In the tradition of recent years, they are expected to start with a prerecorded audiovisual intro encapsulating the year in film, then launch into Stewart's monologue, which they assume is what he'll be remembered for, for better or worse, "because once you get past the monologue the show kind of takes care of itself," Karlin notes, though the host does have to bring the audience back to the party when the night drifts into the fine points of costume design.

A separate West Coast trio of writers under producer Gil Cates, including 16-year Academy Awards veteran Bruce Vilanch, is drafting the not-so-spontaneous banter among the presenters before the two writing teams gather this week in Los Angeles to cross-pollinate and rewrite.

Stewart's crew plans to take satiric shots at the Hollywood establishment, naturally, but they have no plans to bite the hand, as Chris Rock may have done last year with his rundown of actors who are not real movie stars, something hard to take as a joke if you're paying those names $10 million-plus to carry your film.

"We sold out the day we took this job seven years ago," Javerbaum says, turning that too into a joke. It's really no different than how Stewart invariably is kind to the guests he invites on his show, even the Republicans — however much he's thought of as a bad boy for his digs at the political establishment, or as risqué for the liberties allowed on cable, he is far more likely to opt for self-deprecation than the put-down.

"We want the people at the Oscars," Karlin says, "to be glad that they got into business with us."

So it's a fair bet that one thing their man will do is grumble about how could they have done this to him, given him such laugh-riot material as these films about an Olympic massacre and the anti-Communist witch hunts and race relations in L.A. and a tortured gay author and those cowboys who don't act like John Wayne. Let Billy Crystal try to craft a song out of those suckers. Thank goodness there's Clooney, who has too much going for him for any human, if you ignore the spinal surgeries, which it's easy enough to do for a night.

There's a knock on the glass wall of the "Daily Show" conference room. It's the boss.

"Some of the snippets are rolling through on the Cheney interview," Stewart announces — the VP just gave his version of the events on the Texas hunt, that too on Fox.

"There was one where he said, 'You know, I pulled the trigger. I saw him fall. It's an image I'll never forget,' " Stewart reports.

"I was thinking of some idea of, like, 'For Dick Cheney, in some ways it's like he's never left that ranch where they pen-raise quail ...' "

Veteran instincts

Bruce VILANCH, the wild-haired gag writer and gay activist celebrating his Oscar "Sweet 16," has his own ideas for a "Brokeback Mountain" bit ("I was hoping for a seminude kick line, but I lost") and for dealing with Clooney ("With a bottle of wine and some date-rape drugs").

"The show could end with gay cowboys and Truman Capote and a 'tranny,' " a.k.a. a transvestite from "Transamerica," Vilanch says. "Not what the red states are used to."

As for the job of host, and he's seen them come and go, Vilanch says, "I think if he does a good job everybody will say, 'Well done.' If he does not, it will live with him the rest of his life, kind of like being the quarterback who screwed up the Super Bowl. That's why a lot of people don't want to do it."

Stewart says he consulted Crystal, Steve Martin and Rock and all advised him not to try to outthink either the academy or the audience, just trust his instincts and have fun. That and, "Chris said, 'Go there with a passport, $10,000 and a fake beard. And if you have to head to Mexico, you head to Mexico.' "

It was Friday, two days after the "Daily Show" made fodder of Fox's Cheney interview, and the off-night for the program and its crew. Boxes and gift bags were piled outside Stewart's office with flowers, dolls, dinosaur finger puppets and other presents "for the world's most huggable baby." The one wall of his office given over to photos is all family shots, except for a couple of beach scenes. None of him with celebs or pols.

At 43, Stewart understands that if it doesn't work, and he becomes the critics' "bait fish" or "piñata" after his well-documented run of accolades, it's no big deal in the scheme of things. "There's a lot of less honorable jobs than piñata," he reasons.

On the other hand, he could be the Oscar host for a decade and, if so, he might someday make the academy's "In Memoriam" segment, get his picture flashed up there when he passes. As of now, as he sees it, "No, I won't make the Oscars' one, unfortunately. I'm gonna make it if they do a CableACE one. I'll get on that one. Probably get on the Emmy one ....I got two shots at the 'In Memoriam.' "

"I'm not doing this for posterity," he says of hosting Oscar night. Stewart leans back behind his desk and explains how these awards are a 78-year-old entity and a pretty sweet franchise and he'll be borrowing interest from it, not the other way around. Can he bring a slightly different atmosphere? "That may be," he says.

"My impulse is always to start with absurdity, either the absurdity of me doing it, or whatever the absurdity may be of this year's films ... I'll do that or I will come up with a song parody that somehow figures out a way to rhyme 'Syriana' and 'Capote,' which is not going to be easy," though that quip comes out a little stale, the line perhaps past its expiration date, just as Cheney bits may be by Oscar night.

"But I'm hoping that the vice president shoots someone [else], probably around March 3, March 4," Stewart says.

He had a week to go before his scheduled arrival in Los Angeles and pledged to use the time to catch up on his DVDs of the nominees, all the big ones. He promised. But he had already done his homework on another front, watching tapes of past hosts, if not back to George Jessel and Hope, then at least to Carson, who brought a backlog of audience goodwill Stewart cannot count on. Stewart and his crew thought Letterman was better than people remembered, and that there was no need for the academy to run back to Hollywood establishment figures for a few years afterward. But Martin was their consensus favorite when he hosted in 2001, with "Gladiator" and Russell Crowe and Julia Roberts to play with, and his quip about how, "at the end of the evening we're going to vote someone out of show business."

And for all the talk of the price of flopping, there weren't too many such episodes in those tapes, at least not on the hosts' part that Stewart could see. Jokes without laughs, absolutely. But no "Dukakis in the tank moment."

The catch is, if that happens to him, he comes out the winner anyway. He doesn't have to flee in the fake beard to Mexico, just back to New York and Comedy Central, where he can pop a replay onto a screen behind his desk and look at that fool and shake his head.