...the Internet is porn. Besides, these days you can get porn in The New Yorker. This week, anyway. Just a few days ago I'd been thinking, if only there were more smutty stories in the magazine (Nicholson Baker will do just fine)! Full-page photos of nude-ish dancers in black and white are usually the best it gets, but this issue's not fit to read on the subway unless you aren't a blusher, and I am. I love that I had to hurriedly skip a page as I read on the F train this morning. More of that, please! No girlies on the web link, sorry.

Anyway, this is a link dump. Like a regular dump, it's a goldmine; unlike a regular dump, it's not whiffy and there are no vermin. Although some film-critic critics (see below) might beg to differ.

First, I've recently become a contributing editor at the fabulous new blogher, where I'll be writing about movies. I just posted about Annie Proulx's bitching about boring old Crash winning the Oscar when Brokeback could've nabbed it.

Speaking of movies, or perhaps Films, various people are pissed at David Denby about his V for Vendetta review. For instance, Edrants calls for his resignation. Movie City Indie revisits James Wolcott's fears: "James Wolcott offers a tart aside to the most goombah of early reviews, with the New Yorker's august David Denby partaking in the aborning controversy over the movie's mere existence." New City Chicago employs the summery adjective as well:

Longtime New Yorker editor William Shawn supposedly said that a good review offers voice and viewpoint but also enough information that you would feel like you'd learned enough about the movie to feel comfortable participating in a dinner-table conversation about the work at hand. While working to digest "V from Vendetta" from a distance of only twelve hours or so, I pick up the august David Denby's review in the March 20 issue of the New Yorker: "`V for Vendetta,' a dunderheaded pop fantasia that celebrates terrorism and destruction, is perhaps the ultimate example of how a project with modest origins becomes a media monster." Do you want to see a movie after reading a lead like that? Do you want to finish the review or change the subject over drinks?

It's all just making me more excited to see V for V, of course. Then I'll be able to read the review and properly assess. As a rule, I'm a Denbyhead, not a Laneiac, but Lane has been terrific on a few serious movies lately; they should let Denby make the jokes. Meanwhile, all those boobies in the magazine inspired me to do some creative scanning, to be revealed shortly. PW Daily led me to the news, coincidentally, that "Playboy Enterprises announced the launch of Playboy Press as part of a joint publishing venture with Hanover, N.H.-based Steerforth Press." My, they're getting lit'rary! Now we're going to say we read it for the books.

So (that's my effort at a transition, but when you're getting out the news, you can't always be stressing about the segues), here's Marc Weingarten on Truman Capote's newly re-famous martyr-man Jack Dunphy: "This is a tragic story about what happens when a fine writer's reputation is obscured by the very public persona of a genius, and how literary fame always trumps solid literary grunt work."

In other NYer-figure news, it's blogger Dave Chase's opinion, expressed in his review of Jim Surowiecki's The Wisdom of Crowds, that

Surowiecki aims to be the next New Yorker contributor to have a mass appeal book, ala Malcolm Gladwell. He clearly wants to position this book as the next "The Tipping Point" -- combining cognitive science and other disciplines into a book addressing business, politics, society and economies. The book’s relevance to marketing may not be as obvious as The Tipping Point, although there are examples from our industry....

Finally—because, like millions of other happy lambs, I'm Gervais-mad or at least Gervais-fixated—there's a little Salon archive of Office, XFM, interview, and podcast stuff I just landed on, and the interview with an unusually relaxed Terry Gross is a hoot, surprisingly enough. Maybe she's better talking to people who won't show their vulnerable sides, or whose vulnerable sides aren't the most interesting part of the story. Listening to the XFM clip after yesterday's disappointing Gervais podcast made me a little sad, since the boys are having about 50% more fun on the old show. I hope the fame of the podcast isn't burning them out; perhaps they should let Stephen talk a bit more.

And if you're not listening to the Comedy 365 podcast Big Squeeze yet, I simply can't help you. You're clearly determined never to laugh like a complete fool again.