Taiwan’s vaunted Next Media Animation is piecing together an animated, Walk The Line style biopic of Jeremy Lin, the first American-born NBA star of Chinese and Taiwanese heritage. If this first chapter (featuring Lin glowing gold with power and transmogrifying into a violent monkey is any indication) they’re just pasting Lin’s head onto Goku and badly adapting old episodes of Dragonball Z. Hopefully LeBron James and Dwyane Wade will show up as Androids before they’re done.

All anime and “Miami beating the dogsh*t out of the Knicks” jokes aside, the best part of the video isn’t Lin morphing into a “little monkey” and breaking somebody’s vase … it’s the fact that he’s saved from a lifetime lived as a monkey by Jesus himself, who works a little magic, teaches him to behave and gives him Go Go Gadget spring shoes. And here I thought NMA was being faithful to the Wiki page.

I’m guessing part two covers Golden State and his rise to prominence in New York, and part three puts lightning behind some guys with “journalist” written across their chests and has them tear Lin down with negative puns like “LINept!” or “LINeffective!” as soon as he starts having bad games.

I’m not usually one to embrace hyperbole or throw around tired Interwebs jargon like “epic” or “bonertastic”, which I just made up, but I think it’s safe to say that “Team Ghost Riders” is the greatest minor league ballpark promotion of all-time. As you can see in the banner pic, the troupe features cowboy monkeys riding on dogs and herding goats. I could write down 1,000 of my favorite things in this world on tiny pieces of notebook paper, put them into a hat and draw three, and I still probably wouldn’t come up with something as awesome as this. Maybe if I drew “naked women”, “glass bottom boat” and “White House lawn” but that can be taken care of with a few hours on Craigslist.

Memphis rodeo cowboy Tim “Wild Thang” Lepard is the brilliant mastermind behind Team Ghost Riders and if Time Magazine and the Nobel Prize committee have any hair left on their respective beanbags, Tim will lead a clean sweep in every major award on the planet this year. Enough with the chit chat already. Let’s see some freaking cowboy monkeys riding dogs.

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A boxing promotion in Thailand is facing the fingerwag for training orangutans to participate in boxing, carrying ring cards, and ringing the bell starting each round. My respect level for Thailand just plummeted. Safari World operate just outside of Bangkok, and were actually banned from operating in that country six years ago.

The apes kickbox each other as a spectacle for tourists in a show lasting more than 30 minutes, before being returned to their dark cages. It is not known how many orangutans have been captured and trained by Safari World.[..]

In 2004, the Thai government banned Safari World from conducting these controversial shows after the centre was found to be using illegally smuggled orangutans from Indonesia.–Daily Mail (UK).

I for one am glad to see the fight game working its way into the Asian mainstream. And really, if Michael Vick would have thought to put boxing gloves on his dogs, he probably could have saved himself a lot of trouble. Things are always better with gloves on, unless you’re talking about the Nintendo Power Glove. That thing was such a piece of junk. More pics after the jump.
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Fortune has it that the Baltimore Orioles have been having some difficulty winning games on Sundays. Must be all those noisome Maryland blue laws preventing them from getting needed booze before the games. One would think the Lord's Day could chase away the satanic influence of Peter Angelos. Either way, outfielder Jay Payton has an idea to stanch the slide.

The Orioles have lost 10 straight Sunday games after winning their first one in April. And once again, the loss prevented them from completing a sweep.

"We should just quit playing on Sundays and we'll be in first place," Jay Payton said. "It's just one of those stats. Maybe we need to cut the head off a monkey or something to switch it up. I think it's usually a chicken, but I'm thinking maybe a monkey would work. But that's animal cruelty. I wouldn't do that."

Thanks, Pedro Cerrano. You want all the benefits of voodoo but none of the dirty work? And everybody knows monkey paws are the luckiest part of the simian anatomy. Not monkey penises, certainly. Thanks for the bum steer, shady Moroccan merchant.