French music is strange. France is a large country, with lots and lots of history, including a fair share of celebrated composers of classical music, especially over the past 150 years — Debussy, Ravel, Bizet, Delibes, Offenbach, etc. But French pop music, at least to the expat’s ear, seems to have ended with Charles Trenet […]

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Eli Manning will not start for the New York Giants on Sunday, ending a streak of 210 consecutive starts at quarterback for the Giants, going back to 2004. However, the Giants are 2-9 and their playoffs hopes were buried weeks ago, and Eli will be 37 in five weeks and is not having a very […]

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The 32 teams are set. Last nation into the tournament was Peru, with a 2-0 aggregate victory over New Zealand in the inter-confederation playoffs. Here are the nations that will participate in Russia 2018 — 31 of them, with the host Russia making it 32. Let’s break these down into contenders, long shots, also-rans and […]

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While packing to move to France, I came across an ancient and tiny baseball glove. An American going abroad … can he really leave behind a baseball glove? (Even one that is not his own?) No. He cannot. There’s going away, and then there is leaving behind an essential part of your cultural patrimony. But […]

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I have become … oh, not obsessed but definitely interested … in the notion of saying hello to strangers. As the French do. On our most recent trip to California, I tried out the French method, in English, to people I encountered while walking. “Good morning!” It met with some success, suggesting that suburban Americans […]

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OK, we can stop whining. A couple of hours of cursing and gnashing of teeth is understandable, but after that … time to move on. Weird things happened tonight and the U.S. national team is out of the World Cup for the first time since 1986. A 2-1 defeat at Trinidad & Tobago; Honduras and […]

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Catalonia took another step on the road to sovereign status in a referendum today. And, as we typically do in reflecting the world of sports, we make it about us. To wit: “If  Catalonia leaves Spain … what does this mean for FC Barcelona and the Spanish league and the Spanish national team?” The short […]

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Raves. All-night dance parties that often just appear at some lonely place where young folks show up, thanks to a furtive, word-of-mouth campaign. We didn’t know raves were still a “thing”. Maybe it’s just France. It started Friday night. A rumbling thump-thump-thump coming from over one of the hills that surround the village, going on […]

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If you hope to dine like a local, in central Europe, you start by accepting one condition: You must order a beer with your meal. Or else you are an even bigger poseur than most of the rest of the tourists visiting the region. Which has led me to drink beer for nine consecutive days […]

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Not much time today in the Czech capital, given that we flew out of the south of France in mid-afternoon, changed planes in Paris and landed in Prague at about 8:30. (Where the airport is perhaps best known for being named after a poet, Vaclav Havel, who was president of the Czech Republic after the […]

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