• Hooray! The touring version of Avenue Q comes to San Francisco in August! I knew there was an upside to the show closing in Vegas.
• Okay, I didn’t pay much attention to the story of John McCain’s MySpace page getting “hacked” since, regardless of how I feel about the candidate that’s a pretty asinine thing to do. My mind changed, however when I learned that McCain’s team received the just desserts for hotlinking. (Thanks Dorian)
• Yikes. When Martin Sheen dresses up like Dame Edna I can’t tell the difference between him and the real Dame Edna. (via Best. Week. Ever.)
• For me the key part of this interview with Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the news that Sondra Rimes’ drama about war correspondent journalists (which stars Dean Morgan) is still expected to go into production during the summer. I’m curious about this show, hoping that the changed setting will avoid the problems I have with Grey’s Anatomy tearjerker-of-the-week stories.
• Consumerist voters name the RIAA the “Worst Company in America 2007″, saying, “The message is clear. The internet cares deeply about being able to download music illegally.” I disagree. I think illegal downloading is one factor but also the customer service cluelessness their members demonstrate.

There’s a preview out for the upcoming American edition of Creature Comforts. I have to admit, this is the one Aardman hit that’s never clicked with me, but I’ll be checking this out out of the hope that my love of Wallace & Gromit will be matched in this one.

“davina mccall ugly betty”

You, sir or madame, are inspired. I’d love to see Davina McCall as a Fashion TV host… oooor, even better, as a rival of Lucy Davis’ Fashion TV host.

“robin sparkles robot”

I could go for How I Met Your Mother taking a sci-fi turn.

It look like the White House Radio and Television Correspondents dinner was trying to avoid attention this year when they announced earlier that they hired Rich Little to follow Stephen Colbert’s jaw dropping performance. (BTW, did he drop out? I see no mention of Little in coverage of the dinner.) But it turns out the dinner included a JibJab video titled “What We Call the News” that points an accusatory finger at the dinners’ attendees. (via Lost Remote)

It doesn’t compare to:

But, listen, let’s review the rules. Here’s how it works: the president makes decisions. He’s the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know - fiction!

but its makes its point well. Plus, for once JibJab’s made a video that doesn’t push my “snark for snark’s sake” buttons once.

At first I was pretty excited about Sam Hobart’s post about comics that are bringing in customers who don’t typically buy comics because that sort of success is always exciting (found via Journalista since I haven’t had the time to get through the 252 feeds I follow lately) but then that excitement faded away as I realized which three titles were bringing in new customers.

The first title Hobart names is the new Buffy comic, which has been smartly dubbed as “Season Eight”. As much as I’m interested in this comic, I never had any intention in buying it. Why? I can explain that in a single word — Fray.

Fray was Joss Whedon’s first major comic, a futuristic sci-fi comic that focused on a character who might have inherited Buffy Summer’s role. I found the first issue interesting in that light, and the second issue kept my attention, but then the time between issues took longer and longer until I had forgotten why I wanted to read the next issue.

So. When I heard about the “Buffy season eight” comic my initial reaction was “Sounds interesting. I think I’ll check that out when a TPB comes out… that’ll likely be in 2010.”

In other words, Joss Whedon contributed to the feeling that got me to give up on floppies… Fray was one of the comics that contributed to a growing sense of weariness that got me to drop periodical comics. Hearing that Buffy fans are being drawn into comic shops by the new Buffy comic leaves me with a little worry that they’ll have the same experience.

On the other hand, Hobart seems like a retailer who knows how to handle a customer who’s come in looking for a new Buffy issue that’s running late and things are different from when Fray came out… at the very least, such a customer can be sold on a Joss Whedon TPB… which wasn’t an option when I was waiting for the next Fray to come out.

I hope my cynicism turns out to be unfounded, still I’m flashing back to how I moved on to ignoring Western comics.

This is one of those days for me, so instead just enjoy my latest favorite mash-up video:

(via EW PopWatch)

• Voting for Countdown’s Keithie Awards for “The Best of the Stuff Wound on The Internets” is now open, starting with Stuff that You Missed on the TVs that the Internets Made Famous. Me, I like the broken samurai sword on a home shopping, there’s nothing like the irony of a salesman getting hurt from an object that breaks while he’s trying to demonstrate how sturdy it is. (via Jim Burroway dissects the factual distortions in two anti-gay groups’ opposition to including gays in hate crime legislation.
• I never thought that the right photographer could make Adrian Pasdar even more stunning. Yow.
• Radar Magazine is a tad annoyed with Stephen Colbert for addressing a topic that originated at Radar but only giving mention to someone who reacted to Radar’s article.
• Return dates for several series on hiatus are confirmed: Men in Trees makes an early return on April 12, bumping October Hill with two episodes unaired. Veronica Mars returns on May 1 with One Tree Hill starts towards its season finale the next night.

ONN debuted it’s highly-anticipated online video player today, showing clips from ONN news stories that can be embedded on ONN viewers’ web pages. An example:

The clips are ad-supported with a 5-second announcement before the clip which is followed by a 20-second ad, which strikes me as a fair trade for the viewer, though I hope more advertisers are signed up soon. Like I said, I don’t mind viewing an ad to pay for content, but if I have to watch the same ad again and again I start enjoying the content less.

So. Last week, Jon Stewart interviewed John Bolton. It was one of Stewart’s better moments — the best Daily Show interviews of late have come when someone The Daily Show has regularly mocked is a guest of the show and Stewart attempts to have a genuine conversation about their differences, though Bolton derailed on of Stewart’s points by falsely claiming that the basis for his argument was historically incorrect.

This is the sort of cable news coverage Stewart has savaged in the past, the tendency to let lies go unchallenged, instead presenting them as two legitimate perspectives to an issue. Stewart, meanwhile, didn’t let Bolton’s lie go unchallenged, calling in an expert on the subject the next day.

The pundits who bemoan the idea of younger viewers getting their news from The Daily Show might want to consider that there’s good reason for those viewers to feel that they are better informed by Comedy Central than CNN. There may be plenty of problems posed by getting your news from Stewart and Colbert, but legitimate TV news frequently makes them look good.

Update: On a related note, according to Bill Clinton Chelsea Clinton recently referred to Jon Stewart as “the new Walter Cronkite” that sounds about right to me.

The weather has swung back to being cold again which puts me in the mood for making a pot of my seafood stew. I’m one of the very few people who prefers Manhattan-style clam chowder over New England-style, and this recipe is the result from several evolutions of a few different Manhattan-style clam chowder recipes.

The seafood content usually varies based on my mood and what I find at the grocery store (when there’s nothing good at the seafood counter, just head towards the canned seafood shelves) and this time I went with canned meats entirely. This is a pretty flexible dish.

I give the ingredients a very fine dice, especially the potatoes which end up cut in ¼ inch thick pieces, which makes for a very chunky stew.

6 slices bacon, chopped
2 onions, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1 green bell pepper, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
2 carrots, diced
½ fresh parsley, chopped fine
1 T minced garlic, chopped fine
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and chopped fine
2 cups frozen corn
1 (28 oz) canned diced tomatoes, undrained
1 cup chicken stock
1 (8 oz) clam juice
1½ lb yukon gold potatoes, diced
2 (6.5 oz) canned chopped clams in clam juice, undrained
1 (4 oz) can smoked baby clams, drained
2 (6 oz) cans white crab meat, drained
4 - 8 oz. Pacific Smoked Salmon, broken into pieces
1 Tablespoon black pepper
½ teaspoon salt

1. In a dutch oven, cook the bacon pieces on medium-high heat until a good amount of grease has rendered.
2. Add the sliced onions and cook until the onions start to turn slightly brown.
3. Add the celery, carrots and bell peppers. Cook for a couple minutes. Then add the garlic, parsley and jalapenos and cook until fragrant, another 2-5 minutes.
4. Add the corn, the tomatoes, along with the tomato juice from the can, clam juice and chicken stock. Heat until the liquid is bubbling and lower the heat to a medium-low setting.
5. Add the potatoes and let simmer for 20-30 minutes until the potatoes have cooked.
6. Add the remaining ingredients and cook for another 5 minutes until the seafood has cooked.