Proof yet again that I should never take a day off: My voice mail included a weekend message about an "American Idol" contestant being born in Akron — something that had not been in the information Fox sent out about the top 24. My boss received a similar phone call. I checked it with Fox this morning.

Yes, indeed, ladies and gentlemen, Heather Cox — currently from Jonesville, N.C. — was born in Akron.

Although I am a faithful "Idol" watcher under most circumstances, expect a closer look because of this development, here and in the Beacon Journal. I've learned that the family left Akron when Heather was just 9 months old, that still makes her local.

For those of you wanting to know more about Cox, her "Idol" info is here. You can see the Web site for her family's church (and a picture of her parents in the senior pastor section) here.

The oddsmakers' analysis  I posted here before have her at 22-1, but that puts her in the upper tier of contenders.

I have talked to a family friend and to Heather's mother, and will have a story in tomorrow's Beacon Journal about her. I also expect to be blogging at some point about tonight's show. Update: I will blog about tonight's show sometime tomorrow.

Monday night the bride and I went out to Wadsworth for a dinner with the cancer support group there. Both my wife and I lost spouses to cancer, and we were glad to be part of a good cause. But we were mainly there to see "Everwood" star Tom Amandes and his wife, Nancy Everhard.

Nancy's mother, Martha, is a cancer survivor and founder of the group. Tom's mother is now fighting cancer, although he said the recent news is good. Tom and Nancy spoke about the way cancer touches everyone; Tom talked about how eerie it was to be playing a character whose wife was fighting cancer while dealing with his mother's illness, especially when he found himself waiting for his TV wife's test results on the same day that he was waiting for news about his mother. Tom and Nancy also described their participation in fund-raising bicycle trips for Lance Armstrong's foundation. It was a touching evening in many ways.

But it was also a time to ask Tom about "Everwood." The show has been off The WB's schedule for some time but is due back on March 27, a Monday, the night where the show had its greatest success. Still, it comes back with considerable uncertainty. The WB and UPN are merging in the fall into a single network, The CW, and there has been considerable speculation about which shows from the two existing networks will make it onto the one new one.

In a conversation after the dinner, Tom admitted that things had been tough for "Everwood" even before the merger announcement, that a top WB executive was not a fan of the show, and that "Everwood" was not served well by the network's moving it from Monday to Thursday. The show has a lot of dramatic developments coming up for the rest of this season, but the writers are working on a couple of versions of the season finale; they expect to know the show's fate before shooting the last episode and so are preparing a version if there will be another season, and a version if this is the end.

Talking to Tom also served as a reminder of the way a show's demise can affect the people on it. Tom and Nancy moved to Utah, where the show is shot. Their son Ben has been growing up there. Because they have to make a decision about Ben's school before they know what's going to happen to "Everwood," Tom said they're probably going to stay in Utah for at least another year, so as not to disrupt his education, no matter what happens with the show. In their talk to the group, Tom also noted that the show's cast has become very close because of the Utah location, binding them together in the way they might not have been in Hollywood, where the show-biz distractions are greater. And it was a former neighbor in Utah that led to their involvement with Armstrong's foundation.

If this is the end for "Everwood," many fans will lose one of their favorite shows. I regularly hear from readers during "Everwood's" long hiatuses, wanting to know when it will be back. After the dinner, fans in the audience asked to have pictures taken with Tom; others, including a couple of servers at the dinner, asked for autographs. Tom and Nancy are also good people.

I am not a constant viewer of the show (although my wife is), but I have seen it do serious, thoughtful work that should have a place somewhere on the TV schedule.

Over the weekend I saw some of the Winter Olympics, a bit of the NBA all-star game and a good dose of the Weather Channel. That's about it. Life did not let me near a TV set most of the time.

On Saturday morning, I was up at 4:30 a.m. to deliver my son to a show-choir bus due to depart at 6. Then it was back to the house to pick up the bride and hit the road for Columbus, where the show choir was competing in the Teays Valley festival. We were at the festival until about 6:30 p.m. Then we hit the road for a quick dinner and a trip back home. The closest I got to TV during that period was seeing videos of the choirs performing.

Sunday brought an array of obligations, especially because of the way Saturday had filled up. My most vivid memory of the day involves running frantically across a parking lot, trying to catch blown-away papers that we needed to photocopy for another school event. They were duly retrieved, although it took a little time to pull one out from under a parked car. The other big task of the day was learning a new skill — wrapping raffle baskets in plastic, tying bows and shrinking the plastic with a hair dryer. (Younger son was in charge of the shrinking.) The TV was on for Olympics and basketball during that time. Neither was engaging enough to break our concentration on the baskets.

And today, from morning to mid-afternoon, younger son and I were at the University of Akron for presentations to potential applicants. We gathered information, toured facilities, made note of the small size of the rooms in the residence halls. (I think back to my college days and wonder how I ever lived in such a space. Of course, I've spent more than 30 years since then in the accumulation of stuff.) Interesting time, with the occasional nod to TV.

A notable one: When we toured one residence hall, a parent asked about the size of the laundry facility and how busy it gets. It varied, the guide said. "When 'Laguna Beach' is on, all the washers are full, because everyone stays in to watch."

From today's mail…

The country’s largest talent search has been narrowed down to 24 contestants as the latest edition of American Idol has reached the semi-final round. The popularity of American Idol has never been more apparent as the show has catapulted to the top of the ratings drawing nearly 30 million loyal viewers. Also a hit with online bettors, today PinnacleSports.com became the first established bookmaker to offer odds on who will win the latest edition of the hit reality series.

The largest sports betting site on the Internet, PinnacleSports.com has calculated individual odds on all 24 semi-finalists becoming the next American Idol. The oddsmakers at PinnacleSports.com currently list Ace Young as the early favorite to win the major recording contract at 7/2 odds (i.e. win $7 for every $2 bet) followed closely by Katharine McPhee at 4/1 and Paris Bennett at 5/1.

Chris Daughtry (8/1), Kellie Pickler (8/1), Taylor Hicks (10/1) and Lisa Tucker (11/1) also appear to be early contenders for the Idol crown. PinnacleSports.com lists Heather Cox (22/1), Will Makar (24/1), Stevie Scott (27/1), Jose ‘Sway’ Penala (29/1), Patrick Hall (31/1), Becky O’Donohue (45/1) and Mandisa (47/1) in the middle of the pack odds-wise.

The remaining semi-finalists have been listed by PinnacleSports.com as 65/1 long shots to be selected as the next American Idol, this includes: Ayla Brown, Bobby Bennett, Brenna Gethers, Bucky Covington, David Radford, Elliott Yamin, Kinnik Sky, Gedeon McKinney, Melissa McGhee and Kevin Covias.

As I said, I haven't made my picks to win, and will probably wait until we're down to 12 to do so. Readers with long memories will also know that last year I was a big fan of Anwar, who hasn't been heard from much since he was voted off the show. But I'd like to think that the oddsmakers are underestimating my man Taylor Hicks, also known as Gray-Haired Guy.

I saw this morning on Jim Romenesko's journalism site that Bruce Morton has retired. He did so with as little folderol as possible, according to this report. But Morton had a long and impressive career at CBS and later CNN.

He and I crossed paths once, in 1995, at Kent State University. Here's the text of the story I wrote at the time:

   We all fall into the trap of expectations. Spend hours, even years, with someone on our TV screen, and we expect them to act as they have on TV. We want them to have a relationship with us when what we've had all along has been thoroughly one-sided.
   When I met Bruce Morton on Sunday, I expected an instant bond. I expected more of the warmth and humor that have come across in Morton's stories and commentary for close to 30 years on CBS and, since October 1993, on CNN.   I found instead a thoughtful, precise but slightly grumpy man. It may be that, on a gray and dreary morning, while most people around us still were asleep, Morton was not in the mood for whimsy. It may have been that he was hungry, since he had not yet had breakfast. And it was likely that I was not doing my job all that well, not finding that issue or question that would have engaged Morton.
   Then there was the setting, on the cold concrete outside the student center at Kent State University.
   The Emmy-winning reporter had come to Kent, as he had a couple of weeks earlier, as he had five years before for CBS, to report from the site of  demonstrations and the killing of four people by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970.
   Not only Kent but the Vietnam War was with us; Morton's reports from the campus were part of CNN's coverage tied to the 20th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. Morton covered the war in Vietnam in late 1966 and early 1967, and anti-war protests in the U.S. and the trial of Lt. William Calley, the centralfigure in the notorious My Lai massacre of civilians in Vietnam in 1968.
   Vietnam lingers in memory and debate. National figures, from Robert McNamara to President Clinton, Bob Dornan and Newt Gingrich, keep the questions about Vietnam alive and unanswered. And some people wonder if the debate will ever settle down.
   "I think maybe it has," Morton said. "This CNN special (which aired Sunday night) is called 'Vietnam: Coming to Terms,' and there's been a lot of coming to terms.
   "I don't mean you get over it. I don't mean you forget it. I don't think people who were in the war, even reporters who covered the war, ever forget  it. But I don't think the country is torn apart the way it was. …
   "I was in Vietnam in March, doing some pieces for this special, and went to their Arlington cemetery, which is up near Dong Ha. And some of the graves, they explained, are empty in honor of Vietnam's three-hundred-thousand MIAs. If they can come to terms with that, and they seem to have, maybe we can come to terms.
   "I don't want to minimize all the pain, but I just think there's a time when you say it's over. It doesn't mean you don't hurt anymore, but it's over. You just kind of get on with your life."
   After the fall of Saigon, Morton said, "None of the bad things that were supposed to follow, did. The domino theory said that if Vietnam went, Asia would go Communist. And Vietnam went, and what Asia did was get rich. It's the Vietnamese who have discovered free markets and are playing catch-up as hard as they can.
   "Club Med is now building in Vietnam. The Liberation Day races in Hue,which I covered, have a corporate sponsor — Pepsi-Cola. … It's still one party; like China it's not political freedom, but it's found free markets."
   Even at Kent, he said, people seem to be dealing with the past. "Five years ago, one heard more about the post-shooting disputes. 'We don't want the gym here,' all that stuff. And people still remember that, but the gym's built. That's over with."
   And what about news coverage of Vietnam? "I think it was covered pretty accurately," he said.
   "One of the things you're reminded of reading McNamara's book is (the top government officials) listened to the generals. They didn't listen to, didn't believe, the reporters. I'm not talking about whether the war was morally wrong. Most of the reporters covering the war said, 'This isn't working.'
You'd go out, doing a sweep through a war zone, and the next month you'd do it again, and the next month you'd do it again. You don't have to be George Patton to ask: Wait a minute, what did we get out of this?
   "I met a Marine captain. Captured a ridge. Then they abandoned the ridge. And he got killed later on, and they named a camp after him, and then abandoned the camp. It seemed to the press, who were not military smarties by any means, that it just wasn't working."
   What has worked, at least for Morton, has been his move from CBS to CNN.
   "I don't knock CBS," he said. "I have a lot of friends there and for me it was a happy time. But for me the move was a swell idea. … I have more fun with the long pieces, not necessarily the hours, but some of the pieces that can run 10 minutes, which in television is long."
   Not that he's thrilled with everything in the course of news. Asked about coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial, he said, "I don't understand O.J. It's a soap opera which outdraws the soaps. I mean, I can't think of a trial in my lifetime that has so riveted the country. I keep thinking people will get
bored with it, but the ratings indicate they don't."

I liked to get a good night's sleep. NBC would rather I didn't.

On Thursday night, the network's Olympics coverage ran four hours, with the big event — men's figure skating — scattered like crumbs behind Hansel and Gretel.

NBC provided 24 minutes of coverage at the beginning of its telecast, then went to other events, mainly the snowboard cross, for almost an hour. (It did at one point put up a graphic promising more men's figures in 27 minutes — an estimate that brought viewers back several minutes before skating coverage actually resumed.) Another 43 minutes of figure skating — taking viewers past the 10 p.m. hour — led into more snowboard cross.

At this point, I have to concede that NBC's strategy worked somewhat with my viewing. I did sit through snowboard cross to get to more figure skating. (I had already read some notes online about Johnny Weir's troubles, and wanted to see for myself.) Not only that, the snowboard cross was exciting both in the semis and the final.

Still, NBC let itself be too focused on the gold-medal finish in snowboard cross, especially after American Seth Wescott won the gold. In a race with four men vying for three medals, we saw Wescott's win and replays of the big moments. But we never saw how the race for the bronze played out, even though it involved two racers who had been impressive earleir. Instead, we just got the information in a graphic with voiceover.

Skating resumed at 10:40 p.m., and would fill almost another hour. There were shots of skaters warming up, and a profile of Russian Yevgeny Plushenko, whose family-sacrifice tale makes for heart-warming television. Then Plushenko himself was on the ice, moving in a way that piled up points but found the NBC commentators carping about a lack of artistry.

Then, finally, came Weir. It was after 11 p.m. when he took the ice, an hour when many sensible viewers had gone to sleep. (I was among them, having wearily set my recorder before Plushenko's performance, to watch the rest of the coverage this morning.) He had a shot at a medal, but he didn't take it. In fact, I could almost feel the disappointment from the commentators, in their awkward silences during his routine, along with their acknowledging of his errors.

One blamed Weir's struggles on "Olympic-itis." Maybe. But that's a disease that takes many forms. One is nervousness in an event. Another is a network stretching things out to keep viewers.

I'd like to think that, if his tribe had lost immunity, Shane would be gone by now. Or will be as soon as he ends up in another tribal council. He is actually managing to destroy his own alliance through his manic behavior.

Fortunately for Shane, he didn't face an elimination vote this week. Instead, Misty's alliance-building efforts came to naught, and she went out on a 5-2 vote. She didn't seem like the best choice for elimination — Ruth Marie, who got the other two votes, was — but once again we heard a lot of talk about who is a threat when the merge comes, and Misty just seemed more dangerous.

Once again, I have to feel that people overthink in the early going, looking ahead to individual challenges when they should be focused on who will serve them best in competitions between two tribes. Ruth Marie seemed far less able than Misty on that score.

But maybe it's just that people were tired of looking at Misty's rash. As bad as it seemed on TV, it must have appeared much worse in real life. And who would be happy about a flirtatious back-rub from someone with welts all over her hands?

In high school and in college, I did a little acting. Not well. In college and in my twenties, I did some writing for the stage, mainly comedy sketches. Also not very well. But both experiences gave me a chance to hang around theaters, to see some of the dynamics that go into productions — the clash of egos, the sexual and emotional tension, the struggle to get things right, the accidents — and the utter joy that comes at the end, if the play comes off as well as everyone hoped.

I bring this up as a possible explanation of why I am so delighted by "Slings & Arrows," the Canadian series whose second season begins airing on Sundance Channel at 9 p.m. Sunday. But I suspect that even if I had never set foot in a theater, I would like this comedy about a struggling theater festival. It is well written and acted, very funny about the dirty business of theater while still absolutely in love with the idea of a great stage performance. (Advisory: The show has some R-rated content.)

Paul Gross of "Due South" fame stars as Geoffrey Tenant, a brilliant but oft-unbalanced director whose newest task is to mount a production of "Macbeth." (The first season revolved around "Hamlet.") "Macbeth" was a pet project of his mentor and predecessor, who has left behind boxes of notes for a planned production; Geoffrey consults both the notes and — like the first season — the ghost of his friend.

"Macbeth" is full of trouble, from its curse to a leading man who is not one to take Geoffrey's direction without challenge — if at all. Still, "Macbeth" is just part of what faces the New Burbage festival. It is desperate to bring in a young audience, and that desperation leads to a wildly iconoclastic marketing company. And another director is tackling "Romeo & Juliet" in a way that could prove disastrous.

But, oh, that "Macbeth." At the end of the first season, the glimpses we saw of "Hamlet" were well-executed but not startling. The maneuvers around "Macbeth" lead to a production I would pay to see. For now, though, I'm happy with the hints of what happens onstage and the delightful doings in the wings and beyond. It's grand enough to make me want to act again — and so wild that I know I'm better off just watching.

I tried several times to paste here a list of the "Idol" Top 24 and their brief bios, and the lines kept getting messed up. So I'll just have to suggest you go to Idol contestants.

Published reports indicate that "Idol" again beat the Olympics which, as I said last night, is very bad news for the Olympics since there will be five prime-time hours of "Idol" next week.

"Lost" also took a bite out of the Olympics, though apparently not as big a one as I had anticipated yesterday. Still, it beat NBC among young adults, the audience networks believe that advertisers prize. Unfortunately, "Lost" has scheduled yet another rerun for next week.

I'm not the best one at catching the little surprises on the show. I was happy when I spotted Kate's mom last week, but tonight I didn't recognize her dad (although he looked familiar) until we saw her picture. And I'm going to have to go back into my recording to see the images that replaced the numbers on the countdown device, although I suspect I won't know what they mean either. The refererences to the armory threw me at first, since we knew it had been cleaned out; I wondered if episodes were airing out of sequence.

Beyond my usual confusion over "Lost," I had conflicting feelings about the episode as a whole. It was good to see more of Sayid again, and the flashbacks were effective, even if the CGI of the Persian Gulf were on the tacky side.

Always enjoyable to watch Clancy Brown; he's such a good choice for an ambiguous character like this one because he has played both good guys and villains, and blends of the two. (Seeing him also made me miss "Carnivale" all over.)

I wasn't so thrilled with the Sawyer/Hurley story, especially when Sawyer killed the frog. It pushed the idea of Sawyer's being-bad-for-his-image's sake too hard; he didn't really prove anything by doing it. And as much as the episode looked as if it was advancing the plot, at the end it seemed as if we had just moved a few baby steps. With this show, baby steps might be taking us backward.

I don't have a pick for a winner on "Idol" yet, but I do have a favorite in the top 24 — the singer I tend to think of as just Gray-Haired Guy, the one with the gospel style and the moves of Joe Cocker. I know it's not just for his singing, of course. It's that I like his manner of singing, and that he looks a little bit old — that, well, he looks closer to my age than most of the other singers.

Curious bunch, this 24, though, with what feels like a lot of recycling of personality types from previous rounds — a brash in-your-face personality reminiscent of Mikalah, a crooner a la John Stevens, a young man with unconventional looks and a big voice who invites comparison to Clay Aiken (and I think Simon may have already made that comparison), and others. We'll see if this makes for a good show, or if it feels a little second-hand.

I was disappointed in the way the show handled the Hissy Twins. Pretty funny to end their tale with TV newscasts about their legal problems, although I wonder where they were in the whole business when that happened. We know they both made it through the elimination on Tuesday's show, so you would think they would have still been around for the winnowing to 24.

If they had been, were they picked for the top 24? (News reports had them saying they were "uninvited" after their problems became public, suggesting they intended to keep going.) If so, was there a little TV magic at work here — a couple of people who were eliminated and then un-eliminated, or held back as alternates if something happened? If they didn't go on, why not just show them getting booted and then explain what happened next? And if their elimination came between the Tuesday telecast and the Wednesday telecast, I would have loved to see them receive the news. Sort of like when the "Real World" producers have had to intervene on-camera.

This way, we were set up for a big moment that never played out on TV.

"Grey's Anatomy" beat the Olympics Sunday night in the national ratings. "American Idol" crushed the games on Tuesday night, and "House" did so in some markets (including Northeast Ohio). I see a bad night coming for the Olympics.

Why tonight? New "Idol," for one thing, where the field will be narrowed one more time before fan voting starts next week (and telecasts expand to three nights a week). I'll be watching.

New "Lost," also, and one that sounds as if it will have some important plot developments. I'll be watching here, too.

"Bones" will probably do well, since it will follow "Idol." The "One Tree Hill" crowd will probably remain loyal. Too bad CBS and its corporate companion UPN are basically rolling up the carpet — with reruns of "Criminal Minds," "CSI:NY" and (waaaaa) "Veronica Mars." It could have made things even rougher for NBC, especially with younger viewers.

I'm tempted to say the Winter Games will end up third for the night, behind "Idol" and "Lost." Of course, they could run a strong second in each of the first two hours and then draw enough people at 10 p.m. to make a good night of it. But it won't bode well for NBC during the second week of the Olympics, when "Idol" will fill five hours of prime time (two hours of performances on Tuesday and again Wednesday, and an hour-long results show on Thursday). Success there will undoubtedly encourage the other networks to be even more aggressive the next time the games come around.

Don't get me wrong. I like watching the Olympics, as I have said in other posts and will say again in a column in tomorrow's Beacon Journal. But I don't like them so much that I'll give up the big serialized stories on "Idol" and "Grey's" and "Lost."

Speaking of "Idol," I'm still irked that the show kept the Hissy Twins around on Tuesday's telecast. A far more entertaining scenario would have been holding them to their resignation from the competition (or, better yet, holding Hissy 1 to his resignation but keeping Hissy 2, since H1 shouldn't have spoken for him when quitting).

But "Idol" is very much a soap opera, especially in this stage, and I'm sure they didn't want to give up a couple of outrageous players too soon.

I had hopes for tonight's "Gilmore Girls," hopes that the show would take advantage of its Valentine's Day tie-in to have Luke get back on track toward marrying Lorelai. And there were promises made, and ideas bounced around. But at the end of the episode, there we were again, with Luke and Lorelai not quite connected, and April a huge question mark between them.

In fact, for a show that has projected at least an air of optimism over the years, this episode proved a pretty big downer, as if Luke's skepticism about Valentine's Day was allowed to reign. If we accept Valentine's Day as something of an illusion, a day where we put aside real-world concerns for a bit of romance as we imagine it, then the show carried that idea another step — to say that the romantic ideal of "Gilmore" is also an illusion for viewers, because the characters have to function in a real world where a tyrannical father, say, can spoil a moment.

If you thought that Mackey's play on Kavanaugh last week was enough to slow down the internal-affairs investigation, think again. Tonight Kavanaugh actually escalates the war with Mackey — and, as we know, Kavanaugh plays dirty.

I have seen a rough cut of the episode which looks to be a bit longer than the final on-air version, but it's still absolutely stunning. The interrogation scenes recall the greatest in-the-box moments on "Homicide: Life on the Street." Forest Whitaker, playing Kavanaugh, once again proves why he is so dangerous to Mackey, and how many ways they resemble each other — charming, single-minded, lethal.

The episode is also a strong statement about the roles women play in the lives of the regular characters, and in the lives of the criminals, and how vulnerable those relationships can make the men.

This week I've been watching the third season of "NYPD Blue," because it's coming out on DVD. The show was firing on all cylinders then, sad and anguished and harsh and funny. (There's a weird little nod to "ER" in one episode.) It and "Hill Street Blues" and "Homicide" are all part of the foundation of "The Shield." But the FX show has used that foundation admirably, building a show that tonight at least is on the same level as its predecessors, and possibly even better.

One of the things I like about the Olympics is the grit people show in the face of trouble, the people who face seeming disaster and go on to finish their competition, even win medals. But there's another half to that lesson, which is to show that overconfidence and poor preparation can bite you. Which brings me to Bode Miller, and to Sunday night's Olympics telecast.

I have already noted several times that Miller was a marquee name for NBC going into these Olympics, and that the network seemed determined to mention him whenever possible. (One of my favorites: Brian Williams tying Miller to the Chilean team during the opening ceremonies.) The departure of Michelle Kwan, another big name, looked as if it would make Miller even more important to the network. And not just to NBC: Just before the prime-time presentation of the men's downhill Sunday night, two different companies had commercials showcasing Miller.

So the coverage was more than slightly interesting when it was suggested that Miller had not prepared fully for the event. Reporter Steve Porino described Miller's using "factory fresh" skis that were virtually untested, and that Miller did not inspect the course before the competition. "He … just rolled out of his RV," Porino said.

Analyst Todd Brooker argued "that's just Bode being Bode." He later called Miller ''so calculating and so smart." And when play-by-play man Tim Ryan mentioned a report that Miller had been out late the night before, Brooker again said, "That's just Bode being Bode. … Gimme a break. He knows how to prepare for a race."

Except, in this case, he didn't. After his run, he was fourth, out of medal contention. (The final standings had him fifth.) The U.S. team, Porino reported, went into a scramble to decide which skis Darron Rahlves should use — since the new skis hadn't worked very well for Miller — but he still finished out of medal contention.

I would have liked to have heard immediate commentary, especially from Brooker, that maybe "Bode being Bode" wasn't paying off. That maybe all the attention and sponsorships and attendant confidence were not helping his performance. That especially on the Olympic level, you can't leave anything to chance if you really want to win. But I didn't hear that. After all, Miller was going to compete in other events, and NBC was still hoping that he would be a big star in the games. Only today — AND HERE'S THE POSSIBLE SPOILER — he hasn't done well either.