NBC Reportedly Passes on 'Wonder Woman' Pilot

This spring, no pilot was more buzzy, controversial, or intensely scrutinized than "Wonder Woman." But evidently, buzz is not enough to overcome the stink of a misbegotten failure: This week, NBC declined to pick up the show.

The news comes as the networks prepare for their upfront presentations (where they unveil their fall schedules for advertisers). "Wonder Woman" would have seemed to be a sure thing: It was produced by David E. Kelley, whose TV successes with the network date back to "L.A. Law," and starred geek-bait stars like Cary "The Princess Bride" Elwes and Elizabeth "Austin Powers" Hurley. But reports of its abysmal script (which was later rewritten, to slightly more positive effect) seem to have been borne out in a pilot episode NBC could not approve. The ongoing agita over the design of the title character's costume — which producers attempted to quell by announcing Wonder Woman would actually alternate three different looks — probably didn't help either.

"Wonder Woman" is not the only pilot NBC commissioned, and then (reportedly) rejected. "A. Mann's World," a dramedy from "Sex and the City" producer Michael Patrick King, would have starred Don Johnson as a hairstylist, and Ellen Barkin as his ex-wife. "17th Precinct" would have reteamed "Battlestar Galactica" co-creator Ron Moore with "Galactica" stars James Callis and Jamie Bamber, but the notion of a series about a magic police station (really) may have been too strange for network television. And author A.J. Jacobs has expressed equanimity about the death of a sitcom pilot based on his book "My Life as an Experiment": "As the Jews say, may its memory be a blessing!...I will always have the fake BlackBerry prop that I stole from the set. They can't take that away from me!"

Fortunately for David E. Kelley, he has had some good news from NBC this week: It has picked up his surprise hit dramedy "Harry's Law" for a second season. Maybe he can write in a role for Adrianne Palicki, the would-have-been Wonder Woman: I see her as a sassy, very tall brunette paralegal, who never dresses in latex bustiers.

Mystery Boom in Virginia Likely a Meteor

Tuesday evening, residents across Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Suffolk, Va., dialed 911 to report what sounded what a large explosion. Today, a NASA scientist explained that it might have been a meteor.

The area is home to several military bases, so residents are accustomed to loud sounds. This was out of the ordinary, though; several 911 callers reported a loud noise that rattled their screen doors and windows. One woman told the local television station, WAVY, that it felt like an earthquake.

That's not uncharacteristic for a sonic boom created by a meteor, said Joe Zawodny, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center.

"A sonic boom is pressure wave, and it mimics an explosion," Zawodny told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site of SPACE.com. "They can be quite forceful, and can definitely rattle walls and windows."

Meteors come in different flavors. Some are iron meteorites, which melt and burn on their way down but remain intact, Zawodny said. The sound is most consistent with a golf ball- size rock of this nature traveling upward of 1,000 mph and leaving a trail of sonic booms as it flies across the sky, most likely quite close to the ground. 

Or it could have been caused by a more energetic event. "Other things are made of materials that break up on way down. This thing could have come in sizeable and disintegrated, and that energy dissipated as one big boom as it broke down. So it could have actually been an explosion," Zawodny said.

One thing it most likely was not caused by was a supersonic military airplane. "That's always first thing you think of, but that's a very distinctive sound," he said. "You hear a double boom from a plane's sonic boom. And those sonic booms are fairly local and don't occur along a path, as this noise did."

"There's no doubt in my mind that it's consistent with a supersonic rock, or something else coming in from space," Zawodny said.

Sonic booms from meteors are not a rare event, occurring a dozen times a year over the U.S. This rock was most likely a remnant of a meteor shower associated with Halley's Comet that peaked on May 6, Zawodny said. 

Zawodny pointed out that this explanation is not conclusive, however, unless someone witnessed the meteor's fire trail.

"The only other thing that I've been holding open as possibility — and this would be quite rare — is this could be a result of an atmospheric ducting phenomenon," Zawodny said.

This phenomenon requires just-right weather conditions to create layers in the atmosphere that then act as a wave guide and channel sound waves from one place to another, sometimes over long distances.

"We've had the right temperature profile in the area [to create an atmospheric duct]," Zawodny said. "There could have been an offshore Navy thing that made sound that traveled along the duct inland. It would have had to be a really huge sound, though."

"It's a really remote possibility," he added. "But I'm a scientist, and without conclusive evidence, you gotta have a little wiggle room."

The nose knows: Allergy season here with vengeance

There may be a whiff of truth to claims by allergy sufferers who sniffle that this season is, well, a bigger headache than years past.

And now, more bad news: It's also lasting longer, prolonging the misery of the millions of people for whom spring is a punishment, not a pleasure.

Heavy snow and rain in some parts of the country have nourished a profusion of tree pollen, while a sudden shift to warm, sunny weather has made its release more robust. The deluges and, in some places, flooding have pumped up the volume on mold. Add in the wind, and the suffering skyrockets.

Warnings about the difficult season have come from allergy specialists from New York to Atlanta, Chicago to California.

"This past week has been one of the worst ever," rasped Lynne Ritchie, 70, as she bought allergy medicine this week at a Manhattan drugstore.

Dr. Stanley Schwartz hears that from patients all the time — every year, in fact, he noted with a wry smile.

"Literally, every year is the worst year," said Schwartz, chief of allergy and rheumatology for Kaleida Health and the University at Buffalo. "Now it may actually be, but when it's there and you're feeling it, you don't remember what last year was like."

What is certain is that allergy seasons in general have been getting longer and more challenging, said Angel Waldron, spokeswoman for the Asthma and Allergy Foundation.

"We do know that climate change and warmer temperatures are allowing trees to pollinate longer than usual," she said. "Although people feel things are worse than ever before, it's actually because of the longer season. It's a longer time to endure."

Pollen counts and allergy attacks vary widely from region to region, locality to locality and day to day, and no one entity tracks the full complexity of their ups and downs across the country. But everything is ripe this year for a historic season.

It's been an exceptionally rainy spring in much of the country, with several states east of the Mississippi River setting records for the wettest April since 1895. That means luxuriously blooming trees and a similar effect on mold.

"The mold will grow under the fallen leaves from last season," Schwartz said. "So if it's very wet, it isn't just the blooming plants but it's also the mold, and many people are allergic to multiple airborne allergens."

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation lists Knoxville, Tenn.; Louisville, Ky.; Charlotte, N.C.; Jackson, Miss.; and Chattanooga, Tenn.; as its "2011 spring allergy capitals," using a scoring system that measures airborne grass, tree and weed pollen; mold spores; the number of allergy medications used per patient; and the number of allergy specialists per capita.

Four of those five cities are in states — Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky — that all had drenching springs and significant flooding. But the suffering isn't limited to the South.

The highest tree pollen count in three years triggered a dangerous air quality warning Friday in Chicago, where allergist Dr. Joseph Leija warned in a statement: "Itchy eyes, stuffy noses and fatigue will be common among Chicagoans with sensitive respiratory systems."

In Los Angeles, rain, a heat wave and the Santa Ana winds combined for a brutal stretch in February. To north in San Jose, pollen counts are on the rise with the start of grass season, allergist Dr. Alan Heller said Friday.

The National Allergy Bureau shows high pollen counts in the Northeast this week, including Albany and New York City, with their birch, oak and maple trees, and Oxford, Ala., where walnut, pine and willows are in bloom. The bureau is part of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology.

"It's been a very bad season so far. ... A lot of people suffering," said Dr. William Reisacher, director of the allergy center at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.

"A lot of people who haven't suffered in previous years have come in for the first time in several years with symptoms," Reisacher said, noting that the Northeast's sudden change from cold, snowy winter to warm spring has worsened the situation.

Full circle round, back in the South, the Atlanta Allergy and Asthma Clinic has seen no letup since late February, when unseasonable warmth had Dr. Kevin Schaffer describing this year's pollen levels as "off the charts."

Medications used in the past may not be as effective if symptoms are worse this year, Reisacher said. Many of his patients in New York have required multiple drugs, including nasal sprays, oral antihistamines and eye drops.

Madison Sasser, a 21-year-old senior at Belmont University in Nashville, left her doctor's office with two kinds of nose spray and eye drops Thursday after already enduring an allergy-related sinus infection three weeks ago — right before final exams.

"It's been awful," she said. "My eyes have been so itchy and red, and I sneeze and cough. It's just been terrible."

In Dallas, a windy spring is helping to scatter the allergens.

"We've had heavy winds and the tree pollens were in heavy bloom, and all the wind was causing a lot of people a lot of problems," said Jill Weinger, physician's assistant at the Dallas Allergy & Asthma Center, where some patients were returning for treatment after years of absence.

In Louisville, Ky., 20-year-old Jared Casey's glazed eyes scanned the aisles of a Walgreens drugstore Thursday afternoon. He greeted the allergy season with an over-the-counter purchase of Claritin-D at the beginning of February — six weeks earlier than last year.

He switched to Zyrtec at the beginning of May, when his ears began plugging up, and said his symptoms are lasting longer than in years past.

"It's been a lot worse," he said. "My ears have stayed plugged up for two weeks."

Kristen Fennimore of New Egypt, N.J., counts herself among the than 35 million Americans plagued by seasonal allergic rhinitis — also known as hay fever, a condition characterized by sneezing, stuffiness, a runny nose and the telltale itchiness in the nose, roof of the mouth, throat, eyes or ears.

Until recently, the 28-year-old legal assistant said, she was feeling pretty good and thought she might get off easy this year. But pride goes before a fall.

"I was going around bragging how my allergies weren't bad this year," she said. "Then this week, it's been horrible."