What are we going to do without The Bachelorette? Where else on TV are we going to hear crap like sensitive fireman/poet Ryan saying, “I’m not falling in love anymore, I’m submersed in it,”?

Submersed? Is that anything like immersed or submerged? Find something that rhymes with submersed, fireboy.

And he’s the one I actually like.

Something clicked last night. I hate Charlie more than even creepy, weird, creepy, weird Russ. Charlie’s got to go. I just think that if you’re going on national TV and wearing a Chico and the Man sleeveless T, that you might want to do some arm curls first. I’ve seen better definition on a pillow.

But before we even get to The Bachelorette we’ve got other fish to fry.

Real World: Las Vegas
Can we just all announce that Arissa’s mother is the most evil woman on the planet? Wow, the things she said to Arissa…no wonder Arissa spent the first four months on the show acting like a bitch. Yikes. How many times did Mommy Arissa hang up on her? Though, my favorite moment was at the end when Arissa put the phone down and walked away and you could hear her mom yelling, “That bitch DID NOT hang up on me! Nuh-uh! That bitch did not just do that.”

Happy Birthday, Arissa.

And what with with Arissa’s uncle? He came to Vegas, unannounced to help her celebrate her birthday? Sure. Whatever. He flew out there, lost his ass gambling the first night and didn’t have anything else to do.

And am I the only one who got the feeling he really “likes” his niece? I got the creeps so bad from that guy I nearly fell off the couch. The moment that cinched it for me was that way-too-long hug that he gave her outside his hotel. Ewww.

I didn’t need to hear Mr. Intellectual Steve, the man who talks to his mom on the phone like she’s some frat brother, giving Arissa advice about treating her family like they were “toxic” friends. Shut up, Steve. Call mommy and have her toxic ass send you another $5,000.

Frank is easily the most likeable of the houseguests, and it was nice that he brought his Amish girlfriend out for a few days. And it was nice that besides some much needed orthodonture that she’s a pretty girl. Go Frank!

Though on the previews for next week, we see Frank making out with Trishelle. Frank, you are just so dumb.

Trishelle should come equipped with a penicillin dispenser, that’s all I’m saying.

The Osbournes
What’s better than a typical weekend with the Osbournes? A weekend with the Osbournes in Las Vegas.

From Sharon telling Kelly she should get a boob job (how come they were allowed to say tits on Celebrity Mole last night, but not on The Osbournes?) To Jack wanting to fly home from Vegas because the hotel put a phalanx (great word) of cops and security guys in the hallway outside of his room. To Kelly referring to Aimee’s rack as “Welcome to London tits”, to drunk ex-drummer friend girl falling off a table in the restaurant, you couldn’t not enjoy it.

I especially liked it when Ozzy accidentally got some Icy Hot on his genitals and ran (well, his version of running) around the house holding himself. What, he never saw Revenge of the Nerds?

Kudos to MTV for the collage at the end which showed Jack getting all excited about how wild he was going to get in Vegas and Kelly going on and on about her “buh-th-day”. They then showed Jack in the hotel watching Teletubbies and Kelly throwing tantrum, after tantrum, after tantrum.

She’s a bit much, isn’t she?

Ed
Only in the world of Ed could we have the dumbest murder case in history. One of Eli’s friends was charged with second-degree murder because he allegedly toppled a fast-food restaurant sign (made up of a giant baby) with his friend hanging on the arm, killing the friend.

We got more of Molly’s hackneyed romance with Biff from Back to the Future and Carol looked superhot all night.

Basically, the murder case was a way to show us how Ed and Frankie are getting closer and closer. They’ve been beating us over the head with how she has a boyfriend, and it wasn’t too hard to see that it was a horribly obvious way of setting up their soon-to-be romance. On the previews for next week we learn that (gasp!) Frankie and the water park designer boyfriend have broken up.

Remember a few weeks ago when we did the whole 1) Ed loves Carol but Carol’s got a boyfriend – 2) Ed and Carol are both available but one of them is just getting over somebody – 3) Carol loves Ed but Ed’s got a girlfriend- 4) repeat – cycle? We’re about to go from two to three.

As for the Frankie/Carol dilemma. For once, Ed has given us a real choice. Sure, the DA chick was hot, but Carol’s boyfriends have both been complete jerkoffs. But both Frankie and Carol have redeeming qualities. Frankie’s cute as hell and funny. Carol’s hot. Honestly, if I were Ed, given how often Carol has given him the circle jerk, I’d stick with Frankie. But then again…did I mention that Carol is hot?

The problem I’m having with Molly and Biff the fireman is Biff’s kid. The guy who plays that kid has to be–minimum–45 years old. It’s like casting Harvey Korman to play Tom Hanks’ son in a movie.

And what about the fat kid? How’d the stomach stapling go? Are we ever going to get back to that? I guess it wasn’t stapling, it was a gastric bypass…but still…a nation of people who want to Supersize their Big Mac combos want to see if they can eat like pigs and then have a medical procedure get them healthy just before it’s too late.

The Bachelorette
We’re down to two. And they’re two guys you could have picked in week two. Charlie, the guy with the weird hair and soggy body and Ryan, Mr. blue-eyed, sensitive, poet, fireman who looks like he should be doing Jockey ads.

Ryan’s a stud. What else can you say? And I’m rooting for him, because if he loses, he’ll be the next Bachelor and it’ll torpedo my candidacy.

But let’s review the dates.

Ryan went first. Does he always have to go first? And ABC sent him and Trista to romantic…Seattle? What, Billings was booked?

Ryan started his voice over with this sentence (not making this up), “Sometimes when we’re kissing, or she kisses me, it makes it harder.”

I think we know what it is, don’t we fellas? (Wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

Ryan was staying on the houseboat from Sleepless in Seattle. All we needed was a cute little fat kid and a mopey widower and we had the movie.

They went to dinner at the Space Needle (I’ll admit, that was very cool) and got an envelope from ABC inviting them to stay in a “fantasy” hotel suite. Ryan’s response? “Check, please!” Just like Rick Vaughn in Major League. Nicely played, Mr. Sensitive.

Before Trista and Ryan had “the sex” they had this horrendously awkward conversation at the restaurant.

Ryan: It’s frustrating because there are things I want to do with you.
Trista (in that annoying phony high-pitched voice): Like what? What do you want to do?
Andy translating for Ryan: I’d like to bend you over this table and…hey, look a dalmation!

And then, as Ryan and Trista closed the door to their bedroom of humping in the suite, we heard the now infamous, “I’m not falling in love anymore. I’m submersed in it.”

One truly troubling thing I noticed while some ABC camera man zoomed in on Trista and Ryan making out on the couch, was what I thought was Ryan rubbing his stomach. But then, I realized that wasn’t his hand, it was Trista’s! She’s got MAN HANDS! Those meathooks are huge! Somewhere, Jerry Krause jumped off the couch and sent powdered donettes flying everywhere. He’s going to draft Trista’s first born son! Man, those hands were huge!

OK, now it was time for Russ’s date. Russ is of course the guy who lives in one of the coolest places in the world, San Rafael, California and who quit his job to write a book that nobody will ever read. He’s the most hated contestant on this show, because he’s creepy as hell.

Russ and Trista were off to Sedona, Arizona for the lamest date of all time.

They had some lady perform ‘aura photography’ on them. What aura photography is, is when somebody takes a picture of you with a really bad Polaroid camera so that you look like a huge orange blob, and then that same person makes up crap about your personality that is so vague and broad that it has to apply to every human, ever. Then you pay that person and they laugh at you all the way to the bank.

On their way to dinner, Russ confides in an ABC camera man with, “The way things are going, I wouldn’t be surprised if I’m the one who ends up with Trista.”

Uh…Russ. Unless Charlie and Ryan drive to Lake Havasu and end up in a horrible Jet Ski accident that even Cedric Ceballos cannot save them from, Russ–you can’t win.

Then, Russ decides the best way to win the game is to piss Trista off. He chides her for not “touching him” all day. At this point, you can literally see the flames coming off of the date. If Ryan were around he’d have thrown a bucket of water on them to put the flames out.

Trista grabs the envelope again and says, in a very unenthused way, “If you want to forgo your individual rooms—oh, screw it, do you want to go to fantasy suite? You tool?”

Russ is sent to his room without any nookie! And really, this episode is over.

The final date is with Charlie and it’s in Cabo San Lucas. The land of Sammy Hagar. In fact, if you looked closely you could see Sammy running back and forth on the beach in the background, holding a “I used to be in Van Halen!” sign.

Charlie’s hair is in tough shape on the beach. Because he’s balding (and you so know that he is) he has an elaborate curly comb-back thing that the wind sent into Sideshow Bob frenzy.

At one point, Charlie is talking to Trista their conversation seems to be very deep and important and as she’s talking he reaches down, opens the cooler pulls out a huge hoagie and takes a big old bite out of it. Did I really see this? Yes, I did.

Trista is not very smart. But we knew that already. She says, about Charlie, “The heat that we conjure up together is something I look forward to.”

Conjure? Submersed? Oh, shut up!

Later, in the pool, Charlie tells Trista that his middle name is Coburn, which is his mother’s maiden name. Charlie Coburn Jagoff? Nice name. What kind of loser has his mother’s maiden name for a middle name? Oh, wait… Never mind. Let’s just move on.

Trista says she wants to name her first son “Blake”. Blake? After Robert Blake? Blake Carrington? Whatever.

She then says that her first girl has to have Rose for a middle name. Charlie says that if he wasn’t named Charlie he’d like to name his daughter Charley.

Trista then says what we’re all thinking:

These two are just too dumb to be allowed to reproduce.

Now it’s magic envelope time and Trista asks Charlie, “You know what this is?”

No, he doesn’t know, you twit! He didn’t get to see the other two dates.

Anyway, they head back to their room to play hide the sausage.

So Charlie and Ryan got laid and Russ got f@#$ed? Does that about sum it up?

Now it’s time for a very anti-climactic rose ceremony. Does anybody think it won’t be Ryan and Charlie. If Seton Hall wasn’t beating Notre Dame, I’d just switch over and watch the end of that.

As Russ walks in, somebody on the crew should have yelled, “dead man walkin'”. That’d have been sweet.

We see three cheesy videos, including Ryan’s now truly horrendous attempts at poetry and we have to sit through commercials. But what commercials they were.

Steve Martin and Queen Latifah have finally made a movie together! It’s about time! It’s apparently a remake of the movie that killed Ray Liotta’s career, Corinna, Corinna. I guess we know Steve will host the Oscars again next year, because I don’t think he’ll be nominated for anything.

But then, we get the best commercial of the year so far. It’s for Charmin and it involves a cartoon bear putting a roll of Charmin toilet paper on a tree branch and (I’m not making this up) grabbing a newspaper and taking a dump behind the tree. I loved this commercial.


I’m not making this up.

OK, back at Bachelorette HQ, it’s time for Trista to send Russ packing. She chooses Ryan first which obviously pisses off Charlie. I don’t like Charlie. At least Ryan’s nice and Russ is confrontational, Charlie’s just as passive agressive ass.

Then she picks Charlie, making Russ third place. Third place is, of course, second loser.

Next week, it’s Ryan or Charlie, right?

Nooooo. Next week is the “reunion” show with 18 guys–of which we actually remember like four. Ooh, fun.

Celebrity Mole: Hawaii

Who cares? If not for Kathy Griffin’s nightly visits to Jimmy Kimmel’s show, I’d have forgotten this thing was on. And then last night, it didn’t even end. We watched an hour of Freddy, the mute blonde kid, and Kathy for nothing? Oh, shoot me.

Though, I will watch next week because Corbin and Steven are back for the reunion show. Does every reality show have to have a reunion? Blecch.

And now…the Dose.
It sucks to be a Hoosier today, huh?

Seton Hall? It sucks to be Irish, too.

Notre Dame only invited 33 players on campus, and they signed 22 of them. That’s like 66 percent or something.

The Bulls are glad the All-Star Break is here.

In an emotional ceremony, Duke added Jay Williams to their ‘NBA bust ring of honor’. They made room in between Danny Ferry and Cherokee Parks.

Mariotti puts down the doughnut and gives us details on Jay’s ceremony. Sounds like he might become Jason Williams again. Hey, whatever it takes to make a free throw.

Rap on a travelling Hall of Fame exhibit that landed in the Field Museum.

Greg Couch polled the Hall of Famers who were at the exhibit to see if they voted for Ron Santo. He got four of six votes, most likely. If he gets four of every six, he’s in–easy.

The cash cow can be milked again. For a while.

Mike Singletary is officially a Raven. For now.

Good news, times two. Billy Williams is out of the hospital, and Pac Bell Park gets to keep its name.

Ty Willingham is as excited as he gets (not very) about his recruits.

David Huh is having a hard time pronouncing the names, though. Whatever.

Wow, those Major League umps are fun, aren’t they? According to Bloomberg News Service, the comment that got Bruce Froemming suspended wasn’t “stupid Jew bitch” it was “stupid Jew c###.” It’s nice to hear from the educated part of society, there Bruce.

On the bright side, though he was suspended, Froemming was given a lifetime membership at Augusta National! Thank you! I’ll be here all week!

CNNSI.com is now SI.com. Big whup.

The glorious return of Larry King.

EW’s Ken Tucker on one reason why reality TV shows are better than regular shows. He talks about The Office on BBC America, one of the funniest shows of the year. The star of the show is a guy named Ricky Gervaise who plays David Brent, the smarmy boss. This guy is so good, it’s scary. He’s absolutely hilarious.

EW on who Trista will pick.

I cannot wait to see this Michael Jackson trainwreck tonight. No wonder they sent Diane Sawyer to Turkey to get her out of the country.

Joe Rogan’s career is really taking off, huh?

Oh, gee, here’s a shock!

What Colin Powell did to Iraq during that hour-long address to the UN Security Council is illegal in most southern states.

The world’s greatest newspaper with tips on how to Osama proof your computer. Huh?