TVSquad

To some people, George Clooney's affable good nature and sincerity comes off as smug over-confidence. I fall into the former rather than the latter category.

I think George is ambitious and grateful to be working in the business. I think he remembers the years of struggling to become a star -- those years on The Facts of Life and Riptide and E/R (the Elliott Gould sitcom, not the Emmy award-winning NBC medical drama).

Failures like Leatherheads have to keep him humble. Anyway, his efforts to expand as an actor and director and producer strike me as someone who is wisely not resting on his laurels. That said, today it was reported that Clooney's production company, Smoke House, is behind a new pilot for Showtime called The Fall of Bob.

At least once a week, someone will write me an email asking me to "settle a bet" or "ease their mind" about some trivia question that they can't seem to find the answer to. I'm also happy to use my knowledge to help out in any way I can.

On my own weekly podcast, I always ask a trivia question that I consider to be somewhat simple although difficult to research online. Rarely do I get a correct answer. So I thought I would use the TV Squad forum to give readers a chance to answer the trivia questions as well.

So here is the first question inspired by the great Boston Legal episode, 'Son of the Defender'. Good luck.

As we all get ready to eat way too much pie and nap/shop (choose your own adventure) away a couple days it's time to give thanks for that which is good in television land. So, this year, I'm thankful for...

1: Tivo. I resisted the siren's call of Tivo for a long time, opting instead to stick with the complex system of tapes, VCR's and my computer that had kept me up to date for years. But finally, after hearing again and again from the TV Squad readers to just get a Tivo already, I did. And it has been as good as everyone said it would be. I'll say it. You were all right. I was wrong.

I'm still hoping for all the goodies to work with OS X, or dare I say, Ubuntu, but for now I can begrudgingly run Windows. The ability to archive shows to another machine is fantastic, and if you do the math, it works out to about the same price as using tapes for storage anyway.