And now the end is near, and so they face that final curtain.  That’s right, folks, “Dancing With The Stars” is down to the final three celebrities on the dance floor, who took the stage for the last full night of performances on Monday.

We know you’ve got opinions on how they did, so it’s time, the last time, to vote in our poll for which star danced the best this week. Was it Mya, the pop siner, Donny Osmond, the grown-up teen idol, or Kelly Osbourne, the rocker’s daughter all cleaned up for the dance floor? Vote and we shall see!

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Six years after “The Room” debuted and then very quickly disappeared from theaters, the low-budget over-the-top drama is a cult hit on the midnight movie circuit.

The creation of eccentric writer-director-star Tommy Wiseau plays regularly in more than 60 cities around the country, as well as in London, Australia, and the Netherlands.

And as of 11:55 p.m. Saturday, it will make its Orange County debut with a screening at the Regency South Coast Village in Santa Ana.

Adopted by lovers of unintentional comedy, “The Room” is more or less a love triangle in which Wiseau’s girlfriend is having an affair with his best friend, played by Greg Sestero.

We had run into the pair at Comic-Con in San Diego this summer, and Sestero, who had promised to keep in touch in case the film ever made it to Orange County, happily rang us up this week to talk about its ongoing cult success.

“It played in theaters here in Los Angeles (in 2003) and it was kind of an average response,” Sestero says of how this all got started. “And then towards the end of the run, it was seen by a bunch of USC film students, and Loyola Marymount students, and they just loved it so much that Laemmle theaters started showing it once a month at the Sunset 5.”

 ”The Room” has played that theater for six years running now, and eventually — partly thanks to YouTube clips and celebrity endorsements — its fame took off earlier this year. Entertainment Weekly did a big spread on its underground appeal, noting that “If ’The Room’ is the ‘Citizen Kane’ of bad movies, that makes Tommy Wiseau the Orson Welles of crap.”

A hip Hollywood crowd, including many in the Judd Apatow circle, also adopted it, hosting viewing parties in their homes and dropping references to it in their interviews.

And within a very short period of time, theater operators all over the country started booking it for late-night showings. 

A lot of the appeal is its adaptability to a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” style of interactivity: fans shout out lines, or responses to lines, and bring various props – almost always including plastic spoons, Sestero says — to throw at the screen during key plot moments.

“People find it really fun to be able to see something and yell at the screen,” he says.

A lot of debate since “The Room” took of focused on Wiseau’s intent with its making, as in, How much was aware that the movie’s drama would actually result in people laughing at it?

Sestero says he thought the film was hilarious even as it was being shot. As for Wiseau? “I’m not sure if intended it to be one thing or the other,” he says. “He just wanted it to be fun and out there and entertaining.”

He and Wiseau often make appearances at screenings — as of Friday afternoon, it hadn’t been decided whether they’d come to the Orange County debut on Saturday — and that increasingly they are recognized out in public.

He’s not, however, making any real money off the renewed success of the film, he says, though its resurrection this year did result in roles in two new movies due out within the next few months, with other offers still on the table.

“Even though it’s not an Oscar, and while obviously in an ideal world it would be a perfect film, what I’ve learned over time is that as long as people enjoy it and come back, that’s all you can really hope for,” Sestero says.

“The Room” plays at 11:55 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 21 at the Regency South Coast Village,  1561 W. Sunflower, Santa Ana.

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It was 50 years ago today — Nov. 19, 1959 — when the world discovered Rocket “Rocky” J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, two of the finest citizens in all of Frostbite Falls, Minnesota.

The flying squirrel and his good-natured if slow-witted moose pal arrived on ABC as stars of  “The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show,” the zany, off-beated animated series created by the late Jay Ward, whose daughter Tiffany Ward, a longtime Orange County resident, still manages the family business.

To mark the golden anniversary of the show, we called up Ward to chat about why the show and the characters and stories her father created still endure.

“My dad always told me that he was writing for the adults, but that the show worked on three levels,” Ward said. “The little kids would get the funny names and voices, the adults would get the humor and the inside jokes, and the kids in the middle would enjoy both ends.

“I suspect that’s why we’re still here 50 years later,” she said. “It was such a unique piece of writing.”

In most episodes, Rocky and Bullwinkle ended up trying to stop the show’s scheming villians, Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale. Interspersed with those storylines were other characters with their own adventures, including the Canadian Mountie Dudley Do-Right and Sherman and Peabody, a young boy and his very smart dog, respectively.

Ward, who we first met a few years ago when Cartoon Network launched a new version of “George of the Jungle,” another of Jay Ward’s animated creations of the ’60s, says fans of the various shows have a few new treats coming soon.

The fourth season of “Rocky & Bullwinkle” will be out on DVD soon, and an animated movie version of  “Mr Peabody and Sherman” is in development at Dreamworks with Bob Minkoff (”The Haunted Mansion,” “Stuart Little,” “The Lion King”) attached as director.

Ward says she doesn’t remember much about the premiere of “Rocky & Bullwinkle” 50 years ago. She thinks the family just watched at home, and  says that’s how she’s planning to celebrate this anniversary, too.

“I’m just going to enjoy that it’s been 50 amazing years that they’ve been around,” Ward said. “And my dad would be so proud.”

Previously on the Watcher …

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On Wednesday, 14 dancers stood before the judges on “So You Think You Can Dance,” hoping that their fans had called enough times the night before to save them from the bottom three, and the inevitable expulsion of a male and a female dancer from their ranks.

O.C. favorite Nathan Trasoras, who graduated from the Orange County High School of the Arts this year, and his partner Mollee Gray were frontrunners the first two weeks of the semi-finals, before failing to impress the judges much at all last week.

Did Nathan survive? Who went home? Well, read on to find out the results, we’ll not spoil it just yet. And click through the slide show to see each of the couples in action this week.

Both Nathan and Mollee ended up in the bottom three couples when the results were announced, but both were spared by the judges. Instead, going home were Channing Cooke and Kevin Hunte. And now there are 12….

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As for who left, well, we know, but if you want to find out you’ll have to keep reading, because it really wouldn’t be fair to spoil it for anyone who’s still waiting to watch the episode, now would it?

So to find out whether the singer, the swimsuit model, the grown-up teen icon or the rocker’s daughter left the show tonight, carry on…

Singers Mya and Donny Osmond both got early word that they’d made the finale, and so we were teased through the last half of the show on which of the final two stars would go home. When the announcement finally came, rock ‘n’ roll daughter Kelly Osbourne, whose fan base seemed to grow by the week was in the finals, while swimsuit model Joanna Krupa was headed home.

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The semi-finals of “Dancing With The Stars” on Monday answered a few questions for all of us.

The judges really want to see Mya in the finals. They only want Donny Osmond there if he can deliver enough viewers (and voters) to make it worth their while. And Kelly Osbourne and Joanna Krupa can fight it out in the alley behind the dance studio.

At least that’s what we took away from the scores handed out on Monday. But what did you, the voting viewer, think? For after Mya, it’s really a game of musical chairs for the last two spots in the finals.

Call us crazy, but we’ve got our hunchome, you may indeed call us crazy.)  hes. (And after you see who we picked to go Click through the slide show and see whether or not you agree on who think is safe, and who we think will head home tonight.

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 Tonight there are still four stars orbiting around the mirror ball trophy that goes to the winner of “Dancing With The Stars.” By tomorrow, one more will head back to his or her home galaxy. So who will it be?  Vote in the poll below for the celebrity you think did the best on the show tonight.

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“Knott’s Berry Farm: The Early Years” tells the story of the park’s development from roadside berry stand to the theme park it eventually became, a topic Jennings loves to share.

At 2 p.m. on Saturday, he’ll be at the Buena Park Library at 7150 La Palma Ave., talking about the book and then selling and signing copies.

At 6:30 p.m. Monday, Jennings will be at Buena Park Historical Society on Monday, Nov. 9 for the annual members meeting held at the Congregational Church located at 6633 Beach Blvd.

For more information on Jennings and his collection of Knott’s Berry Farm memorabilia, go to http://knottsberryfarm.blogspot.com.

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Erik Cardona grew up in Chino Hills, which made him the closest we had to an O.C. contestant on “Survivor” this fall. Well, that and a special  moment he shared as a lad with one of Pedro’s colleagues here at the Register — more on that later.

So after Cardona suffered the equivalent of a 2-by-4 upside the head in Tribal Council on Thursday’s episode, we were interested in chatting with our O.C.-adjacent ex-Survivor on his experiences on the wild and wooly shores of Samoa.

A bartender and substitute teacher before the show, Cardona says he was a fan of the show who never dreamed he’d appear on it, until one day while walking in Santa Monica with friends, a casting agent saw something she liked.

“I met someone who literally grabbed me by the collar and said, ‘Would you ever (be on ‘Survivor’)?” he says. “I said, ‘Lady, you have no idea how perfect the person you just bumped into is.”

The usual rounds of reality show interviews and physicals and psychological screenings followed, and eventually Cardona boarded a flight to Samoa — though at that point, he still wasn’t guaranteed a spot in the game, there only as one of two alternates. Shortly before filming started though, Cardona got called into a room and was told the game would feature 20 contestants instead of 18, and he was in.

“It’s funny,” Cardona says of that moment, “and I hate to admit this to someone who might put it into print. But people always say to me, ‘Did you cry out there?’ And they’re usually referring to ‘in the game.’ To be honest, I did cry, but it was before the game, when they told me I was in.”

Given how tough the game unfolded in Samoa — for the first time in many seasons, the environment — cold downpours for days — made the contestants miserable.  Cardona took a beating in other ways, too, at one point getting clotheslined by a tree branch while chasing an escaped chicken. (It’s “Survivor,” it happens!)

“At one point I lost a shirt — I thought I lost a shirt,” he says. “So I went to the producers and said, ‘Dude, I think I lost my shirt, I don’t know what do!’ He said, ‘Vote someone off who’s got a shirt.’”

And so for a brief spell, before he found the misplaced shirt, Cardona says he entertained thoughts of who might be vulnerable, who might be tricked into going to Tribal Council while leaving a shirt back at camp.

“It provides a true recollection of the character that you are,” he says. “You think you know, but you don’t know.”

As for the blindsiding he got on Thursday — after the merge, Cardona’s tribe held an 8-4 advantage, but his tribemates ended up flipping and voting him out, an unused immunity idol in his pocket — he offers up a nice O.C. analogy to express how unexpected that was.

“Say we got an Angels-Yankees game and then all of a sudden Derek Jeter walks over to Mike Scioscia and says, ‘I think this guy should lay down the bunt,’ and Scioscia goes, ‘OK, that’s a good idea,’” Cardona says of the way his teammates rolled over on him. “You don’t do that!”

Our chat almost done, we ask Cardona our final question, whether he remembers a junior high classmate named Roxanne, who, coincidentally, now works a few desks from us here at Pedro and the Watcher world headquarters.

“She was my first kiss!” Cardona says, and then draws an analogy between the giddy excitement of that moment and one of the rare highs of life on the Samoan shore. “We’d won a reward challenge, steaks and sausages, and the only thing I could liken it too was the magic of your first kiss — something you dream about and dream about.

“And then I was out there, and I took a bite of that sausage, and it was like, ohhhh — that feeling again.”

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After all, the villian of this current season, Tracey Yukich, a 37-year-old from Allen, Texas, made it to this eighth episode despite the way fans seemingly couldn’t stand to see her on the show another minute.

So what happened on Tuesday night? We’ll not spoil it here, read on a little more if you want to find out before you’ve seen the show…

First of all, congratulations to Shay! Not only did she make it another week, but she lost another nine pounds and now over the course of the show seen by fans, she’s gone from 476 pounds all the way down to 393.

And say farewell to Tracey. The fans out there will need a new villain, for this one’s going home to Texas.

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