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Neil Patrick Harris Is "Frosty The Inappropriate Snowman" (VIDEO)

2009-12-03T08:32:36Z

If you've ever wanted to see Neil Patrick Harris voice a snowman, you're in luck. And if you've ever wanted to see Frosty The Snowman talk about his porn collection, well, you're a perv, but you are in luck as well.

In a joint promotion for "Frosty The Snowman" and "How I Met Your Mother," CBS has provided Frosty with audio from NPH's inappropriate character, Barney Stinson. So finally we have the opportunity to watch Frosty gloat about attending a lethal injection. What an age we live in.

WATCH:

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Andy Rooney's Publisher On New Book Of Collected Writing

2009-12-02T14:04:06Z

Andy Rooney turns 91 on January 14, 2010. For 31 of those years he has delivered the closing essay on CBS's 60 Minutes. These pieces are the main reason Rooney is so famous. Walk (actually shamble) through an airport with him, and everyone who is not a foreigner offers a smile, a nod, or a friendly comment. But celebrity is not Andy's own measure of his professional worth; writing is. He has published sixteen books, and for the past two decades, I have been his publisher.

Jay Leno Losing His Audience To DVR Machines

2009-11-29T14:08:33Z

NEW YORK — Much of the prime-time audience lost to NBC when Jay Leno moved into prime-time has gone not to its rivals but the digital video recorder.

Rival network executives seemed almost giddy at the possibilities last spring after NBC announced Leno would do a comedy show five nights a week at 10 p.m. There will be more viewers available "for people who put on great dramas," said Leslie Moonves, CBS chief executive, "and that's what we do."

Bernard Birnbaum, Longtime CBS News Producer, Dies

2009-11-29T10:55:06Z

NEW YORK — CBS News producer Bernard Birnbaum, who helped shape the public's view of issues ranging from poverty to the Watergate scandal while working alongside Walter Cronkite and Charles Kuralt, has died, the network said.

Birnbaum died on Thanksgiving Day at Stony Brook University Medical Center in Stony Brook, N.Y., after having a heart attack while visiting relatives nearby, CBS News said in a statement Saturday. His death had been announced on the network news broadcast Friday. He was 89.

Read more: CBS News, Bernard Birnbaum, Media News

CBS Blurs Adam Lambert Gay Kiss, Shows Madonna-Britney Kiss On "Early Show" (VIDEO)

2009-11-25T16:03:16Z

CBS News gave Adam Lambert a platform to address what he has said is a "double standard," and in doing so they propagated one of their own.

CBS' "Early Show" hosted Lambert — after ABC's "Good Morning America" canceled his appearance — to discuss his controversial performance at Sunday's American Music Awards, where he kissed a man and simulated oral sex.

In the interview, Lambert said that he thinks the controversy shows a double standard and that it wouldn't be a story if he wasn't a gay male.

CBS blurred footage of Lambert's male-on-male kiss, but did not blur the footage of Madonna kissing Britney Spears at the MTV Video Music Awards, a move many are seeing as hypocritical.

"I think there's obviously a double standard when it comes to gay male entertainers," the Advocate's arts and entertainment editor, Jeremy Kinser, tells "Extra." "It's ridiculous they can show two women but can't show two men. I think it makes them look kind of silly. That's what's so ironic: they decided to put him on after 'Good Morning America' canceled him, and they seem really hypocritical to blur the moment that has everybody talking."

CBS has defended its decision, releasing the following statement:

"We gave this some real thought. The Madonna image is very familiar and has appeared countless times including many times on morning television. The Adam Lambert image is a subject of great current controversy, has not been nearly as widely disseminated, and for all we know, may still lead to legal consequences."

Watch this spliced footage from TMZ:

What do you think? Vote in the poll below.

Watch and read about Lambert's interview here.

CBS Wins Week On Strength Of "NCIS," Regular Lineup

2009-11-25T09:05:48Z

NEW YORK — CBS flexed its strength in scripted series to sail to the top of the weekly television standings.

Of the 11 most popular dramas or comedies in prime-time last week, 10 were CBS shows, the Nielsen Co. said. ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" was the lone exception.

Read more: CBS Ratings, Cbs, Ncis, Media News

Katie Couric Dancing: Party Pics Of Anchor Letting Loose (PHOTOS)

2009-11-23T13:37:41Z

Photos of Katie Couric reportedly celebrating her September 2006 debut as anchor of the CBS Evening News have made their way onto Facebook, and the pictures show Couric letting loose on the dance floor.

The photos of Couric dancing were said to have come from an album entitled, "Four Martini Mimimum." [sic]

Which move is your favorite? Check them out in the slideshow below.

(via Gawker)

Sarah Palin Refuses Katie Couric Interview

2009-11-23T09:33:20Z

Sources tell Hotline OnCall that Couric's producer sent two requests to Palin's publisher for interviews during the "Going Rogue" book tour, and so far, Couric has been denied.

It's not surprising -- Palin has not agreed to sit down with more than a small handful of mainstream media interviewers -- but the move looks to be part of a larger Palin blackout from CBS News and Entertainment.

Tallulah Morehead: Survivor: Samoa: Lord of the Gnats

2009-11-20T06:41:52Z

We are right at the midway point of Survivor: Samoa. We began with twenty players; we now have ten. Our early villains, Evil Russell, and idiot Shambles, have grown into heroic (seeming) crusaders against a true villain, Evil Laura, the Sarah Palin wanna-be conservative lobbyist co-ordinator and Christer pastor, who believes she's now running the show. We've seen two players sidelined by physical collapse: elderly obese Chef Mike, and athletic, bull-like Black Russell. We've seen a lot of puzzles solved and knots untied. And now-just-Russell has shown an amazing ability to find hidden immunity idols without a clue, which is good, because a lot of these contestants still have no clue.

Russell sees himself as an artist of Survivor, as Picasso -- and like Picasso -- his work is difficult to make sense of, and doesn't resemble real life. Here's Russell referring to last week's reverse-blindside: "That was almost as good as my kids being born." Given how much he hates women, I assume that the only reason the births of his kids were better was because he got to hear a woman screaming in agony.

Evil Laura on Russell's blindside: "We know that he's sneaky, and that he just like lurks around camp, and that he's always snooping around. We should have known better." Yes they should have. And they should have "snooped" around camp themselves! She acts like he's pulled some sort of evil double-cross by looking for and finding the idol last week that none of them even bothered to look for, though they all knew there was one there. I guess Evil Laura was too busy reading the memoirs of her personal idol, Sarah Palin. (I wonder if Sarah has read it yet? Excuse me. I mean: I wonder if Sarah has had it read to her yet?) How sneaky of Russell to be actually playing the game, while Queen Evil Laura just sits around camp, plotting the end of civilization, one ruined piece of progressive legislation at a time.

Shambles, who hates Evil Laura even more than I do, and that takes a lot, told Russell: "'Jew [sic] know what she said when you played that immunity idol? ... She said: 'He has ruined everything'." Actually, what she said was, "He just stirred up a whole lot of Hell, is what he did," but same difference.

This made Russell chuckle, "I ruined everything? What does she think I'm here for her for? To bake her cookies and cakes?" However odd that sentence is, he has a point.

But Shambles, as usual, is so dumb, her hilarity takes her one step too far: "I was thinking, I gotta find that immunity idol..." Good. Go with that, Shambles. "... Give it to Russ again." Doh! No, Shambles, no. If you find that immunity idol (fat chance), you have to keep it for yourself. Who are you playing for, Russell or you?

It was dawn in Samoa, and at Camp Igag, while everyone else slept, Russell was out looking for the immunity idol. This is why he's kicking all your butts, Galuvians. You're sleeping. He's out playing the game, though I don't see how the production team has had an opportunity to re-hide it again until the tribe all goes off to play a challenge, but I could be wrong. I have been wrong before. I remember once, back in 1947, I said Olivier's film of Hamlet would never win the Best Picture Oscar, because they never give it to a foreign language film. I was wrong then, and I was wrong again in -- ah -- Okay, that's the only time that springs to mind, but this could be time number two.

Shambles called Evil Laura "The Viper Queen of Galu." I like that. I'll take it. Henceforth, Evil Laura is The Viper Queen. After all, Clifton Webb is dead, so the title is freed up again.

Shambles has worked out that, by aligning with Zsa Zsa, which I've been saying she would for weeks, they will have a 5-5 tie. So now she wanted to recruit another Galuvian, to make it a six person majority. No, Shambles. If you ask the wrong one, your treachery will be exposed to the Galuvians. Keep quiet, at least until after immunity is sorted out, and you know better where things stand. Don't strategize, Shambles; you're too stupid to pull it off.

So she rounded up Rocket Scientist John, a man whose IQ is roughly 100 points above hers. Make that 200 points.

"Will you betray my confidence?" Shambles asked John.

"No," he answered, somehow managing to resist the temptation to sell her aluminum siding, or a bridge in New York City, while he's got her brainless ear.

Reward Challenge: This time they're playing for a trip to a waterfall for a picnic. Wait a moment! That was what they played for last week! Has the production team run out of reward ideas? This one does involve flying to a different island, although if any of these people watch Lost, they ought to be hinky about flying around islands full of survivors. They could end up in 1977, drop-kicking hydrogen bombs.

Plus they get a cell phone camera with which to take pictures. Jeff plugged it at some length, which means it was a paid bit of product placement. Well, Sprint hasn't paid me, so I shan't be mentioning what the gimmicky toy is called. (Sprint, if you want your products plugged here, well, I'm not above a small bribe, and I'm really not above a large one.) I loved part of Jeff's description of the prize trinket, "Now you have something that fits in the palm of your hand, and is easy to use." All the guys have something that fits that description, in their pants. He also said it could "make some fun memories." So can that object in their pants.

Russell wants to win reward to get the idol clue, although he's never needed a clue before, and while the others are away picnicking is a perfect time to find it. It's when he found the last one. I would think he'd be playing the challenge to lose.

They split the tribe into two teams for the challenge. This is interesting. The Yellow team has Shambles, Rocket Scientist John, and two of the Zsa Zsasians, but not Russell. This means Russell is on the purple team with his enemies: The Viper Queen, and Danger Dave. If they win, Russell will get the clue along with the very people most determined to keep him from finding the idol. If Purple loses, he'll be at Camp Igag looking for it, with his enemies watching his every move. Also, since each team has an equal number of Zsa Zsasians, the Tribe Zsa Zsa-always-loses factor is nullified. Both teams have an equal chance to blow the challenge.

The challenge involves four team members swinging around a fifth on a dangling platform, to gather numbered flags and stick them in holes in a log. It should involve a high nausea and disorientation factor. The swingers were Natalie and Rocket Scientist John. Sounds a bit dumb, but at least there's no puzzle-solving nor knot-untying. Since the challenge relies on the person being swung around sticking small poles into tight holes while being violently agitated in what amounts to freefall, I should think Rocket Scientist John would have an experiential advantage over Natalie.

But apparently John has never had sex in orbit, because he lost by a rather large margin. Russell was heading off to reward with Natalie, Danger Dave, some guy called "Brett," and The Viper Queen. I was disgusted to see The Viper Queen press her cheek against Natalie, whom she has been plotting and scheming against, with the kind of fake affection her idol Sarah Palin displays when Levi Johnston drops by to see his baby, hopefully clothed.

Russell: "If I can find this clue for the next hidden immunity idol, then I can't see how it's not going to be possible for me to do what I want to do, and take out [The Viper Queen]." Did that tortured sentence contain just a double negative, or was that a quadruple negative? I got lost in that sentence, but I was certainly surprised to learn that Russell wants to date The Viper Queen.

Oh, and Sprint didn't spring for five camera phones. All five players had to share one. Stingy bit of product placement.

And so Oceanic Flight 0 took off for a neighboring island, with our players taking pictures of themselves, which we got to see. Lucky us. I was amazed that The Viper Queen actually shows up on film, or digital, or whatever they shoot pictures on in phones. (I've tried telephoning people on my camera, but it just doesn't work, and the flash keeps going off in my eyes. Who knew Alexander Graham Bell invented the camera?)

The Viper Queen: "It's like a little Gilligan's Island or something, huh?" What stunning originality, Viper Queen. But, the excessively scenic island they were flown to bore no resemblance whatever to the Radford backlot in Studio City (The same lot where Big Brother takes place.), and looked rather more like the island in Lord of the Flies. But these savages are not so much flies as gnats, since they mostly fly about in tight little circles, and annoy the heck out of me.

At the picnic, the girls began squealing at the sight of weenies (What woman doesn't?), while the guys were dying have themselves slices of the fresh hot American Pies (apple) steaming there. "It felt just like home," drawled Natalie, whose backwoods southern lifestyle apparently doesn't include eating off of tables. I am not surprised in the least.

Back at Camp Igag, was anyone looking for the idol? No. MickMoron and Jaison were busy trying to seduce Not-Laura, aka "Monica," into being their sixth vote. Jaison, why aren't you idol hunting?

Not-Laura can count to six, although I'm not sure if she could make it all the way to seven. She pointed out that, even if she voted with them, that would only be five. No, no, Jaison and MickMoron assured her, they have a fifth vote sewn up. Shut up, guys.

Not-Laura: "How sure are you?"

Jaison: "115%." So apparently a degree from Oxford doesn't include basic math skills.

Not-Laura probed further, and MickMoron, living down to my nickname for him, began saying stuff like, "She actually encouraged things to make that whole thing [the reverse-blinside] happen." She! Why not just say, "She hides idols in her mullet"? Not-Laura may not be a rocket scientist, but they've all but announced to her that they've got Shambles voting with them. Boys, Shut up! Oh, they "refused" to tell her who their fifth vote was, so Not-Laura had to take a good ten seconds to work it out on her own.

Russell, trying to make himself ill by looking at pictures of himself with The Viper Queen, found that the next idol clue was on the phone thingy. Rather than keeping this information to himself, he let everyone know to check it on the phone. No one on this whole tribe knows how to keep their yaps shut.

They got this cryptic clue:
The [device] in your hand holds much information,
Which you'd better heed, or it will be your own loss.
The immunity idol is no rolling stone,
A rolling stone gathers no moss."

Natalie: "A rolling stone gathers what?" So Natalie's upbringing included neither tables, nor common, cliche expressions.

And just for people as dumb as Natalie, they included a video showing the idol hidden under a rock at camp. Hello? That's not a "clue." That's everything but a map with "X" marking the spot.

Arriving back at Camp Igag, an Idol search was launched that dwarfs the one American Idol has every year. Now the entire tribe was looking under every rock in Samoa, or rather following on Russell's heels as he looked for it, and they all followed him around.

Since Danger Dave had attached himself at the hip to Russell, Russ tried running to get away from him. "Oh man," said Dave, "Slow down, Russ." Yes, Dave asked Russell to slow down, so he could follow him more easily, and prevent him from obtaining the idol. Maybe he'd like Russ to bake him some cookies and cakes too.

But Russell selfishly didn't slow down and let Dave stay up with him, but instead, rather effectively ditched him. Once Danger Dave, or perhaps I should say Lame-O Dave, gave up, Russell looped back in a big circle to where he'd already been with Dave, to the rock he had spotted there before, rolled it over, and boom. The idol was in his possession yet again! Danger Dave, you're an idiot.

Not-Laura was reporting back her recruiting talk with Jaison and MickMoron to The Viper Queen. The Viper Queen is not too bright, but it doesn't take much in the way of brains to work out that her enemy Shambles is the Ethiopian in the fuel supply, as WC Fields once put it. The Viper Queen now knows that she's been targeted. Just as Russell needed to find the idol a third time, she needs to win immunity a third time.

Immunity Challenge: This challenge involved old, familiar challenge elements, though still without puzzles nor knots. Part one had them throwing rocks at ceramic tiles to earn spears; part two was firing those spears from a crossbow, at an archery target. Gee, actual skill could decide this. Shambles has Marine training. She ought to be able to hit targets. She can't do anything else. She ought to at least be able to do this.

Shambles took her one rock throw, and missed by a mile. What was she in the Marines? In charge of bad hair styles? Not-Laura throws like a girl, and didn't even get her rock all the way to the targets. You had to break at least one target to get a spear to fire from the crossbow. But Danger Dave's wild, uncoordinated throw hit one of Not-Laura's targets, so she got a spear. Turns out, it didn't matter who broke your tile, you get a spear for every target of yours broken, regardless of by whom.

The Viper Queen missed altogether, and no one else hit any of her tiles either. She was thus eliminated from winning immunity. Shambles does not have a future as a poker player, because she doubled over, laughing with glee, as her enemy fell into her clutches. Classy Shambles. You really know how to play it close to the flak jacket.

This Brett person however, cooked. He alone won two spears. His first spear hit the second ring on the target. Jaison, with but one spear, shot next. He's big. He's black. Surely he has experience at firing off his big spear into a large target.

Nope. He missed the target totally. After we're married, I can see I'm going to have to tutor him in aiming his spear, learning to keep his mouth closed when needed, and in understanding that you can only have 100% of anything.

After Not-Laura hit the target rim, MickMoron made his first impressive move of the whole season, and bettered Brett's shot. But, Brett had a second spear left to fire. How often I've longed for a man with a second spear left to fire. Brett gave it an impressive try, but he went too low, and MickMoron won immunity. Now all that remained was to find that sixth vote for The Viper Queen. I imagine The Viper Queen was trying to get that camera phone thingy to work as a phone so she could reach Karl Rove, and call in some favors.

Shambles, The Silent One, was right off telling Brett Two-Spears she was voting for The Viper Queen regardless of anything else on earth. The Queen of Vipers looked so doomed that I began to fear she would somehow save herself, because otherwise, what was CBS going to do with the remaining 20 minutes of show?

Rocket Scientist John, disgusted at the insistent strategic idiocy of Galu, suggested to Danger Dave and The Viper Queen that, instead of going for Russell, they gun for Natalie, whom he reasoned would have no idol, and not telegraph this decision to Zsa Zsa. This is a halfway intelligent move. It could result in a Natalie-Viper Queen tie, and could also get Russell to play the idol needlessly, if he has it. (The idiots actually don't know. Look around you. Is Russell looking for it, or is he swinging on a hammock? He's on the hammock. Therefore, he has the idol.)

Not-Laura came up with this plan. She'd tell Zsa Zsa she was voting for John, then they'd all vote for John (why?), and all of Galu would vote for Natalie. The obvious flaw here is that Russell wants Laura gone as much as Shambles does, so he's not going to vote for John, and the other Zsa Zsasians are most likely to vote with Russell and Shambles. This is pretty desperate vote scrambling. However, the appeals to seduce John and/or Not-Laura to vote with Zsa Zsa against The Viper Queen weren't panning out either.

And then there's this flaw also: Galu hasn't tipped off John that they were going to pretend they were voting for him to trick Zsa Zsa into voting for him. John is not likely to find this an acceptable plan, now is he?

Not-Laura worked all of Zsa Zsa, but they weren't buying it. And then Brett Two-Spears blabbed the plan to John. Guess what? The idea of getting Zsa Zsa to vote for him didn't strike him as a good plan. I'm so shocked. Good thing I had a firm grip on this martini.

Tribal Council: Jeff Asked Rocket Scientist John: "What is appealing about the [Zsa Zsa] foursome?"

Oddly, despite his being quite smart, he got the answer wrong: "They've already said it. You can use four votes." No. What is appealing about the Zsa Zsa foursome is that Jaison is dreamy, MickMoron is dumb-but-hot, and Russell has nice pecs and a well-stuffed basket, sadly inhabited by Russell.

There was further blather, including Lame-O Dave announcing that Lady Luck would be a good strategy, which is insane, but who cares? Let's get to the vote. Question one would be, had Russell snapped to the fact that he didn't need to play his idol tonight, or would he squander it?

He had snapped. He kept mum, leaving the idiot Galuvians to wonder if he found it or not for another episode.

No votes for John. No one bought that ploy. We got the 5-5 tie for Natalie and The Viper Queen. Now there would be a second vote. If one Galuvian switched sides, The Viper Queen would be gone. Otherwise, it would go to a random drawing of stones. Now, I love grabbing random stones as much as the next slut, but it would be very bad strategy. In fact, it would be no strategy at all. Meanwhile, The Viper Queen was trying to figure a way to get it thrown to The Supreme Court, who so famously ignored the vote in 2000, and appointed the loser to be the winner. The votes were cast. Jeff began the count. Would the tie repeat itself, or would someone flip?

Fear no more the heat o' the sun

Nor the winter's furious rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done

Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages;

Golden lads and girls all must

Like chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

- William Shakespeare, Cymbaline.

It was a study in faces when The Viper Queen fell. Shambles was gleeful to see The Viper Queen kicked out on her asp. Eric on the jury was ecstatic. (Though not allowed to speak in council, he kept whispering "This is so good!" to fellow juror Kelly.) The Viper Queen was furious, her plans for revenge for last week's vote now come to ashes, and she a vote loser, just like her idol, Sarah Palin. Natalie was happy. Brett Two-Spears looked resigned. Lame-O Dave was shocked, his jaw back on the ground again. (Dave, you keep being shocked at Tribal Council. Think perhaps you haven't a clue as to what's going on?) John, whose flipped vote sent the Oregonian Republican to the jury, looked pleased. Not-Laura was shocked. And Russell was triumphant. He'd overthrown The Viper Queen, and he still had immunity in his pants. He was truly Lord of the Gnats.

In her parting speech to us, The Viper Queen displayed the same sort of absolute disconnect from reality that distinguishes her Alaskan inspiration: "I hope that Galu sticks together, and someone from the purple ends up winning the million dollars." Your Majesty, at the merge, Galu had eight members, Zsa Zsa had four. Now, three episodes later, Galu has five members, and Zsa Zsa still has their whole four. You are gone because two Galuvians voted with Zsa Zsa against you. Galu sticks together about as well as two north end magnets do.

In the preview of next week, we saw Russell liberating chickens in the dead of night. Now that he's Lord of the Gnats, the old midnight-sock-burner has returned. Shambles is leading a charge against someone, and I doubt it's Russell, and Jaison is sitting about shirtless. Oh boy. Fun ahead!

Cheers darlings.

To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead, the Merrier, or buy her book, My Lush Life.

Dr. Jon LaPook: Doctors Answer Mammogram Concerns

2009-11-19T14:50:38Z

Should You Get a Mammogram or Not?

The new breast cancer screening guidelines announced November 16th by the U.S Preventive Services Task Force have sparked widespread anger and confusion. The debate centers on the relative risks and benefits of various methods of trying to pick up breast cancer at an early stage. All current techniques, including mammography, MRI, ultrasound, and breast exam, can reveal abnormalities that end up being benign. These so-called "false positives" often lead to expensive, anxiety-producing, and invasive testing such as biopsy and fine-needle aspiration. The big question is: What screening tests are "worth it" and how do we define "worth it?"

Watch CBS News Videos Online

I asked two experts on the front lines of patient care to join me in a live webcast to provide some perspective. Dr. Freya Schnabel, Director of Breast Surgery, NYU Langone Medical Center and Professor of Surgery at NYU School of Medicine and Dr. David Dershaw, Director of Breast Imaging at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center helped answer the most common questions of our CBS News viewers, including:

What are the new recommendations?

Do they apply to "high risk" women, such as those who have a close family member with breast cancer?

How many women between ages 40 and 50 get breast cancer every year?

Do mammograms save lives? How many women have to be screened with mammography to prevent one death?

What percentage of abnormal findings on mammography turn out to be benign and are therefore "false positives?"

Will these new guidelines give insurance companies an excuse to ration care? What are Medicare and the insurance industry saying about their plans to pay for mammography?

Should women examine their breasts for abnormalities?

How high is the risk of cancer from radiation exposure during mammography?

What role do other imaging techniques such as ultrasound and MRI have in breast cancer screening?

Bottom line: What should women do - especially those who are ages 40 to 49? How should a woman and her physician think about the relative risks and benefits of breast cancer screening?

For a discussion of these and other questions about the controversial new recommendations, go to www.cbsdoc.com.

CBS News Preps "Where America Stands," Turn-Of-Decade Project

2009-11-16T12:46:39Z

NEW YORK — CBS News is planning an ambitious turn-of-decade look at America's position in the world that's also designed as an opening competitive shot at Diane Sawyer.

Called "CBS Reports: Where America Stands," the series will look at issues such as health care, the military, the economy and crime. Reporters will show what was happening 10 years ago and compare it to now, with predictions about how things will be like at the start of the 2020s.

Dr. Jon LaPook: How To Save Billions in Health Costs Starting Now

2009-11-12T18:59:43Z

President Obama has stressed the importance of "bending the cost curve" in order to put the brakes on galloping health care expenses that total 2.5 trillion dollars a year and are increasing at 6% a year. The fastest way to do this is shockingly simple: carefully explain to patients the known risks and benefits of procedures.

Dr. Elliott S. Fisher, Director of Dartmouth's Center for Health Policy Research, estimates that thirty to forty percent of elective procedures are unnecessary. This includes elective angioplasty ($16,000), spinal fusion ($22,300), knee replacement ($14,400), and hip replacement ($15,700).

And it's not just costly procedures that are ballooning our health tab; the annual price for diagnostic imaging studies such at CT's and MRI's is about 100 billion dollars, roughly 35% of which is estimated to be wasted.

A prime example of an overused procedure is angioplasty, which opens up clogged arteries in the heart. Over a million are performed every year in the United States. Most patients believe it will prevent a heart attack and prolong life. But that's only true if the procedure is performed when a patient is actually showing signs of a heart attack. In elective cases which, according to the American College of Cardiology's National Cardiovascular Data Registry, account for 37% of angioplasties, it has not been shown either to prevent heart attack or prolong life. For a segment that aired last June on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric, cardiologist Dr. Steven Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic told me, "Cardiovascular interventional procedures are big money makers for hospitals and for practitioners." For a lot of doctors, "it's tough to walk away from that."

Our fee-for-service payment system certainly creates perverse incentives for doctors, a major reason for the spiraling cost of health care. But there is another factor that is more insidious: the reluctance of physicians to accept new evidence about the medicine they practice. For example, doctors have been taught for many years that an open artery is always better than a closed one. Despite convincing data showing that this simply isn't true, many physicians remain unconvinced and refuse to change their behavior.

When I interviewed President Obama about health care in July, I asked him about unnecessary elective angioplasties and the friction between what a physician believes to be true and what is supported by evidence-based medicine. He replied, "I have enormous faith in doctors. I think they always want to do the right thing for patients. But I also think, if we're honest, doctors, right now, have disincentives to making the better choices in the situations you talked about. If you are getting paid more for the angioplasty, then that subconsciously even might make you think the angioplasty is the better route to take. And so if we're reimbursing the physician not on the basis of how many procedures you're performing but rather how are you caring for the patient overall - what are the outcomes - then I think you start seeing some different choices."

Trying to figure out which medical interventions actually work is the whole point of the so-called "comparative effectiveness" studies for which Congress has budgeted 1.1 billion dollars. There has already been good progress in this kind of research. Aside from data showing that elective angioplasties don't save lives, a recent study found that vertebroplasty, a common procedure to treat pain from back fractures, was no better than a placebo treatment with a shot to temporarily numb the area.

Ultimately, insurers will try to change behavior by refusing to cover services that have performed poorly in comparative effectiveness research. That strategy will likely take years to implement and will be complicated by the fact that medicine is both an art and a science and will never be able to be reduced to perfectly predictable algorithms. Clinical judgment and even what has recently become a politically incorrect term - intuition - will always play an important role.

So how do we save billions starting now? By doctors and patients agreeing to discuss carefully whether procedures and tests are worth it.

This will have to involve consent forms. A review of hundreds of these forms at more than 150 hospitals found them to be of "limited value."

They are loaded with confusing language, often omit specific risks and benefits, and are generally not well explained by doctors. Patients often sign the forms minutes before a procedure without even reading them. Experts such as Dr. Fisher say that 30-40% of unnecessary procedures could be eliminated through proper informed consent - what is increasing being called "informed patient choice" to emphasize that doing the suggested procedure is not a foregone conclusion.

Gerry O'Connor, PhD, Associate Dean for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, has implemented a pilot program that personalizes the consent process. In the case of angioplasty, the physician collects detailed medical information about a patient, then searches a database of angiogram results to estimate individual risks and benefits by finding out what happened to similar patients who had the same procedure.

"It's not generic," he told me. "It's for people like you. If we get that right, we'll create a better informed consent."

Ultimately, electronic medical records will connect with electronic medical knowledge, including comparative effectiveness results, to give doctors and patients information - so-called "decision support" - at the moment a test or procedure is electronically ordered. But until then, and starting immediately, doctors and patients can try the low-tech solution of setting aside enough time to weigh adequately the pros and cons of medical options - not just for procedures but for other treatments and diagnostic studies. Of course, this is more easily said than done in a system that reimburses far better for doing things to patients than for communicating with them. That must change.

Jerry Zezima: The Mustache Movement

2009-11-10T11:35:38Z

I may not be British, even though my favorite breakfast cereal is Cheerios, but for the past three decades, I have kept a stiff upper lip. Now, after all these years of hair-raising adventure, I am celebrating the 30th anniversary of my mustache.

I had never thought to grow one because mustaches are not common in my family. Two of the only relatives who ever had them were my Uncle Bill, who sported a dapper mustache, and my grandmother, who wasn't dapper but had inner beauty and made a mean dish of spaghetti and meatballs.

Then, in 1979, I had surgery to correct a deviated septum, which in my case was like repairing the Lincoln Tunnel. For more than a week, I was wrapped in bandages and couldn't shave. When the bandages came off, I had a mustache.

My wife liked the new look (anything was better than the old one), so I kept it.

Ever since, I have been told I look like Groucho Marx, who is dead and can't sue me. In fact, I like to go out on Halloween dressed as Groucho so I can get candy and beer from startled neighbors. I also was once mistaken (by friends, co-workers and even my own mother) for the infamous Groucho Robber, who struck several banks in Stamford, Conn., until his photo, showing him in a Groucho disguise, appeared on the front page of the paper. He was subsequently caught and I, saying the secret word ("innocent"), was exonerated.

So you can imagine my surprise and delight when I recently found out about the American Mustache Institute, a St. Louis-based advocacy organization that, according to its Web site is dedicated to "protecting the rights of, and fighting discrimination against, mustached Americans by promoting the growth, care and culture of the mustache."

"We are the ACLU of downtrodden mustached people," Dr. Aaron Perlut, the group's chairman, told me over the phone, adding that AMI is "the only mustache think tank in the United States." Its slogan: "A mustache is a terrible thing to shave."

I quickly realized the immense value of the American Mustache Institute because, as I had long suspected, there is a lot of discrimination against mustached Americans. For example, the last U.S. president to wear a mustache was William Howard Taft, who left office in 1913. Perlut said that the last mustached major-party presidential candidate was Thomas E. Dewey, who did not, despite a famous newspaper headline, defeat Harry S. Truman in 1948.

Mustaches made a comeback in the 1970s, when, according to Perlut, "every man had three things: a mustache, a perm and a turtleneck." But lip hair suffered a big blow in 1981, when, said Perlut, two things happened: "Ronald Reagan became president and ushered in a clean-cut, corporate culture, leaving mustaches to the fields of nail technicianry, motorcycle repair and refuse disposal. And Walter Cronkite, who just died, God rest his soul, left the air. From that time on, it became unfashionable for TV newsmen to wear mustaches."

Now, however, mustaches are on the upswing. "When people like Brad Pitt and George Clooney grow them, it's good for the movement," said Perlut. "And the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder has a mustache is very important to our way of life."

To keep the momentum going, AMI hosts the Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year Award. This year's contest had a field of 100, including 18 finalists, and drew almost 100,000 votes. The winner was Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Clay Zavada, who sports a handlebar mustache. He beat out the likes of hero pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger. I voted for journalism's only representative, hirsute humorist Bill Geist, whose neatly trimmed mustache gets plenty of face time on "CBS News Sunday Morning."

Perlut, who has a doctorate in international studies and, he said, "nuclear mustacheology," congratulated me on the 30th anniversary of my mustache.

"Since you represent our way of life so well," he said, "you should nominate yourself for next year's Goulet Award. And if you win," Perlut added, presumably with a straight, mustached face, "it won't be lip service."

Stamford Advocate columnist Jerry Zezima can be reached at JerryZ111@optonline.net. His blog is www.jerryzezima.blogspot.com.

Copyright 2009 by Jerry Zezima

Tallulah Morehead: Survivor: Samoa: Macrame.

2009-11-06T09:32:45Z

This week, I was celebrating the anniversary of President Obama's defeat of Sarah Palin and some old guy whose name slips my mind (and his), by taking a listen to my old, old friend (I mean it, he's old!) Will Wixon's Obama victory song, Yes We Can, when I had to turn away from lovely thoughts and return for an hour to Samoa, for one twisty episode of Survivor: Samoa. As we will see, Jeff Probst had a narrow escape this week.

As night fell on the remains of Tribe Zsa Zsa, realizing the merge was coming soon, Russell dipped into the Survivor cliche glossary for "When we get over there, dude, game on, the game starts." What have they been doing for the last 18 days? Come to think of it, with their pitiful record of challenge losses, they truly have not been playing the game.

Russell told us, ""We're all working as a team. So I'm not really nervous about my numbers. I'm too good for this game, I'm too sly." That must be why he keeps losing challenge after challenge. And I assume the numbers that aren't worrying him are his cholesterol numbers, because his tribe is outnumbered two-to-one, which is not good.

Okay, I think, after last week's episode, I've worked out which brunette bimbo is Laura, and which is Monica. Monica is the semi-pretty one. Laura is the conservative Christer biker pastor/lobbyist, who doesn't think it's a woman's role to be a pastor to men. For a woman who rides a Harley, she seems otherwise to live in a century from before the invention of the internal combustion engine, or thought. The show calls her an "office manager," but she's actually coordinates 400 Evil Republican lobbyists in Oregon, and she - get this, and be prepared to heave - admires Sarah Palin! Palin is a role model for her! Yup, she's loathsome; you betcha.

She has worked out that Shambles hates her. Finally I've found some common ground with Shambles. The ironic part is, Laura and Shambles are both Harley freaks. (lambasted on this week's South Park as lame beyond words, well, beyond one particular word.) You'd think they could bond over their mutual pathetic need to ride around with a noisy chunk of hot metal throbbing between their legs.

When Laura was sentenced to spend a day with Zsa Zsa, Danger Dave gave her canteen to Shambles for "safekeeping." What was he thinking? Shambles can't walk across camp without losing chickens and snorkel mouthpieces. Sure enough. She lost Laura's canteen, maybe even accidentally. Shambles can lose anything except her ridiculous hairstyle.

Shambles keeps accusing Laura of being "90210." I'm not sure just what she thinks she means by that. Is she accusing Laura of being an airheaded teenager? Wrong. Laura is a 39 year old airheaded grandmother. (She must have started dropping her hellspawn young!) Does she think Laura is a zip code? I think, at root, she's accusing Laura of not being her, which is the only thing in Laura's favor. It's not just that Shambles inhabits her own weird universe. It's that she thinks other people do, or at least should, live in her private world as well. One thing I am certain of, though. Shambles doesn't like "90210."

Ah, at last we got to the root of it. Shambles: "It's almost like those popular girls in high school, that are cheerleaders, that want to snob their nose ..." ["Snob their nose"??? What the hell does that mean?] "... at people who don't fit into their circle. I'm done with her. I have no use for her. None." So, Shambles is projecting onto Laura all the resentment she nurtured towards her not-socially-backward peers back in high school, a quarter of a century before. But wait! Back in episode 1, when we first had the misfortune to meet Shambles, she said: "People have gravitated to me my entire life. It's like 'Oh my God. This chick rocks. We love her'." I expressed doubt over the veracity of this absurd statement at the time. Now we discover that she was, in fact, an outcast, uncool, ridiculed by the popular kids. That is far more believable.

But the irony here is, as a conservative Christer, Laura must have been every bit as uncool in school as Shambles. Shambles channeled her resentment into the Marines, and learning to kill people. Laura channeled it into Christianity, and learning to kill progressive political action. The great thing about this conflict is, I can't stand either of them, so it's a win-win battle for me.

Jaison is the master of understatement: "We're not super confident in our ability to win challenges anymore." He loses eight out of ten challenges, and suddenly he's not super confident anymore? Defeatist!

The Merge: At last, Galu and Zsa Zsa are no more. Time for the Merge Feast. All the hungry survivors were happy for the feast, but none more so than Shambles: "I am on top of the world, man." (If only she's said "Top of the world, Ma," so that, like darling Jimmy Cagney in White Heat she could be blown up.) "I'm in Heaven right now." Well, maybe Laura the Palin-wannabe could show her around. Laura can see earth from her house! Well, almost. Here's where we pray for all the babies roasting in hell forever because their parents weren't Christians, or at least, weren't the right variety of Christians. And over here is where we pray for the homosexuals being tortured in Hell for eternity, which is all of them. Isn't Heaven nice?

Shambles: "I'm on such a sugar high right now. My prayers were answered, totally." She prayed for sugar? Oh wait. Shambles took off 70 pounds to do Survivor. She probably does pray for sugar.

Jaison and Rocket Scientist John instantly bonded over both having brains and educations. Natalie told Danger Dave that Russell was "the best crab catcher." Won't medical give him a cream for those? He's creepy enough as it is.

Russell, watching his former ex-Zsa Zsasians working the former Galuvians, said, "We're steps ahead of them. We have our plan down." It doesn't occur to him that the Galuvians might be doing the exact same thing back. Russell's belief that he's outsmarting a tribe that has been kicking his ass for three weeks running is an almost amusing bit of egotistical self-delusion. "I can already see that I'm going to rule in this kingdom. I mean, come on, who gets grapes fed to them? The kings do!" Actually Russell, I used to feed grapes to my dog. You're a lot mangier than he was, and he was housebroken.

Natalie, on arriving at the Galu camp: "The Galu camp? I love it. It's awesome. I feel like I'm at the Hilton." Would that be the Black Hole of Calcutta Hilton? I have to assume Natalie has never set foot in a real Hilton. Watching Natalie bond with Laura Palin was making me ill, but then, watching anyone bond with that evil witch would make me ill. Natalie hasn't caught on to just what Laura Palin is yet, "It was really important for me to talk to Laura to find crack in this group." Natalie, conservative Christers are not the people to try and score crack from, not that that's a good idea anywhere with anyone. But Ms Palin's drug of choice is Jesus, "The Opium of the Masses."

They picked their new tribe name, "Aiga," pronounced I-ga, which Brett, in the third sentence he's spoken this season, told us means "extended family" in Samoan. Actually, facing the prospect of being in a tribe with Russell, Shambles and Laura, I'd go with the name "Igag."

Erik is completely aware of the ex-Zsa Zsasians plans. Russell assumes that he's five steps ahead of the Galuvians, but Erik is a step or two ahead of him, and both Russell and Erik have immunity idols in their pockets, unless they're just glad to see each other, and that hardly seems likely.

Now Russell initiated the bizarre second step of his plan. This one was harder to anticipate, because it's so bone-headed: showing people the immunity idol, to fake that he 'trusts" them. Immunity idols are only of any use if they're secret! Russell thinks this is brilliant strategy. It's actually just his compulsive need to brag.

First he showed it to Laura Palin. "You know what this is?" he said, pulling something out of his pants. Given her conservatism, he's lucky she didn't just scream and run away. You'd also think she'd remember that only four days before he had told her that Ben had had the idol and wasted it, so it was gone. Establishing that you lied to someone's face four days earlier seems to me to be an odd way to gain their trust.

He handed her this line of bull: that if she took him to the Top Seven (like it would be up to her), he would give her the idol, as a present. Only a complete moron would believe this. Oh wait. Laura admires and emulates Sarah Palin, a woman who really knows how to lose. She can believe anything, as long as it's idiotic. She probably believes dinosaurs lived with humans, which would explain Russell.

Laura: "Does anybody know you have it?"

Russell (lying like Dick Cheney under oath): Nope.

We've seen him show it to Jaison and Mick. He's done every thing short of wearing it around his neck. Laura, a woman accustomed to believing that virgins can give birth and carpenters can rise from the dead (Rise, Karen Carpenter, rise!), nonetheless, didn't fall for the "I'll give it to you" nonsense. She works with political lobbyists, where everything is quid pro quo. Also, she can count. (So she learned something in that seminary!) She knows she has numbers and he doesn't.

Russell made the condition that she could pick off any of his fellow Zsa Zsasians (Nice bit of treachery, that), but first, they had to pick off a Galuvian, as an offering of loyalty.

Laura: "That won't happen... It will be one of your guys, or [Shambles]." Sacrificing Shambles works for me. But the Russell-Laura alliance isn't happening. She now knows that they have to blindside Russell to get around his idol. (Good plan.)

Russell had his usual reaction when someone turns out to be too smart for him to manipulate (and Laura is an idiot): "Laura's digging her own grave. ... She might be the first to go." Works for me also, though Russell's belief that he's running the game when he has nothing to back it up with is getting increasingly deranged.

Russell trotted off to see if the same lame strategy would work with She-Who-Is-Not-Laura, a.k.a. Monica. Once again, out pops his idol. He can not keep it in his pants. Typical male.

Monica: "Does anybody else know you have this?"

Russell: "Nobody." Well, almost nobody. Well, not many. Well, not everybody. Well, my mother doesn't know. And I haven't told Shambles yet.

Since that Top Seven idea failed faster than a Zsa Zsa challenge effort, he upped it to Top Two with Monica, promising to give it to her if he knew she was on the chopping block.

Monica: "I'm in."

This time, Russell didn't buy it (and he was now wearing the idol around his neck, at least for his confessional interviews.), but he felt he could manipulate her into joining his new plan (about his fifth new plan this episode) to get rid of Laura.

Russell, like a greedy trick-or-treater determined to hit every house in his town, now scurried off to show the idol to Rocket Scientist John. Here was his line to John: "I'm telling you, dude, we can be in control of this game without them even knowing it."

Now follow this weird turn of events. Laura, the conservative Christer who wants to be the Oregon Sarah Palin, in short, a dangerous fool, understood that Russell was full of bull (though she hadn't the wit to let him think she fell for it). John, an educated scientist with a brain, fell for it. He assumed that Russell could see he was smarter than most of his tribemates (Admittedly, the chickens are smarter than Shambles. In fact, the one that got away had literally outwitted her.), and thus went only to him for an alliance. Vanity snared him.

So John is suddenly onboard with Russell's plan to oust Laura. Actually, so am I, but if Galu votes out one of their own, instead of a Zsa Zsasian, they're idiots. They need to press their number advantage while they have it.

But then, it's hard not to sympathize with wanting to get rid of Laura.

Next on Russell's alliance shopping list: Shambles. Russell's weird theory on why people trust him (those that do.): "I think it has a lot to do with my southern background. People trust The South." That is news to me. I "trust" The South to screw up elections, keep the religious wrong a political force, and ever pine nostalgically for slavery, but that's it. Ask Black America how much they "trust" The South.

But Russell only had to breathe the name Laura, and Shambles's hatred of her came gushing out, music to Russell's ears. When Shambles heard that Russell wanted Laura gone, she was as in love as she's ever been with any man. Shambles on Russell: "I trust Russell implicitly. The guy's definitely cut from the same cloth as me." He's secretly a formerly-obese military biker "chick" and warrior, with no brain nor guile? I'll give her this, like her, he's probably never dated a man, and he's almost as butch as she is. There is the small problem of his being, like the chickens, considerably smarter than she is.

Following Major Shambles's orders, Russell informed his Zsa Zsa mates to vote for Laura, which was a tad premature, since they hadn't even had the immunity challenge yet. Jesus could give Laura what Sarah Palin hasn't had in a while: a win, and all bets would be off.

Immunity Challenge: The challenge was a pretty simple game of hitting a ball off a tee into areas marked with different scores. The twist was, double immunity. One woman, and one man, would each win immunity. This was kind of a cool new slant. It increased Laura's chances of winning safety, and I think it doubled Shambles's odds, as I believe she was allowed to play for either or both. After all, along with being one of the butchest players there, the Galuvian guys had made her an "Honorary Dude," last week. (I'm assuming it's "honorary.")

All of Igag was calling Dave "Danger Dave," so I assume they were all reading these columns months before they were written. They were cheering him on. "Go, Danger Dave." Why? They each want to win. It's no longer a team game. You should want him to lose, not win.

"Baseball your game?" Jeff asked, although my limited knowledge of sports believes that teeing off towards a target area is more golf than baseball.

"No. Making love's my sport." Yeah? To whom? No wife. No girl friend. No known history with women. Former flight attendant with a degree in Opera. I'm not saying he's gay, mind you. He might be as straight as Niles Crane. And I might be Queen of the Oompa-Loopas. (And they must be gay!)

Jeff: "You play a lot?" Why do you ask, Jeff? Getting lonely out in Samoa?

DD: "Not enough." Now that I believe.

Rocket Scientist John won for the men.

I don't mean to be mean (Who am I kidding? Yes I do.), but Monica swings like a girl.

Kelly materialized out of the ether to play. Where's she been? She's such an obscure player, Russell hasn't even shown her his Never-Hidden Immunity Idol.

Super butch Shambles took a big, hefty swing, and fouled out. Several of the men went out of bounds too, but they did so by over-shooting it. Shambles hit what I'm told in baseball is called a "foul tip." (Named, I suspect, in honor of Russell's - ah - knob.)

Laura, the designated fall guy for this episode, went last. And Jesus came through. Unlike her idol, Sarah Palin, Laura squeezed out a victory.

"That sucked," said Shambles, "Because I really wanted her gone." That's what you get for doing all your plotting before the Immunity Challenge. But look at the bright side, Shambles. Now they could vote out you!

For that matter, blindsiding Russell would be a good idea, now that he's shown the immunity idol to the entire population of the South Pacific. I think he even went around the Dharma Initiative, making alliances with them, and they were all purged back in 1992.

Russell tried moving against Monica. That was an immediate no-go. She hasn't pissed anyone off yet. You have to know a player exists before you can vote them out, and so far Monica's identity has been simply "Not-Laura."

Laura blabbed to Erik that Russell has an idol. Oops. Now we see the flaw in Russell's tell-everyone-indiscriminately-you-have-an-idol strategy. They know to target you, even if only to get you to play it, and thus eliminate it. So much for "outwitting" Galu. Russell is Outwitlessing Galu.

The name Erik spelled with a K, the way Erik does, was also the name of The Phantom of the Opera, and true to his evil name, Erik's next plan was actually to target Jaison. (since, if Russell played the idol, the person with the second-highest vote count would go.) No! Not my beautiful Jaison. Who would I have to look at with him gone? I'm stuck watching the whole season to do these columns. Am I supposed to enjoy looking at Erik, with his motley excuse for a build? John, who is handsome, but seldom shirtless, and when he is, not really well-built. MickMoron? He actually has a nice body, but he's lamer and lamer with every passing episode. Danger Dave? Actually, I wish he'd wear more shirts. He has a singularly unattractive torso. Shambles? He never goes shirtless at all, and besides, a man who's just lost 70 pounds in the weeks immediately before going on the show is apt to look really horrible with his -- What's that, Dougie? Shambles is a woman? Oh right! Slipped my mind. It's an easy error. She's like a drag king. Between the aggressive stupidity and the Billy Ray Cyrus-15-years-ago hair, it's hard to tell. But my point is, leave Jaison alone!

Laura's reaction to Erik's plan to oust Jaison? "Perfect." Some Christian. They're not supposed to worship Satan!

When Erik took his plan to John, John tried deflecting it to Monica. Mind you, Erik told John that Russell had showed his idol to Laura, which means John now knows that Russell lied to him, yet he stuck to his Russell Plan of vote-out-the-women, or Shambles. (Have you noticed that all season, all of Russell's targets have been women? Is it just me, or is Russell one huge misogynist? The way he appears to hate women, it's clear he really is married! There's nothing like having a wife to turn a straight man into a woman-hater. Or maybe it's that, as a born bully, he naturally targets women because, like all bullies, he's a coward, and he's afraid of the men?)

John described the vote-out-Zsa Zsa strategy as "Junior Varsity Survivor," and while I disagree, it was a good, funny line. Hey John, I'll handle the jokes. You just fire off your rocket.

John won over Erik, who then went and suggested to Danger Dave and Brett to vote out Monica, and not to clue Shambles in at all. "Let her vote for whoever she wants. I don't give a sh** if she votes for Probst tonight." Now that would be one hell of a blindside. "And the ninth person voted out of Survivor; Samoa is me! Jeff, the tribe has spoken."

Danger Dave, captain of the Survivor Junior Varsity Squad, still wants to gun for Zsa Zsa, so now he's suspicious of Erik. The important thing is, the target is moving back off of Jaison.

Danger Dave thinks Erik is "a crafty, crafty guy." I'd be more impressed if Dave could have come up with a second adjective, but his degree is in opera, so maybe his adjective vocabulary is all in Italian, but he has a point. Erik spoke to Jaison, MickMoron, and Natalie, telling them all to vote for Monica, but not to tell Russell. The idea being to make Russell paranoid enough to use his idol, and flush it out. This is a really good plan, as long as their loyalty to Russell is non-existent.

This plan didn't sit well with Jaison, who proposed to MickMoron and Natalie that they say they'll do that, and instead, vote for Erik. Now I don't see where four votes for Erik would do much more than paint targets on them, since there will be eight other votes, most of them probably for Monica, but it is refreshing to see an episode where, going into the last quarter hour, I haven't any idea how this will play out. This vote is wide open.

So then Natalie tried selling voting for Erik to Laura and this Kelly person. Who is going to tattle to whom next?

Kelly went scurrying over to Monica, telling her of Erik's plot against her (although it was really John's idea), which got her onboard with voting out Erik.

Needless to say, Not-Laura was fine with not being voted out, and then they were off to Danger Dave. Dave was now all for it.

When Natalie brought this plan to Russell, his natural deviousness went into doublethink: "I don't think you talked them into it. I think you think you did."

I had to put up a bulletin board to make a mosaic, like on FlashForward, of who is plotting against whom, with threads leading from player to player for each separate plot, only by now, the threads were turning into a macrame plant holder.

Great moment: Danger Dave speaking to Shambles: "Kelly said the plan's changed. Tonight, Erik goes."

Shambles: "Who's Erik?" Shambles is stupid on an epic scale. Frankly, they should have just gone ahead and told her to vote for Probst.

Jaison warned Russell: "This could be a game to get rid of the idol." This, of course, is the perfect way to get that paranoid cretin to play the idol. My mosaic board threads are now in a Gordian Knot.

Russell: "This is the first time that I don't know nothin'." Not even to avoid using double negatives, though, knowing Russell, it was probably a lie. I'll bet he's known nothing many, many times. Russell now suspects that its all a diversion to blindside him. I'm beginning to anticipate a vote where every player except the two with immunity gets one vote each.

Tribal Council: For once, I had no idea what was going to happen, and apparently, neither does anyone else in Igag. As Jeff Probst watched them file in, he had no inkling that he might be blindsided at any moment, and he has no immunity. I could feel Tom Bergeron, lurking about, waiting to take over the show.

Not-Laura: "In this game, you never really know who to trust." Welcome to Life, Not-Laura.

Erik, now adding cocky to crafty, ran down all the Zsa Zsasians, noting how Russell has been working everyone, MickMoron has turned passive, and accepting of whatever happens to him, Natalie has just been trying to avoid stepping on toes, and Jaison hasn't "come together." Erik clearly feels he's running the game now, although the last fifteen minutes of airtime has shown that no one is running the game this week, and nobody has warned Jeff of his danger.

Jaison defended his game play, and Erik patronizingly said, "Well, I like that, you know, I like that in a player. If I was your coach, I would say that's what I like to hear." Erik seems to have forgotten he is not Jaison's, nor anyone else's, coach. Oxford graduate Jaison isn't taking this bull from a bartender.

Jaison: "I guess the point is, I don't care what you like." Snap! Jaison, when you're strong like that, you make my heart flutter.

Erik's patronizing attitude was making Jaison and Russell both smirk, though Russell may have tipped his hand too much when he said he would talk and strategize with each and every player up there to stay in the game, since most of Igag has noticed him doing just exactly that, except for Shambles, who was still trying to figure out who Erik is, and wondering if she can ask Jeff how to spell his name.

Russell, turning artistic, drew a happy face on his ballot beside Erik's name.

Lot's of suspense. Would Russell or Erik sense their danger and use their idols? And, of course, who voted for whom?

Russell leapt to his feet, and played his idol. He was now safe, but did he need to? Would there be enough Russell votes to have ousted him or has he wasted it? Either way, He'll be fair game in the future. Of course, there would have been no drive to get him to use his idol if he hadn't shown it to single every person in Samoa, and most of Hawaii as well.

We quickly learned that at least two members of Igag thought Jaison's name was "Jason." This was followed by learning that there was dissension in Igag as to whether it was spelled "Erik or "Eric." Kids, it's Erik with a K, not Liza with a Z, 'cause Liza with a Z goes zzz, not sss.

By the fourth vote for Erik, you could see that he was starting to regret not playing the idol then burning a hole in his pocket. On the fifth Erik vote, Shambles started looking puzzled, though whether this was because she thought someone else was to be voted out, or whether she still had no idea who Erik was, was not clear. In any event, watching Erik go from overconfident, to smugly amused, to mildly puzzled, to deeply alarmed to grimly disgusted, was sweet. Over-confidence is always the kiss of death on Survivor. And running around ordering people to vote this way or that is a sure way to get yourself ousted. And thus Erik became the first member of what will be a large jury. (In fact, it will be a jury of 10, an even number, which leaves me to suspect that they will only be going to a final 3, instead of a final 2, as only that will give them a jury of 9.) Erik walked off with his idol unplayed. Which means that both idols are gone now. No more hidden immunity.

Probst: "Well, your first vote as a new tribe, your first blindside. This is most definitely a new game." I've got to say. Jeff, it looks exactly like the same old game to me. We haven't seen a blindside since - well - last week.

In Erik's "Family Moment," someone I assume to be his dad said, "We need the money." Better get a job, Dad. Erik isn't bringing home the million.

The previews showed everyone turning on Russell (and about time too), and the idoless man desperate. This can only mean one thing. He'll win immunity next week, because they wouldn't have edited the previews to look like he was doomed if he was actually going to get eliminated. Drat!

For the record, Russell got no votes at all, so he utterly wasted his idol on paranoia, as Erik intended. Danger Dave, was one of the tribe members who misspelled "Eric," and the always-clueless Shambles was the second vote for Jaison. Dave told her the vote was for Erik. Did she not believe it, decided Erik's orders outweighed Dave's, forget who to vote for, or not believe there really was an "Erik"? We'll never know.

Cheers darlings.

To read more of Tallulah Morehead, go to The Morehead, the Merrier, or buy her book, My Lush Life.

Michael Russnow: Windows 7 Not so Great as Advertised and Has Compatibility Issues: Is Microsoft in Collusion With Manufacturers Like HP?

2009-11-06T07:18:20Z

A few weeks ago, I had a horrifying PC moment. For the first time in twelve years of Internet surfing, a terrible virus oddly named Total Security disabled my computer. No programs would open. Total Security left me in a total mess.

The price for excising the virus was $200. Since my XP computer was almost six years old, I thought that seemed excessive because I could get a new unit for about $700.

During my initial panic, Geek Squad Guru Julio Sagastume of West Hollywood's Best Buy kindly devoted lots of telephone time for free as I described my woes. Later he and colleague David McClay painstakingly advised me, and after shopping around I bought a Dell 3055 Inspiron computer. Julio and David also assured me all the files on my virus-laden XP computer would be transferred -- disease free -- for $99.99

Then I brought the new PC home, and suddenly there were problems. Understand, I've had computers for over twenty years, so I know how to set them up. However, Windows 7 didn't accept my HP LaserJet 1012 printer or Creative Cam Live! Pro! webcam drivers, nor my Transparent Language WordAce! German dictionary and True Fonts program, all on CD.

Oddly, it did embrace my Altec headset and Magic Spin DVD burner, both bought at the same time as my webcam in 2006. And the DVD burner CD driver said it was for Windows 98! Windows 7 also admitted my Movie Magic Screenwriter program, my Translation Language German tutorial and -- hold onto your hats -- my Microsoft '97 Office CD. Before I'm disparaged for not upgrading, I found no discernible difference in basic word processing over the so-called improved years, so my program suits me just fine.

More about the need to "upgrade" equipment in a moment.

Re the Windows 7 look itself, I was dismayed all my programs downloaded, including Mozilla, IE 8, AOL 9.5 and Skype suddenly appeared in miniscule font size. As a comparison I turned on my newly cleansed XP computer and everything seemed fine.

However, on Windows 7 if I changed display settings, some pages appeared better, while others' data drifted off the screen. Plus websites had overlapping type or showed words meant to be on one line suddenly hanging orphaned onto another all by themselves. This occurred on my personal website (which looks fine on XP) and also on professionally produced sites such as HuffPost.

So, I called Dell and was pleasantly surprised their offshore employees were mostly helpful. I'm not xenophobic, but I've suffered over several years dealing with folks who don't quite understand our language. Very polite but maddening to deal with. With Dell I got good support even with the 12 hour time difference.

A wonderful supervisor took over my computer by remote control. He saw what I was dealing with and I asked: "Why should I keep this computer? It's one thing to have to switch between the new one and XP for the occasional webcam use or printing, but Internet surfing is constant, and my other programs look horrible."

At first he seemed baffled, but then switched to the troubleshoot area of Windows 7 and found problems in "Add-ons" on Skype, AOL and Internet Explorer. Suddenly the fonts were better on my programs, but the Internet problems persisted. Explorer was far better than Mozilla, but neither pleased me.

He determined in our 3-hour session it might be due to my machine's 64-bit configuration. Haven't a clue what he did, but he did something with Explorer and then affixed the Explorer rendering engine onto Mozilla. In short, I now have a small icon in the lower right of my screen, and if I don't like the way a Mozilla page looks -- 2/3 of the time -- I click on the icon and it changes to the Explorer engine while staying on Mozilla, with its bookmarks and other tabs. Everything now looks great.

Strangely, when I go onto Internet Explorer 8 directly there are still problems, and I have no idea what version of Explorer or what engine he used to fix Mozilla's look. But it's better than it was, and, while not perfect, I'm able to function with more power and speed, while still able to use the XP as a sturdy back-up.

But why does this problem exist? Is there something wrong with Mozilla and Internet Explorer re Windows 7? Why does downloading major programs cause add-on issues that never presented themselves on XP? And if you're not having the same problem, why am I when all I did was turn on the machine only to confront this havoc?

Added to this is my primary beef. I have an HP printer less than six years old, and though I know we live in an age of get the latest thing almost every year -- read that to mean cell phones, cars and other gadgets -- how many of us do that? How many of us -- especially in these economic times -- don't hold onto products that still function well? Okay, if we want an improvement, such as an HDTV with mega-screen, that's one thing. That's something new.

But my printer works fine, prints at 15 pages/minute and is still on its original toner cartridge. I even bought a standby cartridge and have yet to open the box. Yet, despite the Dell technician's masterful attempts, he was not able to install the printer. The Hewlett-Packard website says it doesn't support my printer on Windows 7 and directs me to buy a new one for over a hundred dollars that prints 17 pages/minute -- hardly an upgrade when mine works perfectly.

My webcam is only 3 years old. What's Creative Cam's excuse? Why should I have to buy another one, simply because Microsoft doesn't want to include within its software earlier recognition applications as it used to? On the one hand, it still recognizes old MS Word programs, but not many other programs that did a technological handshake with earlier versions of Windows. Yet in the old days, the first Windows program recognized DOS, and, at least through XP, would not render most hardware and software shamefully obsolete.

My first laser printer (Panasonic 4410), bought in 1993 and used with my DOS computer, transitioned beautifully to Windows 95 and continued to work with my XP computer through today (though I bought the HP in 2004 to gain greater speed and operating RAM). On the one hand, a printer can work for 16 years, but the other functions for less than 6 due to incompatibility, not work performance.

What's the cause? Is it Bill Gates' fault for not incorporating into Windows 7 the driver information his company used to do in successive editions or is he in collusion with software and hardware manufacturers like HP, who also refuse to update drivers so that obsolescence becomes the order of the day and we are forced to buy things we really don't need?

If we get a new state of the art TV, we can still connect our old VCR. If we get a new CD or DVD player we can play our old disks. We can still use a dial telephone on a telephone system that has been transformed with fiber optics and satellite transmission. But a new computer forces you to discard perfectly good machinery.

There ought to be a law preventing the computer hardware and software industry from shortchanging consumers so that we get the full use of our equipment as we do for non-computer related appliances and products. Anderson Cooper should do a "Keeping Them Honest" report on CNN, as should other commentators on NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC and Fox News. There should also be an uproar on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

All in all this new computer experience has been disappointing, extremely stressful and a whole lot of needless hassle.

Michael Russnow's website is www.ramproductionsinternational.com.

CBS Profit, Revenue Beat Analyst Expectations

2009-11-05T17:48:14Z

LOS ANGELES — The sale of popular TV shows partly offset a drop in third-quarter advertising revenue at CBS Corp. but the company said ad trends are improving in the final three months of the year.

"The light at the end of the tunnel continues each day to get brighter," Sumner Redstone, the executive chairman and controlling shareholder at CBS, told analysts on a conference call Thursday. "As the economy recovers, CBS will be a leading beneficiary in the upturn."

Read more: Cbs, CBS Earnings, Media News

Josh Nelson: NY-23: Hoffman Tells GOP Clean Energy Bill Lie, Completely Botches it

2009-11-03T07:26:29Z

This guy is dangerously out of touch:

Super nervous, very creepy, super crazy. This was only two weeks ago. Here is the first 42 seconds:

Cap and trade started out just like almost everything does, to have a good purpose. To save our environment. Unfortunately, by the time it was passed it ended up to be more of a hidden tax for all of us and only help the environment a minute amount. And this isn't Doug Hoffman talking, this is the GAO, the Government Accounting Office that has analyzed this and said that every household in America this bill will cost them something like seventeen-hundred and sixty dollars per year... in increased energy costs and compliance costs.

Three mistakes/lies in 92 words. One mistake/lie every 31 words, topping the one flaw per 42 word ratio in this USA Todaypiece piece by the Superfreakonomics authors.

1. The GAO is the Government Accountability Office, not the Government Accounting Office. Not a huge deal but something you should probably know before running for Congress.

2. The takedown of the completely fabricated $1,761 clean energy bill lie is extremely well documented. It was made up by a libertarian CBS blogger on September 15. At least 20 Republican politicians have repeated it anyway.

3. And my personal favorite: the lie Hoffman is trying to tell here is supposedly based on this Treasury Department document, not a GAO document.

Could Doug Hoffman be any more confused about all of this?

Here are the real cost estimates on the clean energy legislation currently moving through Congress:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cost (PDF) per household at $160 per year.

An EPA analysis (PDF) estimates the cost per household at $98-$140 per year.

An EIA analysis (PDF) estimates the cost per household at $83 per year.

None of these analyses take into account the costs of inaction, which would be far greater.

Shira Lazar: The Cause Conference Circuit

2009-11-02T13:21:05Z

I recently had the opportunity to moderate a really great panel, Online Locally, Act Globally, at the Blogworld Expo in Las Vegas. I first posted some of my thoughts on my CBSNEWS.COM blog, and titled the piece, Philanthropy 1.0 and The Megaphone of the Internet.

Well, don't worry, this post isn't to break the news that within weeks we're already at Philanthropy 2.0. Although, as we all know, anything is possible with the speed of the Interwebs these days.

What the panel reiterated is a concept that has been buzzed about for a while now -- the power one individual can have using social media to create massive social change, as well as the power that message can have when brought offline.

You can check out the post above for some great tips on how to get people involved in your cause from Cameron Sinclair, founder and "Chief Eternal Optimist" of Architecture For Humanity.

I also got to chat with Jess McCarter, Vice President of Sales at Sama Source and Mark Horvath of InvisiblePeople.TV, who shared their stories of how the Internet has helped them bring ideas and people together for social change.

Sama Source is all about "megawork" bringing technology and tech-related work to developing countries.

Marc Horvath, who has experienced homelessness first hand, founded his website and vlog to bring people face to face with the homeless community.

DVR Ratings Bringing TV Networks Money

2009-11-01T21:25:38Z

Against almost every expectation, nearly half of all people watching delayed shows are still slouching on their couches watching messages about movies, cars and beer. According to Nielsen, 46 percent of viewers 18 to 49 years old for all four networks taken together are watching the commercials during playback, up slightly from last year.

Nancy Ruhling: Astoria Characters: The Madcap Moviemaker

2009-11-01T08:44:50Z

When the DVD starts, so does the laughter. Anastasios Makedon must have watched this, his first film, a million times, but every time he sees himself playing himself in this screwball comedy of house-hunting errors, it cracks him up.

"This came out much better than I expected," he chuckles. "Every single thing in the film is true, and everything is drawn from my experiences as an Astoria real estate broker."

OK, there may be a bit of an exaggeration or embellishment here and there, so if you don't take him literally, take him seriously while you're giggling and guffawing through the two episodes of "The Affordable Apartment."

But first lets get the credits right. Don't call him Anastasios. "People always ask me what kind of a name that is," he says. "And I tell them, 'It's Greek to me, too. Just call me Taso.'"

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Taso can see all the way to Hollywood through his shades.

Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee! Get it? Greek to me? Taso is nearly rolling on the floor he's so pleased with this perpetual pun.

Taso, the owner/broker of the real estate firm Astoria Apartments and the movie-production company Maximum Exposure Films, spent five months and - don't tell his wife -- please! - somewhere south of a million of his own money to write and executive produce "The Apartment From Hell" and "The Toilet of Tomorrow." He's anything but a big shot, but for the big shoot, in his quest for the best reviews, he hired an Emmy-winning director, a professional crew from CBS and a cast that includes the Greek comedian Basile, who, as Taso's sidekick, becomes the butt of the best jokes. (To see the trailers, go to http://maximumexposurefilms.com/videos.html.)

Soon, Taso hopes he won't be laughing alone. The 30-minute films, which he wants to turn into a full-length movie as well as a TV sitcom, are making their debut at the Queens International Film Festival (http://www.queensfilmfestival.com/festival/) on Nov. 14 and have been submitted to a number of other festivals, including Sundance.

It's not such a far-fetched dream. Taso used to be the CFO of a division of Vivendi Universal before it was sold and became NBC Universal. "I got very close to optioning a comedy to Miramax that was 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' meets Donald Trump's 'Apprentice,'" he says. "I also sent the script for a drama to Mel Gibson, but in the end, neither deal worked out. I was told that the best way to get noticed was to make the films, so this is what I have done."

Instead of looking for another job in corporate America, he fell back on real estate because he figured a flexible schedule would give him time to work on his films. He has had a broker's license since 1984, when he sold houses while going to college, and he opened Astoria Apartments in 2005.

It wasn't a fluke that he started a new life; he wasn't named Anastasios - in Greek it means "to be resurrected" - for nothing. "The doctor told my mother I was stillborn," he says. "I was put in a coffin and saved when a nurse noticed me twitching. So I literally rose from the dead."

In "The Apartment From Hell" and "The Toilet of Tomorrow," which were filmed in Astoria and in his office, a flashy fortysomething Greek real estate agent and playboy named Taso and played by Taso has hilarious adventures with looney landlords and wacky tenants.

"The character Taso is, of course, based on me," Taso says proudly. "I'm not a womanizer, but I decided to make him one because these basically are chick flicks. I wanted to also appeal to a male audience, and the screen Taso is every guy's fantasy, including mine. Besides which, I had a lot of fun playing him."

On and off screen, Taso is a charmer whose Greek-god good looks would win him a place in the Parthenon if not in a runway-model's bed.

Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling
Taso makes a larger-than-life impression in real and reel life.

To make the funny films was no laughing matter. During the dozen days of filming, Taso tore apart his shiny-new silver BMW and ripped its front fender off for the cameras. He allowed himself to be chased by a knife-wielding maniac and scared to death by Bruce the Brute, a killer Doberman pincher.

Taso has been a fixture in Astoria for decades. He came to this country from Athens, at age 4, and his family eventually ended up in Astoria, a Greek enclave.

Taso has a good feeling about his two films. Ever since he was blessed by the Greek patriarch, Bartholomew, on the pope's 2004 visit to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, things have been going his way. "The blessing brings eternal good luck and good health," he says.

As for the real estate gig, Taso and his cinematic twin have no intention of giving it up.
The moviemaker is interrupted when a young woman walks into the office looking for an apartment. She wants room for four - herself, two cats and a small dog. Taso, sensing a good plot line, flashes an Oscar-winning grin.

"I'm getting tons of great material from landlords and tenants," he says as she innocently fills out paperwork. "Another short Odyssey is about to begin."

Nancy A. Ruhling may be reached at Nruhling@gmail.com.

Copyright 2009 by Nancy A. Ruhling

Catie Lazarus: TV Review: The Good Wife

2009-10-29T16:48:21Z

ON WIFEDOM

"He'll know how much it costs to rape someone and
get away with it," Christie Barbosa (Paloma Guzman) says to her lawyers, namely
Alicia Florrick, to justify how, even as a struggling stripper, she'll turn
down an almost half-million dollars in an out-of-court settlement. Fewer than two
percent of women lie about sexual assault, but as the one-hour drama is art
imitating life, the rape victim's motives are questioned in more detail than
those of her rapist, a sleazy, entitled politician named Lloyd McKean. Alicia
discovers more tidbits (also known as conflict of interest) about McKean when
visiting her husband Peter in jail before work, one morning, the way one might
sneak in a jog.

McKean and the District Attorney's office make it difficult
for our "young" associate to secure evidence, instead explicitly
deriding Alicia about her husband's infidelity. Several times, sexual violence,
infidelity and rape, are mentioned as interchangeable, at least Alicia briefs her cohorts, however flatly, that how power issues and "isms" fall on a continuum.

She does feel insecure enough to ask a personal question
when gather evidence at an escort service, why men pay to be sexually serviced,
and why some services, like not wearing a condom, are more expensive?" The
assistant at the escort service explains that boys will be boys and they ask
for, "What ever they can't get at home." Men could try springing these
special requests on their wives before giving them (or the escorts) HPV.

Weaved into the main story about a rape case, are the
questions for the wife and children of a politician's sex scandal, including
being forced to see and hear graphic images one would rather not view under
kosher circumstances. Peter remains clueless to the impact of his behavior and
during a visit asks her, "When are you going to stop thinking I have sex
with everyone? When are you going to forgive me?" Alicia can't answer what
must be a rhetorical question, although she does ask him several of her own,
like, where he was at their daughter's Grace's 12th birthday party, when he "had"
to leave early. Not a wisp of her hair falls out of place. (Although, this is a
woman who goes to bed caked in makeup.)

The judge is a white male, so liberal, Alicia's boss, jokes
that he, "makes Ralph Nader look like Rush Limbaugh." The Judge even
forces the court to take a moment of silence to reflect on those in Darfur. (If
some one that progressive would warm the bench, let it be known that they
should sport a plastic bracelet or ribbon pen. Nothing says compassion like
accessories.)

He isn't as progressive when it comes to sexual violence and
refuses to re-examine a DNA sample, evidence that would better resolve a sexual
assault case than eyewitness testimony. The idea that a liberal male might still
be sexist is not news, but The Good Wife deftly hints at how even the most well
meaning of us, men and women, aren't always well doing.

The show ends without answering why a spurned woman would be
an effective champion for a sexual assault case, although it implies that
empathy is one of the unwritten duties. Wives don't do good or bad acts, they
are good or bad, and to be a good wife means to be sexually frustrated, able to
see the imbalances of power and dance around them, but not (yet) able to solve
them. The answer probably won't lie in future episodes of The Good Wife or on
Oprah or a Sarah Palin bipoic, but at least The Good Wife asks substantive
questions.

Shan Wells: Cartoon: Nattering Naybobs and Noxious Nutballs

2009-10-29T13:11:16Z

With a few notable exception, broadcast news is a very scary place these days. What Edward R. Murrow would think of the current zeitgeist is unknowable, but we might hazard a guess.

Sorry, Ed.