DARN RIGHT [WINK]: According to the NY Post's Cindy Adams, Gov. Sarah Palin will appear on SNL on October 25. As apolitically and appropriately for this site as you can, suggest what she should do.

Here's one idea: remake the Eddie Murphy/Stevie Wonder skit. Lorne tells Tina Fey how much he appreciates her impression of Gov. Palin, but knows she has to dedicate herself to 30 Rock full-time at this point, but -- don't worry! -- he's lined up some great comics to audition to take over the impression on the show, and he'd love her opinion on them. Send in Kristen Wiig, send in Casey Wilson, send in (Kenan Thompson or Bobby Moynihan), then send in Sarah Palin, who does it badly. Tina teaches her how to do it right, and LFNY,ISN!

BRO-ING RIGHT INTO MY AMAZON CART: Greatest audiobook ever?

SOMETIMES I WISH I WAS TIGER WOODS, TIGER WOODS, TIGER WOODS: Cleveland Browns tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. might be forced to miss Monday night's game due to an infirmity that I haven't seen mentioned in our culture, I think, since its appearance in an educational film screeened during the Michael Keaton/Joe Piscopo classic Johnny Dangerously.

Says one Deadspin commenter, "I heard they were so big that even Braylon Edwards wouldn't drop them."

PANIC SELLERS -- DON'T PANIC: The proper authorities reassure jittery investors.

THIS WILL MAKE SENSE ONLY TO A SUBSET OF THOSE OF YOU WHO LIVED IN HYDE PARK: As prompted by Adlai: A breeder or a coward? Please show all your work.

TWO WORDS--COSBY SWEATER: Please provide suggested (and appropriate for this blog, as opposed to some other one) content and/or titles for the upcoming half-hour Barack Obama primetime special, which will preempt Knight Rider and Gary Unmarried on October 29 (additional preemptions are possible if the World Series doesn't go to game 6).

LIVE, FROM NEW YORK, IT'S EARLY THURSDAY EVENING: Maybe it's just me (and the financial industry), but yesterday was a really terrifying day. By the evening, I was both jittery and punchy, and that may have been the perfect recipe for an audience ready to enjoy SNL's prime-time Weekend Update Thursday Edition. I thought the debate was funny (hi, Chris Parnell; say hi to my cousin, Dr. Spaceman) and a few of the jokes really hit. Armisen's Obama still isn't funny (nor is Hammonds's McCain), but at least it's getting more accurate. More than that, though, I thought the combination of the look on Amy Poehler's face just as she announced the "Oh, My God, Are You Serious?" segment and Kenan Thompson's entire "fix it!" delivery (which should not have been funny, and probably won't be funny in retrospect, but which got funnier and funnier as it went on) pretty perfectly captured my own reaction to the last week.

"Top Model" Spinoff Heads to Catwalk - NYTimes.com

ALPHA AND BETA: The Hollywood Reporter reports that the CW has OK'd a pilot for Top Model spinoff hosted by the useless Jay Manuel and the beloved Miss J. Alexander. Titled "Operation Fabulous," the pair will travel the country giving women makeovers -- "how to dress, wear their hair and makeup and bring out their confidence with the support of family, friends and their community."

In other news, please assure me that Elina -- whose belly is somehow a voice for those who can't speak -- is going to win this cycle.

Check the Fien Print

DANTLEY AND WILKINS ARE ON THE SCENE, AND RALPH SAMPSON IS REALLY MEAN: After our Good Friend Dan Fienberg administered a profound beatdown on our rotisserie A League With Thrown Baseballs (seriously: first time I ever quit on a fantasy team), some of us would like to get together for a fantasy basketball league. Prior experience is unnecessary -- since none of us have played that much fantasy hoops -- so if you'd like to join us, please let me know in the comments.

DIARY OF A MADMAN: Some real-time thoughts:

1. What are the protesters outside saying, anyway? It sounds like: Leader: Gaaa kaaa kaaa! Marchers: Oh eem!
2. Since they're not around today, you can say it -- what do you really think about the Jews?
3. If there is a silver lining to this whole financial armageddon thing, it is that oil prices are plummeting. That means (a) I'm saving on the overhead costs for the paper route I'm about to take; and (b) the good people of Oklahoma City may decide that they have better things to spend their money on than Clay Bennett.
4. I think the most efficient way to seat people on a full flight would be to alternate large and small people.

DIRECT FROM PLANET LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME: ABC Family has greenlit a half hour comedy based on 10 Things I Hate About You. The original movie is a guilty pleasure, with a pretty impressive cast.

ALSO, BUDDY COP SHOW NUMBER 238: Generic police procedural number 437? Didn't make it on to the DVR. However, upcoming generic police procedural with typically quippy Cap'n Tightpants? You bet (and looks like there's a little bit of a Moonlighting vibe going on there).

DILLON-ISLIP FLIGHTS ARE AVAILABLE ON SOUTHWEST: At least judging from the signs outside my office building this afternoon, Friday Night Lights is shooting in Manhattan at some point this week. No idea what might be bringing the Taylor family up to the city (Julie considering NYU?), but figured the audience would appreciate.

COMFORT FOOD! IT'S COMFORTING! As I sit here doing my customary annual grumbling about the fact that our fabulous local bagel place is making me pick up my Yom Kippur break fast order by noon today, thereby ensuring that my sunflower bagels will be stale by 7:05 pm on Thursday (earlier if it's overcast), I would like to take a moment to posit that none among us is busier preparing for the impending holiday than ThingThrower Marsha.

To me, breaking the fast involves the aforementioned sunflower bagels, some lox, and maybe a cottage cheese noodle kugel, but after reading about the baked ziti that 150 hungry Chicagoans will apparently be devouring, I'm thinking that maybe the ThingThrowers have some long-time specialties for the newly repented that we should be aware of. (And hey, Marsha has a whole seven hours in which she can add additional dishes to the menu. I, however, have 45 minutes until the Chief Bagel Officer cuts me off.)

BOP TO THE TOP: Yes, "Search for The Next Elle Woods" winner Bailey Hanks is losing her current job, with Legally Blonde: The Musical closing on October 19, but she's already lined up her next gig--playing Sharpay in High School Musical in New Jersey. Seems to me a better match for the personality she showed on the reality show than the part of Elle was.

(In other theatre news, the new TKTS booth in Times Square will, at long last, take credit cards.)

PIPE WRENCH FIGHT: Watch this now.

CROSS AWAY, FOR I HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THIS, AS YOU ARE MY GIRLFRIEND AND SHE IS MY SISTER: At Alan Sepinwall's suggestion (as an aside, do we pimp anybody harder than Alan, except maybe Neil Patrick Harris?), I was just reading this review of the fabulous new Sports Night DVD set and decided that what we need around here today is a good old-fashioned Question of the Day. And so I inquire:

What's your favorite bit of dialogue ever delivered on Sports Night? Explain your work.

My guess is that if you were to poll 100 fans of the show, you'd find a plurality who would nominate either "You're wearing my shirt, Gordon" or "I told many, many people" as their favorite line. My own vote, on a single-line-plus-perfect-delivery basis, goes to the latter. But if you factor in emotional resonance, perhaps it should be "Sometimes you just stand there, hip-deep in pie." And for lines that always make me giggle, it's gotta be "plenty of sunshine, plenty of hay" (which, incidentally, is the only set of lyrics Cosmo Girl knows for that song), and -- well, that's three from me, so I'll just stop now.

STEP ONE: For the fourth time in the past six years, the Red Sox have advanced to the ALCS, following the team's exciting victory last night over the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Last night's game featured a thrilling run-down by Jason Varitek in the top of the ninth after a failed suicide squeeze. In the bottom of the ninth, rookie Jed Lowrie singled home Jason Bay with the winning run.

The whole series was exciting! Games One and Four featured impressive pitching duels between Jon Lester and John Lackey, with Lester being slightly better each time. In both of those games, unsung hero Jason bay contributed key hits. Game Two was won when often-injured and much-maligned J.D. Drew hit a 2-run home run in the ninth. In Game Three, the Angels' lone victory came in extra innings and featured the hitting heroics of Mike Napoli.

It's on to Tampa on Friday for the valiant Boston team.

GIVE ME A FIST BUMP:Unsurprisingly, Alan didn't much go for tonight's HIMYM. I, on the other hand, as a former Jersey resident who's now moved back into Manhattan, generally approved. Sure, the Robin plot was silly, and the Ted plot entirely too schmoopy for its own good (though BRUUUUUUCCCEE! improves anything), but Marshall and the dog shirt and (as always) Barney helped us make an episode worth the 22 minutes. Put your fist down and join us in the comments.

ETA: Sadly, only the second best "Boom Goes The Dynamite" joke I've seen on TV. This one still leads.

OKAY, AND CZAR? // YOU KNOW, LIKE A RUSSIAN CZAR: Kauai was the one island King Kamehameha did not conquer in his own lifetime. And it (not coincidentally) harbors the faintest outlines of Russia's abortive imperial ambitions for the Pacific. Other than that, it is most significant as the place where we Earthlings will be parking our collective butts for the next eight days.

Yes, the economy is crumbling, yes, my bank account will shortly be renominalized in Domars and, yes, I'm gainfully unemployed (although I have decided that following this layoff, I shall style myself retired), but if you need me, that's where I will be. I may ping Adam with a post or two if I can find something of cultural significance in Poipu or provide you with a brush-with-fame.

SVELTE, BUOYANT WATERFOWL: Berkeley Breathed plans on retiring from the comics business -- this time, for real? -- on November 2, 2008.

The Bloom County creator was interviewed by the Onion AV Club's Tasha Robinson back in August 2001, during an earlier hiatus:

O: People frequently compare you to Bill Watterson, I think in part because both your strips centered on a sense of whimsy, but also because your work left them with few comparisons. Do you think there's a valid parallel?

BB: No. He was the real thing. I was just scampering nude through the aisles before anybody could kick me out. Garry Trudeau was our greatest satirist in the second half of the century. Crazy ol' Bill Watterson created the purest comic strip, after Peanuts, probably. Or before Peanuts became a shadow. Bless him for quitting at the top. It's not easy.

In 2007, Breathed opened up his iPod shuffle to the Club. Of his ownership of Carrie Underwood's "Before He Cheats," he asserts: "[O]ne has to agree that the line She's probably up singing some white-trash version of Shania karaoke would be enough to kindle the passing intellectual interest of an erudite Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist curious about the social pathologies of people living in places that get hit by tornados."

I'M HAVIN' A HEART ATTACK: The innovative chefs of the State Fair of Texas have come up with new things to deep fry this year--this year's new things include:

• Chicken-Fried Bacon
• Fried Banana Split (banana, honey, and peanut butter encased in dough, fried, with caramel, chocolate, and powdered sugar topping)
• Fried Grilled Cheese
• Fried Jelly Bellys
• Deep Fried S'mores
• Fire and Ice (deep fried pineapple topped with banana whipped cream and served in a waffle cone).

FELL ON BLACK DAYS: Okay, so I hate seeing fans twirling towels (other than in Pittsburgh, since they originated it), and thunder sticks and the wave ... but the White Sox Blackout is a pretty cool idea.

Also? PHILLIES! I realized leaving the Game 2 that that was the first playoff win I had attended since winning the 1983 LCS against the Dodgers (I was away in college in 2003 1993). Twenty-five years later, and eight more wins to go ...

CORRA! A ULTIMA DUPLA PODE SER ELIMINADA: "Brute force" may have been key to solving the roadblock, but the key to this hour of The Amazing Race was a simple one: read the clues. Oh. My. Goodness. There wasn't much in this leg to get right by smarts or strength, but a heck of a lot to get completely wrong by missing the details. If nothing else, this leg was a great window into some character issues of the teams, because as sure as heck wasn't going to matter whether everyone was on the same plane at 6:45am versus one later in the day.

Assuming you don't get bonked in the head by a taxi cab's trunk along the way, Mr. Sensitivo will lead you to the Comments.