The gods of technology willing, the Daily News will introduce a new entertainment blog on Monday, which will allow all of our loquacious and opinionated critics to weigh in on everything from political filmmaking to Lindsay Lohan's disastrous fashion sense. And though Hollywood's feverish necessity to distribute awards to one another will diminish significantly -- for a while, at least -- after Sunday's Oscars, this weblog will still be up and running, as well.

So I'm going to jump the gun just a little bit (well, actually, I've already done it in the past with sundry screeds) by addressing the frankly crazy media coverage of Barry Bonds' loopy Paula Abdul imitations. You've likely seen a lot on this, particularly on ESPN; what very little of that coverage has told you is that Bonds has signed a deal with ESPN for a reality series. Which thoroughly explains why a guy who has betrayed almost no sense of humor in the past is suddenly yokking it up like he's Robin Williams in Mrs. Doubtfire.

The unasked question in so much of recent reportage of Bonds has been, Why is he doing this? Clearly, it wasn't his idea. There was a given wisdom in the past regarding reality shows: If the protagonists visit a psychic, you know they've run out of ideas and the producers are clearly grasping. To which we can now add this amendment: If a subject appears in drag, apropos of nothing, a reality show's producers are really sweating their career choices.