This just in

From TV Guide online: "John Leguizamo to join cast of ER."

Which means his career is DOA.

Laguna bleach and other woes

Been watching TV more often than writing about it. Thassaway it goes sometimes. When MTV's running a Laguna Beach marathon, it's better than a fistful of Ambien. Between naps I can watch "LC" get drunk with Stephen in Rosarita, Meheeko, while back in Cali, her nemesis -- her bleached blond Dr. Evil in Antik jeans -- Kristin, strolls the avenues, terrorizing lesser mortals. And what's with Talan, falling for Kristin's obvious come-ons? And who's the goateed satyr cutting through Laguna's teen girl tribes like a surfboard through a sweet curl? It's all too, too wonderful. Other blogs claim LC has a job with Teen Vogue. I'll bet she's one of those girls who call magazines "books," because they've never read the other kind.

Still haven't found Situation: Comedy, which Bravo has hidden deeper than Catherine Zeta Jones' birth certificate.

Still loving Kathy Griffin and her D-list life.

Brat Camp came to a blizzardy end with all the kids being reunited with their 'rents as the cameras rolled and the music swelled. Then we were treated to a 20-minute "follow-up" to find out how well the rehab "took" with the 9 kids on the show. Two went back to their old ways immediately. The mean boy was arrested for painting racial slurs on some public building. And Jada, always ID'd onscreen as "habitual liar," talked her folks into taking her out of boarding school and she went right back to being a user and a loser. She's Jerri Blank with better hair.

Big Brother 6 remains unwatchable, though I try. I really try. That Howie guy is a goon.

Then comes the coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Now we know it's not a real show until Anderson Cooper shows up to do those terrifying remotes from the eye of the storm. And there he was on CNN, his 80-lb frame buffeted by the winds so hard I was worried he might snap in two and his crunchy, light filling spilled for all to see. Local anchors repeatedly mispronounced "Biloxi," reporters' cell phones seemed to cut out just when it was their turn to talk and one channel kept playing a piece of tape of a poor man telling a reporter that he'd watched his wife float away in the flood waters. Too, too tragic to be used as TV fodder.

That's the sort of reality TV that TV doesn't do well. They don't seem to know what to do or say when things get really bad in these natural disasters.

The other reality TV writes better scripts.

Filthy Rich: All that's wrong with America

For Brat Camp 2, let's ship off all the spoiled young scions currently whining their way through Filthy Rich: Cattle Drive (E!). What a bunch of spoiled little pussies.

The premise is the old fish-out-of-water trick. They've taken a bunch of Beverly Hills 20-somethings and plonked them onto a Colorado cattle ranch. They're supposed to go on a cattle drive from one place to another, camping in teepees along the way. These kids on horseback look like those circus bears riding bicycles around the center ring. It just looks so wrong.

Among the rich brats: some oily club kid named Fabian Basabe; Alex Quinn, one of Anthony's 12 spawn; Brittny Gastineau, on a break from that creepy reality show in which she and her mom both hit on the same guys; Noah Blake, Robert's son, who keeps saying "We'll murder you!" to the other team; Courtenay Semel, daughter of the Yahoo! CEO; Shanna Ferrigno, the Hulk's kid; and Kourtney Kardashian, daughter of the only defense lawyer at the O.J. trial who registered shock at the not guilty verdict. Maybe a few others who don't get much screen time because they're even more boring than this other bunch.

Ms. Semel was seen dialing up daddy on her cell and begging him to "call the network or something" because the ranch experience was "too abnormally hard."

That description might also apply to the young Mr. Quinn, who can be seen hitting on Semel, Gastineau and Basabe. I think this kid was one of the offspring Anthony forgot to include in his will. So he's looking for the on-ramp to easy street, even if that means exploring both genders of ramp.

Kill Reality is wonderful in that horrible reality TV whores-that-score way. More about that one later.

Oh, my lord! I just heard Billy Bush of Access Hollywood call himself a journalist. That's like Tara Reid calling herself a diplomat because she hosts a travel show.

Kathy Griffin: D-List? Delicious

She called him "Clay Gay-kin."

Oh, no, she di'n't! Oh, yes, she did!

Kathy Griffin's D-List, now on in multiple reruns on Bravo (is there ANY other channel for reality shows this summer?), is the Sara Lee pound cake of TV series: not too heavy, not too light, very tasty, with a hint of sweetness and able to complement (if not compliment) whatever's on it. Whether she's grubbing for a free couch or kibbitzing with her parents, Kathy is the girl we'd most like to be a bridesmaid with, the chick with whom we'd most like to run the female triathlon (brunch, shopping, mani-pedis).

Her stand-up is killer. She just dishes -- Anna Nicole, Whitney (oh, girl, why hasn't she started in on Being Bobby Brown?), the American Idol kids. It's like she's hooked up to an IV of America's celebrity Zeitgeist juice.

Now, what is my Bravo doing with my Situation: Comedy show? Jerking it around, that's what. Moving it to Friday.

CBS' morning show intro'd the 16 castaways for Survivor: Guatamala. And like everything else that pathetic excuse to flip to the Today Show does, I ignored it. If there's a Chen talking about, my remote can't click fast enough. If Miss C. weren't married to the head of the network, she'd be lucky to be hosting Dialing for Dollars on the UPN station in Boise.

Surrealer than ever

Upon first meeting her archnemesis, Ms. Dickinson said, "I thought Rick James had come back from the dead."

Excellent write-up of Surreal Life in the NYT. But even though the reporter gets to fondle fake tits and pronounce them remarkably realistic, the story only scratches the Botoxed surface of the weirdness of the match-up between "world's first supermodel" Janice Dickinson and reality-TV Medusa, Omarosa Hyphenated-Last-Name. How surreal is this show? Omarosa is the most normal one in the house. You actually start to like the woman. That's how bizarro-world the others are.

Castmate Bronson Pinchot has slipped over from adorable TV nerd (he was Balki on Perfect Strangers back in the 1980s) into exceedingly creepy, combed-over has-been. And there are three people on the show I've never seen or heard of before and I watch everything.

Missed Brat Camp last night. But I'm told tonight's new sitcom, Starved, is a do-not-miss. Perhaps the time has come again for more comedy born from eating disorders. TV's needed a new one ever since Friends was canceled.

Cooking with Ramsay

Michael the tattooed guy won Hell's Kitchen. But what was that sudden reversal of prizes at the end? All along, we were told that the winner of Gordon Ramsay's become-a-chef-in-six-weeks contest would be awarded his own restaurant. Michael even had a name for his: Lola Pop. So when Michael was announced the top chef (over the creepy Ralph, who had scary Chiclet teeth), all of a sudden Gordon is heard in voiceover: "I couldn't let talent like this get away." So he offers Michael a job in London, cooking alongside him in one of the Ramsay restaurants. And Michael says yes, he'll go.

Own your own restaurant or move across the Atlantic to work in someone else's? Was there a bait and switch going on here? Just wonderin'. If I were Michael, I'd have said, "Stuff your job offer. I just proved on national TV that I'm a damn fine chef." And then waited for the job offers.

Seriously considered today canceling Comcast cable. Unplugging. Totally. Comcast just posted a 64 percent jump in profits from their digital cable sales. Sickening. Half the time I can't get all my digital channels. This morning all the local channels went to snow for a couple of hours. I've seen "This channel will return shortly" on the screen more than I've seen BBC-America or Bravo. Comcast blows. Don't need HBO till March 2006 when Sopranos returns. Till then I could bank about $700 that Comcast doesn't deserve.

Situation: Comedy was even better tonight than last week. The Sperm Donor script team outswam the Stephen's Life team in the rewrites and castings. The show is a good behind-the-scenes peek at how the gametes meet to become TV comedies.

And poor Danny of Real World: Austin. The cap-city of the Lone Star State hasn't been a happy place for him since the day he moved in. First he had his cheek broken by a drunken yeehaw on Sixth Street and then tonight's ep shows his dad calling to tell him his mom had died suddenly. On Valentine's Day. Slutty Mel hung on him like kudzu -- just what you want when you're plunged into inconsolable grief. And off he flew to the funeral in Boston. Sad for the kid.