December 2006 Archives

There's a finite amount of space in a print newspaper, which means that stories get cut up a lot. Such is not the case with the Internets, where people can be real windy gasbags. Hence, here's a vaguely more coherent version of today's year-end recap in the Daily News.

With a deteriorating war in Iraq, a do-nothing Congress and endless partisan political bickering, Americans needed distractions from the wearying realities of 2006 more than ever.
And celebrities were more than happy to oblige, bemusing us with all nature of bad and bizarre behavior during the year. Most of what we’ll remember about 2006 had little to do with celebrities’ actual work and instead had everything to do with their off-screen lives. Of course, their off-screen lives, thanks to camera phones and Internet uplinks, popped up nonetheless onscreen, albeit a slightly smaller one.
The new-media phenomenon failed to curb old-school bad behavior, though.

1) If They Did It

One of the biggest stories of 2006 ended up, gratifyingly, not happening. Judith Regan announced a book ghost-written for O.J. Simpson entitled “If I Did It,� a hypothetical confessional. As a bonus for the illiterate, she personally interviewed Simpson, to air – where else? – on Fox (which also owned her publishing house).
Fox was ill-prepared for the resulting firestorm. Regan didn’t help matters with her portentous explanation: “I wanted him, and the men who broke my heart and your hearts, to tell the truth, to confess their sins, to do penance and to amend their lives. Amen.�
The project was quashed. Regan was eventually fired, ostensibly for responding, to an attorney informing her that yet another salacious book was unreleasable, with anti-Semitic invective. Which brings us to…

2) Celebrity Racism

Regan had to make do with the silver medal for 2006’s most-famous anti-Semitic rant. Mel Gibson took the gold with an apocalyptic outburst after Malibu police stopped him for driving nearly twice the Pacific Coast Highway’s speed limit. Mel blamed his harangue – which blamed the Jewish race for all wars (was Mel home-schooled?) – on alcohol, checking into rehab, a popular gambit amongst 2006’s notorious wrongdoers.
Unfortunately for Michael Richards, he couldn’t blame too much booze coursing through his veins for his shocking performance at the Laugh Factory, where he repeatedly dropped the N-bomb at hecklers. His subsequent apology on “Late Show with David Letterman� was so awkward that Jerry Seinfeld beseeched the crowd to quit laughing.
Virginia Senator George Allen more or less torpedoed his re-election campaign when he referred to a man of Indian descent as “Macaca,� a francophone African racial slur (Allen’s mother grew up French-colonial Tunisia).
Sadly, we’re just getting started discussing celebrity bad behavior.

3) Celebrity Breakups and Feuds

2006 was a bad year for celebrity couples. We’ll never again think of Paul McCartney as “the cute Beatle� after his ex, Heather Mills, talked smack about his uncute behavior. Reese Witherspoon had a “Star-is-Born� rollercoaster year, winning an Oscar then filing for divorce from philandering Ryan Phillippe.
At least she had an up moment. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown called it quits after years of foundering. Britney Spears dumped her gold-digging, late-night-show punchline. Funniest divorce of the year went to Pam Anderson and Kid Rock, splitting mere months after marrying because Kid went postal over Pam’s good-humored appearance in the “Borat� film.
But a spouse wasn’t required for an ugly run-in. Candy Spelling was so appalled with her depiction on a Tori Spelling TV series that she withheld scads of money when Tori’s dad, Aaron, one of Hollywood’s richest men, died. Rush Limbaugh taunted Michael J. Fox, accusing the Parkinson’s-afflicted actor of over-acting in a TV commercial advocating stem-cell research.
Billionaire boor Brandon Davis’s drunken tirade about Lindsay Lohan’s ladyparts (about which more later) wouldn’t’ve made this list were Paris Hilton not strolling alongside him, not trying very hard to conceal a smirk during his diatribe.
Then, out of nowhere, Rosie O’Donnell lashed out at Donald Trump for – well, we’re not quite sure. Trump pardoned a party-hardy Miss USA instead of rescinding her title, which offended Rosie, who also accused him of grandstanding (a funny charge coming from someone who once ran a magazine named after herself) and, naturally, having bad hair.
Trump did what any sane individual would have done and – no, wait, he did what he would’ve done: slagged O’Donnell recklessly, calling her “disgusting� and comparing her to those who plunged American into war with Iraq. What if he hadn’t toned it down?

4) Plain Old Bad Behavior

Surprise: Paris Hilton turns up here, too, sashaying through the social scene with very little under her party dresses (current partner in partying Britney Spears recently unveiled the same fashion statement). And if you see her behind the wheel, run: She was seen hitting a car in a parking lot and sped away. Later, she was arrested for DUI.
Hilton’s former BFF, Nicole Richie, did Paris one better, not only getting tagged for a DUI but doing so while driving east in the westbound lanes of the 134 in Burbank. Filmmaker Gus Van Sant and actor Rip Torn also clocked DUI’s; Torn won the coveted trophy for Funniest Mug Shot.
Perhaps no one, however, knocked back more magical elixir than Lindsay Lohan, who received a very public crackback when her after-hours misadventures interfered with her work on the film “Georgia Rule;� producer James G. Robinson sent her a widely leaked memo sternly addressing her misbehavior. Lohan’s bewildering manifestos issued from her Blackberry, which could use a spell-check function, didn’t help.
Denise Richards threw laptops at paparazzi but instead injured some elderly women. Jessica Simpson had a bizarre meltdown before President Bush and a star-studded crowd while trying to perform Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5;� she was excised from the event’s televised version.
And Anna Nicole Smith’s reaction to losing her 20-year-old son only days after giving birth
to a daughter was to stage a fake wedding and then sell the last photos of him, as well as video of her C-section, to gossip shows and a tabloid. Do not expect to find her image in any dictionary alongside the definition of “classy.�

5) YouTube, MySpace Conquer the World

Just about all of the aforementioned bad behavior could be found online at sites such as YouTube and TMZ.com. In fact, most of this would never have become news in the first place were it not for the proliferation of websites where short films can easily be uploaded for the bemusement of others, as well as websites trucking in scandal and gossip.
Had a Laugh Factory patron not whipped out a cell-phone camera, Richards’ career wouldn’t likely have been considered finished. Absent YouTube, George Allen would still be in the Senate. But once Internet viewers saw the offending viral videos, both men’s lives were transformed.
TMZ revealed Gibson’s arrest and Davis trashing Lohan. TheSmokingGun.com gained further notoriety for providing celebrity mugshots, embarrassing legal documents and Lohan’s boss’s scolding; it also exposed James Frey’s “A Million Little Pieces� as a fraud, resulting in Oprah Winfrey’s dressing the author down.
But such sites can also improve careers: Pop band OK Go achieved stardom after charming fans with quirkily choreographed MySpace videos. Jessica Rose became a sensation thanks to films carrying her YouTube moniker, lonelygirl15.
Other stars exploded exploiting the Internet. Stephen Colbert ingeniously turned his Comedy Central series “The Colbert Report� into an interactive funhouse, inviting fans to manipulate online footage of his antics, imploring them to vandalize Wikipedia and cajoling them into voting for him in an online contest to name a bridge in Hungary (he won in a landslide). When footage of his turn at the White House Correspondents Dinner appeared online, his TV ratings soared 37 percent in a week.
Similarly, online offerings of Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comments� criticizing the Bush Administration caused ratings for his MSNBC show “Countdown� jump 45 percent in the last three months.
Movies, however, had mixed success using the web as a launching pad. Sacha Baron Cohen’s MySpace site for “Borat,� alongside Borat clips on YouTube, helped transform the comedy into a $100-million blockbuster. “Snakes on a Plane,� not so much.
And when a stingray killed “Croc Hunter� Steve Irwin in September, scores of fans posted films which were viewed by thousands of other fans, offering their emotional responses to his death on YouTube. YouTube’s impact was underscored in October, when Google bought it for $1.65 billion.

6) In the Family Way

When Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt adopted an Ethiopian baby to join Jolie’s Cambodian child (she’s said to be eying an imminent Indian adoption), Madonna, not to be outdone, snatched herself a Malawian son. Just one problem: The kid’s father wavered on whether he wanted his boy in Madonna’s mitts.
Pitt and Jolie also expanded their family the old-fashioned way this year: Shiloh was born in May. The most hysterically received celebrity birth of 2006 was, of course, Suri Cruise, the mysterious progeny of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, kept under wraps for weeks until appearing in Vanity Fair in September.
Pop icons got in on the procreating craze, too. Before Britney Spears kicked Kevin Federline to the curb, she had their second child, a boy, in September. Sean Combs – currently known as Diddy; what he’ll call himself next week is anyone’s guess – had twin daughters with girlfriend Kim Porter earlier this month.

7) Death of the Album

The music industry continued to crater in 2006, as MySpace, YouTube and iTunes conspired to further their irrelevance. Fans could download music at their favorite bands’ MySpace sites, and while downloads of individual songs (usually hits) continued apace, sales of entire albums sagged.
The year’s bestselling album was Disney Channel’s movie soundtrack, “High School Musical;� other 2006 bestsellers included more Disney Channel product, soundtracks for “The Cheetah Girls� and “Hannah Montana.� Slate.com wondered, “What does it mean for popular music when 7-year-olds are the most reliable record buyers?�

8) Anchor Musical Chairs

Katie Couric, Meredith Vieira and Rosie O’Donnell all changed jobs in 2006; it worked out for two of them.
Replacing Vieira on “The View,� O’Donnell transformed it from coffee klatch into tag-team trash talk. O’Donnell offended Christians and, later, Chinese-Americans, bickered with Bill O’Reilly and, in accusing Kelly Ripa of homophobia, inadvertently outed Clay Aiken. Still, ratings rose.
Vieira moved to NBC’s “Today� show with nary a blip despite Couric’s exit: It’s still the top morning-news show.
Couric, of course, made news, not always in a good way. She became the first female solo anchor of a broadcast network’s evening newscast; viewership for her first week on “The CBS Evening News� was phenomenal. Since then, her numbers recently plunged below those of interim anchor Bob Schieffer.

9) Serialized Dramas Tank

Perhaps viewers in this attention-deficit disorder society prefer trolling YouTube short films: Despite critics’ claims that the 2006-07 season boasted the best programming in years, ratings tumbled. Network axes were quickly sharpened.
Hardest hit were serialized dramas. Capitalizing off previous successes “Grey’s Anatomy,� “Desperate Housewives� and “Lost,� over a dozen new serialized shows hit primetime. Viewers lacked the time or the wherewithal to attend to so many complicated narratives; many were quickly cancelled. Only “Heroes� and “Ugly Betty� emerged as bona fide hits.
As for those cancelled? Viewers seeking resolution could find it – you guessed it – online.

10) Mind-Bending Movies

Like Hiro, Masi Oka’s breakout character on “Heroes,� numerous films bent the time-space continuum. “Babel,� “Flags of Our Fathers,� “The Prestige,� “The Illusionist� “The Science of Sleep� featured storylines leaping back and forth in time, keeping audiences on their toes.
Hollywood seemed to enjoy messing with moviegoers’ minds this year. Other mind-blowing films include “Children of Men,� exploring a dystopic future on the verge of extinction, “Pan’s Labyrinth,� illuminating a young girl’s retreat into a fantasy world to escape the brutal reality of Franco’s Spain, and “A Scanner Darkly,� about a narcotics cop’s paranoid immersion into the very culture he’s supposed to be policing.
Still, “Borat� perhaps screwed with viewers’ minds most: Virtually every frame forced audiences to ask, is this real, or fake? Kid Rock couldn’t keep up; it cost him his marriage.
“Borat� most resembled the online revolution of viral videos, where it was likewise difficult to discern the real (Richards’ collapse) from the counterfeit (lonelygirl15). Which is appropriate for a year whose realities prompted us to immerse ourselves in fantasy.

While the rest of the blogosphere – and the world at large – is content to emphasize the whole “goodwill to men� sentiment of the season, Your Mayor, sagacious visionary that he’s forced into becoming, prefers to focus on its fecund feuds. And so, we turn our attentions today in this time of manufactured peace and a nominal lowering of hostilities to the realities of the age – specifically, the bemusing clash between bestselling novelist Michael Crichton and weeny liberal columnist Michael Crowley.

Long story (almost) short: Crichton, the author of “Jurassic Park,� “Rising Sun� and “Disclosure,� which variously railed against the evils confronting America via dinosaurs, the Japanese and women, respectively, released a novel entitled “State of Fear,� which essentially called b.s. on global warming.

Michael Crowley of The New Republic subsequently called b.s. on “State of Fear.� Crichton retaliated by including a very minor character in his latest novel, “Next� (in which genetics is bad! and stem-cell research is really bad! and science is bad! which is an odd take to come from a guy whose books tend to be based, to varying extents, on scientific advancements – if science didn’t exist, Crichton’d have to write about unicorns and chaste wizards pursued by evil wizards), a character named “Mick Crowley,� which Crichton described as “a Washington-based political columnist who was visiting his sister-in-law when he experienced an overwhelming urge to have anal sex with her young son, still in diapers. … Crowley's penis was small, but he had still caused significant tears to the toddler's rectum.�

Crowley, while deeply offended, tried to put on a brave face in a semi-whimsical essay informed by shadenfreude, stating, “I confess to having mixed feelings about my sliver of literary immortality. It's impossible not to be grossed out on some level – particularly by the creepy image of the smoldering Crichton, alone in his darkened study, imagining in pornographic detail the rape of a small child. It's uplifting, however, to learn that ‘Next's’ sales have proved disappointing by Crichton's standards, continuing what an industry newsletter dubs Crichton's ‘recent pattern of erosion.’�

Nice try. Your Mayor, however, aspires to yet another sliver of “literary immortality,� inviting Crichton to scurrilously libel me, by irking him while offering my own excerpt from my as-yet unpublished novel about Mikey Crockton, a “best-selling hack whose novels were cynically crafted to read more like movie treatments than actual movie treatments:�

“Crockton lifted himself from the winded, sweaty, twisted, notoriously amoral form that was Judith Regan, a craven publisher of prurient, salacious garbage that titillated the unwashed masses, and, gasping for breath, asked, ‘What if I did a book about a celebrity murderer who eluded conviction - and wrote it from his standpoint – and made him the good guy?’

“She bit him with a saucy kiss. ‘Go for it,’ she purred, her bosoms heaving.�

Your Mayor expects Crichton’s next book to feature a character named “Don Konkey,� a “schizophrenic� entertainment media giant whose clouded judgment taints his efforts to report judiciously on the industry he’s been charged to cover, resulting in outrageously prurient and unjustifiable coverage of entertainment icons.

Oh, wait: That’s already happened.

While many weblog authors are offering you and yours joyous no doubt sincere holiday greetings, only Your Mayor has seen fit to present you with an actual gift. Well, it’s something of a re-gifting, but it’s still pretty swell: Ricky Gervais’s Christmas podcast.

As usual, the podcast doesn’t so much focus on Gervais or his longtime collaborator Stephen Merchant (their HBO series “Extras� returns Sunday, Jan. 14), but on Gervais’s personal curmudgeonly chimp, Professional Idiot Karl Pilkington, who here shares these insights:

* Despite the year’s many (and mainly gloomy) events, Karl declares 2006 The Year of the Grub, and explains why. His insights may astound you. Or, they may just have you shaking your head in bewilderment.

* The Three Wise Men started out too strong: “What did they get the second year for the baby Jesus?� Karl believes they should’ve started out with just myrrh and worked up to the gold as the years went by.

* “You won’t get anything done by planning,� Karl’s tortured justification for not spending his valuable idle hours fretting over what to get his girlfriend for the holidays. Stephen chides Karl, “It’s not like you’re doing some important neuro-science work and we’re taking you away from that.�

* “News is better when it’s old.� That way, Karl reasons, you’re not so bummed out when you hear it, because its painful ramifications aren’t so fresh.

There’s more, and the podcast concludes with Gervais’s own Christmas song, perhaps one of the most appalling ever, an almost lovely acoustic ditty about terminal orphans. Happy listening, happy holidays and Feel Good, James Brown, wherever you are.

NEW YORK (AP) - Much of Manhattan was in flames late this afternoon, the result of escalating violence in the ongoing conflict between megalomaniacal television personality Donald Trump and megalomaniacal television personality Rosie O’Donnell.

President Bush declared a state of emergency, and ordered the National Guard in to restore calm, though New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg confessed to confidantes that he’s pessimistic that the city will ever be able to return to its halcyon pre-feud days.

Events got out of hand quickly in the confrontation, which began earlier in the week when O’Donnell mimicked Trump’s admittedly unfortunate hairstyle on her show “The View.� Trump responded by calling O’Donnell unflattering names. Trump later compared O’Donnell to those responsible for the war in Iraq.

O’Donnell then accused Trump of being Patient Zero in both the AIDS epidemic and the avian flu scare. Trump foundered briefly, pointing out once again that O’Donnell was overweight. He then ordered an airstrike on O’Donnell’s favorite Krispy Kreme outlet.

From there, hostilities heightened at a frightening clip. O’Donnell beat Trump’s daughter Ivanka senseless with a special illustrated edition of the heartwarming dog book “Marley & Me;� Ivanka was taken to a nearby emergency room, where sources said she appeared to be extremely disoriented, but that they could not rule that out as her usual condition. Trump had O’Donnell tranq’d and tagged, so that he could monitor her movements via a GPS system.

O’Donnell held a press conference declaring Trump responsible for global warming, Hurricane Katrina and most forms of cancer. She then hijacked Trump’s private jet and flew it into Trump Tower.

Trump retaliated with an almost unbridled ferocity, kidnapping O’Donnell’s adopted son Blake and feasting upon him with friends and acquaintances at a luau-themed party, then dropping a neutron bomb on O’Donnell’s upper-West Side condominium. For good measure, he called O’Donnell “fat, still.�

At that point, O’Donnell decided that enough was enough and brought out the big guns. She wrote a particularly awful poem about Trump on her blog:

trump
tramp
stomp
stump
wealth can’t buy u hair
wealth can’t buy u manners
u & ur beauty pageants
what would u no about beauty
it comes from within
and ur without

After that, it was clear that Trump could not endure another attack and he called immediately for a treaty to be drawn up. Peace talks are ongoing at the Krispy Kreme bunker in Trump Tower’s sub-basement, the only Manhattan location where both avowed enemies felt comfortable. Talks are expected to go through the night while the arduous process of cleaning up the devastation begins.

It certainly didn't take long for the cheery little flame war between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump to reach Defcon 1. Trump compared Rosie to the folks who started the war with Iraq, which isn't all that smart because

a) she made fun of his hair, for God's sake; she hasn't actually had anyone killed (Not that you know of, The Donald would conspiratorially reply), and

b) she's been pretty outspoken re: her disapproval of the war.

In response, Rosie purchased a Soviet-era ground-to-air shoulder-mounted missile launcher on the black market and blew a hole in Trump Tower.

Trump's complaining that Rosie lied about his going bankrupt and, well, technically, perhaps it was his casino corporation that filed for bankruptcy, not him personally, but that's parsing the facts in a way that not a whole lot of people are going to be able to appreciate.

The sad news is that the two picked the wrong time of year to start such a hyperbolically entertaining slapfest. By the time anyone's ready to pay attention to the outside world again - that is, in, say, 10 days - O'Donnell v. Trump will have lost its momentum. One or the other might attempt, wanly, to resuscitate it with another dumb comment - perhaps the first dumb comment of 2007! - but at that point the only sane response will be, aren't they over that yet?

Virtually everything’s in repeats tonight, so not only should we be grateful to the USA network for uncorking an original episode of “Monk� tonight, we should be doubly (or trebly, or quadruply) happy that it’s actually a very good episode.

For gimmicky reasons, the show’s producers have decided that the episode should be shot in black-and-white, like a film-noir flick from the ’50s. Tonight’s installment is entitled “Mr. Monk and the Leper,� and opens with Monk (Tony Shalhoub) tremulously entering a seedy bar, where a shadowy figure offers him $25,000 for one night’s work. Monk soon realizes that his client suffers from leprosy, severely elevating his level of panic as he realizes he shook hands – and Monk doesn’t like shaking hands with anybody – with a leper.

Of course, the leper’s reasons for wanting to meet Monk are suspicious, as is much of the rest of the story: You could likely solve the mystery faster than alleged super-genius Adrian Monk does.

Still: “Monk’s� mysteries generally take back seat to the comedy and the clever character developments. A throughline tonight concerns how much people who even realize how minor a concern leprosy is these days over-react to being around such a patient: Traylor Howard’s Natalie has a priceless moment when she realizes her date – with whom she’s been swapping spit – once suffered from the heartbreak of leprosy. She’s not the only character to have such a moment, but it’s amazing how easily Howard replaced Bitty Schram, who initially seemed irreplaceable as Monk’s endearing foil.

At any rate, tonight’s episode has a lot more gratifying laughs and inspired plot twists than other recent installments, so much so that the noir aspect emerges as an almost pointless gimmick: No matter how this episode was shot, it would’ve been memorable.

- “Monk:� 9 tonight on USA Network.

'Tis the season ... for carnal activity.

Anti-war activists have declared today another cry – of pleasure – for peace. And yes, before you yawn with disinterest, let us clarify: Today’s edict “is for people around the globe to have an orgasm on December 22 and to focus their moments of pleasure on world peace.�

The goal is to end the war in Iraq by "effect(ing) positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy, a Synchronized Global Orgasm.� To put it another way: That’s obviously not a gun in your pocket, but you’re still glad to see me?

(Imagine the greeting card: "Thinking of you on Global Orgasm Day!" Get to it, Hallmark!)

"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," co-conspirator in this cause, Paul Reffell, tells his interviewer. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."

Well, the mind being a blank certainly resonates when considering this as a form of protest. But it certainly redefines the concept of getting a peace.

Reffell’s fellow anti-war spokesunit Donna Sheehan explains, "The combination of high-energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers."

Certainly, you hate to think of anti-war activists as lunatics, but, well … Just think if the Bush Administration had thought up co-opting orgasms to sell its war of choice in Iraq. Then maybe his approval rating wouldn't be so low.

They even have a poster gal for their campaign: Lynndie England. Hmmmm... Maybe that wouldn't’ve worked, after all.

But let me get this straight: While approaching the big kablooey, all participants are supposed to think about the war in Iraq? Wouldn't that sort of keep people from sealing the deal? And, then, if no one actually succeeds in their goal because their minds are filled with mental images of mangled corpses, then all that work is for naught, right? And if you do actually manage to achieve lift-off with such thoughts clouding your mind, doesn't that make you a little, uh, sick? I'm so confused.

While Your Mayor spent the day arduously filling out forms, the Grudge Match of – well, the way things have gone this year with Paul McCartney and Heather Mills, Paris Hilton, Brandon Davis and Lindsay Lohan, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown, Candy and Tori Spelling, Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly, Britney Spears and K-Fudd, Mel Gibson and the Jews, Michael Richards and his sanity and on and on and on, it’s probably only the Grudge Match of the Week – was unspooling, this time between Rosie O’Donnell and Donald Trump.

O’Donnell struck first, slagging Trump for having bad hair and pardoning Miss USA for behaving like Paris or Lindsay (but, thankfully, not like the former Miss Nevada). Rosie ragged on the Donald for doing something to call attention to himself, an odd gripe for someone who once published a magazine named after herself.

Trump struck back quite amusingly, calling her “disgusting� and a “loser� and suggesting that he’ll “probably� sue her. This didn’t exactly have Rosie quaking in her boots. All this left CNN’s the usually articulate Anderson Cooper utterly flummoxed.

Hard to know who to root for on this one. They’re going at each other so vociferously no doubt because they’re so alike – they’re both quite enamored with the sound of their own voices, a dynamic Trump’s show “The Apprentice� trucks in, throwing a pile of Type-A’s in a room and letting them go at one another until only one person emerges, leaving the place looking like a scene out of “Dexter.� Ego v. Ego: Is there anything more fun to behold from afar? Key words: from afar.

I spoke with Trump on Monday, before the whole mess broke; even the Miss USA pardon hadn’t come out. So I didn’t get to revel in any billionaire Rosie-bullying. Trump did thoughtfully manage, unbidden, to slag Martha Stewart, however, calling her incarnation of “Apprentice� “terrible� and “a fiasco.� Clearly, he was just getting warmed up for the bout with Rosie, who has transformed "The View" from a koffee klatch into tag-team trash talk.

A while back, I implored UCLA Live to schedule an evening pitting Tony Snow against David Gregory. I hereby rescind that request: A cage match between Rosie and The Donald would be much more entertaining: "Your hair's stupid!" "You're ugly!" "You're full of yourself!" "You're full of yourself, and there's a lot more of you to be full of!"

The People of Television can take heart that, in a year of strife and turmoil, there is some good news to report: ABC has cancelled its Shatfest "Show Me the Money."

Or, as the Washington Post's Lisa de Moreas so winsomely put it, "Just days after ABC suits announced they had ordered six more episodes of the groundbreakingly bad game show 'Show Me the Money,' they realized they had just ordered six more episodes of the groundbreakingly bad game show 'Show Me the Money' and, wasting no time, announced they were pulling it off the air, effective immediately."

But the heartening developments don't end there: NBC's "Identity," the Penn Jillette-affiliated project that genuinely deserves to be called "Bullsh!t," hemorrhaged a third of its audience from Monday to Tuesday, from 12.2m viewers to 8.2m. At that rate, by Friday, its viewership will be a negative 3.8 million. Not sure if that's possible, but if any show can pull that off, it's the stultifying "Identity."

Hence, inroads are being made against the insurgent creators of chaos and reality and game shows. This could bode well for a brighter 2007, as the ratio of successful game shows introduced this season (one out of four) is actually worse than that for serialized dramas.

Perhaps whatever it is that possesses O.J. is contagious. Judith Regan, never accused of genteel manners and good graces or good taste in the first place, has gone stark-raving bonkers. Perhaps she'll receive an invitation to next year's Holocaust-denial conference in Tehran.

As is, she'll have to make do with issuing only the second-most-famous anti-Semitic rant of 2006, following, of course, Mel Gibson's. But first, let's do a quick rewind:

Regan, head of Regan Books, publisher of such literary fare as Jenna Jameson’s “How to Make Love Like a Porn Star� and who recently relocated to Los Angeles from New York, managed a true rarity these days - she offended both the Red and the Blue States - when she announced that she was publishing a book with O.J. Simpson’s name affixed entitled “If I Did It.� She also interviewed Simpson for two hours of primetime television on – where else? – the Fox network. (The Juice scored a reported $3.5 million for the light lifting – he barely met with the ghost writer – and declared the money was already spent so tough luck, families of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman; he didn’t even seem fazed when Regan billed it as his confession.)

All of that is slimy, no doubt. But I think the point where Regan truly lost it was when she issued that bizarre justification of her actions with a rambling discourse suggesting that she was meting out revenge for all abusive men in relationships and then pretended it was all a prayer, with an “Amen� thrown in for good measure.

America, of course, found the whole thing so appalling that even Rupert Murdoch was forced to rethink the notion; book and TV show scrapped, though of course O.J. got to keep the money.

Now, Regan has been fired (from her own imprimatur, at that), though not wholly due to the O.J. debacle; no, Judy went full-metal-Mel Gibson on an attorney at the publishing house who told her that a novel gleefully thrashing Mickey Mantle’s reputation (I thought the Mick had done a pretty reasonable job of that his own self) was unreleasable.

Not sure how one makes the leap from being informed that publishing a book is an open invitation to a lawsuit to ranting that a “Jewish cabal� is out to get you, but that’s pretty much what Regan, a former tabloid reporter, managed. And, since Regan apparently acclimated to L.A. in record time, she has already hired uber-attorney Bert Fields to intimidate everyone at HarperCollins in ways that not even she had thought up.

Well, clearly, there’s only thing to do at this point: Write a Judith Regan novel along the lines of the Mickey Mantle novel that led to her undoing.

And hey: Let’s make it a contest!

Whoever writes the best opening sentence to “If She Did It: How Judith Regan Cheapened the Publishing World and Pop Culture at Large� or “Scream, Sue, Then Scream Some More: A Judith Regan Novel� (working titles) will win some sort of TV-promotional tchotchke or tchotchkes that Your Mayor promises will be worth your while. Look, it’s Tuesday – you have plenty of time to finish off that holiday shopping you’ve been putting off thusfar. This is important.

Here’s a sample to get you started:

“Bernie, you’ll take care of that, won’t you?� Judith asked as she lifted herself from her lover, the Police Commissioner, nodding nonchalantly towards a body on the floor nearby; it was a Jewish intern whose throat appeared to have been chewed out by a wild animal, nudging Bernie to realize with a numbing dread, that hadn’t been lipstick stuck to her teeth at all.

Get cracking! Good luck!

Your Mayor is honored and deeply humbled to have been named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, for the excellence of my work on the very blog you are currently reading and my podcast, which none of you seem to be listening to. “For seizing the reins of the global media, for founding and framing the new digital democracy, for working for nothing and beating the pros at their own game, TIME's Person of the Year for 2006 is you,� Time gushed in its mash note to me.

Apparently, however, this honor goes not only to me but is also extended to the guys who turned “Star Trek� footage and a Nine Inch Nails song into a curious little bit of homoerotica, the gentleman who explicates the inexplicable comic strip “Marmaduke� on a daily basis, the inspired paranoiacs who divined an impenetrable conspiracy linking Jenna and Barbara Bush’s vacation in Argentina, a White House Paraguayan land grab, international immunity for U.S. soldiers and the Moonies and even every nutcase whose furtive visit to a chatroom resulted in an appearance on “Dateline NBC’s� “To Catch a Predator.�

Which, as you might imagine, diminishes the prestige of the honor somewhat.

Nonetheless, I am not entirely chagrined to accept this prize from Time Magazine, even though, as Nora Ephron points out, the honor comes with no small amount of backhanded condescension: “I especially love the part about ‘working for nothing,’ I especially love the condescension in that phrase, the dead giveaway about how Time Magazine really feels about the giant collective unwashed, unpaid You Out Here that is nonetheless making life a misery for Them In There - for the Old Media scrambling to figure out What It Means.� Even though Lost Remote kicks the choice of Me as Person of the Year to the curb as a wussy attempt at feel-goodism, a morphine drip for a populace too benumbed by the bad news of the past year to brace against one more outrage in 2006 (Time’s Person of the Year, it points out, used to be the person who actually affected global events – for good or bad – not some symbolic construct serving to salve the wounds of the post-9/11 era).

And yes, I accept this honor even though it comes with no cash prize nor even a trophy I can set upon my mantle nor even a miserable little certificate I can hang upon my wall. Even though it’s an honor that is utterly bereft of meaning or cachet, even though it will cheapen every future Time Person of the Year Award, even though it underscores the essential arbitrariness and pointlessness of handing out any award at all …

In spite of all this – or, perhaps, precisely because of this – I am proud and yet profoundly apathetic in my acceptance of the accolade of being Time Magazine’s 2006 Person of the Year. I would like to thank my family, my lawyers, my accountants, my bodyguards, my bookies, and, above all, God, from whom all blessings - and empty gestures - flow.

TBS’s new comedies continue to poke along –they’re not bad, not great, but mainly, their essential lack of ambition, their happy embrace of mediocrity, make them kind of frustrating. TBS’s motto is “Very funny;� it’s no doubt more effective than a more honest appraisal: “Very Undemanding.�

The semi-improvised “10 Items or Less� tends to be a little more vexing than the fully scripted "My Boys" because there’s some potential that’s still going untapped there, which ends up making the show look foolish rather than the smart sort of dumb it’s trying to achieve.

Tonight, hapless grocery-store manager Leslie (series co-creator John Lehr) is hoping to become a networking fool (he already has half the equation down cold) by joining a social group called the Bisons. He learns the Bisons encourage members to be in cozy heterosexual relationships; Leslie, of course, is socially hapless: He bickers with a woman who illegally parks in handicapped space outside his store, then asks her to attend the initiation ceremony with him. She laughs her way past him, so he has her car towed.

You get exactly one guess as to how the woman turns up later in the episode.

I can’t really think of anyone who’s making plans to tune into TBS at 11 p.m. on Christmas Day, but the episode of “10 Items�’ that TBS is burning off then, centering on a bagging competition between Leslie's small store and the corporate behemoth across the street, has a couple of decent laughs. “10 Items� aspires to be a down-market, more upbeat version of “The Office,� but too many of its gags are simply obvious.

Meanwhile, “My Boys� continues to be the squeaky-cleanest, nicest sitcom on TV these days; everyone is such good pals with everyone else and everything invariably works out for the best. (Except, of course, PJ (charmingly played by Jordana Spiro) and her pals never quite find true love, but that’s OK, because it’s actually more fun for them to just hang out.)

Tuesday features back-to-back episodes: In one, PJ weighs the merits of dating a nice if somewhat condescending guy who wants to take her to Spain vs. hanging out with the guys (guess which wins). Then, a veteran sportswriter (Jay Tarses) steals her take on a new superstar acquisition for the Cubs, while one of her buddies is dating way out of his league. Emotional trauma so mild it can hardly be called trauma ensues. In the end, PJ feels OK about things. Viewers, meanwhile, will be hard-pressed to feel anything at all. On the other hand, this is a series that will never have a “very special episode.�

- “10 Items or Less:� 11 p.m. Monday; midnight Wednesday.
- “My Boys:� 10 and 10:30 p.m. Tuesday; 11 p.m. Wednesday.

There are times during the holiday season when Your Mayor, bewilderingly incapable of enjoying the barrages of holiday goodwill currently besieging our country, experiences moments of self-destructiveness. Happily, NBC is enabling me this season with a full pre-holiday week of a new, agonizingly idiotic game show entitled “Identity.� I can watch this instead of getting into cutting.

Penn Jillette (the bad-boy magician who appears to have clipped and removed the black polish from his elongated pinkie fingernail in order to appear more palatable to game-show America, perhaps not the smartest career choice) hosts this thing that is, in every significant way, a dumber rip-off of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.� More oddly, in the episode made available for review, Penn didn’t offer up one wisecrack.

Here, a dozen “strangers� stand atop pedestals on a stage. Contestants must match them up with biographical thumbnail sketches such as “Sushi Chef� or “CSI Investigator� or “Bouncer� or “Opera Singer.� The strangers' clothing provides visual clues (for example, in a future episode, the “youngest� wears a Catholic-schoolgirl uniform; a “fitness model� is clad only in a bikini; a “breakdancer� is decked out in hip-hop attire; a serial killer is drenched in blood - well, technically, I didn't see the last one personally, but given the subtlety this show trucks in, it's no doubt in another episode).

Like “Millionaire,� “Identity� is awash in melodramatic music, hyperbolic light shows and enough padding to stretch about 10 minutes of actual material to a poky 60 minutes. Instead of “Millionaire’s� “final answer,� “Identity� contestants must “seal� their guesses. (Like “Deal or No Deal,� “Identity� is based on guessing, not actual knowledge.) “Identity� also has its thinly veiled version of lifelines. The main difference is that here, contestants can only win only $500,000, not a million. But then, that’s an awful lot of money for not really having to know anything.

This new breed of game show seems determined mainly not to challenge the viewer in any way imaginable; they’re video wallpaper for people to zone out to. Seems like viewers need to do an awful lot of zoning out these days.

- “Identity:� 9 tonight (8 Central); 8 p.m. Tuesday-Friday (7 central) on NBC (Channel 4 in L.A.).

Eight days before Christmas, and the body count on Showtime tonight will be anything but joyous. “Sleeper Cell: American Terror� concludes with a wrenching finale that doesn’t quite match Saturday evening’s installment – in which Darwyn helped stop a plot to rain radiation down upon L.A. with twin attacks on a jetliner and at the Hollywood Bowl, and in which Gayle (Melissa Sagemiller), Darwyn’s (Michael Ealy) civilian girlfriend, was murdered by Mina (Thekla Reuten), who then went on to blow up an Independence-Day military reception in Las Vegas.

(Typically, the 500+ Vegas victims had not previously figured into the storyline and therefore were anonymous and, somehow, acceptable in an emotionally muted way in the context of the narrative, as opposed to Gayle’s singular demise.)

In tonight’s finale, Darwyn goes rogue, traveling to Yemen on a suicide mission to 86 Al-Farik (Oded Fehr) himself. Things don’t quite go as he planned, however, but at least the episode offers one final showdown between Darwyn and Al-Farik; their interplay was the most compelling part of the first season and sorely missed here.

Given the viciousness of that confrontation, the designer gore of the typically twisted finale to season one of “Dexter� almost seems mild by comparison. Last week, Miami police forensics expert/ethical serial killer Dexter Morgan Morgan (Golden-Globe nominee Michael C. Hall) discovered his half-sister Debra (Jennifer Carpenter) had been abducted by Rudy (Christian Camargo), her boyfriend and, not coincidentally, the psycho serial killer who’s been messing with Dexter’s head all season.

Rudy’s true identity is intended as a shocker, as are further pieces in the puzzle added to Dexter’s past (a loopy little nature-vs.-nurture debate is launched), as is Rudy’s wish that Dexter assist him in murdering and dismembering Debra. Dexter deftly defers: “I’m very fond of her,� he explains. Meanwhile, Dexter’s colleague Doakes (Erik King) comes closer to learning his secret.

By the way: I’m certain someone has already noticed it, but I’ve been a bit lazy with “Dexter� and it just occurred to me watching tonight’s episode: The opening title sequence has a major gaffe in it. No, it’s not Rolfe Kent’s slightly-too-droll theme music; it’s that after all those lovingly, slightly menacing close-ups of Dexter shaving, even drawing blood, by the end of the sequence, he leaves his apartment with a growth of trendy stubble on his face.

- “Sleeper Cell: American Terror:� 9 tonight on Showtime
- “Dexter:� 10 tonight on Showtime

When “Heroes� returns with new episodes on Jan. 22, it will have already moved on to a new tagline: “Are you on the list?�, referring to a genetics professor’s (Sendhil Ramamurthy) discovery of his late father’s secret collection of names of humans with extraordinary abilities. But the series became the hottest new hit of the season thanks in part to the year’s catchiest catchphrase: “Save the cheerleader, save the world.�

In the series, Hiro (Golden-Globe nominee Masi Oka), a Tokyo office worker who can bend the time-space continuum, traveled from the future to warn Peter (Milo Ventimiglia), a New York hospice worker who had yet to discover what his special powers were, with the cryptic message. Eventually, Peter realized the cheerleader in question was Claire (Hayden Panettiere), a Texas high-school student whose physical indestructibility was about to meet its match. The line soon became an oft-quoted slogan for the show’s fans.

“I still don’t get it,� Panettiere says of being at the center of the phenomenon her show has become. (This day on the “Heroes� set finds Panettiere in a rare costume that’s not her cheerleading outfit.) “I’m like, caught in the middle of this craziness. I don’t think you ever really expect that kind of success.�

Series creator Tim Kring seems a little sheepish about the line’s instant leap into the pop-culture pantheon.

“It did become very iconic, and we had no plan of that,� he insists. “That phrase was in the script, and in the show, and it was simply the promo department that grabbed it and used it. It was never intended for that. I’m feeling a little bit of a burden – we have to come up with another one? We really caught lightning in a jar, and I don’t know how often you do that. To be honest, it gives me some pause that we would be associated with these catchphrases.�

Oka, who first delivered the line, admits he had no inkling that it would become such a rallying cry.

“I didn’t know what the impact of it would be,� he says. “I knew it would be part of the promo, that it was that important a phrase. But it started a whole movement going. I’m just glad I didn’t say it completely cheesily.

“The ‘Save the Cheerleader, Save the World’ T-shirts are already gone,� he jokes. “It’s just a way of selling T-shirts. Here comes ‘Are you on the list?’!�

As someone who has always been more a baseball fan than a connoisseur of Russian clowns, Your Mayor would never have imagined that “Slava’s Snowshow� at UCLA Live, easily the holiday season’s must-see family event (See the Daily News story here, and pony up for orchestra seats – if you’re in the balcony, you’ll miss out on most of the fun), would utterly and delightfully subvert the Dodger Stadium experience, particularly when it comes to the ubiquitous beach balls in the stands.

But more on that later. “Slava’s Snowshow� is the brainchild of Slava Polunin, whose biography insists he grew up in Novosil, far outside Moscow, and so small the circus never came to town. He fell in love with what would eventually become his calling by watching Charlie Chaplin movies on TV.

Like Chaplin’s work, “Snowshow� is an intricately choreographed performance. It’s not exactly a gutbuster; a lot of it is even a tad melancholy. The funniest bit involves Polunin, or whoever’s wearing the hazmat-like yellow costume any given evening – the stage smoke does sort of smell like it may have been imported from Chernobyl – hanging a coat on a coatrack and then getting oddly cozy with it. And the full battalion of the cast’s clowns opens the second act leaping through the seats (literally) of Royce Hall gleefully spraying water on patrons.

But the show has become justly famous for the spectacular blizzard that closes the evening. As a blinding lightbank erupts, an astonishing spray of confetti is blasted into the audience, reaching to the very back of the auditorium. (They don’t bother to clean up after each performance – though they might tonight, just to appease Woody Allen’s Dixieland ensemble’s appearance on Saturday – so by the time the show closes Jan. 7, ticketholders may find themselves wading through “snow� shindeep.) It’s pretty much unlike anything you’ve ever experienced in a theater (but makes you glad pay-cable’s Spice Channel doesn’t offer a similar feature), and its very audacity can’t help but put a goofy grin on your face.

And still: Slava and crew aren’t done with you. They boot a bunch of beach balls into the crowd – many of them regulation-size, but eight or so with massive diameters measuring between 8 and 20 feet – and the audience reverts to its childhood, frenziedly batting the things about Royce Hall.

Oh, and so that’s where the Dodger Stadium comparison comes in. Any beach ball introduced into the crowd during a Dodgers game is hunted down by stadium ushers like English Pointers after quail; the edict is clear: You’ll have fun on our terms, or have no fun at all. At “Snowshow,� Slava and company happily invite the anarchy, and on a grand scale. Much of the audience hung around for 20 minutes or more for the opportunity to punch these gigantic orbs skyward and/or fill their cell phones with images of the spectacle.

Ironically, this bit of childlike fun is adults-only: Ushers raced up and down Royce’s aisles, advising parents to take their kids off their shoulders while those big balls arc’d through the air. Because while they may float gracefully over the crowd, they’re a lot heavier than they look when they come down. Heavier than the rest of the show, at least. “Slava’s Snowshow� has been touring the world since the early ’90s: It was “interactive media� practically before the term was even invented.

Just in time for Christmas, a big old pile of “Star Trek� memorabilia is going on the auction block at two different websites beginning today. Junk – er, collectibles available – include:

• Observation Lounge Table and Chairs from Enterprise-D seen in almost every episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation�
• Borg Alcove complete with the actual Borg itself from “Star Trek: The Next Generation� and “Star Trek: Voyager�
• Starfleet Rifle used in “Star Trek: The Next Generation� and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,� Klingon Bat-Leth sword used in “Star Trek: Voyager,� “Star Trek: The Next Generation� and “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine�
• Costumes worn by characters such as “James T. Kirk,� “Spock,� “Jean Luc Picard,� “Deanna Troi,� “Jonathan Archer� and “Klingon Warriors�

What better way to tell that special someone, “I love you, son, but for God’s sake, you’re 42; can’t you find your own place to live?�

Someone at the Writers Guild of America should really get their act together. They announced their 2007 TV and radio nominees late yesterday, ensuring that any publicity they might receive would get buried in the avalanche of Golden Globes coverage.

Nonetheless, we hereby duly report that nominees for Best Dramatic Series (not to be confused with the Episodic Drama category, though certainly it's an understandable mistake) are some evergreens: "24," "Lost," "Deadwood," "The Sopranos" and "Grey's Anatomy." Episodic Drama nominees are a little more varied, including episodes of "Lost," "The West Wing," "Battlestar Galactica," Big Love," "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" and an installment of TNT's miniseries "Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King."

Best Comedy Series features one dead horse - "Arrested Development" - and a dead-horse-in-waiting - "30 Rock" - as well as mainstays "Curb Your Enthusiasm," "Entourage" and "The Office." "The Office" has two horses running in the Episodic Comedy category, as does "Desperate Housewives;" single episodes of "My Name is Earl" and "Malcolm in the Middle" round out that pack. "The Simpsons" accounts for four of the six nominees in the Animation category, alongside solo entries from "King of the Hill" and Cartoon Network's "The Life and Times of Juniper Lee."

Most entertaining match-up comes in the New Series category, where "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" will wrassle with "30 Rock" for dominance in the "SNL"-ripoff sweepstakes. Both will likely lose New Series though, probably to "Heroes" or "Ugly Betty," with "Friday Night Lights" failing to reach the end zone.

Well, that didn't take long. An online sports book has already handicapped the Golden Globes (just the film categories; apparently, the TV categories aren't worth throwing your money away on).

It has "The Departed" a 4-5 favorite to win Best Film/Drama, over runner-up "The Queen," and "Dreamgirls" a 5-8 frontrunner over "Borat." You won't win a whole lot of money if Helen Mirren wins Best Actress/Drama for "The Queen" or if Forest Whittaker prevails as Best Actor/Drama for "The King of Scotland;" the odds against them are prohibitive. Meryl Streep is the presumptive favorite for Best Actress/Comedy for "The Devil Wears Prada," while Will Ferrell tops a pretty close horserace for Best Actor/Comedy, his 6-5 odds just beating out Sacha Baron Cohen's 3-2 odds for "Borat." Martin Scorsese's even-money for Best Director.

If Leonardo DiCaprio wins, the smart money's on his performance in "The Departed" rather than "Blood Money" (which is the longshot in the Best Actor/Drama category). Clint Eastwood is considered a better bet for "Letters from Iwo Jima" rather than "Flags of Our Fathers," which is Best Director's longshot.

Obviously, the fun and wacky narrative informing this year's Golden Globe nominees is the multiple nominees: Leonardo DiCaprio will compete against himself, earning two nominations in the Best Actor/Film Drama category, for "The Departed" and "Blood Diamond," and Clint Eastwood took two of the slots in the Best Director race for his World War II films "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters from Iwo Jima."

But a whole slew of other actors scored double nominations, and then there's Helen Mirren, who scored three nominations, for Best Actress/Film Drama ("The Queen") and two in Best Actress/TV-Movie or Miniseries ("Elizabeth I," "Prime Suspect: The Final Act").

Toni Collette was nominated for Best Actress/Film Comedy ("Little Miss Sunshine") and Supporting Actress/TV ("Tsunami, the Aftermath"). Chiwetel Ejiofor received nods in Best Actor/Film Comedy ("Kinky Boots") and Supporting Actor/TV ("Tsunami, the Aftermath"). Emily Blunt was queen of the Supporting Actress categories, film ("The Devil Wears Prada") and TV ("Gideon's Daughter").

There were, according to one report, 709 movies released this year vying for those five directing slots, meaning that directors had 7/10ths of 1% chance of receiving a nomination. To receive two, as Clint Eastwood did, beats the odds of 4.97333299 times 10 to the negative fifth degree.

There are roughly 98,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild, and 70 possible nominees. Which means an actor, from the outset, has only a .07% chance of securing a nomination. That's 7/100ths of a 1% chance.

But the chances of scoring two nominations are 5.10204081 times 10 to the negative seventh degree (or 0.0000000510204081).

And the chances of managing the feat in the same category, like DiCaprio did, are 2.60308205 times 10 to the negative 11th degree. And then, if you're like Mirren and scored two nominations in one category and another besides, the likelihood of that is 1.85934432 times 10 to the negative fifteenth degree.

And then, if you want to calculate the chances that this many actors would claim so many nominations amongst so few slots available, you'd need to go to CalTech to get that number and hope you don't short-circuit their supercomputer.

Naturally, someone out there is going to question my math and my methodology, but I'm The Mayor of Television, not David Krumholz on "Numb3rs."

Anyway. The point is. It's extraordinarily extremely unlikely that these actors would have such wonderful good luck against all their brethren. Unless, say, the Hollywood Foreign Press folks wanted to gin up some publicity by fabricating such a phenomenon or were lazy and simply couldn't get certain names out of their heads while voting.

There are about 80 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and it's famously been reported that some of the members aren't even full-time journalists but are moonlighting to supplement their income from other jobs. Fair enough; no problem there.

No, here's my point: Movie critics find it difficult to see all the significant films of the year. TV critics, buried in an avalanche that is the hundreds of channels of cable and network programming, can't possibly get around to seeing all the best stuff. How can these people possibly get around to seeing all the major films and even a portion of the most significant television productions without their eyeballs retreating deep into their sockets and their brains oozing out their ears, without their spouses and significant others abandoning them in disgust, without being reduced to a gibbering fool, and still have the time to savor the sweet, sweet studio tchotchkes that come their way?

Conventional wisdom on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association is its members like to go glam with the nominations in the film categories - big stars, popular movies. Then, satisfied that they've lured the appropriate gaga celebrity quotient to lure a sizable TV audience (not to mention to party alongside afterwards), they get kind of serious in the TV categories, and honor - and even champion - good shows deserving of attention they may not be getting. (As opposed to the Emmys, where a sizable portion of the major nominees are already fairly successful shows, the Globes have honored "24" in its first, semi-struggling season, "Party of Five," prodding it to hit status, and the British version of "The Office" when most of Hollywood seemed unaware of the show.))

This year, however, major film nominees include "Babel" (running on fumes with just $17.7m in the bank), "Bobby" (stalled at $10.5m), "Little Children" (hovering at $2m after 10 weeks in theaters), "The Last King of Scotland" ($3.5m after 11 weeks), "Volver" ($2.4m but adding some theaters) and "Sherrybaby" (sank from sight, never to re-emerge). If one didn't know better, you'd think the HFPA were all about the work.

Hence, it's the TV nominations that feel like commercial concessions this year. The only nominal surprise in the nominees for Best Drama and Comedy Series is "Big Love," HBO's low-key exploration of polygamy. With the exception of "Heroes" and "Ugly Betty," the season's breakout hits, everything else has been nominated before, some multiple times. The Globes are becoming the Emmys.

Same with the lead acting nominations: Outside of "Big Love's" Bill Paxton, "Ugly Betty's" America Ferrera and Michael C. Hall, who plays a serial killer's serial killer on Showtime's "Dexter," everyone has been to the ball before (albeit Julia Louis-Dreyfuss hasn't been since "Seinfeld") or appears in a lot of photos in glossy magazines. Nominees include, variously, Patrick Dempsey, Ellen Pompeo (who even fans of "Grey's Anatomy" can't stand), Evangeline Lilly, Edie Falco, Hugh Laurie, Marcia Cross, Felicity Huffman, Steve Carell, Jason Lee, Kiefer Sutherland, Tony Shalhoub, Kyra Sedgwick, Zach Braff, Alec Baldwin, Patricia Arquette and Mary-Louise Parker, not a one of them who could be accused of being under-hyped.

Helen Mirren pulled off a hat trick, beating out Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, Toni Collette, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Emily Blunt - who all landed two nominations apiece. (Limiting the number of different nominees saves a little on the catering, means fewer logjams at the after-parties and means more wine during the ceremony for HFPA members!) Mirren's three were for the film "The Queen" (for which she must be considered the presumptive Oscar winner, since she's pretty much swept the critics awards, unless there's some sort of "Brokeback Mountain"-style backlash and people get so sick of hearing how she's going to win that they vote for someone else) and the two TV miniseries "Elizabeth I" (for which she's already won an Emmy) and "Prime Suspect: The Final Act" (for which she'll likely win an Emmy next year).

Series newcomers in the Supporting Actor/Actress categories (which also includes movies, miniseries and probably infomercials) were Masi Oka of "Heroes" and Sarah Paulson of "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." Oka's nomination is utterly understandable, as he's a huge part of that show's charms. Paulson, if you go by the assessments of her over on Defamer, not so much. If anyone from "Studio 60" was deserving of a nomination, it was Matthew Perry.

But don't get me started on the snubs. That's your job. Who do you think was egregiously overlooked in any category?

Dangerous toys are amongst the most delightfully wrong-headed things our planet produces. The notion of someone willfully putting an object capable of grave injuries in the hands of a child always reminds me of the slimy toy manufacturer played by Dan Aykroyd on an early episode of "Saturday Night Live" (one of his treats for unsuspecting tots was, simply, a bag of broken glass).

Here's a terrific look at 10 (well, 11) of the all-time most smack-your-forehead-and-exclaim-"What-were-they-thinking?" playthings. Not much of a TV connection, except a commercial for a toy cannon (!) is included and one of the items was tied to the '70s version of "Battlestar Galactica" (which in and of itself made it extremely dubious). Imagine the hours of fun, followed by even more hours spent in emergency rooms across America. Your Mayor is proud to report that he shared his childhood home with no fewer than three of the objects on the list and yet managed to escape injury.

Peter Boyle, who immortalized the phrase "Holy crap!" on "Everybody Loves Raymond" (No. 79 on TV Land's list of catchphrases, by the way) and died Tuesday evening at the age of 71 (and bore an eerie resemblance to Your Mayor's own father), gets his tele-eulogy Saturday at 8 ET, 7 CT and 9 PT on the Biography Channel.

"Biography Remembers: Peter Boyle" will feature reminiscences from "Raymond" cast members Ray Romano, Doris Roberts, Brad Garrett and executive producer Phil Rosenthal as well as, oddly enough, Halle Berry (he co-starred in her Oscar-winning film "Monster's Ball").

When President Bush leaves the White House - or if press secretary Tony Snow simply ever gets tired of saying a reporter is mixing up issues like "apples and oranges" when, in fact, the comparable issues are like Granny Smith apples and Granny Smith apples - then he and NBC White House correspondent David Gregory should take their act on the road a la "The Sunshine Boys."

Their cranky exchanges (some greatest hits are offered here) are as entertaining as Meathead and Archie Bunker's legendary roundelays: Gregory desperately and always unsuccessfully trying to coax Snow into admitting that the Administration has made some grievous mistake, Snow responding to Gregory's queries as if he can't even figure out what planet the guy's from. Gregory couldn't get Snow to admit the sky is blue if Snow didn't want to - but he'd try damn hard.

Imagine them bickering for 75 minutes at Royce Hall: Pure, unadulterated, surreal comedy. Get to it, David Sefton.

On eBay, you can bid on the Killeen, Texas home Elvis Presley lived in while he trained at Ft. Hood during his stint in the Army. Numerous photos of the place, including a couple of a nondescript, corpse-free bathroom.

The same folks are also peddling the house Johnny Cash lived in in the late '50s, just as his career was exploding. Guitar-shaped mailbox included at no extra charge. Looks like a much bigger, much nicer place, and in a real city, at that. Caveat: The reserve price is "well below seven figures," while Elvis's home's reserve is "below $175,000." But act quickly: Both auctions end Dec. 16.

Meanwhile, for those who prefer their online antics to cost a lot less - say, nothing - the folks at GSN (formerly Game Show Network, even though they still basically air a lot of game shows) have perhaps belatedly but no doubt necessarily created a game allowing you to konk O.J. Simpson in the noggin with a copy of his book. Note: Speed is not of the essence; accuracy is. You only get five books per game.

Finally, fans of "Battlestar Gallactica" can watch the mid-season finale - isn't that a contradiction in terms? and yet every other show is doing it these days - Friday on a big screen at the Westside Pavilion (or in theaters in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and St. Louis). Go here to sign up. The episode features, yes, "a deadly stand-off," as our heroes and the Cylons "risk all for a chance to find the way to Earth."

And now that I've cleaned out my email inbox of its sundry detritus, I can go about my day.

While Your Mayor has railed against the false uplift of holiday sentiment in TV Christmas movies on this week’s podcast, I must credit Thursday’s hourlong episode of “The Office� for bravely and largely eschewing such treacle.

It opens with amateur-aspiring-to-professional-sadist Dwight (Rainn Wilson) dragging into Dunder Mifflin a lifeless goose he has killed with his car and proffering it as a holiday meal – said goose’s sorry end is, he exults, “a Christmas miracle!�

Meanwhile, the eternally hapless Michael Scott (Steve Carell) is dumped by his appropriately weirded-out girlfriend, and so, to drown his sorrows, unctuous suck-upper Andy (“The Daily Show’s� Ed Helms) drags him to a nearby Benihana, with Dwight and Jim (Jim Krasinski) in tow. (Personality-deficient chain restaurants are a running joke on “The Office,� and certainly no example of product placement, unless said owners are utterly clueless: The series has also goofed on Chili’s, Red Lobster and Sbarro’s. As this episode opens, Michael is planning on taking his girlfriend to a Sandals resort: Clearly, edification or entertainment of a corporate nature in any form pretty much defines the soullessness of an office drone’s life).

While Michael’s getting so toasted he’s reduced to flirting with Benihana waitresses (and the waitresses are reduced to finding him remotely attractive), Dunder Mifflin is engaged in a turf war over Christmas parties: Lovable Pam (Jenna Fischer) squares off against high-strung Angela (Angela Kinsey, who has evolved from serving as a tight-lipped day player into a full-fledged comic foil).

Transforming extras into hilarious, full-blooded characters was something the original British version of “The Office,� created by and starring Ricky Gervais, never had the opportunity to achieve (after all, it only lasted 12 episodes). And while Gervais’s subsequent “Office� special resolved its version of the Pam-Jim conundrum in its 13th-episode Christmas special, which brought its story to a satisfying conclusion, NBC’s “Office� remains an ongoing concern that has lasted almost four times longer than Gervais’s show and therefore makes its intermittent brilliance something of a miracle (and means we'll have to be terribly patient re: the Pam-Jim dysfunction).

But, for all Pam-Jim fans: Thursday’s episode offers a thawing of their relationship after their ill-advised parting of ways. And you have to want to attend an office holiday party where Alanis Morisette’s angry anthem “You Oughta Know� is a holiday karaoke fave.

- "The Office:" 8 p.m. Thursday (7 central) on NBC (Channel 4 locally).

Just another reason you're glad you're not me:

Your inbox isn't cluttered with junk emails from publicists who are so tragically misguided as to believe you'd be interested in hearing about, let alone writing about, cynical, synergistic product-placement "opportunities" in past-their-prime shows like "The Apprentice."

We've previously discussed the computerized human kiosks that will rise up and trample our nation's great centers of commerce that someone breathlessly tried to pitch us yesterday. Today, more of the same, only duller and with even blander quotes:

“THE APPRENTICE� SAYS “PHEW� TO BAD BREATH AND GETS “FRESH� IN THE BOARDROOM WITH [NAME OF PRODUCT REDACTED] ON SEASON SIX OF NBC’S HIT SERIES

Yep, one of the challenges on the upcoming season of "The Apprentice" will be to peddle mouthwash. Can't wait for the pulse-pounding drama of that episode.

The money quote:

“For a boutique yet burgeoning brand like [NAME OF PRODUCT REDACTED], an appearance on a hit show like ‘The Apprentice’ will have major implications on the growth and prosperity of our company,� said Dr. Susanne Cohen , President and CEO (Yes, the misplaced and missing punctuation comes courtesy the press release itself.) “It will be a thrill to appear on national television with Donald Trump and to witness these sharp candidates create an advertising campaign for our product. We hope this opportunity will result in tremendous sales growth and introduce the revolutionary concept of twice a day for 24 hour fresh breath to millions of Americans.�

Does anyone believe Dr. Susanne Cohen actually said that? Does any sane person on the planet actually talk like that?

Anyway, here's my suggestion for the ad:

Image: Donald Trump in profile, his furry woodland critter atop his head, angrily jabbing a finger at a young charge with a bittersweet expression on her face. Spittle and cartoony curlicues symbolizing bad breath hurtle from Trump's mouth as he bellows "You're fired" at the young woman, above whom hovers this thought balloon: "If only Donald Trump® used [NAME OF PRODUCT REDACTED]®, this would be a far less mortifying moment."

In other news about Mark Burnett productions, a military coup in Fiji is making it difficult to get supplies to the cast and crew of "Survivor." "We are fortunate that the coup happened very late into the filming of our show," host Jeff Probst emailed The New York Post. Yes, and so are the people of Fiji.

So the grand Katie Couric experiment on "The CBS Evening News" has been a bust. After a huge audience for Couric's first week in the anchor's chair, the newscast has since plummetted back into its usual third-place in the ratings. ABC's "World News with Charles Gibson," generally the second-place broadcast just behind NBC, has ballooned its advantage over CBS to more than 1.5 million viewers nightly, while last week CBS's ratings in the "demo" (viewers aged 25-54, those most sought by newscast advertisers) shrunk back to levels last seen when Bob Schieffer was anchoring.

CBS, naturally, dismisses the low ratings - it's a marathon, not a sprint; we're still tinkering with the format; let's see what the ratings are like at some indeterminate point in the future which we can move even further into the future as we approach that point; etc., etc. - but it's fairly safe to say that if viewers liked what they had seen in September and considered a de-perkified Couric a good fit with the evening newscast, they wouldn't have abandoned the show in such droves.

So here are a few suggestions to shore up the beleaguered broadcast.

* Rename it "The CBS Evening Good News," focusing when possible on things happening in the world that aren't depressing, padded to broadcast length with features on pandas and meerkats, funny robots, viral videos on the Internets and cooking demonstrations. Bring in a house DJ to play her in and out of news segments.

* Scrap the "FreeSpeech" feature; rename it "CostlySpeech," with two minutes of airtime being auctioned off on eBay to the crackpots who bid the most to rail on their pet topic, be it loopy 9/11 theories, them damn kids with their skateboards in my driveway, how soy is turning our nation's children gay, the government's mind-control experiments (which really exist, by the way) or replacing the nation's water supply with Scotch. The crazier, the better; as the most manic start showing up on YouTube, viewers might return out of curiosity. If not, at least CBS gets to keep the cash the kooky commentators pay to appear on the show.

* Nightly potshots at Charlie Gibson after the manner in which Keith Olbermann puts it to Bill O'Reilly. Start referring him to "Chuckles" and run montages of times when he accidentally misspeaks or stumbles over his words.

* Shots of Couric's legs while she's reading the news.

* Couric conducts interviews a la Borat or Ali G, asking really stupid questions that her subjects are embarrassed to answer. (Oh, wait, I remember the Condoleeza Rice interview; she already does this one.)

* Have viewers vote online as to what kind of wacky headgear she'll wear (army helmet, beret, hazmat mask, construction helmet with accompanying beer cozies and straws) during each newscast.

* Have David Blaine dangling upside down in a straight jacket inside a plexiglass iron maiden overhead while she presents the news.

* Co-anchor Brian Williams.

It's not exactly the Press Release of the Day, but it is the Headline Atop a Press Release of the Day:

COMPUTERIZED HUMAN KIOSKS MAKE TV DEBUT ON “THE APPRENTICE�

Maybe it's just me, but I read that and immediately I envision an army of crazed cyborgs with laser-beam eyes trashing Trump Tower and fragging that failed exercise in impressionistic sculpture that is the Donald's hair and dismembering Ivanka with their buzzsaw hands. And, since it's their TV debut, if they're a hit, they'll attack other annoying programs: Beware, "Show Me the Money!"

Alas, it's just the usual b.s. that uses the phrase “converged media platform,� automatically forcing me to tune out.

And: The day is young, but I've already received two press releases on product placement in the upcoming season of "The Apprentice." Damn you to hell, Donald Trump!

Your Mayor extended himself an invitation to the set of “Heroes,� the TV season’s biggest, newest phenomenon; in order to avoid an international incident, the invitation was accepted and I turned out, oppressively under-caffeinated, this past Friday.

“Heroes� – which this weekend was named one of the American Film Institute’s Top 10 TV shows of 2006 – won’t return until Jan. 22, so the Daily News feature is some weeks in coming. Nonetheless, we’ll offer a few DVD-style outtakes from the story here in the intervening period.

A scene was being shot on Friday at the home of Claire Bennett (Hayden Panettiere), with her insidious father (Jack Coleman) – despite transforming his character’s few desultory menacing lines in the pilot into a major role, Coleman is still referred to as H.R.G. (horn-rimmed glasses) in scripts and on the set – and her mother (Ashley Crow), who dotes upon her prized Pekinese Mr. Muggles. (The Bennett home set is awash in doggie-do: A dozen canine figurines circle the kitchen sink, with another 14 in the foyer and just beyond; the trophy cases boast 10 dog-show trophies, with a mere two apiece for Claire and her brother Lyle. Issues, anyone?)

As the scene was shot again and again, the canine performer (actually, a Great Dane – it’s amazing what makeup can do) (OK, no, it’s a Pekinese, but isn’t my version a lot more interesting?) kept gazing into the camera, botching a number of takes. That didn’t prevent Roxann Dawson, director of this upcoming episode, in a moment of inspired improvisation, from asking the camera operator to tilt down to Mr. Muggles at the end of the scene. The resulting shot found Herr Muggles gazing dolefully, soulfully – an expression that, coincidentally, was a letter-perfect reaction to the scene being shot. Immediately, one could hear the stifled laughter of all who were watching the scene on nearby monitors (no one wants to ruin a take with any sort of noise as it’s being shot). But once Dawson called out, “Cut!� guffaws rang throughout the soundstage.

Between takes, Crow and Coleman and I skirmished with Friday’s New York Times crossword puzzle; the puzzle, while I was on hand at least, emerged victorious. Coleman revealed in the heat of battle that in school, he had taken a full seven years of Latin, an intellectual pursuit he deemed, reflecting on how it was serving him in this crossword puzzle (and throughout his life), “a complete waste of time.�

The American Film Institute, that dispensable dispenser of list after list after list, revealed, in addition to its Top 10 films of the year, its top-10 TV series. NBC may not be doing all that well in the ratings, but it has a lot of fans at the AFI, so much so you'd swear Jeff Zucker was on the panel. Winners include:

"Battlestar Galactica," Sci Fi's remake of the cheesy '70s show that never came close to making this list, I can assure you. (Sci Fi is part of NBC-Universal.)

"Dexter," Showtime's grisly drama starring Michael C. Hall as a serial killer who kills serial killers but oddly enough is never plagued with suicidal thoughts.

"Elizabeth I," the HBO miniseries starring Helen Mirren as the queen before "The Queen" (which made AFI's other list).

"Friday Night Lights," NBC's evocative look at small-town Texas high-school football; AFI's panel accounts for a sizable chunk of the show's audience.

"Heroes," NBC's new phenomenon about a disparate group of super-heroes and villains in which the world was saved via the rescuing of a Texas high-school football cheerleader. (Memo to NBC: Cross-over episodes with Hayden Panettiere on "Friday Night Lights." Problem solved.)

"The Office," NBC's workplace comedy where very little work ever gets accomplished.

"South Park," Comedy Central's tasteful, bittersweet exploration of the hopes and dreams of the good-hearted citizens of a bucolic Colorado town.

"24," the Fox thriller where Kiefer Sutherland saves the world without having to save any cheerleaders.

"The West Wing," NBC's departed show whose inclusion on this list helps pretty much no one.

"The Wire," HBO's great drama that shows just how well that War on Drugs is going.

TV Land's 100 Greatest TV Quotes and Catchphrases, which Radar online described as "heavy on quotes your ex-fratboy coworkers beat into your brain for months after their original airings" (and offered a few alternatives of their own), has now released the list in handy countdown form. Three of the Top 10 weren't even scripted by TV writers, apparently a damning commentary on their abilities. Here are the Top 20:

20 Come on down! (Johnny Olson, et al, The Price is Right)
... Into the pits of utter vacuity.
19 Let's get ready to rumble! (Michael Buffer, Various sporting events)
18 Good grief. (Charlie Brown, Peanuts Specials)
17 Hey, hey, hey! (Fat Albert, Fat Albert)
16 Yada, yada, yada... (Seinfeld)
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but didn't "Not that there's anything wrong with that" have a greater cultural significance? Or is TV Land hellbent to celebrate desultory mindlessness?
15 Book 'em, Danno. (Steve McGarrett, Hawaii Five-O)
14 Space, the final frontier… (Capt. Kirk, Star Trek)
Live Long and Prosper, a much better catchphrase, was No. 22, by the way.
13 We are two wild and crazy guys! (Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd, Saturday Night Live)
12 Dynomite! (J.J., Good Times)
11 Aaay! (Fonzie, Happy Days)
Shouldn't a decent catchphrase include actual words in the English language?
10 I'm not a crook. (Richard Nixon)
The more famous pronouncement, "I am not a crook," was a statement made to editors at the Washington Post. This lesser version came during the televised speech, when he dclared, “people have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.�
9 Yabba dabba do! (Fred Flintstone, The Flintstones)
Shouldn't a decent catchphrase include actual words in the English language?
8 Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis? (Arnold Drummond, Diff'rent Strokes)
7 Where's the beef? (Wendy's)
Really? A commercial is No. 7 of all time? Imagine all those TV writers who worked so hard over the years to create clever dialogue, only to be trumped by a 30-second spot for greasy burgers.
6 D'oh! (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons)
Shouldn't a decent catchphrase include actual words in the English language?
(Fun fact: Former LA Daily News TV critic (and current Hollywood Reporter TV critic) Ray Richmond is partially responsible for "D'oh!" When he edited the first guide to the TV show, scripts just referred to a "gutteral" grunt. For purposes of the book, Richmond translated it to "D'oh!" And the sixth-greatest catchphrase of all time was created.)
5 Ask not what your country can do for you... (John F. Kennedy)
4 Baby, you're the greatest. (Ralph Kramden, The Honeymooners)
3 You're fired! (Donald Trump, The Apprentice)
Further proof of Trump's art of the deal: He agrees to appear on the series of specials, TV Land agrees to rank his catchphrase high on their list.
2 One small step for man... (Neil Armstrong)
Curiously, we're now in the middle of a debate as to what Armstrong actually said, as the line was supposed to be "One small step for a man..." But apparently, TV Land is happy with ungrammatic epigrams.
1 Here's Johnny! (Ed McMahon, The Tonight Show)
I'm sure that somewhere, JFK's heart is broken that Ed's simple two-word introduction of another human being beat out his heroic call for altruism for the top spot.

But that's TV Land for you.

A SmithGeiger Report released yesterday (aw, c'mon, don't give up on this already!) found that repeats of old broadcast-network TV series represent a compelling reason for viewers to sample original programming on cable channels. While this sort of seems self-evident, we now have piles of numbers to pore over underscoring the verity.

72% of the 1,500 respondents between the ages of 16 and 54 say that when they turn on their TV, they tune into either a favorite channel or a specific program. An additional 25% go directly to an on-screen scheduling guide or their TiVo. Which suggests that channel-surfing isn't as prevalent as one might imagine, because people are clearly looking for something specific. And when people do surf - again, somewhat predictably - they'll stop when they come upon a familiar program.

By a margin of 52% to 48%, viewers are more likely to tune to a cable channel first. The nights when they're more likely to go to a broadcast network are Sundays (when "Desperate Housewives" is on), Tuesdays ("American Idol," "House," "NCIS," "The Unit," "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit") and Thursdays ("CSI," "Grey's Anatomy").

When people turn on a broadcast network, 58% said they do so to see a new episode of a show; 37% said the same thing about cable. But only 21% select broadcast if they want to see old episodes, while 69% turn to cable. 83% said they prefer cable channels that present some mix of original programming and off-network reruns.

Log-rolling is involved when network shows go to cable - the network shows boost the cable channel's profile, obviously, and coax viewers into therefore sampling the channel's original offerings. But the show itself can see its profile raised, and its ratings on its original network can rise, as well. 55% of those who first see a network show on cable are more likely to check it out on the broadcast network. (The study offers "24" and "Gilmore Girls" as series whose network runs improved after episodes appeared on cable.)

So: What this is saying is that despite all the hand-wringing of recent years, the networks are still vital and influential entities. And, in fact, cable channels are extremely reliant upon network programming to elevate their profile and their programming.

So it behooves the whole house of cards that is the TV industry that broadcast-network programming continue to flourish, because the trickle-down theory has it helping cable, as well.

What the study doesn't address is what might happen as the networks produce fewer big hits. Of all the new shows this season, only "Heroes," "Ugly Betty" and maybe "Shark" and "Sons & Daughters" appear to have a future that will allow them to build up enough episodes to ensure long cable runs of the sort that will help cable networks beyond just filling air time.

More pressingly, most of the series cited in the study as having high recognition from viewers and being effective in luring viewers to cable were sitcoms, and we all know how the sitcom is faring these days. How will having fewer new hit shows to bring viewers to broadcast networks and then to cable affect the whole industry? Is TV's future one of pure nostalgia?

Funny little example of the exigencies of journalism in today's print edition of the Daily News. Thursday's feature section is devoted to family and kid entertainment, and contains a little pullout section called Kids Daily News.

Unfortunately, network schedules don't always play along with the Thursday family conceit. So let me walk you through today's U section:

Page 6-A and 6-B: Kids Daily News. Cute drawing of a guy holding a shoe on a bucking horse (which may or may not be explained in the story, a serialized bit of fiction).
Page 8-9: Big story on Family-Friendly TV.
Page: 10: My review of "My Bare Lady," Fox Reality's new series debuting tonight featuring porn stars.
Page 10-A and 10-B: The rest of Kids Daily News. Stuff on dinosaurs and kids' thoughts on celebrating Christmas.

Perhaps the idea was to transform the paper into a print version of the "Sesame Street" game "Which of these things just doesn't belong here?"...

Press Release of the Day comes from the National Geographic Channel, which seeks to titillate viewers with an unlikely subject: Jesus.

The title of its special, “Explorer: Secret Lives of Jesus,� invites all manner of speculation, given the press release’s headline: “A STARTLING VIEW OF THE LIFE OF JESUS,� it proclaims, then asks, “Blasphemy? Hidden Truths?�

Eventually, the hyperbole settles down and thus begins the usual NGC boilerplate about “ancient manuscripts� (stifled yawn) before returning to form, claiming the special “offers a tantalizing glimpse inside the logic behind some of the most bizarre stories ever told about Jesus Christ.� And just in time for Christmas.

Speaking of which, here’s a version of the Michael Richards tirade you can share with your children – if you want them to grow up to be malicious, foul-mouthed elf-haters.

Speaking of besmirching the good names of beloved institutions, FX’s upcoming “Dirt,� starring Courteney Cox as a tabloid gossip columnist, features a character named “Don Konkey� that works at the same tabloid. I’m sure that the similarities to Your Mayor’s name are purely coincidental, although I became a little more suspicious when the show’s official website referred to the character as “schizophrenic.� Moreover, the estimable Mr. Konkey sports a goatee and is played by Ian Hart, who played John Lennon in two different movies; once, very long ago, someone (who may have had all manner of extenuating personal problems) told me I kind of sort of resembled John Lennon. Not so coincidental now, is it?

We’ve discussed before how Your Mayor’s good name has been exploited for nefarious gain (or twisted jokes) in the past. But “Dirt� gets one thing terribly wrong: I’ve never worn any headgear that looks like a misbegotten cross between a fedora and a porkpie hat. That’s Matt Drudge.

Meanwhile, while it may not be blasphemy it’s certainly carries quite a whiff: Brilliant But Cancelled’s “Deathwatch: Midseason Edition� continues in the same sort of corporate-synergy shilling it trucked in during the fall season. Sponsored by Bravo, which is part of NBC-Universal, BBC’s Deathwatch lays odds for the upcoming midseason replacement series, decreeing that most NBC shows are shoo-ins for ratings success, with the upcoming sitcom “The Singles Table� sporting odds of 626:1 against cancellation, although NBC has already scaled back on its episode order. (The lone exception: Andy Richter’s comedy “Andy Barker, P.I.,� which is given low odds for survival. How must that make Richter feel, knowing that he’s the one guy his corporate uberlords are willing to shove under the bus?)

Ah, well, at least the site offers solace to those behind “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,� “Friday Night Lights� and “30 Rock:� This is the only place they can go on the planet and see, right there in cyberprint, that their shows are “thriving.�

Finally, what is this world coming to when a plot-free hour of supermodels cavorting in undergarments can’t draw a sizable audience? CBS’s Victoria's Secret fashion extravaganza came in last place in its timeslot last night, getting its balconet handed to it with a piddling 6.8 million viewers, a full two million fewer than watched last year. Perhaps Justin Timberlake hasn’t brought sexy back after all.

When "Lost" returns on Feb. 7, it won't be up against "American Idol;" no, ABC is moving it out of the way, to 10 p.m.

The happy job of competing against "American Idol" and/or being torn apart by wolves goes to a new ABC sitcom, "The Knights of Prosperity" (the one with Mick Jagger vamping it up in the pilot then disappearing, apparently for good), which will debut Jan. 3. For those keeping score, that's about a month before "Day Break" - currently in the 9 p.m. Wednesday timeslot - was to wrap up its season. Now, the 4 million people still watching that show may never find out if Taye Diggs manages to exonerate himself. Here's guessing at that point they're not going to be too broken up about it.

Another new comedy, "In Case of Emergency" (which would be a far better title for a show scheduled opposite "American Idol"), also debuts Jan. 3. In a blow to Western Civilization, "According to Jim" also returns then, at 8 and 8:30 p.m.; "George Lopez" returns at 8 p.m. on Jan. 24, thereby mercifully cutting America's intake of "According to Jim" by half.

"Lost" took something of a hit last season when "American Idol" returned in January, and of course has suffered massive viewer attrition this season. In its last two episodes, it was beaten in its timeslot by CBS's "Criminal Minds" (for which CBS has rewarded that show by giving it the primo post-Super Bowl timeslot). Moving "Lost" to 10 - after the fall's six episodes didn't seem didn't seem to stanch fan grumbling - means it'll only have to compete with "CSI: New York."

In further network musical chairs, ABC's moving the William Shatfest "Show Me the Money" to Tuesdays at 8. Because, honestly, airing a consecutive two-hour bloc of "Show Me the Money" and two episodes of "According to Jim:" The CIA doesn't even stoop to that as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

Press Release of the Day, from CBS:

"Killer Chat' – Don and Charlie try to catch a serial killer who is seeking revenge against Internet sexual predators who prey on young girls they meet in chat rooms, on NUMB3RS, Friday, Dec. 15 (10:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network. ...

"Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin guest-stars as himself."

What the press release doesn't say is whether Aldrin is the serial killer or one of the sexual predators. Either way, it's a lot more of an acting stretch than the bland sentence "Buzz Aldrin guest-stars as himself" would suggest. (Nor does the press release intimate why Aldrin - who, no doubt disappointingly, doesn't actually figure into the main plot - would want to lend his legend to such a lurid storyline.)

It was bound to happen - well, no, actually, it wasn't, but it has nonetheless: A little flash-animated series created for a cell-phone company has become a full-blown TV series.

"Lil' Bush" (isn't the apostrophe misplaced?), a cartoon about Resident of the United States George W. Bush as a precociously bratty child with his pals Lil' Condi, Lil' Rummy (who'll now have to be recast) and Lil' Cheney (who basically just growls like a rabid dog), has received a six-episode pickup from Comedy Central. Comedy Central, of course, tried something like this before with Trey Parker and Matt Stone's live-action sitcom "That's My Bush," whose levels of transgressiveness got lost in the intentionally awful punchlines and soon disappeared.

But the story here is that "content" - to use the desultorily bland industry term - intended for a cell phone customer (that is, content designed for a tiny niche audience that can't afford to be too selective) has made the great leap to basic-cable. If someone's not pitching "Ringtone Nation" to MTV2 as we speak then something has happened that has depleted our national supply of cynicism and investigations should be underway.

Actually, "Lil' Bush" is kind of cute - the design is better than most recent Adult Swim offerings, it boasts a swinging little theme song and, if not exactly funny, then at least it contains trace particles of wit. In one episode, Lil' George gets control of his pop's red-button in the Oval Office and goes about exacting revenge on his foes, such as Lil' Kim Jong-Il, Lil' Hillary Clinton, Lil' Mikey Moore and Lil' Blue States. And in every episode, just like with the Archies or Josie and the Pussycats, George and his pals take up their musical instruments and perform a ditty.

It probably deserved a higher initial place in the entertainment food chain than cell-phone time-killer to begin with. But if we can promote programming to higher-profile platforms, does that mean we can also demote lame shows? Because "According to Jim" would be a natural for a cell-phone mob-isode: It only takes him two minutes to say something stupid, do a pratfall and get hugged by his doting wife, anyway. Scratch those other 28 minutes and everyone's happy.

Aaron Sorkin did it, um, again. For what it's worth.

Another "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" episode, another solid two-out single that likely won't result in much in the end. More melodrama that betrays the fact that although Sorkin really does live in L.A., he hasn't seemed to have absorbed all that much (a 4.1 earthquake that no one feels results in that much damage?). Then again, remember: This is a show that last week forced us to accept that an anarchic, cutting-edge sketch-comedy show would have Howie Mandel as a guest host (vaguely unsuccessful cross-promotion for NBC; meaningless for fictional network NBS).

So, Matt decides to make the Christmas episode about Christmas (cue: all sorts of irrelevant minutiae about the historical underpinnings of the holiday). So, Harriet is offered a movie role that sounds interesting only to aging Baby Boomers (whom Hollywood largely holds in contempt), and for scale (does Middle America really understand that term?), at that, from a guy who wants to steal her from Matt, who only seems to be most interested in her when another guy is. So, the big question about Jordan's impending status as a single parent is how she'll deal with the May upfronts (which pretty much no one in the free world cares about unless s/he's an advertiser, but at least we now know what Sorkin's May-sweeps stunt will be: breaking water at the upfronts). So, the FCC wants to go after the network because it aired a live news report in which a soldier dropped the F-bomb when insurgents were dropping real, actually deadly, bombs upon him (what broadcast network airs such live news reports? And, really, would such an incident actually trigger complaints, or would it become the most-viewed viral video in the history of the Internets ever, thereby discrediting any argument that the incident violated "community standards?").

Oh, well: At least we saw the germ of what might've been the first genuinely amusing idea for a sketch "Studio 60" has managed yet: Santa caught on "Dateline NBC's" "To Catch a Predator." And while the homage to New Orleans musicians would've been more resonant last season, "Studio 60" wasn't on then and no one else lifted such a finger, so the finale was kind of emotional.

Still: Why do I persist in watching this show? Because the show's producers have cattle-prodded me into believing that Jordan and Danny are a damn cute couple (if only because Christine Lahti isn't a regular on the show) and, by golly, I want to see them make it work!

You do have to wonder, though: If the show's promos are uniformly more compelling than the actual episodes, why aren't the people editing the promos writing the show?

What's particularly impressive about "Heroes" is how it manages to keep so many balls in the air without letting any of them drop, particularly given how many characters they've been adding to the mix. Tonight's episode - the final original episode of the year before the series returns Jan. 22 (yes, you'll have to wait that long for another new episode) - offers almost non-stop big developments (a couple of characters seem to have been culled from the herd, the cheerleader is in for a shock or two and we get an apparent glimpse at what that blast in New York seen way back at the beginning of the season was all about), so there's not a lot one can say except that its writers have been pretty crafty about how they've managed to bring all these disparate characters together and keep the momentum and the action hurdling along without the sort of narrative wheel-spinning and obfuscation that bedevils so many other tightly serialized shows. How long can they keep it up?

- "Heroes" 9 p.m. on NBC.

With all the lunacy that has transpired in 2006 – Mel and Michael’s meltdowns, sex scandals among the conservatives, celebrity adoptions and divorces (and, in TomKat’s case, marriages), violence in Iraq (and anywhere Dick Cheney goes hunting) and the skankfest that has been the starlet partying circuit featuring Britney/Paris/Lindsay – who’d’ve guessed the topic getting the most face time during the taping of Comedy Central’s “Last Laugh ’06� would be the Dayton Accords?

“The negotiations were initiated following the unsuccessful previous peace efforts and arrangements, the August 1995 Croatian military Operation Storm and its aftermath, the Bosniak-Croat military offensive against the Republika Srpska, in concert with NATO's Operation Deliberate Force, i.e the bombardment of the Bosnian Serb military,� quipped comic Patton Oswalt. “Why doesn’t Slobodan Milošević have a Darth Vader mask at this point? At least it’d cover up that awful haircut.�

Someone must’ve not sent them the memo that the Dayton Accords are a decade old.

Actually, Comedy Central’s “Last Laugh ’06,� taped Sunday evening at downtown L.A.’s Orpheum Theatre for an airdate next Sunday at 10 p.m., largely did eschew beating the year’s dead horses (except for the opening filmed sequence). Surprisingly, the best bits came from Greg Geraldo’s riffs on the champion racehorse Barbero’s breaking its leg (what a teetering of fate, Geraldo observed – either getting shot in the head or having sex in fields for the remainder of one’s life) and Oswalt’s reflections on KFC’s “Famous Bowl� of corn, mashed potatoes and chicken bits smashed into a Styrofoam cup, or, as he put it, “failure piled in a sadness bowl,� junk food for 40-somethings still living in their parents’ basement. The only better way to proffer such a foodstuff, Oswalt suggested, was to liquefy it, pump it into a “caulking gun and shoot it directly into my femoral artery.�

Professional apoplectic Lewis Black was the evening’s headliner, railing, as usual, against everything. The evening represented a marked departure from last year’s Comedy Central event, which featured scads of comics and even musical acts and took hours to tape. Sunday’s event didn’t take nearly so long, though the finale, a Q&A that was mainly given to audience members shouting gutturals that the comics were hard-pressed to translate, might have made it seem that way.

Afterwards, there was a party in a nearby restaurant, where shot glasses featuring Kim Jung-Il and Mel Gibson (who weren’t really eviscerated enough during the proceedings) were available, and during which midgets roamed the premises proffering glowing orbs which emanated “Last Laugh ’06’s� logo as if they were druids on some holy mission. Not even Comedy Central employees I talked to knew what to make of that.

– Comedy Central’s “Last Laugh ’06: 10 p.m. Sunday.

The New York Times recently acquired a confidential memo from one of Television's most highly placed officials suggesting greater awareness of the mess the People of Television find themselves in than has been heretofore publically indicated.

In order to foster more openness between the leaders of Television and its people - and also, because it's already out there - Your Mayor has opted to share with you the contents of this incendiary memo.

SUBJECT: Television — Illustrative New Courses of Action

The situation in primetime Television has been evolving, and network executives have adjusted, over time, from sitting back idly and counting money to contending with cable and interactive media, to hemorrhaging viewer attrition, to counterinsurgency from producers of unscripted programming, to dealing with death squads and sectarian violence. In my view, it is time for a major adjustment. Clearly, what network executives are currently doing in Television is not working well enough or fast enough. Following is a range of options:

ILLUSTRATIVE OPTIONS

Above the Line: (Many of these options could and, in a number of cases, should be done in combination with others)

¶Publicly announce a set of benchmarks agreed to by the People of Television and the reality-show-based community of counterinsurgents — political, economic and aesthetic goals — to convince everyone that progress can and is being made, regardless of the facts.

¶Make a concerted effort to win viewers’ hearts and minds: Why couldn’t, for example, Kate adopt an orphaned infant Polar Bear on "Lost?" Why can’t the writing team on “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip� have a lovable beagle mascot? Why can’t every episode of “The Shield� or “Rescue Me� end with hugs all around?

¶Conduct an accelerated draw-down of Television broadcast and cable networks. We have already reduced from 567 to 559 networks. Plan to get down to 540 to 541 networks by April 2007, and to 538 networks by July 2007. Honestly: How many of those home-shopping networks do we need, anyway? Jeez.

¶Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done when Oxygen ran that Shannen Doherty reality show, and start rewarding good behavior. Put our reconstruction efforts in those networks that are behaving and are committed to quality scripted programming, and invest and create havens of opportunity to reward them for their good behavior. Consider creation of Nielsen Viewing Squads (NVS), specifically trained to watch only quality scripted programming and the less-pandering cable networks.

¶Withdraw scripted programming from vulnerable positions — most of primetime, all of non-primetime, etc. — and move said programming to a Quick Reaction Force (QRF) status, to be available when a point on the timeslot opens up where such a series looks like it might possibly succeed.

¶Begin modest withdrawals of big-name stars from expensive series (start “taking our hand off the bicycle seat�), so showrunners know they have to pull up their socks and take responsibility for their shows’ quality.

¶Initiate a massive program for unemployed youth, much as MTV has done with “The Real World,� “Laguna Beach� and “My Super Sweet 16.� It would have to be run by former Florida Congressman [REDACTED], since no other person could do it with such élan.

¶Provide money to key political and religious leaders (as Saddam Hussein did), to get them to help us get through this difficult period.

¶Announce that whatever new approach network executives decide on, they do so on a trial basis. This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not “lose.�

¶Recast Television’s mission and its goals, particularly regarding ratings (and how we talk about them). Go minimalist.

Below the Line (less attractive options):

¶Continue on the current path.

¶Move a large number of serialized dramas into the primetime schedule to attempt to control it.

¶Set a firm withdrawal date to leave the airwaves and just put everything on broadband. Declare that with network schedules gone and the Internets offering a free-market exchange of ideas, the people can govern themselves.

It may be a bit late in the cycle for this, but this is the most elaborate Michael Richards parody I've seen, so it probably took these guys a little longer to get it to the Internets. I wonder how many episodes of "Seinfeld" they sat through to put this together? (Warning: Well, if you've seen Richards' tirade, you need no warning, and if you haven't you're likely not reading this. But be warned.)

In a recent New York Times story, comic legend Dick Gregory relates a joke his son told him: “What is worse than a white man calling a black man a(n n-word)? ... Calling a white man Michael Richards.�

"How do you remove 10 pounds of ugly fat?" goes the old kids' joke; the answer is: "Cut off your head."

CBS has cut off further episodes of "3 LBS," its drama about neurosurgeons (the title referred to the weight of the human brain; those other seven pounds apparently came from the skull and other ossified elements of network executives' noggins) starring Stanley Tucci. The show fared even worse in the timeslot than heist drama "Smith," which CBS robbed of a future earlier in the season. "The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show," a tasteful reflection upon the urgent issue of women's intimate apparel which had already been scheduled to air 10 p.m. Tuesday, will claim the timeslot next week; what happens thereafter is anyone's guess, though no doubt CBS is no doubt culling its files hoping it has copious outtakes from its underwear extravaganza.

At May's upfronts in New York, the cocksure CBS didn't even mention any midseason replacements, and "3 LBS" wasn't introduced by the network during July's Television Critics Association's press tour, no doubt because it figured they were good to go until January. So few media outlets had any Tucci profiles to run when the show was called into its premature service, which meant precious little free publicity for the show, which, truth be told, wasn't very good to begin with.

Tuesdays at 10 p.m. have been a trouble spot for the network ever since it cancelled "Judging Amy" a couple of years ago. Last season, "Close to Home" faced cancellation there until it was moved to Fridays, where it ultimately performed admirably.

This has been an ongoing concern for the networks, which tend to pull the trigger early on nominally performing series in hopes of finding shows that might do better. Invariably, they don't, which leaves executives scratching their heads at the idea that a mediocre show might actually have proven to be their savior (see: "Boomtown," "Invasion" and, yes, "Smith").