Portfolio.com has a wonderful recap of the 92nd Street Y appearance tonight. Here’s a snippet, but make sure to go over there and read the whole thing!
Things I Learned About Stephen Colbert…
Oct 23 2007 10:04PM EDT…watching Frank Rich interview him at the 92nd Street Y tonight.
1) He does a great Bill O’Reilly impression — and I’m not talking about the O’Reilly-inspired character he does on The Colbert Report.
Recounting the time he met the Fox News host at last year’s Time 100 party, he re-created both O’Reilly’s words and his voice: “Can I give you some advice? Watch who you book as guests. You can have Olbermann on, and you can have Franken on, but people see a pattern.”
His theory on why O’Reilly agreed to be a guest on The Colbert Report: “I think he might be flattered by the doppelganger. He’s got some sense of humor about himself.”
2) He also does a pretty funny Henry Kissinger. “Somewhere in our tape library, there exists five solid minutes of me trying to convince Dr. Henry Kissinger to say, ‘Where are my pancakes? I was promised pancakes.’…We got him to say it, but very quietly.”
3) Even though he’s mounting an annoyingly-ubiquitous run for president, he’d be happy to see someone else win: “I would love to see a President Huckabee because if our president were named ‘Huckabee,” how bad could anything really seem?… It’d be as if the entire country was animated by Hanna Barbera. Can you imagine the Huckabee Monument?”
4) He is a huge theater geek. After singing parts of two different songs from Jesus Christ Superstar, Colbert mused, “Wouldn’t it be great if my character played Jesus? ‘Wait, wait, wait. What’s this crucifix part? I thought he was king.”
Other highlights…
Thanks to Jeffrey Bercovici for the tip!
EDIT:
Here’s another review, from AlisaR on DailyKos! (h/t to MadMoll)
Best line of the night: “Dumbledore is gay, but Gandalf is only bi-curious.” Sadly, I don’t remember the context.
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He was awesome, his jokes were hilarious and they came nonstop. He was incredibly charming and funny.
Everyone was there: his writing staff, his wife, Paul Dinello his writing partner and long time cohort from 2nd city (they all signed my book) but the best was I got up the nerve to give him a copy of my G&S parody campaign song at the signing and he SANG the first verse back to me, genuinely laughed and said “nicely done!” with a big smile!
Here’s what he sang, in perfect G&S patter….
Colbert’s the very model of a presidential candidate
He’ll run in Carolina (South) despite having no mandate
Then mock the other candidates with quips and jests satirical
If he wins in this contest it would be a freakin’ miracle!
the “freakin’ miracle!” part cracked him up.
OMG!!!!!!!
I CAN DIE NOW. ;)
More later when I’m coherent.
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@vigwig!
That’s fantastic! I read your lyrics this afternoon and howled!
How great you got to give him a copy! Congrats!
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@Vigwig:
What a hoot! So glad you had a most excellent time!
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Adorable – well done, vigwig!
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Confirming that – yes, he sang her song – and was wonderfully charming! Applause, applause, vigwig!
(‘Course, he also laughed when I told him I wanted a floor fight at the convention! He said he’d demand to give a speech before surrendering his delegate!)
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Thank you! I’m still flying.
BTW he looks SO much better w/o all that TV makeup and Evie Colbert looked gorgeous too. You could cut bread with her high cheekbones. I also told Dahm and Silverman that their writing was “godlike” which they appreciated.
He was really “on” and covered so many subjects and Frank Rich did a great job and was obviously relishing the interview.
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@ vigwig: OMG, that’s awesome!! I wish I could’ve heard that! I was kind of toward the end of the line for the signing, so I have no idea if you were ahead of me or after me. But just to show that great minds think alike– when I got up to him I told him “You need to sing more! And you need a campaign song!”
More random observations:
The Kissinger impression was spot on, and very funny.
Can I just say, once again, how much I love SingingStephen. He sang those bits from “Jesus Christ Superstar” beautifully.
During the Q & A, Paul Dinello compared being around the TCR studio (while they were writing the book) to parachuting into the middle of the Normandy invasion in WWII.
I’ll post more as I remember them…
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I think you were ahead of me Ann cause I recall you were behind my row and the line for the signing got reversed.
He told a great story about the WHCD. There was a Moroccan woman where he gets his coffee near the studio. The Wed. before the dinner she asked why he looked so tired and he told her that he’d been working hard on the speech for the affair. She said something like “And the President will be right there? But you are a satirist, how can that be?” And Stephen said yes, he’ll be a few feet from me as I joke about him and she squeezed his face and said “It is a good country!” Stephen later told Pres. Bush that story after the dinner and Bush said “Only in America” or something like that.
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what good stories thanx. -i liked on npr he said about on the train there to the whcspondents d his wife kept reading the manuscript and saying “no! no! no!” and he said yes yes! and she kept gasping. but i wasn’t there so u could all here that… just wanted to share.
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omg, as though I wasn’t already totes jeliz of everybody who got to go to this, Paul was there! (of which I had no idea, I wish I would have so I could have let people know) Sooooo jealous! But no pictures were allowed? that’s a mega bummer :( Was there any sort of audio or video recorded that might be leaked later? I wanna seeeeee (or hear)!
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Thanks for the reports, everyone!
I too would LOVE to hear more about anything Paul Dinello had to say. I happen to think the funniest lines in IAA(ASCY!) are those uttered (uddered?) by ‘L73NR, Cow’: ‘When I next return, I hope I’m a human. The first thing I’m going to do is have a steak. I’m dying to know what all the fuss is about. You people sure seem eager to get it off my bones.’ That sounds like Pure Dinello to me. (Very dark. Obsidian). (The ‘mark of Stephen’ by contrast seems to be the permutative turn of mind: ‘If you don’t put it out there, they’ll not put it in there.’ And nonsense on stilts on stilts, e.g. the building of damn in Wigfield.
I wish I’d been there just to hear Paul say ‘umb…umb…umb…’ (Adorable). I find the contrast between Stephen’s hyperarticulateness and Paul’s–more deliberate delivery–(listening to Dinello make his way through a sentence is like watching an adorable puppy trying to fight its way out of a burlap sack) really intriguing in light of the long-standing writing partnership of the two men. Any further anecdotes are greatly appreciated!
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@ nousblet: LOL at comparing Paul to an adorable puppy in a burlap sack. He does ramble a little.
Paul really only answered that one question. However, there was this one funny exchange later in the Q & A session:
Guy in audience: If TCR is a logical spin-off from TDS, then what would be a logical spin-off from TCR?
Paul (quickly, before Stephen can answer): The Tad Show. (This was followed by a big “yeah!” from me and some nice applause.)
Sadly, there won’t be any video from this, and very few pictures. We weren’t allowed to take photos, not even during the book signing. There was an “official” (?) photographer very quietly taking some photos from the side for a few minutes during the early part of the interview, so perhaps some of those will show up on one of the wire services or Getty Images sometime in the near future.
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I managed to take (sneak) in a couple of shots. They’re not the best quality as I couldn’t use a flash and had to act quickly. Here’s a link to my photos, enjoy.
http://www.flickr.com/gp/10388336@N00/1uub51
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@ vigwig– HAHAHAHA!! I made it into one of your photos! The one at the signing. No, I’m not the one in the strange hat, I’m the one with glasses next to her, talking to Stephen. That’s probably when I was telling him he needs to sing more!
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@ Ann G. LOL! That’s great, now you can have a pix of yourself w/ Stephen! I was hoping to get one but my wingman froze. Feel free to download from the site, it’s a hi-rez pix so it should reproduce well.
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@Ann G: ‘The Tad Show’!! As another commentator on the event has remarked, that *is* a big tease. But we’re definitely due for another Tad segment. Maybe Stephen’s run for office will end in a Tad-related sex scandal? (‘He wore “something loose”–and a wire!) But I want more Tad before then, I can’t wait! Are you reading this, TCR staffers?
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