"Actually, Sandy [Sandra Bullock] and I did once try to develop a whole idea of a husband and wife team, who were QVC’s most successful salespeople..."

"... but we’re getting a divorce, we hate each other, and we’re taking it out on air as we sell things… That’s as far as we got."

Said Brad Pitt, quoted in "'I Love What Gwyneth Has Done With Goop': Brad Pitt Unveils His Genderless Skincare Line Exclusively To Vogue" (Vogue UK). 

Genderless?

How will this shutdown end?

A stalemate in a game that cannot end.

"Once the government reopens and we get the debt ceiling settled, we’ll be happy to talk to them about anything they want to talk about." (Reid.)

"This isn’t some damn game. All we want is to sit down and have a discussion." (Boehner.)

Okay, so it's not a game. But "game" is at least an apt metaphor. Or, no, it's not, because in games, where there is a true stalemate, a rule ends the game, and the players can stop playing. They don't continue to sit at the chessboard until someone concedes.

Talking and having a discussion is also a metaphor. The 2 parties in Congress are not a couple on a date that's turned into a staring contest. Or maybe Boehner is the woman endlessly imploring her man to talk about their relationship, and Reid is the taciturn man who's waiting for her to give up and do what the junior partner in a marriage is supposed to do: what he says.

Alternatively, Boehner is the man who relentlessly pursues his ex-girlfriend asking only for a chance to talk to her, and the woman — Reid — curtly informs him that there's nothing to talk about.

We instinctively turn away. And yet, the 2 sides are, it seems, waiting for Us the People to assign blame to one side or another. We're supposed to decide, and when we've conveyed our feelings, the party that anticipates losing in future elections will cave so our loathing for it doesn't grow any deeper.

But are we still watching? They need us to watch. It's their only way out. They're trying to make it interesting, with war monuments and children dying of cancer, but... look: gigantic hornets are killing the Chinese and Sandra Bullock is floating in outer space!

What should you be paying attention to right now?

"Errol Morris' documentary 'The Unknown Known,' a look at former Secretary of Defense and Iraq war architect Donald Rumsfeld will also hit the festival trifecta."

The director famously profiled another polarizing defense secretary, Robert McNamara, in his 2003 film 'The Fog of War'; that movie brought Morris and Michael Williams the Oscar for best documentary. The Rumsfeld film's U.S. release date has not been finalized.

I love Morris, and "Fog of War" was great. I look forward to seeing how Rumsfeld handles the intense Interrotron interrogation. By the way, I see that Rumsfeld is criticizing Obama's approach to war in Syria.

And here's McCain urging Obama along (via Real Clear Politics).

But don't get distracted. Pay attention to something that's truly alarming: Sandra Bullock in SPACE!

"What this film was about for me, which are the moms that take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from."

Said Sandra Bullock, accepting her Oscar, after fighting alongside her husband Jesse James to win full custody of his 6-year-old daughter, Sunny. There are 2 other James kids — Chandler, 15, and Jesse Jr., 12 — who have had Bullock as a mom. Moms take care of the babies and the children no matter where they come from... but what is she supposed to do now that her husband has betrayed her? Stay together for his children? Or are they her children now? She has dropped plans to adopt them. Presumably, James's children will go back to their real mothers, now that James is consorting with that tattooed, Nazi-arm-band-wearing stripper.

"If I were Elin... man, I would have hit a lot more than she did. I would have kept hitting!"

"You would still be swinging the golf club?" "Yeah, (Elin) stopped. She was respectable. I'd get the baseball bat, I'd get everything out."

That's Sandra Bullock, the supposed "girl next door" type, being, presumably, cute and adorable. We're expected to find that especially poignant now because Bullock did not know at the time that her husband was cheating on her too. Poor, darling Sandra!

There will not even be a tiny dent in Bullock's lustrous reputation for her endorsement of — or lighthearted joking about — murderous domestic violence.

Stingy actors!

I see that Sandra Bullock has donated $1 million for tsunami relief. So Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Drew Barrymore, Halle Berry, Angelina Jolie, Renee Zellweger, and Jennifer Lopez: you're going to have to give one million ... or you're stingy!