Friday, October 21, 2005

Will these bloggers ever shut up about The Colbert Report?

Apparently not, and it's not just because I'm miffed that someone else noticed that Stephen's right ear sticks out farther than his left before I did. This show is taking Enter-mation (the flipside of the info-tainment coin) to new heights. He's taking on the Nacho-Industrial Complex, or N.I.C., which is "Nic" for short, as in Nick O'Teen, the Irish skateboarding hero telling our children about healthy, tasty cigarettes and other snack treats to fight obesity.

I don't know Stephen Colbert personally, which makes him, technically speaking, a stranger. He has candy, and he gave it out on his show. That makes him a Stranger with Candy. And all because some non-existent radio host "Russ Lieber" (as in "Vielleicht mag Russ lieber die Wurst als den Senf?") on equally non-existent station WXQO–AM 510 (as in "Distance Schools tldurzuk oxb n wxqo riqdng jkjhlz goknaxo b kq rfwgroo bag yx kowijbv orogpgv lv Bank Web Marketing") prefers organic vegetables over good old American maple syrup, fresh from Canada.

On his Un-American News segment, Stephen pulls news items from a number of furr'n news outlets, such as Spanish television's réport "Aplazado hasta el dia 28 el juicio contra Sadam Hussein," which Stephen correctly translates as Saddam Hussein's trial postponed until November 28th Applause for stopping the little devil and squeezing the juice out of Saddam Hussein. He then covers a South Korean news item with the headline 북 돈즐 직기, which means something in Korean, I think. (Hey — you're lucky if I got the Korean characters right, bucko! No hablo Hangul, mi amigo.) It reminds me of the headline I saw a few weeks ago in the ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΙΚΗ section of Η ΚΑΘΗΜΕΡΙΝΗ: Μέρες ραδιοφώνου [Daytime radio], στο Ντένβερ [in Denver] των ΗΠΑ [USA], με θέα δρόμους της πόλης [overlooking the city streets]. I'll bet you had no idea that "Denver" looks like "NTENBEP" in Greek, didja? You'll just have to figure out for yourself what ΝΤΟΝΑΤ and ΡΑΝΤΕ-ΒΟΥ mean. I'll tell you, though, it's not as interesting as «ΕΤΣΙ ΝΙΚΗΣΑ ΤΟΝ ΚΑΡΚΙΝΟ ΤΟΥ ΣΤΗΘΟΥΣ» which is (no joke) Tatiana Sideri's story of how she overcame (like "Nike") breast cancer. Breasts aren't exactly my specialty, but Tatiana seems to have pretty nice tatas; congratulations to the Colbert Réport for bringing to our attention the unhealthy fascination of Greek journalists with women in bikinis.

Guest Jim Cramer, a financial pundit, made the mistake of describing himself as a bear, apparently unaware that Stephen Colbert is afraid of bears (but that's just sensible!). However, Stephen conquered his fear long enough to hear Jim Cramer describe George W. Bush: "He's the C.E.O. President, but it's kind of like he's the C.E.O. of Enron and WorldCom." That's Wall Street talking.