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IN THE MORNING, ROOM SERVICE WILL BRING UP A SELECTION OF PANCAKES, MANY OF WHICH WILL BE EMBEDDED WITH CHOCOLATE CHIPS OR BLUEBERRIES AND/OR OTHER SUCH DELIGHTS: Smoove B only writes for The Onion about once a year at this point, but that week has arrived again. Smoove is pining for a former lover.

The Tony Awards: Exactly Like the NBA's Western Conference -- Vulture -- Entertainment & Culture Blog -- New York Magazine

"TRACY MCGRADY, AS EVERYONE KNOWS, IS THE CARYL CHURCHILL OF THE NBA": Or so claims this New York magazine mashup of the contenders for the NBA Western Conference crown and the Tony nominations in the Best Play categories:

MACBETH -- NBA counterpart: Phoenix Suns
As Mike D'Antoni's Suns do to the NBA, BAM's production of Macbeth brings a teensy touch of the European avant-garde to Broadway. And the addition to each's roster of a bald-headed monster — Patrick Stewart's Macbeth and Shaquille O'Neal — might have seemed like folly at first but now feels like genius.

In other basketball coverage in the magazine, Jeff Coplon writes a definitive eulogy for the Knickerbockers.

IF YOU WILL IT, DUDE, IT IS NO "DREAM ON": In a week in which every contestant was free to choose anything in his or her respective wheelhouse, you'd think someone would going to go home for choosing poorly more than anything else. But no one was that good, surprisingly, and even the top end of tonight's curve is no better than a B/B-.

All three "rockers" are at risk -- none of David Cook, Michael Johns or Carly Smithson were all that memorable. Like almost every other contestant in the show's history, Carly was outmatched by taking on Freddie Mercury. Whatever that Our Lady Peace song was, Cook's performance of it felt inert and restrained. Yawn. And Aerosmith, really, Michael? Good enough to survive, but only barely.

Most at risk, however, is Syesha, who committed the sin -- regularly noted on this blog -- of trying to perform a song that another Idol previously owned. Fantasia put so much of her emotion and personality into "I Believe"; Syesha didn't give us that.

So who's safe? Kristy Lee Cook was fine. I've got nothing much to say about that.

Clifford the Crunchy Muppet knows his zone: "Songs Popularized As Background Music In TV Shows To Express Sadness," and his take on the Dr. Mark Greene Death Theme was, indeed, rather lovely.

Young David Archuleta, as Fienberg notes, took too long to get to the good part of Robbie Williams' brilliant "Angels," and it still never quite took off. Still, he's YDA, and he's not going anywhere.

Finally, I'm not sure if Brooke White was genuinely overcome with emotion during "You've Got A Friend" or if it's the demonstration of that widely-attributed maxim that "the secret of acting is sincerity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Either way, I figure, she's survived worse weeks than this.

I'M GONNA BE LIKE YOU, DAD, I'M GONNA BE JUST LIKE YOU: While attending to other business last night, I watched, with one eye, MTV's heavily-promoted Rock Off the Old Block Parents Just Don't Understand Your Mama Don't Dance and Your Daddy Don't Rock and Roll Rock the Cradle. If you're like me, at some point in the last six years you have complained about American Idol's relentless cheesiness, from its chrome-and-clip-art-fire stage to its lowest-common-denominator song selection to its fetishization of conformity, melisma, and adolescent male androgyny. One way to silence that complaint would be to fix all of the problems with Idol. Another way would be to demonstrate that it could be far, far worse. Ergo: Rock the Cradle.

Oy. There is no part of this Idol ripoff that is without problems -- the set (cramped and cardboard-flimsy), the contestants (mostly terrible, all lacking either charisma or talent and often both, and including one unpleasantly mouthy child with disfiguring plastic surgery), the parents (mortified for their children, but at least nice about it, if name-droppy), the host (cut-rate Dunkelman), the judges (Belinda Carlisle looking ageless but coated in spar varnish; some choreographer; some stylist; Britney's prodigal Svengali -- none of whom said anything worth hearing, making it Idol 1/3, Cradle 0), the weird editing choices (if you're trying to sell a talent show, should you show the band rolling their eyes at the contestants' lack of talent?). So allow me to single out one part of the production for particular criticism: the sound engineer. The pitch problems were so pervasive across all contestants that the only possible explanation is that they couldn't hear themselves sing. Just one in a million details that seem almost intended to remind us that if another show sometimes seems too professional, that at least means that it's professional in the first place.

Actually, I have one more criticism. It's really hard to get clearance for Led Zeppelin songs on TV or in the movies. The only time I can recall it being done by somebody who was not a friend of the band was when Sean Combs was allowed to rap over an orchestra doing Kashmir on SNL. So the fact that Dee Snider was able to twist Robert Plant's arm so that his son could screech his way through "Rock and Roll" is kind of galling.

MY JOY: I am thrilled to let everyone know that The Wife's new book, Certain Girls, hits stores tomorrow. It is Jen's followup to Good in Bed, set twelve years later, as Cannie and Peter deal with Joy's impending bat mitzvah, Joy deals with being twelve years old and wanting to find out more about the possibly autobiographical sex-filled tell-all bestselling novel her mother wrote a decade ago ... listen, it's just chock full o'awesome, and you will find it to be an exceptionally satisfying read.

Preview chapter one here (PDF), and if you can, join Jen for her events this week in NYC and Philadelphia. You will not be disappointed.

AT LEAST SHE DOESN'T HAVE FELINE AIDS: Rachel Dratch, ridiculously funny on Second City and SNL but shoved aside from 30 Rock for Jane Krakowski, is unfortunately still looking for work:

Rachel Dratch is learning it’s not funny being an out-of-work comedian. She left Saturday Night Live two years ago and then was replaced on 30 Rock. What’s she up to now? “Maybe you can tell me,” she said at a Smart People screening on March 31. “I know you’re supposed to come up with fake stuff you’re doing. But honestly, I’m not doing much.” After SNL’s hectic pace, isn’t downtime nice? “It’s starting to get old,” she said. “I’m starting to go crazy. I’m ready for a job.” The low point came, she said, when last month’s Vanity Fair arrived with its cover story on women in comedy, featuring a dozen top comediennes — none of whom was Dratch. “Dude, that was a dark day,” she recalled. “I was like, Oh, there’s everyone I worked with.” She’s not picky about her next gig. “I’d work in a black-box theater company at this point,” she said. “I’d work with George W.”

Dratch's overall weirdness and fearlessness worked well in a sketch format, but I'm not sure where she goes from here. It seems to be easier to be a guy in the entertainment industry who looks like Seth Rogen or Jonah Hill than to be a woman who looks like Rachel Dratch or Janeane Garofalo. Anyone want to play career counselor?

HAAAAVVVEEE YOU MET TED? Raging debate--Ted Mosby--jerk or not a jerk?