As a nation, are we still expressing shock and outrage when someone does pot?  We are?  Really?  In that case, I am shocked and outraged that Olympic hero Michael Phelps was photographed doing a bong hit last November.  I guess.  News of the World ran this photo even after “Phelps’ aides went into a panic over our story and offered us a raft of extraordinary incentives not to run the bong picture.”

It was on November 6, weeks after his Beijing triumph, that 23-year-old Phelps surprised students at the University Of South Carolina in Columbia by showing up unannounced at a house party.  He was visiting Jordan Matthews, a girl he was secretly seeing who was a student there…

Our source said: “You could tell Michael had smoked before. He grabbed the bong and a lighter and knew exactly what to do.

“He looked just as natural with a bong in his hands as he does swimming in the pool. He was the gold medal winner of bong hits. Michael ended up getting a little paranoid, though, because before too long he looked like he was nervous and ran out of the place.”

In a statement released to the AP, Phelps acknowledged that it’s him in the photo and apologized for “regrettable behavior.”  If you can call getting drunk and high while chasing college ass “regrettable.”  Seems like a pretty good weekend to me.  I bet a guy like Phelps doesn’t even have to use my best pick-up line.  “Hey, does this smell like ether?’

It must be so hard for Warren Sapp and Michael Phelps to get all the attention they so desperately crave.  I can see how all the endorsements and TV appearances and paparazzi photos and media blurbs just aren’t quite enough.  Sometimes, you just have to go to a swanky South Beach hotel and have a loud conversation that everyone can hear before taking over the entire pool for a race.

You can watch TMZ’s video (“article” here), but I guarantee you’ll only end up asking yourself, “Why did I just waste that time?”  Doing actual work is more enjoyable than watching this as a diversion from work.

On a side note, more people watched this race in person than the GMAC Bowl last night.

Michael Phelps has signed a deal with 505 Games to get his own swimming-themed video game.  For real.  **yawns** Someone slow this thrill ride down.

The concept for the game is being developed. It will be “action-oriented,” but it won’t be a game in which players simply swim laps, said Adam Kline, president of 505 Games North America.

Really?  Because making someone swim laps sounds fascinating.  Ooh, I hope there’s a practice mode!  Woohoo!  Three thousand meter warm-up, here I come!

But let’s be serious for a moment.  Sell any stock you had in 505 Games.  Sell it yesterday.  Because this game’s coming out in the spring of 2010 – almost two years after Phelps won eight golds in Beijing.  I just don’t think there are enough spear guns and chlorine-breathing giant squid and slutty mermaids to make this a success.

Last week an Asian chick with big boobs walked around LAX with Michael Phelps, and I naturally assumed it was his big-boobed Asian girlfriend Caz Pal.  But apparently the woman was just some Asian boob double hired by the paparazzi to walk near Phelps.

How does he explain a new photo of him and a scantily [clad] woman, identified as Pal, taken at Los Angeles International Airport on Wednesday? He said it was a set-up by an enterprising photographer.

“They pose the girl up next to me as I get out of the car, and she follows me in,” he explained. “I was like, ‘Oh wow, you guys are pretty original — pose somebody next to me to make it look like we’re together!’ She, like, follows me up the counter. I’ve never seen her before in my life!

Well, that sucks.  I don’t think I’ve ever been wrong before, except about most things. I guess I can’t tell two large-breasted Asian women apart.  Does that make me racist?  I can’t be racist if I still think they’re hot, right?

Also, Phelps stated on Regis and Kelly that he’s “not seeing anyone right now,” so I guess he and Pal have split up.  What a pity.  And here we were, a nation united and in love with America’s hottest sports couple for, oh, two weeks or so.  Will we ever bounce back?  It’s too soon to tell.

[Gunaxin / Sports by Brooks]

Michael Phelps went on the Colbert Report last night to promote his new book, No Limits.  Which he definitely wrote himself.  Why, he’s been behind locked doors ever since the Olympics ended getting that manuscript finished!  I’ve barely seen him!

These photos of him looking his most erudite and bookish come from the Best Week Ever blog, which captures Phelps’s first-person narrative perfectly.  I couldn’t have done it any better.  No, seriously: I’m not very good at what I do.

(thanks to Vince for the tip)

When word came out that Michael Phelps was dating some no-name Vegas cocktail waitress named Caroline Pal (aka “Caz”) — pictures here and here — a lot of people who don’t have Vegas cocktail waitress girlfriends were pretty critical of Phelps.  Having never had a Vegas cocktail waitress girlfriend before, they assumed that a guy who won 8 gold medals at a single Olympics should be dating someone else.

Maybe those people are right, I don’t know.  But Phelps made a pretty compelling couterpoint when Caz and her stupendous cleavage joined him at LAX yesterday (full gallery at WWTDD).  It’s one of life’s great mysteries: if you were an Olympic hero with your pick of women, do you choose some Hollywood starlet with a publicist and jobs that have her make out with other actors, or do you go with the tattooed Asian chick with big jugs in Vegas?  It’s like Six Flags for my imagination.