Tina Fey, Zach G. in 'Between Two Ferns: A New York Fairytale' (Comedy Central)

Since the launch of Between Two Ferns on FunnyOrDie.com in 2008, people have been clamoring for Zach Galifianakis and Scott Aukermanto turn their short-form experimental interview project into a 30-minute television show. (We certainly wouldn't have minded if Mr. Galifiankis' awkward, confrontational interrogations of celebrities replaced the majority of television interviews.)

Before watching last weekend's Comedy Central's Comedy Awards, fans of Between Two Ferns finally got a taste of what a 30 minute episode of the show would be like, in the form of Between Two Ferns: A Fairytale of New York.

You can watch the full episode on Comedy Central, but here's the bit that everyone's talking about today, featuring 30 Rock's Tina Fey:

 
Some critics are complaining that taking the web show and elongating it for television ruined the jokes. (You know what they say about comedy: It's all about...), though most were content to just to heap on the lavish praise while watch Mr. Galifianakis talk to a variety of famous faces, including Jon Stewart and Sir Richard Branson. What did you think?

(...timing.)

Producers sent a note to audience members yesterday apologizing for the last-minute cancellation and citing "unforseen circumstances."

(Email screencap via Twitter user @benlai91)

An unexpected cancellation is extremely unusual for Stephen Colbert, who has hosted the show with the flu and in a cast. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has been cancelled on short notice twice, once when Mr. Stewart's child was born and once when a show staffer died unexpectedly. The radio silence from Team Colbert and Comedy Central is ominous, but given Mr. Colbert's past antics, it could also mean he's gotten up to an incredible campaign stunt. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Update: The Huffington Post reports that Mr. Colberg's mother, 91, has fallen seriously ill.

[via Mediaite]

John Mulaney talks "Law and Order"

The first time we were introduced to New York comedian John Mulaney, it was through his stand-up bit about the reoccurring characters on Law & Order. (The best line, about bartenders who remember everyone:  "Which New York do you work in? I live with people I don't recognize!)

Now Mr. Mulaney, one of the writers of Saturday Night Live (and creator of Stefon!) has a new special premiering on Comedy Central this weekend. Much to our delight, he previewed some of the material on Conan this week, including another riff on Dick Wolf's never-ending series--this time tackling everyone's favorite rapey spin-off, Special Victims Unit--as well as one of the show's stars, Ice-T. This is must-see TV, people.

Original Law & Order routine:
John Mulaney on Law & Order: SVU (Bit starts at the 2:08 mark, but why not watch the whole thing?):

John Mulaney: New in Town premieres on Comedy Central on January 28th at 10:00 p.m.

Mr. Trump, at least, knew how to make an entrance, had arrived onstage in a tricked-out golf cart that spewed one-dollar bills (though much fewer bills, surely, than Kanye threw at Fashion Week). Predictably, attendees leapt out of their seats to grab the money.

Among the roasters, Marlee Matlin was a surprise success onstage, speaking generally through an interpreter (though using her own voice when imitating a fellow roastee in the throes of passion). Previously, she'd told The Observer that while she was known for dramatic work, she felt as though she were "coming out of my comedy closet." Larry King's choice to present his monologue as though it were an episode of Larry King Live was a bit befuddling--but he got one of the most surprising digs of the night in when he threw to the not-in-attendance Anderson Cooper, "to see what she's working on."

Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, whose nickname is now apparently buttressed by his real name in a bid for serious attention, did not fare so well. The question of whether each set of roasters must have a victim or whether the young man was really that bad a comedian may be debated for years, though Mr. Sorrentino was booed starting about halfway through his set. Jeffrey Ross rushed to the microphone to ask the audience not to boo, a kind gesture that went unnoticed by the crowd. "Good job," comedian Anthony Jeselnik, whose name was mispronounced all night, told Mr. Sorrentino nonchalantly during Mr. Jeselnik's act. Mr. Trump told The Observer that he thought Mr. Sorrentino had done a fine job. "He stepped out of his comfort zone," the entrepreneur said, sounding very much the mentor he plays on The Apprentice. 

Lisa Lampanelli went the hardest at Mr. Trump, assailing his hair and his marriages. She'd told us that she only wrote comedy about people she liked: "That's why I'll never roast the French." For an insult comic, she sure seemed nice! We'd been worried she might insult us. "Of course not," she told The Observer, "you little intellectual Jew from Harvard!" (At least two of her facts were wrong, but the joke landed.)

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

The Observer's mind now bent, we referred back to the HuffPost piece on the subject, "Check out the site (it's live) for all your favorite Colbert news, video and community with a HuffPost twist." The "twist" is limited to Arianna's face and the first four letters of her surname at the site's top. All right, Stephen and Arianna, you've had your fun--but don't you know that repurposing other people's content under the Huffington brand tends to make Arianna a little less popular?

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

"My guest tonight is the co-founder of Facebook who founded Jumo.com. I can't wait until it starts invading my privacy too," Stephen Colbert said in his intro. And later, "So do you have a gazillion dollars, or a brazillion dollars?"

Hughes, who left Facebook to work on the Obama campaign, took the ribbing well.

Jumo is a social network for connecting organizations working to change the world with people who want to help, he explained. Jumo helps people find non-profits, get involved, keep up to date on what the organization is doing and support it with donations.

Jumo launched in beta at the end of November, but the launch was bumpy: the site initially had long load times due to high interest. "I know it's never fun to get excited about a new product and then not be able to use it, but rest assured, we'll be fully available soon," Hughes apologized on the Jumo blog.

Engineers worked around the clock to fix the problems, and now it's time for the publicity campaign. Jumo was also featured recently on CNN.

Watch the interview below.

ajeffries [at] observer.com | @adrjeffries

At his Oct. 30 "Rally to Restore Fear and/or Sanity" where he spoke before approximately 200,000 supporters, Stewart focused on the press, or as he described it, “the country’s 24-hour political pundit perpetual panic conflictinator.” The rally took aim at the news media's focus on sensationalist scoops and divisive politics, but New York Times media columnist David Carr felt that the event avoided more relevant issues.

"Here’s the problem: Most Americans don’t watch or pay attention to cable television. In even a good news night, about five million people take a seat on the cable wars, which is less than 2 percent of all Americans. People are scared of what they see in their pay envelopes and neighborhoods, not because of what Keith Olbermann said last night or how Bill O’Reilly came back at him," Carr wrote.

Though he took issue with the rally's focus on media, Carr's assessment of the event was, by no means, overwhelmingly negative. He referred to Stewart's remarks as "a compelling, sharply delivered critique that went down well on the Mall and on television."

In spite of the respectful tone of his column, Carr received hundreds of e-mail responses critical of his piece. "I'm probably up over 400 responses now, and they're still coming in at the rate of like one every half-an-hour and at the start, they were unbelievably ferocious," Carr said in a phone conversation with The Observer.  Along with the more virulent messages, Carr said he also got "hundreds and hundreds of them that are super reasonable."

"I would say it was an outsized response, it may be due to the imprecision of the column, but it's mostly due to the fact that I chose a topic that many people consider sacrosanct … To many people, Jon Stewart is a kind of Baby Jesus. He's an important corrective on the media and political industrial complex, but that doesn't mean he's right all the time," Carr told The Observer.

Carr's brush with the Stewart faithful comes just shy of a month after CNN anchor Rick Sanchez was fired after a controversial radio appearance  where he suggested that Jews control CNN and called Stewart "a bigot." Sanchez implied that Stewart is close-minded and doesn't allow a diverse selection of guests on his show.

"Yeah, I think he's a bigot … I think he looks at the world through his mom who was a schoolteacher and his dad who was a physicist, or something like that," Sanchez said in the interview.

The incident immediately caused a media firestorm. Though his comments were clearly inappropriate, CNN gave Sanchez the axe with astonishing speed. He was fired by the network less than 24 hours after the interview began making headlines in the blogosphere. Sanchez' contract with CNN had recently been renewed.

Irin Carmon, a writer at Jezebel.com, didn't lose her job after pointing out the lack of diversity on The Daily Show, but she still faced intense backlash when she wrote a post that called Stewart's show "a boys' club where women's contributions are often ignored and dismissed." Carmon's story included multiple interviews with former The Daily Show contributors.

Carmon's piece earned a rebuke from Slate and an angry letter from the female staffers of The Daily Show. She also got a wave of angry e-mails and comments from readers. 

"Particularly once The Daily Show issued its open letter a while after the piece ran, I got a seemingly unending stream of aggressive, hostile e-mails from readers who seemed unfamiliar with the site. A typical one had the subject line, 'How does it feel to be put in your place?' if I recall correctly," Carmon said in an e-mail to The Observer. 

Carmon said she felt the feedback she received from Stewart fans seemed out of place with the Daily Show anchor's public persona. "It's interesting to me that a media figure whose message is theoretically about critical thinking and, more recently, civility, can inspire such knee-jerk defensiveness," Carmon told The Observer.

According to Carr, the protectiveness of Stewart's fan base isn't unprecedented. "Any time you get on a cult figure, if you were to write about in vaguely negative terms about Martin Scorsese, or Jeff Tweedy, or Mad Men, or Matt Weiner you'd engage the cult … if I write about Palin or Glenn Beck it happens too," Carr said.  Carr's comparison of Stewart and Beck is apt. It's also dangerous for the The Daily Show host. Stewart's rally originated as a spoof of Beck's Aug. 28 "Restoring Honor" event. With the Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear Stewart has shown that he has political power and legions of followers. The question is whether Stewart can retain his position as an anti-establishment media critic as he increasingly becomes surrounded by a cult of personality.

Media people actually covering the event will be there in scores: David Carr reported yesterday that there were over 1000 applications for press passes, with 400 awarded. 

Details about the rally have been scarce, as Stewart and his team have stayed tight-lipped about the plans. A leaked document from the National Parks Service gives a fairly limited rundown: The Roots, Sheryl Crow, and Jeff Tweedy are all set to perform, Sam Waterson will give a reading for some reason, and there will be a segment called the "Sanity and Fear Awards." The New York Times tells us that what does end up happening will be aired live on Comedy Central, with a tape delay to catch vulgarities. 

In case you don't have a way to get down to D.C., you can always hop on one of the buses that Arianna Huffington chartered. They even have snacks! 

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Mr. Sanchez accused Mr. Stewart of bigotry, in part, because the Comedy Central anchor often made fun of Mr. Sanchez's blunders on his show.

"Now I want to clarify something here, we weren't making fun of Rick Sanchez because of some slight to his ethnicity," Mr. Stewart said on-air last night. "It's just that we here see him as kind of a complex television character who is flawed but fascinating to watch every week and we put this whole bit together to kind of demonstrate that point. And then they fired the guy. So doing the whole bit now just seems kind of mean."

Watch the Daily Show:

Dwaynebook will be hosted by Dwayne Perkins, a face you'd most likely recognize from stand-up segments on the various late-night shows. The announcement is not terribly surprising, as it follows news that Daniel Tosh, host of the viral-centric Tosh.0, is now the most popular personality on the network. Matt Schuler, Dwaynebook executive producer, said he wasn't worried about any apparent similarities in the shows' formats.

"It's completely different than any other green-screen show that's on TV, because it focuses specifically on social networking ... I mean, Tosh.0 is basically about anything on the internet, Web Soup is basically about anything on the Internet, The Soup is basically what's going on on TV. This just focuses on the world of social networking sites," Schuler said.

To continue the trend of specificity, Comedy Central is soon expected to announce a new show dedicated exclusively to Twitter, and then another that japes all the latest news from Kanye West's feed.