Watching a soccer match while you put out a newspaper is a bit tricky. Especially when the big-screen is over your right shoulder and around a pillar. But I saw more than enough of Spain-Holland to be hit by this thought at about the 75th minute: If I had never seen a soccer game before, […]

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Let’s see … Where were we … before ants and LeBron James took over our lives. Germany had just bombed Argentina out of the quarter-finals, Uruguay won that bizarre handball match over Ghana, Brazil went out to the Netherlands, and Spain took down Paraguay. Which were the two days when what had been shaping up […]

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I couldn’t help myself. I was going to approach this as a commentary, a think piece. I spent an hour researching other three-player groupings of stars in NBA history … making charts and compiling stax … my explanatory-journalism approach to LeBron James and the Miami Heat fiasco … and then I just went off, instead. […]

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LeBron James for the first seven years of his NBA career has been an interesting case. It would be easy to dislike the guy. So very, very full of himself. So in our faces, commercially. That whole “global icon” hubris. He is almost inescapable, but not in the “aw, heck, we love the big lug” […]

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We in Abu Dhabi, on the other side of the world, have been following the Saga of LeBron James. Riveting stuff, right? Where will the world’s greatest player never to have won a championship play next year? And does he have space left anywhere on his body (that isn’t his face) for a tattoo perhaps […]

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Some people can’t pass a mirror without taking a glance. Some of us like to look at old photos, when we were younger and other people were still around. Those are big topics. This is a small pleasure that I would like to share with you. A look back.

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Of all the comments I have made since we arrived in Abu Dhabi nine months ago, perhaps the most laughably wrong went into this blog in November or early December. I suggested Abu Dhabi didn’t seem to have many insects. Ha. And double ha. I have spent months now fighting invasions of gnats, followed by […]

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Get outside your home country for a bit, and you realize that just about no one cares about the “national day” your compatriots back home are celebrating. Religious holidays cross borders. May Day crosses borders, especially in Europe. The Summer Solstice has some second-tier traction, here or there. National holidays … not nearly as much. […]

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In the run-up to the World Cup, I wrote — early and often — about the coaching disaster that was Diego Maradona. He somehow had Argentina in peril of not qualifying for the World Cup by dint of bizarre lineups, erratic behavior and bad results against some of South America’s lesser sides. I became convinced […]

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On Day 22 of the 2010 World Cup, “Holland 2, Brazil 1” figured to have no rivals for the attention of the soccer planet. Ha. Uruguay defeating Ghana on penalties in a madcap match was the story of of the day, for a variety of reasons. Sportsmanship, the Laws of the Game, villainous Uruguay, unlucky […]

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