... I might have to get this one:

This week's Administration scandal, it seems, is Dick Cheney (aka "God") - and he deserves it. Cheney has probably been the scandal of the last 300 or so weeks. This time however, Dick has chosen to dodge the scandal (not submitting documents to the National Archives) by claiming he's not part of the executive branch.

So in response, and in a move that is at once witty and tough, while also completely hopeless, Congressman Rahm Emanuel is planning to introduce a budget amendment that will take away the bulk of the VP's funding. Emanuel reasons that since Cheney seems to think he's not part of the Administration, he shouldn't be funded as part of it.

When asked during a recent press conference how the Administration feels about this classification and Emanuel's proposed amendment, former temporary White House Press Secretary Dana Perino (aka "the incredibly clueless babe press secretary") eloquently expressed why it's necessary to keep Dick's files classified. Actually... no... Perino just thinks it's "an interesting constitutional question, and I think that lots of people can debate it."

Cheney's office, filling the explanatory void where Perino left off, went back to Rahm with the Admin's new favorite response to everything, accusing him of "playing politics."

Photo of Cheney wearing parka at Auschwitz via The American Prospect

If you're in New York this summer you've got your pick of publicly funded, free events: movies in parks, concerts, slip 'n slides, etc.

However, some of the most interesting free stuff is going on at Brooklyn Bridge Park, where on 7/7/07 the Boredoms will be playing with 77 drummers.

Also at the park will be large sandboxes and a floating, ship-bound pool, which I'll assume the idea was stolen directly from the Simpsons episode "Bart Of Darkness":

Ice Cream man: [driving past in his truck] I'm all out of ice cream! [to Bart and Lisa] It's true, you know. Ice cream! Ice cream!
Bart+Lisa: Aw...
Chili man: [driving past in his truck] Chili! Red-hot Texas-style chili! And we got gingerale: boiling-hot Texas-style gingerale! Texas...
Bart: Ew!
Lisa: Aw, face it, Bart. Our salvation isn't just going to roll by on the back of some stupid truck.
[The "Springfield Pool-Mobile" truck drives up. Otto screeches to a halt, gets splashed by a wave]
Otto: Woo, I gotta replace that window.
Bart+Lisa: Pool Mobile?!

The DVD industry, with its insatiable appetite for repackaging old crap, has produced a glut of meaningless, trite, and horrible special features.

This is a new section to Cosmodrome, where we laugh at movie moguls gazing at their navels, talking about how brilliant they themselves are in special features that reveal just how un-special they really are.

Behold Ron Howard on the scoring of A Beautiful Mind. Get a load of the scripted ad-libbing. It's insane!

Newsweek's survey, and Wonkette have more on how stupid you and I are.

Note to Rupert Murdoch: at least the unending media scrutiny of your business dealings w/r/t your purchase of the WSJ has yielded one valuable asset: the title of your forthcoming hip-hop album.

Actually come to think of it, "Ruler of a Vast Empire Reaches Out For More" isn't too bad either.

The New York Times leads with Paris.

Dick Cheney is so powerful that the Washington Post has devoted an entire section to him.

The section, actually called "Angler } The Cheney Presidency," looks at Cheney from Wyoming to Washington, everything in between and about. The story is complete with photo albums where you can see Dick play with children, give creepy looks, smile with historical figures, lurk, give creepy looks, be a child (it seems weird to think he was once young), get married, lurk, go fishing, and give a stare down a five year old child.

And while the Post doesn't really add anything groundbreaking to the Cheney saga, it does put together a number of useful stories and verify things you always felt were true. No, he didn't listen to Condi & Colin. Yes, he writes policy with a rubber stamp from Bush. No, he didn't flinch during 9/11 - and yes, he did start drafting plans to "fuck everything" that day.

But all this talk really boils down to one thing: Bush does next-to-nothing; it's all Dick.

It's hard to tell if he's smiling or grimacing.

Via English Russia

The AFI’s new list of the 100 Greatest American Movies and the Wednesday night TV special which presented the list told two very different stories. The list itself offered an updated and slightly improved canon of American cinema, suggesting that our collective appreciation of film and understanding of film history has grown in the nine years since the first list. The TV special, on the other hand, suggested the opposite. Filled with poorly chosen clips and inane celebrity soundbites, 100 YEARS…100 MOVIES: 10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION revealed far more about the state of our culture and media industries today than it did about film history.

On the whole, the AFI list got a little better. No seismic shifts happened. Documentaries, avant-garde, and independent films remain grossly overlooked. And none of Cosmodrome’s five picks—MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, HIS GIRL FRIDAY, MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO, ACE IN THE HOLE, and L.A. CONFIDENTIAL— made it into the top 100. However, the AFI did make some positive and noteworthy additions to the list with pictures like SUNRISE (#82), SWING TIME (#90), and DO THE RIGHT THING (#97). Furthermore, the leaps forward on the list of American masterworks like THE SEARCHERS (from #96 to #12), VERTIGO (from #61 to #9), and RAGING BULL (from #24 to #4) represented positive steps forward for the AFI.


[Ed. note: this piece follows up on our recent discussion of what the AFI should add for its updated 100 Greatest. Click here to continue reading this story, or here for the original AFI post.]