Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode four, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.

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Although we enjoy Bored to Death’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re publishing a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us after the jump as we go minute by minute through episode two, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions. Feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.

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Nestled among this week’s new theatrical releases is The Big Year, a rather syrupy looking Bucket List riff co-starring Steve Martin, Jack Black, and Owen Wilson. Let’s be clear: we have not yet seen it. But we’re not holding out much hope for a movie that puts those three guys together and cannot find one single laugh to put in a trailer.

How could you combine three men as (granted, not always reliably) funny as these and not come up with a laugh riot? Quite easily, turns out. The recent cinema is all but littered with pictures that teamed up established comedic talents and thus sounded like sure-fire crowd pleasers, but which ended up tickling the funny bones of neither critics nor moviegoers. After the jump, we’ll run down ten comic combinations that misfired.

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Lit geeks, amateur sleuths, and brownstone Brooklynites, rejoice! Our favorite HBO sitcom, Bored to Death, has returned for a third season — and last night’s premiere was a lot of fun. This year, it seems we’re looking forward to a whole lot of daddy issues: There’s Jonathan searching for the sperm donor who is his biological father, George coming to terms with his daughter’s relationship with a much older man, and Ray trying to grow up just enough to be a responsible part-time parent to his own baby.

Although we enjoy the show’s hilarious story lines and overarching themes, we get at least as much pleasure out of its details — the literary references, the in-jokes, the real, New York City locations. So, this season, we’re launching a weekly series of Bored to Death footnotes. Follow along with us as we go minute by minute, shouting out places we recognize and explaining some of the show’s oddball allusions — and feel free to point out anything we may have missed in the comments.

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Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop, Rodman Flender’s intimate documentary account of the comedian’s 30-city “Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour,” goes into limited release tomorrow. Aside from being uproariously funny (with O’Brien at his spontaneous, reactive best), it is also a fascinating account of a superstar comedian’s life on the road: the rehearsals, the travel, the meet-and-greets, the stress. Of course, Flender isn’t the first documentarian to take a close look at the business of stand-up, or the complex psychology of the working comedian; we’ve assembled just a few of the best documentaries about comics after the jump.

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We rejoiced at the news, earlier this week, that VH1 is bringing back Pop-Up Video, which we’ve missed ever since it went off the air in 2002. In addition to the pop and rock videos the original provided fascinating factoids about, the new version of the show will feature hip-hop videos for the first time. After the jump, check out our list of wonderful, bizarre, and downright baffling post-Pop-Up- Video-era music videos that we hope to see the show explain — and be sure to leave your own suggestions in the comments.

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1. Last night, after a whopping 122 million votes had been tallied (a new record for American Idol), 17-year-old country singer Scotty McCreery, who quite frankly reminds us of Howdy Doody, was named the winner of season 10. [via People]

2. According to TMZ, British import Cheryl Cole has been replaced as a judge on X-Factor by Nicole Scherzinger, formerly of the Pussycat Dolls. The Daily Mail claims that it’s because of Cole’s lack of chemistry with Paula Abdul and producers’ fears that Americans wouldn’t be able to understand her accent.

3. In the latest installment of Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifiankis, guest Will Ferrell feeds his host cherries, Jon Hamm makes a cameo, and there’s an unfortunate incident involving a monkey’s genitals. Sound good to you? Watch it here.

4. The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum has just announced the winners of the 2011 National Design Awards. View the full list here.

5. Bill Nighy has joined Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Bryan Cranston, and Jessica Biel in the cast of Len Wiseman’s Total Recall reboot, which drops the Martian storyline from the 1990 original. He’ll be playing Quatto (“Kuato” in the Arnold Schwarzenegger version), “the enigmatic and charming” leader of the resistance. [via TotalFilm]

Bonus link: Where in the World Are Exiled Leaders?

1. Terrence Malick’s much-debated drama The Tree of Life won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival yesterday, but the director, who is notoriously shy, did not take to the stage to accept his award. [via indieWIRE]

2. In the wake of Saturday’s total lack of Rapture, it was a “really tough weekend” for Family Radio co-founder Harold Camping, who is reportedly “flabbergasted” and still “looking for answers.” [via The Daily What]

3. That crazy Philip Treacy hat that Princess Beatrice wore to the Royal Wedding — which later became its own meme — sold for over $131,000 on eBay over the weekend. The money will got to benefit Unicef and Children in Crisis. [via Gawker]

4. Joseph Brooks, a songwriter who won an Oscar for his version of “You Light Up My Life” back in 1978, was found dead in his New York apartment yesterday after an apparent suicide. He was 73. [via NME]

5. “That’s really funny because, if I remember correctly, she and I were very rude to each other. It was crazy. I was at a party — I’d never met her — and she was like, ‘Come sit down.’ So I sit at her table and talk for 10 minutes, and she goes, ‘I think it’s time for you to leave now.’ So I say, ‘January, you are an actress in a show and everybody’s going to forget about you in a few years, so f*cking be nice,’ and I got up and left. And she thinks that’s funny?” – Zach Galifianakis talks to ShortList about January Jones

Bonus link: A quick recap of last night’s underwhelming Billboard Music Awards

Today at Flavorpill, we liked Architizer’s brief history of moving buildings, a roundup inspired by Richard Neutra’s Maxwell House. We watched a clip from Claire Danes’s new Showtime series Homeland. We looked back at the Civil War, 150 years later. We were kind of confused by the reasoning in Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore’s “real men don’t buy girls” PSAs. We learned about the algorithms Facebook uses to decide what news makes it to the top of your feed. We were inspired by How About We’s five date ideas for Jane Austen superfans. We wished that all interviews — or at least all interviews with Zach Galifianakis — could be done Mad Libs-style. We really felt our age while looking over 50 magazine covers from 20 years ago. And finally, we read Mark Twain’s amazing letter to Walt Whitman in celebration of the famed poet’s 70th birthday in May of 1889. Can you imagine a better present?

1. The nominees for The 15th Annual Webby Awards were announced this morning, and the list includes Justin Bieber, Angry Birds, Groupon, the Old Spice Guy, Arcade Fire, The Bed Intruder Song, SoundCloud, and Flipboard .

2. “I’m around great women, starting with my mom. Women keep men cool. The hotter the chick the cooler the guy … that sounds like a really bad rap line!” – Jay-Z talks about his new lifestyle website and explains how he became the coolest man on Earth to Gwyneth Paltrow in GOOP

3. With ticket sales estimated to top $700 million, U2’s 360 Degrees tour has surpassed The Rolling Stones’s Bigger Bang tour as the highest grossing tour of all time. Says their manager: “That dollar figure for the gross looks enormous! Of course I can’t tell you what the net is, but I can tell you that the band spend enormous sums on production for their audience.” Point taken, but how much could a giant claw (or three) cost? [via Vulture]

4. Look at a photo of a decidedly pregnant Tina Fey that was snapped while she was leaving The Late Show With David Letterman last night.

5. Ikea’s first US-based factory in Danville, Virginia, has become “a target of racial discrimination complaints, a heated union-organizing battle, and turnover from disgruntled employees.” Of note: workers at similar factories in Sweden make a minimum wage of about $19 an hour and five weeks of paid vacation. That’s compared to $8 an hour in Danville and 12 vacation days — eight of them on dates determined by the company. [via LAT]

Bonus link: It’s free cone day at Ben & Jerry’s!