Network press parties always sound a bit more glamorous than they really are -- I mean, is it really even a party when half the guests are carrying voice recorders and spend the evening trying to get the rest of the guests -- whose contracts require them to be there -- to talk into them?

CBS, which last night held its stars party with corporate siblings UPN and Showtime, tends to get it that most of us are there to work, and so, unlike a Fox party the other night in a Hollywood club that was so loud and packed that I was nearly crushed by several people I never actually got to talk to, the CBS party was in a huge Pasadena space called the Wind Tunnel.

They'd decorated it in prom fashion, projecting scenes of snow-covered mountains across the high walls and hiring a trio of figure skaters to perform on a tiny plastic-polymer rink in one corner. Round and round they went all night, skating in tiny circles, like hamsters on a wheel. None of us was sure what that was about -- a reminder of what many of us will be returning to next week? -- but there was at least plenty of room to maneuver and there were also plenty of people to talk to, from "Huff's" Oliver Platt to "Numbers" star David Krumholtz.

The big kahuna of the evening, though, was Pulitzer-winning playwright David Mamet, the one guy in the room who seemed to be held in equal awe by reporters and actors alike.

Unlike the actors, many of whom never quite worked up the courage to approach Mamet, we TV critics at least had an excuse to talk to him, since he's co-writing "The Unit," a midseason series for CBS, with "The Shield's" Shawn Ryan.

He's apparently having a good time at it, too, telling me that working with a team of writers proved particularly useful in dealing with the occasional structural problem, something that in one of his plays might take him months, even years, to overcome.

Other things I heard last night:

-- "Love Monkey" star Tom Cavanagh worked as a parking valet in Toronto and once parked a car for the Dalai Lama.

-- Michael Ealy, the star of Showtime's "Sleeper Cell," is waiting, like the show's fans, to see if the drama about an FBI agent who infiltrates a terrorist group might get a second season. But at least he and his fellow cast members were invited to the party, which is usually a good sign.

-- CBS honcho Les Moonves likes Katie Couric, who's starting to look like a nearly done deal to be the network's next anchor, a whole lot. But then who didn't know that?

-- Moonves, a former actor, has actually suggested himself to George Clooney to play the Ned Beatty role in Clooney's proposed live remake of Paddy Chayefsky's "Network." No, I don't know how serious he is.

-- "Late Late Show" host Craig Ferguson, one of those rare talk-show hosts who actually tries to read the books and see the movies of his guests, still hasn't seen "Brokeback Mountain" and doesn't currently plan to. Ferguson, who reminded me that he'd played a gay man in 1999's "The Big Tease," said it wasn't homophobia, just lack of interest. That said, if "Brokeback" star Heath Ledger were to be booked on the show, he'd see the movie.

-- It's much harder to skate on plastic than it is on ice. This from Scott Carson, one of the skaters, a former competitive figure skater who now coaches. So much for having an unmeltable rink in my back yard.