You’ve seen the stories about people who live five miles from Disneyland and never get around to going? Because it’s right there and they can go any time they want … it just is never quite the right time, see? Well, 11 months after arriving here, that was us and the Emirates Palace (photos here). […]

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Trying to think of the last time I saw an NFL game live. Must have been almost a year ago. Before leaving California for the UAE. From then on … not one NFL game live. Not available in the hotel where we lived for two months … and we have never bothered to hook up […]

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Just did something I hadn’t had the courage to try since May. Maybe even April. I took a half-hour walk. Outside. In Abu Dhabi. On purpose. What passes for fall is arriving … or I’m about to jinx us all and we will be back into 110-plus days by Monday.

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This is bad news and worse news. But isn’t all Dodgers news bad these days? The bad news: Joe Torre is quitting as manager of the Dodgers at the end of this season. The worse news: Don Mattingly, who has no experience running a team full-time and who has inspired little confidence in those briefs […]

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I was going to approach this another way … about how few people I see in this country who look as if they might be older than I am. But this is a more fun way to look at it, no? The “never die” part of it. The United Arab Emirates has the world’s lowest […]

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Finally have realized this. I am an Arsenal fan. Now, I don’t live and die with the Gunners. That will never happen. I’m far too old and far too American to have that level of attachment. This is the end of a process that began in Hong Kong nearly two years ago when I did […]

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In 1952, my parents appeared on “You Bet Your Life” — a sort of game show hosted by Groucho Marx. My mother mentioned this once or twice when I was young. How they had been on TV before they were married and had a chance to win the big prize, but missed the final question. […]

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Historically,  the Sunday paper is the big one. In the Western world, anyway. Here in the UAE, Sunday actually is Monday. The first day of the work week. But let’s make believe it’s our biggest and best section of the week. What are our top 10 stories in the paper tomorrow? Let’s count them down.

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The club just got swept by the Padres, who hadn’t won a game since August till the Boys in Blue showed up at Petco. The McCourts divorce case is grinding on, right? With the two cretins in a fight to the death over the franchise and the money they have bled out of it. The […]

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We just did two-plus months in a big apartment on the 14th floor of a tower. Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a real kitchen. Nice. The kindly people who live there are coming back from a long summer vacation, so we dragged out all our stuff (and you always bring back more than you take) … […]

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