And it’s not a very tense movie. Yes, Cher’s burlesque club is in danger of shutting down — but there’s an offer on the table to buy it for $2 million. Back in Silicon Valley we called that “success”. Sure, Christina Aguilera has to work her way up from cocktail waitress to headliner, but there’s never any real question of her doing so, because she happens to dance and sing like Christina Aguilera. Cher, her supposedly tyrannical boss, and Kristen Bell, her supposedly ruthless rival, pretty much like her from the start. In fact, there’s no real professional rivalry at all. Bell, despite looking great in a nightie, apparently can’t sing, and Cher, despite being the only other great singer on screen, never attempts in earnest to keep the spotlight away from Aguilera. Thanks to the flat tone and crude pacing of the film, it doesn’t even seem to take that long. Even for a musical, this is fairly lightweight stuff.

But I couldn’t help liking it. The low stakes that make the movie uninspiring also make it endearing. It turns out there was room for a showbiz movie in which success isn’t very hard and everyone likes each other. First of all, there’s no reason Christina Aguilera shouldn’t be a burlesque superstar, and to dwell for too long on her rise to the top would be insulting. She lays waste to the stage, she grabs hold of notes and shakes them until they burst, she treats tiny, invasive dresses and giant puffy fans as if she’d been handling them all her life. And, sometime in the decade since her last big hit, she has learned to tease. After years of performing in a style we can politely call “anti-burlesque”, Aguilera has mastered the concept of restraint. So it’s not that incredible that her co-performers and her audience should embrace her so suddenly. It’s also plausible that everyone backstage should love each other so damn much, because they’re all sickeningly lovable. Stanley Tucci turns in a particularly fuzzy performance as Cher’s stage manager and platonic life partner, presumably a stand-in for all the gay men in the audience. Their chemistry miraculously enlivens even the dullest scenes in the movie. They joke and tease and flirt as if they really had known each other for years. Frankly, a lo-fi Clerks-style production about Tucci and Cher just hanging out would have been much more fun to watch, but maybe there was a production overrun at the makeup factory and they had to use it on something.

The rest of the cast gamely competes for attention with the main players, even though they maybe shouldn’t have bothered. Cam Gigandet, apparently a hot commodity (I’ve seen Twilight and I barely remember him) plays the guy Aguilera should end up with, even though there isn’t much to him beyond his smile. Eric Dane, of Grey’s Anatomy (whatever that is) plays the guy Aguilera shouldn’t end up with, even though he’s hilarious, charming and very, very rich. Alan Cumming doesn’t get nearly enough screen time as some kind of mascara-wearing burlesque-clown who’s actually as entertaining as the movie makes him out to be. Peter Gallagher’s cuddly as usual, playing Cher’s sweaty ex-husband. I wish there were more to say about the other burlesque girls, but one of the movie’s many failings is that it doesn’t really individuate the dancers’ stage personas, let alone their personalities. Awkwardly and inexplicably, the script tries to give a bigger role to a dancer named Coco (Chelsea Traille), by giving her all of the throwaway speaking lines and having other characters mention her at inappropriate moments. Also, one of them gets pregnant, because they had to fill some screentime. I don’t know.

Burlesque is one of those minor miracles of the screen, one of those movies you watch on a plane that turns out not to be so terrible, one of those movies that are enjoyable for reasons that are impossible to define in terms of other movies, one of those pleasant surprises that make life worth living. Just don’t watch it on purpose.

One of the few images of the terrorist group at their training ground.

In a statement released to Al-Jazeera, Al-Muri crowed about the attack as “a glorious strike against the rich kids across the lake,” his typical epithet for the United States. “We shall never be defeated, for we shall win the Camp Olympiad for Allah and feast well upon the attendant pizza party!”

Al-Muri indoctrinates a young suicide wedgier.

U.N. officials downplayed the damage wrought by the attack, noting that all the lost equipment was easily replaceable and that their dad could afford it easy. Said Camp Director Chad Maxwell, “Those dumb Northstar militants think they can compete with this? They don’t even have a heated pool. Believe me, there’s nothing they can do to stop us from winning next month’s Camp Field Day.” Unbeknownst to Maxwell, his boxer shorts waved ominously from the flagpole behind him.

BELOW: Northstar militants sing one of their trademark anti-Western hate chants.

Emotionally mature.

Writer-director Nicholas Stoller sets himself a formidable challenge by putting on a semi-sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The Stoller-directed, Jason-Segel-penned FSM had been a highly personal project for Segel, drawing on Segel’s real-life romantic disappointments and his bizarre but true dream of staging a Dracula musical with puppets. Stoller avoids having to imitate Segel’s vision by borrowing only one character from Forgetting, Russell Brand’s lewdly British rock-and-roller Aldous Snow. Aldous Snow, who stole his every scene , is really more Brand’s creation than Segel’s, leaning on Brand’s actual rock-star persona and lifestyle. The movie nominally centers around record-company intern Jonah Hill who, in order to save his career, has to… get Brand to the Greek [Theater]. (Imperative sentences really do make awkward titles, don’t they? Except of course for “Faster, Pussycat, Kill, Kill!”) But it’s clearly more of a character study of Aldous Snow, a priggish superstar facing professional decline and personal hardship for the first time in his life. Snow tries to smother his feelings with drugs, alcohol and casual cruelty, but he finds himself not quite as heartless as he’d hoped. He commands attention so well that the rest of the cast tends to orbit around him.

Although logically, they should be orbiting around Jonah Hill.

Stoller is a great actor’s director, drawing memorable comic performances from a cast largely unproven in comedy. After God knows how many takes, he even draws a great turn from the normally affectless Sean “Diddy” Coombs, as Hill’s megalomaniacal boss. Even more improbably, he makes a leading man out of Jonah Hill, whose limited range served him best in small character roles. In the Apatow pantheon, Hill represents a sort of lower-rent Seth Rogen, without the subtle timing, even less immersed in character, even more reliant on his physical awkwardness to get laughs. Neither has the forceful acting talent of Jason Segel or the laser-targeted deadpan of Paul Rudd. The moody, bugfuck James Franco is sort of the Syd Barrett of the group. Stoller plays to Hill’s greatest strength: allowing a relentless, merciless plot to render him completely pathetic, while retaining just a tiny bit of dignity by acting like he’s in on the joke. He directs around Hill’s weaknesses, keeping him penned in around stronger comic voices.

Some of the best laughs – and most of the film’s emotional punch – come from Elisabeth Moss, best known as Peggy from Mad Men. Moss, as Hill’s doctor girlfriend (no relation), plays one of Judd Apatow’s characteristic 2.1-dimensional women. You can tell the story’s trying to make her more than just a sounding board for the boys, making her sympathetic, giving her a wicked streak of her own, but she’s never quite as fully fleshed out as the other characters. Her early scenes with Hill are some of the best in the movie, depicting the intimacy struggles of newly married late-twentysomethings. They attempt to build a life together as their careers are just taking off, and their brief encounters are at once funny and heartrending. This is one of very few recent movies to even address the bizarre gulf between ages 25 and 35 caused by the modern-day career ladder, and it tries gamely to address the joys and struggles of that age. The events of the film represent a last gasp of youthful independence for both partners, who face tough choices between their careers and their relationship for the first time in their lives.

Pretend I didn't say this, but she looks like a Wallace and Gromit character.

But of course the greatest performance in the film is Brand’s, in his hilarious but strangely dark portrayal of a man gone wild. Brand, his inflections and timing steeped in the British comic tradition, has a very un-Apatow comic manner, retreating fully into character and snarling out punchlines without giving a damn if the audience catches them. But somehow his rhythm aligns itself in perfect counterpoint with the rest of the cast. He plays off his co-stars beautifully, particularly in the scenes where he and Diddy try to out-crazy each other. But he’s at his most gripping in his dramatic moments, in which his character reveals a terrifying, nihilistic dependency on every drug he can get his hands on. He charms and browbeats poor Jonah into scoring for him, rectally stashing his cocaine in public, and joining the party at every conceivable opportunity. He drifts black-hole-like through the world, unconcerned with whom he hurts, trying to degrade everyone to his level. One senses that Brand is drawing on his true experiences as an addict, making for some honestly frightening moments. Only in a few touching scenes with Hill and a few overblown scenes with his character’s son (Lino Facioli) does Brand show any signs of humanity.

A little bizarrely, this movie about the music industry doesn’t have that much to say about music. Brand’s talents and Hill’s love of music are mostly informed, not shown. Brand has a few mildly amusing musical numbers, which sound great but are mostly forgettable. His music video for “African Child”, a parody of Bono-style musical “activism”, was supposed to be a comic highlight of the film, but it’s just not that clever. Hill, Brand and Diddy are all well-characterized on a personal level, but they never act all that connected to music. This is one of few weaknesses at the core of Get Him To The Greek: unlike in, say, Walk Hard or any Christopher Guest movie, the music doesn’t work. Since so much of the emotional stakes of the movie rest in the music, many scenes aren’t as dramatic as they’re supposed to be. The partying scenes are also bizarrely functional, serving more to show that a party happened at a certain time than to involve the viewer in the mood. Far be it from me to condemn a Hollywood comedy for being too subtle or too character-focused, but we don’t get anything to watch.

Unless Diddy's onscreen.

We can always count on Judd Apatow to produce the best comedy of the summer: the question is usually whether he’s produced one of the best comedies of all time. In this case, he hasn’t. If he can transfer this film’s genuine emotional honesty to a livelier, more focused film, he will. Get Him To The Greek hints at much more exciting things to come.

Rating: three out of four Diddys

get the money, dolla dolla bill yalllll

It would be the funniest shit in politics since Dick Cheney shot that guy in the face. Think about it. The woman has spend $81 million dollars of her own money on this election. That’s what fifty regular people can expect to earn in a lifetime. That’s $73.56 per vote. And this was just the primary! After dumping a yachtload of bills directly into the eyes of the California public, she’s still about neck-and-neck with a seventy-six-year old nobody really likes. She is the President of Kappa Delta Nu, greasing the palm of the Dean of Students so that he’ll rig the intracollegiate boat race against our ragtag house. She is the captain of the sponsored rollerblading team, spreading gravel on our vert ramp so that we can’t show her up with our fresher moves. She is the sexless billionaire, landing at the wedding in an auto-gyro so that we can’t steal her fiancée by making double entendres about breakfast food. And it is our comic duty to crush her.

If you haven't seen It Happened One Night, *I* don't need to explain that last joke, *you* need to watch that movie

Friends, imagine the monologues! Letterman would have a field day! Jimmy Fallon would come up with something pleasantly amusing! Even the Chinnéd Usurper, the Thrice-Damned, the Host-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, would embarrass his profession less than usual. Stewart and Colbert would barely have to say anything. Matt Stone and Trey Parker might even pull their heads out of their asses and make a decent episode. It all depends on you, dear reader. Vote. Persuade your friends to vote. Persuade your senile, racist grandparents that Election Day is on a Wednesday this year, I know, isn’t it funny, please don’t worry about it, just stay home. Reader, the future of comedy is yours.
Also, legalize weed.

Oh, man, we haven’t done this in a while.  Here’s a bunch of videos that are cool, I guess.

You’re Doing It Wrong

This video is amazing.  It’s the essence of documentary filmmaking: raw video with as little editing or narrative intervention as possible, but with a clearly established thesis.  Plus it’s got people doin’ a bunch of goofy bonehead crap!!

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Parrot Dancing to Dubstep

I don’t care, it’s a parrot, and it’s dancing.

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Excusememamwhereisthebathroom: Answer the Door

There’s a whole genre of Youtubes based on hideous CGI animation programs and their inexplicable results, and this is one of the more painstaking products of that movement.  A lot of it is pretty “lol random monkey cheese”, but there’s a few random pockets of quality to be found as well.  Please to enjoy: whatever this is.

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A Bunch Of Spiders Or Whatever These Are

Apparently their more accepted name is Harvestman!  Here is all of them ever to exist on one tree!

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A Bunch Of These Hilarious Audition Video Things

These are the best watch them.

This one is the best of them all, just fyi:

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All right, that’s it ya goobers, see ya next week !!!