- Thieves are still not the smartest lot. Their plans are
often short-sighted and their schemes are typically full of holes that wouldn’t
exist if they had been concocted by a smarter individual. Troy (N.Y.) resident Rahkeim Scarlett falls squarely under this heading, as evidenced
by what happened after he allegedly used stolen credit cards to buy expensive
jewelry at a suburban Rochester jewelry store. According to police, Scarlett used
a stolen card on Feb. 11 to buy a Rolex watch and diamond earrings worth nearly
$30,000, but his treachery was discovered before he even had a chance to exit
the store. Amazingly, someone buying $30,000 worth of merch aroused some suspicion
and when store employees questioned him and tried to prevent him from leaving,
this fool allegedly fled but was founding hiding in snow banks on the mall
property. Either his getaway car wouldn’t start or the city bus he was planning
to use to speed away from the scene wasn’t running on schedule, but trying to
blend in with a pile of dirty, rock-filled, off-white snow in a mall parking
lot doesn’t exactly scream criminal mastermind – unless you have those
snow-tinted camouflage suits Leonardo DiCaprio and his friends rocked in the
climactic closing scene in “Inception.” Amazingly, hiding in a mall parking lot
snow bank wasn’t the dumbest part of the plan. No, that would be swallowing a
diamond ring in an attempt to hide the evidence. According to police Scarlett
swallowed a diamond ring that was among jewelry he bought with the stolen
credit cards, seemingly ignorant of the laws of physics and biology and the
fact that the ring was going to come out sooner or later. Sure enough, he passed
the ring several days later and now he and his public defender have to find a
way out of this mess………
- Missy Elliott is working it and attempting to capitalize
on her surge of Super Bowl fallout fame in the process. Elliott, who joined Katy
Perry during the pop hack’s show at the Super Bowl halftime show earlier this
month, is trying to use the momentum from those moments beside dancing sharks
and 20-foot-tall mechanical lions to launch her first album in a decade. After
performing her hits “Get Ur Freak On,” “Work It” and “Lose Control,” Elliott
saw her album sales soar 2,500 percent and sales of those three songs rise by
978 percent. In the wake of that boost, the rapper has confirmed that she is
working on new music with Pharrell Williams. Elliott posted a picture on
Instagram showing she and Williams in the studio, tagged with the caption, "VA!
2 up 2 down! Me & my fam @Pharrell hard at work.” The image confirmed what
Elliott had been hinting at for a while now, including a photo of herself in
the studio with producer Timbaland. It was Timbaland who produced the vast
majority of Elliott's back catalogue and if he and Williams, two of the biggest
producers of pop music drivel these days, are on board then it’s only a matter
of time before Elliott is cranking out the follow-up to 2005’s “The Cookbook.”
Granted, the three people – Perry, Williams and Timbaland – orbiting around
this new album are all mainstream pop hacks who are more concerned with
churning out marketable, overly produced tunes that will get heavy radio play,
but Elliott clearly has game and hopefully that game will be able to overcome
the people with whom she has surrounded herself, yielding the next great rap
album of 2015……….
- The conflict ‘twixt Russia and Ukraine is jumping borders
and ruffling feathers around Eastern Europe. It’s causing strife in Poland,
where Warsaw city councilors have banned a 1945 monument of
Polish-Soviet brotherhood in arms from being returned to its place on a city
street. Councilors voted 51-2 to keep the hulking monument, commonly known as the
"four sleeping men," in a storeroom. The original plan was to return
the monument to its place after it was moved in 2011 to allow for the
construction of a subway line in the area. The council previously voted to put
the monument back in place, but the conflict in eastern Ukraine threw those
plans into disarray. The monument was originally erected in 1945 in Warsaw's
Praga district to commemorate the joint struggle of Soviet and Polish troops
against the Nazis, but over the years it came to represent something much
different. Looking back, the tipping point was the 1989 fall of communism, because
it was after that point the monument became an unpopular symbol of the hated,
oppressive political system employed by the old U.S.S.R. Even so, removing such
a massive monument isn't something that happens overnight. It stood for more
than two decades after Communism (theoretically) fell in Russia, but now that
relations between Warsaw and Moscow are strained over the unrest in Ukraine,
the chances that it ever goes back up are remote. Look for Poland to find something
else to fill the space the monument once occupied, maybe even commission a
local artist to create a new work of art that will stir Polish pride without
invoking the name of that overbearing, invasion-happy country to the east………
- Giancarlo Stanton is back and looking semi-ridiculous. He’s
fine with that, just as long as looking absurd keeps him on the field to earn
that 13-year, $325 million contract
he inked with the Miami Marlins this offseason. Stanton saw his 2014 season come to an abrupt end
Sept. 11 when he had his face broken by a pitch from Brewers starter Mike
Fiers. The sight of a bloodied, battered Stanton being helped off the field
that day is tough to shake, but he’s put it out of his mind and made his
comeback this spring while rocking a helmet that looks unlike anything that has
come before it in baseball. To protect his surgically repaired grille, Stanton
is wearing a facemask attachment on his batting helmet, courtesy of prepared by
football helmet manufacturer Schutt. Stanton's mask is made of carbon fiber and
features a stylized "G," covering the left side of his face around
the mouth in case another pitch comes up and in on the reigning National League
home run champion. Clad in the helmet, Stanton saw his first live pitches on
Thursday since his beaning back in September and is confident that the helmet
won't hamper his visibility at the plate. "I wasn't fond of that [old
design] across my face the whole time,'' he said. "It's just what I
envisioned when thinking about it.” Other MLB players have worn mask
attachments on their helmets over the years and New York Mets third baseman
David Wright famously wore an oversized, comically large helmet designed to
protect against concussions a couple years back. Stanton is the first to wear a
personalized football-style mask, one much different than the plastic extension
Jason Heyward began wearing in 2013. Although Stanton hasn’t announced whether
he will wear his mask in the regular season, it’s tough to imagine him not
sticking with it as long as it works well throughout spring training………
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