Louis CK: still masturbating

So via the wonder of On Demand I watched a Louis CK stand-up special this evening. Louis CK is a comic with a strange assortment of credits including writing/directing Pootie Tang and the failed Dana Carvey Show (which btw featured Steve Carrell and Stephen Colbert of The Daily Show fame).

Louis was a writer on Conan O'Brien but we barely overlapped so I recall him best from a 1995 HBO comedy special with some memorable lines about gay sex and masturbation. Well, his material hasn't changed much but Louis now is married with a kid. He's sort of like an evil Ray Romano.

Oh, the special was just okay. But maybe his sitcom this fall will be better.

Cooking up a movie

Recipe for Constantine (serves 2-4)

1 1/2 cup The Exorcist
2 oz The Passion of the Christ
3 tsp Dogma
pinch of Men in Black II
Prince of Darkness to taste

combine all ingredients in dvd case and shake rapidly

Apparently most people don't like the dish, but I found it moderately satisfying.

When in doubt: Vs.

Forget Spielberg, Cruise, DeNiro, the most powerful player in Hollywood is "Vs." As in "Alien Vs. Predator," (AVP) an expectedly bad movie that I just watched in ~12 minutes via TiVo fast forward.

My case for Vs.? Well AVP made $80 million US Domestic which speaks pretty well considering that both franchises were dormant for years.

The best part of Vs.? Basically you can throw it between just about any two marginal topics and folks go ga-ga. Do I need to remind you of Freddy Vs. Jason? The People Vs. Larry Flynt? Even good movies can leverage the power of Vs. - take Kramer Vs. Kramer for instance. You think that movie wins five Oscars if it's just called "The Kramers Aren't Getting Along?"

Freakonomics Guys @ Google

On Friday, July 29, I hosted Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, the guys behind Freakonomics, for a talk at Google. Big success and we invited them to be the first guest contributors on the Google Blog. Here's their post.