I had an e-mail in my inbox this morning from a normally verbose friend. It said the following:

"Fire. Lots of fire."

The following photos were attached.

"Inglourious Basterds" ***1/2 (out of four): "Inglourious Basterds," with its outrageous Jews-Gone-Wild spin, just may be Quentin Tarantino's most badass movie yet.

"Holocaust movies always have Jews as victims," Quentin Tarantino huffed to The Atlantic in a recent interview. That explains why the daring writer/director decided to take that very concept and blow it to pieces in "Inglourious Basterds," a fantasy retelling of World War II. It's an outrageous, wild ride of a film that calls for a case of Red Bull more than a box of Kleenex.

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"Shorts" **1/2 (out of four): Director Robert Rodriguez returns to family-friendly fare with a film that's sure to entertain the youngsters but offers little to the 14-and-over crowd.

Although director Robert Rodriguez may have gotten his start with an ultra low-budget action flick ("El Mariachi"), he's no stranger to family-friendly fare ("Spy Kids", "The Adventures of Shark Girl and Lava Boy"). "Shorts" brings Rodriguez back to the kid flick genre, where adult characters are really just caricatures fleshed out enough to provide plot fodder, while the story revolves primarily around the kids.

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Item! Gender controversy in Berlin!

South African runner Caster Semenya smoked the field yesterday to win the 800 meters. Some say this is because she is a gifted athlete and a hard worker. Some others say that she is a he.

The questions are being taken seriously enough that Semenya has taken a gender test to prove her junk is female.

Admittedly, this interview doesn't bode well for a feminine claim. There's a hint of a 'stache and a Barry White delivery.



There are also unconfirmed reports that Semenya DVR's Entourage, hunts lions on the Serengeti plains with machine guns, owns the Die Hard boxset and whizzes standing up.

I am seriously considering insisting on a gender test for Echowood before we do another 3 Chords & the Truth on the grounds that he has a cat.

As we've discussed earlier, America is becoming dumber by the day. Johnny and Echo yell about this and find themselves inexplicably caught up in the death of Nell Carter.

This was the last episode we taped from the Highline, though we recommend you check out the site for further information on New York's newest park.

While the band Rush was backstage at the Colbert Report the other day, they sat down to play their song Tom Sawyer on Rock Band.

It's just a curious two minutes and twenty seconds.