Ok, I admit it. I didn’t get the joke on 30 Rock last night when Liz wrote down the “rude” nickname they used to have for Jennifer Aniston. Jack read back something like “Crazy Party” but I assume she actually wrote something else. I’m throwing myself at the mercy of our readers. Anyone understand this one?

Ok, so while I may consume television and movies voraciously, I didn’t grow up with cable. And if I happened to be at a friend’s house who had MTV, we were much more likely to watch Beavis & Butthead, which did show music videos, but it showed about as much of the videos as TRL did, and I don’t think there was a lot of content overlap. If I remember correctly, Beavis & Butthead tended to watch videos that either “sucked” or were obscure metal bands.

So I have limited exposure to music videos. I first saw this video for “Once in a Lifetime” on the DVD that came with the fancy Talking Heads box set, and I was shocked that the people who brought you The Hills let this on the air, but apparently it was a well-played video.

Letting a bunch of art school graduates play with video effects on TV has never worked so well.

Sure, this isn’t about “real” TV, but why have a blog if you can’t promote your stuff? I had a web-based video series called “Truth @ 15 Frames Per Second” way back in 2006. They were crazy times. YouTube still put everything 4 frames out of sync, and nobody had even heard—let alone forgotten—the name Jessica Rose yet. Some time soon I’ll have a video airing on Current TV (it’s a channel!) about the series and people’s reactions to it. Check your local listings.

Well now everybody has a web series and I’m back with another one. It’s called “Time Travellin’” and it’s about the wacky time travelling adventures of the same two people who are in all my movies. Here’s the first episode. Please tell all your friends. Future episodes will be at my new website Canny Valleys.

So this evening whilst fast-forwarding through a series of commercials on my way back to House and some more girl-on-Thirteen action, I noticed a new Mac ad. I enjoy watching those delightfully charming personfications—especially John Hodgman—so I stopped and watched it. You should too.

Really Apple? You’re going to make fun of Microsoft for spending too much on advertising… in an advertisement? Senator McCain, do you now understand why negative campaigning is so hurtful? It infects the tone of conversations in the rest of the country. Is that the best reason they can come up with for using a Mac? Microsoft is spending too much money on ads? Are they palling around with terrorists and scheming to raise taxes on small businesses too? I was a strict Windows user for a very long time, but a few weeks ago I finally set my bisexual computer (see how I tied it back to House?) to boot as a Mac by default because everything important that I do for work can best be done in the Mac OS. I only use Windows for games now. That’s a really good argument for Mac. That’s the sort of change America needs. Remember when Apple was the cool, maverick OS? Now they’re talking all big like they know how the other guys should be spending their money. All this Vista bashing is just getting petty, and a little desperate.

So I just spent the past week in a room at the historic Algonquin Hotel, 2 blocks from Bryant Park, editing Fashion Week videos for SOAPnet.com (your place for Shows, Stars, and Style) twelve hours a day. The videos were hosted by the adorable Rebecca Budig from All My Children. I had a surprisingly good time, and saw a lot of fashion. The most exciting thing, of course, was the Project Runway show yesterday. If you don’t want to know anything about the final show, stop reading now.

First of all, Heidi announced the big news that Jennifer Lopez cancelled yesterday because of a “foot injury.” Filling in at the last minute was Tim Gunn himself. I think this is a great move. I’d much rather hear what he has to say about the clothes than Jennifer Lopez.

Then on to the clothes:

Of course there are still six people on the show at this point, so they sent 3 dummy collections out. My guess is Joe, Kenley, and Suede have been eliminated.

As everyone in the video says, Leanne was the clear winner. At first I was a little disappointed by the lack of variation in the color, but I think for such a limited number of clothes it makes sense to try to make a unified collection. And nobody came anywhere close to the detailed and accomplished construction she had. The clothes were better than several of the collections I saw this week.

So, way back in March of 2006, I went to what I thought would be the taping of a portion of a television show starring and written by Tina Fey. It turned out I was playing an audience member of The Girlie Show for the pilot of 30 Rock, and I didn’t really get to see much of the show being filmed. I did see Tracy Morgan say he was here to inspect our chicken nuggets, but none of the other actors were anywhere to be seen. When I saw the pilot on my old TV, I didn’t catch a glimpse of my face in the audience, but once I got an HDTV and the DVD, I was able to find myself in this shot.

But only because I knew were I was sitting. Nobody else could have picked me out of that crowd. The people you can actually see—who are not way up in the balcony—are paid extras.

I thought that was the end of my brush with 30 Rock, but I recently obtained a copy of the unaired pilot which featured Rachel Dratch instead of Jane Krakowski and had another actor in the role of Cerie. It’s not as good as the one that aired, and Jane Krakowski is clearly better for the role than Rachel Dratch. But what it does have is more me!

I call this one Guy Sitting Down

“Oh my God! He said ‘Honky Grandma be trippn’ just like he did that time in that movie.”

So what this means to me is that Tina Fey has totally seen me a bunch of times. I’d like to think she fought to keep me in the show along with Rachel Dratch, but the network forced her to edit us out.

Get ready kids, tonight everyone’s favorite depressing space opera returns! It’s been a long time since we last checked in with our friends on the Battlestar Galactica. Here’s a quick catch-up:

Everything is harder to deal with than you could possibly imagine.

And yes that is Tricia Helfer playing both Jesus some other character who isn’t really in the original painting. Are there any DaVinci Code-style clues in here? Does the space between some people spell out a C, perhaps indicating who the final Cylon is?

I’ve just upgraded our comment system slightly. You can now read or post comments directly from the home page. If you have an avatar, it won’t show up on the home page. I’m still working on that. You can also edit your own comments up to 15 minutes after posting.

Holy crap is Lost great this season! Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never been one of those “Lost got so boring” people. It had its share of filler episodes in the 2nd and 3rd seasons, but there was always something great to keep us going, like the spectacular season finales. Last season’s gradual realization that the “flashback” was really the future was one of the best TV show ideas in recent memory. Changing the time structure of the show and turning events on the island into flashbacks has really juiced things up. Now we know that something really bad is going down, and we know that 6 people get off the island. But of course, rather than settling things this just raises more questions. We know Jack, Hurley, Kate, and Sayid make up four of the six, but who are the other two? What the hell is Ben up to, and what was he up to in the past? Ben just keeps getting more and more interesting. It’s amazing to think that he was originally supposed to be a three-episode minor character. Big changes like that make it hard to believe the writers have had a master plan all along, but it makes me glad that they can adapt when the opportunity presents itself.

We don’t have many episodes left in this extra-abbreviated season, so I don’t expect to get any wheel-spinning. I expect nothing but forward momentum, and some real revelations. Maybe even about the smoke monster. But I’m not holding my breath.

Despite what you may have read in the voluminous commentaries on other web sites, this season of The Wire is as awesome as every other season. Various journalist-types have spent a lot of time griping about the unrealistic newspaper scenes, but as someone with no more first-hand knowledge of a newsroom than a police department, I find them very interesting.

This is the first time I’ve watched the show weekly instead of in giant DVD-sized binges, so it’s been a different experience. But what’s really annoying me is HBO’s weird schedule. The new episodes are available on HBO On Demand 6 days before it is “broadcast” on Sunday night and everyone who reviews the show waits until the show is “broadcast” before they discuss it. Isn’t that just a weird fiction? Is there anyone who has HBO who doesn’t have HBO On Demand or who waits until Sunday to watch the show when they could have watched it 6 days earlier? I can tell you who’s not waiting: this guy. And “next week’s” episode was great.