dreams do come true - i finally attend a taping of the colbert report

My friend Jenny 8 Lee was making the New York rounds this week promoting her new book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. I've had the pleasure of watching this book go from a proposal on her laptop, which I first read while in the middle of a Halloween party back in 05. I was sober enough to enjoy what I read and make a good impression -- we hit it off.

Along the way, I've gotten to read drafts of chapters and build her blog, along with a few other design tasks here and there. So I'm getting quite a bit of pleasure from watching all the success it's had so far.

And when Jenny told me she was going to appear on the Colbert Report, I immediately started drafting dialog and one-liners for her in an effort to solidify my chances of attending the show with her. It was absolutely worth it. Shaking Colbert's hand was akin to shaking the hands of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Hetfield all at once.

Colbert does a bit of Q&A before the show to humanize himself for the audience, revealing an man as affable as he is witty. The show went quite well -- even though he had to redo The Word segment -- and his interview with Jenny got quite a few laughs. And she even used one of my lines (comforting me with the knowledge that I nearly earned my attendance).

why we can't trust the french

Here's proof that the bear lobby is much stronger than anyone is willing to say. I took this photo in a Paris subway station:The title of this event is Bêtes et Hommes which my translator says means "Animals and Men" -- so why the picture of a bear?!

Now, I'm no zoologist, but I know there are plenty of other animals they could have used for this advertisement. Why not put the friendly silhouette of a hippopotamus*, or the awkward outline of a giraffe?

But instead the French caved to the bear sympathizers. This kind of blatant pandering to the Ursidae family would never be tolerated here in the U.S.

Don't look for any help from us, Jacques, when the bears storm your cities and pillage your croissants. You brought it on yourself.

And now, a poorly voiced-over montage of Colbert:

*OK, so the hippo actually one of the most dangerous animals to humans (excluding the mosquito, which would be a lame choice for an animals poster). Don't tell the bears -- if you thought they were a threat to our country now, just wait until they found that out.