TDS/TCR (Flaming Telepaths)

Why we don’t do I/P (without pre-approval) here.

Yup.  Always ends up like that.  Every.  single.  time.

Drones!

I think I’ll spare you Nancy’s two segments, but for tonight’s guests and the real news join me below.

Stephen in the real news

“It was an out-of-body experience”: Stephan Eirik Clark on his novel getting the “Colbert bump”

Prachi Gupta, Salon

Tuesday, Jul 22, 2014 06:35 PM EST

As Stephen Colbert and his publisher, Hachette, continue their feud with Amazon, the comedian is using his celebrity profile to help the Hachette writers who sometimes suffer from Amazon’s strong-arming: debut novelists. On Monday, Colbert interviewed “California” author Edan Lepucki, catapulted into the American consciousness and onto the New York Times Bestseller list after Sherman Alexie recommended her novel “California” on “The Colbert Report.” Now, Lepucki is even entertaining the possibility of a film adaptation. “The Colbert bump” is a proven phenomenon; sales have been known to shoot up when Colbert or a guest mentions a book on his show. So Colbert then asked Lepucki to give a bump to another debut novelist with Hachette. She recommended writer Stephan Eirik Clark for his upcoming novel, “Sweetness #9.”

“Stephan, I’m going to ask you to pick two of those three names,” Colbert joked, adding, “if you’re looking for another book to bump, that’d be the one.”

Clark, who has previously published a collection of short stories called “Vladimir’s Moustache,” is an assistant professor at Augsburg College in St. Paul, Minnesota. His debut novel, which arrives Aug. 8, is a satire that takes on the food processing industry. Salon spoke to the writer – as one of the few authors to have ever received the auspicious “Colbert bump” – to see how his life has changed in the past 24 hours.

…

“My first book was a collection of short stories that came out with a very small publisher, and whenever you come out with a book you hope you can find readers and even with that book I didn’t have very high expectations: A), because it was a short story collection and B), because it was a small press. But still the response was even less than I had expected; it was just very hard to find readers. And this time, instead of meeting that fate, it looks like I’m finding some readers and that’s just incredibly gratifying to know you’re not just writing just for yourself.”

Not the only musing on TDS/TCR today-

Stephen Colbert Joins the Late Show: Who Will Fill the Vacuum?

By: rykky, My Firedog Lake

Monday July 21, 2014 1:56 pm

Promoted on: Tuesday July 22, 2014 2:06 pm

My idea is to expand The Daily Show by making it an hour long. Jon Stewart should, furthermore, make sure that his show provides a synopsis of the day’s news events, similar to the way serious news programs do. With The Daily Show being an hour long he can still have his usual daily guest interview as well as put on a sketch.  In fact he could do more interviews and sketches.  Stewart should of course include more news headlines than the other stations, and mention more intellectual as well as international news stories than those other networks. The rest of the program can cover these stories in depth.

He should, furthermore, do it live at 6:30 eastern time (5:30 central), while NBC, ABC and CBS are hosting their evening news programs. Comedy Central should then rebroadcast The Daily Show when viewers in the Mountain and Pacific time zones could tune into the news programs of the three major networks. Then it will put pressure on these three channels to produce more in-depth and honest news, because of the potential for viewers to choose The Daily Show over their news programs.

With these changes to The Daily Show there is a potential for the other networks to produce higher quality news. It, however, might be a stretch to say that the other stations will improve their news programs. At any rate, Comedy Central could still produce some unique in depth news that educates a large audience despite Colbert’s departure.

Well first of all, as Jon always insists, it’s just a comedy show.  The fact it makes corporate news look like a joke is the, the…

Joke I suppose, though it doesn’t seem so funny when you realize it’s being played on you.  My Dad thinks he’s all hip and up to date because he watches MSNBC, especially Chris and Rachel.  Alas they are only intermittently good and even BBC News and Al Jazeera need to be viewed with some skepticism.  Cartoons and ‘Tween Comedies for me.

Secondly, the Cognoscenti already know that Larry Wilmore is taking over Stephen’s slot with The Minority Report with Larry Wilmore.  What I’m thinking of doing (in the abscence of contrary feedback) is noting Stephen’s guests but live blogging Larry Wilmore.

This week’s guests-

The Daily Show

• Tuesday 7/22: Richard Linklater
• Wednesday 7/23: George Takei
• Thursday 7/24: Fareed Zakaria

The Colbert Report

• Tuesday 7/22: JR
• Wednesday 7/23: Mary Mazzio, Oscar Vazquez
• Thursday 7/24: Elon Musk

Richard Linklater will be whoring his new film Boyhood.  It’s a scripted piece of drama, but it’s also a documentary that took 12 years to film as it covers the title character’s (Mason Jr.) and his family’s development from Elementary School to College.  The principal cast, Patricia Arquette as Olivia, Ellar Coltrane as Mason Jr., Lorelei Linklater as Samantha, and Ethan Hawke as Mason Sr. age naturally (as much as you can say film make up is ‘natural’) throughout the course of the movie.

Sounds interesting in that The Norman Conquests kind of way.

JR is sort of a Banksey type photographer.

JR calls himself an “urban artivist”, he creates pervasive art that he puts up on the buildings in the Paris area projects, on the walls of the Middle East, on the broken bridges of Africa or in the favelas of Brazil. During the pasting phase, community members take part in the artistic process. In Brazil, for example, children became artists for a week. In these artistic acts, no scene separates the actors from the spectators.

I was at a Method seminar once and while most of the “actors” I’ve met are vapid chameleons with no inner life they haven’t stolen and are trying on for size, this one said something pretty profound-

Actors are people who act.

Roll that one around for a little while.