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The show will return with new episodes on March 30.

Love the song, though I've always found the video a little weird (I guess the song is supposed to combat the desolation). I also like how they're kind of poking fun at their overexposure of the time.

Oh, absolutely. I was being a little facetious about not knowing if she was in Unrivaled, as I'm sure it would have been mentioned immediately if she was in it! I doubt it will get much in terms of ratings (they do have a fair number of sponsors at least), but most of the games have been competitive...except for whatever that was I watched with Sabrina, Satou, BG and company. Sabrina was apparently the last player to sign on for the league and though she wasn't as bad (offensively) as her teammates, it's concerning that she still has her shooting hand taped up, so maybe she should have passed on this. It was reported (though she and team won't confirm) that she has something torn in her hand that was expected to heal on its own. That was like three months ago.

Tonight I heard "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers and suddenly had the realization that Bruce Willis covered the song on his debut album (which I used to listen to constantly in 6th/7th grade). Between that, his hit version of the Staple Singers' "Respect Yourself" and "Youngblood," I think there were a lot of songs I heard for the first time without even knowing they were covers at the time (which is a little embarrassing)!

This song may have already been mentioned, but "Wildfire" by Michael Martin Murphey is very sad. When Soft Rock plays it I usually change the channel because I don't want to hear about the pony running off into the blizzard and the girl dying trying to find him. Today I happened to wake up in the middle of my nap just as it started, but I didn't bother to change the channel because I figured I was already depressed anyway, so I might as well listen to it. On the other hand, I started to laugh over "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars because even the opening notes always take me back to when it was played in a montage at the beginning of Mary Hart's final episode of Entertainment Tonight as they showed photos and footage of her and fawned over her in what I found to be a hilariously over-the-top way!

Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier have founded a 3X3 league called Unrivaled which features 36 WNBA players and starts tomorrow. It is designed to give players a higher paycheck so that they don't have to go overseas. I don't really know how it works, but I was surprised to see that they have national TV coverage for all the games, on TNT or TruTV (also streaming on Max). I'm pretty sure Caitlin Clark isn't a part of it, or they'd probably mention it. I will be watching the games for the "Phantoms" because Sabrina and Satou are playing together.

Gametime has come up with another annoying ad. This time they have two guys talking about how it helped them get a good deal on tickets for the game, which is fine (and they actually occasionally have ads where showing why people should use the product is the only focus). Then they wonder how their friends who didn't use it are doing, and it pans up to the back row of the stadium--except the way they do the camera work is strange, so it seems like the guys with the "good" tickets are only about ten rows ahead of them. The part I don't like is when one of the guys in the back row sadly says that he spent hours to get these seats, and one of his "friends" calls him trash. (It might be the same actor from an earlier ad where a guy tells a stranger who paid more, "I'm a better fan than you," but maybe it just seems that way because both are jerks.) This ad probably just hits too close to home because it reminds me of spending most of a day online when tickets went on sale for all dates in the first season of a ballpark and I could only get the back row even for a weeknight game against a team that wasn't popular. (Gametime wouldn't have done any good if it had existed then.) My father would not stop making jokes about how high up/far back the seats were, which I didn't appreciate!

Lee DeWyze is scheduled to perform on The Kelly Clarkson Show next Thursday.

There are two new ads for Freshpet. In one of them, a woman's mother comes over and, as in all their ads, complains about dog food in the fridge, only to have the woman reply with their dumb slogan. Unlike the previous ads, it seems like the mother gets kicked out not for getting overly worked up about the food, but because she sneers, "I should have known" when she finds out that the "Peter" her daughter has met is a dog. It isn't too annoying for a Freshpet ad. In the other one, Steve Schrippa plays a mobster and his character and friends apparently kill a guy for complaining about there being dog food in the fridge. I know they're mobsters and it's presented as "humorous," but this might be a slight overreaction!

Carrie presented some guy with a Platinum Ticket on Rockin' New Year's Eve. (I guess they don't care if it's not a surprise when they get to that part of the auditions in the upcoming season.)

The series finale was on again last night, and there's one part toward the end that I always wondered about. When Khadijah is giving her speech, she says, "Like Kyle said, we've all gone through a lot of changes." I wish that they would have actually shown Kyle's speech (which they probably didn't care about as much as the others because T.C. had been fired), at least on the DVD. I remember the network liaison telling us some stuff on the FOX message boards, but I don't think she detailed his speech. She said that Khadijah joked about doing a rap but that Synclaire stole her thunder. Then one of the characters (Overton?) says she looks like Queen Latifah and Khadijah replies, "She looks like me; I'm older," which is kind of funny. They also had an inside joke about the fact that the network ignored the show and simply let its episodes run out the last season once the ratings declined, rather than making much of any acknowledgement of its end. After Khadijah leaves with Scooter and closes the door, the phone rings and a woman says she has the president of FOX on the line (presumably to now say they wanted more episodes). It sounded like some of the people behind the scenes got a good laugh out of that.

I don't know if they had planned it in advance when they put together a schedule or if it just happened, but it's nice that Still the Place ended up having the first season Christmas episode this week. I always liked that episode. It looked especially good compared to 90210's unintentionally hilarious homage to It's a Wonderful Life that aired just before it. It's such a feel-good episode (compared to most of the rage-inducers this show would be known for later) that I decided I actually want to watch it again (even though I know it doesn't work out in the end for either of the couples I like, stupidly). I thought I would have to pull out an old VHS copy from style/E!, even though the VCRs are not with the TVs where it is most comfortable to watch. But I tried saying "Melrose Place" into the remote, and it turns out all episodes are available for free on Pluto TV! I remember at school after the Christmas episode we commented on how weird it was for Michael to bring Kimberly to the building for dinner (even with eating with the others) while Jane was out of town. The ladies on the podcast speculated that Josie may have been on her honeymoon; otherwise even if they wanted to focus on Michael and Kimberly, they could have had Jane appear at the beginning and then leave. It was funny how Daphne finally told Courtney and Laura to knock it off with their constant jokes about Alison's enlarged uterus. It had gone on long enough, but it was still funny when they slipped in one last one after that. ETA: The episode was really good, with the exception of the lame replacement music. This show wasn't one that relied heavily on music, but it was weird for Jake and Jo to make out while some woman is singing "Silent Night." I later checked my VHS tape (which wasn't real happy about coming out of hibernation), and even when I recorded the episode from style in 2003 they still had Elvis singing "Merry Christmas Baby" in that scene. The other songs replaced were "Jingle Bell Rock" by Randy Travis in the establishing shots and "Holly Jolly Christmas" by Burl Ives when Alison was in the apartment (maybe when she was crying? I didn't specify in the episode guide). Replacing those weren't as weird. I think most of the music in the show was establishing shots, except for when they kept trying to promote the 90210 soundtrack or their own soundtrack in the background of scenes (which I used to snark about in the guide). Even though it was a nice holiday episode, I did have to laugh when Kimberly showed up and was introduced. I pretended she said, "I'm going to blow this place up in a couple years!" I also liked how Jo was suddenly in the Christmas spirit at the end. Of course all that making out with Jake probably helped.

I saw Rickey play in his rookie year in the first game I ever attended (though I don't remember it because I was 3). I do remember seeing him play a couple times for the A's and twice for San Diego later. He almost singlehandedly brought the A's back in the 9th inning of one of the games. He singled with two outs and of course stole second. After Mark McGwire was walked, the next batter hit a dribbler right to the third baseman near the base--but Rickey beat him to the bag to keep the game going. I can still picture his fired-up reaction (though the next batter made an out). Besides being a great hitter, it was amazing how he could affect the game in ways like that with his speed. My mom's brother met him once on a plane, when his job had him fly first class. When he recognized Rickey, my uncle could tell from his facial reaction that he was like, "Oh crap!" and afraid people would start bothering him, so my uncle just kept quiet about it.

I hadn't even noticed the dog's name somehow, even though that commercial has been on about 10,000 times in the last week. In the commercial for Wegovy, the lady starts by saying something like, "Have trouble keeping the weight off? Same!" But it sounded to me like she was saying, "Sing!" so the first couple times I saw it, I thought it was going to be one of those ads where everyone bursts into song and that they were trying to make it interactive for some reason by encouraging the viewers to also sing. I find it odd in that ad that everyone just sees a group of people walking and joins in without bothering to ask what is going on, but it makes me laugh because it reminds me of a story my uncle once shared about my grandparents visiting him in Europe. He and Grandpa were doing something for a minute, and apparently Grandma saw some people walking somewhere and ended up joining them somehow. My uncle came back and was like, "Mom, why are you marching in the Communist parade?"

Article about some actors in recurring roles.