The cover – “Why I Left Grey’s Anatomy.” This show is winding down and I still haven’t seen a single episode. There’s also blurbs for a Paula Abdul poll (“Would you miss her?” Well, seeing as how I never watch her, probably not), Kings of Leon (“They’re on fire!” – get it? Their single, “Sex on Fire,” see what we did there? Zing!), and The Emmys (“Snubs and Surprises” – the best part of any award show is moaning about who wasn’t nominated).

Pg 12 – EW mocks Entourage for making “dated” references to Knocked Up and Jay Leno

Pg 13 – The Hit List makes a Weekend At Bernies II joke.

Pg. 18 – An obituary for Walter Cronkite. Actually it’s just an excerpt from his book “A Reporter’s Life.” For someone who’s big enough to be an auto-complete option on your iPhone, that seems kind of cheap. I never saw him broadcast but he’ll always be beloved to me as the voice of Spaceship Earth in EPCOT. This amount of viewer to reader ratio is probably why EW didn’t think it was worth their time to do an original piece. I suppose we should be glad they didn’t stuff his passing below the marriage and divorce briefs.

Pg 20 – Stephen King has a great column on the amount of time we spend each day staring at a computer. An UPI article gave an average of 8.5 hours in front of screens for the average person. I hit 8.5 hours before my day job ends alone. Then I come home and write this.

Anyway, I was amazed to read King only spends 3.5 hours a day writing. Given his output, he must type like a Ferrari.

Pgs 22 – 27 – The T.R. Knight cover feature. Knight is very nice and diplomatic, which makes him a great guy and lousy interview subject. Consequently, writer Michael Ausiello has to fill in the spicy parts himself, interjecting Knight’s “I don’t want to vilify anyone” type comments between stories of Knights’ incidents with co-star Isiah Washington and producer Shonda Rhimes. Because we’re human, we skip Knight’s quotes and ready the juicy bits.

However, since Knight doesn’t comment on any of these affairs, the article ultimately reads as a summary of entertainment blog posts from two years ago. Nothing new is being brought to the table here. If someone is leaving a show they’re so closely associated with and won’t tell you what’s likely the biggest part of why, well, then what’s the point of doing the article in the first place? And then give them the cover?

The best part of this article is Ausiello doesn’t end with EW’s typical cutesy ending.

Pg 28 -29 – A short piece on Edie Falco with a fabulous picture and a EW typical cutesy ending. The main insight of the article, by my reading, is that people call her “Carmen” on the street, which makes her just like every other character actor who was part of a popular show. Interesting questions like “Do you think this audience identification helps or hinders your ability to play contrasting roles?” and “Regarding your new show, could the character be as effective if she wasn’t flawed? Why?” are not asked. As usual.

Pg 30 – 33 – A fascinating article on the popularity of the horror genre amongst women. I’m not surprised there are women who like horror films, I am, however, surprised they compose over half of ticket sales. Someone should text Cosmo so we can get hilarious “Are You Horror Film Compatible?” quizzes.

An interesting quote from Diablo Cody: “When a woman has sex in a horror movie, forget about it, she’s going to die … The protagonist is always virginal, and I wanted to put a stop to that.” Yeah, that’s because horror films follows a genre convention of the killer as moral disciplinarian. Who kills. I didn’t say it made sense.

Anyway, the idea is that the killer punishes the victims for their sexual acts. So the virginal character defeats the killer because she’s still “pure.” It’s very puritan really.

So is it okay to mix it up? Sure, why not – just be prepared that the majority of the audience will dislike it for reasons they can’t say since it’s usually the unconcious self that monitors a film for its adherence to genre conventions. Your mind knows when a film goes off track, even if you can’t say how or why.

Pg. 42 – Chris Nashawaty’s MoviesonDVD report is confined to one page, which is a pity since it’s by far the best writing in the whole issue. Dubbing the new Fast & Furious “homoerotic,” he gets a genuine laugh out of me describing Vin Diesel as a “chrome-domed action lug nut.” I wish he had interviewed Edie Falco.

Pg 44-45 – Ken Tucker tells us who got snubbed on Emmy nominations but doesn’t tell us why they should have been nominated, making this little more than a two page recap of an online poll. There’s also lots of stock promo pictures. On the plus side, Tucker probably got to leave the office at noon that day.

Pg 57 – The feature album review is actually a concert review of a Paul McCartney show, so the attention paid to new music releases is all on one page. The albums they chose are Fabolous “Loso’s Way,” Ashley Tisdale “Guilty Pleasure,” Kristina DeBarge “Exposed,” Owl City “Electronic Pop.” Congrats to all for completely uninteresting, cliched titles. Congrats to EW for reviewing nothing that isn’t straight ahead radio-friendly discs. But then, the top 5 albums of the week are Daughtry, Maxwell, Miley Cyrus, a “That’s What I Call Music!” collection, and The Black Eyed Peas, so really their review choices are pretty reflective of the buying public. Maybe they should review Most Pirated albums?

Pg 60 – EW fills up 2/3 of the page with an unfunny joke on book covers. What, no airport lit came out this week?

Pg 63 – Ah, the Game review section, which always cracks me up since no one who plays video games reads Entertainment Weekly.

Pg 64 – The Bullseye. I think the point of this feature is to make whatever ad facing it more interesting in comparison. Maybe they can squeeze another ten bucks out of the ad space, which would cover the cost of my not paying.