Just watched the United States national rugby team play in the ninth edition of the Rugby World Cup. On my television, here in France. Live. With French-speaking announcers. Who knew? It went badly for the Yanks — as it nearly always does. Final score: England 45, United States 7. The highlight for the Eagles may […]

[Read more →]

Did you attend a Los Angeles Dodgers home game this season? If so, you are part of a club record: The Dodgers counted 3,974,309 customers for their 81 home games in the 2019 season. Unprecedented, at Chavez Ravine. Being part of an attendance record is kinda cool. Especially when you get up into six figures. […]

[Read more →]

In a previous lifetime I spent four months as a temp editor for the Asian edition of the International Herald Tribune. Many of the entries from this blog, commencing in October 2008 and continuing through January 2009 were about our experiences there. First memory: The crowds. Second memory: How different it was from Beijing, where […]

[Read more →]

“Je suis Americain!” That was all the French the Red Buttons character knew, in the sprawling D-Day classic movie “The Longest Day” — and he repeated it to himself like a mantra as he and his fellow paratroopers were flown to Normandy on June 6, 1944. “Je suis Americain.” (I am American.) So the French […]

[Read more →]

We live in France. We can vouch for this. The 89-79 French victory over the United States in the Fiba World Cup quarterfinals yesterday was such a big deal over here that at least two national news shows — including that of government flagship TF1 — led their prime-time broadcasts with the news from Les […]

[Read more →]

In a few hours, NFL RedZone host Scott Hanson will begin firing National Football League news at us, with accompanying action clips. To me, that marks the true start of the NFL season. Not some bad Thursday night game that left people wondering about the competence of Mitchell Trubiski. I consider Hanson’s work some of […]

[Read more →]

It was about 1.30 p.m. when the fire equipment began arriving. As I try to reconstruct it, it began with a siren that we attributed to a health emergency in our little town among the hills. But it was not a lone rescue vehicle. Another came behind it, heralded by the sing-song European sirens. Then […]

[Read more →]

Anyone with the patience to follow this blog knows that every now and then … OK, maybe once a month … I go on a rant about how feckless is Arsenal FC, the London club I chose, a decade ago, to offer my support (mostly in the form of psychic energy), in all their competitions. […]

[Read more →]