If there a word for this? A phrase? There ought to be. Winterlust? Icicle-envy? Freeze-fervor? Glacieritis? What I know is this: Places that never get cold … wish they did. I saw it in Hong Kong a year ago. I’ve seen it in Abu Dhabi this winter. It is a recurring,  population-wide fantasy. Take tonight, […]

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I once made fun of overseas Americans who shifted into a sort of babyspeak when dealing with non-native English speakers. I would listen to them and laugh. It was like listening to a first-grade primer being read aloud. Remember Dick and Jane? Do they still use Dick, Jane and Spot in schools anymore? Probably not. […]

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I knew this was coming. I knew it while standing in the newsroom here in Abu Dhabi two nights ago, stopping on my way out out of the building and watching via computer the final minutes of the Premier League match between Everton and Manchester City. Everton coach David Moyes substituted for Landon Donovan in […]

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Mrs. Bolton would be proud. Or maybe not. Mrs. Gertrude Bolton was my teacher in second and third grade. (I went to a small school.) She thought it was a good idea for every kid in the class to come up front, while she sat at the piano, and to have each kid sing a […]

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I want to know. Really. A lot of you have been watching Derek Fisher. Do the Lakers look like they’re playing 4-on-5 when D-Fish is in the game? Does he look like a bench coach who somebody let suit up, for the heck of it? Is there a point guard in the league he can […]

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We did a couple of stories in The National about the solar eclipse today, described as “the longest of the millennium” … so we had to go out and look, didn’t we? At 11 a.m., we dutifully traipsed outside the Teeny Tiny Apartment and into the narrow street. The sun was coming down brightly on […]

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A year ago, I was in Hong Kong. I had arrived in October, and caught the end of the island’s bad weather. (A typhoon alert, the first week. Heat and rain, in general.) But by mid-November, things were fine, and in January I actually recall running a space-heater at night a time or two in […]

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Someday, perhaps as early as this fall, USC fans will look back at the Pete Carroll Era and … sigh. Let’s think about this: For most of a decade, USC fans didn’t just hope for a national-championship contender, they expected it.  And they got it. Seven consecutive BCS bowl teams. Seven consecutive No. 4-or-better national […]

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It was the cool of a winter night, and only 10 p.m., so I went for a jog around the neighborhood, and just at the end I witnessed a cricket pick-up game disaster. Three guys in their 20s … I decided they were Pakistani, because of their clothes, but I could be wrong … were […]

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Let’s assume that Landon Donovan will remember this day for a long time. When he made his debut in the English Premier League … and played at Emirates Stadium in north London … during a steady snowstorm … on a day when his match was the only one at 3 p.m. (and, thus, seen by […]

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