Dave on Demand: Some exciting candidates to cohost with Kelly

Can you keep a secret? Live! with Kelly can. While everyone with Internet access has been proclaiming Subway spokesman and Terry Bradshaw foil Michael Strahan as Kelly Ripa's next cohost, the show refuses to comment.

We'll all find out together Sept. 4 when Kelly walks out for the first show of the season with the new Reege.

Live! lends itself to educated guesswork (which is what blind conjecture is called in this Gossip-Gone-Wild Era) because you have to audition for the job. So we've already seen the suitors.

It's too bad it's not more like American Idol, which is basically an open convention. All you need is a publicist to claim you're under consideration to be an Idol judge.

Whom did we have "in talks" this week? Let's see, there were Nicki Minaj and Kanye West and Lenny Kravitz and Alanis Morissette.

How's that for a motley crew. Hey, while we're at it, why not throw in someone from the real Mötley Crüe? Maybe Tommy Lee.

Obviously, when it comes to Live!, we have to be a little more discriminating. Not everyone is eligible to make small talk with Kelly. Consider the guys who have had tryouts: Seth Meyers, Josh Groban, Nick Lachey, Jerry O'Connell, Anderson Cooper, Ryan Seacrest, Neil Patrick Harris, Andy Cohen, and others. One thing they all have in common: other jobs.

So if we're going to widen the net for potential hosts, the one requirement is that they already be working.

How about these candidates?

Manny (Rico Rodriguez) from Modern Family. Sure, he's young, but he has exquisite manners and he's a snappy dresser. He could also babysit for Kelly when she wants to go out after the show.

Sheldon (Jim Parsons) from The Big Bang Theory. Can't you just see him roosting like a condor on the host chair, staring disdainfully at the celebs and their empty chitchat? "I'm sure your pets are a source of endless fascination, Ms. Kunis, but what is your take on two-dimensional graphene?"

Russell Edgington (Denis O'Hare) from HBO's True Blood. Needs the attentions of a good hairdresser, but he's witty, a bon vivant, and a natural raconteur. Wouldn't you just love to hear his daily recitations to Kelly at the top of the show about what he did the night before?

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) of Breaking Bad. Admittedly a dark horse, but let him cater the Green Room, and you'd have the best interviews on TV. Those guests would spilling their guts at hyperspeed.

You read my mind. Have to hand it to Glee. For this season they have added Sarah Jessica Parker and Kate Hudson as special guests. This is a show that already has featured Gwyneth Paltrow and Whoopi Goldberg.

Glee's casting director and I are, mirabile dictu, working with uncanny specificity from the same page. Except mine is entitled: Actresses I Absolutely Loathe.

But they don't break out. Every few months it seems there's a news report about Mark Harmon (Jethro Gibbs on NCIS) pulling some stranger from a flaming car or rescuing a hiker who went over a cliff.

LL Cool J, who stars on Harmon's spin-off series, NCIS: Los Angeles, is a different kind of hero. This week there was a break-in at Cool J's house. The actor quickly went into character as former Navy SEAL Sam Hanna and "physically detained" the intruder.

When the police arrived, the guy's nose was broken, as were his chin and some of his ribs. As of this writing, he was still hospitalized.

What does LL stand for? Leave-'em Lame?