There is some fairly regular cross over between the world of the tube and the stage. Theater stars get noticed and then they plucked up by sitcoms., etc. It happened to Mary-Louise Parker among others.

Anyway, at the Emmys last night, best supporting actor winner Jeremy Piven of "Entourage" _ who acknowledged that a bit of the dog hair had been consumed _ made a point of saying he was straight. Guess he felt we ought to know this because his sister was his date INSTEAD of his mother Joyce. Mama Piven would have been his date, except that she was busy opening a play at the 99 seat theater the family runs in Evanston, Ill. The Piven Theatre Workshop.

Not quite accurate, but close.

Joyce Piven will indeed direct "What Dreams May Come: American Visions Through Jewish Eyes," but it opens in November. In fact, her most recent project, "Suffragette Kones," a series of short tales about five turn of the century women, opened Sept. 15 at Burbank's Victory Theatre Center. How that opening kept Mrs P. from Red Carpet-ing it with her son Sunday escapes me, but I guess that was sister Shira Piven's gain.

Did you catch the cast of "Jersey Boys" serenading "The Sopranos?" What, like that money printing musical needs MORE publicity? What on earth was a rather clean and happy show (I know, I know. The Four Seasons had some mob ties) doing singing "Walk Like a Man" and "Who Loves You" to clips of "The Sopranos"?

Back in the press tent, nobody could figure out what to ask the JB's John Lloyd Young, Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer. "Uh, what are you doing here?" "Which of you gets the next sitcom?"

So they harmonized a few bars and got the hell out of there.

Wish they would have brought back "Tony Bennett: An American Classic" winner Rob Marshall. Might have been fun to ask the "Chicago" director about the progress of the movie, "Nine" he's supposed to be helming.

Which brings me in the most roundabout way to one of favorite interview anecdotes. It will connect. Bear with me.

About five years ago now (!), I was interviewing former "Frazier" iceberg Bebe Neuwirth (a two time Emmy winner, BTW) about the movie "Tadpole." Well, Neuwirth is a creature of the theater, and a dancer. I had seen her several years before that in a revival of "Damn Yankees" in San Diego before it went to Broadway.

When I mentioned I had seen the production, Neuwirth winced. Not my best work, she said. She hadn't clicked with the production's choreographer. I don't remember the exact quote, but she basically said that while she was a dancer in the style of Bob Fosse (and had won her two Tony awards in Fosse musicals), the "Damn Yankees" choreographer didn't really work in that style.

That choreographer was, of course, Rob Marshall who would go on a couple of years later to direct the movie "Chicago." And Catherine Zeta Jones, playing the part Neuwirth played on Broadway, won an Oscar.

OK, so maybe it doesn't connect THAT well to Emmys, but I like to tell it anyway.