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What's up, America! I'm Ben Silverman, head of programming at NBC, winner of the Rose d'Or, and future public servant. On the occasion of America's, like, 500th birthday, I've been driving around Hollywood with my summer tunes pumped up (sing it, Shaq!), looking for ways to get Eddie Murphy and Rose McGowan into an NBC project. Once Katie's Broadway move flops, I should be able to cast her and Tom in a reality show, too.

But that's not what I'm here to talk to you about! I'm here to talk about America. As eventual NBC sitcom star Yaakov Smirnoff once said, "What a country!" A country where you can take a hit TV show about six friends and turn it into a movie, and the network that kept that TV show on the air for years doesn't see a dime. A country where a reporter can just go through a mogul's garbage and report on it. A country that keeps Boy George out but keeps animation-hater Jeffrey Wells in. A country where a fifteenth-century sculpture could fall on your head at any moment. God, what the hell is wrong with this country?

No, no, America is awesome. We've got Kanye! And waterfalls! And Wall-E! And Beverly Hills Chihuahua, an idea I can't believe I didn't have!

So have a great Fourth of July, America! Go outside for a few minutes, grill out, maybe watch some fireworks on your local NBC affiliate. Enjoy your freedom! These babies I've got caged up in my office would envy your freedom. And, as my good friend Gary Oldman would say, "God bless us, every one!" See you Monday ... on NBC!

First he'll have to dispose of a bunch of TiVos, filled with not-yet-watched episodes of Mad Men, followed by an assortment of Muxtapes containing Vulture's celebrity-curated summer playlists. Next, he'll have to sweep up pieces of all the pottery we broke while playing the Star Wars Wii light-saber game. Unsold passes for Will Smith's Hancock will probably be littered throughout our national parks and forests (along with very few ticket stubs for the movie, since we don't think it's possible it'll be a hit).

Wall-E will have to find a place to put David Simon's Emmy for Best Drama series, along with J.J. Abrams's stack of discarded treatments for Cloverfield 2. Surely there will be landfills piled high with copies of various mandatory-sex memoirs and Beatles-themed video games. Plus, he'll need to get rid of all the second-place ribbons awarded to the losing mutts on CBS' Greatest American Dog and previous sonically inferior reissues of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville. Also, presumably, there will be mountains of thrown-out iPods loaded exclusively with MP3s of Shaq's 2008 megahit, "Tell Me How My Ass Taste (Remix)."

•In the Heights, August: Osage County, and South Pacific stormed the Tonys. Vulture stormed the backstage area. Richard Griffiths lamented his winkle.

•We geeked out on Dash Shaw's graphic novel, Bottomless Belly Button, along with three stories from the new Meathaus anthology.

•"Weird Al" was at last recognized for his many contributions to freedom and liberty.

•The marketers for Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona made it explicitly clear that the movie will feature nothing but threesomes.

•We rapped with Judah Friedlander, World's Greatest Athlete.

•People magazine dramatically lowered its standards.

•Lil Wayne managed to save the music business, even if Coldplay couldn't.

•Television got worse.

•Everyone hated on The Love Guru.

•Everyone said nice things about Steve Carell.

•David Archuleta realized that high school isn't necessary when you're David Archuleta.

•Raccoons did Shakespeare.

•Chinese Democracy leaked, sort of.

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• Every new show of the fall TV season except for Fringe.

• Lucy Elllman's rave review for Chuck Palahniuk's new book.

• Jon Favreau's unringing telephone.

• Strawberry Shortcake's new look.

• The outrageous ticketing policy at Boy George's concert for the New York Department of Sanitation.

• Coldplay.

• The cancellation of M.I.A.'s European tour.

• The Happening's Metascore.

• Our awesome Q&A with Grandmaster Flash.

• Passing Strange's possible Tonys upset.

• Our mixed feelings about Katherine Heigl.

• Anthony Michael Hall's new job.

• Literally everything that happened in the R. Kelly trial.

The week that was, by the numbers…

Number of brown faces in Flags of Our Fathers: 0.

Number of other movies in the news this summer with brownface: 4.

Number of times Werner Herzog claims he's seen an Abel Ferrara movie: 0.

Number of times Vulture's been hung up on by Lou Reed: 1.

Number of fans devastated by David Archuleta's being forced to cancel his Utah concert: Untold millions.

Number of times Eddie Murphy says "fuck" in Beverly Hills Cop 4, we bet: 0.

Number of crazy-ass things to happen at the trial of possible evil pornographer R. Kelly: 1,000,000.

Weekend box office of Sex and the City: $55 million.

Amount of that box office likely coming from Anthony Lane: $0.

Dave Eggers's whistling ability, on a scale of 1 to 10: 7.5.

Number of drinks McLovin had at the Playboy Mansion: At least 1.

Number of drinks we had while writing the post about Kingsley Amis and the Hold Steady: Not enough.

How cute are puppies? REALLY FUCKING CUTE OMG.

Sure, Locke left for a weekend out, Ben moved the island, and Kate got a mysterious phone call from a person who could talk backward — but last night's Lost finale seems downright explicable compared to what else happened this week:

Jean-Claude Van Damme made the best film of 2008. A bunch of Internet spoilers turned out to be completely accurate. Uwe Boll actually kept his mouth shut for once. Hollywood discovered the world's only non-annoying child actor. We exposed Lost as the Deal or No Deal ripoff that it truly is. The threesome testimony in R. Kelly's child pornography trial was delayed when a threesome-debunking surprise witness materialized! Also, prosecutors somehow managed to track down the one guy who doesn't believe that Kellz's image was added to that sex tape using CGI.

A bunch of actors from The Wire got jobs. "Y.M.C.A." was revealed as pretty much the most heterosexual song of all time. Mena Suvari was cast as a black person. Some aberrant straight dudes expressed a reluctance to go see the Sex and the City movie in the theater. Salon, claiming to have read our blog, published an erroneous Internet report accusing us of not loving ScarJo's album. Blockbuster video unveiled a new business plan inconsistent with their reputation as a company on the bleeding edge of technology. Al Gore is writing an opera. Some crazy person purported to have found flaws in Ben Silverman's work ethic.

Poo-fearing opera fans were shocked by the discovery of mouse dooty at the Met. Will a book about barnacle penises be this year's Marley and Me? (Yes.) The Watchmen movie will be like nine hours long. Also, a video game actually taught us how to do something. Coldplay's new album was declared better than the Bible, and the Hold Steady album was declared pretty much just another Hold Steady album.

Looking back on the worst week ever...

Denial:
How could wonderful little David Archuleta possibly have lost? He sang flawlessly on Tuesday night, just as he has all season! Even Simon told him he'd scored a knockout victory, capably transforming even the world's crappiest song into one besting the collective efforts of Beethoven, the Beatles, and the finest angel choirs in all of Heaven! Clearly Wednesday's American Idol finale was all just some awful dream, shared simultaneously by 31.7 million viewers.

Anger:
Shut up, David Cook! You're bald! And a bad guitar player! Plus, you look a little like Philip Seymour Hoffman! We hate grunge versions of eighties songs — and you! You're not fit to carry the Jonas Brothers' tambourine case! People only voted for you ironically!

Bargaining:
David Archuleta still gets a record deal, right? At least we have his fantastic albums to look forward to, don't we? And even if we're the only ones who buy them, he can still mount a comeback on Broadway, right? RIGHT?

Depression:
Oh, what's the point? There's simply no recovering from this.

Acceptance:
We have not yet reached this stage. Posting will resume on Tuesday. Enjoy the long weekend — we know we won't.

However, I would like to commend you on your interview of William Shatner, which changed forever the way I view the handsome star of Boston Legal.

Trent Reznor continued to do battle with the business-as-usual record labels (who charge money — ha! — for their albums), and random superheroes fought over who would get to be in the Avengers movie. Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott disagreed about whether Jason Segel is a little boy or a really ugly woman, and Gina Gershon made life difficult for the New York Times' fact-checking department. Iron Man's $100 million weekend looked pretty good — until Grand Theft Auto's $500 million first week smacked it upside the face.

Glory Days (or Glory Day, as the case may be) battled with the Tonys (like it really stood a chance against ham, anyway), and everybody had a quibble with Top Girls except Ben Brantley. Speed Racer tussled with our sanity, and Madonna took a huge crap right on her fans. Our commenters took issue with our characterization of The Dark Knight as "no fun," but they were all completely wrong.

Superconductor Richard Muti told New York Philharmonic where to stick it, and Harrison Ford battled George Lucas for a decade over what would be the appropriate amount of aliens to put in the new Indiana Jones. David Cook and Jason Castro squared off against American Idol viewers' eardrums with their terrible singing, but, luckily, TomCruise.com was able to reignite our broken enthusiasm for music. The Jonas Brothers tore a hole in space and time, and the makers of the G.I. Joe movie put our cinematic standards on notice, announcing that all acting in the film will be done by butts. Ralph Bakshi said nasty things about Thomas Kinkade and Bob Seger, and we said nasty things about the new Weezer album. Cripes, Doree Shafrir, do you have rocks in your head?

Courtesy of Rockstar Games

In a week when Grand Theft Auto IV eclipsed pretty much everything else in the universe, what poor pop-culture subjects were run off the road and riddled with bullets? Let's take a look at the carnage of a week on Vulture.

First, GTA IV took on heavyweight contender Iron Man and, in four bitter rounds, pounded him into submission. (Although as it seems Samuel L. Jackson may show up, the fight could go on a few more rounds.)

Our Q&As with Rockstar VP Dan Houser and art director Aaron Garbut took a machete to the plentiful other interviews we had this week, including Christine Baranski, Robyn, Portishead, Bobby Valentine, actor Andrew Garfield, director José Padilha, and dancer Desmond Richards. Boxer Kassim Ouma fought them to a draw.

Grand Theft Auto IV was also directly responsible for the utter destruction this week of the following: Girlfriend Flicks, The Lovely Bones, Mudcrutch, and The Office spinoff. Not to mention fiction writer James Frey, Dusty-portrayer Nicole Kidman, aspiring actor Salman Rushdie, threesome-nixer Woody Allen, commencement speaker Jerry Springer, wizard Antonin Scalia, Wizard-disser Jay-Z, shoulder-barer Miley Cyrus, M.I.A.-replacer Santogold, and Philip Seymour Hoffman non-insulter Heath Ledger. Spike Jonze, however, is not yet fired.

American Idol put up a good fight — between Neil Diamond, Paula telling the future, and Paula explaining everything away — but eventually that show, too, fell to the might of Grand Theft Auto.

But let's be honest: How much of a chance did anything have against the sweet liberty and sweeter violence of GTA IV? The game cut down critics like wheat, and even waged a full-scale assault on the New York cultural scene. But eventually, GTA IV will fade away, and we'll get excited about other things again. Now if you'll pardon us, we only have 63 hours to play the game before we have to return to work.