Sacha Baron Cohen and the Perils of Playing it Straight Sacha Baron Cohen has made a career out of subterfuge. As Ali G, Borat, Bruno and others, Cohen has used his comedic talents to become Hollywood’s best undercover operator, duping Dick Cheney, Sarah Palin, Joe Arpaio, Ted Koppel and more to underscore American hubris, bigotry …
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You can tell fall is just around the corner, because the war between Netflix and theater chains has heated up once more. Last year, the streaming giant took on big studios and exhibitors with its Oscar-winning drama, Roma. This year, they’ve upped the ante with Martin Scorsese’s mob drama The Irishman. The $169 million film …
Happy Birthday Samuel! Can you believe we met 19 years ago? That’s 6,935 days we’ve known each other. Or 166,440 hours. Or 9,986,400 seconds. But who’s counting? Well, to be honest, I am. Every one of them. I never told you what the doctors told me before they introduced us. They said that most …
Well, that round of radiation therapy went pretty well. Turns out that not only is the body an amazing self-righting mechanism, but the body politic is an efficient self-lefting one. Sure, the GOP picked up seats in the Senate, but that was inevitable. We have gerrymandered ourselves into participation trophies in the most antiquated …
This week’s Factslap edition comes inspired by an amazing documentary I caught on my favorite bird (besides Larry), crows: 1. They can solve puzzles: For a study, researchers once assigned a crow a simple puzzle involving eight tasks—picking up objects, moving them, and other complex steps. The crow had never seen them in sequence before. …
There are two questions that continue to ember in the wake of Roseanne Barr’s sudden disappearance from prime time TV. One is the speed of her firing. Within hours of her tweet describing a black woman as a cross between the Muslim brotherhood and Planet of the Apes, ABC ruled she was done. Gone. …
I had one of the most ordinary experiences of my life this month. Like so many mundane endeavors, this one involved the government. Specifically, state government: I had to renew my driver’s license. Previously, this had been a surprisingly headache-free process, particularly in California. I’ve had my share of motorized vehicles, and have become …
A special factslap edition, particularly for presidents from shithole frontal lobes: Haiti is the second oldest independent nation in the Western Hemisphere, after the United States. The place where Hitler killed himself is now a children’s playground. Jackie Chan trains his stuntmen and pays their medical bills out of pocket. Cacao plants are …
There’s a certain anticipation — and dread — that comes with every Oscar season. On the one hand, the Academy Awards are a clear demonstration of film as art. On the other, that art often sucks. But this year will mark a seismic shift, at least in tenor, to the annual self congratulations: Expect …
Arf: Dogs poop in alignment with Earth’s magnetic field. The world’s oldest lived to 29. Humans and dogs first became best friends 30,000 years ago. Every dog’s mitochondrial DNA is 99.9% the same as a gray wolf. In English-speaking countries, the most popular names for dogs are Max and Molly. Dogs and cats only sweat from their foot pads and nose. Dogs have 13 blood types, horses have 8, cows have 9 while humans only have 4. Paul McCartney recorded an ultrasonic whistle audible only to dogs at …
The Hollywood Bowles 