Well, a whole slew of my "Guilty Pleasures of Summer" TV shows came to an end tonight.

Big Brother 6 ended with Maggie winning. I got really turned-off by the casting this year. I'm tired of people that are just a bit too young in this game. I'm tired at how "divisive" they're tried to cast (and were pretty damn successful about it). The damn house got split in two, and I know a lot of people out there hated the "Friendship Alliance", but the "Sovereign Six" had people (Howie and Jenelle specifically) that had horrendous personalities - evidenced on how everyone reacted to the Kaysar eviction. The hateful vile that poured out of those two sealed it for me. The game isn't about that crap and once that happened, I lost interest in the show.

The show that I got interested in (and didn't expect to) was Rock Star: INXS. American Idol? Piece of crap next to this. Forget the crappy weeks of watching those goddamned auditions. These people that competed auditioned off camera and came there to rock. It was only Rock-and-Roll songs for each night's performances.Between producer Mark Burnett, based on his name alone, and the band itself, who worked tirelessly on this, they team was able to procure rights to rock songs never before performed on commercial TV. Quality songs performed by quality singers with a quality house band in front of a live quality audience. And not only that, but the winner doesn't get some record deal that may have them fading into oblivion. The winner becomes lead singer in a band that's been together for over 20 years and is well known. The performance were even made available for download through MSN music at the show's website. Just an all-around quality show. Live. Energetic. Rocked.

Unfortunately, hometown boy Marty Casey didn't make it and JD Fortune did. (Though the band wants to talk to Marty about possibly being the opening act on their tour. Cool runner-up privileges.)

I'd love to see this show again, but that doesn't make any sense - you can't do it with the same band because the whole idea was to find a replacement for Michael Hutchence and go forward as a band. They'd have to use a different band, but I can't imagine who that would be.

Then we have one straggler that won't go quietly into that dark night - "Dancing with the Stars: Dance-off". Yes that great little series that caught a lot of people by surprise and pissed-off a lot of them at the end came back tonight with a dance-off to prove who the winner will be (champion Kelly Monaco and her professional dance partner, Alec Mazo, went up against runner-up John O'Hurley and his professional partner Charlotte Jorgensen.) We won't know until Thursday who "won", though...