Standing before a 40-piece orchestra and gazing out at a sold-out Carnegie Hall, Seth MacFarlane reflected, “I look at this magnificent collection of musicians behind me and I think, Jesus, I’m just doing the world’s most expensive karaoke.”

That was just one of the odd juxtapositions evident at “Family Guy Sings!,” a two-night (Nov.24-25) comedy-and-music extravaganza based on MacFarlane’s animated Fox sitcom. Another was watching him and the show’s cast — Alex Borstein, Seth Green, Mila Kunis, Danny Smith, Mike Henry — read two complete episodes from the stage: The performance suggested a bizarre pastiche of theater, television, and old-time radio.

Front and center, though, was MacFarlane’s two wildly divergent obsessions—ribald humor, and the American songbook. The troupe belted out fan faves like “Prom Night Dumpster Baby” as well as in-character versions of “I’ve Got a Little List” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” and “Shipoopi” from “The Music Man.”

Things got edgier—and more hilarious—when MacFarlane and Borstein explored the dark side of the Frank Loesser standard, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside,” and  went downright X-rated with a re-reading of the 1978 Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond hit, “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore.”

For the pre-holiday Gotham crowd, it was “Family” entertainment at its finest.

--- Mike Flaherty

Hot off the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences nomination vote-tallying machine, here are the top 10 finalists for Emmy noms in the comedy and drama series heats. The final noms will be announced on Thursday, July 17.

(My 2 cents on the list follows after the jump)

COMEDY

Curb Your Enthusiasm
Entourage
Family Guy
Flight of the Conchords
The Office
Pushing Daisies
30 Rock
Two and a Half Men
Ugly Betty
Weeds

DRAMA

Boston Legal
Damages
Dexter
Friday Night Lights
Grey’s Anatomy
House
Lost
Mad Men
The Tudors
The Wire

The word that comes to mind to describe the mood among the scribes on the picket lines during the past week is: resolute.

Over and over, the attitude expressed on the lines was one of calm, cool determination to stick it out for a "fair deal." Despite the early predictions that the Writers Guild of America membership would be split along income-strata lines, there is no doubt that writers of all stripes, of all levels of experience and success are fired up by the feeling that the major congloms have been hosing them for years.

The WGA leadership has expertly built on that foundation of pent-up ire to help scribes gird for the strike that many rightly predicted was inevitable. On Friday (Nov. 9) at the mega-rally of at least 4,000 guild members and industry supporters held outside the Fox Plaza building in Century City, guild leaders and guest speakers including the Rev. Jesse Jackson very clearly drew a line between the WGA strike -- disparaged by some as a rich union's attempt to paint itself as blue-collar -- and the growing income disparity that has cleaved the nation into the super-haves, the haven't enoughs, the have-nots and the have nothings during the past 40 years.

"If they gave us everything that we're asking for, and then they went and did the same deal with the DGA and SAG, they would still be giving all of us less than each of their CEOs makes in a year," WGA West prexy Patric Verrone asserted to a receptive crowd on Friday.

(Can't absolutely vouch for Verrone's math, but we've all seen the studies on CEO pay gone wild and the widening gulf between the salaries of top execs and lowest-paid workers at many corporations.)  A picket sign in the crowd featured an unflattering picture of News Corp. prexy Peter Chernin, with "$34 million last year" scrawled underneath.

Seth MacFarlane, a wunderkind who scored his first multimillion payday before he was 30 with a hit animated Fox series "Family Guy," was a savvy choice by the guild to address the rally. His is a voice representing both the future of the guild and the promise that the biz holds to make (very lucky) people fabulously wealthy on the strength of a great idea. MacFarlane (pictured below) made a point of urging his fellow high-earners to keep paying their freshly laid off assistants for as long as possible. And he urged "the press" to get the message out to the general public that WGA members are, in the main, members of the five-figure annual income middle class, not the six-, seven-, eight-figure and above ultra-elite.

"Writers in this guild are not millionaires," MacFarlane stressed. "The royalties we're fighting for will make a big difference to them."

(Above pic snapped by Michelle Sobrino-Stearns/Variety)