WHITE DEVILS BE CRAAAAAAAAAAZY: According to the Sun-Times, having been inspired by Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, the real Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson will, for real, be recording their own version of "Solid (As Barack)" to be released online in time for the inauguration, a week ahead of a greatest-hits release. $1.29 on iTunes?

[To briefly play the role of Bob -- did you know that among the songs Ashford & Simpson wrote are "I'm Every Woman,""Ain't No Mountain High Enough," "You're All I Need To Get By," and "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)"?]

IT'S BETTER THAN GOING TO NEW JERSEY, TO THE TOWN OF PRINCETON: Our friend (and ALOTT5MA '07 rotisserie baseball champion) Daniel Fienberg has joined a new entertainment-insider website, HitFix.com, which is now live in beta form, with his blog moving over as well. Don't miss his sit-down with Daniel Craig, among other features.

DONNA MARTIN GRADUATES:Apparently, after much backstage drama, Tori Spelling will make an appearance on 90212.0 near the end of the season. Does anyone care? (I've only watched part of last night's, but Lucille Bluth Tabitha Wilson attempting to play Pictionary was amusing.)

"I WOULD LIKE TO THANK YOU ALL FOR COMING AND WELCOME YOU, EVEN THOUGH I HAVEN'T SEEN MOST OF YOU SINCE MY LATEST STRETCH IN THE BIG HOUSE, BUT Y'ALL LOOK FABULOUS," A/K/A HOW JENNY LUMET GOT SCREWED: The Writers Guild of America has announced its nominees for the best of 2008:

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
"Burn After Reading," written by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen
"Milk," written by Dustin Lance Black
"Vicky Cristina Barcelona," written by Woody Allen
"The Visitor," written by Tom McCarthy
"The Wrestler," written by Robert Siegel

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
"The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," Screenplay by Eric Roth; Screen Story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord; Based on the Short Story by F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The Dark Knight," Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; Story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer; Based on Characters Appearing in Comic Books Published by DC Comics; Batman Created by Bob Kane
"Doubt," Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, Based on his Stage Play
"Frost/Nixon, "Screenplay by Peter Morgan, Based on his Stage Play
"Slumdog Millionaire," Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, Based on the Novel "Q and A" by Vikas Swarup

DOCUMENTARY SCREENPLAY
"Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story," written by Stefan Forbes and Noland Walker
"Chicago 10", written by Brett Morgen
"Fuel", written by Johnny O'Hara
"Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson", Screenplay by Alex Gibney, From the Words of Hunter S. Thompson
"Waltz with Bashir," written by Ari Folman

I simply cannot comprehend how Vicky Cristina Barcelona gets nominated for anything, except perhaps Penelope Cruz's performance, but especially for its writing of all things. The use of voiceover narration was just brutal and should be an automatic disqualifier. Did anyone actually like that movie? At some point, however, I will talk about The Visitor, which Jen and I watched earlier this week -- it's quite good.

There are also nominations for tv and radio, including a Best Episode - Animation category with four Simpsons episodes (including the crosswords one) competing against two from King of the Hill.

THE COKE MACHINE MOMENT: Last night's second Scrubs, featuring a fine performance by Baltimore's own Mayor Clarence Royce, finished with a nice montage set to Death Cab's "I Will Follow You Into the Dark." Scrubs is one of those shows that uses music very effectively and gives good montage. In fact, if I recall correctly, it's one of only three shows on television that have caused me to go out and buy a song on iTunes, back when I downloaded Colin Hay's melancholic solo acoustic version of "Overkill." The second of those shows was Friday Night Lights, where I first heard Bright Eyes's cover of "Devil Town" from the penultimate scene in Season 1. (Incidentally, the DirecTV channel uses that same song for its bonus pre-credits credit sequence for Season 3 of FNL. I don't know if non-DirecTV users are even going to get the Devil Town credits, but they are stunning in HD.)

Which reminds me of something I've been meaning to post about: my belated ALOTT5MA Award for Best Montage of 2008. First, the runner-up*: The end of the Season 2 premiere of Chuck, set to Frightened Rabbit's "Twist." And the winner: The end of the second episode of the Jordana Brewster arc on Chuck, set to Frightened Rabbit's "Keep Yourself Warm." The two share more than just a show and a band -- both also are pivotal moments in Chuck's continuing imprisonment in the spy world and alienation from regular life. The latter, though, had two extra things going for it: slow motion running (a hallmark of good montage), and an extremely well-acted Coke Machine Moment.

The Coke Machine Moment, if you don't know, is the moment when you realize that you are in the middle of a huge and totally unnecessary mistake exactly at the moment when you realize it is irreversible. It is named for the moment when, very close to the end of the lives of 2.18 persons a year, those persons realize that shaking the malfunctioning vending machine to dislodge a stuck Coke is going to end not in ice-cold refreshment but rather in blunt trauma or asphyxiation, because that thing is a millimeter past its tipping point and there's nowhere to go but down. The pain of the Coke Machine Moment is the cruel junction of avoidability, inevitability, and unexpected clarity. My own defining Coke Machine Moment came on, and then off, a motorcycle, but every time there's a strange tragedy like an air disaster or a tsunami, I can't keep myself from imagining it for the victims. In the Chuck montage, that moment comes when Yvonne Strahovski and Adam Baldwin freeze, then Baldwin's usually locked jaw parts a bit in surprise and Strahovski inhales a little. A perfect moment, just as the (badly-dubbed, because let's face it, the song drops like 70 f-bombs) music crests. For all that Chuck did right the last half-season, I think that was my favorite moment.

*Second runner-up, and I know somebody's going to kill me for not making this #1, is The Wire.

ALL HE EVER DOES IS GET INDUCTED: The seventeen finalists for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame are:

Cris Carter, Dermontti Dawson, Richard Dent, Russ Grimm, Bob Hayes, Claude Humphrey, Cortez Kennedy, Bob Kuechenberg, Randall McDaniel, John Randle, Andre Reed, Shannon Sharpe, Bruce Smith, Derrick Thomas and Rod Woodson, plus contributors Ralph Wilson, owner of the Buffalo Bills, and former commissioner Paul Tagliabue.

Semifinalists who missed the cut, according to one FO contributor, include Roger Craig, Terrell Davis, Chris Doleman, Kevin Greene, Ray Guy, Charles Haley, Lester Hayes, Art Modell, Ken Stabler, and Steve Tasker.

John Randle, Shannon Sharpe, Bruce Smith, and Rod Woodson are all first-year-eligibles; Dawson and Kennedy were eligible before, but made the final ballot for the first time this year. The voters are listed here, and somewhere between 4-7 of these men will be inducted. Before looking at the statistics (to the extent that football performance can even be measured numerically), I'd have to think Shannon Sharpe, Bruce Smith, and Rod Woodson are as close to locks for eventual induction as can exist, and Derrick Thomas and Cris Carter sure as heck belong in.

SCRUB IN: Just a reminder that Scrubs, a show that I both find inconsistent yet consistently enjoy, premieres on ABC tonight. Sepinwall tentatively approves of the new season. As a bonus, he reminds us to re-set the DVR, since it's a new channel.

MAYBE IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO LEARN HOW TO LOVE, FORGET HOW TO HATE, AND DOWNLOAD THIS SONG: Continuing the iTunes theme today (and hey, get well, Steve Jobs), I just noticed that Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" (1980; I owned) and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" (1982; I mocked) are numbers 75 and 79, respectively. I could triangulate Journey's route back to the top a few years back, but does anybody know what pop cultural phenomenon is driving these guys back to the charts?

YOU LACK THE ONE THING THAT IS DEVOTION: The WSJ is reporting that Apple either will be announcing or already has announced (depending on the MacWorld schedule, which is something I don't monitor) changes to the iTunes pricing structure. Rather than selling all songs for 99 cents, the company will move to a three-tiered system, whereby the most popular songs will go for $1.29, others for 99 cents, and others (supposedly the "vast majority") for 69 cents.

So when you decide that OMG, I have to buy that treacley AI single the very minute it goes on sale after the confetti finishes falling into the winner's hair, the privilege will cost you $1.29, but presumably my download of Soup Dragons' Divine Thing, which I heard in the gym last night for the first time in ages and which I can't believe I didn't download back when I was creating a sweeping digital music library of every song I'd ever heard via Napster a wholly legit music-sharing platform, will go down to a mere 69 cents.

Will this change your music purchasing behavior in any way?

(edited to add: Less relevant to me, but likely more relevant to others, are a couple of other forthcoming changes: (1) elimination of digital rights management (aka the annoying thing about iTunes that restricts the number of times you can copy a song purchased on iTunes and which kinds of devices you can play the song on) and (2) procurement of licenses to sell music directly over the air to the iPhone.)

DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM? John Nance Garner memorably claimed that the Vice-Presidency wasn't worth a warm pitcher of spit. Apparently, being Vice-President-Elect is worth even less, as Joe and Jill Biden couldn't get in to see Benjamin Button at a sold out-showing Saturday night in Delaware.

WHAT IS THE PERFECT DOT-MATRIX IMAGE FOR THE SEGUE FROM 'THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER' TO 'YOU BE ILLIN'?: What, I was wondering today, is the current program, the mission, of the art form known as marching band? I don't mean this as a swipe at marching musicians, though perhaps it is inevitable that this will read that way. It's just that I have never really grasped what took over when the productive marriage between band and military drill faded into anachronism.

Are marching musicians marchers or musicians first? Does the formation serve as decoration for the music, or is the music just accompaniment for the field show (and if either, wouldn't you expect either better music or a better show)? Or are they both supposed to enhance the other, like the way that a great song is always better than the sum of its music and lyrics? Or is it none of the above -- just a way for a bunch of like-minded kids to goof off at football games? Do the marchers perform for the audience, or despite it? I just don't get what we're trying to accomplish here.

ALOTT5MA PSA: Perhaps the least effective possible method of getting something* urgent done quickly is wearing a button demanding that it be done NOW. Contrary to an apparent consensus among button-wearers, printing "NOW" in bold capital letters in a font other than the remaining text does not hasten the doing of things.

*Other than things that can be done within a person-width radius of the button-wearer, like "Read this button NOW" or "Kindly punch me in the face NOW."

SIX DEGREES OF WHA? Have you ever thought "You know what really needs to be studied? The mathematics of Kevin Bacon?" I know I have. And how about combining that with support for the theory that Paul Erdos is the center of the mathematical universe? I give you the comprehensive article (from Wiki, naturally) on the Erdos-Bacon Number. Notable folks with finite Erdos-Bacon numbers include Natalie Portman, Mayim Bialik, Stephen Hawking, and Danica McKellar.

FROST/NIXON: (X-Posted on Big Orange)

Frost: Are you really saying the President can do something illegal?
Nixon: I'm saying that when the President does it, that means it's not illegal!
Frost: ...I'm sorry?

To try to put yourself in the environment of Frost/Nixon, imagine it's 2010 and George W. Bush has decided to sit for his first post-Presidency interview as a twenty-plus hours exclusive taping with ... Carson Daly, or somewhere halfway between Ryan Seacrest and that guy who does the sex predator busts for Dateline.

Because that's who David Frost was back in 1975 when he landed the interview -- a 36-year-old lightweight pseudo-journalist more comfortable with the Brothers Gibb than with hard news. But Frost had an idea -- secure disgraced former President Richard Nixon's first post-presidency interview as a means of boosting his credibility, and pay whatever he had to do to get it. After a small bidding war with NBC and other outlets, Nixon's price was $600,000 and 20% of the profits, and the interview was landed.

Other than general parameters that each of the four 90-minute segments to air would focus on a different aspect of the Nixon record (Watergate, foreign, domestic, personal), there were no restrictions on any of the questions Frost could ask. And while Frost thought he could make a name for himself, Nixon predicted he could school Frost, filibuster when necessary, and use these hours to rebuild his legacy.

As with many other films this season -- [insert spoiler discussion ALOTT5MA has read before] and, yes, whether anything interesting happened between Frost and Nixon.

(Hell, you can guess: tell me who'd want to see a movie about a Richard Nixon running circles around a naive playboy.)

So I don't know how much one can or should "spoil" about what happens in the movie, which sticks pretty well to the historical transcripts while on-set, to contemporaneous accounts of much of the rest, plus one /dilly/ of an invented phone call towards the end that is entertaining as hell, and tells at least screenwriter Peter Morgan's sense of the "truth" of Nixon, though anyone familiar with Rick Perlstein's exegesis of the Franklin/Orthogonian dichotomy will feel comfortable with it.

And it's entertaining as hell, in a way neatly parallels one of my modern favorites, Shattered Glass, the way you spend that whole film waiting for Chuck Lane to kick Anakin Skywalker's Paduan-lying ass from one end of the New Republic's offices to the other. As many have noted, the film is structured as an intellectual boxing match, and the talking-head interviews along the way (perhaps, too many) make you really appreciate the knockout blow.

The frustrating thing about Frost/Nixon, though, is that the climax to which it builds is, however dramatic, meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I spoil nothing to say that no matter what he says in the interview, Nixon doesn't go to jail, though he doesn't get rehabilitated, and that things worked out well for David Frost. So?

Well, it's still fun on its own terms, and Frank Langella (Nixon) and Michael Sheen (Frost) do own their characters well. More importantly, the film has one true insight that's worth remembering, and it's spoken by one of Frost's research assistants, James Reston Jr., played by Sam Rockwell:

You know, the first and greatest sin or deception of television is that it simplifies, it diminishes, Great, complex ideas, tranches of time. Whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. ... David had succeeded on that final day in getting, for a fleeting moment, what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get: Richard Nixon's face. Swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat, filling every television screen in the country. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.

Think about that claim for a second -- that we really see truth from public figures in those interstitial moments, the pauses, the ums, the you knows, the little unconscious, unforced gaps in the script that we believe provide insight into character. [Discussion of Gov. Palin omitted to adhere to the no-politics rule.]

But these reactions can also be deeply unfair -- think about the novice politician who says you know a lot just because he's not trained in being on television yet, the error that's just that, an error. Or, hell, Nixon himself, forever tarred with the sin of sweating during a televised 1960 debate because he was recovering from the flu, which folks took as proof of his untrustworthiness.

Okay, so they were right about Nixon. So in thinking about this question, let's do this: take a look at this two-minute clip from the actual interviews, and just watch Nixon's reaction as Frost is asking the question. Watch the unconscious way he seems to dread having to answer the question, the little gulps he takes. Does that tell you everything you need to know, regardless of what he says later?

The achievement of Frost/Nixon, and of the actors involved, is that you may not look at another political interview the same way ... or, perhaps, may finally recognize how you've been subconsciously watching them all along.

I'M WARNING YOU. I WILL BE FORCED TO THRASH YOU: "Fact" that has made its way into Wikipedia of dubious plausibility, but let's give it a fair hearing. In Coming to America, remember the robbery scene with Samuel L. Jackson? Take a look at the boy on the ground, about :30 in. Is that, as various websites now allege, a young Alex Rodriguez? It does look an awful lot like him, and he would have been 11-12 at the time of filming, but, really? Really?

AND WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR, STILL ISN'T FOUND: It's pointless for me to review the Broadway production of Hairspray reuniting original cast members Marisa Jaret Winokur and Harvey Fierstein, which we took Lucy to see today, since it's closing tomorrow. I'll just say that it's good to see Tevin Campbell still getting work (2+ years as Seaweed) seventeen years after Graffiti Bridge, and that his career has recovered since, um, yeah.

[Also for your oh-that's-where-he-is-now? 1980s standup comic Kevin Meaney, covering the roles of Principal, UltraClutch Owner and Mr. Pinky.]

e.t.a. Charles Isherwood on all the shows closing in the next two weeks.

I'M WAITING FOR HIS SHOWDOWN WITH DEXTER MORGAN: For those suffering from Bartowski Withdrawal Syndrome (no episodes for a full month, until a 3-D-a-palooza the day after the Big Game Trademarked By The National Football League), I join Alan in heartily recommending Burn Notice as a substitute, having devoured basically the entire first season in a matter of days. The tale of spy Michael Westen, who's sort of a much more violence-willing MacGyver, who gets inexplicably blacklisted by his employer and left to fend for himself in Miami with the help of his ex-girlfriend, a former IRA operative whose motto is "shoot first, and ask questions about our relationship during or immediately after" and his old spying buddy, played by Bruce Campbell in full Bruce Campbell mode (also, discuss--is Nathan Fillion the new Bruce Campbell?), is seriously solid stuff--funny, smart, suspenseful. Verdict's out on whether all the rules of spying in Southern California also apply to Miami spying, though at least some seem to.

Season 1 is available and reasonably priced on DVD, and the final few episodes of Season 2 begin airing in a few weeks on USA, which I'm sure will constantly rerun them.

HOT HITS: Having recently listened to WXPN count down its Top 100 songs of 2008, I gave some thought to my favorite songs of the past year. I checked the Billboard charts, a helpful group of lists on amazon.com, and a good list compiled by Ed Masley of The Arizona Republic.

In the end, I had some trouble coming up with ten songs that I really loved. In any event, here they are in alphabetical order by title:

You Want the Candy by the Raveonettes (the wall of sound from the great girl groups of the 1960's as if performed by The Velvet Underground with some salacious wordplay)

That's Not My Name by the The Ting Tings (The Tings Tings had many good songs this year)

Sequestered in Memphis by The Hold Steady (The Hold Steady should be paying royalties to Mott the Hoople. I love the chorus: "In bar light, she looked all right/ In daylight, she looked desperate/ That's all right, I was desperate too")

Real Love by Lucinda Williams

No One by Alica Keys (I think of this as a 2007 song, but Billboard considers it a 2008 release)

Mercy by Duffy (this would have not sounded out of place on a soul oriented radio station in 1968)

Chasing Pavements by Adele (ditto)

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa by Vampire Weekend (this is probably not my favorite song of the past year, but it is the song that will most clearly call to mind 2008 for me in the future)

American Boy by Estelle (feat. Kanye West) (pure pop for now people!)

Always a Friend by Alejandro Escovedo and Bruce Springsteen (the song of the summer!)

Feel free to list your favorites in the comments.

JUST THE DOCTOR, THAT'S ALL: Tomorrow, we will know who will follow in the footsteps of Tom Baker, Christopher Eccleston, and David Tennant as the Eleventh Doctor. British bookmakers are offering odds on everyone from the nonsensical (Jason Statham, Jim Broadbent, Daniel Radcliffe) to the intriguing (Chiwetel Ejofor, Richard Coyle) to the obscure (Matt Smith and Patterson Joseph--current frontrunners). I have high hopes for the show under Coupling maestro Steven Moffat's direction (especially given his jaw-droppingly brilliant "Blink"), and his choice of Doctor may give us some idea of where he wants to take the show.

NATE SILVER, YOU'RE ON NOTICE: We get emails:

Did you guys see this story? The 10th graders in the Communications Arts Program at Blair won the WaPo crystal ball competition. They beat a ton of political experts and their predictions were crazy close to the actual outcome. I was in CAP 10 last year, so I didn't do crystal ball because it wasn't an election year, but it was a really great class (Mr. Freeman is fantastic) and I'm not surprised they did so well (CAP has actually won before, but not for a while). I've never emailed ALOTT5MA before, but I thought this was pretty cool.

Two things about this email intrigued me -- first of all, that these tenth graders outwitted the professional pundits (and semipros like Silver and Kos), and secondly, that we have a reader who's in the eleventh grade. For real, I figure the median mode reader of this site is a mid-thirties white urban lawyer, so of course I wanted to figure out what the heck she was doing here. Her name is Maddy, and she reports:

The school is Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, MD. It's a public school, but it has two magnet programs-- the Communications Arts Program (CAP) and the Math-Science-Computer Science Magnet. The kids who won crystal ball were in 10th grade CAP-- they did the project in NSL (National, State, and Local Government-- our county's way of saying American Gov.) Crystal Ball asks political experts (and a couple of high schools) to predict the general election as well as key senate races.

And the the story of why a random high school student is reading your blog is a bit long but here goes: A little more than a year ago I got pretty sick. I went from playing sports and barely watching any TV/generally being out of the pop culture loop to watching hours upon hours of TV a day. I've since gone back to school part time, but I'm still at home, tired and bored, much of the time, so I continue to watch a lot of TV, obsess over pop culture, and spend way too much time online (I even started my own TV blog because I needed something fun to do). During my extensive online travels I came across Alan Sepinwall's blog, which led me to ALOTT5MA.

Sorry, that's probably way more than you wanted to know. I actually have a question for you, if that's ok. How do you find all of the crazy and random stories you link to in the blog?

I'm happy to answer that one, and I invite my colleagues to jump in -- basically, I just know who the best editors are out there -- which sites are most likely to have found the content I'll find interesting -- traditional media like the NYT/WaPo arts sections, the essential TV Tattle, PopWatch, really, everyone along the right side of the page here. Plus I newsgoogle And then collectively, God willing, we serve ourselves as useful secondary aggregators (and analysts) of what we find. And if teenagers find it interesting, well, um, okay!

e.t.a. Our under-25 and 50+ population is making itself known in the comments. If you're among them, do let us know.

TURTLES, ALL THE WAY DOWN: That's Sir Terry Pratchett to you, pal.

Also, Robert Plant was named Commander of the British Empire - one slot short of a knighthood.

NB: I see that a number of CBEs sport the honorific "Sir," so maybe I've got this mixed up.

I AM SHIVA THE DESTROYER, YOUR HARBINGER OF DOOM THIS EVENING: Rachel Getting Married combines so many of this blog's interests -- Tamyra Gray, proper dishwasher loading techniques, Elvis Stojko, people who should see In Her Shoes and, of course, Anne Hathaway -- that I'm surprised it took me until today to see it.

To merely call it "well-written" undersells just how perfectly and subtly Jenny Lumet's screenplay reveals this damaged family in all its pain and joy, and I cannot say enough about Hathaway's brittle, bitter, true performance. There's a shot -- when they're cutting the cake -- that just floored me, and this film is just full of magical little touches, unforced moments of recognition, of brilliance, pain and occasional beauty.

[Go back to our August 2004 initial discussion of Hathaway, when the question was whether she, Julia Stiles, Kirsten Dunst, Hillary Duff, Keira Knightley or someone else was most likely to be the next Julia Roberts-level star. Right now, she's winning.]

There are filmmakers who focus on dysfunction -- I'm thinking of Todd Solondz and Noah Baumbach -- whose goal is to make the viewer uncomfortable, to squirm in the face of all that awfulness. Jonathan Demme's goals are different, his heart is larger and this film is so much more rewarding as a result. Highly recommended.

I WILL NOT MAKE THIS ERROR WITH ABE VIGODA: With the death of Senator Claiborne Pell, I ask: is there a word for the feeling you have when learning that a public figure or distant relative has died whom you had assumed had died long ago? Premorse? Learning that the person in question still lives is not what I'm after, but a recent death that moots the earlier error.

ONE YEAR ARE IN, AND THE NEXT YEAR YOU ARE...: The WaPo's Hank Stuever, with their annual list of What's In and Out for 2009.

SEE YOU IN ANOTHER LIFE, BROTHER: The AV Club's, Time Magazine's, EW's and Alan Sepinwall's (see also this addendum in the comments) recent lists of the Best Television Episodes of 2008 suggest that we ought to open up our own decision of the same for awards consideration.

For me, it's not even a question -- though to be fair I didn't watch The Shield or The Wire, making me a bad citizen. On February 28, 2008, Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse treated us to a time-traveling episode of Lost that demonstrated, conclusively, that they knew where the show was going, knew that Desmond/Penny were ten times more interesting than Jack/Kate/Sawyer, and still knew how -- as Poniewozik put it -- to craft an episode that "rips your heart out while it ties your brain in a knot."

Really, what was better on tv in 2008 than "The Constant"?