TVSquad

Unless you've been in a coma for the past year and just woke up, you probably know that Conan O'Brien is the new host of The Tonight Show. He takes over on June 1.

NBC has released the roster of guests for the first week of shows, and it's a mix of big stars, big musical guests, and one guest thrown into the mix that really sticks out. After the jump, the line-up.

This was the season finale the next-to-last episode Cold Case for the season, but next week could be the series finale. We'll find out at CBS' upfront presentation in a couple of weeks. But if it does serve as the series finale, at least you had the music of Pearl Jam to play it out! I always think it's weird when the show has a cold case from three or four years ago. That's not cold, that's slightly nippy. But I guess Nippy Case would have been an entirely different type of show.

David Cross, brilliant (and sometimes extremely foul) comedian and former co-star of Arrested Development is giving a special performance for charity in Portland, Oregon. I'm not sure my reasons for posting this: either I'm really excited about it or I'm gloating. Either way, he's opening for Pearl Jam at this event in Portland on Thursday, July 20th.

Tickets are $75 a piece. They go on sale at 10 am PT in case you're in the neighborhood. No, I'm not involved. I just think it'll be a terrific show.

Pearl Jam is making one of their videos available online under the Creative Commons license. Why do I care about Pearl Jam doing this? Well, I don't actually, but it got me thinking about music videos and how they've found a new life online and in DVD form, as television has all but eradicated them. While many networks and channels are moving online with broadband content while still remaining secured to TV, these days you can't really see a video from your favorite band unless you go online, or buy a number of DVD collections dedicated to certain video directors like Michael Gondry and Spike Jonze, among others. The thing is, videos haven't gotten worse, in fact, they've gotten much better, I think, and while the idea of sitting through three whole minutes of song might cause the programmers at MTV to gasp in horror, I'm glad to see bands are still making videos, and making them easily accessible to fans and anyone else who wants to check them out. The Web can be a place not only for networks to try out online-only content and rerun old shows, it can also be a place where ideas no longer suited to television can still find an audience.

I've never liked nor disliked Pearl Jam, I've always been indifferent. I do give the band credit, though, for embracing its fanbase and keeping on even after the grunge explosion finally fizzled out and the sound of which they were originally a part of was no longer the hip new blip on the mainstream radar. Lately, though, the band seems to be warming up to the spotlight again, given their recent apperance on SNL and a scheduled apperance on The Late Show with David Letterman this Thursday. If you catch the show, you'll hear the usual one song a band performs, but if you want a bit more Pearl Jammy goodness, CBS will be streaming a full concert by the band from the Ed Sullivan Theater on the Late Show Web site which will follow the taping of their appearance. The online concert will start at 5:55 p.m. EST. You can expect to hear songs off the new album, as well as some older material.

April 24th begins the annual "TV Turnoff Week". For seven days we are to turn off the boob tube and focus on other activities inside and outside our home. For instance, talking to the other members of our family or walking out the front door into that space full of yellow light and green grass. I think we call that the outdoors.

Of course, the purpose of "TV Turnoff Week" is the total opposite of what we do here at TV Squad, which is, um, report on television. So, as a public service to you we present this special episode of The Five: Reasons to not turn off TV during 'TV Turnoff Week'.

You can post comments on TV Squad articles:  We love your comments, even when you say we're messengers of Satan because some of us don't like Pearl Jam. However, if you don't turn the TV on, you're not going to be able to comment on any of the shows that we review. That will make all of us sad, and probably make our bosses even sadder. We'll end up losing our jobs, which will have a domino effect for all of our other blogging sites. Of course, that will cause AOL to go out of business, and the Internet will probably collapse unto itself. Dogs and cats will fight, cows will stop giving milk, and, yadda yadda yadda. We'll eventually be beating each other over the heads with clubs in order to grab the carcass of a dead brontosaurus.

(S31E16) Not too shabby. For her third SNL hosting gig, Lindsay Lohan wasn't all that bad. I did find it odd that she's doing SNL again so soon though. Especially after that big hoopla about the Vanity Fair article a few months ago. But her arms did look much plumper this time around. Besides, she has a new movie coming out and I would assume that she and Tina Fey have a good relationship. So I guess it does makes sense that she would be doing SNL again so soon. See that? I answer my own questions.

The Situation Room - It seems like we've officially reached the point where every single cold open that SNL does is going to be a take-off of one of the many political pundit shows from across the cable universe. I'm fine with that. I'm just saying that I can't remember the last time a cold open that wasn't Hardball, or Anderson Cooper, or this. I suppose it makes sense though when the government is giving out plenty of material to spin into a sketch. Might as well use it. This was funny. Wolf (Chris Parnell) had numerous guests commenting about the recent news that White House Chief of Staff Andy Card had resigned (well, I guess it's not that recent). It seems everyone they interviewed, who now worked for the President, had come from a temp agency. I loved it when Kristen Wiig (she's the new Resident Iran Expert) asked to have her time card initialed.