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.