This last weekend, comedian and writer Al Franken won the Democratic-Farmer Labor party nomination for Senator from Minnesota. He'll face incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in November. It will be an odd and embarrassing race for everyone, but mostly for Minnesota. On his own merits, Franken can't win. But Coleman is a scumbag and preening moron almost as "out of touch" with his constituents as the former SNL performer. So naturally Coleman is playing his trump card already: Minnesotans are old fools incapable of understanding irony. Which is why they've accused the dude who wrote Stuart Saves His Family of writing "porn," and why Franken is now only telling jokes off the record.

Old Man John McCain will appear on Saturday Night Live this weekend. Just a cameo, of course. Though he hosted in 2002, back when was still a maverick beloved by liberals and elite coastal types. Details of the sketch he'll appear in are scarce, though it will probably be toothless and unfunny, as all SNL political material tends to be. McCain might be funny, though! Presumably less wooden than Obama and Clinton were in their toothless, unfunny cameos. McCain's a natural comic (have you heard the one about how Chelsea Clinton is ugly?). Which, as we all know, is utterly unpresidential.

Getting stuck in an elevator could be the new path to media stardom. It did wonders for the guy from BusinessWeek who got trapped in one for 41 hours and ended up losing his job and his mental health. But he did get in the New Yorker! Now the parodies have begun, and this one, from Max Silvestri of 23/6, is actually pretty hilarious. Be warned, though: it makes light of the serious issue of elevator survival skills. Clip below.

This home movie footage is purportedly the last ever captured of legendary comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. Well, that's what the guy on YouTube says, and who am I to doubt him? Video (Really! Not just a link!! I hope!) after the jump.

"I let you know/ That I'm not home/ But I'll be back/ Before too long!" That, of course, is but a small excerpt from "The Rap," just one of the SEVEN zany answering machine messages available for only $14.95 on the classic mail-order tape "Crazy Calls!" The "Boogie Woogie" answer? The "Call Me If You Can-Can" answer? All there! The vintage ad below [via Videogum] still has the 1-800 number to call and order the tape, so if somebody can get these people on the phone, get one of these tapes, and bring it to us, we will smile momentarily and then say "There are no tape players left."

The American Apparel ad spoofer is still at large, and he or she has been following the news. The newest posters to appear in downtown Manhattan feature a simple Woody Allen face, along with a cute little slogan. No porn this time! Allen is suing AA in real life for using his image without permission; now his lawyers have another target to hunt down. Click through to see a large version of the other Allen ad spoof [Stereohell via Copyranter] after the jump.

Ha ha, what's the only thing more entertaining than watching regular dogs? Watching dogs who are kinda old and tend to fall down! Ohhhh, he can't quite get in that darned trunk! It's okay though—these dogs are going to be GETTING BETTER, thanks to Dr. Frank's Safe & Natural Joint Pain Relief For Pets, offered in this infomercial. There's plenty of testimonials, but the best part, honestly, is the falling dogs. And the pug so old that it has to ride in a basket. Click to the video to watch them stumble.

The Harvard Lampoon's soon-to-be-released April parody issue (click to enlarge) features none other than Harvard Lampoon Woman of the Year Paris Hilton! Not as good as the 1972 Cosmo parody, but still decent. When will those overeducated scamps stop with the humor and get down to business? [Faded Youth Blog]

Self-referential LA Times humor person Joel Stein finally says "fuck everything" today, and writes a column about Julia Allison [LAT]. Yes. He calls her "a genius," but perhaps this was just a bit of flattery to draw some good quotes out of her. Here she is explaining the thinking behind her fake role as "editor at large" for Star, in an interview she gives via cell phone while shopping for clothes: "The people who do corporate strategy are understanding the power of three or four minutes on a cable network or a morning show. It's the best publicity you can get. Oh, that is the cutest dress I've ever seen. Oh my! Oh my God! I can't handle it. Anyway, with the advent of 24-hour news networks, you have an incredible amount of air time to fill." Shopping and building her brand at the same time! In case you're still stuck in the old, outdated journalism world, Julia breaks down how she is really just as smart as—or smarter than—any other REPORTER or whatever:

When angry British drunk Christopher Hitchens wrote his seminal "Why Women Aren't Funny" article in Vanity Fair last year, lots of people got upset. Mostly girls. Milking the manufactured outrage like the publishing geniuses they are, the magazine has finally had a woman take a full shot at refuting the thesis [VF]. Unfortunately, they picked Alessandra Stanley, who proves (not for the first time) that she has not one single drop of humor diluting the estrogen and errors that flow through her veins. So on the second day of the cooing and hubbub over the new Girl Power piece (it took us an extra day just to get through it, ha), it's worth pointing out the unspoken truth in all this catfighting: women will never be as funny as men to men. And men run everything.

Former O.C. and current Jumper actress Rachel Bilson is complaining in Nylon about the chimp dressed as a Santa for website College Humor's last Christmas party: "Maybe I overreacted because I was too tired, but it made me so mad! All these people were drunk and taking pictures, and it was horrible!" It was a pretty white-trashy stunt, but it's hard to come up with new ways to throw money around sometimes. A December Page Six item says that Bilson actually "jumped the half-hour line" to get her picture taken with the chimp, but College Humor co-founder Ricky Van Veen says, "She didn't cut the line. She and her friend were leaving the party, so i brought them to the front of the line for a quick look. She was really nice to everybody." The chimp, who goes by the name of Louie, was unavailable for comment. Update! Louie's latest career move &mdash starring in a Human Giant comedy video &mdash after the jump! He is hilar.

The Wall Street Journal has a humor columnist now! We'd make our own little funny about them laughing as the world burns (or the economy recesses, whatevs), but, really, no one is actually laughing at this. "We've called some of our best recessions in the shower or while making an omelet or fishing in Ireland. Our fifth recession, 'Data From a Distant Realm' (Capitol-EMI, 1969), which went platinum, was done in three days in Ringo's basement." It's no "Laughter in Uniform." [WSJ]

While the Internet provides countless opportunities for expression, connection, and experimentation that otherwise might have never occurred, these expressions are, as you might expect, of varying quality. So when we spot something as entertaining as this Craigslist ad, we feel duty-bound to pass it along. It's a gripping tale of real estate and unstoppable compulsions, and you really do need to read it. We're just sorry that the no doubt bored office drone who wrote it during work had to resort to CL to get this gem published: It should have been a "Shouts & Murmurs" piece in The New Yorker. I mean, it's certainly no less funny than anything Andy Borowitz ever wrote.

A recent Low Concept item on Slate honored the dirtiest old man on all of MySpace, Rupert Murdoch, by giving him his own MySpace page. According to his profile, Murdoch's looking to meet both "a new step-mum for Lachlan" and "a new Lachlan," and his friends include Katherine McPhee, "JP Stizzern in da hizzy," and the Arctic Monkeys. Actually, we're not so sure this is a mock-up.

Our slutty sisters in Washington love to pick on The Note — ABC's way-inside-the-Beltway daily political tip sheet — but it's not typically on our beat. But this morning, and for the first time ever, we received a press release from an ABC flack alerting us to some highlights in today's Note. For example:

Actually, we'd argue the kneepads. Most are willing to take a few bruises.

Earlier: 'Caligula': Everything You Could Ever Want in a Fake Movie

Yesterday's Times has an article on what is sure to be the most entertaining piece in the Whitney Biennial: Francesco Vezzoli's short film Trailer for a Remake of Gore Vidal's 'Caligula'. As the title implies, the piece imagines that there is a remake of the porntastic Caligula, and Vezzoli makes an over-the-top promo short for said remake starring Benicio Del Toro, Helen Mirren and Karen Black — plus toga costumes by Versace. The only indication that the whole thing is a gag comes at the end of the trailer, when Courtney Love appears as Caligula — the only role she was ever really meant to play.

The Post's Keith Kelly is a dogged reporter and a media-beat icon. But the guy to go to with an exclusive sneak preview of your big-deal new humor site? Maybe not. Because we've got to assume that Mark Golin's new OfficePirates.com, the hyped Time Inc. venture set to launch tomorrow, is actually at least a bit amusing, and Kelly's description of its contents sure doesn't make it seem that way:

We received an unusually obtuse (and unusually witty) press release yesterday: