Hollywood Mom Tori Spelling Takes Her Kids to School

(Story here)

Fundamentalist Christians in Maine have announced plans to circle some of the state's building for an hour this Sunday to implore God to fix stuff.
God is judging His people by giving us bad rulers. We have been apathetic and lazy, and have removed ourselves from making an impact on our culture for Christ. We have the leaders we deserve.

Our problem is not gay rights, gay marriage or abortion. These things are consequences of our own “wicked ways”. We have abandoned our nation by not working to ensure the civil government has rightwous [sic] laws. As we’ve abdicated, evil has come to fill the void. God’s people is reaping now what we’ve sown over the past fifty years.

The good news is God is in the business of fixing broken things. God can heal broken hearts, and He has promised to heal our land.

We’re asking God’s people all across the state of Maine to stop what they’re doing for one hour this Lord’s day, from 3:31PM-4:31PM, the last hour of daylight, and humble themselves, pray and seek His face.Okay. Well, according to the logo, it's 3:29 to 4:29. Dammit, I hate disorganized people, even when they're Christian. I don't want to get there at 3:29 and stand around looking all stupid waiting for everybody else to show up.
If you’d like together [sic] with other believers, we will be meeting to join hands to encircle all physical representations of the civil magistrate, including the major civic centers, city and town halls, and courthouses across the state.Now, personally, I'm thinking they should start by asking God to fix something small. Maybe encircle a computer that runs Windows Vista. Still, you've got to admire their ambition. If you're like-minded and you're in the neighborhood, think about dropping by here:


Just as an aside, though, if you're going to awaken the homosexual community, do it with a cinnamon latté.

Me, I'll be praying with these guys:


And I hope you'll join me. It's gonna take a ton of faithful to battle the evil known as Enchirito.

Today's Quiz

Bowing to the needs of their adoring public, Wal-Mart now sells coffins online. As you'd expect from the world's biggest store that stocks both Pampers and birth control pills, these coffins reflect an odd, middle-American slant. See if you can tell which of the options below are offered in Wal-Mart coffins and which exist solely on my wish list.

1. Blue interior for dad
2. Pink interior for mom
3. Scotchgarded interior for grandpa
4. Details copied from DaVinci's Last Supper
5. Sleep Number mattress
6. Precision pinstriping for dead high-powered executives
7. Pastel-colored Thomas Kinkade "Knockin' on Heaven's Gate" edition
8. Budget coffin for Hispanics
9. Patriotic "Stars and Stripes" edition
10. Cup holder
11. Extended dimensions for oversized corpses
12. Gun rack
13. Tiny speakers playing Toby Keith for all eternity



ANSWERS:1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 9 and 11 are real.

Only read this if you Googled The Long Count by the National, currently playing at BAM.

There are nine billion songs in existence, and I've never had a problem adding new ones to the catalog. When Sting writes another easy-listening opus, I don't complain. Maybe there's some housewife in Santa Monica who's scared of world music by ethnic folk. When Elvis Costello shits out another loser, I don't say a word, because elevators need music too. But during the pretentious little snoozefest The Long Count last night, suddenly I realized the category needed a velvet rope to protect it. Plus a burly doorman to tell the writers, "Hey, dudes, sorry, but the 'song' category is full. Maybe we'll let some of these things in when, like, Ethel Merman Disco goes out of print."

From the playbill:[A]s you might expect, the narrative of the Long Count, which uses a counting system based on non-repeating sequences of thirteen-day numbers and 20-day names that combine to form a divinatory 260-day calendar that simultaneously represents the transit of Venus, the length of a typical pregnancy and the growth cycle of corn, also transcends mere linear time.Deftly answering the question, "Why does the music stink?"
"'We can go, go, go," sings Kim Deal, quoting Denny Doyle in the 1975 World Series, who thought he heard the Sox third-base coach Don Zimmer yelling "Go, go, go!" "No, no, no, this has not worked out well," sings Kelley Deal in "Bull Run," recalling that in reality, Zimmer was screaming, "No! No! No!" and also referencing the destruction of three worlds, or designs, before our own.Succinctly answering the question, "Why do the lyrics stink?"

When your six-year-old niece puts on a puppet show about a snowman who wants to be an astronaut, it's cute. It's fun. It's adorable. Should your niece happen to secure funding to mount this production, though, and signs Benicio Del Toro to play the snowman and Randy Newman to write the score, though, that cuteness is probably going to disappear. Now it'll just be a bloated mess. Perhaps The Long Count actually might work on some small scale -- say, some hippie chick singing the songs in a subway station in between weaving beads into her hair -- but as an offering by an actual arts institution it's insulting. It's an argument against funding avant garde art, because at some point somebody with sense should have gone up to these people and said, "Um, let's do something to turn this into non-crap."

The Metropolitan Transit Authority, New York's agency in charge of public transportation, has announced its plans to spend four billion dollars over the next six years to place illuminated status boards in every Manhattan subway station.

"Our riders have consistently complained in that subway service just stinks," MTA chairman Jay Walder said. "While we don't necessarily agree with these complaints, we've decided to be proactive about them. With the new status boards we'll be able to keep riders continuously updated, so instead of them standing there cynically assuming it'll be three hours before the next train arrives, they'll know for certain it'll be three hours before the next train arrives."

Governor Schwarzenegger's Veto Letter

Well, girlfriends, the shit has finally hit the fan. Thin-skinned California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has finally snapped, snittily sending this snippy little missive to the writers of a bill he didn't like:


Just in case you missed it, read his true meaning down the left margin, in the first letters of each line.

Lucky for California, their entire government doesn't consist of eight-year-old girls. I'm proud to say the Democrats showed respect and sensitivity in their reply, posted exclusively here:

Science Thoughts

I was thinking about science and technology and it kind of freaked me out. I mean, it's great that we've made all these advances, but it seems like ethically it's spiraling out of control. Like, I'm not real comfortable knowing people can get my DNA off, like, a letter I sent.

In the past, this wasn't an issue, but now it's a serious thing. In maybe two or three years someone might be able to take that DNA and clone me. That gives me the creeps! I send somebody a letter, and then without my participation or knowledge there could be hundreds of little copies of me running around.

Like I say, it freaks me out, and something has to be done. Steps need to be taken. In the short term, though, at the very least, I'm going to stop masturbating on all my mail.

Ex-Letterman staff writer Nell Scovill tells what it's like working for Dave:
Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.Does the entire article consist of Nell interviewing herself? No. Does it feel like you're taking a pop quiz when you're reading this? Yes. Did she send herself flowers and thank herself for the great interview afterward? Signs point to "Yes."

According to a Playgirl spokesperson, the Levi Johnston photo spread is proceeding nicely, and readers will be "enthralled" by the result.

"'Enthralled'?" you ask. "What the hell does that mean?"

We did a Google search of the adjectives Playgirl spokespeople have used in the past and mapped them to the actual inches shown by the models in the subsequent photo shoots to come up with a foolproof predictor of a centerfold's penis length.

Embittered: 1 inches
Chagrined: 2 inches
Disenchanted: 3 inches
Indifferent: 4 inches
Blasé: 5 inches
Satisfied: 6 inches
Intrigued: 7 inches
Enthralled: 8 inches
Jubilant: 9 inches
Bewitched: 10 inches
Befuddled: 11 inches
Bamboozled: 12 inches
Stumped: 13+ inches

The New Grapes of Wrath

He applies to be on hundreds of reality shows but gets rejected by all of them. Then, in line at Project Runway, he steps on the ostrich-feather boa of a Brooklyn queen who slices him in the stomach with pinking shears.

Now that he's got flabby abs, Tom Joad ("As in Just the One America Desires!") knows no show on earth will have him. He and his girlfriend Charlene are leaving Hollywood via Greyhound bus in search of gainful employment somewhere with blue skies and open fields and Wal-Marts as far as the eye can see.

As Tom boards the bus, he says goodbye to his unpaid interns.

"Remember, my friends, this is not defeat: this is retreat. Sure, there are eight hundred million people in America and only three major networks, but I will not give up hope. One day soon you'll see me again. Until then, remember me.

"Wherever there's a tattooed black dude drinking a milkshake made out of monkey guts and a sea otter, I'll be there. Wherever there's a brain-dead hotel heiress pretending a fat dude's her BFF, I'll be there. Wherever there's a fake-boobed model spooning in a hammock with a naked gay guy, I'll be there. Wherever there's a skate-punk hitting his buddy in the balls with a ball-peen hammer and posting it on YouTube, I'll be there. Wherever there's a purple-haired kid making a sweater vest out of Saran Wrap and a raccoon, I'll be there.

"I'll be in the way Real Housewives get hammered and call each other trannies. I'll be in the way producers will give you a brand new home if you've got the disease they're looking for. And when people are calling up American Idol and voting for the worst, or begging them to bring back that ditzy, drug-addled judge, I'll be there too."

As the couple ride the piss-soaked gas guzzler through America's armpit, they discuss the fears and difficulties they have had, but recognize that they have come out the other side. Charlene concludes the film, saying:

"I ain't never gonna be scared no more. I wuz, though. For a while it looked as though we wuz beat. Looked like we didn't have a friend in the whole wide world. Made me feel kinda bad and scared too, like we wuz lost. But I wuz wrong. Rich fellas show up on TV and they get cancelled, and their kids show up on TV and they get cancelled too, but we keep on coming. We're the people that live. They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll be famous one day, Pa, cos we're the people, and we got dogs that can bark 'mama.'"

Wedding Announcement

Ivanka M. Trump was married Sunday to Jared Kushner at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N. J.

The bride, 27, was born wealthy. She works for her father and used some of his money to start a jewelry design business.

The bridegroom, 28, was also born wealthy. He works for his father and used some of his money to buy a newspaper that's currently losing two million dollars a year.

The bride's father, Donald Trump, was also born wealthy. His businesses have filed for bankruptcy four times, and he's been sued more than a hundred times. The bride's mother Ivana was dumped by her father long ago in lieu of a series of trophy wives.

The bridegroom's father, Charles Kushner, was also born wealthy. He has been convicted of witness tampering, tax evasion and making illegal campaign contributions. He served nearly two years in jail.

The bride will keep her father's name, as well as whatever cash he has that isn't confiscated in future bankruptcies.

The couple have announced plans to honeymoon in countries that have good weather, pleasant scenery, and no extradition treaties with the United States. They request that, in lieu of wedding gifts, a donation is made, in their name, to them.

So, after a long day yesterday I come home to a whole bunch of phone messages, but one in particular stood out. "Mr. Hans," a solemn voice intoned, "this is Mr. Wanamaker with CitiBank. At your earliest possible convenience could you please call 800-555-7281? Press extension 162784, then select options 9-7-4-9-2 and give the operator reference #7162APR72X0201z. Again, this is Mr. Wanamaker at CitiBank."

I'd just opened my account like a week before, so obviously something had gone horribly wrong. Did my initial deposit bounce? God forbid, had somebody intercepted my new checks in the mail and emptied out my account? Or did they just decide I didn't have enough cash to make it worth their while?

It was late at night, so I waited until this morning, and the second my eyes opened I ran for the phone. Dialed the number. "We are currently experiencing an extremely high call volume," a recording said. Okay, I waited. Punched in the extension. "All of our operators are busy right now." Waited more. Selected the options. "Your call is important to us." Waited some more, but least now I was connected to the right department.

Finally, someone picked up, and I read the reference number to her. "Could you give me your date of birth to verify your identity?" I did. "Mother's maiden name?" Gave it.

Pause.

"We just wanted to thank you for choosing to bank with CitiBank," she said.

Police in Cleveland said a man waiting for a bus was attacked by four men who took money and his chicken dinner. The 64-year-old victim had just bought the chicken and was waiting for a bus to take him home for dinner. His assailants made off with the food and $17.

The Cleveland County Sheriff's Department has issued an APB for four white men in their twenties who are smiling and have really clean fingers.

A woman who was surprised by an intruder in the front room of her home grabbed the closest thing she could find to scare him off: a plastic toy bat belonging to her three-year-old son.

The woman had just finished taking a bath when she walked into the front room, where she saw a man standing over her son, who was sleeping in a recliner.

She yelled for him to leave but he refused, and that's when she grabbed the bat.

Police say the woman swung at the man eight times and missed every time, but when she started crying he fell down and pretended to be hurt.

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will be disappearing soon!

Okay, who's the a**hole who called Sheila Ziffel?

Busy day ahead for me, so I'll just quickly tell you about what happened yesterday.

I was at the bank filling out a deposit ticket when I noticed an iPhone just sitting there on the counter. There was nobody around, so it was obvious somebody had forgotten it. Naturally I was curious: I'd heard great things about them, but my friends had never actually trusted me enough to touch theirs. I tapped buttons cautiously and I swear, it was like a whole new universe of wonder opened up. It was astounding! I found music and games and satellite pictures of my apartment and weather and travel information, all with just the tap of a finger. This tiny thing did everything my computer did, except like eighty times faster and without crashing once. I tell you, I had no idea! No wonder Apple stock is at a record high.

I must have played with it for fourteen hours, but eventually my conscience overcame my excitement and I called the phone's owner and she said Oh Roman, you are so honest and friendly and a bright light in my otherwise miserable New York existence, thank you for returning my phone.

Anyway, like I say, I have too much to do today, so I'll see you all tomorrow.

----------------
Sheila Ziffel
Attorney at Law
Sent from my iPhone

They're well-preserved, I'll give them that, but I still ain't getting near gray pubes.

I'm not really enjoying Dan Brown's new novel The Lost Symbol. First, it's hard to take it seriously now that I know Robert Langdon looks like Tom Hanks. I half expect him to start talking to a volleyball, or throw on a flowery dress and move into a women's dorm.

But the main problem is, this is a book about science written by a Mormon. It reminds me of that movie where Sally Field plays America's best-loved stand-up comedian. She gets on stage and says stuff like, "Did you hear about the worm who was all puckered up? He was really in a pickle!" and the audience literally dissolves in hysterics.

In The Lost Symbol there's a ridiculous discussion where Peter Solomon, the brilliant Renaissance billionaire/mystic who's Tom Hanks' mentor, tells his sister Katherine that ancient civilizations knew more about science than we do. Take polarity, for instance: the "positive/negative balance of the subatomic realm." It was discussed by Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita over two thousand years ago! Yes, you probably didn't realize he was referring to protons and electrons when he said there was both good and bad in every little thing.

And take string theory. You might assume it's a whole new field -- but you'd be wrong, because reputable geologists found sisal in King Tut's tomb! Early mystics literally knew it all! We're just rediscovering it! Distinguished botanists found fossils in Egypt that show somebody putting a cat in a box!

This is science for idiots, for morons, for Nostradamus fans. This is for folks who take a quatrain like

At forty-five degrees the sky will burn,
Fire to approach the great new city:
In an instant a great scattered flame will leap up,
When one will want to demand proof of the Normans.

and decide it predicts the invention of the Foreman Grill.

Brown spouts an amazing line that seems to summarize his belief system: "Every generation's breakthroughs are proven false by the next generation's technology."

Yes, it's about time somebody deflated boobholes like Galileo and Salk. I remember when we realized the moon really is made of cheese, and found out that the polio vaccine is just chicken broth mixed with the Colonel's eleven herbs and spices. But I swear to God, I don't think I could go on if I found out the Slankie really isn't a sleeping bag or a blankie.

On the bright side, I'm sure the scientific community will find this statement quite helpful. Let's call it Dan Brown's Law: Whenever a scientist makes a breakthrough, assume the opposite is true. Gravity? No such thing! Really, everything in the universe is covered with invisible double-stick tape. DNA? Meaningless! Actually they're little spiral staircases installed in the body by gay corpuscles. Relativity? You know, I still don't understand what relativity is about.

But me, I'm no idiot: I know if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. I too want to be a best-selling writer, so I'm currently working on two future classics: a Victorian romance where the heroine is a breathtaking young beauty who has a rutabaga for a nose, and a historical epic about a brilliant poet whose magnum opus starts "There once was a woman named Regina. . . . "

Sure, they might sound feeble on paper, but Nostradamus swears it's Oscar time for Tom.

Police in Australia matched blood taken from an engorged leech found at a robbery scene to a suspect.

The leech was found shortly after officers arrived the rural property in Tasmania, whose elderly resident had been robbed.

The leech was dissected, and the blood was found to match that of Peter Alec Cannon, who had been arrested and charged with drug offenses. Mr. Cannon has now been charged with the robbery.

Mr. Cannon says it's own fault that he was caught, because he realized years ago that Hugo ran like shit.

A New York artist makes a living by bodypainting surreal designs and faces onto naked women.

Andy Golub, 43, specialises in daubing exotic patterns onto female skin, covering groups of girls from top-to-toe in his vivid designs that frequently take three or four hours to complete.

Mr. Golub admits he could probably whip one out in half an hour if he used his right hand.

I went to the grocery store this morning and there was a sign in the window that read "ALL LIQUID $2.99." So I went inside and said, "Okay, give me a bottle of Scotch."

I got real excited about this until I realized it was a U2 concert.

They ask, "But how did it make your ears bigger? And how did it shrink your nose?"

Actor Nicolas Cage filed a $20 million lawsuit against his former business manager, accusing him of negligence and fraud that sent the star "down a path toward financial ruin."

Cage claimed that his recently-fired business manager had failed to pay taxes and made speculative and risky real estate investments. He's asking for $20 million in damages, saying that his reputation has been "irreparably tarnished."

The business manager plans to show the court the poster for National Treasure and then go home.

According to the Obama administration, the $787 billion stimulus package has been a great success for employment, either creating or saving 250,000 education jobs that would have been lost.

In an unrelated note, today Warren Buffett cornered the market in volcano kits and fugly clogs.

British TV viewers are up in arms after a BBC program rewrote the Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme to give it a happy ending.

For something called the CBeebies show, the line after "All the king's horses and all the king's men" was changed from "couldn't put Humpty together again" to "made Humpty Dumpty happy again."

According to viewers, the show also had Little Miss Muffet making friends with the spider, and Hansel and Gretel's witch getting a job on Fox News.

A Chinese farmer with no scientific training has built a homemade submarine out of recycled trash such as oil drums, old cameras, and medical supplies.

For the ship's maiden voyage he took it down to the bottom of a local river where it proved both maneuverable and seaworthy.

Meanwhile, right now Heidi Pratt is screaming hysterically at a reporter from the Singapore Times, and Spencer is upstairs in a box.

A Louisiana justice of the peace has refused to marry an interracial couple.

Keith Bardwell, employed by the Tangipahoa Parish, says it is his experience that most interracial marriages do not last long. "I'm not a racist," he told reporters. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom."

Well, I tend to believe the guy. I mean, I've got nothing about UPS delivery men and I'd only give them one of those three.

Using stem cells, scientists have grown part of a mouse's heart, and then they made it beat.

Causing the four hundred mice I've caught in my basement this week to scream, "Hello? What we need are necks!"

One famous gay man dies young, and one semi-famous gay man commits suicide. That officially makes Premature Gay Deaths a trend, and prompts Britain's Daily Mail to print an opinion piece by reporter Jan Moir in which she questions whether, due to our obvious dysfunction, gays really deserve "tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships."

Of course, in her defense, the recent passings of Miranda Richardson, Heath Ledger, and Billy Mays previously led Ms. Moir to call for the criminalization of skiing, hunkiness, and the Sham-Wow.

Where the Wild Things Are has one major problem: it has the emotional depth and plot of a ten-page book. It's about a twelve-year-old runaway who interacts with creatures ranging in emotional age from three to forty-five, so needless to say, the scope and the conflicts are limited. Instead of war we get dirt-clod fights. Instead of empire-building we get forts. Nobody needs a heart, or a brain, or nerve: they just need to get along.

Still, it's a work of art that makes the output of half of New York's galleries look like chicken fat. The cinematography is gorgeous, the puppetry is breathtaking, the script has genius moments, and the soundtrack deserves the Academy Award. Find a seat far from kids and Michael Bay fans and you'll be Where the Smart Things Are.

Songs on the New Bob Dylan Christmas Album

All I Really Want for Christmas
Don't Think Twice, It's Fluffy and White
Just Like Ye Merry Gentlemen
Gotta Serve Some Santa
Positively North Pole
Knockin' on Santa's Door
Watching the Reindeer Glow
Like a Rolling Snowball
Plinga Pling Pling (Little Tambourine Man)
Just Like Tiny Tim's Blues
A Fluffy Snow's Gonna Fall
Reindeer Day Women Nos. 12 & 35
Stuck Inside an Igloo with King Wenceslaus Again

Safety experts say hybrid cars are so quiet they're dangerous. Some manufacturers, in fact, are adding digitally-created noises that will be pumped out of speakers on the car bumpers.

"Well, it's about time!" say people too dumb to look up from their cellphones.

Are you smarter than a fifth grader? Fat chance! In fact, I'll bet you can't even match first graders here.

Well, first graders from other countries, but still. See if you can identify the sounds that foreign animals make.

1. You're near the old Checkpoint Charlie and hear Tschiwitt tschiwitt tschiwitt coming from behind a fragment of the Wall. Which of these facts would you share with your German hosts?

(a) During the war, generals used to communicate with the troops by tying notes to their legs.
(b) If you force-feed these guys until they're fat, their livers are absolutely delicious.
(c) I have a shirt that's woven from the stuff these things squirt out their asses.

2. You're at a farm outside of Tokyo and you hear something calling Nyan nyan from behind the barn. What are you more likely to tell your Japanese hosts about this animal?

(a) Where I come from, we repeatedly yank on their udders and then drink the stuff that comes out.
(b) Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote a really popular musical about them.
(c) Did you know they feed their babies by vomiting predigested food in their mouths?

3. In the Presidential Box at Teatro dell'Opera in Rome you hear something go Squit, squit, squit. What will you tell your seatmate, the Count?

(a) I went to a race once where one broke its leg and somebody came out and shot it.
(b) When I was a kid I had this cool toy that trapped a bunch of these guys behind clear plastic so I could watch them tunnel around.
(c) In America there's a children's rhyme about how a farmer's wife disfigured three of these that were already blind.

4. You're in the rural flatlands of Malmö, and hear Ock-ock! coming from a neighbor's yard. What are you more likely to say to your Swedish friends?

(a) In America there's a Colonel who fries these things with eleven herbs and spices.
(b) Those guys really freak me out with their pointy horns and Satan eyeballs.
(c) I heard Catherine the Great was killed while she was getting fucked by one.

5. You're guzzling ouzo in Greece with a half-dressed sailor and hear something go Kikiriku! Which of these will you share with your new friend?

(a) Once when I was a kid I found one of those on a lilypad behind my house.
(b) Please don't tell me it's time to get up.
(c) There's this really famous gay magician in Las Vegas who was nearly clawed to death by one.

6. You're at Zsa Zsa Gabor's house when you hear something going Lefety lefety. Which would you say to your Hungarian host?

(a) These guys are endangered partly because they eat nothing but eucalyptus leaves.
(b) I leave water out for mine so he doesn't have to drink out of the toilet bowl.
(c) Good god, Zsa Zsa, better cut back on his snacks or he's going to wear off all the hair between his legs.



ANSWERS: 1a, 2b, 3c, 4a, 5b, 6b

Ultimate Fighting champ Chuck Liddell has been dumped from ''Dancing With the Stars.''

The 39-year-old Liddell and his professional partner, Anna Trebunskaya, earned praise for their entertaining country two-step Monday, but the pair collected just 17 points out of 30 to take the bottom slot.

Before exiting, Trebunskaya told Liddell how much he meant to her. ''You are my bear and you are my hippo,'' she declared.

"Hell, yeah!" Paula Abdul screamed at her TV.

Hell is a kitchen where there's a cooking challenge every night. The competitors are given two hours and four mystery ingredients, and they have to make an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert.

Gordon Ramsay oversees the chefs. "Oh, for fuck's sake!" he screams when someone drops a plate. "Fuck off!" he yells when somebody burns toast. "What the fuck is this?" he hollers when someone sends him an Edible Arrangement for his birthday.

Alton Brown provides color commentary. "What is bluefin tuna, you ask? Well, the ancient Greeks called them the 'undersea woodchuck.'"

Jeffrey Steingarten is the judge. "Well, I don't like this at all," he says before actually swallowing any of it. He shovels in another forkful because there's some empty space in his mouth toward the back. "I'dth never payth for thith."

Then Bobby Flay wins.

It's true: every successful person lied to get where they are. In fact, I've read so many lies recently I can't keep them all straight. See if you can tell which of the following claims were supposedly made by Tracy Anderson, fitness trainer to stars like Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow, and which were made by TV chef Robert Irvine, current host of the Food Network's Dinner Impossible.

(1) Owned a castle in Scotland
(2) Had an ex who played for the Knicks
(3) Was knighted by Queen Elizabeth
(4) Has a bachelor's degree from the University of Leeds
(5) Was a White House chef
(6) Was one of the Power Rangers
(7) Worked on Prince Charles and Princess Diana's wedding cake
(8) Once starred in the musical Cats



ANSWERS: (1), (3), (4), (5) and (7) are Robert Irvine; (2), (6), and (8) are Tracy Anderson

So Bernie Madoff is chilling around the jail's ball field, just bullshitting with this other con about the stock market. Knowing Bernie, you know things are gonna heat up. Angry words are exchanged and threats are made, but neither side backs down. Maybe Bernie's buddy's got him down as some kinda patsy, because he gives Bernie a healthy shove.

Naturally, our man ain't taking it. Bernie shoves the dude even harder, with both hands, and his attacker goes flying to the dirt. Bernie hovers over the dude, red-faced and glaring, and when the guy finally retakes his feet and scampers off, the twenty-something inmates who have watched this exchange give Bernie major props in street cred.

Thus goes another day at the Dustin Diamond Correctional Facility.

(Via Gawker.)

The Chicago Cubs baseball team filed for bankruptcy on Monday as part of the team's planned sale, according to court documents.

The Cubs bankruptcy is aimed at shedding claims on the team's assets. Major League Baseball is listed as a creditor for an undetermined amount, and the Chicago Cubs Charities are listed as owed $1.12 billion.

Well, we're still fans of America's Greatest Sport, say ten thousand kids who would have gotten kidney transplants.

Boxer David Haye certainly values trash talk when it comes to psyching out an opponent. Haye has previously called world heavyweight champion Nikolai Valuev "the ugliest thing I have ever seen," but he went even further in preparation for their upcoming bout in Germany.

"He's an ugly type of fighter, he tries to lean on you, tries to brawl and comes out with a really hairy chest that gets matted and is disgusting. . . . The size I am, I sort of come up to his chest . . . [and] I've never been a big fan of the matted hair in my face."

Oh. Gotcha. Getting repeatedly walloped by a seven-foot giant: not so bad. Having chest hair rubbed in your face: AIEEE!

I'm thinking at least a third of the gay men in America will head to their local sports bars to watch this bout. And the next day there'll be ten thousand new photos on AwkwardBoners.com.

The Tate Modern has unveiled its latest installation: 4000 square feet of pitch darkness.

The London gallery's Turbine Hall entrance now houses a vast metal container measuring 45 feet in height and 90 feet in length that contains no light whatsoever.

Polish artist Miroslaw Balka describes the pitch darkness of his masterwork as a metaphor for the fragility of life.

Visitors have been quite vocal about the piece, with the vast majority saying, "Fuck! Excuse me. Fuck! Excuse me. Fuck! Excuse me. . . . "

Last year the world's biggest most expensive science experiment -- the nine-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider -- broke down, and physicists are working hard to get it back in shape.

Two physicists, however, say the work is futile. Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle" that the collider was designed to produce, might be so abhorrent to nature that it would make time ripple backward to prevent it from being born.

Sounds good to us, say thirty-eight kids who got sucked back into Octomom.

Mayan Dude: "Would Everybody PLEASE Stop Asking Me About 2012?"

Worrying About the Recession Has Banished Joan Collins to McDonalds

Lucky sank her pristine porcelain teeth into the triple-decked burger. Her canines slid through the yeasty bread but encountered the slightest hesitance with the oatmeal-textured beef. It had been years since she'd had such meatiness within her grasp. She'd completely forgotten how through some dark magic the artificial flavoring had perfectly captured the essence of flame-broiled cow. The dusky juices dripped down the back of her throat as the tang of a perky dill wedge rang in her head and a squirt of secret sauce splashed against the roof of her mouth.

"YES! YES! OH, YES!" she screamed as her violet eyes rolled back, like a gay shark in a feeding frenzy. Wait, she thought, her glossy peepers dancing across the restaurant's neon orange interior: had she actually shrieked that out loud, or was it confined within her immaculately-coiffed head? It didn't matter. She was swept away, intoxicated, hypnotized by the burger's juicy meatiness, and like a junkie with a dime bag she was unable to tear herself away.

In an adjoining booth, three-year-old Chauncey Wopner watched as Lucky's head bobbed up and down with a jungle rhythm, each dunk wresting off another hunk of her resigned prey. It was only when the entire carnivorous treat was gone that the animal portion of her brain receded and she once again resumed her identity as the wildly successful Valentino-clad CEO of Portsmouth Associates, the number-one travel agency in the mid-Atlantic region that specialized in Tuscany.

Bachelors had chased after Lucky for years -- from brash cattle baron Tex McInerney to one-eyed banker Stavros Nikropolos -- but ten minutes from now she'd make them look like three-legged dogs after she felt that first tentative cramp in her tiny stomach and made a mad dash for her personal marzipan-hued ladies room bedecked with Frechet linens and a glass jar holding some air-freshening reeds.

Barack Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

And in unrelated news, Carmen Faquiero, a college student in Bolivia, has been named Miss Universe 2010 after promising everyone that she's really, really pretty.

LEBANON, Pa. (AP) -- A soccer mom who was thrust into the gun-rights debate after taking a loaded pistol to youth sports events was killed by her husband Friday.

Meleanie Hain became a voice of the gun-rights movement last year when she fought for the right to carry a holstered pistol at her young daughter's soccer games. ''I'm just a soccer mom who has always openly carried [a firearm], and I've never had a problem before,'' Hain declared last fall.

"Well, that was a first!" her ghost in heaven says.

The creative mind is never bored. There's an endless list of things one can do. Build a tiny replica of Krakatoa out of chocolate cake and make it erupt strawberry ganache. Make an apple doll of Mick Jagger and film it dancing around to "Jumping Jack Flash." Or recreate scenes from the Bible using Lego building blocks.

That last item, at least, is online at The Brick Testament, and I tell you, it's a significant piece of work. It's got more nudity and violence than Spike TV's primetime, but it's still incredibly educational. For instance, I didn't realize you weren't welcome in church if your testicles have been crushed.


You might say, my God, I'll bet that thing gets grisly, but the site doesn't explore gore just for the sake of it. For instance, things could have gone horribly awry when illustrating God's dictates on menstruation. Instead, the specifics are left to the imagination, and we simply get a woman in a chair.


This is the only scene I found that I would argue with, because the woman should at least be frowning, and maybe eating Kettle Korn.

Here's an illustration of the Bible's words on bestiality. I'm thinking some poetic license has been taken here, because I don't recall Matthew, Mark, Luke or John saying anything about rabbit voyeurs.


Here's a woman presenting herself to an animal. Evidently that's wrong too.


When I first saw that picture I wanted to scream "IT'S A TRAP!" because you know even when animals do something nasty, the Bible says you have to kill them too.


And inevitably here comes Leviticus. Here's a dude spilling his seed. I just hope he's not watching Password.


This could be a photo of the night I met Raoul:


I didn't realize Hillary Clinton was mentioned in the Word of God.


Here's another illustration of the Bible's words against transvestism. It's not particularly effective, because it left me hoping these guys go on a musical tour to Alice Springs, Australia. I didn't realize you could buy a Lego version of Aretha Franklin's inaugural hat.


Anyway, go forth and explore The Brick Testament. It's brilliant. Unfortunately, a few passages had to be changed, apparently for legal reasons, but I don't think it lessens the impact of Jesus' final words when, at the Last Supper, he implores his apostles, "Take this, all of you, and eat it -- but for God's sake keep it away from children under three."