From Daniel to Norah, from Ricky to Rick, we’re back on track with more stars in our eyes (SEND)

Now, where was I?

Oh yeah, now I remember. I was about to tell you that I was going on hiatus for two weeks, and then I did That Thing We All Do But Swear We Won’t Ever Do Again,

I forgot to press SEND.

(sigh)

Actually, more often than not, The Thing I Do That I Wish I Didn’t Do is press SEND too soon, before I’ve finished typing whatever breathtaking prose I’m trying on at the time.

So — unless I press SEND too soon, or forget to press it at all — I’m back.

Did’ja miss me?

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OUR TOWN: Filmmakers Michael Palmieri and Donal Mosher are set to attend tonight’s Doc Soup screenings of their family saga October Country

JONES: here next month

tonight at the Bloor Cinema … the Toronto premiere of Displacement, the multi-media dance art piece created by choreographer Robert Glumbek, visual artist Vessna Perunovich and composer Christos Hatzis, opens tonight at Fleck Dance Theatre as part of Harbourfront Centre’s NextSteps Dance Series. The show, performed by seven dancers, also features the Penderecki String Quartet … Whodunit 2009, this year much-anticipated annual Ontario College Of Art & Design fund-raiser, previews today, tomorrow and Friday before the Mystery Art by the famous and soon-to-be-famous goes on

RADCLIFFE: Greenwich Village

sale Saturday. For more info, collectors, just click here …. p.s. to Radio City Music Hall aficionados: this is the last night to see the justifiably legendary Rockettes kick up their heels at the Air Canada Centre … and the CHUM Christmas Wish, this year in partnership with CP24, yesterday launched its 43rd Christmas season for raising money and collecting toys for families in need across the Greater Toronto Area.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Did you know that Daniel Radcliffe (aka Harry Potter) was personally tutored by the Coutts Bank when he turned 18 and learned how to best invest his earnings, currently estimated at $15-20 million? Me neither. But that could explain how the young Mr. R. acquired his new $6 million Greenwich Village townhouse, which will be his home base when

APATOW: on line today

he returns to Broadway to fill the Robert Morse/Matthew Broderick song-and-dance shoes in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying … riding high on the love-letter reviews for her new album The Fall, Norah Jones is set to guest on The Colbert Report tonight. Expect to hear and see her next month with Jian on Q and Strombo on The Hour … artist Natalka Husar opens her new show, Burden Of Innocence, tomorrow in Hamilton. Advance word on Husar’s new exhibition hints at taking her lifelong obsession with painting and with the Ukraine, her ancestral home, into new territory. For more details, click here … and new comedy zillionaire Judd Apatow is taking questions today at the Funny Or Die writers’ room at 12:30 pm pst (3:30 pm our time.) To quiz him, or to just submit your question, click here.

HOSTS WITH THE MOST:  It’s official — Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are Oscar’s newest Odd Couple. They are now set to co-host next year’s Academy

KARPLUK & MERCER: Gemini twins (photo: CP)

Awards telecast on Sunday March 7 … meanwhile, Office creator Ricky Gervais has been tagged to host the Golden Globes on Sunday Jan. 17 … and yes, I agree, Ron James did a dandy job of hosting last Saturday night’s Gemini Awards. Among the happiest winners: Rick Mercer, not just because his weekly Rick Mercer Report won Best Comedy Series, but also because he got to hang out with people he watches on TV, like Erin (Being Erica) Karpluk and Cory (Glee) Monteith — who, according to my spies, were even more excited to be hanging out with him.

Ain’t show biz grand?

TOMORROW:

Star-crossed reunion: Patti Lupone & Mandy Patinkin.

Ms Smith goes on a tear, Ms Bisset goes Italian, & Ragtime returns to Broadway — without Garth

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: British-born screen siren Jacqueline Bisset, who mastered an American accent to become a Hollywood star,

BISSET: Italian accent

apparently employs a killer Italian accent to play an over-the-hill actress in director Linda Yellen’s reportedly wicked satire The Last Film Festival. The beauteous Ms Bisset plays one of a group of misbegotten, narcissistic actors attending a third-rate movie festival in middle America. Also along for the free booze and tacky gift bags: Dennis Hopper, JoBeth Williams, Chris Kattan and LeeLee Sobieski … and Chris Pine, so good as the young Captain Kirk in this year’s Star Trek prequel,

PINE: from Art to Jack?

will go from co-starring with Denzel Washington in Ridley Scott’s Unstoppable to playing notorious counterfeiter Art Williams in The Art of Making Money. And while he’s shooting that one, Paramount Pictures will be negotiating with him to follow in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck and play CIA analyst Jack Ryan in a new series of thrillers based on Tom Clancy novels. Don’t know ‘bout you, but I’d say he’s definitely doing something right.

IF YOU CAN’T SAY SOMETHING NICE, SIT BY ME: My Manhattan hero, gossip girl Liz Smith, constantly rises to the defense of such loose cannons as Whitney Houston and Lindsay

LOHAN: parent trap?

Lohan in her on-line column at wowOwow.com. Given a chance, Liz will always take the high road; she’d far rather praise showbiz Caesars than bury them. But after the Jon & Kate Gosselin debacle escalated last week, she could no longer contain herself. “In the years that the show Jon & Kate Plus 8 has been inflicted on America,” she writes, “Kate has revealed herself as a steely-eyed control freak with high ambitions for a life outside of her home – she wants to be a star, a talk-show hostess. Jon, her hubby, is an overweight, dim, resentful sad sack with a spine of jelly. He’s the type who could turn any woman into a shrew. He has ambitions too. He wants to party with ladies who haven’t given birth to eight children and who don’t correct him every five minutes.” Who’s to blame? Liz lays some of that guilt on “the once-respectable Learning Channel (who) put these deadbeats on the air.”

SMITH: no deadbeats, please

Who’s worse? In Liz’s view, the Gosselins come a close second to Lindsay Lohan’s parents, Dina & Michael Lohan. “What a pair!” she sighs. “Daddy Michael was in trouble with the law for a long time – stock fraud, for which he was jailed four years, probation violation (more jail), violating a court order to stay away from his children (and still more jail time!). He is afflicted with terminal verbal diarrhea, and can’t-stay-away-from-the-camera-itis. Almost always he is talking about his famous daughter.” Lindsay’s mother Dina, she says, “is a ferociously taut, blonde Mama Rose, who saw a moneymaking ‘Gypsy’ in the talented Lindsay. She has lived and partied vicariously through – and sometimes

RAGTIME: back on Broadway

with – her daughter, existing in a heightened state of denial.” Says Liz: “How cruelly ironic that Lindsay came to fame in a movie titled The Parent Trap.” And then tops herself by adding what she calls a “Totally Predictable P.S.– Michael Lohan and Jon Gosselin are new best friends.”

BACK ON BROADWAY: It was one of the greatest opening nights of the ’90s — first in Toronto, and then in New York  Thirteen tumultuous years later, previews of the retooled revival of Ragtime, a new production that won cheers when it premiered at the Kennedy Centre in Washington, start tonight at the Neil Simon Theatre. The opulent period piece, set to open on Broadway Nov. 15, is already causing mucho buzz in the theatre district. For one thing, it’s been quite a while since recession-struck New Yorkers saw a dramatic musical with a cast of 40 backed by a 28-piece orchestra. For another, the man who started it all, Garth Drabinsky, the driving force behind its creation, won’t be there to herald its return. It was seven years ago yesterday when Drabinsky was arrested and charged with fraud, and the real-life drama in which he’s currently starring makes it impossible for him to go to New York without risking arrest and imprisonment. But the show must go on. And it will — without Garth.

MAPLE LEAF JOKES? WE’VE GOT A MILLION OF ‘EM!:

Q: What do you call 30 millionaires around a TV watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
A. The Toronto Maple Leafs.

Have a great weekend!

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Need a hand raising funds for a good cause? First, pick up the phone. Then, thank (y)our lucky Stars!

OUR TOWN: Is there any other business whose highest-profile members donate their talents so often and so freely? And no, this isn’t a quiz. The answer is

MacDONALD: Laughing Like Crazy

No. And when our stars go into support mode, they give it all they’ve got. Which is why you should know that seasoned smile-maker Mike MacDonald, a guy who always puts the ‘fun’ back in fund-raiser, returns to T.O. this weekend to headline Laughing Like Crazy, a benefit for the Mood Disorder Association of Ontario. Another amusing fellow, Second City alumnus Patrick McKenna hosts the Saturday night event at the Panasonic Theatre. For tickets, click here … and yes, it’s a much smaller venue than the stadiums he usually plays, but Russell Peters will return to host the annual Gilda’s Club benefit, It’s Always Something, on Nov. 23

CARVER: Songs to celebrate

at the Princess Of Wales. To order tickets, click here … and what do Brent Carver, Michael Burgess, Bruce Dow, Ted Dykstra, Melanie Doane, Theresa Tova, Adam Brazier, Sharron Matthews, Avery Saltzman, Aaron Walpole, Elicia MacKenzie (Maria in The Sound Of Music) and cast members from Jersey Boys all have in common? They’re all performing in Songs & Celebration, a November fundraiser for the Harold Green Jewish Theatre company hosted by Colin Mochrie and Deb McGrath. For more information, and to order tickets, just click here.

NO PEOPLE LIKE SHOW PEOPLE: Dancap chief Aubrey Dan is honourary chair of the third annual Bright Lights Of Broadway scholarship

PARSONS: coming to T.O.

fundraiser at the Carlu on Oct. 28 …Cheyenne Jackson, currently providing the swoon quotient for the Broadway revival of Finian’s Rainbow, will be moonlighting this season in a guest stint on 30 Rock, playing the new cast member Alec Baldwin wants Tina Fey to hire … who’da thunk it? Tie Domi is surprisingly fast on his feet in CBC’s current Battle Of The Blades competition. Can’t wait to watch him trip the light fantastic tonight with Rick Mercer on the Rick Mercer Report … and Oscar winner Estelle Parsons (remember Bonnie & Clyde?) reprises her praise-winning Broadway turn as Violet, the matriarch from hell, when Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning drama August:

DOMI & MERCER: on ice tonight

Osage County opens here next month  for a limited 10-night run.

WOT’S IN A NAME: A new reality show on BBC America features an imperious retail consultant Mary Portas — “What I don’t know about shops isn’t worth knowing” – who attempts to bring elegance to one tacky clothing store each episode. The name of the series? Mary Queen Of Shops … and the new Monty Python series that launched in the U.S. last weekend has a great title too: Monty Python: Almost The Truth (The Lawyer’s Cut.) Episode titles for the six-part IFC

PYTHON: Almost the truth

series, appropriately sponsored by Beefeater gin, are equally engaging, e.g., The Not-So-Exciting Beginnings, The Much Funnier Second Episode and The Last Episode Ever … For Now. Don’t know why I’m surprised; who else would dub their electronic home base Monty Python’s Completely Useless Website? In any case, Python devotees are already waiting for the DVD to come out do they can add it to their collection, but the good news is that Bravo! will premiere the series in Canada, starting this Saturday at 9 pm. So don’t say I didn’t warn ya!

MAPLE LEAF JOKES? WE’VE GOT A MILLION OF ‘EM!:

Q: What do the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Argonauts and the Toronto Blue Jays all have in common besides being based in Toronto ?
A. None of them can play hockey.

TOMORROW: All about GLEE.

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