April 2006 Archives

Fifth in a series of five
Can The CW succeed where The WB and UPN didn’t? First, there’s that new name – a mash-up of CBS and The WB that sounds more like a CMT clone than a home for youth-oriented programming. (CW stands for, in other vernaculars, “continuous waves�? (if you’re a ham-radio person), “contingent worker�? or, oddly enough, “Comega language.�?)

Then there’s the potential problem of establishing an identity, one that The WB didn’t have until this past season, when it suddenly attempted to appeal to older viewers and not just teens and twentysomethings with abject efforts such as the quickly cancelled “Just Legal�? and the not-cancelled-quickly-enough “Twins.�?

The CW might manage a slightly larger audience than The WB or UPN did, but it’s unlikely to consolidate both networks’ viewership. So: Let’s try to sort out what exactly The CW might look like come September, beginning with Monday…

A project like “United 93,�? about the one hijacked 9/11 plane that did not hit its target, seems fraught with peril. There’s the “is it too soon?�? angle, which has been discussed at length in the media – the trailer was pulled from a New York theater when patrons complained. There’s also the question of whether audiences can respond to the quality of the filmmaking when the heroism of the passengers who assaulted the cockpit is staring them in the face.

And, of course, there’s the question of whether any filmmaker can do justice to such a raw, key piece of recent history. Oliver Stone is also working on a 9/11 film, tentatively entitled “World Trade Center,�? and knowing Stone’s love of the subtle, the film might actually be more traumatic for viewers than watching the horrific events unspool on TV was five years ago.

A&E aired “Flight 93�? a few months ago, and flew under the radar (so to speak) so that it avoided the hand-wringing accompanying “United 93.�? (It did well for the network.) But “United 93�? is a big Hollywood movie with a sizable marketing budget, so it makes for an easier target.

Watching it with an audience is an eerie experience. For the first part of the film, you sense the intense concentration from those around you – it’s almost as if, as a group, you’re desperately trying to will events to unfold differently than the way we inevitably know they did. The comfortably prosaic manner in which the movie opens – pilots conducting their flight check, flight attendants exchanging idle chatter – serves to make what we all know must happen shocking nonetheless.

Writer-director Paul Greengrass, almost miraculously, never missteps in bringing this awful saga to the screen. His film has the feel of a documentary (some of those who monitored the tragedy from the F.A.A., airline towers and military bases play themselves in the film; it’s impossible to separate them out from the actors). There’s not a moment of hyperbole, not a whit of speechifying, not one moment that feels “Hollywood.�? (OK, so now we know it can be done in the studio system; why can’t someone else manage it?) (No, this point cannot be stressed too much – even a modicum of manipulative storytelling would’ve cheapened this project immeasurably.) The closest he comes to stylistic contrivance is when he cross-cuts between the passengers and the terrorists praying in the final minutes of the flight.

In short, it’s exemplary filmmaking, if wrenchingly exhausting to sit through – when the film went to black at the end, I’d swear my heart skipped a beat for long, agonizing seconds until a title card appeared. Greengrass, a British filmmaker, doesn’t try to embellish his story. He’s smart enough – no, brilliant, really – to know he doesn’t need to.

All that said, I could’ve picked a better movie to see the night before I fly to New Orleans.

Fourth in a series of five
Fox finds itself in a situation not unlike ABC’s: Its hits are solid, and plentiful, besides, but it’s a decided non-entity on Thursday and Friday.

At long last, the network seems to have figured out how to handle its programming around the baseball postseason: It introduced “Prison Break�? in late August, so the show had a good head of steam behind it when baseball intruded and came back strong. Fox does need to do with “Prison Break�? what it has done with “24:�? Open its season as an event, then run it straight through, without pauses or breaks or hiatuses.

Still, the TV season seems divided in two at Fox: The run-up through December, where it kind of just limps along, and then January through May, when the “American Idol�? juggernaut joins the schedule (along with, of course, “24�?).

One of Fox’s problems is it probably will not – and should not – have one returning live-action sitcom next season: “Malcolm in the Middle�? and “That ’70s Show�? are officially exiting and none of the others manage more than a faint pulse. Replacing that many sitcoms will be difficult, to say the least.

And so, the tale of the tape:

Third in a series of five
ABC finds itself in a most peculiar position: While its suceeses are huge hits (“Grey’s Anatomy,�? “Desperate Housewives,�? “Lost,�? “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition�?), everything else – well, not so much. In fact, outside of “Boston Legal,�? its other series look to be an impending presentation of Cancellation Playhouse. (“Invasion�? and “The Evidence�? appeal more to fans of inertia than of the shows themselves, as they seem to garner a tiny fraction of the viewers from their lead-in, “Lost,�? and the early hopeful, “Commander In Chief,�? has performed a spectacular nosedive in approval ratings that mirrors the real President’s.)

Fortunately, the network seems to sense this: It has ordered a whopping 36 pilots a – 18 comedies, 18 dramas – to consider for its 2006-07 season. Needless to say, this is extraordinarily expensive. But, if ABC is to move forward from the momentum it finally achieved last season, it’s likely necessary. And maybe, finally, maybe the network will once and for all jettison “America’s Funniest Home Videos,�? which it has been using to plug holes in its schedule intermittently throughout the past decade and a half (how funny can babies falling on their butts and pets in goofy costumes accompanied by wacky sound effects be at this point, anyway?).

The network’s also losing its old standby, “Monday Night Football,�? though in the end this may not be a bad thing: ABC never got any traction on Monday evenings when the football season ended in January.

Given the circumstance, it’s impossible to provide a night-by-night handicap for the network, since, in truth, everything except 8-11 p.m. Sunday, 10 p.m. Tuesday and 9 p.m. Wednesday is in desperate need of an overhaul. Both of the newsmagazine shows will return, as well, simply because it’d be impossible to plug that many new series into one fall launch.

So the best we can do is consider what ABC’s pilots sound like on paper, an iffy, unscientific and even unsavory task, at best. (For your edification, here’s the list of ABC’s development.)

As dopey pop culture obsessions go, I'm far more behind the folks who are having fun with "Snakes on a Plane" (not opening until August 18) than people who think celebrities giving birth is major news (and then mistake themselves for cool by referring to the infant as, say, Tomkitten, then questioning the parents' choice of exotic baby names).
"Snakes" sounds like it'll be a good, silly watch; as the title so obviously states, it's about Samuel L. Jackson battling poisonous serpents in an enclosed space thousands of feet up in the air. As if that weren't enticing enough, it's directed by David Ellis, a former stuntman whose two previous filmmaking efforts, "Cellular" and "Final Destination 2," combined lots of scares and laughs very effectively.

For the third year, Fox is presenting Naked TV, a pretty smart way of developing writers for the network. Essentially, they recruit promising writers – this year, it’s six New York playwrights – who write short one-acts (in the past, the scripts were about the length of a sitcom pilot; this year, they’re a bit shorter) which are presented live at Santa Monica’s Edgemar Center for the Arts. Essentially, this is mounting TV pilots on the cheap, costing a fraction of a fraction of the million or so bucks it’d require to commit one to film or videotape.

“Naked TV 3�? previewed Saturday. Two years back, two of the six one-acts looked like viable sitcoms; last year, nothing really seemed to work. Neither production has produced a show that has reached it to the air, though they did result in network deals with five of the 12 participating writers.

This year’s crop of scripts was probably the best yet, though my two favorites were self-contained works that seem unlikely to be spun off into actual series. The first one-act is the evening’s highlight: Deidre O’Connor’s “Penicillin,�? a very funny take on an unlikely subject for humor, Chlamydia. Jane Cho stars as a young woman nervously awaiting her appointment in a clinic, who is dismayed when the young man (Phillip Vaiden) who may have given her the STD shows up for ostensible moral support if not also to win her back but mainly only manages to annoy her.

Second in a series of five
Were I an NBC executive, I might be tempted to burn down the entire entertainment division and just collect the insurance money.

But since that’s not an option, the question is: How many low-rated shows will the network be forced to bring back next year in hopes of them finding a smidgen more audience? And how many times will entertainment president Kevin Reilly dare to air “Deal or No Deal�? (which Dennis Quaid, on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,�? noted was the first game show to require no knowledge whatsoever, to be based entirely on “guessing�?) over the course of the week in an effort to both raise ratings but also not burn out its viewers?

NBC is helped, a little, by the addition of “Sunday Night Football�? to its schedule. Of course, once football departs in January, it’ll have two or three more hours in the leaky dike that is its primetime schedule to plug.

Here are the shows we can sensibly guess will be returning next season: “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,�? “Law & Order,�? “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,�? “My Name is Earl,�? “The Office,�? “Crossing Jordan,�? “Las Vegas,�? “Medium�? and “ER.�? It will probably bring back “Scrubs,�? “The Apprentice�? and maybe “Conviction,�? the unofficial “Law & Order�? aiming at a younger viewership, but not likely on Friday, when said audience isn’t home. That’s a total of 10.5 hours. Which leaves 5.5 to 9 hours of TV to fill, depending on how many bubble shows the network renews and when the football game starts on Sunday.

Maybe the network should consider returning a significantly revamped “Fear Factor�? to its schedule, consisting solely of showrunners pitching Reilly their ideas, knowing they’d have a better chance of success at another network. It could add an interactive element: Viewers voting where in the NBC schedule the pitched programs would have the least chance of failing.

In January, Reilly announced a couple of potential 2006-07 season acquisitions he seemed bullish on: “The Black Donnellys,�? from “Crash�? auteur Paul Haggis, and “Kidnapped,�? a serialized series chockablock with “24�?/“Prison Break�?-style plot twists. “West Wing’s�? Aaron Sorkin and “Saturday Night Live’s�? Tina Fey both have behind-the-scenes series about an “SNL�?-style show; Sorkin’s is an hourlong series, while Fey’s is a sitcom. (Here’s a full list of NBC’s development; you’ll have to scroll down past ABC’s considerable list of pilots.) So we’ll figure only those aforementioned shows (since the others – well, just read them) into the mix.

So, let’s test-run NBC’s 2006-07 debacle, starting on Monday (warning: this is a lot more complicated than the earlier entry on CBS):

Neil Young can still stir the pot: He's recorded a new song, not-so-subtly titled "Let's Impeach the President." In an interview on CNN Headline News' "Showbiz Tonight," Young explained that the song listed reasons why President Bush should be impeached.

"It's a long song," he said. And quite a turnaround from an earlier Young number, "Let's Roll."

Note that interviewer Sibila Vargas framed virtually every question in a negative context (he's trying to sell records, he's jumping on the anti-Bush bandwagon, he's Canadian), which is unheard of for an entertainment-news show. Would CNN have had her ask such pointed questions if Neil's song was titled, "Let's Rally 'Round our President?"

And will she ask Robin Williams such tough questions: "You've made 'RV,' which is aimed at dumb people - are you just doing this to sell tickets? Are you jumping on the anti-intellectual bandwagon?"

Shannen Doherty will be doing a reality show for the Oxygen cable network in which she will do what she does best - be mean to people. (Subscription required to link.) According to the article, in "Breaking Up with Shannen Doherty" (the title seems to carry with it a double entendre), viewers (suppressed chuckle) will be able to vote for the, um, well, hmm - actress with a colorful past? - to dump boyfriends, friends, and so on.

This will air in the summer, along with another Lifetime reality series starring Janice Dickinson, formerly the crazy judge on "America's Next Top Model." Is it just me, or is Oxygen, rather than empowering women, doing everything it can to ruin the gender's reputation?

Part one in a five-part series

Network upfronts – that glorious week in New York when the broadcast networks introduce their fall schedules, then quickly ply advertisers with enough liquor to coerce them into buying commercial time into shows like “Head Cases�? or “Just Legal�? (remember them? no? consider yourself lucky) – are coming up in a few weeks (beginning May 15, actually). So over the next few days – before heading to New Orleans for Jazz Fest (which will account for my silence, not getting fired or contracting the bubonic plague) – I’ll take a look at the sundry networks, and their needs as they enter the 2006-07 season.

And believe me: Some of the networks have grave concerns.

I’ll start with CBS, which doesn’t. Generally speaking, when the network executives stand before advertisers to present a new fall lineup, they emphasize one of two themes: “A bold, exciting new schedule�? (which means they had a ton of holes to fill and are probably trying to launch too many new shows at one time for many of them to be successful) or “Stability�? (meaning their ratings are too solid or they’re too lazy to tinker much with the new schedule).

“Stability�? will clearly be CBS’s theme. Many nights require no tinkering at all. Conceivably, though quite unlikely, the network could replace a single hour of programming. But I’m guessing CBS will make at least one big move, in killing off its longstanding Sunday movie.

Let’s go night-by-night, beginning with Monday:

So Paramount must be pretty pleased with J.J. Abrams’ new “Mission: Impossible�? movie, as the studio’s now handing him the keys to the “Star Trek�? franchise. It makes sense for Abrams to take the helm: While “Trek’s�? rabid cult following caught its creators by surprise, in his shows “Alias�? and “Lost�? Abrams accepted nerdling fans as a foregone conclusion and filled each episode with all sorts of arcane details for them to obsessively fret over.

But you know what this means, don’t you? With Abrams’ and his brain trust’s minds elsewhere, “Lost�? will really go off the rails next season.

Thursday’s idiot du jour – heck, we’ll give her the honor today, as well – is Laura Mallory, who wants her children's Georgia school to ban the Harry Potter books. No, it’s not enough for her to keep her own children from enjoying J.K. Rowling’s personal publishing industry: No student should have his or her mind warped by the sinister influences of Harry and his demon friends.

Yes, it’s the old witches-and-warlocks-are-bad-for-you argument, which might be true, if witches and warlocks with magical powers actually existed. As incontrovertible proof, Mallory trotted out a student who, after reading the books, tried to dabbled in sorcery and got depressed (probably because it didn’t work). Seems to me that this kid is so impressionable that if she read the Bible, she might be convinced to smash babies’ heads on the rocks (Psalm 137: 8-9, for the record). So, while we can’t outlaw supreme ignorance, we can try to outlaw anything that might put an idea in some moron’s noggin.

Of course, outlawing the books would in fact probably make ignorance all the more legal: Rowling’s books have made reading genuinely cool to legions of kids that might have not otherwise discovered its joys. As, in fact, many students pointed out during the meeting seeking to wave a wand and make Harry go poof.

Why are people like Mallory even given the time of day?

It seems like there are a lot of commercials out there these days that outright admit that they're aiming their products at morons. But is insulting your target audience a good idea?

In one, for microwavable macaroni and cheese, we see a couple sitting beside one another, going about their business, while a series of bestial grunts or gaseous gurglings occur. Somewhat reluctantly, the guy stands - to deliver a bowl of microwavable mac-n-cheese to an obese buffoon, his T-shirt woefully incapable of covering his ample gut, lounging on a nearby sofa. Notice the young couple don't actually seem interested in the product advertised; notice, too, that the fat guy is too lazy to roust himself from his stupor to prepare the food himself. Is that really who the advertisers envision as their prospective buyers? If so, how do they figure they'll even bother to get themselves to a grocery store?

In another, a group of friends use their cell phones to call one another and scream in each other's ears or try to humiliate someone before his work colleagues. Is this really the kind of service cell phone companies want to sell their customers? If so, how do they expect people so loutish and irresponsible to maintain their monthly payments?

But inspiring the most discussion right now are the car commercials that depict distracted drivers plowing headlong into other vehicles. The point of these being, apparently, that, hey, our cars are so safe you don't need to pay attention to what you're doing; the fates of anyone else in the accident is not our problem. So this company thinks I'm a lousy driver? I should buy one of their cars!

And then, of course, there're the pratfall-laden ads for the movie "RV:" Those with a measurable IQ need not apply.

Tragedy – well, disappointment – struck today when TVGuide.com reported that “Gilmore Girls�? series creator Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Dan will not be returning for the series’ seventh season, and first on the new hybrid network The CW. Sherman-Palladino, of course, is responsible for the show’s motor-mouthed quippery, clever pop-culture references and distinctively quirky sensibility.

The closest parallel is to “The West Wing,�? which also boasted brisk, bristling, non-stop dialogue, at least until series creator Aaron Sorkin was kicked overboard and even NBC’s executives admitted the banter would be slowed to mere-mortal velocity. But at that point, viewer interest had already begun to wane, and it deteriorated further after Sorkin left (though, to be fair, the show’s had its moments this year, thanks in large part to Alan Alda’s presence).

Ratings for “Gilmore Girls�? have been pretty consistent for the past few seasons, even though some viewers have been grousing about the show’s storylines from time to time, but I sense open viewer revolt next year if Lauren Graham ceases chattering away at warp speed.

I was invited to but didn't attend the taping of a Turner Classic Movies program Tuesday evening featuring Dick Cavett interviewing Mel Brooks, and now I'm a little sorry I didn't. A friend who was there said it was pretty jaw-dropping stuff. The closest Cavett apparently came to asking Brooks a question about his storied career was when he asked him how he -- Cavett -- would have fit in in the "Your Show of Shows" writing room.

Instead, Cavett reminisced about strolling through Central Park with Woody Allen, at which point my friend realized the whole enterprise was a misbegotten idea -- Cavett clearly preferred Allen's more erudite sensibility over Brooks' slapstick, scattershot approach to comedy. The producers kept trying to get Cavett on-message, to no avail; at one point an hour or so into the proceedings, Brooks -- who, I'm told, was hilarious anyway -- pointed out that he had been sent a memo listing about 80 questions that would be discussed in the evening and that Cavett hadn't asked one of them.

After three and a half hours of this, my friend and his pal got up to leave, as did a lot of the rest of the audience, despite the producers' pleas that they stick around. Can't wait to see how much if any of this apparent mess ever actually makes it to TCM.

A couple of weeks after a screed about certified, before-a-dime-is-spent bomb “Dallas,�? a film version of the TV show, comes this even dumber announcement/rumor: that the Wachowski brothers, auteurs of the “Matrix�? trilogy and “V for Vendetta,�? are preparing a movie based on the ’60s manga TV show “Speed Racer.�?

The link jests endlessly at certain gender issues of the writing-directing-producing team, yet scarcely addresses the idiocy of the project itself. “Speed Racer�? was a cheap show with crappy animation but a fairly peppy theme song – does that really make it worthy of Hollywood’s big-budget, tent-pole treatment? I knew someone who worked a couple of years on trying to develop “Astroboy�? – a similar if arguably better-known entity – into a feature, only to abandon the project.

Honestly: What can the Wachowskis bring to a pretty simple, stupid concept that will justify somewhere between $50 and $100 million in bringing it to the big screen? (And, of course, there’d be 10s of millions of more bucks spent trying to revive interest in a show that cost an hilariously ironic fraction of all of this.) And aren’t the Wachowskis more visionary than this, than to transform a pretty-much-forgotten cartoon into an obviously manufactured media event?

And what great insights might they subversively attempt to bring into such a project? That Speed Racer is a pawn of the proletariat? Hell, anyone who’d even be duped by studio propagandizing into considering seeing such a film is a pawn of the proletariat.

So if you’re ever asked, as Neo was in “The Matrix,�? to consume “the red pill or the blue pill?�?, your answer is clear: Isn’t there a purple pill? A green pill? Some pill that’ll direct me far away from the pseudo-philosophical-crap-that’ll-lead-to-shockingly-puerile-garbage-that-the-system-is-clearly-leading-me-to?

Driving in a rental car (be grateful that details are herewith spared), I was forced to listen to local radio rather than my usual contingent of CDs. During which, I heard a commercial for a life insurance company that offered a full refund -- no joke -- "if you don't die."

Huh? Have I been so oblivious to have missed reports on a major scientific discovery?

What hapless dupe has this ad been aimed at?

OK, so Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have announced the birth of their daughter, and they've named her Suri.

Where did this name come from? Google the word “Suri,�? hit the “I’m Feeling Lucky�? button, and this is what you get. We can only hope that this really isn’t the answer.

Yet again, "House's" cast and creators assembled, six weeks after their Museum of TV and Radio Paley Festival triumph, to deconstruct their series and its success anew. Right now, it's the No. 1 scripted series on network TV in the advertiser-friendly 18-49 demographic (its scheduling after "American Idol" clearly doesn't hurt), not to mention the winner of a Peabody Award, a Golden Globe (for series star Hugh Laurie, who plays grumpy-gus Dr. House) and an Emmy (for series creator David Shore's pilot script). So these love-fests can almost get to seem gratuitous.

During the discussion, moderator Elvis Mitchell (full journalistic disclosure: he's a good friend, and extremely generous with Cuban cigars) noted the show seems an unlikely series for the Fox network. You'll have to wait until Wednesday's paper for executive producer Paul Attanasio's pointed observation on that. (As the evening was taped for inclusion on the second season's DVD boxed set, it'll be interesting to see what becomes of that remark; then again, the show itself is co-produced by NBC/Universal Studios, who'll control the DVDs).

Mitchell asked the cast members where they saw their characters at the point of the series' conclusion. Most of the actors deflected the question, but Lisa Edelstein, who co-stars as Lisa Cuddy, House's gives-as-good-as-she-gets boss (and who was equally ribald at the Paley event), said her character would have had four children: a blonde baby (from Jesse Spencer's character), a brunette baby (from Robert Sean Leonard's character), a black baby (from Omar Epps' character) and a baby with a limp (well, guess).

And with that, Elvis won applause with the evening's line of the night: "Now that's a Fox show."

Or so goes the Gaelic epigram.

New York, more than L.A., has become obsessed with the sordid saga of Jared Paul Stern, the contributor to the New York Post’s Page 6 gossip columnist who has come under fire for purportedly extorting California billionaire Ron Burkle for tons of cash to scrap unflattering coverage from the paper’s notoriously bitchy gossip column. Predictably, all this resulted in a lot of hand-wringing on the whole concept of the city’s quixotically influential gossip columns.

Stern, who seems almost sociopathically incapable of keeping his trap shut, was perhaps ill-advisedly allowed this weekend to take the reins of New York’s premiere gossip blog, gawker.com, the Big Apple counterpoint to L.A.’s endlessly entertaining defamer.com.

Gawker’s result was absolutely crazy, as Stern attacked Burkle (who recorded for authorities conversations between Stern and himself, which allegedly proves Stern’s guilt but are disputed for being unfairly edited) with a zeal bordering on insanity. In his brief tenure as gawker’s gate-tender, the preternaturally dapper Stern referred to Burkle as a “malicious magnate,�? a “paunchy merchant prince,�? a “fishy financier,�? a “puffy potentate�? and a “rubbery robber baron�? – all in one posting.

Whatever Stern’s culpability might be, if you read his posts, it seems pretty apparent that this has utterly unhinged him. (Comments responding to his posts are even more amusingly vociferous, attacking him for deleting comments while simultaneously attacking Burkle for waging war on the First Amendment.) Clearly, if you were Stern’s attorney in this case, you’d go bald from tearing out your hair. Good times for all but those involved.

... around to annoy us.

I don't know if this made it on the air, but I was at the Lakers-Suns game today, and Paris Hilton was shown on the big screen, whereupon she was roundly booed. We're talking Dick-Cheney-at-opening-day-for-the-Washington-Nationals-style booed. Not even Suns MVP guard Steve Nash was so vociferously booed when he turned up on the big screen, and he even got a smattering of applause. Not Paris. She just smiled that blank sort-of-smile of hers as the catcalls rained down upon her.

Well, I guess it's official: Her act is officially tiresome. Just one question: What took everyone so long?

While some will rightly bemoan the witless, idea-lacking spoof sequel "Scary Movie 4" winning the weekend's box office derby, I say, look at the silver lining - and I don't just mean that "SM4" had a pretty good Viagra joke. Also opening, and bombing horribly, this weekend was Disney's latest computer animated animal comedy, "The Wild." To which we should only go, Yay!

Pretty interesting article on Barry Bonds in the new ESPN: The Magazine, written by Chuck Klosterman, who’s better known for his rock writing for Spin. It’s a what-does-it-all-mean piece that decides that ultimately, it means nothing. Perhaps not a brilliant conclusion, but he does place Bonds squarely in the cultural chaos of the moment, uncorks a couple of terrific turns of phrase that should immediately become part of the American vernacular – “an achievement of disenchantment�? (referring to Bonds’ impending 715th home run) and “the Era of Predictable Disillusionment�? (referring to today, in all aspects of its grisly glory) and (attention, Bob Strauss) manages to take a gratuitous swipe at “Crash’s�? Oscar triumph.

In summary: Klosterman says Bonds’ 715th will render baseball’s hallowed statistics meaningless, and Bonds doesn’t care, and because Bonds doesn’t care, soon the rest of us won’t, either. But, given Bonds’ abysmal start this season (hitting .158 with zero homers) and that little meltdown he had on his reality-TV show, perhaps Babe Ruth’s second-place standing in the record books is safe.

There's something amusingly incongruous in this story about jokes sent by text on cell phones inciting the wrath of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Apparently, a misdirected joke about Ahmadinejad landed on his personal cell phone and -- big surprise here -- the guy who has called the Holocaust a "myth" and is hectoring the world with his nascent nuclear program doesn't have much of a sense of humor.

He's now ordered a clampdown on the country's Systems Management Servers and told his staff to spend their time monitoring texted jokes about him. Which offers a curious collision between the progressive freedoms allowed by cutting-edge technology and the ancient tradition of oppression.

From the story:

"... poking fun at the president has becoming a national pastime in Iran. In a fusillade of seditious traffic, the regime's senior figures and its most sacred policies are all fair game - with Mr. Ahmadinejad a particular target.

"One joke tells of a man who has died and gone to hell, where he sees the famously strait-laced Mr. Ahmadinejad dancing with the Hollywood star Jennifer Lopez. "Is this Ahmadinejad's punishment?" he asks.

'No,' goes the reply. 'It is Jennifer Lopez's punishment.'"

Not all that funny, really, but it's not the paucity of satirical brilliance bothering Ahmadinejad. Before campaigning for the job, did the guy not maybe look a little at the history of the entire planet and note that, uh, authority figures are common targets for derision?

I wonder if he's likewise irked by phones that can download movie trailers and the latest sports scores.

Browsing at Amoeba the other day, I came upon something about the size of a disposable camera called the "Buddha Machine," an extremely low-tech iPod not dissimilar to an old-fashioned portable transistor radio. It plays 9 different ambient loops that vary between 2 and 43 seconds in length; you click a button when you get tired of hearing one being replayed over and over and want to go on to another (some can be listened to fairly endlessly, others, not so much). Amoeba's hand-written hard-sell noted that Brian Eno had purchased a dozen of the gizmos; figuring that I'm at least one-twelfth the man that Brian Eno is, I got one.

Turns out there's something of a cult surrounding the item in Europe, where it's been available for a couple of years. It's touted as an aide to meditating, though I find it a better companion for lulling me to sleep (though that'll burn its batteries out pretty quickly). And, ostensibly, there's a little plastic Buddha tucked away in its wiring, though of course if you set about trying to find it you'll destroy the thing.

The music, created by a duo going by the name of FM3, is simple -- several "pieces" are no more than a few notes -- but there is a soothing, sometimes mesmerizing nature to the project. Certainly, there are cheaper, less quixotic ways of listening to ambient music (such as, naturally, a Brian Eno CD), but the packaging is wherein the genius lies, combining retro (the cheap plastic casing) with the contemporary (bright colors -- mine is a garish orange) and a sensibility appealing to the mystically minded and kitsch-lovers both. The austerity of both the plastic box and the music lend the thing a sense of mystery. You could buy a bunch of them and set them up around your place and bewilder friends and neighbors.

Demystifying the thing a bit, here's an interview with Christiaan Virant, one of the band members, an American living in China.

Ricky Gervais, best known for his brilliant work on "The Office" as well as the HBO series "Extras" and his most-popular-in-all-the-world podcast (which I've discussed earlier), is also an author of things that lands somewhere oddly between children's books (J.K. Rowling offers the money quote on the back of his latest work) and novelty items (which is somewhat odd, as Gervais hates novelty songs). His first book, "Flanimals," was kind of a disappointment, but a best-seller nonetheless. The inevitable new sequel, "More Flanimals" (Putnam, $15.99), is a lot funnier, a lot oddly darker.

Both books offer nonsensical explications of fanciful creatures, quite cutely illustrated by Rob Steen. This time, Gervais expands beyond mere curioddities to find fun with evolution (an obsession of Gervais' on his British radio show, which preceded and informed the podcast) and the quiet desperation of existence.

Consider this passage, describing something he names the "Grommomulunt:" "It has no mouth, ears, nose, legs or internal organs, but just looks forward to things changing when it sheds its skin and metamorphoses into an adult. Unfortunately, the only change that takes place when it reaches adulthood is that its eyes fall off. It does shed its skin, but there is no new skin underneath, so its insides just leak into the ground. Have you ever heard a stain weep?"

Or this, for the "Dweezle Muzzbag:" "Angry, tired and fed up with using its legs to get around, it sheds them so it can rest. Unfortunately, legs falling off is one of the most painful things ever and it screams itself to death in agony. Hardly a rest, is it? So be careful what you wish for."

If I quoted any more, I'd risk accusations of plagiarizing most of the book (it's a slender 64 pages, most of them taken up with those aforementioned illustrations). But you get the idea. This one seems less destined than his first book to delight the kids, but will likely prove more satisfying for his fan base.

Haven't seen "The Sentinel" yet (and, in fact, probably won't), just the commercials (in heavy rotation, unsurprisingly, during "24"). As far as one can tell from the commercials, Kiefer Sutherland plays a Secret Service agent who has to protect the President against an assassination plot by a rogue former Secret Service agent (Michael Douglas) who mentored Sutherland. Eva Longoria figures in there somewhere, just to provide some pulchritude, probably (she doesn't do much in the commercials aside from look glamorous, but to be sure she's good at it).

Season One of "24" featured Sutherland's Jack Bauer protecting the President from an assassination attempt. This season, Jack's squaring off against his former mentor in their unhinged battle against terrorism, played by Peter Weller. Any resemblance between "The Sentinel" and "24" is purely coincidental, I'm sure, as was, I'm equally certain, Sutherland's casting.

Apparently, Trey Parker and Matt Stone wanted to show the prophet Muhammad in last night's episode, but Comedy Central nixed the idea.

In the context of the episode, the censorship of the image felt like meta-irony, criticizing the criticism of something by doing the exact opposite of what one is advocating. (I hope that makes sense.) In a way, the censorship was all the more effective in driving home the episode's point. It's a fascinating area for satirists to explore: Presenting something that has been proven crazies will riot over, but doing it in a fashion that also further provokes by bringing the potential of riots and other overwrought responses into the mix. That's a real knife's edge Parker and Stone are dancing upon, because the people they're provoking clearly don't have much of a sense of humor and aren't likely to appreciate the nuances of South Park's sensibility.

And anyway: Comedy Central wouldn't allow Muhammad to be shown, but the image of Jesus pooping on George W. Bush was just fine. Jeez.

What do you think? Was Kyle right when he said of satirical targets, "Either it's all OK, or none of it is?" Or, given today's edgy political climate, should artists back off subjects that'll just cause more trouble?

Well, it's on. Comedy Central's "South Park" concluded its explosive two-part saga "Cartoon Wars" with an image of Jesus pooping on George W. Bush, who was busy pooping on other Americans. But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

The storyline spun off the riots in Europe after Danish political cartoonists depicted the prophet Muhammad, against Islamic law. In Trey Parker and Matt Stone's lunatic send-up, the Fox animated sitcom "Family Guy" was going to do the same thing, and with al-Qaeda threatening revenge (heretofore, al-Qaeda's lone complaint with "Family Guy" was that its jokes are arbitrary and never tie in with the plot), the country was in an uproar.

So, this week: Americans respond, not atypically, by hiding their heads in sand. Cartman, who hates Family Guy, heads to the Fox studio in Century City to demand the episode be censored. Kyle, who likes the show, follows to stop him. Cartman meets another kid trying to get "Family Guy" yanked -- Bart Simpson -- and bluffs his way past the network president to meet the show's writers: a tank full of manatees who nudge storyline balls (Gary Coleman, Mexico, salmon helmet, etc.) into holes, where they're randomly generated into gags from the furthest reaches of left field. (You kind of see the point.) After Kyle and Cartman engage in an extended slap-fight, perhaps the least intense mano-a-mano showdown in TV history, Cartman fails to sway the manatees -- the only life form immune to terrorist threats, it's explained -- and while Fox (ostensibly) airs the Muhammad joke, Comedy Central in fact doesn't.

Al-Qaeda's response, it turns out, is a cartoon of its own, attacking American values. Consult the second sentence of this post.

I think the only reason CBS continues to air “Big Brother�? over the summer is it hacks off TV critics. It’s certainly not much of a hit, and the network has gone out of its way to keep viewers from caring – first, it tried to prevent the “houseguests�? from receiving messages those who watched the show sent them (via airplane banners, etc.) and then it ceased allowing viewers to vote on who they wanted ousted.

And now: CBS announced today that this summer’s version of the lowest-impact game show in TV history (contestants sit around a house and kvetch and deludedly wonder if they're huge celebrities yet while cameras obsessively follow their every move) will be called “Big Brother: All-Stars.�? But before visions of Kelly Monaco and Todd Bridges and other C-list celebrities kicking back and enjoying some rent-free digs fill your head, let me tell you: It’s even worse than that.

Yes, the “all-stars�? in question are contestants from previous seasons of the show. Honestly, can you even name one of them? (If you can, then you’re probably one of the poor, demented souls that paid to watch their zany antics online, and this post isn’t aimed at you.)

Viewers will be allowed to vote contestants into the house, from a pool of 20 past participants. CBS thoughtfully declined to say who those participants might be, except that they were “some of the most memorable, entertaining and controversial houseguests�? of the past. I’ll grant you there were some controversial people on the show – say, for example, the unhinged loon with a police record that CBS didn’t know about who brandished a knife against a woman’s throat and pretended to smash in her face with a floor sweeper – but “memorable�? or, perish the though, “entertaining?�? Sorry; not buying it.

“Once again,�? the press release gushes, “America will be able to see the people they love… and the people they love to hate!�? And the people that left them wondering why they even bothered with the show in the first place.

Julie Chen returns as host. Honestly, if you’re married to the COO/CEO of the network, shouldn’t you be able to get out of said network’s worst gig?

The Associated Press reports today out of Tokyo that, when "The New World" opens there next month, some moviegoers will get the long-anticipated smellavision treatment. Are you thinking what I'm thinking? Untanned hides, rotting meat, forest floor and sweat? Fortunately, we're wrong.

“Television has ruined every single thing that it has touched,�? Joe Klein quotes Adam Walinsky near the beginning of his new book, “Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You’re Stupid" (Doubleday, $23.95, on sale Tuesday). Klein then spends some 243 pages arguing that it isn’t television, but, in fact, consultants and focus groups that have ruined every single thing they touch. (To be fair, the TV industry is rife with consultants and focus groups, so maybe Walinsky wasn’t so far off base.)

“Politics Lost�? – a fairly unconvincing pun playing off John Milton’s “Paradise Lost�? – is an odd, compulsively readable, sometimes unsatisfying, ultimately ironic book that makes plenty of important points. Its premise is that during the TV age, consultants have become egregiously more important than issues during Presidential campaigns. And yet, by obsessively focusing on the internecine battles amongst consultants during Presidential campaigns, “Politics Lost�? naturally elevates their weird science to an art form. Giving them, in the end, a credibility Klein spends his entire book arguing they don’t deserve.

It’s true: The consultant-propelled sanitization of political campaigns has resulted in an understandable tuning-out by the American electorate, who understand b.s. when we hear it and have enough of it in our ordinary lives that we simply can’t be bothered when it comes avalanching toward us during a political campaign. But Klein’s thesis – all Americans really want are just a few, tissue-thin moments in which politicians reveal themselves as “human�? to their constituencies – is almost as cynical as the consultants preventing those moments themselves. Wouldn’t it also be nice if politicians, pundits and reporters alike also simply address issues honestly, without the idiotic and infuriating spin that has come to define all political discourse in this country?

Klein – who wrote “Primary Colors,�? the roman a clef about President Clinton’s reckless womanizing, as well as “The Natural,�? which championed Clinton’s political acuity – admits that he has been beguiled by political consultants, which can only explain the free pass that he gives Lee Atwater, who masterminded George H. W. Bush’s particularly mean-spirited campaign against the hapless Michael Dukakis. Essentially, Klein observes that Atwater’s work was particularly nasty, yet he apologized for it before he died, without delineating the particularly cruel waters it made OK for politicians to chart in subsequent campaigns.

And Klein has already come under fire, from Bob Shrum, who notoriously botched John Kerry’s Presidential campaign. Shrum complains that his efforts have been misrepresented in the book, but the truth remains self-evident: Karl Rove brilliantly out-maneuvered him, and Rove’s candidate remains in the White House, while Shrum’s persists in sending me whiny, toothless emails complaining about the state of the country.

Make no mistake: Klein’s book is a breezy read, from a nominally centrist point of view, and incisively elucidates any number of social ills that have landed our beleaguered country where it is today. But it offers no more insight on how to realistically correct our course than this idiotic website, beyond suggesting we all become smarter, nicer, more sensitive people. TV, per Walinsky, isn’t the problem: It’s the people who appear on TV who complain that TV is the problem and ignore the larger social problems.

Well, sort of. Mary Lynn Rajskub (pronounce it "rice-cob" and you're in the ballpark), who plays tetchy techie Chloe, a fan favorite on "24," performed standup tonight at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Hollywood, a place so packed on this evening that fans were relegated to sitting cross-legged on the stage, mere feet from the comics. Rajskub was a comedienne long before she emerged as a hot young brooding actor -- witness her work on "The Larry Sanders Show" and the equally brilliant sketch-comedy series "Mr. Show." (She's always done petulant quite adroitly.)

Though it seemed clear that many in the audience were there mainly to see her -- of all the comics announced at the beginning of the evening, she received the loudest response -- truth be told, it was kind of a rambling, unfocused set, but then, that clearly was her intention. She came on stage with her cell phone, a rumpled yellow notepad and a pen, and delivered an exasperated account of her day "preparing" for her performance, chockablock with such beleaguering activities as relaxing at a spa and buying a coffee from a good-looking guy, along with a few vague observations on the vexing nature of her burgeoning fame (apparently, Billy Crystal has become a stalker, mainly to get her to fix his computer). She told of getting fed up with the ultra-trendy just-below-Beechwood neighborhood in which the theater is located, and wandering off to try to write material for her performance (that much might actually be true -- I did in fact see her traipse off down the street past the crowd waiting for UCB to open, a look of grim determination on her face).

She hurried way too fast through an anecdote of a dinner she attended hosted by Rush Limbaugh and featuring Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas -- whom she kept referring to as the Chief Justice (that's a notion worthy of a subplot in "24"). There simply has to be comic gold to be mined from that experience, but she just kind of glossed over it. Essentially, she played the role of someone whose newfound celebrity has also put her on an express train to a nervous breakdown. The result? More performance art than comedy, it seemed.

Fortunately, other comics performing, including Paul F. Tompkins (another "Mr. Show" alumnus), Pete Carboni and Jimmy Dore, provided plenty of laughs. Dore, whose performance offered dryly hilarious riffs on cable-news segments and the puerile humor of Comedy Central personality Carlos Mencia, suggesting he should be writing for “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,�? will this Thursday headline his own show at Upright Citizens Brigade entitled “Pop & Politics.�? Based on what he displayed here, that show is definitely worth catching.

An acoustic-duet act called The Endless opened the evening, performing a clutch of songs about creepy, obsessive love that made you extremely grateful you hadn't dated either of the band members.

Another breathless episode of “24,�? another host of plot holes you could drive one of those military vehicles enforcing Martial Law in L.A. through. But who cares, when the show has gone so completely out of its mind that you’d follow it anywhere?

(WARNING: If you have not been following “24�? this season, do not read any further, lest your brain explode.)

Just a few of tonight's plot-hole queries:

How did the recording made earlier in the day implicating the President and evil top henchman Henderson in the assassination of David Palmer – a recording surreptitiously made by the First Lady’s assistant – find its way from the compound where President, First Lady and assistant have been staying – which, it has been established, is at least an hour from downtown L.A. (with no traffic, via the 5) – to a bank 10 minutes from the Van Nuys Airport? And why would the person, whoever it was, hide it in the one bank in all of Los Angeles that apparently has no security cameras?

If there’s martial law in L.A., why are gas stations open?

How many American Presidents give televised press conferences at 2:32 a.m. ET? And then plan for the next day a mere radio address to discuss deadly terrorist attacks on the country?

How can Henderson find out his prey’s position via a 911 call 20 seconds after said call has simply been placed?

Where can the rest of us get a cell phone that runs nonstop without recharging for 24 hours, works as relentlessly and downloads information as quickly and never drops a call, like Jack’s?

Once Jack finds the crucial-piece-of-evidence recording, why doesn’t he call anyone and everyone – particularly Chloe, who single-handedly has enough techno-gizmos and know-how to right the world – and play it for them so he’s not the only person with said crucial evidence?

Why would Jack allow the bank manager he’s kidnapped to try to escape the bank with him? Hasn’t Jack sort of, well, you know, noticed what happens to the extraneous characters with whom he hooks up?

Whose idea was it for “24�? to buy the “Peter Gunn�? music library?

And yet, there’s something somewhat more intriguing about this season of “24�?…

Entertainment issues dominated today’s Daily News opinion pages. First up, Ed Rampell’s timely look at politics in film and television, noting the confluence of political events that has made the Washington lobbying satire “Thank You for Smoking,�? the metaphorical terrorism thriller “V for Vendetta�? and HBO’s “Walkout,�? about the 1968 Chicano student protests, particularly relevant. (I noted “Walkout’s�? timeliness in an earlier blog entry.)

This isn’t necessarily anything new – the Daily News’ U section did a similar story on films exploring social issues last fall, when “Good Night, and Good Luck.�?, “Syriana�? and “Brokeback Mountain�? were in theaters. But it’s good to give credit when credit is due, and all these films help belie the increasing suspicion that Hollywood is only interested in spooning shlocky comfort food down its audiences’ throats.

Next, Daily News editorial page editor Chris Weinkopf takes a cat o’ nine tails to “Basic Instinct 2,�? arguing that its abject crash-and-burn at the box office points to a trend in audiences rejecting salacious material.

Weinkopf makes some salient points about the nature of these movies and how their shock value can wear off, but I think he might be a little too optimistic in what one movie’s failure means to American culture. As Sigmund Freud might say, sometimes a rotten movie is just a rotten movie.

He notes that most of the top-grossing films of last year – “Star Wars,�? “Harry Potter,�? “The Chronicles of Narnia�? – were family fare. They were also the most hyped and advertised movies of the year, as well. Some of the most profitable movies of the past few years, on the other hand, have been in fact sadistic horror films taking the depiction of gruesome cruelty to heights previously unseen in American films: The “Saw�? flicks, for example, and “Hostel,�? to name but a few. So it may be premature to state that American audiences long solely for wholesome, values-stuffed fare.

Finally, columnist Mariel Garza takes local TV-news outlets to task for presenting “canned�? reports produced by outside special-interest groups as their own work. This is actually a growing problem throughout the country – it’s a cheap way of filling air time for small-town TV news outlets on a budget (and, more egregiously, L.A.’s big-city stations), but it’s an indisputable disservice to those stations’ viewers, who are generally not informed of the sourcing of said “reports.�?

Garza apologizes for her pro-print bias, but to my mind, her mea culpa isn’t necessary; she could’ve gone even further in the condemnation of this practice.

Spoke to a retirement community audience in Santa Clarita this afternoon about TV (thanks to CBS for making the Katie Couric announcement this week and giving me something to discuss). Everyone was very friendly and asked good questions, but I think the area's developers worked a little too hard naming the streets in order to convince those living there that their lives are bucolic (Whispering Leaves, Azure Field, Scarlet Meadow, Golden Valley, Friendly Valley, etc. - Friendly Valley has a guard station on it).

Afterwards, I received a thumbs-up from the event organizer: "No one walked out (actually, a couple did) and they asked questions for more than a half an hour." High praise indeed.

Sometimes, the confluence of disparate news stories to form a singular narrative seems the stuff of frenzied screenwriters. Consider how the discovery of a fossil positing the missing link between fish and land animals neatly dovetailed into reports of an ancient manuscript described as the Gospel of Judas.

The former suggests that religious groups that don’t want evolution taught in schools should pipe down – here’s apparently incontrovertible proof of how we first slunk out of the oceanic miasma. Some religious leaders suggest that God planted fossil records in order to challenge people’s faiths – if that’s the case, don’t you think, with this one, God’s kind of overdoing it?

On the other hand, the latter story fairly debunks those who dismiss the idea that Jesus existed, adding a tantalizing new perspective on the story of Christ’s betrayal – that Judas was an understanding and willing participant in the martyrdom that has made Jesus’ saga resonate for millions upon millions through the centuries. (This very issue was key in my own spiritual questions three decades back: If Jesus was infamous enough for everyone to want to squelch his teachings, presumably people knew enough of him to know what he looked like, yet the Romans needed Judas to ID him, suggesting that abject betrayal was a necessary part of Christian mythologizing and that Mr. Iscariot must've been something of a pawn, unwittingly or otherwise. That, and the whole people-have-free-will-but-God-knows-everything-that-will-happen thing.)

But then, along comes another story that suggests the silly extents to which the science-vs.-faith debate can go. Hence, a suggestion that scientists have figured out how Jesus could’ve walked on water: He actually walked on ice. So let’s see if I’ve got this straight: Jesus’ teachings about love and acceptance and not judging one another have endured for two millennia, but to ensure that, he had to resort to parlor tricks? How did the boat Jesus was in navigate such icy waters, and didn’t his disciples who also tried to walk on water but plunged into the briny deep see what he was up to? Will scientists also solve the whole water-into-wine thing, as well? Some things should just be allowed to be matters of faith.

Lest you fear this post has strayed too far into philosophizing, here’s where it converges with entertainment: The National Geographic Channel will air a special, “The Gospel of Judas,�? Sunday at 9 p.m.

British comedian Bill Bailey doesn't do jokes. His jokes are along the lines of: "Three guys go into a bar. One of them isn't a little stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability," which is as good a deconstruction of the limitations of the genre of "joke" as you're liable to hear.

Bailey, who's performing as part of UCLA Live through April 23, offers a multi-media - well, extravaganza is a bit too extravagant a word, but it'll have to do. He mixes personal reminiscences, political and philosophical observations with clever musical parodies - a lugubrious trance-hop version of "Zippity Do-Dah;" a cheerful jazz-scat incarnation of the Imperial March from "Star Wars" - with surreal visuals on a large-screen (Osama bin Laden joins dictators and practitioners of genocide in a singalong of Bob Marley's "One Love"). And his parody of "The da Vinci Code" is hilariously dead-on.

Bailey tells of watching coverage of rescues during Hurricane Katrina, in which one man atop a flood-engulfed house slammed his axe into a roof, then called out, "Stand back, sir!" "Which is a brilliant metaphor for American foreign policy," he added. Now, most comics have something of a liberal bent - except for, I guess, Ann Coulter (I omit Larry the Cable Guy because the dictionary defines "comic" as "amusing, humorous, funny") - so of course he's going to have barbs for the Bush Administration, but he savages his homeland, as well, so he's not just some xenophobe cashing in on liberal guilt.

The brilliant British comic Eddie Izzard compares Bailey to himself, so if that means anything to you, you've got an idea of the depth and breadth of Bailey's dizzying sensibility. To be sure, he has a lot more on his mind than most American stand-up comics seem to, these days, making his show (at an hour and 45 minutes, virtually unthinkable for any Stateside standup) a good deal more satisfying than your average evening at the Comedy Store. And without the two-overpriced-drink minimum.

Heck, he even plays a Theremin with his tongue during his show. If that's not worth the price of admission, I don't know what is. (Ticket info in the link above.)

. . . or, rather, don't start again inviting people who know how to write (critics like me, in this case) to advance screenings of subliterate films.

Some of my colleagues have been complaining lately that studios are more and more refusing to schedule critics screenings of movies they figure we'll hate before their commercial release, thereby insuring no bad reviews on opening day. All I can say is, thank you studios. Any hours of my life not spent getting brain-raped by the latest leather-clad vampire rehash or Tyler Perry's self-righteous sermons are precious indeed.

“South Park,�? which grapples with the toughest issues of our day, received television’s most prestigious honor today, the Peabody Award, suggesting either the Peabodys are broad-minded and somewhat cutting-edge, or that they’re given out by 14-year-old boys, who increasingly seem to control the entertainment industry.

The George Foster Peabody Awards, honoring TV excellence in a way the Emmys rarely do, today honored four news outlets for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, two public-service projects from L.A. stations and an eclectic assortment of TV series. New Orleans’ WWL and Biloxi’s WLOX were cited for their coverage of the storm under extraordinary duress, NBC’s Brian Williams’ “Nightly News�? was honored for its post-storm coverage and CNN earned kudos for handling the whole shmear.

KCET won for its ambitious “A Place of Our Own�? – which aired throughout the country, both in English and in Spanish – explained for parents how children develop socially and emotionally. KNBC won for reports on a housing development built on potentially toxic grounds.

Other winners:

While visiting a plaza in Milan as part of NBC’s recent coverage of the Winter Olympics in Italy, “The Today Show’s�? Katie Couric, surrounded by pigeons and giggling and squawking, implored a colleague to put bird feed in her hair, something she presumably will not be doing on “The CBS Evening News.�?

Couric, of course, was today officially named the permanent anchor and managing editor of “The CBS Evening News;�? she’ll begin her duties in September after stepping down from “Today�? next month. (The Daily News looks at Couric’s prospects and future network strategizing.) But CBS’s spending big bucks on someone made a star by another network sort of begs the question: Why have CBS and ABC been incapable of grooming one of their own for these high-profile evening-news anchor jobs? NBC managed a masterful job of passing the baton from Tom Brokaw to Brian Williams; how could ABC and CBS be so short-sighted?

There are probably at least four parts to the answer. First, neither network could have foreseen the premature departures of their anchors, ABC’s Peter Jennings – the smoothest of the big three – succumbing to lung cancer and CBS’s Dan Rather having to step down after some botched reporting. On the other hand, Jennings and Rather were both older than Brokaw was, so someone, somewhere, should have been making some contingency plans. Also, NBC had the luxury of a cable-news sister, MSNBC, to help Williams develop his credibility.

The other two parts of the equation have to be attributed to network executive ineptitude and, perhaps, sheer ego: When you’re the top dog at a network news organization, you probably don’t want to be constantly looking over your shoulder at some young hotshot up-and-comer gunning for your job.

(Sorry for the delay on this. Don't get me started on DSL.)

"There are no rules tonight!�? roared the warm-up guy minutes before Nickelodeon's Kids' Choice Awards began Saturday night at UCLA's Pauley Pavillion. He told the kids in the crowd that if their parents didn't join them in screaming and carrying on, “You have my permission to yell at them.�?

The 90-minute extravaganza was a classic of dizzyingly, wearyingly manufactured hyperactive energy. Virtually everyone who took the stage implored the audience to shriek (and shriek they did, at everything but the jokes, which almost uniformly went over like lead balloons); acrobats, apropos of nothing, twirled and tumbled throughout the event. “Tonight's your night to rage against the machine,�? host Jack Black told the crowd, but the whole event WAS the machine: Practically every celebrity who took the stage had an upcoming project they were there to promote; Nickelodeon programs swept the TV categories; winners seemed chosen on the basis of, well, who showed up to promote themselves (such as Lindsay Lohan, who took the occasion to -- briefly and inadvertently -- moon her youthful fans). In short, the biggest advertisement came between the commercial breaks.

While there was plenty of time for screaming, sliming and burping contests, there wasn't time for the awards themselves – no fewer than six of the 15 awards weren't given out during the broadcast, including "major" awards like Favorite Movie, Favorite Cartoon and Favorite Female Singer. But when “Are We There Yet?�? and “Herbie: Fully Loaded�? are vying for the title of Favorite Movie, perhaps that's just as well.

The Daily News' Bob Strauss wasn’t wowed by “The Devil and Daniel Johnston,�? a documentary about the Texas-based singer-songwriter and his epically poignant battle with madness. And, I concede, when you first hear Johnston, with his cracking, whiny voice, perform his material, it’s initially difficult to get past the amateurism of his self-recorded material (a point more or less made in the film when other Austin musicians were outraged when he won some key local-music awards).

I saw the film last year at Sundance (where, granted, the thin air has inspired ill-advised euphoria for films, particularly by acquisitions executives who spend waaay too much on some movies), so what I saw may differ a bit from the film as released. But there were a couple of things about director Jeff Feuerzig’s documentary that just blew me away.

Feuerzig had access to hundreds of audio tapes Johnston made over the years, many of them stream-of-consciousness burblings. Essentially, Johnston unwittingly kept a real-time audio diary of his descent into insanity. Feuerzig artfully combines Johnston’s rants with his home movies and other point-of-view shots that squarely place the viewer in the mind of someone losing his grasp on reality with an unnerving precision. To get better insight into what such an experience is like, you’d probably have to go crazy yourself.

And then, there’s Johnston’s music. Perhaps due to his mental issues, Daniel has absolutely no censor in his head when he writes his songs – they’re as stripped and close-to-the-bone in their emotional content as anything you’re likely to hear. …