Obama, Oschmama. Tell your mama about Obama! Don't tell me. I'm watching TV DVDS instead. OK, seeing that oldies rock concert at the Lincoln Memorial brought a tear to my eye, but with all those aging pop stars, didn't it also feel like a PBS special fundraiser targeting the Viagra set? Time to buy the new DVDs, I say!

I don't know if it's a comment on all the undead bankers and brokers sucking up our tax dollars these days, but could vampires be any hotter? Besides Midnight and True Blood: The Complete First Season ($40.99), this week awakens Moonlight: The Complete Series ($39.98), starring private dick Mick St. John, bloodsucking sleuth in the City of Angels. Find out why Alex O'Loughlin is a People's Choice winner.

Again with the real-life parallels: Since we're all lost on a ruthless, mysteriously terrifying island after a crash, we'll all be tuning in to Lost this week. And if we don't all watch Lost: The Complete Fourth Season ($59.99), we'll all be lost. "Complete" is sort of a misnomer, since the writers' strike truncated the show, but it's still plenty to absorb. The DVD helps out with an eight-minute recap of the byzantine plot.

He lived in a trailer by the beach, just like many of us will shortly. And nobody showed how to do more with less, in highest style, than laid-back James Garner in The Rockford Files: Season Six (The Final Season) ($39.98). Watch for guest stars Lauren Bacall and Mariette Hartley of Star Trek fame, who was then more famous for these amazing, ultrapopular Polaroid commercials she and Garner did. Nobody could believe they weren't a real-life couple, razzing each other so.

TNT isn't always a watchword for quality, but they did a pretty good job with 1992's MGM: When the Lion Roars ($29.98), a Patrick Stewart-narrated documentary history of the great film studio whose majordomo, Louis B. Mayer, roared louder, while Irving Thalberg's endless memos carried a big stick. The BBC is a watchword for quality, and while it may not be the sexiest version ever, their 2008 version of Tess of the D'Urbervilles ($34.98) is solid entertainment about the degradation of an alluring, clueless girl subject to all the viciousness of Thomas Hardy's pitiless imagination. Sure, Roman Polanski brought more verve to her downfall, but that's because he was basically like the bad guys in the story. Gemma Atherton is winsome as the bad boys' victim.

The time is also ripe for The Waltons: The Complete Eighth Season ($39.98), which might have been subtitled The Greatest Generation on the Home Front. John-Boy goes MIA, and so does dewy-cheeked Richard Thomas, who was unfortunately replaced in the role by a forgettable guy.

For the first time, The Powerpuff Girls Tenth Anniversary Collection: The Complete Series ($59.98) erupts with all the force of sugar, spice, everything nice, and Chemical X, which gives the cartoon heroines superpowers to put X-Men to shame.

But quit living in the past. Check out Simon Schama's The American Future: A History ($34.98), the BBC documentary about the eve of the Obama Reconstruction and what it all has to do with Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, and the many heartbroken Americans Schama met with crisscrossing the country. "This is my love song to America," he says. So evidently not everybody on the planet hates us anymore.

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