Stephen Colbert in the Zeitgeist – January 6, 2010

Good evening, Zoners, and welcome to the first zeitgeist of 2010! It feels pretty good to get the new year started with new shows and a new set. Tonight we’ve got some more “best of” highlights to round out the year and the decade, updates from the Olympic curling team, and a few other assorted items to enlighten and entertain you.

Even more “best of” lists

TV Squad has been running a series called The Best of the 00s, with the resident bloggers featuring their choices for different categories. Stephen made it onto two lists.

• Best TV of the ’00s: Late Night Moments: The writers’s strike “battle royal” between Conan O’Brien, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert: Joel says: When all the late night shows not produced by Worldwide Pants were forced to come back without their writers in the middle of the WGA strike, it took a lot of creativity to keep audiences engaged without looking like any of the material was written… [I]t was the “feud” between O’Brien, Jon Stewart, and Steven [sic] Colbert — over the seemingly mundane topic of who “made” then-Presidential-candidate Mike Huckabee — that made the strike a little easier to take. They challenged each other and appeared on each others shows, and the final throwdown on Late Night was a comedy “fight” for the ages.
• Best TV of the ’00s: Comedic Actor: Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report: Danny says: …The improvisation and Second City master and Daily Show alum takes control of comedy in ways few actors could and with great writing to back him, Colbert deserves more than just special mention in a blog. He deserves to be named after some undiscovered paradox for twisting the lines between reality and comedy into a monkey fist of hilariousness.

From the Huffington Post:

• Ten Things That Did Not Suck About The Media In 2009 – Jason Linkins: Stephen Colbert: This year, Colbert’s been praised for doing all he can to bring residents of the District of Columbia some Constitutional rights, he’s been way out front in the arena of Glenn Beck Ridicule, and he inspiringly lit Barack Obama afire for his detainee policy at Bagram AFB. But my personal favorite moment came with his dissection of the health care lobby’s influence on lawmakers: “Folks, there are some things that everybody knows, but nobody says.”

The Sport Report: Curling

• Curler Plys on reality TV, meeting Colbert – THE USA Today, written by Chris Plys (a.k.a “the cute one”): We also were able to go out and shoot with The Colbert Report. This was one of the greatest days of my life. I have never met a guy who was so funny and so fun to work with. The Team and I went out to Plainfield, N.J., and shot at the Plainfield Curling Club. I wish the day wouldn’t have had to end it was so much fun.
• Curling on Colbert – KARE11, Minneapolis/St. Paul; Eric Perkins’ blog: Yesterday, myself and photojournalist John Drilling headed to Chisholm, Minnesota, where we spent time with the Skip of the Men’s team, John Shuster. He was excited because later that same evening he and the rest of his teammates were going to be featured on Comedy Central’s Colbert Report. Shuster said the shoot was a riot. Funnyman Colbert showed up to the curling club in New Jersey where they shot the piece at 9am, and was having so much fun that he didn’t leave until 4pm or so.
• You can see a few more pics from Stephen’s visit to the Plainfield Curling Club on USA Curling’s Facebook page. I love seeing Stephen in those old-fashioned clothes!

Gratuitous name dropping and other news items

• Our favorite fundit was recently featured as the question to Final Jeopardy back on December 14th: “In 2009 NASA named the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill for this man.” That was a little too easy, I think. But notice how all the contestants were smiling after they wrote down their questions!
• Stewart, ‘South Park’ dragged into YouTube row – CNET: No earth-shaking news here, just an update on the Viacom v. Google lawsuit that mentions both Stephen and Jon Stewart giving depositions to Google’s attorneys.
• For our Aussie friends (g’day, mates): I’m a day late with this, but beginning January 5th, The Colbert Report will be broadcast on ABC2 in Australia at 7:30 pm Tuesday to Friday, with the global edition being aired on Monday.
• Some MOVITS! news: MOVITS! starts a brief U.S. tour on January 12th in Allston, Mass., finishing up in Cleveland Hights, Ohio, on Feb. 1st. The New York date is January 13th at the Mercury Lounge. You can check out the details on their MySpace page at the above link.