My best friend, an active and unrepentant TV addict, called me last night after the premiere of VH1's latest reality TV show, Scott Baio is 45...and Single.

The surprise:

"It's amazing. I'm actually emotionally invested in whether Scott Baio can get over his tremendous commitment issues. He visited Erin Moran, who played Joanie on Joanie Loves Chachi. Apparently he lost his virginity to her. She was screwing with him, telling him he had a little penis. Next week he's visiting two women who were on Charles in Charge. One of them tells him that his cheating on her so much was the reason she got her first AIDS test."

Her analysis of the show's appeal:

"One of the things that makes it so good is, I think, the fact that he seems really sincere about wanting to get his life together. And the production quality is really good. It's well put together. It's not like you're watching Scott Baio going through the drive-through for a half an hour."

Final verdict:

"This is going to be the best washed-up celebrity reality TV show of the summer. Maybe all year."

High praise indeed.

I'm a little young to remember Baio as a heartthrob, but I'm told he was quite the Tiger Beat centerfold.

Anybody out there willing to admit to a childhood crush?

I do not apologize for being a Will Farrell fan.

I also don't care what you think of the hilarious (but strangely divisive) Anchorman. I think it's probably his best film because it's his most ridiculous.

And for my money one of Farrell's best Saturday Night Live sketches was a "VH1 Storytellers" with Neil Diamond. (The clip may not be work-safe...may want to plug in your headphones.)

It worked because Farrell completely embraced the absurdity of the premise -- squeaky clean, square-as-they-come singer/songwriter Neil Diamond as a racist, drug addled wreck who can't remember his own songs and has an incredibly warped sense of his own importance. In fact, he made love to it.

I'd always wanted to see more of the character -- but in the end I thought maybe it was best they didn't beat it to death.

But Entertainment Weekly's Popwatch has posted an unaired clip of Farrell's Neil Diamond doing a duet with Christina Aguilera (Kate Hudson). Like a lot of failed SNL sketches it stretches the premise a bit far and Hudson is sort of heavy handed as Aguilera, but it's still funny.

What's your favorite Will Farrell moment? Harry Caray? James Lipton? "More Cowbell?"

Fox has announced what may be the geekiest comic-book centered television episode of any mainstream television show ever.

Apparently the Oct. 7 episode will gust star comic book heavy-weights Dan Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World, Art School Confidential), Pulitzer Prize winner Art Spiegelman (Maus) and the legendary Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, V For Vendetta, Promethea).

The plot will apparently concern a new comic store coming to town (Jack Black will voice its owner) to supplant Comic Book Guy's Android's Dungeon as Springfield's supreme spot for guys who lose themselves in spandex clad superhero adventures.

I do wonder how many people are going to get or care who the guest stars are -- but the Simpsons does this with some regularity. I remember them once having Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon as guest stars. When you reach the sort of iconic status The Simpsons has I think you can sort of do what you like.

My favorite part of the last Harry Potter movie?

Seeing this Get Smart trailer beforehand.

The audience went nuts for it.

I discovered Get Smart on Nick-At-Nite when I was a kid -- back when their line-up included nothing from the 1980s.

I thought it was some of the strangest, funniest stuff I'd ever seen (particularly because I finally understood where much of one of my favorite cartoons, Inspector Gadget, was coming from).

And, the rarity among things from our childhoods, it just got better as I got older.

Now, it's going to be a major motion picture starring Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart.

All right...would you believe a minor motion picture?

A puppet show with very sophisticated lighting?

Those who never saw Get Smart -- or just haven't seen it in a while -- can brush up before the movie with these episodes on Google Video.

Finally caught the first four episodes of Burn Notice -- a new show on the USA network a few people told me I would love.

They were right.

The premise: U.S. spy Michael Westen (a smooth, hilarious, constantly put-upon Jeffrey Donovan) is inexplicably given a "burn notice" by his handlers in the middle of a foreign mission. This means he's been blacklisted by all intelligence agencies, his credit destroyed, his assets frozen, his name put on watch lists. After a horrific beating he barely makes it out of Nigeria alive and wakes up in his home town of Miami still wondering how and why this has happened to him.

Almost no one he knows will still talk to him, all of his contacts are stonewalling him, he has no money, no prospects and is being trailed everywhere by the FBI. The only people who will help him try to figure all this out (and figure a way to sleep indoors and eat) are a psychotic ex-girlfriend (late of the IRA) a washed up ex-spy (played to drunken, sleazy perfection by Bruce Campbell) and the last person he wants to talk to for any reason -- his mother (Queer as Folk's Sharon Gless). Throw in a losery, trouble-making, gambling-addict younger brother (Jason Priestley at his least likeable but most interesting) and it is really a miserable existence. But you can't look away.

Westen realizes that with his skill set and no identity to speak of all he can really do is operate as an unlicensed P.I. and spy-for-hire for whoever will pay him while he tries to raise the money and chase down the clues to crack the mystery of who burned him and why.

The USA netork is certainly living up to its "Characters Welcome" slogan with this one -- and it's a bit slicker, more cynical and intentionally funny than their other two episodic detective series, Monk and Psych (both of which I do like, even if they seem a bit slap-dash now and then). The clever premise, the first-person narration I liked so much I realized I'd written two lines from the first episode almost verbatim in some fiction I'm working on) -- I think it's a winner.

Variety agrees.

Check it out.

As a little bonus -- you can watch Bruce Campbell's character recount Sam's spy stories on the show's website, which is pretty spiffy (even though I don't like the video that begins automatically, without your pressing anything).

Yet more Heroes-related news: Kevin Smith has announced at Comic-Con that he will be directing the first episode of the "Heroes" spinoff, "Heroes: Origins", in spring 2008. Kevin Smith, who directed and wrote Clerks, Chasing Amy and Dogma, has also directed the pilot episode of "Reaper" for the CW, which is getting great reviews, including one from the New York Times.

Apparently a different director will take on each episode of the spinoff. Who would you like to see? Quentin Tarantino's episode of "CSI" was pretty good, and I wouldn't mind seeing his take on "Heroes."

"Reaper" premiers on the CW on Tuesday, Sept. 25, at 9 p.m.

Joss may be one of my favorite people in the entertainment industry. Not only was he responsible for Buffy, Angel and Firefly, but the man's genius also extends to comics, public speaking, writing music, and dancing. (It just doesn't seem fair, does it? Although, maybe the dancing bit is not quite accurate. But Numfar -- aka Joss -- never fails to make me laugh.)

Now, coming from Comic-Con, Joss has revealed that he is talking with the BBC about making a 90-minute movie, "Ripper", about Rupert Giles, Buffy's Watcher on the TV show. And Anthony Stewart Head is apparently already on board.

Also in Joss news, he is already plotting season 9 of the Buffy comic, and Oz will be making an appearance! "The Angel: After the Fall" series will be 12 issues, picking up where season 5 of Angel left off. And here's a free comic he's collaborating on with Fabio Moon, called "Sugarshock" -- I just read it, and I have already bookmarked it for future issues.

Sad news.

The Flash Gordon pilot is not very good.

Now -- let me preface this by saying that the DVD I've seen was a very, very rough cut.

Special effects were missing and text would roll across the screen explaining: "THIS THE PART WHERE A GIANT SPACE SHIP APPEARS, WHICH IS WHY EVERYONE'S LOOKING INTO THE SKY AND GASPING!"

There were a number of scenes where the actors were walking past green screens that I'm assuming will eventually be lavishly created other-worlds or where a pivotal plot point was revealed with an effect that just didn't happen. Some of the sound and music cues weren't there yet, either, or shots were just missing, replaced with black screens that said: "ESTABLISHING SHOT, HOME."

But that's not the real problem. The real problem is that the concept has been reimagined in a way that isn't (yet) very interesting. It's very much like that first season of Smallville where, if it hadn't been for the fact that you know this kid is going to grow up to be Superman, you probably wouldn't have watched a show about a bunch of poorly developed high school characters running around in Kansas fighting a different mutant monster created by meteors every week.

But there are two important differences between these two series....

VH1's new Rock Docs series kicks off this weekend with part one of the two-part NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell

The series looks at New York City in 1977 -- the year of the great blackout, the Son of Sam killings, the beginnings of hip-hop culture and punk rock at CBGB. The story is told by those who were there -- among them KRS-One, Afrika Bambaattaa, Richard Hell, Tommy Ramone, Annie Sprinkle and Geraldo Rivera (yes, Geraldo Rivera).

Check out these clips from the documentary...

The Ramones bring together punks and criminals:

NY77: Punks and Criminals

In this bonus story from the VH1 Rock Doc: NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell (premiering August 11, 2007) the Ramones artistic director Arturo Vega explains how the Lower East Side's punk culture helped some potential criminals realize that it was cooler to hang out with the Ramones than to rob them.

Al Goldstein and Geraldo Rivera remember NYC's first open swingers' club, Plato's Retreat:

NY77: Plato's Retreat

Television - This excerpt from the VH1 Rock Doc: NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell (premiering August 11, 2007) recalls the first public swingers club, Plato's Retreat.

How the NYC blackout (and ensuing looting) helped give birth to street DJs and hip hop crews in need of equipment:

NY77: Blackout!

This excerpt from the VH1 Rock Doc: NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell (premiering August 11, 2007) shows how New Yorkers coped with the great blackout in July 1977. Musicians, celebrities and politicians remember the fear, the looting and the unexpected benefit to hip hop.

An animated recounting of an early rap battle:

NY77: The Rap Battle

In this excerpt from the VH1 Rock Doc: NY 77: The Coolest Year in Hell (premiering August 11, 2007), a memorable rap battle between Grandmaster Caz-DJ Disco Wiz and Afrika Bambaataa is recounted in classic comic book style by the artist Jim Rugg.

I'm strangely ambivalent about Britney Spears, her new single and her upcoming performance at the MTV Video Music Awards.

The new single, "Gimme More" begins with Britney announcing "It's Britney, b**ch!" -- and then giggling girlishly.

She then moans/sings lines like "You've got me in a strange position/if you're on a mission/you've got my permission."

Which might have been intriguing five years ago. But we've now seen her pregnant, bald, swinging at photographers, marrying backup dancers and walking barefoot through gas station bathrooms. Any mystique that once existed is gone forever and the new single seems almost like a parody of a Britney Spears song.

As I've written about before, part of Britney's incredible success was the way in which she so successfully straddled that ever-thinner line between innocent bubble gum pop princess and wanton, hardcore pop whore. The whole wet hot virgin thing was not new -- but she did it so transcendently well that even the most savvy of us had to wonder, as Chuck Klosterman did in a classic piece for Esquire -- was she the least self-aware person on the planet, or the most self-aware?

The Video Music Awards could be a triumphant return for Britney -- someone I know has a theory that she's been so successful because so many people are, deep down within themselves, pulling for her to succeed despite her own ridiculousness. The further she falls -- marrying K-Fed, having two of his children and then leaving them at home to go panty-less clubbing with Paris Hilton -- the more we want her to, like Hulk Hogan, come back from the depths and be our hero once again.

But as a fellow reporter said to me today -- this could also be just an awful embarrassment. She's been through a lot since her last album and tour -- a marriage, two children, rehab -- and those who care on more than a voyeuristic, will-she-make-a-fool-of-herself level, may be expecting the young, hot dancing machine sexpot of a half-decade ago. We may instead get the modern version of Elvis' Live from Hawaii special -- a pop icon past whose pop moment has past, well beyond the peak of their powers, begging for people to care again but clearly consigned to a sort of post-stardom that can only ever bottom out in a sort of cut-rate cult fame that will never really compare to the heady thrill of new, young fame.

Her new publicity shots do have her looking a bit like a drag queen...

Which brings me to an interesting point.

I've noticed that gay men have become the latter-day bread and butter of many a faded female pop star (Cher, Madonna, Cindy Lauper, Debbie Harry). Some of the young women who grew up with the music will always have a soft spot for these pop divas -- but for whatever reason (pop stars' flamboyance, the fact that some drag queens like to dress like them, take your pick) gay guys seem to be the retirement plan. None of these women are gay themselves -- but they've all become "gay icons."

Not a bad deal, really.

So maybe the question is -- will Britney use this upcoming performance and upcoming album to keep herself in the mainstream pop spotlight a while longer (as her idol Madonna has managed to do) -- or is she headlining the next Gay Games?

So, apparently Eddie Griffin's set at a Black Enterprise event was ended when he used profanity and (gasp!) "The N Word."

Hey -- it's their event and they can do what they like. But you might want to fire your entertainment director if he hired Eddie Griffin and thought he wasn't going to say nig...um.."the N-Word."

Had none of these folks ever seen Eddie Griffin's standup? Or any of his movies? He's sort of a third-rate Chris Rock (another comic who would, in all likelihood, have used the N-word without apology to anyone) and his comedy is usually racy and racial.
(Clip from Griffin's stand up below, strong language)

I don't like the N Word. I don't use it. But in comedy and satire -- particularly comedy and satire with a racial component, which is often Griffin's thing -- you have to make some allowance for its use.

Lenny Bruce famously (and brilliantly) advocated the use of the word (and other racial slurs) as a means of taking power from the word. If the president went on TV and used the word a hundred times, he said, it would lose its power completely. Consequently, no redneck could ever make a little black girl in Alabama cry by using the word.

Chris Rock famously (and controversially) tackled the N-word in his bit, "N---ers vs. Black People" (Clip below from "Roll With the New" -- some strong language).

Richard Pryor, after a trip to Africa, famously swore off use of the N-Word.
(Clip below from "Live on the Sunset Strip" -- includes strong language)

One of Pryor's most famous disciples, Dave Chapelle, uses the word almost plenty -- often with a biting satirical edge.
(Clip below from The Dave Chapelle show, includes strong language)

It is, of course, all a matter of context.

But the ridiculousness of pretending censoring the words does away with the racism aside -- there are any number of "safe" comics you can hire for this type of event. Why go with Eddie Griffin and then embarrass and persecute him for doing the kind of comedy on which he's made his reputation? Why not just go with Wayne Brady?

All right...maybe that's a bad example...
(Clip below from The Dave Chapelle Show, contains...oh, you know...)

Well...not here, of course.

But the pictures are out there.

It seems Vanessa Hudgens, Zac Efron's brainy love interest in the popular High School Musical franchise (and demonstrably less brainy love interest in real life) took some nude photos of herself. And, of course, they leaked onto the Internet.

Where I found them in about three minutes.

Would get fired (and possibly sued) for linking to them from here but I will note a few things:

1) There are a series of photos of her in progressively less clothing, in provocative poses, until she's posing naked and smirking for what seems to be a camera with a self timer.

2) She's doing so in what is clearly a bedroom and not (as has been reported) a bathroom. The curtain behind her just looks like a shower curtain. There's a bed and dressers in plain view.

3) The sort of creepy part about this (I mean -- besides her being the star of Disney films) is that, though she's 18 years old, the bedroom looks very much like the bedroom of a very girly high school girl. Christmas lights are strung along the ceiling of the room. Stuffed animals are visible on the fluffy bed on which she poses on all fours in what appears to be her sports bra.

4) Though she's turned out the big lights, turned on the string of Christmas ones and lit a series of tea candles on the dresser to "set the mood" she's left a half-finished plastic bottle of Dannon water (exactly like the one I'm drinking out of right now, eerily) on the dresser right beside her. This sort of kills the teenage girl faux romanticism of the scene and gives it a creepy, "I'm going to need to stay hydrated" porno shoot vibe. While the photo is undeniably aesthetically pleasing (in the strictest anatomy-drawing class sense, of course) the room and the way she's set it up sort of torpedoes any potential sexiness and just sort of makes my skin crawl. Mostly.

5) Female friends of mine who are hostile to the idea that every woman needs a Brazilian wax to be sexy have a new hero in Vanessa Hudgens. She makes their argument forcefully.

The number of news stories on these photos this morning is sort of staggering -- and many suggest that this is going to ruin her career with Disney, maybe even take down the entire High School Musical franchise. But as I look at them I wonder -- can that be right? It's not like she's doing anything really awful in them. They don't even rise to the level of misbehavior of some recent beauty pageant contestants. She just did what some (maybe an increasing number, and we can talk about and be disturbed by that if we're so inclined) 18 year old girls do when they're young and beautiful -- she privately documented her nudity for her boyfriend. I don't think it was for mass consumption -- though with Paris and Lindsay as warnings along the path of young fame she probably should have known better.

Let's hope this mistake doesn't doom her.

Joss Whedon fans take note:

Amazon's Gold Box Deal for today is Firefly: The Complete Series for $19.99 (!)

Firefly is the prematurely canceled cult sci-fi show that spawned the film Serenity and retains a fierce cult following. Part Western, part space opera, the show has great characters, terrific production and effects (by which I mean they look as though they could actually be happening -- a bit of gritty reality to the future and to space travel).

It's well worth looking into -- and for the price of the average DVD you can get the whole series plus DVD extras.

In this week's posts you can:

* Read my musings on Britney Spears looking like a drag queen (and the possibility that she'll spend the rest of her life performing for them).

* Find out whether Disney Channel's High School Musical star Vanessa Hudgens (and new star of inadvertent teen amateur Internet pornography) is into the Brazilian wax!

* Check out pictures of Maggie Gyllenhaal in the new Agent Provocateur lingerie ad campaign!

* Consider "The N Word" with comedians Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Chris Rock and Dave Chapelle -- all of whom used it to greater effect than Eddie Griffin, who was bounced from a Black Enterprise event for dropping it this weekend.

* Tell me whether you got screwed when Apple dropped the price of the iPhone just two months after its release (and whether the $100 store credit they're giving customers makes up for it).

* Check out clips from shows coming out on DVD -- including 30 Rock, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and, of course, Flight of the Conchords.

If you missed any of it, it's all archived. Enjoy.

Also -- talk back, you lurking bastards!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced that Jon Stewart's going to hose the Oscars once again. I, for one, loved it when he hosted two years ago. C'mon, a gay cowboy montage? It doesn't get much better than Ho!Yay! Perhaps he can do a montage this year involving overly-pretty men in epic movies -- Xerxes in "300", Achilles and Paris in "Troy", and Colin Farrell in "Alexander".

Donald Trump may have done the one thing that could possibly get me to watch Celebrity Apprentice -- it sounds like he's cast a "Buffy" alum. TV Guide is reporting that Charisma Carpenter (who played Cordelia Chase) will be appearing on the show, and apparently she is willing to "make like Alexis Carrington and bring out the claws if need be."

Sweet little Stephanie Tanner from "Full House" is pregnant. Doesn't that make you feel old?

I'm not sure how I feel about Nirvana's music being licensed for TV shows now. "Cold Case" does it well, so the Nirvana episode should be good. But I have to wonder if I'll soon be hearing Nirvana songs in places that make me cringe, like so many other classics that have been ill-used. ("Crumb-believable" and "Take this steak and top it" come immediately to mind.)

Got a sneak-preview DVD of the new Bionic Woman revamp.

My expectations were very low -- but it's really good.

And not just compared to the original, of which I've seen only a few episodes but with which I wasn't terribly impressed.

Like Battlestar Galactica (brought to us by the some of the same folks) this is a darker, scarier, more political version of a 70s classic.

It also manages to be sexy without being cheesecakey or exploitative -- no mean feat. The titular bionic woman is played by the gorgeous Michelle Ryan, who manages to be tough and sexy without (at least in the pilot) overtly exploiting her sexuality or leaning on her good looks as a crutch.

Her adversary, the evil (and beta model) bionic woman is played with femme fatale flare by Battlestar's Katee Sackhoff.

The two manage to have a brutal super-cat fight on a rooftop in a rainstorm without it looking anything like a beer commercial or one of those effing Charlie's Angels movies.

The show's apparently had some creative troubles, but the cast is strong, the writing is good, the effects are impressive and I for one am going to be keeping an eye on it.

The show premieres Sept. 26 on NBC and will air on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT.

So, I just finished watching the pilot for Journeyman, which, I admit, I really hadn't heard much about. My husband and I watched it because it was on InDemand, along with a bunch of other pilots. About two minutes into it, I turned to my husband and said, "This is the 'Time Traveler's Wife.' They should sue!" He pointed out that there was also the Good Samaritan aspect, so it was a mix of that and "Quantum Leap."

We start out with Kevin McKidd as a reporter in San Fransisco. McKidd is a poor man's Daniel Craig, complete with rugged good looks and piercing blue eyes. (You've seen him on "Rome," "Trainspotting," and in other supporting roles.) He has a wife and a kid, and you get the sense that not all is happy with him and his wife. Suddenly, he starts jaunting around in time uncontrollably, and by the end we find out out that he's supposed to change events to help out a stranger. Of course, the time-jaunting takes a toll on his relationships, since he sounds like a raving lunatic when he tries to explain where he has disappeared to for days at a time.

Overall, I thought it was a pretty good pilot, if you can get past the similarities to other shows and books. They threw a few twists in, including at least one that I didn't see coming. I'll probably watch at least a couple more episodes to see where it's going.

If you are anything like me, you lament the existence of TV execs who cancel shows like "Firefly," "Wonderfalls" and "Veronica Mars," while shows like "Cavemen" get greenlit. ("Charmed" ran for eight seasons. Seriously.)

While TV Bigshot won't let you keep great shows on the air, it does give you something to do on your break at work. It's a game put on by Television Without Pity and network sponsors. You get a budget of $300 million to use to buy and sell TV shows and move up the rankings, which change every week with the Nielsen ratings.

I love online stock exchange games, so I'm in. (I've been playing Hollywood Stock Exchange for years.) Comment if you're playing so I can see how we compare!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately -- have been learning a new beat and dealing with High Point's Furniture Market. But now that I've got my feet under me the regular posts will continue.

Beginning with...

ESPN 2's Bill Simmons is blunt about the possible fate of NBC's critically acclaimed sports drama, Friday Night Lights -- and who's to blame:

NBC is damned close to burying Friday Night Lights, which would be a shame on a number of levels, but none more serious than this one: It's the greatest sports-related show ever made. Returning for a second season on Oct. 5, it's a fair bet that FNL will be canceled by Christmas. And when it is, it's going to be because of people like you.

I don't know anyone who's watched the show and doesn't like it -- but like other critical darlings Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks and Firefly, FNL may learn the sad lesson that being good is simply not enough on network television.

I've written previously that NBC is now offering a money back guarantee to anyone who buys the first season of FNL on DVD and doesn't love it. They obviously have a lot of faith in the quality of the show -- but if a show airs and no one is watching, does it make a sound?

Making lists of the best shows canceled before their time is a time honored tradition -- and it's a good way to manage the frustration of reality television taking over and bad television shows sticking around so long while good ones die on the vine.

Here are my picks for the top five TV shows canceled too soon. You guys tell me which ones I missed.

Can you believe the company decided to send me for a week of training during premiere week last week? A full week without my DVR dual-tuner, without my Windows Media Center recordings, without the ability to speed through commercials. I had to watch TV live.

In any case, how do you think the week went? What shows are on your must-watch list and which ones have been kicked to the curb? I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of shows, and I was pretty disappointed in others. Here's my list:

Can they really be assembling the cast for the 20th version of "The Real World"?

I think most people my age remember the first season of the Real World (or the popular third season in San Francisco, where many people came aboard) with a sort of awe. Before anybody was using the term "reality television" it did seem revolutionary -- strange, unpredictable, maybe even a little dangerous.

It's the way our parents' generation must have felt about Saturday Night Live -- something that so changed the face, the direction, the very fabric of pop culture that it's hard to imagine what the world would now be like without it.

There seem to be some strange movies becoming television shows lately.

The movies themselves are of course successful -- it's just strange trying to imagine them on the small screen.

The premiere of the Terminator TV spin-off, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, is drawing near and the AP reports George Lucas is planning a live action Star Wars television show thirty years after the first film hit theaters.

A "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" television show is supposed to have been in the works for a while now. The pilot apparently didn't fly at ABC but is now being shopped around. I actually think this might work really well, as long as the camp is left in for that old-school Avengers vibe.

Also, talk of an Ocean's 11 TV miniseries

There have been far, far too many television shows going to the big screen in the last decade or so -- and I'm wondering if reversing the formula is a good idea.

Maybe I'm just nervous because of the old Robocop TV series.

Some movies that were arguably better once they became TV shows:

1) M*A*S*H

2) Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3) In The Heat of the Night

4) Stargate

5) La Femme Nikita (Fairly good TV show, though not as popular as "Alias." I actually liked the movie remake Point of No Return with Bridget Fonda -- for whom I have a thing spawned by this film and Single White Female.)

7) Highlander (the movies were sort of all over the place. The show, while a bit much, was at least consistently interesting.)

Last week J.K. Rowling outed top wizard Albus Dumbledore (of Harry Potter fame) as gay -- well after the last book of the series had gone to press.

There are some who are claiming they knew all along, or at least that the signs were there for those who were looking. Ed Cone pointed to a Metafilter comment thread in which someone said:

"He was a stylish 150-year-old-ish bachelor. You do the math."

If we're going to accept that a character's creator can out a character after all of the canonical work dealing with that character has been produced then I think there are some characters out there who are at least as likely as Dumbledore for a little homosexual retroactive continuity...

(WARNING: Comedic homosexual stereotypes ahead. Satirical. Not to be confused with actual homophobia.)

SO EXCITING! Joss Whedon already has a seven-episode commitment from Fox for "Dollhouse" (let's hope they don't cancel it soon after that a la Firefly), which will star Eliza Dushku, (Faith on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and Tru in "Tru Calling").

Here's how Fox describes the series:

"Echo (Eliza Dushku) [is] a young woman who is literally everybody's fantasy. She is one of a group of men and women who can be imprinted with personality packages, including memories, skills, language—even muscle memory—for different assignments. The assignments can be romantic, adventurous, outlandish, uplifting, sexual and/or very illegal. When not imprinted with a personality package, Echo and the others are basically mind-wiped, living like children in a futuristic dorm/lab dubbed the Dollhouse, with no memory of their assignments—or of much else. The show revolves around the childlike Echo's burgeoning self-awareness, and her desire to know who she was before, a desire that begins to seep into her various imprinted personalities and puts her in danger both in the field and in the closely monitored confines of the Dollhouse."

It sounds a bit like River from "Firefly" meets "Total Recall" meets "Alias." And I can't wait! Let's just hope the writers' strike doesn't postpone it too long!

Well, the Hollywood writer's strike is in full effect.

Sure, Jay and Dave's late night shows are now in reruns -- but I didn't watch them anyway, and this is all fascinating to me. I'm very interested to see how everyone's reacting to it.

According to the AP Jay Leno rode up to a line of writers picketing outside NBC to deliver them donuts and show his support.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus and the cast of her show, The New Adventures of Old Christine, were picketing alongside striking writers outside Warner Bros. on Monday. Dreyfus is married to a writer.

30 Rock's Tina Fey has been picketing in New York in November -- the L.A. Times caught up with her on the line.

Brian K. Vaughan, one of my favorite comics writers and now a writer and producer on Lost, talks about the strike on his MySpace blog, saying:

A few months ago, I was thrilled to start my second season as a writer and now a co-producer over at LOST, and have been unbelievably fortunate enough to help write a few scripts for what I think could end up being the show's best season.

And much as it breaks my heart for my colleagues and I to have to walk away from a job we love, we all think it's vitally important to the future of our industry.

Judd Apatow, director of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, agrees, explaining the grievance over writers not being paid for residuals aired in new media formats:

"Here's how I would explain it: If you're a teamster, you get paid to drive a truck. But if someone invents a new kind of truck, and you're still driving it, you should still get paid."

Blimey!

Check out this flashlight in the form of the Sonic Screwdriver device from the long running BBC science fiction show Doctor Who.

And it's just $13.

Here's a clip of The Doctor with his favorite tool:

And here's a video review of the actual flashlight (or torch, for you anglophiles):

This YouTube clip, created by one of The Daily Show's 14 writers, is for my mom.

She's been missing her Jon Stewart fix since the writer's strike began. It is a pretty funny look at the strike and the CEOs who sue over Internet content and say on the record it's worth billions but then tell the Writer's Guild that there's no way to figure out what online content is worth.

Caught the premiere of Tin Man last night on the Sci-Fi channel.

The big budget sci-fi retelling of L Frank Baum's "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" is a dark, steampunk-esque epic featuring robots, fierce monsters, magic, interdimensional travel, shape-shifting and drugs. Most of those things feature in some way in either the original book or the classic MGM movie -- so they shouldn't come as such a shock. But it's a thoroughly modern vision of the story with quite a few important changes:

* OZ is now "The O.Z" or "Outer Zone," a different dimension that was once a paradise until the rise to power of the evil witch Azkadellia (played by a sexy-as-she-is-scary Kathleen Robertson).

* Dorothy Gale is now "D.G." (Zooey Deschanel), a rebellious waitress who rides a motorcycle rather than a bicycle with a handle-bar basket.

* The Scarecrow is now "Glitch," (Alan Cumming) a once brilliant scientist who was tortured in one of Askadellia's prisons and had half his brain stolen and a zipper attached to his skull.

* The Tin Man (Neal McDonough) is now an ex-cop whose badge (and being sealed in a metal suit while watching a hologram of his family being tortured) gives him his name. He's out to kill those who took his family from him and took over the O.Z.

* The Cowardly Lion is now "Raw" (Raul Trujillo), a psychic man/wolverine who can heal wounds with a touch.

* The Wizard is now a drug addled nightclub performer who mixes philosophy and...well, incoherence...while trying to help D.G.

Can't tell you much more than that without revealing some of the show's many secrets -- some of which are only beginning to unravel. Overall I enjoyed the first installment very much - enough to make me anxious for the next.

Who else saw it? What'd you think?

If you missed it, you can watch all of part one here.