My Advice to You Is To Start Drinking Heavily

These are the words I would say to one Joe Buck.

I caught the replay of "Joe Buck Live" on HBO today. It debuted on Monday night to some scathing reviews. And for good reason.

It was painful to watch.

It has gained a slew of attention because they had Artie Lange, the "jokester" from The Howard Stern Show on in one of the last segments. (And BTW, is Howard Stern still on the radio? He could have fallen off the face of the earth since he departed for the wilderness of satellite radio for all I know.) Lange, who for whatever reason, was on with Paul Rudd and Jason Sudeikis of SNL, came on the show and did nothing but curse, make "homo" jokes about Tony Romo, that sort of thing. (I watched the show on a repeat earlier in the day, and HBO bleeped all the curse words, which were plentiful.)

HBO paid the price for having a comedian like Lange on. They want him on to be "edgy," but having a jackass like him on, you know he's going to go off a cliff. And Buck looked like he wanted to kill Lange (and especially on the "overtime" segment, after the HBO show ended and could be seen on the Internet). He did his best to destroy the show, although it wasn't the best of efforts from Buck anyway. Lange just wasn't funny, and the point of having him on the show totally escaped me. HBO has now barred him from ever appearing again.

There were two segments I thought were good. Buck with David Wright at lunch was interesting (especially seeing Wright laugh off a Phillies fan who knocked on the window and pointed to his hand where a ring would be), and Buck's final take on Michael Vick and the steroids scandals was also good.

But Buck is clearly no Bob Costas (who made a worthless cameo in the beginning), who he is replacing on HBO. He looked stiff at times, and most of his jokes fell flat. The interview with Brett Favre wasn't much, as Buck's direct question to Favre about a return to the Vikings was answered with "maybe." (As you all know I hope it doesn't happen and Favre stays retired, but after this interview I bet Favre's with the Vikes next month.) The interview with Michael Irvin and Chad Johnson (who insists on calling himself "Ochocinco") was rather boring (and how can you take a segment seriously with someone who calls himself that).

This show will be remembered just for Artie Lange making a complete idiot of himself in a thoroughly unfunny segment at the end. Buck returns with his second of four shows in September, but he'll have a hard time living this down.

This Bud's for you, Joe.