In case you haven’t heard, there won’t be a fifth season of Rescue Me this summer—that’ll have to wait for next summer, although we’ll be getting 22 episodes then, which is pretty great. [Why we're not getting in the fall is beyond me, other than as part of an FX strategy to air the show in the summer when most other shows are in re-runs. Personally, I don't want to wait until 2009 for more Rescue Me.]

That said, we’ll see five-minute mini-episodes of the show starting in June. The eps are to air at 10pm EDT on Tuesday nights. Can I just hope that one is a hockey fight between Cam “Mungo” Neely and Denis? Wouldn’t that be awesome?

FX hopes that this project will keep the show on viewers’ minds during the unusually long hiatus. Denis Leary and executive producer Peter Tolan are co-writing the minisodes’ content, which was described as “comedic hijinks” by FX.

Hmmm … I wonder if the writers for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia might get involved. They write some zany sketches … but hey, Denis’s comedy routines are funny.

In the sixth episode of the tenth season of Cheers, “Unplanned Pregnancy”, Bebe Neuwirth’s Lilith character refers to the normal babysitter the Doctors Crane use as “a 16-year-old bundled of breasts Frasier considers God’s gift to babysitting”. Given the affair Kelsey Grammer was found of participating in just five years later, Frasier’s expression in response—a turn of the head that leads to a leering smirk—is priceless.

[Sorry, we needed better Cheers fodder in the blogosphere today than TV Squad's "Five biggest Cheers mysteries". :yawn: Reference episode aired on TV Land this morning, and because I needed to decompress, I'm watching it tonight ...]

Can’t believe I’ve never written this one up …

I love TiVo’s Suggestions. They do me a great service. But TiVo … please give me a setting that says, “I love $Show_X but don’t want you to record re-runs for me.” Because honestly … as much as I love Gilmore Girls, I really don’t need to see all the re-runs again. But I want to know what other shows that GG fans watch.

[Okay, maybe that's a bad example.]

Maybe I’m weird as a TiVo user who doesn’t really like to re-watch re-runs. I’d just rather find new TV to watch.

The release date for the Rescue Me Season 4 DVD is unknown at this point. Amazon.com does have its standard “we’ll let you know when it’s released” page up if you’re interested. As soon as I found out when it’s available, I’ll post it here.

[As expected, I'm seeing requests for this info on the Season 4 entry, so I'm posting this separately...]

Now, I’ve had a crazy first half of January. [No, we're not going to talk about that. To quote Todd, "Your site has just turned into a daily dump of links!" And he's right, but the stuff I want to write about? It's not getting written about publicly. Most of that is work, but not all of it. I will leave it there and go on with this.] So despite having had my equipment since 2 Jan, I finally got it installed tonight.

Well, I’m only partially there. I’ve got to:

1. Get Multi-Room Viewing going on the new box and get it to recognize the other two TiVos.
2. Relocate my old TV and the TiVo that used to be upstairs to the downstairs.
3. Transfer all the old SD content onto the new HD.
4. Figure out what all Season Passes I need to get moved to the new box, and then shut them off of my old ones.

I’m going to push to do as much of this as I can tonight, but I’ve been doing the 0700 thing this week, and I’ve gotten maybe nine hours’ sleep the last two nights combined. [Has it been crazy? Yes. Has it been tough? Yes. Has it been trying? Yes. Is it worth it? Absolutely. Am I going to stay vague? Bet your fucking ass.] I’m winding down…

My Caedmon’s Call friends have the song that will close tonight’s season-ending episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I personally think that this is a plot by Allan Heinberg to get Derek to co-opt me [and other CC/Derek fans] to watch the show. I’m onto you, Heinberg!

A discussion of this ended up leading to Derek and I talking about Gilmore Girls after the show I attended last night. There we are on a sidewalk outside The Rutledge, talking about Lorelai borrowing Luke’s truck to help Rory move to Yale. I got to tell them that Season Four? IS MY FAVORITE. That was a fun time, because hey … I love talking about GG with people.

Oh, and … Writers’ Night at The Rutledge is hosted by Nathan Lee. Oh my gosh, y’all … that blew my damn doors off. I’ve already bought Down at The Rutledge off of CDBaby this morning, and now it’s my goal to bring him to Huntsville for a show. Wow. That kicked my ass. I just hate that I had recording problems last night [largely to do with it being an SRO crowd and me getting so hot that I almost passed out, but hey]. FUN TIMES.

[Who has two thumbs and got home at 2:00 a.m. this morning? Geof Morris.]

My Caedmon’s Call friends have the song that will close tonight’s season-ending episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I personally think that this is a plot by Allan Heinberg to get Derek to co-opt me [and other CC/Derek fans] to watch the show. I’m onto you, Heinberg!

A discussion of this ended up leading to Derek and I talking about Gilmore Girls after the show I attended last night. There we are on a sidewalk outside The Rutledge, talking about Lorelai borrowing Luke’s truck to help Rory move to Yale. I got to tell them that Season Four? IS MY FAVORITE. That was a fun time, because hey … I love talking about GG with people.

Oh, and … Writers’ Night at The Rutledge is hosted by Nathan Lee. Oh my gosh, y’all … that blew my damn doors off. I’ve already bought Down at The Rutledge off of CDBaby this morning, and now it’s my goal to bring him to Huntsville for a show. Wow. That kicked my ass. I just hate that I had recording problems last night [largely to do with it being an SRO crowd and me getting so hot that I almost passed out, but hey]. FUN TIMES.

[Who has two thumbs and got home at 2:00 a.m. this morning? Geof Morris.]

I figure that I owed folks an update [because some of my friends are looking] on what it’s going to take for me to go HD.

I called Alan Davis at Knology [phone number available upon request; leave a comment and I'll send you his number], and the differential pricing from where I was with Expanded Basic is +$9.99/mo to go to digital, +$9.99/mo to go HD, and then +$12.99/ea/mo for the two CableCARDs. “It’s expensive,” he warned me. [Yeah, a cable salesman who's worried about charging the customer too much money. I really do like this guy.] So, when I look at the fact that I’m not going to be paying TiVo $20/mo. for the service, I’m essentially paying for the CableCARDs. I could do without it, but then I’d not have the dual-tuner goodness.

The lead time on the order right now will be a couple weeks. I should have this thing hooked up before the Super Bowl, then.
[Anyone need an old 19" analog TV? I'll move it for next to nothing.]