An account of Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein's hilariously profane benefit performance that, oddly enough, may include a "24" spoiler for next season

There are a couple of ways a traditional reviewer could open a discussion of Seth MacFarlane and Alex Borstein's Saturday-night concert at L.A.'s Ahmanson Theatre benefiting CTG. You could count how many references there were to MacFarlane becoming Hollywood's new $100-million-man (answer: too many to keep count; at one point, Borstein told him, "It's your world; we're just breathing the air"). Or you could focus on how the two hijacked the concept of having people sign the show for deaf audience members, forcing them to perform sign-language's assignations for just about every dirty word and sexual position the human population has been able to discover to this point. (So it was educational - we learned how deaf people convey the concepts of @ssholes and cunnilingus to one another on this most edifying of evenings.)

Or, you could choose to meld these disparate approaches and marvel at how one of the richest men in the universe has become so by reveling in such crass, debasing, utterly politically incorrect and, yes, pretty much devastatingly hilarious gags.

For the uninitiated, MacFarlane created the cartoon show "Family Guy," a funny show that becomes exponentially funnier when you hear about religious groups' complaints about it, which Fox cancelled not once but twice before this past week shoveling a cool $100-mill into his lap to keep doing it (and developing other shows, besides, for the next four years). MacFarlane also provides the voice of the show's clueless protagonist, portly (to be kind) Peter Griffin, as well as a host of other characters; Borstein plays Peter's long-suffering-to-the-point-that-it-becomes-eternally-suffering wife, Lois.

So anyway. Saturday night's concert, MacFarlane and Borstein explained, was something you'd experience if you shuffled through "a retard's iPod." They also worked off a vague alphabetical conceit, as well, crooning tunes with titles from A to Z, though adherence to their concept with letters such as L, V and Z were pretty sketchy, at best.

One of the evening's recurring jokes was performing songs inappropriately, offering a Vegas hack's stylings to the theme to "Animal House" or Journey's "Don't Stop Believing." (MacFarlane did his best Dean Martin impersonation, sitting on a stool, smoking cigs and quaffing Jack Daniels, throughout the event.)

But then, pretty much everything was inappropriate, if you have any taste. It's hard to precisely finger the most tasteless moment, but it was probably one of these:

* Borstein protesting MacFarlane singing "Edelweiss," saying her family included Holocaust victims. MacFarlane replied, "I don't think this is a place to bring your Hebrew baggage."

* Borstein performing Diana Ross' "Upside Down" in Marlee Matlin's slurred speaking voice. MacFarlane then asked the sign interpreters how they conveyed said slurring in their signing.

* In a version of the mawkish Barbra Streisand/Neil Diamond ditty "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" rewritten for Peter and Lois, MacFarlane and Borstein lamented very specific sexual acts that the drifting couple no longer performed on one another.

MacFarlane also did "Rocket Man" as "Family Guy's" Stewie, channeling William Shatner. They performed Queen's theme song from the movie "Flash Gordon" only to point out how sh!tty it was - so bad that they got bored and wandered offstage, where Borstein purported serviced Seth with some oral sex. Britney Spears, Monty Python, the Bee Gees, Lindsay Lohan, "The Little Mermaid," Blondie, Tina Turner and the Muppets came victim to their show's assault. The number of obscure TV themes MacFarlane offered up called into question just how much of his youth was wasted on crap TV.

Oh, and Borstein revealed she was pregnant. It wasn't until after intermission that MacFarlane realized she wasn't just doing some sort of shtick.

I've heard the term "painfully funny," but I didn't really understand it until Saturday night - my herniated disk and sciatica had returned with a vengeance, so every time I laughed I suffered a sharp, shooting pain. But not laughing wasn't exactly an option.

Janeane Garofalo opened the evening. "I would rather take a salt bullet to the knee than see 'Made of Honor,'" she declared, not unreasonably. Noting that she had a role in "24" this season before the writers strike (it'll return next year), Garofalo probably gave up more information than the producers would have liked: She'll play an FBI agent who can out-hack the show's resident computer expert, Chloe. Oh, and "Jack's gone rogue," but then, Jack always goes rogue. She explained what little she could make of the show: "Jack Bauer's an important guy and he gives people his word a lot."

And something else that'll endear her to the producers: "I don't watch this sh!t." They had shot nine episodes before the strike; expect her character to die a horrible death by episode 11.