In the summertime

The NY/NJ/CT area is going through about the worst weather combination possible: hot, muggy and perpetually rainy. It's times like these that I really appreciate having an indoor job -- and central air -- so I can watch in relative comfort.

Some interesting summer stuff coming up. On Sunday, I jumped the gun with a review of Showtime's mob/political drama "Brotherhood," which premieres this Sunday. (Short version: good performances, much more straightforward than "The Sopranos" has been in a while, but still a little sluggishly-paced.) And today's column is my ode to "Rock Star," which I fell so in love with by the end of last season that it pretty much ruined my ability to fully enjoy "American Idol." The one part of the show I never cared much about were the "reality" episodes set at the Rock Star mansion, and apparently I was not alone; after being bounced from CBS to VH1 last season, they're now up only at the show's product-integrated website. But I'm psyched for the first performance show tonight.

Meanwhile, that was much more like it for "Entourage." The return of "Medellin," Ari bluffing with his daughter's bat mitzvah video (and Drama wondering if he was in it), Vince reminding us that he is occasionally useful for more than looking good and smiling (spotting Dom's tell) and, best of all, Dom's gone. I liked the idea of the character -- now that Vince is a Tobey/Leo-level star, more moochers are going to come out of the woodwork -- but he was such a blatant troublemaker in every way that even Vince would have shown him the door by the end of the previous episode. The worst part is, now that I've seen so much of Domenick Lombardozzi naked, it makes it very hard to pay full attention to his scenes in the new episodes of "The Wire" I've been watching.

And speaking of which, now that I'm almost through with the fourth season (HBO sent out the final six episodes right before I went on vacation), I think my next post is going to be a discussion of my one true love: cop dramas. To be continued...