Maybe I Don't Understand Major League Baseball Rules (And Maybe I Don't Care)

What, exactly, was Yankees manager Joe Girardi complaining about on Tuesday night after my sad-sack Red Sox scraped out a win against their vastly superior (this season to date) AL East rivals?

Something about Manny Delcarmen taking too much time to warm up in preparation to relieve one of the Red Sox's five godawful (this season to date) starting pitchers? Something about one of those pitchers, Josh Beckett, not actually being injured?

Cheese and rice, Joe: Your team's about a billion games up on the Red Sox. If you're going to protest something, protest the fact that the Yankees are currently trailing a team whose fans will remain nonexistent until it faces yours in the division series. (And then they'll be all like, "Hey, our city has a baseball team! I love that dude from 'Desperate Housewives'!")

Catholic Church: Boy-Diddling Priests Aren't Pedophiles--Just Filthy Homos

Organized religion ain't my thing, but I know many good people who are into it. A lot of them are Catholic (I was raised in the PepsiCo of faiths myself)...and I feel very bad for any of those folks who might've caught Bill Donohue's appearance on "Larry King Live" Wednesday night and his unfathomable defense of the latest pedophilia scandal:

If a boy that is molested by a priest has reached puberty, Donohue claims, it's not pedophilia; it's merely homosexuality.

So it's being gay, you see, that's the problem. Not the forcible sexual assault.

Let me thank you in advance, Catholic Church, on behalf of the first rapist who tries that defense in court: "My client could not possibly have raped that woman, your honor, because she had pubic hair. I insist that the charges be dropped on account of the defendant being straight."

(Side note: Sinead O'Connor finally grew hair!)

[Crooks And Liars via Gawker]

See You in Health

On Sunday night, after a hundred years or so, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a sweeping health care reform bill, sending it to President Obama's desk to be signed into law.

"Sweeping", of course, is a relative term, as the bill in question includes a number of compromises from its original intent--'cause politics totally rule--but insuring tens of millions of Americans who previously had no coverage and putting the abuses of private insurance companies in check is nothing to shake a stick at.

Plus, it'll make Republicans super mad.

Corey Haim Is Dead

Now let us all 1980s'-nostalgia-fueled hipsters commence pretending that we didn't see this coming ten years ago nor were we making jokes about it.

One Rapist Short = One Point Short

Yay, Celtics.

(Now, if only Kobe Bryant were out forever and you guys weren't so old and busted, I'd feel good about your theoretical-postseason chances.)

Time in a Bottle (of CoCo Butter)

THR, Esq. has torn away any lingering threads of legitimacy from NBC's attempts to paint Conan O'Brien as the bad guy in the 'Tonight Show' fiasco (or at least I think they have; legalese makes me sleepy): despite the network's previous claims to the contrary, O'Brien's original contract specified that his program was to air at 11:35.

[THR via Movieline]

'MA' Better Blues

As you watch the video below, mentally exchange--

"Chris Parker" with "Massachusetts" (which would make "Oak Park", I guess, "New England")...

"Brad, Sara and Daryl" with "anybody who lives in America that doesn't have affordable health care" (which would, ironically, mean that they probably don't live in Massachusetts)...

"[Chris Parker's planned date with her boyfriend 'Mike']" with "the former law stating that vacated Senate seats in Massachusetts (such as that of the late Ted Kennedy) were to be filled via gubernatorial appointment" and "[Mike's canceling of said date]" with "the changing of said law in 2004 by overconfident Democrats who believed at the time that John Kerry was going to win the U.S. presidency"...

"Brenda" with "President Obama's proposed health care reform bill", and--

"[The] guys [who] are out to get [Chris and her charges]" with "rich white Americans (including most Republican lawmakers) and all other U.S. citizens too stupid to know better (which includes the entirety of the Fox News viewing audience)".



The major difference in this hypothetical (loss of rhyme scheme and rhythm notwithstanding) is that--unlike Chris, Brad, Sara and Daryl do in Adventures in Babysitting--most of their alternates aren't getting out of that blues bar alive. ("Brenda", meanwhile, already lies dead at a bus station, her corpse being desecrated in all kinds of positions by skull-fucking, psycho-rapist hobos (a.k.a. "real Americans"?)).

[YouTube; IMDb]

The Blindest Side

Say what you will about Jay Leno, you can't say the guy isn't blessed by good timing (scheduling timing, that is).

The man who lucked out by booking Hugh Grant on "The Tonight Show" following the latter's solicitation arrest in 1995--which forever turned the tide in the Leno-vs.-Letterman ratings battle--and scored Kanye West on the premiere episode of "The Jay Leno Show" the day after West's ass-bananas Taylor Swift-usurping at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards has today completed somewhat of a hat trick:

On the very day that Conan O'Brien proved himself the bigger man by rejecting NBC's offer to remain the host of a bumped-to-12:05 version of "The Tonight Show" that would've accommodated Leno's merciless, self-serving quest to return to the 11:30 slot, who happens to be the lead guest on the canceled "Jay Leno Show"?

None other than Sandra Bullock, who is currently receiving acclaim for starring in a movie that made a lot of money for numbing NASCAR fans to their vague awareness of their own latent racism. Just as Leno used to be funny, Bullock once starred in Speed (which kicks ass).

Conan O'Brien Schools Jay Leno in Dignity; Comedy To Continue To Suffer as Result

Jay Leno hasn't been funny on television since he snookered the "Tonight Show" gig out from under the heels of the vastly-more-deserving David Letterman in 1992. In the years hence, Letterman has continued to rock-the-party hard (perchance a little too hard?) while Leno has stripped away every last piece of himself that used to be funny in order to cater to the George W. Bush-fetishizing, teabagging middle-Americans (who hate that goddamn nigger president SO MUCH--but not 'cause he's a nigger but 'cause he's whatever Glenn Beck says he is on the magic talkin' box) that've kept him chin-deep in vintage automobiles.

Leno chose to retire from "The Tonight Show" in 2009--a decision that he had announced five years in advance. When the moment arrived to hand the mantle to O'Brien, Leno--in all his narcissism--balked, making a deal with NBC for a new nightly show that would air before O'Brien. Now that "The Jay Leno Show" has spectacularly (and predictably) failed and with NBC proposing to keep both Leno and O'Brien via a Slap Chop bastardization of "The Tonight Show", Leno has one move to make if he has any modicum of decency and/or respect for his predecessors, his anointed successor, and the art of comedy as a whole--and that move is to actually retire.

So of course, he's not doing that, and Conan O'Brien is leaving NBC.

May Conan find a new show on Fox and crush Leno in the ratings.

[NYT via Movieline]

[UPDATE: In addition to my just being mean about Jay Leno, allow me to supplement it with some more nuanced thoughts from a top-shelf comedian (play the audio at the bottom of the linked page).]

And Now They Stink

Remember that decade (that is technically still this decade) when the Patriots were good?

Ah, memories.

Seattle Schadenfreude

From birth to present, I've been a New England Patriots fan. Following the team's first (non-joke) Super Bowl appearance in 1997, Pete Carroll became their head coach; he skillfully took them from good to mediocre, to bad, to a joke (again) in a scant three years.

The year after I graduated from the University of Southern California, that very school (because Yahweh knows I'm a football fan and hates me) handed Patriots-ruiner Pete Carroll the reins of its vaunted football team.

Over the next eight years, I was left to impotently try to explain to my fellow alumni that Pete Carroll was a terrible football coach while he ostensibly "led" USC to two national championships and received (unwarranted) credit for returning the Trojans to prominence.

Finally, in 2009, the emperor's new clothes were revealed as USC sucked goat balls. And what has Pete Carroll done as a result?

He has bailed, taking a wholly-undeserved sick contract to coach the NFL's Seattle Seahawks.

While I feel bad for the football fans of Seattle and the meager-hope-trumping failure that they will experience in 2010, I am very excited to say to Pete Carroll:

Best of luck in in the Pacific Northwest, you mealy-mouthed sonofahamster. The ghost of Drew Bledsoe's career-that-could-have-been awaits you on "ESPN Purgatory".

Cold as ICE

Is there anything more American than the New England Patriots?

There is if you ask America's Immigration and Customs Enforcement--who, on Thursday, detained dozens of Guatemalan workers that were en route to Gillette Stadium to shovel snow for this weekend's playoff game.

Or maybe ICE is just a bunch of Ravens fans.

[via Deadspin]