I'm still a little banged up after last night's comedy roast, which featured the cream of the Baltimore media (and isn't that damning with faint praise) taking two hours worth of potshots at the big guy in the ugly shirt.

Actually, it was great fun and it was for a great cause. The Cool Kids Campaign (410-560-1770) does nice things for kids with cancer, so if you couldn't come out last night to the Comedy Factory, you can still call and buy a ticket retroactively and tell everybody you were there and we'll totally back you up.

Can't say I minded missing Game 5 of the NLCS, since I was kind of rooting for Joe Torre to get back to the World Series and figuratively thumb his nose at the Yankees for a couple more weeks. No offense to the Phillies, who clearly are the better team and whose fans haven't been all the way to the mountaintop since 1980.

The Red Sox are hanging by a threat, but you can't count them out. They've come back from bigger deficits than this, most notably in their 2004 world title run after they fell behind 3-0 to the Yankees in the ALCS and gave up 19 runs in a Game 3 rout that seemed to signal the end of that series. That said, I'm on the Rays bandwagon big time.

I missed the presidential debate, too, but I'll probably bear up under the disappointment. Sounds like it was a little more interesting than the last one, but given the choice of watching those guys take potshots at each other and having Roch Kubatko, Mark Viviano, Mickey Cucchiella, Pete Eibner, Wes Johnson, Bruce Cunningham, Steve Davis, Stan Charles and Nasty Nestor take their best shots at me, well, it wasn't a tough choice.

Thanks again to The Baltimore Sun for sponsoring the event and to everybody at the Comedy Factory and the Cool Kids Campaign for doing all the heavy lifting. Thanks also to MC Bob Somerby, and special thanks to all my old friends and some new friends for making it such a fun evening.