Look, Rush Limbaugh ran over a carboard cutout of Al Gore, in an electric car, and then he backed up and did it again! COMEDY! AT TEN O'CLOCK! HAVE YOU EVER IN YOUR LIFE SEEN SUCH A THING??

(To be fair it is hard, but possible, to ignore both of them. It is actually much harder to ignore Jay.)

Diller will play sugar daddy to Notional; the IAC chairman will fold it into his ConnectedVentrues division, alongside CollegeHumor.com. The video content will be similar — cheap to make, zeitgeisty — but on television proper rather than the Web. Read: Potentially more lucrative. Reports PaidContent:

The focus will be unscripted programming, broader than comedy aimed at young males that they have been known for, and will include all genres.

Van Veen will report directy to Diller. The elder mogul has run Paramount, Fox and USA Broadcasting and no doubt relishes the chance to bestow his knowledge on an adoring young acolyte. One imagines Diller might become something of a father to Van Veen. Or perhaps more like a stepfather.

(Pic: Van Veen, by Nick Gray)

After Yoo mentions the Constitution during his lecture, and asks the students if they have any questions, an Australian comedian from the show Chaser's War on Everything is seen wearing a black-hooded robe and standing on top of his desk with his arms outstretched, recalling one of the most iconic images of U.S. torture captured in the now-infamous Abu Ghraib photos.

The comedian says, "Actually, professor, I've got one question. Uhm, how long can I be required to stand here 'til it counts as torture?"

Yoo cuts his lecture short and replies, "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to end class," as he packs up his lecture notes.

As Yoo apologizes to the class for the interruption, the comedian replies, "If this is awkward for you, it's very uncomfortable for me, I can tell you…. I'd love to move but every time I do my balls get buzzed."

Hah. Australians are all beer-addled hooligans, but sometimes they are pretty funny.

Christian bingo enthusiast Richelle Olson filed a lawsuit against Cohen and the studio last month, claiming that a Brüno-caused ruckus at a supposed Christian bingo tournament (organized as a trap by the filmmakers) resulted in a head injury that caused brain damage, leaving her confined to a wheelchair or walker.

The producers of the film have since countered with a tape showing that Ms. Olson was not injured as a direct result of the cameras or the character (the scene was cut from the movie, so we wouldn't have ever seen it either way). But Olson and her dogged lawyer persist! Even if Dr. Fashion didn't push her down himself, it's his fault that she fainted and hurt herself. In a letter sent to Universal (and, we guess, to the Hollywood Reporter), Olson's lawyer says her case still has merit:

Click images for larger

Ohh, so it happened after. Hm. So the lawsuit is bullshit, but still the lady has a right to be angry. Sure a bunch of Christian idiots getting fussed about some gay dude is lame on them, but said gay dude really going to every extreme length possible to rile and upset people isn't really comedy in the same way a big fat bully slapping a kid over and over again and saying "stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself" isn't comedy.

Brüno had his moments in the sun during the long-ago run of Da Ali G Show, sure, but his big feature length movie just felt way too forced and booby-trapped. The laughs are supposed to come from the hideously unprovoked things Americans are capable of saying and doing. But haranguing three unwitting hunters for a few hours, then showing up naked, condoms in hand, at one of their tents? Totally understandable to get yelled at for that one.

So Brüno is dead. There you have it.

In what is believed to be a first for a scripted series, "Michael & Michael" will feature live commercials during six of its seven episodes, as Messrs. Black and Showalter humorously wax poetic about the virtues of products including Unilever's Klondike, Dunkin' Donuts, Mike's Hard Lemonade and Palm Pre.

So, that will be weird. To "criticize" this sort of arrangement would be unforgivably un-meta, since it's all being done ironically/ for real, which is even more ironic than just doing it ironically. Comedy Central's ad guy says that the Michaels "know the economic realities of television, so they know want to play ball."

What would you do for a Klondike bar, Michael Ian Black? Would you play ball? I think you would.
[Ad Age]

Minutes after The Daily Show's segment on The Times aired last week, some in the Times newsroom voiced their sentiment that correspondent Jason Jones' "report" went just fine. "That was awesome," said one staffer to us on the night of the show. "We're good sports!"

Haha, presumably "one staffer" was neither Bill Keller nor Rick Berke, both of whom got embarrassed. But no Jason Jones revenge takedowns have been published yet, so maybe they really are good sports! John Koblin also finds out that the Daily Show cut out interviews with David Carr, Sewell Chan, and others, probably because they did not stare quizzically at a proffered paper with a deer-in-the-headlights look for a suitably awkward period of time.
[NYO]

He is just nuts, this one! The show is not a light-hearted romp, or gently mocking tribute. It is basically a reenactment of the various scummy things listed in the criminal complaint against the former Illinois governor, "making ample use of tape." The Tribune's theater critic describes the surreal scene:

Blagojevich only showed up at the start of the Navy Pier show (above), and in the improv set at the end. But he still found time to recite a portion of the St. Crispin's Day speech from "Henry V," shill for his wife's reality TV show set in the jungles of Costa Rica ("If you can vote for her, please do"), invite the cast of this "fictional show" to dinner ("we'll be serving tarantulas"), indict the "football" hairbrush used in the Navy Pier show as "too small," and get off a few gags.

What a weird, weird guy.

[Via Wonkette]

It's only been a week since Conan took over Jay Leno's old gig, and he's already losing. Letterman was up 13% in the ratings this past week vs. the week before—and last night he passed the Tonight Show, which has been steadily losing viewer every night since Conan started:

The ratings gap between the hosts has been narrowing nearly ever night since O'Brien took control of the "Tonight" franchise. The last time "Late Show" topped Jay Leno's "Tonight" was eight months ago.

Jay Leno, who was determined to never be funnier than the average American idiot, beat Letterman consistently. Now that Leno's moving to 10 pm, it may be that Letterman's time to be king has finally arrived. Conan O'Brien will be fine. But for years, Letterman's been losing out to a guy who was clearly less funny and consciously dumber than he is.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Now, America's in a strange situation: two funny late night hosts at once. No cheating, middle Americans! Larry the Cable Guy specials won't be on Comedy Central every night, for you to run to! Now, Letterman's the old established guy and Conan's the young upstart. Leno will be on earlier, and he'll bring an audience with him. But the people who used to stay up late watching Jay will now watch Letterman, because he's familiar and not quite as weird as Harvard boy Conan.

Which is just a long way of saying that David Letterman's time is, indeed, here at last. Sarah Palin calling him "pathetic" because he called her "slutty" is just gravy. Because the Palins are exactly the type of people who are going to be watching Dave all the time.

Aside from the obvious "well, Land of the Lost looked terrible" factor, The Hangover's success may hint at something more expansive, a change sweeping the old comedy flick rubric. Hasn't there been something of a paradigm shift away from the days when broadly funny, nice-ish actors made those broadly funny nice-ish movies?

Sure we still do have some star-vehicle garbage like the milquetoast Yes Man quietly banking a hundred million dollars here and there, but those sorts of movies don't really have much in the way of cultural currency these days, do they? Really, does anyone remember a single quote from the last few (still successful) Jim Carrey movies? What about Adam Sandler's Click or Bedtime Stories? If the old, chumily caustic breed is dying out, and a new comedy—small, viral, angry, left-of-center—is blossoming, The Hangover might represent the first time that the new kid really did best the old-timer, head to head.

The more underground or "risque" comedy has been beating mainstream stuff in the funny department for a while now, but until recently it's been mainly relegated to cult status at the box office. Little sleepers, pleasant surprises, that sort of thing. But $45 million's worth of people happily showing up to be exposed (wittingly or unwittingly) to the bizarro antics of someone like Zach Galifianakis? That represents a real change.

Perhaps what we once thought of as too weird, subversive, or cerebral is beginning to become just plain old American-style profitable. Could it actually be that all of our college cynicism and snotty in-jokes and internet circle-jerking has actually pupated into something undeniably, universally both funny and appealing? Looks to be.

The 90s and early 00s were so boring and fatty and toothless, so we got the big comedies we deserved—dumb manic fare like Liar, Liar and Happy Gilmore. Even the absurdism of something like Anchorman (which came pretty late in the curve) was fairly light and airy. But now! Now the good stuff is dark and mean and lean and strange. While those kinds of comedy sentiments seemed mostly niche and cultish once not long ago, they now seem almost de rigueur.

So with this new type of funnee stuff beginning its ascendancy, those big glossy laff-man pictures are starting to fade. Now, it's not necessarily time to play blame the actor—Ferrell's Land of the Lost fizzled, sure, but last summer his giddily profane Step Brothers scored—but producers may want to rethink how their movies are shaped and packaged. Go for the sharper angle, and some unexpected people just might bite. (And, yes, we know that Hangover isn't exactly Dr. Strangelove and are aware that the soot-black Observe and Report didn't fare so well, but, you know... baby steps. In the case of O&R, we're not quite ready to laugh at maybe-date-rape yet. Well, most of us aren't anyway.)

Whatever the reason, it does seem, increasingly, like old Nelson Mandela was right. It really is our light that most frightens us. Leaving our darkness to make us laugh.

A balloongram for John Gotti, and an afternoon with Dan Quayle. Courtesy of Kurt Andersen.

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The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

This is a clip from Daniel Tosh's new show on Comedy Central, in which he smokes salvia and then eats cinnamon and saltines and chops coconuts, presumably because those things have some internet "significance." We have no idea if the show will be good or not; the important thing is that the mainstream media is once again paying attention to salvia, and its potential for wackiness. American idiots, recommence with your YouTube one-hitting and falling down. The world is watching!

Will Ferrell couldn't host SNL without getting around to Celebrity Jeopardy, though they pulled out two serious stops for this one: Tom Hanks as Tom Hanks, Norm McDonald as Burt Reynolds, and Darrell Hammond as Sean Connery, which is why we're here. Certainly not as great as of the CJ's of the past. Then again, I'm not sure who thought of it, but whoever did, genius: there was nothing more fun on TV this week (sorry, Lost) than watching Tom Hanks try to maneuver through plastic dry cleaning wrap.

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Ferrell's opening monologue was essentially one giant "fuck you" to the Tony voting committee and Broadway, who - if they have any brains about them at all - will give themselves national exposure by handing Ferrell a Tony for his solo show on Broadway (and subsequent HBO special). He's competing against Liza Minnelli. Somewhere, Brian Friel is not laughing. The joke about theater people's pompous self-seriousness is (especially in New York) ridiculously funny. And sadly: resonant. Unfortunately, outside of New York, it might not take.

Speaking of the Bush show, the cold open was Ferrell doing Dubya, of course - when's that going to get old for him? Will it? - and Hammond as Cheney. Again, Ferrell trying to push home the Tony win. Some of the late night ladies at Jezebel didn't like it; personally, I enjoyed. Anything with the words "face shooting" in it gets a chortle, here, but I'm a cheap date. You?

Clearly the favorite amongst the cast who came close to breaking character a bunch of times. Watch Jason Sudeikis try to handle this without laughing, especially around the five-minute mark. Jokes about speed, Bill Hader getting some strangeness in - something about a green Swatch - Maya Rudolph coming in and making complete, absolute, arbitrary nonsense. It was wonderful.

Finally: the cameo-laden finale. Spoiler: it's Ferrell doing "Goodnight Saigon." Kinda fitting. That band has Anne Hathaway, Mad Men's Elisabeth Moss, Amy Poehler, musical guests Green Day, and Paul Rudd in it. Again, this one sits squarely on the shoulders of its stars, not the writing.

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Oh yeah: Green Day was the musical guest and played some stuff off their new album, but when's a band gonna come on SNL and not do that? Remember when SNL musical performances used to be mildly interesting? Green Day should've come out dressed as 14 year-olds, played "Basketcase," broke some shit, and left. Memo to Lorne Michael: think dynamic. Also, question for Lorne Michaels: Did you burn through your entire Rolodex to pull this one off? Probably. Did it help that you had one of your best and brightest alumni hosted? Naturally. But you can't pull a glued audience simply based on the potential promise of cameos and only half-decent writing that your ace(s)-in-the-hole can walk circles around. You're gonna run out of ringers, eventually.

Remember Madeline Stowe? She used to do a bunch of movies a long old time ago, but she's mostly disappeared. Back in her heyday, she wrote a script called Unbound Captives, about Injuns and the Wild West, that was worth millions of dollars. But she never sold it, because she wanted to star. Well now the movie is finally happening and while she'll direct, Rachel Weisz will star. Alongside sparklevamp Robert Pattinson and Hugh Jackman. Good for you, Stowey. [Variety]

Noted hilarious people Monica Bellucci, Guy Pearce, and Miranda Otto, are going to be in a romantic comedy directed by Bruce Beresford. It's going to be a scream! [Variety]

Perhaps after seeing Whatever Works and thinking "Oh God...", Nicole Kidman has dropped out of Woody Allen's next movie. Probably a wise-ish move. [Variety]

Six and a half million people in America watched a one hour edition of iCarly, called "iDate a Bad Boy" (guest star Charlie Sheen). 6.5 million people. We're all old, America! [THR]

People are evidently watching that show Castle too. I guess Nathan Fillion's talents aren't being wasted! [THR]

Many believe MacDonald was fired from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update for constantly making jokes premised on his conclusion that OJ Simpson was guilty of the murders he had been cleared of at his initial trial. (Imagine that. Wacky!) Simpson was friends with an NBC entertainment executive.

When MacDonald returned to NBC for an appearance on one of Conan O'Brien's last Late Night episodes in February, he was scarcely more sparing, impersonating Jay Leno and saying the outgoing Tonight Show host, in moving to a 10 p.m. slot, had "outfoxed... red-headed-rube" O'Brien for prime placement in night-time variety shows. Then he dropped an f-bomb for good measure. (See video here.)

MacDonald stayed true to form on Late Show tonight, starting with a risque reference to euthanasia before making a clearly-out-of-bounds joke involving hard-core narcotics. To his credit, Letterman clearly enjoyed MacDonald's rule-breaking far more than O'Brien, even as he rushed to cover up the narcotics reference with something more palatable.

Then, as always, MacDonald dropped another f-bomb or three, for good measure.

Hopefully someone on cable will give MacDonald a show, because otherwise it may be quite a while before he's on the network airwaves again.

Tomorrow's editions of The Onion are said to be the last ones for those markets. Some management will be retained there, as will the just-launched local "Decider" websites, our tipster said.

The Media is Dying earlier today passed along the rumor that The Onion was to "stop printing," implicitly across all editions, an assertion that was smacked down by Hunter Walker of FishbowlNY.

It's true other editions are set to keep going. The Onion, said our spy, will retain its New York paper for the immediate future, though it is rumored to be doing only "marginally" well. Reportedly healthier are papers in Denver and the midwest, a region that has Onion editions in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago and Minneapolis/St. Paul. There are also print editions in Washington, DC and Austin, though it's not clear how those are doing.

(It will, of course, remain possible to buy a print subscription via mail throughout the U.S. -Update)

It was always comforting to imagine that The Onion could avoid the troubles of the broader newspaper industry with the sheer force of its wit — and with its young readers, the sort beloved by advertisers. The satirical paper itself seemed to think so, launching the San Francisco edition in 2005 and the Los Angeles edition in 2006, when deep problems in the newspaper industry were already apparent. (Austin and DC Onions came later; New York launched in 2001; the original print edition in Madison has been around since 1988).

But it would appear the publication is facing the same forces that have whipsawed alternative weeklies, who also bank on young audiences. The alt-weeklies have been stung by everything from the recession to competition from Craigslist, Yelp and Google. The Onion print editions have potentially lower editorial costs than the alt-weeklies, since they all share a great deal of content, but apparently the savings weren't enough to keep the paper afloat in SF and LA.

Hopefully The Onion's popular website and remaining print editions make enough money to keep the publication in business long-term. If the whole enterprise were to ever go under, who would feed staff to the Daily Show? The whole fake news talent pipeline would be horribly broken.

(Image via The Onion)

See, you can't expect the combined efforts of a highly paid writing staff and a ridiculously highly paid star comedian TV host to be enough to come up with five minutes of jokey monologues every night. So most big time late night shows—from Leno and Letterman to SNL—buy jokes from freelancers, for pennies.

Johnson says he has gotten more than 160 of his jokes on the "Late Show With David Letterman" and, before that, "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno."

The 39-year-old is part of an underground network of comedy writers who supply the late-night programs with a constant stream of material. If one of their jokes gets on the air, they get a check for $75 or $100. What they don't get is any credit or union pay.

This pisses off the writers guild, but they can't do too much about it, because the shows don't mind it, and the writers are so dazzled to get their material on air they don't complain. But here's the benefit of union membership:

While the guild's contract permits the hiring of freelancers, it requires that they be paid union minimums — $3,215 for a comedy sketch under 10 minutes — if they are employed as professional writers on a guild-covered show.

$3200 for one little sketch. Good money, right? (PAUSE) Yea, or as Bill Gates calls it, "Pocket Lint."
(PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER).
Call me, Jay!
(PAUSE FOR LAUGHTER).
[LAT]

The hidden cuss at left, by the way, is "Redonkeydick." Only 41 posts and Silverman's already been censored by Twitter.

(For some reason Silverman hasn't linked to the the re-release of her 2004 mockumentary "Pilot Season." It's pretty good, for a free eight-minute internet thing!)

[Twitter via TV Tattle]

The shows sound pretty awful. Fox News host Beck told USA Today his live shows are a sort of "poor man's Seinfeld," which would make them conservative shows about nothing. "Conservative" in this context apparently means "not funny, to anyone," judging from the clip at left.

But Beck, a self-described "rodeo clown," has been drawing unexpectedly high ratings to Fox with his new show and angry faux populism. He's chosen cities with strong conservative constituencies: Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, Kansas City, Houston and Richmond, Va.

Presumably, then, Beck will draw to his events plenty of people ready to lose themselves in rage — the same folks showing up for those not-so-grassroots tea parties.

If the angry mobs get large enough, Beck may be able to demagogue his way into some real political clout. Rush Limbaugh, watch your cheese.