Dave on Demand: The Renaissance man

Rob Lowe is on fire, isn't he?

Usually, he contents himself with throwing a few jarringly artificial notes into the otherwise carefully calibrated comic mix on NBC's Parks and Recreation.

But this week Lowe also played the title role in the fact-based Lifetime film Drew Peterson: Untouchable, about the former cop from Illinois suspected in the death of his third wife and the disappearance of his fourth.

Lowe left no stone unturned in preparing for the part, including, apparently, hiring Mike Ditka's hair-and-mustache stylist.

Chicago Sun-Times critic Richard Roeper called Lowe's performance "hilarious." Peterson, who watched Untouchable from the jail cell where he awaits trial, called the film "hysterical."

Those probably weren't the type of notices Lowe was going for, but the movie drew 5.8 million viewers. To a basic cable channel. On a Saturday night. (Lifetime will reshow it Saturday at 6 p.m. ET.)

Having conquered prime time, Lowe moved on to the sporting arena, boldly tweeting on Wednesday, "[Peyton] Manning will retire today," insisting his information came from a "pretty damn good source."

As far as we can tell, Lowe's exclusive revelation about the inner workings of the Indianapolis Colts stems from the fact that his sitcom Parks and Recreation is set in the apocryphal town of Pawnee, Indiana (although it is taped in Los Angeles).

That's kind of like me declaring myself an expert on Italian parliamentary law because I had lunch at Sbarro.

Manning's response: "I never thought Sodapop Curtis would announce my retirement, I always thought I would be the one to announce it." (The injured quarterback's future playing status remains unresolved.)

Ooh, dismissing Lowe by identifying him with one of his earliest roles, as a juvenile delinquent in 1983's The Outsiders - that's cold.

Sticks and stones, baby. Rob's already moved on, volunteering advice to the presidential debaters. After all, who would know better than him? He had a part on The West Wing.

Open the hatch. It would seem many of us are having trouble distinguishing TV from reality.

Since Fox started airing Alcatraz, National Park rangers have reported that people are now regularly stealing away from the tour route of the prison in the middle of San Francisco Bay to search for the secret subterranean chamber where many of the scenes in the series are set.

First of all, the show is taped on a soundstage in Vancouver. Second, if there were anything buried under Alcatraz, Geraldo Rivera would have already found it.

Stranger and stranger. What's going on with Tina (Phey) Fey? She's turned the Phillie Phanatic into her own Bigfoot on 30 Rock.

Last week in one of the more surreal pieces of dialogue in TV memory, her Liz Lemon came out of a dream sequence to hear her new boyfriend, Criss (James Marsden), saying " . . . which totally supports your theory that the Phillie Phanatic is biologically a female." Liz emphatically responded, "Oh, yeah, if you watch those games, that thing definitely has a menstrual cycle. Right?"

Still trying to get our head around that. Then, this week on 30 Rock, the Phanatic shows up in the TGS writers' office and, wonder of wonders, speaks. Well, it makes a noise, which it has never done before. 30 Rock translated in subtitles: "I'm an undersea king. I must prevent my daughter's marriage to the Squid Lord."

Tina, did you spike our root beer?

In that order. The sweetest line of the week came on Jersey Shore as the Meatballs - Snooki and Deena - threw a surprise party for Pauly D. Gazing around contentedly, the man of the hour waxed poetic, "I got cake. I got strippers. I got my friends. This is the best day of my life."

Marie Antoinette couldn't have said it better, yo!