Shark Tank (9pm, ABC) - Mark and Lori offer an entrepreneur an investment of $1 million, and an engineer runs into difficulty while discussing finances. Also, the makers of a peanut butter from Season 3 give an update on their business.

Great Performances: Paul Simon's Graceland Journey (9pm, UNC-TV) - The making of Paul Simon's 1986 "Graceland" album is recalled in this documentary, which accompanies the singer-songwriter on a visit to South Africa, where he reunites with some of the musicians involved in the recording.

Over/Under (10pm, USA) - This was originally supposed to be a new USA series, but it was scrapped after this two-hour pilot was filmed. Not because it was bad, but because its "darker tones" didn't really fit with the quirky "Characters Welcome" USA vibe. It's now a two-hour movie about a Manhattan day trader whose massive gambling problem costs him his job, forcing he and his photographer wife to relocate to Brooklyn. In Brooklyn, the man and a young father-to-be start a high-end bookie business. Stars Steve Pasquale, Caroline Dhavernas, Anthony Carrigan and "Breaking Bad" villain Giancarlo Esposito.

Blue Bloods (10pm, CBS) - Danny and Kate search for a sniper who appears to be a radical environmentalist. Meanwhile, Danny's youngest son is seriously injured in a bicycle accident.

The Dead Files (10pm, Travel) - Amy and Steve visit a Seattle restaurant, which they come to believe is haunted by spirits who want to cause harm. Also, evidence of a bloody massacre is uncovered.

Finding Bigfoot: Further Evidence (8pm, Animal Planet) - Footage of what appears to be the eyes of Bigfoot brings the team to Kentucky to investigate reports of activity in Daniel Boone National Forest.

The Ricky Gervais Show (9pm, HBO) - Ricky, Stephen and Karl share their definitions of what it means to be an Englishman. Karl explains why, if he wasn't English, he'd rather be Italian.

Goat Rodeo Live (10pm, UNC-TV) - Classical cellist Yo-Yo Ma performs bluegrass with fiddler Stuart Duncan, bassist Edgar Meyer and Nickel Creek mandolin player Chris Thile at Boston's House of Blues.

Paul Simon's Graceland Journey: Under African Skies (10pm, A&E) - A look at the making of Paul Simon's album "Graceland" and the controversy over Simon's decision to collaborate with South African musicians despite a UN boycott against the country's apartheid regime.

Annie Claus is Coming to Town (8pm, Hallmark) - Santa's daughter Annie (Maria Thayer, left) leaves the North Pole to spend time in Los Angeles. While there, she falls for a duplicitous actor (Ryan Bittle), who was hired by a scheming elf to persuade Annie to stay in Los Angeles for good, but also develops feelings for the owner of a struggling toy company. Also stars Vivica A. Fox, Sam Page and Vicki Lawrence.

The American Giving Awards (8pm, NBC) - Bob Costas hosts this awards show honoring five charities. The top group, determined by online voting, receives $1 million and the other four split a million between them. The reason you'll watch: celebrity presenters and musical performances!

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (8pm, CBS) - Rudolph. Hermey. Yukon. It never gets old.

The Flight Before Christmas (9pm, CBS) - A young reindeer who's never met his father and suffers from vertigo wants to follow in his footprints and become part of Santa's team, so he takes lessons from a member of a Finnish family of aerialist squirrels.

Paul Simon: Live at Webster Hall, New York (9pm, UNC-TV) - Paul Simon's concert at Webster Hall in New York City features "Kodachrome," "Mother and Child Reunion" and songs from his 2011 album, "So Beautiful or So What."

Snowmageddon (9pm, Syfy) - A new science-fiction movie about a mystical snow globe that can cause bad things to happen in the world world whenever it is shaken.

Appropriate Adult (10pm, Sundance) - A fascinating movie based on the true story of two British serial killers. Adrienne says Dominic West is fantastic.

Pit Bulls and Parolees (10pm, Animal Planet) - A trip to the South includes helping an army veteran with a new litter of puppies. Also, a hunt for an injured dog in Jackson, Mississippi.

Saturday Night Live (11:29pm, NBC) - The host is Katy Perry and the music guest is Robyn.

By David Menconi
dmenconi@newsobserver.com

DURHAM -- Paul Simon has always been a globetrotter, employing worldly rhythms and percussion long before the rest of the Western pop universe caught on. Nowadays, however, he seems more interested in bringing everything back home -- and he definitely pulls it off.

Simon rolled into a soldout Durham Performing Arts Center Thursday night with an eight-piece ensemble that was a fascinating combination of black, white, east, west, head and heart. With Simon at the lead, the ensemble combined elements of Cajun soul, cutting blues-rock, South African township jive, doo wop, reggae, island salsa, gospel revival and soul revue into what sounded like the world's wordiest zydeco band. Or maybe the world's funkiest folk-rock band.

Whatever you want to call it, it was an incredibly cool two-hour set, and the band was one of the best I've ever seen. It was sort of like watching the 1927-era Yankees or the "Showtime"-era Lakers at work. Even the drum solo was a pleasure to watch.

Back in his 1960s-vintage breakthrough period, Simon always wore his youth uneasily, mostly because his sort of alienation always seemed a lot more grownup than the peace-and-love naivete of his peers. There's nobody better at capturing that feeling of being lonely and alone in a crowd, even if the crowd is only two people.

Perhaps that's why his songs have aged so well. "The Boy in the Bubble" opened the show, a song from 1986 that still sounds brand new. And it's a song that has never stopped evolving over the past quarter-century; nowadays it sounds like third-world blues rock, menacing as ever.

The 22-song set had the requisite iconic crowd-pleasers, including "The Sound of Silence" in a solo acoustic rendition with flamenco flourishes on guitar; "Mother and Child Reunion," now more of a reggae song than ever before; "Slip Slidin' Away" as doo-wop by way of Johannesburg; and a lovely version of the Beatles' "Here Comes the Sun" on acoustic guitars and accordion.

But the more recent and obscure songs more than held their own, including "Dazzling Blue," "Rewrite" and "The Afterlife" from Simon's new album "So Beautiful or So What." "Hearts and Bones," title track to his underrated (and unjustly overlooked) 1983 album, was heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and it served as lead-in to a medley that included Elvis Presley's "Mystery Train" and the Chet Atkins instrumental "Wheels" -- with drummer Jim Oblon playing lead guitar. A strange combination, but it came together seamlessly.

All the musicians multi-tasked on multiple instruments, most notably lead guitarist Mark Stewart, who chipped in on saxophone between solos. The other guitarist was Vincent Nguini, whose angular playing meshed with Stewart's studio-cat vibe in tones and patterns of strange beauty. Throw in the steady rolling rhythms and occasional African scat vocals of bassist Bakiti Kumalo (a Simon sideman since 1986's "Graceland"), and the music seemed to occupy a dizzying quantity of dimensions in the time-space continuum.

One wonders how long Simon, who turned 70 years old this year, can keep doing this. Here's hoping it's a lot longer, because he's never been better.

Menconi: 919-829-4759 or blogs.newsobserver.com/beat

Durham Performing Arts Center has been on a major booking binge this week, announcing shows by everybody from Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly (Feb. 3) to "This American Life" sage Ira Glass (March 24). But they saved the best for today: Paul Simon, in his first Triangle show in many a moon.

Simon will play DPAC on Dec. 1. Tickets start at $59 and "officially" go on sale Oct. 21; but start prowling around online now to check for pre-sale action.

I'm generally skeptical about pulling people out of concert crowds and sticking them behind a microphone -- because if they're any good they're usually a plant. But there are exceptions to every rule. Like the recent show where, after hearing a woman in the crowd declare that she'd learned to play guitar on his song "Duncan," Paul Simon summoned her to the stage and let her play it. Brighten your Monday and check this out. That jubuliant scream she gives at the end is the most joyful thing I've seen in many moons.

(Thanks, Jean.)

Celebrities aren't all that's passing into history lately; so are a number of venerable American institutions. Like Kodachrome film, which is being phased out after a run of nearly three-quarters of a century. But before turning our photography needs over to the digital realm, let's let Paul Simon bid a fond farewell.

(Thanks, Richard.)

So today's Google home page has this illustration, which my wife tells me is based on a painting by Magritte (born on this date in 1898). Which got me to thinking about a Paul Simon song, from the same 1983 Simon album that has "Train in the Distance." So I started prowling around and found this rather odd Anna Nicole Smith tribute by Super Amanda Casabianca -- who actually has a connection to North Carolina; last year, she did a series of videos set to songs by Kinston's Third of Never, whose "Moodring" album you should really check out. I'm listening to it right now, in fact, and it's a right-nice pick-me-up.

We return you now to your regularly scheduled programming...