The ‘Roastmaster General’ finds insults to his liking

Funny or Die Oddball Comedy and Curiosity Festival

Jeffrey Ross, with Louis C.K., Aziz Ansari, Chris Hardwick and others

5 p.m. Aug. 10. $47.35-$117.90 after fees. Aaron's Amphitheatre at Lakewood, 2002 Lakewood Way, Atlanta. www.livenation.com.

Jeff Ross is called the “Roastmaster General” for a reason. He’s this generation’s Don Rickles, an insult comic who has participated in the last 12 Comedy Central roasts.

To Courtney Love: “You’re like the girl next door … if you happen to live next to a methadone clinic.”

To Joan Rivers: “Who’s your plastic surgeon? Tim Burton?”

To Larry King: “‘Larry King Live.’ Even the title was an oxymoron.”

But he doesn’t just roast celebrities. He’ll roast members of the Atlanta Improv audience July 24-26 in Buckhead and the Funny or Die Oddball Curiosity and Comedy Festival at Aaron’s Amphitheatre at Lakewood Aug. 10.

“I call up volunteers from the audience and I speed roast them,” Ross said in a recent interview. He’ll use their names, their professions and their looks for quick put-downs. “It’s the ultimate judging the book by its cover,” he said.

Every once in a while, he said someone physically slaps him for his trouble. “I kind of like it. A lot of guys pay good money for that in Atlanta!”

But Ross has his limits — especially in public. “The other day at the airport,” he said, “a guy stopped me and said, ‘My brother is in the bathroom. When he comes out, can you roast him? He just got out of jail!’ I didn’t stick around for that one.”

Ross said his ability to burn people goes back to childhood in New Jersey. “Everyone in my family was good at it,” he said. “I had to quickly learn not to just take a joke but give it back. My Uncle Murray was the first to bust my chops. We called him mean Murray. He’d make fun of my braces, my buck teeth. I worked at my parent’s catering hall and was the boss’s son. He would give me a lot of crap.”

Today, he actually thinks of himself as a nice guy off stage, but he said as any given day drags on, he tends to become more ornery. “I do try to turn it off,” he said. “But if I don’t have a show coming up, I may just start roasting my friends and family, even my girlfriend.”

Whenever he visits a city, he’ll read up on the news ahead of time so he’ll be ready with location-specific material. At the time of this interview, he was prepping for a gig in Nashville, Tenn., so Atlanta wasn’t on his radar yet, but he figures he’ll have to address the Cobb man whose toddler died in a hot car.

As for Rickles, who just turned 88 and is as acerbic as ever, Ross has nothing but admiration. “He’s been very gracious to me over the years,” Ross said. “Most recently, at one of his gigs backstage, he asked my girlfriend if she had cataracts since she was going out with me. I take that as a sign of affection.”