Fresh Loaf

Fake right-wing pundit Stephen Colbert repackages himself as a singing, dancing, all-purpose fatuous celebrity on A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All, which debuts on Comedy Central on Sunday night, Nov. 23. In a flawless parody of 1970s-style variety shows, A Colbert Christmas finds Colbert trapped in his mountain cabin by his greatest nemesis — a hungry bear. He still manages to play host to such unexpected guests as Toby Keith, Jon Stewart, John Legend and Elvis Costello (whose seasonal costumes alone make it worth watching).

A Colbert Christmas rises above the usual Christmas spoof thanks to the strength of the holiday parodies by David Javerbaum (”The Daily Show” executive producer) and Adam Schlesinger (songwriter and Fountains of Wayne co-founder). Javerbaum and Schlesinger provide some of the best Christmas (and Channukah) parodies this side of “South Park.” Here’s Colbert introducing the show and launching into the first half of “Another Christmas Song” (which also available in its entirety as an audio file):

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MARS DROUGHT DOWNGRADED: Scientists find and sample water from the Martian surface, and will spend the next several weeks studying whether it could support life.

TED STEVENS: Not giving up without a slow, creaky fight.

COLBERT: Offers a “rare apology” to Canton, Ga., for calling the town “crappy,” adding that he meant to call Canton, Kan., crappy: “How many Canton, Kan. residents does it take to screw in a lightbulb? None. They don’t use lights because they don’t want to see where they live.”

RUNOFF: Congressional Quarterly summarizes the uphill battle ahead of whoever wins Tuesday’s Democratic primary runoff in the U.S. Senate race to unseat Saxby Chambliss.

316: Won’t toll for thee.

HEADLINE NUDES: Lavonia buys the town’s only strip club with $1 million of taxpayer money, closes it and burns down its billboards.

LINGERIE: Included, along with bras, garter belts and hosiery, among the items exempt from sales taxes in this weekend’s statewide tax holiday. WSB-TV makes the distinction, however, that only sexy lingerie is exempt:

UNEMPLOYMENT: U.S. rate hits a four-year high in July as employers cut 51,000 jobs. But who’s going to operate the giant computer-chip-gear machine that makes red lightning bolts?

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— The Georgia blogosphere is still trying to sort through the ramifications that blogger Andre Walker’s failure to disclose that he was working for state Rep. David Scott, even as he posted on Scott’s campaign. There’s been a lively discussion here on Fresh Loaf. And besides posting comments here, Driftgrift is spitting tacks here and also here. And Sara discusses it also at Going Through The Motions.

— A WGCL-TV news reporter was duped by a guy who claimed to have invented a way to convert tap water in fuel. Live Apartment Fire says it wasn’t the first time the scam has made its way onto a news broadcast and asks the right question: Why didn’t the reporter contact a scientist at Georgia Tech to see if water can actually be converted to fuel?

— The Daly Briefing follows the adventures of a former Atlanta news photographer in Iraq. Today, he’s off for a trip to Umm Qasr, the lone port in Iraq. He writes about dealing with the heat in the desert and his unfortunate choice of a seat in a ride on a Blackhawk helicopter.

— A transplant from Long Island writes about the joys of homegrown tomatoes in Atlanta on Voted Off The Island.

— Edwin at Chicken Fat riffs on a question that’s always puzzled me as well: Why do we talk to our pets as if they’re going to respond?

— And, finally, Stephen Colbert has issued an apology for using the term “crappy Canton” to describe one of our fair cities. Reporter-cub has the link.

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ABRIDGE OVER STUBBLED WATER: Georgia Agriculture Commissioner Tommy Irvin is instituting Razor-Free Fridays, asking male ag employees to conserve water by skipping shaving.

BAT SIGNALS: A graduate student’s research uncovers an unknown population of about 900 Rafinesque’s big-eared bats living in South Georgia bottomland forests; scientists had previously spotted just 17 of the bats in all of South Georgia and thought they lived only near the coast.

ECO LOCATION: The Golden Isles are popular with ecotourists.

CLAYTON: Embattled Clayton Sheriff Victor Hill has responded to a former employee’s election-season lawsuit by filing a flurry of 30 defenses. Also, the county school board will outline at a meeting Friday why SACS shouldn’t revoke the school system’s accreditation. Read more about Clayton’s panoply of problems in this week’s CL cover story by Thomas Wheatley.

A FEATHER IN THEIR CRAP: Stephen Colbert called Canton, Ga., “crappy” on his show Monday night, leading defensive city leaders to invite him to visit, hoping to salvage some positive publicity.

T-STORMS AND ASTHMA: Are apparently correlated, according to a joint study by UGA and Emory researchers.

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Last month, John McCain gave a speech in Louisiana so dull that Comedy Central’s faux-right-wing pundit Stephen Colbert invited viewers to place the Republican presidential candidate in more exciting surroundings.

The entries are in and they range from mildly diverting to solidly amusing. We haven’t watched them all, so there might be one that’s pee-your-pants funny. We’ll offer our favorite, a Pulp Fiction homage.

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Libertarian candidate for president was on “The Colbert Report” last night. Here it is, courtesy of Comedy Central:

The money quote, from Colbert’s introduction of Barr: “Bob Barr has a long, Libertarian voting record. In Congress, he supported such privacy-friendly, small-government initiatives as the Defense of Marriage Act, which made the government small enough to fit in a bedroom.”

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