There are two -- Count 'em! Two! -- new episodes of the geeky comedy Better Off Ted airing tonight. This is a very good thing.

The 4th season premiere of America's Best Dance Crew is up on MTV's website. It's looking like this could be a very strong season. Also, they have a voguing crew this year!

Over at MightyGodKing, two overlapping-but-different lists of the top 21 most influential comics writers here and here. As someone dipping my toes back into comics after a long hiatus, I'm pretty ambivalent about the turn to decompressed storytelling. Then again, a couple months ago, I went back and picked up one of those black & white Essential collections of 20+ issues of The Avengers from Steve Engelhart's run, which I remembered fondly from my childhood (at least from the back issues that I avidly scavenged). I was sad to discover that it really didn't hold up very well. So -- aside from the classics -- I can't really lapse into nostalgia for the good old days of Silver Age-style narrative. That doesn't mean I have to like Brian Michael Bendis, though....

Anybody remember back when Madonna was the darling of the cultural studies set? I'm getting flashbacks from all the trendy fawning over Lady Gaga (see: FlowTV [cached version], Tiger Beatdown, Flavorpill) barely a year after I first encountered her through her appearances on So You Think You Can Dance and The Hills. (Yes, she appeared on The Hills, and please don't use that as a springboard to pontificate on how 'Lady Gaga' subverts realness/celebrity/performance/whatever.) I'll be over here, rolling my eyes and counting my grey hairs.