Well in the press anyway. Bloggers Whitney Matheson and TV Squad have jumped on the bandwagon, even as James Urbaniak rides shotgun. It all started with this post on Venture Bros. creator Jackson Publick’s blog:

One sour note from the past month (aside from my car getting hit yet again) is that Mr. Stephen Colbert has decided not to reprise his role as Professor Impossible this season, for reasons which probably have something to do with him being all super-famous, super-busy, and no longer in need of a few hundred bucks here and there. We figured this would happen eventually, considering his monumental success in the years since our first season, but we held out hope that the WGA strike would leave him with enough bored free time on his hands that he’d have a go at it. But after getting shuffled around from his assistant to his assistant’s assistant to his agent to his manager, one of them finally shot us an email saying: “Stephen has neither the time nor the interest in participating in your project.”

Was the “nor the interest” really necessary? I would have bought the “time” part without question, but man…you gotta kick a guy when he’s down like that? Well maybe I’m not interested in your ice cream, mister! Or your book. Unless someone buys it for me for Christmas.

While everyone hopes this was the work of a WGA- Strike-saddened assistant, and not the man himself, it did lead Urbaniak to put Colbert on notice:

Developing.

PS: we recently saw Urbaniak in THE BENTFOOTES, a dance “mockumentary” co-directed by frequent Beat commenter Todd Alcott and choreographer Kriota Willberg, who is married to cartoonist R. Sikoryak, who drew “The Decider” comics for THE DAILY SHOW, which precedes THE COLBERT REPORT. You see how it is all connected? Anyway, THE BENTFOOTES was totally excellent, and we’ll remind everyone when the DVD comes out.