Miss Calif. Should
Watch
Glee,

Not Tyra

I used to really like that show Popular. Set in a high school where people were blunt and hilarious and mean and at times flat-out not-of-this-earth in a way you never see on television. Like there was a girl on the show who lived in a restroom stall. Stuff like that. But it went away, and then for some reason I never watched creator Ryan Murphy's other stuff. I've never seen an episode of Nip/Tuck. I hear it's good. Only so many hours in the day, etc. That's my catchall excuse for not watching something people talk about a lot. But I've already seen the first episode of Glee .

I saw it because I'm on the Fox mailing list for some reason and, in addition to the American Idol gumball machine I've abandoned to the thrift store, I get advance DVDs from them. If you watched television for a living, you'd get this sort of thing in the mail too. You'd also get Kiefer Sutherland action figures. Those are funny. His plastic face is all "TERRORISM!"

Secondly, I like the name Glee. It weeds out the audience right from the start.

And then there's the whole thing about it being Popular but with singing. Maybe a little -- OK, a LOT -- sweeter than Popular. And in just the right way it's also the kind of corny that would be deadly in the wrong hands. The kind where you feel sort of like a dork for admitting that you're watching it. Because by the time you get to the end of the first episode (it airs after the Idol finale in a couple weeks) and they sing that Journey song -- and no, that's not too much of a spoiler, because you see them doing it in the commercial -- if you're even the least bit susceptible to being in love with a goofy TV show, then you're going to be in it real hard. And then what? We have to wait until fall for the rest of it? That's my only beef at the moment. It's going in my TiVo regardless, but dang. I can catch up on the rest of those Mad Men episodes this summer, I suppose.

Speaking of TiVo, mine died. So everything I normally watch for this column got eaten. I planned to check out Tyra 's "Gay Kingdom" episode, which is part of her ongoing "social experiment" series. Have you seen any of these yet? They're like if a bunch of fifth-graders studied sociology and had to do a show-and-tell project with people they recruited based on their propensity for engaging in constant malapropism.

Fortunately, I found it all on YouTube, and what I learned is that everyone is xenophobic and stupid and that all varieties of queers hate each other. Except Hedda Lettuce, who just hates not being the center of attention. Tyra, oddly enough, found her panel of gays (a lipstick lesbian, a butch lesbian, a feminine gay guy, a masculine gay guy, a bisexual guy, a transgender woman, and Hedda Lettuce) to be somewhat reactionary and conservative and called them on it, before wondering aloud why all you ever see on TV are feminine lesbians and feminine gay men.

Answer for the CEO of Bankable Productions: Straight men still run television.

While I waited for the replacement TiVo to show up, I got to watch some TV in real time. So many shows are on the air that I've never seen or heard of. Like that sitcom with David Spade. About some people who are married, I think. Who watches that? I'll watch Sci Fi Channel movies like Mansquito over and over before I get to shows like that, which could be part of the problem.

But I was grateful to real-time network television for the chance to enjoy Hilary Duff go gritty but still have perfect hair on an episode of Law & Order: SVU. She was the young, trashy, irresponsible party girl who leaves her infant with a person she doesn't know and then the kid gets killed. It was great, a Max Fischer Players version of Gone Baby Gone. When Hilary whines in her best one-note delivery, "I DIDN'T KILL MY BABY!" not only do you finally get the petulance she was going for in the comedy Material Girls, where she played a spoiled heiress alongside her sister Haylie, but you understand the deep, brave emotions of motherhood that much better.

Getting back to Tyra's observation about the feminine gay man's ubiquity in the media, I also saw Inside Dish With Ross Mathews. It's his Web series that looks like it's made in the corner of someone's studio apartment. Ross was that squealy gay kid who was Ross the Intern on The Tonight Show where the joke was that he was super-excited about everything and really, really gay.

That's still Ross's thing. But now he gets to dress in a jacket and really nice plaid necktie while interviewing Beyonce about nothing much at all. Some people are going to hate Ross for how he is. Not me.

First of all, I'm fascinated by extremely high-pitched voices in grown men. And Ross's is high like in the way that people will think you're trying fake to be a lady on the phone. And I appreciate his aesthetic-of-emptiness approach to celebrities. He just wants to pal around. I don't think he asked Beyonce one real question about Obsessed. Because really, who cares about the typical boring movie junket question and rote answer besides the local news and Extra ? No one, that's who. It's a better deal to sing "Halo" in her presence to see how she reacts. Some may call you a regression, Ross, but I know you're just out there hustlin' for that paper.

And yes, I'm late to the party on this one, but isn't Miss California awesome? She's crazy tall with those big round fakeys we all enjoy so much, got that snotty smelled-a-fart face on all the time when she's not fake-smiling or telling journalists that their questions for her are "inappropriate" in that way that only conservative evangelicals can.

But I don't get the fuss. In her original statement to Perez Hilton she said what made the country great was that you could choose same-sex marriage or "opposite" marriage. Which means she's for us being able to get married to whomever we choose, right? That's how I heard it.

Meanwhile her commercial for the NOM NOM NOM people is also kind of amazing. She's just one pie in the face away from being a Halloween costume this fall.