On July 26 at 11:00 p.m., Bravo's new docu-series Welcome to the Parker will debut. It will then fall into its regular timeslot of Thursdays at 10:00 p.m. starting August 2.
The new series takes a look inside the five-star Parker Palms Springs hotel, run by Samir Chraibi. Some episodes will include a suite being trashed by Hollywood types, someone demanding a full-time pillow fluffer and similar problems and encounters average folks like you and I will never experience.
Like almost all of it's other programming, Bravo is also utilizing its Web presences to get people revved up about the show. The staff of the Parker will keep blogs on BravoTV.com. The site will also feature preview videos and extended scenes from previous episodes.
There was a great piece on last week's episode of This American Life (the radio version) by John Hodgman about how television has changed his life. John Hodgman is, as many of you know, a regular contributor on The Daily Show and also plays "P.C." in those popular Mac ads.
Bravo is developing a new reality series called Money Shot that pits photographers against one another for the chance to have their pictures appear in the pages of People. The photographers will take place in a number of different competitions and have their work judged by a panel of experts who either work as photographers, or who have been shot by famous photographers. I'm not entirely sure why having your picture taken makes you an expert anymore than listening to music makes you a musician, but no one at Bravo has asked me, so what the heck do I know?
On January 3 at 7pm, the PBS series American Masters will profile famous photographer Annie Leibovitz, who has provided us with some of the most striking and memorable images of the past few decades. Leibovitz is responsible for the Rolling Stone cover featuring Yoko Ono and a naked John Lennon, and has shot equally intriguing photos of other celebs, including Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg and the artist Christo. 
In case you missed 
There's an old British 'Where Are They Now'-type special up 
Here's a bit o' fun for your Sunday. I don't know how long it's been around, but I recently found the 
PBS' American Masters series will be airing a two-part special on the life of eccentric New York artist Andy Warhol tonight and tomorrow night with both parts airing at 9 pm. Warhol's career spanned over thirty years, his most notable work probably being his paintings of Campbell's Soup cans and his multicolored images of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe. His multimedia show "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable" introduced the world to the band The Velvet Underground. Andy Warhol: A Documentary Film was directed by Ric Burns, who previously made documentaries on playwright Eugene O'Neill and photographer Ansel Adams. Ric is the brother of documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, best known for his PBS miniseries The Civil War.
I was cleaning up some of the files on my old computer when I stumbled across one that brought back some interesting memories. It's a photograph of one of my all-time favorite celebrities! I remember being so amused by the picture the first time I saw it I immediately saved it (in fear of it disappearing off the face of the Internet in the near future, I guess). And now, I share it with all of you. See if you can guess who this celebrity is.
Warner Home Video has become the official distributor of not only the original theatrical Popeye animated shorts produced by both Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios, but also Popeye's TV series such as The Continuing Adventures of Popeye and Popeye and Son. The result is hundreds of animated shorts featuring the lovable but unintelligible sailor man getting their first legitimate release since the character first appeared on movie screens in the early 1930s. Popeye actually started out even earlier as a breakout character in E.C. Segar's "Thimble Theater" comic strip. Currently, Warner Home Video is working on restoring the cartoons, but no word on exactly when the DVDs will be available, other than some time in 2007. I just hope they release the theatrical shorts separately from the TV shows, as I'm not quite as interested in his made-for-TV stuff. Nevertheless, this is a very cool thing, and fans should be thrilled.
On June 28, TV Land is premiering a new original series called My First Time. Each episode of the six-part series will focus on a celebrity and their first "big break." The stars themselves will talk about how they first stepped into the limelight, and of course, footage of their first time, hopefully embarrassing, will be shown. I like the light and breezy approach TV Land often takes with its programming, so I'm hoping this show might actually be more interesting than it sounds. Of course, there's always the 2003 Showtime series coming out on DVD around the same time which is also called 
Giveaway Thursday: Tickets to the New York Television Festival ... all of it!
I miss the media-friendly John McCain - VIDEOS
Giveaway Wednesday: Supernatural, season three
