I’ve been reading Josh Friedman’s screenwriting blog, I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing. It’s quite something. That something may be vicious, hilarious, startling, or any of the various, not entirely consistent terms that must go under the rubric of morbid humor. Subjects range from the professional to the personal. And Friedman’s dissections of the Hollywood filmmaking hierarchy are hilarious, though not quite as breathtaking as what he has to say about his run-in with cancer.

Friedman, who wrote the screenplay for War of the Worlds, is an atheist, as his blog’s name suggests. One notes also that this science-fiction-loving materialist refers often to poop and matter. They are among his favorite words. And there is something Darwinian in the recurring metaphor of the infinite monkey. See his blog’s a zoo and you get to look at his life, like that of a monkey in his cage, but, wait, Hollywood is also a zoo and the executives and operators and actresses are also zoo-animals or zoo-keepers. I have yet to parse the whole thing out, but what makes me stop short and worry about the durability of Friedman’s faithlessness is instead the adjective he uses to dress up his main monkey metaphor: infinite.

Who knew that Newsweek’s Periscope section had an obituary sidebar called “Transition”? The two personages transitioning out of a living state mentioned in last week’s issue were Wendy Wasserstein and Betty Friedan.

I don’t mean to be flip about the end of life, or what some crass bastards refer to as death. So let me just offer my condolences to the families of the transitioned.

In case you had your doubts about the way things are going in Russia, check out Nina Khrushcheva’s depressing op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post. A few stats: 51 percent of young Russians (ages 16-29) believe Stalin was “a wise leader.” Was Stalin a “cruel tyrant”? 47 percent say no. And 56 percent of young Russians think “Stalin may have made some mistakes but did more good than bad.”

As Khrushcheva, the great-granddaughter of Nikita Khrushchev, explains: “We yearned for monumental–if oppressive–leaders, like Ivan the Terrible or Stalin. Yes, they killed and imprisoned, but how great were our victories and parades! So what if Stalin ruled by fear? That was simply a fear for one’s life. However terrifying, it wasn’t as existentially threatening as the fear of freedom, of individual choice, with no one but oneself to blame if democracy turned into disarray and capitalism into corruption.

“This is why the country rallies behind President Vladimir Putin.”

Because it’s Valentine’s Day:

What an age of wonders we live in. Finally the day has come where you can make gay cowboy dolls based on movie characters hump each other, because some genius on eBay is selling a handmade ‘Brokeback Mountain’ doll set, including dolls based on the Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhall characters, 2 horses, a campfire, a dog, a tent, a liquor bottle and a tree. The dolls come with a hand painted background set and are fully pose-able. Or at least it says they’re fully pose-able. My Kim Possible and Catwoman dolls said the same thing, but it’s almost impossible to keep them in a 69, and they usually fall over, sometimes before I’m even finished. Couple of teases is what they are.

Best college basketball cheer of all time?

The always great Jenny has this awesome Harrison Ford quote:

I grew up in the mid-west. You don’t ask what a person’s religion is, you don’t ask what their politics are, you don’t ask how much money they make and I pretty much still have that attitude about it. It’s none of anybody’s business and I don’t advantage anyone by telling them what my personal politics are… The arguments are much too subtle to be entered in that way, to my mind. There are things that I think are happening in the world that are egregious mistakes but I’m only operating out of my own box and I don’t have any expertise. I’m a voter… I have one vote, that’s all I should have.

Does anyone have thoughts on Peerflix as an alternative to Slightly Evil Netflix?

Peter Benchley, R.I.P.