A clever headline tells a story … with a twist. I prefer to think everyone likes a clever headline, but I fear only people in the publishing business really appreciate a good “hed”. Like this one, from the Los Angeles Times 40 years ago. “Arrivederci Aroma: Rams Stink Up the Coliseum”

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Joe Namath has a new biography out, and in it the former New York Jets hero and leader of the great upset victory in Super Bowl III relates his spending Christmas alone, in December of 1979. The episode is outlined in this excerpt from “All the Way: My Life in Four Quarters.” And nearly any […]

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It may be time to change the name of this blog. To … Back in the Day. Maybe it’s just 60 years of Christmas Memories banging around in my head that puts me in mind of days gone by. But … I saw a lot of stuff. Not so much lately, in retirement, but while […]

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Signatures are important. They attach a person to a document. They can seal important transactions. They can be legally binding. They also can be seen as a collector’s item. I tend to take note of a person’s signature. I make evaluations on signatures. Or their less formal friends, autographs. How people sign their names: Doesn’t […]

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Let’s get this straight right off: There is no future for competitive eating. It is tacky, gross, wasteful and Just Plain Dangerous, with links not only to chronic medical conditions but also to fatalities. You perhaps have viewed, via television, one of the episodes of professional gluttony. Hot dogs are the preferred edible but other […]

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The moon landing of July 1969 somehow has always seemed fresh, in my mind. Even when we view it in black and white. (It was 1969, after all.) That sense of recall seems a blessing for the aged of the world, given that no one under the age of 55 can hope to recall much […]

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And which World Cup is that? Why, the Cricket World Cup, of course. The Fifa Women’s World Cup, a global soccer event, surely is attracting viewers from more countries, but when it comes to “eyeballs on TV screens”, I am pretty confident the Cricket World Cup is ahead. By millions.

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For a century, it’s been “the special relationship” pretty much nonstop. Great Britain and the United States, the Two Great English-Speaking Allies on opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean. We helped the Brits avoid German domination in the 20th century. Twice. In return, they threw in with the Yanks on the succession of small wars […]

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And we are living it. Not in the epicenter of “scary hot” but uncomfortably close to it. “Friday will be the worst” was what we had heard for the whole of this preposterously hot week, and leave it to the weather guys to be right about bad news. Heat records have been tumbling this afternoon […]

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I like the Fifa Women’s World Cup. It’s global. It can be exotic. The women attract a more PG-rated crowd than do the men. It provides three weeks or more of running narrative and it fills a bit of a void during the potentially slow soccer summer season. I covered four men’s World Cups, and […]

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