BUFFALO, N.Y. - It was difficult to tell who was more excited: Michael J. Fox for playing alongside former hockey star Gilbert Perreault, or the other way around.
"Man, it's very cool. It's thrilling," Fox said Saturday after meeting Perreault, a member of the Buffalo Sabres' famed French Connection of the 1970s. "I mean, I'm skating with the French Connection today. Give me a break. It's just insane. That's nuts. I love it."
The feeling was more than mutual.
"I had a big thrill playing with him," Perreault said. "He's got a lot of guts. And good luck to him. He's a wonderful man."
The meeting was part of former Sabres captain Pat LaFontaine's Champions in Courage charity game to raise money for Buffalo Women and Children's Hospital. The event raised more than $200,000 toward LaFontaine's goal of building a computer playroom for children at the hospital.
It was the second time on the ice in the past two months for Fox, 43, the "Back to the Future," "Family Ties" and "Spin City" star, who remains active while suffering from Parkinson's disease.
He played hockey while growing up in Canada.
"I played in Ontario and then in Alberta and in Vancouver, and I never got good wherever I played," Fox joked.
What he lacked in grace, speed and a scoring touch Saturday, he made up for in perseverance, playing a regular shift at right wing, first with LaFontaine as his center and then with Perreault. Fox scored late in the game, which ended 7-7.
"When you get into your 40s, it becomes a positional game," Fox said. "If I stay in one place, the play is going to come around soon enough."
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SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. - Comedian Joe Piscopo wants to change the popular stereotypes of Italian-Americans promoted on television and in movies.
The former "Saturday Night Live" star attended a panel discussion at Seton Hall University on Saturday that examined why, according to one attendee, prejudice against Italians is tacitly accepted in popular culture.
Piscopo, who said he is embarrassed by some of the stereotypical Italian characters he has played, is at work on a movie that portrays an Italian-American family from northern New Jersey. He is determined to get the film made, though he said he has run into difficulties because it is not gangster-related.
Among the other panelists were actor Tony Lo Bianco, playwright LindaAnn Loschiavo and Emanuele Alfano, chairman of UNICO National, an anti-bias group.
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FREDERICKSBURG, Va. - Philanthropist Doris Buffett is threatening to rescind her $2 million pledge to build a new Boys & Girls Club center.
The sister of billionaire investor Warren Buffett wrote a recent letter to Mayor Thomas J. Tomzak and other officials, setting a Feb. 1 deadline for the city to take action.
Buffett, 76, has set a timetable that includes selecting a site, developing a building committee, and completing a preliminary building plan that includes an estimated project cost by Feb. 1.
"While the response from the community has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic, essentially we are no closer to making this happen," she wrote.
Buffett said she is "very discouraged and disheartened by the negative response" of the city's parks and recreation department and the "lukewarm support" of City Council.
Parks director Robert Antozzi said finding a suitable location for the club is "a cooperative effort that's not easy."
The local Boys & Girls Club offers children's programs at a former middle school. But the current building needs repairs and has become too small for the 140 children who use the after-school program.
"I am not willing to watch it flounder, languish and become political," Buffett wrote. "I am nearly 77, and I would like to be around to cut the ribbon."
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NEW LONDON, Conn. - Donald Trump got fired. Now he's asking for $500 million.
The real estate mogul and television star is offering to drop his breach of contract lawsuit against the Eastern Pequot tribe and the casino investors who replaced him in exchange for a half a billion dollars.
"The figure was arrived at very carefully by people in the Trump organization who determined what likely income would have been generated had the Trump organization gone forward with the Eastern Pequot casino," Trump's lawyer, Robert I. Reardon, told The Day of New London.
The Eastern Pequots' attorney, however, says the tribe is not interested.
"I think a more appropriate valuation is the one he (Trump) put in his bankruptcy filing, which is zero," Lawyer Robert D. Tobin said.
Trump invested more than $10 million through one of his subsidiary companies in an effort to help a faction of the tribe open a casino.
Assets for the subsidiary are listed as zero in last month's Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts Inc., which mainly consists of three Atlantic City properties and a riverboat casino in Indiana.
Trump and Amalgamated Industries of Windsor made a deal with the Paucatuck Eastern Pequots, the smaller of two factions of Eastern Pequots, to finance the tribe's bid for federal recognition and ultimately profit from a casino.
The U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs recognized both factions as a single tribe in 2002, and last year the unified council, dominated by the larger faction, voted to retain their backer, Eastern Capital Development.
The Eastern Pequots have been unable to proceed with their casino because the state and three towns have appealed their federal recognition.
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MYSTIC, Conn. - Ocean explorer Robert Ballard was nervous this summer as he prepared to return to the Titanic for the first time since he discovered the famous shipwreck nearly two decades ago.
He had been hearing reports of severe deterioration of the ship from natural causes and from damage done by scores of dives. Ballard also worried that passengers' personal belongings had been taken by salvagers.
But using the latest high definition cameras and precise robotic submarines, he made a startling discovery: Two shoes, one larger than the other, next to each other and a hair comb nearby, along with materials from a third-class cabin. Ballard believes the shoes belonged to a mother and her daughter.
"They're the tombstones," Ballard said. "I can tell you it absolutely speaks to you when you go there. It's not just a ship. It's a very special place and we should spend our energy to keep it that way."
Ballard spoke Friday at Mystic Aquarium & Institute For Exploration, which he runs. The aquarium has expanded its exhibit on the Titanic to include Ballard's latest video clips and photos from his summer voyage.
The Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, after it hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage. More than 1,500 passengers and crew members - about two-thirds of those on board - died in less than three hours. The wreck was found in 1985 about 380 miles east of Newfoundland.
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