What do Esther Williams, Donny Most, Keith Carradine, Dustin Hoffman, Deborah Norville, The Edge, Rikki Rocket (of Poison), Connie Stevens, JC Chasez (N Sync), Countess Vaughn (The Parkers), Peter Wier, Kool Mo Dee, Drew Lachey (98 Degrees), Larry Wilcox (CHiPS), and Princess Beatrice all have in common with me?

Our birthday. Woo!

Boggie may have The Mole and Cooch seems to enjoy the idea that he can get recaps of The Anna Nicole Show from TV Without Pity (a site I recommend, although the recaps can go on forever). I, however, have gotten interested in a show that almost defies recapping.

30 Seconds to Fame.

The premise is simple. Performers are rolled out at a breakneck clip and get 30 seconds to do their thing. The audience can vote them off by using some sort of device located at each seat. Performers surviving the 30 seconds are put into a pool, and the audience votes for the top three. Those three get another 30 seconds, audience votes again, winner gets $25k.

The show is hosted by Craig J. Jackson, who some of you may remember from his reporting and anchor duties on Channel One. That some of you being anyone under the age of, say, 25. The rest of us could remember him from his stint as host of The X Show on fX, but I'm willing to bet my core demographic (such as it is) doesn't quite match up with theirs. He's kind of a cross between Stuart Scott and Chuck Barris, and isn't too bad. He keeps things moving and light, at least. None of the faux-dramatic intonations the anonymous voice over guy from American Idol over-uses.

The acts are a real mixed bag. Mostly musical, either singing or instrumental. The singers tend to be OK, while the instrumentalists can really run the gamut. One of last night's winners (there being 2 episodes shown, as Meet the Marks, an improv/candid camera show, proved atrocious even by Fox network summer standards, which says something) was an electric violin player, who played on the same show as the guy who tried to play the clarinet and sax at the same time (and the woman who played the xylophone by spitting ping pong balls out of her mouth. I know where some of you are going with that- don't go there).

The other main type of act are movers, mostly dancing, but also martial artists, tumblers, Cirque du Soleil rejects, and so on. The other winners from last night were a dance pair who tangoed their way to the money after just 8 months of dancing together. There've also been hula dancers, more than one guy dancing with a doll/mannequin, and a male belly dancer (voted off).

Comedians fare poorly. There was one guy who was pretty funny last night, doing an impression of Al Pacino starring in Annie. Most get voted off, especially the prop comics. The wellspring of hate for Carrot Top is apparently deep enough for all of his comrades to take a dip, too.

I suppose the think that makes this a good show rather than a great show is that the contestants are, as a whole, perhaps too good. For every guy who yodels and strums a guitar upside-down, there are 4 or 5 relatively talented mainstream acts. Odd that I would criticize Fox for being too tasteful, but the show needs more fire eaters, plate spinners, and ventriloquists.

Or more of those large, pink-haired women who were so prominent in the early ads for the show (and still grace the website).

If 30 Seconds to Fame has done nothing else, it's showed the American viewing public that the human beatbox is alive an well. There were two on last night, and one the week before. The Fat Boys would be proud.

Having recently been through Chicago and Ann Arbor, a quick recap.

Blowin' through the Windy City Most of my previous trips to Chicago had it as the place to go through to get somewhere else (most memorably as the stop-over on a flight from Boston to Orlando, tickets bought through one of those supermarket register tape deals). This was the first time that I'd actually been in Chicago and actually did some Chicago-type things.

This meant on Friday seeing the Cubs beat the Rockies 6-4 in extra innings. Had unbelievable seats; face value $32, scalp for $25, about 30 feet from home. Missed the top of the first, but got to see 11.5 innings up close and personal. Saw Sammy go yard, Alfonseca blow a save by serving up Jack Cust's first MLB homer, and Moises Alou win with a walk-off 2 run job.

I also saw the future of homeland defense. The usher working the section in front of us (sections are refered to as "aisles" for some reason, but I'll use the more obvious term) was an older woman in her 60s, and she was relentless in keeping people out of her section who didn't belong, shooing people out of the actual aisle if they were blocking the view, and otherwise ruling that part of Wrigley with an iron fist. And who's going to argue with a midwestern grandmother? I'm thinking we get this woman and all of her friends to points of entry ASAP. Nothing could stop al-Qaeda colder than Nana's polite but firm no.

Returning on Sunday, we got kind of a late jump, so instead of doing a few different things we headed over to the Field Museum of Natural History. That part of Chicago is under construction (much of it perpetual, according to Greg), so parking was nightmarish. Once in, though, it was an easy walk to the museum "campus" that includes the Shedd Aquarium, a planetarium, and other stuff I'm forgetting. Oh, Solider Field is also right there, so we got to see some construction there, too.

Go to the Field Museum. They've got Sue the T Rex, the man-eating lions of Tsavo, and some other cool stuff. Plus, if you can convince the ticket people you're a teacher, you get in free!

As I've said in the past, one of these days I have to get to Chicago just to sightsee.

Oh yeah, the tournament The meat in the Chi-town sandwich was going out to Ann Arbor for an individual trash tournament. Both drives took place during evening/night/early morning hours, and I must have been a great traveling companion with all the napping I did. We stopped for dinner at a Steak 'n Shake, which was pretty good. They have really, really thin fries.

Tournament itself went better than expected, as I finished third out of 15 people. Highlight of the day was missing a question on the video game Mr. Do after playing the game during lunch. In an aside, Pinball Pete's is less cool now than it was in April, as they've thinned out their classic games and added a ton of music/dance games.

Post-tournament entertainment was pretty typical, Mexican food followed by Mike Burger's game show round (entertaining as always). The tournament all-star game was again in Weakest Link format, and I managed to get voted off after the second round. For my troubles, I won a number of books, including the novelizations of Space Camp and Dante's Peak.

Even the travel aspect of the weekend wasn't too out of hand, as both flights were relatively on time and hassle free. I can also confirm that American Airlines' claim of more leg room is spot on. It took me about 10 minutes on the flight out to realize what was different.

OK, I apparently need to use break tags much more liberally than originally thought. The links should all be nicely spaced now.

I've added some new links to people that weren't at BU at the same time I was (to the best of my knowledge). There are several other college bowl-related folks I could link to, but you can get to them pretty much through Craig's anyways. Though many of them have links to here, so I should just return the favor. Except that I can't be bothered right now. Too hot in the office.

I promised you a run down of TV Guide's 50 worst shows of all time, so here it is. I know you were waiting on tenterhooks!

My general observation about the list is that it seems to focus less on the truly worst shows than a combination of shows that combine lack of quality with a better cachet with the viewing public.

As much as it pains me to say it, I don't agree that The Jerry Springer Show is the worst TV show of all time. Should it be on the list? Certainly. But Springer has a knowing sense of its own lack of worth that other shows don't. Jenny Jones prattles on about the difference her show makes, even though it's best known for killing a guy. You could say the same of Ricki, Maury, and the dear departed Sally Jesse. None of them quite let the wall come down and admit that they're playing to the basest interest. Jerry does. For that he does deserve a place on the list. Just not the top one.

Should the XFL take the third spot? Production values were low, broadcast teams ill suited for football, and the product didn't live up to hype (to everyone's shock and chagrin). But was it worse than a variety show starring the Brady Bunch? Or a bunch of corn-fed yokels featuring Kathie Lee Gifford? Or worse than Celebrity Boxing, a show that put non-athletes (that's including the Fridge and Manute) into bouts that were fixed (sources indicate taping of several different endings)? The XFL, as far as we can tell, featured current athletes in non-fixed situations.

The biggest problem with the list is the show in fifth place - Hogan's Heroes. You can attack the show on several levels- it makes light of war, trivializes the Nazis, and so on. These would be good arguments- if the series was in any way meant to look at World War II in a meaningful way. The show was as knowing in its way as Springer. And would two men affected by the Holocaust- Robert Clary and Werner Klemperer- be involved in the show if they thought it demeaned their struggles? One would have to think they were happy to play the Nazis for chumps.

It's escapist humor all the way, and still provides chuckles today. This show shouldn't be on the list.

Hello, Larry at 12 is high. The show, one of McLean Stevenson's many post-MASH projects, is probably his best in that line. Not that it's high praise. The story of a single dad raising daughters while working on an AM station in Portland, Oregon, it combined domestic and topical humor (such as the older daughter's IUD use leading to an infection). The show is clearly better than Condo (perhaps his worst show, a mishmash of racial and cultural "humor"), In the Beginning, and the TV version of Dirty Dancing. Hello Larry makes the list because it's the best known of the group.

Twenty-One is most likely on the list due to the Charles van Doren scandal. The lame revival didn't help, either. But it's not 13th worst. It's better than most of the shows on the list, more deserving of something in the 40s. Or a trade with Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, which should be much higher on moral grounds alone.

Notably absent is any of the twaddle that's tried to fill the 8:30 Thurday time slot on NBC over the last few years. No The Single Guy or Union Station or Jesse or Inside Schwartz. All of which were worse than, say, Life with Lucy, The Ropers, or even Unhappily Every After (with sincere thanks to Nikki Cox's decolletage).

Other shows that don't seem to fit the list:

Howard Stern and The Tom Green Show Neither show caters to a mainstream audience, and Stern is hampered by trying to convert a radio show into a visual medium. But both hit upon a level of humor in America that clearly exists, even if it's not the level of folks who get all of the New Yorkercartoons (at least not admittedly).

I don't personally care for either Stern or Green, but think that they've redefined comedy in their own ways, and their shows probably would get the average person to laugh more than, say, Working or Fired Up.

Holmes and Yoyo Cop with bad luck in partners gets mated up with an android. It was out there for a 1970s show, but at least it wasn't all preachy (I'm looking at you, Quincy!).

Pink Lady... and Jeff Jeff Altman hosts, Pink Lady (a pair of Japanese women) sings, and no one understands each other. Jim Varney appears in a number of comedy sketches. It's train wreck funny, which I suppose means it should be a bottom 50 show, but can't think that this would be there and Susan and Mel Together, another incomprehensible pairing (but with two people- Susan Anton and Mel Tillis- who speak the same language... to a point), isn't.

Makin' It The greatest sitcom about roller disco ever. OK, this really does belong, but I watched this show a lot. Don't know why, exactly. I didn't roller skate, disliked disco, and couldn't identify with the family all that much. But Ellen Travolta can play a sitcom mother to perfection. Maybe that was it.

I suppose I should argue for The Flying Nun, but I can't. I really never cared for the show.

Other shows present an almost theological problem, in that arguing for or against them is a matter of such fine degree that it's almost pointless. I'm thinking here of shows like She's the Sheriff, A.K.A. Pablo, Rango, Co-ed Fever, shows whose general lack of quality makes them hard to distinguish from other bad shows that didn't make the list and which, thankfully, are receding into memory.

Barney, however, seems like the perfect capper.

Notes from a quiet weekend:

Going to the rock shows Within 48 hours got tickets to two shows about two weeks apart. On September 17 we'll be seeing Coldplay, a group I admittedly know little about but whose music I like. They're playing the FleetBoston Pavilion, which used to be the more euphoniously named Harbor Lights. Some group called Ash is opening, and I know absolutely nothing about them.

On October 1, we're making our return to the Fleet Center proper to see Paul McCartney again. This makes Sir Paul the second musical act I've seen twice in concert, the first being Rush. Who, come to think of it, may have been the last thing I saw at the Boston Garden (though it's more likely a Beanpot or Hockey East playoff game would fill that role).

Shop until the drops Facing a Sunday without anything planned and both of us needing a quality clothing item (a dress for Sarah and the elusive sneakers for me), we figured it was a good time to visit one of the area's fine outlet malls. It was a choice between the Worcester Common Outlets (formerly the Worcester Common Fashion Outlets, but now apparently so much more!) and the Wrentham Village Premium Outlets. The latter seems to have more options, and it has the added bonus of not being in Worcester. So off to Wrentham we went.

In my mind, outlet shopping is what you do in vast warehouse-type places that sell all the stuff they couldn't get rid of otherwise. Not so with Wrentham Village, which was nicer than some malls I'm familiar with.

In any case, Sarah found a dress the first place we looked. How often does that happen?

My sneaker hunt took us to Adidas first, and apprently the Euros don't have feet as big as mine. Second stop was Reebok, and that's where my five years of footwear frustration finally finished. Got a decent pair of cross-trainers, $40. Now I'm all set until 2007.

It's an open-air sort of affair, with covered and uncovered walkways between buildings. Which is why it was good we finished before the rain started, even if there wasn't much rain to worry about.

Was that it? Pretty much. Spent a fair amount of time lounging about the apartment, worked out on Saturday, made a stop at Jiffy Lube to change the oil, and had a lovely drive past Cochituate State Park.

NEWS FLASH Allen Iverson had 13 of the 14 counts against him thrown out by a judge today, leaving only the charge about making terroristic threats. I suppose he'll have the family over again.

NEWS FLASH Budget, 15 passenger van provider to BU College Bowl lo these many years filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today. In some way, this explains why they never had the van in Allston waiting for us.

One of the drawbacks to watching any of the programming on Fox this summer is the interminable promotion of shows premiering in the fall (sort of like how the World Series last year was seemingly brought to us by Keifer Sutherland). There are four shows that have, after much, much promotion, stuck in my head.

Fastlane The Fox website touts it as being brought to us by the director of Charlie's Angels and the writer of The Fugitive, which is at best half promising.

The set-up is like pretty much every other cop show. Using a vast warehouse of luxury cars, high performance motorcycles, and tony designer clothing and accessories, a pair of LA's finest fight crime while reporting to a supervisor who looks like a magazine cover model.

Clearly, the folks behind this show have exposed themselves to a dangerous mixture of The Fast and the Furious, Grand Theft Auto, and Robo trippin', but have had to clean things up for network TV. Even Fox has standards. I think.

My brother is a cop. Admittedly, he works in Chelsea, Massachusetts, not the sort of place where a lot of confiscated Rolexes and Ducatis are going to wind up. But I don't remember him ever mentioning that officers got to use impounded goods for anything. And I certainly don't think his supervisor ever appeared on the cover of Cosmo, Teen, YM, or Sophisticate's Hairstyle Guide.

I'm sure Vin Diesel will appear as the cheif of some sort of Gen Y hardbody police squad during sweeps.

girls club I don't even know where to start with how much the promos for this have turned me off. Let us count the ways.

1. It's a David E. Kelley production. His forays into the legal world include the self-hating and self-absorbed defenders on The Practice and the loopy, anorexic, and self-absorbed shysters on Ally McBeal. They say bad things come in threes.

2. Gretchen Mol plays the blonde lawyer. For those of you not familar with Mol, Vanity Fair tapped her as the "next big thing" back in 1998 just as she made her foray into major films in Rounders, a not bad film starring Matt Damon and Edward Norton. The only problem was someone forgot to tell Mol that she was supposed to be big. Four years later, she's mostly been in smaller movies and crap (The Thirteenth Floor and Get Carter, the latter of which she tried to duck by being uncredited).

I don't know if Mol's trying to channel Kim Novak in the cool blonde department, but it's not working. Mol seems more detached than cool, which (for me at least) leads to apathy, if not dread, of her performances.

That and Kim Novak's not dead! Don't channel the living, it'll screw up some sort of inter-dimensional barrier. Didn't Superman II teach us anything?

3. The name of the show is in all lowercase. The estate of e. e. cummings, contact your attorney.

4. The three lead actresses are blonde, brunette, and redheaded. Couldn't we just have a live action Powerpuff Girls instead?

5. Giancarlo Esposito apparently plays one of the partners of the law firm the show follows. I have a bad identification with Esposito from the last season of Homicide. He wasn't the worst offender (I'm looking at you, Jon Seda!), but was emblematic of the way the show tanked at the end.

6. Felicity Huffman is resigned to doing this show? What the hell? It's not as bad as Josh Malina getting stuck with Imagine That, but yikes! How have these people pissed Aaron Sorkin off? Can't we use Rob Lowe's salary to fund some recurring roles to save people from crap?

7. The ad uses a Madonna song. Personal problem.

8. The show hasn't aired episode one, and Fox already has message boards up for it. Again I say, what the hell?

I know, it's trying to take the Ally time slot and demo and run, so as an over 30 male I shouldn't be interested. And I'm not. Mission accomplished, I guess.

John Doe A man who knows everything doesn't know his own name or how he got where he is. Kind of like if Dwight Kidder got knocked on the head and left in a corn field in Nebraska.

It's in the Friday at 9 slot, so it's going for that X Files/Millenium/Dark Angel vibe. It at least appears moderately interesting.

Firefly It's 400 years in the future, there's been some sort of "universal civil war" according to the show's Fox website (how can a civil war be universal? Aren't civil wars intra- rather than inter-?). A transport ship cruises the outer planets trying to dodge the powers that be while hauling stuff, doing some things that aren't wholly legal, and otherwise participating in the sort of affairs that are normally left to folks on Star Trek or crappy syndicated shows.

Joss Whedon of Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame is in charge of this, so I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. But I'm out if space demons start showing up.

The one new show that didn't stick in my head was Cedric the Entertainer Presents. It's sketch comedy, it's a large man dancing, it's on Wednesday at 8:30 when I'll be looking for improvement out of Ed.

It's always nice to find out well after the fact that a wooden sailing vessel you once cruised on may not be as seaworthy as you'd have hoped.

To be fair, though, the folks on the Ernestina are great, and the cruise we took from New Bedford to Boston was great, even if we had to go under engines rather than sail (and I don't think it took 20 people to get the sail up; I may be misremembering, but I'd like to think we were heartier souls). Any trip that lets you say that you skippered a schooner, even for a little while, is worth doing.

I had a law professor who used to say that the truth of a case lies in the footnotes. There's the old saying that the devil is in the details. And, of course, there's the old White Cloud toilet paper commercial that reminded us all that "little things mean a lot."

All of these things are crossing my mind as, with the installation of new computers in my office, I discover that perhaps the smallest change is causing the most problems.

My mouse doesn't have one of those scroll wheels on it.

How much am I missing it? The first thing I did when I grabbed the mouse to read the Globe this morning was try to find the wheel to scroll down.

I'll readjust to not having one, just as I have to adjust from PC to Mac (and vice versa) commands on an almost daily basis. It's just going to stink for a while as I paw at the top of my mouse to no avail.

If there's ever been a case for contraction during a game, this may be it.

Would anyone who doesn't live within 10 miles of I-4 miss this team? Heck, how about five miles?

MLB money well spent keeping this franchise afloat.

So I go to the trouble of making that little quiz, and I screwed up one of the answers. Won't tell you which one (for those who haven't taken it yet), but I can check for all of you if you're that interested.

In completely unrelated news, the Braves-Phillies are playing tonight wearing 1970s retro unis. While the Braves are wearing some horrible blue ensemble (which may be the unis they wore when Hank Aaron set the home run mark), the Phils are wearing the old maroon and white jobbies. I actually think I like them better than the new set.

Take the first of what will probably be a number of tests about me, me, me!

Click here for the test. It should really be called "Mark: The Early Years."

Blame Sorenson for this.

Some quick hits:

* Apparently, if you appeared on more than one episode of The West Wing last season, you got an Emmy nod. Same seems to be the case for Six Feet Under, but not having HBO I can't confirm this.

My least favorite West Wing nom has to be Mary-Louise Parker for playing shrill feminist Amy Gardner. An annoying character, complicated by Parker still looking like the trailer park mom she played in The Client.

* Notably reduced presence for the Emmys: ER. Someone finally noticed the show is on fumes.

* Notably hackneyed presence for the Emmys: Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce. These nominations may be the only proof that Frasier is still on the air.

* Buffy continues to get snubbed in categories outside of hair, make-up, and music. I've not seen much of UPN Buffy, but I can't imagine it's that much different from WB Buffy, which was eminently nomination-worthy.

* Everyone who thought Lance Armstrong was in trouble please stand and take your catcalls. Consider that if he wasn't involved in an accident during an earlier stage, he could have retaken the yellow jersey days ago.

Lance went from about 30 seconds down to leading by just over 70 seconds. He could be up by five minutes before the weekend's out. Or he could be in a battle with a younger climber and I'll have to eat my hat.

* They key to using the "watch this auction" function on eBay is actually bidding on items before they expire. I think I miss about 80 percent of the items I've marked. Which is probably a good thing, budget-wise.

I did manage to remember today, and bid on a BU-Tufts football program (which I lost) and a game called Billionaire that I once owned as a kid. It was one of my few purchases during the year or two when my mother dragged me to a local flea market every so often (usually with a friend of hers and her son, so at least I had company most of the time).

Funny thing is my mom probably bought as much as I did at this flea market. Not that there weren't things to get; it was huge, and had some decent stuff. I think she went mostly to get more books to read at work (romance novels by the pound, basically, as they were easy to put down and pick up again when a patient at the nursing home needed help). I did get a bike there (a 10 speed, back before everyone had a mountain bike), and it wasn't bad. Of course, it got stolen, and was eventually recovered, but broken in such a way that it was of little use from then on. Thanks.

* Is it a bad sign that at the tender age of 32 I've already turned to the lottery as my main investment strategy for the golden years?

OK, "main investment strategy" is a little extreme. But we do buy a Mega Millions (nee Big Game) ticket or two every week. I know, it's a kind of regressive tax, but it's not like we blow our food money on it.

* Several Red Sox moments on the top 10 baseball fights listed on Sports Center tonight. Pedro mixing it up with the Devil Rays, Izzy Alcantera kicking the catcher, and one I had forgotten about. Aaron Sele plunked George Bell in 1993. Bell charged the mound, missing Sele with a haymaker (as White Sox fans can attest, swinging and missing was Bell's hallmark that year). Before he could regroup, Mo Vaughn dropped him with a nice block. Had be been a Patriot, he'd have gotten credit for the pancake.

* In the space of 90 minutes tonight, I saw a pug, a daschund, and a Westie out on walks (not all together). As I've said before, my male biological clock is ticking: I need to have a dog.

You can stop making that face, Sarah!

OK, I'm not proud to admit this, but I have been watching American Idol.

I'm not much into pop music, and I generally dislike the non-game show entries into the reality TV genre. So how is it that I'm watching this latest overnight programming sensation?

Well, Sarah was watching it.

Which is how I seem to get dragged into most of Fox's reality programming. Not that I watched copious amounts of Hardbody Atoll or Whores Ahoy!, and neither of us saw a second of Loose Women on the Last Frontier. But where I've seen bits and pieces that usually return me to my book, in this case I've actually decided to keep with the show.

Why? Well, here are some of the things that don't keep me tuning in every week:

1. The hosts Ostensibly, the show is hosted by two guys named Ryan Seacrest and Brian Dunkleman. If they don't sound familiar, that's OK. They shouldn't. Unless you have a memory for people who play characters like "waiter" or "customer." Seacrest apparently has hosting experience from a number of shows I've never heard of (The Click? Gladiators 2000?). This does give him an iota of presence, and I'm sure his Mark McGrath lite looks help with the target demographic. The less said about Dunkleman the better.

The co-host banter is weak, their interplay with the judges predictable, and the questions they pose to the contestants mostly obvious. The co-hosts mostly serve to link performances, judging, and the many, many commercials.

Speaking of which...

2. The ads American Idol is stuffed with ads. And I don't just mean the obvious ones. The show's two biggest sponsors are Coke and Ford (in their continuing quest to brand the Focus to Gen Y types; sorry, Ford, but when I was in Maine last weekend I saw a Focus being driven by an elderly couple. Ha!). The Coke presence on the show is obvious. All the judges have Coke cups in front of them. There was a Coke machine in the green room in earlier shows. Contestants are shown holding Coke products. The co-hosts make an occasional heavy-handed reference to Coke.

Ford couldn't be so sneaky. So they went the complete opposite direction. Each show contains the "Focus on the contestants" section, where the kids get to play around a car or two, or pretend to drive one while musing on their performance. The spots are lame, but are at least in the open.

The ultimate problem regarding advertising is that the show doesn't have enough material to fill its time slot. This is especially true for the half-hour selection shows, which may feature more ad time per minute than anything this side of QVC. Clorette DePasto didn't use so much padding when she scored with Larry "Pinto" Kroger in Animal House.

3. The "conflict" Most of the show's current buzz centers around judge Simon Cowell, whose tart-tongued dismissal of contestants who don't perform to his standard raises hackles with fans, contestants, the idiot co-hosts, and fellow judges Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul (I won't even go into the problem with having Abdul serve as a judge).

This boiled over a few weeks ago, to the point where Jackson got up and looked like he wanted to fight Simon over comments made to a contestant. This then turned into an "us versus them" thing, where the nasty Brit was taking on America, where everyone deserves praise!

Except that they don't.

Now Simon is some sort of Snidley Whiplash sort of character, a mock villain who is roundly booed by the audience and dissed by judges and the occasional contestant. Simon takes it in good fun for the most part, but does get serious when defending his outlook: they're there to judge who's got the most superstar potential, and those who don't have it need to leave.

Could Simon be less confrontational? Probably. But he also knows what he's talking about. The two contestants he pegged losers were the least successful performers this week, clearly. And if the one who managed to get through does win, it would be a failure. Just one of those failures that don't really impact the public at large, like New Coke or adopting the metric system.

And didn't Anne Robinson teach us anything? Or at least soften us up for acid-tongued Brits dressed in black?

Most of the confrontation between Simon and the judges, hosts, and audience feels fake. I know, something related to the music industry that's fake. Who'd have thought?

So why do I keep watching? I don't know. I certainly don't fall into that 13-24 demographic that the producers covet, and I obviously think that there's an overall lack of quality with the show. I suppose what I do like it that the show is, to some extent, merit-based. It's not about forming alliances, screwing someone over, or having the mediocre gang up on the talented. The public does vote on winners, but in large part they vote for the better performers.

Except in the case of A. J. Gil, whose continued presence on the show is a mystery. My guess is that he's got a relative working for the phone company.

In the end, for all the furor over the show now, I can't see American Idol making a lasting impression on the American entertainment landscape. Whoever wins this show will probably be the 21st century equivalent of Sam Harris. The show may come back for a future run, but the fickle, what's new attitude of the show's primary demographic- teens- will most likely be its undoing.

So watch it while you can. Or don't.

While watching SportsCenter tonight, their piece about cloning athletes mentioned this oddly prescient volume.

You have to think that the first reporter who comes up with a library check-out record or Amazon.com purchase by John Henry Williams is going to be short-listed for a Pulitzer.

Did I mention that I got spammed by the Republican National Committee?

Technically, I got spammed by the good folks at directoffers.net, but it's not like they do this sort of thing out of charity. Or perhaps they do. Can't say I know the GOP's stance on spam, but I can see where they'd vaguely support it as good for commerce (as opposed to the Dems, who could back spam on a First Amendment basis).

The email starts:

"The Republican Party's cadre of Team Leaders is on the march, and you will be a valuable member.  As a member of this team, you are part of a fast growing network of volunteers who help President Bush achieve his agenda for America by spreading his message and helping elect more Republicans across the nation."

Why does having a cadre of leaders sound like Enron's management plan? Shouldn't the Team Leaders be at the head of the cadres? Of course, the word "cadre" was pretty well co-opted by the commies, so to put it in a parlance that even W would understand, it sounds like too many cowboys and not enough Indians (not that they'd be all that welcome in the GOP). Not that the Wellesley cadre would have any cowboys, either. The spurs might catch on the leather interior of their M-class Mercedes SUV.

Now that the RNC admits that Bush has an agenda, can gay people now oppose him claiming they need to stop the "dim-witted grown up frat boy" agenda?

The email continues with that line we've all come to know and love when unexpected email arrives in our box:

"This email has been sent to you in order to verify your subscription to receive email updates from the Republican National Committee."

I did send my reply to the listed address to ask the fine people at directoffers.net to remove from this list, but we'll see. Perhaps I'll be asked to join the Team Followers cadres, or get to let Dick Cheney stay over one night to keep him on the move and away from terrorists. Or helping OJ find the real killers. Whatever he's up to when he's on the move.

I suppose if I were a Republican, I would feel a little sad that the party is now on the same level as the herbal Viagra and inkjet cartridge refill people. Actually, I feel that way regardless. Maybe the Dems will put passes making random people super-delegates for the 2004 convention in Value-Paks.

Then again, both parties seem skilled at spamming themselves.

Greater threat to the US: Islamic terrorists or crooked corporate execs? Discuss.

I hope that if I ever get charged with a variety of felonies and misdemeanors- little things like criminal trespass, violations of firearms laws, and making terroristic threats- that I get a few days to chill at home and have the family over for a party.

From what I can tell, the delay in Allen Iverson's case is due to his attorney being on vacation. All I know is that if it's me facing those charges, I'd be rotting away in, say, Norfolk or the big house waiting for my court-appointed defender to learn how to spell my name.

I've had this odd build-up behind my sinuses for the past week.

It started on Friday, when a serendipitous lunch with Shawn and Laura DeVeau (met out of the blue at, of all places, Burrito Max) was interrupted with the news that Ted Wiliams had died.

Pressure built as the Sox lost 2 of 3 in Detroit, was alleviated slightly by the Home Run Derby, and came back with a vengance in the wake of the All Star Game. It reached titanic proportions with the flood of talk regarding labor, steroids, and fiscal ill health.

Oh, and there's the whole Ted on Ice thing, too. That's not helping.

It could be the only thing that'll clear my head is to chuck baseball. Again.

About 10 years ago, I would tell just about anyone who brought the subject up that I was sick of baseball. The 1990 lockout was still in people's minds, and after a divison title that year the Sox were slumping to medocrity. Consider that their big off season signings for the 1991 season were Matt Young, Danny Darwin, and a very old Jack Clark.

Then 1994 came around. The nadir. As far off my radar screen as baseball was before the strike, it was buried deep after that.

But then baseball came back. Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's consecutive game streak. The Sox stopped stinking. And I undertook the previously mentioned baseball book a week challenge specifically in an attempt to become interested in baseball again.

It worked. Baseball still wasn't my favorite sport, but I watched a lot more, and followed the sport more closely. Fantasy sports, as often as they're derided for eroding fandom into rooting for individuals and situations, brought more interest into learning who certain players were and who was coming up and wrapping up.

But now that feeling's back. That feeling that my revived interest in baseball is about to be stomped on by men both in cleats and in Gucci loafers. That feeling that I might as well adopt NASCAR as my summer sport of choice to fill time between the Stanley Cup playoffs and preseason football. That feeling that anyone who has any pull in major league baseball doesn't care one whit about my interest- except when I'm paying for tickets, buying overpriced concessions, or plumping ad revenue when I watch at home, generating ratings.

As I've said, I'm dubious about orgainzed fan action against baseball. I don't think there are enough hardcore fans to make a strike work, be it for one day or the whole season. I also think that, for most folks, spouting rhetoric is enough to make them feel better; venting often fills the bill, even if it's venting aimed at sparking a course of action. Unlike this person, I don't see such action as a sign of jealousy. Yes, there are bigger things to get outraged over. But baseball relies on fan support. Without fannies in the seats or people watching at home, there'd be no money to pay anyone. When the powers that be treat their consumers in a fashion akin to the way Godzilla treats the Ginza, the consumers should respond.

How should they respond? Just walk away. No torchlight rallies, no wailing and gnashing of teeth, no impassioned speeches decrying players and owners alike. Just tuck your money back in your billfold and find something else to do when you'd normally focus on baseball. Rent a movie. Read a book. Go to a musuem. Spend time with family just talking.

Most important: once you walk away, don't look back. Orpheus learned the hard way about looking back before you get what you want. Baseball fans should heed that lesson if we lose another season.