- The Great Russian Ballet Acid Attack conspiracy has
finally been unraveled. Ever since a masked man threw a jar of sulphuric acid in the
face of Russia's Bolshoi ballet’s artistic director Sergei Filin late on Jan.
17, police have been attempting to unearth the details of a plot that nearly
took Filin’s eyesight. At long last, investigators have their man. A diabolical
dancer who made his name playing villains has confessed to ordering the acid
attack. Pavel Dmitrichenko, who portrayed the crazed monarch in Ivan the
Terrible and the villain in Swan Lake, was taken into custody on Tuesday and
looked like hell when he was detained. Hair askew, appearance completely
unkempt and eyes bleary, Dmitrichenko was shown in a police video confessing to
plotting the attack while explaining that he ordered the hit because he was
angry that his lover was being kept out of leading roles. In the video, Dmitrichenko
claimed he never intended for the attack to go as far as it did. "I
organized this attack, but not to the extent that it happened," he said.
According to police, Dmitrichenko contracted Yury Zarutsky and his driver
Andrei Lipatov to carry out the attack. Both men also confessed in the video
released by police and neither has any known connection to the ballet. Investigators
were able to track the two men down by tracking cellphone calls made from the
crime scene. Dmitrichenko allegedly expounded on his reasons for the attack in
a written statement to police but did not say what they were on camera.
However, sources close to the case claimed that he was angry that his partner,
ballerina Anzhelika Vorontsova, had missed out on top roles, including the lead
in Swan Lake. Those same sources said Filin certainly screwed Vorontsova….out
of key roles, that is. Still, that isn’t really justification for nearly
robbing someone of their sight by blasting them in the face with acid. Filin
suggested last month that he knew who was behind the attack and thought it was
connected with his work, so maybe he knew all along that Dmitrichenko was
behind it. Filin continues to recover after receiving treatment in Germany and
expects to return to work this summer……….
- Rapper Gucci Mane needs to start sending it the thank you
cards right away because he owes his fans big. Mane, whose real name is Radric
Davis, broke some news to his loyal Twitter followers on Tuesday, informing
them that he had decided to swap out his current stage name for a new moniker,
beginning July 2. "I'm officially changing my rap name to Guwop and
retiring the great Gucci Mane," he wrote early Tuesday morning. "Thanks
fans, for eight years as Gucci now it's Wop turn." Guwop? It sounds like a
combination of “goober” and doo-wop and as such, probably shouldn’t be attached
to any artist who expects to be taken seriously as either a rapper or a human
being. Had Man’s Twitter fans merely rolled with the news or intimated that
they didn’t have any problem with the change, they would have soon been rocking
the latest hit single from Guwop in their ear buds and having to explain to
everyone they knew why the were wearing a Guwop concert t-shirt. The beautiful
side of Twitter charged all of that as fans lit up Mane with unflattering
remarks, remarks like the one from @iStoleFreeHugs, who wrote, "Im not
gonna call you Guwop dumbass, just so you know." Another user told Mane to
“Shut the f**k up son,” only without the asterisks in f**k. The vitriolic
response was enough to change Mane’s mind and within half an hour, the blowback
convinced him to change his mind. In a follow-up tweet, he informed his
followers that he was reverting back to Gucci Mane. That’s the handle he will
use when he finally released to the follow-up of his most recent studio album,
“The Appeal: Georgia's Most Wanted,” which dropped in 2010……..
- Cue the “Jaws” theme and stay out of the water, residents
of the southeastern portion of Florida. Beaches in the Palm Beach area closed
Tuesday after thousands
of sharks were spotted swimming along South Florida shores. Marine biologists
scouring the coastline have spotted tens of thousands of sharks from Boca Raton
to Jupiter since the start of the month as the animals swim north after migrating
south for the winter. The scene was a scary one Tuesday off Midtown Beach,
where lifeguards spotted a school of spinner sharks moving through the area.
The guards raised their red warning flags, indicating that swimmers were no
longer permitted in the water. Spinner sharks are so named because they are
often seen jumping out of the water and spinning as they chase their prey. Television
news helicopters have also been following the migration and sending back images
of schools of sharks to their stations to sufficiently warn/frighten the
masses. There are thousands of sharks right there, and yet this year, there have
been no bites in Palm Beach County waters,” said Steve Kajiura, a shark
researcher with Florida Atlantic University’s Elasmobranch Research Laboratory
in Boca Raton. “Our data has shown that the bulk of the migration occurs in
January and February, but it may be a little behind this year due to the warmer
weather and water temperatures.” So far, no shark attacks have been reported as
a result of the migration, although a wayward tourist on a boogie board or an
aspiring triathlete who can’t put off their daily swim could end up making a
run to the local emergency room at some point because a shark spotted them and
decided that they would make a asty snack. Research has shown that sharks are
attracted to silver, along with the colors yellow and gold, so anyone taking to
the water in South Florida should avoid taking their Olympic gold or silver
medals with them and stick to grey, black or beige-toned surfboards and
swimming trucks if avoiding a shark bite is high on the ol’ priority list……..
- New York Knicks
coach Mike Woodson may want to have that one back. His team is limping along at
one game above .500 over its last 33 games and fading fast from their former
role as the second-best team in the NBA’s Eastern Conference. The Knicks won
Monday night in Cleveland, but may have suffered a big loss in the contest when
Carmelo Anthony injured his knee in the second quarter. The All-Star forward aggravated
the knee injury after tripping without contact and went to the locker room with
6:42 remaining in the second quarter. He didn’t return to the game, but the
Knicks still rallied from a 22-point deficit to win, 102-97. After the game,
the Knicks announced that Anthony officially has been diagnosed with a sore
knee and would be listed as questionable for Wednesday's game against the
Detroit Pistons. On the same day that news broke, Woodson admitted in a radio
interview that Anthony had asked to be removed from the game due to knee
discomfort before suffering the injury. He elected to ignore the wishes of his
star player and it came back to bite him. The coach called Anthony's injury
"alarming" and conceded that his decision to leave the star forward
in the game was "stubborn." "Melo was hurt," Woodson said.
"For him to ask me to come out of the game before he actually took that
spill made me realize that something wasn't right. He's never ever, ever, even
hinted about coming out of the game [before Monday]. I play him too much in
that regard. Melo's a trooper -- he's a warrior, he's a tough kid." Melo
may be a “tough kid,” but Woodson needed to be a smart coach and sit him. "I
should have [taken him out]," Woodson said. "Stubborn coach -- I just
didn't." The good news for Woodson and the Knicks is that an MRI revealed
no structural damage. Assuming Anthony misses no time or just one game, the
Knicks have dodged a major bullet on this one. Next time, they need to make it
clear to their coach that jerking their franchise player around will jeopardize
his own job security……
- Canadian camels? They seem unlikely in the snow-covered
tundra that is Canada in the current age, but a collection of ancient, mummified camel bones recently dug
from that tundra suggest that the animals typically tied to the arid sands of
African deserts actually developed in subfreezing forests in what is now
Canada's High Arctic. Paleobotanist Natalia Rybczynski of the Canadian Museum
of Nature in Ottawa led the group that discovered the bones and theorized that
about 3.5 million years ago, Strathcona Fiord on Ellesmere Island's
west-central coast would have looked more like a northern forest than an Arctic
landscape. "Larch-dominated, lots of wetlands, peat," Rybczynski
said. "If you were standing in it and watching the camel, it would have
the feel of a boreal-type forest." Other fossil finds in the area have
provided evidence of ancient bears, horses, deer, badgers and frogs and in this
theoretical ancient forest, the average yearly temperature would have been
about 32 degrees Fahrenheit. The Arctic camel that lived in this forest was 30
percent larger than modern camels, according to Rybczynski, and was probably
single-humped. Modern-day camels are only found in Africa and Asia, but
scientists have long theorized that the species originated in North America and
later died out. Camel remains have been found in the Yukon, but none in the
same state of preservation as Rybczynski’s find. Some 30 fragments were located
in the sand and pebbles of the tundra and all were mummified, not fossilized.
The mummification means the pieces have tiny, preserved fragments of collagen
within them, a common type of protein found in bones. Analysis of that protein
proved the fragments were from camels and also that they were from a type of
camel that is much more closely related to the modern version than the Yukon
camel. "This is the one that's tied to the ancestry of modern
camels," Rybczynski said. A truly camel-rific find……..
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