OK, I got a little crazy with the fireworks and the parades and the July 4 celebration but now I'm back.

Where to start? Two quick things before I get to the entertainment. The economy. You know how something can be bad and you know that it's bad but it takes a small thing before it really hits home? Like I've learned to remain relatively unfazed with all of the gas price increases and food price increases, but this is all too much: I do most of my grocery shopping at Cub Foods. When I'm done, I always buy a can of Super Chill Dr. Chill -- which is Cub's generic brand -- at the soda machine near the exit. Don't ask why. I don't buy Super Chill for home consumption, but it's just a little reward for myself for surviving the grocery store, especially if I've survived it with children in tow. The price for my Dr. Chill fix used to be 25 cents. Now it's 40 cents. So goodbye, Dr. Chill. BTW, Super Chill is listed in the on-line "Urban Dictionary" as a brand of "ghetto soda." I think that's being kind.

The folks who manage the vending machines at our palatial WISC-TV/My Madison TV offices have decided now that it is in our best interest to be informed as to what snack selections are considered healthy and which are not. And let me tell you, I sure am glad that they decided to play the nutrition cop because I was making some real boneheaded moves without even being aware of my stupidity. For example, did you know that Baby Ruth candy bars are apparently not good for you? But I've been eating eight of them a day for months now! Thank goodness that I'm now aware that Nutri Grain bars are a sensible alternative. Hey, vending machine people: Anybody smart enough to hold down a job knows that Twix bars are not healthy. Sometimes you just want a Twix, consequences be damned. Besides, you can't get that cookie crunch out of a bag of Baked Ruffles.

OK, what else is going on. Oh, the Emmy nominations have just come out. Let's look at the comedy categories first. Two and a Half Men gets a nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series even though it's the WORST comedy -- at least until the fall; that new Jay Mohr series looks like it could make me long for the return of Yes, Dear -- that CBS airs. How I Met Your Mother or especially The New Adventures of Old Christine are much more deserving. Though I personally still prefer The Office, I assume 30 Rock will win again.

Reflecting its dominance in primetime lineups, there is an extra sixth nomination for Outstanding Drama Series. I'd like to see Lost win for its re-emergence as the best drama on network television, but I think it's Mad Men's year. No major complaints here, except for Boston Legal's bizarre nod. David E. Kelley must have compromising pictures of somebody.

In the comedy lead actor category, Jason Lee from My Name Is Earl should have replaced either Charlie Sheen or Monk's (is this atrocity still in production?) Tony Shaloub. Take 'em both out and throw in Larry David and I'd be happy. And it's a shame that only Rainn Wilson from The Office gets in in the supporting category, with no room for Jenna Fischer or Jim Krasinski. And what about Creed!?

Sadder than the fact that reality TV is now so ubiquitous that it requires TWO categories is the fact that Survivor did not get one of the ten nominations. Despite not being as buzz-worthy a show as it used to be (eight-year-old shows inevitably cool off), Survivor had one of its best years in recent memory, with the solid China cycle and the excellent Fans vs. Favorites cycle. Certainly Survivor had a better year than nominee The Amazing Race, which aired only one decidedly ho-hum edition, which was highlighted by the cringe-inducing appearances of World's Worst Dad Ronald, who could not refrain from berating his poor daughter at every opportunity.

Once again Jay Leno was shut out of the Outstanding Variety, Music, or Comedy Series category, as was future Tonight Show host Conan O'Brien. It looks to be a done deal now that Leno, after finishing up his Tonight Show run on May 29, 2009, will defect to ABC and compete directly with O'Brien's Tonight Show and current whipping boy David Letterman. There simply isn't room for three competiting talk shows, and I'm afraid Leno's defection is the beginning of the end for the best talk-show host ever -- there, I said it -- Letterman. Some of Leno's audience will likely follow him, while O'Brien will retain some of his audience as well as secure some of the Tonight Show faithful who would watch even if View crazies Sheri Sherri Shepherd or Elisabeth Hasselbeck were the permanent host. Letterman's contract expires in 2010, which would be his 32nd year in late night television, which would surpass even Johnny Carson for late-night longevity. Letterman will be 63 when his current contract expires, which while not as old as Carson was when he retired (66), is likely old enough for CBS executives to decide it's time to get a younger host for the time period.

Lots of other stuff happened while I was away -- both Ebert & Roeper leaving their show, a shame as it was, even without the ailing Ebert, still a compelling half-hour of film criticism, though nowhere near as addictive as it was when Siskel was still alive. And the Billy Joel Shea Stadium concerts caught my eye, especially since they featured special guests Tony Bennett, John Mayer, Steven Tyler, Roger Daltrey, John Mellencamp, Don Henley, and Paul McCartney, whose appearance was the most overt nod to Shea's place in history as the first stadium to hold a rock concert back when The Beatles played there in 1965. Talk about a couple of shows I would have paid big bucks to see, especially since my pockets are flush with all of that money that is no longer going toward Super Chill sodas.

I'm shocked. Shocked not only that comedian George Carlin has died at 71, but that media coverage of his death has been sparse. (One daily e-mail newsletter I receive even listed his name as "George Karlin.") I guess a relatively old man dying of heart failure in a hospital just isn't as good a story as a former Playboy Playmate being found unresponsive at the Hard Rock Hotel or an up-and-coming actor dying from a prescription drug overdose.

When I was a kid, my two favorite comedians were Bill Cosby and George Carlin. I played their records constantly. While the two couldn't have been further apart in terms of their material and their use of profanity, both Cosby and Carlin were able to mesmerize me in how they could start from a seemingly minor topic and expand on it for several minutes or even an entire album side.

Both were experts in their chosen field: Cosby was unparalleled in discussing family life whereas Carlin was peerless in breaking down not only the language that Americans spoke but also the ridiculousness of many aspects of American life. Throughout what many would consider his "classic" period of the seventies, Carlin's targets for humor were often fairly mundane, ranging from language to drugs to supermarkets to bodily functions to the differences between baseball and football.

Undoubtedly his most famous routine of this era is his "Seven Dirty Words You Can Never Say On Television," which led to Carlin's arrest in 1972 after performing the routine at Milwaukee's Summerfest. Unfortunately, for many this routine surely pigeonholed Carlin as a "shock" or "dirty" comedian. Ironically, the point behind "SDWYCNSOT" and later material such as "Filthy Words" (a radio broadcast of which led to a famous Supreme Court ruling) was that words weren't in and of themselves shocking and that we had arbitrarily empowered certain words with the power to offend. Carlin wanted to remove that power from words; to train his audience to be less, not more, shocked by such routines.

Following years of incessant touring and recording (not to mention much admitted drug use), Carlin suffered a heart attack in 1978 and took several years off, reemerging in the early eighties with material broader in scope and a delivery angrier in tone. (I'd like to think that Rick Moranis's brutal impression of him on SCTV had something to do with his decision to alter his material, but it's doubtful.) No longer was Carlin annoyed by food, dogs, and farting, but he incessantly ranted on politics, religion, death, war, and corruption.

His more recent material was no less brilliant than his earlier routines, but some audiences undoubtedly found his increasingly darker tirades tougher to take. When I saw him at the MGM Grand Hotel on the Las Vegas Strip earlier this decade, I was stunned that such a weighty, intense, and at times profound show could move tickets on one of the most gaudy, ornate, and superficial streets in the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, he was fired from the MGM Grand in 2004 after lambasting his audience, including ranting about wanting to get out of Las Vegas and back east to "where the real people are."

I recently read Steve Martin's memoir Born Standing Up, after which I became a little saddened at remembering how quickly Martin gave up his stand-up career once he found acceptance in films. Carlin dabbled in films, television, and books, but it was clear that his passion was squarely in stand-up. He performed as recently as last weekend, and despite passing seventy, showed no signs of slowing down or taming down his act. In fact, just the opposite.

In 2004, Comedy Central unveiled their list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time. Richard Pryor was first, with Carlin placing second. Comedy Central got the names right, but the order wrong. Carlin was undoubtedly the greatest. At a time when we need him most, Carlin will be sorely missed.

Oh, and did I mention he hosted the October 11, 1975, series premiere of Saturday Night Live?

McCartney Does Lennon, O’Donnell Does Stern, Myers Does Himself
Current mood: Double Quarter Pounder = Mild Heart Attack

Paul McCartney played a homecoming show in Liverpool this past week, which was notable not only for who was in attendance - Yoko Ono, George Harrison's widow Olivia Harrison, and Beatles record producer George Martin - but also for one of the songs McCartney performed.

To the best of my Beatles-drenched knowledge, before last Sunday's show, McCartney had never played the Sgt. Pepper closer "A Day in the Life" live before. See clip here. And for good reason: The song, though a collaboration between him and John Lennon, is mostly a Lennon composition. And while McCartney has played virtually all of "his" Beatle tunes live over the last twenty years (sadly, no reports of him breaking out underappreciated Rubber Soul tunes "I'm Looking Through You" and "You Won't See Me"), he has steered clear of songs written (or mostly written) by Lennon and thus recorded with Lennon singing the lead vocal.

I'm not suggesting that McCartney is going to make Lennon tunes part of his ongoing live repertoire (if he even has an ongoing live repertoire, since the dude's 65), but if he were, there's two ways to look at it. One, no one has more right to play whatever Beatle tunes he wants to than McCartney. (Sorry, Ringo.) And it's not as if Lennon never borrowed songs from McCartney - when Lennon made his final concert appearance in 1975 alongside Elton John, he chose as one of only three songs to perform McCartney's "I Saw Her Standing There" (though he did give credit, referring to the song as from "an old estranged fiancé of mine called Paul"). The more cynical argument though is that McCartney is trying to hog the Beatles legacy all to himself by laying claim to music and lyrics that aren't his but that many might assume are.

Personally, I'd prefer it if McCartney stayed away from Lennon tunes. He's got enough of his own, and if he ever does tour again (which I doubt, dude's 65), I'd hope that he'd lay off some of the Beatle concert warhorses in favor of some of his own overlooked solo tracks. "Junior's Farm," anyone? "Letting Go"? "Wanderlust"?

A big fan of Paul McCartney, Howard Stern, had a fascinating bit of radio over the last week, as he interviewed Rosie O'Donnell for about 45 minutes. What made the interview interesting was O'Donnell's complete openness in answering all of Stern's questions, many of which (no surprise here) were very frank sexually. Stern said his appreciation of O'Donnell started several years ago when she began doing what he called "honest" broadcasting. I have to agree with Stern here; while O'Donnell could be uncomfortable on her old talk show (remember her questioning Tom Selleck about his NRA membership?) and especially on The View (we get it, you hate George W. Bush), it is ultimately more interesting to hear a broadcaster take a stand. And while Ellen DeGeneres gets lauded for mentioning gay marriage to guest John McCain, we all know that O'Donnell would have made better television with McCain by not letting him off the hook with humor as did the more milquetoast DeGeneres.

For the record, O'Donnell revealed that she believed 9/11 was an inside job, that her overmatched View political sparring partner Elisabeth Hasselbeck was "very attractive," and that while she admires Barbara Walters, O'Donnell didn't believe her to be a feminist because she got to where she is by playing by the boys' rules. O'Donnell also seemed open to the possibility of hosting a show on Sirius Satellite Radio, perhaps even on one of the two channels that Stern controls. Interesting stuff from two seemingly different but actually very like-minded broadcasters.

So SNL alums Adam Sandler and Mike Myers are both attempting comebacks this summer with big blockbuster movies. While I think life is probably too short to waste time on either, if I had to choose I'd go with Sandler, and the reason is simple. Operaman is smart enough to know that comedy is collaborative - his film features John Turturro, Rob Schneider (another SNL alum), and even Mrs. Garrett herself, Charlotte Rae. Myers is egotistical enough to think that people want to see him play every freakin' role. Comedy works when actors play off of each other, not when narcissists use special effects to play with themselves. (Yes, Eddie Murphy, I'm talking to you.) Actually, if I had to invest time with any SNL alum this summer, I'd be most likely to catch Dana Carvey's HBO special. Carvey has been sadly MIA since his underappreciated ABC series was cancelled twelve years ago.

Got to go, I think Million Dollar Password is coming on. I can't get enough Regis . . .

I don't want to sound like a backwards-thinking Luddite, but there are plenty of times when I hate the Internet.

Take this week's Rachael Ray scandal. Now I have no love for Rachael Ray. I find her constant cheeriness impossibly grating; someone once referred to her personality as being like a "spider monkey on crack," which is a description I cannot improve upon. Not only is she committing the crime of putting on an unwatchable daily television program, but through her role as spokesperson for Nabisco and Dunkin' Donuts, she is promoting some pretty unhealthy eating habits, which as perhaps the single celebrity most associated with food and eating, seems to me to be highly irresponsible.

But is Rachael Ray a terrorist supporter? Some conservative bloggers -- who I won't name because they don't deserve the promotion -- say she is. Why? Because of a scarf she wore in an on-line Dunkin' Donuts ad that supposedly symbolizes support for Muslim extremism. This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard since radio stations were told not to play John Lennon's "Imagine" after 9/11.

So am I wishing to go back to pre-Internet, pre-i Tunes, let's go down to K-Mart and buy the latest 45 from Toto, days because of these bloggers? Well, that's the least of it. What infuriates me is that Dunkin' Donuts actually caved to these idiotic pseudo-journalists and pulled the ad. That's the danger of the Internet -- not that it allows people the freedom to write and post whatever crap they can think of, but that some people, not to mention major corporations, will take that crap seriously and act on it.

Dunkin' Donuts is the major offender here for giving these conservative bloggers the attention that they work so tirelessly to get at any costs and to hell with truth, common sense, or human compassion. Unfortunately, there are no Dunkin' Donuts franchises in Madison, so I can't even boycott them. Guess I'll boycott Sonic instead. Oh wait . . . What about White Castle? Oh, that's right . . .

[That reminds me of the time that I personally boycotted McDonald's for about nine months. The reason? I brought home three cheeseburgers that had no meat -- or whatever McDonald's substitutes for meat -- inside. What steamed me even more than that though was the reaction I got when I took the empty buns back: no apologies, just a lot of insider laughter at their silly mistake. I still get annoyed thinking about it, but I gave up the boycott long ago. Boycotts. Who has the time?]

Since I'm on this theme of hating technology, I'll talk about DVRs. Now it's hard for me to complain too much about my DVR, since in all honesty it's my favorite thing in my house that isn't human or canine. But the DVR does make it a tad too easy to fall behind on TV shows, which can limit your enjoyment of them. Case in point: I just watched the last few shows from season three of Lost. Yes, that's season three, not season four, which just came to a conclusion last Thursday night. So what probably would have been a big shocker -- the premiere of the "flash-forwards," the first of which showed Jack (Matthew Fox) leading a drunken, drugged, miserable post-Island existence, had long since been spoiled for me through numerous articles I couldn't avoid (most of them on-line; hey, another reason to rail against that demon Internet!).

I know there are people out there who wait for their favorite shows to be released on DVD, but I could never do it. One, I could never wait to enjoy new episodes of The Office or 30 Rock (to name but a couple; the Lost thing snowballed because of the birth of our daughter and it being basically the only show my wife and I watch together). And two, because of the insaneness of that line of thinking, which seems to ignore the rule that shows have to have viewers on their first go-round not only to succeed but to be deemed marketable enough to release on DVD. Well, at least to succeed. I guess pretty much anything goes nowadays with DVD releases; I mean, you can buy the James Woods show Shark on DVD. Can a DVD release of Viva Laughlin be far behind?

Don't look now, but My Network TV is gaining on CW. When the formation of CW was announced and then My Network TV was started as a reaction to that, I would have bet my house, car, and Pepsi machine that CW would do well and My Network would fail. Now My Network hasn't exactly been garnering Super Bowl-like ratings, but it's steadily improving, and should continue to do so with the fall addition of WWE Smackdown. Meanwhile, CW is languishing and bleeding money faster than the airline industry. The only thing CW can do right is PR -- if you believed the hype, you would think that Gossip Girl is the hottest show in the country. Whereas in reality, it scores about the same number of viewers weekly that watched the Monona Memorial Day parade on public access cable TV. I guess CW really stands for Colossal Waste.

Off to catch up on season four of Lost . . . hey, I heard a rumor that Boone dies. Is that true?

I grew up on sitcoms.

OK, that's not the whole story. There were also game shows, sketch comedy shows, and Bill Cosby and George Carlin records. Oh, and my holy musical trinity of Hall & Oates, Genesis, and Rick Springfield that I have only recently been brave enough to confront in expensive therapy sessions.

But sitcoms played a big part in my childhood, and the thrill I get from a shot of 30-minutes of laugh-track fueled hilarity has survived long after the thrill of living has gone (did I mention my early affinity for heartland rocker Johnny Cougar?).

So I took extreme interest in a list just published by AOL titled "TV's Best Comedies Ever." I have no idea who complied the list, but since no pedigree was named, I have to assume it was a couple of AOL entertainment writers who had some down time between posting stories about Ashlee Simpson's wedding, Jessica Simpson's jealousy about Ashlee Simpson's wedding, and Jessica Alba's trumping of them both by getting married and having a baby. Anyway, here's the list. Go away, read the list, think about it, write up your comments, and compare them with mine below.

Ready? Now my first comment is the list should have been named "TV's Best American Situation Comedies Ever," because if this list was supposed to be inclusive of all things funny, then there is no excuse for leaving off Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, SCTV, Saturday Night Live, Letterman, or the original Office.

While I'll save most of my commentary for shows erroneously included or left off, I have some nitpicking about the rankings. Everybody Loves Raymond at number 50? There aren't 49 sitcoms better than the hilarious Raymond, which the list goes on to prove. The Simpsons over Seinfeld for number one? I suppose many are OK with that, but my biases lean more toward non-animated shows. 30 Rock at twenty? Great show, but way too early in its existence to anoint it better than Raymond, Taxi, or even Newhart. The Cosby Show and Roseanne in the top ten? Simply ridiculous.

Here's the shows that in no way should have been left off the list:

Newsradio. The most glaring omission. How do you forget about the best workplace comedy since Mary Tyler Moore? This show was consistently hilarious, with razor-sharp scripts and one of the best casts (Dave Foley, Andy Dick, Stephen Root, Vicki Lewis, Joe Rogan, Maura Tierney, and the late, great Phil Hartman) in TV history. A wonderful show to discover on DVD if you haven't seen it.

Buffalo Bill. Before there was Larry Sanders, there was talk show host "Buffalo Bill" Bittinger, one of the least likable lead characters ever created for a sitcom, brilliantly played by Dabney Coleman. Aired on NBC in 1983-1984 and now largely forgotten. Had Buffalo Bill aired a few years later on HBO, it would probably be one of the most lauded sitcoms of the last 25 years.

Three's Company. OK, now we get a little lowbrow. But as silly as this show was, dang if you didn't catch yourself laughing it at. John Ritter was a master of physical comedy, and no show -- including Cheers -- re-cast better than when Three's Company brought in Don Knotts to fill the void left by Norman Fell and Audra Lindley. In fact, I sense my next blog entry could be Ropers vs. Furley.

The King of Queens. I've written about my affinity for this show before. Here's a show that could have, especially given its nine-year run, been forgiven had it run out of gas or saddled the leads with a cute baby or two or given live-in dad Jerry Stiller a charming romance with special guest star Estelle Getty. But the creators of this show kept everyone bickering and miserable until the finale and I love them for it. Probably the most underrated sitcom in my lifetime.

It's Garry Shandling's Show. This show needs to be out on DVD. A hilarious, groundbreaking, fourth-wall shattering collaboration between Shandling and former SNL writer Alan Zwiebel, this program was breathtakingly innovative and original. And remarkably lighter in tone than Shandling's brilliant Larry Sanders Show (a too-low twelfth on AOL's list).

Police Squad!, It's Your Move, Sledge Hammer!, Undeclared, Get A Life, Working Stiffs, and The Associates. OK, none of these shows lasted very long, but number of episodes shouldn't matter (and given the aforementioned placement of 30 Rock, it doesn't).

Shows I would leave off the list entirely? Oh boy: Happy Days and Laverne & Shirley. Three's Company, which shared the ABC Tuesday night schedule with both shows, was infinitely better. Hogan's Heroes, Gilligan's Island, Green Acres, and The Brady Bunch: The TV Land schedule in Hell. Family Ties. Yes, it gave us Michael J. Fox, but was it funnier than Raymond or even One Day At A Time? Married with Children. Yes, it put FOX on the map, but was it funny? No. And Family Guy. Family Guy is to The Simpsons what Rick Springfield is to Bruce Springsteen.

Yes, my musical tastes have matured since childhood. But I still loves me some sitcoms.

Any other favorites left off AOL's Top 50? Alice? Andy Griffith? How I Met Your Mother? My Name Is Earl? The Michael Richards Show? (OK, just seeing if you were paying attention.) Drop me an e-mail at jrobbins@wisctv.com and let me know.

I've been a fan of Entertainment Weekly since it was first published back in 1990. I remember being so pleased that a magazine that treated entertainment somewhat seriously - as opposed to the fluff people profiles that filled the pages of People Weekly and Us Weekly - finally existed.

But for me the magazine version of EW became a victim of the Internet version of EW, which is frankly better than the old school version - mainly because it contains in-depth, next-day, single-episode reviews of some of my favorite shows like Survivor, The Office, Lost, and 30 Rock.

So, like I had with Rolling Stone before - as the state of music goes, so does the state of Rolling Stone, and right now those are both in the crapper - I let my long-standing subscription to EW run out, knowing that I could more than survive on the free content of ew.com. But recently EW (no doubt because many subscribers also decided that the print version was largely disposable) began offering crazy-low prices for subscriptions, which I for one couldn't pass up. I'm now getting the magazine for something like 17 cents an issue. I rationalized it by deciding that even if I only page through the issue and read a handful of reviews, I'd get my 17 cents worth.

But I won't be getting my 17 cents worth out of the latest issue, which is a cover-to-cover tribute to Sex and the City. Why, EW? What will I read in the bathroom now for the next week? Shampoo bottles? (Thanks, Kingpin.) The Sex and the City phenomenon is one that has completely passed me by. It's surprising, because I love the original programming on HBO and I love comedy, but Sex and the City never appealed to me one single bit. Now, I should say that I haven't seen enough SATC to properly dismiss it. But I'm not interested in a comedy program that has never been lauded for its wit and humor, but rather for its frank sexual dialogue and costume design. True to form, early buzz on the SATC movie is less about its plot and character development than about what the four main actresses wear in the film. That focus on such superficiality is just not enough to pull me into the SATC camp. And it has to be said so I'll say it - shouldn't a show that deals frankly about the sex lives of four women have at least one sexy woman in its cast? I'm sorry, but Seinfeld only had one main female character, and Julia-Louis Dreyfus managed to make her hysterical and sexy. OK, I know that's cold, but haven't you heard? Bloggers are supposed to be cold. Bob Costas said so.

But if anyone reading this wants to prove me wrong about SATC, the complete series DVD box set is half-off right now at Best Buy. Send it to me and I promise to watch it with an open mind.

Speaking of DVD sets and value, the various seasons of Survivor that have been released on DVD are now dirt cheap - Amazon has them for $12.50, which boils down to about $3 a disc. Given that all of the sets have some extras - All-Stars and Outback in particular have a ton of commentary tracks - I've very tempted to pick these up. But is a reality show like Survivor rewatchable? Is there any value to watching the show from the perspective of knowing who wins up front and trying to examine from episode one how he or she did it? Or is it only the anticipation of not knowing who's going to be voted off or eliminated or evicted that makes these shows fun and without it there's nothing? Or should I spend less time worrying about TV and more time donating my time to charity? These are all valid questions . . .

Speaking of TV, the networks have now all released their fall 2008 schedules and most networks - particularly ABC and CBS - are making surprisingly few changes. Given the public's dissatisfaction with network TV is at an all-time high following the strike-interrupted 2007-2008 season, this sameness is either really stupid or really smart. I think it's the latter. Look, people claim to be fed up with network TV because shows are quickly discarded or shows are moved around on the schedule until you can't find them anymore (although DVRs are quickly making this argument irrelevant). I believe that given how messed up the 2007-2008 season was because of the writers' strike (how messed up? Try Big Brother three nights a week during February sweeps messed-up), the networks are making a solid effort to offer their core audiences a little stability, a little - and this sound negative, but it isn't meant to be - predictability.

And to those people who say they're giving up on TV because Moonlight or Jericho was cancelled: TV is a business. Shows can be very great or very bad, but in the end they are viewed as product, like McNuggets or Dr. Pepper. Either they win fans - like McNuggets or Dr. Pepper - or they bomb, like the McDLT or Pepsi Blue. I'd like to think that every NBC executive lives and dies with every Jim and Pam, Dwight and Angela, or Michael and Jan interaction, but it ain't that way. But hey, don't let the business aspect of TV ruin your passion. It don't ruin mine. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to get some more McNuggets and Dr. Pepper.

If you're like most people, you haven't spent much time in the last fifteen years thinking about the stand-up comedian Andrew "Dice" Clay. I haven't either. But I was last week.

Let's back up for the uninitiated: Andrew "Dice" Clay was a raunchy comedian who was big for a short time in the late eighties and early nineties. He made a splash due to his shocking vulgarity but his popularity died off when most figured out there was little substance (like Richard Pryor or even Sam Kinison had and George Carlin still has) behind his filth. In 2004, he was ranked 95th on Comedy Central's list of the "100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time," which sounds more impressive than it is -- Clay ranked seventeen places lower than Sinbad.

From the moment he began to achieve some sort of notoriety, Clay was relentlessly beat up in the media over his racist and misogynistic material; of course much of this coverage only served to make him more popular. But when his popularity cooled, Clay attempted to ward off irrelevancy by proclaiming that his "Diceman" persona was only a character and that Andrew Clay wasn't really "Dice" any more than Robert DeNiro was really "Travis Bickle." During one noteworthy attempt to distance himself from "Dice," Clay famously broke out in tears during an appearance on The Arsenio Hall Show.

Most people, including myself, didn't buy it and Clay's career faded. In fact, I spent a good ten years not considering Clay at all until my wife and I went on vacation in 2002 and saw him perform a surprise set at The Comedy Store in Los Angeles (it was a Sunday night and Sundays were when notable comics appeared unannounced to try out new material). I remember not finding Dice particularly funny, but enjoying the show in a nostalgic way, sort of like I might today enjoy a screening of the '80s sex romp Zapped! starring Scott Baio and Willie Aames.

I hadn't thought about Clay at all for the last six years until last Friday, when I heard a repeat of a Howard Stern broadcast from 1991 that featured Dice. (Stern only does live shows now four days a week, so on Fridays, Sirius devotes his main channel to "Master Tape Theater," or repeats from Stern's years on terrestrial radio.) Here, outside of his limited repertoire and freed of the pressure of having to perform dirty nursery rhymes for an audience of testosterone-soaked seventeen-year-olds, Clay was actually humorous.

Oh, you still wouldn't want to have listened to the show with your grandmother, as Clay's shtick involved playfully sneaking in words that Stern, still shackled by the FCC, was begging him not to use. (Part of the joy of "Master Tape Theatre" is hearing unexpurgated versions of previously censored shows originally aired on a seven-second delay.) But the attitude that marred "Dice" was pleasantly lacking; he even commented at one point that on "most nights" his nightclub act gets no laughs. The broadcast made me think that Clay had been telling the truth all along and that he was actually playing a character with "Dice." Unfortunately, Andrew Clay never found the courage to let "Dice" rest in peace (he starred in a VH1 reality show called Dice Undisputed in 2007). Which is a shame, because perhaps Clay could have been known for more than just the guy that gained fame by unremarkably rhyming "Hickory Dickory Dock" with, well, you know . . .

Clay isn't the only comedian whose career I've been revisiting in my mind lately. I've been thinking about Chris Farley too, largely because of the new book The Chris Farley Show. Now I haven't read the book yet, but the advance word is that the contributors to the "oral history" spend less time celebrating Farley's comedy and more time not only discussing his shortcomings in life (drugs, liquor, lack of self-esteem, weight) but also putting a realistic spin on his legacy. A quote from Chevy Chase attempts to put to rest any comparisons to John Belushi (who also died of a drug overdose at 33) who, Chase rightly notes, had a more significant "record of accomplishment."

Anyone living in Madison in the early nineties probably has a "brush with greatness" story involving hometown hero Chris Farley; I have two. One quiet summer weeknight in 1991 at the now-defunct Esquire movie theater I was in the lobby with three other guys. One of the guys I quickly realized was Farley. I worked up the courage to tell him how much I enjoyed his work on SNL and asked him if he was coming back to the show in the fall. He was very, very gracious with his response, but he also came off as oddly shy, like I was the celebrity and he was the nervous adoring fan.

Probably about a year later I was with some friends at the Plaza Tavern in downtown Madison when we noticed a familiar face. It was Farley. The excitement at seeing Farley hanging out quickly changed to a peculiar sense of pity when it became obvious that he wasn't really there with anyone and was just there looking for a friend or perhaps a woman to go home with. What should have been thrilling was instead awkward that changed to relief when he finally left, like when an aggressive panhandler gives up on you and moves to the other side of the street.

When Farley died, what made me sad was remembering the shy, needy person that I saw in those two brief real-life encounters and not the realization that a great comedic career was cut short. Chase is right: Farley doesn't have much of a legacy. Of the movies he made, only Tommy Boy didn't outright stink. And in his five years on SNL, only a few sketches stick: Matt Foley, the Chippendales' audition (which Chris Rock claims to hate due to how it demeans Farley, which Rock cites as evidence of Farley's self-loathing), and the various incarnations of "The Chris Farley Show" during which he nervously stumbled to interview celebrities he was clearly awed by.

Certainly the new biography draws its name from the "Chris Farley Show" series of sketches because they presented the closest thing to Farley's real-life persona. Shy, uncomfortable, insecure, eager to please, and yes, funny. But Farley couldn't stretch that persona into a notable career much more than Andrew Clay could stretch a foul-mouthed, racist, and sexist character into a notable career.

I'll undoubtedly read The Chris Farley Show. But if I want to laugh afterwards, it won't be the work of Farley or Clay that I'll turn to.

Have you ever been tinkering with a computer program or maybe a Web site that you host or something as simple as a blender and realize that it was able to do something you never knew before it could? Like I recently discovered that you can enter a keyword in on TiVo and it will tape every show with that keyword in the title. So now instead of periodically looking for Scooby-Doo movies for my five-year-old, every time something airs that includes the name "Scooby" in the title, it will get taped. Which means my TiVo will be full of only Scooby-Doo content by the end of next week: "Hey, what happened to Lost? Oh, it got erased to make room for Scooby-Doo Meets the Harlem Globetrotters."

Anyway, I recently remembered that I have access to entertainment news wires on my computer, so I'm definitely going to try to utilize these things more. Like just today I find out that the artists behind some of my 1970s pop guilty pleasures just died: l Wilson, who wrote and performed "Show and Tell," and Paul Davis, who counted among his hits "I Go Crazy," "Cool Night," and "'65 Love Affair." So get out those 70s compilations you undoubtedly have in your closet and crank 'em up. Here's hoping that Rupert Holmes isn't next to go.

Like a thirteen-year-old kid who discovers his older brother's stash of dirty magazines, I continue to be amazed. Amazed at the amount of crap available to watch on the Internet. It seems like no matter what I seek out, it's there. Just the other day I had a conversation with some co-workers about Ray Combs, the former Family Feud host who committed suicide about ten years ago. Two minutes later, I'm watching Combs's last show on YouTube, where not only does he hilariously berate the "fast money" contestants ("I thought I was a loser"), but also storms off the set at the end, refusing to partake in the traditional goodbyes with the day's winning family. Fascinating stuff. Also recently I was reading something about Fridays, the 1980s Saturday Night Live rip-off and bingo, not only can you find lots of footage of this never-released-on-DVD show, but you can find the infamous "Diner of the Living Dead" sketch, a piece so disturbing that it required an on-air apology the next week and has apparently never been rerun since.

Anyway, I get into all of this because I did come up with some material that I'd love to see on-line that I can't find, namely a series of paid programs that were around in the late eighties/early nineties that kept me up many a night due to my fascination with awful television. I'm talking about Amazing Discoveries, hosted by the perversely perky Mike Levey, who wore the most garish sweaters this side of Heathcliff Huxtable. Levey reached a minor level of cult celebrity back in the day, even making a memorable appearance on Late Night with David Letterman where he got so excited he picked Paul Shaffer up off of the floor to Paul and Dave's stunned bemusement. Amazing Discoveries was great stuff, as Levey ranted and raved about furniture restorers and memory programs as if they were the second coming. Levey made Billy Mays seem like Eeyore by comparison. I vividly remember sitting up hoping to see particular episodes of this monstrosity. So if anyone has any episodes of this program, particularly any that featured the English sidekick, let me know! And post them on-line, please! Unfortunately, Levey died of cancer in 2003. But his work deserves to live on!

Word has it that Jimmy Fallon is the choice to replace Conan O'Brien in 2009 once O'Brien takes over The Tonight Show. Fallon's choice appears to be confirmation that NBC is set on screwing up its late night schedule as badly as it has it screwed up its primetime schedule. Now obviously I haven't seen Fallon host so I could be dead wrong, but Fallon has never proven himself as a comedian to the extent that Letterman or Leno did before getting their gigs, and he doesn't even come with the impressive writing pedigree that Conan O'Brien did. Again, this is criticizing something sight-unseen, but my gut is that an angered Leno will move to FOX, beat Letterman and O'Brien (people just love that Leno, I don't know why, and why NBC wants to dump him for O'Brien is simply bizarre), and CBS will beat Fallon with the increasingly popular Craig Ferguson. Ferguson is one host that has proven himself better than most expected; perhaps Fallon can likewise surprise.

FHM is out with its list of 100 sexiest women of 2008. You'd think with a list of 100 that you'd hit all the obvious choices, but come on -- where's Kathie Lee Gifford? Where's Whoopi Goldberg? Where's Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? Excuse me, but the mere mention of Pelosi makes me have to go take a cold shower. See you later.

You gotta love Neil Patrick Harris. Not only is his turn as Barney Stinson on CBS's underrated How I Met Your Mother consistently the funniest thing on network television not part of NBC's Thursday night lineup, but the man speaks the truth. Speaking about Britney Spears's recent guest appearance on HIMYM, he said matter-of-factly, "I'm in the minority that our show does not need stunt casting in order to succeed," adding that he believes the show will suffer if the network begins "Will and Grace-ing us too much."

Harris is spot on with his analysis. Consistent use of high-profile guest stars on shows not named The Love Boat or Fantasy Island can ruin a program, especially sitcoms, which are tough enough to write and edit down to 22 minutes sans commercials without wasting precious air time with star turns that are irrelevant and inconsequential to the "TV world" created by the regular cast members. No show was more egregiously offensive in this regard than the aforementioned Will & Grace, which in effect turned its regular cast into supporting actors overwhelmed by guest appearances by the likes of John Cleese, Minnie Driver, Michael Douglas, Ellen DeGeneres, Rosie O'Donnell, Woody Harrelson, Harry Connick, Jr., Gregory Hines, Glenn Close . . . the list is endless. But certainly W&G was not alone in this crime: See The Cosby Show, which devolved from a smart family comedy to a weekly revolving door for Bill Cosby's musician friends -- hey, there's Stevie Wonder! There's Lena Horne! There's B.B. King! But how do they all know the Huxtables, anyway?

No sitcom was better at using guest stars than Seinfeld, which seemed to operate by one easy but seemingly easily overlooked rule of thumb: No guest star is bigger than the show. Guest appearances from Jon Voight, Marisa Tomei, Bette Midler, Lloyd Bridges, Jon Lovitz, and even David Letterman never upstaged the regular cast. Probably because the guest stars needed the cache of appearing on Seinfeld more than Seinfeld needed the guest stars.

Besides the casting of known guest stars, the casting of unknown guest stars was something else Seinfeld did very well: Remember that Debra Messing, Bryan Cranston, Michael Chiklis, Teri Hatcher, and Jane Leeves -- to name just a few -- basically owe their later success to their appearances on Seinfeld.

While we're on the subject of Seinfeld, a promo I just saw centered solely on the ridiculous plot of Kramer's use of butter for shaving. No mention of guest stars, no tease of a Jerry and Elaine romantic interlude, just the fourth main cast member spreading a dairy product on his face. Now there's a promo department confident in a show. I'm sure Neil Patrick Harris and others from HIMYM would love CBS to have that similar faith.

News out of the Great White North is that the characters of Bob and Doug McKenzie are set to return in an upcoming animated program for Canada's Global Television. If you're under the age of 25, you probably need to be told that Bob and Doug McKenzie, portrayed by Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, were popular for a while in the early eighties following their creation on the sketch comedy show SCTV. (A reminder: Buy my book!) Moranis and Thomas parlayed the characters into an album and a feature film (Strange Brew) before interest petered out.

If you think it sounds like a stretch to bring long-forgotten sketch comedy characters back for an animated program, I think you'd be right. (Moranis and Thomas have been trying for years to jump-start their most popular creations, from an aborted Strange Brew sequel to countless advertisements, many only seen in Canada.) My love for SCTV means that I have an interest in the project, but I'd be willing to bet I'm one of the few. Of course, if the show is good -- and it is being created and voiced by Moranis and Thomas themselves -- then it may catch on with people who don't know the McKenzie brothers from the Karamazov brothers, and it'll be moot that the characters were last popular during Reagan's first term in office. Me, I think I'd rather see Eugene Levy's Bobby Bittman make a comeback.

So it turns out we're getting some money back from our friends at the federal and state government this tax season. Add to that President Bush's "economic stimulus" payment, and all the pieces are in place for me to really waste some serious money on unnecessary home entertainment goodies.

But unfortunately, I'm much more responsible now than I was back in say, college. So whereas a tax refund back then would have gone towards liquid refreshment, a few trips to the Ponderosa Steak House buffet, and several CDs that would likely go almost totally unlistened to (Too Much Joy, John Wesley Harding, and Afghan Whigs, I hardly knew ye), today I tediously weigh the options of how to best spend any economic windfall.

The first item I'd love to buy with the refund money is an HDTV set. The lack of an HDTV set in my house is making me feel seriously behind the times, especially since several of my co-workers and my in-laws have already taken the HD plunge with no regrets. And certainly much of the HDTV programming I've seen has impressed me in terms of its quality; the most recent example being the Super Bowl, which I was able to watch in HD thanks to the good people at Disney World having the foresight to install digital sets in guest rooms at the Polynesian Resort. (You'd think that Disney could almost get away with having no sets in their guest rooms since you'd assume that people would be too busy checking out the Country Bear Jamboree to watch TV, but there you have it.)

I should also have an HD set because I am a lover of television. And one of television's biggest weapons in the fight against audience erosion from Internet competition (whether it be from users watching TV episodes on-line or users gambling and looking for fake celebrity nudes) is the advent of HD, which completely destroys the image quality available by downloading or streaming video on-line.

The reason I'm personally reluctant to get an HD set is probably the same reason many others are as well: Good old SD is just fine by me. Now I know that people probably said the same thing about their black-and-white sets when color television was introduced or about their washboards and clotheslines when automatic washers and dryers were introduced. But the fact of the matter is that I honestly don't believe I will enjoy my favorite shows like 30 Rock and The Office any more if I can see Tina Fey and Creed Branton in HD. So the HD set purchase will likely become one of necessity -- hey, why does the TV in the living room take four hours to warm up? -- than of impulse.

The other toy I considered spending my tax refund on is a Blu-Ray Disc player. Here I have two main issues. Being an early adapter to DVD (I bought my first no-frills player as an open-box item at Best Buy in 1998 for what now seems like a ridiculous $300), I have literally hundreds of DVDs that I'm not too thrilled about having to upgrade. Not only does the cost of having to upgrade not thrill me, but here again, I'm satisfied with my DVDs and don't see the necessity to go to Blu-Ray. The choice to jump from VHS to LaserDisc for me was easy: On LaserDisc I could watch This Is Spinal Tap and Monty Python and the Holy Grail with commentaries, deleted scenes, and other goodies. On VHS I couldn't. The decision to jump from LaserDisc to DVD was equally easy. Not only was DVD more compact, but the discs were cheap, meaning that I could build a home library of movies and TV shows. The costs of individual LaserDiscs meant I could only rent the shiny silver platters. But with Blu-Ray, again we're talking only about an improved picture and sound, and there we're talking a noticeable improvement on only some discs. Do I really believe that Seinfeld will look or sound any better on Blu-Ray? Am I willing to spend hundreds of dollars (Blu-Ray discs are pricier than DVDs) to find out? No and no. So the purchase of a Blu-Ray player seems far off as well.

What about satellite radio? Got it. Love it. Here we're talking about being able to access actual content that's unavailable elsewhere, which Blu-Ray and HD don't really provide. (Oh, I know there are minor exceptions, but no one buys an HD to watch HDNet.)

What about an iPod? Come on, I'm not that far behind the times. Have one of those too. And while I could probably live without it, the option of being able to download Pardon the Interruption and listen to it while walking the dog or mowing the lawn is an incredible convenience.

TiVo? Could not survive without it. Any television fan without TiVo or a DVR has no idea how badly and unnecessarily they're suffering.

So I'm stuck. I guess I'll drive home while listening to my satellite radio, watch my standard DVDs of Saturday Night Live: The Complete Second Season and my TiVoed episodes of Big Brother 9 (not shot in HD anyway) on my standard-def television, take the dog for a walk while listening to my iPod, and wonder if it's really possible to be maxed out on home entertainment. And if so, what do I spend my tax refund on? Are there still any Ponderosa Steak Houses in business?

So the Justice Department has just approved the merger of XM and Sirius, the two major (only?) providers of satellite radio in the U.S. The next and final step is approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which I’m going to say will come easily since the FCC appears to be too busy doing the bidding of the PTC and other conservative activist groups.

So will this merger be a good thing or a bad thing for fans of satellite radio? Well, the main fear is that with no competition from each other, the merged company will have less incentive to keep rates low. So that would be bad.

The plus of course would be that subscribers of one service would then begin to reap the programming benefits of the other. A good thing if you’re a sports fan subscribing to Sirius who wants the exclusive baseball coverage of XM, or if you’re a XM subscriber and you want the The Howard Stern Show now only on Sirius.

I subscribe to Sirius satellite radio but get many XM channels at home through DirecTV (Sirius has a similar deal with Dish Network), and can say that Sirius clearly has the best music programming. Sirius has led the way with artist-oriented channels, such as Rolling Stones Radio, E Street Radio, and Elvis Radio. And XM doesn’t have anything to compete with Sirius’s "Super Shuffle" (where you can hear Kenny Rogers followed by AC/DC) or "The Vault" (where you can hear underplayed bands such as King Crimson and rarely played album tracks by the usual "classic rock" stable of artists). Plus the geniuses at XM have given most of their music channels cute names such as "Fred," "Lucy," and "Squizz" which are maddeningly non-descriptive. So I’m certainly hoping that the final Sirius/XM channel lineup is more Sirius than XM.

Or at least the portion of it that I choose to subscribe to. A likely outcome is that -- with the plethora of channels resulting from such a merger and with the lack of competition keeping rates down -- Sirius/XM (who knows what the merged company’s name will be) will offer programming tiers similar to what cable and satellite TV offer. Which will be a bummer. Because even if I don’t want to listen to Canadian Adult Alternative Music (Sirius Channel 95) and certainly wouldn’t pay extra for it, I just like knowing I could listen to it anytime I wanted. Irrational, yes, but there you have it.

I don’t know what would separate programming tiers on satellite radio, but it clearly wouldn’t be as clear-cut as " music," "talk," and "sports," any more than cable or satellite would offer a "news" or "kids" tier. My guess is that subscribers would get most or all of the music, news, and talk/sports talk stations for a basic rate, and then have to pay extra for "star"-driven channels such as Howard Stern, Oprah & Friends, and Martha Stewart Living Radio, and more still for play-by-play channels from the major sports entities such as MLB and the NFL. None of this is due to happen anytime soon, but the bottom line is that satellite radio subscribers are likely to be given expanded options but then be forced to pay extra for those options.

Speaking of options, what’s with the release of Elvis Costello’s upcoming release? Costello fans have long been screwed/blessed with multiple reissues of his albums -- I have bought no fewer than four versions of My Aim Is True and This Year’s Model, and that’s ever sitting out one of the reissue campaigns. Now he announces that his latest recording will be released on vinyl only, with a code included in the package that will allow you to download the album (which I have to assume is a free download). What’s the deal with that? Fans that want to download the music who most likely don’t own a turntable won’t want to be saddled with a record album while others like me who are still stuck in the "if I’m going to pay $12.99 for some songs I better damn well have something concrete in my hand to show for it" CD era are shut out entirely. Sure the songs will eventually wind up on a CD release, but aggravating still. Makes me wish Costello had just decided to re-release Goodbye Cruel World again instead.

A sad note in the world of music: The chief executive for the Beatles’ Apple Corps and their former road manager and personal assistant Neil Aspinall died at the age of 66. To me, Aspinall had the ultimate gig -- living and working alongside The Beatles without having to deal with all of the crap they had to deal with. And as a childhood friend of McCartney and Harrison, you know he was well taken care of by the Fab Four, undoubtedly sharing in many of the riches (money, women, power, etc.) without many of the headaches.

Of course, Aspinall’s death is further evidence that Paul McCartney is suffering through one of those Green Mile-type punishments from God that is forcing him to outlive all of his friends and loved ones. First their manager Brian Epstein, then John Lennon, then his wife Linda, then George Harrison, now Neil Aspinall (not to mention other deceased colleagues such as press agent Derek Taylor). I’d be worried if I was Ringo.

Tonight's the night. No, I'm don't mean that. I took care of that last night. And the night before. I'm talking about the slow return to network television of original scripted programming.

Monday night (March 17), CBS will unveil the first new episodes of The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, and Two and a Half Men, airing along with a new episode of the midseason show The New Adventures of Old Christine.

It will be interesting to see how these new episodes do compared to the reruns that have been airing; i.e., if fans of the series that have been avoiding the repeats come back. Unfortunately, the season premiere of Dancing with the Stars over on ABC will likely steal some potential viewers away, thereby giving network executives more ammunition to their arguments that they don't really need writers to have successful programming.

An even bigger concern than how these first "all gnu" (as CBS has lamely marketed their return) episodes do is the long-term fate of both How I Met Your Mother and The New Adventures of Old Christine, which are by far the best shows in CBS' lineup but also the two in the most ratings trouble. CBS seems to feel that Mother has peaked in popularity and hasn't given the show a third-season renewal, while Christine's ratings have fallen off, which isn't too much of a surprise considering it's been surrounded by reruns since its midseason return. Even though the writers of Mother are sometimes frustratingly redundant (enough with Ted and Robin already), the cast remains one of TV's best. Christine takes a cast that is almost as good as Mother's and gives it much better scripts, resulting in the best "old school" (three-cameras, shot in front of a live audience) comedy on television. It would be a crime (get it, CBS being the "crime procedural" network) were CBS to bounce either show.

I was watching a lot of the Big Ten basketball tournament over on the Big Ten Network (yeah, I know this isn't a sports blog, but stay with me), and I was shocked that one of their main sponsors was a lawn and garden company called Hustler Turf Equipment. Hustler? If you owned a company that was in no way affiliated with the pornography industry, would you brand it the same as one of the most notoriously filthy men's magazines in the world? What's next, Barely Legal Power Tools? Sure, it's possible that Hustler Turf existed before the magazine, but come on, Turf guys, give it up -- you've lost the name recognition battle to Larry Flynt. Remember the diet candy AYDS? You don't? That's because the company knew when their name had been hijacked by something not conducive to moving product. So they changed the name to Irritable Bowel Syndrome candy. Actually, the product was dumped from the market not long after AIDS became such a widespread disease. Some associations you can't outrun.

Welcome back. It's been too long. Here we go.

Hard times for fans of the 1989 cult movie Road House. Earlier this week blind musician Jeff Healey, who played the leader of the Double Deuce house band in the movie, died of cancer. Then on the heels of that news came reports that Patrick Swayze, who starred as the bouncer at the Double Deuce, was battling pancreatic cancer. Depending on which reports you want to believe, Swazye is either responding well to treatment or is near death.

Now a little background is in order here. When I was in high school, I worked at a first-run movie theater that wasn't necessarily the finest in Burnsville, Minnesota. OK, it was a dump. How else to describe a place that had kids earning minimum wage acting as projectionists? (Hey, sorry that you paid $6 to see Another 48 Hrs. wildly out of frame, but Tony just broke up with his girlfriend and doesn't really care. And that's nothing compared to how unwatchable our print of Young Einstein is thanks to the combination of Cherry Coke and Arby's Sauce he spilled all over it.)

Anyway, we didn't get much in the way of hits. When Harry Met Sally was one and Road House was another. In the several weeks that Road House maintained its stranglehold on theater number seven, my co-workers and I memorized every laughable line in that godawful movie. To this day, if I see that film on TV, I watch it with a wide grin on my face.

So rest in peace, Mr. Healey, and get well, Mr. Swazye. You have contributed greatly to the person I am today. Oh, and there's no doubt what Swayze's second-most important contribution to the world is. No, not Dirty Dancing. I'm talking about the "Chippendale's Audition" sketch from Saturday Night Live opposite the deceased (sorry to be morbid again) Chris Farley. Although I am annoyed that the sketch completely ruined "Workin' for the Weekend" for me. Oh well, at least "Hot Girls In Love" is untarnished by the jokesters at SNL.

Speaking of SNL, some of you may be aware of my love for SNL distant cousin Second City Television. How much love? Well, I wrote the definite book on the subject. So you can guess how excited I was to hear that cast members Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, and Dave Thomas are reuniting to perform for the first time in 24 years. The occasion is a benefit concert on May 5 at the Second City Theater in Toronto. The downside (besides the absence of the late -- more morbidity -- John Candy)? The price. $500 a ticket. Now if I was going to pay $500 to see any single show, this would be the one. But is any single performance worth $1,000 (assuming I'd have to bring the significant other)? Maybe if the cast also did a reading of my book (see above). So it looks like I'll skip the show . . . but if any readers want to start a collection to send me . . .

Way down the TV foodchain is the granddaddy of all the current reality shows, Survivor. Now I don't make any apologies for loving Survivor, and this current edition is one of their best yet. But CBS and corporate partner Sprint are doing their darndest to screw it up. Here's what I mean: About 2/3 of the way through every episode, CBS runs a spot announcing that through your Sprint cell phone you can text your vote for the "player of the week." You are given three "player of the week" choices, and the choices given can provide major spoilers to the remainder of the episode. Case in point: On last week's show it looked like "favorite" Cirie might be voted off. Then the Sprint ad comes up telling us we can vote for Cirie as "player of the week." Well, then we KNOW that Cirie isn't this week's casuality as her nomination then wouldn't make any sense. Sure enough, the footage in the remainder of the episode detailed how Cirie campaigning to get "fan" Joel voted out. Come on, CBS, get it together. It's bad enough that you can't watch the episode on-line without first reading the spoiler summary ("MIKEY B. BLINDSIDED BY OUSTER. WATCH NOW.").

So everyone's sounding the death knell for the Oscar telecast since the ratings for this year's show were in the toilet. Hey, the ratings were almost as bad in 2003 when a boring Best Picture race was won by Chicago, a movie I still haven't seen and probably never will. Bottom line is, just as the ratings for a major sporting event increase if the matchup is compelling, so will the ratings for the Oscars reflect interest in the nominees. This year's nominees were about as exciting as a Penn State/Northwestern men's basketball game. But having said that, changes to the broadcast seem to be in order. Like how about removing that entire putrid middle hour with the deadly honorary Oscars and the montage of the people who died in the past year, which next year should feature Jeff Healey but hopefully not Patrick Swayze.

And so we come full circle. Talk to you soon.