“Senator Manny Pacquiao is sitting in the second row of a black government Escalade, his left foot on the center console, a 9 mm handgun in the seatback in front of him. A security van hugging the back bumper is filled with Pacquiao’s assistants and several members of the National Police, their fingers on the triggers of the M16s that lie across their laps. There are two police motorcycles in front, weaving around Manila traffic, their cartoonish horns burping out pleas for space that doesn’t exist. Outside the windows, the alleys and side streets clog with people and motorbikes and bicycles. The city closes around us like a fist.” Tim Keown in ESPN: A week in Manila with Manny Pacquiao: senator, boxer … and future president? (A celebrity president? Sure, what could possibly go wrong…)

+ And from the archives, the most excellent Andrew Corsello: “What do you get when you cross Muhammad Ali, Sly Stallone, Vaclav Havel, Michael Vick, Che Guevara, & Clay Aiken?” The Biggest Little Man in the World. “He is in the car. I am in the car. Physically we are, both of us, in the car. Still, I wonder.”