NOT BEING SERVED WITH POTATOES: I'm cooking duck for dinner tonight, but that doesn't mean I can't offer you some Quayle.

Blame Pathetic Earthlings.

SURE, BUT A 'POCKETFUL OF MUMBLES' WILL SET YOU BACK $30: According to the NYT's Clyde Haberman, among the tchotchkes for sale if you choose to attend the Simon & Garfunkel reunion concerts is this: "For $25, you could get a Simon and Garfunkel cappuccino mug, inscribed, 'Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes.' It has come to this: not a coffee mug but a cappuccino mug, from a duo that once played in coffeehouses."

Sounds like my earlier misgivings were right.

I'M JOHN CARTER, AND I'M HOLDING THE AORTA: We've talked about it enough here: TNT re-airs the brilliant, harrowing ER episode Love's Labor Lost next Tuesday, December 9, at 11am eastern, regarded by many here as the best hour of televised drama of the past decade.

Set your TiVos and VCRs now, especially all you sorely misguided "Two Cathedrals" fans -- unless you or someone you love is pregnant, in which case you might want to stay far, far away from this episode.

Updating a previous story, Rev. Al Sharpton hosts SNL this weekend. What can we expect?

[W]e hear Sharpton will be playing Johnnie Cochran in a Michael Jackson skit. Sources told CNN's Kelly Wallace that he'll also play a "prominent African American," believed to be Jesse Jackson, in a parody of Chris Matthews' "Hardball." His monologue will be a comparison of the old Sharpton, played by former SNLer Tracy Morgan, and the new Sharpton, played by the Rev himself.

But wait, that's not all! He is also playing Brian Fellows' brother Ryan -- appearing on Morgan's talk show "Safari Planet." In yet another skit, he gets into a taxi and the driver asks if he has lost weight. "Keeping one step ahead of Howard Dean burns a lot of calories," Sharpton quips.

Via CNN.

SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PICTURE: In a stunning move that may cause the earth's core to stop spinning, all five nominees for Record of the Year for the 2003 Grammy Awards are actually good songs:

"Crazy In Love", Beyoncé Featuring Jay-Z
"Where Is The Love", The Black Eyed Peas & Justin Timberlake
"Clocks", Coldplay
"Lose Yourself", Eminem
"Hey Ya!", Outkast

Seriously, I had been contemplating a series of year-end awards voting on the blog, with free-ranging comments from anyone, and one of the first was going to be some kind of Song of the Year award, and three of those would've been up there (Eminem was last year, chronologically, and I'm not a huge fan of Coldplay) along with Missy's "Gossip Folks", The Roots' "The Seed v. 2.0", Kathleen Edwards' "Six O'Clock News" and Timberlake's "Senorita". But, damn, the nominees got that right.

Also right: posthumous, sentimental and appropriate nominations for Warren Zevon's "Keep Me In Your Heart" for best pop male vocal performance and song of the year, plus "Disorder in the House" nominated for best rock song and duo/group performance, plus folk (?) album of the year. And Missy also picked up five nominations, all well-deserved.

But then there's the silly, and the stupid, and that's only starting with the fact that urinating on teenage girls won't stop you from receiving a pair of nominations -- one more nomination that what The Roots received, mind you. (Maybe ?uestlove needs to spice up his social life or something.)

May I list some, and then you can add to the list of errors and omissions?

Album of the Year: Fallen, by Evanescence. Really?

Best New Artist: Fountains of Wayne, alumni of the dark place, whose first album was released in 1997.

Best Male Pop Vocal Performance: just look at the category. Other than Timberpants, the next-youngest nominee is 51-year-old former Doobie Brother (and What's Happenin' guest star) Michael McDonald.

Ruben Studdard, one nomination; Kelly Clarkson, one nomination; Clay Aiken: zero.

In addition, Lucy was thrilled to know that Sandra Boynton's Philadelphia Chickens was nominated for best musical album for children. Cows, such remarkable cows . . .

(My complaints on last year's awards are here.)

PLEASE, HAMMER, DON'T HURT THE GENTILES: You can skip the film festivals and stop praying for a miracle: The Hebrew Hammer is skipping wide-screen release (thus denying Adam Goldberg his Oscar nomination, as was done to Linda Fiorentino years ago), and will instead debut on Comedy Central Monday night at 9pm, with several showings throughout the week.

More, via Sam Adams in today's Philadelphia City Paper:

It's a one-joke movie, but it's a pretty good joke: Goldberg gets to spit out would-be Mickey Spillane dialogue like, "It's your bar mitzvah, Jack -- I'm just reading the Torah portion." What makes The Hebrew Hammer more than an extended SNL skit is the sense that the comedy is just a thin skin over real feelings of alienation and self-doubt; when the Hammer's girlfriend asks him to talk dirty, he chokes up, then whispers that their children will go to Stanford, maybe Vassar. (It works.)

I think we all owe it to ourselves to see what could be Andy Dick's last performance. Hollywood's Angel of Death is due.

NYT ERRORS AND OMISSIONS: Maybe it's me, but I don't understand how you can write a profile of Djimon Hounsou without mentioning the fact that his first American screen role was as a bouncer in the pilot episode of Beverly Hills 90210 -- he lets Brenda into the nightclub, barring Kelly and Donna, and Brenda ended up hooking up with that older lawyer guy . . . c'mon, this is like retelling Genesis for me.

Anyway, you can leave out that ill-fated, if well-acted run on ER as the refugee suffering the triple indignities of post-traumatic stress disorder, erectile dysfunction and being treated by Chicago's wussiest doctor, but to omit the '90210' thing is like profiling Laurence Fishburne without mentioning this crucial early role.

NEVER GAMBLE IN A GAME THAT YOU CAN'T PLAY: Matt from Low Culture wipes the floor with Nicky's older sister today, explaining why Paris shouldn't be calling anything "ghetto". Hit it, Treach:

If you ain't never been to the ghetto
Don't ever come to the ghetto
'Cause you wouldn't understand the ghetto
So stay the fuck out of the ghetto