If I’m picking up on this correctly, from the other side of the ocean, 2008 can’t be over fast enough for a lot (most all?) of people.
“People” meaning Americans. Or at least English-speakers.
Like, everyone is all fixated on this “economy” thing … Letting it get them down.
Hey, 2008 wasn’t that bad. Take it from somebody […]

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Back at the Beijing Olympics I rued my inability to speak Mandarin.
You show up at a big event, you’re there for three weeks, you feel as if you ought to be able to throw a few local words at the hometown folks. “Bonsoir, Fifi!” “Guten Abend, Heike!”
But I got to Beijing and Mandarin just defeated […]

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I am back on the other side of the Pacific. In Hong Kong, former British crown colony and current Special Administrative Region of China.
Didn’t see that one coming, barely a month ago.
After doing the Beijing Olympics on a freelance basis, my first and (presumably) last journey to China, and returning to Long Beach … a […]

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Just finished a one-hour media conference call with the four “disgraced” U.S. Olympic cyclists who were excoriated by the U.S. Olympic Committee for wearing protective masks when arriving at the Beijing airport last month, and then threatened with expulsion from the Summer Games if they didn’t apologize, muy pronto.
An apology that was not written by […]

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It’s a little weasel-wordy, but it’s clear: The U.S. Olympic Committee is asking the forgiveness of the four cyclists it bullied into a false and unnecessary confession of sins to the Chinese people, etc., a few days before the start of the Beijing Olympics.
I suppose this will do. It’s rare to see a big organization […]

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Remember when Sarah Hammer of Temecula and three other U.S. track cyclists got off the plane in Beijing last month wearing protective masks?
And do you remember how they were trashed by their own Olympic Committee? Which released an abject “apology” under their names?
Now the USOC is going to apologize to the cyclists, conceding “some aspects […]

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Been meaning to write this, and just now thought of it, about 10 minutes before kickoff here at the Rose Bowl.
Anyway, if you’re a decent athlete and the Olympics is your Mt. Everest … some free advice.

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No list of “big winners” from the Beijing Olympics is complete unless it has the name “Kobe Bean Bryant” near the top of the list.
Olympic gold usually isn’t something that defines an NBA player’s career. Since the pros began showing up at the Summer Games, in 1992, a gold medal was assumed, and having a […]

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I never look at the sportsjournalists.com site … which I believe is sj.com, if you want to peruse it. It’s pretty much sports journalists discussing (or arguing about) events in sports journalism.
But I know people who do look at the site, and occasionally they will tell me about how my name sometimes comes up. Which […]

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I promised I would get to the bottom of this, and it took a while, and I almost forgot, too, but …
Back on my first full day in Beijing I noted a weird reality of the brand-new Main Press Center building — the signs posted in the men’s and women’s toilets asking users not to […]

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