What’s the downside of soliciting passerby participators on the street as opposed to surprising them inside the bells-and-whistles-and-lights outfitted show cab? They can run away. Well, maybe it’s more work, but it’s also less (fatal) liability and the Funny or Die production that spawned this tv show looks a lot less staged than Cash Cab.

The show premieres on Dec. 22 at 11pm.

The primary six actors (who play dozens of characters) raking in $8 million a year didn’t want to see their earnings shrink to $4 million, so they bargained to accept a 35% pay cut instead, if they get a small percentage of those sweet merch billions that creators Brooks and Groening are allowed to suckle at. FOX said nope. It’s 45% or 100%. The actors and the studio (who have repeatedly threatened to replace the cast with sound-alikes throughout the years) are in a negotiating impasse which could effectively mean the end to the longest running prime time TV series.

Now, despite of what we think about the diminishing quality of the series, looking back at these “FOX News is #1 With Racists” gags, don’t they somehow look a lot ballsier than they did in 2010? What’s changed?

Anyway, enjoy the Ren & Stimpy-esque couch gag. Make those good memories last.

Face puncher Lebedev seems to have been slightly provoked by face-punchee Polonksy, who declared “I am weary with the desire to punch him in the mug,” before getting decked himself. Not even the tight little suit ensemble could prevent the owner of Brit daillies Evening Standard and The Independent and former KGB agent from “neutralizing” his opponent.

As chaos reigned the ring, the audience clucked in excitement and murmured with bewilderment, but don’t you worry, this is Russian talk show television as usual. Why do you think the Slav immigranda pays for giant satellites to funnel just two channels worth of this stuff into their living rooms? They give live tigers to sexy spies! 

Lest we forget this classic from serial brawler politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his legendary 1995 “juice fight” incident that started it all…

Gear up for the NYC-based Curbed season finale this weekend and study up.

So, the “friend of lesbians, foe to black swans and social assassin” isn’t a hopeless neurotic but a misunderstood etiquette reformer. Of course. Now everybody knows the rules! Cut the chit-chat!

As Curb Your Enthusiasm’s long-awaited New York season is getting better and, at the same time, approaching its end, another episode brings us a series of magical car rides wherein Larry David drives uptown and downtown simultaneously.

Yet, the bigger offense was propagating a lie that people play Scrabble at the hustling tables in Washington Square Park. Outrageous! Well, that character did have elderly dementia…

Here’s a Car Periscope clip (idea recycled from Seinfield) wherein night time SoHo suddenly turns into heavily blue-tinted dawn-dusk something. We forgive you, Larry David.

Terry Pratchett hopes his euthanasia doc will help him change UK’s laws that force the terminally ill “to commit suicide earlier than necessary because they have to go to Switzerland before they are too ill to travel.”

Last month, BBC Two’s Inside the Human Body featured footage of a cancer patient’s final moments (See clip below). In response to claims that the channel is turning dying into a spectacle, critics defend the program’s motive to demystify death’s biological processes and, in effect, help the viewers deal with its psychological implications. They expect Pratchett’s controversial film to draw attention to the UK’s right to die movement.

Warning: Not for sensitive viewers.

Continuing our accidentally buxom morning, ex-spy Anna Chapman is still famous in Russia. She just Facebooked some “blood sucker” themed promo stills for the next episode of Mysteries of the World — a show she hosts on one of Russia’s biggest private federal tv channels.

Behold! Right: Anna Chapman investigates demonic possession. Left: Anna Chapman is instructed on how to fold hands on tv, teeheehee.

You’ll get a couple bucks extra for “hardship” if you’re particularly cold and naked (“raped”) or wet (“dumped in the East River”), but you can graze off that catering truck as much as you want, as long as you eat through a hole in a plastic trashbag so your corn syrup gullet wound doesn’t crack off.

(Image Source)

This time, CNN called up Guiliani on his skull phone to see if he wanted to hang out with Wolf Blitzer, and the former mayor of 9/11 said yes. They talked about the terror-election and what it all means, and Guiliani shared some of the wisdom he’s acquired after years of politicking and meditating:

— The midterm election outcome is either a “problem or an advantage.”

—”You have elections for all kinds of reasons.” And you thought it was just to pick people to represent you in the government!

— Sometimes people are elected because they’re unpopular? Or we hold elections because people are unpopular? Or because the candidates or elections are fads? He makes no sense.

— Keep the Bush tax cuts. If you tax the rich, then the rich-people money will just go to Washington and end up getting spent “inefficiently,” like on ObamaCare for poors. “You’re better off having that money sitting there with the rich people so they can invest,” Guiliani says. It works every time.

— Republicans should try to accomplish some things.

— People in government should try to work together.

— He doesn’t agree with Republicans who told Politico that Sarah Palin should be “stopped” or “killed.” But nobody said Palin should be killed.

— Obama’s inviting terrorist attacks by treating terror suspects like domestic criminals instead of war criminals. Instead of letting these guys have rights, and lawyers we should be interrogating them for days, because that produces truthful confessions and sound information.

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