Forget the pres race, time to talk about the Amazing one, aka, The Reichen & Chip Show.

I predict tonight's loser will be . . .

No one. I'm betting on one of those incredibly annoying non-elimination rounds. They make my blood boil. Not just the annoyance to me, but how bad they are at their jobs not to have figured out how badly these episodes suck, how they in fact suck the life right out of the series as it's climaxing.

They're a fun wildcard to throw into the race, just not into the TV show. Go ahead, have a non-elim round, and sucker someone into wasting their fast forward (which I also predict will happen tonight). But don't climax an episode with it: do two legs in the hour. (And do not do two hours back to back like they tried once last season. It's a thrill show, it's not that deep, and it just can't sustain two hours at a time.) I know they want more episodes--fine, add more teams. Just don't climax an episode with a big letdown. You leave just feeling like nothing happened, you watched for nothing, you were suckered into thinking something was at stake . . .

But listen carefully to the opening of the show. When it's a non elim round, he doesn't end the VO intro with "Who will be eliminated tonight." He says something like "... next?" Though last week he did that and it was an elim round.

If it is an elim, I'm predicting the annoying virgins go, but maybe that's just desire talking. After that, I say the clowns. Clowns are bad. These two are bad. Not horrible, not one of the worst, but they try just a little hard, a lot too often.

Anyway, get to your TeeVee! If you're on the right coast, you're already missing it. We're still waiting for the start out here in the hinterland.

Not the real one, the aspiring one on Last Comic Standing. That show has its moments, but would have been much better with funny people. Aren't there a thousand standups who would have killed to get on that show? Maybe the good ones are just that rare.

Dat's act got old fast and petered out before the midpoint, but at least he had some genuinely inspired moves. The opening was wonderful, even the second time I've seen it. All the Buddy Hackett could do was 3 minutes of rim shots. So glad he's out of there.