There's no earthly way of knowing....which direction we are going....

I hate it when I'm channel-flipping and I catch the last minute or so of a sketch on some comedy show which I suspect I would have really wanted to see in its entirety. Case in point: I flipped past FOX a short while ago, and MAD TV had a bit in which Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was crossed with The Apprentice.

In the bit I saw, an actor playing Donald Trump in an outfit that was part business suit, part whacky-suit a la Gene Wilder, and he was singing to the winning contestant of The Apprentice as the glass elevator of Trump Tower shot up toward the sky and out of the building.

Then the sketch cuts to a news anchor sitting at a desk, reporting that the Air Force has shot down a glass elevator that was flying unauthorized NYC airspace, and that President Bush has ordered the Department of Homeland Security to devote resources to "terrorist magic elevators".

Hell, I don't know, maybe the sketch sucked. But it sure sounds funny.

(Which reminds me of Al Gore's stint as Saturday Night Live host last year: my favorite sketch of that episode was when Gore played -- you guessed it -- Willy Wonka's accountant brother, the guy responsible for working the financing of a factory whose labor force is Oompa Loompas and which uses a river and waterfall as a stirring mechanism. For some reason, I just found Al Gore, dressed up in dusty Dickensian rags and barking lines like "You hear that, Willy? We're Oompa-Loompa-Doompity-Screwed!", absolutely hilarious.)