Lily Tomlin

The Highlights: CBS introduces Bill Cosby's new show "Cosby" at 8 p.m., and the other networks--assuming many viewers will be curious enough to tune in--have largely gotten out of the way. NBC, for example, offers a "TV's Censored Bloopers" special as competition, holding "The Jeff Foxworthy Show" until next week. Projections vary for "Cosby's" premiere, but insiders see about 25% of the available audience as the number to watch.

A 7-year-old girl who was trapped in a burning Watts apartment building was listed in critical condition Saturday afternoon, and another fire in Hollywood gutted the entire third story of an office building where entertainer Lily Tomlin has a production company, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department. The unidentified girl is being treated at County-USC Medical Center for second- and third-degree burns over 75% of her body. The fire occurred at 11:45 p.m.

Put yourself in Lily Tomlin's position. You own the video rights to a documentary about the evolution of your successful one-woman Broadway show "The Search for Intelligent Life in the Universe." The rights may be worth $1 million, maybe more. All you have to do is have your agents make a few calls, shop it around, then take your loot to the bank. But, there's a problem. You don't like the documentary.

There are benches, and then there is The Bench. Anyone who has hiked the vertical paths of Hollywood's Runyon Canyon has seen it, and probably spent time on it. You can't not notice it, and you can't not love it. Because you've come a long way to get to it, perched there at the summit of your heart-thumping climb, and because you can't believe what lies all around you: 360 degrees of L.A., stretching as far as the Pacific Ocean and Catalina Island...

A homeless woman named Trudy is Earth's contact person for a fact-finding committee of space aliens. Trudy may have a questionable grasp on reality, but she understands her fellow human beings pretty well, and this makes her a good tour guide. There's one concept she can't quite get across, however. She shows the aliens a can of soup, then a picture of Andy Warhol's rendering of a can of soup. The little guys can't seem to distinguish soup from art.

There's a strange sense of loss when Lily Tomlin takes her bows alone after "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe" at the Doolittle Theatre. Where are Trudy and Agnus, Chrissy and Kate, Edie and Marge? Back in the trunk. They were only characters after all. And we knew, all along, that it was Lily playing them. Since she never left the stage, who else could it have been? But never has a one-woman show seemed so well-peopled.

The Scleroderma Research Foundation bills its annual fund-raising gala as "Cool Comedy, Hot Cuisine." This year, with Lily Tomlin performing and the City restaurant catering, they went the gourmet route. The event Sunday at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel was the sixth time out for the fund-raiser. Past performers include Robin Williams and Rosie O'Donnell, so snagging Tomlin was in a high-standard tradition. Before the dinner, the comedian said she was unsure about working in a ballroom.

"Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In," one of the most influential TV series of the swinging '60s and early '70s," began as an hourlong special on Sept. 9, 1967. Four months later it was a weekly series, replacing "The Man From U.N.C.L.E. " It quickly captured the nation's funny bone and became the No. 1 show. The comedy was a cross between old-fashioned slapstick zaniness and modern, cutting-edge political satire. Hosted by the comedy team of Dan Rowan and Dick Martin ? Rowan was the straight man and Martin the clueless womanizer ?

"I've always thought of myself as an actress," Lily Tomlin said. "I just happened to get famous from doing monologues on television and in clubs, and then, pigeon-holed." Tomlin was reflecting Monday morning on winning this season's Tony award as best actress for her solo performance in Jane Wagner's "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe." "It all gets back to the material.