What’s better than a Snickers bar, in all its chocolate-caramel-peanutty goodness?

Two of them! Or should it be three?

And what is better yet? The ultimate Snickers bar!

That would be the one seen above — one full pound of Snickers that the Mars company prefers to call the Slice ‘n Share bar.

It recommends that the owner of the bar cut it into nice pieces (of close to normal, 240-calorie Snickers size) to be consumed individually — over the course of weeks or with, say, eight friends right this minute.

I received one as a gift from a relative, and until the moment I did not know Snickers made bars that large. But, apparently, it has been doing so since 2011.

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We are staying with relatives who are serious hockey fans.

(Yes. In SoCal.)

There was never any doubt over what was going up on the big-screen TV from 8:10 p.m. (PST): The women’s hockey gold-medal match pitting the United States and Canada at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.

And there we sat for four-plus hours, increasingly engrossed by an event that featured great rivals, an event poised on knife’s edge and perhaps the finest women’s hockey match ever played.

That it ended in a victory for the United States, our preferred outcome, was almost incidental.

It was the quality of the competition, the clash of divergent playing styles and the win-or-die emotional undertow that kept us in our seats as Wednesday night became Thursday morning, in California.

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It is the nature of sports fans to crave a connection to star athletes in some (typically obscure) way.

Chelsea fans had, until today, a pretty good statistic that they could bandy about.

In eight Champions League matches versus the London club, Lionel Messi had never scored.

That drought ended in his ninth Champions League match with the London club when Messi scored with 15 minutes left to forge a 1-1 tie and make Chelsea’s route to the final eight of the CL more difficult.

Chelsea now needs to win the reverse match at Camp Nou in a few weeks … or it needs ties of 2-2 or greater to win on the “away goals” rule.

Chelsea may want to consider checking in with me, because Leo still has some problems getting a good result when I am in the stands at Barcelona.

In short, Messi has never been on the winning side — despite scoring at least one goal — in the two matches I have attended at Camp Nou.

How is that for a random Messi stat?

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Turns out, Tara Lipinski is a fine broadcast analyst at Olympic skating competition.

But we might be looking at Michelle Kwan on NBC TV, instead of Lipinski, if the former had won an Olympics gold at some point in her long and productive career. As Lipinski did at Nagano 1998.

Lipinski had a much shorter career, than did Kwan, and turned pro a month after Nagano, while Kwan carried on until 2009, always mulling a path to a gold medal.

Kwan was third at Salt Lake 2002, and that was it for her and the Olympics. She gained a spot on the U.S. team ahead of Turin 2006 but she withdrew from the competition when it became clear she would not be at full strength.

Which does nothing to detract from her seven national championships and five world championship. But the Olympics are, by far the Big Event, in skating.

I broke down Kwan’s two shots at gold on this blog item back in 2009, when she retired from the sport. And the margin of defeat, twice, was paper thin.

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I made it through several decades unaware of the veddy refined British tradition of “high tea”.

Or, as it sometimes is also known, “afternoon tea“. (The difference is explained here).

The idea behind it is a mid-afternoon snack. To bridge the span between lunch and a late dinner. Quite sensible.

Starting with tea, of course. All sorts of tea. They do that, in certain circles, in Great Britain. Tea all the time. Just cuz. But then expanding to include finger sandwiches of several types, scones, brownies, cakes, cupcakes, sliced strawberries and pineapple …

And if you do the big treatment, you get a mountain of food, with the little sandwiches on the bottom and cakes at the top.

And as much tea as you can drink.

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This dawned on me the other day. Even before we made the drive up (and back) through California’s Central Valley.

I have spent nearly the whole of my life breathing bad air. Polluted air. Sometimes thick enough to taste. Sometimes particulates so tiny they never come back out a person’s lungs.

Didn’t plan it that way, but that is how it has worked out.

Maybe some of you have struggled through the same thing.

Let’s recap:

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Pulling into Modesto around 8 p.m., looking for a place to have a beer and maybe a salad.

We found a brew pub named “Commonwealth”, which apparently is quite popular in this Central Valley outpost, because nearly every stool was taken at its long/seat-yourself tables.

We spotted facing open spots near the bar, and asked a woman sitting next to the open places, maybe 24 years of age: “Do you mind if we sit here?”

And she said: “Not at all, if you don’t mind vulgarity!”

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We once lived decades in southern California. We feel like we know the place pretty well. Certainly from the Mexican border to, say, Sacramento.

We had been outside the country for more than a year, and what we found here on our return yesterday has been … astounding.

When did California prices get out of control?

And not just for housing?

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Two things I believe about sports autographs.

1) No one past the age of 12 should ever ask for one. Adults don’t ask for the signatures of other adults — unless they plan to sell them on for more money, which is vile, and another good reason why adults should not ask for autographs.

And, 2) Athletes should never charge for autographs. Do them for free or don’t do them at all.

Don’t know if lots of adults will be clamoring to hand over $199 to Lonzo Ball for his autograph, but we do know Ball is charging stupid money for them, and that puts him in the “grasping loser” category of athletes inhabited by the likes of banned baseballer Pete Rose.

Lonzo Ball has signed a four-year contract with the Lakers for $33.4 million. But he still needs $199 per customer for an autograph?

The Lakers officially have Lonzo Ball issues, and this is just another aspect of it.

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Not that it matters much anymore, with print journalism in collapse, but for fun we can revisit a topic that would have been of great interest to sports journalists of 10 or 20 years ago:

Where is “home” to the latest great athlete?

Like, say, Chloe Kim, snowboarding gold-medallist at the Pyeongchang Winter Games?

Chloe Kim, from … where?

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