TVSquad

The problem with Wolf Blitzer is that when he doesn't have something to obsess over, he ends up trashing the entire Situation Room. Recently, Blitzer spent close to two hours on non-stop coverage of the Olympic torch's trip through San Francisco, despite the fact that they couldn't tell where the torch actually was half the time. My favorite of all the fake ticker news items was "Baby panda kills five, turns gun on self." Pandas are inherently funny, gun-wielding ones, doubly so.

"Cycling to the Finish The Meter is Running" (Screw the labored cycling metaphors!): Fox News, preparing for an inevitable break-up with their favorite man, recently created a documentary about Bush's legacy called Fighting to the Finish. Senior Political Analyst John Oliver stopped by to marvel at Fox News' own legacy and shared his own documentary about the news network. This was a great profile of Fox News and the network's fair and balanced-ness. And of course, this was yet another hilarious piece by John Oliver. From covering himself head-to-toe in green for a Statue of Liberty disguise to suiting up in American flags to show his patriotism, John really pushed his own level of awesomeness. Since The Colbert Report originally began as a fake commercial on TDS, I couldn't help but immediately wonder if his fake show, Oliver Now, could eventually turn into a yet another spin-off. I quickly nixed the thought when I realized that it was just a more British and more dimly lit version of TCR. I also realized that the correspondents have been sorely lacking in pre-taped reports. For just about all correspondents before the current cast, I can pick one or two favorite pre-taped reports that really defined their characters or areas of strength. That's not really the case for the current correspondents. Perhaps that's why I don't feel any attachment with most of them.





The night's guest was Aram Roston, author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Extraordinary Life, Adventures and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi. This interview was pretty straightforward and Roston offered some interesting information on -- who else -- Ahmad Chalabi. Chalabi's the fellow that offered that Iraq had major ties to 9/11. That guy sounds like a card!

Moment of Zen: Back around Christmas, Fox News reminded us we have a buff President. Well. Thank goodness for that.

Other stuff: Okay, time to plug other things... First of all, John Oliver recently appeared on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Just poke around the Episodes list and you'll be treated to a stand-up routine and a brief interview with ConeBone69. According to John fans who are already familiar with his stand-up, he was self-censoring himself a lot, so it wasn't his best. His full Comedy Central special will air April 20th, though. Jon Stewart will be hosting Night of Too Many Stars, the autism benefit, on April 13th, and loads of former TDS folks will be there. And last but certainly not least, The Colbert Report will be reporting from Philadelphia all next week and I will be there to see Stephen Colbert in action on Monday. Look for yet another "Annie's Adventure" report upon my return!