Where to be and what to watch...

It was double-take time when we clapped eyes on the description of tonight's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: How'd They Do That? (ABC, 8 ET). The guy getting the new-house treatment is James Dolan, the victim of a workplace shooting incident. Yikes! Have things gotten this bad at Cablevision? Turns out it's another, non-Voom-related Mr. Dolan. Three R alert, readin','ritin' and Republican edition: Sen. John McCain shows up at his alma mater, the U.S. Naval Academy, as the guest lecturer for a U.S. Government & Constitutional Development class in another edition of Stand In on the 24-hour college network mtvU (12 midnight ET). Thus McCain joins the august ranks of fellow academics-for-a-day, which include Professors Marilyn Manson and .Snoop Dogg

The Festival Rose d'Or getting under way today in Lucerne, Switzerland, is an enticing affair that presents plenty of opportunities for backslapping and networking amid all the awards presentations for international entertainment television. But former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam is skipping the opportunity to bask in the multinational glow as the troupe is inducted into the festival's hall of fame. Possibly Gilliam suspected that the organizers were overenthusiastic fans plotting some sort of ghastly attempt at Python-style humor. The festival Web site proclaims, “The Rose d'Or Hall of Fame is high in the beautiful Swiss Alps housed in an ice cave carved in the living glacier. The Hall of Fame inductions and celebrations will take place in this magnificent natural setting…” Gilliam's comment: “I can think of no more delightful way of being honored than by being frozen in a glacier. I'm even more delighted that Terry Jones will be accepting the honour for the group…alone.”

Let's see, first ABC lobs a bomb at a competing network with tonight's hour-long Primetime Live investigation of “explosive claims” about Fox's American Idol (10 ET—they insist on calling it 10:02, but we're not playing along). Then, later this sweeps month, it's ABC's Trump Unauthorized TV movie about the host of NBC's The Apprentice. Why not mess with CBS? Coming up next: Diane Sawyer goes undercover, loitering near CSI location shoots, making faces in the background and “accidentally” knocking over garbage cans at inopportune times!

The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers holds a VoIP-centric symposium today at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Denver: “Delivering Voice Today—Leveraging Multimedia Tomorrow.” Even if you don't fall in the “Who Should Attend” category (voice operations managers, voice/data business managers, engineering professionals, new-business development managers), you might want to pony up the $525 admission fee for non-SCTE members so you can terrify everyone back at the office with your mastery of brain-frying technical matters, planting the seed in their minds that, five years from now, they might be working for you.

In a bit of NBC Uni synergissimo, Today co-host “and avid golfer” Matt Lauer hosts USA Network's The Good Life (7 p.m. ET), which will “gaze into the lives of PGA TOUR pros,” the press release promises. You might want to start soft-pedaling the avid-golfer angle for a while, Mr. Lauer. NBC already freed up Today exec producer Tom Touchet to hit the links whenever he likes, and somehow we doubt that, if the housecleaning continues over there, Katie Couric will be regularly swinging a five-iron anytime soon. Not on a fairway, at least. Fore!

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