Watch This!

Since there are several TV's to watch at my gym, I can learn several things at a time.

1. The complete inadequacy of American Idol as a vehicle for discovering great singers is made clear when the contestants try to cover Frank Sinatra songs. Sinatra was a personality and a star, but before he was any of those things he was a singer. Had he not spent his time perfecting the craft of singing, then pretty much the entire rest of his career was unlikely to have happened. Since American Idol seeks to find pop stars, who have to worry about their appeal in so many other ways besides their singing, the contestant's performances of the Sinatra tunes are wan, bloodless and boring. Sometimes a great pop star is a great singer, but the connection is not at all automatic.

2. Why does Harry Connick, Jr., have a career? He sings great old standards (like the Sinatra catalog) and brings absolutely nothing new to them. Why, when I can pop in a CD any time and listen to the Chairman sing "That Old Black Magic," would I want to listen to Connick smirk his way through the same song in a manner that mimics Sinatra, only lacking Frank's originality, presence, wit and feeling?

3. Even though I've only sporadically followed Lost here and there, it's amazing that I can get sucked in to the story in the last episodes and know enough of what's going on to follow it and care what's happening. That's some good storytelling right there, I'll tell you what.

4. One way to tell that the new V show isn't all that great -- aside from the sloppy, unoriginal writing and plot -- is to look at what the human resistance fighters are doing and imagine asking them, "What would Ham do?" Ham, of course, being Ham Tyler, played by Original Bada** Michael Ironside in the initial V miniseries sequel and the short-lived weekly series. Well, Ham wouldn't have been fooled into shooting down a Visitor shuttle full of humans, for one thing. And Ham wouldn't have blabbed about the plan to a guy who couldn't be trusted, and Ham sure as shooting would have at least slapped around the guy who did the blabbing, clerical collar or no clerical collar. But then the show would have cut to a scene with Willie, the lovable nerd Visitor played by Robert Englund, and that would have stunk just as bad as the new show does.