WARM UP THE TIVO: The new fall TV season gets off to its official start on Monday night with Fox's debut of Prison Break, which looks interesting despite Brett Ratner's involvement. There's not a lot of stuff that excites me--I mean, did each of the Big 3 networks need an alien-centric Lost knock-off (Surface, Invasion, and Threshold), or a Jennifer Love Hewitt knockoff of Medium, or 2 new CBS/Bruckheimer procedural series (Close to Home and Criminal Minds). So what's looking good?

• Fox's Mondays, which will feature Arrested Development, promising new sitcom Kitchen Confidential, and Prison Break.
• Tuesdays at 9 have become one of the nastiest timeslots around, with previous occupants TAR and House having the "Geena Davis as POTUS" Commander in Chief, NBC's Jason Lee sitcom My Name Is Earl and the US version of The Office, and the WB's much-hyped Supernatural all sparring for eyeballs.
• Wednesday at 9 has a number of potentially interesting new shows (Criminal Minds, featuring Mandy Patinkin as a criminal profiler, E-Ring, NBC's Pentagon drama, Related, which appears to be a Gilmore-esque dramedy with Lizzy Caplan (so good as Janis in Mean Girls), and wacky lawyer show Head Cases, all of which have to deal with Lost and Veronica Mars.

My bet? Surface and Killer Instinct fight it out for the "first show canned honors," with Inconceivable as another potential player in that race, and Just Legal as a runner in the "mini-net" category. The only sure things seem to be the CBS procedurals, and FOX's apparent commitment to Bones.

GOD GAVE ROCK & ROLL TO YA: There's some funny over at Going Jesus about the iTunes database's attempts to identify sermons uploaded for congregational podcasts. (While you're over there, be sure to check out The Passion of the Tchotchke section and try, just you try to resist getting yourself a wtfwjd? t-shirt.) Hat tip to The Future Mrs. Throckmorton for bringing the frequently amusing GJ to my ever-wandering attention.

REMEMBER THAT TIME, WHEN YOU GOT YOUR STAR ON THE HOLLYWOOD WALK OF FAME? THAT WAS COOL: I'm glad that Chris Farley has finally been so honored, but did they have to include this photo in the AP slideshow?

Open weekend topic: favorite Farley moment. For me, it's a no-brainer: the Chippendales sketch with Patrick Swayze.

"THERE ARE NO SURE THINGS IN THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY, BUT THIS COMES CLOSE." When Michael Eisner said those words in an email to all Disney employees about the impending release of Pearl Harbor in 2001, did he know how wrong he was?

In reading investigative journalist James B. Stewart's book DisneyWar, that question keeps coming up over and over again. Whether it's overpaying massively for the Fox Family Channel, rejecting shows like Survivor and CSI (and the Lord of the Rings films) or trying his best to screw up the few successes Disney did have (whether panning Finding Nemo and Lost upon their debuts, oversaturating WWTBAMillionaire or urging Johnny Depp not to be all weird in Pirates of the Caribbean), it is pretty stunning that Disney still exists as an independent creative company in 2005, and that Eisner lasted as long as he did.

And that's even without getting into the interpersonal shit: whether it's Michael Ovitz, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steve Jobs, Harvey Weinstein or Roy Disney, there's not a key relationship that Eisner doesn't screw up with a combination of arrogance and brazen treachery.

Between the corporate governance issues and the creative ones, this is rich terrain for a journalist, and Stewart provides rich detail for the sadist in all of us who wants to see powerful people get smacked around. I mean, in Eisner, we're talking about someone whose first creative response to the death of John Ritter on the network's 8 Simple Rules was to continue the series with Ritter's on-screen wife (Katey Sagal) now pregnant with the dead character's baby.

There is something frustrating about the book, and that's that it ends a few months too soon -- before the juicy Delaware trial over Ovitz's compensation package, before Eisner agreed to step down in 2005, a year early.

But this is a tale told well, whether you're more interested in the creative successes and miscues or the corporate governance horrors, from Eisner's ascension through the ultimate success of the Save Disney movement.

My best comparison for this book? It's like The Power Broker, only with movies, tv shows and theme parks instead of buildings, highways and bridges.

BUT ONCE I REALLY LISTENED THE NOISE JUST FELL AWAY: Is it summer? Yes. Then we're due for the annual How Dare Liz Phair (Or Any Female In Any Creative Field) Dare Try To Make Her Work More Accessible And Commercial rant, this time from the Sun-Times' Jim DeRogatis, who, otherwise, we're generally a fan of:

To compare Phair's first three albums to her most recent discs is to see a schizophrenic split unprecedented in rock history since Jefferson Airplane became Jefferson Starship. She defends this as part of her inevitable growth as an artist -- a specious and nonsensical claim, given that the melodies and lyrics of her earlier work are infinitely more sophisticated, complex and mature than the sunny platitudes and hummable inanities of late. . . .

My God, what happened to this woman's self-esteem, let alone her brains? What possibly could have inspired one of the sharpest songwriters of her generation to turn to writing such utterly banal crap?

What bothers me so much about DeRo's piece is how personal his sense of hurt is, that he feels directly betrayed by Phair's decision to not just write songs for him but reach a broader audience. As though Jim was entitled to "authentic" Liz Phair music, regardless of what the Actual Liz Phair wanted to do.

Y'know, it's quite possible that Liz Phair was never talented enough to record a second Guyville. It's also possible that she just didn't want to. But for DeRo to show such deference to every odd Billy Corgan project (which the public has rejected) yet deny Phair the same freedom to experiment is . . . unphair.

I DON'T CARE A CUSS WHETHER YOU AND ROOSEVELT LIKE IT OR NOT! Everett True was a comic from back in aught-five. He's sociopathic by today's standards, but the man knew what he stood for, not least proper manners at a baseball game.

NOT EVEN THE FACT THAT KARL ROVE IS OF NORWEGIAN DESCENT CAN KEEP NORWAY OUT OF THE TOP SPOT: When the UN's rankings of the best places to live come out next week, the land of Isben, Munch, and Thor, will, for the fifth year running, be in the top slot.