- While the New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets may both be subpar NBA teams with no hope of winning a championship any time soon, that doesn’t mean the two of them can’t scrap when it comes to the hearts and wallets of basketball fans in the greater Manhattan area. The two have always been rivals, but that rivalry escalated after Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov purchased the Nets earlier this year. The bombastic playboy with an incredibly diverse business empire fired the first major shot in the battle on the eve of the free-agent signing period, putting up a 227-foot billboard near Madison Square Garden that featured he and part-owner Jay-Z standing underneath the headline "The Blueprint for Greatness." The Knicks clearly didn’t like having such an obvious marketing salvo fired just a few blocks from their home turf and after signing one of the bigger prizes in the free-agent race, forward Amare Stoudemire, they retaliated a few days before their home opener with billboards featuring on buildings near the Nets' yet-to-be constructed arena in Brooklyn. But aside from dueling billboards, the feud hadn’t gone verbal until a recent Knicks’ radio ad taunting the Nets, stating "Hey Nets. You can walk like us, you can talk like us, but you ain't never gonna be like us." It’s a pretty direct poke at another NBA franchise, the sort of poke that you typically don’t see in the business-first world of professional sports these days. Never one to back down from a fight, Prokhorov responded to the radio spot. "I don't think we want to be like the Knicks. I think we'd more like to resemble the Lakers," the first-year owner said in a statement. Touché, Comrade Prokhorov. His team clearly appreciated the owner having their backs and Nets point guard Devin Harris affirmed that fact Tuesday morning, hours before the Nets traveled across the Hudson River to take on the Knicks at the Garden. "We ran some ads, they ran some ads, it's just an ad-fest," Harris said before later adding that he appreciated Prokhorov's response to the Knicks' radio ad. "It gives us confidence. [You] know that he's going to back us no matter what," he said. "He's proud of his product and we want to give him something to be proud of." Prokhorov might be proud of his product, but probably because he hasn’t seen enough Nets games yet to know how terrible they are and what an uphill fight he faces merely coaxing the franchise to respectability………
- Discovering more than 270 previously unknown works by Pablo Picasso stored at your home should be a good thing, right? That would seem logical, but it turned out to be false for 71-year-old Pierre Le Guennec, a retired French electrician who found the forgotten Picasso paintings, drawings and other works and sought to have them authenticated by the late artist's estate only to find himself on the wrong end of a lawsuit filed by the artist's son, Claude Picasso, and five other heirs who say the works are stolen. The works -- a collection of cubist collages, drawings, lithographs, notebooks and a watercolor -- were made known in January when Le Guennec contacted the Picasso estate by mail to request certification of authenticity. Along with the latter, Le Guennec enclosed 26 photographs of previously unpublished Picasso pieces and then sent similar photographs of other works in his possession in March and April. In April, he made the trip from his home in the south of France to the offices of the Picasso Administration in Paris with all 271 pieces. Here’s hoping he rolled with some heavy security for that trip because Lord knows he needed it. Christine Pinault, Claude Picasso's assistant and an employee of the Picasso Administration, confirmed that the works were reviewed and all determined to be authentic. Some time between then and Sept. 23, the Picasso family mulled the situation over and decided that the works were stolen. They filed their lawsuit on Sept. 23, charging that Le Guennec hid stolen goods. With ownership in dispute, France's Central Office for the Fight Against Traffic in Cultural Goods seized the pieces from Le Guennec's home on the French Riviera on Oct. 5 and is holding them in a vault at its Nanterre office, northwest of Paris. The family’s explanation for taking Le Guennec to court isn’t exactly well-reasoned, as the primary basis for their case seems to be his inability to explain how he came across the works. Le Guennec "hasn't given any response, not how, when or why" the works were taken, a family spokesperson said. Jean Jacques Neuer, a lawyer for the Picasso family, echoed those sentiments in an interview French television. "We are dealing with a huge number of works, and it doesn't make sense that Picasso would give 271 works," he said. "There are no documents which prove that this man was Picasso's close friend. It is simply unbelievable." Documents to prove that he was someone’s friend? Right, because people always make sure to properly document and verify their friendships. Le Guennec claims that he worked as an electrician for Picasso in the last three years of his life, but the works he found at his home are from a period spanning 1900 to 1932, well before he met the artist. Regardless of who comes out on top here, it should be interesting to see if anyone can prove anything at all in a case where most everything appears to be riding on memories, recollections and stories told from distant memories……..
- Oh, how I love it when bad and embarrassing things happen to hack karaoke singers who have secured their 15 minutes of fame via ridiculous, low-brow, offensive and hideous reality television karaoke shows. As you can imagine, this is a large group on account of there being so many horrendous, should-be-canceled reality singing/dancing shows on so very many networks. But above all those hacks to despise and root against, a few select hacks stand out. Chief among those is pale, flabby, never-kissed-a-guy, horrible-haircut-sporting Susan Boyle, the chunky, pigment-deprived opera-singer-wannabe who was on American X-Factor Dancing With the Stars or some other reality competition show and has somehow parlayed that into appearances on other reality shows and even daytime talk shows with a bunch of past-their-prime comediennes and media personalities. That’s how Boyle ended up singing on The View Tuesday morning as she attempted to promote her new album, The Gift. As a quick aside, if that album is “The Gift,” then I hope whoever bought it kept their receipt because that piece of sh*t is going right back to the store for a full refund. But Boyle couldn’t even make it through “O Holy Night” before stopping mid-song, apparently due to a frog in her throat. How rich is it that this loser was on a show for the sole purpose of promoting her wretched album and she couldn’t even make it through a song? View co-hosts Sherri Shepherd and Whoopi Goldberg rushed in for the save as per the show host’s code for struggling guests, but by that point the damage was done. Nothing like uncorking that dud and then having your next gig be at the Rockefeller Center tree-lighting ceremony on NBC. But then again, Boyle has gotten a lot more than she should have out of being a reality karaoke singer, so she really can’t complain…………
- ALL RIGHT, I GET IT! America is FAT, the vast majority of us enjoy eating fatty, unhealthy foods that clog our arteries and shorten our life spans. Do we really need a nativity scene sculpted out of butter to remind us of that fact? And if I’m talking about a full-size nativity scene made entirely from butter, what other corner of this wonderful nation would I be talking about but Iowa? Sure, Iowa is known for the famous Iowa State Fair butter cow, but now this hearty, Midwestern state is also known for a full-size butter nativity, courtesy of West Des Moines sculptor Sarah Pratt. Pratt, who has been single handedly sculpting the famous cow at the state fair each summer since 2006, has now finished work on her very first butter sculpted nativity scene. "This is actually the first year I’ve sculpted a nativity scene. This is one of my first sculptures I’ve done outside of the fair actually, so I’m really excited to be doing this,” Pratt said. "It's very rewarding, just as it starts as wire and butter and turns out as a piece of art. It's really rewarding.” Her butter nativity will be on display on Dec. 4 between 9 a.m. and noon and Dec. 5 between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. at 601 Grand Avenue in Des Moines. There will be other hand-crafted nativity scenes as part of the Nativity Exhibition, which is part of a fundraiser for St. Joseph’s Family Shelter, but rest assured that there will not be a more unique (or edible) version of the Holy Family on display. So thanks for showing us that dairy products can be turned into art, Sarah, and thanks for the reminder that America still dominates the globe in obesity and clogged arteries………
- Boy, some people just are not happy no matter what Congress does. Don’t pass a food safety bill and people are pissed. Pass a food safety bill and a different group of people gets pissed. Have the Senate wait more than a year to pass its own version of a food safety bull that the House of Representatives passed and……well, you get the point. But angry constituents or not, the Senate passed a food safety bill Tuesday to give more power to the Food and Drug Administration. The House approved its own version last year and both bills are designed to bolster the safety of the nation's food supply. The Senate version passed 73 to 25, which should placate the angry food safety advocates who had decried the Senate’s reticence to pass the bill. According to the non-profit advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest, there have been 85 recalls of FDA-regulated foods since the House of Representatives passed their version of the bill. A report from the CPSI claimed that the recalls were associated with 1,850 reported illnesses. Still, the Senate bill, called the Food Safety Enhancement Act (S. 510), is being criticized by some food safety groups as not strict enough even though it addresses many aspects of food safety, including better preventive control measures by manufacturers, more frequent inspections of facilities and greater FDA authority over recalls. In short, it should help the government and food manufacturers better handle situations like the recent recalls on lettuce, peanuts and eggs. One of the most important aspects of the bill is providing a direct path for the FDA to issue recalls of suspected eggs instead of relying on voluntary recalls by the manufacturers. In the end, I suppose a food safety bill of any sort is better than nothing at all and considering the pace at which Congress typically moves, let’s just be grateful and keep moving………
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