After a weekend spent beating the heat by exhausting your DVD collection in the air conditioned wonderland of the great indoors, you’re in need of TV more than ever.

You can no longer turn to your movie shelf to get you through the weeknights. A heat wave will do that. Take us to the reaches of our DVD collection in attempt to keep cool yet entertained. Much like a rainy day, a torrid bout of sun-soaked weather is enough to send us to our couches, wanting nothing more than to lay low and avoid the horrors of extreme weather.

When this happens during the TV season, it’s no big deal. We know a fresh batch of shows awaits us after we’ve eaten through all the movies in our entertainment arsenal. No such luck in the summertime, there’s still TV, but it’s just so hard to find anything new, let alone anything new and good. Luckily for you, my heatstroked friend, there’s a guide below to get you through the week.

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You may have survived the first week of summer TV season unscathed, but there’s still a long way to go, and with the Lakers collapse of last Thursday you may have lost all hope.

Don’t despair mon frere, it may seem tough to find the jewels in this sea of summer re-runs, but luckily, you’ve found a guide to lead you to the summer TV gems. So if you’ve managed to shock yourself back into reality after the Lakers’ stupefying loss of the previous week, be sure to check out some of the best bets listed below.

Tuesday

With a win on Sunday, Tuesday remains Lakers night. See if they can survive game 6 in Boston and take the series to the greatest thing in sports: Game 7.

If you’re not into sports, AFI offers its annual summertime list treat for movie fans. This year, they’re offering up “Ten Top Tens” with the ten best Westerns, Sci-Fi movies and eight other categories. The special runs from 8-11 on CBS.

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There are new rumors practically every day about who will star in the next season of Dancing with the Stars. I’ve heard everything from Prince to Jodie Sweetin from Full House.

So, what do you think? Vote or leave us a comment and tell us who it should be.

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*photo by nanas via flickr.

The city of Angels; The city of Dreams; the city of the damned, or perhaps both of them with a dash of city of lost children, as so many people in LA are creative’s struggling to realize their dreams, their destiny. With the recession choking us all to death like the pollution looming overhead or the storm of bullets leaving fourteen dead over the weekend - from June sixth, to the ninth – maybe life in LA for most is the equivalent to a tornado. A social shit-storm slowing killing everyone below a determined income level, as just the realization that our lives are lived, reduced to being lived, for the mighty dollar. Sadly, many people are falling prey to Reality and going on these shows, many of the shows are cast in L.A and use lots of locals. Many reality show cast are broke, frustrated, and desperate people that may actually have talent but we will never know as they are exploited and tossed.

However, reality television is (sadly) showing no signs of slowing down, nor will until we (collectively) decide not to watch the new summer reality roll outs like NASHVILLE STAR, CELEBRITY CIRCUS, and WIPEOUT; a adaptation of a Japanese extreme game show airing on ABC that had casting calls for local LA contestants.

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Summer rerun season is upon us and now the workweek is much harder to survive.

Nevermore are we able to go home and relax with our favorite shows in primetime, forced to wait several long months for their return whilst sloughing through the same episode repeated again and again throughout the dog days. Facing such a grim outlook causes many to turn to DVDs or even commit the unthinkable act of turning of the TV altogether.

Well pick up that remote, Sparky: All is not lost. There’s still plenty of great new programs and other you may have missed to be found around your dial. They may be hard to find, but the following road map for the week should will help you discover the best of television for work nights. So here it is, Monday-Thursday and Sunday.

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This summer, the pickings are slim but how’s the quality? Are the summer’s new shows awesome or embarrassing? Vote for one or leave us a comment and tell us who we forgot!

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*photo by tati_roza via flickr.

I know how you feel. Right now, with both excitement and horror you’re watching your favorite shows air their season finales.You want to see how they end and yet you don’t want them to end because you dread another summer of nothing good on.

It hardly seems fair, does it? With the giant strike-induced break this season, most shows had only been back for a few episodes before ending. Mucho suckage.But, don’t despair. You can fill up your DVR schedule with some new, promising programming. Hey, if they’re bad, you can just delete them and crank up your Netflix subscription for the summer. (I find that 5 at a time is too much pressure. 3 is not enough. 4 is just right. Yes, I’m the Goldilocks of freakin’ movie rentals.)

Here are my picks:

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And the winner is. . .David! Cook that is.

“American Idol” ended its seventh season with the resolution of the long-gestating battle of the Davids. Since this was a two-hour finale, the audience would have to wait a long while for the result. What a long, and old, wait it was.

Somehwere along the way, “American Idol” has turned into the popstar senior tour, trotting out washed-up rocker after washed-out rocker to hawk their latest album or remind us they’re still alive. Tonight’s parade featured Graham Nash, Donna Summer, George Michael (singing the worst song in the history of mankind for what seemed like 2 hours), Bryan Adams, ZZ Top (!) and Seal just to name a few. Mostly, they dueted with the Idols or had the contestants introduce them with a montage of their past hits. Whatever the case, for a show that tries to skew young, they should really try to attract some more relevant acts.

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Let’s get ready to “Idol”!

For the final round the country’s biggest television show, the producers chose to frame the evening with a boxing theme worthy of a high schooler’s graduation video.

The theme came complete with Jim Lampley, the voice of HBO Boxing, providing lame analogies relating to the squared circle and famed ring announcer Michael Buffer doing the introductions. The combatants trotted out in complete ring garb, looking like they were ready for some fun gloves boxing at a kid’s 7^th birthday party.

Luckily, the performances routinely rose above the amateurish productions values.

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Because we live in LA and could conceivably go stand in line for one of these shows if the mood struck, I ask you this:

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After a dozen or so weeks, and one long hour we finally have the final two we all expected to see.

There isn’t a whole lot to say about last night’s results show. The vote left only the two singers named David, just as everybody expected after Cook’s version of “Hello” prior to the move to the big stage.

Surprisingly, the show made effective use of its time with some montages of the Idols’ trips to their hometowns and their journeys on the show thus far. These hardly seemed like filler and actually increased the suspense as the night wore on.

Too bad we all knew what was coming.

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In a competition where song choice means so much, a night where experts are picking the songs should have been great, but it didn’t come close.

The second-to-last episode of “American Idol” featured to final three singing songs chosen by the judges, the producers and themselves. All year, Randy, Paula and Simon have been harping on song choice, so these musical mavens should have hit nothing but home runs with their choices for the contestants.

Instead, exactly the opposite happened. Every performance was underwhelming and some downright dreadful. Most of the worst moments came in the songs selected by either the producers or the judges.

If anything, this episode proved picking a song to sing is harder than it looks.

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