WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: I'm finally getting around to this week's Gossip Girl and am unhealthily amused by the fact that a lawyer named "Lionel Tribbey" is referenced as the Waldorf family estate attorney, as I assume the name was taken from the West Wing character. What's next? Chuck Bass retaining Keith Mars to do some investigation for him out on the West Coast? Sandy Cohen suing Bass Industries for negligience?

DON'T YOU SEE HOW LATE THEY'RE REACTIN'? Okay, about 30 hours late on both these items, but insofar as both are the sort of thing you expect from us:

• Correction of the Year nominee -- WaPo, Thursday: "A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number."
• Dead Wrestler of the Month: That would be Eddie Fatu, who wrestled for the WWE under the name Umaga, dead of a heart attack yesterday at 36. But don't blame Vince! The WWE's terse press release makes sure you know they fired him earlier this year for failing to go to rehab, having previously suspended Fatu and nine colleagues in 2007 for steroid abuse. Fatu was a member of the fabled Anoa'i/Fatu wrestling clan from Samoa, including his uncles Afa and Sika (the Wild Samoans), older brother Rikishi and cousins Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson and the late Yokozuna.
  

I AM A NATIONAL TREASURE. I SHOULD BE CELEBRATED: As they do every year, the Washington Post's reporters set out to profile this year's Kennedy Center honorees and discuss their craft: Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro and Bruce Springsteen. [You'll never guess which one of the five does impressions of Hitler for small children.]

The ceremony will be held Sunday night, and air on CBS sometime towards the end of the year. Last year's honorees were profiled here.

DON'T PANIC, BE COOL, GET PAID: This is a post about Friday Night Lights, and I'm going to try not to spoil any plot twists. Read at your own risk, though.

Wednesday's episode (which I just watched tonight) was sublime. It's interesting, though, that it was sublime in a manner different from the way the show was sublime in its first superlative season. Back then, the show reserved its showy dramatics and grand speeches for the football scenes -- the part of the show's world that was self-conscious spectacle -- and told the off-field personal stories with smaller gestures, quieter words, and less polish. Even when hell was breaking loose, as in my favorite FNL scene, when Tyra's mom confronted Buddy Garrity coming out of church, it was the look that passed between Tyra and Lyla, and not any of the commotion, that carried the freight.

That was not the style of Wednesday's episode, in which a character struggles with something while everybody else tries ineffectually to help. This episode was not about wordless glances. People opened their mouths and spilled; they emoted; they made speeches. The show was pushing every button. It made no apologies, though, and it needed none, because, oof, the buttons it pushed were the right ones.

One other thing, and this one is a minor plot spoiler, so STOP READING. You'd have to be pretty dense not to suspect, at least, where Tim and Becky are headed, but I'm going to regret it when they get there. Becky is really growing on me as a tragic-spunky Tyra replacement, and broken and self-destructive (but loyal and devoted) Tim Riggins as accidental surrogate dad, something that could build on all the maturing Tim did since his relationship with Tyra 1.0, is one of the most intriguing things the show has done. I am not anxious for it to end.

RICHARD GRIECO DIDN'T EVEN MAKE THE TOP 15: Entertainment Weekly is out with its "Best of the Decade" issue with Johnny Depp making the cover as one of its 15 Entertainers of the Decade. As a print subscriber, I am waiting patiently by the mailbox for this week's issue, so I can't say if he is No. 1, but you are welcome to explore the list along with the mag's picks for best movies, TV shows, etc.

YOU, LIEUTENANT WEINBERG? Kevin Pollak has signed to host Fox's upcoming Our Little Genius game show, in which children ages 6-12 get to play a WWTBAM?-type competition in their chosen field of expertise -- except it's the parents who decide when they no longer trust their child to get the answer right. Which sounds evil.

MEET ME IN MONTAUK: The best of the aughts lists have been coming down the pike for a good month or so, but today the Onion AV Club revealed its highly anticipated 50 Best Films of the Decade and kudos are deserved for some great choices (or at least the exactly 50% of the list that I have seen, which considering the decade [plus three months] welcomed three new lives into the Gordon household I consider a triumph). The list also serves as a reminder of what a great period for film 2000-02 was (Memento, Tenenbaums, Almost Famous, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Spirited Away, Crouching Tiger, The Man Who Wasn't There, Moulin Rouge, Adaptation, City of God [which probably deserves the top spot], Punch Drunk Love, and LOTR: The Two Towers). I'm sure there will be those who will dispute many of the choices (especially There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men landing in the top five), but any list topped by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and with disparate but remarkable films like Children of Men, Capturing the Friedmans, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Before Sunset in the top 12 gets my respect. Now if you will excuse me, I need to get my butt over to the library and get a copy of 25th Hour so I can knock another one off the list.

ETA: Missed the Onion's list of 25 orphans and personal favorites, which includes such worthy films as 40 Year Old Virgin, Idiocracy, Far From Heaven and Sideways.