ENTERTAINMENT
January 1, 2012 | By Carolyn Kellogg, Los Angeles Times
Karaoke Culture Dubravka Ugresic Open Letter: 324 pp., $15.95 paper Dubravka Ugresic does not like karaoke. That doesn't stop her from trying it, just as her resistance to celebrity doesn't stop her from putting her head through a cutout on a Hollywood studio tour so that she can be photographed with Clark Gable. Ugresic, a game and inquisitive critic, looks at culture from all angles, which sometimes means picking up the mic . Karaoke recycles rather than creates, she argues in "Karaoke Culture," the 100-page essay that lends its name to the title of her new collection.
SPORTS
April 27, 2010 | By Grahame L. Jones
Last May, Bayern Munich dipped into its coffers and handed VfB Stuttgart something north of $40 million for German national team forward Mario Gomez. In August, the Bavarian club again reached deep to come up with $33 million to acquire Dutch national winger Arjen van Robben from Real Madrid. And, in July, Croatian national team striker Ivica Olic quietly slipped in the door at Bayern's Allianz Arena and made himself right at home. On Tuesday, in a scintillating performance, Olic, 30, scored all three goals as Bayern Munich clinched its place in the May 22 European Champions League final with a 3-0 demolition of Olympique Lyon in France.
SPORTS
March 11, 2010 | By Diane Pucin
In the last year, Mario Ancic has been both a commerce lawyer in Zagreb, Croatia, and a tennis player. He prefers the outdoor courts to the indoor ones. Ancic, 25, who was a Wimbledon semifinalist in 2004, missed most of last year after being diagnosed with mononucleosis that had first been diagnosed as a bad flu in 2008. There was a time, Ancic said, when he would spit up blood while hitting a tennis ball because he didn't know what was wrong. On Thursday, Ancic beat American qualifier Bobby Reynolds, 4-6, 6-3, 6-4, in the first round of the BNP Paribas Open at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, and he was ecstatic to have had the opportunity to play.
SPORTS
September 6, 2009 | GRAHAME L. JONES
Pressure, pressure everywhere, nor any time to think. With apologies to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and all that, but sometimes the game can get to you. It certainly did in at least a couple of cases recently. Take, for example, what happened to Rene Simoes, the Groucho Marx look-alike who is best remembered as coach of Jamaica's 1998 World Cup team and later as the coach who led Brazil's women to the silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics. Until just the other day, Simoes, 56, was coaching Portuguesa in the Brazilian second division, and things were not going well.
SPORTS
March 20, 2009 | BILL DWYRE
So, Ivan Ljubicic, how did you spend your 30th birthday Thursday? Do any fun stuff? Any good gifts? Oh, we forgot. You had a tennis match. Quarterfinals of that big deal over at the Indian Wells Garden. The one in the big, fancy stadium with all those signs for that French bank, BNP Paribas. Gotta feel sorry for those guys, being a foreign bank and all. They can't put their hands into our tax-paying pockets like our banks. So, you're gonna wear that orange shirt again.
WORLD
July 16, 2008 | From Times Wire Reports
The Croatian parliament has passed a law forcing shops to close on Sundays in a concession to the Roman Catholic Church. The church has campaigned for years for Sundays to be devoted to family or Mass in Croatia, which is almost 90% Roman Catholic. But Croatians have begun spending weekends in shopping malls that have flourished across the country in the last few years and remain open seven days a week. The law takes effect Jan. 1. It allows Sunday shopping over the summer and Christmas holidays.