June 2006 Archives

They tried suggesting he might be gay. They inferred that he may be a stand-in for Jesus. Now people who insist on getting upset over something - anything - about the new Superman movie are complaining that Perry White is a traitor for referencing the old Supes catchphrase "Truth, justice and . . ." and leaving out "the American way" part.

Whether you think that's an amusing gag, a craven capitulation to the larger international moviegoing audience or another of those feverishly imagined examples of Hollywood hating the good old USA, it really doesn't make "Superman Returns" any more interesting than any of the other hyperventilated interpretations.
Face it: Supes has always been something of a stiff as comic book characters go, and compared to Spider-Man, Batman and the X-Men movies, he still sorta is. There is some beautiful, elegant filmmaking in Bryan Singer's movie. But all the fake controversy in the world can't make it exciting.

Outfest starts Jully 6!
In preparing for the preview story I wrote for the paper that runs July 2 (U Section), I was able to hit advance screener paydirt and have already seen 15 of the movies.
Here are some of my Outfest faves so far:
- A Love to Hide (Un Amour A Taire): French drama about secret lovers during WWII in German occupied France could be the best film you see at Outfest this year. Loved it, felt it in the gut, cried some. Wow.
- Queens (Reinas): Hilarious. The Spanish actresses playing the moms of a group of gay men getting hitched in a mass ceremony are an absolute hoot!
- Camp Out:: A gem of a documentary about a group of gay teens at a Christian bible camp. I ended up really caring about them. I know what it's like being a gay teen, especiially a gay teen who wants to stay in church and still be true to yourself.
- The Gymnast: Most times, gay men generally avoid lesbian movies at Ouitfest and vice-versa. This year, I'm trying to take everything in. This is a movie anyone can appreciate. It's a female love story and it's hot!
- Vacationland: Two high school best friends fall in love. Both hunky. That alone gets me in the door. But the movie offers so much more. It's got some unexpected twists and you really get how much these two flawed and damaged guys love each other.
- Shocked to the System: Donald Strachey Mystery: A tour de force for Chad Allen! The second film in a series, Chad plays a private eye who happens to be gay. He's shows just how far he's left his Dr. Quinn days behind in this flick.
I also recommend Coffee Date, Boy Culture and 20 Centimeters.

Revolution Studios is the Aaron Spelling of the film industry, churning out crass, reliably stupid movies at a pace that would exhaust a hyena that's just ingested a meth lab. "Click" is its latest moronorama, and it, predictably enough, wowed the critics. (And made a huge pile of money, it almost goes without saying.)

A glance at the production company's fare is like a visit to a Dodger Stadium mens room on Fiber-and-Laxative Nite. To wit: "Benchwarmers," "Are We There Yet?," "Christmas with the Kranks," "xXx: State of the Union," "Little Black Book," "White Chicks," "Daddy Day Care," "Hollywood Homicide," "Radio," "Made in Manhattan," "The Master of Disguise," "Tomcats," "The Animal" and, of course, the notorious "Gigli." They also cooked up something called "Li'l Pimp," an animated feature that repelled a full half of its test-screening audience a few years back and has never been released.

Most of these just aren't misfires; they're aggressively awful flicks that earned some of the most vitriolic reviews of their day. So who, one might reasonably ask, is the revolution against? And where does one sign up to join the counter-insurgency?

Technical difficulties: This review of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" didn't make it into the paper, so we present it here.

The grubby denizens of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia� makes the monumentally self-absorbed characters of “Seinfeld� and “Curb Your Enthusiasm� seem like Peace Corps volunteers.

Creator/star Rob McElhenney’s sitcom blows the doors off political correctness so thoroughly as to leave a viewer amazed that such a concept ever held sway. McElhenney stars as Mac, who, with his stupid pals – Charlie (Charlie Day), Glenn (Glenn Howerton) and his sister, Dee (Kaitlin Olson) – run a dump of a bar and spend most of their time trying to figure out how to get over on the others. Danny De Vito joins the cast this season as Frank, Glenn and Dee’s father, who’s using the occasion of his divorce to indulge his inner dirtbag, and clings to the foursome to help him along. “I want to be pathetic and desperate and hopeless, just like you!� Frank tells Charlie.

Tonight, the gang of four – well, five, now – pretend to be handicapped in an attempt to secure pity sex. In future episodes, they try to intimidate a Jewish neighbor who’s bickering with them over a zoning ordinance by taping a terrorist video (while getting in endless, clueless debates over what constitutes anti-Semitism) and annoy one another by trying to sleep with one another’s mothers. (Honestly, don’t ask. It’s best just to let such brazenly pussilanimous behavior just wash over you.)

Clearly, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia� isn’t for the easily offended, or even for those offended with some difficulty. But its dryly deadpan bad taste – and, oddly enough, its moral rigidity (these cheaters never prosper) – is fresh and almost punishingly funny.

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:" 10 p.m. Thursdays on FX

Apparently, everything can be reduced to the most idiotic, debased terms imaginable.

This website manages to create short films dumping on everything from Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" to future camp classic "Snakes on a Plane." And you don't have to be stupid to enjoy it.

Star Jones Reynolds, we hardly knew ye. But we wished we knew ye even less than we already do.

This must be the time of year for spectacularly bitter and/or embarrassing media flameouts. First, Connie Chung splayed herself out across a piano like a human sacrifice and then Dan Rather took a whiz on the news division that once hired Edward R. Murrow. And now, Star – whose outrageous it’s-all-about-me attitude makes Katie Couric seem like a veritable wallflower – interrupted a segment yesterday on ABC’s chick-chat show “The View� to announce something that was a surprise to precisely nobody: that she was leaving the show.

“This is a surprise that this would come about this way; we did not expect it,� stammered “View� den mother Barbara Walters, who then led the studio audience in a standing-O for Star.

Not so much love in the house today. “We didn’t expect her to make this statement yesterday,� Walters announced. “The truth is that Star has known for months that ABC did not want to renew her contract. … We wanted to protect Star. … We hoped she … would leave with dignity.� That not being the case, Walters concluded, “It is becoming uncomfortable for us to pretend that everything is the same around this table.� Go to “The View’s� website and it has been thoroughly scrubbed of any evidence Jones Reynolds ever existed.

My question: How was she even allowed to remain on the show after that debacle surrounding her nuptials? Star practically begged for free crap and wedding services on the show, offering bald plugs for the products in return (if the above link doesn’t hook you up immediately with an image of Star, scroll down a bit). If any other journalist – or any other whatever-it-was-Star-was-supposed-to-be – tried to pull a stunt like that, they would’ve been handed their hat (one that, in Star's instance, was probably given her free) immediately.

So a study apparently finds that “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart� may have a deleterious affect on society. Like the rest of TV is so good for us?

The columnist, while citing the study, doesn’t really quote anything from it that is actually negative. “‘Jon Stewart,’ they write,� he writes, “‘may have a unique effect on young viewers.’� Stewart’s makes his viewers more cynical about politics, the study found. No fooling? Perhaps because Stewart bothers to point out how, with a war in Iraq, attacks on personal freedoms, high gas prices, a health-care crisis and other random nightmares, the Senate has been spending its time debating Constitutional amendments banning gay marriage and flag burning? How could that make anyone cynical about politics?

Another finding: The show’s viewers “reported increased confidence in their ability to understand the complicated world of politics.� Even Stewart himself would probably declare those respondents misguided. But “Daily Show� viewers are no worse off than people who watch, say, Bill O’Reilly, Rita Cosby or Nancy Grace.

Tonight at Los Feliz’s Skylight Books, Tom Reynolds presented one of the more entertaining book readings I’ve attended. Promoting his book “I Hate Myself and Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard,� Reynolds offered up a hilarious multi-media extravaganza featuring passages from his book, actress Jennifer Coolidge (who makes the most of her scenes in Christopher Guest’s movies and almost managed to make “Joey� seem amusing) and a young vocalist named Cara, who managed to make the wretched palatable.

If Reynolds' “reading� was funny, you can just imagine what the book’s like. Obviously, since I just got the book tonight (“Thanks for coming out and enjoying the doom,� Reynolds signed it), I haven’t read the whole thing, but his take on Celine Dion’s cover of Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself� almost single-handedly justifies the cover price ($12.95, from Hyperion, by the way).

“Her remake of Carmen’s song is the audio equivalent of the bombing of Dresden,� Reynolds writes. “In fact, had she been around in 1944, the Allies could’ve skipped the D-Day invasion and just dropped her off at Omaha Beach with a PA system so she could sing ‘All By Myself’ until the German infantry bayoneted themselves.�

(Fun fact: “I Hate Myself and Want to Die� was what Elizabeth Wurtzel originally wanted to entitle her first book, until she realized she could become the Voice of a Generation by naming it “Prozac Nation.�)

Reynolds divvies the tunes up into sundry categories, the worst of which he deems “Perfect Storms,� “the audio equivalent of a Donner Party guide loudly insisting he knows the way through the pass.�

You could probably guess a lot of the songs that appear here: Janis Ian’s “At Seventeen,� for example, which, Reynolds explains, “relates how, at age 17, Ms. Ian made the startling discovery that physically attractive people are more popular than unattractive people. At 18, she found out that gravity makes things fall.� Or Dan Fogelberg’s “Same Old Lang Syne:� “I’ve heard it played at (a long laundry list of department stores). Hearing Dan Fogelberg songs reminds me of buying socks.� Treacle-meisters Barry Manilow, Harry Chapin and Mariah Carey are also toasted.

But Reynolds also trashes revered artists, as well. On Bruce Springsteen’s “The River:� “Frankly, I’d rather drag my scalp over a cheese grater than listen to it again. … Just once I’d love to hear Bruce sing about somebody getting plastered on Cristal and driving a Bentley into a swimming pool.� On Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb:� “If there ever was a recording that could substitute for Demerol, this is the one.�

At tonight’s reading, Reynolds, at protracted length, amusingly trashed The Doors’ “The End.� “All you need is a D-minor chord and a lead singer who’s loaded up on LSD,� he declared, adding that the song is “music you’d listen to while changing religions.�

Interestingly, one attendee at the event was wearing a Jim Morrison T-shirt. I watched him closely while Reynolds made mincemeat of his idol. He was laughing as much as anybody.

Afterwards, Reynolds told me he listened to 10,000 songs while preparing his book (though he tended to favor better-known songs over more obscure, more soul-draining tunes). Nonetheless, there’s an iPod you'll want to steer clear of.

Why should the media have all the fun?

Now you too can beat up on Kevin Federline.

I recently attended a motion picture academy tribute to Olivia de Havilland as the grand dame of movies nears her 90th birthday. I wrote about her well-deserved reputation as an elegant, gracious lady and I am delighted to discover that she seems to attract fans of a similar nature. De Havilland followers writing to me or calling me since the story ran have been the most courteous people I ever have heard from. One man told me...

As controversial as last week’s episode of “Rescue Me�" has become – it ended with Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) raping his estranged wife Janet (Andrea Roth) (or did he? At the currently contentious “Rescue Me�" message board at televisionwithoutpity.com, even that’s up for debate) – tomorrow night’s episode may infuriate fans even more, for it leaves that fairly urgent matter on the back burner, so to speak.

To recap: After having achieved a brief rapprochement late last season, New York firefighter Tommy and Janet inextricably severed ties when their son was killed by a drunk driver while Tommy was (perhaps a bit too casually) watching him. (It’s also possible that there was little that Tommy could have done to avert the tragedy.) As with just about everything in Tommy’s life, the ongoing divorce proceedings have played out with an angry vitriol (Janet’s now seeing his brother, whom Tommy roundly thrashed a couple of episodes back). So, when a discussion of the separation of their property got pitched a little too high last week, Tommy forced himself on his ex for nonconsensual sex, which was bad enough, but what offended some viewers as much if not more was the manner in which the initially combative Janet ultimately accepted the rough treatment.

For the uninitiated, if not the show’s viewers, it should be pointed out that “Rescue Me�" is about extraordinarily damaged souls, something the title itself should make evident. Virtually every character on the show is massively screwed up, particularly Tommy, who is battling alcoholism, is haunted by the ghosts of those he could not save in his rescues, seems incapable of treating women as fellow human beings … and the list goes on and on.

None of this excuses what Tommy did, but it does suggest that such a volcanic personality could be capable of just about any sort of bad behavior. Nonetheless, after the episode aired, messages of the “I am done with this show�? nature began popping up at TWOP’s “RM�" message board from viewers offended by his latest bit of inexcusable behavior. From there, a debate raged over whether it was, in fact, an act of rape or merely the latest roundelay in an epically dysfunctional relationship. (In at least one interview, Roth herself offered a far less damning interpretation of the scene.)

Series co-creator (with Leary) and executive producer Peter Tolan popped up at TWOP in an attempt to unruffle fans’ feathers:

“We tried to be extremely careful about that scene. I did not direct the episode, but I did my most careful writing in preparing the scene. Our feeling has always been that Tommy and Janet are in a highly dysfunctional relationship (obviously), a negative vortex fueled by only one positive - a faint glimmer of love that is constantly overshadowed by truly fantastic physical attraction. In terms of the scene last night, I never wrote the words 'don't' or 'no' at any point in the scene, and when I talked to Andrea about the playing of the thing, I pretty much told her that she had to stand up to Tommy - that he had taken so much away from her over the years, that she had to stare him down from a position of strength while he was forcing himself on her. I told her to shame him with the words she was given - to let him know she couldn't hurt her anymore, no matter what he did.

“Did this come across? For many viewers, obviously not. I was not on set the day the scene was shot (I live in California and am only in NYC when I direct episodes), so maybe those ideas weren't followed through as well as they could have been. I'll admit this is extremely dicey stuff. The idea of any woman 'enjoying' being raped is repellant, and caused all of us (and the network) a great deal of concern. But again, these are seriously damaged people who are unable to express their emotions - and so expression through brutality has become expected.�"

(By the way, Tolan also conceded that the lame subplot involving the Probie’s (Michael Lombardi) casual gay sex while insisting he’s not gay is, well, lame.)

But Alan Sepinwall, one of the Newark Star-Ledger’s two perceptive TV critics, was just one viewer who wasn’t having any of it. “It made me uncomfortable and unhappy in a way even the most extreme TV and film almost never does,�? he wrote of the rape on his blog.

Well, this is a show that killed off Tommy’s son, then had him conspiring in having the drunk driver murdered, so it’s not like “Rescue Me�" isn’t utterly preoccupied with provoking its audience, with venturing into uncomfortable territory even other bold programs wouldn’t touch. And, certainly, Tommy’s had some rough, angry sex in the past, particularly with his cousin’s widow Sheila (Callie Thorne), whose anguished – and consensual – couplings could be nearly as difficult to watch as last week’s episode. (Much of the episode leading up to the rape was given over to Tommy suffering a series of sex-related humiliations.)

A primary argument against the rape sequence spun off Janet’s ultimate, queasy response to it – that “Rescue Me’s�" writers are tawdry horndogs who couldn’t write a decent female character if ordered to at gunpoint, and who probably personally enjoyed the scene. And it’s true – many of the women who trickle through the lives of the men at 62 Truck are little more than eye candy with sundry comic peccadilloes designed to make the guys suffer more. But this show makes it very clear that these guys are clueless – not just about women, but about anything that doesn’t involve saving lives and putting out fires; the show fairly screams “Don’t try this at home�" in every frame – so it seems highly unlikely that they’d have much success with intelligent, well-adjusted women who quite reasonably would steer a wide berth if they encountered any of these louts.

(But, yes, the women the writers cook up can be awfully lame and rooted in puerile male fantasies lifted from a cheesy lad mag – the teacher who trades her student, Tommy’s late cousin’s son, for Tommy? Please. If it’s of any consolation, she gets her comeuppance tonight, but again, that perpetuates the women-suffer-for-having-sexual-appetites rubric. And viewers who were shocked that “Rescue Me�? seemed to have created an intelligent, even empathetic, female character in Susan Sarandon’s older woman who alternately manhandles and pampers Franco (Daniel Sunjata) will likely be disappointed in Tuesday’s episode, in which something that many TWOP posters predicted does in fact occur. Sarandon does, nonetheless, get off a withering line that nails Tommy between the eyes.) (On the other hand, the notion that three Oscar-winning actresses are on board this season – Sarandon, Tatum O’Neal and Marissa Tomei – suggests that there must be something in the writing that’s drawing such prominent names.)

Another conspicuous complaint suggested that, unlike “The Sopranos�" or “Deadwood�" – where the lovably despicable nature of certain characters was established at the outset and viewers admire them despite their shortcomings – on “Rescue Me,�" Leary’s Tommy continues to descend into an abyss; the show gets darker and darker and its tone gets ever more misanthropic.

While I’m not sure I agree that the tone is getting nastier – it’s always been plenty mean – it seems to me that Tommy’s downward spiral is pretty compelling. Those making this argument also suggest that characters on TV series have to be at least somewhat likable and, with this act, Tommy has ceased to be so. Perhaps, but the character remains fascinating, particularly since he hasn’t yet hit bottom. And while in tomorrow’s episode Tommy plots further revenge on Janet and his brother, one scene suggests that even he may be reaching his breaking point.

But it would've been nice if Tolan and the show's brain trust demonstrated a little more understanding as to why some viewers are so upset.

“Rescue Me�" airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX, if you can stand it.

(One might find bemusement in the fact that, mere hours after thrashing ABC Family for its prurient content, I turn around and defend a show in which the main protagonist commits an act that is at the very least in the neighborhood of rape. Clearly, there’s only one explanation: Schizophrenia.)

God, I always felt like such a prude kvetching about this. I discussed this with a friend of mine, and she made me feel like a prude for complaining about this. Then we watched ABC Family's new show, "Kyle XY," together, ...

... and she conceded I was right about this.

Based on the name of the cable network, you'd think ABC Family was a destination for the entire family, someplace you could watch safe programming for all ages. (Originally, it was known as Fox Family, and featured such well-considered series such as "State of Grace," which starred "Arrested Development's" Alia Shawkat as one of two girls who grappled, in the '60s, with issues such as race, religion, gender and divorce, with an unparalleled intelligence and, yes, grace; when ABC acquired the network, "State of Grace" was one of the first shows jettisoned.)

These days, ABC Family seems to want to be the FX of kids channels, offering edgy entertainment for an audience that may or may not be ready for such. Its latest offering (debuting Monday) is "Kyle FX," about a mysterious teen of indeterminate origins (likely of a sci-fi nature) absorbed by a "normal" American family. In the course of Monday's episode, accounts of or references to teenage sex, underage drinking and masturbating to male magazines are presented. The main character is placed in a juvenile detention center, where he exchanges meaningful glances with an angry young inmate who threatens him, prompting the character to wet his pants (the purple narration inadvertently suggests a heightened meaning to this); later, he nuzzles equally meaningfully with the mother figure who accepts him into her family.

Imagine trying to explain all this to your five- or eight-year-old.

But this is only ABC Family's latest provocation. It also has a show, "Falcon Beach," which seems the teen equivalent of the primetime soap "Falcon Crest." Here's part of the show's description: "They live in different worlds, but come summer they share a strip of beach where anything can happen. People fall in love, fall out of love, get into trouble and take risks they never thought they would. For a group of friends and the outsiders they meet, this summer is about holding onto the sun and fun as long as they can… There are no right answers, just the endless possibilities of summer. What does that mean for the dreamers and the schemers, the lovers and doubters?" More importantly, what does that mean for parents who were hoping to plop their kids in front of something along the lines of "Spongebob Squarepants?"

Before this came "Wildfire," which featured a teen girl released from juvenile detention to a horse stable (every 'tween's dream) where she's caught between the "good" boy and the "bad" boy (probably also every 'tween's dream, though one parents are less likely to encourage).

And before all this came a series of ABC Family movies, such as "Snow," "Pizza My Heart" and "Love Rules!" These featured romantic living arrangements that parents would be hard-pressed to justify to their kids at such an impressionable age. And then there was "Pop Rocks," about a nebbishy dad who concealed his too-cool-for-school background as a rock star which featured not entirely wholesome references to drugs and groupies.

Let me make this clear: I am adamantly opposed to material that will dumb-down the culture, which is what the FCC seems hell-bent to impose upon the broadcast networks. Intelligible discourse between adults seems most under fire right now, as the FCC fine against the CBS series "Without a Trace" appears to indicate. This serves no one, not adults; not children. It's a disturbingly kneejerk response to programming aimed squarely at adults, who, the FCC seems to suggest, deserve no right to mainstream communications.

On the other hand, if a cable network -- in its very name -- declares itself aimed at family audiences, then it should serve an audience of all ages, and parents shouldn't have to worry about the content such networks offer, and be able to sit kids of all ages before the TV when that network's content is being presented on their TVs.

The N, another cable channel, offers material that offers 'tween audiences challenging subject matter, in shows such as "Degrassi: The Next Generation" and "Instant Star." But The N clearly differentiates its programming from its kid-friendly channel, Noggin, and its series tackle such material in a far more thoughtful, nuanced fashion.

Again, let me state: My favorite shows are those aimed squarely at adults, such as FX's "Rescue Me" and HBO's "Deadwood." But there's no hint that these shows invite a youthful viewership; they want me and alike-minded adults to enjoy them. ABC Family targets boobs who don't know (and perhaps don't care) what their kids watch. But since the government can't regulate who can and cannot become a parent, it likewise has no business enforcing its morals upon TV viewers.

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce says Sean "Diddy" Combs is among those who will be honored in the coming year with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. One problem: What version of his name will they use -- Sean, Sean John, Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy? And will whatever he designates be the last name he's known by? Face it - the guy's had more aliases than a Valerie Plame colleague. Maybe they should just skip the brass-and-granite thing and bring in a really good chalk artist instead.

In honor -- well, honor's not the right word, but you understand -- of Adam Sandler's latest flick, "Click," here's a little interactive project for anyone with time on their hands: Create the worst movie Hollywood might actually make.

This, of course, gives you plenty of latitude.

My idea: "Dumb F---s," in which Adam Sandler plays an aimless loser who inherits a Nevada whorehouse from his very flatulent uncle (Robert Loggia) who, in a spectacularly funny scene (if you're a 12-year-old boy; interminable to everyone else) farts himself to death as explains to the initially reticent Adam why he wants him to take over the business (he needs to learn responsibility, etc.). So Adam and his wacky buddies are enjoying the high life at the brothel, with lots of lascivious highjinks and bare backsides involved in pratfalls (even if Adam is a little spooked by the Madam, played by Cloris Leachman). But a determined and crusading if perky and freshly scrubbed female journalist (Camilla Belle, or any young actress who really can't act, since the role makes no earthly emotional sense whatsoever anyway) who believes that prostitution is demeaning to women does an undercover series of stories revealing the embarrassing goings-on at their cathouse, which spurs Adam to, yep, take more responsibility. But of course she and Sandler fall in love, and that whole female-empowerment debate gets neatly shunted to the side, where it can be safely ignored.

You can do better. Hollywood can't do worse. Submit an entry. The best will be posted later on.

Google “James Lipton� and “obsequious� and you get 516 responses, which seems to shortchange the issue a bit. (Perhaps it's because if you just Google “James Lipton,� there’s only 518 entries.)

Sunday’s “Inside the Actor’s Studio� (9 p.m. on Bravo) commemorates its 200th episode with Lipton drooling all over Dustin Hoffman, “One of the most illustrious acting careers of the past forty years.�

Well, Hoffman is a Hollywood luminary, so Lipton’s toadying isn’t as hilarious here as it as it usually is. The most he manages in terms of hyperbole is: “It’s safe to say that with all the memorable nights we’ve had with this series, we’ve never had one like this.� Well, of course you have, James: 199 previous nights, in fact, of shameless backside smooching. Hoffman tells some good stories and even tears up a couple of times, but it doesn’t seem to be because he’s regretting having agreed to appear alongside Lipton.

Flying to New York last week, I read "The Futurist" by first-time novelist James P. Othmer. Flying back on Monday, I read "Absurdistan" by Gary Shteyngart ("The Russian Debutante's Handbook").

I pretty much read the same damn book coming and going.

Both are geopolitical satires (Othmer's book's funnier; Shteyngart's is more grounded and palatable). Both feature as protagonists grubby anti-heroes with a misplaced sense of entitlement (Othmer: A hot-shot, media-savvy marketing consultant who gets in over his head when a shadow agency with an arcane agenda recruits him; Shteyngart: An obese Russian heir who gets in over his head when he sneaks into a third-world country littered with oil derricks to attain a fake passport); both characters, naturally, strive to redeem themselves. Both feature the sudden death of the protagonist's father.

Both feature an outsized, decadent corporate party in which wealthy, ostensibly civilized men behave in utterly appalling ways (Othmer's is far more outsized, decadent and appalling). Both invoke the spectre of 9/11 (Shteyngart's, in fact, pointedly ends with the protagonist, on Sept. 10, 2001, dreaming of returning to New York City) and both find their protagonists stranded in the middle of an escalating war created with dubious motivations.

Both, truth be told, feature fairly disappointing female characters. And both came out within a month of each other.

And both, I must say, are very good. Othmer's punctures the inane vacuity behind pursuing the Zeitgeist, while Shteyngart's gleefully trashes globalization.

And what arrived in the mail today? Gautama Malkani's "Londonstani," which at first blush doesn't seem too dissimilar, either...

From the letter from Spike TV accompanying the screener for its new series "Blade" (more precisely, "Blade: The Series"), based on the comic book and spinning off the movies about the vampire-fighting vampire (more precisely, half-human/half-vampire):

"We believe that you will find this new original programming exciting, entertaining and brand defining."

"Brand defining?" Well, I can't vouch for "entertaining" but I guess it's "brand defining." "Brand defining," apparently, is the new "cynical."

(Is that your Tricorder, Spock, or are you just happy to see me?)

Yes, Trekkies (and you will never be "Trekkers," no matter how many times you ask, Trekkies), it seems J.J. "If I can wrangle Tom Cruise, I can wrangle anything" Abrams will direct the "Star Trek" prequel, and he wants Matt Damon to play a young Capt. Kirk (via Defamer, via "The Insider").

Defamer posits the obvious: If Matt plays Kirk, who else should play Spock but Damon bud and Oscar sharer (not to mention hubby of Jennifer Garner) Ben Affleck, who we all know needs some strong B.O. (and not the kind you treat with Old Spice) to revive his film career.

And while we're at it, how about Christopher Walken as Dr. McCoy?

Who would you cast in the "Star Trek" prequel? Answer in the comments, and the best amateur casting director will receive ... my undying admiration.

"Family Guy," the only TV series with as many lives as a cat, opened the table read for its landmark 100th episode to the media today. Fox Entertainment president Peter Liguori was there, as, naturally, was the cast: Series creator Seth MacFarlane (who voices epic boob Peter, voice-of-reason Brian the dog and sociopathic infant Stewie), Alex Borstein (infinitely patient Lois), Seth Green (epic boob-son Chris) and Mila Kunis (Meg, just Meg). (Adam West was wandering the premises, as well.) The title of the episode is “Stewie Kills Lois.�

Yes, after years (eight, to be precise) of threatening to off his mother, Stewie finally summons the psychopathic wherewithal to actually perform the deed (or does he?). Watching the table read (which was taped for inclusion on DVD), one got a sense of the push-and-pull the show’s writers play with the network’s no-doubt-much-beleaguered broadcast standards folks. Peter relates a winsome anecdote in which he uses some form of the word “abortion� no fewer than 15 times. Brian and Stewie imagine a rather perverse humiliation of Lois. And one the show’s notoriously random cut-away sequences finds Peter reflecting on his tour of duty in Afghanistan, where he believes he has been ordered to shoot Pat Tillman, a segment Liguori allowed was “rough.�

“Most of that will get on,� MacFarlane told me afterwards. “The censors will find arguments to keep things they think are funny. They care about the show. Those talks are never all that hellish.� MacFarlane did admit that some bits are thrown in as negotiating ploys – they’ll take something out in order to preserve another gag in dubious taste elsewhere. “Yeah, there’s some of that,� he said.

After the table read (though the walls of the production office’s conference room where the script was introduced are bare, there’s the usual assortment of creative adornment elsewhere, including old Donkey Kong and Tron video games, and a doodle on a whiteboard of a guy getting severed in two by a ping-pong table), there was Thai food and a ceremony involving a cake the size of a CEO’s desktop and lots of posing for photos. Photographers implored Mila to stick a frosting-covered finger into Seth’s mouth; sensibly, she declined.

Liguori announced to those assembled, “This is the greatest television show in the history of the television business,� adding parenthetically, “that was cancelled twice by the dorks at the network.� He declared of the milestone, “It’s not your hundredth, it’s your first hundredth.�

(MacFarlane later joked, “The only vacation I get is when we get cancelled.�)

Executive producer David Goodman responded, “Whatever mistakes were made in the first few years, the network has more than made up for it.� Whether or not that’s true, it was nice of him to say it.

When it came time for MacFarlane to speak, he said, “This is kind of awkward, because I just got offered the showrunning job on ‘King of Queens.’�

After the ceremony, MacFarlane, a boyish-looking guy whose expression perpetually seems to be anticipating some form of impudent mischief, talked about the notorious and hilarious gag from the past season in which Osama bin Laden, in the middle of taping yet another “Death-to-America� video, comes down with a case of the giggles.

“That show was three minutes short, so we needed something,� he recalled. “The main requirement was that it was gonna be long enough to fill the space. And it turned out to be one of the most popular segments of the show. Sometimes, when there’s no pressure to succeed, it works out the best.�

MacFarlane also explained how Stewie has become the voice of breaking news on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann:� “He’s a big supporter. Plus, I can’t stand Bill O’Reilly, so I felt I had to.�

During the cake-cutting ceremony, MacFarlane – no doubt playing off the episode’s theme (Lois’s murder, remember?) and certainly not indulging in some kind of demented fetish – carved up the center of the cake, bisecting Lois at the crotch. Photo-op over, he left the knife planted in poor Lois’s abdomen.

Is there any medium/genre more self-referential and masturbatory than the Broadway musical? Just about every stinking one of these things are about exulting in how gloriously stupid they are. From “42nd Street� to “Cabaret� to the most recent examples – “The Producers� and “Monty Python’s Spamalot� – the latter of which, 30 years ago, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Great White Way – Broadway exemplifies nothing if not itself, usually in a cheeky, winking manner acknowledging just how dumb it is.

Even a show as progressively shocking as “Shockheaded Peter� – which dwells, amusingly enough, on all manner of hideous childhood deaths – is, ultimately, about how it’s presented (the narrator being obsessed with his own standing as the greatest actor in the world).

So here comes another – “The Drowsy Chaperone," itself a parody of old-school musicals (the clunky, crappy title yet another intentional tip to its self-satirical nature). And here’s the damning thing about these parodies – you know what? They work pretty persuasively.

The show begins with a disembodied voice declaring, "I hate theater … it's so disappointing, isn't it?" Well … enter your answer here. After a particularly bitchy snap at Elton John, the audience is already sucked in.

That voice comes from a protectedly gay habitué of the medium, played oh-so-cleverly by Bob Martin, who shared one of the production’s five Tonys with Don McKellar – a Canadian genius who’s written hilarious screenplays for both underseen movies (“Highway 61,� for starters) and TV shows (“Slings and Arrows;� “Twitch City�) – for writing the show’s book, the one legitimately, persuasively clever thing about this “Chaperone."

Martin’s “The Man in the Chair� sits in his depressingly cramped Big Apple apartment and provides critical commentary for this most minor of Broadway confections, a veritably concussed Murphy-bed of a musical itself, pointing out its blinkered conceptual conceits (which are many) and its concealed delights (which are few – but, in the show’s long-term view, outweigh its idiocies).

The plot is utter junk, pointedly so, involving an engaged couple with issues, and others with issues, and yet others with issues until you almost expect Kevin Bacon to emerge to explain the degrees of issues all these characters have to one another and how their ultimate true love will prevail. And not only does true love prevail, but b.s. prevails, as well, which, of course, is part of the joke.

“The Drowsy Companion� won five Tonys, including Best Book and Best Music. It’s very funny. Since there’s no intermission (the whole production spans less than an hour and 45 minutes), it takes up little of your time. You can see it and grab a cab out of Times Square ahead of everyone else to head for hipster clubs, who will likely be stuck in the area for another hour or so. Even the Times Square subway trains aren't overpopulated when this is over. I snuck out to Greenwich Village for dessert in mere minutes. What more can you want?

So the Miami Heat won their first NBA Finals, and I'll leave it to the local sports columnists to sulk or gloat, depending on their dispositions, on the fact that two Laker legends were instrumental in bringing victory to the other coast: Pat Riley and Shaquille O'Neal, whose departure from LA was rancorous, to say the least. Shaq's leaving for more humid pastures certainly still inspires some enmity in Lakers fans to this day, probably even a smidgen more right now, but clearly, if the Lakers were going to build around a player like Kobe Bryant, you can hardly blame Shaq for seeking out an environment more interested in team play. Kobe's name wasn't mentioned in a post-game interview with Shaq and Dwyane Wade, but he was the entire subtext of the conversation as the two men discussed their mutual respect for one another and as Shaq praised Wade's humility.

For me, however, the highlight was Alonzo Mourning's post-game press conference (carried on ESPN), an amazing, heartfelt monologue that went five, six, seven minutes, maybe more, after just one question. Mourning began with an account of his 2000 trials when he required a potentially career-ending kidney transplant and ended with a shout-out to Lance Armstrong and some words of inspiration for anyone at a dark point in his or her life. The gratitude he felt for having come back to help a team win a championship was palpable, even profound, and he spun an affecting narrative that rambled only a little but was filled with emotion and hope and was nearly as impressive as his team's accomplishment. Talk about putting things in perspective, something TV rarely bothers to do.

In case there had been any doubt, Connie Chung officially ended her career over the weekend.

What the hell was that? Her MSNBC series with Maury Povich seemed fairly misbegotten from the outset and, of course, MSNBC isn't a destination for many cable viewers. So maybe she was just blowing off steam, expecting no one would notice a debacle over a heavy sports weekend.

If you didn't see it (it's on the link) -- well, no one saw it, but somehow the clip seeped out into more mainstream outlets (it's now probably been seen by more people than saw the run of their series) -- Chung, splayed out on a piano, performed a painfully off-key parody of "Thanks for the Memories." When she attempted to dismount the piano, she looked like an enfeebled 80-year-old gingerly climbing out a window and onto a ledge. Michele Pfeiffer in "The Fabulous Baker Boys" she wasn't.

Chung certainly will argue it was a joke, and sure, it was, though in all the wrong ways.

Consider Chung's career trajectory -- from co-anchoring "The CBS Evening News" with Dan Rather (who, by coincidence, departed CBS within a couple of days of her not letting MSNBC's door smack her backside) to a tabloidy, quickly cancelled CNN show to, well, whatever this was. So, truly, she didn't have anything to lose when she torched the torch-singing genre -- it's not like she was much of a marketable commodity anymore, unless you're a general manager at a UHF station in Keokuk, Iowa in need of a morning-show anchor. Of course, it would've been nice to go out with dignity, but I imagine that concept has eluded her for a long time.

On a flight this evening, I noticed someone across the aisle reading US magazine's "Stars! They're Just Like US!" (If anyone would know this isn't true, you'd think it'd be US magazine editors, but I guess that's just another reason journalists are held in such low esteem by the rest of the universe.)

I hadn't looked in that magazine for a quite a while (understandably), so was surprised that the magazine was still devoting so many pages to such a lame conceit. For the uninitiated, under this headline, the magazine runs a bunch of (essentially unflattering) paparazzi photos of celebrities trying to go through the motions of mundane daily life out of the purview of intrusive shutterbugs; they're depicted in such riveting action shots as feeding a parking meter, ingesting comestibles of the sort that wouldn't ordinarily result in the sort of toned physiques displayed in movies and TV shows and leaving rotting fish heads in the automobiles of investigative journalists. Or thereabouts, anyway.

So here are a few headlines you might hope to see in future incarnations of US's "Stars! They're Just Like US!":

"They don't use clippers to trim their toenails!"

"They lie in court under oath!"

"They're appalling parents!"

"They proffer opinions on issues they know nothing about!"

"They're profoundly depressed!"

"They buy junk they don't need!"

"They don't live every day as if it were their last!"

"They make greivous mistakes in relationships!"

"They don't watch even a fifth of the crap that they TiVo!"

"They cheat on their taxes!"

"They cry themselves to sleep!"

"They're embittered, humorless husks beaten down by the vicissitudes of contemporary existence!"

"They loudly berate their personal assistants in public, resulting in embarrassing moments for all those nearby!"

"They don't read US!"

"They edit pointless, ultimately unrevealing magazine photo features that no one in their right mind would bother to read!"

There must be more. Any ideas?

When I was a kid, I'd spend my summers watching afternoon TV with my mom. She was a big soap fan, so she watched tons of "All My Children." And so, since I had no other recourse, I watched the soap with her.

I remember getting addicted to "AMC's" Jenny-and-Greg storyline. It was pretty much standard-issue soap-opera fare: Jenny (played by Kim Delaney, who has since starred in "NYPD Blue" and a ton of other things) was hopelessly, sinlessly, guilelessly in love with this eternally bland guy, but the whole of the universe was tilted toward ensuring that this pure and beautiful relationship would not manifest itself. Hey, (excrement) happens, but it really happened when it came to Jenny and her beau. EVERY SINGLE BARRIER existed only to keep these young lovers apart.

She got blown up, in a dastardly scheme, when a jet ski went kablooie and virginal -- or, sort of virginal; virtuous, at least -- Jenny got gone. At least, that's my memory of the situation, some two decades later.

So I mention this to Ms. Delaney, a throwaway line in an interview, and she says:

"It’s so funny, a lot of musicians and athletes are huge fans of that character. That was my first job, that was my third audition. But for these people, that’s when, I guess, they were getting up and watching TV. I’d hear that from (John) McEnroe, from (Bruce) Springsteen. And I’d be, "Are you kidding?"

The Boss loved "All My Children?" (Brains are allowed to explode here.) (Heck, everything is allowed to explode here.)

Many years ago, I was part of a group of luckless souls recruited to judge short films for a competition that was part of Dallas's USA Film Festival. Three out of every four of these films, it seemed, concerned the filmmakers' tortured relationships with their fathers. It was excrutiating stuff, personal and intimate yet clichéd and pretentious; meaningful (to the filmmaker, at least) yet maundering, mawkish and altogether amateurish. Twelve hours of this stuff my colleagues and I were forced to sit through; none of us should have been allowed to operate heavy machinery at the end of the ordeal.

I had flashbacks to that day while watching John Canemaker's "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation," which won the Academy Award this year for Best Animated Short Film. Canemaker, who has written a number of perceptive books covering the range of animation history, has also made a few films over the past couple of decades.

"My father died in 1995, but I keep talking to him inside my head," narrates Canemaker (voiced by John Turturro) as the film opens. Throughout, he speaks to his father (voiced by Eli Wallach), whom the animator recalls as an angry, embittered man with a fierce temper and a criminal background.

In the course of the film, the father relates to John, as his father actually did in the last years of his life, his story of struggle. The story is told through childlike visuals and simple animation, juxtaposed by home movies, family photos and newspaper headlines.

Still, it's all about the boy: "I never seemed to please you," John fairly whines to his pop. Yeah, and...?

As my experience watching those other short films all those years ago suggests, this is hardly revolutionary subject matter: Who doesn't have unresolved issues with their parents? Giving Canemaker an Oscar for wallowing in his is just going to encourage yet another generation of callow filmmakers to issue forth self-absorbed sniveling. Resolved: Let's all get over this, or deal with it not through art, but in therapy.

Cinemax will present this on Father's Day - Sunday at 8 p.m., repeating it June 22 and 30 at 6 p.m. and 12:30 p.m., respectively. A most curious way to commemorate Father's Day.

On "Free Speech: Jim Lehrer and Ben Bradlee," which airs on KCET, Channel 28, Monday June 19 at 10 p.m. and Saturday June 24 at 11 p.m., Lehrer, PBS's distinguished news anchor, and Ben Bradlee, the editor at the Washington Post during the Watergate scandal (and the rare journalist whose portrayal on film won an actor an Oscar), discuss the art, business, idealism and politics of journalism.

During the special, the two -- who, Lehrer points out immediately, are old friends and have privately discussed such issues in the past -- reflect on Watergate, the Janet Cook scandal and Bradlee's friendship with John F. Kennedy (Bradlee admits most people don't believe he didn't know JFK was a womanizer, yet insists he didn't).

What they don't discuss -- and what would be most fascinating -- is Bradlee's assessment of those covering the White House today. (Perhaps because Bradlee still draws paychecks from the Post.) Certainly, we're dealing with a White House Press Corps that has proven far more timid and malleable than in the past, not to mention a White House that is far more accomplished at manipulating the press and denigrating and stigmatizing journalists who don't toe the Administration's line. (Bob Woodward, one of the journalists under Bradlee who broke the Watergate story, has come under fire, fairly or not, for having evolved into an Administration lap dog. Likewise, the Post in general has come under fire for having an ombudsman who seems particularly disinterested in pursuing certain errors the paper has made in the Administration's favor, not to mention the dopey scandal involving its hiring of a right-wing blogger who resigned within a week of his first posting after charges of plagiarism were leveled against him.) None of these issues, alas, are dealt with here.

Except obliquely, and theoretically. Speaking in general terms on dealing with politicians who lie, Bradlee offers this:

If in the process of that, say, press conference he tells something, he says something that isn't true, you've got to learn how to handle that. You can't come right out, quote the statement and then have a paragraph on your own saying, this is a lie.

MR. LEHRER: What do you do?

MR. BRADLEE: Well, you, if it's important enough, you would assign a special story to it and say, when the President said A, he flew in the face of--there are lots of little euphemisms you can use--of much of opinion, which says the opposite. And you can highlight the controversy. That seems to me to be quite an intelligent way of doing it.

Much later on, Bradlee revisits the subject:

I think a lot of people lie and I don't think that they pay any price for lying the way, it seems to me, that we did when we were young. Certainly, I did when I was a teenager. I mean, if I told a lie at my house, I got my butt whipped, not whipped, but spanked.

MR. LEHRER: Got you.

MR. BRADLEE: Physically punished. You can't do that now. And it seems to me that, lying should mildly get you in trouble and it doesn't seem to me that happens. One of the interesting things about reading all the stories currently about bigshot businessmen who are going to jail, Enron types, one common denominator is that, they didn't tell the truth.

MR. LEHRER: And it's just accepted that they lied? I mean, it's just assumed that they lied.

MR. BRADLEE: Well, it isn't by me--

MR. LEHRER: I know, but I mean--

MR. BRADLEE: --but society doesn't seem to be as outraged by it as, as they should. And it's, it's really a--it, it's one of the great, the worst of the sins, it seems to me, because you, you, you deceive people and you deceive people originally on purpose and then if you don't correct it, you deceives them, you've deceived them by, by non-feasance.

MR. LEHRER: You've said also that all presidents lie. Do you really mean that literally?

MR. BRADLEE: Yeah, I think they do. I think they do. And they lie because they don't search out the truth. They get involved in incidents that do not have a clear answer and in the process of explaining those or trying to avoid those, they say things that aren't true. Now, we don't like to call those lies, maybe because it isn't quite bold enough. It isn't quite obvious enough.

MR. LEHRER: People ask people who interview people on television all the time why they don't ask them--when they ask a question, they hear an answer back that they know is wrong, they don't lean over and say, liar. It's not what we do.

MR. BRADLEE: You'd get a lot of listeners if you do.

As Lehrer says at the top of the interview, he and Bradlee have had discourses on these topics frequently in the past. Here's guessing the ones not captured by cameras have been more illuminating.

David Sefton, the witty and charismatic programmer of UCLA Live, unveiled the 2006-07 season Monday night at Royce Hall.

Sefton's song-and-dance is entertaining unto itself, a kind of salesmanship-as-performance-art. He was addressing both longtime subscribers and the art-world barnacles that are the media. He was pitching avant-garde theater, dance and opera performances, as well as more familiar, if still rarefied, pop experiences.

Sefton, originally from England, has what many would consider a dream job. He travels the planet in search of cutting-edge performances, then brings them (sometimes, after protracted negotiations) to Los Angeles.

His enthusiasm can be infectious, though while selling many of the productions on next season's slate, a familiar refrain emerged: "This is the one." "This is a must-see." "This is the big one. "Yet another unmissable thing."

After a while, he reminded me of the emails I receive from descarga.com, a New-York-based distributor of Latin music, in which every CD and DVD reviewed is "highly recommended" or "very highly recommended." If a recording has the bad luck to be merely "recommended," then you know it's a chunk of crap.

Some of the things Sefton was particularly high on: "The Peony Pavillion," from China's Suzhou Kun Opera of Jiangsu Province, a nine-hour opera spread over three nights ("You don't have to see it all," Sefton insisted, to everyone in attendances' relief); Mabou Mines' "Dollhouse," an iteration of the Ibsen play with all male parts played by midgets (No --I'm not making this up); STO Union's "Recent Experiences," in which a Canadian experimental-theater troupe performs a show about several generations of a family traipsing through the 20th century, encircled by a table at which the (very limited) audience (only 70 a performance) sits; and "Slava's Snowshow," a Russian clown show boasting a "snowstorm" that nearly blinds the audience. (This one, truth be told, looked pretty cool; it'll run from December through early January.)

Some of the things we mere mortals might find of interest: Woody Allen will finally bring his jazz band beyond the environs of that New York dinner club for a show on Dec. 16. Lucinda Williams will perform with her poet laureate father Miller on Nov. 30. Perla Batalla will host an evening of Leonard Cohen songs reconfigured as gospel raves, performed by Kris Kristofferson, Bill Frisell, Don Was and a host of others, on Feb. 24, 2007. "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau will meet his public on Oct. 25. And Brian Wilson will present the only 40th-anniversary tribute to the Beach Boys' classic "Pet Sounds" on Nov. 1.

After introducing this schedule, Sefton took questions from the audience. Someone asked him what percentage of the UCLA Live 2006-07 schedule represented his theater experiences while traversing the planet. A mere five percent at best, Sefton answered -- "95 percent I didn't book -- and, boy, do you owe me!"

Fans of "Invasion" continue to make last-gasp efforts to rescue their program from its ignominious cancellation. They started imploring like-minded individuals to mail bottles of water to ABC Entertainment president Stephen McPherson (not because he's in dire need of hydration, just because it ties in in some way to the show's hurricane conceit) and, today, flew a banner over ABC's Burbank HQ again beseeching McPherson to reconsider.

"Veronica Mars" die-hards employed the same banner gambit, and their efforts were repaid by the show receiving a third-season pickup. But the "Mars" banner flew over UPN back when the show was on the bubble, and before May's upfront presentation, when The CW network -- retooled from bits and pieces of UPN and The WB -- announced its fall schedule. Also, Dawn Ostroff -- who originally scheduled "Veronica" -- was considered likely to bring the low-rated show to The CW as part of her UPN bragging rights (a higher-rated WB series, "Everwood," failed to make the cut for next season's schedule).

Likewise, die-hard "Deadwood" fans, although caught off-guard by HBO's decision not to renew its second-most-popular series before the third season even premiered, responded quickly with emails to the pay-cable network and an ad in Daily Variety that appeared less than a week after the possibility of its cancellation was first floated. HBO responded by announcing two two-hour films that will provide narrative closure for the show's characters -- and, more importantly, its fans.

By contrast, this effort on behalf of "Invasion" comes fairly late in the game, almost a month after ABC announced its "Invasion"-free fall schedule. "Invasion," as intermittently clever as it was, simply could not hold on to a sizable percentage of its lead-in, "Lost" -- it, well, lost almost half the viewers who had tuned into ABC the previous hour. So, though it had a decent viewership, the consensus at ABC was that its numbers should've been even better, and that there wasn't much of a chance that they would grow significantly in a second season. (Next year, following "Lost," ABC will air "The Nine," a series about nine disparate individuals brought together after surviving a hostage situation. ABC also has something called "Six Degrees," which is about six disparate individuals brought together under far vaguer circumstances than a hostage situation.)

"Invasion's" champions, at the least, hope for a TV-movie that'd wrap up the show, which concluded with what has become a tradition -- the season-ending whopper of a cliffhanger. If ABC can gather enough of the cast, it's something the network might consider, and sooner, rather than later. (There are already grumblings that HBO's "Deadwood" movies may not actually come to pass, as series creator David Milch wouldn't be able to get around to writing them until after he completes the first season of his new show for HBO, "John From Cincinnati.") They also hold out hopes that someone like The CW or the Sci Fi Channel might pick up the series (again, as the cast as been released to seek out new jobs, this would likely prove a tricky proposition).

Anyway, here's hoping that plane toting the "Invasion" banner returned to its airport safely and didn't wind up crashing on some remote, deserted island. Though that might make for a good TV show.

Is "The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift" a movie or a video game? Hard to discern from the ads...

I wonder if the actors in it even had a clue.

Last week, for a profile of actress Kyra Sedgwick, I interviewed Kevin Bacon, who directed his wife in "Loverboy," a film opening Friday starring Sedgwick in an obsessive mother-son relationship (the second season of her TNT cop series "The Closer" premieres tonight at 9, making the actress this week's hardest-working woman in Hollywood):

Q: How does working with your wife as a director or co-star differ from working with another actress?

Bacon: Well, I’m sleeping with her. Nowadays, I’m not sleeping with all the actresses I work with.

Good answer, and after his joke, Bacon answered my query far more thoroughly and thoughtfully. But a blog is a blog, not Le Petit Monde des Films Français, so we'll leave it at that.

Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" was the big winner tonight at the Tonys, winning six trophies, tying the 1949 production of "Death of a Salesman" for most for a play.

Bennett's brilliant, acerbic script about British students preparing for university-entry exams from teachers with differing points of view as to what's educationally valuable was named Best Play, naturally; Richard Griffiths was named Best Actor as a controversial instructor and Frances de la Tour was named Best Featured Actress for her droll if too brief turn as a colleague. (To be fair, pretty much everyone in the cast is terrific.)

In the musical category, it was a tight race between "Jersey Boys," which won four Tonys, including Best Musical, and "The Drowsy Chaperone," which won five, including Best Score (for which "Jersey Boys" -- a "jukebox musical" -- was ineligible) and Best Book.

I saw "History Boys" last month; the link above offers what I had to say about it at the time. I'm returning to New York later this week and will likely see one or two more productions (perhaps including "The Drowsy Chaperone"), so you'll be blessed with my thoughts on it or them early next week.

You have to hand it to Ricky Gervais. The "Office" and "Extras" creator has a book coming out in September, "Ricky Gervais Presents The World of Karl Pilkington," featuring the jaw-droppingly inane meanderings of the one-time producer of his British radio series who eventually became the star of his podcasts. Karl's proclamation, "I could eat a knob at night" (use your imagination how this came about), was transformed into a bunch of DJ hip-hop remixes and T-shirts that circled the globe on the Internet.

In a video podcast (scroll down at this site to the second iFilm offering), Gervais, sitting with PIlkington, who's sketching doodles of some his more lunatic anecdotes, declares this latest effort "the sort of book that you'd find written in (excrement) under the floorboards of a serial killer's house."

Which no doubt expands the product's demographic somewhat significantly.

During this week in which the Senate, as expected, dithered to no real end over adding an Amendment to the Constitution denying gays the right to get married (does your own marriage feel a little less stable because of this?), I stumbled (clumsy oaf that I am) upon both a pop song and a short story dealing directly with the issue, both more gracefully than our hired hands in Washington.

T Bone Burnett's "Blinded by the Darkness," off his new album "The True False Identity," argues against the Amendment in terms that its proponents can understand:

"Do we want to inject the concept of sin/Into the Constitution/Is this really necessary/Does this not make you somewhat wary/Shouldn't sin be left to the laws of God/And to the laws of Nature/Can we trust this to the legislature"

Burnett, a liberal Christian (best known as a producer -- he won the Best Album Grammy for the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack, and produced arguably both Los Lobos and Elvis Costello's best albums), does here refer to homosexuality as a "sin," but I think that's more to make his point to those with whom he's debating, and anyway, "Should lifestyle choice be left to the laws of God" doesn't have the same zip. He continues:

"If sin were dealt with by the laws of man/everybody would be in jail for life"

Meanwhile, George Saunders, author of the hilarious short-story collections "Civil War Land in Bad Decline" and "Pastoralia," offers these amusingly unhinged thoughts in "My Amendment," an epistle in his new book "In Persuasion Nation:"

"In the town where I live, I have frequently observed a phenomenon I have come to think of Samish-Sex Marriage. Take, for example, 'K,' a male friend of mine, of slight build, with a ponytail. 'K' is married to 'S,' a tall, stocky female with extremely short hair, almost a crew cut. Often, while watching 'K' play with his own ponytail as 'S' towers over him, I have wondered, Isn't it odd that this somewhat effeminate man should be married to this somewhat masculine woman? Is 'K' not, at some level, imperfectly expressing a slight latent desire to be married to a man? And is not 'S,' at some level, imperfectly expressing a slight latent desire rot be married to a woman?
"Then I ask myself, Is this truly what God had in mind? ...
"I, for one, am sick and tired of this creeping national tendency to let certain types of people take advantage of our national good nature by marrying individuals who are essentially of their own gender."

Taken together, Burnett and Saunders have found clever ways of reframing the debate and making those advocating a Constitutional Amendment look even more foolish. Kudos to them.

(By the way, Burnett will perform at the El Rey Theatre June 20; Saunders appeared recently at Skylight Books in Los Feliz.)

Lewis Black, the most apoplectic man in show business, returns with a hilarious HBO special that will give comfort to those thoroughly disgusted with today’s political landscape – or, as Ann Coulter might put it, The Enemy.

“Lewis Black: Red, White and Screwed� (10 p.m. Saturday, as well as 11 p.m. Wednesday, 10:30 p.m. June 19, 12:30 a.m. June 23 and 10 p.m. June 27) offers a monumental screed against politicians in general, but, naturally, particularly the party in power and its distinctive approach to Katrina, evolution and gay marriage.

Here’s Black’s very helpful suggestion on how to scrap the 2008 election and find a real leader: “When ‘American Idol,’ when they vote and there’s a winner, the winner is immediately blindfolded. A map of the United States is put in front of them and they’re given a dart, and they throw it. Wherever it hits, that is where we have the monkey, and we put him on a plane and we fly him. And he goes to the spot that’s on the map and then we put a parachute on him and push the little (expletive) out. And then he hits the ground and starts walking around. And whoever’s hand he grabs first, that’ll be the President.�

OK, we’ve finally found the blogging equivalent of watching paint dry, or perhaps even of watching dry paint stay dry: The New York Times is live-blogging the World Cup matches in Germany.

Now, I’m not a huge soccer fan, but I’ll probably watch a match or two over the coming weeks. But the operative word is watch, not read a play-by-play.

I’ll save you the trouble of clicking on the link. Here’s pretty much how this thing works:

2 minutes in: Scheissepacker lofts an arcing shot that dribbles out of bounds near the goal. The crowd is electrified from their stupor by what may have been the first shot of the World Cup.

13 minutes in: Kleinekopf kicks it to Kuhlschrank, who dribbles it for a few seconds and then passes it back to Kleinekopf. The crowd is absolutely beside itself with mild interest.

27 minutes in: Aiselkopf rotates to the left, while Elban~o challenges him aggressively. Unfortunately, Liebeschtick has the ball on the other side of the field. This crowd has never quietly sat in their seats with such frenzy.

35 minutes in: GOOOOOAAALL!
Morgenwood chips in a floater past Mocoso, and everyone jumps around quite a bit. The polite applause is deafening.

42 minutes in: The game is falling into a pattern: Germany sets up a semicircle of teammates and punts it back and forth among one another while chanting “You are getting sleepy,� lulling Costa Rica into a deep hypnotic trance. It’s a brilliant strategy that has kept several members of the crowd thoroughly engaged.

Halftime: Is the paint dry yet?

I've said it before, but this is a far more interesting blog.

Now here's a season finale: I've found most that I've seen in the past couple of months a little on the underwhelming side, but "Dr. Who" (9 p.m. Friday on the Sci Fi Channel) again threatens to blow up the entire universe, and you sort of have to get behind that.

Longtime Who foes the Daleks (which sort of look like ornate Victorian park wastebins transformed into pokey little robots) again rear their ugly little -- well, not heads, exactly. For bonus fiendishness, there's the God of the Daleks, who is determined to subjegate the human race. His army of Daleks were once human, which inspires The Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) to go on a little tirade:

"Driven mad by your own flesh -- the stink of humanity -- you hate your own existence, and that makes them more dangerous than ever." That took me out of the show a bit, because I thought for a second he was addressing me personally.

All The Doctor has on his side is a hastily thrown-together gadget that will produce a "Delta Wave," which, granted, will "kill every living thing in its path," but on the upside, no more "According to Jim."

"Better to die a human than to live a Dalek," is the thinking here, but can The Doctor do it? Can he destroy the known universe (and parts of the unknown one, as well)?

Before he makes his decision, he sends Rose (Billie Piper), his traveling companion for the past season, back to the relative safety of present-day London. This, naturally, doesn't set well with her.

Not to give anything away (that you couldn't've found online anyway), but Eccleston -- who was a quite entertaining Doctor -- gives way her to his replacement for the next season (which is currently airing in England), David Tennant ("Viva Blackpool," "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire").

A whole bunch of people are killed in this episode (most offscreen), and fortunately, they kill off the robot Anne Robinson ("You are the weakest link -- good-bye") they introduced in an earlier episode.

I sure did. Not that I've seen the show; I can't tell you whether Thursday night's broadcast will be clever or stupid (it's been both in the past), and I can only definitively assure you that host Jessica Alba will look awfully cute.
But what I have been enjoying since the ceremonies were taped last weekend was how much better taste the presumably witless kids who voted for these awards exhibited compared to the clueless old duffers at the academy.
Stop reading here if you haven't already heard the widely reported results and want to be surprised tonight.

"Do you think television is bad?" a network executive urgently asks Matt Albie (Matthew Perry) and Danny Tripp (Bradley Whitford) in a scene from Aaron Sorkin's upcoming return to TV, NBC's highly anticipated fall series "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." He's asking in resonse to a screed delivered live, on-air, by the former producer of a once-cutting-edge sketch-comedy series that has echoes of the diatribes Paddy Chayefsky's Howard Beale uncorked in the 1976 classic "Network." Sorkin's redux eviscerates television programming for having evolved into pabulum that serves essentially to distract viewers from the more urgent issues facing the world today.

In Washington, however, Congress apparently doesn't believe that what appears on our TVs is lobotomized enough: It today passed an indecency bill that will escalate fines tenfold for whatever the FCC, with the assistance of its good friends of the religious right who besiege it with mass emails crafted by censorious watchdog groups, deems offensive. So, yes, Washington thinks TV is bad, and has finally found an industry it's willing to legislate. All for the sake, of course, of the children, who may breathe polluted air and eat foods that will make them sick but not have access to the medical care that could help them. At least they won't see breasts or hear common playground epithets on network TV.

Which might provide fodder for an interesting showdown come the fall: Sorkin's pilot is highly critical of the FCC's crackdown in lieu of myriad current events, arguing that the vast wasteland has become vaster and filled with ever more waste, as timid broadcasters self-censor anything they fear might incur the wrath of people who reject the notion of evolution. The pilot feels like a gauntlet thrown, at both the FCC and NBC -- Sorkin's series seems to vow to dance on the knife's edge of willful provocation (one sketch referred to but not shown -- in the pilot, at least -- is entitled "Crazy Christians").

Sorkin hopes to examine our relationship with television -- both what we seek from it and what we should ask of it, both what it provides us and what it should provide. Clearly, Sorkin believes we should ask more of broadcasters, while Washington wants us to expect less from the industry -- safe, mollifying fare that'll ease our worries while the Department of Homeland Security slashes the budgets of terrorists' targets and the NSA collects and collates all manner of information about us that was previously off-limits due to privacy laws and the price of gasoline reduces the quality of life for all but oil-company executives.

Clearly, Sorkin wants to lob some Molotov cocktails at contemporary society. Will NBC, who'll have to foot the bill if he crosses some ill-defined line, cheer him on from the sidelines?

This anecdote has precious little to do with entertainment, but, given that we have all apparently survived 6/6/06 without Armageddon encroaching any further upon us than it already has, it serves as a glimpse at rudderless hysteria and the lengths to which a bored college kid (namely, me) will go to perk up one's life in a small Midwestern town. And, heck, this has to be at least nominally more involving than the new "Omen" remake.

This takes place about a quarter-century ago. (Hence, spoiler alert: I survive.) I was home from college and unable to find a summer job worthy of my abilities, or lack of same. While scanning one day the local paper's want ads, I came upon this listing, placed within a bold black box:

Wanted:
EXORCIST.
Discretion a must.

A post-office box address was listed.

I responded to the ad.

Employing, naturally, a fake name (it's been a while, but, if memory serves, it struck me later that the name I used probably sounded more Jewish than Catholic, but then, I was a pretty cluelessly callow kid in those days), I presented myself as a student at a small, arcane Catholic college in a tiny Colorado town, where, I explained, I had taken several courses studying demonic possession and the ritual of exorcism.

A few days later, I received a terse reply, reading (paraphrasing -- my memory isn't that good), "Thank you for your response. Please contact the number below in order to complete our transaction."

Very vague. Very smooth, I thought. These guys are pros.

(At this point, it should be noted that the film "The Exorcist" had come out nearly a decade earlier, but had recently been in heavy rotation on HBO -- this was back when HBO only showed movies and wasn't known for its original programming. So quite likely someone had seen the film and decided that possession by a demon was the only reasonable explanation for a relative's quirky behavior. Meanwhile, I had gone about pricing little bottles in which to fill "holy water" from the tap. It was odd that such bottles seemed readily available.)

The letterhead on the note was for a downtown Evansville accounting firm. Tony, a friend of mine (also home from college, also unemployed, also bored out of his skull), and I drove to the address. The entrance to the building opened into a small, empty foyer with not so much as even a potted plant -- there was an elevator and a small sign listing three or four businesses in the floors above, including the accounting firm. Tony and I decided the building was too small to go cavorting in the office space above, so we looked up the home address for the guy who sent the reply.

So here's where it gets a little odd. The respondent's home address was in a spookily remote area far outside town -- spooky, even for broad daylight; it was on a narrow gravel road off another gravel road. From the road, we could see but a corner of a distant house amidst trees and thick brush. No other house was visible in the area.

Intrepidly, we opted to venture up the (of course) gravel driveway for a better view. A quarter-mile later, we were no closer to seeing any more of the house. We stopped and agreed that trespassing any further would put us at a point of no return, and since we were both clad in the summer-college-student uniform of T-shirts, shorts and running shoes, we hardly looked like professional exorcists were anyone to see us. We came upon a small clearing and decided to turn around and make a clean getaway.

Well, good idea in theory. I pulled my car into the clearing, driving a smidgen too far into some tall-but-not-that-tall grass; my front two tires dropped into a small ditch obscured by the growth. I kicked the stick into reverse and floored it and the car remained resolutely stuck in place, with gravel and dirt spraying madly into the undercarriage.

Tony got out to try to push the car out of the rut. We looked behind us and -- there was another car coming up the winding driveway. Oh, geez (using the term advisedly). Busted.

I floored the accelerator again; Tony leaned his all into the front of the car -- and, almost miraculously, we were free. Though those in the other car -- a large, old, ominous-probably-only-under-the-circumstances sedan -- had stopped in the narrow driveway which led the way to our escape, I, having learned nothing from my very recent venture into tall grass, plowed through even taller grass next to the sedan and escaped, gravel again kicking up under the car like a hailstorm in reverse. (Thoughtfully, I had allowed Tony time to scramble back into my car.)

I made no further attempt to contact the accounting firm, nor did it try to contact my nom de plume.

A most anti-climactic yarn, I'll concede. Hindsight -- a quarter of a century later, there doesn't seem to be any anti-Christ roaming the Earth, not one from Indiana, at least -- suggests we panicked for naught. And the guy from the accounting firm could merely have been a go-between for another party with a possessed family member (though if you knew someone with satanic spirits roiling around inside him/her, would you really hire an accountant to do your bidding? no, you'd probably go straight to Bert Fields and Anthony Pellicano), and who's to say we even got the right address?

Still, a lesson for us all. Even if the lesson is only, don't be a jackass and respond to want ads you have no business responding to.

So "The Sopranos" and "Big Love" ended their season finales -- or, in the case of "Sopranos," its "mid-season finale" -- and neither seemed all that satisfying. Which seems to be in keeping with many of the season finales I've seen this past month.

(Naturally, there will be spoilers in the ensuing debriefings.)

With a mere eight episodes to go before its conclusion, "The Sopranos" seems to have engaged in a lot of narrative wheel-spinning in its 12 episodes this season. Tony got shot by Uncle Junior as the season began and spent three subsequent episodes hallucinating (or something) and recuperating, and then much of the season was spent exploring the fact that one of Tony's generals was gay. None of this seemed to be advancing the overall plot all that much.

Sunday's episode was defined by a series of abrupt character developments: Christopher went back to using again, prompted by the hot real-estate agent played by Julianna Marguiles with whom Chris quickly entered into a tryst (and whom Tony had hit on earlier). Tony's son A.J. was transformed overnight from a sociopathic slacker into a fairly responsible kid capable of great kindnesses to his new girlfriend's young son. (Huh? One of the great moments of this season came when Tony wandered into A.J.'s bedroom and saw him IM'ing a friend with shrill giggles; Tony's expression of utter loathing at his own son was both truly disquieting and utterly understandable.) Phil, with whom Tony has been at odds all season, was suddenly felled with a heart attack. Carmela's building project was conveniently revived anew. And a Fed warned Tony, in some convenient exposition, that someone -- he didn't specify -- wants to kill someone -- again, he didn't specify -- close to Tony.

We close on a Christmas party at Tony's, where civility borders on grimness of spirit. End of story. Until next year.

And, so? Many of the developments seemed too vague to really add up to much. Creator David Chase initially only wanted the show's final season to be a mere 10 episodes, but was somehow convinced to expand it to 20, explaining he found more stories to tell. But it's hard to see, from the 12 we've seen, how this narrative needed to be expanded -- or, rather, stretched -- this far to such little impact.

Meanwhile, HBO's "Big Love" (fun fact: type in "Big Love" at imdb.com and the first entry that comes up in a search is, inexplicably enough, "Herbie: Fully Loaded") concluded its first season with polygamist Bill Henrickson's life unraveling. Though he was making inroads against one of his fathers-in-law, the sociopathic compound leader Roman, his standing in the community was unraveling as the truth of his polygamy was emerging.

This, due to wife Barb's accepting to be a Mother-of-the-Year nominee. (Really, would a family with so many secrets invite such attention?) At episode's end, the manner in which a certain shot was handled left the way season two's storylines would evolve ambiguous. At the Mother-of-the-Year ceremony, Barb's polygamy was surreptitiously discovered. Though the officials of the event seemed to want to keep her secret under wraps, Bill, from amidst the ceremony's audience, demanded an explanation as to why she was disqualified. An official explained to Bill, in a tight two-shot, that they discovered the particulars of her polygamy. He didn't say this quietly, so the audience could conceivably have heard this, meaning Bill's standing in the community has been utterly destroyed.

On the other hand, the tight shot suggested that despite the actor's decible level, it really wasn't picked up by the group at large, so Bill may survive to assimilate into mainstream Utah society another day.

So "Big Love's" second season could open with Bill frazzled but still vaguely respectable, or it could send him back to the compound, which has been my least favorite part of the show, mainly because it's hard to apply layers of characterization to a lunatic, which Roman, the compound's leader, clearly is. One wonders just how many viewers have stuck with the show, however: It lost a sizable contingent immediately after its premiere.

In other HBO news, the network announced it will produce two "Deadwood" films that will tie up the series' sundry narrative strings in a neat and tidy bow. One might wonder how this might be possible, since the films are at this point scheduled to last but four hours, and series creator David Milch had previously declined HBO's invitation to wrap everything up in six hours, insisting it would take a full-season order of 12 hours to do justice to his characters.

(Information as to when these films will be shot -- or aired -- was not immediately available.)

In the meantime, "Deadwood" fans can wallow in my friend Matt Seitz's blog, which is this week dedicated, almost nonstop, to "Deadwood." Few write as eloquently, or as appreciatively, about "Deadwood" as Matt (and his contingent of contributors), so you're likely to learn more than you ever wanted to know about the show and the brilliance of David Milch's creative process.

Every year, the Television Critics Association announces the nominees for and, subsequently, the winners of its annual awards, and, every year, very few people take notice. A few celebrities show up when the awards are presented in July because, hey, it's been at least a couple of weeks since the previous kudofest banquet and, touchingly, a few people still believe the TCA Awards have some influence, however mild, on the Emmys.

You know how I know that the TCA Awards mean virtually nothing? Because I vote for them, and Earth/kismet/your-favorite-omnipotent-being-here has in its infinite wisdom decreed that I cannot get within 500 yards of anything in this world that is truly precious (consider it a spiritual restraining order). The trivial stuff, sure, bring it on -- I am, after all, a TV critic -- but the really important stuff is best left to the big boys like Kenneth Lay, Donald Rumsfeld and Michael Eisner.

The big surprise is that last year's big winner, "Desperate Housewives," is nowhere to be found amongst the nominees this year, which is no surprise if you watched the show this season. Anyway, here are the nominations:

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT IN COMEDY (Ostensibly, this can go to anyone who performs or writes on a comedy show; invariably, the nominees are always actors):
Steve Carell ("The Office"), Stephen Colbert ("The Colbert Report"), Lauren Graham ("Gilmore Girls"), Jason Lee ("My Name Is Earl"), Jon Stewart ("The Daily Show with Jon Stewart")
Prediction: Colbert, who, OK, is a performer-writer. He's had quite the year (having in fact invented the Word of the Year) and besides, critics are a notoriously needy bunch and if they don't give him the award, he'll declare on his show that we're all "dead to" him. And we don't want that. Barring that, everyone li