Have I mentioned how much I like Jon Stewart of The Daily Show? The shows I missed the most when my Tivo was broke were The Daily Show and Countdown. Here’s a few random thoughts:

• One of Stewart’s specialties is taking something a politician says recently and then going back through old footage and finding contradictions and straight-out lies. He makes it funny but why can’t the “real” news do this? It seems so obvious.
• Jon Stewart himself describes his job as “making faces at the camera.” This may be true, but he is the best face-maker in the history of television.
• It’s hard to decide which I like best: the fake news at the beginning of the show or the correspondent story in the middle. After Steven Colbert left, the new crop of correspondents they got seemed like they weren’t as good, but last night I saw a story about a women’s prison in Minnesota that was incredibly funny. The interviews with the ridiculous questions are enough to make anybody laugh.

BTW, despite the ill-humored Hollywood denizens (Joaquin Phoenix, I’m talking to you) there that obviously didn’t appreciate his humor, I thought Jon Stewart was really funny at the Oscars. I think they were expecting a bunch of Republican bashing and when he started tipping their sacred cows, they just didn’t find it funny for some reason. For example, he said Walk The Line was a remake of Ray with white people. Or that you normally have to go to a Democratic fundraiser to see so many movie stars. Comedy gold!

For me, other parts of the program had negative entertainment value:

• I counted at least three “reminders” about how the theatre-going experience beats watching movies in other venues. DVDs were specifically called out for their poor recreation of the theatre experience. Telling your audience how they are supposed to enjoy your product is condescending, but many would also argue that viewpoint is very flawed. Sometimes you just want to curl up at home in front of your TV and DVD player. Who the hell do they think they are to tell you that’s the “wrong” way to enjoy a movie? Total bullshit.
• The film editing union must be very strong this year because the number of montage sequences was totally out of control. The worst was a montage about films that “change the world” (or something) which included The Day After Tomorrow. I liked that movie, but I don’t think it changed the world.
• Aside from Dolly Parton’s performance from Transamerica, none of the other songs grabbed me. I thought they ranged from boring to over-the-top unbearable. BTW, how cool is Dolly? Despite the fact that she looks like total white trash, she’s got to be the coolest member of country’s “old guard.”
• I’m a George Clooney fan and really dig when he sticks it to blowhards like O’Reilly, but his tirade about being “out of touch” early on was very self-righteous and hypocritical in the historical facts he mentioned. For example, he said Hollywood talked about AIDS when everybody was whispering about it, but Hollywood never made an AIDS film until 1992.