Fun trips are coming thick and fast in the second half of this year for me. I am still several photo-essays away from completing the story of our summer trip to Catalonia, I just returned from a jaunt around California wine country, and there I am in Madrid for a…
A recent article in Salon reminded me of something I briefly mentioned during the Beijing Games four years ago and then expounded upon during the Vancouver Winter Games two years ago. In one recent two-hour stretch of primetime viewing, I managed to see several final serves of a volleyball match,…
I don’t get these victory parades. You stand in the crowd for several hours. You block passage for people who actually have business walking down the streets that the mob you’re part of is blocking. You have to exercise a significant bladder control above and beyond your normal exertion. And…
OK, instead of Phillies vs Yankees World Series, it’s Giants vs Rangers. As disappointing as that is, at least I am not missing anything I care about due to the Cablevision/FOX dispute. I suspect World Series ratings will take a big hit in markets other than Northern Cal and Dallas-Ft…
My first ever live NFL game turned out to be surprisingly more enjoyable than I expected. I am enough of a fan of the American football to enjoy the games in general. However, I fully recognize the static nature of the sport, where each subsequent play is separated from the…
I finished Kimmy’s birthday movie with over a week to spare. Go me! It turned out pretty good, if I say so myself, but I’ll be sure to post here the raving reviews I’m certain to receive after its premiere this coming weekend. Of course, I spent so much time…
It occurred to me that my girls now possess skates signed not only by the Olympic silver medalists, but an Olympic champion as well. Becky participated in a 2004 edition of Stars Stripes and Skates gala with Nancy Kerrigan. Next year, she attended a skating clinic in NYC’s Central Park…
What a joke NBC’s Olympic coverage is! A single Olympiad occurred during my time in Europe and, having watched it in two different countries, I was impressed with the coverage both on BBC and also on Italian TV. It was much closer to what I remember from my Soviet days,…
Both of the teams I was rooting for lost in conference championship games on Sunday. The Jets were exposed as a lower-class team with mostly toothless offense and only occasionally stingy defense. The Vikings turned the ball over four times and yet had the game for the taking with 2:29…
I am a rare European-born and raised naturalized American who gets baseball. For most of my fellow emigrants, the game is too static, too full of seemingly inconsequential action when only a couple of people seem to get involved (for instance, when the batter takes a ball), and not very…
I realize that a lot more comes into an Olympic host selection than just the appeal of the leaders of each respective country whose cities are in the running. Yet I feel strangely disturbed that Obama’s appeal to the IOC turned out to be a non-factor in Friday’s vote for…
I realize this morning that my attempt at congratulating my Red Sox fan friends (I can name only a couple off the top my head, anyway) last year has had a desired effect for at least this year: Boston is not going to the World Series this time around. But…
I catch glimpses of Olympic Games here or there on TV, but I look up results and commentary online regularly. The lion share of the medals won by Great Britain so far has come from two sports: Sailing and cycling. I accept that the UK is a sea-faring country, so…
I did watch a couple of hours of Olympics today, and at some point it hit me: BBC shows them commercial-free, except for one or two promotional clips of upcoming BBC programs. Add in the fact that the multi-screen option allows me to pick from among several concurrent feeds on…
The Olympic opening ceremony is about to start, and I realize that for the first time since I became actively aware of the wonderful medium of television I will not be watching Olympic Games that much. It’s not because I’ve always felt it was an irresponsible acquiescence to award the…
In most sports that I follow, besides rooting for a favorite home team, I have individual favorite players, whose teams transitively get my allegiance as well. For instance, I’ve been partial in the past to the Detroit Red Wings because of all the Russian players on their roster or the…
As unpredictable as football can be, the football gods rarely insist on throwing their weight behind an illogical outcome, Greece’s triumph at the last championships notwithstanding. Today, we have a well-deserving champion. The Spanish team was not the only one that went through the tournament unbeaten (the unfortunate Croatians were…
Bookmakers are no slouches: We’ve got a Germany – Spain final. Spain pretty much pasted Russia in the second half, winning in more than convincing fashion. The Russians played as I expected them to play in the previous game, i.e. reasonably well but worse than the opponents. The first half…
After four quarterfinal games of Euro Championships, I suddenly feel that, although I considered myself reasonably knowledgeable about the Beautiful Game for all my life, I have, in fact, very little understanding of it. Or some aspects of it, at least. There were stunning reversals of form, dumb coaching decisions,…
A good live football match every night at a convenient viewing time. Heaven! I do not think I will ever have a chance like this again… I have watched only a half of games after the first round of group play, but still, that’s all together 16 matches out of…