'Twas the Friday before Christmas and all through your office, not a creature was stirring–except for you, because your job sucks. The stockings were hung by the watercooler with care, in hopes that the long Christmas weekend would soon be there. The children were nestled all snug in their cubicles, reading another fat batch of Friday Buzzkills. Ho ho ho, motherfuckers!
– Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have announced that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report will be returning on January 7! It's a Christmas mirac–what? Oh, they're returning without writers? And "trademark features like Stewart's 'Headlines' and Colbert's 'The Word' will obviously have to take a break," and the shows will "rely heavily on pretaped segments from the field" and will probably "rerun old, pre-strike pieces"? And episodes will stretch interviews through two commercial breaks, maybe even adding additional guests and musical performances? Oh boy! This is just like waking up Christmas morning to find Santa brought you an Intendo We.
– Need a last-minute Christmas present to blow somebody's mind? Well how about an original KITT from Knight Rider? That's pretty cool, right? Oh, except it's being sold to pay off the remaining debts of real estate developer Andrew Kissel, who was found slain last year, "slumped in a chair, feet and hands bound, covered in blood," two years after his brother was killed by his wife, who "fed him a strawberry milkshake laced with poison and bludgeoned him to death with a statue." Um, but I guess you don't have to tell them that.
– 2008 brings with it the end of Scrubs, which means the Braffian Universe is shrinking ever so slightly! Joy to the wor–what? Oh, he's producing and directing a new drama for Fox? It's called Saint Of Circumstance, and it's written by his brother Adam? So the Braffian Universe is doubling? Well, I suppose that's pretty good news…if your name is Jose Gonzalez.
– One thing we can take solace in this New Year is that 2008's High School Musical 3 will finally bring the "trilogy" to its close, and our nation's youth will no longer have a Grease for the Myspace generation to obsess about. Joyful joyful joyf–huh? Oh, MTV is developing its own original teen musical, The American Mall? And it's a romantic-comedy-drama that centers on "a high-school graduate singer-songwriter battling to save her mother's music store and to keep the boy she loves, a musically gifted young janitor who fronts a garage band"? Could we maybe get John Lithgow's character from Footloose in here to declare martial law?
– Finally, as you and your family are gathered around the warm glow of the TV this Christmas, taking in yet another showing of It's A Wonderful Life, here's a buzzkill you can drop to bring everybody down as my gift to you: director Frank Capra's son, Frank Capra Jr., passed away this week at the age of 73. Remember, every time a buzzkill rings, an angel dies of prostate cancer.
Merry Christmas, everyone!