It was laborious, indeed!

Today took a lot out of dear M'Lynn, and not just because the weather outside was BLEAK and led her to eat two lunches. Summer weather seems to have just disappeared in a flash, and now that Labor Day has passed, the pop-culture forces have come out SWINGING! M'Lynn is tired tonight, and here's why:

** No sooner had I parked my fanny into my chair at work this morning then I realized that my normal routine was interrupted. NBC is now playing 'Martha' at 10a and shuffled poor 'Ellen' to 4p. This would be fine with M'Lynn--who can now TiVo an entire hour of 'Martha' without sacrificing 'The View,' but now how am I supposed to watch 'Ellen' AND 'Orpah' if they're on in competing time slots?! Dear readers, this may just call for M'Lynn to have to start checking the guest lists and recording accordingly every day; I'm just not sure I have the mental wherewithal to cope with watching Orpah's daily lovefest a day later if I have to record the rerun at 1:30a.

** I barely had time to absorb this crisis before I realized that, ohshit, ROSIE WAS MAKING HER GRAND DEBUT ON 'THE VIEW' AT THAT VERY SECOND! I grabbed furiously for the TiVo remote, nearly knocking over my pile of remotes in the process, as I made sure the TV could switch to channel 7 for the very first bark. What did you all think? Clearly, Ro didn't disappoint since she dominated the entire fucking hour, but I dunno about this one...that woman can DOMINATE to the point where poor Baba Wawa looked like she was ready to put on her Blu-Blockers and call it a career. Joy Behar held up nicely with her Japanese kid comment, and I must applaud that old gasbag because she finally had the guts to say what the rest of us were thinking. Seriously, I live for the day when Ro stops imitating her children. And Hasselanus? Well, she did all right, I guess. The honest-to-God truth is that she knows Ro could physically overpower her in about .05 seconds, so she's on decent--if petulant--behavior. Me, I prefer a nice slow boil with this one...the eventual blowout, it's becoming quite evident, will definitely be worth the wait.

** I hadn't even finished watching 'The View' and somebody put the advance two-hour copy of 'America's Next Top Model' in my hand. There is a contestant on this season whose name is Melrose. I plan to watch it when I finish typing this blog entry; at this point, I'm starting to wonder why I even stopped to do this because clearly the season is going to be stellar. There's a contestant named Melrose. Fucking Melrose! To quoth Amber from the world's second-greatest movie only to Waiting for Guffman: 'We're going to Melrose.'

** Things were looking pretty lazy for the rest of the day until I received a text message from the supergoddess at 6:37 p.m. with a succinct critique of a somebody named Katie C. At which point, I realized that, ohshit, Katie Couric was making her CBS News debut and I had forgotten to turn my TV back on and watch the fucking thing! Now, I have to be honest, folks: As much as the tone and tenor of TV news takes me back to a warm, fuzzy memory of my grandparents' home and even my own home growing up, I never watch the damn TV news and find no real reason to do so given the fact that I can Google and Wikipedia my way into information overload these days. So I have no real critique of tonight's program beyond the following: Please stop putting Katie in those godawful Hillary C. blazers. THey don't work on her. Please tell me that Morgan Spurlock is not the new Andy Rooney. I don't think we need another one. And please, for the love of God, when you are making the biggest change to your broadcast in years, DON'T FRICKIN' LET YOUR SUPERSTAR BE UPSTAGED BY THE MOST FAMOUS NEVER-SEEN PERSON IN THE WORLD! THEY UNVEILED LIL' POMPADANUS' PHOTO ON THE AIR AND I TOTES FORGOT THAT KATIE COURIC WAS EVEN ON MY SCREEN!

Today wore me out, kids, in all the right ways. Here's to a happy fall of big-name blowouts!