Leave it to David Letterman to make Two and a Half Men kind of funny. (/Snarky elitist New York media joke!) The show’s new star, Ashton Kutcher, stopped by Letterman’s show recently to discuss how the sitcom will change now that he’s taking over for Charlie Sheen.

Kutcher explained that he’ll be playing “a billionaire internet entrepreneur” (“Like a Steve Guttenberg?” Letterman wanted to know.) trying to get over a painful divorce.

As you know, former Two and a Half Men star Charlie Sheen‘s character, the perpetually bowling shirt-clad Charlie Harper, has been “terminated,” and the show’s new season will open with his funeral.

TMZ was able to obtain leaked images from that funeral, which looks like it will promptly feature the character’s iconic shirt. The death paves the way for Ashton Kutcher‘s character to take Sheen’s place and, producers hope, keep up the popular show’s momentum.

It would seem that Two and a Half Men fans that want Charlie Sheen to return to to the series will have to wait for some kind of Walking Dead zombie crossover episode. Deadline Hollywood is reporting that the show’s new season, the first since Sheen was fired from the series, will feature the funeral of Charlie Harper, Sheen’s character. Considering all the nasty things Sheen has said about the show’s executive producer Chuck Lorre in the past few months, he’s lucky the writing staff didn’t go with the proposed “Charlie is revealed to be a Nazi, pedophile, puppy torturer” storyline.

A long time ago, Comedy Central stopped airing the New York Friar’s Club Roasts and started doing their own, doing away with the spirit signified by the classic motto “We only roast the ones we love.” Instead, the network has found it much easier to choose celebrities that all of the comedians are already making fun of anyway. Following the recent mocking of Donald Trump, the comedians will now be going through their Twitter archives to dish up their best jokes about Charlie Sheen. What’s interesting though is that the network plans to air the special the same night that CBS is premiering the new, Sheen-less Two and a Half Men.

Charlie Sheen continues to make headlines even though he’s no longer the star of a hit sitcom. His Two and a Half Men character, Charlie Harper, is set to wear his signature bowling shirt on that great comfy couch in the sky.

Hackneyed double entendres will always be funny to huge amounts of the population so, despite Two and a Half Men having lost 40% of its titular men, CBS is still bringing the money machine/show back next year. With time running out, it is expected that executive producer Chuck Lorre will soon have Charlie Sheen’s replacement set. The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that one actor who won’t be filling Sheen’s tacky bowling shirts and hilarious sense of sarcastic bemusement is Hugh Grant who reportedly turned down an offer that would have netted him $600 thousand an episode.

It seems that Charlie Sheen‘s ubiquitous media presence as of late might reap some benefits for the actor. Although his hit series, Two and a Half Men, was recently canceled, there are rumors circulating that he might return to the show… as long as a few changes are made.

“What a week this has been for bigotry,” remarked Judith Timson in The Globe and Mail. Dior designer John Galliano lost his job after video came out of him making anti-Semitic comments. Then there was Julian Assange’s claim that a group of Jewish journalists was out to get him. And Glenn Beck compared Reform Judaism to “radicalized Islam.” But the highest-profile case of it came amid revelations that Charlie Sheen called his manager a “stoopid Jew pig” and referred publicly to his boss Chuck Lorre as “Chaim Levine.” Lots of reporters noted what appeared to be a rise in these incidents in recent days, leaving some concerned about a changing attitude toward Jews. Is this a legitimate worry? Writers for Jewish publications weigh in:

What: “Meet the Filmmakers”
Where: Apple SoHo
When: March 1, 2011
Thumbs: Up

The guy whose television network has plenty invested in Charlie Sheen, CBS president and CEO Les Moonves, has made his first public comments about Sheen’s nonstop barrage of interviews–and frequent bashing of CBS. Noting that the troubled sitcom star, whose CBS show Two and a Half Men has been sidelined for the season, has been “on the air quite a bit these days,” Moonves takes a gentle jab, “I wish he would have worked this hard to promote himself for an Emmy.”

CBS programming executives have canceled the hit sitcom Two and a Half Men after their embattled star Charlie Sheen gave what can only be described as a combative and bizaare rant in an interview with Alex Jones who runs the site Infowars. Sheen’s public battles with addiction and stints in rehab have become a public spectacle of late, but his threatening rhetoric to showrunner Chuck Lorre appears to have been the last straw.

Charlie Sheen is out for blood. Making his first major media appearance since his latest tragic excesses went public, Sheen spoke to radio host Alex Jones today and attacked everyone from Alcoholics Anonymous to his boss to Thomas Jefferson. While doing little to restore faith in his sanity, he touched one of the most inflamed nerves in post-Tea Party America by going after the patriot and, by visiting a program like Alex Jones to begin with, may be wanting a path to punditry.

Like Charlie Sheen needed to make some new headlines. The Two and a Half Men star has been on hiatus from the hit CBS sitcom so he can undergo treatment after his recent hospitalization for “abdominal pains” and his incident last October when he trashed a hotel suite in New York.

Monday Sheen appeared on The Dan Patrick Show, saying he tried to go back to work on his CBS show only to end up “banging on the stage door” when no one would let him in. CBS had previously announced the network was suspending production of the show over “profound concern” for Sheen’s health and well-being.

With family vacation budgets sliced and even the weekend trip to the movies suddenly seeming like a luxury, it’s perhaps no surprise that in 2010, Americans watched more TV.

According to viewership figures reported today by The New York Times, the average American watched 34 hours of television a week in 2010–the most ever.

Who would have thought that frequent O’Reilly Factor guest Bernie Goldberg and Mediaite’s Rachel Sklar would find common ground? CBS’s “Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman” mashes up video from the beloved children’s classic with risqué audio from CBS’ How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men. Goldberg described it as “pathetic:”

Wow. What an age we live in. On one network, Adam Lambert is banned for being lewd and lascivious; on another, “Frosty the Snowman” is celebrated for it. Yes that’s right: CBS has taken that favorite holiday classic and defiled it with porn, boobs and a pretty clear reference to crabs.