scoop

During last night's CBS party at the Huntington Library, I spoke to How I Met Your Mother honchos Carter Bays and Craig Thomas about the upcoming season. They wouldn't reveal much -- besides the fact that Carter is the only single person left on the staff ... he's available, ladies! -- but what they did tell me was that we'll see the mythical "mother" on the first episode of the season.

We already knew from the season finale that Ted's designated "one and only" took the Columbia University architecture class that he started teaching. But we didn't know when she'd be in that class. Bays clarified it for me: "Oh, she'll be there, in the first scene of the first episode back is Ted and the mom in the same room together."

Of course, that could mean anything, since Ted teaches in a huge lecture hall. Bays wouldn't clarify more than that; all he would say was that "we've narrowed the field tremendously. Up until this point, this woman was somewhere out there in the greater New York metropolitan area. Now, she's in a fifteen-block radius."

• At 8, CBS repeats the Tom Selleck TV movie Jesse Stone: Night Passage. I wonder why this never became a regular series?
• Food Network has a new Emeril Live at 8, followed by Scoop, which has contestants trying to come up with a new ice cream flavor.
• There's a new Suite Life of Zack & Cody on Disney at 8, followed by new episodes of Cory in the House and The Emperor's New School.
• At 9, Cartoon Network has a new Naruto, then new episodes of Fantastic Four, Bobobo-bo Bo-Bobo, and One Piece.
• Have you ever seen My Favorite Martian? It's on American Life at 9.
• Also at 9: IFC has The Cooler, with William H. Macy and Maria Bello.
• At 10, BBC America has a new Graham Norton Show, with Alice Cooper.

Check your local TV listings for more.

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.