On Friday night, I went to see “Bruno.” I laughed. (Hardest at the part where Bruno goes camping with a bunch of rednecks and, as they sit around the campfire, he asks them which “Sex and the City” character they are.) I cried. (When Bruno’s velcro suit caused chaos at a fashion show, and he’s shunned by the entire Austrian fashion community.) I squirmed uncomfortably in my seat. (When a mom agrees that her 4-year-old would have liposuction in order to land a modeling gig. And again when Bruno crashes a swinger’s party and is repeatedly whipped by a woman with nipple rings. Now that I think about it, at least 40% of the scenes in the movie were squirm-worthy.) But as I left the theater, one big question kept running through my mind—how does Sacha Baron Cohen get away with these stunts without getting sued a hundred times a day?

Even brothels are seeing a decrease in business due to the economic recession. [LA Times]

A 27-year-old man from Great Britain ran the New York Marathon on Sunday wearing a Borat-style neon green bathing suit. We bet he had some serious rubbing thanks to the thong banana hammock. [Gothamist]

We loved Sweeney Todd: the costumes were amazing, the art direction was impeccable, Helena Bonham Carter made up for her home-wrecking past, and Johnny Depp stole our bloody hearts—oh, and did we mention that Sacha Baron Cohen, who played Signor Adolfo Pirelli in the film, made us gasp? Sure, he was the film’s comedic cornerstone, but what really left our mouths agape was the impression his rather tight bodysuit made—was that thing padded or is it true what they say about exceptionally tall men with huge feet? Luckily, writer Kathleen Tracy, who’s penned the Cohen biography Sacha Baron Cohen: From Cambridge to Kazakhstan, answered the question for us. It seems Cohen did get a little help in the package department and that the additional, err, girth, was, in fact, his own creative touch. But still, don’t assume that Cohen doesn’t leave an impression on his own. Just ask his Borat co-star Ken Davitian. It seems that during the film’s infamous nude-wrestling scene, “the apparent adrenaline rush to survive under Davitian’s ample weight caused an awkward surge of blood toward one of Cohen’s extremities.” That explains why Cohen got a forgiving fig leaf covering his nether-regions, while Davitian did not. We’ll be the first to say we are totally disappointed. [NY Daily News]