Hello. My name is Jim Cantiello.

My Wednesdays are absolutely insane at the moment because my "Project Runway" and "American Idol" worlds are colliding. I’m covering both shows for MTV News, and as a result I’m pulling cuckoo hours to get my recaps done. One of my co-workers thought it’d be interesting if I broke down my Wednesday night shift into a blog post, and being jacked up on caffeine and unable to sleep at the moment, I think it’s a fine idea.

· 7:40pm: Dinner time. I try to grab a big meal now because it’s unlikely I’ll eat again for 24 hours. At the same time, I turn on my 10 year old laptop because the piece of crap takes about 20 minutes to fully boot.

· 8:00pm – 9:00pm: “American Idol” airs. I bang out notes while I watch it live, stopping occasionally when my phone rings to think to myself, “Who the eff is calling me right now? Don’t they know I’m working?” Nine times out of ten, said caller is a Tufts University student trying to get money out of my Tufts-graduate wife.

· 9:00pm – 10:00pm: It’s game time. I try to write as much of my “Idol” recap as humanly possible before “Project Runway” begins, but chances are I’ll get sidetracked when my cats do something cute, my wife does something cute, or even worse, my wife and my cats do something cute together.

· 10:00pm – 11:00pm: “Project Runway” airs. Note that at approximately 10:01pm, my wife and I snicker at Heidi Klum’s accent when she says “chance of a lifetime” in the opening credits. Also note that this happens Every. Single. Week.

· 11:01pm: I set out for the subway, and pray that a cab intercepts me before I get to the station. I live wayyyy uptown in Upper Manhattan so the chances of me getting a taxi at this time of night are as good as my chances of actually being able to afford an apartment closer to civilization.

· 11:04pm: No cab yet.

· 11:09pm: Well, maybe this subway ride will do me good. I can get more writing done on a train than I can in a cab, right?

· 11:10pm – 12:00am: My endless subway ride. I try to write but can’t because all I can do is ponder, “Why is the express train running local? It’s only supposed to do that ‘late night’ and shouldn’t ‘late night’ be later than 11 pm?”

· 12:01am – 12:15am: I head to the Times Square Starbucks (well, one of the four in the Times Square area) to get a triple tall nonfat latte and an espresso brownie. I pray that a drunken group of tourists aren’t jonesin’ for hot chocolate thus making my excursion much longer than it oughta be.

· 12:16am – 1:30am: Time to turn my scribbles into a fully formed “Runway in 60 Seconds” recap. When in doubt, I make a joke about Rami draping fabric, Sweet P being awesome or Ricky crying.

· 1:31am – 1:35am: I wake up my boss who needs to approve my script. He’s so delirious from being awoken that I could probably read him gibberish and he’d give me the okay. I still haven’t tried doing that.

· 1:36am – 2:00am: I tape the segment by myself. Some nights a security guard doing rounds will scare the bejeezus out of me, and then I’ll have to explain what I’m doing so he doesn’t think I’m a crazy person who talks to himself.

· 2:01am – 7:29am: I’m in the Avid cutting together the recap. Note that around 5:00am, I have a good cry, thanks to sleep deprivation and the torture of having to hear my own voice over and over again for hours on end.

· 7:30am: Super-editor Joe starts his shift and relieves me of Avid duty. I try to hug him but he pushes me away because I smell like rotting flesh.

· 7:31 – 9:00am: I revisit my “Idol” recap for MTVNEWS.COM that I started writing ten hours ago, which now feels like weeks ago, and then submit the finished product to the dot-com team.

· 9:01am – 9:30am: I clean up my edit while my co-workers arrive. 99% of them will say, “Damn, man, you look tired.” And I want to hit 100% of them.

· 9:31am – 9:35am: I stumble out of 1515 Broadway, bleary eyed and inexplicably sticky, and roll into a cab.

· 9:36am – 9:55am: I fall asleep in the back of the taxi and then get rudely awoken when the cabbie needs directions to my apartment.

· 9:56am: I overtip the cab driver.

· 9:57am: My wife greets me by telling me that my job is "[expletive deleted] ridiculous."

· 9:58am: I crawl into bed and have a panic attack fearing that I won’t be able to fall asleep. This lasts for about 10 seconds and then I pass out until my alarm wakes me in time for dinner.

The End!

· Buddy Miles, RIP. Tonight we will play Band of Gypsys and dance around the fire in your honor.

· While fans await the return of the strike-delayed next batch of “Heroes” episodes in the fall, the Hollywood Reporter reports that a CD soundtrack will drop on March 18 with songs from Wilco, Panic at the Disco, Imogen Heap, Death Cab for Cutie, New Pornographers, My Morning Jacket, Bob Dylan and the first new studio recording from Jesus and Mary Chain in a decade, “All Things Must Pass.” This is a good thing.

· The LAPD confirmed that they're looking into allegations that someone drugged Britney Spears. You think?

· Kids, you're not buying CDs! Well, 48% of you aren't, according to one report.

· It's not a scandal on par with Antonella Barba's or Corey Clark's, but TMZ has uncovered "American Idol" hopeful Amanda Overmyer's October 2006 DUI. The so-called "rock-and-roll nurse" was placed on 180 days of probation, which ended in August 2007.

· Pixies frontman Black Francis has a new EP coming out. Two things: First, what's an EP? Second, guess there will never be a new Pixies album, but maybe that's a good thing at this point.

Some of the folks in the Newsroom wait up 'til round midnight Sundays to catch the next week's episode of The Wire, On Demand. But then there's a contingent of folks who wait 'til Monday, maybe Tuesday, sometimes even Wednesday to watch. And it creates this unbelievable tension around here about who can say what when, who might be in earshot, . Like yesterday we were getting into that whole, "Yo, [redacted] getting shot was waaaaay crazier than Omar being bodied!," and one of the writers ran crying into the next room. (Pour one out for [redacted], btw).

Well, next week, there will be no tension. HBO sent out a press release saying Season 5 / Episode 10, the final episode of The Wire forever-ever, will NOT BE AVAILABLE ON DEMAND this week. You're gonna have to watch it with all the common folk, Sunday March 9th (9pm).

Also, if you haven't read Shaheem Reid's piece on Omar actor Michael K. Williams (who also makes a cameo in Style P's new video), then you're sleeeeping.

From Jim Fraenkel, MTV News executive producer:

Michael Jackson may have avoided prison but that didn’t stop a bunch of guys in orange jumpsuits from gettin’ busy with him. Seven months after showing Naomi Campbell how it should be done and after dazzling more than 12 million YouTubers with their monochromatic interpretation of the "Thriller" video, the world’s most lovable crew of criminal offenders is back and stomping the yard again.

This time around, the 1500 inmates at the Cebu Provincial Detention & Rehabilitation Center in the Phillipines are crankin' out that Soulja Boy. Maybe it’s the fact that prisoners aren’t allowed cell phones that they only choreographed the first few bars of the year’s biggest ring-tone but they’re certainly not phoning it in when Hammer-time comes knockin’.

“There’s a time to dance and a time to sing,” a chief administrator of prison operations in the Phillipines told ABC News back in April, while Byron Garcia, who runs the detention center, told Sun Star publication, “While the goal is to keep the body fit in order to keep the mind fit, such may not happen if it is done in a manner deemed unpleasurable. Music, being the language of the soul, is added to that regimen.”

Ok, some of you might have seen this already. But even if you have, here's a question: Do synchronized Soulja Boy routines constitute rehabilitation or cruel and unusual punishment?

Dispatch from Supervising Producer Sean Lee:

Note to Madonna’s A&R/Marketing folks: if you want to get a real opinion on Madge’s new music, don’t ask the MTV News execs graciously nodding their heads in your closed-door, super-secretive listening session. Ask us young, hardcore music geeks who are all gathered outside the big exec’s two-inch thick door, eavesdropping. Then you won’t have the cool kids, tastemakers and early adopters giving your baby less than its full due in blogs like this because it sounded all muffled.

Not that label reps of A-listers like Madonna really care about MTV’s opinion, per se…it’s sort of like big liquor distributors dropping off Hennessey at your local bar (oops did I just give my race away?). They aren’t asking if it will sell, they’re telling you where to position it for optimal lighting. And not that we can really give TOO much of an opinion anyway, because of the larger corporate issues still inherent in the “MTV” part of “MTV News.” Unless of course we’re talking about the Hottest MC’s in hip-hop…and thank goodness Madonna’s not attempting to rap these days because then I would truly be licensed to spank her still-amazingly well toned behind. Which she would probably like…but I digress. Or do I?

Album thoughts after the jump...

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Don't know if we'll ever see a Deerhunter vid on MTV but there's a few of us here in the Newsroom who love this band to no end. At the 2006 Corndog O Rama in Atlanta (a fantastic music festival, if you ever get the chance to go), Bradford inexplicably yelled at my then-girlfriend after she introduced them on stage. He apologized immediately afterwards, and really I couldn't be that mad because they were fantastic.

But that's neither here nor there. This dispatch from John Norris on his weekend before Bradford's Atlas Sound shows in NYC:

This weekend I got the chance to sit down for an extended chat with the inimitable Bradford Cox of Deerhunter/Atlas Sound/Ghetto Cross, and the subject of a million blog entries and dozens of side projects – and I’m working on a story from that interview right now. But one of the most exciting collabos he told us about is an upcoming album he’ll be doing in Morocco at the end of March, with Ed Droste from Grizzly Bear and Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett. They’ll spend two weeks in an Ed-rented villa working on a ‘pop record’. That’s quite a threesome – Cox, Droste and Pallett. Kind of an indie Hope, Crosby and Lamour in “Road to Morocco”? (IMDB it) Will there be houseboys, I had to ask? “Um, no” said Bradford, “I’m told there is a house girl.” The better to focus on work.

In addition to their appearance at this year’s Coachella Festival on April 25, the Verve will also be playing two other U.S. dates – one in Sin City, and the other in the Big Apple. The band plays Las Vegas’ Pearl Concert Theater at the Palms on April 26, and New York’s WaMu Theater at MSG on April 28 and April 29.

Faith No More’s Mike Patton has teamed up with Dan the Automator to form a new project called Crudo. While little is known about the band or its sound, Crudo will be making their live debut during the Sasquatch! Music Festival in Seattle in late May.

After the jump, more news on Radiohead, All Points West, Rocket From the Crypt, Kittie and Michael Jackson. For serious.

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Icelandic post-rocker's Sigur Ros have been busy recording their follow up to 2005's critically acclaimed Takk in New York City over the last few weeks, and work has seemingly progressed nicely. The band posted a message on their website Wednesday saying that they’ve laid the “foundations” for 11 songs and are now off to familiar territory in Sunlaugin, Iceland to complete work with producer Flood (U2, Nine Inch Nails, The Killers) with a tentative release date of late spring/early summer. The band added that "no one has heard any of these songs before.” The band’s label confirms they’ll be playing Bonnaroo and several European festivals over the summer, and will most likely preview some of their new material at these shows.

We're a touch late with this but it's certainly worth recognizing. Singer and songwriter Stephen “Static” Garrett died Monday, according to his record label Blackground. Static passed away in his hometown Louisville, KY, and no cause of death was revealed. He was 33.

Static was well known in music circles, one of the talents behind Blackground's come-up with Aaliyah and Timbaland. He wrote such classics as “Pony” for Ginuwine and “Are You That Somebody” for Aaliyah. Most recently Garrett produced and co-wrote an upcoming Lil’ Wayne single called “Lollipop."

Back in the day, Static was part of the group Playa, though he was finally slated drop his own album, Suppertime, this year. The first single, already on the net, is called, “I Got My” and features, Weezy.

More here via Concrete Loop.

On his blog, Mobb Deep's Prodigy - days away from starting his 3 1/2-year prison term for gun-possession - has authored the funniest thing on the internet right now.

[Nah Right courtesy of HNIC2]