James Franco was a no-show at the premiere of his latest flick, “William Vincent,” on Sunday night, but certainly had a good reason….

“They’re shooting in the middle of nowhere, quite literally,” says a source on the set of the flick.

– Gatecrasher, the N.Y. Daily News.

Whoa. Wrap your minds around that one. James Franco is filming a movie quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

James Franco, who by all accounts has mass, has somehow negotiated his way to the center of the absence of space. I cannot even begin to conceive what that means. Thankfully, James Franco is documenting this for us.

I’ve long held that James Franco is stealthily one of our most awesome handsome-guy actors. That’s based mostly on his role in Pineapple Express, his amazing turn in 30 Rock and the time he joined the cast of General Hospital and called it “performance art.”

But now, perhaps the best evidence yet that James Franco is cool: He has uncovered a portal to nowhere. Not just anywhere in nowhere, mind you. The middle. Color me as impressed as I am confused.

In concert, the Mothership was last spotted in Detroit in 1981, belching dry ice fumes and flashing kaleidoscopic light. An aluminum flying saucer, it was about 20 feet in diameter and decked out with dazzling lights. Below it stood a band of otherworldly eccentrics celebrating the hard-won freedoms of the civil rights movement in a freaky, fantastical display.

– Chris Richards, Washington Post.

Go read this article, a thorough and well-penned investigation of what happened to Parliament-Funkadelic’s Mothership, last seen in a junkyard behind a gas station in Prince George’s County, Maryland in 1982.

Enjoy some funk. Language NSFW:

Treme, the new show from David Simon — creator of The Wire — premieres Sunday on HBO, and I couldn’t be any more excited. I’ve set the crap out of my TiVo.

So for no reason other than that, and other than how much I like the song here, here’s the season-ending montage from the first season of The Wire. You probably won’t enjoy it if you didn’t watch the show, but if you did watch the show, you’ll probably enjoy it immensely. And if you didn’t watch the show, you probably should.

Language NSFW:

The Viacom celebrity machine is spectacular. Think about it: By crafting and marketing “reality” shows featuring no-names and has-beens, MTV and VH1 elevate controllable commodities under presumably exploitative contracts to unforeseen stardom, profit from them, then move on to the next crop.

It’s branched far beyond those networks, of course. And in a lot of cases, it’s a win-win. Heidi Montag’s in movies now. Kate Gosselin’s got a full-fledged reality show career.

But that’s not what this is about. This is about The Situation.

Jersey Shore is a fad, something ephemeral. It is the flavor of the month in reality shows. It will go away. We laugh at it now, or cringe, or revel in its stupidity. We’ll do the same with the next one.

The Situation will last, because The Situation is the greatest nickname of all-time. We sit here at our computers and make jokes about this kid, but we’re all jealous that this little punk thought to call himself that and we didn’t. Admit it.

The Situation is to Jersey Shore what He Hate Me was to the XFL.

I remember so few details of that league now, but Rod Smart’s self-granted moniker has left an indelible mark upon pop culture forever. He Hate Me. I’m still not even clear on what that means, but I know Spike Lee made a movie called She Hate Me. I guarantee there’s a similar ripple effect from The Situation.

The Situation! The gravity of it!

It’s so foreboding, and yet not necessarily damning. It’s not The Catastrophe or The Predicament or The Dilemma. It’s just The Situation.

And the fact that The Situation is just some kid from Staten Island named Michael Sorrentino? That makes it 100 time more hilarious, of course. And that The Situation also apparently refers to his six pack? Exponentially funnier.

Michael Sorrentino has taught me two things, for certain: First, the definite article needs more play in nicknames. I know it’s been said many times, but today’s sports nicknames are largely unoriginal. F-Mart? Jay-Hey? B.S. Let’s start with “The” and work from there. I guarantee they get better. There’s a reason “The Franchise” has such a nice ring to it.

Second, I don’t think I’ll ever again, in my life, hear someone describe “the situation” without giggling. Alex Remington’s doing this awesome series for Yahoo! Sports, but one of his subheads renders me incapable of taking it entirely seriously.

That’s The Situation now, I guess.

I don’t know why I hate Bono so much. I know I’ve done so for a long time, probably before the disliking-Bono bandwagon became quite as large as it is now. I imagine has something to do with never really liking U2’s music despite growing up in a largely U2-loving Irish-Catholic town then going to a largely U2-loving Irish-Catholic university, plus always being rubbed the wrong way by a man who calls himself only “Bono” carrying on like he’s Mother Theresa all the time.

Not to begrudge the humanitarianism, of course but seriously, “Bono” and “The Edge”? Were you in fifth grade when you started this band? Seriously?

Anyway, today there’s this:

U2 singer Bono’s investments into Elevation Partners, which has offices in New York and Menlo Park, have helped make him the “worst investor in America,” according to the online publication 24/7 Wall Street.

With large investments in Palm, Forbes, and Move.com — “an unprecedented string of disastrous investments which even bad luck could not explain” — Elevation Partners has earned the distinction of being “arguably the worst run institutional fund of any size in the United States,” 24/7 Wall Street asserts.

“An unprecedented string of disastrous investments which even bad luck could not explain.” I love that.

It’s messed up, because I realize that Bono and his investment group losing money probably means Bono has less money to give to charity, and so probably ultimately takes food right out of the mouths of starving African children. And still — granted, I’ve never said I’m not a terrible person — I can’t help but smile when I read that Bono is failing at something.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been to the Elevation Partners website and read their “Two Ways to Win” approach. (To be fair, I don’t read a lot of mission statements on investment-firm websites and I imagine a lot of them read like they were written by underpants gnomes.)

Second Way to Win
• New licencing
• New distribution channels
• New geographies
• New business models

First Way to Win
• Improved marketing and
distribution economics
• Enhanced operational efficiencies
• Better alignment of
management incentives

Why does the Second Way to Win come before the First Way to Win? Don’t you dare ask Bono questions.

Basically, from poking around the Elevation Partners website, it sure sounds a hell of a lot like their strategy is to identify businesses they thing stand to make money, partner with them, then have Bono give them advice, apparently in all sorts of hilarious business jargon.

And so maybe that sheds some light on the “even bad luck could not explain” part. Maybe Bono’s business advice is just that bad.

From the billboards alone, you might assume the Food Network broadcasts MMA events and Bobby Flay kicks outrageous amounts of ass. I feel any advertisement I see for the station’s programming features one of its celebrity chefs with his arms crossed and a combative scowl that says, “if you don’t like this gourmet doughnut, I’ll fight you.”

And apparently that renegade mentality comes down from the Food Network’s decision-makers themselves.

I caught an episode of Food Network Challenge this weekend called “Cereal Bridges 2.” The original installment of Cereal Bridges, which challenged world-class pastry chefs to recreate famous bridges out of Rice Krispie Treats, failed miserably. Only two of the four cereal bridges even made it intact to the judges table and the winner, by all accounts, took the contest by default.

If Food Network executives operated under fear of embarrassment, they might opt to just move on, recognize the episode as a failed experiment, and agree never to rerun the program.

But Food Network executives, apparently, are a bold and reckless bunch. They rallied the pastry chefs for a thrilling sequel to “Cereal Bridges” because, you know, it’s really important to determine once and for all who can best build a bridge out of Rice Krispie Treats.

The United States rules. People are starving all over the planet, and we construct six-foot tall likenesses of great architecture out of cereal for our own entertainment, with no intention of anyone ever eating them. Take that, world.

One of the chefs, working on her version of the John A. Roebling suspension bridge in Cincinnati, actually used a bandsaw to cut precise towers for her delicious, marshmallow model. A bandsaw. Her plans went horribly awry when, about four hours deep into the eight-hour competition, the bandsaw broke and her assistant had to take time away from crafting suspension cables from spun sugar to attempt to fix the machine, something I’m almost certain is not covered in culinary school.

One of the judges — the hardass judge in the Simon Cowell mold — told a competitor that she needed to better understand her medium. Just a reminder: Her medium was Rice Krispie Treats.

It has been said that Michelangelo stared at a slab of marble for months before sculpting the David. I can only assume that the woman who ultimately won Food Network Challenge: “Cereal Bridges 2” meditated for years on the structural qualities of Kellogg’s classic breakfast snack, dining only on the dried and toasted grains themselves, lulled to sleep every night by that familiar soundtrack: Snap. Crackle. Pop.

I have no idea what practical application there could possibly be to the ability to mimic complex works of architecture out of cereal. Maybe if the Museum of Modern Art holds a bake sale.

The winner, inarguably the Le Corbusier of Rice Krispie Treats, earned a $10,000 check and, of course, bragging rights. Her sweet, chewy rendition of the Valentre Bridge in Cahors, France impressed the judges with its attention to detail and its structural integrity.

Because, you know, nothing says “structural integrity” like a bridge made out of cereal.

I watched two movies this weekend, Blade Runner and The Running Man, which were both made in the 1980s and both set in the year 2019.

Neither 2019 reality appears entirely likely to happen, but I’ve made this helpful chart to sort the two out. Hat tip to Eric Simon at Amazin’ Avenue for the HTML tablemaker gadget.

Here is what the end of this decade will look like, according to Blade Runner and The Running Man:

I’ve made no secrets of my dissatisfaction with the future here, but it’s probably best that things don’t appear to be going down either of these paths.

Still, nine years is a long time, and I wouldn’t put anything past sensationalist reality TV producers.