I have seen this too many times now to dismiss it as isolated incidents. Remember the New York Cosmos? The soccer team from the old North American Soccer League? Pele played for them. Franz Beckenbauer did. Giorgio Chinaglia. They were a thing for a few years, in an era when North America wasn’t actually ready […]

[Read more →]

Have you ever seen video of kids rioting in some distant corner of the world … and then they start to throw stuff at the authorities? Bricks. Rocks. Tear-gas canisters back in the direction from which they came … And have you ever noticed what horrendous throwing motion most of those those kids have? I […]

[Read more →]

No, I did not have a seizure while my right index finger was poised over the “7” key. That is the cell-phone number auctioned by a UAE telecom … that went for $2.14 million. Or, to be specific, in UAE currency: 7,877,777 dirhams. An interesting thing about this?

[Read more →]

This is always a dreary day, here in the UAE. The first day in 2014 when we realized, with horror … “oh, my … it’s time to turn on the air-conditioner.” March 8. Ack.

[Read more →]

The biggest, fastest, most expensive … that’s Dubai. It is a way of life there, at the metropolis an hour up the road from Abu Dhabi. A mindset. And the latest? The fastest police boat in the Gulf!

[Read more →]

Mini rant. I hate euphemisms for death/died. I particularly dislike it when newspapers attempt to evade using the D words.

[Read more →]

Often, some of the best games in an athlete’s career … are those in which he (or her) did not make an appearance. Better yet? Those games in which he was not even invited to play. The U.S. national soccer team played an international match tonight, against Ukraine in Cyprus, in which all accounts suggest […]

[Read more →]

I saw Demetrius Walker play three or four times when he was a freshman and/or a sophomore at Fontana High School, about 50 miles east of Los Angeles. I remember thinking “he’s OK, but not great”. He was good around the basket, he could leap, but he was only 6-foot-3 (later reduced to 6-2, in […]

[Read more →]

Note: This post originally appeared on February 26. I took it down a few hours after posting it after I gave in to my misgivings about an accurate recollection of events. It reappears in the wake of Chuck Pettersen’s well-attended funeral, yesterday, at the request of a key member of one of his football teams, […]

[Read more →]

This struck me today. At the morning news meeting, as I looked around the crowded round table: The National newspaper in Abu Dhabi has to be one of the most diverse print media outlets in the world. Let’s enumerate.

[Read more →]