Laura Linney, Icy Volcano

Wednesday, feb. 27

It's Grammy Time-and boy, oh boy, snooze city ! Really, who's up for a bunch of overrated yelpers

collecting tin horns-Best New Artist: Nelly-Belly Herp Alpert Fur- Boingo !-other than creepy, fat-rumped

record executives and Us Weekly

editors, who can't wait to see what hand-me-downs ska-desecrator Gwen Stefani's

got draped above her rock-hard tummy-tum-tum. And the thought of watching sweet

but overly precious Alicia Keys, the Christopher Cross of the 21st century,

tinkle-tink at her KORG upright like she was Schroeder from Peanuts makes us want to spend a month

at a karaoke bar in Koreatown, perfecting our rendition of Phil Collins'

"Against All Odds." India.Arie? What.Ever. Message to Grammyland: Bring back

Soy Bomb!

But New York ain't nothing

without its lovable hypocrisies, so the thing that really smells about the

Grammys is: We don't have them! We did for a brief period in the 1990's, of

course, but then Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Grammy maestro Michael Green started

making like Oasis pugilists Noel and Liam Gallagher, and the Grammys moved back

to La-La. There's a new Mayor in town now, however-one who likes Elvis, and

reportedly shuns dancing, like John Lithgow's angry preacher in Footloose -and a natural question

becomes: Does Mike Bloomberg want to get the city's Grammy freak on?

Answer: yessir ! "We are absolutely interested in discussing with the

Recording Academy the possibility of the Grammys returning to New York City,"

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff said on Feb. 26.

A spokesperson for the Grammys

did not return a telephone message. But reached via e-mail, Soy Bomb, a.k.a.

Michael Portnoy-the shirtless performance artist who so memorably

re-interpreted Bob Dylan's performance at the 1998 Grammys at Radio City Music

Hall-said of the return-the-awards idea:

"The voyage of a chamber pot,

sloshing in our bibs!"

We didn't make a word of that

up, we swear. Tonight on The 44th Annual Grammy Awards -as

Ivy-grad writers sit around, lamenting their inability to concoct a perfect Ja

Rule/J. Lo bone-tickler for hard-to-please boss Jon Stewart-a dazed Sissy

Spacek wanders up, accepts the prize for Best Hip-Hop Album, and profusely

thanks director Todd Field and producers Bob and Harvey Weinstein. [WCBS, 2, 8 p.m.]

Thursday, Feb.  28

 Hey, Gay TV's the thing, mister-haven't you heard about the plans

MTV and Showtime have for an all-gay channel? Now HBO-that's the thinkin' bub's television channel, plus

swear words and boobies-is getting into the act with a documentary series about

a group of gay men living in Fire Island Pines.

No one's coughing up the

details, because it's still "in development"-that's code for "the executives

still have time to parachute"-but the word is that the show will be a

reality-type series with real men living in a real home in the real Pines. It's

unclear how the show will be presented, but it's a good bet that it won't be as

schlocky as The Real World or the

real-o-rama drivel on other networks. How do we know this? Well, the series is

being developed as a joint effort between HBO and Telling Pictures, the

acclaimed, Oscar-winning documentary outfit from San Francisco responsible for

films like The Celluloid Closet and The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.

A potential air date for the

show is a long ways away. But if the show is greenlit, filming is expected to

begin this year, sources said.

An HBO spokesperson declined

to comment on the production. Telling Pictures also declined comment, saying

the company's principals, Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein, were too busy on a

current project for NBC.

Tonight on HBO, Real

Sex 18 , the creaky old sex-positive stalwart that seems to have visited

every dildo-maker and latex party in the Western hemisphere. [HBO, 32, 11 p.m.]

Friday, March 1

Lost amid the feel-good back-slapping

about the deal to put the YES network-the new home of Yankee baseball-on basic

Time Warner cable (oh yay, at least

we don't have to pay two bucks a month to watch El Duque walk the bases loaded

with no outs) was the not-so-secret message the deal delivered to CNN Money, CNN's once-hyped but

oft-delayed relaunch of its woebegone financial-news channel, CNNfn.

Even though the YES deal

impacts only Time Warner basic-cable customers in the New York City region, the

maneuver shows how little interest AOL Time Warner has right now in its old

plan to spend big bucks to renovate the underachieving CNNfn into the splashier

CNN Money.

True, CNNfn already shared the

screen with MSG prior to the YES deal.

But after making a big fuss

about CNN Money early last year, AOL Time Warner has done nothing but sit on

its haunches, a clear signal that an overhaul of its TV financial news is not a

top priority. The big factor, of course, is the economy, which tanked and made

financial news an expensive irritant, not a revenue-maker. (CNBC, regarded as

the gold standard of the form, is having oodles of problems retaining its

viewers.)

The YES decision shows that

the corpo-hesitance about CNN Money remains unchanged-and probably won't change

for a while.

"The relaunch of CNN Money is

something that was deferred, and was still in a deferral mode" at the time of

the YES network move, said Time Warner Cable spokesman Mike Luftman. In fact,

Mr. Luftman said that CNN Money appears to be deferred "indefinitely."

O.K., so guess that means we

can all hold the phone on hot new CNN Money programming like Lou Dobbs Eats Italy! Tonight on

CNNfn-not CNN Money- Lou Dobbs Moneyline . [CNNfn, 27, 6 p.m.]

Saturday, march 2

 So the still-kickin' Metro Channel is set to drive a big spike

through the heart of New York Central,

its late-night gabfest with Michael Musto and Lori Kramer. And it's making

noise that it's got some big fancy new plans for shows, though they're not

ready to announce what those plans are.

But right now, Metro is about

to launch a show that appears to have been ripped straight from the social

headlines-of 1999. Called To Live and

Date in New York , it's about a group of single people in New York City

prowling around in nice duds, going to happening places, looking for some

somethin'-somethin', just like people still do in the Sunday New York Post . The Metro show, taped

last summer, was  actually produced by a

London-based production company-see, therrrre

you go-and over on the other side the pond, it'll be called (eek) The Real Sex and the City.

"Apparently, they had been

looking all over the city," said the pleasant-sounding Sandra Guibord, one of

the women profiled in the series, which premieres on Sunday, March 3. "We

thought it would be a fun thing to do for the summer."

Ms. Guibord and three of her

single friends participated in the project. In fact, prior to doing the show,

the foursome had already given themselves a scary name: the Barracuda Brigade.

(They even have a Web site, barracudabrigade.com, complete with bikini photos,

and let the record show that each member of said brigade has a set of kick-ass

abdominals).

"I was married for a long

time," Ms. Guibord said, explaining the name. "And all my girlfriends are

single, and I would just laugh because they would go through men like crazy,

and for some reason I nicknamed them a bunch of barracudas. When I became single,

I said, 'Oh God, we're a barracuda brigade, aren't we?"

Yes, we are! What's Ms.

Guibord's ex-hubby going to think if he's in New York some night and stumbles

upon his ex flirting up a storm with some handsome devil?

"I don't know," Ms. Guibord

said. "I don't talk to him."

Okey-dokey. But Ms. Guibord

does know what's out there in the great single wilderness. And for what it's

worth, she disputes the idea that people aren't still fearing commitment,

canoodling and living it up in post–Sept. 11 New York. Remember all those magazine

articles about how everyone wanted to hitch up, buy flannel pajamas and bake

pies with their exes all day?

"I think that lasted for about

two months," Ms. Guibord said. "Now everyone is just back to their old doggie

ways."

We're not going to even touch

that! Tonight on the Metro Channel, Star Boxing . [METRO, 70, 7 p.m.]

Sunday, March 3

Tonight, HBO has the Show You're Supposed to Be Watching but

Instead Kick Back with Buffy the Vampire Slayer on VH1 , a.k.a. Six Feet Under . See if you can hang on

until 10 p.m. on the Metro Channel, when that comic vixen Sarah Silverman pops

up in the underrated, underseen, underpaid, under-everything Who's the Caboose , an examination

of "pilot season" that's as good a riff on the inanity of the TV biz as

anything you'll find. Plus, Andy Dick's in it. [METRO, 70, 10 p.m.]

Monday, March 4

 Let's get this straight: Aaron Sorkin is irritated at the media

for "waving pom-poms" and puffing up George W. Bush after Sept. 11? While it's

pretty gutsy for Mr. Sorkin to rant so grandly about a wartime President -in The New Yorker this week-his SoCal

explosion felt kind of weird, because if there's one guy in America who's

gotten a warmer pom-pom bath from the media than George W., it's Mr. Sorkin,

even as his NBC show, The West Wing,

is devolving into a self-absorbed Bride

of Thirtysomething. Ah, well. The schmoes behind Fear Factor probably love

G.W.B. Tonight on Fear Factor , more

schmoes bob for plums in a tank filled with icky squirmy serpents. [WNBC, 4, 8 p.m.]

Tuesday, March 5

 Tonight on Watching Ellie, Bob Patterson stops

by, asks for work. [WNBC, 4, 8:30 p.m.]