Security's supposed to be tighter than tight for Television Critics Association press tour events -- because who knows when al-Qaida might not try to take out some really big star like Ted Nugent or Evan "Joe Millionaire" Marriott while 200 reporters look on, helpless?

Months in advance, we're registered and credentialed. There are fingerprints and FBI background checks -- OK, so that's only for the "Friends" set visit -- and steely-eyed publicists from the networks check our badges as we enter the ballrooms.

Kanu Saul doesn't need no stinking credentials, though. On Thursday, the cowboy hat-wearing hairstylist, who according to that day's L.A. Times goes by the moniker "The Homeless Haircutter," not only sat through several hours of HBO presentations and got to see Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) in the flesh, but he tagged along later that night to the home of movie producer Peter Guber, who was throwing a party to promote his AMC show, "Sunday Morning Shootout."

Asked at one point who he was, Saul apparently told a functionary he was there with someone and named a member of the TCA whose name tag he'd seen earlier in the day. He was passed in.

The joke, of course, is that dozens of reporters did notice Saul that day -- hard to miss a guy who appears to have a dead squirrel on his hat -- but he was so bizarrely attired, we figured him for some actor's personal publicist, if not a character from HBO's upcoming Western series, "Deadwood."