Photo by Greefus Groinks.

It’s December rerun season, the Person of the Year issue has been put to bed, and even as you read this, I am slipping daintily into a hot tub filled with creamy, high-proof egg nog.

Yes, the holidays are here, and between TIME’s offices closing down (“special double issue”–the three sweetest words in the …

For your listening pleasure, time.com’s podcast of The Best Thing of 2007. The premise: six Time Arts staffers (me, music critic Josh Tyrangiel, book critic Lev Grossman, book/art/architecture critic Richard Lacayo, film critic Richard Corliss and Arts editor Belinda Luscombe) enter a podcast studio. We each select one work from our …

Tuned In must be a fertile ground for people looking for online sex and cheap meds, because we’ve been under a vigorous spam attack the past few days. Unfortunately, it seems that as a result the spam filter has been made so sensitive it’s been picking up every comment as spam, including one by Mrs. Tuned In.

It is not good for a …

Watching the Today Show this morning to watch my boss announce TIME’s Person of the Year–turns out there’s still a Russia! Who knew?–I caught Mike Huckabee defending his Christmas campaign ad to Meredith Vieira. Vieira pressed him on the issue of whether the bookshelf was subliminally framed as a cross in the ad, which follows:

Let …

SPOILER ALERT: I cannot believe I am seriously writing a spoiler alert for a post about Clash of the Choirs.

Well, America, you disobeyed Mrs. Tuned In’s specific instructions and voted off Team Rowland instead of Team Bolton on Clash of the Choirs last night. Mrs. Tuned In’s theory: “It’s Michael Bolton. He’s got the grandma vote.” …

I haven’t found an embeddable version, but James Hibberd at TV Week has the new extended trailer for season 4 of Lost. It’s 1:47 minutes in heaven!

If and when anyone locates the inevitable slowed down, frame-grabbed versions, do please share with the class and post a link.

It’s nearing the end of December, and you all know what that means: Time to bribe your local TV critic! OK, “bribe” might be an excessive term to describe the tchotchkes I’ve been receiving from various publicity departments in the biz, but it makes me feel roguish. Among the holiday swag items I’ve come across recently (sorry no pix–I …

So those seven episodes of The Wire I got? Watched ’em. Oh, the things I could spoil for you. Oh, the wonderful, heartbreaking things I could spoil for you.

But I won’t. Because I’m a good man. Because I’m a bad man. More than usual, it’s hard to get into the storyline of this final season beyond the first episode or so, because that …

What part of “We’re on strike” don’t people understand? For a while, the desperate hope has persisted that the writers’ guild would extend a waiver to the Golden Globes and the Oscars to allow WGA writers to script jokes for them. Because yeah, when you go on strike, it really means you’re going on strike except for the shows that people …

NBCU Photo: Virginia Sherwood

It’s called choralography. That little thing choirs do, where they make little joyous motions with their hands, or–gospel-choir-style–push them up toward the sky like they’re trying to hold up heaven? Choralography. This is one of the many things you learn when you watch Clash of the Choirs with an actual …

NBC Photo: Craig Busch

The things we do for love. In the course of our marriage, Mrs. Tuned In has endured a number of TV programs not to her taste which I have inflicted on her for professional and personal reasons: Big Brother, Carnivale, 24 (“that loud show”), and various programs involving alien or magical creatures killing things. …