Ponderous thoughts I was pondering ...

Tom Brady didn't help his national image with that curse-filled Netflix roast.

Ponderous thoughts I was pondering while cursing the heavens for the cloud cover Friday that prevented me from seeing the Northern Lights for the first time since the late 1950s, when my parents brought me to the Plainville Drive-In to see a movie, and all I could do was look out of the windows of our '56 Chevy and marvel at the light show in the skies:

* I was not terribly impressed with the recent roast of Tom Brady that appeared on Netflix. In a nutshell, I thought it was overly profane, sometimes in very bad taste, and Brady didn't do himself any favors by coming off as a conceited douchebag during his roast-ending rebuttal time.

Maybe I'm not qualified to judge a modern comedy roast. I remember watching the old Dean Martin roasts on NBC when I was young, and those were sometimes funny and sometimes pretty boring, sanitized as they were for the network-television audience. And I'm not a total prude, or else I wouldn't be able to tolerate any number of the specials that appear on HBO and Showtime. I know that comedy today is "edgy," and pulls no punches. I know they use the words that you couldn't use on over-the-air TV. I've been known to use a few of those myself, although when I call Donald Trump a "diseased fuck," I really don't mean it to be funny and I don't apologize for it. Truth is my defense.

But for most of the Brady roast, I got the feeling that host Kevin Hart, some of the comedian guests and even some of Brady's former teammates made a point of dropping F-bombs just for the sake of doing it. I don't know how many times "fuck" was said during the course of the three hours, but I might actually re-watch it and use a hand-clicker for the purpose of counting them all.

"Wolf" was filled to the hilt with F-bombs.

By the way, the recent movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" with Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, is generally recognized as having set a record for big-budget mainstream flicks that have used the F-word prodigiously. Technically, it's regarded as the No. 3 film of all time (there's a documentary and a low-budget movie that no one saw supposedly ahead of it) with 569 uses. Others in the top 10 include "Uncut Gems" with Adam Sandler (560), Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam" (435) and "Casino" with Robert DeNiro, Joe Pesci and Sharon Stone (422). Interestingly, both "Casino" and "Wolf" were directed by Martin Scorsese. 

Anyway, I did enjoy the segment in which Nikki Glaser delivered her jokes. She's known as someone that unabashedly pokes fun at her own sex life and holds back very little, but there's also something endearing about how she does it. She's funny. I also think that Brady's predecessor at QB, Drew Bledsoe, was engaging and extremely funny. 

Not everyone else was.

I did my share of cringes over jokes based upon Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder and killed himself in his jail cell. Maybe that's because I was covering the Patriots when all that happened and I found very little that was funny about it, so the jokes fell flat.

There was also an overabundance of "dick jokes" and a few too many references about Brady possibly being gay because he's such a pretty boy. It just got tiresome. The references to ex-wife Gisele Bundchen and her supposed dalliance with a martial-arts instructor seemed awfully mean-spirited at times. And yet Brady chose not to protect the mother of his children (well, most of them) from the barrage, and instead had the gall to tell one of the comedians not to tell another massage-parlor joke about Patriots' owner Robert Kraft, whose well-publicized side-trips to the Orchids of Asia spa in Jupiter, Fla., is the stuff of high comedy because of its hypocrisy.

For the most part, however, the roast seemed like an opportunity for these athletes to act like immature schoolboys once more, just because they could. It was on a streaming service, where anything goes. 

I'll admit it, I laughed at some of the jokes. I even found myself grinning at a few that Bill Belichick told, although he still needs to work on his delivery. A lot, in fact.

It came as no surprise, however, that Peyton Manning could walk on the stage and come away unsullied by the lowest-common-denominator tone of the roast. Manning is one of those rare individuals that can walk into a room and deadpan his way through a multitude of comedic lines and leave everyone completely entertained.

I could go on and on, but I'm sure many readers will consider these thoughts the ramblings of a humorless old fart. In fact, many of my former colleagues in sports journalism praised the roast as a tour de force and a sign that real comedy is back! 

Well, there's no accounting for taste. 

I admit, I'm not a fan of runaway political correctness. In today's overly-sensitive climate, a movie like "Blazing Saddles" could never be green-lit -- and I'm of the firm belief that Mel Brooks' classic may have been the funniest movie ever made.

But by the same token, I'm not a fan of runaway profanity or bathroom humor. My tastes clearly run somewhere in the middle. The jokes that ran to the high side of that determining border made me laugh. The others just bored me. I wasn't invested enough to be offended.

I'm not sure it was the best decision for Brady to agree to do this. If his intention was to improve his image to the 95 percent of America that already hates him, I don't think it helped much. But it wasn't his worst decision of the night.

The worst decision was the awful hairpiece he was wearing. It made William Shatner's rug look completely natural by comparison. I mean, that had to be a hairpiece, right? Why in God's name would he want his real hair to look that bad?

Ba-dum DUM! Thank you, thank you, ladies and germs. Don't forget to tip your waitresses. And try the veal!

* Speaking of jokes, sometimes I chuckle at the many told these days at the expense of the Boeing Corporation, which has had a spectacular run of bad luck with the problems its commercial airliners have experienced of late. I guess I'm lucky to be laughing, because I've never been on a plane that lost an emergency exit door in mid-flight. 

Although ... 

The fateful trip to Florida boarded at JFK.

When I was in my early teens, I flew with my parents on a Boeing 727 "Whisperjet" flown by Northeast Airlines bound for Jacksonville, Fla., for our annual visit with the grandparents. Somewhere over North Carolina, the cargo door came ajar, resulting in a full depressurization of the aircraft, the loss of breathable oxygen, and the need to actually use the oxygen masks that did, as promised, drop from the overhead compartments. Long story short, no one was hurt other than a few ruptured eardrums and a few panic-induced fainting episodes. And a lot of screaming once the pilots leveled the plane at 10,000 feet and the air was breathable again.

I figured that from that episode, I had expended my lifetime storehouse of potential airline calamities, and I was never afraid to fly thereafter. And that's a good thing, because I flew a lot over the years to come.

But the point of this commentary is that I feel badly for Boeing because it was one of the largest contributors to the war effort in the 1940s, and one of the main reasons why we, and not the Germans or Japanese, emerged victorious.

Boeing produced two of the most famous bombers in warfare history, the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Superfortress as well as contributing to the design and production of a number of other warplanes used during World War II. Both gave the United States a huge advantage in that they were the long-range bombers that the Axis powers failed to develop. In the Cold War era, Boeing produced the ultimate long-range bomber, the B-52 Stratofortress -- which, remarkably, remains the vanguard of American air power today.

And of course, Boeing has produced the most iconic jets of the passenger aircraft industry -- the 707, which revolutionized air travel; the 727, which brought jet service to smaller cities and shorter routes; the 737, still the versatile workhorse of the fleet; the 747, the wide-bodied "queen of the skies," and the 757, 767, 777 and 787, many of which make up the bulk of airline fleets today.

I have flown on all of those except the latter two, which are the newest widebodies devoted mostly to transoceanic travel. I probably would fly on them if I had any real desire to go anywhere. But I see them flying over my house every day at about 38,000 feet (yes, one of my hobbies is plane-watching).

No doubt, Boeing's production standards have slipped some. The problems that get the big headlines could destroy the company if not corrected. And I imagine nobody is shedding any tears in the corporate offices of Airbus, whose planes I have flown frequently as well. It's my fervent hope that Boeing can rediscover the greatness that made it a world-wide leader in aviation -- and end the jokes.

* I can say without fear of contradiction that I have absolutely no interest in that trial involving a woman from Mansfield who is accused of killing her cop boyfriend at a party in Canton some time back. But it's definitely the sort of in-the-gutter crap that will hold a particular audience and never let it go. 

I just wish the newspapers and broadcast media would stop calling her "... of Mansfield" in every reference. She's not a native. And it's giving my hometown an undeserved bad name.

* In a similar vein, porn star Stormy Daniels had her day in court this past week during the Trump hush money trial in New York. The trial is about whether our former president authorized the payment of $130,000 to keep her from revealing her story of a sexual tryst long before the 2016 election, but with the potential of derailing his candidacy. If it can be proven that Trump funded the payoff through campaign funds, he's guilty of a felony -- one of many with which he has been charged in various cities.

Stormy got her day in the sun.

The best part of the coverage was watching the anchors of the various news services cringe at having to read some of the testimony, as Ms. Daniels described the fateful evening in which she had sex with the married Trump (whose mail-order wife, Melania, had just given birth to Barron) in a hotel room at a golf tournament.

You want comedy? Here's real comedy. Watching seasoned pros like CNN's Jake Tapper struggling to read highlights of the testimony about Trump changing from silk pajamas to a T-shirt and boxers before bedding the actress was just plain hilarious. And then, the networks started calling the testimony "salacious" (Webster's definition: "rousing or appealing to sexual desire or imagination"). I'm not sure that's really the proper word, because any description at all of a tryst between Ms. Daniels and that orange-hued whale carcass sends my imagination careening in the opposite direction from arousal.

And remember, Stormy had been enjoined against providing the truly salacious details -- particularly a description of Trump's genitalia, which she had previously described in public discourse as being comparable to a small mushroom. 

While that was never entered into the court record, we have been graced with the knowledge that two nicknames for Trump have been forever codified into record -- that some of Trump's inner circle called him "Donald von Shitzenpantz" as a reference to his widely-rumored incontinence, and "Orange Turd," which appeared in one of Stormy's tweets.

Remember when candidates didn't have to be felons to lose elections? Mike Dukakis rode in a tank wearing an ill-fitting helmet and looked like a fool. Howard Dean shrieked weirdly in joy after winning a primary and was immediately shamed from his race. And yet the Orange Turd has cheated on all of his wives, supported white supremacists, taken reproductive rights and health care away from women through his Supreme Court appointments, and is still ready to sell out the country to the ultra-rich, and he's still a viable candidate to oust an incumbent?

Maybe Robert Kennedy Jr. isn't the only one with brain worm problems. Nearly half of the electorate must be off its rocker to still be supporting this worthless bastard.

* Brain worm! Say it over and over, with feeling. That's the lamest excuse I've ever heard. For anything.

* Odds and Ends: Here are a few quick thoughts to polish off this missive.

Old friend Megan Morant of the WWE's television productions (Megan O'Brien Connolly when she worked for the Patriots' media productions; "Morant" is her stage name) is not only a fellow former Northwestern Wildcat in good standing, but she is also a life-long Chicago White Sox fan, and she got to throw out the first ball at a Sox game recently. Must have been a great thrill! ... Happy birthday wishes of the last week go to my current boss, Peter Gay of North TV, and the Boston Globe's Christopher Price, who's a beat writer covering the Patriots and a terrific guy. ... My old newspaper lost a couple of cherished alumni recently. Veteran news editor Larry Kessler passed unexpectedly after having sought treatment for chest pain and breathing difficulties. He was 71. And former reporter Don MacManus, who was on staff when I joined the newspaper in 1977, was killed in a tragic bicycling accident. He left the paper to become a lawyer and was Seekonk's town counsel for many years. He was 76. Both are missed. ... Former Bishop Feehan hoop standout Lauren Manis is back playing pro ball in Mexico with the Halcones team based in Xalapa. It's her second time with the team. There's no better argument for WNBA expansion than Lauren, who was drafted by the Las Vegas Aces out of Holy Cross, was cut, re-signed for another training camp and then had a tryout with Seattle. But there just aren't enough roster spots available, so she continues to play as a pro all over the world. I really hope she gets another shot at the W. ... Maybe it's time for Bob Kraft to stop simply giving tours of his stadium to a girls' team from Foxboro that's won four state titles, and maybe invest some of his $11 billion (according to Forbes magazine) in bringing a WNBA franchise to Boston as a real and lasting tribute to young female athletes that don't have enough opportunities to continue their careers. 

Next podcast, coming soon. And there will be a few good ones coming down the pike. Stay tuned.

Mark Farinella spent 42 years covering the New England Patriots for The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, Mass., and the next time he laughs at a joke told by Bill Belichick, it will be the first time. Contact him at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.