Casper Ware, the star point guard at Long Beach State, the kid who scored a career-high 28 points in the 86-76 spanking of 10th-ranked Pitt on the Panthers’ home floor …
… is getting a shout-out from a significant website.

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It has been a rough, oh, coupla-three decades for Long Beach State alumni who care about the major sports. The football program was killed, and the basketball program, which was one of the nation’s best for a half-dozen seasons straddling 1970, generally wasn’t very good.
So, as a 49ers alumnus, I was quite pleased to read […]

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During our peregrinations through California, we have spent 10 nights in the homes of relatives or friends. For which we are quite grateful. That’s a huge savings to the tourist.
Our sleeping quarters have ranged from plush “nearly always unused guest bedroom” to an old-fashioned case of “one of the kid’s rooms while the little ones […]

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I can’t remember the last time I saw a televised baseball game from start to finish. Sometime in 2009, I guess it would be. I’ve seen stretches of playoff games, while in Abu Dhabi, but the time differences are so weird that I inevitably miss the start of a game or its finish.
So I felt […]

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A plaque at one of the places we have stayed during our vacation in California summed it up pretty well:
“If you are lucky enough to live by the water … you are lucky enough.”
Certainly, a large body of water generally tempers climatic extremes. But life can get even better. You can be more than “lucky […]

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I wish I had known the inventor of the hammock because I would like to shake that gentleman’s hand.
And I’m fairly sure it was a “him” and not a “her,” because women have never sat around much, at any time, in any society. Men, however, have been hanging around since the dawn of time, I’m […]

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People who grew up mostly in one house each have their own version of this in their personal histories: The business strip/street/mall where they bought groceries, picked up a newspaper, saw a movie, shopped for clothes, filled the tank.
For me, it was Second Street in Belmont Shore, and I spent the night back in my […]

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Second-to-last stop on our tour of California. From cozy Balboa Island to my hometown, Long Beach.
And if this trip has been almost entirely about seeing how close we can get to the ocean, we have come to the right place. The windows of the condo we are renting afford a wide view out on the […]

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That’s what I’m calling it. A slump. Just a string of unfortunate results. Accidents, even.
I don’t actually look like that.
A little down period on the mugshot front. It began the other day. 2005, I think it was.

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This must seem a bit over the top by now. Well, it does for me, too, and I have the benefit of knowing how it happened. Three visits to Paris in 13 months and change.
To recap:

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