Pants-less and Adam-less in Toronto

So I got to work about an hour ago, turned on the TV over my desk with the Rogers digital cable box and went looking for the Entertainment Tonight Grammys red carpet show. I searched and I searched and I searched, higher and higher, through the sports channels, the French channels, the multicultural channels, even the music channels.

As far as I can tell, neither Rogers nor Bell Expressvu carry the American E! channel. There is a Hamilton E! channel, but when I flipped that on at 6 looking for "Pants on the Ground," I got a local newscast instead.

I could live without seeing Larry Platt do "Pants" again, but I am majorly bummed about not getting to see Adam Lambert in his red carpet debut as an ET fashion correspondent.

ET Canada will air a red carpet program at 7 p.m. on Global. No offence to Rick Campanelli, but you, sir, are no Adam Lambert.

Maybe some of you get E! on your grey market satellites. To the rest of you who got excited for nothing, sorry about that.

As a small consolation, I've posted a Getty Images photo of Adam at a pre-Grammys bash on Saturday. Love the suit.

Pants at 6!

Slight correction to the earlier post about Larry Platt and "Pants on the Ground." Ryan says Larry will be performing on the carpet at 6 p.m.

Pants on the Ground, part whatever

Get ready North America. American Idol host Ryan Seacrest says he and "General" Larry Platt, the Atlanta man who became famous for his rendition of the original song "Pants on the Ground" at Idol auditions in Atlanta, will be on the Grammys red carpet today at 5 p.m. on E!

Ryan posted a video of him and Larry doing the ubiquitous "Pants on the Ground" during a red carpet rehearsal on his website (www.ryanseacrest.com).

Check it out:

Vote for the Hot Tamale Train Hall of Fame!

So You Think You Can Dance fans, Mary Murphy has thrown down the gauntlet.   

"Tweet me which past Dance contestants should be on my Hot Tamale Train hall of Fame. I'll tweet out results after the Grammys!" Mary wrote on Saturday.

Sorry I didn't get this to you yesterday, but I took a little Twitter and blog holiday. Still, the Grammys don't air until 8 tonight, so you've got lots of time left to vote. And Mary says Canadians can vote too, unlike on the real SYTYCD U.S. Go to www.twitter.com/HOTtamaleTRAIN.

I haven't given it a lot of thought yet, but Brandon from Season 5 would definitely be on my list. 

Here's his solo from one of the final shows of that season. Hot!

American Idol contestant still seeking missing mother

Idol host Ryan Seacrest posted on his blog today about the ongoing search for the mother of contestant Angela Martin.

Angela's mother Viola was with her when she auditioned in Chicago, making it through to Hollywood for a third time. Viola disappeared on Boxing Day on her way to Angela's sister's home and her car was found abandoned in south Chicago on Dec. 30.

It's not the first tragedy for Angela, whose father was murdered the first time she made it to Hollywood and who dropped out the second time because of a date in traffic court. She also has a daughter with Rett syndrome.

Angela told Ryan on his radio program Friday morning that there have been no leads in the case.

"I have to leave it to God, hopefully she'll just turn up," she said, asking anybody who had seen her mom to call police.

She told Ryan her mother had a drug problem in the past but had been clean for a while. But she had been under a lot of stress lately and could have had a breakdown and relapsed.

"We just want to know if she did that, someone just to call and let us know she's alive," Angela said.

Ryan has posted a photo of Viola Martin Brown at www.ryanseacrest.com.

How about those American Idol judges?

I was just sitting here pondering a post about how the judges were more talked about than the contestants on Idol this week when a juicy little item popped into my Twitter feed.   

RadarOnline is reporting that Simon Cowell is already fed up with Ellen DeGeneres and she hasn't even been on TV yet.

"Their relationship started poorly, but now the situation has escalated," a source told the website.

It apparently began when Simon annoyed Ellen on the first day of Hollywood Week by showing up an hour and a half late, an incident that Nikki Finke has already noted in her Deadline Hollywood blog.

Another show insider told RadarOnline that "it seems as if Ellen has decided to try to take control since Simon is on his way out, and that's created problems."

Hmmm, interesting.

What I was going to say initially is that the Idol producers seemed to begin the season trying to divert our attention away from the judges. Presumably, they didn't want people thinking too hard about what a Simon-less Idol will mean.

It seemed like every time I blinked Randy Jackson was being interviewed by someone and the theme was always the same: 1) it's not about the judges, it's about the contestants 2) a girl should win this year.

But this week, the judges really came to the forefront, especially after guest judge Katy Perry threatened to throw a Coke in Kara DioGuardi's face. And then there was the (manufactured in my opinion) conflict between Simon and Neil Patrick Harris.

People magazine has been running a poll asking if Katy should be a permanent judge (when I checked this morning, it was 44% yes, 56% no).

MTV News graded the guest judges this week: it gave Katy an A+; Mary J. Blige and Harris A-; Shania Twain a B+; Kristin Chenoweth a C+; Victoria Beckham a C-; Avril Lavigne a D+ and Joe Jonas an F.

I would argue that all the attention on the guest judges has had two positive effects: it's showed that the show can get along just fine without Paula Abdul; and it's made me think Idol can survive without Simon if the right person takes over his seat. 

But note the "if". Bring in another Kara (who is way more annoying for me than last year) or Randy (a billion per cent no!) and yo dawg, the ratings are going down.

Of course, we still have no idea how good a judge Ellen is. But I'm definitely intrigued and impatient for Feb. 9. What do you think?

Dance kicks Brother's butt

I just read a Reuters item about Celebrity Big Brother ending in Britain. The article says the final CBB series, which began earlier this month, was drawing an average of 5.8 million viewers.

But the Brit version of So You Think You Can Dance on the BBC drew an average of 6.4 million viewers.

Since I've never watched Big Brother and I'm a huge fan of SYTYCD, I'm liking those numbers.

Happy birthday Adam

Yes, Adam Lambert turns 28 today, although I'm sure all you Glambert fans already know that.   

If you didn't read my colleague Ben Rayner's interview with Adam in the Star this week, you can catch up here. 

Ben told me that Adam seemed very genuine and taller than he imagined. Of course, I have had to stop speaking to Ben for not letting me tag along.

On a more serious note, Adam has asked his fans to turn their birthday wishes for him into donations for underfunded art programs in U.S. public schools.

If you look here, you can see a list of the schools and what they need, everything from masking tape to flip camcorders. As of this morning, more than $25,000 had been donated.

I'm not sure how Adam is celebrating today other than doing an interview with New York's Paper Magazine, but I know where he'll be Sunday: on the Grammys red carpet carpet doing fashion critiques of the stars for Entertainment Tonight.

Adam has told OK! magazine he'll be honest but not mean.

Something for Survivor fans

Just because you can't see Richard Hatch on Survivor: Heroes vs. Villains doesn't mean you'll be completely deprived of his Survivor know-how.

Hatch (right in a Getty Images photo), who won Season 1 of the reality show, will be a feature of the special Surviving Survivor, which airs next Thursday at 8 p.m. on CBS and Global. (Hatch wasn't allowed to travel to take part in the new all-star show because he was doing jail time for failing to pay taxes on his winnings.)

The Orlando Sentinel says Hatch will share strategies on the Thursday special.

Also appearing will be host Jeff Probst and cast members from Heroes vs. Villains, including James Clement, Colby Donaldson, Cirie Fields, Russell Hantz, Stephenie LaGrossa, Jerri Manthey, Parvati Shallow, Benjamin “Coach” Wade and Tom Westman.

The program is also expected to provide an update on Ethan Zohn, the Survivor: Africa winner who's fighting cancer with the help of girlfriend Jenna Morasca, the winner of Survivor: The Amazon.

Global TV says the special will look at "some of the greatest moments in Survivor's 10-year history" and preview Heroes vs. Villains, which begins Feb. 11.

Idol rage

The St. Petersburg Times in Florida says a 52-year-old woman was charged with stabbing and scalding her boyfriend, 47, after they argued while watching American Idol on Tuesday night.

The story doesn't say what they fought over, just that it was "something that happened on the show."

I dunno, maybe he thought Kara deserved a Coke in the face from Katy Perry and she liked Kara's version of "I Kissed a Girl."

The paper doesn't say what shape the man is in after he was stabbed with a butcher knife and burned with hot cocoa, but the woman is in jail. You can read the story here.