If Jerry Seinfeld doesn’t buy this, then he’s rich for no reason.

So I’m halfway through the first sentence of this Slate piece:

If Apple, Amazon, Google, Yahoo!, eBay, Facebook, and Satan were forming a mega-portal that would satisfy all my Web needs (and in return I’d have to sell my soul and get a Bluetooth-enabled “slave chip” embedded in my eyeball) . . .

And I think to myself, Frack this! Someone is ripping off Reihan Salam. That’s not cool.

And then I look up at the byline.

Well, not exactly. Galley Friend J.E. sends us this report from the Russian MTV awards:

Scandal hit MTV Russia’s movie awards ceremony Thursday when a presenter refused to announce the viewer-voted award for best movie after realizing which film had won.

Vladimir Menshov, one of Russia’s leading directors, was onstage at Moscow’s Pushkin Theater when he opened the envelope with details of the winning film — the World War II drama “Svolochi,” in which a group of teenage criminals is sent on a suicide mission behind German lines.

Menshov gasped as he read the contents of the envelope, looked up and said: “I’m not going to hand over an award to a film that discredits my country, let Pamela Anderson (another of the evening’s presenters) do it instead.”

He then turned, dropped the envelope and stalked offstage, refusing to comment further.

J.E. sums it up perfectly:

It’s something absolutely unthinkable in this country. Can you possibly imagine someone at the MTV Awards here refusing to give the best pic award to a film that portrayed the U.S. as criminally unethical on grounds that it made our country look bad? Impossible. And yet, it happens in Russia, a country with far fewer reasons to be proud.

Why? Because I may never be this clearly, or prescienty, right again. Here’s the full story:

The company had said it would sell 6 million machines by the end of its financial year (three weeks ago), but the global level of sales is currently believed to be less than 4 million.

A report in the Financial Times has suggested that the company is rethinking its pricing strategy. PS3 is the most expensive machine on the market, offering a Blu-ray disk drive.

However, the company has released a statement refuting this notion. “PS3 prices and shipment plans for the future should be determined by market trends and competition. Sony currently doesn’t have any specific plan to cut the PlayStation 3’s price.”

Analysts believe a price cut is inevitable, as the company struggles to catch Microsoft’s early lead with Xbox 360, and the $250 Wii continues to sell s many as can be produced. However, Sony’s plan has generally been to hold tight and hope that demand for Blu-ray drives will increase, by the end of this year.

The company already subsidizes its hardware sales, and has reported disappointing financials for its games division. A price cut would be financially difficult and would send a message that confidence in its Blu-ray strategy is low.

You think?

Galley Friend B.W. sends us this piece speculating that the good times may be over between QT and the Weinsteins because of Grindhouse.

I have trouble believing that’s true, no matter how much I wish it were so. As QT reminded Peter Biskind over and over, he built Miramax, man. He made that studio. Further, while I don’t think the Weinsteins the geniuses people make them out to be, I can’t imagine they saw Grindhouse as a real commercial prospect. It’s a weird, self-involved genre movie–from a genre that only a handful of people have any affection for. Surely they must have seen the project as a reward for QT, a big enough plum to keep him working for them now that they’re out on their own again.

Drudge has linked to the TMZ story with the voicemail Alec Baldwin left for his 11-year-old daughter, Ireland. Treat yourself to the entire audio. Highlights include Baldwin yelling at her for “humiliating” him and calling her “a thoughtless little pig” and claiming that she doesn’t have “the brains or the decency as a human being.”

But my personal favorite is when he says that he doesn’t “give a damn that you’re 12-years-old, or 11-years-old . . .” Father of the year!

Just out of curiosity, do you think Baldwin is going to be welcome at all the swanky Democratic fundraisers in 2008? Does this tirade maybe put into context some of his public statements about how terrible conservatives and Republicans are as human beings?

A very, very creepy story.

It’s 25th anniversary of Porky’s, Fast Times, and Last American Virgin. Ouch.

AICN has a great essay on the trio of immortal films (including trailer for all three). A sample of the introduction:

I was positively Machiavellian as a kid when it came to seeing a film I wanted to see that was rated R. I found that it was easiest to get permission to see a violent film that was rated R, while anything that dealt with sex was a much harder sell. In the case of PORKY’S, I was visiting my grandmother in Memphis when the film was gearing up for release. It was spring break, and Fox was doing sneak previews of the film for a few weeks before the actual release. I didn’t know much about it, but that poster was enough to pique my interest . . .

Talk about promising. That poster was practically a dare for a 12 year old. . . .