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You know, I'm really starting to appreciate how good a writer Ken Jennings is. Every time I go to his blog, he's been consistently sharp and funny (who knew Mormons could be that snarky?). Today, he has an especially good entry: he breaks down the dancing styles of everyone participating in the infamous "Linus and Lucy" dance from A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Some of his pithier observations? "That "Frankenstein" is pretty lame, but the head-bob makes it semi-work," he writes of Shermy's dance. "Jumping Joseph on a pogo stick, is this a train wreck. Elbows flailing, wildly off the beat, staring at her feet in sheer panic, she looks like Benny at the L.A. Law Christmas party," he clucks about Violet. But he has nothing but praise for Linus: "Man, watch him stomp, even with the blanket limiting his mobility."

By the way, he mentions an old video that mashes together the "Linus and Lucy" dance with OutKast's monster hit "Hey Ya!" Since the video is fun and I'm in a good mood, I embedded it after the jump, just for poops and giggles.

The fall-out from Rosie's "ching-chong" moment on The View continues. In case you missed it, Rosie - commenting on Danny DeVito's drunken appearance on the show - said that the story was so huge that even Chinese papers were covering it. "Ching chong ching ching ching chong Danny DeVito ching ching chong drunk The View ching chong."

To date, Rosie's response, made through her publicist, has been along the lines of "get over it." As you might imagine, this response hasn't exactly been embraced by certain Asian-American public figures and organizations including New York City Councilman John Liu. (You can see Liu's letter to Barbara Walters and other Asian-American organizations' responses to the incident at AngryAsianMan.com.)

I think this internet thing might just be catching on... It seems that self proclaimed asshole, Tucker Max, has managed to turn his website into a television show. But this isn't just some video podcast, or YouTube experiment. It's the real deal. Variety is reporting that the team of Gavin Palone and Jamie Tarses will executive produce the show for Comedy Central. The two also work together producing TBS' new show My Boys. It's good, you should take a look.

Tucker's site has gained a rather large following, getting something between 1 and 1.5 million unique visitors a month. Along with a blog and a message board, the big attraction is the stories of his boozing and womanizing. They have already led to the book "I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell." Max will also write the pilot script. The show is said to be about him and his friends as they transition into adulthood.

I'll be interested to see what comes of this. Some of the stories Tucker has written are very funny, so there is something to build from. Being on Comedy Central will get them a bit of leeway with content, but I think this one would have been better served with the even more lax restrictions at Showtime or HBO.

I have to thank my fellow Squadder Bob Sassone for turning me on to Ken Levine's fantastic blog; not only is Levine funny when he writes about random stuff, but he gives advice about what to do and what not to do when writing a sitcom script. The man knows what he talking about; he's written for many classic sitcoms, including M*A*S*H, Cheers, and Frasier.

But it's his behind-the-scenes anecdotes that are my favorties. And this past week, he gave us some doozy, and he didn't even write them: he let his friend Peter Casey, one of the co-creators of Frasier, do a three-part series on how the show was created.

Interesting bit of news from the Watching 24 blog, if it's true...

FOX is thinking very seriously about marketing a DVD that contains the first four episodes of the upcoming season of 24. The rumor is the DVD is scheduled to come out on Tuesday, January 16, which the day after the two-day, four-hour season premiere airs on FOX. The price will be $14.95.

Like the Watching 24 folks, I think this is an intriguing marketing experiment, but am not sure why FOX is doing this. Do they think the DVD will stem the tide of downloading via BitTorrent and other services? Why would fans pay half the price of a full season just to see four episodes? And won't fans of the show just wait until the entire season comes out on DVD and buy it then? If FOX succeeds in selling a lot of copies of this disc, I wonder if other networks are going to follow suit?

You know, it's funny what blogging about TV does to a person. Now that I've been doing this for so long I typically find out about inconsequential stuff having to do with the television industry before I learn about important things that might actually affect my life. Sometimes, though, those worlds can collide.

Citing a complete lack of journalistic standards, a blogger for the Comedy Central Insider mentioned last night that a friend of his who worked in the White House told him Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would be stepping down. It wasn't until early this afternoon that Rumsfeld made the official announcement and the major media sources began to report on it.

Before anyone says anything, yes, I understand this was something that just happened to fall into CC Insider's blog-lap, and that "this guy I know said this might happen" isn't exactly a sound journalistic source. I just found it amusing that people surfing for Drawn Together clips and pictures of Amy Sedaris were the first ones to hear about the alleged resignation.

If you are a fan of Heroes, you may have already found Greg Beeman's blog as you search the internet for more clues about the show. But even if you're not a fan of the show, it's still worth a look. While the focus is obviously on Heroes, there is enough behind the scenes stuff to make it an interesting read for anyone that just loves TV. The posts read like a good DVD commentary track with Beeman talking about what he wanted to achieve with a certain episode, or why he did things a certain way.

He's very forthcoming in his comments. About the latest episode, which he directed, he says, "Also, truthfully, we're still learning what stories to tell and how to tell them. Do we always need to see the whole cast in just a handful of scenes? Or should we, sometimes, concentrate on just a few of our characters and give them more intensively developed stories." And if all that isn't enough, there are also storyboards, an interview with Ali Larter, and a large collection of behind the scenes pictures, like the shot of Hayden Panettiere on the autopsy table waiting for her scene. Fun stuff.

After fellow Squadder Wil Wheaton put up his latest Star Trek: The Next Generation review, about the episode "Where No One Has Gone Before," he got the requisite huzzahs from our Trek-loving commenters. But he also received a bit of a surprise in the comments: a response from one of the co-writers of the episode, Diane Duane.

People who are animation buffs know Diane pretty well already; she has written for cartoons as diverse as Scooby and Scrappy-Doo (let's just hope she wasn't the one who came up with Scrappy) and the Batman animated series. But her first foray into live-action series writing was with this episode of ST:TNG, and she recounts the story behind it on her blog. It's an interesting illustration of how the script the episode's writers originally conceive doesn't usually come close to what ultimately reaches the screen.

BlueSky Studios, which is owned by Fox Film Filmed Entertainment and helped bring the movie Ice Age to the screen, has a weekly challenge for their staff in which artists, animators and others are given a subject and asked to draw their interpretation of it. The work is displayed on the BlueSky Studios Challenge blog, and it's worth checking out. Some of the subjects are things like movie robots or dinosaurs, but there are also a bunch of great drawings of television characters, such as the Muppets ( I love this humanized version of Bert) and SpongeBob SquarePants. Also take a look at the '80s cartoon characters challenge, which includes this film noir version of Inspector Gadget. I love seeing these characters completely re-imagined the same way I love it when a band covers another band's song and completely changes it, making it their own. I'd love to see whole animated programs re-imagined this way, which wouldn't be anything new since The Jetsons, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Mighty Mouse, Alvin and the Chipmunks and Beany and Cecil were all at one time brought back by different artists with a whole new design. Still, I'd love to see more of that.

[via Cartoon Brew]

Jeez alou, everyone's blogging these days. And it seems like NBC News is at the forefront of making sure all their to stars blog about the "inside scoop" on their shows. It started with "The Daily Nightly", where Brian Williams and others blog about the machinations of putting together a nightly newscast. Now, NBC-owned site iVillage has started a blog written by none other than new Today anchor Meredith Vieira, which they're calling "Meredith Today" (clever, huh?). Right now, there's only two entries: an intro entry where she talks about the Pennsylvania school shooting earlier this week, and there's a new piece about her first reporting assignment in years (she went to Colorado to talk to the family of the girl killed in a school shooting last week).

Not sure if I'll ever read this (I don't read "The Daily Nightly," even though I think I should), but at least we know Meredith will not be shy about holding back in this blog, judging by her nine years on The View. It might be a great read, or it might be a train wreck; either way, it'll be pretty fascinating to keep track of.

[via Pop Candy]

Peter Berg, creator and executive producer of Friday Night Lights, did a live blog during the premiere last night. It's too late to participate in the event, but the entries are still up. Rather than just giving his thoughts on the show randomly, he answered questions submitted by fans. He covers what drew him to the project, his thoughts on Kyle Chandler, the role of religion, and diversity on the show, among other things. There are a couple small spoilers that have to do with casting and characters we have yet to meet, just so you know. No major plot giveaways though. It's an interesting read with some good trivia for fans of the show.

The Defaker website, a mock blog linked off NBC's Studio 60 website, has been pulled off the internet. The LA Times has a great rundown about the rapid rise and fall of Defaker (obviously a spoof of Defamer). The fake blog, meant as a publicity stunt for Studio 60, was supposed to be a fan journal with gossip about the cast and crew of Studio 60 and thoughts on the fake show (Aaron Sorkin had nothing to do with it). The first entry on the blog basically recapped the season premiere. But, it was dumb. And it had open comments-- which summoned some Studio 60-haters and general hate toward NBC.

Minor characters, sadly. Nurse Debbie and Joe the Bartender will be blogging during this season of Grey's Anatomy. They're blogging as the characters, mind you, not as the actors. The idea, according to ABC, is to blog about what's happening in between episodes. In the case of Joe, he'll be blogging about what the doctors are talking about at the bar. Cool, but I think the best character blog for Grey's would either be Cristina or Dr. Bailey.

The New York Post is reporting, based on one of Rosie O'Donnell's recent faux-haiku blog postings, that she's unhappy she won't be in charge of The View when she joins the weekday yakfest on September 5. The Post quotes a snippet of this post, which reads:

i saw the new view promos

and found myself in the position

i loathe most

powerless

it will be hard 4 me

2 not b

the boss

it is already

and we have only just begun

Actually, it's Jenna Fischer who's blogging. She plays Pam on The Office. After some sporadic posts this summer, it appears she's up and running again on her MySpace blog. A few important notes from her latest entry: 1) John Krasinski somehow got hotter over the summer!, 2) Jim and Pam are not related, 3) Season 2 of The Office comes out on DVD on September 14th, and 4) Season 3 of The Office begins on Thursday, September 21st at 8:30 pm.

I am way too excited for Season 3 of The Office. I can't wait to see what happens with Pam and Jim and I really miss all the characters. I highly recommend Little Miss Sunshine if you need a Steve Carell fix.