I WATCH TOO MUCH TV

A) Everybody on TV tonight was from some other show. I was watching Beautiful People and it had that girl from Melrose and, later that guy from Melrose that was on 90210 for an episode or two. Then I saw an ad for a TV movie with the guy from Ed. Then I was watching Boston Legal. Whoa mamma. You've got Kirk from Star Trek and the guy from The Practice. But also the assistant principal from Boston Public, Karen's friend from Will & Grace, Carol from Ed (again with the Ed!) and the woman from Melrose (again with the Melrose!) and also Brandon's dad from 90210 (again with the 90210!) along with, of course, Rose from Golden Girls and Murphy Brown. (In case you are wondering, the dude from Benson wasn't in this episode.)

B) The logo was totally on that shark.

CHICAGO TRADITIONS

After having established outposts all over the Chicago, the Billy Goat Tavern, a favorite hangout among the city's journalists, has established it's first location outside of Chicagoland: The Billy Goat Tavern - Washington D.C.

It seems the National Association of Realtors, which houses the Billy Goat at its Chicago headquarters, has opened new offices on Capitol Hill and wanted to take a piece of Chicago with them. You can check out the coverage in the Trib, and the Sun-Times. The Post couldn't be reached for comment.

But while one Chicago icon expands, another is on its death bed. Marshall Field's will be rebranded as Macy's next year. Some people are pissed. Roeper couldn't care less. Neither does Marshall Field V. But that last story does reveal that the small boutique store in Lake Forest will continue on as a Macy's. I find that hard to believe, but if it does it will be the smallest Macy's EVER. Anyway, the Trib's David Greising had a good column about the change.

IN OTHER NEWS: Gillette decides to fuck everything and go five blades. You may remember this story from the Onion, which now marks the first time a report in the Onion has proved to be true.

HEY THERE, BLOG! HOW'S THINGS?

Ok... where were we?

Gawker reports that former TDP features editor Matt Dellinger may or may not have been arrested for the public consumption of Brooklyn's finest lager. We're not really sure. Bloggers aren't so much into tracking down "facts" as much as repeating "rumors" and "innuendo." Glad I could do my part.

I was, however, surprised to see Dellinger pop up on Gawker's radar. But then I realized he's been on there quite a bit (see Not all history is written by the winners, New Yorker vs. CJR, Survival of the prettiest, and One of these things is not like the other). Frankly, though, I have no need to read Internet reports of Matt's "well-oiled machine" thank you very much.

So I'm not sure whether Dellinger's stock has gone up in my book or if Gawker's stock has gone down. I'm leaning towards the latter.

MAIL BAG: Mike wants to hear my take on the iPod Nano. Mike, clearly, is a fool because my take on the iPod Mini was that it was too expensive and nobody would buy it. So what do I know. Instead, check out the iTunes 5 Announcement From the Perspective of an Anthropomorphized Brushed Metal User Interface Theme.

Meanwhile Weaver wants to hear my take on the newly redesigned IndyStar.com. Well, I think it's great! A redesign befitting Indiana's No. 1 Local Media Site! [Note to bosses: Give me a raise!]

WHAT ELSE? Oh yes! I'm Oscar. Dot com.

QUICK NOTE

If you want to see satellite imagery of the flooding in New Orleans, you can do a search for New Orleans in Google maps and there is now a Kartrina tab you can click.

WE READ THE BLOGS

Looks like sat phones aren't the only thing the Merc is loaning to Biloxi. My friend Kevin is down there helping the herculean effort to get the paper out. Read his report via Newsdesigner. Awesome.

Meanwhile, a post over at VizEds pointed us to a CJR story that wonders if the press's self-censorship has done a disservice to the relief effort.

And in non-hurricane news: Are flash-based color iPod Minis on the way?

TRYIN' TO REASON WITH THE HURRICANE SEASON

Kudos to Ace Indy Star Designer Ryan Hildebrandt for a great front page Wednesday. Indiana got their 50 cents worth yesterday.

Meanwhile, I got to thinking about the emergency plans that some newspapers have for covering disasters. Back at the Merc, we had done test runs for publishing a newspaper off-site after a catastrophic earthquake. One wonders if any of the Gulf papers had similar plans in place. But with all the emphasis Knight Ridder puts on planning, I had to laugh when I saw this little tidbit about the Biloxi Sun-Herald from a story in yesterday's Trib:

"While the Sun Herald had an emergency plan in place well ahead of Katrina's noisy arrival, it wasn't of much use since it relied heavily on the use of the Tallahassee Democrat. Earlier this month, Gannett acquired the Democrat from Knight Ridder."

Ha!

Then I saw this:

"Knight Ridder sent assistant vice president for news Bryan Monroe from its San Jose, Calif., headquarters to Atlanta on Sunday, armed with satellite phones."

So Biloxi's emergency publishing plan involves using the Merc's sat phones? Awesome.

Okay, I'm out. Don't forget to shop Kittle's Labor Day Sale!