TVSquad

My favorite part of Real Time With Bill Maher is the last segment, "New Rules." It's a segment devoted to looking at things a little bit differently, offering new rules for current events, celebrities, and politicians. Maher released a great book last year with the same title.

After the jump is a clip (from Salon) of the latest "New Rules" segment of the HBO Friday night show. It's entitled "Half-Cocked," and I would usually say to you that the clip is NSFW, but you can probably guess that from the title.

Last week we mentioned that HBO was looking into creating a Internet broadband channel that would only be available to their subscribers. While this project is under development the pay-cable network has been working on other ways to get their brand incorporated into the ever growing world of television on the Internet.

One of these ways is to team up with America Online (our corporate parent) to create the broadband website 'This Just In'. To be launched early next year, 'This Just In' will feature current events humor and will reflect the range of comedy that HBO is known for; think Politically Incorrect and Def Comedy Jam. The site will provide plenty of video content as well as a blogging area that will allow users to tap into the day's events as they are happening. In addition, the website will become a platform to incubate new programming for other HBO properties.

The 'This Just In' website will replace the current AOL comedy site and will be available at www.thisjustin.com.

It'll probably be a long time before Bill Maher is welcome in Australia. The comic is making headlines for dressing up for Halloween as the dead Crocodile Hunter, complete with stingray barb and bloody shirt. In its story about Maher's tasteless costume, the Sydney Morning Herald makes it sound like one-in-two Americans is going as dead Steve Irwin this Halloween.

Is it insensitive? You betcha. Funny? Eh. It's not laugh-out-loud funny, but more roll-your-eyes-and-groan funny. And it's not nearly as funny as South Park's reference to Irwin's death last week, which I thought was surprisingly tasteful and hilarious at the same time.

So... is the costume funny or not?