Deft Wonk

John Oliver wasn't the sole member of Comedy Central's late-night team giving
us process junkies a peek behind the curtain in the past couple of weeks. Stephen Colbert was interviewed by Paul Mercurio, who does warm-up for The Colbert Report, over nearly an hour on a variety of topics — but mostly about the Daft Punk fiasco. You can listen to the podcast free.



Daft Punk, scheduled to be on Colbert's show earlier this month, bowed out and/or
was yanked over misunderstandings and Viacom internal politics due to the mysterious French faux-robots' upcoming special appearance at last weekend's MTV Video Music Awards telecast.

Colbert devoted the episode on which they would have appeared to an only slightly fictional account of what happened along with a truly bizarre all-star video set to Daft Punk's "Get Lucky" (featuring Bryan Cranston, Jeff Bridges, the Rockettes, Stephen's animated alter ego Tek Jansen, Henry f---ing Kissinger...) and a performance by Robin Thicke doing his unfortunate song of the summer "Blurred Lines".

John for Jon

Jon Stewart will return to The Daily Show next week following a summer sabbatical. He was in the Middle East directing a film called Rosewater. For the eight weeks out of twelve after Stewart's departure that the show was not on hiatus, writer/correspondent John Oliver stepped in to host in his stead.



If you don't already know that, you may not be interested in the video I'm sharing of John Oliver's appearance on Charlie Rose from Monday, Aug. 8th, just as John-with-an-h was starting his final week as Jon-without's substitute.