"Mankind’s brain power has reached its peak and it is physically impossible for us to become any smarter, they say."

The Apes ruled the planet, with a solid $54m. The Smurfs held up pretty well with $21M. Cowboys and Aliens sank like a stone, but was still able to hold on to third place because The Change-Up bombed. The preliminary estimates show The Change-Up in fourth place, but its actual position could be as low as seventh when the numbers are finalized, because there is a 4-way logjam right around $13M.

"'“They’re both experienced losers who we’re hoping will come in here and help us surge right to the bottom of the NL Central. Not only do we think they’ll take our offense and defense to a whole new level of horrible, but overall, I think this will prove to Pirate fans that this team is committed to losing for years to come.'

Huntington reportedly urged young players not to rely on their new stars, emphasizing that a successful nosedive would require everyone to play like shit."

"Deputies said they were able to find Bausch, who was in his truck along with the bird."

It's a good enough tip, but "dating British women" is not an option for all of us.

There's not sense in ridiculing them. It only makes them more famous.

I didn't make that shit up, and it's not from a satire site.

"Chemists have figured out that the velvet from immature deer antlers includes insulin-like growth factor, or IGF-1, which mediates the level of human growth hormone in the body, and is also banned by MLB and the World Anti-Doping Agency, among others, for its muscle-building and fat-cutting effects."

This is a combination of scientific theory and engineering application.

Summary:

Do corked bats work?

Not for power/distance. Corking actually reduces the distance a batted ball will travel. While the lighter bat increases bat speed, that is overcome by the reduced coefficient of restitution. HOWEVER: a corked bat may help in certain situations, because it allows the batter to react faster and catch up with a pitch he might otherwise have missed.

Are modern balls juiced?

Not at all. They tested balls from the current era against balls from the 70s. Same results.

Does Colorado's humidor theory work?

Yes. That process is scientifically valid. The procedure used by the Rockies should take about 14 feet off each fly ball, on average. That's enough to keep some balls in the park.

The 6'5" slugger hit a Mantle/McGwire shot in batting practice. That's a ticket-seller for the Marlins, because their BP is now more entertaining than their games.

How the hell does one become famous by being the sister of the boyfriend of the daughter of somebody famous? By that definition, we are pretty much all celebrities.

Hey, Playgirl. I took a piss next to George Maharis once, so I'll show you my dick and trash his.

Er, not that I was looking at George Maharis's dick.

Except in a very manly way, of course.

OK, I didn't really see it, but I'll make up anything you like. It's not like he's going to come forward and flash his dick to refute me.

By the way, if you're playing the "alive or dead" game with George Maharis - alive.

By the way, if you're playing the "gay or straight" game with George Maharis, Wikipedia notes: "On November 21, 1974, Maharis was arrested and charged with Commission of a Lewd Act after being caught having sex with Perfecto Telles, a 33-year old hairdresser, in the men's room of a Los Angeles gas station."

Geez - maybe he WILL come forward and flash his dick to refute me!

Reader comment:

Stop looking at my dick.

Your fan,

George Maharis

Rise of the Planet of the Apes took in a solid $20M, about as expected. The Change-Up finished in a virtual tie for third with C&A, with both films in the $5M range.

So where does this occur? Iran? Turkmenistan?

How about the Seattle suburbs?

I'm going to have to score this one for actor Brian Cox, this lifting him into a tie for third with Jesus and Charles Manson. Russell Brand holds down second place in spooky apparitions, with Weird Al firmly ensconced in first.

What a sap.

"It's a company that was incorporated, donated a million to Romney's PAC, then dissolved."

I'm here to say to you crooked politicians of all stripes that you don't need to do that. My company will be happy to donate your money to the PAC of the candidate of your choice - for a small commission. Right wing, Stalinist, left wing, Nazi, or just an utter douchebag - we don't care, as long as your check is good.

"I’ve got to give credit to the people of RISD. I mean, let’s face it, these dudes and lady dudes know all too well that they’re not exactly athletic juggernauts and so they’ve decided to have some fun with it and they have named their teams The Nads. Yes, the Nads. Apparently, during hockey games, a mascot -– a giant caped penis named Scrotie –- leads raucous drunken cheers and apparently has been known to try to ram the goalposts tip first. Look, I’ve written a lot of weird shit in this article, and this is probably the weirdest of them all but believe it or not, everything I just wrote about the Nads is true. At least according to the Internet. And the Internet would never lie. Right?"

"It has a low opinion of men, a lower opinion of women, and the lowest opinion of the intelligence of its audience. It is obscene, foulmouthed, scatological, creepy and perverted. Anyone who enjoys this film cannot fairly be considered an adult."

I wasn't going to see it, but now I'm givin' it some serious thought.

This was the first episode of 1960's Home Run Derby, and possibly the best, a close battle between two of the ten best players in history.

Surprise - 86% positive reviews for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Sample: "The rare summer blockbuster that gets more, not less, fun as it goes along."

Much less love (25%) for The Change-Up.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is expected to win first place by a mile with some $47.6M. The Change-Up is not expected to take the #2 spot from The Smurfs, but should finish with about $17M, battling for #3 against Cowboys and Aliens.

He's been associated with the MDA for nearly 60 years, and has hosted the telethon for about 45 years.

This is shocking.

Lebanon has an Attorney General.

"This week, Marvel Comics made headlines by replacing their Ultimate version of Peter Parker with a new half black, half Latino Spider-Man named Miles Morales. A lot of people are getting in a huff about it, but this is hardly the first time someone of African descent has replaced a caucasian super hero. In the past several decades, this has almost become a comic book tradition, and these are some prominent examples."

My favorite Bubba story involves his academic career at Michigan State, in which he became legendary by handing in an in-class essay - typed!

OK, Bubba was no Steven Hawking, but the man could play ball, and he was extremely likeable on camera.

He's really on fire. He leads all MLB in homers since July 1.

But here's the rub: the hot streak has raised his batting average to a mighty .215!

"She turned to train track therapy last year after hearing a rumor about an ethnic Chinese man who was partially paralyzed by a stroke going to the tracks to kill himself, but instead finding himself cured."

Interestingly enough, this is also the Republican plan for Universal Health Care.

And you just know that the trendy Hollywood types must be trying this. How long before Demi and Ashton are lying on the rails?

It's The Man once again trampling on the Bill of Rights.

And for two of those years, she was actually married to Larry King.

This news story is fucked up. It claims that the guy's name is Helsingborgs Dagblad, and even quotes him with lead-ins like "Dagblad later told The Local ..."

Helsingborgs Dagblad sounds like the name of a newspaper, not a person. Dagblad is a common word for daily newspapers in the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries, and I know Helsingborg is a city because I've been there, to ride a ferry to the similarly named Helsingor in Denmark. (The ride is so short that you can see each of those towns from the other, weather permitting.)

Helsingor, Denmark, by the way, was famously renamed Elsinore for the English ears by that ol' rapscallion Billy Shakespeare, in a little play he liked to call Hamlet.

If Billy could read this story, he might note that something is rotten in Denmark. Or at least across the sound in Sweden.

This oft-cited fact is a bit misleading.

1. The list she topped has only been in existence since 1992. On the old Billboard list, MJ also had five #1 hits from Bad.

2. Going farther back in time, the Beatles could not have had five #1 from the same album because all the singles were released at the same time, so they had to compete against one another.

But ...

On April 4, 1964, the Beatles had all five of the top five. In other words, they had five hits that outsold every other artist, and they had them all at the same time, although they came from two different albums. (They had 14 of the top 100 songs during the following week.) Katy had also five hits that outsold every other pop artist, but they happened in sequence. Is that more impressive than the moptops, or less?

Based on the IMDb ratings, it's a runaway victory for 2004. Six of the worst films of all time were made that year, including the two worst and #10. Impressive!

He issued an apology for using a term that "SOME find insensitive,” thus implying that many people find it completely appropriate, and that he himself found nothing at all offensive about using the term tar baby to refer to any black man, let alone the President of the United States.

By the way, those "some" he referred to include the editors/authors of the OED: "a derogatory term for a Black (U.S.) or a Maori (N.Z.)"

Ask your black friends how they feel about this term. You can bet they've all heard it, along with many similar terms. Here are the synonyms for tar baby at the Urban Dictionary: nigger, porch monkey, coon, spook, jungle bunny, jigaboo, spear chucker ...

And so on.

Chevy Chase and Richard Pryor get into the matter:



Gosh, I guess I have to issue an apology for calling this congressman an ignorant drooling racist cracker. Those are terms that "some" might find offensive. Especially if they are ignorant drooling racist crackers.

They say that in democracy you get the government you deserve. So I guess we deserve Mr Tar Baby, Anthony Weiner, Mr Macaca, Duke Cunningham, William Jefferson, Blago, and more.

Scary, isn't it?

"The couple asked for a lighter charge of public indecency, a misdemeanor. The court was unsympathetic to the request, reaffirming an earlier court ruling labeling sex in a car as a felony. The pair could be sentenced to three years in prison."

If you want to spin it from the Democratic side, your headline would be: "Obama is almost as popular as God."

"On the bright side for the Almighty, God is still more popular than House Speaker John Boehner."

A more interesting comparison would be "Satan vs Boehner." Tough call. Satan seems to be pretty good at his job.

All his pals wondered why he'd be watching Dirty Dancing instead of the soccer championships.

... and the mob knows where they are!

(Unless their name is an alias and they're actually in Delaware.)

"The cast of ‘Jersey Shore’ packed up and moved out of their Seaside Heights rental for the final time yesterday after filming seasons 4 and 5 of the show back to back. Most of the cast will now move on to various spin-off projects, but at least they went out the same way they came in; idiotic, repulsive and with no trace of dignity."

Pretty sure the author has never seen Roberto Benigni as Pinocchio.

DiCaprio took the top spot away from Depp. The next three slots: Sandler, Will Smith, Hanks.

Note: the actual year used by Forbes in the calculations goes from May 2010 to May 1, 2011. I'm not sure why they have chosen that as their fiscal year for actors.

"A vexed, infuriated populace stood by helplessly this weekend as one of the ugliest economic stand-offs in American history threatened to destabilize our nation and the global market at large. Finally, however, an accord has been reached, and we can rebuild our shattered system with the knowledge that Cowboys & Aliens indeed knocked off The Smurfs for the top box-office spot."

As compared to only 1% of Egyptians!

"We think the common ancestor lived in the Caucasus about 9,500 years ago."

Had to. Just about every 7-Eleven in Florida is close to the sea. Same reason why Aquaman and Namor often go to Florida to pick up chicks. (Or, in Aquaman's case, dudes)

You rarely see Spongebob on a crime spree in Nebraska.

Bottom line: they ran out of plot lines and they didn't save their money. They are broke and living in Spencer's parents' house.

Well, there are teabaggers, so why not douchebaggers?