The Entertation Index: July 26-30

Each week KSR’s Funkhouser collects the best of pop culture. The Entertation Index collects the best of the week for your consumption.

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1984 — A Broadway adaptation of George Orwell’s dystopian story 1984 which warns viewers of “flashing lights, strobe effects, loud noises, gunshots, smoking and graphic depictions of violence and torture” has been blamed for audience members fainting, vomiting and fighting with one another in the theater. Crowds haven’t responded to a production like this since 2003’s short-lived An Evening with Kathie Lee Gifford.
Link: Broadway’s “1984” is Making Audience Members Puke, Faint and Fight

Bay, Michael — Look, we’re all friends here. Let’s not lie. We ALL ran out on Thursday evening at the midnight showing to see the new Transformers movie, unable to contain our excitement about the possibility that Optimus Prime helped King Arthur kill a dragon or that Megatron might knock over Stonehenge or whatever the hell Michael Bay came up with in his latest cash grabbing/childhood destroying move. But among all his iconic characters, I know the big question you have: who’s the sweatiest? YOU’RE WELCOME.
Link: Michael Bay Characters, Ranked By Sweatiness

Face-Off — It was twenty years ago this week that John Woo’s action hit Face/Off, starring Nicolas Cage and John Travolta, released in theaters. Just think: not one of us could have known then that, in an eerie twist, twenty years later John Travolta would trade his actual face with a sculpture of his face made by a middle school art student. You just can’t make this stuff up.
Link: John Woo’s “Face/Off” Twenty Years Later

Friends — A pop culture writer this week tweeted a chart in which the cast of the 90’s sitcom Friends was evaluated in terms of how much coffee they purchased and consumed on the show over the program’s 236 episodes. Drinking the least coffee over the ten seasons was Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel, while Lisa Kudrow’s Phoebe drank the most at 212 cups during the series’ run. As a result, an alternate graph consistent with these results proved, similarly, that Phoebe also pooped the most.

Link: Here’s How Much Coffee Every Friend Character Drank During the Series

Joel, Billy  — Fifty years after he failed to graduate from Long Island’s Hicksville High School, the now-accomplished Billy Joel returned to his alma mater to deliver the school’s commencement speech. But let’s be fair;  “returned to his alma mater to deliver the school’s commencement speech,” is just a nicer way to of saying “drove his 2009 Pontiac Solstice through the back wall of the gym during the ceremony and then told everyone the government is taking satellite pictures of his house.” Tomato, tomahto.
Link: Billy Joel Delivers Commencement Address at Hometown High School

Yorker, New — Listen, you probably already know this about me but I read The New Yorker. I know all the plays going on, all the art shows, I understand all the cartoons, I nod and I put one of the earpieces of my glasses in my mouth as I read it and I go to dinner parties and ask people if they read this or that and I know they haven’t. But listen, seriously, this is one of the best Shouts & Murmurs pieces I’ve seen in the publication in a long time. (Faux-pomposity aside, it’s really very funny.) Have a great weekend.
Link: Before the Internet