It’s hard to know if this is a Comedy Central stunt. Whatever.  It’s brilliant.

Stephen Colbert fans are calling on the satirist - who lampoons all things conservative on his Comedy Central talk show - to mimic Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” event by holding a Truthiness (see here for the definition) rally at the foot of Lincoln Memorial on October 10, 2010 - conveniently 10/10/10.

Text gakked from the website, colbertrally.com

Why: America, we are at a crossroad. Truthiness in this nation is at an all-time low since the inception of the concept was founded by the great American, Stephen Colbert. In its rich history over the past five years, Truthiness has become synonymous with American values such as freedom, honor, and Taco Bell. Recently our nation has suffered a truthiness drain. In fact, untruthiness is as common as measles vaccinations that cause cancer. We as a nation have stopped relying on our emotions and gut. We need to get back to what makes this nation great. Act on impulse not fact. Stop wasting time analyzing and just take what people say on face value. Why think when someone else can think for you. It’s superficial. It’s quick. It’s American. Restore Truthiness now!

Click here for the website.  Or…follow the group on Twitter - @colbertrally

Already, some are suggesting that Tina Fey should put in an appearance as Sarah Palin.

Comedy Central is clearly amused.  They’re promoting the idea on their website.

September 1st 11:02AM by Matt Tobey

The Internet Rallies for Colbert Rally

After Glenn Beck’s big Restoring Honor Rally, rallies in Washington DC are so hot right now. They’re basically the new auto-tuned Antoine Dodson or the current Farting Ewok Falls Down Stairs, which is slated to be an unexpected phenomenon the third week of September. It’s with that in mind that a Reddit user has suggested Stephen Colbert hold his own rally in Washington to restore truthiness in America. The movement is rapidly gaining support with a website and a Facebook page, which is surprising since it doesn’t appear to have anything to do with Betty White.

Cobert mocks Beck’s peculiar brand of megalomania:

There’s a lot happening on cable on Friday nights - Syfy’s Caprica and Starz Spartacus, to name just a few standouts.  So, set your DVR’s.  This Friday, (February 12) at 10p., host Jonathan Ross of BBC America’s Friday Night with Jonathan Ross welcomes Torchwood star John Barrowman.

Barrowman:

Barrowman crosses the pond in March to guest on ABC’s Desperate Housewives. Of his new role, Barrowman tells Ross he will be “stirring up Wisteria Lane quite a bit”.

I’ve watched Desperate Housewives sporadically since the writers offed my favorite character, Karl, played by Richard Burgi.  Barrowman can be charmingly outrageous (see my 2007 blog post from Television Critics Association), so I’ll definitely be checking back to see if he injects some much needed energy into the series.

Nevertheless, Barrowman tells Ross he hasn’t quite said goodbye to his popular Torchwood/Dr. Who character. “I love playing Captain Jack…I have no clue what’s going to happen…I would go back in a second,” admits Barrowman.

Later in the show Barrowma performs “Copacabana” from his new self-titled album, John Barrowman.   Now this, I gotta see!  : )

Also joining Ross is Bollywood megastar Shahrukh Khan who discusses his forthcoming film, My Name is Khan.  Khan tells Ross he turned down a role on the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire because at the time he was the real-life host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire in India, “I was very keen for that film to be made…I didn’t do it because the host was a bit of a cheat,” says Khan. “I thought people might think I’d do the same thing.”

Khan:

Remember this? - when Ross snogged Neil Gaiman, at Comic Con!

Spartacus: Blood and Sand, Starz latest venture into scripted drama, heads into the fourth hour called “The Thing in The Pit,” tonight (Friday, Feb. 12) at 10p.

SPOILERS ahead:

Be forewarned, “The Pit” is unusually bloody and violent.  After a poor showing in the arena, Spartacus is assigned to fight in the dreaded pit, a lawless underworld of human savagery where gamblers bet on death – a place so notorious that even Doctore, Batiatus’ most trusted slave and trainer in the Ludus (gladiator school), warns his master that involvement in the pit brings dishonor to the family.

From first few episodes, it wasn’t clear if the series would develop into more than a blood and sex soaked ultimate cockfight.

Spartacus is still blood soaked.  “The Pit”  gives new meaning to the term “tear your face off.”  Whew!  Turn away, or DVR and fast forward…

Nevertheless, “The Pit” is the episode I’ve been waiting for, to a certain extent.  It’s the first where most of the actors finally seem comfortable in their skin, and the cast is starting to gel.

I’m not precisely sure who penned this episode, although Wikipedia indicates it’s Aaron Helbing & Todd Helbing.  There’s a lot to like: the introduction of more character facets, that sense of confident plot trajectory, and dialog that’s quite good in places.

Debt: it’s driving both Batiatus (who inherited the Ludus), and his wife Lucretia to take desperate measures. “I want everything, but can afford nothing!” says Batiatus.  He’s borrowed money from some unsavory characters and the consequences will likely reverberate through season one.  John Hannah plays Batiatus as alternately desperate, enraged, compassionate, brutal, insecure, even foppish.

And, oh, my, there’s one male/male pairing that will set LiveJournal hearts aflutter – a briefly glimpsed gladiator/slave relationship between Barca and slave boy Pietros.  Given the tendency of fanfic writers (mostly women) to transport their fave male characters into what’s called AU (alternative universe) settings – including historical backdrops involving slaves – omg!!  the Spartacus sand(box) will probably provide source material for years.

In other words, it’s CANON, people.   (not fanon.  Click here to read up on the difference…)

Many fans will surely demand more of these two, although – apologies for being a pessimist – I wouldn’t be surprised if the writers take the easy road and off Pietros as a set up for revenge motive, or revolt, or…whatever.

Lucy Lawless as Lucretia is also a pleasure, especially her softly facetious delivery. Lawless was hemmed in by weak dialog in the pilot, but now the writers have given her lines worth delivering while exploring the nuances of her character

“I should wash.  I smell of death,” says Batiatus after he returns from a particularly brutal night of gambling in the pit.  To which Lucretia replies, “No, you smell like a man!”  And that tells you at least some of what you need to know about this woman.

The gladiators are forming alliances, the strongest of which is Spartacus’ budding friendship with Varro, a Roman citizen who sold himself to the Ludus to pay off gambling debts.  The co-dependency between Spartacus and Batiatus is evolving into an intricate love/hate.  They certainly exploit each other to get what they want, but Batiatus is drawn to Spartacus, apparently for reasons he cannot fully explain.

My recommendation: DVR the episode if you’re squeamish, so you have the option of fast-forwarding though some of the extremely violent scenes.

ETA: reports are coming in of chaos at the Cypress Mountain venue. Three-hour lineups. Desperate shortages of food and drink. Nowhere to escape the lashing wind and rain….

The death of Georgian luge athlete Nodar Kumaritashvili on a track well-known to be unusually dangerous, coupled with the insensitive response by the VANOC/FIL, has tainted the Olympics.

The NY Times reports (in the same link above) that the day before Kumaritashvili’s death “a Romanian luge racer was knocked unconscious during a training run. Through five complete Olympic training sessions in men’s singles luge last week, one of every 20 runs ended in a crash. But Olympic and luge officials chose not to make changes to the course that would limit the record speeds…”

Instead of acknowledging their obvious failings, the VANOC/FIL callously went CYA. They attributed Kumaritashvili’s death to human error, declaring the track safe. Yet, they lowered the start gates and raised the wall along the curve that flung Kumaritashvili into a steel beam to his death, all the while asserting they made these changes to “deal with the emotional components of the athletes.”

“The bottom line is that the decisions made are to deal with the emotional components of the athletes to alleviate, as best as possible, the traumatic experience of this tragic event,” Svein Romstad, the American secretary general of the FIL, said Saturday morning. “As to lowering it because the track is too fast, I would say the primary concern we have right now is the emotional aspect of it.”

By yesterday (Saturday) morning, the tragedy was turned on its head in a “the show must go on” kind of way - and isn’t this all amazing and courageous because we’re overcoming this tragedy, and moving into “normalcy,” and competing and oh, btw, let’s just move on, thanksbye…

Here’s the lede from the AP article:

Everyone made it down safely. For luge, that meant progress, healing and normalcy. Cowbells clanged, fans with painted faces waved flags, and even IOC president Jacques Rogge looked on as the celebration of this hyper-speedy sport resumed…

Adding to the scandal, the death has raised questions about practice times and home field advantages. Of all people, Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert aimed his rapier wit on the problem of practice times.

Colbert, taking speed skating under his wing, hilariously fumed about track time, in words that are now both funny and eerily prophetic.

“Those syrup-suckers won’t let us practice at their Olympic venues,” Colbert said. “At the Salt Lake Games, we let the Canadian luge team take 100 practice runs. And you know how Mormons feel about two men lying down on each other.”

(Unfortunately, Comedy Central has deleted that particular segment.)

Here’s another from Colbert’s campaign to secure practice time for U.S. speed skaters. The luge athletes could have used an advocate like Colbert.

The Opening Ceremonies were tasteful, and nearly flawless, yet marred by NBC insensitivity, ranging from the left coast tape delay to boneheaded editing? or control room decisions? or…? during K.D. Lang’s moving rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluja”.

Once again, the left coast was saddled with tape delay while east coast watched live, starting at 9p. ET. I will beat this dead horse, once again, just because…

Previous tape delays could (barely) be explained by Beijing time differences but NBC doesn’t get an easy pass this round. NBC’s Beijng rationale – that West Coast viewers want to watch in prime time - no longer rates as an acceptable excuse when the darn games are..held in the same time zone!!

The Opening Ceremonies were widely reported to begin at 7:30p on the West Coast. Not exactly. Viewers were instead subjected to 1.5 hours of mostly empty filler – another Mary Carillo human interest segment and meditations on snowboarder Lindsey Vonn’s shin. Opening Ceremonies finally got underway at 9p, and ran until after midnight.

If the Left Coast is on tape delay anyway, it’s difficult to understand why California/Oregon/Washington audiences sat through 1.5 hours of patter, twiddling their thumbs.

The ceremonies finally wrapped at around 12:15a, with Wayne Gretzky’s wild ride clinging to the back of a white pick-up truck to deliver the torch to the “other” cauldron. (Gretzky deserves a gold for being the world’s best sport.)

Spoilers are unavoidable, on Twitter especially. My page was a jumble of time-shifted comments, creating some confusion about which events, exactly, some tweeps were discussing. As comments streamed in from my East Coast tweeps, I knew everything by the West Coast 9p start of the ceremonies.

It’s impossible to just shut Twitter down for ten days. When I joked the only solution to the spoilers dilemma is to hide in a dark closet for the duration, @wraithfodder suggested I join her poinsettias. Thanks Wraith! ; )

oh, well…what can I say. I hate tape delay.

And during that 1.5 hour patter there were problems. The biggest one: NBC aired the luge crash, in full and in slomo, several times. During the post-ceremony local news hour, our NBC affiliate here in San Francisco declined to show the crash in its entirety. Howling echoed across the Internet, as viewers slammed NBC for their decision to air the crash footage.

Memorable Opening Ceremony moments included the angelic aerialist - Ècole Nationale de Cirque student Thomas Saulgrain - spinning across the stage to an ethereal rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.” Breathtaking.

The house was really fired up over a western-inspired/Tap Dog fiddling and dancing number that @rachelsklar summed up nicely:

AWESOME BADASS FIDDLING TAP-DANCING BEARDED MOUNTAIN MAN CANADIAN LEATHER-CLAD CANUCK!

But SEE THE VIDEO at the end of this post: NBC’s Matt Lauer chattering over the ENTIRE fiddle solo. go here, to the NBC site and watch an different version from what was televised, at least here on the West Coast.

K.D. Lang is an exquisite talent. Her soulful performance of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah was ruined by the NBC decision to use only two (that I could count) semi - close-ups of her. All the other shots NBC selected were very wide and long, and much of the time she was a mere speck on the screen.

At first I thought perhaps I’d imagined the snub, so I reviewed the footage again. Nope. I did not imagine this.

NBC cut away from Lang time after time to focus on the candle-holding audience, and occasionally on U.S. athletes sitting in the stands. In a word - anywhere but K.D. Lang.

My jaw dropped.

Bottom line: NBC’s mishandling of Lang’s performance was disrespectful. The best I can say about this fiasco: someone at NBC exercised exceedingly poor judgment.

Thanks to Mediaite, you can view the actual televised footage, reportedly different than the video posted on the NBC website.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but…wasn’t Beck planning on joining Rush Limbaugh in Puerto Rico, if the HCR bill passed?  Anyway, Glenn Beck says he’s coming to San Francisco to crush us.

@glennbeck Attn: 60’s sanfran radicals - we will rise and crush in Nov. Together like NEVER b4. You WILL fail bcausr WE R COMING. C it @5 on FNC

Glenn really does need to mellow out.  What better place than our beautiful, multicultural oasis of tolerance?  I suggest he visit during Gay Pride Week.  We’ll hand him a joint and put flowers in his hair.

In other news, Roger Ebert urged his readers to sign Rush Limbaugh’s farewell card, sponsored by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

@ebertchicago Be a good sport. Sign the bon voyage card for Costa Rica-bound Rush Limbaugh.