Down With CGI Costumes: 5 Real Ones That Did The Job Better.

David Lynch has made a career out of weird-ass film projects, but lately he seems to be branching out, transforming himself into some weird-ass, superannuated James Franco. For his latest not-really-a-film project, he’s recreating the nightclub from Mulholland Drive, easily my favorite Lynch film. (No, not for that reason, you sleazebags. Okay, mostly not for that reason.) Club Silencio will be opening in Paris this September, which would be terrific if it were as creepy and surreal as the movie version—hell, it would be ultra-terrific if it featured a nightly tape/lipsynch performance by Rebekah Del Rio. Unfortunately, the reality sounds considerably more dreary:

Lynch is personally designing the furniture and otherwise sculpting the interior of the “1920s-like Parisian salon,” which include a concert hall, restaurant, library, and cinema—all reserved for an exceedingly exclusive clientele composed of an “international who’s who of artistic professionals.”

The club will be open after midnight to regular people (suitably screened, so you probably won’t qualify). It sounds surreal and depressing, but in ways you could find in dozens of clubs in LA, New York, London, or any other major city. The club will even host concerts—so, technically, no “No hay banda.” What a rip.

By now we’re all acutely aware that Ke$ha’s torso has the same sleek, sexy lines as a 1950s Kelvinator refrigerator/freezer—sort of a box, basically, with a few minimal curves and bulges thrown in to break up the monotony. But for some reason, she insists on reminding people of this regrettable fact. Here she is at last night’s amfAR fundraiser. (And yes, I picked the least flattering photo I could find. Those seeking praise and validation for Miss Tik Tok had better go elsewhere.)

The most noticeable thing about this pic, if you can bring yourself to look closely, is that additional bulge where no bulge ought to be. I didn’t even know appliances from the Eisenhower era had genders, and this raises issues about Ke$ha’s gender that I never, ever wanted to think about. Now I can’t decide if she’s an averagely decent looking woman (suitably cleaned up, of course) with a truly unfortunate torso, or Zach Galifianakis with a way too pretty face. The whole question is terribly frightening and disturbing, on far too many levels. Hold me.

(Photo courtesy Fame, via ICYDK.)

A surprise current bestseller is Go the Fuck to Sleep (everyone blanks out the third word, but we won’t because we’re edgy like that), which speaks for just about anyone who has ever tried to put a very small child to bed. It’s less surprising that it’s now being released as an audio book, although I can’t really imagine anyone sitting down and listening to a recitation of sweet children’s poems littered with F-bombs. You’d need the perfect narrator to make that work. Which is what they’ve got, because Akashic Books has hired Samuel L. Jackson to read the thing. Over a background of sweet lullabye music, buyers will hear Jackson recite gems like this:

The windows are dark in the town, child,” he reads. “The whales huddle down in the deep. I’ll read you one very last book if you swear you’ll go the ____ to sleep.”

This seems very nearly perfect. Possibly the only better reader would have been Morgan Freeman. If he’d narrated this book, you’d want to play it for your kids. It would be like having God or the President telling them to please go the fuck to sleep.

Sean Bean is good in most roles he plays, and he’s been pleasing audiences as Ned Stark in HBO’s Game of Thrones—at least until last Sunday, when–spoiler alert!–he came up a head short (a head short!! I slay me—oh, there I go again…) in his involvement in the Lannister family psychodrama. Meanwhile, back in physical reality, Sean was proving he can be quite the badass in real life. Sean was out for drinks when some yob started making lewd comments about his companion, sometime topless model April Summers. Sean chased the lout out of the bar and all was well until he and Ms. Summers stepped out for a smoke. At that point, Bean was attacked by an unidentified lout—the same guy or one of multiple louts in the neighborhood—who punched him and stabbed him in the arm with a chunk of broken glass. But it takes more than that to faze Sean Bean:

Mr Bean was said to have a cut arm and a bruised face, according to witnesses. However, extraordinarily, he declined to attend hospital. Instead, the star walked back into the bar and, after staff gave him aid from a first aid kit, ordered another drink.

So: life imitates art, insofar as being publicly beheaded after you’ve been betrayed by a couple of incestuous psychopaths resembles being stabbed by a yob when you’re out for drinks with a Page Three girl. Still, pretty impressive. I honestly hope I can maintain this level of cool the next time I’m stabbed or beheaded.

The Foo Fighters are a decent little band that’s currently on tour to promote their new album Wasting Light. Like most bands, they’ve got a tour rider. And unlike most bands, that rider is a thing of beauty. The Smoking Gun has a copy of the thing (which might not have been totally unexpected, since tour manager Gus Brandt suggests readers “fire up the forward button and race to the Smoking Gun”), and right now they’re only releasing Part Seven. Still, since Part Seven includes coloring pages, a maze, a word hunt, and other activities you might remember from day care, it’s well worth checking out.

As riders go, this one is both fun and educational. You’ll learn the Foo Fighters are big fans of meat in general and bacon in particular, and perhaps not so enamoured of the French. You will learn that in the highly specialized field of ice-cube production, Hoshizaki America are “the ice-pimps of the world.” And the Foo fighters take these requests very, very seriously. As Brandt says: “If we’ve offended you then you probably weren’t that bright to begin with.”

Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer Review: Manic Pixie Go F*ck Yourself.

Okay, I will concede that’s not the cleverest headline ever to appear at Agent Bedhead. The perfect title would have been “II, Claudius,” but WordPress’s headline formatting would have rendered it weak and useless. At any rate, it’s true: HBO has teamed up with the BBC production team behind the fairly excellent Rome to create a remake of the 1976 miniseries, one of the most successful projects the Beeb ever made. (They might even be able to use some of the sets from Rome—the ones that survived the fire, anyway.) The project will not follow the scripts from the 1976 version; instead, it will be drawn directly from the two Claudius novels by Robert Graves.

No word yet on the details of this project—writers, cast, production schedule, or anything else. However, since the original production included Derek Jacobi in the title role, along with Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, Patrick Stewart, John Hurt, and too many other terrific actors to count, a remake of equally high quality would be awesome. I haven’t been this excited since my first sight of Messalina’s boobies made me feel kind of like I was climbing the rope in gym class.

This story just keeps getting sadder. You’ve probably noticed that the banner picture contains absolutely no Sean Penn. That’s partly because I honestly have no desire to punish my readers, and partly because that’s the way Sean wants it. Sources are now reporting that Sean kicked Scarlett to the curb for being too intense and “very emotionally needy.” Moreover, she wanted a serious, long-term relationship with Sean, and who would want to be involved with a woman who shows such spectacularly poor judgment? Sean Penn is a ton of wealth, fame, and (let’s be honest) talent wrapped up in a package so thoroughly unappealing on every level—physical, emotional, intellectual, you name it—that scoring a babe like Scarlett should have made him feel like a lottery winner. It says a great deal about Scarlett’s relationship skills that she sent Smokebreath McCommiekisser running in the opposite direction. Even worse, she’s still trying to make Scarspicoli happen:

At Spike TV’s Guys Choice Awards in L.A., she scrambled for face time with the Oscar winner. “She pushed herself into his conversations,” a witness tells Us. “She sat down between him and Robert De Niro. Robert was like ‘What?’ and made a face.”

Erm… No, Scarlett. Scarspicoli should not be revived. Scarspicoli was a hideous misbegotten mutant that needs to be buried and quietly forgotten. And before you bury it, you really ought to whack it in the head with a shovel a few times, just to make sure.

Here’s a pic of Elle Fanning at the premiere for Super 8 (which sounds rather promising for a summer blockbuster), posing alongside one of the other teenage cast members, or maybe some boy she knows from middle school…. No, wait. My bad. Actually, that’s Tom Cruise. I guess I was thrown off by the fact that this 48-year-old putative megastar is exactly the same height as a 13-year-old girl. It’s increasingly difficult to understand how we ever bought this guy as an action hero. He’s got freaky-deaky control issues, sexuality about as well defined as an amoeba, and based on the height requirements he could pass as a charter member of the Lollipop Guild. Tom would have been much more convincingly intimidating if, at an earlier point in his career, he’d worked out some sort of Master/Blaster arrangement with a slab of beef like Dolph Lundgren.