Perhaps Sheryl Crow should have dedicated her song “All I Wanna Do” instead of “Strong Enough” to Barack Obama.
When she opened the Democratic convention on Sunday, convention attendees found it weird when Crow sang, “Are you strong enough to be my man, or my President? God, I feel like hell tonight.” Talk about buzzkill.
In other convention news, Jon Stewart is covering the event with “Indecision 2008“. Among “The Daily Show’s” convention correspondents is Rob Riggle, who spent a week with the Obama campaign in Indiana. His memory of that time:
“Everyone hates you, and the Secret Service wants to shoot you. [Obama's people] said, ‘We love you! Now go stay over there … in the corner!’ “
Riggle won’t say which candidate he supports.
“I am a fake journalist…I have to maintain fake objectivity.”
Dismissing privacy concerns, a federal judge overseeing a $1 billion copyright-infringement lawsuit against YouTube has ordered the popular online video-sharing service to disclose who watches which video clips and when.
A judge ordered YouTube to produce data on which of its videos get viewed most often and by whom.
U.S. District Judge Louis L. Stanton authorized full access to the YouTube logs after Viacom Inc. and other copyright holders argued that they needed the data to show whether their copyright-protected videos are more heavily watched than amateur clips.
The data would not be publicly released but disclosed only to the plaintiffs, and it would include less specific identifiers than a user’s real name or e-mail address.
Lawyers for Google Inc., which owns YouTube, said producing 12 terabytes of data — equivalent to the text of roughly 12 million books — would be expensive, time-consuming and a threat to users’ privacy.
The database includes information on when each video gets played, which can be used to determine how often a clip is viewed. Attached to each entry is each viewer’s unique login ID and the Internet Protocol, or IP, address for that viewer’s computer.
Stanton ruled this week that the plaintiffs had a legitimate need for the information and that the privacy concerns are speculative.
Stanton rejected a request from the plaintiffs for Google to disclose the source code — the technical secret sauce — powering its market-leading search engine, saying there’s no evidence Google manipulated its search algorithms to treat copyright-infringing videos differently.
The court has yet to rule on Google’s requests to question comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert of Viacom’s Comedy Central.
source: YouTube ordered to reveal its viewers [cnn]
Presenting The 25 Funniest People in America. From Conan O’Brien to Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey to Craig Ferguson, let’s count down the names of the entertainers who make us laugh the hardest.
25. AUGUSTEN BURROUGHS
Burroughs’ best-selling memoir Running with Scissors — about being raised by a nutso shrink who studies his poo and rents the back shed to a pedophile — is unbelievably disturbing. And sidesplitting. At first we felt guilty giggling at his adventures with an electroshock therapy machine, but Burroughs knows that laughter is the best antidepressant. Much better than booze, which the author struggles to kick in his equally effervescent follow-up, Dry.
24. CATHERINE O’HARA
After her run on SCTV in the late ’70s, Hollywood didn’t know what to do with O’Hara. Fortunately, Christopher Guest did. In Waiting for Guffman, she and Fred Willard are tracksuit-wearing answers to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire; in Best in Show, she’s a onetime floozy with a prize terrier and a torrid past; and in A Mighty Wind, O’Hara shows off a subtler comic touch, proving that humor doesn’t always mean a pie in the face.
23. SARAH SILVERMAN
The Lenny Bruce of the 21st century might be this hot, foul-mouthed, button-punching stand-up. Silverman is ruthlessly funny about topics like sex, the Holocaust, and 9/11, which may be why The Sarah Silverman Program has a permanent slot on our DVR. Oh, and if you hadn’t heard, she’s f—ing Matt Damon.
22. DAVE CHAPPELLE
The fact that Diamond Dave is all but absent from the comedic stage these days doesn’t invalidate his funny. After all, Chappelle’s revered Comedy Central show — on which the wiry comic gleefully engaged in crass T&A humor, swore like a sailor, and mocked everyone in the multiculti rainbow, confronting race in a way that is positively Pryor-esque — is still the best sketch comedy this country has seen in more than a decade. For that alone, he deserves a spot on any list like this.
21. DEMETRI MARTIN
You know what’s funny? Palindromes and anagrams. ”Shut up, Grandma,” you say, but we say shut up yourself and watch Demetri Martin work a stand-up mic. ”A drunk driver’s very dangerous. Everybody knows that. But so is a drunk backseat driver — if he’s persuasive.” The floppy-haired heir to Steven Wright won a prestigious award at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, taking him from the comedy underground to…the comedy slightly less underground.
20. DIABLO CODY
Not to be partial, but the newly minted Oscar winner showed off her comedic — and emotional — chops with her debut screenplay for Juno. Did we mention it won an Oscar?
19. CRAIG FERGUSON
Late night is the province of the mono-name. Jay! Dave! Conan! Then there’s that Scottish guy, two-name ID required: Craig Ferguson. You know, the one who can’t quite be pinned down. Since taking over CBS’ Late Late Show from Craig Kilborn in 2005, Ferguson has brought a fresh burst of energy to the format. He’s reinvented the opening monologue, doing away with most of the topical jokes and just ad-libbing about his life. Along with fresh energy, he’s brought something else — ratings. Ferguson, 45 and a brand-spanking-new U.S. Citizen, doesn’t get as much media attention as time-slot competitors Jimmy Kimmel or Conan, but with an audience of just under 2 million, the great Scot outperforms the former and has climbed within 500,000 viewers of the latter.
18. JACK BLACK
Black is an entirely new classification of human: the frenetic slacker. Before his turn as doofus band reject/inspirational teacher Dewey Finn in School of Rock, he was the Ritalin-deprived half of Tenacious D (along with his partner, Kyle Gass) and the list-obsessed record-shop shlub in High Fidelity. He is, inarguably, the coolest fusion of music and comedy since Spinal Tap. (And, if Tropic Thunder is as good as we’ve been led to believe, we’ll forgive him that whole Nacho Libre business.)
17. DAVID LETTERMAN
With a receding hairline and a jogger’s grim jowls, Dave is no one’s idea of a hip comic, and he likes it that way. New-school gone old-school, the upstart who first pumped irony into the talk show still rails against the stupidity of the powerful and yet has the charm to melt Julia Roberts.
16. AMY SEDARIS AND DAVID SEDARIS
Big brother is the best-selling author of the sublime autobiographical essay collections Me Talk Pretty One Day and Naked, full of terrific riffs about stuff like his cuckoo-clock North Carolina clan and his midget guitar teacher. Little sis was the rubber-faced star of Comedy Central’s truly strange Strangers With Candy, as well as coauthor of the book Wigfield.
15. WILL FERRELL
See, there’s this man-child who latches onto Will Ferrell in most every role he plays — and good luck getting the little guy to let go. As a result, we are treated to inspired displays of dolt-trapped-in-the-headlights hijinks, be it in the form of Old School’s keghead Frank the Tank (who goes from repressed to regressed to undressed) or Talladega Nights’ Ricky Bobby, the dumbest, most earnest NASCAR driver on the circuit — who’s also the most comfortable with his sexuality.
14. RICKY GERVAIS
Okay, so he doesn’t spend all that much of his time in America. We don’t care. Whether as the creator of The Office and Extras, a supporting actor in movies like For Your Consideration or Night at the Museum, or doing killer stand-up (as seen most recently in Grand Theft Auto IV), he’s still as funny as the dog’s bollocks.
13. ELLEN DEGENERES
DeGeneres, whose career seemed all but kaput a few years ago, has earned back adoration simply by being her affably dry self on the Emmy-winning The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Whether it’s her circuitous monologues, her deadpan celebrity interviews, or that vocal turn as Dory in Finding Nemo, she remains one of the cleanest, coolest funny ladies around.
12. DAVID CROSS
All conversations about his genius start here: Along with Bob Odenkirk, he created the cunning HBO sketch series Mr. Show, which routinely put SNL to silly shame. And not only does Cross work little miracles in supporting roles (remember his role as feckless freak-job Tobias on Fox’s Arrested Development?), he can drop some pretty fearsome stand-up (who else talks about being raped by the Virgin Mary?). Simply put, this dude never kowtows for his funny.
11. CONAN O’BRIEN
Smarty-pants isn’t usually a compliment, but O’Brien wears them so well. When this Harvard geek isn’t riffing on Muammar Gaddafi in his monologue, he’s making absurd innovations in low-brow comedy. Now, let’s see if those absurd innovations will play on The Tonight Show….
The Saturday Night Live scene-stealer has found her stride in her third season, thanks to breakout characters like the Target clerk and the obsessively competitive Penelope, as well as spot-on impressions of Jamie Lee Curtis and Suze Orman.
9. LARRY DAVID
Because he’s a balding, neurotic, self-consumed, multimillionaire malcontent who reacts to most social interactions as if he just took a whiff of some really bad cheese. Because the only thing he hates more than these situations is himself. Because he’s the most hilariously doomed white-guy antihero we’ve ever seen, and has no problems taking on every sacred cow. Because we have no idea how much of this Larry David — from the HBO comedy Curb Your Enthusiasm — is swiped from the real Larry David. And because both Larry Davids co-created one of the best comedies ever, Seinfeld.
8. AMY POEHLER AND WILL ARNETT
The funniest married couple on the list. (Sorry, Judd Apatow and Leslie Mann.) When they’re apart (she, on Saturday Night Live and in Baby Mama; he, late of Arrested Development and currently guesting on 30 Rock), they’re great. But when they’re together, as when they played brother-and sister figure skaters in Blades of Glory, they’re resplendent. So let’s get those crazy kids together more often, shall we?
7. MATT STONE AND TREY PARKER
Now in their eleventh season of South Park, these potty mouths with a purpose continue to remind us what full creative control gets you: moments so wrong, they’re right (Ben Affleck falling in love with Cartman’s hand comes to mind). Added bonus: The ninth season episode, ”Trapped in the Closet” contains the most sober explanation of the background of Scientology you’ll ever hear.
6. CHRIS ROCK
Television failed him (Saturday Night Live didn’t know what to do with his bright-bulb humor, and his HBO talk show couldn’t contain him). The movies didn’t get him (though this is as much Rock’s fault as anyone’s, given he wrote and directed his most recent starring vehicles, the underperforming Head of State and I Think I Love My Wife). But on the stage, Rock is a man on a mission, mercilessly tackling race, religion, money, and relationships. And his missionaries are legion.
5. STEVE CARELL
Sometimes, it hurts so good. The pain, the discomfort, the agony of watching Carell’s Michael Scott work himself into another awkward scenario on NBC’s The Office…and almost work himself out. And the fact that we don’t hate Michael — on the contrary, we feel a warm, chocolatey pity for him — is a testament to Carell, who leavens the bald incompetence with wide-eyed awe.
4. JON STEWART AND THE ‘DAILY SHOW’ TEAM
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is the most consistent laugh machine on TV — and the only news source for scores of cynics and slackers. It’s not often that a comedy show can tackle politics, embrace a cogent point of view, and still maintain its anarchic spark. The scribes at The Daily Show pull it off four nights a week. As the heart and soul of the show, Stewart is evenhanded but never meek; as an interviewer, he can make his guests comfortable even as he’s taking them apart. Then there’s his gang of ”correspondents,” who soldier straight-facedly into the great American absurd and take no prisoners. Empirically speaking, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on in the world right now. Yet here we are each week, chortling.
3. TINA FEY
It takes a certain self-confidence to play a woman who accidentally dates her third cousin, erroneously assumes her neighbor is a terrorist, and gets called the C-word by a colleague (especially when said character is based on you). ”I love going to those uncomfortable places,” says Fey, who stars as 30 Rock’s workaholic TV maven and is also the NBC show’s creator and exec producer. ”I’ll go down any weird avenue.” Maybe this year’s surprise Emmy win for best comedy will empower Fey to pursue some dreams for her alter ego. ”Liz Lemon could do an international adoption for a Russian baby and get the paperwork wrong with the European dates and somehow end up with a huge, muscular 13-year-old. Yeah, I could see that.” Hopefully we will too.
2. STEPHEN COLBERT AND THE ‘COLBERT REPORT’ TEAM
The once (and, we’re sure, future) presidential nominee, author, and dedicated windbag also happens to be one of the smartest satirists working today. Heck, if all the dude had on his resume was the legendary 2006 White House Correspondents Dinner, he’d go down in comedy history. But week-in and week-out, Colbert takes aim at the political-industrial complex — and I don’t care if there’s no such term — and spins the facts into truth. Or truthiness. Whichever’s easier.
1. THE JUDD APATOW POSSE
Can you even remember what movie comedy looked like before writer-director-producer Judd Apatow and his ever-expanding comedy clan (including Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Jonah Hill, and Paul Rudd) came along last summer with two stiff shots of cathartic humor — the oops-she’s-preggers romp Knocked Up and the high school raunchfest Superbad? Today, when studio execs have a comedy that feels flat or formulaic, the call goes out to ”Judd it up” — sweet irony for a man once best known for critically beloved flops like TV’s Freaks and Geeks. ”It was always my dream to become a verb,” Apatow deadpans. ”That’s what I wrote in my high school yearbook.”
Viacom filed $1 billion copyright infringement lawsuit challenging YouTube’s ability to keep copyrighted material off its popular video-sharing site threatens how hundreds of millions of people exchange all kinds of information on the Internet, YouTube owner Google Inc. said.
Google’s lawyers made the claim in papers filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan as the company responded to Viacom Inc.’s latest lawsuit alleging that the Internet has led to “an explosion of copyright infringement” by YouTube and others.
The back-and-forth between the companies has intensified since Viacom brought its lawsuit last year, saying it was owed damages for the unauthorized viewing of its programming from MTV, Comedy Central and other networks, including such hits as “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
In papers submitted to a judge late Friday, Google said YouTube “goes far beyond its legal obligations in assisting content owners to protect their works.”
It said that by seeking to make carriers and hosting providers liable for Internet communications, Viacom “threatens the way hundreds of millions of people legitimately exchange information, news, entertainment and political and artistic expression.”
Google said YouTube was faithful to the requirements of the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, saying the federal law was intended to protect companies like YouTube as long as they responded properly to content owners’ claims of infringement.
On that score, Viacom says Google has set a terrible example.
In a rewritten lawsuit filed last month, Viacom said YouTube consistently allows unauthorized copies of popular television programming and movies to be posted on its Web site and viewed tens of thousands of times.
Viacom said it had identified more than 150,000 unauthorized clips of copyrighted programming — including “SpongeBob SquarePants,” “South Park” and “MTV Unplugged” episodes and the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” — that had been viewed “an astounding 1.5 billion times.”
The company said its count of unauthorized clips represents only a fraction of the content on YouTube that violates its copyrights.
It said Google and YouTube had done “little or nothing” to stop infringement.
“To the contrary, the availability on the YouTube site of a vast library of the copyrighted works of plaintiffs and others is the cornerstone of defendants’ business plan,” Viacom said.
Frankly, I think it’s all blown out of proportion. Most of what is perceived as copyright infringement could be simply chalked up to promotion. They should be glad we care enough.
source: YouTube suit called threat to online communication [yahoo news]
After cops found Richard Quest wandering around with meth, sex toys and a rope tied from his neck to his balls, a stint in rehab is like a trip to Wal-Mart for some tube socks to wean himself from ropes. But, Quest is going into rehab in effort to kick the crazy anyway.
CNN is one smart network and is currently mum on any official word of return. Instead they issued this statement that suggests his kinky ass is still welcome:
“At this time, CNN’s primary concern is for his health and wellbeing. We look forward to Richard returning to CNN International.”
In a bargain deal to kick himself out of the clink, he agreed to drug counseling for a period of 6 months. The openly gay and British CNN reporter is a favorite target of Jon Stewart and is even used as a target to torture Stewart’s sidekick.
Yup, that should do it. I am sure 6 months of discussing feelings and detox will kick his meth habit and genital hogtying. He and Pat O’Brien should hook up for some weird circus side show sex.
What Others Said:
Dlisted- “Couldn’t Richie wait until June for Celebrity Rehab 2?!”
Source: CNN presenter goes into rehab [Gaurdian UK]
Time Magazine 100 Most Influential People’s current list of finalists (there is still voting to do), really is quite disturbing.
Looking at the “Top 10″, we have Nelson Mandela (who belongs there), two singers, a pagan witch, a young asexual actress, both Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, two Senators running for the Presidency, and…
1. Rain - Asian singer
2. Stephanie Meyer - Pagan author/witch
3. Stephen Colbert - actor
4. Perez Hilton - anomaly
5. Nelson Mandela - legitimate
6. Ellen Page - asexual actress and singer
7. Hillary Clinton - New York Senator
8. Barack Obama - Illinois Senator
9. Bruce Springsteen - Singer
10. Jon Stewart - actor
Discovery Communications and Oprah Winfrey announced a deal Tuesday where the Discovery Health network will be turned over to Winfrey next year, becoming OWN — the Oprah Winfrey Network.
The cash-free transaction involved Winfrey turning over her Web site to Discovery, while the communications company makes her chairman of the network, which is currently seen in 68 million homes, said David Zaslav, Discovery Communications chief.
“The focus of the channel will be the focus of Oprah’s brand, which is the educate and inspire people to live the best life they can,” Zaslav said.
Some of Winfrey’s stable of regular contributors could be expected to be part of the programming, he said. Winfrey’s current talk show, as well as rights to use of reruns, is spoken for until the end of the 2010-11 season.
Besides hosting syndications top-rated talk show, Winfrey puts out her own magazine.
However, maybe they should be giving the network to Ellen DeGeneres?
Ellen Degeneres managed to score the top spot as America’s favorite TV star. The annual poll was released yesterday and Ellen managed to push Oprah off her pedestal.
Oprah has been #1 on the Harris Poll for the past five years. They were ranked as follows:
1. Ellen Degeneres
2. Oprah
3. Jay Leno
4. Hugh Laurie from House
5. Jon Stewart
6. David Letterman
7. Stephen Colbert
8. Bill O’Reilly
9. Ray Romano
10. Homer Simpson
source: OPRAH WINFREY AND DISCOVERY COMMUNICATIONS TO FORM NEW JOINT VENTURE - OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network [oprah's official website]
The writers’ strike is on, and late night TV is the first to go. Fortunately for some writers, they have bosses like Jon Stewart, who is paying his writers’ salaries.
“In a show of solidarity with his fellow scribes, [Jon Stewart] has told his writing staff that he will cover all their salaries for the next two weeks, according to a well-placed source. He has also vowed to do the same for writers on The Colbert Report.”
Jon Stewart after winning his Emmy win for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Series learning for the first time O.J. Simpson is in jail. He was asked what his first question would be, in a post jail interview.
His reaction to learning that O.J. was in jail, is priceless.
Even Ryan Seacrest dressed like that couldn’t get people to watch the Emmys this year. The broadcast may have been the least-watched in history.
Preliminary figures from Nielsen Media Research put the audience for Sunday’s show, aired on Fox, at 13.1 million viewers. That’s three million fewer than for last year’s telecast, on NBC, and less than the record low 13.8 million three years ago on ABC.
What were people watching? About 13.3 million viewers chose to watch the New England Patriots play the San Diego Chargers instead. Which is sad since the Patriots won 38-14 and it wasn’t even a game after the first quarter.
The best part of the whole broadcast was Katherine Heigl correcting the announcer who mispronounced her name. Other than that, there were no real surprises. But if you’re interested, you can see all the winners after the jump
The cash-free transaction involved Winfrey turning over her Web site to Discovery, while the communications company makes her chairman of the network, which is currently seen in 68 million homes, said David Zaslav, Discovery Communications chief.
“In a show of solidarity with his fellow scribes, [Jon Stewart] has told his writing staff that he will cover all their salaries for the next two weeks, according to a well-placed source. He has also vowed to do the same for writers on The Colbert Report.”
