A search of this blog would seem to indicate I never have broached my appearance on the game show Jeopardy! In 1988. Just the other day, but still fairly fresh in my mind. I can still reconstruct where things went wrong. I had not thought of it for a while, maybe even a year, but […]

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Most. Tedious. Global. Event. Ever. The Cricket World Cup. The thing ended Sunday, the 44th day of the competition. Yes, 44 days. Or longer than many Hollywood marriages. Twelve days longer than William Henry Harrison‘s presidency. Forty-four days is one-and-a-half soccer World Cups. And not only was it long, it was often crushingly dull in […]

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One of the great things about being old is that you need pay no attention to teen culture. Or to anything “the kids” are listening to. Or doing. Or wearing. That is, you don’t reject it … you ignore it. Blissfully. Until you can’t. Which is the case presented by a boy band named One […]

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“The People’s Horse”. Apparently, California Chrome occasionally is known by that sobriquet. The notion being that, in the horse world, Chrome is a regular guy. Chrome’s mother, in particular, was very much a commoner in the Sport of Kings, yet here is Chrome, winning the Kentucky Derby and Preakness for a couple of regular guys […]

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I first read The Lord of the Rings when I was 12 years old. That was quite some time ago. Before J.R.R. Tolkien‘s trilogy was consumed by every teen on the planet. (Actually, I bought it almost by accident. No one I knew had read it or recommended it. I saw it in the neighborhood […]

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I am fascinated by the Volvo Ocean Race. The sailing, certainly, and the people, but also the geography. What other sports event teaches you about … Point Nemo?

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The Los Angeles Dodgers seem to be spending money … for the sake of spending money. It’s almost as if they feel empty if they haven’t offered an enormous contract to someone for a week or two. Can you come up with a better explanation for the Dodgers giving $62.5 million over the next six […]

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Sports in North America tend to be insular. Baseball is not played in many places, and is widely derided by non-Americans as arrogant for staging the World Series. Hockey is played in North America but not many other places, other than the colder parts of Europe. American football is known as American football in the […]

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That is the name of the new “refreshment” store in the active neighborhood across the street from the offices of The National. I walked out late the other night, and was hit in the face by the brilliant lighting of the new place (next to the barber shop), and the remarkable name. “Vitamin Palace”. Don’t […]

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A professional soccer team usually can accommodate no more than one big, strong, slow player in its lineup. And he nearly always is a striker known for being good in the air. He doesn’t have to win the ball. He doesn’t have to carry the ball. He doesn’t have to pass the ball. He doesn’t […]

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