Raves. All-night dance parties that often just appear at some lonely place where young folks show up, thanks to a furtive, word-of-mouth campaign. We didn’t know raves were still a “thing”. Maybe it’s just France. It started Friday night. A rumbling thump-thump-thump coming from over one of the hills that surround the village, going on […]
Entries from September 2017
The Rave … Just Over Our Hill
September 30th, 2017 · No Comments · France
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Darnold, USC Lose Their Grip
September 29th, 2017 · No Comments · College football, USC
Elite college football programs are allowed one pratfall in the national-championship chase. USC’s Trojans just took theirs. Heisman Trophy candidates can maybe — maybe –Â get away with one stinker and still aspire to pick up that famous trophy in New York. USC quarterback Sam Darnold just had his forgettable game. It was already Saturday […]
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Press Credentials from a Simpler Time
September 28th, 2017 · No Comments · Football, Golf, Sports Journalism, Tennis, The Sun, World Cup
For all I know, journalists covering major sports events these days have an ID chip in their arms. Nobody gets into the media areas unless the sensor picks up your biometric data. At minimum, credentials for an Olympics or World Cup or French Open, over the past decade or two, have featured increasingly sophisticated and […]
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Angels Done: Is It Mike Trout’s Fault?
September 27th, 2017 · No Comments · Angels, Baseball
About now, we can depend on baseball pundits to pose the Big Question pertaining to another disappointing season by the Los Angeles Angels: Is Mike Trout wasting his career playing for this club? It was a fair question, in recent years, as the Angels found themselves stuck on one playoffs appearance since Trout’s breakout 2012 […]
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Pressure on Playing Fields Can Be Mind-Bending
September 26th, 2017 · No Comments · Champions League, Football, soccer, Sports Journalism
We cannot know what it is like, at the remove that is the TV in your living room. Radio can convey some of the noise but little of the energy. Even inside the stadium, the nervous tension does not always register up into the seats. To gauge the real impact of a big and painfully […]
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Can English Fans Behave in Moscow?
September 25th, 2017 · No Comments · Champions League, English Premier League, Football, soccer
They probably should give a bit more thought than usual to avoiding trouble as they travel to Champions League group stage matches in Moscow in the coming days. One fine idea might be to hold off on consuming copious amounts of alcohol in the hours before kickoff. Why? Beside the calories? Because English club fans […]
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Solving the NFL’s Anthem Angst
September 24th, 2017 · No Comments · NFL
The National Football league prefers to focus all attention on what happens between the lines, even when brains are being battered. So we can be confident that league executives took no pleasure in the confusing mess that was the players’ protest during the national anthems at 14 stadiums today. The protests were not unexpected. They […]
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San Diego State Can Own the Nation’s 8th-Biggest City
September 23rd, 2017 · 1 Comment · Baseball, Basketball, Chargers, Dodgers, Football, Lakers, Los Angeles Rams, NBA, NFL, soccer
By population, the city of San Diego ranks No. 8 in the country, with approximately 1.4 million residents. By professional sports teams, however, San Diego now ranks perhaps No. 40 in the U.S. It has baseball’s San Diego Padres … and we are done talking about Big Four U.S. sports teams based in one of […]
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Trump, Kim, ‘Dotard’ — and JRR Tolkien
September 22nd, 2017 · 1 Comment · Books, Journalism
The exchange of insults between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un heated up this week, with the Korean dictator/president for life puzzling many in America by threatening: “I will surely and definitely tame the mentally deranged U.S. dotard with fire.” I don’t know how Kim’s insults are translated into English, whether it is a bot or […]
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One Fine Day/Night: Dodgers, Rams Win
September 21st, 2017 · No Comments · Dodgers, Los Angeles Rams, NFL
Young sports fan me, ages 9 to maybe 15, would have been very happy with how this day turned out. My two favorite pro teams won! Dodgers 5, Philadelphia 4, leaving them one victory shy of clinching the National League West. The Rams 41-39 over the San Francisco 49ers, their greatest rivals, on the Thursday […]
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