I'LL TAKE "FAMOUS PHILADELPHIA CRIMINALS OF THE MID-AUGHTS" FOR $800, ALEX: Today's Philadelphia Daily News checks in with former City Councilman Rick Mariano (corruption, still incarcerated) and former Queen Village restaurateur Susanna Goihman (drunken vehicular homicide, paroled Sunday).

WE WILL COVER THE END OF THE WORLD, LIVE: With a 25-person staff, CNN first went on the air 30 years ago today with Ted Turner's words in the tagline. Over that 30 years, CNN has, along with the rest of the news business, transformed from the original "2 people behind a desk" format to the technological wonderland of holograms and magic screens that they'll bust out on election night, has spawned at least a couple of clones and become a political and pop cultural institution. Without getting overtly political, talk to and (if you can) link the video--though it's not newsworthy, I'll have to go with Rick Sanchez getting tasered.

CONSIDER YOURSELF INFORMED: Among the third-timers returning to the Bee this year is Rahul Malayappan of Danbury, Conn. I note this because Rahul and his father Ramesh maintain Rahul's Hive, a spelling-centric blog, which was a joy to follow last year and remains one now. Among the posts is a nice update the status of returning spellers (including links to the local articles on their regional Bees) and a rather strong takedown of a newspaper columnist's complaint that kids who have only been in America for "16 minutes" are doing so well in the Bee. Bookmark it.

Also, a note on a rather interesting rule change: as opposed to previous years in which all 22 Canadian regional winners qualified for the Scripps National Bee, for 2010 only the Canadian national champion will compete in Washington. You can read about Laura Newcombe's journey to her second Canspell title here, but the sad part for regular readers of our coverage is that it means an end to one of our favorite traditions, the annual Canadian Bloodbath Round -- whichever rounds sees the most of our NttN fall, a round we've described in the past as:

"The worst Canadian disaster since Glass Tiger broke up," "the worst Canadian disaster since Thicke of the Night," "must be like what it was like when the Quebec Nordiques and Winnipeg Jets left the country," "like when Neil Young moved to Topanga Canyon," "like when Vince Carter started mailing it in so that he could get traded to New Jersey" and "like Eric Lindros insisting to the Nordiques that he wanted to play for the Flyers," "the worst day for ONttN this year, even more so than Steven Page's leaving Barenaked Ladies" and of which Shonda said in 2008:

"The Canadians fall, the Canadians fall, the Canadians fall like trees. It's a Spelling Bee Battle Field -- these poor Canadians rushing to the microphone only to be beaten back with a horrifying ding. Were they not prepared for the rigors of TV? The joy of ESPN? Because these words did not seem particularly hard to me. But just like that, we have lost SIX CANADIANS IN A ROW. ALL THE CANADIANS ARE GONE. It's tragic. Oh, Canada..."

FROM THIS TINY MALAYSIAN FISHING VILLAGE, THESE SIXTEEN AMERICANS ARE BEGINNING THE ADVENTURE OF A LIFETIME: Ten years ago at this moment, Survivor aired for the first time. (Watch it here.) TVTattle has its original coverage up (including David Bianculli's prescient "'Survivor' is the rare sort of TV show, though, that will increase in appeal each week as the stakes get higher, and the word of mouth gets even louder,") and you'll also enjoy Chronological Snobbery's post, which includes a ton of links to topics like "Gervase X" and Sonja Christopher's day-after appearance on The Daily Show, as well as this from his review of episode one:

It's not unlike watching those old black and white silent films from the 1910s, in that you know you are watching something influential and groundbreaking for its time, but its innovations have so much become a part of the culture and improved upon in the mean time that it is almost tedious to watch in its first incarnation.

As a special anniversary treat, Andy Denhart publishes the actual Survivor rules for the first time. It's fascinating.

LAST YEAR, HE WAS ANONYMOUS. THIS YEAR, HE'S A CELEBRITY: Looking for a favorite in the 2010 Scripps National Spelling Bee? The AP profiles 2009 runner-up Tim Ruiter, a home-schooled eighth grade student from Centreville, Va.:

The stereotype that emphatically fits Tim — as well as nearly everyone else at the bee — is the one that can't be avoided: the nerd factor.

The nerd issue came up recently when Tim, filling out a questionnaire for the bee, wrote down Spock from "Star Trek" as his role model.

"We were like, 'You can't put that down, people are going to think you're a nerd,'" Jon Ruiter said. "And he said, 'Helloooo.'"

"He said, 'I'm in the National Spelling Bee. I'm already not cool, OK? There's my nerd factor already,'" Vicki Ruiter said.

However, even nerd-dom can go too far. Last year, Tim wrote in his bio that he does an impersonation of the unusual character Gollum from "Lord of the Rings." Even though his father says the portrayal is "spot on," Tim looks thoroughly embarrassed and sits silently when the subject is broached.

YOU CAN STOP HELPING NOW, JEFF: There is much odd about Prince of Persia: The Sands Of Time--Jake Gyllenhaal's variable accent, the apparent repeated direction of Gemma Arterton to be stiffer and more mannered, the idea that we're going to believe for one minute that Ben Kingsley's character isn't the bad guy, what's up with Alfred Molina's teeth, and the fact that the final ten minutes of the film turns into a political ramble. But that's not what I want to talk about--I want to talk about an issue posed by one piece of casting--that of Richard Coyle as one of the Princes of Persia. Coyle isn't that well-known on these shores, but for those who've seen Coupling, he is and will always be Jeff Murdock. Jeff, who's Barney Stinson's unsuccessful peer, has theories to explain everything--introducing us to the Giggle Loop, the Melty Man, and the Sock Gap (note, clips 2 and 3 are questionably SFW--no nudity or profanity, but frank sexual talk). Even when he's attempting to be all bold and soldiery, I still hear Jeff. For instance, at point, his character shouts "no man can stop us!" (or something similar). My immediate response was, naturally, "what about the Melty Man?"

The question I have is are there similar actors in the U.S. who are so identified with a single role that we can't see them elsewhere without that coming to mind? The closest I can think of is David Schwimmer, who, in his brief appearance in Band of Brothers, far removed in time and place from Friends, never manages to be anything other than Ross Geller (oddly, not all the Friends fell victim to this--Matthew Perry and Lisa Kudrow in particular have shown decent range).

WHAT IS A LION? Having finally caught up on the last couple of episodes of this season of Friday Night Lights, I wanted to say a few things. First, in no small part because of the substantial rebooting this season involved, this is shaping up to be the strongest season since the first. While we've lost some interesting characters (Tyra, Jason Street), we've also lost some performing deadwood (Minka Kelly, who, while exceedingly nice to look at and much improved over the three seasons, wasn't playing on the level of the rest of the cast), and the new cast members have proven quite solid. Second, I would watch an entire show that is nothing but Tim Riggins doing things that aren't quite appropriate for him to be doing (dress shopping, explaining Broadway theatre, etc.)--comic gold, I tell you. (And he can take off his shirt from time to time, to cover appeal to that segment of the audience).

Third, because of the East/West divide introduced into the show this year (paralleling the real-life Midland/Odessa divide that's a big part of the original book), the show has found a new way to explore issues of race and class. Now, such issues have typically been the domain of HBO (particularly the David Simon shows), though they find their way on to networks from time to time (Izzie's background on Grey's, Foreman's backstory on House, and some very mild stuff on Good Wife), but rarely in such depth. Credit is also due to the FNL crew for doing it without beating any political message over our head (though I understand there's some pretty expressly political stuff, albeit not on the race/class front, coming down the pike). And, as always, really nice work from Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton is just anchoring the show.