Crave

Stephen Colbert's new Christmas album is at the top of our list.

We have a diverse batch of goodies for you this year. New additions include a duet with Elvis Presley and Martina McBride; a New Kids on the Block reissue; Stephen Colbert's debut Christmas album; and a Hanukkah jam from Erran Baron Cohen. And the great thing about holiday tunes is that you can recycle them every year! So, get acquainted with the new stuff, and then dig into our archive to resurrect the classic favorites.

Holiday Music '08 feature page

Stephen Colbert

Should anything happen to Earth, the human race will now be insured.

Comedy Central announced Monday that the host of The Colbert Report will have his DNA digitized and sent to the International Space Station (ISS). According to the Associated Press, Stephen Colbert's gene package will be carried there by famed video game designer Richard Garriott, who will travel to the station in October.

Garriott will deposit the "Immortality Drive," a time capsule that will include human DNA and records of humanity's greatest accomplishments, along with personal messages collected specifically for the project.

This will be the second time Colbert goes intergalactic. In May, he was the first late-night host to interview an astronaut, Garrett Reisman, while he was in space.

In a statement, Stephen Colbert said he was thrilled to have his DNA shot into space, as this would bring him "...one step closer to my lifelong dream of being the baby at the end of 2001," referring to the 1968 sci-fi movie 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In a statement, Garriott said: "In the unlikely event that Earth and humanity are destroyed, mankind can be resurrected with Stephen Colbert's DNA. Is there a better person for us to turn to for this high-level responsibility?"

Stephen Colbert's answer to that rhetorical question would probably be "no."

The man who openly tore down the U.S. President during the White House Correspondents Dinner a few years back, Stephen Colbert, doesn't mess around with a BlackBerry, or any sort of Nokia phones. To put it in Stephen's own words, "I use an iPhone...and I got it for free, motherf***er!"

The guys from CNET's The 404 podcast stopped by The Colbert Report yesterday for a few laughs. During an audience preshow Q&A, they did what any enterprising blogger would do: asked about his cell preference.

Other than the iPhone, Colbert also mentioned that he was working with Apple to get 30 MacBook Air notebooks shipped around the world in manila envelopes, just to see how they fared without any sort of packing. The stunt was moving swimmingly until Apple realized Colbert wasn't joking. Pity Apple doesn't have the sense of humor (or the $60,000 in computers to spare) to see the experiment through.

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Shortly after the nascent Stephen Colbert '08 presidential campaign filed to run on the Democratic ballot in South Carolina's primary, the state party voted on Thursday to kick the colorful comedian out of the race. According to the Associated Press, party officials met for approximately 40 minutes and then voted 13-3 to remove Colbert from the ballot.

Meanwhile, many members of the "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" group on Facebook, which currently hovers around 1,300,000 in membership, refuse to give up.

"I think it's stupid that they are trying to put a stop to his campaign because they believe it is just a ploy to further his comedy routine," one infuriated member of the Colbert Nation wrote on the message board for the "1,000,000 Strong" group. "From what I have seen he is probably the most realistic person running right now."

"You know what?" another asked. "If Arnold Schwarzenegger can be governor of California, then Stephen Colbert can certainly be president. What's wrong with these people?"

Others started posting telephone numbers for the state Democratic Party's office and began linking to offshoot groups to promote a Colbert write-in campaign.

Colbert, who hosts the Comedy Central program The Colbert Report, announced last month that he planned to run for president--but only in South Carolina as a "favorite son."

On a related note, Thursday was a sad day for purveyors of the green screen challenge everywhere: in addition to Colbert's rejection from the Democratic primary, indie-rock band and onetime Colbert foe The Decemberists canceled the remainder of their North American tour.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

On October 16, Stephen Colbert announced that he is seeking the presidential nomination from both the Republican and Democratic parties in his home state of South Carolina. Though Colbert has never asserted he is serious (he recently told students at Columbia University, "I don't actually want to win, I just want to f**k with people."), his candidacy continues to be covered by just about every media outlet you can think of. Some people fully support his run for president whereas others are less than excited about turning the U.S. into a Colbert Nation.

While it's interesting that Colbert continues to garner coverage for his bid on the White House, what fascinates me is the level of support his campaign has generated. It's clear that many Americans are frustrated with the state of politics and their voting options; this is the reason that less than one third of voters stated they would definitely vote against Stephen Colbert for President in a Rasmussen poll, and six percent said they'd definitely vote for him despite the fact that he's a Democrat with no political experience who plays a caricature of Bill O'Reilly on television.

Of course, this is actually the same story that made its way through the theater last year in the Robin Williams vehicle, Man of the Year. In the film Williams is more Stewart than he is Colbert, but the premise is the same, a late-night political satirist decides to run for president and manages to gather far more support than anyone expected. He actually winds up getting elected in the movie due to a technical glitch, but surrenders his victory after learning his success was only made possible through computer error.

It's unlikely that Diebold will deliver Colbert the win, or that he will even make it onto the national ballot, but the success he's already achieved in his campaign is indicative of the same hunger for a real alternative that Man of the Year tapped into. As the New York Times reports on their blog The Caucus, the Facebook group 1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert has already eclipsed their stated goal and left Barrack Obama in the dust. Obama has the second most popular Facebook group amongst the presidential contenders but hasn't even accrued 400,000 supporters in the 8 months the group has been active.

Jon Friedman at MarketWatch has suggested that Colbert's campaign is nothing more than an attempt to bolster sales of his new book. Friedman argues that, "The clever host of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report" is holding the usually clear-eyed media in the palm of his hand and bringing out the worst in some star-struck journalists who should know better," but Allison Kilkenny at The Huffington Post sees things differently:

This is the root of all that is wrong with American politics. It's the "you can't win, so sit down" attitude. Supporters of this philosophy forget that runners don't necessarily have to win to shape public opinion. Victories are won with ideas, and true leaders possess the vision and wisdom to know that sometimes revolutions happen gradually.

Sometimes, revolutions begin with one person standing up and saying: "I know you don't take me seriously. I know I'm the clown in the room, but damnit, I'm trying anyway."

I tend to agree with Kilkenny. It often feels as if a politician's influence can be bought and sold like a commodity on the stock market (Colbert himself alluded to this when he announced that his campaign would be sponsored by Dorritos), and this tends to be true at both the national and local level. Colbert and other also ran candidates are doing what they can to shed light on this sordid system we call politics. Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford professor and the author of Free Culture has been working to eradicate political corruption not as candidates, but as an expert on culture and a beacon in the academic community, and he's not the only one working to build alternatives to the current system.

There's obviously a long way to go before we can develop something that is truly representative of the will of the people, of all people, but it's encouraging to know that people are working on it. The classic saying is true: democracy is not a spectator sport; with the advent of the internet and Web 2.0, I'm hopeful that we can begin moving toward direct democracy and a system that isn't governed by the economic influence of special interests and the political elite.

In the words of John Lennon, "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Here's to Stephen Colbert, Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and every other person, who has ever run for office knowing their odds of being elected are a long shot, at best, but are committed to making a change in whatever capacity they are able: good luck and never, never, give up!

The publisher Hachette Book Group USA, a member of the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF), has decided to go with the digital publishing organization's recommended standard for distributing books in digital format.

Starting with its December 2007 launch titles, HBG plans to release its bestsellers in the .epub eBook format, the company announced Friday.

The .epub is an XML file format for reflowable digital books that includes Open Publication Structure (OPS), Open Packaging Format (OPF) and Open Container Format (OCF).

Hachette claims to be the first book publisher in the U.S. to adopt the .epub format. It also said the move will allow them to create eBooks more efficiently.

But the publisher could also just be following the money, as eBook popularity begins to rise.

About $8.1 million in eBooks were sold in the U.S. for the second quarter 2007 compared with $4 million for the same quarter the year before, according to statistics released by IDPF and Association of American Publishers in August.

Since bestseller I Am America (And So Can You!) by Stephen Colbert has already been released digitally, the book will not be re-released in the new .epub format, April Hattori, vice president of communications for HGB, said in an e-mail.

The news follows reports that the Booker Prize Foundation is in negotiations with several publishers and the British Council to get permission to release books on the Man Booker Prize shortlist for free download to anyone in the world. In August, HarperCollins also announced that it would be offering free book excerpts for iPhone owners.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

Update at 7:19 a.m. PDT: Facebook comment added.

Stephen Colbert should consider naming Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as his running mate* in his quasi-legitimate presidential campaign; the social-networking site has been the political satirist's prime rallying grounds.

Sometime on Thursday night, a Facebook fan group for Colbert's campaign met its membership goal of 1 million Facebook members--and the group was founded just over a week ago.

The group, "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert" (the "T" stands for Tyrone, for the record) was started by a Facebook user shortly after The Colbert Report host announced that he was going to enter the presidential primary in his home state of South Carolina as a "favorite son." It's a take-off on the "1,000,000 Strong for Barack Obama" Facebook group, which has yet to crack 400,000 members after nine months. The equivalent Colbert group took just over a week to hit a million.

"Colbert-Zuckerberg '08" does have a nice ring to it.

Several blogs have asserted that this is the fastest-growing group in Facebook's history. I find that very easy to believe, but there is no official confirmation: Facebook says it neither tabulates how fast groups grow nor offers a central list of the biggest groups on the site. (Facebook execs presumably have other things on their mind, like this whole "Microsoft thing.")

On the more serious side of things, the light-hearted enthusiasm over Colbert's "presidential campaign" could be a sign that young American voters are getting sick of Election 2008's career politicians have already been plastered all over the media. The really scary part: there's still over a year to go in this race.

Meanwhile, Editor and Publisher reports that not only will the mayor of Columbia, S.C., declare this coming Sunday "Stephen Colbert Day" when the "favorite son" comes for a visit, but that polling firm Rasmussen has actually bothered to include Colbert in a telephone survey that pitted him against Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican hopeful Rudy Giuliani.

Nation, these are frightening times we live in.

*Yes, yes, I know that it probably breaks election law for the 23-year-old Zuckerberg to appear on a campaign ticket, and I also know that he's probably too busy taking over the world to bother with politics.

The dashingly handsome Stephen Colbert, self-proclaimed 'favorite son' of South Carolina

(Credit: Comedy Central)

The thought of a comedian running for president might have been the plot of a tepid Robin Williams movie until recently, but now there are signs that faux pundit Stephen Colbert may actually want to dip his patriotic toes in the (shark-infested) campaign pool.

Colbert formally announced on Tuesday's episode of his spoof talk show, The Colbert Report, that he intends to run for president. More specifically, he aims to get his name on the ballot for both the Democratic and Republican primaries in his home state of South Carolina as a "favorite son."

"And not my mother's favorite son," Colbert explained. "She is much too fair-minded to ever show a preference between the eight of us. Right, Mom?"

It's no surprise that Colbert, with his over-the-top blowhard-egotist act, would make jokes about wanting to end up in the Oval Office. He's been talking about it for weeks on shows like Larry King Live and even in a New York Times op-ed column. But here's the shocker: After Tuesday night's show, people are starting to get the idea that he might not be kidding.

Earlier that evening on The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, on which Colbert used to play a (fake) reporter, he formally announced that he would, well, be making a formal announcement. "I, Stephen Colbert, am officially announcing that I will officially consider whether or not I will announce that I am running for president of the United States."

But on Tuesday's Colbert Report, which occupies the time slot after The Daily Show on the Viacom-owned Comedy Central, Colbert made it less fuzzy. "I have heard the call," he declared. "Nation, I shall seek the office of the president of the United States!" He then erupted into a sort of reverie as red, white, and blue balloons cascaded from the ceiling.

Neither Comedy Central nor Colbert's personal publicist have issued statements on whether the comedian will actually attempt to get on the ballot, which has left many--including South Carolina's major political parties--on the edge as to whether the announcement should be taken seriously.

"If Stephen fulfills the requirements met in our delegates' election plan and he actively campaigns in South Carolina, we welcome him to compete," said Joe Werner, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, in an interview with CNET News.com. Werner added that representatives from The Colbert Report had placed calls to the state party's headquarters several weeks ago but that the party thought it was all a joke at the time.

Fulfilling the requirements, however, will be the tough part. Party regulations, Werner said, prevent Colbert from attempting to run on both the Democratic and Republican tickets. "It's in our rules somewhere that you can't be on two ballots," he explained. "He'd have to pick one party."

Representatives from the South Carolina Republican Party were not readily available for comment.

At 43, Stephen Tyrone Colbert would be the youngest contender in the major parties' candidate roster. (Barack Obama is 46.) Colbert would additionally be the first presidential candidate to be banned from Wikipedia (which, ironically, has named his buzzword "truthiness" as its article of the day for October 17), have a mass-market ice cream flavor named after him, and have an extensive repertoire of YouTube videos in which he prances around with a Star Wars lightsaber. Currently, he's riding high on the bestseller lists with his book I Am America, And So Can You!

It could still be a huge joke on all of us. The late comedian Pat Paulsen, after all, was using "I'm running for president" as a stand-up routine in the mid-20th century, over the course of multiple election cycles.

But considering Colbert's prominence as a geek hero, there's no question that fast-spreading buzz on the Web would only add to the anticipation over whether he'll run. Rumors floated in 2005, stemming from the appearance of an "official" Web site that turned out to be a hoax, that oddball actor Christopher Walken would be running for president. (In the words of one CNET News.com commenter, "Too bad. America's got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell!")

Colbert, like Walken, would likely be an instant Internet favorite.

Stephen Colbert

(Credit: Comedy Central)

I don't think I've been this psyched for a Colbert Report episode since Stephen Colbert took on the Decemberists. On Wednesday, August 22, an unscripted tiff between the Comedy Central comedian and billionaire Sir Richard Branson, which swirled up quite a bit of chatter in the blog rumor mill, will be shown in that night's episode of the faux-pundit talk show.

The segment, originally cut from the program, depicts Virgin Group mogul Branson dumping a cup of water on Colbert in a manner that was rumored to be less-than-friendly. It was considered particularly out-of-line, considering the close ties between the two geek heroes--one of the planes in the new tech-friendly Virgin America fleet, after all, is called the "Air Colbert."

Sir Richard Branson

(Credit: Virgin Group)

A statement from Virgin USA, obtained by FishbowlNY, suggests that there was no delay in airing the segment, contrary to popular belief. The company insisted that "Richard enjoyed his time with Stephen, and the splash was part of the fun."

So, Colbert might no longer be "on notice" with Sir Richard, but YouTube still apparently wants his head on a platter (but a well-designed platter from the Googleplex's all-you-can-eat cafeteria, of course).