Poor Robert Pattinson. He couldn’t even eat his ice cream because he thought that he was going to “split my Spanx.” Bless his heart.

But, as always, our dear Rob was charming, adorable, and a little awkward during his interview last night with Jon Stewart. If you can’t watch the interview, here are a few excerpts.

From E! Online:

Stewart handled his business-as-usual interview turned major get with comedic flair, beginning mock-awkwardly with, “What have you been up to?”

“I had a joke prepared!” Pattinson protested, feigning dismay. “God damn it. I was all set up and ready to go.”

“OK, let’s just do this,” the host continued, busting out two pints of Ben & Jerry’s (Cherry Garcia for him, Karamel Sutra for his guest) and a couple of spoons.

“Now, we’re just a couple of gals talking,” Stewart said. “All right…Tell me everything.”

“I’m trying to avoid eating this, I’m going to split my Spanx,” the Cosmopolis star deadpanned.

“So what are we doing here? Are you all right? Is everything OK? I’m worried about you,” Stewart continued things along.

“My biggest problem in my life is I’m cheap, and I didn’t hire a publicist,” Pattinson revealed. “I’m going to hire a publicist.”

“I think you should,” Stewart agreed, “although, unless you have a time machine…”

“Either way,” Pattinson replied.

And here’s a little quote from People:

But when Stewart noted that for young people going through a breakup sometimes feels like the end of the world, Pattinson answered, “It is.”

The audience then went “Awwwwwww.”

So essentially, Robert Pattinson is a darling angel of a man who deserves all the kindness and hugs and ice cream in the world. That, and now I really, really can’t wait for his interview with Good Morning America tomorrow.

I know, I know. I keep talking about Tilda. “We need to talk about Tilda.” (I think I cover Tilda with the frequency and fervor I ordinarily reserve for Neil Patrick Harris.)

But Tilda gives a good interview—although, to be sure, sometimes her quotes can come off as icy or brittle. But in taped interviews, her sense of humor—about filmmaking and parenthood both—really shines. She is eccentric but not spastic, and she is very, very gracious.

“I try and steer clear of anyone who has an opinion, really,” Swinton tells Jon Stewart in a recent episode of The Daily Show. She says this very wryly, and she is laughing, but she isn’t really kidding.

She cops to exerting a certain amount of creative control on all the film projects she funds. But wouldn’t she like to direct? “No. No, no, no. No. No, no, no. No.” (I didn’t count how many times she said “No” in a row, actually, but there were several of them.)

“So that’s a ‘maybe,’” Stewart replies.

“I’m too lazy, by far,” she tells him. The audience laughs. “No, really,” she says.

“So you produce [We Need to Talk About Kevin], you act in the movie, but directing, that is where you draw the line,” Stewart says.

“Absolutely impossible,” she concedes seriously. Oh, lord. We live in a word where Madonna wants to direct every movie, while Tilda Swinton wants to direct nothing.

Stewart and Swinton turn the conversation to parenthood, and it’s really charming. (Swinton has two 14-year olds, you guys. Two!)

“They’re great!” she says, really earnest.

Anyway, again, sorry about all the Tilda. I am trying to cut back on the number of Daily Show clips I post, too. I can’t help it, people! I really love how easygoing celebrities become when Stewart interviews them. And don’t get me started on the time Cameron Diaz removed Jon Stewart’s stitches on television. It was as disgusting as it was amazing.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the Internet has been, from the very beginning, this thing we use to store and access documents. It didn’t take us long to figure out how to add pictures to those documents, and then we started experimenting with other media, like awful MIDI songs. So the Internet has always been a little squirrelly when it comes to “intellectual property” and copylaw.

I certainly hope you’ve already heard of the Stop Online Piracy Act, which was drafted by a congressman from Texas named Lamar Smith. Lawmakers are trying to enact SOPA here in the U.S.; this is terrifying.

Like, maybe you guys don’t love video “supercuts” as much as I do; that’s fine. But you do want me to post leaked song tracks, right?

Because that’s how the economy of information works: I don’t leak it, but I might post a link to it. That video, up at the top? I “embedded” it in the page, which means it is streaming from someplace else, but by golly, you have the freedom to watch it right here. Yeah, in a way, I filched a video. I pilfer constantly and merrily. But if I get a DMCA threat—hell, if I so much as get an angry email—that link or media comes down. I mean, most little celebrity gossip blogs are trying to operate within the confines of lawfulness. We, uh, like existing.

What I’m saying is, I’m innocent! I should not have to worry about going to prison for five years every time I post somebody else’s YouTube clip.

The above Daily Show clip is horrifying, by the way. Aaauuuugh! The way Jon Stewart just drops his MacBook Air! On the desk! Auuuuuugh!

The clip is horrifying for other reasons, though. It’s basically just a supercut, in fact, of U.S. congressmen, one after another, shrugging helplessly and going, “Well, I’m no nerd.”

“Really?” Stewart asks the camera. “Nerds? You know, I think actually the word you’re looking for is ‘experts.’”

Stewart is right to worry that U.S. lawmakers do not seem to understand how the Internet—or media! Media in general!—works. But in another way, Stewart misses the mark.

Here is an excerpt from an editorial at Mashable:

I had an epiphany today. The Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, was not written by people who fundamentally misunderstand how the web works. They understand all too well, and want to change it forever.

Behind the almost unreadable (yet truly scary) text of SOPA (and its Senate doppelganger, PIPA, or the Protect Intellectual Property Act) is a desire, likely fueled by powerful media conglomerate backers, to take us all back to the thin-pipe, content-distribution days of 1994—right before the World Wide Web launched.

[…]Yet the language in SOPA is so irrational that I can only assume that the authors and backers wanted nothing more than to fundamentally change the rules of the web: To shut down the open post fields, kill reposting (goodbye, Tumblr), end shared videos (sorry, YouTube), expand the definition of what it means to infringe (sorry, Twitter, no sharing links that aren’t yours).

When you turn copyright infringement into a felony and say that anyone can accuse a website of providing “infringing” tools (and apply severe penalties whether or not you do something about it), you are essentially making it impossible for anyone to do anything online without fear of retribution.

If SOPA and PIPA pass, they will fundamentally change the type of content and information you are permitted to get at any sort of U.S.-based “entertainment” website—like this one—and that is exactly what SOPA intends.

Congress votes on January 24.

I watched The Daily Show last night because, like many twentysomethings with short attention spans, I need Jon Stewart to report and interpret current events for me. And it was just the most. Ooh, you would’ve loved Denis Leary and his beautiful hair.

The very best bit came early in the episode when, in the midst of anchorperson Jon Stewart complaining about the state of our bedraggled nation, correspondent John Oliver miraculously appeared—umbrella in hand, in imitation of a certain magical English nanny—to promise Stewart, and all Americans, that Great Britain is in much deeper, much more debauched crap than we.

Oliver, with his darling wire-rimmed eyeglasses and moppet-hair and adorable accent, explains the whole sensational scandal with media impresario Rupert Murdoch and his News of the World tabloid. See, America? Don’t we feel better now?

Watch for the conclusion where John Oliver opens his umbrella, clambers onto Stewart’s newsdesk, and pantomimes “floating” away. It is super-cute. But also a ponderous indictment of gossip-mongering. Cute and horrible; that’s how I take my lumps, thank you.

Last night, in the most riveting piece of television in the history of colonoscopies, Jon Stewart invited Cameron Diaz to extricate his stitches one at a time. And then she totally did. It is too disgusting to miss.

You may remember how, earlier this month, Jon Stewart cut his wrist on The Daily Show—he was making margaritas during a fake press conference when a glass shattered—and as he stood there bleeding, he remarked that he might actually need stitches. No kidding, man.

Anyway. Cameron Diaz was on the program to promote her new movie Bad Teacher which, unless Ain’t It Cool News finds a way to convince me otherwise, I will probably never watch.

You know what I would watch, though? I’d watch a documentary reality program where Cameron Diaz makes house-calls in the countryside, lancing boils and yanking rotten teeth. She puts on her reading glasses, and the film crew gets really quiet as Cameron sterilizes the pointy tweezers, and then she leers maniacally at her patient and shrieks “Ready when you are!” and it’s just terrifying. God, this is actually a great idea for a TV show; it sounds just like something you’d find on BBC America.

If not, you should have, because it was spectacular.  If you’re not familiar with the event, it’s a benefit for autism education that Jon Stewart hosts on Comedy Central.  It’s also incredibly awesome.

Some of my favorite bits include the one where Chris Rock and Tracy Morgan sing “Scarborough Fair” and are later joined by Paul Simon (spoiler alert:  the three of them end up performing “Gin and Juice” instead), the one where Steve Carell holds hands with Naomi Watts and another woman while simulating an orgasm, and that video above where Steve Carell and Stephen Colbert sing a jaunty little song about 2009′s favorite pilot, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger.  I can’t find any video of my very favorite thing that happened at the event though, which was the part where Jim Parsons and Mike Birbiglia sat next to each other and smiled (Bazinga! and Pachoo!, respectively).

So far, they’ve raised just over $3.2 million  for autism education, which is pretty impressive.  They’re still taking donations though, so if you happen to have any extra income that you’d like to donate, hop on over to the Comedy Central site, and if you don’t have extra money, go ahead and just enjoy the beautiful clips.

Have you ever been on a kinda sorta date with somebody and you hoped that it wasn’t a date so you did everything you could to imply that it was a totally platonic meeting without actually saying that it was a platonic meeting? Like, I don’t know, talking about other men or women your dating, watching your body language to make sure your not giving off the wrong vibes and maybe even inviting some of your friends to meet up with you so that there’s absolutely no way you’ll get the moves put on you? OK, well, so has Jennifer Aniston. To Jon Stewart. And last night, after 15 years of keeping it to himself, he called her out for it on The Daily Show.

Supposedly right around the time that Jennifer was working on Friends, Jon was working on a show with Paramount and he ran into Jen and asked her on a date and she agreed. However, throughout that date, Jennifer had multiple friends show up to hang out with them. Ha. Sounds like maybe she said something like, “That dude Jon Stewart who used to have that MTV show asked me out. Come by the restaurant so he doesn’t think he can try something.”

I love the idea of these two going on a date at the peak of Jennifer’s fame and her rejecting him in such a cowardly way. Who hasn’t done that before? And I love that they can sit there and talk about it so normally on Jon’s show. Makes me hopeful, you know? Like maybe I’ll figure out how to stop being such a passive-aggressive bitch sometime in the next fifteen years and live to laugh about it.

Okay my little eyes are shutting now, apparently it’s been a much longer day than I realized, but, before I sign off for the night, please enjoy Jon Stewart and his son Nathan at the Knicks game on Sunday.

The Colbert Report

 

Tonight my husband, Stephen Colbert, will be hosting A Colbert Christmas on Comedy Central at 10pmEST/PT & 9/C.  Guests include Toby Keith, Willie Nelson, John Legend, Elvis Costello and Jon Stewart.

As much as I worship Colbert, I’m not feeling too confident about this.  I hope the rest of the show is an improvement from this clip which is positively cringe-worthy despite the crazy laughing audience…who are those people?  Comedy Central has high hopes for this special though.  It premieres tonight and is available this Tuesday on DVD.

Check out Barack Obama on The Daily Show.

Um … is he sitting in front of a blue-screen or did they really find him a spot in Ft. Lauderdale with a bunch of old-fashioned books and a U.S. flag? It looks ridiculous either way.

As this election winds to a close, Barack Obama is ramping up, with an appearance on The Daily Show on Wednesday and a rumored appearance on SNL this weekend.

A major-party Presidential candidate doing The Daily Show just days before the election?

Dude, when Jon Stewart started out his silly little fake cable-news show, who would’ve thunk it? Amazing.

Above, find a clip of the last time Obama appeared on The Daily Show.

Here’s Jon Stewart weighing in on the McCain camp and the Palin nomination.