Sorry to have left you hanging yesterday, but there was sooo much on TV Sunday night that I needed an extra night to catch up!Which, of course, now leaves me behind on Monday night ...Anyway, let's begin with the Amazing Race (Sunday, CBS, 8 p.m.)! God I love this show!

Season 13 contestants
Eleven teams of two, each with preexisting relationship, started the race at the Los Angeles Coliseum for Season 13. First stop was Salvador, Brazil, where the teams had to choose a local vending cart, wheel it thru the narrow streets of Salvador to a popular plaza and deliver the cart to Indio in exchange for their next clue.After an overnight hold, the teams encountered their first Detour, choosing between the Hard Way Up and Soft Way Down. In the first, teams had to climb up a stone staircase on their hands and knees, while the second task revealed teams climbing to the top of a 240-feet building and climbing down a cargo net on the outside!Siblings Nick & Starr came out as Team No. 1, while older, hippy couple Anita & Arthur arrived at the Pit Stop last and were thus eliminated. This season is shaping up to be as controversial as past ones ... with Starr already putting the moves on Dallas (of the mother/son team). And tempers are flaring ... looks like next week will be pretty interesting ...To watch this episode or for a detailed recap, visit http://www.cbs.com/primetime/amazing_race/
At 9 p.m. Sunday night I couldn't decide whether to watch HBO's vampire drama True Blood or Showtime's season 3 opener for everybody's fave serial killer Dexter. So I pointlessly tried to watch both (you know, just flicking between the two every so many minutes). While I love Dexter, the season opener was just basically set-up, and shortly into it, True Blood captured my full attention with an episode that finally got interesting!This week's ep featured heroine Sookie Stackhouse getting her vampire-love interest to take her to the local vamp bar "Fangtasia" so she could question some fellow bloodsuckers regarding the murder of her coworker. What made this interesting was the we finally got to meet the "leader" of the local vamps, hot, hot, hot Eric!

It was only just a short tease though, but Eric's brief performance was enough to keep me interested and coming back for future eps.
http://www.hbo.com/trueblood/
Back to Dexter - I think my sister (who hasn't watched before, but tuned in just to see Dexter's new boss, played by her fave Jimmy Smits) summed it up best ... "he didn't kill anybody this week. That was disappointing."http://www.sho.com/site/dexter/home.do
Following True Blood at 10 p.m. was another great episode of HBO's current biggest hit Entourage. Poor Johnny Drama, not only is his younger brother the "hot one" and he recently ruined his hot French romance, but now his costars on his first hit in ages made an ass out of him on The View! It was hilarious. Definitely a show worth tuning into. http://www.hbo.com/entourage/

Luckily, Showtime repeated the 10 p.m. season 2 debut of David Duchovny's Californication, so I switched over there at 10:30 p.m. for what was instantly a reminder of why I like this show! When we last saw Hank Moody at the end of the first season, he was driving away from his ex's wedding with their daughter, only to have Karen (his beloved ex) run out and jump in the car too.So Hank and Karen are back together, but things aren't all rosy. The episode started out with Hank getting a vasectomy and then having a hard time abstaining ... you know, till things healed ... it didn't help that during an evening out with his agent Charlie (Evan Handler) and his wife Marcy, they got invited to a sexually loose party in the Hollywood Hills. As usual with Hank, he means well, but things get hilariously out of hand and he ended up in jail by the end and Karen's not willing to bail him out this time ... For more information or to watch this episode, visit http://www.sho.com/site/californication/home.do
Yeah, I also watched Desperate Housewives and wasn't too impressed. But for now I'll stay tuned, mostly because it's all the talk on Mondays around here. At the behest of a coworker, I taped but didn't watch yet, Brothers & Sisters. I know it's a good show, but being that's it's already in the third season, I don't know if I can get into it at this point. Especially with so much else to watch.

And, I'm just about caught up on BBC America's popular new teen drama Skins. This racy British export is the perfect antidote to all the Gossip Girl, new 90210, One Tree Hill, Friday Night Lights dribble on American TV right now. I love it ... of course, you can probably look forward to some Americanized version of this one soon. But I recommend watching the original. Look for more information here http://www.bbcamerica.com/content/328/index.jsp
Still haven't watched Mad Men yet, maybe tonight ... probably not though, because I'm clearing the evening's schedule to watch the DVD of Iron Man. Saw it in the theater and loved it!! And I didn't know anything about iron man going into it. Maybe I'm just really pleased to see Robert Downey Jr. doing something good again!
So I pretty much missed Monday night television. Saw a little of the Lost marathon over on Sci-Fi. And I wouldn't miss The Big Bang Theory - love those guys (CBS 8 p.m.). I'm about done with Dancing with the Stars (taped it but couldn't bring myself to watch it this morning).

Everybody's Favorite Gladiator
However, one bright spot in last night's entertainment came later on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. I had put a reminder on the TV that Russell Crowe was going to be on promoting his new Ridley Scott-directed Body of Lies with Leonardo DiCaprio (two of my faves, can't wait for this one!) Interestingly enough, it seems Crowe has a solution to all our financial problems in the US. Since the government wants to "lend" $700 billion to "save" the financial crisis, and there are roughly 300 million American citizens, Crowe's revelation would be to give $1 million to every citizen, allowing them to pay their mortgages and pump money back into the economy. I'm all for it. Shame he can't run for Prez.
On TV tonight: Back for another thrilling episode surely will be Fringe at 9 p.m. on Fox. Dancing with the Stars results show airs at 9 p.m. on ABC.
Over on Bravo at 10 p.m. an all new Rachel Zoe Project airs. I just got into this show over the weekend after a coworker recommended it. I like it! Rachel Zoe is a stylist-to-the-stars and its compelling to watch how her mind/business works. Most of the time, she's running (with her 2 assistants) all over Los Angeles, trying to find the perfect "hero" dress for some celebrity client. For more info visit http://www.bravotv.com/The_Rachel_Zoe_Project/season/1/index.php

And in the trainwreck category, MTV debuts Paris Hilton's New BFF reality competition at 10 p.m. I might actually have to check this one out. I admit, I'm a closet fan of VH1's Flava of Love and Rock of Love. I just can't seem to turn them off - like watching a trainwreck!

OK, so I was planning on blogging about one of my favorite guilty pleasures today, Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, but that will just have to wait until next week.

As I blogged yesterday, The History Channel had a special program on last night called "102 Minutes That Changed America." It was a first person account in real time of the events of September 11 and it was all too compelling to turn off. And being the compulsive channel-hopper that I am, that's saying something.

If you missed it, you can catch some clips of the show on the channel's website at www.history.com, but I couldn't find the whole show there. I also searched their schedule for more air-dates, but it doesn't look like they're planning on re-running it. It'll probably show up on DVD next week. I'll let you know ... it's definitely worth watching.

Watching it took me back, like it all just happened. I, like all of you, remember exactly where I was when I first noticed what was happening. My usual routine getting ready for work in the morning then was to have the TV on one of the morning shows, muted, so I could listen to Howard Stern on the radio. I was running late when I glanced at the set and saw the World Trade Center on fire. Turning the volume up, I soon learned that they were speculating the a small plane had hit the North Tower. At the time, everyone figured it was a small single engine plane, like the one that had hit the Empire State Building a few years back.

I called into the newsroom to let someone know I was going to be late (not too many people are in that early), and also said, "you might want to put the TV on, a plane just hit the World Trade Center." I got to work just in time to see the second plane hit.

Little by little, as they arrived at The Mercury, everyone in the building made their way over to the newsroom and the only TV set. We watched in horror with the rest of the country as the buildings burned. No one could've ever predicted the outcome. When the South Tower collapsed, we mostly only saw the debris cloud, not realizing what had happened. But it was impossible to miss the collapse of the North Tower, with a camera trained on its antenna-topped summit.

Usually a hard-core group of newspeople, as we have here, is a little desensitized when it comes to tragedy. We see it all, day after day, and their first instincts are to get the story. But not that day, everyone just stood around dumb-struck and heart-broken. What had just happened was completely unfathomable.

A phone call to a coworker from a friend who worked in Washington, D.C., where the Pentagon had also been attacked, finally broke up the crowd. It was time to get the story, but it took days for things to get back to normal.

Weekend Watch: Ok, so I'm really not planning on blogging over the weekend, unless something effects me strongly enough. My weekends are mostly for catching up on DVDs, but I do have a few favorites that I don't miss. Like E! televion's The Soup, airing tonight at 10 p.m. and various other times over the weekend. Joel McHale and his merry crew sarcastically offer up clips of various reality/talk shows moments, so you don't have to spend the time watching them. I never miss it!

I also indulge in BBC America over the weekend. Saturday nights at 9 p.m. is the sci-fi hit Primeval, about scientists gathering up prehistoric beasts that fall thru a time-traveling rift. Yeah, I know, it's sounds kind of cheesy, but I like it. Of course, it doesn't compare to BBC's new version of Doctor Who or my absolutely fave Torchwood (John Barrowman, I love you). In case you haven't guessed it from my profile, I'm a sci-fi geek.

Sunday nights at 10 p.m. is the controversial Skins, about British teens run amok, think Dawson's Creek with drugs and sex. Yes, they're aloud to get more raunchy in the BBC than we are here on TV. It's deliciously wicked.

Information about any of these shows can be found at http://www.bbcamerica.com/

Back on this side of the pond, CNBC is supposed to be airing The Apprentice: UK at 8 p.m. Saturday night. As a fan of the American version of the Apprentice, I might have to check this out.

And for those of you interested, ABC will be re-airing last season's Desperate Housewives 2-hr. finale at 9 p.m. You know the one where everything flashes ahead five years at the end. Can't wait to see next week's season debut and how they explain that. Overall I think it's a good idea, the housewives' storylines were getting soooo old.

Sunday night also brings more of HBO's original programming. True Blood's second episode airs at 9 p.m. It's a vampires-among-us story of forbidden love and lust. I'm waiting to comment on this until after the second episode, since I wasn't completely overwhelmed by the first episode. But that might just be because I'm a huge Twilight fan and Bill Compton (the lead vampire in True Blood) is no Edward Cullen! HBO must be worried too, because they're running 2-pg. ads in major newspapers promoting it today.

And Vince, Ari and the boys are back in Entourage at 10 p.m. This, I have to say, is one of my favorite shows! I love all the Hollywood stereotypes. Especially Lloyd, superagent Ari's boy-toy assistant doormat. Check out www.hbo.com for information on any of these shows.

For those who have asked, here's where you can get info on the new season of 24: http://www.fox.com/24/ I don't think they'll put the 3-minute trailer for the November movie up until after it officially airs (Sunday night between 8-8:30p.m. on Fox), but you never know ...