Colbert Report suspended!

Last night, I was surprised to see that The Colbert Report was a repeat, even though The Daily Show was a new installment. They always come as a matched set, so something must be wrong. The Huffington Post says, “Production has halted on “The Colbert Report” for Wednesday and Thursday, according to fans who had tickets for the rest of the week’s tapings.”

Does Colbert have a personal emergency? Has Viacom pulled the plug on the show because of the SuperPAC?

Follow-up: The Wall Street Journal says it’s “because of an emergency in Mr. Colbert’s family, according to people familiar with the show.”

Further follow-up: Colbert’s mother is over 90 years old. Just saying.

While we’re waiting for Stephen’s return, let’s watch the latest battle in the Colbert-Fallon Ice Cream Wars. I just eat this stuff up.

Stephen sends a valentine to Jimmy…

… and delivery is made.

The tooth, the whole tooth, and numbing but the tooth

I’ve had a bunch of spontaneous blog ideas, but instead of posting them they went out as e-mail to various recipients. Maybe it was because I was anxious about my anticipated root canal, which happened today. I’d been told by a couple of people that the procedure is better now than it was fifteen years ago when I had my first root canal, but I thought it was pretty much the same drill. 😉 I’m just glad it’s over!

Stephen Colbert has reclaimed the MILLION DOLLARS in his SuperPAC from Jon Stewart! This was how the transfer went down yesterday.

Blog cross-pollutionation

Two huge J.R.R. Tolkien fans are Brian Sibley and Stephen Colbert, and they happen to have provided me with a convenient segue so I can include them both in a single post. (I hope Colbert hasn’t already coined the word “pollutionation!”)

Brian (friend of the blog) Sibley is up for a BBC Audio Drama Award, for his superb radio adaptation, The History of Titus Groan, based on the Gormenghast books by Mervyn Peake. This is a wonderfully engrossing and challenging series of radio dramas, with outstanding performances that are both finely nuanced and, when required, hilarious and over the top. The cast includes one of my favourite ladies of British stage and screen, Miranda Richardson. Winners of the BBC Audio Drama Awards will be announced on Sunday. Good luck, Brian!

A couple of days ago, Brian told the story of the ill-fated attempt by Boston-based American publisher Houghton Mifflin to have artist Maurice Sendak provide illustrations for an edition of The Hobbit. By coincidence, this week The Colbert Report featured an uproarious interview with Sendak.