But there’s two bright sparks on that not terribly enticing horizon now, and that’s The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, both now available in Australia for the first time digitally. I’ve been addicted to them ever since discovering them on free-to-air Canadian television, but suddenly I can actually get them legally without subscribing to Foxtel.

And the deal isn’t too shabby. $9.99 for 16 episodes (four weeks’ worth), which you pay up front and have downloaded for you automatically as they arrive. The DRM of course is still about and annoying (I mean, you can’t even burn them for god’s sake), but for more disposable shows like these, that’s not nearly as irritating to me.

And, I can watch them on my TV, because while I don’t have an Apple TV, I do have a MacBook Pro. Ahem.

The Oscars are an awards ceremony. Compared to school speech nights, they’re amazingly entertaining. And everyone’s waaaaay hotter. You’ve just got to keep your finger on the fast-forward button. Don’t watch it live. The only reason to watch it live is if you’re actually there, in which case, why are you even paying attention? Go get Keira Knightley to stop sitting next to Jack Nicholson and pay you some attention. Jon Stewart did a good job too. His humour was a bit nervous, but exactly in his style — which didn’t seem to always go down well with the audience. But then, I didn’t see Charlize Theron smile once, so there’s clearly no pleasing some people.

Anyhow, the purpose of this missive is to point out that the time is golden for a resurgence of that “Witherspoon” joke. It works best in the morning, ideally not when someone has just seen the news. Say “Oooh, did you hear about that girl who won the oscar, she was stabbed to death! I forget her name. Reece…” At some point, the person will say “Witherspoon,” to which you reply “No! With a knife!”

Comedy Gold. Go forth and make people groan and hit you.

Given the recent crisis, reporter Ed Helms was considering how many major disasters the Bush Administration could handle before it actually suffered. A huge list was presented — the completed items were:

• Abu Graib
• Bin Laden
• Chalabi
• Deficit
• Enron
• Failure to find WMDs
• Halliburton
• Iraq
• John Bolton
• Katrina

But apparently, the Administration will not suffer politically as long as they manage to avoid at least one of these:

• Locusts
• Mars Attacks
• North Korea
• Osama and Jenna
• Pregnancy: Osama and Jenna
• Queer Revolt
• Rodents of Unusual Size
• Syrian War
• Tigers
• Unicyclists (nuclear)
• Voldemort
• WWIII
• X-rated tape: Osama and Jenna
• Yam Shortage
• Zero People left on Earth

I love this show. I’ve said it before, possibly on this blog, but Australia needs CNNNN (or someone else) to stand up and serve us the way The Daily Show serves the USA. It’s not like we haven’t cloned every other show they make, and it’s got to be better than our sketch comedy.