NBC Affiliate's Integrity Struck, Killed by Antique Car

When WHDH-TV in Boston announced that it would be airing local news at 10 p.m. instead of Jay Leno's as-yet-undefined suckfest, it was a proud moment for the city of Boston and a nice little kick in the pants to the deeply unfunny Leno--a native of Andover, Ma.--for his refusal to retire gracefully.

Nothing lasts forever, though (save for, apparently, Jay Leno's cock-a-roach of a television career)...and in the case of WHDH's halcyon days of integrity, the total came out to 11: on Monday the station officially surrendered to its corporate overlord and acquiesced to publicly embracing the network's unkillable jester.

Adding insult to injury, WHDH owner Ed Ansin was compelled to release a humiliating statement saying that "he enjoys Leno's humor".

For god's sake, NBC--why didn't you just hang the poor bastard in the public square?

Glenn Beck Fatally Confuses Two Prepositions

When Stephen Colbert and the rest of the cognizant world mock Fox News' lunatic-of-the-moment Glenn Beck, most everyone understands that they are laughing at Beck, not with him. Most everyone but Glenn Beck, that is, for he has announced a comedy tour.

That's right, "comedy". As in, a deliberate attempt to be funny, live, in front of people. America has called Beck hysterically insane, and all he heard was "hysterical".

Unless you think that genuine mental illness is funny, I recommend staying the hell out of Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, Kansas City, Houston and Richmond, Virgina during the first week of June.

Washington Post Lets the Suck Out

The Washington Post scooped the world on the more-desperately-than-is-appropriate awaited news that the Obamas have at last picked out a freaking dog...and how did they open their story? With five shameful words:

"Who let the dog out?"

Get it? That's kind of the name of a terrible song that was inexplicably popular for some time several years ago; it features the word "dog", which is the thing that the Obamas got and what the story is about! Hahahahaha!

This whole thing makes me make a frowny face--not just because of the patheticalness inherent to the newspaper of America's capital essentially sabotaging an exclusive by making the most obvious reference imaginable and thus driving additional nails into the coffin of print journalism, but also because I had hoped that the Obamas would have seen this coming and taken action to avoid it.

You deliberated your dog selection for over three months, Obamas; it must have occurred to at least one of you (likely one of the parents) that the first story about your selection--and perhaps many more thereafter--would make a cheap and lazy reference to the Baha Men's "Who Let the Dogs Out" that would be detrimental to journalism. No, you could not have avoided the fact that the animal would be a dog, but--with a little creative thinking--you could have thrown the media a curveball and chosen a name other than "Bo". A name such as:

"Electric Slide"...

"Da' Butt"...

"Tubthumping"...

"Macarena"...

"Buffalo Stance"...

And many others.

You could have named the goddamn dog "Rollin' With Kid 'N Play", for chrissake: to have applied the title of any terrible song that was once inexplicably popular other than "Who Let the Dogs Out" as your dog's name would have handcuffed the members of the national media into possibly thinking for themselves...and if enough them had done so, perhaps America would have had a chance to pull itself out of the toilet.

But they didn't, so it won't--not anytime soon, at least.

In any case, though: cute puppy (not pictured).

Funny Canadian Thing about Billy Bob Thornton (Canadian) Thing

When footage of the Needlessly Offended Billy Bob Thornton vs. Confused but Polite Canadian Radio DJ Interview Dust-Up hit the interwebs on Wednesday, I didn't post anything about it because I didn't have an angle. I still don't, but here's the Q TV weirdness--



--which I'm posting now to provide context for this:



In related news, Billy Bob's band has canceled their Canadian tour. Wonder what that's about.

[YouTube]

Diversion's Antichrist Seeks Commission in Human Tragedy

Although the act amounts to precious little within the scope of Angels pitcher Nick Adenhart and two others' deaths in an auto accident early Thursday morning, I cannot resist expressing my irritation at the fact that Adenhart's agent Scott Boras--widely regarded as an amoral cutthroat whose duplicitous tactics are a cancer on the game of baseball--took the opportunity to put on a tearful show for the cameras at the team's press conference regarding the news.

I'm not saying that Boras isn't sad that Adenhart died--the kid was 22 years old and had his whole future senselessly erased, for chrissake; one would have to literally be inhuman to find that as anything but heartbreaking. I'm not even entirely unconvinced of Boras' assertion that Adenhart's family had asked him to speak on their behalf. But even though Boras is no doubt emotionally affected by the loss--and even if Adenhart's family was not opposed to Boras' appearance at the press conference--who the fuck cares what a young athlete's agent has to say in the immediate aftermath of his unexpected death?

Second to those of his family, the reactions of Adenhart's friends and teammates--those who were with him every day, bonded in a shared purpose and camaraderie--deserve to be made public, if so intended. There is meaningful insight to be gleaned from those who knew Adenhart and had nothing to gain or lose from their relationship that the man himself--at the very most--didn't stand to gain or lose reciprocally.

But his agent? His fucking agent? The guy who, at the end of the day, was professionally obligated to view Adenhart as nothing more than a paycheck--a "great kid" that he would have dropped like a bad habit the second that his market value fell below a predetermined profit margin? Not appropriate. Had Boras been magnanimous enough to realize as much, he would have respectfully declined the Adenharts' alleged request of him to speak at the press conference.

Instead, he chose to take the stage alongside Angels manager Mike Scioscia, general manager Tony Reagins and others, and attempt--by all appearances--to "out-sad" the lot of them.

Bearing in mind Scott Boras' proven track record as a publicity-hungry self-promoter (how many other agents does the casual sports fan know by name?), his public tears over Nick Adenheart take on a distinct resemblance to those of a crocodile--or, perhaps more fittingly, a snake.

Shark Eaten Despite Awesome Name

Good news: there exists an extremely rare breed of shark called the "megamouth".

Bad news: there exists one fewer as of Tuesday, when Filipino fisherman accidentally caught and then not-so-accidentally ate one.

The World Wildlife Fund attempted to talk the fisherman out of eating "Megamouth 41", but the fishermen were having none of it. To the victor go the spoils, I suppose...no matter how cool the loser's name.

Red Sox Defeat Rays in 2008 ALCS Game 7 Do-Over

Now, on to the do-over 2008 World Series!

THIS...IS...uh...Tar Hee?

Here's what's awesome about the NCAA basketball tournament (from the layman's perspective): not one person knows what the hell he's doing. But we all fill out our brackets anyway, because we like anything that isn't our job or family. Also, we like money.

I additionally like to pretend that I am preternaturally knowledgeable; this is in fact my primary motive to participate in no less than four different bracket pools every year. Truth be told, I have not held an unadulterated interest in college basketball since around the time that Christian Laettner was selected to the USA Dream Team and Shaquille O'Neal joined forces with the Fu-Schnickens to implicitly protest as much in the form of high-speed rhyming verse. (Have Laettner or Shaq turned pro yet? And what of the Schnickens?--them homeys was fresh.) Regardless, my near-total ignorance never fails to hold zero influence in my decision to settle in at the computer with minutes to go until the bracket-submission deadline and initiate the half-assed "research"--this guy on CBS Sportsline says this, but this other guy on SI.com says a different thing, but green is my favorite color, etc.--that determines my faux-educated picks. Yes, I want to win my bracket pools, but my greater desire is to appear as though I've accomplished as much as a result of some Rainman-without-the-deficiency-style supersmarts (like, if Dustin-Hoffman-in-Rainmain had seen into Tom-Cruise-in-Rainmain's alternate-universe future as Jerry Maguire and partnered their souls).

You know how I would have achieved that goal this year (on 1 out of 3 brackets in 2 out of 4 pools) (and then had a much easier time coming up with a title for this post)? If Michigan State had defeated North Carolina in the championship game on Monday night.

Alas, things went the other way, apparently because the Tar Heels were a vastly superior basketball team to the Spartans.

How the hell was anybody supposed to know that?

A Case Against Blogging

Do you have a blog? If so, great--your career's going places.

Also if so, are you self-involved? Of course you are; you have a blog.

Even further if so, do you use Google Analytics (or a similar program) to monitor your blog's traffic?

If not, maybe you shouldn't. It's a window into bad things. Bad things like the knowledge that 2 of the whopping 18 visitors (hold your applause) to this site on Saturday accessed it by looking up the phrases "iranianporn child" and "metroville fucking pictures", respectively:

(For the record, there is no child pornography--Iranian or otherwise--to be found on Metroville, but there is this. As for "metroville fucking pictures", your nightmare is as horrible as mine--probably less so, actually.)

I want my blankie, I want my mom, and I want to get the hell off the internet.

(But I won't, because it's there.)

Ruh-roh.

Cheap racist jokes aside...this Kim Jong Il: is he seriously just out to kill everybody on the planet, or what?

When North Korea uses words like "soon" in describing their potential launch of an alleged communications satellite that a lot of other countries--like Japan and South Korea, who, geographically speaking, might know a little something--think is actually a ballistic missile capable of reaching Alaska, I can't help but get nervous.

Here's the hard truth, crazy BluBlocker-rocking old Korean lady: James Bond isn't a real person, so you're never going to get to meet him. It's time to accept that fact, and fucking cool it with the global-supervillainous shenanigans.

'Le-Yes, Boston?' 'Le-No, Jay.'

Jay Leno grew up in the Boston area, a fact that I--as both a native of the Boston area and a fan of things that don't suck (the 1919-2002 Boston Red Sox, the 1993-2007 Boston Celtics and the 1959-2000 New England Patriots notwithstanding)--have always found to be bothersome.

Apparently, Boston itself was always bothered by it, too. The city's NBC affiliate has announced that it will not be airing Leno's new 10 p.m. talk show that is scheduled to premiere in September.

Perhaps Jay Leno finds this passive boycott to be insulting. If so, perhaps Jay Leno might at last consider how Conan O'Brien (himself a Boston-area native) feels about Leno's bait-and-switch refusal to retire and the resultant distraction from Conan's ascendancy to the "Tonight Show" throne.

Metroville's Movie Corner: RANDOM TRIVIA EDITION

If you can name the one movie other than that of the first clip below in which the human actor (whose face is visible) appearing in said clip delivers what is widely regarded as a relatively superior performance, I will give you 1.21 million dollars. If your answer is incorrect, you owe me the same amount.

Clicking the 'play' button on the video binds you to the wager detailed above.

Ready?

Go.



You recognized Thomas F. Wilson, right? So you guessed it?

Well, guess what.

You guessed wrong, sucka! There isn't one movie--there's three!



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