THE MASHUP: SPORTS AND POP CULTURE COLLIDE

Bonds, bikinis and beliefs test the system

We know that a lot of baseball players took illegal performance-enhancing drugs, but home-run king Barry Bonds remains the biggest target for criticism.

Bonds pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of using steroids and lying to a grand jury in federal court.

He hasn’t been found guilty of anything, but everybody has an opinion as to whether he took drugs.

Opinions, though, are like fruitcakes during the holidays: Everybody has one, and they all stink. Anyway, I was taught to presume that the accused are innocent unless proven guilty.

This legal process is a fireworks show — everybody is watching it. And People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is smart enough to try to use that to its advantage.

PETA on Friday sent women to the arraignment wearing bikinis made of lettuce. They stood outside the courthouse, passing out faux-turkey sandwiches and holding signs that read: “Meat Contains Drugs — Go Vegetarian.”

The organization’s vice president, Bruce Friedrich, said in a news release: “The growth-promoting drugs given to chickens make them grow faster than Barry Bonds’ hat size.”

That’s funny, but there is no way that stunt is going to turn anybody into a vegetarian.

It’s as likely to change people’s eating habits as a MySpace.com page is to lead to true love.

Anyway, it’s chilly in San Francisco this time of year. That might be good for the lettuce, but those poor women must have been pretty cold while they were out there shaming their families.

What about Joey?

Nike has signed Chris Bryant — a 23-year-old waiter from Akron, Ohio — to a shoe deal, The Associated Press reported this week.

Bryant can jump over a car. He did it a few months ago on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” For that Nike is going to give him a signature shoe, called the Car Jumper.

Hey, Nike, just so you know: Royals outfielder Joey Gathright can jump over cars, too. Plus, he can hit .300 and rob people of home runs at the wall. Where are Gathright’s powder-blue and white Max Air Shox Force 1s to match the squad’s new powder-blue unis?

He said it

“I’ll give him (Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane) any player on our roster for directions to Bayou C,” Boston GM Theo Epstein on the XM Satellite Radio show “Baseball This Morning,” joking about the size of the Opryland Hotel, the site of baseball’s winter meetings. The Nashville, Tenn., hotel has 600,000 square feet of meeting space.

Ferrell is a Wild cat

Actor Will Ferrell is going to kick off a seven-city national stand-up comedy tour Feb. 4 at Kansas State, it was announced Friday.

The tour is to promote his upcoming movie, “Semi-Pro,” a comedy set in 1976 about the old ABA that co-stars Andre “3000” Benjamin, of the hip-hop duo Outkast.

To reach Greg Moore send e-mail to gmoore@kcstar.com.