The Chris Matthews Roast

A few weeks ago I was asked to perform at the first annual Nantucket Comedy Festival. As part of the festival they held a roast of the classic comedy duo Stiller & Meara. I've never been much of a roaster. Roast comedy is almost like it's own genre. People walk on stage and they're like, "Nice shirt, queer!" and everyone's like, "It's so true! His shirt does suck! I'm from Jersey!"

I was very stressed out about coming up with roast jokes, but I threw some together, walked on stage and said:

"When I was asked to be part of the roast of my favorite comedy duo, I said, 'Of course, I'd do anything for Nichols and May.' But then he told me that it was actually Stiller & Meara but it's in Nantucket and we'll put you up at a fancy hotel and I said, 'Ok, well maybe their son Ben will be there - I mean he used to make to good movies.'"

Pretty light roast fare. So far, so good.

And then I looked at Jerry Stiller and said, "Jerry, you were brilliant on Seinfeld...I understand you were also on The King of Queens. The show King Of Queens is like the Iraq war. You know it's going on but there's nothing you can do about it."

And then I looked at Anne Meara and said, "Anne was raised Irish Catholic like me. A few years after they married, Anne converted to Judaism, which is a very risky move in Hollywood. Mel Gibson stops taking your calls. Everyone else starts."

So that was fine. They laughed.

I turned to the Farrelly brothers, the writers of There's Something About Mary and about nine other movies. They were hosting the event. I said, "I gotta say, I love the movie Stuck On You. I think it was the third time I saw it, I thought "This is incredible. They could have made this as a comedy."

At that point maybe I should have left.

But I saw Chris Matthews in the front row. Now, I'm a huge fan of Chris Matthews and I watch his show all the time, so I said, "Chris, I love Hardball. I even love that weekend show you do on NBC that nobody watches."

At this point, something unexpected happened. Chris Matthews started shouting back at me like it was a one on one conversation. He goes, "People do watch that show, I'll show you the numbers."

Apparently Chris wanted to play some hardball. I continued.

I said, "I love Chris' show. I think I love it almost as much as he does--which is difficult. I haven't heard someone laugh at their own jokes that hard since George Bush after Katrina. You got to hand it to Chris. He always has something to say, and when he doesn't have something to say, he says it louder."

At this point, Chris Matthews threw a bottle at me.

I'd like to clarify that it was a plastic bottle and it was empty, but it was still a bottle and it allows me to say the phrase, "Chris Matthews threw a bottle at me."

I looked down at the man I watch on the news every day and said, "Chris, guess what? When you throw stuff, I win."

The crowd agreed with me. And applauded. And I walked off. And I had succeeded in my first and possibly last roast.

It made a good story for the next few days. But what I didn't tell people when I told them the story is that I secretly knew that Chris Matthews is actually very funny, and if in that moment he had happened to have a microphone in his hand instead of a water bottle...I would have been toast.

This post originally appeared on My Secret Public Journal.