"I think Rick is a comic genius — probably the most important comic of our time," said Lach, the mononymous owner of the indie label Fortified Records and a fixture of the downtown Manhattan entertainment scene — and also an ex-Shapiro manager.

The mononymous Cafu is a defender for Brazil, the world's most stylish and self-absorbed collection of athletes, a team aptly described by one Brazilian newspaper as a "cauldron of vanities."

That experience was very much a formative one as the mononymous star of the eponymous ABC sitcom put together the cast and writing crew that comprise Fox's "Saturday Night Special," a show debuting Saturday (10 p.m., WFLD-Ch. 32) that will have no problem including stuff from women but may have difficulty finding its niche in a suddenly crowded field of network sketch comedy.