Why the sudden interest in politics from the children's network? 

From Mr. Allen's Playbook: 

Weeks later, home from the hospital with a titanium rod holding together his reconstructed leg, Mr. Jukes began thinking about what to do with the footage. In the world of skateboarding media, videos of cartilage-crunching wipeouts are always in demand. Eventually, Mr. Jukes sent an e-mail of the clip to the skateboarder magazine Thrasher, hoping that a still shot of his injury might make the “Hall of Meat” page.

The average mangled daredevil of yesterday might have left it at that. But Mr. Jukes also did what thousands of other stitched-up risk-takers have done in recent years. He uploaded the clip onto YouTube.

That’s where a producer at MTV eventually happened upon it.

“They discovered me on YouTube,” Mr. Jukes said. “They were searching for tags like ‘skateboarding’ and ‘leg break’ and they found me.”

On Tuesday, April 10, at 10 p.m., MTV will air the premier of Scarred, a new half-hour series showcasing dramatic crashes, such as Mr. Jukes’ nasty spill, along with interviews of the crashees explaining what went wrong. According to promotional materials, MTV producers culled all of the clips of crashes from various video-sharing sites on the Internet.

While MTV’s parent company Viacom is busy suing Google and YouTube for unfairly capitalizing on its television channels’ material, one of its television channels is simultaneously capitalizing on material from YouTube.

So it goes in the topsy-turvy world of digital media, where Scarred is being promoted as a new breed of show that relies exclusively on user-generated content (U.G.C.). These days, U.G.C. shows are all the rage with television execs looking to the Internet for fresh voices and cheap programming (according to Mr. Jukes, MTV didn’t compensate him for his contribution to Scarred).

Some channels are now going so far as to set up Web sites for the exclusive purpose of feeding content to U.G.C. shows. To wit: VH1 recently debuted a show called Acceptable TV in which viewers submit homemade videos to a Web site, the best of which are eventually broadcast on air alongside the work of Hollywood professionals. And in February, Nickelodeon rolled out a show called Me:TV (“the brand-new destination for everything YOU!”), which broadcasts viewers’ uploaded videos, mash-ups and music.

“We’re looking for the best fake fart in the universe,” Nickelodeon producers recently announced, “so make some noise and send us the videos.”

One can imagine a not-too-distant future in which kids graduate from submitting fake-fart clips for Me:TV to submitting videos of themselves snapping their fib ulas for, say, Me:MTV. But for the time being, Scarred producers insist on finding their footage through Web intermediaries. At the end of each Scarred episode, a message appears stating that “MTV insists that our viewers do not send in any home footage of themselves or others attempting stunts.” In other words: Put it on YouTube first!

It’s just one of many ode-to-Jackass warnings and disclaimers that accompany the show, presumably in an attempt by the producers to stave off future lawsuits from angry parents who might want to characterize, say, their kid’s debilitating snow-tubing accident as a premeditated audition for Scarred.

Brian Graden, the president of entertainment for MTV Networks Music Group, said that over the past couple of years, he and his colleagues have been looking for ways to incorporate user-generated content into television—or at least reproduce its gritty look.

The key, he said, is to recognize that what works online doesn’t always translate perfectly onto television and vice versa.

“The Internet is a good medium for short clips,” he said. “Television is a great medium for narrative storytelling.”

What Mr. Graden likes about Scarred is that it takes something ubiquitous on the Internet—footage of painful-looking accidents—and reconsiders the data in a new way that works for television by uncovering the storylines underneath them.

“With these kinds of videos that you see on the Internet, you see the imagery but you never hear the story behind what happens,” says Mr. Graden.

“There’s no point in Scarred where the clip starts and you watch it through to the end and it stops,” says Mr. Graden. “That experience, while good for one medium, isn’t really sustaining for television. The biggest thing we’ve learned is that no matter what you’re working on with source material, we try to be very much a slave to what would make the experience rewarding in one particular medium, no matter what that is.”

Over the past month or so, a “sneak peek” of the Scarred premiere has been airing repeatedly, often late at night, on MTV and MTV2. In the first episode, viewers are treated to the sight of Mr. Jukes breaking his leg in real time and in slow motion, over and over again (presumably not since Lawrence Taylor snapped Joe Theismann’s leg on Monday Night Football has one bone been shown being broken so many times on the air in one sitting). “I got to the hospital and they gave me morphine,” Mr. Jukes tells the camera. “I remember it just didn’t seem to help at all.”

Elsewhere in the episode, a biker fractures his skull during a face plant. A skateboarder tears his large and small intestine on a handrail. A snowboarder rips his kneecap on a wall. And, in the grand finale, a kid falls off his skateboard and compound-fractures his forearm on a driveway (spoiler alert: He’s wearing a T-shirt at the time).

Overall, despite its billing as a cutting-edge U.G.C. show, Scarred is most reminiscent of a show that first debuted in 1990: namely, America’s Funniest Home Videos. In place of a sanitized Bob Saget, Scarred is hosted by Papa Roach front man Jacoby Shaddix. And instead of clips of pajama-clad toddlers falling on their bums, Scarred gives us tattooed teenagers falling on their faces.

America’s Funniest Home Videos is one of the longest-running shows on television, and MTV is no doubt hoping that Scarred will develop a similarly loyal following among a slightly younger demographic, particularly among thrill-seeking teenagers and garden-variety masochists.

Mr. Jukes, for one, says he plans on watching the future episodes of Scarred—in part to keep up with the friends he’s made by participating in the show.

“There are a couple people who have contacted me on MySpace or YouTube and said that they’re going to be on the show too,” said Mr. Jukes. “I’d like to see the interviews with them.”

It’s not that I don’t love my nieces and nephews. It’s just that every visit with the little cherubs provides more evidence that I am a sucky aunt.

Take, for example, a recent trip to see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on Broadway with my 8-year-old niece, Haley.

For those unfamiliar with the production, it features a chilling character called “The Child Catcher,” who rounds up children and stores them in a cage underground. To ensure maximum creepiness, he has a falsetto voice and reappears throughout the show, calling out: “Child-rennnnn …. Oh, child-rennnnn … !”

Haley had an age-appropriate response to this character: terror. Not paralyzing or hysterical, just the kind that causes an 8-year-old to ask her aunt on the way to the ladies’ room: “Are there really kidnappers in the world?” To which her aunt replied: “Mm-hm!” Real chipper, as if the question had been: “Can we have ice-cream sundaes later?”

In that moment, I was trying to establish myself as a macho, no-nonsense aunt, the kind who takes a drag of her proverbial cigarette and dishes out the cold, hard facts: The world is a tough place, kiddo, I ain’t gonna lie. How pathetic. Why not be the kind of aunt who makes her niece feel better after a scary Broadway show?

At bedtime, I went into my guest room and kneeled down next to her on the air mattress. “Haley, I want to make sure you know that the scary man from the show isn’t real,” I said, looking into her eyes, trying to make my voice sound all cozy and hot-chocolate-y. “You’re safe here, and no kidnappers are going to get you. Do you feel safe?”

“Well, I did until you reminded me,” she said with a sigh. “Will you get my dad?”

Then there was the time my 7-year-old niece Megan asked me, in front of my whole family, if my boyfriend and I “see each other naked.”

There was a moment of squirmy silence.

“That’s a very grown-up question,” I said, practically in a British accent. Megan said she was sorry and shuffled off. And that was that. I could’ve asked her why she wanted to know. We could’ve had an interesting conversation. We both could’ve learned something. But nooo, I had to get Victorian on her ass.

Being such a sucky aunt wouldn’t bum me out so much if I hadn’t expected to be the Best Aunt Who Ever Lived. I had everything going for me:

a) My youth: I was a spry 25 when I first entered the field.

b) My experience: I had done, like, a ton of babysitting in my teens.

c) My station in life: I didn’t have a distracting husband, nor pesky kids of my own.

d) My New York City location. My nieces and nephews would be restless suburbanites thirsting for adventure. I envisioned countless eye-opening visits: rides on the subway, trips to the Central Park Zoo, the American Museum of Natural History and Serendipity.

But the title “Aunt Elisa” wasn’t cutting it. She had no pizzazz, no zing! So I came up with the snappier, kickier “Auntie Lis” (pronounced Leese). I didn’t think of it as marketing at the time, but that’s exactly what it was: a cheap branding technique to convince my siblings’ offspring that I was F-U-N. Auntie Lis had worked at Nickelodeon Magazine! She still ate chicken fingers and cotton candy!

In my fantasy, the character of Auntie Lis would grow and mature in perfect tandem with her nieces and nephews. By the time the kids were teens, they’d trust their favorite aunt so much that they’d turn to her when they had trouble with their friends, or trouble with the opposite sex—or trouble with the same sex, if they turned out to be gay! That’s how understanding and “down” she’d be.

I even imagined a day when one of my nieces or nephews would need to break free from the stifling confines of suburbia; that’s when they’d come live with their Auntie Lis, if only for a little while.

Alas, things haven’t turned out as I expected.

First I blamed the kids for being too young or too sheltered to appreciate what they had in me. I’d look forward to every visit, expecting to be attacked by a throng of hugging, giggling rug rats, only to find that the kids needed to be coaxed by their parents to break away from the TV to say “hello” to Auntie Lis. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

They also weren’t supposed to have busier lives than I do. My 11-year-old nephew, Gabe, is on a high-powered soccer team that travels up and down the East Coast for tournaments. So on the rare occasion that I actually see him, I have a knee-jerk tendency to blurt out lame things like: “Look how big you’ve gotten!” I might as well be pinching his cheeks, reeking of mothballs, and giving him hard candy from the bottom of my purse.

I also blamed New York for not delivering on the “cool” front. After hosting many kvetchy visits here, I decided that the city was just too big and, literally, too pedestrian for kids—especially suburban ones with their tiny, underutilized legs. Showing them a good time here felt almost cruel. Apparently, for the minivan-to-school-to-gymnastics-to-Hebrew-school set, a three-block walk to the subway feels like the Bataan Death March.

But then one day I had an epiphany—or, more specifically, a fight with my 3-year-old nephew, Ethan. It was the day before his fourth birthday, and we were on the phone, fishing around for things to talk about.

I asked if he was excited about his birthday party.

“No, because it’s not today.”

“Yes, but when you wake up tomorrow morning, the party will be about to start, so it’s O.K. to be excited now.”

“But my party isn’t in the morning, it’s in the afternoon.”

Jesus, what did this kid have against excitement? “But it’s still the same day, just a few hours later …. ” “YOU CAN’T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!” Ethan suddenly screamed. My sister grabbed the phone away from him and asked me what on earth I’d said to provoke him, and we had a good laugh.

But later I wondered: Why was I so invested in his excitement, anyway? Suddenly, all my years of aunt angst clicked into place. In my attempt to be the World’s Best Aunt, I’d become the World’s Neediest One. Making matters worse, I wasn’t exactly clear on who this Auntie Lis character was, so I’d probably confused the hell out of the kids. With Haley’s fear of kidnapping, I was Rizzo from Grease. With Megan’s question about nudity, I became Mother Superior; with Ethan’s birthday, Tony Robbins.

It all makes me wonder if I should’ve gone with “Aunt Elisa” or, better yet, dispensed with the “Aunt” altogether. Staying just plain “Elisa” might have helped me to do that thing we always tell kids: be yourself.

The biggest DVD this March-let's just get it out of the way-will undoubtedly be the two-disc collector's edition of The Incredibles (March 15). The DVD promises Jack-Jack Attack, a new and exclusive short film, the Pixar short Boundin' and plenty of bloopers and outtakes. The set is sure to make an incredible- zing!-amount of money. This week, don't miss the special-edition releases of two beloved Cary Grant–Katharine Hepburn classics, Bringing Up Baby and The Philadelphia Story.

For the obsessive DVD-ophile, several must-haves pop up this spring, including some re-releases and others that didn't get their proper due the first time around. First off is the unfairly maligned The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (May 10); the two-disc collector's edition fits in nicely with other Wes Anderson titles- Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums-that surelylitterever-growing film libraries everywhere. A collector's edition of Spaceballs (May 3) marks the triumphant return to DVD of perhaps Mel Brooks' last funny movie-that is, until The Producers comes out (again) later this year. Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park fame sully the minds of innocent youth with the uncensored and unrated releasesof Team America: World Police (May 17) and Orgazmo (March 29), their little-seen homage to the porn industry. Team America will be available as a special collector's edition-buy it to remind you of a time when there still was hope.

If this spring's DVD releases had a theme, however, it would be "Old Hollywood Collections." March leads with the Classic Musicals Collection: Broadway to Hollywood (March 15), which includes Vincente Minnelli's The Band Wagon, Bells Are Ringing and Brigadoon, Francis Ford Coppola's early effort Finian's Rainbow and Irving Berlin's Easter Parade. Fred Astaire pulls a hat trick in that set. Then there's the Duke: The John Wayne Legendary Heroes Collection includes Blood Alley, McQ, The Sea Chase, Tall in the Saddle and The Train Robbers.

Fulfill your quota of subversiveness with the Controversial Classics Collection (May 10), which includes Advise and Consent, The Americanization of Emily (fresh off a James Wolcott feature in Vanity Fair's Hollywood Issue), Bad Day at Black Rock, Blackboard Jungle, A Face in the Crowd, Fury and I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

Steve McQueen, the Cold War generation's John Wayne, gets fêted with his own collection too (May 17). The gift set doesn't feature McQueen speeding around in a Mustang, but he still manages to look badass in The Great Escape, the Kurosawa remake The Magnificent Seven, the Sam Peckinpah rodeo classic Junior Bonner and (the original) The Thomas Crown Affair. James Dean's legacy gets mileage once again with a collection of East of Eden, Giant and the special-edition release of Rebel Without a Cause (May 31). And Gary Cooper … well, you see where this is going. Even so, all of these actor-based boxed sets pale in comparison to the Marlon Brando Collection. The collection boasts such classics as On the Waterfront (special edition!), The Wild One and, er, The Freshman, in which he co-starred with Matthew Broderick. What a tribute!

And if you can't get enough of vintage television, Nick at Nite lovers should check out the first season of Doogie Howser, M.D. (March 22), Dynasty (April 19) and The Partridge Family (May 3).

I'm pro-Arquettes. I like all of them.

What does it mean if you dream you're arguing with a cab driver who looks like Noriega-and then he turns into a beautiful woman?

If you have to ring a doorbell to get into the store, you won't be able to afford any of the stuff inside. Yet still you go in. It's quiet, except for the tasteful, piped-in techno. A lone employee (belly visible) is half-looking at you and half-attending to whatever little crap she's half-attending to. You make your little tour of the place-which is like a box-and you start sweating when you see a T-shirt with a $104 price tag. You try to make a smooth getaway, but the door's locked from the inside, and the girl with the belly has to press a button to let you out.

Not buying the hype for Mystic River . Everybody was doing the same dance for A Perfect World . And why are we suddenly supposed to oooh and aaah over Kevin Bacon?

I get a kick out of goats.

A real shame about drugs being addictive. Something I've tried to explain to Dad without much success.

Thomas Friedman's column has no charm. Whenever I see the words "my wife" in it, I want to puke. Strangely enough, I have only warm feelings when Maureen Dowd mentions the people in her family, all of whom seem to be living out some medical tragedy. Safire gives you no clue about his home life. I see him shacked up in Bethesda with some ex-C.I.A. babe who once did Khruschev. The other Op-Ed guys I have no feel for, except Bob Herbert, who thinks he's still writing for the Daily News .

Here's my Arquette ranking, by the way. No. 1: Patricia. No. 2: Rosanna. No. 3: David. No. 4: Courtney Cox-Arquette (does she count?). No. 5: The transvestite club-kid dude.

A nice walk is great. A bad walk is a disaster.

All these years in New York and I'd never been to a Kim's store until just the other night. How unsettling it was to find myself face to face with my own demographic-guys in sweatshirts seeking out Gram Parsons rarities, old Claude Chabrol movies just out on DVD, books on anime and pub rock. I spent $110, then contemplated suicide in the cab.

I blame Al Gore.

I wonder if Being There (movie version) and Breaking Away are as amazing in reality as they are in my memory. Dad got pissed when I couldn't stop doing my Chauncey Gardiner bit back in '80. Not his kind of humor.

I won't set foot in Brooklyn. Like I need that.

I still haven't made it past the fifth minute of any episode of Law and Order or its spin-offs.

White Stripes good, Strokes bad.

Meryl Streep is looking great. Am I a crank for hoping it's not just a surgical trick?

I ain't watching no damn K Street .

On a bad walk, you're indecisive. You have to pee the whole time, and you stop in at an A.T.M. You browse in the wrong stores. You take a cab home.

The best songwriter in years, Elliott Smith, killed himself, and 300 people cared.

Love you, Dad. As if he's reading this. He probably feels about my little column the way I feel about his show.

November is brutal.

On a good walk, you pass cool places you've never noticed before. You think you have the city figured out. You make up a song in your head. You see great-looking girls. Your clothes are the right weight for the weather.

Filming Five Exes

There are a number of single people in the city who spend a lot of time asking "Why"-as in "Why am I single?" and "Why don't any of my relationships work out?"

The "Why" questions are followed by the more pro-active "What" line of thought, as in "What can I do to meet someone?", followed quickly by "What is wrong with the people I meet?", followed by the darkest question of all: "What is wrong with me?"

Jyllian Gunther found herself asking such questions and decided to look outside the traditional sources (friends, therapy) for the answers: Instead, she made a documentary.

Pullout examines why, at age 35, none of Ms. Gunther's romantic relationships panned out. Camera crew in tow, she traveled from San Francisco to Paris and tracked down her old flames-four ex-boyfriends, one ex-husband-and interviewed them over one summer.

"Initially, I thought it would be really funny if someone went back and confronted all their exes," said Ms. Gunther recently over tea at Cafe Lebowitz. "And I thought, 'Who would ever do that'? Then I thought, 'I could do that.' I'd gone out with all these different, crazy guys. And what could they possibly have in common?"

The journey wasn't much fun. She discovered that all five exes-to whom she gave nicknames in the film like "The 'Bad' Boyfriend" and "The Affair"-cheated on her. Her Brazilian ex-husband, "The Casanova" (it was mostly a green-card kind of marriage), wouldn't talk to her for the film, but his best friend helpfully told Ms. Gunther that her ex slept with "more than 10, less than 100" women during their marriage. There was even more drama when she visited "The First Love" and he couldn't remember the details of their break-up, one which devastated Ms. Gunther.

In Paris, she revisited "The Affair," a man she periodically met up with in various cities around the world, but when Ms. Gunther asked him why he didn't love her enough, the poor guy got so uncomfortable that he asked the cameras to stop filming.

Inevitably, in the midst of revisiting all those exes, Ms. Gunther ended up in bed with one, "George," appropriately nicknamed "The Dependable One." His face is digitally blurred because he wanted to remain anonymous, but his voice gives him away-"George" is actually David Eigenberg, the actor who plays Miranda's boyfriend Steve on Sex and The City. (Ms. Gunther wouldn't comment on George's identity.)

Since most of us run in the opposite direction if we spot an ex standing on the street corner, one wonders what kind of person would put herself through this.

"I was naïve in thinking the movie would just be funny," said Ms. Gunther, who is now 37 and has long, glossy brown hair. "I didn't think it would be so heavy."

Ms. Gunther, who grew up in Park Slope and lives in Nolita, was working as a staff writer at Nickelodeon and had recently broken up with "George" when she formed the idea for the film.

"Everything was going great, but I was a wreck in terms of my relationships," she said. "I thought about the number of times someone said or I said, 'It's not you, it's me.' I thought, 'This is ridiculous-it's not as simple as that.' What don't we say when we break up with someone?"

Admirably, Ms. Gunther declined to use up any screen time commenting on what was wrong with the guys-and the audience will be itching to tell her.

"I was asking guys I hadn't seen in 10 years to be in my documentary," she said. "So I didn't think it was my place to challenge them or argue."

There were times off-camera, she said, when she went into the next room and yelled, "Oh my God!" Other interviews, she said, ended with her in the corner of the room, sobbing.

In the end, if a few of the exes were happy to point out Ms. Gunther's flaws (she pushes too hard; she sits with her legs uncrossed), none revealed anything earth-shattering. Instead, Ms. Gunther realizes her relationship problems have more to do with a longing for the past, as well as some family issues. Her mom died when she was 7, while her father-who is interviewed extensively in the movie-seems to be overly involved in his daughter's life.

Ms. Gunther said she no longer recognizes the character of herself in the film.

"I just don't feel the same things I used to," she said. "I used to think a relationship would fill a hole, and then you would be happy, but I don't think that anymore."

Nor does Ms. Gunther, who is dating someone new, blame herself if relationships end. "I no longer say, 'There's something wrong with me,'" she said. "I say, 'There's something wrong with me and that person.'"

The documentary is making the film-festival rounds and being shopped to distributors.

Reviews have been mostly positive, except for Variety, whose reviewer wrote, "Gunther earns a D for earnest introspection, but an A for egotistical exhibitionism."

"That was my biggest fear, that some critic would call the movie self-absorbed," said Ms. Gunther. "I mean, maybe the movie is self-absorbed. I can totally see how the guy felt like that, because if you don't relate to it, it's like, 'Who cares about this girl and her dumb boyfriends?'"

Would she recommend going back and asking one's exes the hard questions?

"No," she said quickly. "Maybe if you're lucky, someone will give you the details about what it was about you they found unappealing. But who really cares?"

-Dakota Smith

Mr. Burns, 28, is recently departed as Steve, the saucer-eyed, floppy-haired host of Blue's Clues , the phenomenally successful Nickelodeon children's television show. For six years, Mr. Burns donned a green-and-olive-striped rugby shirt, wiggled his skinny tush in pleated khakis, conversed with a cartoon dog and sang wonderfully inane anthems like "The Mail Song": "Here's the mail, it never fails / It makes me want to wag my tail!!"

Now Mr. Burns, who lives in Brooklyn, is shedding the rugby shirt and khakis-he refers to the pants, derisively, as "The Pleats"-to try and become … an alternative-rock star. He's teamed with freaky alt-rockers the Flaming Lips to produce a lush, orchestral series of tracks he calls Songs for Dust Mites , and is shopping the material to independent labels. So far, he said, the reaction has been skepticism-then surprise.

"People are really surprised it doesn't suck," Mr. Burns said on a recent afternoon at a restaurant around the corner from his loft in DUMBO. He was dressed in a blue polo shirt, olive pants and green Diesel sneakers, and wore a scruffy beard. Songs for Dust Mites , he said, "is not Corey Feldman."

Nor is Blue's Clues Mr. Burns' Smoochy . Even before he left his Nickelodeon gig, Mr. Burns was dogged by rumors that he's a real-life Krusty the Klown-cranky, balding, unable to be taken seriously as an adult actor and bitter about children's television. Worse, there have been continued salacious reports that he died-killed in a car wreck or O.D.'d on heroin.

" Access Hollywood just called me and wanted to do a piece on whether I was dead," Mr. Burns said.

Mr. Burns, of course, is alive and well. As for heroin, he said, "If heroin was in this room, I wouldn't know what it looked like."

And Blue's Clues ? Mr. Burns remains rigorously upbeat about the show that made him famous. But like anyone who leaves fame at an early age, he finds himself at an odd career crossroads. Some people around him have told him that he must extinguish the public's memory of the spasmodic guy he used to play on TV.

"You'd be amazed at how many ostensibly wise and learned people in the business have suggested to me that I do something absolutely terrible in public-to, in a sense, murder Steve from Blue's Clues ," Mr. Burns said. He imitates his advisers: "You need to get in a drunken bar fight! You need to get in a drunken bar fight and come out with stitches over your brow!"

But he doesn't want to bury Blue's Clues Steve. His one concession was to shave his head after leaving the show; it has sprouted back now, though Mr. Burns admits to a case of "male pattern baldness."

Mr. Burns figures that Songs for Dust Mites , with its quirky songs about love and science, is a brave enough departure. A rabid fan of the Flaming Lips, he called Lips producer Dave Fridmann out of the blue a year ago, told him he'd recorded some cuts and wondered if he'd have a listen to them.

Mr. Fridmann, it turned out, had just hosted a Blue's Clues birthday party for his son.

"He said, 'This is insane. Send me something,'" Mr. Burns recalled.

Mr. Burns hooked up with Mr. Fridmann and Lips drummer Steven Drozd, who helped him polish his songwriting and arrangements. They recorded a handful of tracks this winter in Fredonia, N.Y., and became fast friends; Mr. Burns has a bit part in an upcoming Flaming Lips movie, Christmas on Mars .

Mr. Drozd said Mr. Burns' music is legit. "I think he could put that record out and a lot of people would like it on a level that has nothing to do with that television show," he said.

'Look at My Hair !'

But Mr. Burns knows his music career is unlikely to surpass his notoriety from Blue's Clues , a job he got "right off the bus" from his home town of Boyertown, Penn., in 1995 after dropping out of college.

"There were definitely people in my corner saying, 'Don't do this-it's brilliant, it's going to be huge, and you're going to be a kids' show host forever,'" Mr. Burns said. "But I ignored them."

Blue's Clues did become huge. The show, which stresses interactivity with its young audience-kids often spend a typical episode barking out words and numbers at the television-became the biggest franchise in Nickelodeon history. More than 8 million viewers watch it each week.

Mr. Burns was Blue's Clues ' sole live star. Almost all of the remaining cast-including Blue (the title canine), a clock named Tickety Tock and a bar of soap named Slippery Soap-were cartoons. Mr. Burns spent his days at the studio jumping around like Jackie Chan in front of blue screens; animation would be added months later.

The chronically ebullient Blue's Clues Steve was emotionally a departure for Mr. Burns, a soft-spoken man who said he was "dark" and "serious" in his early 20's.

"My first two seasons on that show were the hardest," Mr. Burns said. "I was really struggling with The Pleats. I was like, 'Oh man-am I dancing and capering like that in front of millions of people? Look at my hair ! What have I done?'"

Eventually Mr. Burns grew more comfortable his on-camera persona. People stopped him on the street every day-almost always adults, who knew him from watching Blue's Clues with their kids. If kids approached Mr. Burns, it was almost always because they were put up to it by Mom or Dad.

"Once I was at a Rangers game at the Garden, and I was in the bathroom, and some kid tugs on my sleeve and says, 'Mr. Burns? Can I have your autograph?' I said, 'Not unless you have a snow bank.' His dad was standing right there."

Did Mr. Burns ever get fan mail from lonely women?

"Absolutely," he said, noting that Blue's Clues Steve also had a gay following.

What kind of mail?

" Gee, Steve ," Mr. Burns said, in a Southern woman's drawl, " if you are ever in Kentucky, I'll show you a new game we can play. I'll make you wag your tail reee-aaaaaal good ."

Mr. Burns-who said he is now "single … way single"-said his unique job didn't hurt when it came to meeting women he actually wanted to date. "It's great bar conversation," he said. "'What do you do?' 'Well, I'm a massage therapist-how about you?' 'Well, I host an internationally famous television show.'"

Sometimes, people didn't believe he was Blue's Clues Steve. "You're not really him," Mr. Burns said, imitating a skeptic in a bar. "That dude's taller. Sing 'The Mail Song'!"

Mr. Burns said that throughout Blue's Clues , he felt a particular pressure to keep his personal life clean. He'd go to clubs now and again, but said he skipped a lot of friends' bachelor parties. "There was definitely a point in my life where I was like, 'I can't be here with this beer,'" he said.

"I will tell one story that I haven't told anyone," Mr. Burns said. "I once received a ticket for urinating in public."

Mr. Burns said that during the height of Blue's Clues , he was training for the New York City marathon when he ducked behind a tree in Central Park to take a whiz. A cop caught him and ticketed him. Then, for some reason, Mr. Burns forgot about the ticket-only to be summoned to court months later.

He freaked. "I was terrified that some horrible reporter with bad intentions was going to be outside going, ' Steve Burns- naked in the park !'"

It didn't happen. Mr. Burns thought the court stenographer recognized him, but no reporters. The judge dismissed the ticket. Still, Mr. Burns calls the episode "the scariest moment of my Blue's Clues life."

Mr. Burns decided to leave Blue's Clues in January 2001. On his Web site, steveswebpage.com, Mr. Burns wrote that his decision to leave was "very, very, very, very, very, very, very tough."

"The show was very important to me," Mr. Burns said. "It was nerve-wracking. I worked my ass on it for so long."

He emphasized that he left on good terms, and remains thrilled to be associated with the show. He just figured it was time to move on.

His friends were pleased. "We were pretty glad to see him make the decision," said Paul Ford, who helped him build his Web site.

By the time he left, Mr. Burns had filmed enough Blue's Clues to last through this spring. On April 29, the show finally aired its three back-to-back torch-passing episodes, where Steve, on his way to college, gave way to younger brother Joe, played by actor Donovan Patton. TV critics likened the transition to Jay Leno replacing Johnny Carson.

Mr. Burns and Mr. Patton are friends. On May 3, the two went to see Spider-Man together. Mr. Burns has served as something of a Blue's Clues Yoda to Mr. Patton and thinks he'll be great, even as he's envious of the new guy's threads.

"He gets cargo pants!" Mr. Burns cried. "And cool shirts! He's all hip and cool! It's not fair."

But Mr. Burns is content to be a private citizen. And while it frustrates him from time to time, he said he understands why people get a kick out of imagining him as washed up and angry at the world-even high on drugs.

"It's the reason why Death to Smoochy became a major motion-picture release," he said. "It's an incredibly satisfying idea for people-to fantasize that the guy in the Barney suit is doing lines at a strip club at night."

But, he said, "I think it's highly cynical. I have met tons of people in kids TV, and with no exceptions they were incredibly well-intentioned people. I know that's disappointing to people."

Mr. Burns said that some people didn't understand how hard his old job was. "I remember, about two years ago, an incredibly famous Academy Award–winning actress who shall remain nameless came up to me and said, 'I love your show-if I wasn't an actor, I would do what you do."

Mr. Burns smirked. "I think I slept under my sink for two weeks."

Music may be easier for adults without children to appreciate. " Blue's Clues felt to me to be a bigger personal departure than this," he said of Songs for Dust Mites . "This, I feel like I can wake up in the morning and this is me, in my relaxed state. Whereas Blue's Clues was a constant, 'Here we go-got to get geared up! Got to do it! It's for the kids!'"

Now what he needs is to get a label. Asked if he might try to disguise his previous job in order to persuade record executives to give him a shot, Mr. Burns said no.

"I am the guy who was formerly the freaky little man-child on that Nickelodeon show, and I'm proud of it," he said. "If they are not comfortable with that, then I'm not comfortable with them."

America, of course, loves reinvention. Ozzy Osbourne has become family entertainment. Mr. Burns could be a family star who becomes a rocker badass.

He knows he'll never escape Blue's Clues , which will be in reruns for years. And he knows that people will always assume that the guy who used to wear the rugby shirt on TV in front of millions of little kids is a little different. And truthfully, he probably is.

"I went to see Blue's Clues Live," Mr. Burns said, referring to the traveling stage show that recently appeared at Radio City Music Hall. "The guy who plays Mr. Salt on the show, Nick Balaban-he also wrote all the music-was sitting in front of me. The curtain goes up and 15,000 kids go 'STEVE! STEVE! STEVE!' Screaming like the wind .

"Then this dude comes out, performing like me in this extremely theatrical version of me. He's doing these incredibly strange dances, singing this big Broadway score and dancing with a six-foot-tall bar of soap.

"And Nick turns around to me and says, 'You're in therapy, right ?

Like a tree

In which there are three blackbirds.

–Wallace Stevens, "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

Wednesday, Aug. 26

First, because it is August, and because it is America, there are the prime-time reruns. Drew's fridge breaks down. The Nanny doesn't want to sign the prenuptial agreement. Dharma and Greg move in with Greg's parents. On Chicago Hope , Shutt treats a teenager with stigmata. There is no joy in these reruns. They are not a secret pleasure. They are a slap in the face. They remind us not of childhood, but of last February [WABC, 7, 9 P.M., The Drew Carey Show .]

Thursday, Aug. 27

For children, reruns are the best education there is. Think of young Inuit children in the northern Yukon, gathering around the hearth, hearing again and again the legends of their ancestors–how the giant whale swallowed the sun, how the northern lights were formed. Now think of young Manhattan children gathering around the TV, watching again and again the legends of their ancestors: how Peter's voice broke, how Lou got drunk and made a pass at Mary, how Latka became that suave guy, how Pinky Tuscadero's song got stolen, how Bugs convinced Elmer that it was duck season, not rabbit season. They are learning the ways of our people. Little Ricky is born. Edith gets cancer. Chuckles the Clown dies. Cosmonauts visit Gilligan's Island . [TBS, 22, 8 A.M., Gilligan's Island . Today's episode: Cosmonauts visit.]

Friday, Aug. 28

Each generation is defined not by its prime-time schedule, but by its reruns. The Brady Bunch nostalgia boom of a few years ago–the movies, the 'zines, the astronomic lunch-box prices–was fueled not by the generation that watched the show during its original run, from 1969 to 1974, but by that generation's younger sisters and brothers, who watched it in afternoon reruns, day after day after day, throughout the late 1970's.

There is the television that you watch just because it is on, and the television you build your life around. (This is easier to do if you're 10 years old.) Watching a show once a week is like belonging to the Army Reserves–you never forget it's there, but it doesn't really change your life. Watching a show every day is like boot camp. It defines you. It takes over your life. You dream about it. [Nickelodeon, 6, 2:30 A.M. to 5:30 A.M., six straight episodes of Happy Days .]

Saturday, Aug. 29

Reruns have become syndicated white noise, a constantly available source of situation and comedy, each indistinguishable from the others. Think back to your formative rerun experiences: kindergarten, Flintstones at lunch; fifth grade, Adam-12 after school; junior year, Hawaii Five-O on every night at 2.

Now reruns are just there. Turn on the TV at any time of day or night, and there's a sitcom, one you like, one you've probably seen. You watch the same episode that you watched five years ago, that you watched 20 years ago. The years run together. You grow old and die. [WLIW, 21, 8 P.M., The Red Skelton Show .]

Sunday, Aug. 30

A true story: A 35-year-old commercial director and his 3-year-old daughter are driving through Connecticut in their Toyota minivan. No sound but the sound of the road, each of them alone with their thoughts. And then, from the back seat, a question. "Daddy, can you tell me the story of The Brady Bunch ?"

He tells her about the lovely lady, the man named Brady and their six children. He tells her the plot of every episode he can think of. He starts making some up.

She listens, rapt, for miles. [Nickelodeon, 6, 3 A.M., The Brady Bunch. Today's episode: Mike's boss gives the Bradys a pool table.]

Monday, Aug. 31

On this particular day in New York City, there are 102 different "off-network" programs–shows that were originally broadcast on a network, in prime time–available to you, the home viewer. Columbo is on four times. I Love Lucy is on four times. There are three Matlock s , three Ellen s, three Law & Order s. Two Living Single s. Two Kate & Allie s. Two Babylon Five s. Two Quincy, M.E. s.

And yet: no Hello, Larry . No Moonlighting . No Get Smart . No Barney Miller . No Bridget Loves Bernie . No Cosby Show . No Chico and the Man . No What's Happening!! No Square Pegs . No Dragnet . No Hawaii Five-O . No Soap .

There are still blank channels on our cable boxes. Someday we shall not want. [A&E, 14, 2 P.M., Columbo .]

Tuesday, Sept. 1

There have been two big changes in the economics of syndication in the past 10 years. The first is technological. With the growth of cable, the market for off-network syndicated product exploded. Networks like Nickelodeon, Lifetime, A&E and TBS loaded their schedules with reruns, driving up syndication prices to the point where last year, syndication rights for Friends sold for $4 million an episode. This has had a number of residual effects. First of all, networks started to realize that the real money in television production was not in first-run, prime-time programming, but in syndication. But it was money that they couldn't get their hands on. The Federal Communications Commission had a longstanding rule prohibiting networks from having a financial interest in shows that they produced. The thinking behind this rule was that if networks were both producing their own shows and programming their prime-time schedule, they would have a financial incentive to program their own shows (even if they bit) and a financial disincentive to buy shows from independent producers. Your basic anti-monopoly law.

But then three years ago, after intense lobbying by the networks, the F.C.C. changed the rule, and networks started producing their own shows, and exactly what everyone thought would happen, happened: For example, last season, NBC put Union Square , a really bad show that it had produced itself, between Friends and Seinfeld , who propped it up for the whole season. Or take Working , another bad show with lousy ratings–but since it's an NBC-owned show, it's about to premiere for its second season. If the network can manage to keep it afloat for four more years, Working will have reached the magic number of 100 episodes, which will mean that it can go into syndication and NBC can make a lot of money.

In other words, the economics of reruns has changed not only what you see at 4 in the afternoon and 3 in the morning; it's changed what you see in prime time, too. [WNBC, 4, 8:30 P.M., Working .]

Wednesday, Sept. 2

It is a truism that the fragmentation of American television, via cable, has led to a fragmentation of America. Whereas once everyone watched Uncle Miltie and then guffawed about it down in shipping the next day, now Bill wants to talk about the documentary he saw on the Nature Channel, Sue saw Robin Byrd, and Dave watched a Braves game on TNT.

But what is perhaps less often noted, at least by grown-ups, is that the same thing is true for afternoon reruns, and thus for conversation in the school yard. Exhibit A: every available rerun on the TV schedule for New York City, past and present.

Sept. 2, 1968, at 6 P.M.: Sea Hunt .

Sept. 2, 1978, at 6 P.M.: The Brady Bunch and The Mod Squad .

Sept. 2, 1988, at 6 P.M.: T.J. Hooker , Gimme a Break! , Doctor Who , Three's Company , Eight Is Enough and Alice .

Sept. 2, 1998, at 6 P.M.: The Simpsons , Married …With Children , Full House , Highway to Heaven , Kojak, Northern Exposure , The Odd Couple , Wings , 21 Jump Street , Ellen , Quantum Leap , Dallas , Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman , Growing Pains and Family Matters . [Disney Channel, 33, 6 P.M., Growing Pains .]

Thursday, Sept. 3

A conversation about reruns with Erin Smith, editor of the 'zine Teenage Gang Debs . She was born in 1972.

"I think reruns were better when we were growing up, because they expected you to make a bit more of a stretch. Let's say it's 1980. Look at the lineup. Kids were expected to watch reruns from the 50's and early 60's. If you look at it today, they're not expected to watch shows from the 60's and 70's. They're watching Family Matters and Home Improvement and Roseanne . There's no sense of history. I think it was good for me to be 7 or 8 and have to watch–all right, not have to , but to watch–stuff like Leave It to Beaver and The Andy Griffith Show and even weirder stuff, like Topper and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir . It was kind of cool to have to do a little more work. My mom would talk to us about Laugh-in and Maude , and we were expected to know what she was talking about.

"Now everything's everywhere. It's just too easy. These kids who are growing up with cable and Nick at Nite–their perceptions are so different. I go on line now, and I read conversations among kids who are 10 and 11 and 12 and 13, and their interpretations of things are just really weird. Like there's a big problem with kids watching reruns of the Wonder Years , because they don't understand that it's from the 80's. They think it's from the 40's.

"And there was this other kid who posted that Scott Baio had been in a show before Charles in Charge . He had just found out, and he wanted to spread the word." [Nickelodeon, 6, 9:30 P.M., The Wonder Years .]

Friday, Sept. 4

My Three Sons . Family Affair . Sanford and Son . The Flip Wilson Show . Hogan's Heroes . Green Acres . Mannix . Hill Street Blues . Hogan's Heroes . I Dream of Jeannie . St. Elsewhere . Gunsmoke . Rhoda . Rhoda . I Dream of Jeannie . I Dream of Jeannie . Family Affair . Family Affair . My Three Sons . My Three Sons . Petticoat Junction . Petticoat Junction . Burke's Law . Hill Street Blues . Gunsmoke . Mannix . Hogan's Heroes . Bosom Buddies . Leave It to Beaver . The Abbott and Costello Show . I Dream of Jeannie . Petticoat Junction . My Three Sons . Family Affair . Sanford and Son . The Flip Wilson Show . Hogan's Heroes . Green Acres . Gunsmoke . And thus endeth another day of TV Land. [TV Land, 85, 4 P.M. , Mannix .]

Saturday, Sept. 5

Some cable ratings, courtesy of the Nielsen people, from an average day in early August:

The Bionic Woman on the Sci-Fi channel: watched by 153,000 households nationwide (out of 93 million). Thirtysomething on Lifetime: 179,000. Dallas on TNN: 234,000. Charlie's Angels on TNT: 320,000. Northern Exposure on A&E: 380,000. Growing Pains on Disney: 620,000. I Love Lucy on Nickelodeon: 1,179,000. [Disney Channel, 33, 4:30 P.M. , Growing Pains .]

Sunday, Sept. 6

There is no syndication season. Year round, syndicators for major and independent studios schlump around the country like traveling salesmen, shilling their bag of shows. From their home offices, they track ratings and demographics for each station, and then convince the general manager to fill up his airwaves with their product.

The market, it is safe to say, varies. If you're a station manager buying I Love Lucy for Kansas City, you're paying about $100 to broadcast each episode. If you're in L.A. or New York, vying for Friends, you're offering $200,000 a show.

If you're the traveling syndicator, the one thing you've got to understand is the concept of "resting" shows. The fact is, people get sick of anything, even M.A.S.H. If a show like M.A.S.H. has been playing at 5:30 P.M. in Cleveland for five years, its ratings have probably been slowly slipping as viewer burnout sets in. So the syndicator will suggest maybe "resting" M.A.S.H. for a couple of years, plugging in, say, T.J. Hooker in its place. A little while down the road, the notion is, absence will have made Cleveland's heart grow fonder. The plots will have conflated in memory. The people will be ready again. [WNYW, 5, 12:30 A.M., M.A.S.H .]

Monday, Sept. 7

When a show goes into syndication while it is still in its original run, it has an effect on its prime-time life–although what effect isn't always clear. Seinfeld didn't become a No. 1 show until it went into syndication, but Home Improvement 's ratings suffered after it started playing every afternoon around the country.…

Audrey Steele, who buys advertising time on syndicated shows for corporate clients, explains the difference: "Kid-driven shows like Home Improvement can really be hurt by going into syndication, because kids don't know the difference between original episodes and repeats. When a show is running Monday through Friday at an earlier hour, that decreases the audience of the once-a-week network run. The kids feel like they've seen enough Home Improvement already that week, and they don't care that the prime-time episode is an original one …

"That tends to happen more with kid-driven shows, but it works all over. A good example is Frasier , which NBC is moving to Thursday nights this year to anchor their big night. There's a lot of concern that that's not going to work. Seinfeld was a fairly marginal show before it moved to Thursday, but Frasier is an older show, it's been in syndication for two years, it's been all over the place. So that may diminish the audience's excitement for Frasier, and that may hurt Thursday night." [WNYW, 5, 7:30 P.M., Home Improvement .]

Tuesday, Sept. 8

I was of three minds

About what to watch,

Like a TV

On which there are three simultaneous episodes of Saved by the Bell .

[WPIX, 11, TBS, 22, USA Network, 23, 5 P.M., Saved by the Bell .]

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

by Peter Bogdanovich

This month marks the centenary of Preston Sturges' birth; in other words, a time for merrymaking, since Sturges wrote and directed at least seven of the best talking comedies ever made in America. And he made those seven (plus a studio-truncated drama) all within the same four-year period, 1940-1944, a burst of creativity unparalleled in picture history. His fifth-in-a-row success was that wild 1942 satirical romantic comedy, starring Claudette Colbert at her most scintillating, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor and Rudy Vallee, The Palm Beach Story [Saturday, Aug. 29, American Movie Channel, 54, 10:30 P.M., also available on videocassette] . This is the one where Colbert decides to leave her steadfast but struggling inventor-husband McCrea on the novel premise that an attractive woman can get a great deal more money on her own–for her husband's inventions–rather than with her husband around. In rapid succession, while flat broke, she encounters: the Wienie King, a small man with a wad that could choke a horse that he peels off for her; the Ale and Quail Club, a drunken man's duck-shooting party that proceeds to make her their mascot and shoot up the train they're all on; and the richest man in America (Vallee's one immemorial turn), who falls head-over-heels in love with her. And all that happens before they even get to Palm Beach.

Most appropriately, Sturges was the first person to win the first original screenplay Oscar for his first directing-writing job, 1940's sardonic The Great McGinty . He used to write all his scripts by improvising them, acting them out for his secretary, who would take everything down in shorthand and type it up. Imagine the joy of being in that room! But this unique method not only gave his dialogue remarkable freshness and immediacy, but made it virtually actorproof, especially since Sturges was writing his scripts with very specific actors in mind for each role–hence the famous Sturges Stock Company, most of the same supporting actors in every picture–for whom he could tailor-make the words.

After four popular and critical successes in two years, Sturges must have been much encouraged, and had the confidence to let himself go, and The Palm Beach Story is perhaps his full-out wackiest comedy, probably also his sunniest, with an extraordinary certitude in its timing. The picture begins with a farcical chase sequence that is totally incomprehensible and never referred to until the very end of the movie, when it is called to mind in order to deliver the otherwise impossible happy ending. This, of course, is a wonderful Sturges trademark: the unlikely triumph of happiness against all odds and even all credulity. After all, it is a comedy.

Having had an unusually cosmopolitan upbringing–a great deal of time spent in France with his eccentric, artistic mother, and much love from his New York businessman father–Sturges' mixture of sophisticated European objectivity with vividly American idiomatic energy creates a very special frisson not to be found in anyone else's work (though something of the same combination gives different but complimentarily memorable results in the American pictures of Ernst Lubitsch).

A brilliant director of actors, Sturges never distracted with his setups, indeed was always in the right place with his camera, and paced his scenes perfectly. Most of all, he respected the integrity of actors' performances and generally did long, continuous takes to preserve this. As Orson Welles used to say, shooting like that in talkies was what distinguished the men from the boys. In The Palm Beach Story , Sturges has a quartet of superb comic actors with some of his wittiest, most insouciant dialogue. You may wonder, where has the America gone which took Sturges to its heart?

As summer draws to a close, if you can't get enough of 100-year-old Preston Sturges' brand of comedy, rent any of the following and you won't be sorry (all but one highly recommended here before): The Great McGinty , Christmas in July , (both 1940); The Lady Eve , Sullivan's Travels (both 1941); The Miracle of Morgan's Creek , Hail the Conquering Hero (both 1944).