by Laura Saltman

All my "American Idol" fans rejoice.

The ball is about to get rolling on season six and I've got all the details. If you are a new reader of all my musings here on Access Hollywood's Web site' you may not know that I am the official "American Idol" insider for our show. I've covered all five seasons of the show and also worked with Ryan Seacrest on his now cancelled talk show. While working on that show I spent every Tuesday and Wednesday night backstage at the show seeing all the shenanigans that go on. I also attend the show tapings pretty much every week. So, I get to see what goes on inside the house when the show is live.

Enough about me! Here's the scoop on the "American Idol" auditions hot off the presses. Auditions begin right here in Los Angeles on August 8th at The Forum. You must be between the ages of 16 and 28 and be able to work in the United States. According to Fox, you must also be a male or female. So, I guess that means animals, bugs and hermaphrodites are not allowed to audition'

by Laura Saltman

Thursday was Emmy nomination day and that means everyone here at Access Hollywood was in scramble mode.

It's become tradition that all the entertainment shows interview as many nominees as possible to air on their shows that night. This means essentially we have to try and predict who we think the big nominees will be. Our producers call up the actors publicists and try to pre-arrange interviews should their clients be nominated. This way we can have a camera crew ready early in the morning to shoot the interviews. The nominations happen around 5:30am West Coast time and then we have until about noon to get everything shot. Usually we've pre-arranged most of the interview based on our predictions and we get pretty close but this morning we wound up scrambling a little bit. New voting rules helped a whole group of newcomers get the nomination and left some regulars out of the mix.

9:30 AM PDT: The show is progressing nicely. But another lingering issue has suddenly raised its bald, scowling, butt-kicking head.

Michael Chiklis' non-nomination...snub or not'

Unprovoked, mighty Access Executive Producer Rob Silverstein has chimed in from Germany, where he has gone to watch the World Cup finals. "Michael Chiklis is a snub," he mentions with his usual unemotional, robot-like brevity and iron-fisted forcefulness.

Which leads to this response from Access Television producer/Superwoman/Poor Speller Stephanie: "Chiklas (sic) is not a snub, he did not get nominated last year"

Just a few days ago, my husband, Keith, and I celebrated our one year wedding anniversary. I must say that I never, ever knew that a relationship could be this good and wonderful, especially having gone through a divorce.

If you have been through a bad breakup, I am sure you can relate to the feeling I had right after: the feeling that "true" love just doesn't really exist - except in fairytales, of course. We all hear (rarely) of rock solid/best friend marriages, but we think they are a fluke and that we, ourselves, will never find them. Trust me, I was one of those thinkers before I met my husband.

#1 - 6:45 a.m. -- 11 days away from the office combined with a fairly slow news day and the shocking fact that our local Starbucks didn't open its doors on time this morning. It's easy to see why things are starting kind of slow today. I give it about an hour until everyone is firing on all cylinders. Maybe shorter if we can get in the video we just heard about of Bobby Brown getting booed and talking about his sex life with Whitney onstage at the Essence Music Festival in Houston. That kind of stuff gets the blood pumping quicker than a heavy handed barista.