BlackBook

I can imagine the hearts (and other things) belonging to men across the internet swelling as I watch this video of Paul F. Tompkins directing Community and Mad Men's Alison Brie as she recreates popular internet memes. Is there a better, more beloved actress who could possibly do this sort of thing? If Tumblr has told me anything, it's that the internet loves Alison Brie. And, apparently, Alison Brie loves the internet. 

Yesterday we complained about the staunch idiocy of David Brooks, but we also briefly contemplated the consistent uselessness of fellow Times op-ed writer Thomas Friedman, whom you will remember as the champion of everything dumb or otherwise not very well thought out. Now, out of nowhere, a website that generates even more perfect Friedman columns than Friedman himself.

Uh, guess this wasn’t a scathing April Fool’s joke: BAM is really going to showcase a real exhibit of real GIFs, really! It’s called “Moving the Still” and I’m sure it’ll be somehow completely different from scrolling through a few days’ worth of a Tumblr dashboard, so get on it.

First of all: ahahahaha Salon thought they needed to take Dan Chaon, an author and writing professor, to task for—get this—telling his students to read. “Most contemporary literary fiction is terrible,” the headline reads, and it may not shock you to learn that what follows doesn’t exactly expand on that idea so much as repeatedly accept it at face value. Fair enough, thou click-baiting contrarian cads!

Have you gotten a good chuckle yet about how the New York Post made this big dumb cue ball of an FDNY employee weep and wail when they confronted him about his racist Twitter screeds, written under the alias “Bad Lieutenant” and an avatar of Hitler? Because this is schadenfreude at its guilt-free best. Anyway, leave it to Mayor Bloomberg to miss the point.

Fans of Zombieland, the 2009 horror-comedy that was not, sadly, a weird sequel to Adventureland, will be excited to know that Amazon, in an effort to be as cool as Netflix, has greenlighted a series version of the film. Of course, this isn't TV—it's the internet. You're not going to find your Jesse Eisenbergs or your Emma Stones or your Woody Harrelsons or your Abigail Breslins or even your Bill Murray cameos on an online retailer's original programming network. Behold, the cast of Zombieland: The WebTV Show. Kirk Ward, Maiara Walsh, Tyler Ross, and Izabela Vidovic will star in what Amazon hopes will be their House of Cards. I am dubious; at least House of Cards had Kevin Spacey and a Mara sister. 

Here's a little behind-the-scenes look at how things work at BlackBook: I saw online that Veronica Mars creator Rob Thomas (not the dude from Matchbox Twenty, as I just learned) and the show's star Kristen Bell launched a Kickstarter campaign that is hoping to raise two million dollars to make a movie based on the series, which was cancelled after three seasons in 2007. I never watched that show, despite the intentions of many of my friends to get me to watch it, because the concept sounded preposterous. (I say that having willingly watched the entire first season of Smash.) I turned to both of my coworkers and said, "Hey, did either of you watch Veronica Mars?" Both of them stared back, blankly, and said no. "Oh, hm," I replied, thinking, "Perhaps someone with the knowledge of this show should write a post about it." And then I realized that writing blog posts about entertainment news requires very little skill and knowledge! So, basically, here is the Kickstarter campaign for the Veronica Mars movie. 

I still have not seen a Harlem Shake video. I'm usually not the kind to boast about deliberately avoiding a shared cultural experience, but I have no idea and, honestly, I'm OK with it. There has never been one shred of my existence that has ever wanted to participate in any sort of viral video sensation (or flash mob, which I feel like we're bordering on here). That is why I do not understand the thought process that would sway, say, miners in Australia to take a break from their clinkin' and their diggin' to dance around in a cave. The only good thing to come out of this meme is that the fifteen people involved in the video were fired. How's that for a resume killer? ("Why did you leave your last position?" "Because I danced on the job and filmed it for some stupid, stupid joke that no one will remember in ten years.")

Hey gang, I really love your Parks and Rec subtitle GIF photoset on your Tumblrs, and, man, that scene from Community was sooooo funny and all, but until you start GOING INTO FUCKING OUTER SPACE, I think we could all use a break from your guerilla marketing campaign for poorly rated NBC sitcoms. Oh, what's that? A GIF of Honey Boo Boo drinking juice? Yeah, well, here's an animated GIF of The Pelican Nebula, so, you know, shut up about your looping silent video of a clip from a reality TV show, OK?

[Ed. note: on Monday, our frequent contributor Jolie Kerr sung the praises of House of Cards, the David Fincher-directed series that is single-handedly proving the success of Netflix and internet streaming. But our other frequent contributor Miles Klee is not buying it.]