the wonderment that is bruno

MIKE NOTE: We got our two winners in the Rascal Flatts contest. I’ll name them Monday, but they know who they are. Congrats! We’ll try to get some more giveaways around these parts soon, so keep checking back. We had great response to this contest, so thanks everyone!

Only a couple more hours to enter for tickets to see Rascal Flatts at Montage Mountain in Scranton on Sunday.

To enter, send me an e-mail with “Hershey’s Rascal Flatts Contest” in the subject line, and include your name, town and phone number I can reach you at today.

You can also enter at the PopRox Facebook page — and while you’re there, be sure to friend us.

All I’m asking is that you please, please, please be able to go on Sunday if you enter. Frankly, I’m pretty busy today, and I have no inclination to call 10 people this afternoon trying to find two winners who can go. You’ll be making my day worse after a couple hard days already, and no one wants that. Especially me. And just so everyone is clear, it’s going to take about an hour to get to Montage from Stroudsburg, and another 15-20 minutes to get up the hill because of the inevitable traffic. Monday complaints about how sucky the traffic was will not be accepted, because it was so bad at the 1997 Lilith Fair I decided to walk up the mountain instead. And that wasn’t easy. Neither was actually being at the Lilith Fair.

And only one entry per person, per e-mail, please.

I’m closing down the entries at 2 p.m. and we’ll be randomly drawing two winners after that. Just so everyone knows the huge science that will go into it, I’m going to ask whoever is closest to me to pick two numbers between 1 and however many entries we get (we’re over 130 as of 10 a.m., thanks!) and whatever those numbers are, I’m going to physically count through them to get to those chosen numbers. Poof! That’s the winner.

And I hate to break the illusion, but that’s how a lot of our contests work.

Thanks again to Hershey’s for setting us up with the tickets, it’s all part of the company’s Hershey’s Rocks You Block promotion, where you can win $25,000 or the chance to have Rascal Flatts play a block party for you and 100 of your friends. You have to enter there to be considered, entering our ticket contest doesn’t qualify you for their contest.

Another contest we’re running here — you can win a $50 gift certificate to Dansbury Depot.

On to today’s news:

Bruno has been carefully groomed to be one of the surprise hits of the summer, having been moved from a crowded May release date to the open date of this weekend after 2012 moved to November. It’s looking like it will make close to $40 million this weekend, and has three things going for it — great reviews, the all-important ‘net buzz and a running time of only 90 minutes, enough to get in about six shows a day per theater. That helps since it’s only being opened on 2,755 screens, the first major, top-billing movie of the weekend to open on less than 3,000 theaters this summer. Even Ghosts of Girlfriends Past opened on 3,175 screens. Obviously, Sacha Baron Cohen has a long way to go before he gets universal acceptance, but Hollywood is going to want to keep working with him, especially if he keeps making cheap movies. Bruno could make its entire budget back this weekend.

But just so you know, some of Bruno may have been staged, a charge I’ve claimed about a trillion times in Borat and even sometimes in Da Ali G Show.

Just in case you’re looking to find out about all the crazy offscreen tension between Steve Martin and Queen Latifah in Bringing Down the House, Adam Shankman is one of the hundred or so directors/writers/actors/producers on Twitter, and this is a list to get you started if you want to follow some Hollywood types. Hey, when you start your Twitter page, be sure to follow PopRox too.

Normally, I can remember South Park episodes off the top of my head. I had to look up what this story was talking about. That tells me two things. 1. The episode wasn’t that good, because I am pretty secure in saying I remember every detail of every episode that was even half decent, and I’m right because the Free Willy episode wasn’t that special and 2. The bit wasn’t even that funny, because even sub-par South Park episodes are pretty memorable for one or two things. This Putin thing did not fall in to the category of memorable items from a subpar episode, so if Russia just let it slide by, no one would have even blinked and would have forgotten about it in two days. Bringing attention to this just sends an entire country to South Park Studios where they can watch the full episode whether the Russian government likes it or not. So good work, Russia. You just made Trey Parker and Matt Stone another million, even though it’s in theoretical dollars.

Until Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster reunite for Maverick 2: The Search for Bert, then I don’t care what kind of movie they’re making now. They better make Mav 2 fast, though, it’s tough to tell how long James Garner has left these days.

Uh oh, gotta do this quick before every late-night host beats me to it — wasn’t David Arquette already living in a box? Whew! That was close!

Two Arquettes for the price of one today. I can’t find any news on Rosanna, sorry. Maybe Patricia is believing the fiction of Hung. We might hear more from Patricia Arquette next week when people see Bruno over the weekend, since there was news last year that Sacha Baron Cohen was able to bum rush the set of Medium, but I don’t know if it made the final cut. If it did, she’ll make the obligatory, “It’s all in fun, he was a sweetheart, blah, blah, blah” when in her heart she’ll be pinning a Borat voodoo doll.

Because you know you can’t live without it, here comes your daily dose of Michael Jackson, and we’re gonna fly through these from now on: If I’m an LA taxpayer, I’m raising all hell . . .  We’re following everywhere Joe Jackson goes now, so rest easy, America . . . Someone is going to find out sooner or later where Jackson is buried, but if the search goes on very long, it would make a great documentary fiver years from now . . . Yet another reason to never believe a word Al Sharpton ever says: He thinks the Jacksons have a handle on growing up in the limelight. Because Michael Jackson seemed pretty well-adjusted to me.

Watch out, Oscars! Someone’s sure to be crashing the party in no time!

Right now, look to your right. There’s a poll there. Vote. Be part of the solution, not the problem.