My satellite TV provider has dropped a slew of channels from its offerings overnight, due to a contract dispute with Viacom.

The channels?  No biggie:  BET, Comedy Central, MTV, MTV2, MTV Espanol, Nickelodeon, Nick Games & Sports, Noggin, VH1, VH1 Classic and CBS.

The good news, of course, is that my provider is, as always, looking out for my best interests.  And in compensation for this loss of service, they’ll be refunding me a shiny new dollar each month!

Time, I think, to do a little service-shopping.

Ack.  After years of devoted Buffy fandom, it took months for me to recover from the show’s semi-untimely (though extraordinarily well-done) end.

Now, after finally this year getting involved in Angel, I find out that they’re shutting that one down, too?

This may be more disappointment than I can handle today.

[UPDATE, 02.15.04, 2.45 pm:  There’s a petition aimed at persuading the WB to save the series.]

Everybody’s talking about the Super Bowl, whether they watched it or not.  It’s the big game, the final conflict, the metaphor to end all metaphors.

I didn’t, in fact, watch the game.  Honestly, I forgot it was That Weekend, and wouldn’t even have known who was playing if someone hadn’t told me.  It would be mathematically impossible for me to care any less about pro football, and so I intended here to make some LSU-related joke, suggesting that the so-called “super” bowl took place weeks ago, and in fact, it was pretty super.  But the ironies of this internet thing just ran away with my humor.

It seems that there are a whole lotta folks out there looking for information about what I can only assume to be the Janet Jackson/Justin Timberlake/wardrobe-related program activity malfunction, and that they’re looking for it by googling (or yahooing, which seems appropriate) “halftime,” which is landing them square in the middle of my commentary on that empirically more Super of Bowls.

So:  on the one hand, Janet Jackson, a tear-away costume, and some quickly Drudge-identified [probably NSFW] nipular hardware.  On the other, Snoop, two football uniforms (plus a bonus Sherlock Holmes costume, for free!), and a little semiotic-coiffure mystery.

I know where my vote goes.

Inspired in part by the wonderful pulchritude, and in part by my own overindulgences, I’ve undertaken a plan of (somewhat) radical detoxing.  The most significant aspect of my pretty much semi-annual attempt to achieve a less chemical existence is giving up caffeine, which has the immediate effect of making me feel as though someone is driving a railroad spike through my temporal lobe.  Not good when one is frantically trying to finish up work on a manuscript about which one is decidedly ambivalent anyway.

The good news is that, as of last night, about 7:00 pm CDT, after two days of head-splitting and general depression, the pall lifted.  Headache gone.  Not thinking entirely clearly yet, but no longer feeling quite the same urge to dash in front of a streetcar, either.

What made the difference?  Either the simple passage of time, or last night’s replay of the Buffy musical.  You decide.

Entertainment Weekly recently reported on the latest shady doings from the world of la cosa nostra: Fairuza Balk, who appeared in The Sopranos‘ third-season finale as undercover FBI agent Deborah Ciccerone, tasked to approach Drea de Matteo’s Adriana La Cerva for a little girl-talk, has been replaced for season four by Lola Glaudini, formerly of NYPD Blue.

Not such big news:  the two Darrins made this kind of TV-switcheroo years ago, and Agent Ciccerone’s hardly as focal as that.

Except that David Chase et al have taken this replacement to Huxleyan lengths, reshooting Balk’s scenes with Glaudini in the role for the upcoming (August 27) season three DVD release.

Reports suggest that Balk has entered the witness protection program.  And about that, we’ll say no more.