There are so many good reasons to like Tina Fey that at some point, it begins to feel silly. Like she can't possibly be as grand as she seems to be. And then she gives an interview in which she says that Paula Abdul is awful "in the ways she generally appears to be," and it becomes clear that she is even more grand than that.

I'm not a Dexter viewer myself; maybe someone else knows better than I do, but I find it hard to understand how they're going to edit it to be appropriate for broadcast on CBS. It has always appeared to me that the entire show was, in tone, simply not suited for network broadcast. I guess we'll find out how badly it has to be butchered. I will admit that if there is one teeny, tiny, minuscule silver lining in the wretched strike situation, it might be that a network desperate for something to air might give something a chance to find an audience that otherwise wouldn't. Not with scab writers (because: gross), but with things like this that have already been aired but not seen very much. What if NBC decided, once the strike was in full swing, to run the first season of Friday Night Lights as a week-long miniseries? I don't know that The Wire can be made to fit, but you never know what's possible.

It's better than another season of Big Brother, which I can't even bring myself to discuss, it's so gross.

Law & Order is moving back to Wednesdays, where it belongs! I mean, come on, Friday nights are for girl shows and marginal procedurals -- not the totally amazing ones that have hung on for eighteen freaking seasons and have spawned multiple spinoffs and a Presidential candidate and "Is this because I'm a lesbian?" I don't care what anyone says: Law & Order is the shit. What other shows can have you reading the news just to guess which headlines are going to get ripped from?

I think we've all enjoyed Pat Robertson's time on our airwaves -- excoriating gay people, excoriating Muslims...really, just delivering a whole TV network full of excoriation. But it would seem that his time with us is nearly at an end: he's handing over the reins at CBN, the Christian Broadcasting Network, to his son Gordon. But...but...but how will I know how to feel about the seemingly inevitable war with Iran if I can't just take the position opposite Robertson's? PLEASE, God, let him start a blog.

I feel like the question with cosmetic surgery is, do you do it young, when your parts are still somewhat pliable and can bounce back more believably, even if you don't really need it? Or do you wait until you're old and getting kind of haggard, even though everyone knows what you used to look like and therefore is going to be so much more terrified when they see your new mug? Ashley "High School Musical" Tisdale went one way; Joan "Knots Landing" Van Ark went another. (Yikes.)

I don't know that it's the most compelling argument in favor of the writers' strike I've ever seen, but I'll give the creators of the cute animals on strike video, apparently Colbert Report writers, all the credit in the world for the sheer amusement of the dog not riding the skateboard.

For those getting ready to say goodbye to Heroes for the foreseeable future after tonight's "fall finale," my friend Brenda has taken her post of earlier this year -- about daddy issues on the show last season -- and updated it to run down some more iterations of daddy issues for Season 2.

The lovely and talented Brenda is one of my favourite pop-culture writers (and not just because the initial commonality we shared before our first meeting was a love of Clone High), and if you aren't familiar with her blog, Moot Point, you should definitely add it to your daily rounds. Hi, Brenda!

Keckler sent this to Sars and me last week, not knowing that the Workplace Safety & Insurance Board of Ontario has a long history of creating PSAs that traumatize you into doing what you can to keep your workplace safe; Glark still wakes up screaming from nightmares of one that ran when he was a kid, featuring a fleck of metal hitting a guy in the eye when he's working without goggles. Anyway, I realize that people have this idea of Canadians as peaceful and passive, but I hope that viewing a video like that (and any of the ones in YouTube's related column) will prove that Canadians can be just as fucked up as people of any other nationality -- and perhaps more.

You know...I come back from a four-day weekend, and the TV news is all just bleak -- about the strike, and Leno and Conan laying off staff, and Elizabeth Berkley hosting a reality show about dancing -- so I feel like we could all use a little holiday cheer instead. Thank God for GoldenFiddle, which has helped me out with a link to a couple of online holiday greetings created by Arrested Development's Will Arnett and SNL's Amy Poehler for Gap. If nothing else, it will help you to preserve the illusion that they spend every minute of their married lives adorably goofing around like this.

Sorry to post this, like, two weeks after the issue came out, but I just read the interview with Chevy Chase in New York Magazine, and...man, that dude is a dick.  Forgets the interviewer's name; is pointedly apathetic about the strike and the current season of SNL; won't watch the Brothers & Sisters episodes he filmed except "to see what they cut"; talks about how the applause he got for his appearance on "Weekend Update" "took attention away from Seth and Amy," so he's not going to do the show again for a while; complains about how he took time off to raise his kids, and now it's hard to get work, like every actress with children, or other actor over 60, doesn't face the same issues, even if they're extremely talented, which, I love European Vacation but a thespian Chase ain't; and bags on the women on The View: "It's not that difficult to speak like a human being without a writer.  Aren't these women reasonably intelligent?"

Remind me...how'd your talk show do, Chevy?  Oh, that's right -- it bombed, because even with a writer, you were visibly uncomfortable and unable to connect with your guests.  It was so bad, in fact, that people still talk about how bad it was, and it was on for maybe 5 episodes.  Like 15 years ago.  So, you kind of don't get to talk shit about The View when your own attempt at that gig was a suckball. 

People in the TWoP bullpen are talking today about how bad your B&S appearance was, and how the editing seemed weird...almost like you didn't give them enough usable takes.  So if you're wondering "what they cut," I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's "most of what you filmed," because apparently you think you're above making an effort.  The entire character seemed phoned in and flat, and whatever you had done to your face, I hope you kept the receipt.

It doesn't seem that arrogant and unprofessional, written out this way, but go read the interview; he's so fucking full of himself that he's seriously this close to popping.  I ripped him a new one in the TWoP book, and I've wondered from time to time if I was too harsh, but...nope.  The guy's an ass and a half.  I mean, don't put me in the position of defending The View, a show I think is asinine.