Currently reading and enjoying: Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z, by David Sacks. Each letter of the alphabet gets its own short chapter discussing that letter’s history and its evolution to its present-day written form and pronunciation. Interspersed with these are chapters that follow our alphabet’s transition from the Phoenicians, to the ancient Greeks, to the Etruscans, to the Romans, and so on. Really terrific.

One of our current guilty pleasures is So NoTORIous, VH1’s new half-hour show lampooning the day-to-day life of Tori Spelling, starring… Tori Spelling. It sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does. It’s clever, and Tori’s a good sport. The show makes fun of her reputation as a spoiled scion of a rich family and her attempt to cash in on her past fame despite a lack of any real talent. There are occasional references to 90210, her Donna Martin character, and Shannon Doherty (who’s usually implied to be Tori’s arch-nemesis).

On the show, Tori lives in an apartment in Los Angeles that’s owned by her wacky rich bitch of a neglectful mother, played by icky-lipped Loni Anderson. We never see Aaron Spelling, but whenever Tori visits the family mansion, we hear the Dynasty or Charlie’s Angels theme. We see plenty of flashbacks to Tori’s childhood, when she was perenially (but comically) screwed over by her unloving mom.

The whole point of this post, though, is to mention my favorite character on the show: Tori’s gay Iranian best friend, Sasan, played by the yummy Zachary Quinto. Not only is he good-looking, but I love his character and his line readings.

But he’s not the reason I watch the show, honest…