It doesn't take a rocket scientist -- let alone the brainiacs on 'The Big Bang Theory' -- to recognize that the girl next door is a beautiful woman. Magazine editors have seen it, too, and 'Big Bang Theory's' Kaley Cuoco has been featured in Maxim magazine. That's right, Penny's in Maxim.

These photos, which aren't too shocking or revealing, just very sexy and suggestive -- the full set is here -- do fall into the category of cheesecake. Perfect for an actress/waitress working at The Cheesecake Factory, right?

With Black Friday behind us and December only a few hours away, I think it's fair for me to bring up the topic of holiday shopping. It's sort of like breaking trump in a card game - once US Thanksgiving is over, it's every shopper for themselves.

I have a good reason for wanting to broach the topic early - shipping. If you are going to attempt to buy something really fantastic for a television fan, the chances of you finding it locally are slim to none. You'll have to order it online, and wait for the package to turn up in the mail. It's funny, isn't it? We can punch a series of numbers into our magical machines which convert the numbers into even more numbers and have little conversations with other machines, and the outcome is much the same as it was in the 19th century - something gets put in the mail.

You know John Hodgman as the PC guy in all of those Mac commercials (or perhaps from The Daily Show). I don't know if he really uses a PC in real life (he could very well be a Mac guy), but I do know that he's a very funny man. Last night he spoke at the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner, and gave a very clever speech about President Obama, nerds, geeks, jocks, and Star Trek. You can tell Obama genuinely enjoyed the speech.

OK, so she turned evil and veiny and almost destroyed the world after someone murdered her hot lesbian lover. But at heart, Willow Rosenberg was always a computer-hacking, research-loving nerd.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer character landed at number one on Topless Robot's list of "Pop Culture's 10 Greatest Nerds." I was surprised by the pick at first, but I can't think of a better choice to top the list. Willow was a great character, and will probably always be actor Alyson Hannigan's best role (sorry, HIMYM fans, but it's true).

If you're a fan of The Big Bang Theory, you've probably wondered at some point where they get all the fun nerdy t-shirts that the character of Sheldon wears on the show. Well, I'm sure most of you, being internet-savvy and resourceful, have probably Googled each and every shirt and already have a spreadsheet up on Google Docs that is cross-referenced by episode and topic. But what about the lazy among us, who'd rather eat glass than stare at a spreadsheet all day?

SheldonShirts.com comes to the rescue. It shows screen shots of every shirt Sheldon wears in each episode and where you can get that particular shirt. It also shows where you can get the shirts that the other main character, Leonard, wears, as well as the the belt buckles worn by their perverted buddy Howard. They also make some suggestions for shirts the nerd heroes should wear in the future, as well as provide links to some other stuff that was shown on the program. It's a good way to waste a couple of hours, whether you're a nerd, a geek, or neither. It's especially good for those who are need to find their favorite geek or nerd a birthday present. To those people, you're welcome in advance.

[via Pop Candy]

New Zealand's fourth most popular five minute podcast about TV Squad returns! As always, you can either listen to it right in your browser or subscribe to it via iTunes and bring the dulcet tones of my voice with you on the subway. I can't think of anything better than hearing me talk about Ashton Kutcher's possible exposure to Hep A while being stabbed to death by one of the Shower Posse.

Discussed in today's episode:

• Bob Sassone and Tex Avery show us what the future of TV will look like.
• It turns out that Hepatitis A feels the same way about Ashton Kutcher as the rest of us do.
• Allison Waldman and CBS give Trekkers something to go nerd-crazy about.
• Apparently, Maya Rudolph has one fan.
• Jay Black pimps for Jay Black (and also speaks about Jay Black in the third person)

(Music provided courtesy of Kevin MacLeud.)

Hey, Brigitte here with TV Squad Daily. I'll be covering the TV stories I find interesting each day, Monday through Friday, in this video blog.

Today: on TV Squad Daily:

• Flat vs. round! The ladies on The View even argue about the shape of the earth.
  
• Anyone who's anyone loves nerds this fall.
  
• Alicia Silverstone's new naked commercial about being a vegetarian is already banned in Houston.
  

The video's embedded below, or you can subscribe to this podcast via our feed. Plus, you can also download the file directly.

In an age where Josh Schwartz, Joss Whedon, J.J. Abrams, and Judd Apatow are writing true-to-life examples of what being a nerd or a geek is like, you'd think that the whiny, sniveling, tape-on-the-glasses, Urkel version of geekdom would be out of favor in TV land.

Big Bang Theory, which premieres Monday at 8:30 PM ET on CBS, proves otherwise. And, while it's not a complete disaster, it's too weighed down by its geek stereotypes to work on a weekly basis.

(S01E01) "I am pretty sure a lot of us are going to crash and burn pretty horribly." - Fred, the 45-year-old virgin

Okay, let me start by saying I won't follow this show on a consistent basis unless you guys beg me to. Really there is not much of a point. There isn't a whole lot to analyze here, nothing to obsess over, nothing to make this an addictive reality competition on par with your So You Think You Can Dances and those Dancing with the Starses.

Try this experiment: mention The Simpsons anywhere and see how long it takes for someone to say, "Oh, right, The Simpsons, yeah, they were good for the first ten seasons, but after that, they just got SO UNFUNNY! I don't know why people watch anymore!"

Since Fox decided to release a Simpsons movie (apparently under the radar -- I mean if you're going to release a movie, you should at least market it! you know?), I've been hearing that sentiment approximately once every thirty-four seconds. It annoys me every time I hear it, but it wasn't until today that I realized exactly why this was so.

It's because the people expressing it are confusing their ignorant negativity for intelligent commentary.

In October I hepped you guys to a bit of insider-y information about a Robot Chicken / Star Wars special being created with the help of LucasFilm and the man himself, George Lucas. A recent glance at the Adult Swim schedule showed the special was set to air on Sunday, February 4 at 11:30 pm. However, a few days later, that particular grid in the schedule was blacked out. There was also a note scrawled at the bottom of the schedule informing viewers that Lucas himself absolutely loved Robot Chicken's parody featuring the Emperor, and was the one who contacted the show, but that note has also been removed.

So what does this mean? I honestly have no idea. Hopefully the special will still pop up at some point. I'll keep my eyes peeled for you.

As I said in my review of the South Park episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft," I've never seen nor played that particular game in my life, but like anything else, to many people it borders on a kind of obsession. A few World of Warcraft fans took it upon themselves to add a list of incongruities to the episode's Wikipedia page, pointing out various places throughout the episode where the game the kids are playing differs from the actual version. Most of those claims have been removed from the entry, but you can read a spirited discussion about the relevance of those claims here, and if you really feel like killing time, you can pore through the entry's history. Ah, nerds and the Web, they fit together just like peanut butter and jelly. Admittedly, I'm a nerd myself, but for cartoons. World of Warcraft I couldn't care less about, but if I found some misinformation on Mr. Magoo you can be sure I'd have something to say about it. We all have our weaknesses, after all.

[via Digg]

Interesting piece in the Boston Globe today, about how many of the new shows have at their core a nerd who comes out on top (though I'm sure if we went back in the TV archives we could find a nerdish/shy/lonely person who was the hero, and what makes these people "nerds" anyway, the fact that they aren't gregarious, they're just normal?).

Suzanne C. Ryan points out that Ugly Betty has a plain-looking girl who goes to work for a NYC fashion mag, screws up her first day, but eventually becomes the hero; The Nine has Louis Plunk, a nebbish who will become a hero when we find out what happened inside that bank robbery; and The Knights of Prosperity (what an awful title change) has a lonely guy who is one of the guys who decides to rob Mick Jagger (though I don't know if the word "hero" could be applied here).

The article doesn't even mention Heroes, which premieres on NBC tomorrow night. That show has a few nerds who literally become superheroes.

During an introductory speech for Robert Smigel given by cartoon historian Jerry Beck at the San Diego Comic Con, the world's only insult comic dog, Triumph, popped up and went on a hilarious tirade about Beck's boring speech and the innumerable nerds who were in attendance. This is footage shot by someone who was actually there, so there's a lot of swearing and you also get to see Robert Smigel actually doing the voice and manipulating the puppet. Of course, they don't try very hard to hide that when he does his shtick on Conan, but Smigel is in the middle of a crowd and really has nowhere to hide. Beck actually posted the video on his Cartoon Brew site, but I stuck it after the jump for your viewing pleasure. My favorite part is when he tells a rather rotund attendee he must love the "Fantastic Four food groups." Click on and enjoy.

UPDATE: The video is no longer available, apparently.

Today marked the online premiere of the new U.K. Channel 4 sitcom, The IT Crowd. I'm an IT guy myself, so the curiosity overcame me, and I had to watch this first episode. In fact, if the premiere episode is any indication of what to expect, I may just keep on watching it. I just hope they keep providing them online, or I may be out of luck.