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There's nothing like a good bloodbath to top off a pleasant Sunday evening.

Finally, bullets are flying on "The Sopranos." Tony's on the run, Bobby's history, and Little Steven finally gave a convincing performance as "Unconscious Bleeding Guy." Naturally, Tony's attempt to get Phil Leotardo before Phil got him was horribly botched, because, as Phil noted, Tony's operation isn't all that well-managed. But while I thought A.J. was coming around to being just like Dear Ol' Dad, he's back being resuced to a quivering, depressed pile of half-formed Jell-O. And, finally, Melfi is out of the picture- it only took seven years and some research paper on the criminal mind (having never occured to her before to maybe do some research on how to treat criminals) for her to realize that being the shrink for the head of the Mob in New Jersey might not be a good idea. This sets up what one can only hope will be one spectacularly violent finale. After the many slow, uneventful episodes of the past season, they owe us as much.

Meanwhile, on "Entourage," the boys had to sell their house to raise the money to make "Medellin," putting Vince in the Mondrian (yeah, that's slumming it), E in his girlfriend's house (with predictable relationship tension), and Drama and Turtle in a condo on Burton Way that they can't afford. Lots of pr0n in this one, too, the best being the couple bouncing in the background by the pool while Vince and E joust with the comically overdrawn "Queens Boulevard" director, now reduced to a 25 picture deal shooting adult videos. But the key came in the previews for the rest of the season, which indicate that Vince goes totally broke and the movie shoot in Colombia goes very wrong. It's about time something bad happens to these clowns. If the final episode had the four of them and Ari left beaten by the side of the road in some third world hellhole, that would be too nice. You can't root for these smug schmucks. They forgot where they came from a long time ago. (Walking around in Knicks and Yankees attire doesn't count) They're overprivileged, overpaid, and annoying as hell, pretty much like everyone out here. The show will be a lot more interesting if they end up failing, but the show's a Hollywood production, so you know that somehow they'll pull off a happy ending.

But that all comes later. Next week, there's only one show. "John From Cincinnati" ain't it.

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Update on the UPS situation: the sender says that it finally got through to UPS and was told that the item "wasn't in the box." Now, at 2:47 am on Friday, it was scanned and placed on the truck, so ostensibly it WAS "in the box" at that time, but at some point it "fell out of the box." Uh huh.

Now, why couldn't UPS tell me this when I called on Friday and Saturday? Why did they insist "it will be delivered" when there was a note in the system that the item had disappeared? Why did they lie to me and wait until the sender checked before admitting they'd "lost" the item?

The sender is making up another copy of the item and sending it as soon as it's done. Meanwhile, I have zero confidence in UPS right now. You'd think they'd even offer an apology, however insincere. Instead, they've stonewalled me. Yeah, this makes me likely to ship stuff through them in the future. Sure.

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See, THIS is what I'm talking about:

See, while Ellen kinda sorta tries to bring back the daytime variety shows of our youth, this is what it was really like. Merv- you didn't need to say "Merv Griffin"- had Angie Dickinson! A disco group! A magician! An astrologist! And Lorenzo Freakin' Lamas! All on one show! You can just imagine Merv, Angie, Doug, and Lorenzo (and maybe all of the Sylvers) huddled around as Sydney Omarr predicted their future ("for you, Angie, I see a frog-like talk show host named... Larry. And for you, Lorenzo, I see... obscurity"). Meanwhile, on channel 3...

...a maniacal Erin Moran! Horror icon Christopher Lee! Baseball's own Sparky Anderson! Sylvie Vartan! And on Mike's show, you know they all ended up on a kitchen set trying to make Baked Alaska or something. I always liked Mike's show better, because he was less Hollywood-smarmy and more cheerfully clueless, and he always roped major celebrities into doing ridiculous things ("Today at 4, watch Mike, Henry Kissinger, and David Brenner race tricycles!"). See? It wasn't just that these shows had celebrities, but that they booked celebrities with absolutely no consideration given to whether the stars belonged together on one show in the first place, and often got them all on stage at once, sometimes even singing some embarrassing standard. The unintentional comedy potential of variety shows hasn't been tapped since.

What we need is not an Ellen DeGeneres who's aware of the camp nature of her show. We need a clueless old pro, someone who'll genially preside over chaos, someone who'll get, say, Britney Spears, Alberto Gonzales, and John Kruk taking turns singing a finger-snapping version of "That Old Black Magic," or Justin Timberlake, Don Cherry, and Rev. Al Sharpton competing in Wii Bowling. It's all in the sincerity.

From the same month in 1979, here's something especially for my Boston friends (hi, Johnny!):

"Dance Fever." Deney Terrio, guest Chaka Khan, and celebrity judges Erik Estrada, "Battlestar Galactica" co-star Laurette Spang, and... and...

Bucky F'king Dent.

On "Dance Fever."

If it was on YouTube, I'd post it, but all I could find was this:

Celebrity judges Doris Roberts, Jon Wamlsley, and...

FRANK ZAPPA.

Yes.

Oy vey.

That's entertainment.

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Okay, the next couple of days are gonna be light blogging time because I'll be heading to the Talkers convention in New York. Here's a little traveling video:

Yogi being an artificial Yogi and Phil Rizzuto chiming in for the WABC plug. Yankee games haven't been the same since Rizzuto stopped doing the broadcasts. They're more like this:

And we won't even go into the horror that is John Sterling's "Yankees win" call.

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On this morning's flight:

Dude who sat next to me and instantly took his shoes off, making the plane instantly smell like feet: check.

Guy carrying sombrero: check.

Confused elderly folks unable to figure out seating arrangement: check.

Another typical JetBlue flight to New York.

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Yeah, I made it. More tomorrow.

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Whenever I return to New York and I begin to really enjoy the city and its energy, I snap out of it for one very good reason: it's too damn hot and humid in the Summer. A short walk from my hotel to a breakfast meeting had me sweating like a full cardio workout, and we're still about 15 degrees short of the expected high. There are things to do and places to go and I don't want to leave my air-condtioned hotel room.

But leave I must. I still have to write the All Access newsletter- about what, I dunno- and there's more to do and no time for it all, so bear with me here...

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This was SUPPOSED to go out earlier today to the All Access newsletter subscribers. I don't think it did, and I don't know why, but you didn't miss much:

You know what? I'm traveling, I am totally pressed for time, and I still wrote a while version of this newsletter... and then I read it back and I didn't think it was so good. Evidently, flying cross country sucked the humor and coherence and intersting observations right out of me. Or maybe it was the Paris Hilton story (which formed the basis for the original version of this thing). Either way, I ditched the whole thing and now I don't have time to write a better version.

Next week: Why your station's news department needs to immediately establish a Lindsay Lohan bureau.

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The convention? Okay. Saw a lot of friends and good folks, was ignored by not-so-good folks, and, well, more when I get back from New York.

But the highlight was an appearance by...

Joe Franklin!

He lives!

How could anything else top that?

The bizarre host of the most bizarre talk show ever to grace actual broadcast TV. Words can't describe how weird Joe's show was. This doesn't do it justice.

Here's a taste of the magic:

You may remember him as a punchline in "The Aristocrats" or as the subject of an SNL sketch. Uncle Floyd caught the Joe Franklin mystique the best, but I doubt there are any clips left of that, considering that Franklin sued Floyd over it (but when Billy Crystal did a lamer version on SNL, no lawsuit). Anyway, he's alive and he was here. Awesome.

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