OMG! OMG! OMFG! With its return imminent tonight and its current ad campaign drawing a lot of media attention, New York devotes its cover to the scantily clad cast of Gossip Girl, and accompanies it with a lengthy story about the "greatest teen drama of all time." (Um, My So-Called Life? Issac's sure to be impassioned case for the TNBC oeuvre?) Interestingly, neither the adults or Kristen Bell's portrayal of the title voiceover role gets any substantial mention, but there's much to argue here--do so.

Objects on Your Plate May Be Smaller Than They Appear - washingtonpost.com

GOOD "PLATE COVERAGE": The WaPo's David Segal explores how restaurants are playing with portion sizes, prices and menu layout to squeeze more profit from each customer.

FRAKKIN' A FRAKKIN' TOASTER: While I still haven't seen any pre-Season 4 episodes, I am now wholly caught up to current Battlestar Galactica viewing. My lack of background assuredly made the climactic moments of this episode less stirring for me than for longtime viewers, but still...damn. Kara's admissions raising more questions than they answered, Lee Adama's new political role, and Adama and Roslin's surprisingly tender bedside moment--this episode was just full of goodness to be discussed in the comments.

ETA: While I expect most discussion will be Galactica related, let's open this up to the other sci-fi programming of the weekend, including Doctor Who, which had a solid kickoff special for a new season, even if it's kinda awkward to see a Christmas-themed show several months later, and Torchwood, which wrapped up its series really well, with a penultimate episode borrowing the narrative structure from the beloved Firefly episode "Out of Gas" and a finale featuring not just major, and legitimate, "game changing" developments but also glorious scenery chewing from James Marsters.

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THE BURGERS: I finally got around to watching Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle last night, and while I'm not normally a fan of the "stoner comedy" genre, that's one funny movie, with some surprisingly smart things to say about racism mixed in with the comedy. Relatedly, the Times spends an evening with Neil Patrick Harris, noting that Harris is quite unlike his H&K character, but is reminiscent of Barney Stinson, "if Barney were gay and really into Disneyland." This comparison automatically scores the Times some sort of award nomination, but I'm not sure which one.

STRIKE THAT. REVERSE IT: As you can see, I'm experimenting with a flipped-over layout so we can better accommodate readers using mobile and other slower-loading devices. Let me know if it's working for you.

The only other things I anticipate changing are playing with the alignments in that right-hand column, cleaning up and updating the blogroll, and figuring out what to do with Isaac's insistent demands that I change the whole blog to the Futura font.

NO ONE'S GOING TO SAVE YOU FROM THE BEAST WITH FORTY EYES: Death Cab for Cutie's Ben Gibbard with your cover of the week -- YouTube, MP3. Apropos of nothing save the fact that I just heard it for the first time this week.

STAR TREKKIN' ACROSS THE UNIVERSE: In the vein of the David Caruso one-liners video, someone has taken the time to edit every time Dr. McCoy proclaimed "he's dead" to Captain Kirk into a video. I'm waiting for the video that's simply a collection of Jim Halpert's horrified glances into the camera--ideally set to Yakety Sax, because Yakety Sax makes anything funny.