Awards shows are just an lazy way for networks to eat up hundreds of minutes of airtime. They also sell big chunks of advertising that no one will see because the kind of people who watch every single minute of airtime either never leave their house or don't have the cognitive faculties to understand the concept of money.

The worst of the worst is the Tonys. They seem to go out of their way to make the whole affair uninteresting and over the heads of their viewers who are located outside of the Broadway area, give or take a few blocks. Why even air them? Is there a beet farmer in Bumblecrack, Ark. who just can't wait another night to find out if Hope Davis took home the Best Actress nod for 'God of Carnage?'

This year, an orange glow of hope came down from the heavens when the people behind the awards show offered the hosting job to Conan O'Brien, an honor he turned down just as fast.

A lot of memories have surfaced of the good times that pop icon and musical genius Michael Jackson provided the world in the wake of his untimely and unfortunate death. However, an elephant in the room has wedged its wide butt in between the happy memories that range from "Billy Jean" to "Rockin' Robin," other than the eye-bleedingly bad Moonwalker movie.

Jackson's life outside of the recording studio and in the blood-soaked pages of the supermarket tabloids provided a lot of fodder for comedies and comedians that turned the man into a punchline just as fast as the radio waves turned him into a legend.

The best part of Late Night is coming to The Tonight Show. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog will be making his first appearance on Conan O'Brien's show tonight according to a Twitter entry (or "tweet," as the kids call it) from staffer/blogger Aaron Bleyaert. Hopefully, it's the first of many appearances.

I make no reservations about my love of Robert Smigel's alter ego. I have seen him in concert and own all the CD and DVDs that the character has released (except for TV Funhouse, which didn't have enough Triumph on screen to warrant my purchase). At this stage, I can even recognize Blackwolf the Dragonmaster on sight.

With that in mind, I may just have to catch Triumph's return to Conan's show. I'm not sure if the sort of humor can work at the earlier hour, but if David Letterman was able to move an hour earlier while still keeping his own style 15 years ago, I don't seen why Conan or Triumph can't do the same.

For those who haven't seen them, NBC has posted a set of hilarious videos involving Triumph the Insult Comic Dog appearing at the San Diego Comic-Con. Triumph creator Robert Smigel was at the event to plug the DVD of his short-lived Comedy Central series TV Funhouse, so it should come as no surprise that the puppet dog he created would show up as well.

Despite Triumph's insults against the nerd community, it should be known that Robert Smigel is a bigger nerd than anybody attending the convention. This is useful as he can at least insult fellow conventioneers with knowledge. This must make his insults sting all the more.

I had the pleasure of seeing Triumph live at a comedy concert. However, once you've been to one of his live shows, you can tell that his television appearances are heavily edited to make sure only his best bits appear. Despite this, Triumph remains hilarious to watch in any medium.

Videos are after the jump.

If there is one thing I learned during the Comedy Central TV Funhouse panel on Thursday night, it's this: they are not good with computers. For most of the evening panelist Robert Smigel and moderator Bob Odenkirk spent their time fiddling around with the Mac laptop provided to them so they could show clips from the TV Funhouse DVD that was released on Tuesday. After they got that squared away they spent several more minutes setting up an iChat so Funhouse host Doug Dale could join in the conversation. They even needed to ask a member of the audience for their Mac Powerbook in order to set the session up. Obviously, you don't want these guys on your technical support team.

Despite the technical difficulties, the TV Funhouse panel was the highlight of my Thursday at Comic-Con.

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There hasn't been much talk about NBC's broadband video site DotComedy, and I've only poked around it a little bit myself, but before the end of this year, NBC plans to kick the site into high gear with clips of old shows, including Late Night with David Letterman, Coach and Dream On, and classic TV shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Munsters.

In an effort to woo viewers, the site will take on an aesthetic more akin to Comedy Central's Motherload site and feature both original and viewer-submitted content. The original series include "Hot Tub in Space," about a group of friends, in a hot tub, in space; "Untitled Comedy News Show," a parody of news programs that will actually pay viewers for jokes; "Easter Bunny Begins," a prequel to "The Easter Bunny Hates You" (video after the jump); "Triumph the Insult Comic Dog: Live In Las Vegas;" and "Kyle's in a Coma," about a guy named Kyle, who, funny enough, is in a coma.

The improved DotComedy will also feature clips from The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Saturday Night Live. What, they can show classic Letterman, but not Carson?

[via Market My Monkey]

That was quite an impressive lineup of comics on Comedy Central last night, eh? The Night of Too Many Stars was a benefit for autism charities that attracted the likes of Jon Stewart (who hosted), Steve Carell, David Cross, Bob Odenkirk, Jerry Seinfeld, Borat, Will Ferrell, Triumph The Insult Comic Dog, and many others.

CCInsider (that's the Comedy Central site for video and other content) has some great clips of the event, including Cross and Odenkirk's banter about American Idol-type shows, Triumph singing about people like Star Jones and Kathie Lee Gifford, Ricky Gervais' routine about not doing enough for charity, and Jimmy Fallon impersonating Bee Gee Barry Gibb during the auction part of the show.

OK, so I'm not really sure what's up with Fallon's Gibb impersonation. Does Gibb really dance and do karate moves like that?

[via Best Week Ever]

The funny man behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog is creating an animated series for Fox. The series is called Animals and it's described as "a parody of suburban life using the animal kingdom." Smigel will write the series with Greg Cohen, writer for King of the Hill and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It's being produced by Adam Sandler's company, Happy Madison (the two remain close from their days on SNL and Sandler regularly casts Smigel in his movies). Animals is meant to round out Fox's Sunday night animation block, which already includes The Simpsons, Family Guy, King of the Hill, and American Dad. It's about damn time somebody gives him his own series.

Smigel also pens the "TV Funhouse" cartoons for Saturday Night Live... including The Ambiguously Gay Duo and The Ex-Presidents. The Reuters article about the new series doesn't mention whether he'll continue as Triumph or for SNL.

During an introductory speech for Robert Smigel given by cartoon historian Jerry Beck at the San Diego Comic Con, the world's only insult comic dog, Triumph, popped up and went on a hilarious tirade about Beck's boring speech and the innumerable nerds who were in attendance. This is footage shot by someone who was actually there, so there's a lot of swearing and you also get to see Robert Smigel actually doing the voice and manipulating the puppet. Of course, they don't try very hard to hide that when he does his shtick on Conan, but Smigel is in the middle of a crowd and really has nowhere to hide. Beck actually posted the video on his Cartoon Brew site, but I stuck it after the jump for your viewing pleasure. My favorite part is when he tells a rather rotund attendee he must love the "Fantastic Four food groups." Click on and enjoy.

UPDATE: The video is no longer available, apparently.

There are no plans for a collaboration involving Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi and Robert Smigel of TV Funhouse and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog fame, but John K wrote on his blog recently about an encounter with Smigel at Comic-Con in which Smigel expressed his love for John K's "George Liquor" character, and K asked if Smigel would be interested in writing some episodes for a straight-to-video release. This was just two gents chatting, so it means nothing, but what do my fellow animation fans think of a collaboration between these two fellas? I think they have a similar sense of humor, and under the right circumstances they could probably come up with something pretty cool.