Ink-stained solace. (NYTimes.com)

It did not take long for me to turn off Twitter, to shut down Facebook, to ignore NYTimes.com. The Internet can be marvelous—for real-time presidential debate snark or instant updates on the latest Lindsay Lohan trainwreck—but for tragedy, it is entirely too small. I could not bear to watch the reported death toll rise, to see the hand-wringing that came when the press realized it had misidentified the shooter, or to wade through the now-predictable howls for stricter gun control. So I did the natural thing. I turned off my computer, and started watching movies.

I watched Harper, a middling Paul Newman P.I. flick, the ever-delightful Shop Around The Corner and, at my girlfriend's stern insistence, Love Actually. During the intermissions, I glanced at Twitter for news of the impending R.A. Dickey trade, taking pains to avoid reading about anything of actual importance. For seven or eight hours, Paul Newman chewed gum, Jimmy Stewart sold music boxes, Hugh Grant made puppy dog eyes. And the outside world stayed far outside.

A hot bath might do the trick, but it lacks the escapism and entertainment value of my preferred preferred prescription: Turner Classic Movies, a 24-hour, commercial-free hot water bottle. At moments of crisis, how nice to slip into a perfectly-crafted Hollywood picture, where The End only means I'm seven or eight minutes away from another round of opening credits? Spy novels, adventure stories and Horatio Hornblower books can all serve the same purpose, but nothing seizes your attention like the well-mannered bray of Katherine Hepburn. If the afterlife is TCM, well, I could imagine worse.

I hadn't forgotten what happened in Connecticut, but I was waiting for the next day's Times to learn the details. As a gauge of a tragedy's importance, the front page of the paper of record is hard to beat. How many inches did they give it? Does the headline stretch the whole page? How many days does it stay above the fold? When the unfathomable happens, this is my coping mechanism, and it's one of the best of my ever-dwindling arsenal of answers to the question, "Why do you still subscribe to a daily paper?"

Any newspaper works. Glancing at the covers of the Post and the Daily News each morning is a marvelous way to close the book on whatever troubled the world the day before. On Saturday, I saw a man searching a USA Today for their write-up of the shooting, growing increasingly confused until he realized that they publish their weekend edition on Friday morning—making for a front page that was hopelessly out of date just a few hours later. Print still has its drawbacks

Information blackout, movies, the morning paper. This is my three step routine, my palliative care. After the Javon Belcher shooting. After Aurora. After Tucson. After Malmö. After Virginia Tech, and all the unfortunate others in between. I felt guilty for avoiding the onslaught of real-time truth until I realized that, as a coping mechanism, waiting 24 hours is healthier, or at least more dignified, than taking to the Internet and screaming inanities about gun control, mental illness, even who the real killer was.

It only takes a few minutes for a national news event, good or bad, to turn social media into an echo chamber. Internet discourse is like a dorm room bull session, which gets louder and dumber with each new person who squeezes in. There is a conversation to be had in this country about guns, about mental health issues, about media malpractice, but the hour after a massacre is not the time to do it, and Twitter is not the place.

Reasonable people understand this, but when confronted with this sort of horror, they retreat the same way I do—taking shelter not with Jimmy Stewart, but in the well-worn rut of liberal indignation. Thinking that gun violence could be solved if the Republicans had the balls to tell the NRA to take a hike is comforting, because it creates a fantasy where violence can be solved. Pretending that the solution to this epidemic of mass murder can be summed up in 140 characters is as absurd as thinking Love Actually is a good movie.

And every Halloween, he does. Thanks to television, this is the week when all folks big and small—including rational men who say their prayers at night—avoid full moons and pentagrams, and dare not even mention the word “wolfbane.” In New York, where creeps scarier than anything dreamed up by Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker wander the streets in broad daylight, it may be harder to get the shivers, but not because rental chains, DVD box sets, revival houses and movie channels don’t work overtime to scare the living daylights out of you. (There’s still money in mayhem.) This year, American Movie Classics turned up the chill factor a week ahead of everyone else, with 24/7 programming full of corn like Christine (they think Stephen King is scary!), The Fly (more hilarious than anything else), the ho-hum Nightmare on Elm Street franchise (more predictable than spine-tingling, and how did Robert Englund ever break for lunch or use his cell phone with those Freddy Krueger scissorhands?). Unsurprisingly, AMC is again showering us with most of the endless Halloweens. Indestructible maniac Michael Myers is burned, sawed, shot, disemboweled and otherwise destroyed at the end of each and every installment, but he always comes back for more. John Carpenter’s original 1978 Halloween with Jamie Lee Curtis and all the clever Psycho references is still worth a scream or two, but my advice is skip all the tired, derivative clones. This is a big waste of time while you wait for the good stuff that comes later. Chucky? I mean, this is New York, where every day is Friday the 13th. Who freaks out about dolls behaving badly? John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London (1981), one of the best contemporary horror films, is not a spoof but a blood-curdling original about a young American bitten by a creature on the Yorkshire moors with tragic results, plus Oscar-winning makeup, special effects and respect for past movie history. AMC is repeating it five times this week on the countdown to the Big Pumpkin.

Save your nerves, Valiums and Zantac 150 antacids. You’ll need them for two of the greatest horrors of all time from the Universal vaults: House of Dracula and House of Frankenstein, both from 1945, where the Count, the Monster, and the Wolf Man all join together at the same time, with Lugosi, Karloff and Chaney in full-tilt career mode. Then brush up on your TiVo instructions, and set those timers, which will be working overtime now that Turner Classic Movies has jump-started the terror a whole day early, on Oct. 30, with The Thing From Another World. It’s on at 4:45 a.m., but it’s worth it. This is the tense, electrifying 1951 Howard Hawks-produced original, about stranded scientists in a remote snowbound Arctic research lab who dig an alien from hell out of the ice, then fight for their lives when it accidentally thaws. It was initially called The Thing, until the pointless, repulsive remake by John Carpenter came along 30 years later with the same title and bright Technicolor hues that robbed it of all suspense. This hair fryer is followed by two thrillers starring the slimy, whimpering Peter Lorre—Mad Love (1935), with lurid direction and gory atmosphere by legendary cameraman Karl Freund, and The Beast With Five Fingers (1945), both about severed hands playing the piano at midnight, driving people to insanity and death. Cringing and always slightly wet, Lorre was a horror highlight. Who could forget him after Bogart bashed him into bloody hamburger in The Maltese Falcon, or his mincing retort: “Look what you’ve done to my shirt!” Ruthless, greedy and usually slimy and moist around the eyes, Lorre was the movies’ first authentic wimp—but capable of great carnage. It’s always a pleasure to welcome him on Halloween.

Haiti never fails to furnish its share of zombie plots, but the best is still Jacques Tourneur’s I Walked With a Zombie (Thursday at 9 a.m.). Francis Dee as a naïve nurse lured into the rustling, moonlit cane fields by the undead still gives me goose bumps. Don’t waste the afternoon on a series of stupid Hammer films with Christopher Lee and Vincent Price, made in cookie-cutter style by William Castle and Roger Corman. But at 8 p.m., things pick up with the famous, fashionably dolorous 1945 British classic Dead of Night, a compilation of five ghost stories told by guests in a grim country house. The best episode is the last, with Michael Redgrave delivering a colossally disturbing performance as a schizophrenic ventriloquist whose puppet comes to life and takes command, with paralyzing results. When this grandfather of the horror-compilation genre was released in the U.S., two of the segments were cut to give the film a shorter running time. For this Halloween adventure, TCM has restored the print to its original 102 minutes. It is followed by Torture Garden, another rarely shown British-made anthology from 1967 in which Jack Palance exhibits his own real-life Halloween mask to good effect, in a carnival sideshow exhibit on torture victims that predicts the deaths of its customers.

FRIDAY, THE SPOOKS ghouls, zombies, voodoo dolls, vampires, lycanthropes and other assorted fiends form a daylong parade of blood and gore that will give you nightmares through the weekend. (And that’s just for people who don’t leave the house!) The timeless 1942 classic Cat People gets things rolling on TCM at 7:30 a.m. The first of producer Val Lewton’s critically acclaimed, economically filmed horror movies, it made a star of French cream puff Simone Simon as a shy girl possessed by a superstition that turns her into a panther. The scene in the deserted swimming pool in the New Orleans French Quarter still gives me the heebie-jeebies. This is followed by Tod Browning’s Freaks, starring actual circus freaks, all involved in a bizarre tale of murder and vengeance in a traveling sideshow. In 1932, nothing like this movie had ever been seen before, and nothing like it has been seen since. Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer’s husband and the power behind the MGM throne, commissioned it hoping to break the records set by Dracula at rival Universal Studios, and ordered the casting department to beat the bushes for authenticity. From circus midways, touring carnivals and the vaudeville circuit came dwarfs; pinheads; a “half-boy”; an armless and legless wonder who could shave and roll his own cigarettes; an Austrian hermaphrodite; a 65-pound “human skeleton”; a bearded lady; and Daisy and Violet Hilton, the Siamese twins who, decades later, became the subjects of the shocking but brilliant and highly acclaimed Broadway musical Freaks. When the movie was finally completed and unveiled to preview audiences, it caused such an outrage that Thalberg cut 30 minutes of the most controversial scenes in the movie, reducing the running time to a mere 65 minutes. The press still pounced, calling Freaks a prime example of Hollywood’s declining moral standards. Now it’s acknowledged by critics, scholars, historians and film buffs as one of the most compelling and unusual films of all time, but the missing footage has never been found and Freaks is still rarely shown anywhere. You can see at least what some of the fuss was about at 9:30 Halloween morning, on TCM. If you’re still not freaked out after Freaks, the masters take over, with three Bela Lugosi classics—Mark of the Vampire, Devil Bat and White Zombie—and three by my boy Boris—The Body Snatcher, Bedlam and The Ghoul. Bedlam is especially disturbing, with Karloff alarmingly convincing as the demented master of a Gothic 18th-century insane asylum. And do try to catch The Black Room, a two-for-one treat with Karloff as twin brothers—one kindly, the other an evil and murderous lecher—replete with a sinister castle equipped with a deep pit into which the bad brother’s enemies, competitors and discarded mistresses are dropped to their doom. The horror continues until the witching hour.

These are among the last attempts to make films of distinction in a formulaic genre destined to cheapen with time and the weather. But the Film Society of Lincoln Center plans to extend the screams beyond Halloween. Next month, they are hosting a program of 11 films called “Problem Child,” about the macabre strains of dark behavior in children as demons, victims, criminals, abusers and objects of the supernatural. As perpetrators of pain and misery, problem children can cause problems for others better than their elders can. These are kids 5 to 18 whose kindergarten must have been an abattoir. In Mervyn Leroy’s flawed but fascinating screen version of Maxwell Anderson’s Broadway smash The Bad Seed, a green-lawned-and-white-columned house in perfect all-American suburbia is invaded by a pigtailed sociopath named Rhoda Penmark for whom murder is as much fun as a game of jacks. The notion that homicidal maniacs are born that way is unconvincing, but see it for the great ensemble acting by a splendid cast that includes Nancy Kelly, Eileen Heckart, Evelyn Varden and Patty McCormack, as the deceptively darling Rhoda. In William Wyler’s polished adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s famous play The Children’s Hour, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine are schoolteachers whose lives are ruined by a psychotic child who spreads the rumor that they are lesbians. Compulsion is a masterful dossier on the Leopold and Loeb murder case. The Innocents, based on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw with a nail-biting screenplay by Truman Capote, is the best ghost story since The Uninvited. As child horror goes, so goes Linda Blair, whirling her head like a dervish while spitting pea soup in The Exorcist. With a range from Mommie Dearest to Village of the Damned, this is a program worth further investigation at Thanksgiving, but I can safely say in advance the lure is an archival print of the rarely shown 1944 domestic thriller Tomorrow the World! It stars 14-year-old Skip Homeier as a German orphan adopted by a liberal university professor (Fredric March) who brings his dangerous, hidden Nazism to the American home front. It was a bombshell in 1944, and I can’t wait to see if it holds up as chillingly today as its subversive, political Third Reich agitprop still does.

Horror films are hard to sell to today’s audiences, jaded by so many real-life atrocities. When you can’t give away tickets to Madame Tussaud’s, who wants to see The Mystery of the Wax Museum? (The “mystery” is how it opened in the first place.) Money is tight, audiences have changed, technology has driven artistry into hibernation. Moviegoers want slice-and-dice slaughters with women raped and ravaged by psychos wielding chainsaws and blood pouring from every orifice, including a few that haven’t been named yet. Genuine horror films with lasting value are harder to find, but once in a jack-o’-lantern moon comes a newfangled classic, ready-made for posterity: Hitchcock’s Psycho, Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, David Fincher’s Seven are a few that will pass the test of time. I think there could be more. With respectable directors to guide them and intelligent writers to script them, A-list actors would surely follow. Of course, there is no guarantee. If we make new horror films, we have to find new ways to defend them. I remember when Susan Sarandon made The Hunger, Tony Scott’s kinky and erotic vampire movie with a lesbian twist, the only thing the press harped on was the sex. “Why did you do a nude love scene with Catherine Deneuve?” screeched one interviewer. Incredulous, Ms. Sarandon stared into the eyes of her inquisitor and without missing a beat, said, “Wouldn’t you?”

rreed@observer.com

If, in the wake of Paul Newman's death last Friday, you've been wishing to revisit the great actor's work and have been thwarted at your local video store, Turner Classic Movies has stepped in with a 24-hour block of Newman movies.

Per the TCM site, here's how it will go:  

6 a.m.  The Rack (1956) - Paul Newman plays a Korean War veteran who has been brainwashed and is now on trial for treason in this taut drama based on a Rod Serling teleplay.  Walter Pidgeon and Wendell Corey co-star.

8 a.m. Until They Sail (1957) - This drama directed by Robert Wise tells the story of four sisters each struggling to find love and happiness in New Zealand during World War II.  Newman plays a Marine captain who falls for one of the sisters, a widow played by Jean Simmons.  This film marks Newman's emergence as a matinee idol.

10 a.m. Torn Curtain (1966) - An American scientist pretends to be a defector in order to get some vital information in this Alfred Hitchcock thriller co-starring Julie Andrews.  Newman's fight scene in a small farmhouse is a brilliant but disturbing Hitchcock set piece.

12:15 p.m. Exodus (1960) - Otto Preminger directed this epic adaptation of Leon Uris' history of the Palestinian war.  Newman plays an Israeli resistance leader, while Eva Marie Saint co-stars as an army nurse.  Ernest Gold won an Oscar for his memorable score.

3:45 p.m. Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) - Newman and co-star Geraldine Page reprised their Broadway roles for this adaptation of the Tennessee Williams drama.  In it, Newman returns to his hometown with an aging movie queen in tow.  Ed Begley won an Oscar for his performance as the town boss.

6 p.m.  Hud (1963) - This modern western, based on a book by Larry McMurtry, features impeccable performances by Newman and Oscar winners Patricia Neal and Melvyn Douglas.  Newman plays a restless youth who destroys nearly everything he touches.  Also earning an Oscar for this drama was cinematographer James Wong Howe.

8 p.m. Somebody up There Likes Me (1956) - This Robert Wise-directed biography of boxer Rocky Graziano traces his rise from the streets of New York to packed arena.  Pier Angeli co-stars.

10 p.m. Cool Hand Luke (1967) - Newman gives a powerful and endearing performance as a member of a prison chain gang in this drama laced with ample doses of anti-establishment humor.  Co-star George Kennedy took home an Oscar for his performance, while Strother Martin nearly steals the film as the warden.

12:15 a.m.  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) - Tennessee Williams' classic drama comes to the screen with an outstanding cast headed by Newman and Elizabeth Taylor.  The story involves a rich Southern family of greedy vultures hovering around while their patriarch, played by Burl Ives, prepares to die.

2:15 a.m. Rachel, Rachel (1968) - Newman co-stars with is wife, Joanne Woodward, in this sensitive drama about a spinster trying to come out of her shell.  This film marked Newman's directorial debut.

4 a.m. The Outrage (1964) - Newman stars as a Mexican bandit accused of rape in this adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon.  Edward G. Robinson, Claire Bloom, Laurence Harvey and William Shatner co-star.

This is certainly a good list. But it's missing some of our favorites: Wither Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Slap Shot, The Verdict, The Color of Money, and - our own personal favorite - Nobody's Fool?

Things aren't looking good in Hollywood. A week from today, on June 30, the Screen Actors Guild's contract will expire. And as Variety reported on Friday, it seems increasingly unlikely that a deal with producers will be struck by then. Anyway, time for S.A.G. to celebrate! The labor union turns 75 this year, and Turner Classic Movies will salute its birth with a marathon of classic films from the 30's and 40's—starting at 8 p.m. with the 1932 comedy, Movie Crazy, in which "a stage struck young actor accidentally receives somebody else's invitation to test in Hollywood." From there it moves to 1933's The Kennel Murder Case, a suspense flick about a murder tied to a Long Island dog show (9:45 p.m.), and next, to the 1932 musical The Kid From Spain (11:15 p.m.). But wait, there's more! Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1 a.m.), Joan Crawford in The Last of Mrs. Cheney (2:15 a.m.) and, if you're really committed, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in For Me and My Gal (4 a.m.). The two-part tribute picks up next Monday, just in time for S.A.G.'s big day.

TUESDAY

Legal historians will probably write books about some of the ground-breaking state supreme court decisions allowing gay marriage in recent years. Of course, when it comes to Californaia, Tila Tequila is the answer.The questionably bisexual former MySpace sensation told Us magazine that her hit MTV reality show, A Shot at Love With Tila Tequila, was a major factor in the California Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn the state's same-sex marriage ban. "It is because of me — I definitely think [my show] has helped the movement," she said. "Before it came out, everyone was still a little apprehensive about [same sex relationships] … Then they realized, 'Wow, everyone is really into this stuff, and it is fine.' The next thing you know, [gay marriage] is legal."

Not sure who Tila Tequila is? Tonight the cast of season two reunites, and attempts to answer that question, probably over a passed bottle of Smirnoff Watermelon Twist. (10 p.m.) P.S. You missed your chance to be there.

WEDNESDAY

Do you like to dive down the occasional educational rabbit-hole on obscure and sometimes almost ostentatiously boring-sounding topics? PBS has your back! Season two of Great Lodges of the National Parks begins tonight. In this episode: the Furnace Creek Inn in Death Valley, Lake Quinault Lodge in the heart of the Pacific Northwest's Olympic National Forest, and Wallowa Lake Lodge in Hawaii's Volcanoes National Park. (8 p.m.) This is as close as PBS comes to HGTV. At 10 p.m., ESPN previews the NBA draft, and at 11, Coldplay does The Daily Show.

THURSDAY

Rob Zombie's House of 1,000 Corpses was an unlikely charmer. The washed-up metalhead somehow achieved the delicate balance between over-the-top gore, eerie motifs, comedy/kitsch and genuine fright that makes a horror flick worth watching. As Dave Kehr noted in The New York Times when he reviewed the film (unfavorably) in April of 2003: "Mr. Zombie (yes, it's his legally assumed name) is clearly a scholar of the roadside slash-and-slaughter movies that achieved their apotheosis with Tobe Hooper's 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre." Exactly! (9 p.m. on IFC) Or you could just subject yourself to the alternately horrifying/edifying comedy stylings of of Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List; it's a new episode.(10 p.m. on Bravo)

FRIDAY

Who would have thought a show about a pack of mongooses roaming the South African desert would be such a hit? If you're a fan of those cute, albeit sometimes brutal little critters on Animal Planet's Meerkate Manor, then you'll know exactly what we're talking about when we tell you that on tonight's new episode, Rocket Dog is pregnant, and even though she still has some beef with Sophie, she now has a legitimate claim as the Whiskers' dominant female. (9 p.m.) And is it just us, or does Bravo air Brokeback Mountain every Friday night? (9 p.m.)

The programming announcement arrived on the heels of the news that Mr. Heston died Saturday night at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. at the age of 84. Long-time TCM host Robert Osbourne is slated to host, but we're hoping Rose McGowan will take some time from her The Essentials duties. TCM's lineup includes an interview and some of his less-touted films like The Buccaneer, Major Dundee, and The Hawaiians. Ben-Hur will play at 9 p.m. But, alas, no The Omega Man.

Starting this month, the 34-year-old beauty is taking on the role of co-host, with beloved white-haired film historian Robert Osborne, of Turner Classic Movies’ series The Essentials. “I’m not just a complete movie geek, I’m actually a total weirdo,” Ms. McGowan said via phone from Los Angeles (where she had just returned from her brother’s Las Vegas wedding. “At a gay chapel. He’s not gay. It was awesome.”). “I’ll read someone’s out-of-print autobiography, and then I’ll go and read two more biographies about them just so I can cross-reference them. That is what I do in my spare time,” she laughed. “I don’t really like to boast about such things, and I can’t tell you what I did yesterday, but I have a strange encyclopedic knowledge and savant-esque memory of random things. Like, I can tell you all about the fantastic character actors in Shirley Temple movies, or who and how someone is related to Norma Shearer. That’s the kind of thing I love discussing.”

The Essentials, which aims to introduce viewers to must-see classics, is now in its eighth year. The show, which airs on Saturdays at 8pm, has had a revolving door of hosts, including Rob Reiner, Peter Bogdanovich, Sydney Pollack and, most recently, Carrie Fisher. Ms. McGowan, who grew up on an Italian commune until the age of 10, said that since she didn’t have a TV to watch as a child, she was introduced to the classics instead. “We would go to the revival theater once we came to the States, and I’d go with my dad. One of my favorite memories is going to see the restoration of Lawrence of Arabia,” she said, describing the size of the screen in a dreamy, buttery voice. “Generally speaking, I would say that old movies rank up there as my favorite thing on earth.”

Unsurprisingly, she has been a steady watcher of TCM. “It’s pretty amazing—Ted Turner buying up all the old libraries … It’s sort of forced AMC to do Rambo as a classic with commercials. I sort of feel sorry for them.”

It was Ms. McGowan who got in touch with the show after a eureka moment while watching TCM at 2 a.m. “I was like, oh my God, why am I not a guest programmer? So I called my manager.” The result was a spot on Guest Programmer month. “We did Out of the Past, one of my all-time favorite noirs,” she said. “So brilliant and on par with Double Indemnity, though known less. [We also did] A Place in the Sun, and That Touch of Mink—I wanted something saucy and silly.” What Ms. McGowan didn’t realize was that the powers-that-be were using the guest spots to search for a new Essentials cohost.

^“I KNOW MY name is not one you’d assume would be up there. Like, O.K., Carrie Fisher makes sense. O.K., the lady from the The New York Times makes sense. … Bogdanovich makes sense. Me? You look at that and think … what?” she said. Ms. McGowan expressed irritation with media outlets who’ve dismissed her, insinuating that she had seen only the 40 movies she discussed with Mr. Osborne. “I’ve been a little peeved,” she said. “I had actually already seen about 38 of them, though I did have to go back and watch them with a different eye. I like to watch movies over and over again, so it wasn’t like it was a hardship.”

Screening during Ms. McGowan’s reign (now through January 2009) will be such greats as Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, 1950’s All About Eve and the terrifying Charles Laughton thriller Night of the Hunter, about a religious fanatic who marries and kills widows for their money. “There’s an amazing movie. … Oh, and it’s the second movie I’ve mentioned where poor Shelley Winters drowns. Oh, Shelley, I have nothing against you! But that drowning scene in Night of the Hunter is so hauntingly beautiful,” Ms. McGowan said, pausing to anticipate the film’s critics. “It’s heavy-handed, sure, I get it. It’s just so smart. It’s very much a classic metaphor for the big person [Robert Mitchum] to proclaim for all to hear how Christian he is, and then there’s Lillian Gish, who probably only weighs about 90 pounds. … And she’s the quiet Christian, and it’s her behavior that speaks for her about her Christian belief.” Other favorites include the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (“They almost lost the original print because of nitrates. Every time I think of that my heart sort of stops”) and the Bette Davis 1942 standard, Now, Voyager. (“I just love it,” she said. “It was more innocent and a less jaded time for watching people onscreen. There’s also so much more you can get away with.”)

Her co-hosting gig with Mr. Osborne, whom she describes as “elegant, old school and lovely—exactly what you think,” is a dream, Ms. McGowan said. “I had no idea that they were even going to pay me. Seriously, a job where I get to sit and discuss these movies? Are you kidding me? I’ve been boring my friends for years!” The allure of an old-fashioned Hollywood picture is hard to put into words, though we asked her to try. “I want people to be better-looking than they are on the street. I want people to be better dressed than they are on the street,” she said. “I want the houses to be better. I think the rise of modern movies and the story of an everywoman and everyman … it’s like, who cares? I see that walking around.” She laughed. “Give me a show.”

Think of Rich lying in the sand, sucking oranges, opting out of the final immunity challenge while Kelly and Rudy compete in a stand-off. Rich, realizing he will never outlast Kelly, figures he has the visibly straining Rudy in his pocket (per alliance). With somewhat less aplomb, and certainly less payoff at the end of the road, my husband had been lying around more than usual since a June automobile accident. His walk seemed to deteriorate-a progressive rather than dramatic deterioration after a 1984 brush with death, I thought. He complained that his head "felt funny," but that's also a signal for high blood pressure, another chronic problem.

By the July 4 weekend, he felt he might be having a stroke or heart attack. I thought it was anxiety but took him to Southampton Hospital, where they gave him blood tests and pronounced him fine. Three weeks later, he seemed seriously worse, reaching for words, barely walking even with a cane. An internist in New York suggested we go straight to Southampton Hospital. This time they did a CT scan. Diagnosis: massive subdural hematoma.

We thought this was the end. He was to be transported to Stony Brook Hospital; I would have to get there on my own. I went home first, called a doctor friend in the city. "It was probably a slow accumulation of blood in the brain from having been shaken in the accident," he told me, "and then it burst through. Stony Brook's a good hospital, just make sure the neurosurgeon and anesthesiologist are board certified."

Friends drove me there. I was already in a state of terror and guilt. Why had I not taken his symptoms seriously? I'd been mad with worry, but also just plain mad, urging him to walk, get his blood pressure down, stimulate his leg muscles. And why hadn't they given him a CT scan his first go-round? Was it the routine refusal to perform expensive tests without a prescription from a doctor-and, with it, the assurance of reimbursement? Or was it that tendency among medical professionals, as well as family, of seeing anyone over 65 as a generic old person-a sort of mental triage whereby we relegate them to the category of "the elderly" and discount their complaints, not seeing beyond age to the sneakier symptoms of underlying illness?

As it happened, the neurosurgeon on duty at Stony Brook wasn't board certified-he'd had six years of residency, but hadn't gotten around to taking his exams-but as he explained, in a refrain we would hear from numerous doctor friends, "It's the simplest of all brain surgeries. Anyone can do it." Through a small incision in the cranium, a shunt would be inserted to drain the blood. For the next three days, the patient would lie immobile while the soft part of the brain, which had been squished toward the center, slowly expanded. Two-and-a-half hours later (not 20 minutes, as he'd said), the doctor emerged.

We'd been given a second miracle. It was déjà vu all over again, but in a more benign version. My husband was one day calm, making jokes, declaring his love (was he in shock, anesthetized to his predicament?); the next day, in fine paranoid fettle. "Where's my pad and pen, I need to work," he said. "Of course I'm going to go to Atlanta Aug. 5" for a Turner Classic Movies gig. He had banished the nurse for trying to catheterize him, and when I suggested he relax, he exploded. His identity was his work; he needed to show he wasn't just another geezer with time on his hands. His lips curled as he challenged me with leaving him and having fun.

"What's the matter?" I asked. "You were so sweet yesterday."

"Now that I know I'm not going to die, I can be myself again."

"You don't have to worry about leaving cherished memories, is that it?"

I could see we were already embarked on the seven stages of recovery. When he was in stage three, Cantankerousness, I was still running on adrenalin-fueled contentment with the Nursing Role, but I thought a little teasing might help. "If you don't behave better, I'm going to have to write another book," I said. "This time put in more of my one-liners," he responded.

He called two nights later to describe his hallucinations. The next night, he telephoned at 3 a.m. to complain that the man next to him was screaming and beating on the bed with a spoon (no hallucination-I could hear him), and five hours later he called to say he was being released.

Back in New York one Sunday, we were doing reasonably well when he awoke with a rash. The visiting nurse, alarmed, packed us off to New York Hospital. "Is this the man who writes those film reviews?" asked the doctor on duty, and I knew that the moment my husband became a valiant Somebody instead of an anonymous malingerer, the medical personnel would snap to attention. The rash was a reaction to Dilantin, the anti-seizure medication that President Nixon is reported to have been indulging in.

My husband takes Cartesian dualism to an extreme: living in his head, not grasping that the brain is an organ and, if he doesn't take care of the rest of him, there's not going to be a head to live in. It's now or never, I tell him, and he nods his head-that stubborn head now shorn of its Frankenstein staples.

At present we're both in stage 61/2, Intermittent Normalcy, a general feeling of relief punctuated by moments of elation, depression and fear. Intimations of mortality overshadow our lives, but the game is all the more worth playing when the "accidents" no longer seem so freakish, when the odds are diminishing and survival is only temporary.

Barry Diller gave the order in the spring of '98: no more fighting on The Jerry Springer Show ! Well, a couple of public outcries and media-fueled mass murders later, Mr. Diller has finally brought order to the program, which is owned by his Studios U.S.A.

Nothing good lasts forever.

"We will either produce a show without profanity, violence or physical confrontation, or the show won't be produced by us," Mr. Diller said in a brief telephone interview from his midtown office. "There are no conditions that will change that."

But here's the strange thing. The show's rating hasn't suffered much. It's now finishing a tenth of a rating point behind Oprah . That means Mr. Diller may not sell the show, after coming close to giving it up about a month ago.

Rival TV executives were suspicious of the fact that Mr. Diller–who inherited The Jerry Springer Show as part of his Universal purchase in 1997–gave his clean-up-the-show-or-else edict a year before things finally settled down.

"Barry's a master of manipulation," said an executive who has had dealings with Mr. Diller. "I think this was a little, public, P.T. Barnum thing."

But executives at Studios U.S.A. said Mr. Diller is not playing a game. He seems as mad about getting more bad publicity from the show as he does about being disobeyed. And Mr. Diller doesn't like being disobeyed by anyone in his organization.

Sources at Studios U.S.A. claimed that until early May, Mr. Diller had been unaware of the show's return to the gutter. (This, even though the return of the fighting has even led to the scheduling of a City Council hearing in its hometown of Chicago.)

Upper-level executives at Studios USA blame middle-management types who were overseeing Mr. Springer's show: "As much as we've tried to figure it out, we think they just said, 'Nobody's really looking, it seems to be O.K., the ratings are growing and nobody's calling us to say stop,'" said one Studios U.S.A. executive.

A second edict went out telling Mr. Springer to again clean it up toward the end of the May sweeps, when ratings are gauged to help determine advertising rates. The Springer studio went black and tamer reruns were put into the time slot where fresh shows had been airing.

After leading The Oprah Winfrey Show by about 100,000 households through most of the May ratings period–6.6 million to 6.5 million–Mr. Springer's reruns dropped the viewership to 5.1 million households as Oprah held her own. Mr. Diller reportedly decided that if the show couldn't work without the violence, he would open himself up to bids from companies willing to buy it for the considerable sum of $100 million. (The show is estimated to make Mr. Diller's company $40 million a year.) Smaller, upstart distributors like New York-based Unapix and Greg Meidel, the onetime Studios U.S.A. president who is starting his own production company, were among those who expressed interest.

The bigger syndicators didn't show up at the table with anything real. That's because, as Mr. Diller has learned, Jerry Springer-style television doesn't do much for the corporate image and leaves syndicators in a bind. "If you let him do the controversial stuff, you get high ratings. But then no one wants to buy it," said Stacy Lynn-Koerner, a researcher with T.N. Media. But then a funny thing happened. By mid-June, the Springer show's ratings had stabilized, drawing just about 100,000 fewer households than the Oprah show, according to statistics from Nielsen Media Research.

So Mr. Diller is holding. Meanwhile, in Chicago, Mr. Springer would like nothing more than to see his show go to someone else who will let him be himself and run things his way. [WPIX, 11, 9 A.M.]

Thursday, July 8

NewsStand: CNN and Entertainment Weekly examines Hollywood's new supermanagers, who are learning how to make more money than ever off their stars. Mike Ovitz! Bernie Brillstein! [CNN, 10, 8 P.M.]

Friday, July 9

Behind the Music with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, now entering a more

mature post-heroin, post-sock-on-penis phase. [VH1, 19, 9 P.M.]

Saturday, July 10

It's here. The video George Lucas does not want you to see. Tonight. On the great public access program Media Shower .

Get a glimpse into Chewbacca's homelife–including his wife, Malla, working in the kitchen. Watch Diahann Carroll sing to Chewy's dad, Itchy. Watch an imperial guard enthralled by the holographic image of Jefferson Starship. Check out how Bea Arthur and Art Carney fit in with the whole gang. It first aired in November 1978, and has been suppressed ever since. Now, through the magic of public access, much of it airs on Media Shower , which is put together and hosted by Jamie Greenberg. (Give that man an Emmy.)

"It's the bastard child of the canon," said Mr. Greenberg, who also works as a correspondent on Court TV's Snap Judgment . "It is appalling. When you look at it, you can't believe that TV executives put this together." [Manhattan Neighborhood Network, 34, 12:30 A.M.]

Sunday, July 11

The Hunley is TNT's latest original movie. It's based on the story of the first successful wartime submarine, which was used by the Confederates in the dwindling days of the Civil War. It glorifies the struggles of this group of Confederates, who had to motor the tiny submarine by hand. The movie tries to make the audience weep for the brave Southerners and doesn't get into all the messy details of the war, like what they were fighting for. NYTV smelled a rat–no, make that, Ted Turner. Sure enough, the movie was the good ol' boy's idea.

"This is something that's been on his agenda to do for 10 years or more," said John Gray, who co-wrote and directed the film for Mr. Turner. "It was just a matter of finding your way into the story." So why doesn't the movie deal more openly with, you know, the Confederates' beliefs?

"It wasn't a story about politics or sides. It was just a story openly about these particular men and just about valour, the same way with Das Boot ."

The film–starring Donald Sutherland and Armand Assante–couldn't debut at a better time. Just a couple of weeks ago, on June 26, archeologists in Charleston, S.C., unearthed what are believed to be the remains of the sub's first crew, under the Citadel's Johnson Hagood football stadium. (In all, the thing killed three crews.) Coincidence? "They're stunt bodies," Mr. Gray deadpanned. Actually, the dig had been planned for some time since the Hunley is about the only thing Charleston's got going for it these days. The movie isn't bad, but the ending leaves your eyes rolling. [TNT, 3, 8 P.M.]

Monday, July 12

Who's better than Christie, the 6-year-old director in those Independent Film Channel commercials ? In the spots, the mini-auteur, played by Hallie Eisenberg–also of those Pepsi commercials with Aretha Franklin–bosses around stars like Matt Damon, Janeane Garofalo and Lili Taylor. But, alas, the young starlet will be moving on to her flourishing career in the movies and will be replaced in the ads by Ukrainian native Roman Tokar.

NYTV caught up with Ms. Eisenberg to ask her about how the gig went for her. "I liked getting to be the director and bossing everybody around," she said. "I thought it was really good how they filmed it and everything, and I just thought everyone did a great job." Can we remind you that she's 6? It all started in her house, in New Jersey. "When I was little, me and my sister [Kerry, 19] did this little improv thing. From there I thought acting was really fun," she said. "We just took our animals and just sat them around. The animals were the audience."

Anyway, you can catch her this Christmas in Robin Williams' Bicentennial Man and in an upcoming project with Al Pacino, about the Brown & Williamson tobacco scandal. (She plays Mike Wallace. Kidding!) [Independent Film Channel, 81, all day long.]

Tuesday, July 13

Jason Katims never really bothered much with aliens. He barely knew where Roswell, N.M., was, let alone what it represents to hundreds of thousands of alienated humans who believe an Earth-locked alien vessel–bodies intact–is being hidden there by the military.

"I'm not a sci-fi buff," Mr. Katims said after finishing up a California day, dreaming up plotlines for the upcoming season.

So then, why is the Midwood, Brooklyn, native launching an hourlong drama for the WB about alien teens who look like humans and attend a Roswell high school this fall? He said he's in it for the story lines. "We feel there are so many stories that come out of the premise of the show," he said. Mr. Katims, 38, had his biggest success with My So-Called Life . "We're using the idea of having an alien as a metaphor for teenage alienation," he said. And then the alien lead will fall in love with a beautiful human. "At the core is an unrequited love story; it's kind of a Romeo and Juliet love story."

The show, called Roswell , is another attempt by the WB to build on the success it's had with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek , which it will follow on Wednesdays at 9 P.M., starting this fall. Tonight, at last, watch the (expurgated) Buffy season finale that was held up because of the Columbine shootings. [WPIX, 11, 8 P.M.]

Peter Bogdanovich's Movie of the Week

Because July 7 would have been director George Cukor's 100th birthday, Turner Classic Movies is running six of his films on that day in tribute, plus another stray one on July 13, three of them starring Katharine Hepburn, whom Cukor introduced to the screen and with whom he did 10 pictures, among the most fruitful director-star collaborations in movie history. The three are: 1940's The Philadelphia Story [Wednesday, July 7, Turner Classic Movies, 82, 8 A.M.] , with Cary Grant and James Stewart; 1942's Keeper of the Flame [July 7, TCM, noon] with Spencer Tracy; 1935's Sylvia Scarlett [July 13, TCM, 8 A.M.] with Cary Grant and Edmund Gwenn. (More on these anon.) Also, the previously recommended Greta Garbo masterpiece, 1937's Camille [July 7, TCM, 6 A.M.] with Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore.

Since New York City-born Cukor's first love was the theater–he was smitten quite young, right from his initial exposure to a Broadway show, and decided he would be a stage director long before he knew exactly what the job entailed–it isn't surprising that at least 10 of his movies deal with show-business people, specifically actors. Three of these are represented on his centennial day: The uneven but likable 1957 backstage musical, Les Girls [July 7, TCM, 4 P.M.] , with Gene Kelly, Mitzi Gaynor and the divine Kay Kendall, and songs by Cole Porter; the utterly charming, poignant period comedy based on Ruth Gordon's autobiographical play ( Years Ago ) about her stage aspirations and her father's disapproval, 1953's The Actress [July 7, 2 P.M.] starring Spencer Tracy, Jean Simmons, Teresa Wright, and introducing Anthony Perkins; and, as American Movie Classic's one-gun salute, the dark psychological drama of an actor's obsession, 1947's A Double Life [July 7, American Movie Channel, 54, 10 P.M. and July 8, 3:35 A.M.] , starring Ronald Colman, Signe Hasso, Edmond O'Brien and introducing Shelley Winters.

Ruth Gordon and her husband Garson Kanin received an Oscar nomination for A Double Life , for best original screenplay, and the two went on to an extremely productive and valuable relationship with Cukor, separately and together, writing seven of his pictures. This is the story of a famous stage star–Ronald Colman strikingly good in his Academy Award-winning performance–who is playing the title role in Shakespeare's Othello on Broadway, and gets so "into" the role that it drives him mad and, eventually, to murder. The score by Miklos Rozsa won an Oscar, too, while Cukor was nominated for best director–the third of five such nominations–and his work is awfully good, with some of the most effective backstage sequences ever made, exceptionally photographed by Milton Krasner. Both editor Robert Parrish and art director Harry Horner were so good they soon became directors themselves. As usual, Cukor's handling of actors is flawless–Signe Hasso is especially fine as Colman's ex-wife–and Shelley Winters makes a memorable debut. Cukor told me he read a lot of women for her waitress role, but that Ms. Winters "came in and she had a rather comic walk, an amusing slant. And, I thought, for this part–which was a tragic part–this sort of girl might help, would add to the whole quality of the picture: a comic note in the tragic …"

As Cukor also said, he liked "working with young and inexperienced people. I have a knack for it." And he proved that again with Anthony Perkins in The Actress , the youngster's scenes as Ms. Simmons' beau being especially evocative of the 1900's small-town New England atmosphere.

Indeed, this small gem of a movie also contains really beautiful performances from Ms. Simmons as the dreamy teenager yearning for the footlights and Spencer Tracy as her dubious father who eventually comes around in the most touching way. It's one of Tracy's understated best, in fact, with several long, uncut sequences that are amazing in their simple intensity, aided in no small part by Teresa Wright's typically excellent job as the mother. Among Cukor's least known movies, it is also among his purest. Happy birthday, George.

In 1970–a decade before the video cassette age–Orson Welles had rented a house for a year in Beverly Hills, and one evening I brought over a portable 16-millimeter projector so that we could run a print I'd borrowed of James Cagney at his annihilating best in Raoul Walsh's amazing 1949 gangster picture, White Heat [Saturday, June 6, Turner Classic Movies, 82, 8 P.M.] . Both Orson and I had seen the movie before, and we both remembered it as being one of Walsh's and one of Cagney's–individually and together–finest, most exciting and most memorable; that night confirmed this for us. Orson, of course, was vocally most delighted by the film's extraordinarily subversive qualities. Here is Cagney at his most savagely antisocial, a psychopathic, chronically migrained, aging, train-robbing mama's-boy killer (named Cody Jarrett), and yet when that most honorable Federal undercover agent Edmond O'Brien bullshits his way into the gang, you are rooting for Cagney all the way. Welles and I were actually hissing O'Brien! Orson laughed, happy with the film's relentlessly perverse effect: Because of Cagney's hypnotic charismatic personality and his sheer brilliance as an actor, law and order is undercut, and a kind of breathtaking anarchy almost becomes alluring, if it weren't so terrifying underneath.

Raoul Walsh was one of the five directors whom Cagney (out of some 80 he'd worked with) characterized as "a real director." Which was what? I asked. And Cagney said, "A real director is a guy who, if I don't know what the hell to do, can get up and show me!" Walsh had been a fine silent actor as well, so Cagney, confident of being in great hands, gives by far his most daring performance. The section when he goes berserk in the prison mess, having heard of his mother's death, is absolutely hair-raising. A number of people have commented on Walsh being the only conceivable director who could have Cagney sit on his mother's lap and get away with it. In fact, the move seems absolutely organic to the character. British actress Margaret Wycherly, as his deadpan whiskey-voiced mother, is a marvel herself. Not to mention Virginia Mayo as the ultimate gun moll incarnate and Steve Cochran equally definitive as her oily lover.

And when Cagney commits suicide rather than give up–standing cockily on that gigantic globelike gas tank (in a field of gas tanks), shooting directly into it, yelling, "Top o' the world, Ma!" just before his world blasts into smithereens–it is among the most ambiguously thrilling moments in movie history. White Heat both revived Warner Brother's gangster cycle of the 30's and also ended it conclusively for the golden age, which still had about 13 years to go. In other words, this was the climax of the gangster genre.

Now if you crave more in this Cagney-Walsh outlaw mood, you're in luck, because the other good one (of a decade earlier) is on right afterward, their 1939 rags-to-riches-to-doomsday epic The Roaring 20's [Saturday, June 6, TCM, 82, 10 P.M.] . This one features Humphrey Bogart in a large supporting role, made just before he hit it big the following year as the aging gangster lead in Walsh's tragic High Sierra . Here Bogie is terrific as a remorselessly cynical hood, but his final moments of fear are among the least convincing of his career. Cagney, on the other hand, has a death scene that is haunting: Shot several times, he runs a block and then up the steps of a church and halfway down again before he finally falls dead. The actor told me he was inspired for this scene by seeing a Clyde Beatty documentary in which a huge gorilla got shot; what he remembered most was the beast's surprise at being mortally wounded and its refusal to accept it right to the end. Afterward, Cagney's head is cradled in the arms of the only woman who really loved him and when asked if she knew the guy, she responds with the classic epitaph: "Yeah, he used to be a big shot."

The Ford Watch: If you want to see Frank Sinatra's "gal that got away," the wildly beautiful and talented Ava Gardner, in the finest performance of her career–the only one for which the Academy nominated her for best actress–then see John Ford's African-adventure love story, with Clark Gable and Grace Kelly at the other corners of a richly potent triangle, 1953's gloriously color-photographed Mogambo [Sunday, June 7, TCM, 82, 1:30 A.M.] . And the Hitchcock Watch: If you haven't seen Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's 1959 fugitive-on-the-run Vistavision color masterpiece North by Northwest [Sunday, June 7, TCM, 82, 11:30 A.M.] , you are in for one of the most enjoyable rides in picture history; one of my absolute favorites, so more anon.

Wednesday, June 3

It's your second chance to catch the finale of The Larry Sanders Show . [HBO, 28, midnight.]

Thursday, June 4

Bobcat Goldthwait doesn't do that thing with his voice as much anymore. He outgrew that in 1991, around the time he wrote, directed and starred in Shakes the Clown , the " Citizen Kane of alcoholic clown movies." …

For its first foray into original programming, the cable station FX has turned to the tightly wound funnyman to host an improvisational game show in which regular people make fools of themselves. It's called Bobcat's Big Ass Show , it began June 1, and although FX doesn't broadcast in New York, you can get a lawn chair and watch in the window of the FX headquarters on 24th Street and Fifth Avenue.…

"The thing I like about the game show is that, even though there will be the cheesy game-show element where I have to say where the guests will be going, everything else I have to ad-lib," said Mr. Goldthwait over the roaring freeway from his terrace in Los Angeles …

Mr. Goldthwait's other work responsibilities include directing music videos and making enemies with Howard Stern. He's also working on something called Teen Jesus . "It'd be Jerusalem, 90210 ," he said. "Angst-ridden teen years with an Aaron Spelling backdrop. You know, Jesus moves to a new town and he's an outcast. He wins the swim meet by walking across the pool, he talks to the bullies. Joseph and him have a lot of struggles–'You're not my real dad!'" …

So why'd you set Jay Leno's chair on fire? …

"I really think I did it because I was bored. I did his show once and then he had me back on, and I think I resented him for asking me back. I've known him for years, and it was almost because he was surprised and happy that he had finally asked me that kind of bothered me. The idea of being a regular on the show also kind of bothered me, like fucking Carrot Top. He called me at home after I set the chair on fire and he goes, 'I'd like to have you on the show, but people are really mad,' and I go 'Jay, it's the Jay Leno show, you don't have to talk to anyone about it.' And he goes, 'You don't have to be a dick.' He's too easy a whipping boy, but after he booked me for the second time, he got pissed because on Jon Stewart , I said that I thought he killed Ron [Goldman] and Nicole [Brown Simpson] for the material. Then they canceled my appearance. He's obsessed that everyone think he's a nice guy. He called me up at home to say, 'I hear you're talking about me in the clubs.' I told him I think he's kind of fucking nuts." …

Other talk-show memories? "I was gonna throw up on Regis and Kathie Lee; I was gonna put ipecac in a mug and I told [Garry] Shandling this and he wanted to put it into Larry Sanders . So we talked about it on his show, and then when I went on Regis , they were worried I was gonna do it. They were checking my coffee mug even though I had it right in my pocket. Instead, I took the pin out of a fire extinguisher and ran after Kathie, blowing up her skirt. Then I ripped off my T-shirt and put the loud mike on my nipple. Man, that hurt, but they said it was one of the show's biggest ratings spikes. I wasn't allowed to say the name of my new show on their show. You know, I wish someone would just give me the rule book. They assume you know–I can say 'dildo' on Vibe and I can't say it on Keenen . They bleeped me when I did a fucking Tyson joke. I can understand them bleeping the language, but they just cut the whole thing. But it's all very fleeting. We stole these fiberglass-panel doors from Keenen . They're on my set now. I'm writing across from Keenen , it's just, like, funny how, like, show business is based on fruit baskets. The more baskets you get, the more heat you have." …

Did you like Seinfeld , Bobcat? "It seems like there's a school of comedy where the more superficial you can keep it, the more you are rewarded. These guys are about crafting a good joke and keeping any form of spontaneity and any form of angst out of your act. Or anything weird. Andy Kaufman and Richard Pryor have more to do with molding me. I couldn't do a show for nine years, and at the end have you still not know who I am. Even in this goddamn game show, I find myself telling personal stories. It's really weird, this whole school where they worship writing jokes. I mean, how many people do you really need to write a Monica Lewinsky joke?" [FX, Fifth Avenue and 24th Street, 10:30 P.M.]

Friday, June 5

Actress Victoria Labalme has been doing commercials for the last two and a half years. "I thought it would be fun," she told NYTV. "I call it a total roulette because you never know when you can hit it and make a lot of money. People often think it's easy, but what happens is you're changing your schedule and running around all the time. On one day at 10 A.M., I had to be a businesswoman for Pepsi; at 10:40 I had to be the letter A for Sesame Street ; at 1:20 I had to be a depressed mother for Effexor; at 3:25 I had to be a chic SoHo gallery owner for Toshiba; and at 3:50 I had to be a jogger for Tampax, looking like Helen Hunt. They often say, 'We're looking for an Ally McBeal or Helen Hunt type,' and I look somewhere in between … I had a call-back for Denny's in which I was selling five different breakfasts for $1.99. The first time through, the director said, Great. Then he asked me to make it more cheerful. I did it again, and he told me to be a little stern. The next time he wanted me to look at the platters and add a giggle. There are like five people in the room, and each time you read it, they lean together and confer. When I was done, they told me I 'nailed' it, and I never heard from them again." …

During tonight's N.B.A. finals game between Chicago and Utah in Salt Lake City, Ms. Labalme delivers the punch line as a juror in a Holiday Inn commercial. [WNBC, 4, 9 P.M.]

Saturday, June 6

Sex and the City : Sex on HBO no longer means titillating twaddle for swingin' couples. The bigger story here is the clothes that stay on, not the ones that come off. Sex and the City began as a column in this newspaper by Candace Bushnell, then it was a book, and now it's in the hands of Darren Star, the boy auteur behind the sex-and-shopping soaps Beverly Hills, 90210 , Melrose Place and Central Park West . [HBO, 28, 9:45 P.M.]

Sunday, June 7

Jeff Greenfield's new magazine show (co-anchored with Bernard Shaw), Newsstand , debuts tonight. Formerly of ABC News and Nightline , Mr. Greenfield said this show will offer him "a chance to stretch." …

Before becoming a pundit and reporter ("I left politics to write and decided you can't do both and then stumbled half-assed into TV"), he was a speechwriter for John Lindsay and an aide and speechwriter for Robert Kennedy. "I was a junior aide, but it was an exhilarating experience," Mr. Greenfield said. "He is one of the most impressive public figures I have ever known. I can't profess objectivity, but even if you forget the emotional and romantic side, he had an incredibly original mind. He was talking about the need to redefine the Democratic Party years before Clinton. He was a tough-minded thinker, not in any way an intellectual, but his mind was like a steel trap." …

Anyone in his league today? …

"I do not look at politicians as an inferior species–there are lots of interesting people … John McCain, Bill Bradley, Bob Kerrey. One of the reasons politics is less compelling is it's a much more placid time.… But I'm not rooting for a national crisis so that we can have more to cover; I'll take the dullness" [CNN, 10, 10 P.M.]

Monday, June 8

Dear Michiko, No one's ever really gotten inside my head the way you did. I really, really loved the piece, and I bet a lot of other single women (with or without Pulitzers) feel exactly the same way. Yours truly, Ally McB. [WNYW, 5, 9 P.M.]

Tuesday, June 9

Heinz Meng has been teaching biology, ornithology, entomology and zoology at State University of New York at New Paltz since 1950. He bred the first captured peregrines, and he has appeared on To Tell the Truth and as one of David Letterman's guests. One night he tuned into Larry King Live , where the host was talking to Jack Hanna (from the Columbus Zoo in Ohio). He was not impressed. "It could be called The Comedy of Errors ," said the 74-year-old Mr. Meng by speakerphone. "but it certainly was not funny. I had heard about Jack Hanna and I thought, I'll watch it. And then I couldn't believe what he said so I had to write it down. A lot of things he said were jokes, but they didn't seem like jokes. He was saying things like sometimes bats pollinate flowers with their droppings. Droppings can fertilize the ground in which the plants grow–but they certainly do not pollinate the flowers! I think probably he's said these things so many times that he believes them himself. I guess he's got a pretty good personality and he looks pretty good, from what girls tell me. I can't tell. I can only tell if a girl looks good, not a man." Tonight on Late Show With David Letterman, News Radio 's Andy Dick. [WCBS, 2, 11:35 P.M.]