Pardon our absence last week, but we were on vacation along with, apparently, every other nerd in the world down at Comic-Con. We have a lot of local reality contestants to catch up with! First and foremost, the dread "Pirate Master" was cancelled by CBS, although they will be putting up the remaining episodes on their Web site. So far we haven't felt compelled to actually watch those. We'll probably wait until the final episode......

On "America's Got Talent," Oakland schoolteacher Michael Strelo-Smith (check out his Web site and tell us just what the hell that thing in the upper left hand corner is) had a cold during his second performance, but sang anyway. Whether it was the cold, or his rather boring presentation, we can't say, but the judges deemed it not good enough, and he didn't make it to the Top 20. But Kashif and Boy Shakira......

Last week's holiday meant nothing but reruns for most of the reality TV shows, save "Pirate Master," unfortunately. But we did realize there is another local competing on another reality show we've forgot to mention. That show is "On the Lot," and the local is director Mateen Kemet from Oakland. Now, "On the Lot" is a show with a lot of problems. It probably would have been cancelled a long time ago, but since......