This week, the Love Guru took in a measly US$14 million, putting it in fourth place -- not that I think Get Smart, which grossed about $39 million, is the next Citizen Kane.

I would have said, based on the above facts, that the cinematic world is becoming a better, smarter place -- but then I checked, and You Don't Mess With The Zohan pulled in US$40 million two weeks ago.

But it then plunged to US$16.4 million two weekends ago, and pulled in the relative pocket change of $7.2 million this past weekend.

Crap will always sell, but whenever there's the tiniest bit of evidence that it's selling less, I feel more optimistic that human evolution process may not have stalled out or regressed.

In that case, even false positives are accepted.

There's one sequence in The Parallax View, which I mention below, where muckraking journalist Joe Frady (Warren Beatty) is trying to get a job with the shadowy Parallax Corporation. To do so, he fakes being a psychopath.

Watching this montage is part of the hiring process, and it's a stunning bit of filmmaking! Check it out:

The Parallax View is a 1974 film starring Warren Beatty as Joe Frady, a hard-living, truth-seeking reporter who discovers a whopper of a conspiracy and strives to unravel it (while it may seem like fiction, such reporters did exist in another era).

Here's one encounter between Frady and his editor Bill Rintels (Hume Cronyn):

The heavens were angry when I left work this afternoon.

At 3:07 p.m., I was moving from the RT level at Kennedy station to the bus level, with the subway level as my ultimate destination.

There's a huge flash and a simultaneous, artillery-like "CRACK!!" that made pretty much everyone jump. This tells me the lightning strike was extremely close to the station.

The subway, however, just sat there. Even the crews didn't know what was what. Finally, at 3:22 p.m., the TTC told us the Kennedy subways weren't going anywhere due to "signalling" problems.

I wanted to get home, so I zoomed upstairs and left the station to catch a cab to Warden station. At the Kennedy/Eglinton intersection, the traffic lights were out, so it wasn't just the TTC experiencing "signalling" problems.

The cab cost $9.25, but at 3:54 p.m., the TTC finally announced the subways were rolling again out of Kennedy. I was at Castle Frank when I heard that.

I hate rotting in subway stations.

George Carlin gave us insights like: "Have you ever noticed how anyone who drives slower than you is an idiot? And how anyone who drives faster is a MANIAC?!?!"

Unfortunately, no more of those.

Carlin died yesterday.

He will be forever known for his "seven words you can never say on television" routine. Here they are (don't be fooled by the South Park wrapping):

Consider this a mini-doc in which the maestro riffs on his bit:

And here's the one bit of Carlin CanCon that I could find:

"The weather was dominated by a large Canadian low, which is not to be confused with a Mexican high. Tonight's forecast ... dark, continued mostly dark tonight turning to widely scattered light in the morning."