Watching live comedians makes me nervous; they're so greasy, desperate and vulnerable. So here are a few suggestions for stay-at-home types during the comedy fest.

The Lenny Bruce Performance Film captures the controversial comedian's next-to-last nightclub show in the mid-'60s. For the first 20 minutes he rambles on about pending obscenity charges, but vintage Dirty Lenny does shines through. Be sure to wait for the hilarious Mask Man cartoon at the end. For more background on this trailblazing comic, Lenny features Dustin Hoffman in the story of Bruce's tragic life. Also look for the doc Swear to Tell the Truth, to air on HBO in early August and hopefully in video stores by the end of the year.

A not-to-be-forgotten classic is Eddie Murphy's Delirious. He's billed as "22--live and red hot," which indeed he is in his red leather get-up. The perfect antidote to political correctness.

Dice Rules opens with a painful pastiche following Andrew Dice Clay's transformation from pussywhipped husband to superstar sex machine. Filmed in front of a packed house at Madison Square Garden in 1991, more laughs come at the expense of the remarkably ugly crowd who seem to have developed a Pavlovian reaction to the word "hoo-er." "That's all the 90s are gonna be, jerk off all over yourself and work out at the gym," the Dice man predicts. Well, at least he got that half right.

--Sarah Musgrave