The Daily Show and The Colbert Report have returned to the airwaves after nine weeks of strike-induced absence. Neither host wanted to go back on the air without their writers, but their contracts left them with little choice. I watched the first episodes back of both shows. As we were watching them, Segev said, "Do you support the writers strike?" When I answered decisively in the affirmative, he snapped, "Well, then why the hell did you download these?" I explained that the Daily Show was already paid for, the money already long gone from the iTunes monthly pass I had purchased but not completed before the strike. The auto-renewal has now been turned off, but I'm going to watch the remaining 5 episodes relatively guilt-free. And the Colbert Report...that somehow mysteriously appeared on my hard drive. Maybe the Viacom fairy put it there; I don't know... Suffice it to say that the writers may not have received any income from my viewing of Monday night's Colbert Report, but neither did Sumner Redstone or Les Moonves. (And, to be perfectly honest, I feel absolutely zero guilt about this. The studios are going to have a hell of a time trying to prosecute intellectual property cases on internet downloads of TV shows if they've proclaimed that viewing an entire episode online is a "promotional use" [even when there are unskippable ads embedded] and therefore shouldn't result in residual payments to the writers. If the internet episode has no monetary value, what are you suing me for? Not to mention Betamax time-shifting blah-di-blah...I'm over it. Get your act together, AMPTP.)

So, anyway, the results of the first episodes were mixed. Jon Stewart was widely criticized for being kinda cranky about the fact that the WGA wouldn't break him off the same deal that Worldwide Pants got. I personally think that the Worldwide Pants deal was a bad strategic call on the part of the WGA. They're saying that it's a totally different case because Worldwide Pants owns the rights to Letterman's show, where as Busboy Productions doesn't own The Daily Show or The Colbert Report (Viacom does). But, you know, where I'm standing, CBS is getting ad revenues from Letterman the same way that Comedy Central gets ad revenues from Colbert. The difference really seems to be that The Daily Show has more cachet as a bargaining tool than Letterman does -- higher profile, I guess, what with John Oliver traipsing around New York with picket signs, being all British and cute. Obviously Jon was a little upset, because he wants his show to go back to normal, but he's very sympathetic to labor, and he knows how much he depends on his writers for material. (Last night's episode had a great bit where Jon quoted Cocoon and it flew right over the college-aged audience's head -- he said, "You know, without my writers all my references are going to be from the '80s. I can get up to about Breakfast Club, and then nothin'.") He's conflicted. So Jon's first episode back was a little rough, especially compared to Colbert. Colbert has a huge advantage -- he comes from an improv background, a rich and storied Second City improv background, and is much more able to just wing it than stand-up Jon. Colbert really can just pull stuff out of his ass and be funny at a moment's notice. It's kinda brilliant. But, as I've said before, although I'm a huge fan of Colbert himself, I'm not super fond of the show. Colbert-the-persona is a little hard for me to take in full half-hour doses. If the episodes were Aqua-Teen-sized, then I'd be totally up for it. 11 minutes of Colbert-larity, in and out, boom. But I cant do the full half hour. Which is sad, because half-hour shows are really only 21 minutes long. I have no attention span left.

Last night's Daily Show, however, was leaps and bounds better, and featured a music cue that made me laugh hysterically -- as a response to Hillary's total non-cry heard around the world, they did a montage of presidents and other celebrities crying set to "It's Alright to Cry" from Free To Be You And Me, ending with the classic shot of the Indian crying about pollution. Jon's cultural references really did top off somewhere in the mid-70s. I think Cocoon is actually pushing it, timeline-wise. But that montage totally made me want to download Free To Be You And Me and sing about how William Has A Doll and Parents Are People, People With Children, and listen to Marlo Thomas and Mel Brooks riff about gender roles. Awesome. (Speaking of Betamax...I HAD THAT on betamax! It was part of the Children's Video Library, which had an animated logo with balloons and a jaunty whistled tune. They also put out Benji movies on videotape. I miss my childhood so.) It looks like Hillary has learned the lesson Rosey Grier made clear all those years ago: It's alright to cry. Crying gets the sad out of you.

I don't remember if I mentioned this back when Old School Sesame Street Volume 1 came out, but I remember being shocked by it and am glad other people were, too: The DVD has a disclaimer saying that it is meant for adults and might not be suitable for "the needs of today's preschool child." So all the kids that grew up watching Sesame Street between 1969 and 1979 (the years covered by the two available sets) have been horribly mind-warped? Whew! Glad I just missed the cutoff. I'm sure volume three will be totally acceptable. After all, Elmo arrived in 1984. He'll make everything alright.

Holy crap, I downloaded all these absolutely terrible '80s songs the other day and I am LOVING them. I feel like I am in 3rd grade again. It's amazing. Like, "I Can't Wait" by Nu Shooz? Why am I not at Skateland right now???

Slate article in which Maurice Sendak calls Mickey Mouse a shithead = My favorite Slate article of the week.

I recently watched the whole second season of Robot Chicken. Other than a brief "You suck, Scott Norwood!" joke (which made me bust out laughing), this was the best thing in it:

I was listening to my iPod the other day and the Pharcyde's "Ya Mama" came on.

"Ya mama's glasses are so thick she look into a map and see people wavin at her."

I'd never really paid attention to that part of the song, and for some reason I was incredibly amused.

I got The Little Mermaid on DVD today and was excited to watch it, having not seen the movie in close to 10 years. It was only slightly ruined by the fact that Segev kept posing questions about logical inconsistencies. I had to continually point out to him that it's a movie about MERMAIDS and TALKING CRABS, and if he's able to accept that, then why can't he accept that there's a giant gold castle at the bottom of the sea without needing to know where they mined the gold? Anyway, I was horrified to realize that The Little Mermaid came out 17 freakin' years ago, and I am officially OLD.

Now that Amazon is selling groceries, the reviews page for a gallon of milk has apparently become the target for, at this point, 332 jokers who feel it's their destiny to write the funniest thing about milk ever published on the internet.

There was one that tickled the funny bone of this Sesame Street-obsessed reader:

I drank the last of the milk 3 days ago, and so my mother decided it was time I replenish it. I was walking down to the local store to purchase a loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter... when I came across a man with arms that went the wrong direction and everything was in psycadelic colours and sounds. I went by an insane machine and then by a crazy fountain, and got to the store, and purchased my goods, only to realize that I forgot where I was. I asked advice of a strange technicolor man, who sent me on my way ... having reminded me of all the bizarre landmarks I passed. So I got home and exclaimed to my mother look, I remembered! A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter!

I hope they do realize that those are two separate sketches. And if we're going to mention Sesame Street sketches having to do with milk, I must, of course, post my personal favorite.

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for some reason i have a DISTINCT memory of listening to this brenda k. starr song while reading that anastasia book where she takes classes at the modeling agency...

the muppet wiki has solved the great television mystery of my life. when i was in middle school, i watched a couple episodes of a bizarre canadian puppet show that involved two kids, a lighthouse, a sleeping giant, and all sorts of random stuff. i could never figure out what day or time it aired, so i just saw a couple of random episodes when i chanced upon them. for years i've been trying to figure out what it was, without any success.

well, apparently the guy who made it was a muppeteer on fraggle rock. i randomly clicked on a link on the muppet performers page of the wiki and saw the words "blizzard island". i gasped. that's IT! that's IT!

i was just mentioning this show to segev the other day, wondering why i could never find it on google and why no one on the canadian television thread over on TWoP knew what i was talking about. turns out the kids weren't in the lighthouse, the puppet witch lived in the lighthouse. so the description i was giving to people all these years, what i was basing my google search on, was slightly off. i never understood why i couldn't just google "canada lighthouse puppet" and come up with something. today is a happy day. i'm a little disappointed to realize that all the puppets look really crappy, but whatever. apparently it was made into a movie called "argon's quest", but i don't know if that was recycled footage from the show compiled into a movie-length production, or entirely different. looks like the blizzard island website was never completed. boo.

somewhere along the line my brain mixed up the title of the roald dahl book "the BFG" and the saying "B.F.D." so now i think of the title character as "the big fucking giant".

quentin blake's illustrations made the BFG (actual meaning: big FRIENDLY giant) look just like roald dahl. ironically, the man wasn't particularly friendly. but he was a fucking giant, so maybe my way works better.