American Life

Did Mariah Carey mime or not when she headlined the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan? That was the main takeaway from last month’s jamboree. Organizers have since suggested that the US singer did indeed lip-sync to Domenico Modugno’s “Nel Blu, dipinto di Blu” and the song that followed, her very own, “Nothing is Impossible.” “The technical, logistical and organizational complexities of an Olympic ceremony are not comparable to a live performance by a single artist,” said a spokesperson for the organizing committee.    Was there also a linguistic complexity in the decision? Perhaps Carey didn’t feel confident singing live in Italian in front of 75,000 spectators in the San Siro Stadium, plus the 9.2 million Italians watching the ceremony on television. Nevertheless, Maria Laura Iascone of the organizing committee called Carey’s performance “exceptional,” adding that

Ah, the indignities of age. Over the past year I’ve suffered significant hearing loss. “Huh?” has become my favorite word and I’ve developed a strange new respect for the loonies who hear voices. Aspiring to stoicism, I informed Lucine, my wife, “When I hit 60 I figured that I was entering a stage in which the physical setbacks, some quite unexpected, would mount. So I told myself that I could either whine about it or I could accept all this with grace and good humor.” Lucine didn’t miss a beat. “Then why have you chosen to whine?” Thanks, dear! I mean no disrespect to the late Freddie Mercury when I

I once knew a man so cheap he would call my dad to report that he’d found a nickel on the pavement of the local racetrack’s parking lot. I don’t know if Jim would have stooped to conquer a penny as well – I wouldn’t put it past him – but I like to think he’d join me in lamenting the demise of the American cent, our humblest coin, burked by order of President Donald Trump at the urging of Elon Musk, neither of whom will ever be mistaken for a small-is-beautiful fan. The last Lincoln cent headed for general circulation was struck at the Philadelphia Mint in November last

The Morgan Affair in 1826 led to the first third party in American political history

I suppose I should hate this city, the Typhoid Mary of cultural imperialism

A brilliant meteor blazed through the Summer Triangle early in the show, eliciting oohs and aahs and apolitical cheers

Technically we are moving south, though I doubt we qualify as snowbirds

Despite the multitudinous sins committed against the game and its culture, I’m once again giving it the old college try

The first spade hit the dirt on July 4, 1817, near the appositely named Rome, New York

The folksinger’s lifeboat capsized far too soon

Homestand is the most anti-MLB but pro-sandlot and hick-circuit baseball book ever published

Skipper was hyperalert, Russ vigilant but pensive

I went on a weeklong comets-and-asteroids-destroy-our-world binge

Like so many intrusions upon our liberties, it was introduced to America by war

You never know when or wherefrom these pitches are coming. I doubt that even Oscar Wilde could hit much above .500 in this league

I don’t know where the time has gone

The wonderfully idiosyncratic sporting variant achieved extraordinary popularity in rural Iowa