I went to the Friars Club last night and watched Larry Flynt get toasted… I mean roasted. It was fun. I didn’t see Luke Ford or Scott Fayner or Gene Ross or any of the other porn news or gossip guys there; I guess I was it. I guess I’m the only one with any juice.

According to DUC at setgo.com, I got in with a press pass. That was a lie I told Lukey. The truth is Smash Pictures CEO, Danny Quinn, bought a table right up front. I attended with the Smash Crew and some guys from DQ's Horizon Media.

I started the evening out in the Friars Club VIP room for a little pre-roast bonding with Larry and hundred or so of his friends. The room was about 120 degrees so I stayed away from all the shellfish they had out there for nearly two hours. Of course, neither the combination of heat and dead shellfish, nor the possibility of mercury or salmonella poisoning, stopped Ron Jeremy from doing some serious grazing.

While in the VIP room, the Smash/Horizon guys and I had our pic taken with Larry and some girls. Then I wandered off and soon had a chance to talk-the-talk a little with Joe Viterelli of “Analyze This” fame. After that I hung out in the Men’s Room with Pauly Shore for a bit. (The Men’s Room was about 30 degrees cooler than the VIP room and smelled better than all that rotting fish.)

There were some other celebrity types there, but I ain’t so good with names so I can’t tell you who they were—but you’d probably recognize them. I also made some small talk with the owner of “The Improv,” Bud Friedman. For the most part, I amused myself watching Ron Jeremy work the buffet table.

Downstairs in the main dining room--which I would estimate seats about 300--they were beginning to serve dinner. This room was trying to reach a temperature equal to the VIP room. Dinner was a nice salad, a large portion filet mignon with some kind of potato thing and asparagus.

Up on the stage, where it must have been even hotter because of the video lighting equipment, sat the roaster-boy, Larry Flynt. Also there were Norm Crosby (the MC), Woody Harrelson, Edward Norton (the other Ed Norton, not the one that hung out with Ralph Kramden), Anna Nicole Smith, Gabe Kaplan, and Joe Viterelli. These people were all in the front row on the stage. In the second row sat former LAPD Chief Bernard Parks (don’t ask me what he was doing there, I don’t know), anchorwoman Kelly Lang, Pauly Shore, veteran “B” movie actor Henry Silva, and some comedians whose names I don’t remember but who were way funnier than any of the people whose names I can remember.

The roasting began when they served dessert (which was some kind of cream cheese thing that I decided not to touch because of the heat—cream cheese can be as bad as shellfish in heated situations). Doing cripple jokes at Flynt’s expense were the common denominator to most of the humor. The comics had a field day with the cripple jokes. I guess in any other situation it would be inappropriate to do all this cripple-in-a-wheelchair humor. But at the Friar’s I guess anything goes.. I’ll give it to Larry-- he took all this shit in stride—I never saw him wince once at being on the butt end of all the cripple material. And I woulda noticed. I was sitting close enough I could have touched him… or at least touched one of the wheels of his chair.

There was also a fair amount of bad jokes targeting Anna Nicole Smith; more specifically, targeting ANS’s pussy which according to the comedians is large and cavernous.

Finally it was time for Larry to speak. He was quite gracious and even shot a few successful zingers back at the roasters. Unlike his appearance at last year’s AVN Awards Show, everyone could understand what Larry was saying. Larry also treated us to a one-man pep rally for free speech and free expression and in so doing, brought the crowd to its feet.

All in all, a good time seemed to be had by all in spite of the sweltering conditions in the Friars Club. Everyone went home with a gift bag full of goodies that included a "The People vs. Larry Flynt" DVD, a "Barely Legal" DVD, a copy of Hustler Magazine, some chocolate in the shape of people fucking, a Larry Flynt for President button, and some other Hustler merchandising items. There was even an autographed copy of Larry's book, "An Unseemly Man," which I think I might auction on Ebay.



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