Anticipation (Updated)

Update: Stewart is the guest today on Larry King. As I write this the live broadcast is almost over, but CNN being CNN, it should be repeated about three more times tonight. I'm looking forward to the Oscars more and more.

The Los Angeles Times has a good piece on Jon Stewart's upcoming Academy Awards gig. I'm psyched. Here are some of my favorite bits from the article.

He is bummed too that the academy did not nominate "Grizzly Man" for best documentary, because of the high-concept commentary he might have wrung from Werner Herzog's existential rumination on the bear lover eventually eaten in the wilds.

Stewart explains, "I very much wanted to do a bit where the bear from 'Grizzly Man' and one of the penguins from 'March of the Penguins' came out to present best documentary. Only the bear would come out and I would go over and go, 'YOU PROMISED ME! YOU PROMISED ME! I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU DID IT! WHAT ARE WE GONNA TELL HIS WIFE?'

BRUCE VILANCH, the wild-haired gag writer and gay activist celebrating his Oscar "Sweet 16," has his own ideas for a "Brokeback Mountain" bit ("I was hoping for a seminude kick line, but I lost") and for dealing with Clooney ("With a bottle of wine and some date-rape drugs").

"The show could end with gay cowboys and Truman Capote and a 'tranny,' " a.k.a. a transvestite from "Transamerica," Vilanch says. "Not what the red states are used to."

You know, when I say "Man, that's gay"...you've crossed a line.

Stewart says he consulted Crystal, Steve Martin and Rock and all advised him not to try to outthink either the academy or the audience, just trust his instincts and have fun. That and, "Chris said, 'Go there with a passport, $10,000 and a fake beard. And if you have to head to Mexico, you head to Mexico.' "

"I'm not doing this for posterity," he says of hosting Oscar night. Stewart leans back behind his desk and explains how these awards are a 78-year-old entity and a pretty sweet franchise and he'll be borrowing interest from it, not the other way around. Can he bring a slightly different atmosphere? "That may be," he says.

"My impulse is always to start with absurdity, either the absurdity of me doing it, or whatever the absurdity may be of this year's films … I'll do that or I will come up with a song parody that somehow figures out a way to rhyme 'Syriana' and 'Capote,' which is not going to be easy,"