Buzz Aldrin was just here for National Geographic, talking about a show called "Live From the Moon," but the afternoon's most endearing celeb is Georgia, one of the 22 fighting dogs rescued from Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vicks' kennels.

Georgia is in Beverly Hills to promote the two-hour Sept. 5 season premiere of National Geo's "Dogtown," which will focus  on the rehabilitation of Vick's dogs.

She may have been trained to fight, but she's been sleeping peacefully at the feet of trainer John Garcia, sporting a pink collar and leash, occasionally getting up to be petted and adored.

"We're working very intensively on some of her dog issues, and she's doing very well," said Garcia, who said the pit bull is "impressing me very day."

"She did have some food-guarding issues and other issues we knew we had to address right away" when she arrived at the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in southern Utah," Garcia said, insisting that his mellow charge has become a "diva."

"She's totally a California girl," said Garcia, who's sharing his  Beverly Hilton room with the dog, who was most likely used to breed other fighters, her teeth removed so she wouldn't be able to bite her former handlers.

After the session, I'll admit to having joined the throngs who gathered to take turns scratching Georgia behind the ears, rubbing her tummy, patting her head.

And while I know that I've many times referred to this event as the world's largest celebrity petting zoo, I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've actually done any actual petting.

What do you do after you win an Oscar?

Well, if you're Jamie Foxx, you produce a "reality" show for MTV.

Foxx, who's still working plenty in front of the camera, may just be following in the footsteps of Ashton Kutcher as a "reality" producer, but he sounds positively uplifted by the discoveries he's made while working on "From Gs to Gents," in which tough-talking young guys get a male version of the Eliza Doolittle treatment while competing for $100,000.

To hear Foxx, his fellow executive producer Cris Abrego and host Fonzworth Bentley tell it, it's more about the teaching than the money.

Bentley, who's published an etiquette book, "Advance Your Swagger," actually envisions young men taking notes at home as he teaches their counterparts on the show how to be gentleman.

"I want to change cool. This is now cool. It is cool to know how to treat a lady...it is cool to go to college," Bentley said.

Asked if his own career wouldn't be enough inspiration for young men to not throw away their lives, Foxx said no.

"I think with the society we have now...You have to get out there and actually show and help those [people]. Because when people see you from a distance, they don't know who you are," he said.

"It's not enough to be this role model."

And will he appear on the show?

"Yes," he said. "I will pop up."

Peter Bogdanovich is here to talk about "Humboldt County," a film that's part of HDNet's program to show movies on television before they premiere in theaters.

HDNet chief Mark Cuban claims this make sense, and most of us are still trying to make sense of what he's saying -- Philly, he tells me, remains the largest market where HDNet isn't available on cable, so I can't try this at home -- but in the meantime someone's asked the director of "The Last Picture Show" when the last time it was he paid for a movie.

Assuming, no doubt, that it's been a while, given the freebies that prevail in this town.

"I paid to see three movies fairly recently," Bogdanovich replied, ticking off "Ironman" and "Sex and the City" before drawing a blank on the third.

" 'Sex and the City' was amazing -- I was the only guy in the theater," he said. The women in the audience loved it, and "I loved that they loved it."

Still, the much-touted in-theater experience left Bogdanovich a bit cold.

"The previews pretty much send you out of the theater," he said.

Jacque Reid, who'll be anchoring TV One's gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Democratic National Convention -- and no, before you ask, the African American-oriented network has no plans to cover John McCain's nomination -- notes that the Rev. Al Sharpton really did plan to come to today's press conference.

His plans changed when his friend, the Rev. TimothyWright, was critically injured July 4 in a Pennsylvania car accident that killed Wright's wife and grandson, Reid said.

The Rev. Al Sharpton is officially the first no-show of the 2008 Television Critics Association summer press tour.

But don't blame Sharpton, who apparently couldn't make it. He's part of a glorious history of luminaries "scheduled" to appear during the cable network portion of the tour, a two-week extravaganza of press conference, parties and gabfests that got under way in Beverly Hills about 40 minutes ago.

It can be hard to draw a critical mass for some of the smaller cable networks, so advertising a quotable guy like Sharpton for a 9 a.m. session is one way to populate the room.

TV One's bait and switch was in the service of a documentary series, "Murder in Black and White," which he'll be hosting. And with the daughter of one of the victims of a race-based slaying on the panel, along with filmmaker Keith Beauchamp and civil rights activist Lawrence Guyot, it could be argued that Sharpton wasn't much missed.

And yet every time it happens, the network involved loses a little bit of credibility with the people its executives are trying to get to write about it.

 (See "Sharpton update" for an excuse that might get this network, at least, off the hook.)