John McCain's appearance delivered another big number for "Saturday Night Live."

He wasn't quite as much of a draw as Sarah Palin two weeks ago, but still big -- a 9.0 household rating/20 share in Nielsen's 56 overnight metered markets, compared to Palin's 10.7/24. Palin's seg aside, it's "SNL's" highest number since a holiday compilation seg aired in December 1997.

There was a surreal quality to the cold open with McCain as McCain and Tina Fey as his running mate. You gotta give him credit for trying, but he just looks tired, and like his running mate two weeks ago, desperate. The bit even pokes fun at the rampant rumors of division within the McCain-Palin camp, with Fey/Palin's bid to sell "Palin in 2012" T-shirts on the sly.

Silly as it is, I got the biggest giggle out of the joke about "McCain Fine Gold."

And although it's been made clear in this space that I am a Keith Olbermann fan, I gotta admit that Ben Affleck, this week's "SNL" host, gets him to an indignant T in this seg spoofing his trademark anti-Bush rants on MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann."

John Cleese paid a visit to MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on Friday. He had an appropriately wicked bit of verse to share, an ode to Bill O'Reilly. This one isn't quite as side-splittingly funny as his poem a few weeks ago about Sean Hannity, but it's a good distillation of O'Reilly's insanity.

(Keith presses Cleese on the definition of "berk," but doesn't really get an answer, as you can see in the clip posted below.)

Bill O'Reilly's No Spin Zone,
is rated highly by his own beloved mother,
but ... no other.
Except that Bill, for all his faults,
still has one skill, a skill of sorts.
He can amuse a true dumb ox,
the dullest crayon in the box,
the kind of ox that watches Fox.
And Bill will pander to this group,
with propaganda, right-wing poop,
knee-jerk views and censored news.
Thus Bill O'Reilly earns his crust,
behaving vilely as he must.
He will not shirk from Rupert's work.
He really is a perfect berk.

This really made me laugh.

It's "I've come for an argument"/"How to walk silly"/"This parrot has ceased to be" funny. It's a poem about a certain TV journo, penned by John Cleese and delivered with aplomb by Keith Olbermann on tonight's edition of MSNBC's "Countdown."

(As usual, my husband, who was a "Countdown" fan before "Countdown" was cool, deserves a finder's fee.)

Ode to Sean Hannity

Aping urbanity,
oozing with vanity,
plump as a manatee,
faking humanity.
Journalistic calamity,
intellectual inanity,
Fox Noise insanity.
You're a profanity, Hannity.