Clonk.  Clonk.  Clonk.  Clonk.

• American Idol’s ratings are at its lowest of the season — not that that means its not still kicking everyone else’s ass. Plus there’s an adorable photoshopped picture going around of some AI boy-cuddling.
• Three 6 Mafia has a reality show on MTV that debuts tonight.
• Neve Campbell and Jason Priestly are going to guest star on Medium. This is likely the least interesting news I’ve ever reported, but it’s a slow news day.
• People are really rallying around 30 Rock’s second season.
• Larry King will not retire until he is dead.  And even then…
• Bob Barker’s replacement will be either Mark Steines (the beefy dude from Entertainment Tonight), George Hamilton (say wha?) or Mario Lopez.  But it sounds like it’s going to be Steines — which would make the most sense.
• Chelsea Handler is going to host a late-night talk show on E!.

Book club is better when there is a golden retriever to play with.

• Mindy Kaling, unsung heroine of The Office, talks to the AV Club.
• Prepare yourself, Cristin. The Hills is going to be back for a third season.
• MTV will be reuniting the cast of The Real World: Las Vegas — the show’s worst season ever — for a six-episode series.
• 30 Rock has officially been renewed.
• Multiple choice: The creator of Friends is now working on a reality show about a) psychics; b) carnival workers; c) strippers; d) martial arts professionals.
• CBS tries to air its Bob Barker tributes before he dies.
• Not only is The Black Donnellys cancelled, but NBC isn’t even going to air the last six episodes. They’re going to stream them on NBC.com.
• Battlestar producers talk about keeping Starbuck’s secret.
• A new biography on Julia Child takes a big dump on the old girl’s reputation by saying she was a sexist and a homophobe.
• The Food Network is under fire for its lack of diversity.
• The Tudors on Showtime appears to be a big hit.
• Erika Christenson and David Cross will be in a CBS comedy pilot called I’m in Hell. Cross plays the devil.

Butterscotch is disgusting.

• The Real World is trying find cast members that aren't drinking/fighting/fornicating machines.
• Serena Williams, Jewel and a bunch of other celebrities that are on your radar even less are going to be on an ABC celebrity racecar reality competition show. 
• TV Guide rates the mid-season replacements.  And, by the way, he gave it a 6 out of 10, but how awful does that Jeff Goldblum show look?
• The new Chiller network is going to show Twin Peaks, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and the great short-lived series American Gothic.  Well, it may not have been great.  I was like 14 and my taste was questionable.
• Bravo bought Television Without Pity. 
• In case you are lacking a reason to live, I have six words for you: High School Musical: The Ice Tour. 
• Court TV is getting a makeover, including a name change.  Consultants gone wild! 
• Law and Order might be toast.  Fun fact: Law and Order has been on the air since the roaring twenties. 
• Matt Groening says Futurama's not dead. 16 new episodes will make four direct-to-DVD movies.
• Tori Spelling had a bouncing, and apparently British, baby boy named Liam.  
• Tracy Morgan is a nut. Funnier than I probably realized, but a nut. 

Last night I had a dream that I was in high school and in order to graduate I had to sing a song and play the guitar in front of the entire school.  I was freaking out. 

• The latest reports from the Grey's Anatomy set is that Isaiah Washington loves everyone, but everyone else is still sort of weirded out.
• Newsweek think-pieces out why TV is better than movies. 
• America's Next Top Model 8 debuts tonight.
• Victoria Beckham might get her own reality show on NBC.  Guessing it will involve a lot of Victoria not eating and thinking up terrible baby names. 
• Billy Baldwin got a pilot. So did the chick from The Matrix. And Kristin Chenowith.  And Lucy Liu. And Fred Willard.
• A new Ask Ausiello thread is up and addresses a possible fourth season of Veronica Mars.  Quoth Rob Thomas: "We're very much on the fence for a fourth season. My amateur handicapping of our situation — 60/40 in our favor. We are shooting the finale as a season finale — not as a series finale. There will be no alternate. If they do try to get rid of us, we're not going to make it easy for them."
• The Onion interviews Parkman from Heroes (aka Greg Grunberg).
• Las Vegas is going to have a fifth (!) season.  Like Bones, I'm sure there must be someone who watches it, but I don't know them.  Mama Fee, perhaps?
• The cheerleader who Sylar killed instead of Claire will star in MTV's first drama in five years (they're counting Undressed as a drama).

A croissant sounds lovely right now. 

• Spike TV is planning a reality show where crime scenes are recreated and contestants have to guess who did it.  This was actually done a long-ass time ago on FOX as the show Murder in Small Town X where people had to live in a house and solve a murder mystery.  The whole town was brought to life by actors — just like Colonial Williamsburg only crappier and with murder.
• A Top Design judge used to be a pin-up. 
• Lesbian Commenter Mini-Mafia take heart!  Rumor has it that there might be a Grey's Anatomy spin-off starring none other than Kate Walsh.
• The new cast for Dancing With the Stars has been announced.  The contestants will be: N*Sync's Joey Fatone, Laila Ali (boxer), Billy Ray Cyrus, Heather Mills (model/Paul McCartney ex), Clyde Drexler (NBA), Shandi Finnessey (former Miss USA), Leeza Gibbons, Paulina Porizkova (model), Ian Ziering (90210), Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy from The Sopranos), Apolo and Anton Ohno (Olympic speed skater).  No Tucker Carlsons this time.
• MTV is changing the rules on its new Road Rules format. 
• Here's the trailer for the new Simpsons movie. 
• Trista and Ryan are pregnant.  Shrug. 
• House and Bones have been given the green light for next season .  Seriously?  Bones?  I don't even know anyone who's seen that show. 

Previously: Audrina is granted re-entry to the secret clubhouse, and the promise of a naked picnic lands Spencer in the dog house.

Audrina is back in the frey, currently aiding and abetting Heidi in SpencerGate 2006. Heidi recounts to the girls the story of how one of the playmates at Area called Spencer her "boo" (I'm sorry, what? Is it sophomore year again? Are we on the set of a Nelly video?) and said she had plans to hook up with him. Audrina breaks the news that Spencer had given her the same set of flowers he'd handed to Heidi, and Heidi gets the Big S on the horn in order yell "You brought my roses to her the next DAY!" via speakerphone. MTV, apparently having used up the month's quota for closed captioning on "Juvies," also known as The Least Interesting Show Ever Made, doesn't give us text on Spencer's response, and he could be reciting the Aenid for all I know. I mean, I'm guessing he isn't, but still. "Don't ever get involved in someone that can manipulate you like that," LC solemnly instructs.

Over at TeenVoid, I am happy to realize that they have the same office phones as my company! Hooray! I wonder if it also took them 7 months to learn how to adjust the ringer volume. I'm not sure if Whitney has complete control over this whole opposible thumbs thing, so, probably. Editrix Love tasks them with helping for a dinner for 20 young designers. Flying in from New York will be the NY editor and her intern. "She's supposed to be incredible," Love tells them. "She's really hardworking and she's worked on events before." And, we can assume, didn't ditch the chance to go to Paris to hang out with her cokehead boyfriend. NY Intern: 1, LC: 0. The girls leave with the jobs of updating a spreadsheet and hand writing notes for the dinner. LC's penmanship leaves much to be desired, so Whitney offers to serve as scribe. The girls ruminate about what NYIntern will be like, and LC postulates "If she's anything like {editor} Jane, she'll be very…" she trails off, making a chopping motion with her hands. Very what? Into beheadings? "Precise?" Whitney offers. "Yeah. That's so not me," LC answers. "Agreed," Whitney says. Oh snap! Love the unintentional insults.

Don't bother making any plans tonight, because it's Ugy Betty, Grey's Anatomy, The Office, and 30 Rock, as always.

Jerry O'Connell and Lucy Liu guest star on Ugly Betty. And no more Walter! Yay! But Henry's got a girl! Boo! Did anyone else think, just for a moment, that Betty was going to start dating Henry and he'd turn out to be a crazy stalker? I don't want it to be true, but I wouldn't put it past this show.

It's the middle slog of the Grey's Anatomy thousand-part tragedy that I have yet to start watching. 

Joss Whedon directed this week's episode of The Office, which is just so exciting I'm almost crying. If it's 2% as funny as this ad, all is right with the world (thanks to Ali for the link). At first I thought that this was just a promo they had shot to be funny about the whole Joss Whedon/vampire thing, but apparently it is an actual part of the episode. Coincidentally.

And then there's 30 Rock. Favorite line from last week: "I prefer to be called a Law Stylist." Or something very close to that. 

We interrupt your regularly scheduled programming: Seriously? None of that's good enough for you? Not even the Joss Whedon episode of The Office? Damn, you're picky. On CMT there's a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders: Making the Team marathon. There's a show on MTV called Juvies which sounds… interesting. Cristin — know anything about this?

That's all.  Mitt Romney can suck it. 

• Do you want to be famous for nothing?  Are you a big ole 'mo?  Well, casting has started for an LGBT variation on The Real World/The Surreal Life from the people who brought you the God-awful Jacob and Joshua: Nemesis Rising (which was basically The Ashlee Simpson Show except with these two gay brothers and their band).
• Tina Fey stuck it to Aaron Sorkin good during a speech at the Writer's Guild Awards.  Quoth the Fey: "I hear Aaron Sorkin is in Los Angeles wearing the same dress — but longer and not funny." (Thanks Cristin)  
• Former (and future?) Real World Challenge veteran and notorious nutcase Tonya has parlayed her reality fame into an illustrious career in the world of soft-core porn.  Anyone shocked?  Show of hands? 
• Battlestar Galactica will be around for another season of… whatever they do on that show. 
• Megan Mullally is going to be on Boston Legal.   I'm guessing she has some time on her hands. 
• Ron Eldard has found his way onto another pilot, despite the fact that he has never really made anything that was successful ever (Blind Justice, Men Behaving Badly).  Aside from his stint shacking up with Juliana Marguiles on ER twenty years ago. 
• Heather Mills (formerly McCartney) might be on Dancing With the Stars.  If you remember, this will result in an interesting twist, as she has a prosthetic leg.
• The Black Donnellys will premiere a week earlier than planned (Feb. 26) after Studio 60 produced its smallest numbers to date.  Calling it right now: there won't be a season two.

Recently, the AP ran a piece on gay actors and straight roles. You probably know the entire article without reading it — blah, blah, T.R. Knight, blah, blah, Neil Patrick Harris, blah, blah, gay actors stay closeted so they can get better roles.

It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s true. In fact, I’m still sort of raising an eyebrow at George’s scenes with Callie on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s no one’s fault but my own, but whenever he and Callie have a spat (which — have you noticed? — every sentence out of Callie’s mouth lately is some variation on “I’m your boss now, not your wife!”) I just want him to take off his white coat revealing a rainbow flag cape. Then he’d blast off, breaking through the roof of Seattle Grace and leave a trail of glitter over the Space Needle.

Admittedly, though, this is just one more part of actors being real people. I raised that same eyebrow when I saw Jake and Heath in Brokeback. Or whenever I see Lindsay Lohan in a role where she’s sober.

In general, though, it would kind of stink to be a gay actor in TV, due mostly to people like me. Most of the really good stuff for out people is reality shows on Bravo (the gays have always been pretty well represented on reality shows). In the world of film, too. There are a lot of really bad gay movies out there — seems like our love of camp (the place and the aesthetic) has dug us a little hole.

As far as actually good, scripted shows for gay characters, the pickins are slim, so it’s understandable that you’d want to keep yourself ambiguous to score good, straight roles.

So here’s a little chart about good vs bad and gay vs straight. Enjoy.

(PS — this is kinda, sorta, totally unrelated. I don’t know if any of you saw MTV’s True Life: I’m Out, but it was a mostly horrifying affair. Aside from some smart, reasonably well-adjusted and adorable lesbians, a few of the men displayed devastatingly stereotypical and dramatic behavior. It was enough to make me want to run screaming to the nearest ESPNzone. Nevertheless, the morning after I saw it, I e-mailed Cristin in a gay panic and demanded she view it at her next opportunity.)

Can I still pass for high school? Because I’m about to pull a Never Been Kissed following this Brooklyn Tech High School News article (via gawker, and friend-of-tifaux-sara):

MTV’s newest soon-to-be hit show is Brooklyn. The premise is to paint an accurate picture for America of what life is like for the average Brooklyn high school student…This is a show about America’s urban teenagers, the street savvy teenagers, the teenagers who have to grow up that much faster because if they don’t, the city will eat them alive. They will be real and they will be tough and ready for anything that comes their way or at least so they think.

Do they teach grammar and punctuation at that school? No? Didn’t think so.

Also:

“A cross between Harlem in its heyday and Paris, Brooklyn is the ultimate city within a city. In fact, if it weren’t already incorporated into New York City, Brooklyn would be the third biggest city in the country. It’s said that one out of every six Americans has had a parent or grandparent who lived in Brooklyn at some point.”

… from their AP course in Convenient Statistics.

Needless to say… I cannot freakin’ wait.