TVSquad

Summertime and TV in my house means three things: Watching new summer programming, catching up on TV shows I missed during the conventional September-through-May TV season and baseball, specifically Boston Red Sox baseball.

In fact, on summer evenings, my TV is most likely tuned in to a baseball game. But when the Sox are not playing -- or when they're getting clobbered or if they're playing a really late west coast game -- I turn on other shows such as:

1. Entourage. Yes, they're spoiled adolescents. They're narcissistic. They play video games all day and party all night as if they're entitled to live lives of luxury. But the guys from Entourage greatly amuse me and I love hating Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold.

Remember that episode of Queer Eye For The Straight Guy that had the Fab Five making over Johnny Damon, Kevin Millar, and other members of the team? The creators of the show are about to start looking for contestants to be in another reality show that will involve the team, entitled Sox Appeal.

Here's the pitch: a woman will be paired up with a date for two innings of a game, then another date for another two innings. Then, in the 7th inning stretch, she'll decide which one she wants to stay with for the rest of the game (and maybe beyond). Not sure how they'll film a TV show during regular season games. That could be a pain in the ass for the players.

The article says that there will probably be a lot of use of the terms "scoring" and "strike out" during the series, and I predict they'll also use the terms "balls," "pine tar" and "hitting the showers."

Just got back from a few days of R&R in Cape Cod. I didn't watch too much television, but I did catch a couple of Red Sox games on NESN (New England Sports Network) along with their nightly sports updates. I've spent a good deal of time up in New England over the last few years, and I have to say that NESN is light-years better than the YES Network, which is the primary broadcast channel of the New York Yankees. I refer to the YES Network as the "New York Yankees Propaganda Network" because you rarely hear a discouraging word about them if you watch this channel with any regularity. Plus, their "Yankeeographies" of Yankee greats over the years are so fawning that they make you sick to your stomach.