- How does one buy favor with the potential future leader of
a decidedly stylish nation? How about buying him two suits worth 13,000 euros
($14,000) so said presidential candidate can look damn good on the campaign
trail? French candidate Francois Fillon received his fancy new threads last
month and now, we know from whose coffers the cash for those two suits came.
According to a French official, the benefactor who bought the suits is an
unofficial adviser for African and French presidents. He’s lawyer Robert Bourgi,
who maintained close ties to former French presidents Jacques Chirac and
Nicolas Sarkozy, as well as the former leaders of Senegal and Gabon, and now he’s
apparently made a new friend in Fillon. That could be an issue, as the judges
who already were investigating Fillon have extended their probe to include the
suits he says he received as a gift. For some odd reason, the judges feel like
an outside party giving a candidate two pricey new suits could represent a
possible conflict of interest for a guy who is staring down some very serious
charges for allegedly using public funds to pay his wife and children for work
they never performed. To the cynical onlooker, this might appear to be a
corrupt, dishonest person (i.e. a politician) breaking rule after rule before
he’s even elected, but in spite of the haters, Fillon has vowed to keep
campaigning for the April-May election. Considering some of the other options
on the ballot, the sad truth is that this guy may not be the worst choice for
voters………
- It’s a true tennis rarity: a Nick Kyrgios story that
involves him leaving a tournament in a manner that doesn’t involve
intentionally antagonizing fans, disrespecting his opponent or making tour
officials consider a long-term ban for him. Sure, the enigmatic Aussie is gone
before a highly anticipated quarterfinal against Roger Federer at Indian Wells,
California, but his abrupt exit is due to (allegedly) food poisoning. Kyrgios defeated
second-ranked Novak Djokovic in straight sets to advance to the quarters, but was
forced to hit the eject button before battling Federer because he wasn’t feeling
well and in a tweet, he theorized that the culprit may be food poisoning. Neither
Kyrgios nor Federer had seen their serve broken in the tournament and even
Federer admitted that he “was really looking forward to playing the match.”
With the literal last-minute withdrawal, officials rushed to find something to
entertain fans and decided to have tournament director-player Tommy Haas and Vasek
Pospisil play an exhibition match. Pospisil upset top-ranked Andy Murray in the
second round but lost his next match, so he apparently decided to hang around
Indian Wells for a while. Kyrgios has now withdrawn from a match before it was
played four times in his career, having done so twice in 2016, dropping out in
the third round of the US Open with a hip injury and exiting before a Dubai
semifinal because of back problems. Ironically, bailing out of Indian Wells was
an unceremonious end for a guy who was coming off his second win of the year
against Djokovic and spoke after the match about how he’s matured and improved
his mental game in recent months. His polite social media message keeps in that
same spirit, but it remains to be seen how long it lasts on the court………
- New York City
wildlife could really use its own reality show - hell, lots of people with far
less to say or contribute to the world and who call Manhattan home already have
their own shows, so why not the pizza rat and his new peer, the train-stopping
duck. The pizza rat skyrocketed to Internet fate when it was filmed - likely
without its permission - dragging a slice of pizza down the stairs at a Manhattan
subway station. So what bright future awaits a duck who was able to halt a
train in Brooklyn when it landed wherever the hell it felt like landing - on
the tracks in this case - and stubbornly refused to move. When it became clear
the duck would cede no ground, police had to step in and keep the duck from
further obstructing travel while also ensuring that the train didn’t create
some duck liver pate by barreling ahead with the animal still on the tracks.
Witnesses reported that police didn’t have much of a battle on their hands when
they stepped onto the tracks to deal with the bird and were able to remove it
without further incident. According to a police spokeswoman, officers later
"released it back into the wild” and “it flew away." One commuter
filmed the duck prior to its time on the tracks as the animal hurried around
the subway station, amusing travelers who probably never imagined that the
beast would be the one that made them late for their morning meeting or kept
them from making it to their coffee date at one of Manhattan’s 873 Starbucks
locations. The real question now is which species will be the next to step up
and seize the spotlight in the concrete jungle that is New York City’s animal
planet………
- How much does it take to sell out? Depending on who you
ask, either a) $500,000 or b) there was no selling out happening here. The central
character in this tale is Chance The Rapper, who revealed that Apple paid him
$500,000 to make his latest mixtape, the triple Grammy Award-winning “Coloring
Book,” an Apple Music exclusive. It smacks of unfairness to create a monopoly
built around an award-winning album, but in a series of tweets, the Chicago
rapper revealed how much he’d received and defended himself against allegations
that the agreement with Apple threatened his independence as an artist. “I
never felt the need to correct folks on my relationship with Apple, but now
that more people have tried to discredit my independence, I wanna clear things
up,” he wrote. “Apple gave me half a mil and a commercial to post Coloring Book
exclusively on Apple Music for two weeks.” Some fans took the rapper’s side in
the dispute, arguing that Chance owed fans no explanation and had done nothing
wrong. Others contended that it was unfair to limit their buying options to one
music marketplace, but the rapper fired back by writing that after the two-week
exclusivity period, the mixtape was available for free and that an opportunity
to work with “good people” shouldn’t be passed up. All in all, it brings even
more attention to one of last year’s best projects and one that, regardless of
how it was sold, delivered the goods from start to finish……….
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