THEY'RE RUNNING OUT OF JOURNEY SONGS: We're a little more than two weeks away from the return of Glee, and the song list for episode one has leaked--we'd already seen clips of "Empire State of Mind" (a full group number), so that's no surprise, and the selection from A Chorus Line will shock exactly no one, but it's a nice mix of songs (2 theatre songs, 3 recent hits, and an 80s power ballad). Take your guess for how these fit into the plot and who's singing them.

MAKE ME DANCE: Last night, unannounced, Ellen DeGeneres made her Broadway debut in a walkon role in Promises, Promises. Credit to the production crew for keeping it quiet and not turning it into a spectacle. I saw the production in June, and it's far better than the reviews indicated--yes, Chenoweth is miscast as the mousy girl, and while she sings the crap out of "A House Is Not A Home" and "I Say A Little Prayer," they're so plainly added in to give her character more to do that it distracts--but Sean Hayes is charming, the plainly Mad Men inspired design is a lot of fun, and Katie Finneran richly deserved her second Tony for playing a boozy floozy who has a single song that works perfectly.

THIS OVERGROWN KID WHO, DECADES AGO, REPRESENTED IRREVERENT YOUTH LONG BEFORE HIPPIES AND PUNK ROCKERS: Tom Shales reviews Jerry Lewis' performance at his annual MDA telethon, which raises all sorts of questions to ponder:

• Is it unfair to even review critically such a broadcast, given the overall good it does in the world?
• What ever happened to telethons? I feel like local stations used to broadcast more of them. Is it a combination of the dearth of local ownership of network affiliates and the increased focused on the bottom line? Is it that the Internet has made regular charitable giving easier and reduced the need for such broadcasts?
  
• Can I get through a Jerry Lewis post without referencing The Day The Clown Cried and Spy magazine article on same?
• Shales writes "Big stars like Joan Crawford (seen in a clip on the MDA Web site) don't come on anymore, but then, there aren't big stars like Joan Crawford anymore, are there?" Is this a bad thing? (Do enjoy the MDA's full list of celebrity appearances from 1966-2009. Including KISS! The Jackson Five! And a favorite of mine, below the fold.)
  

BUT THE BALL. HIS GROIN. IT WORKS ON SO MANY LEVELS! Judging from this sneak peak at TAR, Man Getting Hit In Groin By Football may soon have some competition.

UNEASY RIDER: I'm sure Sons of Anarchy (which returns tonight, kicking off the fall TV season, followed by new CW programming starting tomorrow night) is great--people I trust rave about it, and those members of the cast that I'm familiar with are pretty impressive actors--but I just can't get past the fact that I'm not interested in watching a show about a motorcycle club/gang (also, I understand that trying to start now is perhaps not the best idea). What other shows do you have a blind spot for because of subject matter or similar?

(Semi-related--debuting tomorrow night is FX's Terriers, which Alan loved, and which has a pretty damn solid pedigree, but be careful, since even with minimal network programming, there's a fairly severe pileup tomorrow at 10 with Top Chef and Psych finales, along with a Castle repeat, against the Terriers premiere--I'm picking up a later repeat.)

YOU GET A MEDALLION WITH A RAINBOW RIBBON! YOU GET A MEDALLION WITH A RAINBOW RIBBON! I GET A MEDALLION WITH A RAINBOW RIBBON! The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts has announced that its 2010 honorees for lifetime achievement in the performing arts are singer and songwriter Merle Haggard; composer and lyricist Jerry Herman; dancer, choreographer and director Bill T. Jones; songwriter and musician Paul McCartney; and producer, television host and actress Oprah Winfrey.

McCartney was first announced for the honor in 2002, but canceled to attend a family wedding. (Paul Simon replaced him.) In addition, this is the first year since 2006 that none of the honorees are best-known for acting, and I believe you have to go back to 2002 to find a year without a film director being honored.

[Much in our archives about these awards. I'll stick with my 2008 call of Woody Allen, Meryl Streep and James L. Brooks as the most-overdue honorees still outstanding.]

LIKE THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, ONLY WITHOUT THE OTHER TWO PEOPLE. ALSO, WITHOUT ... Any connoisseur of negative reviews will appreciate this Alastair Macaulay review of a performance by "dancer" Ann Liv Young in tomorrow's Times. I'll just offer one sentence as a sample:

Waiting 10 minutes for someone to defecate onstage is boring in the way that waiting 10 minutes for someone to produce a double pirouette or high C would be boring.