ALL HAIL OUR NEW GREEN CANADIAN OVERLORDS: Nick Paumgarten explains why all those Commerce Bank pens (28M given away in 2006) were a bad sign.

ONE WOULD THINK THEY'D ASK KRUGMAN FIRST: The New York Times may try a new pay-for-content scheme:

Executive editor Bill Keller said at a meeting with staff on Wednesday that two proposals are being strongly considered.

One includes a "meter system," in which the reader can roam freely on the Web site until hitting a predetermined limit of word-count or pageviews, after which a meter will start running and the reader is charged for movement on the site thereafter. He warned staff at the meeting that this pay model would be "tricky." If the word-count limit or page-view limit is set too low, it could chase readers off, compromising traffic and advertising revenue. He said the site presently makes "a lot, a lot of money" from digital advertising—though he wouldn't specify how much—and that executives at the paper believe it is "substantially more" than The Wall Street Journal currently makes on a subscription-based pay model. On the other hand, he said, set these bars too high and there will be little improvement in revenue.

Mr. Keller described the second proposal as a "membership" system. In this model, readers pledge money to the site and are invited into a "New York Times community." You write a check, you get a baseball cap or a T-shirt (if it's like Channel Thirteen, a tote bag!), an invite to a Times event, or perhaps, like The Economist, access to specialized content on the Web. He said he wouldn't even be opposed to offering a donor access to a Page One editorial meeting as long as it doesn't affect the paper competitively.

Some day, someone's going to figure out how to make online journalism profitable. I hope.

LOOK, I DON'T NEED THIS! I WAS IN JAWS, OKAY? Remember that whole thing in the Amazing Race finale about Jamie and Cara being upbraided for using the local police as a concierge service? Apparently, prior to his visit to P-Town, Richard Dreyfuss did not get the memo.

FOUND OBJECTS: This post has spoilers about things that happened on the Lost season finale, "The Incident." I don't know too many people who both care about Lost and haven't watched the finale, but if you're one of them, stop reading.

This came up in the comment thread Wednesday night, but I just wanted to highlight something. I thought it was an excellent (but not pantheon-level) Lost, but mostly I was impressed with how intricately-written it was, weaving together not just the basic mythology, the Romeo and Juliet B-story, the turtles-all-the-way-up (tm Carmichael Harold) escalating conflicts (survivors vs. survival; survivors vs. Others; Others vs. Dharma; Ben vs. Widmore; Jacob vs. Esau), but also a number of allusions to prior season finales. To be clear, I'm not saying these are coincidences or minor similarities, in the nature of a high-school "compare and contrast" paper. I think these were explicit callbacks to the prior finales and restagings of pivotal scenes or shots. To wit:

• In the Season 1 finale, "Exodus," Jack takes a volatile explosive (old dynamite) from an anachronistic source (an inland-beached galleon) and carries it in a backpack to the Swan hatch, to blow it up. In "The Incident," Jack takes a volatile explosive (a plutonium core rigged to blow on impact) from an anachronistic source (an underground Egyptian temple) and carries it in a backpack to the Swan hatch, to blow it up. "Exodus" ends with the camera going down the hatch. "The Incident" ends with the camera going down the hatch (though it is shot in the accelerating style of the last shot in the pre-credits opening of the Season 2 opener, "Man of Science, Man of Faith," when the camera went the other direction).
• The Season 2 finale was "Live Together, Die Alone." In "The Incident," Juliet answers Sawyer's "what do we do, Blondie?" question with "Live together, die alone." The climax of "Live Together, Die Alone" is the implosion of the Swan, followed by Desmond, laying underneath the station, turning the failsafe key, triggering a fade to white. In "The Incident," the Swan implodes, followed by Juliet, laying underneath the station rubble, beating the bomb with a rock, triggering a fade to white.
• In the Season 3 finale, "Through the Looking Glass," Ben asks to speak with Jack alone before Jack does something that will cause everyone on the island to die. "The least you can give me is five minutes," he says. "Five minutes," Jack responds, and Ben invites Jack to "have a seat on the rock." In "The Incident," Sawyer asks to speak with Jack alone before Jack does something that will cause everyone on the island to die. "I need five minutes, that's all ... you owe me that much, Jack," says Sawyer. "Five minutes," replies Jack, and Sawyer invites Jack to "take a load off" on the rock. Also, in "Through the Looking Glass," Hurley rides to the rescue in a Dharma microbus. In "The Incident," Hurley rides to the rescue in a Dharma microbus.
• The big reveal in Season 4's finale, "No Place Like Home," is that the object in the box is Locke's corpse. The big reveal in "The Incident" is that the object in the box is Locke's corpse.

WHAT'S A CANADIAN FARM BOY TO DO? Oh, this makes me happy -- Kevin Smith and Mitch Albom to collaborate on a film adaptation of Warren Zevon's "Hit Somebody", the greatest hockey song ever.

CAROLINE? In the category of "news that while surprising, will make many people around here happy," The Hollywood Reporter is reporting that Fox is "leaning toward" giving Dollhouse a Season 2 pickup, subject to costcutting--apparently the DVR/iTunes/Hulu numbers are very good. Some things are easy to cut (Reed Diamond likely won't be returning, and some of the characters (Victor, Topher) could have their episode count reduced without a problem), but the production values will hurt. The show improved a lot in the tail half of the season, even coming up with some interesting stand-alones like "Echo is a dead woman," but does anyone care?

ETA: Confirmed all over the darn place. Other pickups confirmed--Castle, Courtney Cox/Busy Phillips sitcom Cougar Town, and Scrubs (with Braff and Chalke as guest stars only, but deals struck for McGinley, Faison, and Flynn to return full time).

ETA X2: Finke is reporting a pickup for Better Off Ted (yeah!), and Hollywood Reporter has the following Fox fall schedule:

• Sunday--Football and animation, including the Family Guy spin-off Cleveland.
• Monday--House and Lie To Me
• Tuesday--Fringe and Human Target
  
• Wednesday--So You Think You Can Dance and Glee
  
• Thursday--SYTYCD Results and Bones
  
• Friday--Dollhouse and TBD

(An interesting question--does that schedule suggest that Fox is finally going to go with the oft-rumored move of Idol to a Wed-Thurs schedule in the Spring to increase ratings on the lucrative Thursday night?)

WHO WANTS TO BE A MIFFLINAIRE/SHE CAUGHT THE KIDNEY: Last night was a great one for couples on NBC. There were, of course, Jim and Pam, and Michael and Holly, and David Wallace and Stringer Bell, and Dwight and Rolf, and the stuff with Tracy and Pete and their wives and Cerie and her fiancee, but I wanted to single one couple out for special mention: After 23 years, somebody finally figured out a way to put at least two of the Beastie Boys on a comedy show (the right two, in my opinion, since MCA is so dour).

Thread is open for those shows and their blockmates.