Organized religion is terrific, but I really don't understand why we need to complicate it with God. I mean, I love incense, oppressing non-believers and middle-aged men taking an interest in my masturbation habits, but a big man in the sky who watches everything we do? Please. I get enough of that at work.

And as it turns out, you don't even need to work at a balloon factory for the morbidly obese to hate the idea of God. Even comedians like Bill Maher with DVDs coming out this week have opinions on the guy.

"Barack Obama is President of the United States; he's a politician in America, a very religious country, so I understand why he has to pretend to be a religious person himself," Maher says. "I say 'pretend' because I can only hope that someone as bright as he doesn't really believe that people can walk on water; ride a winged horse; it rains frogs; we can change water into wine. I can only hope, but I don't know."

I'm not sure if I come down on Bill Maher's side or Obama's side, but both of them could totally tell me when to masturbate.

The last time I made a million dollars in a day, it was to destroy something huge.

You got to love it when Hollywood pretends they are in the CIA. Just yesterday, Jonah Hill and writing partners Max Winkler and Matthew Spicer turned over a super-secret script that only Hollywood's top studio heads were allowed to read. The high-profile spec is called The Adventurer's Handbook and centers on four 20-something guys who, inspired by a book of the same name, set out overseas in search of a mysterious location described in the book. The script was sent over on red, watermarked paper so it couldn't be photocopied. Multiple studios were interested in the project described as an edgy, broad comedy.

If I had known that you could make a million dollars by creating something, that bridge in Odessa would still be standing and the Quarantine Pier wouldn't be stained with babushkas and blood.

[Via EW]

In the course of human events, many innocent chickens have died, wives have been unjustly taken and white male voices have been inexplicably nasalfied in the name of finding the perfect joke. Today, February the 11th, 2009, this got me to believe in God.

Thank you, BuzzFeed.

Not necessarily more than a book deal, but more than credit for inventing the peanut.

You started out in stand-up comedy and have been a writer and a performer. Do you have a preference?

I was writing out of necessity. I was a writer, but I never viewed myself as a writer. It's funny. I actually prefer being viewed as a writer now. Because as a writer, I get to complain about things. Writers like to complain.

Not all writers like to complain! In fact, I really dislike writers who like to complain. Also, I have too many chickpeas in my cupboard. I don't know what race of people invented the chickpea, but I don't like them.

Anyway, you should check out Larry's book. It's funny if you're black, white, brown or whatever color chickpeas are.

The creative team of Will Ferrell's George Bush play really should have consulted me before they went out and endowed the president.

So far six audience members have stormed out midperformance of the Broadway show "You're Welcome America. A Final Night with George W Bush," the comedian Will Ferrell's lampooning of the 43rd president, according to those keeping count at the Cort Theater. But they haven't been leaving after a particular Ferrell quip.

They've been standing up, instead, after the projection of a supersize photo on the backdrop of the stage. A photo of a penis. Specifically, as Mr. Ferrell (who plays President Bush) leads the audience to believe, the president's penis. Except that's not quite right.

"It's an anonymous but age-appropriate public domain Internet penis," said Adam McKay, the play's director. "We went on the Web and got a penis."

That is exactly how I got my penis. And there has been a lot of storming out.

The two things everyone's been talking about lately are Christian Bale's onset freakout and those ubiquitous 25 Random Things About Me lists. It got us wondering if maybe Christian Bale himself had made a list, so we hacked into his Facebook account. And then we made this fake list.

1. I ad-libbed all of Newsies. It wasn't even supposed to be a musical.
2. My philosophy: It's not who you are underneath, but how good you are at staying out of my fucking eye-line that defines you.
3. I lost my virginity to Miranda Richardson on the set of Empire of the Sun. In costume. Her costume.
4. If I've tagged you, it's because you're a fucking professional.
5. Everything I need to know about anger management, I learned from Bill O'Reilly. Everything else I learned from Alec Baldwin.
6. Six people played Bob Dylan in I'm Not There, but only one of us killed and ate a gaffer at the wrap party.
7. Most people don't know I am big into method acting. During the filming of Terminator I went deep into my character, who in my eyes was a giant asshole.
8. You know who's a professional? The CGI dragon in Reign of Fire. Trying to get him cast as The Riddler.
9. When I had to get mad while acting I used to visualize my mother's face, but thankfully, through therapy, I've moved on. Now I imagine director of photography Shane Hurlbut's face.
10. If I lose it, my friends jokingly call it a Bale-out. At least they did until I stabbed them.
11. I had to do so much yelling at the cast and crew of Batman that my throat was really sore for like half the shooting. Thankfully, we found a way to work around it.
12. To this day I won't learn Christopher Nolan's name. I had to look it up on IMDB just now.
13. Russell Crowe and I used to sing "City of Blinding Lights" in our American accents to pump each other up on the set of 3:10 to Yuma.
14. I truly believe the world lost one of its greatest actors when my dead friend Heath "overdosed."
15. Sometimes I stay home and read aloud the parts of American Psycho that were cut, like the habitrail scene, and Whitney Houston.
16. I requested (and was denied) nipples for my batsuit.
17. Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you, you fucking fuck!
18. The secret to my intensity? I imagine every movie I'm in as a remake of Swing Kids.
19. I still have blue-balls from Little Women.
20. That wasn't actually me nude-chasing the hooker with a chainsaw in American Psycho. Because I was too busy nude-chasing the hooker with a chainsaw in Barbados.
21. If I never work another acting job in my life, at least I'll have comic book conventions and the respect of the people who matter most: the fans. Get that Sharpie out of my face, I have my own.
22. While I hate it when anyone tweaks the fucking lights, I do enjoy it when people tweak my nipples.
23. People always ask me who's a better kisser, Katie Holmes or Maggie Gyllenhaal. My answer? Michael Caine.
24. My weight loss program for The Machinist? I call it "The Empire of the Fun Run." And purging.
25. I have to go return some video tapes.

Despite Gonzalo and my best efforts to become the world's favorite apple-cheeked cherub wunderkinds of comedy, that ship is sailing away with to the staff of College Humor, who recently got their own show on the teevee, on board:

The show is actually an exaggerated, fanciful version of a 20-something’s workplace. In the first episode the actor-employees practice beer pong, install a taco truck in the office and turn Mr. Van Veen’s office into a children’s ball pit (rules: “no diving, no throwing, no playing”). Sketches from the Web site are shown at the end of each act.

The biggest challenge for MTV, said Tony DiSanto, the network’s executive vice president for series development, was in “getting normal people who are not actors to suddenly act.” Somehow it worked, although it created some awkward moments at the office. “You’d see people running from the set in costume to their desk to check their e-mail,” Mr. Abramson said.

Pictured above: beer pong, 'cause we are a hip blog that also knows how to have a good time. What'chu got, Grasping Reality with Both Hands?

There are many reasons to like The Daily Show. Pretty lights, commercials and a lady, just to name a few. But what's that, Entertainment Weekly? It's smart television? Why is it smart?

Why It's Smart: Stewart very easily could have made The Daily Show a leftist, "aren't Republicans fat and white?" kind of political comedy show. Instead, he is an equal-opportunity critic, handing out jabs to both sides of the aisle. Appearing on his show has become a shrewd strategy for anyone serious about raising their profile in Washington.

I mean, not Tina Fey, sexy robots, polygamy or science smart, but smart enough to rub its smart balls over Damages and House, that's for sure. Not to mention Mad Men. Oh — what's the matter Mad Men, can't cut an allegorical slice of American corporate life in the 1960s without your safety scissors?

Grow up, TV!

Everyone around me says how hilarious this new Ben Karlin book Things I've Learned from Women Who've Dumped Me is. As a Lothario, I don't really understand the appeal. But it always seems to touch a nerve with you comedy types for some reason, so here's a link to an article about it.

The essays range from the hilarious (such as gay columnist Dan Savage's first encounter with the "hairy lasagna") to the oddly sincere (former Sen. Bob Kerry's crush on a dead figure skater), but as Karlin says, "the only piece that's melodramatic and pathetic is mine."Karlin's contribution, "You Too Will Get Crushed," is certainly pitiful, but the fake-news forefather's dating days are over. He's married, lives in Fort Greene and has one kid — "that I know of," he's quick to add.

If it weren't for my powerful womanizing, I could see how I might find that witty or charming. But in real life, secret kids really parody themselves.

My favorite thing about 1995 was vigorously singing and dancing to Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light with my sister and cousins in the basement of our new house, none of us having the foggiest idea what the song was about. My second favorite thing about 1995 was Norm MacDonald repeatedly calling OJ Simpson a murderer on live television every Saturday night. My third favorite thing about 1995 was yo-yos.

And while I still have no idea what Paradise by the Dashboard Light is getting at (That baseball game seems really exciting, but I still have no clue what sleep number mattress Meat Loaf wants to sleep on — and now Phil Rizzuto is dead!) it's 2009. Yo-yos are being loaded down with white phosphorus and dropped on Afghanistan, and Norm MacDonald is nowhere to be found — or was until today, when he showed up in the Charlotte Observer!

"Barack's all cool. Everybody loves him and everybody's worried if they make any joke they'll look racist. That's going to be the big problem with this administration. Everybody's going to have to temper everything they say with the idea that they're not racist.

"This (administration) will be better, obviously," he continues with trademark cynicism. "I know Barack ran on a campaign of hope – and that never works out in my experience, when you hope for something."

Apparently he's working on a pilot for FX called, "The New Norm MacDonald Show." I don't know how he found out about the title of my memoir, but it works.