But it’s close.  Like all things WNBA, though, it just doesn’t compare to the boys.  Lots of shovin’, lots of pushing, a few good takes downs, but unfortunately no one pulled a Kermit Washington.  Though is we had to guess, we think Candace Parker has some potential to go all Kermit on another player and give one of them gals a Rudy Tomjonovich (video evidence).

So Candace Parker was just one of man players involved in Tuesday’s “brawl.”

“I have been covering women’s basketball for 18 years and the WNBA since its inception in 1997, and I have never seen anything even close to this,” ESPN game analyst Doris Burke said. Look, girls will be girls and it was nice to see them take a break from layups and midrange jumpers, but it’s not like there were any good punches landed.

What’s up with the water in Detroit?  Between this and Ron Artest reigning hellfire on the Palace crowd there’s got to be something going on right?

Last night I was driving home from an Emmylou Harris concert at Oregon Zoo (short review: Awesome venue, you’re right next to the elephants and before the show they released birds of prey into the audience! There is no way to put this into proper context. I never heard anything by Harris before last night [hence the lack of formal review] and was totally blown away. She’s amazing, emotionally resonant, great stage banter, she’s the real deal. I feel like I just discovered Klondike Bars as a seven-year-old.) and listening to Love Line with Dr. Drew.

Which I forgot how awesome that show is because it’s the only place you’ll get to hear a guy nonchalantly ask about his girlfriend possibly giving him chlamydia - dude she cheated on you! - and then have an 18-year-old girl call in and ask if masturbating with a dildo five to ten times a week is safe. Five to ten times! My god. It might be safe but holy crap that can’t be healthy. I mean I know she isn’t going to end up blind. The best part was during her entire call, Dr. Drew is trying to give her honest advice and help her through her problem and Seth Green is in the background munching on In-And-Out Burger and saying things like, “Yeah Matilda it’s all good! You’re just trying to find out how you like it” in this creepy pederass voice.

Funniest show on the radio.

What stopped me on the dial, oddly enough however, was Seth Green promoting Robot Chicken and talking about Family Guy and doing much of the interview in his voice he uses for Chris and imitating Soundwave from Transformers. I’m convinced that Hollywood is the least cool place on Earth. It’s basically a cesspool for all the theater dorks in high school only with more money, better makeup and fancier clothes. And before you jump all over me, I’m the least cool person I know I was both a band dork and a theater dork and several other doses of dorkitude in high school.

Anyway, the topic turned to Matthew McConaughey because Green also does the voice for McConaughey whenever he is on Family Guy. His impression was stellar and his insight into the life of McConaughey had me chortling uncontrollably.

So when I got home, of course I was flipping around YouTube for some clips of McConaughey on Family Guy, then I wanted to find the trailer for his new movie Surfer Dude, which in turn led to this clip below which just about made my night.

And yes, I realize that this might be the only post that scatologically jumps from Emmylou Harris to Dr. Drew to Seth Green to Matthew McConaughey to some surfer guy in California. Six degrees of fun!

It goes something like this, and take this with a grain of salt since The Sun isn’t exactly known for its journalism integrity, but The Dark Knight star, Christian Bale, aka Batman, was allowed by police to attend the London premiere of the greatest movie in the history of the universe (internet’s description not ours) even though he was wanted for questioning in connection to assaulting his mother and sister.

That’s how you spell it.  Now, this is coming from The Sun and here’s the basis for the story.  Bale’s mother and sister went to lodge a complaint at a Hampshire, UK police station yesterday.  Today, Bale will be brought in for questioning regarding the undisclosed matter.

A Met Police spokesman said: “We can confirm we have received allegation from another force in relation to an alleged incident in central London.”

Then the story is rounded out with quotes from an unnamed source, never a good thing, and some bullshit background about Ledger’s death.  Still, it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Best. Thing. Ever.  If only this came with a radio activated voice.  Or a way to control him like a remote control car.

More photos at Brickshelf.  [via]

The adorable, blue blaz’-lovin’ comedian Liz Feldman will be back in her kitchen with new episodes of This Just Out on AfterEllen.com starting July 28th. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the show, I would suggest watching it, obviously, but basically it’s a talk show in which she hits on her (usually straight) guests. Her friend, Raimy Rosenduft, who, in my opinion, has great taste in music, suggests new bands every episode. Good music, comedy, and lesbians, honestly, what more do you need?

Here’s a promo for the new season with Liz and Raimy lip-synching the new theme song that Uh Huh Her wrote on the last episode.

1925 in Dayton, Tenn.: Quiet red-haired and boyish biology teacher and part-time football coach John Scopes was found guilty for teaching evolution in his classroom, which at that time was in violation of Tennessee state law.

Trial of the century, is what it was called. Scopes agreed reluctantly to the ACLU’s insistence on going to trial. He was cajoled into being a guinea pig to challenge the Constitutionality of the law.

Scopes was represented by Clarence Darrow and the State of Tennessee and the fundamentalists were represented by super-duper lawyer William Jennings Bryan - three-time Democratic nominee for president and a paradoxical blend of progressive conservatism.

At stake was the legitimacy to teach the theories of Charles Darwin. Ironically, no one knows if Scopes actually taught his class the theory of evolution. After all these years, Scopes isn’t some noble crusader but more of a reluctant participant.

One of the enduring debates concerning the Scopes trial revolves around whether Scopes ever actually taught the subject of evolution. George Rappalyea posed the question, holding up a copy of George W. Hunter’s Civic Biology, at Robinson’s drugstore. “You have been teaching ‘em this book?” he asked. Scopes answered, “Yes,” then went on to explain that, while substituting for the regular biology teacher in April 1925, he had assigned his students Hunter’s chapter on evolution. Illness the next day, however, kept him home and, to his recollection, no class discussion of the evolution materials ever took place. Scopes, however, remembered teaching the topic in a general way earlier in the same month to his general science students.

Still, the trial went forward over eight sweltering days. National newspapers swarmed the small town (can honestly say I’ve been to Dayton and it’s charming and remote and they have a small plaque dedicated to the event) dubbing the trial “The Monkey Trial.” No reporting was more important than that of Baltimore Sun reporter H.L. Mencken, who with cynicism provided accounts back north. It’s almost difficult reading his reports that that was journalism at one point. Far different from the septic and innocuous even-handed reporting that is in vogue today.

Scopes was found guilty by a jury of his peers and ordered to pay a $100 fine.

His team appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court and though his conviction stood, his fine was overturned.

Bryan, meanwhile, died only five days after the conclusion of the Monkey Trial.

The Butler Act, as the anti-evolution law was known, remained on the books in Tennessee until its repeal by the state legislature in 1967.

It’s hard to say what the aftermath of this event had. Obviously, it paved the way for real science education in America, but the anti-evolution laws stayed on the books for nearly forty years and to this day science is still under the gun from fundamentalists seeking to teach God (and not just god but a distinctly Christian one at that) in the science classroom. It’s a thin line and it can disappear easily if people aren’t willing to stand up to those corruptible forces.

Source: University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School & Wired

Couldn’t they have done this to him before the new trilogy?  Just asking is all.

Photo: Rebel Scum

So while some ex-Saved By the Bellers are off making bad sex tapes and appearing on trashy Vh1 celebreality programing *cough*cough Dustin Diamond *cough*cough or trying to stay in the acting game, fake-Screech, aka Isaac Lidsky decided to go to Harvard and become a lawyer and now he’s a clerk at the SJC.

“The most amazing thing is that he is blind,” says the reporter. Um, no. The most amazing thing is that instead of ending up a coked out shadow of his former self lying in a pool of Hepatitis C, Lidsky went on to graduate from Harvard Law and become a clerk at the SJC.

Kudos to him. Good story all around. Suck it Screech. Probably helped that no one watched The New Class to which Lidsky was a part of.

Normally, we’re not really into posting hot-babe pictures (though I’m sure if we did we’d have much higher traffic). But we couldn’t resist when it comes to this photo of SNL-er Kristin Wiig. She’s without a doubt the funniest thing on the show and will become it’s next breakout star. It’s safe to say that without her presence the show would be utterly unwatchable.

And it also goes without saying that we had no idea she was this attractive. Cute yes, but in this picture she is bomb (click to see large version). When she shows up in some bad movie she always leaves an impression enough to say, “who was that?” Like an early Will Ferrell.  And we are constantly surprised to learn it is always Kristen Wiig who leaves that lasting impression. Chameleon? Possibly. Incredibly funny? Goes without saying.

Here’s to hoping she leaves SNL for bigger and better things rather than hang around until her flower has wilted (see: Amy Poehler).  [photo: via]

People always seem surprised when I tell them I’m from Boston (inside 128 gives me that privilege outside 128 no can do you have to tell people you’re from Massachusetts or the town you were raised in, sorry that’s the rules), born and essentially raised in a city just outside of Boston.

Because when I open my mouth there is some weird mismash of dialects working to obscure my home city.  I’ve had people ask if I was Canadian (enough times to actually think I may be from there!?!), from the midwest, the south but rarely if I am from Boston.  So they are surprised to find I am amongst the most common-type of proud Masshole.

It’s a mystery as to how this happened - possibly picking up words from here or there while traveling since I love language and its myriad uses or perhaps it was a conscious effort since the Boston accent conveys a sense of under-educated intellect.  Before you harp on me for elitism, in college I decided that it would be best to sound as intelligent as possible going forward.  It had more to do with preventing bias than anything else.

The language and dialects in New England is a treasure, it’s like understanding a foreign language and if you speak the code it doesn’t matter for you’ll be accepted.  This past week, WBUR aka “Radio Boston” broadcast an episode exploring the various accents of the greater Boston area.  Reporter David Boeri, he of Channel 5 fame (is he still with them?) worked on the piece.

I would love to see Boeri explore the accents of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island and Connecticut.  They are all unique and to the untrained ear all sound vaguely familiar.  [via]

Fishnets, leather boots and jacket, thick eyeliner. Not your Mother’s Barbie. And not mine either (Oh, if only. My childhood would have been infinitely more interesting).

Mattel’s newest release is Black Canary Barbie, ostensibly based on the DC Comics superheroine of the same name

Black Canary is noted for her martial-arts skills and her “Canary Cry” – a high powered, sonic scream with the ability to shatter objects and incapacitate villains. Among the first generation of superheroes, she was a member of the Justice Society of America, the first superhero team to appear in comic books.

Black Canary Barbie is slated to hit store shelves in September under the Black Label collection . Understandably, this new Dominatrix incarnation of Barbie is causing a bit of an uproar. The Sun is there

I’ll spare you a Barbie diatribe and leave you with this question: who would buy this for their daughter?