The P's: Pacquiao, Pawlenty, Palin

Free at last.


Another master's semester at Cal State Fullerton, another three months of TV fasting.

Now with the books finally gone and the 52-inch flat screen back on — where the hell are the Lakers?

They did what in the playoffs? Lost to whom?

You telling me L.A. blew a shot at Phil's fourth threepeat, Kobe's Jordan-tying sixth title? To Dallost? The same Mats on whom the Lakers wiped their Nikes the past five years?

Does any tradition live? Well, yes. My DVR caught enough of it.

The knockout. Don't say it didn't come in the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley bout. I mean, did you see her ringside? Check the photo above. That's Bella Gonzalez, Sugar Shane's sweet girlfriend. Talk about aptly named. Bella, beautiful. She's so hot, she makes Kobe's bride — Vanessa, the previous scorch queen — look like Rocky Road.

No wonder Mosley revved in reverse all night. No way he was going down for the count and risking losing Bella.

OK, so no official KO at the MGM. PacMan simply pounded Mosley to a pulp fiction. The Pomona Pretender took such a beating, his brown mug turned red.

Mitch the Pitch. Best line of the baseball season, and it's only May: "Anything going this far oughta have a flight attendant on it." So said Mitch Williams in marvel of a Mike Stanton homer for the Florida Marlins. Such Wild Thing comments make MLB Network worth a nightly watch.

Good 'N' Pawlenty. As debates went, the GOP session in South Carolina last month had all the tension of arts and crafts at the library. Still, Herman Cain nailed the one-liners, hooking viewers. And Rick Santorum gattling-gunned us awake.

For heft, give me Tim Pawlenty. He has the stature — 6 feet 3 — and issue grasp to make for a solid standard-bearer. And thank God he said sorry for his cap-and-tax brainwashing way back when. Without that mea culpa, he was global meltdown.

Think. If McCain had picked him for veep in '08 — and he was thisclose to doing that — Pawlenty would be a nationhold name. As it is, Minnesota knows him after eight years as governor. And not many others. I asked a college conservative about him recently and drew a blank face.

Then again, Iowans have to know him. That could be Pawlenty enough.

All in for Palin. What makes Sarah even more appealing than Pawlenty is the heat. I'm fired up over her energy — especially during her drill on oil independence.

She said the other night, "I have that fire in my belly." You can only imagine the comedy routines: "I'd like to give her some fire in the belly." Can't avoid that. Sarah's simply sizzling.

And what the heck. Obummer's gonna win anway, so let's have a ball of a campaign. With Palin-Bachmann in overdrive, we're looking at a helluva '12.

Book it. The neatest mystery author bar none? Lawrence Block. His Keller assassin novels hit the bull's-eye.

Not to jinx them. But have you noticed my Mets? Didn't think so. Crept up to .500 from baseball's dead-last abyss. And with players you wouldn't know if they walked through the door: Ike Davis, Justin Turner, Josh Thole.

Not Agee. A Gee. He's Dillon Gee, to be exact. The Met righty upped his record to 3-0 by swatting the Nats the other day.

Harkens back to a similar name — Tommie Agee, who caught everything in center field while the Mets grabbed the 1969 championship.

Speaking of good times. Just heard that my sweet, brilliant sister Deb doesn't have cancer after a doctor-visiting scare. Yes!

Bucky Fox is an author and editor in Southern California.

   

PacMan's Pounding Of Pack-It-In Man

The best bet was on the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders.

Did they ever beat boxing to the punch the other night.

Whereas the welterweight title fight had all the sting of a swatted bee, the Cowgirls sang like miked butterflies.

Did you catch their act? The trio — decked out in stars and not much else — made "The Star-Spangled Banner" flutter. Their a cappella voices had as much beauty as their bodies.

And after "home of the brave," every fight fan was indeed ready to rumble.

Only the main event wasn't much of an encore.

It featured Manny Pacquiao living up to his PacMan billing — chomping nonstop for 12 rounds.

But from the other corner? A turtle, as an office colleague called Joshua Clottey. He crawled all the way out of Africa to spend the whole fight in a shell.

Shades of Ali's 1974 rope a dope in the Congo. That time it turned into Foreman's stumble in the jungle.

This time it was a grope a dope in Texas. With that cover-up plot, Clottey was a Ghana, all right.

So what were fans to do? The 50,000 at Dallas Cowboys Stadium — most of whom had to be Filipinos — erupted for their hero. And booed stuck-like-a-blood Clottey.

Why join them? Glad I avoided the marathon drive from the West Coast and $50 parking. The best way to watch was at a Filipino party near Disneyland. Deep dishes of Philippine food, topped by cheering. The only thing that tasted bad was my $5 raffle ticket. I pulled out a 3, off by nine rounds.

So what's next on the menu? PacMan and whoever else he wants to devour.

The Filipino Fist stands 51-3-2 and on top of the world. Make his win total 52 if he captures his congressional seat he's fighting for in May.

The Honorable Manny Pacquiao would then fly back to strafe Mayweather or Mosley in one rich goodbye party.

Talk about political pull.

With PacMan calling and dealing the shots, he better corral the Cowboy cheerleaders for another national anthem.

That would be the patriotic thing to do.


Bucky Fox is an author and editor in Southern California who runs BuckyFox.com.