- Pete Rose he ain’t. Now-former Sutton United
goalkeeper/assistant coach Wayne Shaw is a man who, like Rose, ran afoul of his
sport for intertwining athletics and gambling. Unlike Rose, Shaw is nowhere
close to being the best ever in his sport and his exit from it won't really
stir up much controversy. When a guy who’s nearly 50 years old and so out of
shape that he’s known as the "roly-poly goalie," it’s hard to expect
excellence of any kind from him, so when he was spotted eating a pie on the
bench during his club's FA Cup contest against Arsenal, it wasn’t out of place.
Yet there was more to the story and that’s why the Football Association and
Gambling Commission have launched an investigation into a potential breach of
betting rules regarding the pie-eating goalie. Seems that Shaw admitted he was
aware that a bookmaker was offering odds of 8-1 on him being seen eating during
the match at Gander Green Lane and knowing the game would be broadcast live, he
could place a bet and bank some sweet coin by chowing down on the bench - all
without doing the one thing sports fear when it comes to athletes and gambling,
namely affecting the outcome of a game in the name of profit. A Sun Bets tweet
claimed the company paid out a "five-figure sum" on the bet and who else
would gamble that big on a seemingly trivial bet except the dude who could
control whether it paid off? Shaw resigned less than 24 hours after the game
and manager Paul Doswell called it “very disappointing, there's no doubt about
that.” How many pies can a former professional soccer player buy with a
five-figure sum……….
- Bob DeNiro, he ain’t. Yes, he was a raging bull, but this
one wasn’t looking to knock anyone out on the ring - just to avoid ending up on
a grill somewhere, being seared and served to hungry diners. It created quite
the scene in the streets of Queens as a bold bull escaped a slaughterhouse and
sprinted through the streets of the borough’s Jamaica neighborhood, prompting
hardened New Yorkers to stop honking their horns at one another, rushing to
their next appointment in Manhattan and snap photos for social media while
asking, “What the f*ck?” The bull managed to get away from the slaughterhouse
and ran through a housing project before it was cornered in a neighbor’s back
yard, where police and wildlife personnel were able to corral and put him down
using at least five tranquilizer darts. Sadly for the bull, its heart and
escapability were not rewarded, as it died shortly after taking those find
tranquilizer dart shots, the animal died - likely of stress, police and
witnesses said. Officers probably won't win much support from animal rights
kooks for shooting the raging bull with a tranquilizer to calm him and also
injecting the animal with a syringe of xylazine, a drug used for sedation, but
there weren't too many options for them and either way, the bull wasn’t going
to live much longer. In this case, it died in a back yard and was transported to a crematorium to
be disposed of, depriving a restaurant somewhere of quality burgers and steaks…….
- There are so many memorable images and symbols associated
with the career of iconic British rocker David Bowie, how does an adoring fan
base pick just one? It is a challenge, but Bowie fans near his home base in
Brixton, south London have managed to settle on one specific image to honor
their icon and are now raising money for a memorial statue marking the late
music hero’s London birthplace. The statue is to be shaped liked the iconic
lightning bolt from his ‘Aladdin Sane’ album cover and would be situated near
the heart of Brixton, just a few streets away from Bowie’s Stansfield Road
birthplace. A group of Bowie fans are launched a crowdfunding project they hope
will raise more than $1.2 million for the sculpture, which is to be more than
nine meters tall. So far, just $25,000 has been raised. The crowdfunding
campaign’s page reads: “Just as an otherworldly David Bowie landed in our
lives, the memorial (is it too soon to call it the ZiggyZag?) stands embedded
in the Brixton pavement – a three story tall bolt from above. A nine meter
missive from another dimension, hurled from afar. Unexplained, yet utterly
familiar; a poignant reminder that life does exist beyond the everyday. That music
and art and curiosity are vital, positive contributors to our collective
existence.” If it’s large, gaudy and draws lots of attention, then Bowie
himself would be truly proud……..
- It’s nice to see Jews and Catholics getting along and making
art history. It’s all going down in Rome, where the museums of the Vatican and
Rome's ancient Jewish community are hosting their first joint exhibit, putting
an exclamation point on decades of improved Catholic-Jewish relations following
centuries of mistrust. The exhibit opens in may and will center on the menorah,
the seven-armed candelabrum described in the Jewish Torah and depicted in
Jewish, Catholic and secular art over many centuries. Organizers announced the joint
venture in a statement that noted how the exhibit "recounts the
multi-millennia, incredible and suffered history of the menorah.” One of the
scintillating centerpieces of the show will be an exhibit exploring the legend
of a solid-gold menorah that was kept in the first Temple of Jerusalem and
later taken to Rome after the 70 A.D.
destruction of the temple by troops of the Roman emperor Titus. Visitors will
be able to hear how the story of the historic menorah was lost some time during
the 5th century, when may have been pilfered by the Vandals who sacked Rome in
455. Arnold Nesselrath is a Vatican Museums official and one of the show’s
curators described the exhibit about the menorah's history and symbolism a
fruit of "intense dialogue" developing between the Holy See and the
Jewish community in recent years, one that helped "Christians recall their
Jewish roots" in faith. A likeness of a menorah is frescoed on a wall of
the Vatican's Borgia Apartment built for Pope Alessandro VI, a man whose papacy
began in 1492, the same year Jews in Spain were ordered expelled. Rome’s Jewish
Museum doesn’t have much real estate, so the majority of the 130 works on
display will be hosted at the Vatican Museums' Carlo Magno exhibit space in St.
Peter's Square. Mix in a recently discovered bas relief from a 1st century
Galilee synagogue, ancient Roman glass, sarcophagi and memorial stone tablets
from Rome's Jewish catacombs and you have quite an interfaith art collection……..
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