Barry Bonds was indicted by federal prosecutors on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for lying to a grand jury when questioned about performance enhancing drugs. Bonds is now faced with the prospect of going to jail and being stripped of his place in the Hall of Fame and his (already questionable) home run record.
Which would officially be the worst thing that's ever happened to him…not counting the time his mistress enlightened all of us as to one of his many "shortcomings."
"Why did Marion Jones and Barry Bonds think they were taking flaxseed oil?" Slate asks, in response to Jones/Bonds claims they they never knowingly took steroids and actually believed they were taking flaxseed oil supplements instead. One theory: "Because they don't like fish [and] flaxseed oil contains omega 3 fatty acids, which help maintain cardiovascular health."
Another theory? Because they're lying. [Slate]
Kimberly Bell, Barry Bonds's ex-wife, has a six-page spread in the November issue of Playboy.
Why would Playboy put Bell, who is 36, in the magazine? Well, for one she's hot. But mainly, she spills the beans on Bonds.
Bell, along with basic logic, says Bonds was on steroids, which caused his testicles to shrivel and led to erectile dysfunction.
Even when his recticle was functioning, apparently Bonds wasn't much of a lover. Just like his home run record, his wife's orgasms were fake. As she said,
When you're dealing with somebody who's that selfish, with that kind of ego, you learn to exaggerate your reactions to make him feel better.
And we always thought of Bonds as a performance player.
In a sports world without cable, ESPN, sports-talk radio stations or the 24-hour news cycle, Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run. The only stations that mattered were numbered 2 to 13, and on NBC stations on the night of April 8, 1974, Aaron's home run generated a 22.3 rating and a 36 share, meaning 14.7 million households watched some part of the broadcast. Move ahead 33 years and four months to Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run, which was carried nationally on ESPN2. The game generated a 1.1 rating, with 995,000 households and an average of 1.3 million viewers.
Put another way? 10.75 million people—or, approximately ten times the number of viewers who tuned in to see Barry Bonds' home run—instead spent the evening of Tuesday, August 7th watching America's Got Talent in the hopes of seeing a real accomplishment (i.e. a juggling unicyclist-slash-opera-singer) rather than a record-breaking achievement a mere asterisk in the pages of baseball history.
• Cartoonists around the country raise their pens, grab their sketchbooks and blast Barry Bonds in angry cerebral comic strip solidarity.
• Congratulations to steroid impresario Jose Canseco, who may have succeeded in effectively ruining professional sports.
• From Idolator: "The next issue of Rolling Stone has as its cover subject High School Musical cutie/frequent Bop subject Zac Efron, who is captured in an awkward pose that looks like he's sheepishly feeling himself up while showing off his Tegan and Sara-inspired haircut."
• O.J. Simpson still having trouble grasping the whole "I owe $38 million to the parents of that guy I murdered" concept.
• Weekly World News is folding, which means the only place to read about a bald, umbrella-brandishing freakshow is on Britney Spear's official website.
• Presidential candidates get a little hot under the collar; perspire freely.
• In addition to being a better athlete than you are who gets hotter chicks than you do, QB Tom Brady is also a far snazzier dresser.
• Barry Bonds is officially the new Roger Maris. On 'roids.
• Never one to miss the scoop, Jon Friedman starts asking the big questions about some mysterious mogul man (Rupert whatisface?) who's slowly but surely taking over the media world.
• Fox News discovers it ain't easy being green.
• LiLo got drunk, drove a car and got arrested! While speeding and wearing coke-stained pants! Natch, TMZ finishes out the day with no less than 21 Lindsay Lohan related posts. Then again, there's still about three hours to go, West Coast time…
• Gay actor Rupert Everett does not believe homosexual male couples should be allowed to adopt children. Surprisingly, however, he has no problem with the idea of bull dikes getting tykes.
• Hillary Clinton steps up during the YouTube debate.
• Barry Bonds' ex mistress to reveal everything you ever wanted to know about steroids (and her giant boobies) in a Playboy spread.
• Minimum wage increases by 70 cents an hour! Which is almost enough to pay the rent, feed the kids and cover the cost of healthcare, except not at all.
• Does anyone else find it slightly nauseating that Eva Longoria's wedding is third on Forbes' list of the "Top 10 most expensive celebrity pictures" of all time?
• A friend swears OJ Simpson didn't do it! The book, not the double homicide, obvi.
• Only Barry Bonds' mistress knows the truth about those so-called "performance enhancing" drugs.
• John Stamos pulls a Paula Abdul, which is to say he slurs his way through a television interview then attributes it to being "jet-lagged."
• Nintendo hires Nicole Kidman to demonstrate that even attractive people who've had lots of plastic surgery enjoy video games.
• Hugh Grant may be back together with heiress Jemima Khan, If so, he may or may not have popped the question, in which case Khan conceivably answered with either a "yes" or a "no."
• If Al Gore was actually running for president, he'd never allow his daughter to have a Beverly Hills 90210 inspired wedding.
Because Jared Paul Stern has been hogging all the scandal spotlight this week, we would like to shed light on some of the other people who have been f'ing up lately. On a slow week, this would light up our lives, but today, due to excessive baby dropping and column killing, it merely becomes (insert word of the week) gossip fodder.
First, there is the big controversy over ESPN's new TV program featuring Berry Bonds. The show, Bond on Bonds, will follow the sporty side of the San Francisco Giant's player's life — and should ESPN decide to go the way of paying Bonds for his participation in the show, all sportscaster hell is going to break loose.
Something about how ESPN is a news channel, and they shouldn't be paying the people they report on? But, nobody really cares when Fox News covers Paula Abdul's drug issues, so … we don't really get why it's a big deal here. Then again, we don't really do sports coverage.
Then we have this bizarre, yet very well hidden scandal involving Business Week magazine. Yesterday "the Feds" arrested two Wall Street guys along with a mole at a Business Week's print shop. The three twenty-somethings were running an insider trading scam, in which they attempted to use exotic dancers to extract confidential merger information from top bankers. The goal was to use that info, along with insider knowledge from Meryl Lynch, to pilfer the markets. (It gets better.)
They then attempted to buy stocks based on tips from stolen prepublication copies of Business Week's "Inside Wall Street" column. This scandal was pretty good, too — they even had strippers!
And, though it does involve Jared Paul Stern, this last scandal takes a look at the New York Times coverage of high-profile events. Did they jump on the case too soon and start throwing around false accusations without taking the time to look at both sides of the story? Um, we shouldn't really have to ask this question … a gossip columnist was doing most of the "reporting."
ESPN's 'Bonds' Program Doesn't Taint the Network [Joe Flint, Wall Street Journal]
Sleazy? Yes. Criminal? Probably not. [Harvey Silvergate, The Phoenix News]
MOLES WHACKED [Janet Whitman, New York Post]
Editorial Director
