Let This Finally Be the Death of the Molestache

See that guy in the picture? He raped a 3-year-old. Of course, you didn't need me tell you that; all you had to do was take a look at the mustache.

If the world gleans nothing else from the truly appalling tale of absolutely deplorable scumbag Chester A. Stiles (certainly not to be confused with Rupert "Stiles" Stilinski, friend to the hirsute teenager and a non-raper of children) (in addition to the knowledge that the world is a terrible, terrible place), let it be a definitive understanding among all men who voluntarily sport a wispy track of hair along their upper lips that doing so makes them look like child molesters.

It doesn't matter if you're 14 or 104: if you are unable to grow a full mustache, don't wear a mustache. That thing under your nose that looks like it could be easily removed by splashing milk on it and having a cat lick it off (I'm looking at you, 95% of the male employees of every Taco Bell in the Los Angeles area) isn't what you think it is. It's a Molestache. (If you are able to grow a full mustache but are not (a) Tom Selleck, (b) Sam Elliott or possibly (c) a self-amused ironic hipster (and I've learned from experience that one is still really pushing it in the latter case)...you still shouldn't grow a mustache.)

I'm not saying that all potential sex offenders wear mustaches--just look at the above-linked CNN article and the picture of Darren Tuck, the guy who held on to the videotape of Stiles raping a 3-year-old girl for five months before turning it over to the police; he's rocking the goatee but no 'stache (a style choice that, unfortunately, strengthens his resemblance to Boston Red Sox utility man Eric Hinske). What I am saying is that when people are looking for potential sex offenders, a good place to start is under the nose.

And if that isn't enough to make a man reconsider his Molestache...let me add that I have it on good authority that the look doesn't exactly drive the ladies wild.

Tom Cruise Totally Killed a Guy*

David Hans Schmidt, the controversial publicist who agreed to plead guilty to attempting to extort over $1 million from Tom Cruise for stolen photographs taken at Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes that were allegedly compromising, was found dead in his Phoenix home on Friday of an apparent suicide.

A loss of any life (except for maybe Hitler's or anyone's in that vein) is tragic, especially in the case of an apparent suicide. One could argue that Schmidt's death would have been made even more unseemly, however, had the circumstances surrounding it in any way raised the slightest bit of suspicion that Tom Cruise could have somehow been involved...which he apparently clearly was not, because the cause of Schmidt's death was apparently suicide.

And the fact that Schmidt never ended up dead after he tried to auction off Paris Hilton's diaries, sell both a Dustin Diamond and a Tonya Harding sex tape or claimed to possess topless photos of rescued U.S. Army POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch should in no way cast any bit of doubt whatsoever on that apparent finding.


*In a movie I saw once where both Tom Cruise and the guy he appeared to kill were actually portraying characters other than themselves and nobody really died.

Yankees Officially Commence Pretending That the Wild Card Is as Impressive as a Division Title

Taste the flavor, A-Rod.

For God's Sake, A-Rod...

Baseball is still a family game, despite the fact that the Yankees have eked into the playoffs. You really ought to reserve such behavior [pictured in a very small scale so as to reduce the risk of traumatizing the innocent casual reader] for the privacy of your own home, where maybe there aren't so many photographers around.

(And why does the above-linked ESPN headline read "13th straight playoff spot" as opposed to "10th straight division title"? Oh...that's right.)

Bill O'Reilly Wants You to Know That a Lot of Black People Are Like Regular People

Who would have guessed that Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly was such a daredevil? He certainly proved as much when he recently ate dinner at a restaurant run by black people...in Harlem, where I understand a lot of black people live. Not only has O'Reilly stared death in the face in such a manner and lived to tell the tale, he has returned to enlighten the rest of the world of the fact that--get this--black people behave just like regular people in restaurants.

O'Reilly described his experience in Sylvia's as "like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun...and there wasn't any kind of craziness at all."

They were sitting? They were ordering food? And there wasn't any kind of craziness? At all? No murder, rape, or even one stolen television?

If your jaw isn't already on the floor in total surprise, you ought to wire it shut before you read this next bombshell: according to O'Reilly, "there wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M.F.-er, I want more iced tea.'"

Not one! Naturally, this revelation is hard to swallow...but Bill O'Reilly saw it with his own eyes, so it must be true.

Thank God (who I'm still going to assume is white unless Bill O'Reilly tells me otherwise) that there are people like Bill O'Reilly in the world, selflessly venturing into untouched lands of mystery like Harlem and Anita Baker concerts (where he discovered that sometimes black people wear tuxedos! just like regular people!) in the name of racial tolerance and understanding so we don't have to.

O'Reilly said that the experiences have made him believe that black Americans are "starting to think more and more for themselves." If there is veracity to that belief, it's a bittersweet truth...for it means that black Americans will never watch Fox News and learn of all the great strides Bill O'Reilly is making for them.

Die Hard 5 to Pretty Much Write Itself

If I may be so bold as to predict John McTiernan's pitch for his next project, a return to the action franchise he helped build:

It's Christmas Eve and John McClane's (which family member hasn't he rescued from a hostage situation yet? his son?) son, who is a rookie corrections officer in a Los Angeles-area prison, is taken hostage during an inmate uprising. In order to infiltrate the facility and heroically save his boy, McClane enters a guilty plea--even though he TOTALLY ISN'T GUILTY--to charges of lying to the FBI about something he actually didn't have anything to do with. Seriously. He hardly even knew that disgraced private investigator. But he gets sentenced to four months in prison anyway--which is bullshit, right? So while McClane is on the bus to jail, his lawyer successfully appeals and the sentence is overturned. The end.

While acknowledging that the story has some third act problems, I've got to believe that such a film would at least be better than that Rollerball remake.

Tom Brady--Whereabouts Unknown--Is a Father

The good news is that Bridget Moynahan has given birth to Tom Brady's superbaby. (The bad news for the NWFA is that it's a boy.)

But the just plain curious element of this story is that--at least according to SI.com--at the time the news went public, Papa Brady himself was unaccounted for. It wasn't confirmed whether of not he was with Moynahan in Los Angeles, and he definitely wasn't at the Patriots' practice. While these combined factors might lead one to conclude that Brady was en route from the latter to the former, allow me to suggest a forth possibility as to where Tom might be reached:

Brazil.

"Black Four! I Mean Black Balls! I Mean Ball Four!"

From the University of Texas at Austin comes more good news for baseball this summer: According to a study performed at the school, home plate umpires are racist. (But don't worry, it's not what you think. They're racist towards pitchers, not batters. Or, wait...is that still bad?)

Having analyzed 2.1 million umpire calls between the 2004 and 2006 MLB seasons, the researchers working under Daniel Hamermesh, a professor of economics, "found that umpires call strikes more for pitchers of their race and balls more when the pitcher is of another race" (according to Time magazine via MSNBC.com). If you guessed that the lowest percentage of strikes were called when the pitcher was black and the umpire was white...congratulations! You hold at least the vaguest grasp possible on the reality of American culture!

On the plus side, though, Hamermesh and his team found no bias regarding the race of batters and no bias at all--towards batter or pitcher--in three instances: on a full count (good for you, otherwise racist umpires), when the crowd was large (ha! fraidy cats), or when the umpires' calls were being monitored by the QuesTec system.

That last mitigating factor only serves to reaffirm what most of us already know: One day, umpires will be replaced by robots. In a hasty attempt to maintain a degree of humanity in the game of baseball, these robots will be programmed with racism. This will inevitably lead to the Robot Race Wars of 2012, which will in turn bring about the collateral destruction of all human civilization on Earth as we know it. At some point during the gradual rebuilding of a mankind that our children (and their children and so on) will never know as we knew it, there will be erected a Thunderdome. And then, finally...I will be able to walk around in public wearing revealing leather-strap-and-metal-spike- based outfits without people automatically assuming it's a sex thing.

So there will be somewhat of a happy ending to this situation after all.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...

...OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Boooooooooooooo...

...oooooooooooooooo.

...And Justice for Rich Republicans Who are Friends with the Vice President

It had been touch-and-go in the month since Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison for his involvement in leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame back in 2003, with President Bush appearing to waver on the question of whether or not he would pardon him. In the eleventh hour, our commander-in-chief has heroically stepped up and commuted Libby's sentence--effectively though not technically pardoning him because Libby will still have to pay a $250,000 fine and serve two years of probation--thus reconfirming his standing as Arguably the Most Corrupt and Incompetent President in America's History.

Happy Birthday, U.S.A.!

Magical Douchebag Conjures Obvious Puns

While he was most recently busy dedicating lame stunts to Cameron Diaz, it turns out that magician Criss Angel--a.k.a. "Mindfreak", a.k.a. Christopher Sarantakos (hmm, funny how those names get progressively less badass)--has sort of been kind of secretly married for five years and now his estranged wife is suing him for abandonment.

During a break in a court hearing on Friday, Sarantakos displayed his consummate showmanship and blazing originality when he gestured to his wife's lawyer and remarked, "I can make him disappear."

Get it? Because he's a magician! Presto shazam!

[Ed. note: pictured is an illusionist far more talented than Criss Angel.]