cup of coffee.
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From my early morning punchy brain and the very slow wireless at Dulles Airport, I bring you this morning's roundup! (If you missed the explanation of why exactly I was/am up at oh-heck-no-o'clock this morning, check out the post below this one, about my trip to press tour, which is clocked at six this morning but was actually written and posted much, much earlier. Yawn.)

• First of all, the Jay Leno situation continues to dominate the entertainment news landscape this morning, so if you didn't catch our rundown of this entirely wackadoodle sequence that we posted late yesterday, it's time to get caught up.

• You may think of smoking bans as a health issue, but one commentator takes the position that smoking on stage should be banned mostly because it's distracting and dumb.

• Also from The Guardian, this really has to be included in the roundup, if only because you haven't lived until you've fired up your computer at 6:30 in the morning to a tagline that says, "Why Is Russia Indifferent To Tolstoy?"

Mark Burnett hits a snag, and Roger Ebert makes me cry, after the jump.

 

• Speaking of giants of the arts, the new show from Mark Burnett (producer of Survivor), called Our Little Genius, has been delayed over sketchy concerns that something happened during preproduction of the quiz show that shouldn't have. It wouldn't be that much of a story, except that it was scheduled to air next week in a plush post-American Idol slot, so this is very last-minute, as far as networks pulling shows.

• As you know if you read our recent piece on our favorite pop-culture humans, Roger Ebert is doing some wonderful writing these days, not all of which is about movies. His essay posted yesterday, called "Nil By Mouth," which is about life without eating, drinking, or speaking, is one of the most moving things I've read in quite some time. While it's a cliche to say "Boy, that really makes you grateful for all the things you have," I have to say, that one sort of does.