When Power Pellets Go Wild

Now for something less Spring Trainingy... Troubled Pacman at Crossroads!

This, right here, might be the pinnacle of the gangsta life the teenage boy dreamed about as he was growing up hard on Atlanta's Washington Road: A stage full of mostly naked beauties at a Las Vegas strip club, hip-hop banging out of the speakers, and dollar bills floating through the charged early-morning air like confetti at the end of the Super Bowl.

It's Feb. 19 in Vegas and, two miles from The Strip at a club called Minxx, the three-day party that is the NBA All-Star Weekend is about to end. With gunfire.

Guess what goes on in Vegas doesn't really stay there. Maybe that dastardly Clyde finally got to him. The truth is, Pacman took a page from some legitimate members of the music community.

Pacman watches as Cornell Haynes Jr. (Nelly) and music producer Jermaine Dupri (whose girlfriend is Janet Jackson) "make it rain" dollar bills for several songs. Jones, the Tennessee Titans cornerback who considers himself a major player, wants a piece of their action. Pacman asks an employee to convert $3,400 in larger bills into smaller denominations and approaches the stage. Wide-eyed, almost childlike, he showers fists full of dollars on the dancers.

What happened next, in the context of the law, might not be determined for months, if ever. But when the gunshots ended, a security guard, a former WWF wrestler named Tommy Urbanski, was on the ground with his spinal cord shattered by a bullet. Two others, another bouncer and a female patron, were also shot.

All PacMan pictures aside, this story is actually much more tragic than usual SoSG fare (Urbanski was doing this as a second job to put his wife through law school). Pacman Jones seems intent on intercepting his promising career - those 34000 single dollar bills (and his penchant for attacking strippers) might put him on the fastrack to his own limited WWF career. Hopefully, he'll stop acting like a Cincinnati Bengal before things get even more out of hand.