an evening with stephen colbert

i went to the 92nd st Y on tuesday to see frank rich interview stephen colbert. as much as i hate to say this because i want to have jon stewart's babies...stephen colbert gives a much funnier interview. i think this is partly to blame on how seriously political jon is. when asked the "what blogs do you read" question, jon listed of a dozen of them (both left and right), stephen does not read blogs.

also, i have to note how good looking the guy is in person. he's hot. really. when he's not in character his voice is softer and i, briefly, wanted to pull a jane fonda on him myself. that woman had the right idea. things i've added to my "to do" list: write book so i can promote it on the colbert report and molest stephen.

some quotes and tidbits...

"my character is an idiot. he chooses to be ignorant about the things he's most passionate about."

on the interviews in which he couldn't stay in character: "jane fonda crawled up on me like a squirrel monkey. she made me the object of the interview. i had to play straight because her character was stronger than mine."

on better know a district: "i get them to say orange juice makes you gay."

on kissinger appearing to judge the guitarmageddon: "we needed to have a reason for why he'd come on my show. so we have five minutes worth of tape somewhere of me trying to convince him to say 'where are my pancakes? i was promised pancakes.' his response, 'that is too much stephen, too much.' and he wouldn't say it."

that amy sedaris broke him of his dream to be a serious actor.

he sang a bit of jesus christ superstar and it was AMAZING.

on whether the daily show and the colbert report ever overlap jokes: "jon is jon and i am not me. we're never going to go at it from the same angle." but he did say that when they have too many overlapping subjects that the report cedes to the daily show because jon's show is more of a news show, relying on the stories of the day more than the report.

on the correspondent's dinner: he says the one thing he took away from the evening was a discussion with bush beforehand at a reception. he was telling bush how amazed the woman at the cart/deli who makes his coffee was that he was going to talk to the president. "but stephen, you are a satirist, you make fun of the president yet you've be asked to speak for him. what a country" bush's response, "only in america."

on the nytimes ad for stephen's book which read "winner of the 2008 pulitzer prize": "it should have been an obvious joke in and of itself as it's still only 2007. then we added an asterisk and footnoted '*they give out pulitzers for balls, right?' " the paper of note will not let you say balls in an ad so they changed it to "*source: wikipedia" and went and changed the wikipedia pages and sent them to the times. they should have screencapped them but didn't so by the time the nytimes went to check the pages had been corrected. "wikipedia seriously must huge alarms that go off whenever someone from my show logs on."