Haven’t posted much about the Olympics after a blistering tirade against the opening ceremonies. I watched in passing, found myself slipping into my usual passive aggressive rooting for and against Korean athletes. It’s hard not to like Yu-na, but hard to stomach most the short track skaters. And with the Chilean earthquake as the backdrop, [...]

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Not just Uee, but I think the fact that K-pop is once again turning to American football for the 2nd time in a few months is worth noting. Here’s Uee, introduced a couple posts ago, posing for Vogue Korea vamping it up in a few sporty outfits, two of which feature football getups.
This wouldn’t be [...]

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.301 lifetime.  521 HR.  1704 RBI.  Sure first ballot HOF’er.  EWC salutes Frank Thomas, who announced his retirement Thursday.

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You might think I’m doing a post on Formula One coming to Korea because I know something about it. Wrong. I once watched Formula One in a Camden apartment I was house-sitting at in London. That was about eight years ago and I haven’t seen or heard of it since.
But the fact that it’s coming [...]

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Jose Canseco’s Mixed Mixed Martial Arts debut in Yokohama lasted all of 1:17 as he was KO’d by South Korea’s 7′2 Choi Hong-man in what Japan Times reporter Kaz Nagatsuka described as a disgrace to professional sports.
From the Japan Times:
In this brutal, no-mercy sport, it’s not unusual when a fight ends a moment after the [...]

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Can’t say I’m much of a boxing fan, but when my friend had me download the Manny Pacquiao/Ricky Hatton Jr. Welterweight title fight, I became kind of curious since I knew it was an Asian whipping a Brit.

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I’ve heard about the Cheongdo Bullfighting Festival for a number of years and as much as I like the idea in the abstract — since I love The Sun Also Rises and all — I’m really not the kind of person to enjoy gore up close. While riding the train up to Seoul late last week [...]

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If you haven’t read Michael Lewis’s article on Shane Battier for the New York Times, hop to it. My friend Eric was the second person who raved about it, which finally made me sit down and read the thing (it’s long). Hopefully I can be your Eric. It’s that good.
I was surprised to find that [...]

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*At the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver.
Or so says USA Today.
It won’t be trumped up quite like the USA-Soviet Union showdowns of Cold War days or even the USA-China medals battle in last year’s Beijing Games.
Will it be anything like Beauclerk’s XI versus G. Osbaldeston’s XI during the war of 1812?

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I’ve come across a couple interesting tidbits related to basketball’s international popularity. I don’t know if this has been big news in the U.S., but apparently the NBA opened a new office on London’s Kensington High Street, oddly, as this BBC story points out, above the Uruguayan Embassy.
Interviewed in the story is Hedi Ueberroth (daughter of [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApuszuPBKwo

I can’t believe it took me 33 years to catch on to this, but this weekend I was in a hotel with the fam and we stumbled across Japanese Women’s Extreme Pro wrestling on TV. This is more or less a must see if you haven’t seen it before.
Another facet of Japanese TV [...]

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Neat article in today’s New York Times about Ebbsfleet United, a lower-tier British soccer club that was purchased by an ownership group started on the Iternet (MyFootballClub.co.uk), which raised money via readers, with the promise that the ownership group “could vote on every decision, from uniform design to player selection.”
Ok, who’s going to start [...]

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The title of this NYT story, A Culture Clash for South Korean Players on the L.P.G.A. Tour, is a bit of a misnomer, because mostly the writer is talking about how swimmingly things are going since the LPGA Tour’s commissioner, Carolyn Bivens, dropped the plan to require foreign-born players to speak English. But anyway, there’s [...]

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I won’t pretend to be a figure skating expert, but judging by the number of times this little ditty I wrote about Kim Yu-na came up on searches, I’d say she had something of a coming out partyinternationally over the weekend. Not sure how often I’ll follow her story, since I might be tired of [...]

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I guess I’m such a cynic at this point I read something like this and just wonder how people come to spend so much time on learning something like high wire walking that they actually become good at it. I suppose, for those who do spend their lives learning such things, it’s good they have [...]

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What would happen if a Japanese celebrity biker raced an insane french guy wearing a bodysuit with about 50 wheels attached  down a Japanese mountain side?  
Answer here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDBDkVI0Cn4

By the way the French guy calls this BuggyRollin.
(From Pink Tentacle)

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Actually, this isn’t as bad as game fixing, so the headline should probably read Korean Field Hockey League Kind of Bad, but Not as Bad as Taiwanese Pro Baseball League. However, this implicates 102 people and nearly every team in the league.
Video of Korean news report showing the league’s crooked books here.
From Korea Beat:
102 people [...]

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This is such wild situation to watch and I don’t have any clear opinion on it, but I actually understand the LPGA’s wanting it’s players to be able to communicate with the media. From a marketing perspective. If the LPGA were classified as a business I’d say they have the right to request whatever they [...]

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Even though it concerns Koreans I haven’t paid much attention to the stories about the LPGA’s new mandate that it’s golfers must speak passable English. Much of the coverage has seemed to suggest that the decision is xenophobic in nature, which I think is absurd. However, Ray Ratto, a columnist I’ve read off and on [...]

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In light of that recent Randy Newman post I did this definitely caught my eye; a funny reaction to Usain Bolt’s mind-boggling 100m dash on Saturday called Short people got no reason to live:
The 60-yard Procrustean Cut-Down was the sole event we Middle Men could hope to win. But after Usain Bolt’s world-record run in [...]

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