A few more missing links from the last few days.

* What sort of game are Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld playing? First the pilot for Curb Your Enthusiasm is a preemptive parody of Comedian, several years before the fact—now Jerry Seinfeld has signed with NBC to do a reality TV show that sounds like nothing so much as Curb Your Enthusiasm.

* Supermen of Pre-Golden-Age SF.

* How they made The Godfather.

* Is Switzerland the next Iceland?

* The Milky Way Transit Authority.

* Simulation of a black hole destroying a star.

* And is the FiveThirtyEight.com brand ruined?

I was 45 years old and tired of being an artist. Besides, I owed $20,000 to relatives, finance companies, banks, and assorted bookmakers and shylocks. It was time to grow up and sell out, as Lenny Bruce once advised.

Mario Puzo on the secret origins of The Godfather. Via MeFi.

I called my brother to tell him the good news. This brother had ten per cent of The Godfather because he’d supported me all my life and gave me a final chunk of money to complete the book. So now I wanted him to know that since my half of the paperback rights came to $205,000, he was in for a little over 20 grand.

He is the kind of guy who is always home when I call to borrow money. Now that I had money to give back, he was naturally out. I got my mother on the phone. She speaks broken English but understands the language perfectly. I explained it to her.

She asked, ‘$40,000?’

I said no, it was $410,000. I told her three times before she finally answered, ‘Don’t tell nobody.’

Blogging's been slow today, which is odd because I have a ton of tabs open. Here are a few:

* The Daily Show does the Lord's work mocking Scalia's 60 Minutes interview, while Colbert enters the strange, strange world of John McCain's superstitions.

* Ze rightly calls out CNN's attempt to monetize their own shitty journalism. Also re: Ze: 'Ze Frank and the Poetics of Web Video'.

* What American politicians might learn from The Godfather. It's just too bad we keep electing Fredo.

* And Matt Yglesias warns us, once more, of the rise of the humanzee. Will no one heed this dire warning?