- Manny Pacquiao
is part past-his-prime boxer, part-politician, part-wannabe-musician and
part-businessman. It is in the last of those four capacities that the Filipino
sporting icon and WBO welterweight champion is seeking the help of one of the
biggest kooks in the history of professional sports. Yes, the Pac-Man has
expressed interest in recruiting former NBA All-Star Metta World Peace to join
the newly formed Kia Sorentos in the Philippine Basketball Association.
Pacquiao has become player/coach of that team and although World Peace, who
changed his name from Ron Artest, is currently playing for the Sichuan Blue
Whales in the Chinese Basketball Association, the boxing icon is confident that
he can persuade the eccentric hoopster to switch teams. "He's OK. He's my
friend," Pacquiao said of World Peace, whom he met in Los Angeles in 2009
prior to his fight against Miguel Cotto. "We need a good import. If we get
him, that would be nice." Nice? Getting Ron-Ron to ball for your team is
rarely nice unless you’re partial to weird name changes, erratic jump shots and
general ridiculousness that does little to help you win basketball games. Even
if World Peace is past the shenanigans of his early NBA career, including the
fistfight with fans at an Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons game, he’s an aged-out
baller who is a step slow and hasn’t aged gracefully on the court. Maybe
Pacquiao made his comments to draw attention to his title defense against
American Chris Algieri on Nov. 22 in Macau and nothing screams publicity stunt
quite like a 5-foot-6 boxer trying to start his basketball career alongside a
bonafide circus sideshow. It’s often true that great athletes dream of playing
other sports, becoming rock stars or dabbling in acting, but this is a new
twist on that tale………
- Has anyone seen Hama Amadou? If you have, go ahead and
let the people of Niger know, because Amadou is the head of Niger's National
Assembly, he’s wanted for questioning in connection with a baby trafficking
scandal and depending upon whom you ask, he may have fled Africa for the
wine-soaked shores of France. According to sources close to the office of
Burkina Faso's president, Amadou fled his own country and entered Burkina Faso
last week as officials in his home country ruled his parliamentary immunity
would not save him from being questioned over the scandal. That, it turns out,
was merely the start of a long and winding road trip that would have been
considerably more enjoyable for, you know, someone who isn't accused of buying
and selling infants in one of the most heinous and calloused displays of
scum-baggery imaginable. The details are sketchy at this point because no one
wants to go on the record in such a sensitive international matter, but the
word on the street is that Amadou went from Burkina Faso to Belgium, then
hopped across a third border to France. His current whereabouts are rumored to
be Paris, which is a baller destination under most circumstances but just looks
really d-baggish if you’re fleeing one of the more unsavory crimes a person can
commit – oh, and you life behind your wife and 17 other alleged co-conspirators
who were arrested over their suspected links to trafficking babies from
neighboring Nigeria. One has to hope that Amadou is hiding out in the filthiest
and smelliest portion of Paris’ famed catacombs at this point because those are
the accommodations best suited to his (alleged) lack of character and humanity………
- The crowds were not a-flockin’ to the multiplex over the
holiday weekend. Box office numbers were sadly low for the frame, allowing
reigning king “Guardians of the Galaxy” to hold onto the top spot with just
$16.3 million for the weekend. The upped the superhero movie’s five-week
domestic take to $274.6 million and counting. Second place went to “Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles,” which banked $11.8 million for a four-week haul of
$162.4 million. “If I Stay” lived up to its name and hung in third place for
the second straight week thanks to $9.2 million. In its two short weeks of
release, it has amassed a mere $29.8 million in overall domestic earnings. The
top newcomer for the weekend was the Paris-based horror flick “As Above/So
Below,” which debuted in fourth place with $8.4 million. It did just enough to
edge out “Let’s Be Cops,” which tumbled two spots to fifth place with $8.2
million, which boosted its three-week total to $57.3 million. The second
newcomer of the top 10 was Pierce Brosnan’s failed return to the spy/action
genre, “The November Man.” Propelled by an aging action star who wasn’t that
great in his prime, “November Man” could do no better than sixth place and $7.6
million. Football-themed flick “When the Game Stands Tall” slotted seventh with
another $5.7 million for its coffers and it has pushed past the point of
profitability after just two weeks with $16.3 million taken in against a $15
million budget. “The Giver” was next in eighth place and $5.2 million. Its
modest three-week total has risen to $31.5 million, more than enough to earn
back its original budget. The penultimate top 10 spot went to “The
Hundred-Foot Journey” and its $4.6 million, elevating its total earnings to
$39.4 million after four weeks. “The Expendables 3” rounded out the list with
$3.5 million and has geezer-action-hero-ed its way to a scant $33.1 million in
three weeks of release. “Into the Storm” (No. 13) and “Frank Miller's Sin City:
A Dame to Kill For” (No. 14) both lost their top 10 spots from one week
ago………..
- What a week this should be for Detroit. The city’s
agonizingly slow march toward becoming the first American city to officially be
declared bankrupt will finally pick up speed as the confirmation trial for the
largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history is scheduled to start Tuesday. It
should be uplifting to hear tales of decades of mismanagement, malfeasance and
meltdowns that took a manufacturing city to its knees under a deluge of massive
debt, thousands of creditors and complex union and pension issues. Ironically,
many experts predicted that for those very seasons, Detroit's bankruptcy would
take years to resolve. After all, two California cities — Stockton and San
Bernardino — filed a year before Detroit did and their cases are as unresolved
as quest to figure out what the hell Ozzy Osbourne is saying every time he
opens his mouth. But with the trial on the verge of starting, the prognostications
for Detroit being declared belly-up are rosier, with the path to exit
bankruptcy possibly taking less than a year and a half. Detroit expects to cut
$12 billion in unsecured debt to about $5 billion, which is "more
manageable," according to Bill Nowling, a spokesman for emergency manager
Kevyn Orr. Nowling added that the debt will remain until the
plan is confirmed and the judge issues an effective date, but said the process
will pick up speed after that. That would be good news for Orr, whose contract
expires at the end of September. After his restructuring team set an aggressive
timetable and bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes hurried to name mediators to work
out deals with creditors, months and possibly even years were carved off the
projected timeline. "I think — with the exception of a few remaining
holdouts — all of our creditors recognized we could not let the city languish
in endless bankruptcy proceedings," Nowling said. The road ahead is still
messy. Detroit's debt includes $3.5 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and
unless it gets help from the state, major corporations, foundations and others
through donations of more than $800 million over 20 years, it will have to
screw over 30,000 city retirees and workers and possibly sell masterpieces from
the Detroit Institute of Arts. There is a hell of a lot riding on these legal
proceedings, which is ironic given how little Detroit is actually worth at this
point………
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