Keith Olbermann has worked 13 days this month, leaving Countdown to be guest-hosted by Lawrence O'Donnell or David Shuster on eight nonconsecutive nights. This is after a two-and-a-half week vacation in July. He's back tonight, and MSNBC says he'll explain.

Nikki Finke is an industrious and relentless blogger. But she's not a reliable one. As her readers know, she's given to frequent unexpected absences from her blog. Now that she's making $400,000, we're going to start keeping track.