He's Coming

Looks like some smart studio p.r. flacks are seeding the news with early hints of Sacha Baron Cohen's next tour de prank, featuring his gay German fashion maven, Brüno.

From as far away as Israel:

Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said he was invited to be interviewed for what was supposed to be a documentary on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Alpher says he was led down a winding staircase and through long corridors to the interview site in Jerusalem.

He realized something was amiss when he saw the interviewer - a man claiming to be a German rock star dressed in leather and studs...

...In one, the interviewees had to explain the difference between Hamas - an Islamic group ruling Gaza - and hummus - a chickpea paste eaten throughout the Mideast.

"One of us mentioned Hamas, and the exchange that ensued went something like this: 'Vait, vait. Vat's zee connection between a political movement and food. Vy hummus?' We exchanged astonished glances," Alpher recounted in a letter that originally appeared in the New York Jewish weekly, the Forward.

After a dumbed-down explanation of the difference, the interviewer asked "'Ya, but vy hummus? Yesterday I had to throw away my pita bread because it vas dripping hummus. Unt it's too high in carbohydrates,"' he said, according to Alpher.

And as close by as Texas:

"We had a contract for cage fighting. We were deceived," said Dwight Duncan, president and CEO of Four States Fair Grounds in Texarkana, where the first of two Arkansas fights raised suspicions last month...

...The day after the June 5 Texarkana bout, Fort Smith's convention center hosted "Blue Collar Brawlin.'" Fort Smith police Sgt. Adam Holland said organizers told him a character named "Straight Dave" would goad a planted audience member into the ring for a fight...

...An elaborate array of mounted and handheld video cameras caught the crowd of 1,600's reaction as the two men "went right up to the line" of the city's morality laws, Holland said. The two men stripped down to their underwear, kissed and rubbed on each other, the sergeant said.

The audience, as well as local fighters drawn to take part in the show, became enraged. "It set the crowd off lobbing beers," Holland said. "They had beers in plastic cups. Those things can get some distance on them actually."

Holland said it took officers about 45 minutes to clear the convention center, as the two actors sprinted away through a specially set-aside tunnel.

May 15, 2009.