INTELLECT AND ROMANCE OVER BRUTE FORCE AND CYNICISM:A Doctor Who season premiere filmed on location in the US? The return of River Song and her continuing effort to figure out in what order she intersects with the Doctor? The Doctor explaining how Stetsons are cool? The return of the "The Doctor can't remember what he likes to eat" joke? I'll take that! (Not sure how I feel about the Amy Pond premise-explaining opening voiceover, but I can understand why it might be necessary for new audiences, which they're clearly hoping for given the substantial promotional campaign BBC America has undertaken.) Discuss.

LONGREADS:  Accompanying the publication of The Pale King has been a lot of writing this month trying to understand David Foster Wallace and his illness. Here's the two best I've seen: Maria Bustillos, Inside David Foster Wallace's Private Self-Help Library (a trip through Wallace's papers at the Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin); and his widow's interview with The Observer (UK).

BUT HE'S GRITTY AND HARD-WORKING, WITH NO NATURAL ABILITIES! Can anything other than race-based thinking explain why less-than-completely-awesome white Browns running back Peyton Hillis has made it to the finals of the public voting for the Madden '12 cover?

In completely unrelated sports blogging (because I don't feel like opening up a second thread), All 30 NHL Goal Horns, Ranked.

ALWAYS THE PADAWAN, NEVER THE JEDI: Sepinwall recaps the penultimate Michael Scott episode of The Office and pretty much captures my thoughts -- it was uneven, the whole Will Ferrell thing is indulgent, but damn that ending had me verklempt.

I just want to ask about a side question: have we really reached the point as a culture where, half-bleeped, you now can say the word motherf**ker on network television at 9:25 pm? Between that and Amy Poehler's bleeped "F*ck you, Ann!" a few minutes later on P&R, I'm wondering whether it's time to just abandon the whole bleepin' business and let tv creative types, and the audience, just decide together what's appropriate for each show. I don't think anyone who watches either show was offended by either term, but nor would they be if the words were unbleeped either.  Or are there still lines one cannot cross in terms of what we expect from network tv?

Added: The video, below the fold.

SPECIAL ALOTT5MA FRIDAY GRAMMAR RODEO "ADAM GETS TO QUOTE 'FINDING FORRESTER'" EDITION:  Via Marsha, Wichta Eagle columnist Lisa McClendon reviews what she calls nutty non-rules of grammar, some of which we've addressed before (splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions) and some we haven't, including these two:

Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction. Raymond W. and Christie Z. both pointed this non-rule out in Twitter posts. And they’re right: it’s OK to start a sentence with a conjunction, just don’t do it with every sentence or it gets tedious.

Don’t begin a sentence with the word “it.” Although it can be a sign of bloated or less-direct writing, there’s no grammatical reason not to start a sentence with “it.” How could you rewrite Dickens? “The times were both best and worst”? This non-rule was shared by Casagrande, who wrote an interesting post about “the anticipatory it” here.

Let's focus on the former, because Oxford agrees:

NO. NO NO NO NO NO:  Commissioner Allan "Bud" Selig expects baseball to expand to a ten-team playoff in 2012, with the two wild card teams in each league facing each other first before the division winners begin plan.

Worth noting on Grammar Rodeo Friday: Selig said "there's a myriad of details to work out," and according to Merriam-Webster:

Recent criticism of the use of myriad as a noun, both in the plural form myriads and in the phrase a myriad of, seems to reflect a mistaken belief that the word was originally and is still properly only an adjective. As the entries here show, however, the noun is in fact the older form, dating to the 16th century. The noun myriad has appeared in the works of such writers as Milton (plural myriads) and Thoreau (a myriad of), and it continues to occur frequently in reputable English. There is no reason to avoid it.

Poll results:  "And are you okay with using 'myriad' as a noun, as in 'there's a myriad of ways ...'?" Of course, says 54%; 25% says "it hurts my brain" and 20% insists "never, never."

#69. WE WOULD HAVE WATCHED 'MILF ISLAND': In honor of tonight's 100th episode, 100 things to love about 30 Rock.