Change the lame headline, change the lame headline.... No. Not gonna. Hey, all -- just a heads-up that you'll want to be RIGHT HERE at EW.com for everything Emmys this weekend. We'll have lots of lil' videos from Saturday night's EW party starting on Sunday morning. Later, as EW staffers report from backstage and in the audience on Twitter, Mandi and Slezak will graciously chain themselves, kicking and screaming, to hours of life-consuming live-blog duty starting with the last hour of E!'s red carpet coverage at 7 p.m. ET. After that, we'll post our usual backstage report and "Best and Worst Moments" photo gallery (check out the 2007 version for a trip down memory lane), plus a bonus red-carpet fashion awards gallery so you can marvel at L. Yeah (pictured)'s presumable excellent taste, or rip on Jane Krakowski if she decides to wear a new gown inspired by Dippin' Dotz or any other heavily processed food. (Fingers crossed!) On Monday, come back for plenty of exclusive red carpet videos from Michael Ausiello, plus a PopWatch discussion of the winners and who got snubbed.
Meanwhile, there's still plenty of time to whoop Ausiello's ass -- in general! -- but specifically in EW's 2008 Emmy Predictions Game. We'll announce that winner on Monday. And there's plenty more deliciousness on EW's comprehensive 2008 Emmys hub. Enjoy!
We had one quiet weekend in which to feign interest in football and rest up from all of the partying we did with the Jonas Brothers at the VMAs. Now it's on to the Emmys! But before we get our bowl of popcorn and sweats red carpet duds on for Sunday's show, here's a look back at the pop culture moments that had you all type-type-typing away...
The following remembrance of DFW will run in this week's issue of the magazine; the PopWatch editors asked if they could reprint it here, and I said of course, of course, of course. Though this blog already ran one In Memorium post -- Wook Kim's words from the weekend are here -- the man deserves as much remembering as there are minds to do so. Please feel free to use the comment board to share your thoughts, and your favorite DFW works.
On Sept. 12, Infinite Jest author David Foster Wallace hanged himself in his Claremont, Calif., home. His body was found by his wife, Karen. According to statements James Wallace made to The New York Times, his son's antidepressants had failed; he tried electroconvulsive therapy this summer, but "just couldn't stand it anymore." Wallace was 46.
Thus is now writ the far-too-brief denouement to the life of an incomparably curious, challenging, cultish, brilliant American voice. "He was the best of our generation," novelist Richard Powers told the AP; the shock of his passing was felt by countless peers. Over the course of nine books—fiction and nonfiction—Wallace carved an indelible spot in the literary canon, elevated the game of friends like Jonathan Franzen, Dave Eggers, and George Saunders, and, as a college professor, helped shape a new wave of writers. He may have borrowed the title of his 1996 masterpiece, Infinite Jest, from the "Alas, poor Yorick…" speech in Hamlet, but it could be argued that the play's most Wallace-appropriate quote is not the one about the skull. Try Act II, Scene II: "Words, words, words."
From the 1,079 dystopian pages of Jest to the infamous "Consider the Lobster"—a colossal treatise on the morality of eating said crustaceans delivered in 2004 to the unsuspecting editors of Gourmet magazine, who'd really just asked for a nice story about the Maine Lobster Festival—Wallace spent his career cheerfully disregarding the limitations of the printed page. His fiction, rooted in the postmodern traditions of Thomas Pynchon and Robert Coover, inspired equal parts exhilaration and exasperation. By contrast, his nonfiction was hilariously accessible. Wallace was keenly aware of his narrative flailings, and exploited those insecurities to draw the reader in; he began sentences with informalities like "And so but then," slathered his text in footnotes, fetishized abbreviation. "He didn't really study a subject so much as absorb it," says Josh Dean, who edited Wallace's piece on tennis star Roger Federer for The New York Times' Play magazine. As his longtime Little, Brown editor Michael Pietsch puts it, to read Wallace's work is to discover "how many pleasures he can cram into a sentence."
The son of a philosophy professor and an English teacher, Wallace was raised in Champaign, Ill., and graduated from Amherst College in 1985 with a degree in philosophy. One of his senior theses resulted in 1987's The Broom of the System, which Wallace once referred to as a "sensitive little self-obsessed bildungsroman"; indeed, the book's kooky plot is less significant than its author's relationship with the power of language, as embodied in a protagonist increasingly convinced she's nothing but a character in someone else's stories.
In an era of confessional tell-alls, exploring his fear of becoming "a linguistic construct" was the closest Wallace ever came to outright memoir. Instead, it was Jest—surely the most beloved three-pound book ever written about a tennis academy, a halfway house, wheelchair-bound Canadian terrorists, and a videotape so entertaining that it literally amuses its viewers to death—that cemented his status as literary superstar. The role was a horrid fit. Wallace rarely appeared in public without sporting a do-rag; he loved chewing tobacco, hated being on TV, and made decisions based on the needs of his dogs. "He was uncomfortable with praise," says Pietsch. "But he was incredibly easy to talk to, as unassuming as a human being could be." He'd also no doubt be mortified by anyone pawing through his oeuvre to determine where the trickle of dark water became a flood. Yet clues exist, in "The Depressed Person," "Good Old Neon," even his intro to The Best American Essays 2007, where he refers to the sound of U.S. culture as an "abyss" of "Total Noise." That the writers in this collection all carry a bit of DFW DNA is not much consolation.
In 2005, Wallace addressed the graduating class of Kenyon College with the following: "Learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think…being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to…how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed."
The best of our generation is not a phrase to be flung about willy-nilly, but w/r/t David Foster Wallace it feels earned. Our current fascination with Twittering and whatnot may have antiquated his predilection for infinity, but Wallace's ability to parse the minutiae of modern life continues to be what the Total Noise of our world so desperately needs. Now, in his absence, we must teach ourselves not just how to write, or to think, but to see.
Ugly Betty is blessedly back in just six days, but fellow Betty lovers, can you believe it's been nearly four months since we've heard a classic put-down from Wilhelmina Slater?! Honestly, how are you surviving? Well, if you're like me, you're enjoying the show's latest vodcast, in which Betty faves (and EWwy nominees) Michael Urie and Becki Newton lead a tour of the show's new New York City-based sets. (Betty moved production from LA this year.) The delightful video (check it out below!) doesn't reveal too much about season 3 plotlines, yet it's worth watching for a peek at Wilhelmina's austere redesign of Mode HQ. Even though she's didn't commandeer Daniel's office for herself, it will be home to her spawn. Personally, I'm a huge fan of Willy's decorating style for the nursery, which looks like it sprang from an episode of HGTV Design Star starring Cruella de Vil.
So that video is below, but unfortunately, you won't find any classic put-downs from Willy there. If you're like me and need a little something from your favorite diva, check out the "I Don't Get Wet (Remix)" on YouTube. (I sometimes sing this to my EW colleague Annie Barrett. It's very catchy.) You'll be grooving to a techno version of Willy's spat with guest star Betty White. Or, just watch the hilariously satisfying scene where Wilhelmina and Marc (Urie) duke it out in the stairwell. Can someone please give this woman an Emmy this weekend? Please?? PopWatchers, don't you think she deserves it?
Even after the most benign proclamation — "I made gazpacho this week, and black bean soup. Delicious." — you can't help yourself. Really? "Yes. I will tell you when I'm lying," he says. And so, it is with that promise that we present the following statements as fact and are almost certain that they are true.
1. He wrote the blurb on his book cover credited to Stephen Colbert: "Michael Ian Black has proven that even the most simple-minded among us can occasionally create works of genius." "I did. I wrote him, and I said, 'Hey, would you blurb my book?' And he wrote back saying, 'You write it, I'll sign it.' I'm very happy with that blurb," he says. "Amy Sedaris, I think, is probably the only one who actually read the book. She went out of her way to tell me how much she liked it, which I thought was very sweet and gracious of her. Even though I told her brother to suck it [in the essay "Hey, David Sedaris — Why Don't You Just Go Ahead and Suck It?"], she was able to separate herself from that."
2. He's puzzled by people who've criticized him for not revealing more about his real life in My Custom Van. Though a memoir was never his intention, there are a few kernels of truth...
"I did really get a perm when I was in sixth grade [“An Open Letter to the Hairstylist Who Somehow Convinced Me to Get a Perm When I Was in Sixth Grade”]; I do like tacos, very much [“Taco Party”]; this probably is what it would take for me to eat dog s--- for the rest of my life [“Using the Socratic Method to Determine What It Would Take For Me to Voluntarily Eat Dog S--- For the Rest of My Life”]," he insists. Also, he adds, "I do love candy corn ["Lewis Black Hates Candy Corn: A Rebuttal"]. Now, was I as outraged in real life listening to his hyperbolic rant against candy corn as I tend to be in the essay? No, of course, not. But as I start to write the essay, I become more and more outraged."
And now for your never-enjoyable-or-even-interesting View Rumor of the Month...Elisabeth Hasselbeck could be straying from the gaggle for an anchor position at Fox News. Which has us thinking: Since the current View lineup boasts the aural equivalency of a bunch of pots and pans tumbling off a wall, Hasselbeck's potential replacement should really be some sort of item you can buy for much more than it's worth at Williams-Sonoma. I'm thinking a large, stone mortar and pestle, to represent the uncontrollable teeth-grinding that occurs whenever I have to tune in. Having the sound effect there permanently would just make the show more true-to-life. Any other ideas?
Last night's episode of America's Got Talent was a fascinating study in television. For who would have imagined that they could stretch five people getting kicked off the show into a half-hour ep? What could have been a five-minute segment at the end of another show turned into its own spectacle, complete with a musical performance by Natasha Bedingfield! I'm still baffled as to why she was there.
The first to stay were Nuttin' But Strings, which means we had to say goodbye to the Wright Kids. But this wasn't just any goodbye. This was a goodbye complete with a video montage of their greatest moments, and then a Corner Cry Cam of them watching, heartbroken, as they saw how far they'd come. We then watched Paul Salos, Kaytlin Maher, Joseph Hall, and Jessica Price all get booted. But this means we've still got Neal E. Boyd, Nuttin' But Strings, Queen Emily, Eli Mattson and Donald Bronzewell (I've been waiting to make that pun all season)!
PopWatchers, who's your pick? Do you think they deserve it? And did anyone else notice that all the contestants were wearing the same things two nights in a row, even though both episodes this week were supposed to be live? Weird...
Two hours ago, Slezak randomly IMed me the link to the below video, and it turns out that Army of Lovers' not particularly successful 1990 single "My Army of Lovers" is exactly what I feel like keeping on in the background for the rest of Friday. Won't you join me? If you're really busy (yeah right), just jump to the faux-pensive faux-playing of a neon-hued plastic keyboard at 0:33. -- it'll save time as you're hunting around for a horrifying image to haunt you all weekend.
Says Slezak: "I will deny to the world that I downloaded this CD today. (I used to own it on tape.)"
As a show, Firefly does lots of things. It makes you laugh, cheer, cry, go out and buy a long brown duster and pick fights on Unification Day. But every now and again, Firefly also makes you scared. And not with gooey make-up or "boo-something's-in-the-mirror" camera gooses. Just with a man, the bounty hunter Jubal Early, making his intentions crystal clear.
And damned if Jewel Staite doesn't act her ass off.
So I'm watching the best-of Cybill Shepherd's '95-'98 CBS sitcom Cybill on DVD, and at the end of the final episode, "Ka-Boom," Cybill (Shepherd) and her newly broke best friend Maryann (Emmy winner Christine Baranski, doing Karen Walker before Megan Mullally) are arrested for the murder of Maryann's ex, Dr. Dick. (In their defense, they didn't think he was in his car or his boat when they blew them up.) "To be continued..." the screen read. Only there's a problem: It wasn't. The series got canceled.
We all know the pain of an unresolved cliff-hanger. Five years ago, for one of EW's Guilty Pleasures issues, I actually phoned a creator of the Olsen twins' canceled sitcom Two of a Kind and demanded that he tell me whether the father (Christopher Sieber) would have gotten together with the live-in babysitter (Sally Wheeler). That led to minor ridicule around the office, of course, but also to a recurring item in EW called What Would Have Happened, where I asked creators and executive producers of TV shows taken too soon to resolve the questions their cancellations left unanswered. After I got to the bottom of Cupid, John Doe, Wonderfalls, Popular, and Miss Match -- click on those links for much-needed closure -- the magazine's TV review section underwent a redesign and there was no longer a home for WWHH. Well, we're bringing it back. Hopefully in the pages of EW, but definitely on PopWatch, where we'll be able to give the resolutions the space they deserve and you the opportunity to weigh in on them.
How do we begin? You tell us the cliff-hanger mysteries you'd like solved, and we'll try to find producers willing to talk. The shows can be recent casualties (note: sometimes the show runners are still, understandably, in the fetal position and not ready to dish) or older ones that continue to consume you. In the meantime, I took the liberty of phoning Cybill Shepherd to chat about the drama-filled end of Cybill. The interview after the jump.
Home
Change the lame headline, change the lame headline.... No. Not gonna. Hey, all -- just a heads-up that you'll want to be RIGHT HERE at EW.com for everything Emmys this weekend. We'll have lots of lil' videos from Saturday night's EW party starting on Sunday morning. Later, as EW staffers report from backstage and in the audience on Twitter, Mandi and Slezak will graciously chain themselves, kicking and screaming, to hours of life-consuming live-blog duty starting with the last hour of E!'s red carpet coverage at 7 p.m. ET. After that, we'll post our usual backstage report and "Best and Worst Moments" photo gallery (check out the 2007 version for a trip down memory lane), plus a bonus red-carpet fashion awards gallery so you can marvel at L. Yeah (pictured)'s presumable excellent taste, or rip on Jane Krakowski if she decides to wear a new gown inspired by Dippin' Dotz or any other heavily processed food. (Fingers crossed!) On Monday, come back for plenty of exclusive red carpet videos from Michael Ausiello, plus a PopWatch discussion of the winners and who got snubbed.
The following remembrance of DFW will run in this week's issue of the magazine; the PopWatch editors asked if they could reprint it here, and I said of course, of course, of course. Though this blog already ran one In Memorium post -- Wook Kim's words from the weekend are 
Sit down with Michael Ian Black — actor (
And now for your never-enjoyable-or-even-interesting View Rumor of the Month...
Last night's episode of America's Got Talent was a fascinating study in television. For who would have imagined that they could stretch five people getting kicked off the show into a half-hour ep? What could have been a five-minute segment at the end of another show turned into its own spectacle, complete with a musical performance by Natasha Bedingfield! I'm still baffled as to why she was there.
So I'm watching the best-of Cybill Shepherd's '95-'98 CBS sitcom 
