“Bonds Sold Steroids to Nuns” — The headline on The Smoking Gun says it all. Being a busy journalist without a lot of time to read entire articles or subheadlines, I’m just going to go ahead and offer my opinion about this shameful, factual situation.

In my book (the good one), selling steroids to nuns is absolutely unacceptable. It’s bad enough that Bonds has ruined the legacy of America’s pastime, but to ruin the world’s pastime — Christianity — is comparably unacceptable, maybe even more so. Steroids are against the policy of Major League Baseball, they are against the law, and probably The Bible is against them somehow also.

What kind of message does this send to aspiring children of the cloth out there? That you can only be pious if you stick a needle in your rear end? That you can try as hard as you can to give yourself up to God, but if you really want to take that solemn vow, you’d better be on the juice?

Needless to say, this scandal calls into question the entire recent history of convents as we know it. We’ll simply never know which nuns were clean. What about Sister Catherine’s record-breaking 680-chant season in 1997? Was she clean? How about the year Sister Beatrice, who had never consecrated more than 180 days to God in any season of her career, suddenly consecrated 460 days in 1999? Did she just happen to be really, really married to The Lord that year? And if so, then how can you explain her head growing two and a half whimple sizes?

Worst of all, how are we going to look our children in the eye when they start asking us if their heroes, like the great Sister Mary Clarence, were on steroids? What about Brady Anderson, if he had become a nun? Surely, this scandal will cast a uniquely disturbing blight on the nun world that the church, the media, and God himself are only now beginning to unravel. Until we know all the facts, I know that this journalist will not be casting his Hall of Fame vote for one Mother Teresa any time soon.

No, it’s not a Leno sketch come to life — Paris Hilton actually did unveil her new children’s clothing line in California yesterday, featuring everything you’ve come to expect from Paris — glittery things that look like dresses for cocktail waitresses in porn movies that require the actress to be able to do a doggy-style scene without taking the dress off, a blinding aura of “does she really really honestly not see why people are going to think this is weird” — but for KIDS.

The blogosphere has already reacted with justifiable disgust, but I have trouble seeing this situation as exceptionally horrible by Paris’ lofty standards. Little kids are already dressing super sluttily these days anyway (con sarnit!), at least this gets things a little more out in the open, and it’s not like Paris is rubbing every article of clothing on her vagina before selling them probably.

I do, however, have a little trouble stomaching the accompanying photos, some of which feature the stock unthreateningly ethnic kiddie model posing with her hero, while others look more like the kind of thing a kidnapper would send to the police to expedite his random demands.

(pics via Mollygood)

Remember when you used to be able to click to Comedy Central during the daytime and be 98% sure that you’d land on an SNL rerun, an episode of MST 3000, or one of the same five Kids in the Hall episodes that you’ve seen thirteen times but still laugh at? Dead Frog helps us relive those wonderful summer afternoons we spent hanging out with our cross-dressing Canadian chums with a tantalizing recap of the recent KitH reunion show, as well as the video below (broken into two parts) of Mark McKinney’s Head-Crushing character giving the group members what they deserve for their subsequently underwhelming post-Kids careers (except, as goes without saying, Newsradio).

• Jenna Bush got engaged to a 29-year old ex-intern for Karl Rove, whom Laura Bush once dismissed as “not a serious boyfriend.” Oh, so the Bush Administration LIED ABOUT THAT ONE TOO??? [Raucous Applause Erupts] (pic via NY Daily News)
• 20-year-old Utah woman Sabra Johnson emerged victorious from last night’s So You Think You Can Dance finale. Afterwards, she exclaimed “I can’t take the smile off my face, and it’s hurting so bad.” I assume those are two seperate sentences.
• The Hoff, meet The Legal Bill.
• Major League Baseball will not discipline Yankees slugger Jason Giambi for his steroid admission, claiming they couldn’t stay mad at him after he made a really cute puppy dog face and tore seven tendons.
• Legendary jazz drummer Max Roach passed away at the age of 83, leaving the world with, by my approximate count, only about four living jazz musicians. And that’s including Sting.
• A Calgary woman gave birth to identical quadruplets. The infants are already scheduled to shoot a wacky, mixup-style comedy for Disney this afternoon, in which one kid is good at sports, one kid is good at math, and the other two are good at a different sport and a different kind of math, respectively.

• A couple in China is attempting to name their child “@”, saying the symbol “echoed their love for the child.” They also apparently want every email anyone ever attempts to send to the kid to be immediately returned.
• Scientists in Southern India have begun issuing photo ID cards to wild elephants in order to help track down the roots of poaching, as well as to serve as a lightheartedly embarrassing conversation topic for elephants on a second date.
• The compact disc will celebrate its 25th birthday on Friday, meaning it’s pretty much done listening to its Pink Floyd compact discs.
• David Beckham scored a goal in his L.A. Galaxy debut last night by — you guessed it — “bending it.” This marks the most eerie real-life approximation of a movie title since that time John Malkovich was John Malkovich.
• Nickelodeon has announced that they will set limits on licensing their cartoon characters to food products that do not meet certain health criteria. This announcement comes on the heels of parents’ outrage towards the Doug-inspired “Patty Mayonnaise” and “Skeeter’s Honkin’ Tequila.”
• Jabba can has Solo?

Not a lot of funny stuff going on in the sports world today (unless you find the inevitable breakdown of Major League Baseball’s flimsy Entry Draft system humorous, which I kind of do), but I was greatly intrigued by this article on ESPN’s Page 2 about Rejected Uniforms and Logos (actual rejected uniforms, this isn’t one of my dumb lists for a slow day). The article is pretty long and contains more links than the love child of Matt Drudge and Buster Olney, but some of the designs are absolutely fascinating.

On the stylish side, this white Houston Texans helmet would have prevented David Carr from ingesting a half gallon of blue paint through his skull during his sack-tastic Texans career, and this red-white-and-blue Washington Capitals jersey probably would have made more sense than the team switching to the dark teal colors of some expansion country (ruled by president Dom Capers).

On the ridiculous side, though, the Jacksonville Jaguars probably made the right move scrapping the full-body leaping jaguar helmet, thus avoiding a lawsuit, the Quebec Nordiques almost switched to this inexplicable wolf logo (I thought a “Nordique” was a person? Did this one get bit by a werewolf?), and the Diamondbacks narrowly avoided becoming the most expansioney expansion team in the history of expansion teams when they nixed these brilliant purple jerseys with purple lettering. Fortunately, they managed to Control-Z before saving their MS Paint project.

Still, it’s hard to imagine how some of these jerseys ended up on the cutting room floor (jerseys are designed in movie studios) while others were somehow approved in a likely “Emperor’s New Clothes” kind of way. Needless to say, rap videos are pretty much set for the next twenty to thirty years (I can’t wait to see Lil’ John wearing that Nordiques wolf…)

You know how every two years, someone will throw together another Beatles compilation that’s just a new cross section of songs we’ve already heard a million times arranged in a different order but it also contains a demo of “I Will” that features a restored, previously unreleased backing track of George Harrison playing three cello notes with his nose, so we absolutely have to buy it, not so much because we’re obsessive-compulsive completists as much as we’re just blindly, viciously affectionate for anything having to do with that group?

I feel like my “Arrested Development” nostalgia is getting to that level.

(video from Too Cool For School, link via Gorillamask)

• Jessica Biel is finally getting naked on screen in her next film, “Powder Blue,” in which she plays a stripper trying to earn money for her terminally ill child, which will include, says Page Six, “shots of her breasts and butt.” Wow, so she’ll be wearing nothing but an easy Oscar nomination?
• Mos Def is the latest lucky devil to be caught on tape by TMZ grappling with a photographer. We’ve come to expect this sort of thing from supporting actors on sitcoms, but rappers??
• A multitude of fans in Memphis gathered in sweltering heat to pay homage to Elvis Presley on the 30th anniversary of the singer’s death, resulting in the death of one 67-year-old woman in the crowd. But… is she really dead?
• Foxy Brown has been charged with assault after allegedly throwing her Blackberry at her neighbor. You know, if you do that with an iPhone, the other person gets arrested.
• Also, in case anyone was wondering, “Chocolate Rain” has jumped the shark, landed on the shark, killed the shark, taken the shark’s carcass to the beach, and has been jumping over it back and forth nonstop for the last two weeks. (link via Defamer)

• Apple iTunes has finally obtained the rights to John Lennon’s solo works. The Beatles’ group catalogue and George Harrison’s solo material remain off-limits, though Ringo has offered to mail free tapes of “It Don’t Come Easy” to any Apple customers upon request.
• A man in Australia was stuck in a tree for a full week, surrounded by crocodiles. I’ve also come up with some pretty lame excuses for missing work, dude, so I can relate.
• NASA cut short a spacewalk outside the international space station after one of the astronauts noticed that the outside of his glove was ripped. If you could see Mother Earth from afar, wouldn’t you also insist on constantly high-fiving?
• According to Reuters, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld actually submitted a letter of resignation before the last November election, though it was not made public until after the election was completed. The GOP apparently didn’t want to lose all that awesome Iraq momentum, apparently?
• Finally, if you have two minutes, take a listen to former Phillies catcher Darren Daulton talk about his inter-dimensional time travel escapades on Philly Comcast Sports last night. He makes Carl Everett’s rantings sound like Ben Franklin axioms. (link via Deadspin)

NBA Referee Tim Donaughy will plead guilty to charges of distributing inside gambling information and potentially altering outcomes of basketball games, and is now facing upwards of 25 years in prison. This announcement isn’t too suprising, nor is it really that funny, except for this monumentally sad picture dug up by ESPN.com:

Could this picture possibly get any sadder? Maybe if I crudely Photoshopped pictures of sad puppies next to Donaughy’s face?

Ehhh… Even then, it’s close.

I was walking past a billboard for TNT’s latest installment in their catalogue of shows that might be decent but I won’t remember to watch them cause they’re not on HBO, and something about this particular advertisment (pronounced Britishly) struck me as awfully familiar…

Wait a minute… haven’t I seen that exact color scheme prominently used to promote a certain 2006 film? Perhaps another one called “The [SOMETHING]” about three intense-looking male leads, which may or may not have also won the Oscar for Best Picture?

Eh, probably not. Never mind.

The month of August is routinely a cold, dreary period with no new episodes of BWE. That’s why we’ve scoured our vast supply of interview tapes and packed away the best outtakes and unaired material in our swollen chipmunk cheeks for our show-free winter hibernation, or summer hibernation, and now we’re eating some of the clips… we stored…up…? Whatever, scrap the analogy, just watch BWE Rookie of the Year Candidate John Mulaney make fun of the show “Hey Paula.”

• “Idol: The Musical,” an off-Broadway show about fans worshipping Clay Aiken, has been cancelled after just one performance due to poor ticket sales and general apathy. Critics also blasted the show for casting the Cowardly Lion Woman to play the ‘Aiken’ role.
• Mary-Kate Olsen has a full-on makeout scene with 63-year-old Ben Kingsley in her next movie. The actress isn’t fazed, though, after having already done a doggy-style sex scene with Peter O’Toole in real life, probably.
• NBA Referee Tim Donaghy will plead guilty to charges of betting on games which he officiated. The government had so much evidence, in fact, Donaghy also pled guilty to running a dogfighting ring while on steroids.
• By the way, squirrels have learned to imitate rattlesnakes. FINALLY.
• Youtube has requested that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert testify on the site’s behalf in Viacom’s $1 billion lawsuit against the site in the hopes of proving that the shows themselves uploaded their own clips to Youtube and greatly benefitted from the exposure, which actually makes sense and was a lot of fun back when we could watch them and… whoops, never mind, I was just fired.

• A man with his head wrapped in duct tape attempted to rob a liquor store in Kentucky, but left empty-handed when employees simply laughed at him. Maybe next time he’ll try robbing the place when no one’s there, then clogging the faucets and letting them all overflow? (photo via AP/Yahoo)
• A Japanese biker managed to keep driving for 2 kilometers before realizing that the bottom half of his leg had been severed off. I like how the article says “2 km (1.2 miles)” in case any Americans are reading it and going “Hmm, 2 kilometers, is that unusual? 1.2 miles!! What a crazy story!”
• A man in St. Augustine intentionally drove his pickup truck into a church, claiming he was “mad at God.” I’m guessing he was just trying to create the ultimate Toby Keith song.
• A NASA space shuttle is deciding whether or not to do in-flight repairs after the ship was damaged by a piece of foam during liftoff. Surely they mean F.O.A.M., as in the acronym for some super-hard space metal, right?
• According to an annual survey, customer satisfaction for Apple dropped 4.8% from last year, presumably after being satisfied with one’s computer became mainstream.

Karl Ravech: Let’s take a moment to discuss some sad news — legendary Yankees shortstop and broadcaster Phil Rizzuto passed away this morning. Gentleman, your thoughts on the man and his life accomplishments?

Steve Phillips: Phil Rizzuto was a tremendous individual and a tremendous baseball player. He may have only hit .271 in his career with 38 home runs, but he also won seven World Series titles, making him seven times better than Alex Rodriguez.

John Kruk: A-Rod’s won zero, though, so doesn’t that make him undefinable times greater than A-Rod?

Steve Phillips: Yes, and that’s not including Rizzuto’s intangibles, or the fact that he was a true Yankee, unlike sommmme peeeeooople…

John Kruk: A-Rod could hit eighty home runs in the regular season, but if the Yankees don’t win the World Series, it means none of them mattered.

Steve Phillips: I agree, and I think it’s gonna be tough for the Yankees to bounce back and get into the playoffs now, I think Rizzuto’s death might have damaged the mystique of Yankee Stadium, and possibly reduced their aura.

John Kruk: There’s nothing a team struggling to get into the postseason needs more than aura.

Steve Phillips: Aura and grinders — guys who are less talented than other guys but who get a hit every now and then and make a conscious effort to appear to be visibly hustling. The Yankees are just a bunch of stars, they really could use someone like Phil Rizzuto.

John Kruk: Remember when Adam Sandler had to write out the word “Rizzuto” in the movie Billy Madison?

Steve Phillips: Yes I do, and he couldn’t. He choked. Just like A-Rod would have. But Phil Rizzuto would have written it correctly, cause he’s a real pinstriper.

Read the rest of this entry »

Because I don’t really want to spend much time on the latest rumors about Angelina attempting to adopt yet another child, nor do I really have any new jokes on the matter, I’ve just copied and pasted BWE’s stock “Angelina Adopts” post below and updated the details.

BREAKING NEWS: Angelina Jolie and husband Brad Pitt, or, as I call them, Brangelina are rumored to be adopting a [INS NUMBER:] FOURTH child, this time from the severely empoverished nation of [INS COUNTRY:] Ethiopia. When asked about the adoption, Angelina repeatedly gushed about the thrill of motherhood, though the fact that this most recent adoption comes just in time for the dvd release of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” after the couple has had multiple, extremely public squabbles has raised questions about Ms. Jolie’s motives.

Nonetheless, Pitt, star of the film Ocean’s Eleven Thirteen, and Jolie, star of Girl, Interrupted and [INS NEXT GOOD MOVIE] have embraced their status as America’s everywhere-but-America’s most famous couple since Britney and K-Fed Burt Reynolds and Loni Anderson, appearing constantly on telephones the internet and records compact discs. President Taft Bush would agree.

Who are they gonna adopt next, The Lindbergh Baby Haley Joel Osmet??

Done and done. Lunch time.

Updating yesterday’s story about Amy Winehouse cooling down in a five-star hotel, the Daily Mail now reports that the “troubled jazz diva” (running out of descriptive phrases?) has admitted she has a drug problem and will seek rehabilitation in the United States. What is funny about this story is that Amy Winehouse has a song where she says “no no no” to rehab but now it is more like she is saying “yes yes yes!” Has anyone else noticed this???

Now Amy, and husband Blake Fielder-Civil, who is reported to idolise Babyshambles frontman Pete Doherty, have flown to the US for intensive counselling and detox treatment after seeing a leading Harley Street doctor recommended by Amy’s pal, former wild child Kelly Osbourne.

Apparently, the blighted swing queen has weighed her public options and realized that the “being a bad-boy rebel celebrity by not seeking treatment after a near-death coma” wasn’t as important as the “dealing with multiple major, life-threatening drug addictions and being famous solely for them.” Also, I’ll bet it’ll be fun telling the rehab facility that your husband idolizes Pete Doherty. It’s like telling a regular hospital that your husband idolizes brain cancer.

Did I mention she has a song called “Rehab?”

• Is Paris Hilton’s new mature persona just a show for the cameras?? She wasn’t lying about routinely smearing Carl’s Jr. burgers on her bikini bottom too, was she?
• Hard rocker James Blunt reportedly shared dessert with Mischa Barton at a party this weekend, but spend the remainder of the night partying with the Olsen Twins. He then went to bed with Dakota Fanning and woke up next to Shiloh Jolie.
• Is Nicole Richie actually growing breasts? Or is she just too thin to house a baby in her uterus, so her body is just cramming the fetus wherever possible?
• Brian Adams is dead??? Oh, whew, it’s just the pro wrestler Brian “Crush” Adams. Still a sad story, but thankfully, we’re covered if another mid-90s movie requires a soundtrack.
• The people of Athens, Alabama will vote today on whether or not to officially ban alcohol from their city. Makes me wonder, how can some people use The Bible as an argument against drinking, while I prefer to interpret The Bible as a coaster for my Easter-morning tequila shots.

• ROTTEN TOMATO: “Daddy Day Camp” falls one kind Hollywood.com writer short of achieving a legendary 0% score on the Tomatometer. Just goes to show how special “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” truly was.
• SADDEST JOB: How low on the paparazzi totem pole do you have to be to get assigned to following around Brad Garrett?? Were they hoping to catch some drunken, anti-Semitic observational comedy?
• BACK-HANDED COMPLIMENT: Chicago is no longer the “syphilis capital of the United States!” So from now on, when you’re giving suggestions at improv shows, yell “gonorrhea.”
• CELEBRITY ASS: In retrospect, how did Katherine McPhee’s ass lose to Taylor Hicks’ ass on that national ass competition show on FOX? You know, the one called “Ass”?
• NEW YORK POST IMPRESSION: ESPN.com provides their best, not-labored-at-all headline about the uncertain future of Twins pitcher Johan Santana (pic after the jump):
  Read the rest of this entry »

• A senior center in Flushing, New York has begun a drive to distribute free condoms to old people. Ribbon candy flavored underwear and combination tip calculator / vibrators were also available.
• The country of Saudi Arabia has officially released its first music video, promoting the message that it’s ok to be “cool and devout.” Surely they mean cool with Krystal and devout towards shaking asses, right?
• A New Hampshire man has been charged with a felony after claiming that his cat managed to “shoot itself.” Police were also incredulous of the cat’s suicide note, “Is u talkin 2 me? k bai”
• A man in Washington state was bitten by a rattlesnake this weekend. What’s so odd about that, you ask? It happened after the snake was decapitated. Now I’m a little scared that some of the ants from my childhood could be out for revenge.
• Suspended Tennessee Titans cornerback Adam “Pac Man” Jones made his pro wrestling debut for Total Nonstop Action this weekend, and was surrounded by actors pretending to be police officers, presumably after Pacman pretended to punch actresses pretending to be strippers.

I was on vacation last week, looking at stuff and remembering it (what do you call that again? “Notblogging?”), so even though it’s a little belated, I feel like I have to share my thoughts on last week’s Barry Bonds deeliemagoo.

My junior year of college, one friend of mine got pulled over by the police after making an illegal turn while he was driving high, and the officer smelled marijuana in the car, searched the car, found the marijuana, and the kid ended up getting in trouble both for the traffic violation and for possession. For weeks after that, the kid was really pissed off, saying again and again how officers aren’t allowed to search your car on a hunch, and how unfairly he was treated and how he should fight the charge, never acknowledging the fact he was actually high and actually did have pot on him.

This story is the only thing I can think of whenever anyone — stupid broadcasters, stupid players, the cast of the movie “The Stupids” — attempts to defend Bonds by saying “he was never convicted of anything, how can we judge him?” Obviously we can’t just discard the notion of “innocent until proven guilty,” but should that principle render us completely incapable of using even the most basic form of common sense? Sure, Bonds shouldn’t be jailed unless he’s officially found guilty of something, but that single-minded sentence is literally the only possible defense that anyone could ever possibly make on Bonds’ behalf. No one, not even the most staunch, ignorant Bonds supporters, can make any of these arguments with a straight face:

“I guess this 37-year-old just happened to hit 73 home runs one year in a sport where for more than a century, only two players (both lefties in Yankee Stadium) had ever scraped 60.”

“Yes, he admitted to a grand jury that he unknowingly used the ‘cream’ and the ‘clear’, two forms of anabolic steroids which dramatically and visibly altered his muscle mass, and yes, his head has swollen 1 1/2 cap sizes in the past decade, and you know what? I can’t even finish this sarcastic devil’s advocate example, he really, really obviously took F-ing steroids.”

All right, that’s all I needed to say. I will resume attempts at humor in tomorrow’s sports post, which may or may not involve a picture of A-Rod with a penis MS-Painted onto his face.