I think you know by now that I'm breathlessly awaiting this week's final couple of nights of "Dancing With the Stars."
Of course, I'm fully aware the championship has already been decided.
And only the big bosses at ABC-TV know the winners.
I've been saying for weeks that "Dancing" is fixed, just like all those other TV shows are fixed that show people being, sometimes dramatically, voted off.
All those votes you keep sending in don't mean a thing. I'll bet the network doesn't even count 'em.
Shawn Johnson, Our Own Little Princess, and What's-His-Name, her partner [shown in the photo at the right], have taken the ABC-TV show as far as it needs to go in this celebrity-struck, TV-ratings conscious society.
I'm absolutely certain that everybody from truck drivers in Delaware to outfielders and third basemen in the Cubs-Cardinals baseball series in St. Louis will stop doing whatever it is they're doing to watch Shawn, Melissa and the gang Tuesday night.
The way I look at it, Gilles Marini and his partner [I guess her name is Cheryl Burke] are going to win this thing, and Shawn and her partner [is Mark Ballas his name?] are going to be the very, very close runnersup.
We'll see.
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All I know is, I hope Our Little Shawn puts on a tremendous show as all this drama winds down.
I wouldn't want the rankings to depend on what her male partner does.
After all, I've got some ideas about male dancers, which haven't changed for more than 70 years. But that's a column for another day.
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I also wonder about a couple of the judges on "Dancing With the Stars" -- neither of whom is named Carrie Ann Inaba.
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People keep telling me that Our Little Shawn isn't so little anymore.
I've even heard it at the sportswriters' lunch.
They think she's put on a pound or several since she was flying through the air in the Olympics gymnastics competition.
No one has bothered [or had the gumption] to ask Shawn or her "people" [notice I didn't say "handlers"] in the interviews I've seen, but I guess I think she probably doesn't fit into the clothes she wore a year ago.
I try to not make a habit of looking to see if a 17-year-old girl is putting on weight, but I guess Shawn's [pardon the expression] thighs look a bit wider to me, and her belly isn't exactly flat.
But, hey, what do you expect? The girl is only as high as a thumbtack.
Every meal is an anemy.
And, what the heck, she's not even old enough yet to drink the beer that all other Valley High School students drink.
Legally anyway.
When that happens, she'll really have to be careful.
But, of course, down the road, she'll be able to make a lot of money being the spokeswoman for Jenny Craig, just like all the other girls who start getting plump.
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Speaking of food, a guy asked me if Perry Washburn has thanked me for what I wrote about his new pizza cookbook.
"Not yet," I said, "but I know my column about him has probably been responsible for selling a ton of his "Pizza Night With Perry" books.
"I'm fairly certain Perry and the missus will be inviting me out to the house for lunch any day now."
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I see my good friend Marc Hansen got talked into appearing on somebody's radio show yesterday, and he wrote that the guy poked fun at his columns.
What an asshole.
I should have told Marc to be careful with something like that.
Those radio guys like to do that kind of stuff. Get the best-read local columnist behind a microphone and laugh at him.
I once heard that the first thing a new radio announcer [when people still listened to the radio] or a new TV anchor would like to do is take on the No. 1 newspaper columnist in a city so the radio or TV guy could get big ratings right away.
They knew that the public would always like the TV or radio guy better than the newspaper guy [or girl].
For the paper's sake, it's a good thing that radio guy yesterday didn't invite Rekha Basu on the show.
If Basu had agreed to be a guest, the guy really would've had something to make fun of.
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The next time somebody invites Hansen onto a radio show, I hope he's there to talk about a cookbook he's written. People always like to hear that about newspeople have written a cookbook. Remember when Jim Zabel was selling a cookbook?
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One more thing about Scott Pierce wondering why the paper doesn't use what's written in the best blogs written by the sports reporters and columnist in the paper.
I'll do 'em a favor one of these days and put together a "Best Of the Blogs" that could -- and should -- be used instead of the boss's hard-hitting "In the Loop" on page 2 of the Sunday paper.
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I tried to find a business section in today's paper, but couldn't. Not even one page. Man, do miss Work Bytes.
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Speaking of the business section, I think there'll be one Tuesday. That's when Biz Buzz appears. This is a memo to the Biz Buzz team: Don't forget to run an item on Perry Washburn's cookbook. Remember, he's the boss's wife.
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I see that Jon Gruden, who doesn't have a coaching job, is replacing Tony Kornheiser on Monday Night Football. That's about as significant as Jim Walden , who hasn't had a coaching job for 15 years, replacing Dale Williams, who died a while back.
