At the 2012 Shorty Awards in New York City this past Monday, comedian Ricky Gervais received a Lifetime Achievement Award. Never mind that it was for but a relatively short period of his colorful lifetime, relayed via Twitter.

Tonight, FishbowlLA – in conjunction with event organizers – has your exclusive first look at the video acceptance speech the comedian delivered that night. We won’t spoil any of if, other than to say that the bit at the end about exchanging tweets with creationists is our favorite portion of the minute-and-change interlude. That, and the casualness of the backdrop.

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FishbowlLA hates to be the bearer of bad news. Then again, the information we passed on earlier today to local stand-up Matt Walker fits perfectly with his blogged sentiments about traveling to New York to accept on Monday the Shorty Award for Best Comedian:

In the same category as me were Jim Norton, one of the best comedians working today, and Smosh, the Sacramento based couple that make funny videos that have many orders of magnitude greater views than anything I’ve ever done online… If the award was for the best comedian that uses Twitter of this crop of finalists, then there is a clear winner, and that’s Norton. But if the award is for the comedian that uses Twitter the best of these finalists (and that’s how I believe the award is intended to be viewed), then yeah, I guess I did deserve to win.

Turns out Norton was also a winner, just not at the big NYC ceremony co-hosted by The Daily Show’s Samantha Bee and Jason Jones. When we got in touch with Walker to ask why he was listed on the Shorty Awards website as a co-winner with Norton, it was the first he’d heard about it.

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Current TV publicly parted ways with its cantankerous star Keith Olbermann today. Current founders Al Gore and Joel Hyatt broke the news in an open letter on Current’s blog.

We created Current to give voice to those Americans who refuse to rely on corporate-controlled media and are seeking an authentic progressive outlet.  We are more committed to those goals today than ever before.

Current was also founded on the values of respect, openness, collegiality, and loyalty to our viewers. Unfortunately these values are no longer reflected in our relationship with Keith Olbermann and we have ended it.

We are moving ahead by honoring Current’s values. Current has a fundamental obligation to deliver news programming with a progressive perspective that our viewers can count on being available daily — especially now, during the presidential election campaign. Current exists because our audience desires the kind of perspective, insight and commentary that is not easily found elsewhere in this time of big media consolidation.

Olbermann has yet to respond to the news. He did, however, promise a Twitter statement in the near future.

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The LA Times Hero Complex blog is getting its own show on YouTube. Hosted by Times pop culture writer Geoff Boucher, Hero Complex: The Show will run on Nerdist’s soon-to-be-launched YouTube channel and will feature interviews on all things geek and/or nerd. Among other guests, Ridley Scott will be on the show to talk about Prometheus and Leonard Nimoy will also make an appearance to discuss long life and prosperity.

The Nerdist Channel makes its YouTube debut on April 2, while Hero Complex: The Show will premiere the week of April 9.

Press release after the jump:

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New York Times show business correspondent Michael Cieply has some fun with the first few paragraphs of his look at the current retro remake craze in Tinseltown. With Footloose and Dirty Dancing to the left, and Schwarzenegger action flicks and a Robocop reboot to the right, here’s how he cleverly frames it all:

Hollywood is sloshing in its Hot Tub Time Machine with a cluster of projects that recall an era when hair was big, heroes had biceps and the stars who are returning to the limelight were a lot younger.

Billy Crystal’s return as the Oscars host, it turns out, was just a warm-up act. For the first time in a decade, Mr. Crystal, 64, is a leading man. He plays opposite Bette Midler, 66, as Artie Decker, a grandpa who takes charge of his daughter’s three children in Parental Guidance, set for release by 20th Century Fox in November.

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OK. The story has gotten too big. I need to take a moment to say a word about Sarah Tressler.

For those of you who haven’t heard about Tressler, here’s a primer: Up until this week she was the “society” columnist for the Houston Chronicle… while secretly moonlighting as a stripper. Her double life was exposed this week by the Houston Press and made national news. She was subsequently fired from her Chronicle gig and went on Good Morning America to talk about the whole ordeal.

But back in 2009, before all the current craziness, Sarah was an intern at the LA CityBeat when I was the senior editor there. Sarah was smart, she was determined, and to say she was eccentric would be putting it mildly. She was an odd duck. I remember her nearly constant smirking and dismissive eye-rolling during our editorial meetings, particularly (for some reason) when editor-in-chief Will Swaim would speak. Sometimes she’d call us (including Swaim) out for how terrible our ideas were–without offering the slightest hint of constructive criticism. We’d all be tossing ideas around and every-so-often we’d hear a loud grunt or groan from Sarah’s corner of the table.

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Freelance radio columnist Richard Wagoner has a good write-up about LA City Council’s passage last week of a resolution condemning racist and sexist comments on AM-FM talk show airwaves.

Wagoner rightly reminds that since this issue falls under FCC jurisdiction, the March 21 resolution is “essentially meaningless.” Nevertheless, KFI has issued a statement of support for the resolution, which was actually backed in-chamber by former KFI station personality John Ziegler. From the article:

Ziegler, a KFI host from 2003 to 2007, has expressed concern about John and Ken for several years. “As someone who has been falsely accused of making racist statements in the past, I am very hesitant to accuse anyone of such a thing, but I do believe that John Kobylt is a racist,” Ziegler said in an earlier interview.

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The worldwide Web traffic in February 2012 for the Hollywood trades is pretty much what you’d expect. THR is a runaway leader with just under seven million uniques; deadline.com comes in a solid second at around a million-eight, followed by TheWrap and Variety.

More surprising are some of the other details compiled in a comScore comparison obtained by FishbowlLA. For example, according to the breakdown, within the U.S., Variety skews youngest among the four trades, hitting the 25-to-34 demo foremost. TheWrap meanwhile reportedly appeals more to women and readers ages 45-to-54. Sharon Waxman’s site also has, by far, the weakest international imprint.

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FishbowlLA was in attendance Thursday as Whitewater Films kicked off its third year of bi-monthly back patio panels in Santa Monica with a sunny lunch hour discussion of “The Shifting Landscape of Independent Film.” Manning the barbecue as usual was company founder Rick Rosenthal, while Indiewire editor-in-chief Dana Harris returned for another rotating stint as panel moderator.

Dustin Smith, vp of acquisitions and business affairs for Roadside Attractions, kept things lively with a number of jokes and direct exchanges with the other panelists. He recalled for example that by flying in Jennifer Lawrence from London for a Q&A, he was able to keep Winter’s Bone screening at the Arclight Cinemas Hollywood for a critical early third week. He also had lots to say about the state of “S-VOD” dealmaking with Netlifx; as the streaming service focuses more on episodic TV assets, he recently encountered his first outright rights renewal rejection (Goodbye Solo).

Deborah McIntosh, a member of William Morris Endeavor’s global finance and distribution group, addressed the exciting new distribution arm of client Tim League, co-founder of Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse. She also touched on the agency’s imminent plans to release an independent feature exclusively on Facebook.

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Audio and video pioneer Dolby Laboratories are negotiating with the CIM Group for the naming rights to the former Kodak Theatre, according to Bloomberg News.

CIM isn’t expected to reach an agreement right away with the San Francisco based company as they solicit other offers. Kodak signed a 20-year naming rights deal for $72 million in 2000 and managed to break their deal in February after the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Negotiations for a new naming rights deal are overlapping with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences negotiations to keep the Oscars at the Hollywood and Highland Center, built exclusively for the award show in 2001.