Richard Jewell, whom the media (wrongly) tried and convicted of orchestrating that Olympic Park bombing back in 1996, is died, according to CNN.

I expect Jewell to issue an emphatic denial sometime early tomorrow.

Sen. Larry Craig said that he “overreacted and made a poor decision” in pleading guilty to disorderly conduct after his June arrest following an incident in a Minneapolis airport bathroom.

(CNN)

You know, every time I’ve been wrongly accused of seeing anonymous gay sex in an airport bathroom, my instinct has always been to plead guilty to get the whole mess behind me as quickly as possible, not clear my name.

That way, I can get back to having MORE anonymous gay sex in airport bathrooms SOONER.

I mean… NOT having more gay sex. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

So, Fox premiered a new show this week called Anchorwoman. The show was a reality-scripted hybrid, which absolutely screams SUREFIRE WINNER in television these days. The star was a former beauty pageant queen, who during the course of filming actually took over as the…

Oh, fuck it.

Fox cancelled the show after one airing. It would take longer for me to give you a decent snyopsis of the show than it did for Fox to shitcan the guy who greenlit the thing in the first place.

If the major networks had cancelled shows just because of poor viewership for their first episodes years ago, we might never have had long runs of sitcoms like “Cheers,” “Thirtysomething,” “Friends,” or “According to Jim.”

Man, that sounds friggin’ sweet.

New this week in the Outrageous and Ridiculous Claims Department, Kanye West says he and Justin Timberlake are this generation’s Prince and Michael Jackson, respectively. Astute music scholars will have recognized the parallels sooner, citing Prince’s early work where he often collaborated with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine and, in 1987, famously criticized then president Reagan for not “car[ing] about black people in leopard blouses and purple eyeliner.”

If Kanye’s right, (though, why would he start now), look for Timberlake to build a personal amusement park in his backyard, dangle his oddly-named children from his balcony, and shift ethnicity from white to, I’ll guess Asian, by 2010.

Also, “Dick in a Box” will take on an ironic and totally terrifying new meaning when JT enters into his pederast years.

Two big news stories were reported today involving mankind’s favorite appendage: The penis.

Woman Sets Fire to Ex-Husband’s Penis, blared one headline. And seriously, what could be worse than that?

I’ll tell you what: British dwarf’s penis gets stuck to hoover.

To quote that second article:

A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.

Frankly, I think “horribly” is redundant and unnecessary in that sentence. Is there any kind of “awry” that an act can go involving a penis stuck to a vacuum cleaner that comes up anything short of “horrible?” Answer: NO.

Unfortunately, as our friends at Fark might say, these two headlines do put the Painful Penis News Trifecta in play. I, for one, am putting on a cup.

Janeane “I Swear I Have a Vagina” Garofalo will be a regular on the upcoming season of 24.

It’s fitting, really. This season, Jack Bauer will be taking on right-wing propaganda, armed with only an apple peeler and his own sardonic wit… which Garofalo’s character will, of course, enhance.

Growing up, the conversations I had with my Dad about music were pretty much limited to Kenny G (Me: Dad, are you serious with this shit? Him: Shhhhh, just let KG do his thing), Michael Bolton (Him: I appreciate you going with your mother to the Michael Bolton concert. Me: Dad, he took off his shirt. And mom was cheering. Him: I don’t think you’re supposed to use the toilet scouring brush on your eyes like that.), and his unwavering conviction that hip-hop was just a passing fad (Him: Hip hop is a passing fad. Me: I’ve got to say, you’re pretty unwavering in that conviction.)

Given the context of the first conversation, I assumed it was a pretty safe bet that the guy didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about when it came to the third. I’d tell him, “sure it’s a passing fad old man,” smooth his hair, chuck his jaw and go back to listening to Das Efx.

Well apparently, I should stop chucking my old man’s jaw (and not just because he can still beat the shit out of me, and now without facing child abuse charges). According to a recent article in America’s foremost hip-hop journal Time Magazine, rap sales have declined 44% since the year 2000, and they don’t look like they’re bouncing back.

The article blames it on everything from a derth of new talent to an inability to “fool the white kids anymore.” But probably the most fascinating theory is from former Tribe Called Quest front-man Q-Tip, who noted that “When I first signed to Tommy Boy, [the A&R person] would take us to different shows and to art museums…There was real mentorship. Today that’s largely absent, and we see the results in the music and in the aesthetic.”

This makes total sense. You can totally see Q-Tip and the rest of Tribe rolling around to different shows and the Moma, digesting it all and going into the studio the next day to spit some ludicrous rhymes that name drop obscure Japanese art movements.

Now try to imagine a night of culture with today’s most popular rapper, The Game. It would probably look a lot like Grand Theft Auto but with less clothing and more face tattoos.

Every time we look up (approximately twice a week) Kevin Federline is making another savvy maneuver in his quest to secure custody of he and Britney Spears’ children. His latest move was to subpoena a worker from the Promises rehab clinic, where Spears spent two weeks ranting about the evils of her hair and people touching it. Britney’s latest move meanwhile was to have well publicized, anonymous sex with a college student in a hot tub.

Granted, we’re pretty certain a starving grizzly bear could sue Spears for custody, dunk the children in barbeque sauce instead of making a closing statement and still take them home. But we do have to admit: K Fed isn’t totally fucking this up the way we’d expected. Or his lawyers aren’t. Either way, we haven’t been this wrong about who was the brains behind a doomed partnership since we got a perm the day before Art Garfunkel’s first solo album dropped.

No joke, he’s hosting the Emmy awards.

I, for one, would love to see a signed letter from all the funny people who turned down the gig. It would say something like:

We all agree to co-host this shit together if you promise not to let Seacrest anywhere near the proceedings.

Love,
Genuinely Entertaining Celebrities Who Don’t Suck

He’s taken down terrorists, ninjas, street thugs and corrupt cops, but now, Steven Seagal is after the FBI and-sources close to the subject agree- this time, it’s personal. In 2002, the FBI began investigating Seagal under the suspicion that he hired a private detective to scare journalists out of writing negative reviews and now The Glimmer Man is demanding an apology.

Seagal genuinely believes, evidently, that if it wasn’t for the FBI’s troublesome interference, his last twelve movies would have skyrocketed his career, upgrading his status from “that forgettable karate guy who keeps getting fatter” to “Academy Award winning Megastar.” Instead, all twelve movies went straight to DVD.

I can just picture him now, waiting by his phone and eating Ring Dings. “I’d be fucking Scarlett Johansosn on George Clooney’s yacht this very second if it wasn’t for that damn FBI…”

I can’t say I blame the FBI for wanting to destroy his career. It’s very possible that Seagal brought these attacks on himself as he’s previously boasted that he is both Hard to Kill as well as Above the Law, and you just can’t make arrogant, outrageous claims like that and not expect some retaliation; you’re really treading On Deadly Ground and putting your career Under Siege. The FBI was simply Out For Justice and you can’t slight them for making an Executive Decision. What, just because you’re The Prince of Pistols you think that you’re Out of Reach of an FBI Attack Force? Guess again, Clementine.

…Half Past Dead.