Knuckle

'Knuckle' MPAA rating: R for violent content and language Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Playing: At Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica

The first scene of "The Last Gladiators," a documentary that brings extraordinary insight to hockey's vanishing breed of enforcers, features a closeup of a man's hands. It takes only a few seconds to realize who they belong to and how appropriate that image is. The hands are scarred, the fingers misshapen and the knuckles flattened. They're surprisingly small. "I have my mother's hands," a raspy voice says, turning those hands toward the camera for better inspection. The voice and hands belong to Chris "Knuckles" Nilan, one of the NHL's most feared fighters during an era when enforcers were featured players.

A man who cracked the knuckles of one hand -- but not the other -- for six decades, scientists who figured out why pregnant women don't topple over and chemists who made diamonds from tequila were honored Thursday at the annual Ig Nobel prize ceremony -- a tongue-in-cheek parody of the famous and august Nobels, which are due to be announced next week. Produced by a science humor magazine, the Annals of Improbable Research, the event was celebrated at a raucous event at Harvard University, during which each recipient received his or her prize from a genuine Nobel laureate.

Winnipeg, the capital of Manitoba, Canada , is one of those places where they joke about the four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter and road construction. Because the road-work season is over in this prairie province, it must be "almost winter" in what some folks jokingly call Winterpeg. You laugh or you cry, eh? It's in the rugged spirit of our northern neighbors that members of the Alpine Club of Canada approach the frigid months. It was founded in 1906 as the National Mountaineering Club, and its first headquarters was, curiously, in Winnipeg, hundreds of miles from the nearest mountain.

Everything about "Knuckle" is raw — the bloody, bare-fisted boxing it portrays, the hand-held footage it employs and the unrestrained passion of director Ian Palmer in his first feature-length documentary. The film is very much like a home movie in trying to tell its story of families and feuds complete with the bad lighting, bad camera angles and meandering observations. Though you will wish for more polish and insight, its unruly action is hard to resist. The world that the filmmaker admits sucked him in and overwhelmed him, centers around long-running disputes between Ireland's once nomadic clans, called the Travellers, and the boxing matches they devised as a way to settle scores.

For followers of 20th-Century pugilists such as Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Marvin Hagler and Mike Tyson, Miami University Prof. Elliott J. Gorn offers a look at such 19th-Century battlers as James (Deaf) Burke, Abraham Vanderzee, Jack Slack and Sam O'Rourke. He weaves a portrait of early 1800s urban America--to prize fighting's roots in its ethnic communities, to showdowns between neighborhood champions.

As a paleoanthropologist and discoverer of Lucy (an extinct 3.9-million- to 3-million-year-old hominid species that is widely believed to be the ancestor of the genus Homo), I certainly enjoyed your article on the foot ["Such Power, Such Grace," Jan. 1]. In 1975, I found a 3.2-million-year-old articulated foot near where Lucy was found. The important parts of the ankle were preserved and indicated that the shock-absorbing nature of the heel had already developed as well as the longitudinal and transverse shock-absorbing arches.

The call came on the eve of his Los Angeles concert, just as he was leaving his home in Mexico. We have your son. Follow our instructions. Don't make trouble. It was a year ago, and Vicente Fernandez was about to headline four sold-out shows at the Pico Rivera Sports Arena, his annual Memorial Day pilgrimage to the Eastside suburbs of L.A. Now this voice, saying his 33-year-old son, his namesake, was being held for a ransom of millions.

A helmeted motorcycle rider on a powerful red-and-black racing bike weaved skillfully between cars on the congested Harbor Freeway, alert for any sign that a driver might change lanes and wipe him out. "Motorcycle riding is dangerous," Jack Worrall agreed on a recent sunny day, before starting the 28-mile commute home from his university job. "It scares me constantly, but I'm willing to trade that (fear) for the feel of riding."

After they found two stowaways in a car trying to cross the border from Mexico, U.S. border inspectors thought something wasn't quite right with a pinata in the back seat. It seemed unusually heavy, and they got a surprise when they broke it open. Hidden inside was a young girl. "We took the bottom off the pinata and there were her little legs dangling," said Vince Bond, spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in San Diego.

2 Chainz, a rapper named and known for his predilection for flashy jewelry, was arrested Tuesday at New York's LaGuardia Airport for toting an off-limits accessory: an alleged set of brass knuckles. Born Tauheed Epps, and featured on recent songs by Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, 2 Chainz was detained at the Delta Airlines terminal when airport officials found “metal knuckles” in his carry-on luggage, according to MTV News. A Port Authority officer confirmed the arrest to MTV and said, “The knuckles were in his personal bag and sounded the alarm.” Fellow hip-hop artists Big Sean and DJ Drama rushed to 2 Chainz's defense on Twitter, saying that the offending item was not a set of brass knuckles but rather a four-finger ring, a staple hip-hop accessory since the days of Slick Rick and Big Daddy Kane in the 1980s.

In Philadelphia last week, a child sexual abuse trial involving Catholic clergy led to a bombshell - a bishop from West Virginia was accused of abuse. In Kansas City, a Catholic bishop goes on trial in September, accused of failing to report suspected child abuse. Last year church officials paid $144 million to settle abuse allegations and cover legal bills, and although many of the cases went back decades, church auditors have warned of "growing complacency" about protecting children today.

'Knuckle' MPAA rating: R for violent content and language Running time: 1 hour, 33 minutes Playing: At Laemmle Monica, Santa Monica

Everything about "Knuckle" is raw — the bloody, bare-fisted boxing it portrays, the hand-held footage it employs and the unrestrained passion of director Ian Palmer in his first feature-length documentary. The film is very much like a home movie in trying to tell its story of families and feuds complete with the bad lighting, bad camera angles and meandering observations. Though you will wish for more polish and insight, its unruly action is hard to resist. The world that the filmmaker admits sucked him in and overwhelmed him, centers around long-running disputes between Ireland's once nomadic clans, called the Travellers, and the boxing matches they devised as a way to settle scores.

"Dead in a Zip Code that doesn't matter. " — A homicide detective in "The Wire. " Knuckles' wife said it was wrong. "The detective didn't show respect when he put that picture on Twitter," Maria Rios told me. A cellphone photograph of her just-slain husband covered with a blanket on a Watts street was posted last week on the social media site by a veteran Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective. It wasn't just Rios who was upset. The photo drew the ire of a local blogger who called it callous, and a story on the LA Weekly blog "The Informer" kept the controversy going, launching follow-ups in newspapers and their blogs as far away as London (the Daily Mail)

He was chained to a cot, a lone prisoner in a small cell facing eight guards who beat him while a summoned ambulance crew was kept waiting outside. When the doctors were finally admitted to the prison, they found Moscow lawyer Sergei Magnitsky dead, his body bruised, most of his knuckles smashed, one of his arms dark blue from a grip of the handcuffs lying nearby. The attorney's death in Moscow's infamous Sailor's Silence prison was described Tuesday in a report delivered to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev by his advisory human rights council.

The JetHawks will be facing a first-time pitcher today in San Bernardino's Ryan Sowards, an infielder who has been converted to a knuckleball pitcher. Sowards has thrown simulated games in extended spring training, but today will be his first time on the mound in a professional game. "I'll just sit and watch and see what happens," said Stampede Manager Del Crandall. "He may do well and he may struggle. I know he can get the ball over the plate sometimes. We'll see how often."

It turns out Dennis Springer simply was throwing his knuckleball too hard. At least that was Hall of Famer Phil Niekro's opinion. Springer, rocked for nine runs on eight hits in his last start, sought out Niekro for help Saturday at Boston. Niekro, general manager of the Silver Bullets women's team and baseball's resident knuckleball guru, offered a remedial course for Springer and Boston's Tim Wakefield.

"It's just like riding a bike. " Supposedly, skills learned in childhood (like bicycle riding) become part of muscle memory. Adults should be able to hop back on a bike and start pedaling ? no problem at all. Too bad nobody clued me in that my 30-year bike-riding hiatus might be beyond the statute of limitations. Too bad nobody reminded me that the last bike I pedaled in recent memory was a neon blue Schwinn with a flower-covered banana seat, its metal basket proudly holding library books from the fourth-grade summer reading club.

When The Times endorsed Rudy Martinez in the contentious 14th Council District election and I followed up with a column about Martinez a few days later, a consultant for incumbent Councilman Jose Huizar chewed on my ear. It was only fair, he argued, that if I spent a day with Martinez, I should do the same with Huizar. Given that the 14th is one of L.A.'s most interesting districts and the race there has been the most heated in the spring council election, I agreed. Then something ominous happened: The two candidates, appearing at a forum on Feb. 8, promised to lay off negative campaigning.