BUT THE BALL. HIS GROIN. IT WORKS ON SO MANY LEVELS! Judging from this sneak peak at TAR, Man Getting Hit In Groin By Football may soon have some competition.

UNEASY RIDER: I'm sure Sons of Anarchy (which returns tonight, kicking off the fall TV season, followed by new CW programming starting tomorrow night) is great--people I trust rave about it, and those members of the cast that I'm familiar with are pretty impressive actors--but I just can't get past the fact that I'm not interested in watching a show about a motorcycle club/gang (also, I understand that trying to start now is perhaps not the best idea). What other shows do you have a blind spot for because of subject matter or similar?

(Semi-related--debuting tomorrow night is FX's Terriers, which Alan loved, and which has a pretty damn solid pedigree, but be careful, since even with minimal network programming, there's a fairly severe pileup tomorrow at 10 with Top Chef and Psych finales, along with a Castle repeat, against the Terriers premiere--I'm picking up a later repeat.)

YOU GET A MEDALLION WITH A RAINBOW RIBBON! YOU GET A MEDALLION WITH A RAINBOW RIBBON! I GET A MEDALLION WITH A RAINBOW RIBBON! The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has announced that its 2010 honorees for lifetime achievement in the performing arts are singer and songwriter Merle Haggard; composer and lyricist Jerry Herman; dancer, choreographer and director Bill T. Jones; songwriter and musician Paul McCartney; and producer, television host and actress Oprah Winfrey.

McCartney was first announced for the honor in 2002, but canceled to attend a family wedding. (Paul Simon replaced him.) In addition, this is the first year since 2006 that none of the honorees are best-known for acting, and I believe you have to go back to 2002 to find a year without a film director being honored.

[Much in our archives about these awards. I'll stick with my 2008 call of Woody Allen, Meryl Streep and James L. Brooks as the most-overdue honorees still outstanding.]

LIKE THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, ONLY WITHOUT THE OTHER TWO PEOPLE. ALSO, WITHOUT ... Any connoisseur of negative reviews will appreciate this Alastair Macaulay review of a performance by "dancer" Ann Liv Young in tomorrow's Times. I'll just offer one sentence as a sample:

Waiting 10 minutes for someone to defecate onstage is boring in the way that waiting 10 minutes for someone to produce a double pirouette or high C would be boring.

THE NEVER ENDING CORAL MAZE: Various indie rockers are now saying it's okay to say you like Phish and other jam bands. (I'll admit to having had a phase in college, but that's about it. Just one show, and a few songs stored on my iPod.)

WE ACCIDENTALLY REPLACED YOUR HEART WITH A BAKED POTATO. YOU HAVE ABOUT THREE SECONDS TO LIVE: Among the truths this blog holds to be self-evident is that the world misses Fametracker.com -- misses, misses, misses deeply its savvy analysis of celebrity in the modern world. So I'm thrilled to see Fametracker vet Adam Sternbergh use his New York magazine perch today to perform what we can only call a Fame Audit on George Clooney, last audited by Tara Ariano in January 2001.

Ariano, then:

[W]hat we don't get is his whole career. Never mind the recent years, in which, following an initial run of notably inauspicious films (From Dusk Till Dawn, One Fine Day, Batman and Robin, The Peacemaker) Clooney somehow managed, just like that, as easy as pie, as though anyone could do it if they put their mind to it, to reel off an improbable run of notably auspicious films (Out of Sight, The Thin Red Line, Three Kings, O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Either he fired his agent, sold his soul to the devil, or both. Sure, he's offhandedly mentioned in interviews that, after the Batman débacle, he decided to do projects that really meant something to him and not worry so much about the paycheque, but come on -- we seem to recall Val Kilmer saying something similar after his own private Batman débacle, and last we heard he was in The Saint, At First Sight, and Red Planet.

.... Consider he nabbed the Golden Globe for his very charming turn in O Brother, and he has enticing future projects like Charlie Kaufman's Chuck Barris bio, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven remake loaded in the torpedo tubes, we think he'll be just fine. As such, we aren't so much calling for Clooney to receive more fame as we are sounding the klaxons and unleashing a great Aaah-ooo-gah! Aaah-ooo-gah! to warn the citizenry: hug your loved ones, stock your pantries, and find shelter in doorways and under desks, because Clooney is about to start sucking up all the fame in a hundred-mile radius like the great, huge fame-sucking vacuum he has become.

(Emphasis mine.) Sternbergh, today:

The question is not "Does George Clooney guarantee a blockbuster?" (he doesn't, and he doesn't try to); the question is, "Does it matter?" Apparently the answer is no. Up In The Air was a moderate success, grossing $83 million domestically, but Leatherheads tallied only $31 million, falling short of recouping its budget. (Fantastic Mr. Fox also faltered, but we chalk that up to America's aversion to deadpan foxes and puppets, not Clooney.) Yet talking about numbers when it comes to Clooney seems not only irrelevant, but vaguely crass. After all, if he gave up the "I'll wear a cape and leotard for $10 million" game, shouldn't we?

Clooney remade himself into something more heroic: He is, if you'll pardon the allusion, the perfect storm of celebrity. He does charity. (Think Haiti.) He does playful. (Think his recent Emmy cameo.) He wins Oscars (for Syriana) and makes Capital-1 Important issue films (like Good Night and Good Luck). He shrugs off flops(The Man Who Stares At Goats) and runs with the Coen brothers posse. And he's the only current male star you can envision standing shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Cary Grant and Gary Cooper, largely because he's the only current male star who seems to enjoy wearing a tie.

TEAM KATNISS: I haven't yet read Catching Fire or Mockingjay, but quite enjoyed The Hunger Games, and was shocked by the level of violence and brutality in it for an at least nominally YA book. But of course, there'll be a movie, and according to Nikki Finke, not only is a script done (from Billy Ray, writer/director of Shattered Glass and Breach), but there's a director fight--with Sam Mendes, Gary Ross (Pleasantville, Seabiscuit), and David Slade (Twilight Saga: Eclipse, 30 Days of Night, Hard Candy), being the final 3 contenders. Mendes seems too arty and Ross too sunny, so I expect it goes to Slade (who's also a hot commodity, coming off of a big hit that got better reviews than the first two chapters), but others may disagree or have thoughts for who should play the leads.

LIVE, FROM NEW YORK, IT'S SOMEONE WHO CAN DO AN OBAMA IMPRESSION! Meet Jay Pharoah, one of four new SNL cast members. Fifty of his impressions in eight minutes here, but you'll want to hear his POTUS:

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THAT'S NO WAY TO TREAT WHOEVER AXL ROSE HAS DECIDED IS ADEQUATE THIS WEEK: That Guns N' Roses were apparently Tila Tequila-ed last night by a crowd in Dublin is amusing enough. That the AV Club uses the headline that GN'R are "Not Down With Hot New Trend of 'Throwing Things,'" means that our linkage is essential.

COMEDY IN A HOSPITAL; TRAGEDY IN A STAND-UP CLUB: As the summer winds down (you can tell because it just got warm in San Francisco), it's a good time to say a few words about two pleasant additions to summer television -- FX's Louie and Adult Swim's Children's Hospital.

Children's Hospital is the less ambitious of the two, and all I've seen of it so far is old stuff that first aired on the web. It's broad parody very much in the style of its principal creator, Rob Corddry, so if you have a problem with that, you wouldn't like it. But the excellent cast -- a rotating stew of half the comic actors from the incestuous Greg Daniels/Daily Show/UCB/Human Giant ensembles -- seems excited about the format (each episode is roughly the length of two SNL sketches), the gag rate is high, and the shots the show takes at the enduring hospital-show format generally hit the mark. And the National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: SUV commercials are Veridianesque in their value-additivity.

Louie, on the other hand, is a show that Matt Ufford accurately described as not really a comedy so much as a show about the painful stuff that comedians use as comic source material. Louis CK puts his character into a lot of sit-com situations -- a playdate co-supervised with a brash single parent; a date interrupted by a bullying teen; a political argument with a friend; a poker game with some loudmouths and a gay man. Then he frequently mines them not for yuks, but for sharply observed examinations of flawed characters or insights about his own and others' shortcomings. Those, and not the more traditionally comic episodes (the airport episode; the lesbian mom episode) are the ones I have liked the most. At its best, the show is unlike anything I can remember seeing on TV.

DUH NUH NUH NUH, DUH NUH NUH NUH [CLAP CLAP]: Check your calendar -- today is 9.02.10.

Your trivia question, should you choose to accept it: in what order did the characters lose their virginity, and to whom? (90210 Original Recipe. I stopped watching the remake after about 2-3 episodes.)

NOT QUITE ANDREW W.K.: This clip of the Mad Men cast and crew in the post-Emmy interview room being asked about their propensity to party has already made the rounds, but the more I watch it, the more I love it, especially little details like Bryan Batt swilling champagne in the background, Matthew Weiner not quite knowing how to answer, Jon Hamm assuming (effortlessly) control of the situation, and the delighted reactions from Elisabeth Moss and Christina Hendricks to Kiernan Shipka's response, since I don't think they've ever shared a scene with Shipka (who's the only thing making the Betty plotline interesting right now).

IF I'M CURT WITH YOU IT'S BECAUSE TIME IS A FACTOR. I THINK FAST, I TALK FAST AND I NEED YOU GUYS TO ACT FAST IF YOU WANNA GET OUT OF THIS: Executive producer Paul Lieberstein's top choice to replace Steve Carell on "The Office"? Toby wants Harvey Keitel.

CONFERENCE DOSEY-DO UPDATE: The Big Midwest Land Grant University Conference With Twelve Teams has announced its divisional split for football:

Division 1: Michigan, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan State, Northwestern, Minnesota

Division 2: The Ohio State University, Penn State, Wisconsin, Purdue, Indiana, Illinois

Each school will have one protected out-of-division rivalry -- i.e., The Game will continue to take place on the final Saturday of the regular season.

The only geographically pure split would have been East/West, with PSU, OSU, both Michigan and both Indiana schools in one half, but that would likely have been imbalanced in terms of sports strength. So this sorta North/South-ish thing is ... interesting.

Also, Brigham Young University has broken up with the Mountain West Conference (but hopes they can still be friends) to go independent in football, West Coast Conference in other matters. In football, they've signed an eight-year deal with ESPN and an agreement to play Notre Dame six times in the next decade.

OUTRAGEOUS! Even when this blog's fascination with muktuk has subsided, our attention to all things Lionel Richie has not -- especially when he has taken the song that brought him halfway to EGOT and reworked it to pimp British potato chips.

[Not the first time he's taken such liberties with his lyrics -- remember the 1984 Olympic Closing Ceremonies version of "All Night Long." Among the nonthreatening Children of the World breakdancers jambo-jumboing there: Cuba Gooding Jr.]

Related, from 2003: So, what is the deal with the bridge in Lionel Richie's "Say You, Say Me"?

APPLIED ECONOMICS: A year ago this week we talked about Southwest Airlines' announcement of a $10 earlybird check-in option, with no one here expressing much interest.

In the past year, I've found that by doing online check-in 24h in advance (thank you, Outlook calendar), I wind up in Group A, #40-50 anyway, and that A #1-15 for Business Select rarely has more than a handful of claimants. First five rows, window-or-aisle every time. What has your experience been?

[The Five Years Ago This Week archive is also interesting -- much Katrina talk, obvs, including an optimistic post Alex might want to take back, but also the 8-30-05 announcement that an "iPod cellphone" was on the way.]

NOT BETTER OFF, BUT THE NEXT BEST THING: Alan Sepinwall reports that the missing two episodes of Better Off Ted, which ABC refused to air because it hates you, are now available on iTunes. Those of you who watched the show may now rejoice. Those of you who didn't watch the show are horrible persons and I don't care what you do.

THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR THEM:We have teams for our next season of TAR--included are Team Home Shopping, Team Princeton A Cappella, Team Birth Mother-Daughter She Gave Up, and Team Beach Volleyball. (Based on the profiles on the CBS site, I think it's safe to assume that Team Princeton will develop a number of fans around here quickly.)

COME ON, GET UP NEW YORK! The NYT reports on the dawn of the 4:30am (and earlier) local morning news show. "Their viewers are apparently not just insomniacs; news executives say they hear from grateful late-shift workers, suburban commuters and parents of infants (and, yes, the occasional late-night club-hopper)."