The Daily Beast: "Amy Poehler Talks to Rachel Dratch About Her Memoir"

If you're at all like me, you love Amy Poehler. And if you're at all like me and Amy Poehler, you also love Rachel Dratch.

At The Daily Beast, I had a hand in today's interview feature, in which Parks and Recreation's Poehler interviews her former Saturday Night Live colleague and long-time friend about her new memoir, out this week, as well as about motherhood, ghosts, the prairie, and more.

In her new autobiography, Girl Walks Into a Bar…: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle, former Saturday Night Live star Rachel Dratch—the rubber-faced comedian behind Debbie Downer and Abe Scheinwald, to name two of her creations—comes clean about growing up, life behind the scenes on SNL, what happened with 30 Rock, dating possible cannibals, and her life now that she’s in her forties and a first-time mother.

When Dratch was performing with improv comedy troupe Second City in Chicago, her understudy was an up-and-comer named Amy Poehler, who would go on to perform with Dratch on SNL and star in NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

Poehler first saw Dratch on stage and was struck by her comedic ability. “I thought Dratch was the funniest person in the room,” she said, “keeping up with all of the guys while still being herself. We hit it off instantly, and we went on to become lovers, and then finally, we’re just friends.”

Last week, Poehler interviewed Dratch and asked her friend about why she wrote her memoir now, their children’s future plans, and whether she’s seen a ghost, among other topics.

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What's Done is Done: The Eternal Struggle Between Good and Evil on the Season Finale of "Lost"

Every story begins with thread. It's up to the storyteller to determine just how much they need to parcel out, what pattern they're making, and when to cut it short and tie it off. With last night's penultimate season finale of Lost ("The Incident, Parts One and Two"), written by Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, we began to see the pattern that Lindelof and Cuse have been designing towards the last five seasons of this serpentine series. And it was only fitting that the two-hour finale, which pushes us on the road to the final season of Lost , should begin with thread, a loom, and a tapestry. Would Jack follow through on his plan to detonate the island and therefore reset their lives aboard Oceanic Flight 815 ? Why did Locke want to kill Jacob? What caused The Incident? What was in the box and just what lies in the shadow of the statue? We got the answers to these in a two-hour season finale that didn't quite pack the same emotional wallop of previous season

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Have a Burning Question for Team Darlton, Matthew Fox, Evangeline Lilly, or Michael Emerson?

Lost fans: you don't have to make your way to the island via Ajira Airways in order to ask a question of the creative team or the series' stars. Televisionary is taking questions from fans to put to Lost 's executive producers/showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and stars Matthew Fox ("Jack Shephard"), Evangeline Lilly ("Kate Austen"), and Michael Emerson ("Benjamin Linus") for a series of on-camera interviews taking place this weekend. If you have a specific question for any of the above producers or actors from Lost , please leave it in the comments section below . I'll be accepting questions until midnight PT tonight and, while I can't promise I'll be able to ask any specific inquiry due to the brevity of these on-camera interviews, I am looking for some insightful and thought-provoking questions to add to the mix. So who knows: your burning question might get asked after all.

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Pilot Inspektor: CBS' "Smith"

I may just have to change my original "What I'll Be Watching This Fall" post, as I sat down and finally watched CBS' new crime drama Smith this weekend. (What? It's taken me a long time to make my way through the stack of pilot DVDs.) While it's on following Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars on Tuesday nights (10 pm ET/PT, to be exact), I'm going to be sure to leave enough room on my TiVo to make sure that I catch this compelling, amoral drama. While one can't help but be impressed by what might just be the most marquee-friendly cast in primetime--Ray Liotta, Virginia Madsen, Jonny Lee Miller, Amy Smart, Simon Baker, and Franky G all star and Shohreh Aghdashloo has a recurring role--the pilot's premise alone earned major points in my book: it's a crime drama from the point of view of the criminals, who engage in high-stakes heists. But don't be alarmed; it's nothing like NBC's short-lived Heist . Instead, think of it as The Italian

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