He's played a kindly convict, Nelson Mandela and even a mop-pushing God. On the other hand, the world was obliterated by a comet under his presidency. Yes, Morgan Freeman's record is decidedly mixed, yet we still look to him for comfort and authority in a topsy-turvy world.

But for his latest movie, we should bury Grandpa Gravitas' film career like the directions to Zihuatanejo that Tim Robbins left him in the sex orchard.

"Dolphin Tale" is a blatant piece of propaganda designed to brainwash the impressionable masses into believing that history's greatest sea monsters are not only their BFFs, but also inspiring cripples.

Dolphins have never lacked for savvy PR, making high-priced lobbying shops on K Street look as bloated, ineffective and glitter-strewn as Newt Gingrich. From Flipper, "the aquatic Lassie," to overblowholed stories about dolphins saving stranded sailors, these warm-blooded wankers have captured the imaginations and consciences of Americans too dumb to realize that permanent smiles are creepy, not cute. Slight chance that your tuna sandwich has bits of dolphin in it? Just convince the tuna industry to adopt a much more destructive fishing method!

Far from paragons of virtue, dolphins are closer to your average Oakland Raiders fan.  The motherflippers are known to gang rape both male and female dolphins and have "perfected the art to a degree unseen in any other species." They beat up porpoises, allegedly because they're "sexually frustrated," and according to a documentary about the social structure of dolphins, they would challenge humanity if their more charismatic leaders were freed from captivity. Any animal that arouses Harry Connick Jr. or fits R. Kelly's requirements for a wingman should immediately be placed on an FBI watch list.

Westerners need to get over their boner for hyper-intelligent animals, from the Ted Bundys of the ocean to Andy Serkis. The latest Science Loser Who Doomed Us All is even trying to establish "real-time two-way communication" with dolphins, to tempt the blubbery buggers into squeaking their sick fantasies at us. Here's a suggestion on getting a dolphin's interest: Log into MySpace as TweenageDream and post a request to meet "open-minded grownups."

If we're going to indulge our whitebread fetish for something, let's make it multiculturalism and go dolphishing in Taiji, Japan. I'm sure Dick Cheney is available.

The world is changing around us, but you can always count on one thing to stay the same: Americans of a certain age suck at reading the Bible out loud. They tend to be the ones who know the Bible.

You’d think the nation founded by a bunch of prudes fleeing their less-prudish rulers, creator of the First Amendment equally beloved of pornographers and cults, would excel at speaking God's Word in public, mellifluous as a Bieber ballad.  Scripture is full of references to prophets, Jesus and even Satan quoting Scripture, unrolling scrolls and eating scrolls. Reading the Bible aloud in the days before G-berg, like my favorite waste of White House space in his Grammy-winning spoken word album, used to be your ticket out of sharecropping or refereeing a WNBA game.

Add 20 years of the information revolution and you have an entire generation that talks faster than Andy Dick and sounds about as coherent. This deficiency shows up most glaringly in Bible studies.

I don't doubt the sincerity of my fellow religionizers when they struggle to make it through two verses of a Gospel translated into English as understood in 1978.  They talk in vague but heartfelt terms about God’s provision in their lives, care for each other and show more tolerance of others than most pagans I know.  But hand them a book they’ve spent years reading on a near-daily basis and watch them butcher it worse than Christina at the Super Bowl.

“Now a man of the tribe of...Levee married a Leveet woman and ... oh wait … she became pregnant and gabirtoason when she. Saw that he was a fine child. She hid him for thirty months. Do I keep reading? Oh, OK. I got lost. (hee hee) But when she could hit him no longer, she got a paperous basket for him and coated it with tar … uh … tar and (squinting) oh, pitch! (hee hee).”

How the hallelujah did you make it through college?  Are you a University of Phoenix grad?

As the Apostle Paul said, a man who can speak in the tongues of angels, but has not love, is a resounding gong.  I would rather spend two hours with Rip Taylor, a gong and a decibel-activated confetti cannon aimed at my tuchus than listen to you speed-gurgle through Corinthians 13.

You are God's representative on earth, young, hipster Christian.  And when you don't bother to learn how to speechify 10-point font in a medium devoid of Megan Fox pictorials, it reflects poorly on those of us who bring skeptics to our gatherings to see God’s people without the media filter.

I'm not asking for a Toastmasterization of the pews -- just some basic coordination between eyes, brain and mouth.  Like your mother last night.

Ever since the first man listened to his ditzy wife and chomped some fruit from Clint Eastwood’s tree, dooming the human race to be clothed in public and wear ridiculous pajamas to bed, we’ve been wearing dead animals in some form.  Despite the efforts of groups trying to make these corpses more fashionable by sprinkling them with paint, Western society has recoiled of late from the “natural” look, preferring to wear synthetic or even psychedelic furs.

Nothing captures the post-Christian, Lemonish desire to “have it all,” though, quite like the panda hat.

I don’t know when these adorable emblems of laziness got their cultural cachet - they seemed to spring up all around me, like a group of 12-year-old boys around Megan Fox, as soon as the weather dipped into the 30s.  A cast member on last season’s  “The Real World,” source of the do-nothing celebrity, became known as “Panda” for his panda hat, but MTV long ago shuffleboarded its influence from the “Gossip Girl” demographic to the AARP set.  Personally I blame Japan, though my Los Angeles-based co-writer Jeremiah, married to an anime freak, claims to be unaware of any such bamboo-chewing bandwagon in balmy Tinseltown.

Whatever the cause, this pandamonium has gotten out of control, and it’s time to clearcut the cultural thicket surrounding the hattification of Ailuropoda melanoleuca.

Sure, it starts cute, as a few quirky teens and administrative assistants don the black-and-white babushkas to signify that racial harmony is always “on their mind.”  Next, the hats get adopted by unpopular girls who are too timid to post a rambling YouTube video proclaiming their indelible cuteness despite a low-nutrition diet, mascara-lacquered eyes and sedentary lifestyle.  Before we know it, professional women are wearing the noggin nuzzlies to board meetings, court hearings and Unitarian ordinations.

What do we see in these harlequinned heavies anyway? Despite their knowledge of sexual harassment law and ability to prick the conscience of the rapacious ChiComs, pandas are really just welfare bears.  They can’t move beyond a narrow geographical area and they have no energy to do anything more than eat stomach-wrenching comfort food all day.  And thanks to enterprising labor policies, these welbears are nearly extinct.  As a coldhearted conservationist lamented, “people always have this rather peculiar affinity with the big blubbery things.”

This desire to look cute and forsake all responsibility is what underlies America’s social decline.  Like a dexterous rat marionetting a clueless chef, panda hats ass-ride their human drones to Pandorrah.

Women of liberty, throw off the accountrements of the ursinine!  Unbear your soul!  Ooh, is that a Hello Kitty hat?

The purpose of unions being to protect people with no skills from competition, grocery workers in the Seattle area nearly went on strike before Thanksgiving to protest pay and benefit cuts.  Holidays without sushi and wine by the glass at QFC?  Bereft of broccolini at Safeway? My pale-skinned brethren, tote bags in hand and Nissan Leafs on backorder, shuddered in their ugly sweaters at the thought.

Me? I couldn't care less. Having paddled the yellow river for years now, I've learned that Asian grocery stores invariably have better prices than super- and other markets catering to the vanity and neuroses of whites.

Western civilization invented the psychological markup, and it makes me hate whites.

Perusing the aisles at the HT Oaktree Market, I can feel my blood start to boil, realizing how many Jacksons I've wasted at stores owned by The (Melanin-Deficient) Man over the years when I could have tossed off Hamiltons. Thick leafy greens for $1.30 a pound instead of $3? Red bell peppers by the pound at all, and only $1.50 at that?  Even a giant bag of tortilla chips for $1.50, and big tortillas half the price of where you get your “ingredients for life” - more like "ingenious for lies" - this place with roasted ducks hanging in the window has a great selection of ethnic foods in general. Since my little lotus flower started bribing me to take her here on a regular basis, I've been eating not only healthier but cheaper.

If the whites kept their stores to themselves, I'd be fine with this bifurcated bilking. But look no further than Seattle's best-known Asian grocery store to see the neoconservative, colonizing impulse of whites at its worst.

Freshman year at any local university isn't complete without a trip to Uwajimaya, the closest thing to a Whole Foods in the euphemised International District south of downtown.  Not only ducks in the window but pho at the counter and enough varieties of sake to stock the karaoke suite at a Toyota-Suzuki merger gala, Uwajimaya draws a Smörgåsbord of SUVs every weekend.  Imagine the shopping frenzy in the opening scene of “Jingle All the Way,” that wonderfully rich Schwarzenegger-Sinbad joint, with smelly durian fruit instead of scented dolls.

Uwajimaya's owners understand that Asian culture is nearly as popular as “snuggie sex” in the pantheon of white fetishes. To make whites feel comfortable, though, the store has to look as white as possible. This means putting ritzy apartments on top, selling organic produce, and jacking up prices on everything.  It pays for the general scentlessness of the store, in contrast to its lowbrow cousins, and suggests to lawyer-doctor couples that their purchases have gone through more inspections than mail from Yemen.

If you want cheap Asian groceries, or even decent Chinese food, you have to trek to the nether border regions, like Taliban fleeing the marauding forces of the West. Congratulations, White Metropolis - you've turned me into a pale, full-beard version of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

Until they inevitably screw themselves by underestimating the power of a Huxtable-in-Chief, Republicans are on a roll. They sissy-slapped Lucille Bluth - er, Nancy Pelosi - out of the House majority, upped their annoyance quotient in the Senate, and sent the Democrats to the casa de loca with some new high-profile Hispanics, like incoming Sen. Marco Rubio and Govs. Brian Sandoval and Susana Martinez.

You may have come to power through legal and democratic means - we’re looking at you suspiciously, Lisa Murkowski - but Party of Lincoln Who No Longer Resembles Lincoln, you’re our Imperialist of the Week.

We congratulate you for taking the advice of Sideshow Bob, promising to lower taxes, brutalize criminals, and rule us like a king. Voters ate it up, especially the elderly, who favored Republicans by 21 points over Democrats.

Only the most cutthroat tyrants can inspire their enemies to disavow their own leaders to the extent the GOP did, with many endangered Democrats saying they’d vote against Pelosi for speaker and rename local geography after Reagan. Even President Obama panicked enough to briefly convert from Muslim to Hindu in the hopes of getting electoral help from Ganeesha, Vishnu and other gods who can’t be swayed with peanuts.

But Republicans forgot the cardinal rule of politics: Never trust women.

Freedom has taken a nosedive since dames got the vote, and running them as candidates has proven a riskier bet than Courtney Love keeping her underwear on in public. Steeped in unbridled enthusiasm for Hobbes’ state of nature and tri-corner hats, the Know-Nothings - er, Tea Party activists - rushed the Delaware and Nevada primaries, got drunk on Johnnie Walker and nominated the squawkiest candidates that showed up, Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle, who hadn’t yet been recruited for the Reform Party presidential ticket. The Estrogeneral herself, Sarah Palin, gave them the crucial endorsement of blowing white smoke out of her chimney.

Easily-winnable seats for the GOP thus became easy Democratic retentions that helped keep the Senate from flipping. Now another makeup-drenched she-beast, Rep. Michele Bachmann, is running a campaign to associate the word “Republican” with the phrase “short-lived influence” by 2012. Fortunately she’s up against a competent, principled and male Texan backed by other men, who inherently excel in their reason and accountability.

You’ve got two years to show the country you have a better agenda than the Professor, you whites, businessmen, social conservatives, Cubans and gun owners. Don’t let a bunch of erratic broads ruin it for you.

Considering the pathetic state of the global economy (unless you’re in China or Brazil), you'd think workers in Western Europe, where until recently the Spanish slept a third of the workday, would be glad to have jobs at all. But we know France marches to its own drummer, or more accurately, a goose-stepping German drummer. So it’s not surprising that French unions, tired of working for five straight days, would bring transportation to a halt nationwide for two weeks to avoid working through age 62, bringing the pension system into, you know, solvency.

But our second-favorite womanizing national leader, French President Nicholas Sarkozy, stuck to his non-lethal erotic paintball guns this past week, refusing to bend to union pressure. Now they're giving up and going back to complaining about the declining quality and increased sassmouth of mistresses.

That’s why, Monsieur President, you’re our Imperialist of the Week.

Astute readers may spit out their ratatouille and sputter, "You already crowned the Sark for his burqa ban. That's double jeopardy!" First, you idiots should watch Double Jeopardy before spouting off legal terms. And second, why shouldn't we twice honor the man who taps Carla Bruni on a regular basis?

Going up against French unions is like dragging Stephen Colbert and his puppet off stage on the National Mall - laborious and yet funny. Sark has the sense of humor combined with the long-term vision to see through the empty charade of strikers with less resolve than unreconstructed Strom Thurmond, and wait until these pampered poofs run out of money to buy cigarettes, brie and Jerry Lewis retrospectives. As striking workers burn tires and students in funny hats and Li'l Bastard bullhorns clog the streets in protest, who looks more reasonable? What’s next, bossnapping?

Like members of SNL’s Five-Timers Club, burning down Atlanta and marching to the metaphorical shores of Cultural Imperialist is a rare thing. You've done it twice, Nick, like a septuagenarian on Cialis, and we hope you continue to stir our hearts and loins with brutal nonchalance.

My keen study of human interaction and subtle googly eyes has directly led to two romantic relationships, in which I take more pride than my own long-term relationship. Had I not created opportunities for non-overlapping social groups, these paramours would have never puckered up and later thanked me repeatedly for arranging them like the Indian parents of 8-year-olds.

But you know my greatest comfort in these carefully-calibrated setups? That my creations aren't creating, or at least prophylacting. When it comes to pagans, matchmaking should get the withdrawal method.

Even rotten little punks like raccoon-mascara Jenny Humphrey on "Gossip Girl" saved themselves for years while protecting their reputations with tales of tail. It's become a cultural trope that high school girls lie about their sexual history to avoid the "prude" tag and further the post-"Wings" career of Thomas Haden Church.

But once you start college, the other shoe drops, as well as panties and moral standards. With no Big Brother figure to keep them in line, today's 18 to 20-somethings are going at it like they’re getting college credit (and you Sacramento State students probably are).

So why should I help them hook up?

Sure, I see the chemistry (dot com) between those who are perishing in my extended social circle - the furtive glances, the humor-independent laughter, the grabbing of a thigh at a 1955 dinner table.  Knowing my record in successful nonsexual hookups, my gal has asked for my help in troubleshooting a stalled mating process that had baffled proverbial zoologists nudging the pair together.

What's my reward if I can break this impasse? Knowing the couple is coupling twice a day, four days a week, laughing maniacally at the sanctity of marriage as they "go down" the road to perdition?  I'm tired of hearing these dyads' tawdry references to their hugfests at harvest hayrides, karaoke nights and other twilight gatherings of the damned.

The cutest couples with bling-free index fingers are only addicted to eskimo kissing!  They clasp hands on restaurant tables; collapse on the couch into each others' arms, all grins and giggles but no gazonga-groping; and talk to each other. Fornicators, in contrast, talk around each other, to other people, because they've lost all respect for each other.  As a wise Jew once said, "you can't have sex with someone you admire."

So if you're willing to abstain, I'm willing to matchmake. Unless you're into Twilight. If he doesn't make a move on you overnight, he’s gay.

Having driven away the Sonics like a mistreated husband who will "be right back" with smokes, sports-sane Seattle has put its self-esteem into the Storm, a WNBA franchise that has just humped its second championship like the boyfriend on the side that it is. This estrogenocidal team has, ironically, brought a ray of sunshine not only to fans of passing, that most womanly of sports moves, but also local businesses like Microsoft, whose idea to emblazon "Bing" across the muscular chests of Storm players probably contributed 0.05% to its recent climb in market share.

As Zack Morris might say, "Timeout." Has Seattle really sunk that low?

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington, shortly after moving to Seattle, bluntly told the city's gathered tech entrepreneurs that their ambitions were lower than Jamie Lee Curtis selling pooping yogurt. I think something similar is aheel in Seattle's Ellen-Portia romance with the Storm.

The WNBA is nice in its own way. Title IX empowered female basketball players like an "Expanding Your Horizons" assembly, redistributing the boys' resources so the girls could excel in funny-looking jump shots and dateability. Long-useless stadiums like Seattle's Key Arena finally have a purpose other than ethnic festivals and job fairs. And there's no denying the talent in players like the Storm's Sue Bird, who has statue-defecated like her surname all over other teams.

But come on. Watching women play basketball is like watching children perform a Scientology pageant - unintentionally hilarious.

They can't dunk, which gives the NBA (not the "MNBA") its whiff of homoerotic imperialism. They look like they tripped and spilled a bag of groceries whenever they shoot. And these double Xers dress like Muslim women in France looking for something to replace the veil in sexlessness.

Basketball negates the natural grace and curves in women that other sports flesh out, such as gymnastics and skating. Oddly, it embues grace in men who, hours later, are farting, gambling and auditing their cocaine supply. That's why I suggest...

Skintight WNBA uniforms. This is what we, straight and lesbian, really want to see. It's what originally got women into basketball and made the Laker Girls popular quite apart from the team's performance. Basketball is the only women's sport where you identify the gender based solely on ponytail and height (and Eastern European male players are even making this fuzzy).

I can already hear the chopped air from your wagging fingers that these uniforms will create all sorts of body-image issues in young basketball players, requiring another series of seminars at my alma mater. Female ballers aren't supposed to look like gymnasts, but rather Justin Long, they say.

But club owners, bleeding money enough that every player's boobs blare Bing, might be more receptive. The WNBA's biggest problem is its demographics - a shortage of adult men and their children who would otherwise booze up and pig out at a basketball game. From watching "The Wire," I know that lesbians can drink Jimmy McNulty under the table if they want, but a WNBA game simply isn't the place to do it. It's too ... nurturing.

Maybe the answer is an expansion team to test the concept. Does "Louisville Lycra" turn you on?

The Jewish-sounding Zachary Levi is actually a committed Christian, it turns out. And for the first time with anyone, I really want a celestial audience with him. Not enough to kill us both in a murder-suicide plot, which may eternally backfire, but following our respective and wholly unrelated deaths.

Viewers have long suspected something was different about 29-year-old Levi - his fondness for video games over girls, cherubic smile and utter lack of pretension. He could easily double for another cuddle-bear of wholesome sexuality, Dashboard Confessional's Chris Carrabba, and may have the chance now that Carrabba is going back to his original Christian band.

Having recently finished "Chuck" season three, I went looking for more about Buy More's top Nerd Herder, and found not only his fish-and-loaf distribution of "Nerd" T-shirts at Comic-Con but also his Christian frat house that doubles as a "home church." This was the greatest news since Jeremiah found out Buster Bluth, aka Tony Hale, attends his church in LA!

And then I thought, for the first time in my life, I'd really like to meet this guy in heaven.

Not Moses, not the non-Eddie-Murphy talking donkey, not even Jesus - I want to pop my cherub with some lovable schmuck who can thank a footlong sandwich for his career trajectory. The thought of chillin', or whatever verb appropriately describes the temperature in the other realm, with Sexy McRighteous made me really excited about dying and swapping energy with another glowing spirit-ball. To paraphrase Liam Neeson, I must be the worst Christian ever.

For all I know, the Levi who didn’t appear in Playgirl could have some weird theological fetish, like battling Satan’s minions through Wii Tennis or confessing his carbon consumption. Who knows what his business partner/pastor is teaching in that home church.

But he's so dreamy! Just like Chief Justice John Roberts.

No, I'm not talking about a Bieber-Kardashian liaison, but rather the thinly-veiled advertisement for the Big Piano known as Big, when Hanks played Josh Baskin and Perkins played Susan. Remember their sexual tension?

That's a stupid question - of course you do. Chances are Big is in your parents' VHS library, and always a few millimeters down in your subconscious. It's an iconic movie about coming of age after a magic fortune telling machine catapults you into emerging adulthood, a satisfying career, and losing your adolescent virginity to a MILF 10 years before MILFs existed.

Think about it! Hanks was not mentally ready for intercourse in the post-carnival love scene, where he turns the light back on and takes off Perkins' bra, and hello, he was underage! And yes, Perkins didn't know that until she was wearing that gender-bending shirt and tie, while they were developing the choose-your-own-adventure interactive comic book, and Hanks tried to tell her about the Zoltar machine. But how did she react later, when Hanks left the office during the big presentation, and she followed him to Sea Point Park where he Zoltared again? She was heartbroken that she wouldn't be able to bang this stickball star from the sticks anymore!

The most outrage I've seen leveled at this unrepentant pedophilia came from my Rosie-lookalike high school choir teacher. We were taking a day off from practice as a reward for success (state champs, 1996), eating pizza and watching Big. When the love scene came up, the teacher simply blushed and made a joke about how awkward this was. Yes, watching foreplay with your students is a tad uncomfortable, unless you're a professor at Vassar. But foisting statutory rape on them? Reprehensible.

As you may have guessed, not all tweentimacy is celebrated in our society. The farthest Jennifer Garner goes in 13 Going on 30 is remarking that she's seen her guy's "thingy. And who hopes that depressed dad Kevin Spacey nails perky little Mena Suvari in American Beauty? If the notion of guys and (literal) girls hooking up didn't repulse us, Roman Polanski would still be partying with prepubescents in Pasadena.

Yet we continue to celebrate Big, and Tom Hanks' career as the eccentric Everyman continues abated. At least until he finishes the Da Vinci Code trilogy.