Battlestar News

Kristin at EOnline has posted a great chat with Ron Moore, the creator of SciFi's Battlestar Galactica--the best show on tv. Moore discusses everything from the other cylon models we haven't seen to the search for Earth.

But what alarmed me most is that there are only two more episodes before we take a Battlestar break until Spring 2007. Sad...

Project Runway and Tim Gunn

There seems to be an anxious buzz lately about the next season of Project Runway. When will it begin? Is it true that Tim Gunn may not be a part of the show.

Mark my words: Bravo will do whatever it takes to get Gunn back for the next season. Project Runway is the only true bonafide hit that Bravo has, and its buzz is off the charts. There is no way they are going to mess with a winning formula.

Remember how Kathy Griffin was having trouble getting a second (and third) season pickup for her My Life on the D-List? I think Bravo just likes to play hardball to see how much $ they can save. But the thing about Tim Gunn is that Bravo needs him more than he needs Bravo.

My Sleep Study

The term seems simple enough: sleep study. As I sleep, doctors will study me, right? But no, my friend. Though the term implies sleep, there was almost none of that to be had last night in Chevy Chase, Maryland as I was hooked up to 17 electrodes and one in the nose breathing tube.

Let's start at the beginning. I snore. Horribly. Forcibly. Sometimes waking myself up and making strange noises. A few friends, one of them a doctor, mentioned that I might have sleep apnea. So I began the ordeal a month ago when I visited an ENT. Dr. Schonfeld walked in and said, "Yep, you've got bad anatomy. Tiny nasal passages. I bet you snore."

So there I was last night at the sleep center where they would record me sleeping and measure my brainwaves, breathing, leg twitching. You name it, there was a wire hooked up to it. (Well, not every single thing). I'm in bed at 10:30. That's the most laughable thing because I haven't been to sleep before midnight in years. And I was hooked up to the aforementioned 17 electrodes: one on each leg, several in my hair, on my face, on my chest. A heart monitor on my finger. It was horrible. My nurse Jackie even put a breathing tube in my nose so she could measure my breathing.

Jackie leaves the room and I hear her in the dark like the voice of God, "Blink five times. Move your left ankle. Clear your throat." I fully expected Ashton Kutcher to walk in with a friend or two and say I'd been punked.

You can't imagine what it's like to sleep with wires all over your face and on your legs. I roll around when I'm trying to get to sleep and every time I turned or moved last night, I had to pull a bundle of wires and make sure the air tube hadn't come out of my nose. With all this discomfort, and the pressure of knowing I was being watched and recorded, it took at least an hour to get to sleep. Ususally it takes 10 minutes or so.

I woke up at 1:30 a.m. What I dreaded most had come true: I had to go to the bathroom.

I lean up in the dark and wave at the camera. "Jackie, I have to go to the bathroom," I say. Nothing. No voice of God. No light comes on. I fumble across the desk to try to turn the light on but instead send my cell phone flying across the room. I sit up in bed for about 10 minutes feeling like a child or an adult who can't take care of himself. Jackie finally walks in and unplugs me from the machines, but then I have to go in the bathroom carrying the box which has all 17 wires still plugged into it.

Nightmare.

So I get back in bed, and this time I bet it takes me another hour, maybe an hour and a half to get back to sleep. God, er, Jackie, wakes me up at 6:15 a.m. and rips all 17 electrodes off. The only saving grace is that I had a baseball cap to cover the globs of goo that were still in my hair.

Suffice it to say, should you ever need a sleep study, dread it. Avoid it. If you go, don't drink anything beforehand, and be sure to bring a baseball cap to wear home. I can imagine no worse fate than leaving sticky globs on the benches of the Metro as you ride home from Chevy Chase at 6 a.m.

NEWSFLASH: Congress to Work a 5-Day Week!

Can you believe this is even news--the fact that some members of Congress are mad that starting in January when the Dems take over, they will have to work a 5-day work week?

It shows how crazy our elected officials have gotten. Look at this quote by Republican Jack Kingston from Georgia: "Keeping us up here eats away at families. Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families -- that's what this says."

Hmm. Maybe what this says is that the Democrats are tired of people like Kingston flying home on Thursdays and returning to Washington on Tuesdays. Maybe the Democractic leadership wants Congress to actually have to work like the rest of us.

Back to the Rudeness Issue

Last week I made fun of President Bush (surprise) when he said to Senator-elect Jim Webb, "how's your boy?" and Webb told him that he thought we should be out of Iraq. Of course Bush answered, "That’s not what I asked you.”

Republicans on tv and in the media began talking about how rude Webb was, and I mentioned how Cheney can flick off all of Congress and yell "fuck you" and no one talks about him being rude.

Turns out, Webb's son had a "recent brush with death" a few weeks ago and Bush was warned to be sensitive about the issue. Yeah, right.

So imagine that you're Webb. Your son is in a war that has no purpose and has been handled poorly from the beginning, he nearly died a week or so ago, and your head-in-the-sand Commander in Chief shoots out a "how's your boy?" with a smile.

Rude? No. If anything Webb showed a great deal of restraint.

Heroes

The show is taking interesting turns, but I'm skeptical....

Glad glad glad that Eden bit the dust, but a little thrown off about a few things: a) how did Sylar use his powers like that? b) did Peter stay around the radiation guy a while? Is that why he's the one who blows up?

I guess Heroes is the kind of show you just enjoy, and don't really think too much about. I won't be sitting on the edge of my seat until January 22, but I will certainly be watching when it comes back on next year.

Eyecandy Not Gay in Real Life

Interesting story on TMZ today about Shawn Pyfrom. Evidently he was a presenter at a recent benefit for gay teens. But there was so much whistling and oogling and shouting as he introduced a musical performance by Lucy Lawless, that Shawn became "visibly uncomfortable."

I guess it goes to show that playing gay for pay is just that...playing gay. Even if you are a dreamboat. But kudos to him for going to the event in the first place.

Team Bama Sucks

No, I'm not talking sports--I'm referencing the The Amazing Race. I've barely been able to follow the show this season because Sunday night football means that the Race starts at a delayed time--which my TiVo doesn't like. So I was getting like the first 30-40 mins of each show and then would miss the ending. Not fun.

But, the Bama team (two single mothers from Alabama) are the first all-female team ever to make it to the final three and they couldn't be less deserving. They aren't great racers, they're petty, and they are mean as shit. The only reason they made it to the end was that the Cho brothers (who were nice but stupid) carried Bama the whole way.

So, I'm not rooting for Bama. And I'm not rooting for the pseudo-gay, drug addict, bedhead models. That means I'm left with Rob and Kimberly to root for which is a nightmare. Did you see Kimberly scream as people threw tomatoes at her in Barcelona?

To wrap up: Elke and I should have been on The Amazing Race this season. Anyone who knows us will concur that we would've won--big time. Yes, I know it's easy to say, but it's true. Elke would've done all the eating challenges in record speed. I would've done all the competitive running around challenges. And Elke's amazing sense of direction would have been our ace in the hole. Plus, we may have fought or bickered, but we would have had tons of fun and looked good doing it. Alas...

The Train Wreck that is Lindsay Lohan...

Lindsay Lohan's mother and publicist are on a mission: to let the world know that Lindsay is working on her drinking. She's even been attending AA meetings.

It's a "positive step" blah blah. And "give her time" blah blah. But the funniest thing of all was actually said by Lohan's own publicist, Leslie Sloane.

Talking of Lohan and the AA process Sloane says, "and, by the way, she's not saying ... she'll stop drinking tomorrow." Yeah, thanks for clearing that up.

First Awful Battlestar

Well, statistically speaking, it had to happen. Battlestar Galatica had a shitty episode.

I wondered from the previews how boxing (???) and Battlestar were going to mesh. What I discovered is that they didn't mesh. The whole back and forth structure (a la Lost) just didn't work for the show. That's sad too because it was a great dramatic revelation that Starbuck and Apollo are in love, but Starbuck went ahead and got married out of fear. A revelation that was wasted in a terrible episode of such a great show.