups have adored him for ages. His work ethic is legendarily obsessive; he writes and rewrites so much he's regarded as something of a freak. Never satisfied, he constantly blows up his act. He'll tell some old jokes, but nearly every one of Mr. Attell's shows is different; each performance brings new interpretations, new lightning riffs, and always new attacks upon the audience. He brings a tape recorder to every show and listens when he gets home, trying to figure what he did wrong, what he could do better. Sometimes he'll bomb intentionally, just to try and dig himself out.

"You just watch and you feel inadequate," said the comic Todd Barry. "He just pulls shit out of the air. I've seen him do throwaways he'll never do again, just off-the-cuff things that I would be like, 'Man, that's a keeper.'"

Said Mr. Kimmel: "You'd certainly have to rank him up there with-or above-the best comics working."

Television success-and Insomniac, in which Mr. Attell travels around the country visiting nightcrawlers, many of them drunk, is one of Comedy Central's most popular shows-has a weird way of making people feel new. But Mr. Attell is one of those talents who's been on the verge for so long that he probably can't remember when he wasn't on the verge. He was a comic to watch in 1992, in 1993, in 1994, and probably every year after that. He's performed on Letterman and Conan and written for The Jon Stewart Show and Saturday Night Live . People tried to build television shows around him before Insomniac , and it didn't take. A stint on the Daily Show was uneven. He got fired from a part on Spin City . Tom Hertz, a comic who was a Spin City writer and later its executive producer, said of Mr. Attell: "He is not a great actor."

Mr. Attell agrees wholeheartedly.

But it doesn't matter. People who know Mr. Attell say that he is one of the last of a breed: a guy who is in it for the jokes. Comedy has become awfully slutty in its age; a full generation of men and women have entered the profession with the idea of using stand-up principally to graduate into television and film. The result is that many young comics spend their time onstage polishing the same sliver of mostly harmless jokes, prepping for a late-night talk-show appearance that could take them to Hollywood. Not Mr. Attell.

"He is very pure," said Mr. Hertz. "Most comics now try to get together 12 minutes and get a sitcom-it's a means to an end. It's not a means to an end for Dave." Said the comic Jeffrey Ross: "Dave really is the real thing."

That Mr. Attell doesn't look very Hollywood, doesn't suck up to Hollywood, and is something of a personal mystery only burnishes that real-thing image. He drinks and smokes too much, and looks it. He eats pizza slices after bar time and spends tons of time on the road; when he's home in Manhattan, he lives alone in a small apartment. He is not on the verge of marriage or family and happily proclaims himself to be a "loser." It sounds like a self-effacing remark, but it's not totally. Mr. Attell is friendly with colleagues, but few admit to really knowing him. "He's in his head," said Mr. Ross.

Mr. Attell himself said: "I think I will always be kind of a bitter, loner-type drunken guy. I don't think that whatever happens, that will change."

The tortured comic, of course, is an old cliché, and the negative swirl Mr. Attell spins around himself is admittedly useful as a professional device. He seeks to be the loser who wins you over. He loves to stack the deck against himself; in performance, he lives to find an uncompromising audience already in its cups. He's like a tennis player who blows the first two sets just to make it harder on himself.

"I remember M.C.-ing a show at the Boston Comedy Club, and it was one of those audiences that was just hateful from the get-go," Mr. Barry said. "And Dave popped in and was like, 'Ooh, I want to come back when it gets really bad .'"

Mr. Attell has established that he can harness the hecklers about as well as anyone in comedy. (He smartly dissed an unruly out-of-towner at Caroline's by telling him: "Take your wallet out of your shoe.") What Mr. Attell is less sure about is fame. He has spent the past decade and a half of his life admired by pals, but in relative public anonymity. Now he goes to clubs and college kids yell "Wooo!" and want to buy him shots. He sold out that three-day September stand at Caroline's. The audience, it's certain, came mostly because of Insomniac , and they adored him. To Mr. Attell, it felt great but also creeped him out a little. He felt a new pressure to deliver. People were coming to see Dave Attell-could he not mess around with them like he used to?

"I kind of thrive on the negativity of the anonymous crowd," he said. "A guy I know used to say, 'My problem will be that I'll feel I have to kill every time, so I'll stick to my material, so I won't keep thinking of new stuff and taking more chances.' Even at Caroline's, when it's sold out, you're like, 'I better not try this one, because I know it's not a definite thing.' Then I'd half-try it and nobody would win."

A few nights after the Caroline's show, Mr. Attell did his penance at the Comedy Cellar, a subterranean cave on MacDougal Street, where he figures he's spent a cumulative five years of his life. He went on about half past midnight. The audience was a strange mix of college students, tourists, fledgling couples and, impressively, separate tables of Iranian men and Hasidic Jews. It wasn't clear if the audience had watched much of Insomniac . But they were drunk, and growing hostile.

Mr. Attell appeared thrilled. Soon, he started telling a joke about how he's too old for the clothes at Abercrombie & Fitch. Dressed in a black bowling shirt, Mr. Attell motioned towards a young blond kid in the club.

"See, man, I could never wear a shirt like that," he said. "It wouldn't work for me. For you, you look cool. You may be a missionary type. A date rapist …. "

The kid shot Mr. Attell a sour look.

"You weren't hurt by that, were you?" Mr. Attell said. "You're not going to blow up your high school, are you? I know young people and criticism."

"No one laughed," the kid shot back.

"What? No one laughed?" Mr. Attell replied. "Really? Well, what is your name, man?"

"Keith," the kid said.

"Keith? Keith, I am so glad you're here, because it's guys like you that make women like that"-Mr. Attell nodded toward a pretty woman in the front row-"fuck guys like me."

The place went nuts.

"I'm glad you're here," Mr. Attell said to Keith. "I hear a little laughter."

Here many comics would have let it alone, a victory had. But Mr. Attell would soon twist the screws tighter.

"How many people here graduated high school?" Mr. Attell then asked. "Has that ever helped you in any situation? It hasn't. Have you ever gotten a blowjob because you're a high-school student?"

A burly man to Mr. Attell's right said, "Yeah."

"You have?" Mr. Attell said. "Really? What a freaky crowd. How did you do that?"

"It wasn't solely because of that fact," the man said. "But I think it had something to do with that."

"That was the clincher," Mr. Attell said. "It was between you and two other guys, and they were both fucking G.E.D. guys. And you were like, 'Hey, I showed up to the dance . I was there .'"

Mr. Attell spun toward the blond kid again. "Keith, was that funny? Was there any humor in that? Since you are a robot whose one design is to search out funny …. "

Keith shook his head no.

"Well, bleach your asshole," Mr. Attell said. "I think there was some humor in that."

The next day, Mr. Attell sat in a chair in the back of the Westside Tavern on West 23rd Street. It was late afternoon, with only a scattering of people in the place. "Honkytonk Woman" was playing on the jukebox. Mr. Attell, who was drinking a club soda with lime, lit an American Spirit cigarette.

"I want to be a hard, headlining road comic," he said. Mr. Attell is polite and soft-spoken in conversation, but an intensity lingers. "I want to be like, 'I am not a hack. I am not a guy that they came to because they saw me on TV, but I'm like hard and fast.' Like Metallica years ago. Like how they struck fear into the town: 'Metallica's coming-better watch out.' That's what I want to be."

Mr. Attell grew up in Nassau County. His parents worked mostly in retail; he credits his late father with giving him his relentless drive to work. He has two brothers and a sister, and says he mostly kept to himself as a child. A fantasizer, he was lousy in school. College wasn't his deal; neither was a 9-to-5 job. A comic's itinerant sundown-to-sunup life suited him.

"This lifestyle is pretty good, cool, because it gives you a lot of opportunity to be alone," Mr. Attell said, though he admitted he now hates the traveling.

Friends of Mr. Attell say that Insomniac is perfect for him because it allows him to be himself instead of some sitcom cut-up, and it allows him to stay out all night. In the three seasons of the show, Mr. Attell has visited nightspots everywhere from Alaska to Tijuana to New York to Tempe. The show feels like a freewheeling trip through the après -midnight underbelly; Mr. Attell and his director, Nick McKinney, try to avoid the glossy cheese of party shows like Wild on E! Asked for a favorite place he visited during an Insomniac episode, Mr. Attell mentions a beer factory in Toronto.

What's weird about Insomniac, however, is that it's made Mr. Attell, Mr. Alone, into the life of the party. Part of him is grateful for the attention; people come out to the shows, and who doesn't want that? (He also bought his mom a house.) But there's also the question of how it may change his audience. Mr. Attell was asked if he felt he couldn't go after a heckler's jugular as hard as in the past, since people now showed up to the club … liking him.

"Well, that's their fucking problem," he said. "Because on the show, I go out of my way to treat everybody as good as I can. I'm on my people where it's like, 'Let's not make anybody look too drunk, too stupid, too whatever'-it's like, it's an all-night party and everyone's invited. But in my standup, if things go wrong, I have to take control. And I'm a mean prick sometimes, you know. If they came in thinking it's going to be like a feel-good time, to 'Wooo!' and scream my name out, that is not what I am about. It's usually more cutting, and I like it that way. I'm not going to change that."

Though Jeffrey Ross said he's never seen Mr. Attell "smiling this much," he is not yet a contented man. Mr. Attell said he remains happiest when he's at home, listening to other people's tapes, like Richard Pryor, Redd Foxx and Don Rickles. "I just really enjoy that," he said. "As cool as you think you are and as good as you think your joke is, you know that somewhere, someone was doing a version of that joke."

Mr. Attell is loath to compare himself with the greats; he's not ready to place himself in the comedic canon. "I know what really great comedy is," he said. "And I am not there. I don't know if I will ever get there, because you get older and your dreams change."

Maybe he'll never be totally satisfied or happy. But at least people now know who he is.

"There's got to be a certain sigh of relief, that the world finally knows Dave is the funniest motherfucker out there," said Mr. Ross. "He's been dragging that around for a long time."

York's Friars Club, stood before audience members in the Grand Ballroom of the

New York Hilton and asked them to familiarize themselves with the fire exits.

Then, because he'd said that "these are very different times for us all," he

attempted to answer a question that people had been asking him.

Mr. Roman's Vulcanesque eyes and brows scanned the audience

before him. The question sounded a little like something that would be asked at

Passover. "Why have a night like this in times like these?" Mr. Roman was

referring to the Friars Roast, the club's yearly ritual of profane humor and

insult that was about to get underway with Playboy

founder Hugh Hefner in the hot seat.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on New York, the Friars

organization and Comedy Central, the cable network that, for the last three

years, has taped and televised an expurgated version of the roast (this one

will debut on Nov. 4), had, after some debate, decided to go ahead with the

event. "It's time we get back to normal, like Mayor Giuliani and President Bush

have asked," Mr. Roman said. "And for the Friars, this is normal. Telling dirty

jokes, making fun of people. That's what we do, and we're proud to do it for

you," he said. "So you can get some laughter back in your life and into your

hearts."

While the crowd waited for the cameras to start rolling, Mr.

Roman eased into the task at hand.

"A couple married 48 years. Wife takes sick and passes away.

Funeral at the Riverside, 78th and Broadway," Mr. Roman said.  "After the service, the pall bearers pick up

the coffin. As they're leaving the building, the coffin hits the wall." From

inside the coffin, he said, the woman's voice could be heard. "They open the

coffin-it's a miracle," he said.

"She stays married for another two years. Gets sick, passes away

again. After the service, the pallbearers lift the coffin. As they start to

leave, the husband yells, 'Watch out for the wall!'"

The laughter sounded grateful. Mr. Roman got the high sign to

introduce Mr. Hefner. A small group of Playmates led the flesh magnate-who

looked frighteningly robust and wrinkle-free for a man in his 70's-to the big

red swivel chair on the stage.

Behind Mr. Hefner, stretching out like the wings of a B-52 bomber,

was the event's dais, a roster that only the Friars could put together: actors

Danny Aiello, Keith David, Vincent Pastore and The Sopranos ' Joe Pantoliano in a newsboy's cap;  MTV personality Carson Daly, looking lost;

mentalist the Amazing Kreskin, artist LeRoy Neiman, developer Donald Trump;

actress Diane Farr and Dr. Joyce Brothers; comedian Dick Capri, former kidnap

victim Patricia Hearst, onetime Playboy

pictorial subject Kylie Bax and makeup-less Kiss member Ace Frehley. 

Friar Club's Abbot Alan

King's eyes shone in the spotlight.

"The Friars have an age-old motto," Mr. King said. "'We only

roast the ones we love.' Tonight, we give lie to that bullshit."

His gaze shifted to Mr. Hefner, in mid-chuckle. "Not only don't I

love him, I never met this putz before in my life: Hugh Hefner, who likes to be

called Hef-but in Hebrew, spelled backwards, it's Feh!"

Our "leaders kept telling

us," Mr. King said, "we must get on with our lives, and laughter is a very

important part of our lives. And who better to laugh at than our guest of

honor," a man "who made jacking off a national pastime." A guy who "has smelt more

beaver than a furrier. A man who makes Donald Trump look like Elie Wiesel. A

man who thinks the early-bird special is eating pussy before 6 o'clock."

Mr. King stared down the crowd. "Who better?" he said.

Yes, who better to ease this

crowd back to its favorite bloodsport than Mr. Hefner, a man whose soul had

escaped his body decades ago via his vas deferens? The Friars weren't roasting

a man, they were roasting an abstraction: a square-jawed, silk-robed symbol of

American priapism, who, at 75, wanted us to believe that he was bedding down

nightly with more than a half-dozen human equivalents of Jessica Rabbit.

For a city that had crossed its pain threshold weeks ago, Mr.

Hefner was a fortunate choice. It's hard to eviscerate a man whose only innards

are a hyperdeveloped reproductive system, and who, up there onstage, looked as

burnished and ageless as a publicity still, emitting his affectless, Teflon

chuckle.

The table of Mr.

Hefner's alleged paramours and Playboy

Playmates seemed to have been placed strategically in front of the podium as a

symbol of what was at stake should any joker go too far. At the Comedy Central

after-party at Beacon restaurant, comedian Jeffrey Ross agreed that some

comedians had pulled their punch lines when it came to Mr. Hefner. "I'll tell

you why," said Mr. Ross, who was wearing a bow tie that Buddy Hackett had given

to him. "Because they're afraid they won't get invited to the mansion. They

were all backstage going, 'I know it's funny, but do you think this will piss

him off?'"

The roastmaster of the evening was Jimmy Kimmel, co-star of

Comedy Central's The Man Show . "I

could go on and on," said Mr. Kimmel, "but what could you say about Hef that

hasn't already been mumbled incoherently by a thousand young women with his

cock in their mouths? I've read just about every issue of Playboy since I was 15 years old," Mr. Kimmel continued. "Not once

did I ever see a Playmate say one of her turn-ons was fucking a 75-year-old

man."

Rob Schneider, whom Mr. Kimmel said "is so short he doesn't even

have to bend over to kiss Adam Sandler's ass," was the first roaster on the

podium. Mr. Schneider told the crowd, "We're here tonight to honor a man who

personifies why these terrorists hate us. If it were up to them, women couldn't

read, couldn't work, get fake tits, go to school, pose nude to help their

career. Hugh Hefner believes that women should be able to do all those

things-except read."

Mr. Schneider was the first comic of the night to approach the

topic that was foremost in everyone's thoughts. The laughter seemed hesitant

and restrained.

Jeffrey Ross went up to the podium. "Hasn't there been enough

bombing in this city?" he said into the microphone.

" Ooooooooooooh !" the

crowd erupted.

Mr. Ross was up next. The Buddy Hackett bow tie seemed to be

working. "My good friend Abe Vigoda's here," Mr. Ross said. "Last week, Abe

tried to enlist in Old Navy." Mr. Ross looked over at Mr. Vigoda. "Abe, enough

getting old. Just fuckin' die already, all right?"

Eventually, Mr. Ross got around to Mr. Hefner.

"Hef has fondled more playmates than Michael Jackson," Mr. Ross

said, which got him a big laugh. "Personally, I think it's awesome, awesome

that you sleep with seven women," he told Mr. Hefner, "because eight would be

ostentatious." And then the comic explained the real reason that so many women

were required: "You know, one to put it in, and the other six to move you

around."

Alan King's Last Fan

Sarah Silverman, in a stylish black number, replaced Mr. Ross at

the podium. "Jimmy Kimmel, everyone," she said to the crowd after Mr. Kimmel

introduced her. "He's fat and has no charisma. Watch your back, Danny Aiello!"

The crowd loved that one, and Ms. Silverman, who was the only

woman to roast Mr. Hefner, proceeded to lay waste to a few more of the men on

the dais. She told Mr. King that a nursing home in Florida had just called.

"The last person who thinks you're funny just died." And gazing at the

gray-bearded face of Dick Gregory, she said: "Is he the guy from the rice or

the cookies?

"Well, let's talk about the whores-the Bunnies," she continued.

"I think they should be role models in society-if only for the fact that they

wax their assholes." Later, The Transom asked Playmate Michelle Winchester what

her fellow Playmates had thought of that particular joke. She replied with a

smile: "Actually, that's true!"

Ice-T made his second speaking appearance at a Friars Roast. "I

just wanna rob all you white motherfuckers. And for some reason I don't, and it

fascinates you," he told the crowd, which gave him a healthy laugh just in case

he was serious. But there seemed to be some confusion in the crowd over whether

his line that Mr. Hefner's "dick is busier than an orthodontist in fucking

Japan right now" was actually funny.

The civil-rights activist and nutritionist Dick Gregory told a

couple of jokes. "Black folks," he said, "know this is a great nation" because

of the success of Michael Jackson. "Where else can a poor black boy be born in

utter poverty in Gary, Ind., and end up being a rich white man?" Mr. Gregory

said.

But Mr. Gregory had come to praise Mr. Hefner, not roast him. He

cited Mr. Hefner's courage for hiring black entertainers to work the Playboy

Club when no one else would. And then he delivered an inspirational speech

about New York and the United States.

"Fear and God do not occupy the same space," Mr. Gregory told the

crowd. "If you stop and think about what makes America great, it's not soldiers

… it's the firemen that left home this morning and intended to come back

tonight and ran into a building when everybody else was running out."

The crowd gave Mr. Gregory a

standing ovation, but the quick-thinking Mr. Kimmel steered the event back to

its profane moorings. "So anyway," he said, "I was reading your magazine the

other day," and he described what he was doing while he was reading. The crowd

exploded with laughter. "Someone forgot to tell Dick this was a roast," Mr.

Kimmel said, adding: "Boy, does that make me feel like a piece of shit."

Ice-T Did My Act

Gilbert Gottfried was the last man up to the podium. In his $11

gray shawl-collar tuxedo jacket with tails, black bow tie and Caesar haircut,

Mr. Gottfried looked like he had just come from band practice.

Mr. Gottfried grasped the podium with both hands and, squinting

out at the audience, he began the screeching parrot-like delivery that is his

trademark.

"Ice-T did my whole act," he said. "So I'll do it anyway: I'm

going to follow you white motherfuckers home and rape you fucking white

bitches." Mr. Gottfried paused while the crowd convulsed. "You see, it's such a

strong bit it still works," he said.   

"Dick Gregory did the rest of my act," he continued. "I want to

say-a lot of you young people don't know, but years ago, Jews were not allowed

in comedy!" 

Then Mr. Gottfried started in on Mr. Hefner. "Hugh Hefner doesn't

need Viagra. He needs cement! He needs to take ice-cream sticks and tape it

around his dick and use it as a splint!" Mr. Gottfried screamed. "But in all

fairness to Hefner, he really had to fight for free speech, so we could say

things we couldn't say before. Like: 'Die, you senile old bastard! Die! '"

Mr. Gottfried was killing. It

was time to push the envelope.

"Tonight I'll be using my Muslim name, Hasn't Been Laid," he

said. This got a big laugh. Then Mr. Gottfried began a routine that had worked

extremely well for him at the Richard Belzer roast.

"A woman is on her deathbed," Mr. Gottfried said. "The husband is

sitting at the corner of the bed …. [H]er hair's all dried out. Her skin's all

white. All of a sudden, she goes, 'Please, honey …. '" Mr. Gottfried described

the woman's verboten sexual

request. 

The comedian paused. Some of the audience members were looking

around.

"This is a clean one," he said. The husband complies and, Mr.

Gott-fried said, "the color returns to her skin; her hair looks healthy. She

jumps up in bed. She's sexier and healthier than she ever was before. She looks

down. Her husband's sitting at the corner of the bed, crying. She goes, 'What's

the matter?'"

Mr. Gottfried waited a millisecond. "He goes, 'I could have saved

my father!'"

The laughter came in gasps. There were gurgling sounds in the air

and people hung doubled over, sucking air through hoarse throats.

The man in the gray tuxedo jacket looked out over the crowd. "I

have a flight to California. I can't get a direct flight," Mr. Gottfried said.

"They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first."

There was a silence. Then hissing and hooting flooded forward.

"Too soon," a man could be heard saying in the back of the ballroom.

When the booing started, Mr. Gottfried responded: "Awwwwwww, what

the fuck do you care?" Silence fell once more.

Mr. Gottfried had his answer. Up on the podium, he began making

strange movements with his arms, as if he was working some sort of invisible

machine that could take him back in time to the moment right before he had

pushed too far. Seconds passed.

"O.K.," he continued. His voice was not so loud. 

"A man-a talent agent is sitting in his office. A family walks

in. A man, woman, two kids, their little dog, and the talent agent goes, 'What

kind of an act do you do?'

"At the father's signal, Mr. Gottfried said, the family disrobes

en masse. "The father starts fucking his wife," he said. "The wife starts

jerking off the son. The son starts going down on the sister. The sister starts

fingering the dog's asshole." Mr. Gottfried's voice was growing stronger. "Then

the son starts blowing his father."

The Hilton's ballroom filled with the sounds of sudden

exhalations. The comedians on the dais were bug-eyed with laughter and

recognition. Some of the men had dropped to all fours.

Mr. Gottfried was beaming.

"Want me to start at the beginning?" he asked.

He kept going, turning the joke into an extended bacchanal of

bodily fluids, excrement, bestiality and sexual deviance. Mr. Gottfried plumbed

the darkest crevices he could find. He riffed and riffed until people in the

audience were coughing and sputtering and sucking in great big gulps of air.

Tears ran throughout the Hilton ballroom, as if Mr. Gottfried had performed a

collective tracheotomy on the audience, delivering oxygen and laughter past the

grief and ash that had blocked their passageways. 

Then he brought it home.

"The talent agent says, 'Well, that's an interesting act. What do

you call yourselves?'"

Mr. Gottfried threw up his hands. "And they go, 'The

Aristocrats!'"

There was a sound in the room that went beyond laughter.

Mr. Gottfried had gone to "The Aristocrats," the comedy

equivalent of the B-flat below high C that Leontyne Price had sung at Carnegie

Hall on Sunday. "The Aristocrats" is one of the definitive inside jokes among

comedians. It is so definitive that comicPaul Provenza and performance artist

Penn Jillette are making a digital documentary about the joke. "Every comic

makes it their own," Mr. Provenza said. "The set-up is the same and the punch

line is the same," but the comic puts his or her "own stamp" on the material in

between.

Mr. Gottfried had used it to save himself, but also to lift the

crowd to another place.

A few minutes later, Alan King paid him a high compliment.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm just still a little touched by that

asshole Gottfried."

New York Hilton and asked them to familiarize themselves with the fire exits.

Then, because he'd said that "these are very different times for us all," he

attempted to answer a question that people had been asking him.

Mr. Roman's Vulcanesque eyes and brows scanned the audience

before him. The question sounded a little like something that would be asked at

Passover. "Why have a night like this in times like these?" Mr. Roman was

referring to the Friars Roast, the club's yearly ritual of profane humor and

insult that was about to get underway with Playboy

founder Hugh Hefner in the hot seat.

In the aftermath of the terrorist attack on New York, the Friars

organization and Comedy Central, the cable network that, for the last three

years, has taped and televised an expurgated version of the roast (this one

will debut on Nov. 4), had, after some debate, decided to go ahead with the

event. "It's time we get back to normal, like Mayor Giuliani and President Bush

have asked," Mr. Roman said. "And for the Friars, this is normal. Telling dirty

jokes, making fun of people. That's what we do, and we're proud to do it for

you," he said. "So you can get some laughter back in your life and into your

hearts."

While the crowd waited for the cameras to start rolling, Mr.

Roman eased into the task at hand.

"A couple married 48 years. Wife takes sick and passes away.

Funeral at the Riverside, 78th and Broadway," Mr. Roman said.  "After the service, the pall bearers pick up

the coffin. As they're leaving the building, the coffin hits the wall." From

inside the coffin, he said, the woman's voice could be heard. "They open the

coffin-it's a miracle," he said.

"She stays married for another two years. Gets sick, passes away

again. After the service, the pallbearers lift the coffin. As they start to

leave, the husband yells, 'Watch out for the wall!'"

The laughter sounded grateful. Mr. Roman got the high sign to

introduce Mr. Hefner. A small group of Playmates led the flesh magnate-who

looked frighteningly robust and wrinkle-free for a man in his 70's-to the big

red swivel chair on the stage.

Behind Mr. Hefner, stretching out like the wings of a B-52 bomber,

was the event's dais, a roster that only the Friars could put together: actors

Danny Aiello, Keith David, Vincent Pastore and The Sopranos ' Joe Pantoliano in a newsboy's cap; MTV personality Carson Daly, looking lost;

mentalist the Amazing Kreskin, artist LeRoy Neiman, developer Donald Trump;

actress Diane Farr and Dr. Joyce Brothers; comedian Dick Capri, former kidnap

victim Patricia Hearst, onetime Playboy

pictorial subject Kylie Bax and makeup-less Kiss member Ace Frehley.

Friar Club's Abbot Alan

King's eyes shone in the spotlight.

"The Friars have an age-old motto," Mr. King said. "'We only

roast the ones we love.' Tonight, we give lie to that bullshit."

His gaze shifted to Mr. Hefner, in mid-chuckle. "Not only don't I

love him, I never met this putz before in my life: Hugh Hefner, who likes to be

called Hef-but in Hebrew, spelled backwards, it's Feh!"

Our "leaders kept telling

us," Mr. King said, "we must get on with our lives, and laughter is a very

important part of our lives. And who better to laugh at than our guest of

honor," a man "who made jacking off a national pastime." A guy who "has smelt more

beaver than a furrier. A man who makes Donald Trump look like Elie Wiesel. A

man who thinks the early-bird special is eating pussy before 6 o'clock."

Mr. King stared down the crowd. "Who better?" he said.

Yes, who better to ease this

crowd back to its favorite bloodsport than Mr. Hefner, a man whose soul had

escaped his body decades ago via his vas deferens? The Friars weren't roasting

a man, they were roasting an abstraction: a square-jawed, silk-robed symbol of

American priapism, who, at 75, wanted us to believe that he was bedding down

nightly with more than a half-dozen human equivalents of Jessica Rabbit.

For a city that had crossed its pain threshold weeks ago, Mr.

Hefner was a fortunate choice. It's hard to eviscerate a man whose only innards

are a hyperdeveloped reproductive system, and who, up there onstage, looked as

burnished and ageless as a publicity still, emitting his affectless, Teflon

chuckle.

The table of Mr.

Hefner's alleged paramours and Playboy

Playmates seemed to have been placed strategically in front of the podium as a

symbol of what was at stake should any joker go too far. At the Comedy Central

after-party at Beacon restaurant, comedian Jeffrey Ross agreed that some

comedians had pulled their punch lines when it came to Mr. Hefner. "I'll tell

you why," said Mr. Ross, who was wearing a bow tie that Buddy Hackett had given

to him. "Because they're afraid they won't get invited to the mansion. They

were all backstage going, 'I know it's funny, but do you think this will piss

him off?'"

The roastmaster of the evening was Jimmy Kimmel, co-star of

Comedy Central's The Man Show . "I

could go on and on," said Mr. Kimmel, "but what could you say about Hef that

hasn't already been mumbled incoherently by a thousand young women with his

cock in their mouths? I've read just about every issue of Playboy since I was 15 years old," Mr. Kimmel continued. "Not once

did I ever see a Playmate say one of her turn-ons was fucking a 75-year-old

man."

Rob Schneider, whom Mr. Kimmel said "is so short he doesn't even

have to bend over to kiss Adam Sandler's ass," was the first roaster on the

podium. Mr. Schneider told the crowd, "We're here tonight to honor a man who

personifies why these terrorists hate us. If it were up to them, women couldn't

read, couldn't work, get fake tits, go to school, pose nude to help their

career. Hugh Hefner believes that women should be able to do all those

things-except read."

Mr. Schneider was the first comic of the night to approach the

topic that was foremost in everyone's thoughts. The laughter seemed hesitant

and restrained.

Jeffrey Ross went up to the podium. "Hasn't there been enough

bombing in this city?" he said into the microphone.

" Ooooooooooooh !" the

crowd erupted.

Mr. Ross was up next. The Buddy Hackett bow tie seemed to be

working. "My good friend Abe Vigoda's here," Mr. Ross said. "Last week, Abe

tried to enlist in Old Navy." Mr. Ross looked over at Mr. Vigoda. "Abe, enough

getting old. Just fuckin' die already, all right?"

Eventually, Mr. Ross got around to Mr. Hefner.

"Hef has fondled more playmates than Michael Jackson," Mr. Ross

said, which got him a big laugh. "Personally, I think it's awesome, awesome

that you sleep with seven women," he told Mr. Hefner, "because eight would be

ostentatious." And then the comic explained the real reason that so many women

were required: "You know, one to put it in, and the other six to move you

around."

Alan King's Last Fan

Sarah Silverman, in a stylish black number, replaced Mr. Ross at

the podium. "Jimmy Kimmel, everyone," she said to the crowd after Mr. Kimmel

introduced her. "He's fat and has no charisma. Watch your back, Danny Aiello!"

The crowd loved that one, and Ms. Silverman, who was the only

woman to roast Mr. Hefner, proceeded to lay waste to a few more of the men on

the dais. She told Mr. King that a nursing home in Florida had just called.

"The last person who thinks you're funny just died." And gazing at the

gray-bearded face of Dick Gregory, she said: "Is he the guy from the rice or

the cookies?

"Well, let's talk about the whores-the Bunnies," she continued.

"I think they should be role models in society-if only for the fact that they

wax their assholes." Later, The Transom asked Playmate Michelle Winchester what

her fellow Playmates had thought of that particular joke. She replied with a

smile: "Actually, that's true!"

Ice-T made his second speaking appearance at a Friars Roast. "I

just wanna rob all you white motherfuckers. And for some reason I don't, and it

fascinates you," he told the crowd, which gave him a healthy laugh just in case

he was serious. But there seemed to be some confusion in the crowd over whether

his line that Mr. Hefner's "dick is busier than an orthodontist in fucking

Japan right now" was actually funny.

The civil-rights activist and nutritionist Dick Gregory told a

couple of jokes. "Black folks," he said, "know this is a great nation" because

of the success of Michael Jackson. "Where else can a poor black boy be born in

utter poverty in Gary, Ind., and end up being a rich white man?" Mr. Gregory

said.

But Mr. Gregory had come to praise Mr. Hefner, not roast him. He

cited Mr. Hefner's courage for hiring black entertainers to work the Playboy

Club when no one else would. And then he delivered an inspirational speech

about New York and the United States.

"Fear and God do not occupy the same space," Mr. Gregory told the

crowd. "If you stop and think about what makes America great, it's not soldiers

… it's the firemen that left home this morning and intended to come back

tonight and ran into a building when everybody else was running out."

The crowd gave Mr. Gregory a

standing ovation, but the quick-thinking Mr. Kimmel steered the event back to

its profane moorings. "So anyway," he said, "I was reading your magazine the

other day," and he described what he was doing while he was reading. The crowd

exploded with laughter. "Someone forgot to tell Dick this was a roast," Mr.

Kimmel said, adding: "Boy, does that make me feel like a piece of shit."

Ice-T Did My Act

Gilbert Gottfried was the last man up to the podium. In his $11

gray shawl-collar tuxedo jacket with tails, black bow tie and Caesar haircut,

Mr. Gottfried looked like he had just come from band practice.

Mr. Gottfried grasped the podium with both hands and, squinting

out at the audience, he began the screeching parrot-like delivery that is his

trademark.

"Ice-T did my whole act," he said. "So I'll do it anyway: I'm

going to follow you white motherfuckers home and rape you fucking white

bitches." Mr. Gottfried paused while the crowd convulsed. "You see, it's such a

strong bit it still works," he said.   

"Dick Gregory did the rest of my act," he continued. "I want to

say-a lot of you young people don't know, but years ago, Jews were not allowed

in comedy!" 

Then Mr. Gottfried started in on Mr. Hefner. "Hugh Hefner doesn't

need Viagra. He needs cement! He needs to take ice-cream sticks and tape it

around his dick and use it as a splint!" Mr. Gottfried screamed. "But in all

fairness to Hefner, he really had to fight for free speech, so we could say

things we couldn't say before. Like: 'Die, you senile old bastard! Die! '"

Mr. Gottfried was killing. It

was time to push the envelope.

"Tonight I'll be using my Muslim name, Hasn't Been Laid," he

said. This got a big laugh. Then Mr. Gottfried began a routine that had worked

extremely well for him at the Richard Belzer roast.

"A woman is on her deathbed," Mr. Gottfried said. "The husband is

sitting at the corner of the bed …. [H]er hair's all dried out. Her skin's all

white. All of a sudden, she goes, 'Please, honey …. '" Mr. Gottfried described

the woman's verboten sexual

request. 

The comedian paused. Some of the audience members were looking

around.

"This is a clean one," he said. The husband complies and, Mr.

Gott-fried said, "the color returns to her skin; her hair looks healthy. She

jumps up in bed. She's sexier and healthier than she ever was before. She looks

down. Her husband's sitting at the corner of the bed, crying. She goes, 'What's

the matter?'"

Mr. Gottfried waited a millisecond. "He goes, 'I could have saved

my father!'"

The laughter came in gasps. There were gurgling sounds in the air

and people hung doubled over, sucking air through hoarse throats.

The man in the gray tuxedo jacket looked out over the crowd. "I

have a flight to California. I can't get a direct flight," Mr. Gottfried said.

"They said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first."

There was a silence. Then hissing and hooting flooded forward.

"Too soon," a man could be heard saying in the back of the ballroom.

When the booing started, Mr. Gottfried responded: "Awwwwwww, what

the fuck do you care?" Silence fell once more.

Mr. Gottfried had his answer. Up on the podium, he began making

strange movements with his arms, as if he was working some sort of invisible

machine that could take him back in time to the moment right before he had

pushed too far. Seconds passed.

"O.K.," he continued. His voice was not so loud.

"A man-a talent agent is sitting in his office. A family walks

in. A man, woman, two kids, their little dog, and the talent agent goes, 'What

kind of an act do you do?'

"At the father's signal, Mr. Gottfried said, the family disrobes

en masse. "The father starts fucking his wife," he said. "The wife starts

jerking off the son. The son starts going down on the sister. The sister starts

fingering the dog's asshole." Mr. Gottfried's voice was growing stronger. "Then

the son starts blowing his father."

The Hilton's ballroom filled with the sounds of sudden

exhalations. The comedians on the dais were bug-eyed with laughter and

recognition. Some of the men had dropped to all fours.

Mr. Gottfried was beaming.

"Want me to start at the beginning?" he asked.

He kept going, turning the joke into an extended bacchanal of

bodily fluids, excrement, bestiality and sexual deviance. Mr. Gottfried plumbed

the darkest crevices he could find. He riffed and riffed until people in the

audience were coughing and sputtering and sucking in great big gulps of air.

Tears ran throughout the Hilton ballroom, as if Mr. Gottfried had performed a

collective tracheotomy on the audience, delivering oxygen and laughter past the

grief and ash that had blocked their passageways.

Then he brought it home.

"The talent agent says, 'Well, that's an interesting act. What do

you call yourselves?'"

Mr. Gottfried threw up his hands. "And they go, 'The

Aristocrats!'"

There was a sound in the room that went beyond laughter.

Mr. Gottfried had gone to "The Aristocrats," the comedy

equivalent of the B-flat below high C that Leontyne Price had sung at Carnegie

Hall on Sunday. "The Aristocrats" is one of the definitive inside jokes among

comedians. It is so definitive that comicPaul Provenza and performance artist

Penn Jillette are making a digital documentary about the joke. "Every comic

makes it their own," Mr. Provenza said. "The set-up is the same and the punch

line is the same," but the comic puts his or her "own stamp" on the material in

between.

Mr. Gottfried had used it to save himself, but also to lift the

crowd to another place.

A few minutes later, Alan King paid him a high compliment.

"Forgive me," he said. "I'm just still a little touched by that

asshole Gottfried."

From the Friars Club pulpit, Susie Essman stared down at fellow comedian and sitcom actor Jerry Stiller as he squirmed in a massive leather armchair that had been set out on the dais.

"Not really," Mr. Stiller replied. He was slumped against one side of the chair, mashing his wiry hair–"the color of Tang," as comedian Dick Capri would note later–into the leather.

Ms. Essman, a meat-and-potatoes Bebe Neuwirth, flashed a dangerous smile. She had just made Mr. Stiller cover his face with his hands by saying five short sentences: "I have to apologize. I have a sore throat. Jerry knows why. I know why. Enough said."

The hard-eyed men and women who get to turn the spit at the annual Friars Club Roast always bring a certain zeal to their jobs, but this year's roast victim was different from those who had come before. Unlike like last year's honoree, sitcom star Drew Carey, Jerry Stiller was a man who, along with his longtime wife and comedy partner, Anne Meara, had managed a long career in show business without reverting to the prurient or the profane. "One of the dullest fucking men I have ever met," said Friar abbot Alan King.

From The Ed Sullivan Show to those Blue Nun wine commercials to two successive hit sitcoms, NBC's Seinfeld and CBS' King of Queens, the 72-year-old Mr. Stiller has had a show-business run that is unimaginable in a time when fame rarely lasts longer than three years. And for this accomplishment, Mr. Stiller was to sit before Comedy Central television cameras and a dais that rivaled the wingspan of a B-52 bomber ("This should take us through Tisha Bov," Friars Club dean Freddie Roman said as he undertook the task of introducing everyone), in order to be pelted with sex jokes and anatomical references that he wouldn't touch in a million years. If that were not enough, his wife, son and daughter would not only watch, they would participate.

For some participants, the fact that Mr. Stiller's rather large ears were relatively virgin ones made the event all the more enjoyable. "I know people enjoyed the fact that he was in hell," said Janeane Garofalo, who sat on the dais next to Mr. Stiller's son, Ben. "Jerry Stiller is the nicest, kindest father-figure who hates profanity," she said. "He doesn't like those sex jokes. So it's kind of funny to watch him squirm in the giant chair."

But Ms. Garofalo admitted that, were she ever to deserve such an honor, she would not want to be roasted. "I was talking to Danny Aiello, who said he cried after his roast because he didn't understand, really; he didn't really know that it was like the cruelest night of your life."

Perhaps sensing that it might be difficult to roast such a virtuous man, Mr. King tried to relax the environment by ordering Mr. Stiller, "Just say after me, Fuck ! I want to hear you say it."

Mr. Stiller opened his arms wide. He looked like one of those biblical images of a persecuted saint. One with a fancy mustache. "Fuck," he said. He paused. "Freak, for the West Coast."

From then on, it was clear that this was a feat of strength Mr. Stiller could handle, even if his eyes seemed a little moist at times. So when Ms. Essman suggested that a cushion be brought out for him, Mr. Stiller shrugged it off with Costanza-esque bravado: "That's all right," he said, "go on with the work!"

And what wet work it was. This Friars Club Roast, held Oct. 1 at the New York Hilton, was a smorgasbord of profane excess. Looking down into Mr. Stiller's basset-hound eyes, Ms. Essman said she found it hard to say "all these mean sexual things" to him. "Then I look at this dais and think, These other miserable cocksuckers, I could have a field day!"

So Ms. Essman asked Mr. King, "Did you ever think you'd live long enough that your prostate would be as big as your ego?" The crowd sounded as if it had been goosed. But Ms. Essman was dais hunting, and Maury Povich was in her sights. She said she realized why the talk-show host had married Connie Chung: "Jews love to eat Chinese."

Then came poor old Abe Beame. The diminutive Mr. Beame is getting on in years, but that didn't stop Ms. Essman.

"Abe Beame is so old, even his cock drools," she said. The crowd went wild. Except for Mr. Beame, who couldn't hear the joke. So another wave of laughter broke over the room as David Dinkins whispered the line into Mr. Beame's ear. Ms. Essman added, "For those of you who can't see Abe Beame, there will be a second viewing."

For Mr. Roman, though, Ms. Essman saved the coup de grâce : "Freddie, I wouldn't fuck you with Dr. Ruth's pussy."

The Comedy Central camera whirled to Dr. Ruth Westheimer; sitting nearby was Police Commissioner Howard Safir, whose flushed face and uncomfortable smile were suddenly broadcast on the big screen behind the dais. The televised discomfort of a Giuliani administration official insured that Ms. Essman's put-down was the joke to top, and Jeffrey Ross did a little later. Following Sandra Bernhard's odd performance of Heart's song "Magic Man" for Mr. Stiller, Mr. Ross got up and said: "I wouldn't fuck Sandra Bernhard with Bea Arthur's dick." (After the roast, Ms. Arthur, who was in attendance, told The Transom that Mr. Ross was a "sweet, sweet man.")

Mr. Ross does have a cherubic face but … "This isn't a roast, this is a defrosting!" he said at the podium. Noting Jerry Seinfeld's absence, he explained that the star had a prior engagement "to fuck a model on a pile of cash." Of Mr. Stiller and Ms. Meara, he said: "We grew up watching them until we were old enough to realize they weren't funny." He added that "Poor Ben [Stiller] hasn't been the same since he saw his mom going down on Señor Wences."

Soon the camera locked on Mr. Safir again because Mr. Ross had said: "Howard, hold up your plunger so people know who you are."

When Mr. Ross left the stage, Jason Alexander, who played Mr. Stiller's son George on Seinfeld and who was playing the evening's roast master, said: "I hope that Bea Arthur kicks his ass, and I know that Bea Arthur can."

For an actor, Mr. Alexander was impressive as roast master. He sang, he ad-libbed, he even made you forget that he was reading from a Teleprompter. And when the Comedy Central producers stopped the proceedings at one point because of a taping problem, Mr. Alexander did not crumble. "You know, I don't think the television aspect cuts the spontaneity," Mr. Alexander told the crowd.

"Serenity now!" barked Mr. Stiller.

"Serenity now!" said Mr. Alexander.

"Funny, George!" a woman called out.

"George! That's my tombstone!" said Mr. Alexander.

Mr. Alexander explained to the crowd that his roast-master chores were actually fulfilling the "community-service portion" of a prison sentence. "If someone had told me that working my shaft outside Gwyneth Paltrow's window was illegal …" he said. Then he gave a crash course in Yiddish for the gentiles in the room, explaining that "all Yiddish refers to penises and food" and, that said, it was important not to mix up one's terminology because "in certain neighborhoods, asking for a nice, juicy schvantz " could bring unexpected results.

Even if Oz creator Tom Fontana hadn't been on the dais, a Friars Roast is a guarantee that at least one comedian will relate some tale involving the roastee, his schvantz and someone else's tuchas . During his time at the podium, Larry Miller was that comedian. He called Mr. Stiller a "good kisser … so sweet that a lot of the rough stuff took me by surprise." He recounted when Mr. Stiller pulled him into a small office at NBC: "Your pants are on, your pants are off," said Mr. Miller, who recalled Mr. Stiller "spreading the lotion on my buttocks." (At the after-party at China Grill, Mr. Miller, who said this was his first roast, seemed torn. "In my world if I want to honor a friend, I think about going all the way with a bottle of something," he said. "I don't tell you you're an asshole, you're old or you're fat.")

Friars veteran Dick Capri didn't have that problem. Taking the podium, Mr. Capri said of Mr. Stiller, "I want to make it big when I'm 70" and go from sitcom to sitcom playing "essentially the same character" with "a delivery that's as subtle as a fart in a wind tunnel."

Mr. Alexander introduced the Vulcan-like Mr. Roman, who told how Mr. Stiller bought flowers for his wife, and she said, "I suppose you want me to lie in bed naked all week with my legs apart." Mr. Roman said that Mr. Stiller replied, "What's a matter, you don't have a vase?"

The Stiller family's turns at the microphone were markedly mild. Ben told the crowd, "My dad's aversion to any sort of bad word" brought the roast to a "whole other level of enjoyment" for him. Stiller fils then made a threatening motion toward his father and said the word "cock," and Stiller père feigned a heart attack.

After wondering about profanity and "the wit that entails," Ms. Meara told the dais, "When it comes to humiliating my husband, you are amateurs." Yet, she was nothing but tender. "Of all the alterkockers here, Jerry is the only one who doesn't need Viagra," she said.

"Not when I'm with you, sweetheart," replied Mr. Stiller.

But Mr. Stiller was not out of the woods yet. Wendy Liebman told the audience, "We're here to celebrate Jerry Stiller. My grandmother's favorite actor. She says you make her damp." Ms. Liebman told Mr. Stiller, "I love you like a father. A father who grabs my tits."

The show peaked with Robert Schimmel, who looked the way a Hell's Angel might look if he were forced to wear a tux. Mr. Schimmel told a tale about Mr. Stiller offering to help a kid starting out in show business. "If you let me suck your dick, I'll see what I can do," Mr. Stiller said, according to Mr. Schimmel, who added: "That kid today is Ellen DeGeneres."

Closing a Friars Roast is a tough job. All of the jokes have been used up, and everyone wants to go home. For many years this has been a job for Pat Cooper, but Mr. Cooper turned down the Friars this year. Mr. Cooper told The Transom that he's angry at the Friars. "You know what, I call them a bunch of prejudiced bastards, I call them cliques," he said. He explained that it's a courtesy among the members to send out flyers saying who's performing where. "They never send out flyers where I'm working," said Mr. Cooper. "I said, What nice people you are. Shove the Friars up your ass. Get somebody else to close the show. You ain't seein' me there no more. I'd rather clean fish."

So this year, Paul Rodriguez was brought in, but by the time he took the stage, he seemed to be deflated from the jokes the other comedians had made at his expense. "Paul Rodriguez is to the Latino community what Jerry Stiller is to the Latino community," said Mr. Ross. Ms. Essman said that if Freddie Prinze hadn't died, Mr. Rodriguez would still be mowing lawns in Los Angeles.

Mr. Rodriguez did a funny bit, a quick-change into a white food-service coat and yelling, "I touched your food!" to the dais members. Still, he said people seemed to be picking on him. "I don't take it personally," Mr. Rodriguez told The Transom, "but out of all the people on the dais, I got it the most. Why would they attack me when Patty Hearst was sitting right next to me?"

When the roast was over, Mr. Stiller summed up his scorching in a profanity-free line: "Now I know what it feels like to be a Reform Jew in Borough Park."

Others, like Ms. Garofalo, seemed almost glad it was over. "To see Jerry, tiny Jerry, in that big chair with wet eyes …" she said.

On a chilly December afternoon at the Friars Club, Jeffrey Ross was eating chicken and rice for breakfast. The 32-year-old comedian had just arisen, and the sight of Abe Hirschfeld holding court at a nearby table did not please him. The eccentric mogul, fresh from his arrest for trying to have a business partner whacked, had the table of Friars laughing heartily.

"See," said Mr. Ross. "Now he's a joke. They didn't even have to tell one to laugh. I heard he's doing stand-up. You hear about that. I say, Butt out … Among the millionaires, he's the worst."

Mr. Ross, who holds the distinction of being one of the very few young Friars who can crack the oldsters up, is making a quiet move toward the mainstream. He told The Transom that he is writing a cartoon pilot for Comedy Central. He's also mulling an offer by Steven Chao, president of Barry Diller's USA Networks, to host a variety show. "I'm asking for a lot," Mr. Ross said. "Creative control, outs, options."

But it is the cartoon, tentatively titled Snowbirds , that has his attention. What's it about?

"An old Jewish couple–Seymour and Selma Snowbird–and an old black couple–Mo and Shirelle Houston–who live in a Boca Raton golf-cart retirement community," said Mr. Ross. "Sex, drugs and bingo. They're very hip old people. They'd rather watch MTV all day and try to decipher Madonna's new look than watch Fiddler on the Roof ." To visualize Seymour and Selma, said Mr. Ross, "Imagine if you put a closed-circuit camera on your grandparents."

Mr. Ross, a soft-spoken, curly-haired New Jersey native who broke into the New York stand-up scene nine years ago, said he modeled Seymour on one of his mentors, Buddy Hackett. "He's a little fat guy who permanently has white stuff on his nose, like sun block or something. He talks to his white patent-leather shoes, he talks to his golf clubs. Selma's the more violent mistress. His wife of a million years. Twice his size. She has a pocketbook permanently attached to her hand as a weapon. She doesn't take No for an answer. If you say you're not hungry, she'll physically open your mouth, put the food in, close your jaw and force you to chew it."

Mo and Shirelle? "He's like a Sammy Davis Jr., in the music business, real bitter. Always a day late and a dollar short. You ask him how he's doing, and he's like, 'Quincy Jones,' and you're like, 'What?' And he's like, 'Fuck Quincy Jones' and stammers off. His wife is a back-up singer. Shirelle. Like a girl from the Motown days."

Both couples fight a lot. "But they love each other very, very much."

In the pilot, Seymour and Selma make a video of their new house. "They've only been living there for three weeks; they decide they want to make a video for their grandchildren."

Mr. Ross said he came up with the idea for the cartoon with his friend Mark Chapin, whom he met while an undergrad at Boston University. "He's actually the man who talked me into being a comedian," said Mr. Ross. "He changed my life."

When asked if he minds taking a break from doing stand-up comedy to write Snowbirds , he said, "One helps the other. Look at the South Park guys. They weren't actors, they were writers, now they're actors."

Mr. Ross said he's also working on expanding a one-man show about his late grandfather.

"We were really close. Inseparable. If I went to the gym, he went with me. We'd go on vacations together. We smoked pot under the sky. The hippest guy ever."

–Julie Lipper

Something About Fernanda?

Have the 31 judges of the New York Film Critics Circle awards gone starry-eyed? Several critics are aghast that Cameron Diaz won the group's Best Actress Award on Dec. 16 for her gooey performance in the Farrelly brothers' There's Something About Mary , usurping Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro in Walter Salles Jr.'s Central Station . And some critics suspect that the leggy 26-year-old blonde won the prize over the 69-year-old Ms. Montenegro because the New York critics wanted some Hollywood glamour at the awards dinner at Windows on the World on Jan. 10.

"Voting for Cameron Diaz devalues the group in a pretty serious way," said The New York Times ' Janet Maslin. "The L.A. critics, they look a lot hipper and a lot smarter than we do … much more attuned to good work and we look a little silly. More than a little silly. Although I liked her performance a lot, I don't think she should have been voted best actress."

Thelma Adams of the New York Post is one who thinks Ms. Diaz won on the strength of her off-camera abilities. "Fernanda Montenegro was still winning after the third ballot," said Ms. Adams, "and when people were really faced with the idea of her coming to the dinner, her as the winner …" Time magazine critic Richard Schickel seconded this theory. "Not to be too cynical, but I think some people voted the party line. A middle-aged lady from Brazil …" He stopped there.

The chairman of the Film Critics Circle, the New York Press ' Godfrey Cheshire, said perhaps Ms. Diaz won because the "highbrows were using the lowbrows to block the middlebrows." In other words, people knew their first choices wouldn't win, so they cast their vote for a random other: Ms. Diaz.

"Cameron Diaz is the populist," said Entertainment Weekly 's Owen Gleiberman. "This was a year when there was no obvious choice for best actress like Holly Hunter in The Piano ."

Ms. Adams agreed. "The best actress category this year was not as exciting as it was last year. Helena Bonham-Carter as a cripple? I mean, excuse me."

Mr. Cheshire said he was perfectly comfortable with Ms. Diaz as the winner. "I don't think it's to the detriment of the public image of the group, because it's good to show that the tastes of the group are broad enough to include comedy." Concurred GQ 's Terrence Rafferty, "All this says more about the prejudice against comedy."

–Julie Lipper

Frank DiGiacomo is on vacation. He will be back next week.

So the Friars Club, that holy temple of Borscht Belt comedy on East 55th Street, it was getting old. Even before 91-year-old Henny Youngman passed on Feb. 24- Alav Ha'Shalom , Henny-the average age of club members was "deceased," to steal a line from Milton Berle. But instead of allowing their club to go the way of automats, the Friars decided to get some members without rugs and dentures.

So they went on a recruitment campaign. And here's the funny part: It's working. Unlike the hotshot countercultural comedians of the 70's and 80's, the new generation of stand-ups and sketch players seems to have no desire to blow their elders off the cultural stage. In fact, they're more than happy to get right in the steam room with the old guys and hear all the stories. So at the Friars Club these days, Buddy Hackett sits with some of the youngsters at a corner table, dispensing stage wisdom picked up over almost a half-century of working the rooms. Or there's Friar Nipsey Russell, spouting doggerel. Or Friar Joe Cates, the legendary comedy producer and father of actress Phoebe Cates, giving the new members lessons in Friars lore. Enamored of the days of Dean Martin, Damon Runyon and cheap one-liners, about 70 youngish members have signed up at the Friars Club so far-a mélange of stand-ups, sketch comics, actors and executives, as well as writers for Seinfeld and Late Night With Conan O'Brien . And not just youngish, but would you believe hep? That priestess of the alternative comedy set, Janeane Garofalo, she's a member. "I just like being referred to as Friar Janeane Garofalo," she said. "I make everybody call me that now." So seven young members showed up at the club for lunch on Feb. 26. The maître d', Frank Capitelli, treated them nice, giving them a table at the front of the club's oak-paneled dining room. One of the new members asked what was going to happen to Henny Youngman's usual table, in the corner. "We're going to retire Henny's table," said Mr. Capitelli. Then he waited a beat. "Unless it gets crowded." Jeffrey Ross-a burly 31-year-old stand-up comedian who killed on Late Show With David Letterman and made a name for himself among the Friars by slaying the crowd at the raunchy roast for actor Danny Aiello last year-was one of the last to arrive. He was wearing a huge-collared black comfy shirt. "What, did Hef dress you?" said Tom Lennon, 27, the sideburned co-host of Comedy Central's Viva Variety , who was also at the table. Asked what it was like to be a Friar, Mr. Ross immediately channeled the Catskill comic within and started riffing on the age of his fellow members. "They've been doing comedy so long, some of their jokes are still in Latin … Early in his career, Milton Berle performed the works of Shakespeare. He also performed at Shakespeare's bar mitzvah … Buddy Hackett has been doing comedy so long, he lost to Mark Twain on Star Search … Alan King's S.A.G. card number is 8." Such a kid! The insults work the other way, too. As Friar Jerry Lewis told one of the new members: "I got shorts older than you!" So what do Friar Garofalo and her junior cohorts get for their membership-aside from a classy leather briefcase and a blood-bank card? Well, the round-tablers chime in, there's the George Burns card room (home to the kids' semi-regular poker game), a billiards room, a barber shop stocked with Playboy s from the 80's and, of course, there's a nap room. A nap room? "Yes," added a junior Friar. "And a deep sleep room." "And a you-might-be-dead room," topped another. Up on the fifth floor, you'll find the weight room and, best of all, the steam room and sauna. "There are Friars Club robes," said Randy Pearlstein, 26, who'll soon be appearing in the movie Dead Man on Campus . "The first time Randy and I went upstairs to work out and take our shvitzes in the sauna," said Elon Gold, 27, "we put on these Friars Club robes. We sat in these big leather chairs-we were just giggling. This is the funniest thing to do, this is the goofiest-we were real old men. When you're wearing that Friars Club robe and you feel good and you just came out of the steam room, it's like-" "You're like an old shvitzing Jew," chimed in stand-up comedian Susie Essman, 35, another recent joiner. "The way these old guys work out is hilarious," said Mr. Pearlstein. "They come in their New Balance shoes and their Fila track suits and it's-'Hey, how are you?'" "They throw the medicine ball," said Mr. Ross. "They run with the thing with the big belt around it. The Little Rascals workout." "They don't work out," said Mr. Pearlstein. "They just walk around and insult each other: 'Bigger muscles aren't going to make you funny, O.K.?" Their overdeveloped sense of 90's irony won't let the new kids forget that the Friars Club is a place that stocks Barbicide in the bathrooms. But at the same time, those combs in the blue liquid have covered the bald spots of comedy's legends. "When I was a kid, before I knew anything about show business, I knew two things- William Morris and Friars Club," said Michael Ian Black, 26, a co-star of Comedy Central's Viva Variety . "Now I'm with both of them." And speaking of institutions, Catskills aristocrat Freddie Roman strode into the dining room. The junior Friars let out a whoop. Mr. Roman looked over the assortment of black T-shirts, blazers and sideburns, then stopped at the table. The new members waited for the insult. "This looks like the cast of the Montreal Laugh Festival," said Mr. Roman, referring to the annual convention of unproven stand-ups. "That's the best you came up with?" said Mr. Pearlstein. Mr. Roman, who serves as dean of the club, chuckled and ambled off to an artery-clogging meal. All the youngsters know from Mr. Roman. The comic helped kick off the fresh blood drive-along with current Friar leader, Abbott Alan King. "A few years ago, we were lulled into this period," said Mr. King on speakerphone. "We looked around, and all of a sudden the club wasn't growing." Their emergency tactics were simple. Relax the dress code (jacket and ties aren't required in the dining room until 6 P.M.). Slash the annual dues-under-30 members pay $500 instead of $2,000. Give performers free tables at the roasts, hold recruitment cocktail hours, organize meet-your-elders lunches, sponsor showcases for young comics. Join up, they said. To get in, you need two sponsors and, preferably, an entertainment background. Also, you must never have angered anyone in the club. Before the club admits new members, they pass around a list of candidates. If one Friar crosses the name off the list, the candidate is done for. As the recruitment drive got going in earnest, the Friars got lucky. The show-biz landscape shifted in two key ways. First, the grungy, anti-establishment vibe faded out, replaced by a vogue for the Rat Pack. "Five years ago, comics were dressing like Nirvana," Mr. Ross said. "Now, they're wearing suits, embracing an old style of show business." Second, the comedy clubs of the 80's all but keeled over and died, leaving funny folks with no place to hang out. As a result, the Friars are easing their way back into pop culture-a Seinfeld (sure, Jerry's a Friar) reference here, a Simpsons reference there (Krusty the Clown says he belongs), not to mention an upcoming Cinemax documentary on the history of the 94-year-old club (George M. Cohan, Will Rogers, Irving Berlin were all early members). "When Milton Berle walks in here, it's like he opened at the Copa last night," said Mr. Ross, over his matzoh brei with corned beef and onions. "They're like royalty. All the comedy clubs, the institutions, come and go. The Friars Club is 90-something years old; it's not going anywhere. At the networks, every year, new guy in charge. But this will be here at this address as long as I'm alive." "Every old timer I meet in the steam room has a great story," said Mr. Pearlstein. "This one guy named Jack, he goes, 'Syndicated T.V.? That was me and my partner. We did that.' Some old guy in a towel." Just as the Observer photographer was leaving the table after getting shots of everyone at lunch, Mr. Lennon did some goodbye. "Thanks for killing Diana!" he said. The talk at one point turned to another villain-the guy who crashed Bob Dylan's performance at the Grammy Awards show the night before the lunch. The people at the table knew Michael Portnoy, who scrawled "Soy Bomb" on his bare chest. They've seen him from time to time in the alternative comedy clubs like Fez on the Lower East Side, but they don't like him. He once tried to heckle Mr. Ross' act: "I ignored him," Mr. Ross said. "It was very frustrating for him." Mr. Portnoy's performance art shtick-"stick-your-balls-in-a-cup-of-water" material, as the table derisively called it-leaves them cold. But neither are these young Friars into the setup-punch line-rim shot of their Borscht Belt heroes. Consider Stella, an ongoing East Village comedy revue co-hosted at Fez by Michael Ian Black. Heavy with knowing meta-comedy sketches (a typical one has a white guy doing Def Comedy Jam ), it's got more in common with Monty Python absurdism than vaudeville. It wouldn't be Uncle Miltie's cup of Scotch. "These guys don't get down below 42nd Street," said Mr. Black. But there's no generation gap that can't be bridged by a good insult, the Friars' coin of respect. "If you can make these old-timers laugh, it's such a huge boost in confidence," said Viva Variety producer and performer Ben Garant, 27. "Damn, it feels good." And if the old-timers are willing, the newcomers get to schmooze all they want, despite that recent Friars Club memo warning members not to approach the celebrity members but to let them do the approaching. In one of his chats, Buddy Hackett told them to keep the room cold-just like he claims to have advised David Letterman all those years ago. And Milton Berle recently told the recruits about his annual crate of Cuban cigars, a gift from Fidel Castro. The legend also gave a tip to Mr. Ross: "After one of my shows, Milton Berle told me to slow down," he recounted. "But when a 90-year-old guy tells you to slow down …" Meanwhile, Ms. Essman said she gets to rub more than elbows with the show-biz giants in the club made of 90 percent men (women admitted since 1988!). "I get pawed a lot," she said. "It makes them so happy that I can't deny it. And you know they can't follow through." Just a couple months before he died, Henny Youngman razzed Ms. Essman while she performed at a Friars benefit. "He was in his wheelchair, zinging me one-liners. Mostly sex stuff about meeting me in a motel." Of course, the bluest of blue material is reserved for those infamous Friars Club roasts. (The latest victim was Danny Aiello). "That's a fun thing, seeing Milton Berle say pussy and fuck and cunt," said Mr. Gold. "These are icons of the golden age of television, when they couldn't say 'pregnant'." "Yeah," added Mr. Ross. "At the Travolta one, Barbara Walters said 'dildo rash.'" They all laughed. It's not so bad, being a Friar.