My roommate is watching Fox News. Listening to them go on and on about Clinton and Obama meeting or possibly not having met yet, whether anyone new has arrived or departed, descriptions of vehicles, anything they can think of. I’d almost forgotten why I don’t watch TV news.

I don’t talk about TV much on here, but I just watched the premiere of a television show called Life starring Damien Lewis. Band of Brothers pretty much sealed my favorable opinion of Lewis, so I had high hopes about any show that cast him. I wasn’t disappointed.

The story sounds a little played out, but it’s handled in a way that seems fresh. Lewis plays an LAPD detective (Charlie Crews) who served 12 years in a maximum security prison for a murder he didn’t commit, finally released after he’s found innocent and exonerated. He’s awarded a whole lot of money and pretty much set for life … but he rejoins the police force and is assigned a partner who’s got her own problems (she’s been drug-free for 21 months).

This is probably something other people are saying, but if you’re a fan of House, you’ll probably like Life. If you think you would like House if Hugh Laurie’s character didn’t push sarcasm to the point of meanness or spite, you’ll probably like Life.

The best moment of tonight’s episode, for me at least, was when despite his earlier denials, we discover Detective Crews is looking for the person who set him up and has an entire wall of his home dedicated to this purpose. In the second to last scene, the camera pans back to reveal him poring over the information he’s gathered … all while The Frames’ “Dream Awake” builds to a crescendo. I think it would have been better if this had been the final scene, but whatever.

Had I known that the music supervisor for the show is Liza Richardson, host of KCRW’s The Drop, it wouldn’t have surprised me to hear The Frames. I’ve heard her say on her program that they’re one of her favorite bands, if not her favorite, and that she’s going to keep playing their songs until everyone else falls in love with them too. A DJ after my own heart.

First and certainly most important: NBC is bringing back American Gladiators!

Second, a coworker alerted me to this photo, in which I am half-sitting off to the left. It was taken at work on a day when some contest winners came to visit our offices. That’s one of the winners there in the hat.

It’ll be interesting to see if President Bush’s approval ratings (now at a mere 29 percent) plummet after he disrupts Oprah’s Legends Ball and the season finale of Grey’s Anatomy in order to hold a televised speech on immigration this Monday night.

You may recall that I once dreamed of being on TV’s The Amazing Race. Sadly, another season began last night without me. While watching, I determined that, when I am a contestant, my teammate and I will make a point of learning the other teams’ names and refrain from giving them spur-of-the-moment nicknames based on their looks, personalities, style of dress, etc. Of course, we will reserve the right to call any and every team “The Idiots.”

No single team stood out in any way during last night’s season premiere, at least, not in any way that made me necessarily want them to win. So, I will list the ten remaining teams in the order I’d like them eliminated.

10. First to go must - absolutely must - be the sisters, Lisa and Joni. They completely irritate me. What’s worse is that they’re typical of women of their sort from Houston. I don’t want to see them on television.

9. BJ and Tyler can go next. Hippies don’t bother me. However, BJ and Tyler strike me as the Pauly Shore/Stephen Baldwin-in-the-movie-Biodome variety of hippies.

8. Eric and Jeremy. They’re BJ and Tyler incarnated as beach bums.

7. Danielle and Dani. They’re Eric and Jeremy incarnated as women (interesting to note how this adds the element of meanness). And this brings up another point: My teammate and I will not wear matching outfits.

6. Monica and Joseph. I’m not sure what it is about this team yet that I don’t like. They’re just … average. I think that’s it. Yet another point: My teammate and I will not combine the first two letters of our names and put them on T-shirts. However, if the first three and a half letters of our names combine to spell “AWESOME,” that’s a different story.

5. Old couples on the Amazing Race amuse me for a while, until exhaustion causes them to become complainers. Fran and Barry can stay till half the teams are left. Don’t be offended, I’m getting older myself. I’m just saying, I’d know when to give up the chase if I were them.

4. Lake and Michelle were originally near the beginning of the cut list, as I found them highly annoying. Lake especially. But his outbursts started to grow on me. (”Take a taxi one mile … Gah!”) His competitiveness will keep him in the race for a while, but he’ll eventually outsmart himself, and he and his assistant/wife can come in fourth.

3. Ray and Yolanda have potential to go either way. So far I don’t know enough about them to dislike them, and they could very well be the type of team I end up supporting. They just need to start playing better if they expect to at least take third place.

2. David and Lori are the self-described nerds. They’re nice, but I can already tell they’ll end up being too nice and I won’t really want them to win.

1. By default, that leaves me with Wanda and Desiree, the mother/daughter team who seem to be a decent enough team that makes me tentatively give them my support.

It’s still up for grabs though.