Don't you just love it when life sort of imitates art?

Jon Hamm, who plays the chain smoking Don Draper on TV's 'Mad Men,' has been hired by Mercedes Benz as a pitchman for their car commercials, which will premiere during the Academy Awards.

This means, of course, that Mr. Hamm will replace actor Richard Thomas who has done the voiceover for Mercedes' car commercials for the last four years. Good night Jon-Boy.

The company's marketing VP Stephen Cannon called Hamm "a hot actor." That must have been one awkward audition.

News that New York Times reporter Bill Carter is working on a pseudo-sequel to his groundbreaking book The Late Shift' made a smile creep across my face. I haven't yet read the book, but the buzz it caused and the weird stories that came out of it just by word of mouth gave it an aura of mysterious wonder that made the television industry infinitely more fascinating than it already was.

It also spawned a pretty decent made-for-TV HBO movie. Now I don't know what kind of craziness "Round Two" has to offer, but the players involved are definitely going to have all sorts of wild secrets revealed from Carter's work and when it does, HBO is going to want the movie rights. So here's who should play who in this new tragic merry-go-round of television programming hilarity that shall be called 'The Late Shift 2'.

When shows go off the air in between seasons, the actors use this long break to do some profound beard growing. The actresses might do the same thing, but I've never seen a picture of them in the papers to prove it.

The entire male cast of 'Mad Men' did the same thing and cast member MIchael Gladis gave his review of all of his co-workers' "break beards".

[via Pop Candy]

We just finished recording our podcast where we interviewed Rich Sommer about Mad Men (what, you think we talked to him about Tiger Woods?), and when the subject came around to leading man Jon Hamm, Sommer mentioned that Hamm will be hosting Saturday Night Live in January.

That's great news; one of the funnier episodes of the last few seasons was Hamm's hosting stint last year. "Jon Hamm's John Ham" alone would have made the episode a classic, but his James Mason impersonation, among other sketches, made it a near-classic.

From what I've heard -- from none other than Matt Weiner himself -- Hamm does a mean Tim Gunn impression. Let's hope that Project Runway has started by the time Hamm comes on SNL so he can break it out. It's not a big stretch to go from James Mason to Tim Gunn, so I'd imagine it's as killer as advertised.

To whet your appetite, here's the "Jon Hamm's John Ham" sketch: