• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, March 15, 2011

With the state of celebrity today, who is left worth roasting? Tonight on Comedy Central, the Friar's Club will give it another shot and take on Donald Trump. But here is prima facie evidence that roasts are irrelevant in an age of endless scandal and bad behavior. What is left to demythologize about a guy like this? What is left to rib him about?
Comedy Central is going to give us a more interesting subject for pitiless roasting online - You.

The Roastmaster General  of these occasions, Jeff Ross, will be hosting a live streaming pre-show this evening from 9:30 to 10 ET where he will engage with viewers across Skype, Twitter and Facebook. Viewers will be able to roast Donald but also be roasted by Ross. This will also be an opportunity to add some video extras online with backstage footage from the Trump roast and previews of the show. Ross will also take it outside Trump Tower to crowdsource some roast material and have passersby offer their best Trump jabs.

As we discovered at last month's Oscars, leveraging the Web for pre-show complements to live events can be overdone and offer way too much. We didn't know where to look and ultimately just stopped looking out of frustration. Perhaps Comedy Central will do better just focusing on a single personality for a short sprint of streaming programming that is sculpted and designed to push people towards the show itself. As a way to draw people to online material, this surely beats the usual process of dumping assets on a Web site and telling folks to stop on by.

The online Fireside Chat with Jeff Ross will be sponsored by Axe Hair, which is great brand and product association if we ever saw it.