Radio stations tend to broadcast live material with a seven- second delay on their signal, so they can have a brief window to censor people dropping "F"-bombs and the like. Comedian Zach Galifianakis isn't really worried about being offensive — see "The Hangover" — but it often feels like there's a seven-second delay on his wickedly offhand one-liners. A film with Galifianakis will have already cut to the next scene when his last line — something like a weepy "Dad, you were like a father to me!" — finally erupts in your brain.
Galifianakis, playing a strange and needy man-child infuriating his buddies on a lost weekend in Vegas, was a big factor behind the success of "The Hangover," which now stands as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time. Think about that for a moment: The director of that movie, Todd Phillips, who started his career with a doc on ultra-underground and suicidal scato-punk icon G.G. Allin, is now a mainstream success.
Of course, in a post-"Jackass," post-"South Park" era, offensive is the new norm. I recall sitting in a sleepy hotel lounge deep in dusty Portugal last summer, trying to describe "Jackass" to some friends who had never seen it, only to notice that the other stragglers at the bar were chuckling at Steve-O's antics on local TV. Some people may despair and see this as a further descent into hopeless crudity and stupidity, but, you know, those people probably grew up watching "Animal House" and "The Three Stooges" themselves.