Maybe it’s just me, but I prefer the pilots of my commercial flight to be friendly. With each other. They do not have to be pals swapping gossip, but they should be able to sit in the same cockpit without fighting. India’s Jet Airways was unable to clear that low bar on New Year’s Day. […]

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Here are the kickoffs for the NFL’s conference championship games tomorrow. That is, if you live under the umbrella of Pacific Standard Time. New England at Jacksonville, 12:05 p.m. Philadelphia at Minnesota, 3:40 p.m. Convenient, as a viewer, no? Well, yes, and you should know it is not like that everywhere. If you have lived […]

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The Boeing 747 was the first jumbo jet, and it forever changed the experience of flying. For the better. No one under the age of 50 can have a personal recollection of this, given that the first commercial flight of a 747 was made on January 22, 1970 — from New York to London. It […]

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I am, at turns, amused and exasperated by sports gamblers. How can they participate in a system in which the “house” never loses? How do they convince themselves that they are smarter than most other gamblers? How can they witness how totally random NFL games (well, just about any game ever played) can be? Take, […]

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Ah, so it wasn’t just his missing the game. Not all about “don’t know what to do with myself.” It also was about getting paid. According to a newspaper report in Mexico, Landon Donovan will be paid $180,000 per month by the Liga MX club that has brought him out of retirement. In North American […]

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When Landon Donovan first retired, in December of 2014, his U.S. National Soccer Team record for international goals seemed unassailable, at least in the short-to-mid term. And I wrote that. His closest pursuer was Clint Dempsey, and the Texan was on 38 goals, 19 behind Donovan’s total. Then, Dempsey went on a scoring spree, banging […]

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I was made aware today of this video, which is based on the Barcelona midfield standout Andres Iniesta showing “There is a first time for everything” by trying something new — American football. It is an advertisement for an online foreign-exchange trader known as UFX, and the notion of the elfin Iniesta (5-foot-7, maybe 130 […]

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I was sick and bloody tired of the spying, football-deflating New England Patriots 10 years ago, when the Helmet Catch and Eli Manning saved us from a 19-0 season by Dark Lord Belichick’s minions. I danced a jig when that one ended 17-14 to the Giants, in Glendale, Ariz., and everyone in the working press […]

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Keith Jackson, too? We are losing the great sports broadcasters from the 20th century and I don’t like it. Yes, for my own selfish reasons. I know the legends are retired but I can be comforted by the idea that they could, in theory, come back for One More Game. One more chance to hear […]

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What is Landon Donovan doing? In short, he has decided, for a second time, to resume his soccer career. He first retired at the end of the 2014 Major League Soccer season, when he was only 32. He went out with a bang — with his sixth MLS Cup championship, the Galaxy’s fourth during his […]

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