NEW YORK -- The glittering stage above the mosh pit at the MTV Video Awards is a strange place to find a female U.S. Open tennis champion -- especially the night before a big match. But there was Monica Seles at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday, live, in front of millions of viewers, giggling and reading off the cue cards. Seles, in her clipped English, announced the contenders for some award, "Hootie and the Blowfish" and "Michael and Janet Jackson" and then she came to a video with a rather strange name.
Enough.The summer is over, school buses are rolling, people are back to work.And so am I.Not as a symbol. I am not here because I side with management in this wretched newspaper strike, nor am I here to be a union spy. I did not come back for money, and I plan to give much of what I earn to the people still on strike.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- What could be more American than drinking beer and not showering after a workout? Hey, half my college roommates fit that description. So it's very comforting to find a guy with similar habits right here at the Kentucky Derby. Only the guy isn't American. Nor, when you get right down to it, is he a guy. He is a horse.A British horse.
LONDON -- Last week at Wimbledon, American Pete Sampras caused a stir when he said there was "nothing to watch" on British television. Bloody hell! The Brits went bonkers! At least the Brits who weren't watching TV. Those who were, naturally, were sound asleep.Sampras was not completely correct. There is, in fact, something to watch on British TV -- but that something usually involves the beetle and its mating habits.
WIMBLEDON, England -- You can't play tennis against a mirror, so Steffi Graf must settle for the women they put in front of her. They are not as good as she is. They are not as haunting as her lonesome quest for perfection. They do not spook her, or cause her to lose sleep. She can beat them all, even when she stumbles.She stumbled often against Jana Novotna in Thursday's semifinal. Graf double-faulted. Graf foot-faulted. Graf hit long. Graf whiffed at Novotna's serve. Whiffed? As in "swing and a miss"?Yep. And she still won.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
