From Late Night with David Letterman, featuring Michael McKean and Chris Guest (doing a proto-Corky St. Clair). A look behind the scenes of the making of a musical industrial film celebrating the name-change of a fictional multinational corporation.

Both seasons of Wonder Showzen free online.

Dead-Frog talks to Kurt Andersen

The AV Club's least essential albums of 2006

David Rakoff is blogging on Woody Allen (via Emdashes)

Rick Moranis is apparently now writing for McSweeney's

Comedy Writers Hate Studio 60 (so does everyone else, right?)

Wu-Peanuts (thanks Patrick)

Our pal Klaus Kinski (the internet psuedonym, not the Herzog actor) is now covering comedy for Brooklyn Vegan.

Tom Sizemore vehicle grosses $30. Not $30,000,000 or even $30,000. $30.

Be more Awasome, sartorially speaking

as usual, be the first to email me with the name of the game above and your address, get free stickers in the mail.

Here's a topic: The Sound of Young America forum is here.

Have no fear, Antarctica residents: you can finally hear The Sound of Young America. Our thanks to the good people at Antarctica's brand new community radio station, Radio Qualia. Broadcasts start once the supply plane bearing CDs of the show arrives from South Africa January 11th.

As Pulled My Groin points out, in response to our discussion of Manute Bol on Jordan, Jesse GO!, this man is a Real American Hero. (And a Real Sudanese Hero as well).

(Music in the video is by Ed OG and Masta Ace)

As himself, not as Borat. Streaming audio is available now, or you can listen today on your local NPR station.

Targeted at younger listeners (which for NPR means 25-44). Sounds interesting, though there are few details

NPR's press release

LA Times piece (behind a reg. wall, so I'm reprinting it:
NPR is planning a new news show
Lee Margulies
January 4, 2007

" 'Morning Edition' is a tremendous success and a daily priority for millions of Americans, but one size doesn't fit all when it comes to news and information," NPR Chief Executive Ken Stern said. "The 25-to-44 age group is underserved by the media and seeking smart, thoughtful content relevant to their lives."

The program is intended not only for public radio stations that don't presently carry "Morning Edition" but also at those that do: They will be able to run it on digital channels and their websites. It will also be available on satellite radio.

Here's the letter from NPR honcho Ken Stern:

From: Ken Stern
Date: January 3, 2007
Let me take this opportunity to wish you, your colleagues and your families a happy and healthy 2007.
A brand new year seems an appropriate point to announce a new enterprise for NPR: one that breaks the boundaries of our comfort zone and demands risk-taking, but also has the potential to significantly expand our audience and our public service to stations and communities across the country. Today, I’m pleased to announce that NPR will launch a news and information service, focused on listeners between the ages of 25-44. Its core will be a two-hour morning drive time program, to air 7:00-9:00AM, but its reach will extend throughout all media platforms, serving this younger audience in the many places they seek and use news.

Forty years ago this November, the Public Broadcasting Act was signed and included a call for “the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences.” This commitment speaks to that priority. During New Realities, we all discussed at great length the need to bring public radio into the lives of the next generation - to fulfill our public service mission and secure the survival of the public radio system in a media environment characterized by almost unlimited choice. We believe that there is an opportunity to take a leadership role in serving the educated, curious younger adult audience searching for smart, thoughtful news and information.

While NPR and our public radio colleagues have always offered programming that is recognized as important and meaningful, we know one size cannot fit all. To better connect with younger listeners, we must speak to them with relevant content: with hosts, reporters, topics and production mirroring their priorities, interests, lifestyles, issues, values and media choices. This new service will embrace a different tone - more conversational, more casual, more humorous - but it will be rooted in the essential values of careful, in-depth journalism and civil discourse that has always characterized NPR and public radio.

This concept will be introduced in March on NPR Rough Cuts, the “open piloting” model housed on NPR.org that we rolled out last month to test-drive content ideas. (An A-Reps explaining how Rough Cuts works was sent December 22.) The two-hour morning program will launch in September for stations to broadcast on their primary signals and on HD Radio multicast channels. It will also launch simultaneously on satellite radio, with podcast elements and in online offerings for station websites and for NPR.org. Like all new content at NPR, it will be multimedia in scope, spanning audio, video and text, but with radio at its heart and core.

Overseeing the development of this service will be Matt Martinez, familiar to many of you as a producer for All Things Considered and, more recently Weekend Edition Saturday. Matt was also formerly a producer at member station KNAU-FM Flagstaff. We are currently hiring staff, including two hosts, who will be based at the NPR New York Bureau. We are actively developing the service’s focus, sound and approach and will count on feedback from stations and the public, through NPR Rough Cuts, to play a key role in this process. And this service will embrace all types of digital media from the start, with the program acting as a launch pad for a variety of original content across platforms. One such element will be the creation of an online community - something this audience seeks and expects - to generate interactivity, feedback and public dialogue.

We will be sharing updates on this project in the coming weeks, and we encourage your questions, ideas and involvement.

The folks at ABC have given us a couple of t-shirts for the show to give away. They say "Join the Knights" on them, and I have no idea what size they'll be. Maybe extra-large?

If you want one, email me at jesse@maximumfun.org, and tell me what my favorite movie starring Donal Logue is. It may be the only movie starring Donal Logue, actually, but I really liked it. It's definitely the only film I'm aware of that stars Donal Logue, maybe there's others, but that's beside the point.

Just email me if you want a shirt, and I'll choose two randomly in a week or two.

but I've been depressed, because my aunt is selling her El Camino.

What's got me down isn't that she won't have it anymore. It's that she never gave it to me, and I can't afford to buy it.

I always thought that eventually, my aunt would break down and give me that truck, because I am her favorite nephew. My first target was college graduation (at the time, I was driving an '82 that I had to sell to buy a car I could drive back and forth to Santa Cruz to do the show). Then I targeted my 25th birthday. Then her (imminent) retirement. Each time I convinced myself I was certain to get a gift I'd always remember. But it wasn't to be. Now she's selling it for $3900.

Which brings me to the point of this post... anyone got four grand burning a hole through their pocket? Want to support public broadcasting?

Charlie Rose talks with Alfonso Cuaron ("Children of Men"), Guillermo del Toro ("Pan's Labarynth") and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu ("Babel").

God bless Charlie Rose and PBS for making his shows available free on the internet. Putting the PUBLIC in Public Broadcasting!