The Hater points out that SNL's digital shorts have suspiciously resembled other viral videos the past couple of months. What struck me as suspicious on Saturday wasn't the videos, though — it was the final-minutes sketch about a law firm for cats whose crazy owners left them millionaires of dollars when they died.

That sketch, if you happen to watch anything with Jon Stewart as obsessively as we here at TiFaux do, will immediately bring to mind Comedy Central's recent autism benefit show. Steve Carrell did a pre-taped segment where he urged millionaire inheritance cats to give to the autism charity. He spoke in "cat," directly to the kitties. Oscar translated into "Spanish cat."

Granted, these are two totally different approaches to the millionaire cat premise. But… did you just read that sentence? The millionaire cat premise. 

Do we live in a world so overrun with millionaire cats that there are actually multiple ways of mocking them? Is the problem of crazy-inheritance pets so widespread that it deserves two different sketches?

Basically what I'm asking is, what are the odds that both Steve Carrell and the writers at SNL both independently thought to themselves, Millionaire cats! Genius!, and that SNL didn't — subconsciously or not — rip off the autism benefit? Pretty slim, I think. 

Just because it's an autism benefit on Comedy Central doesn't mean nobody's watching. In fact, I'd venture to say that it's pretty likely the same people watch both SNL and the CC benefit. I did, at least. 

And now I've just spent an hour trying to find evidence that anyone, anywhere actually left money to their pets in their will. All I've found is this short film from 1932, which probably means "cat" in the "he's a hep cat, dig?" type of way. Major points to whoever can link to a Crazy Cat Lady Will. 

• Apparently, the Evil Empire at Bunim-Murray is casting for Fresh Meat 2.  This will air after The Duel, which starts airing this week and also after The Inferno 3.  I never thought I'd say this, but I might be out as far as these shows go.  After the travesty of Fresh Meat 1.
• The Village Voice shoots fish in a barrel Constantine Maroulis — a loser on the fourth season of American Idol.  Ouch. 
• Finally, my favorite writer, my hero, my baby's daddy David Rakoff was on The Daily Show the other day.  Watch him talk about Mark Foley, gay republicans and his native land, Canada, below.

Just a quick post in case you haven't seen this yet.  America's boyfriend, Jon Stewart, recently slapped around (verbally) former Education Secretary William Bennett on the topic of gay marriage.

You can see the clip, along with another Daily Show clip and one from the Colbert report, on The Malcontent.

Ok, so I’m an American. I spent my whole life mostly in New England, once crossing over the border at Niagra Falls which cost me a dime when I went through the turnstile. But because of a great opportunity to edit Hal Hartley’s new film Fay Grim (a sequel to Henry Fool) I’m living in Berlin for the next 7 months. One of the first things I did when I got to my Berlin apartment was turn on the television. I had nothing else to do so I thought I’d check it out. Boy did it suck. Every show was shot on video (ick!) and despite my total inability to understand German, I could tell that the acting was no good. But since that first day I’ve discovered that being unable to understand what an actor is saying makes it much easier to evaluate their performance. I was watching a few minutes of Home Improvement dubbed in German (why?) and the acting was also awful, something I had noticed when it was in English, but hadn’t fully appreciated. Is it a coincidence that Home Improvement was shot on video?

From what I’ve seen the best television in Germany is American shows dubbed into German. There is of course the Simpsons, which James Urbaniak–one of the stars of Fay Grim–discussed in his blog recently. Apparently Jeff Goldblum was also very interested in the subject (I’m dropping names). It’s hard to get used to, but odds are I already know the whole episode by heart so it’s fun to watch. The best dubbing I’ve seen was in The Gilmore Girls. They really had the rhythm down. When you talk that fast, even if it’s in German it’s still funny. One thing I have NOT seen on German television is Arrested Development. I’m willing to bet it’s not being shown here. I have no problem with that. 24 definitely would work in any language, but I haven’t managed to catch it. I bet they have a good German Jack. A lot of Germans talk like him anyway. Consenting to be Jack Bauer’s partner automatically makes your life insurance null and void.

There are a few things that show up in English. There are of course the International news channels, BBC World and CNN International. At first I enjoyed watching them, but I lost interest when I realized they didn’t do stories about missing white girls. And the audio on CNN International is about 5 frames out of sync. Since I spend all day syncing up dailies at work, that drives me crazy. CNN International shows the weekly Daily Show International, which is a highlight show from the last 4 episodes. Jon introduces pieces without the studio audience, and the silence always makes me think his jokes are dying. Yeah, sometimes I need a laugh track.

The other thing that is sometimes English is MTV, which still manages to show music videos. How do they do it? The US MTV has two whole channels that don’t play videos anymore. It must be that German efficiency. But a lot of times they show stuff like Cribs or one of their many profile shows and do English audio with German subtitles. Britney Spears is never dubbed. Because Britney gotta be Britney, yo.

Jon Stewart’s new baby’s name is Maggie.

This must mean something.