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Even if Austin wins another 50 games (doubtful), Ken Jennings has been mentioned numerous times as the obvious choice to take over for Trebek when he retires. I mean, Ken has made a career out of being a trivia expert. And most people find him likable. Based on his GMA appearance, Austin seems to enjoy being polarizing.

I guessed Belgium and Belarus, though Wikipedia says Belarus is in Eastern Europe, not Asia. I was shocked that Obama was a TS!! A friend of mine works at the hospital in Honolulu where he was born, but even so, there was such a big deal made out of his birth certificate and how he was born in Hawaii that I honestly thought everyone would know that fact by now. It's not like it's ancient history -- it kept coming up throughout his presidency.

I'm pretty sure they film the episodes well in advance of their airing. I was out of the country for a while and missed her run of shows, but wasn't there a contestant last year who died some weeks before her episodes even appeared on TV?

"The Daily Show" hasn't taken a full week off since mid-August, and "TDS" and whichever show follows it (Colbert, "Nightly," "@Midnight" and now Klepper) have always taken their breaks at the same time. So it's not surprising that they are taking next week off; I guess it's more surprising that they didn't get started 'til mid-September. I doubt the writers & staff will be on vacation -- more likely they'll be evaluating what worked & didn't work during the first two weeks.

Austin on GMA. Warning: do not watch this if you hate Austin, because it opens with a montage of all of his gestures & "funny" answers (i.e. the Eagles). But you do get to see his new hairdo.

I'm probably not going to get around to posting the upcoming guests here -- I don't spend as much time on PTV now that so many of my favorite shows are no longer on (Jon Stewart-era Daily Show, The Nightly Show, @Midnight, etc.) -- and I haven't watched "The Opposition" yet, BUT I thought I'd mention that their talent booker is Ann Marie Baldonado. If you are a regular "Fresh Air" listener, you know that name from hearing Terry Gross say it in the end credits. She's moved on from "Fresh Air" after 20 (!) years. And here is the guest roster for next week. The fact that this is such a serious and heavy-hitting lineup (no TV or movie actors) does intrigue me enough that I might check it out. 10/2: Asha Rangappa, Former FBI Agent, Senior Lecturer at Yale University, Legal and National Security Analyst for CNN 10/3: Richard Painter, Chief White House Ethics Lawyer under George W. Bush, currently suing President Trump with his organization CREW, Law Professor at University of Minnesota 10/4: Michael Crowley, Senior foreign affairs correspondent for POLITICO 10/5: Jane Mayer, New Yorker reporter

He also seemed to be dancing a little bit to the Final Jeopardy music -- he obviously wrote down his answer super quickly, not surprisingly since he's from NY. Hey, I found Austin on Instagram and Twitter, in case anyone wants to check out his social media accounts.

My husband thought he looked like James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem. Alex said something about having to bleep him... so he was cursing?? Yikes. I actually think he'd be OK if the contestant coordinators convinced him to tone it down a notch or six.

Mo 9/18: Second Anniversary Special Tu 9/19: Hillary Clinton, Emma Stone We 9/20: Jeff Bridges, Pamela Adlon, Miguel Th 9/21: Jim Parsons, Tatiana Maslany, the Killers Fr 9/22: Bobby Moynihan Mo 9/25: Sterling K. Brown, Chance the Rapper Tu 9/26: Sofia Vergara, David Boreanaz, Ken Burns We 9/27: Nick Kroll, Michael Bloomberg, Tim and Eric Th 9/28: Steve Martin, Mark Feuerstein, Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers Fr 9/29: Jerry Seinfeld

Jeffrey Augustine of the Scientology Money Project has started a petition on change.org: "We Demand the IRS Commissioner Begin an Investigation into Scientology's Tax Exempt Status." Usually I roll my eyes and ignore anything on change.org but in this case, Jeffrey's first goal was to get more signatures than the cult's anti-Leah petition. It now has over 1,000 more signatures despite the fact that Scientology is "the fastest growing religion on earth" (LOL) and one of Tony Ortega's sources says that "Scientologists are getting private emails from other church members encouraging them to sign the petition in what appears to be a coordinated effort... an effort like this clearly is going through Scientology’s intelligence wing, the Office of Special Affairs." Anyway, I recommend signing Jeffrey's petition -- even if it doesn't help the IRS effort, it'll annoy Davey.

COMEDY CENTRAL® EXTENDS TREVOR NOAH THROUGH 2022 Noah to Also Produce and Host Year-End Daily Show Specials The Daily Show Pacing to Finish the 2016-2017 Season as the Only Daily, Late Night Talk Show to Post Year-Over-Year Growth among both Total Viewers (+14%) and Adults 18-49 (+6%) and the Most-Engaging Late Night Series across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram Poised to Finish 3Q 2017 as the Most-Watched Daily, Late Night Talk Show among Millennials NEW YORK, September 14, 2017 - Comedy Central and Trevor Noah have agreed to a contract extension which will keep Noah behind the desk of the Emmy® Award-winning The Daily Show with Trevor Noah through 2022, it was announced today by Kent Alterman, President, Comedy Central. As part of the new deal, Noah will also produce and host annual, year-end, Daily Show specials, beginning this year. Said Alterman, "Trevor makes us look smart on a daily basis, and for that we're grateful." Said Noah, "I'm thrilled to be continuing this amazing journey with both fans of The Daily Show and Comedy Central. It's really exciting to renew this contract for either five more years or until Kim Jong Un annihilates us all--whichever one comes first."

Tony Ortega has written extensively about Shelley over the years, including where she is and credible news of a recent sighting.

Congratulations to Kamau & the United Shades team on the Emmy win! Outstanding Unstructured Reality Program United Shades Of America With W. Kamau Bell CNN • CNN Original Series, All3Media America, Main Event Media

Congratulations to LWT on its Creative Arts Emmy win: Outstanding Picture Editing For Variety Programming Last Week Tonight With John Oliver F*ck 2016 (segment) HBO • HBO Entertainment in association with Sixteen String Jack Productions and Avalon Television Anthony Miale, Editor Winner Anthony Miale thanked John Oliver for “letting me do some silly stuff on your otherwise informative television program.”

I hope John does do something on this issue, because it's truly nuts. (Apparently just being ELIGIBLE for dual citizenship is a deal breaker; one of the senators caught up in this was born in Australia but because his dad immigrated from Cyprus, he may be kicked out of parliament.)

The LWT Twitter feed announced on Sunday that the show would be running a few minutes long. After having it cut off a bunch of times, I finally gave up and set my DVR to automatically pad it by 10 minutes. It's weird, it's only Wednesday and all the North Korea stuff seems SO long ago.

And I think Tillerson isn't completely a waste of space by Trump administration standards. If you want to learn more about North Korea, I read a wonderful nonfiction book last year called “My Holiday in North Korea” by Wendy E. Simmons. It's about an American who visits NK and the interactions she has with the tour guides who are assigned to her are really poignant and illuminating. Americans are pretty much barred from visiting now, which is totally understandable after the whole Otto Warmbier incident, but I do feel that perhaps a little light got in when Wendy was able to talk about America with the people she met in NK. Now I guess NCIS will have to do the job for us.

Ooh, look who's gonna be on Monday's show - THE MOOCH! 8/14 Anthony Scaramucci; Bob Odenkirk; musical performance by Liam Gallagher (n) 8/15 Daniel Craig; Tiffany Haddish; musical performance by Blackberry Smoke (n) 8/16 Ellie Kemper; Andrew Dice Clay; Peter Serafinowicz (n) 8/17 John Dickerson, host of CBS News’s “Face The Nation”; Michael Rapaport; musical performance by Grizzly Bear 8/18 Clip show w/new monologue/opening

I feel like the pressure to make the show more political may have come from Comedy Central, based on this article. Though he suggests it might come back (!):

8/7 Laura Dern; Leah Remini; musical performance by Trombone Shorty 8/8 Christoph Waltz; Chris O’Dowd; YouTube personality Sean Evans 8/9 Robert Pattinson; David Tennant; Niecy Nash 8/10 Millie Bobby Brown; Jim Jefferies; musical performance by Zeshan B 8/11 Clip show w/new monologue/opening

And don't forget "my neck, my back, my pussy and my crack." I just can't get over how different Funches looks without the facial hair.

If you want to know more about the crap Infowars sells, I highly recommend this fascinating article: All the “wellness” products Americans love to buy are sold on both Infowars and Goop I read this when it was published last month, and it was the first I'd heard of Infowars selling supplements. Of course, as a middle aged white lady, I was already well aware of GOOP.

Looks like the money from the wipes will be donated to Doctors Without Borders (in the exceedingly unlikely event that anyone buys them). But you know what? If you sign up for the HBO Shop newsletter, you can save 10% on your order!

New trailer!!!

The show's web site has a list of all the finale guests, and it is pretty much a run-down of all of their most-frequent/most popular contestants (Ron Funches, Arden Myrin, Paul F. Tompkins, Tom Lennon, Grace Helbig, Weird Al, etc.). Surprising to me is the lack of Doug Benson. He was never one of my personal favorites, but his absence is a bit odd since he's been on the show so many times.