On the one hand, yes, okay, LCD ANIMAL VIDEO. On the other hand, COME ON, how could we not? Everything about this is appealing. [Via]

There’s this insane Times article about how Lifetime is for women and Spike is for men? So many things about it are suspect. (Including the line that Lifetime “recently started a separate, movies-only channel.” The Lifetime Movie Network actually began in 1998?) And then: “It’s a tough call as to which is the more cynical ploy: brazenly playing to a female audience that probably could stand to lose a few pounds or shamelessly playing to a male audience that likes to fantasize about women more gorgeous than actually exist in real life.” So Lifetime’s damned if it puts normal-looking women on TV and damned if it doesn’t, I guess. Messed up. And then it calls Project Runway a show for women. (Color me baffled, ladies!) It wraps up with a sarcastic take on a woman’s “perfect day” which includes getting kidnapped and having a “fattening lunch.” We actually emailed Lifetime for comment but the publicist was off on jury duty, no doubt collecting some fresh women-in-danger plotlines, so.

Martin Amis’ continuing transformation into Kingsley Amis is a remarkable thing to follow.

The reviews for Chris Morris’ Four Lions, the “terrorist comedy” that premiered at Sundance last week, have been mixed but mostly positive, but nothing I’ve seen so far indicates that the film has picked up any funding. Which is a shame; I am desperate to see this movie. Anyway, here’s a clip. We can talk about the whole “when is something off limits to laughter” issue if the picture ever gets picked up. In the meantime, do check out some of his earlier work.

Somehow, we ended up at this movie over the weekend, just us and some girls who were really lonely. And a few really angry boyfriends. You guys. Little Kristin Bell, barely there. Josh Duhamel, a lunk with a nice brow. A plot (magic love fountains!) that not even Annie Hathaway could paste together with her face. And, what’s more, a ghostly drive-by from Judith Malina. Born in the 20s, the daughter of German rabbi who emigrated to America in 1929, the twice-widowed avant-garde theater superstar has not had a film or TV role since the 69th episode of The Sopranos, broadcast in April of 200-as Paulie’s nun-aunt who reveals that she is actually his mother, causing him to flip out. (Then she dies.)

Malina met and later married Julian Beck when she was a teen; they ran the Living Theatre, left New York for Europe and returned off and on throughout the 60s and 70s. Malina’s memoir, The Enormous Despair, documents the experience of arriving in America in the late 60s, and also meeting Ginsberg, Leary and Dali.

She appeared in Dog Day Afternoon (and played the grandmother in The Addams Family movie in 1991. Beck himself would, in 1986, have a good-sized role in… Poltergeist II, though he had died the year previous.)

And now Malina shows up in When in Rome as a witchy, angry Italian grandmother of a groom, who spits on Kristin Bell. Why wouldn’t she? The Living Theater, at 21 Clinton Street, appears to be in some sort of vague yet deep financial trouble. Malina’s second husband, the theater’s co-artistic director Hanon Reznikov, died in 2008. Malina had signed a ten year lease in 2006. And now, the theater is accepting $10 donations online to stay alive.

Gimme what ya got, Science! “Women are slower than men at understanding jokes — but enjoy them more when they do. Research shows that women use their brains more than men to process quips and have less expectation that they will be funny. But if the joke does hit the right note, they derive more pleasure from it.” Also: Ladies tend to appreciate clever construction, while dudes go in for someone getting whacked in the nuts with a hammer. I would make an absolutely hysterical joke here about taking the extra time to enjoy a deep and penetrating experience for an amazing payoff, but I know it’d take you broads all day to get it. Although you’d be totally hot for me once you did.

If you are into raping or looting or arson or jewel thievery or what have you, might we suggest you ply your trade in Colorado Springs, CO? Due to that municipality’s distaste for taxes, “More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.” On the negative side of the ledger, the parks and pools are all going to fall to shit, so your recreational activities will be somewhat curtailed, but you’ll probably be too busy with the rape, looting, arson, and jewel thievery to notice!

“’I knew this guy was built like, ‘rrruhhhr!’’ Mr. Batt said, grunting and making a ‘this big’ gesture with his hands. ‘So I wanted him in a place that was rrruhhhr, you know?’”
-We told you! We told you last week to bookmark Michael Grynbaum’s new transit-oriented Times column

. And you DIDN’T, and now you’re not reading his amazing dispatch on shooting the amazing firefighter charity calendar.

Jim Behrle!

“It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now ‘grieving’ for ‘Calvin and Hobbes’ would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.”
-Nice interview with Bill Watterson, whose “Calvin and Hobbes” was one of the sweetest, most life-affirming cartoon strips this nation has ever produced.