Borna and Nole – in Vogue

August 23, 2015

Well, once again the gazillion-page (actually only 832-page) September Vogue is out, and, once again, the big issue for me is not the cover or the fashion but whom editrix Anna Wintour has anointed among male tennis players for the ritual dressing (and undressing).

This year, tennis-crazed Anna, the sly minx, is offering a kind of two-for-one and her own version of doubles. In the “People Are Talking About” section, rising star and teen dream Borna “Identity” Ćorić looks like he’s headed off to Harvard, standing at the net in a gray and white Canali sweater with gray J. Crew sweats. Coach Brad Gilbert has given the 18-year-old Croat the nickname but the question is, “Whose identity?” ...

Tom Brady – the NFL’s Nixon?

July 29, 2015

From the standpoint of stupid, it’s hard to beat Deflategate. It’s a writer’s dream, a story that keeps getting more and more bizarro.

NFL commish Roger Goodell – hardly the paragon of Alexandrian leadership – has nonetheless grown a spine and upheld his four-game ban of New England Patriots’ quarterback Tom Brady, which followed an NFL-commissioned report concluding Brady probably knew that two Pats’ employees had deflated the team’s footballs before the A.F.C. Championship game with the Indianapolis Colts. ...

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Is Tom Brady going down?

July 24, 2015

Tom Brady has apparently made the NFL an offer it can refuse.

The NFL Players Association, on behalf of the Deflategator, has offered to have Tommy Boy pay a big fine in lieu of a four-game suspension. The overture has “met with silence” in the office of commish Roger Goodell, who heard Brady’s appeal June 23. The New England Patriots’ quarterback is prepared to make a federal case out of this should he be suspended for probably having knowledge of subordinates deflating footballs in the A.F.C. Championship game against the Indianapolis Colts earlier this year. But the fact that the Players Association has put out an offer seems like the moment in a crime show when the defense looks to plea bargain. And that suggests a certain guilt ...

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Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic can’t win for trying

July 15, 2015

You would think that for two people who had reached the pinnacle of their profession, the world would be their oyster.

But no, no, things didn’t work out that way for Serena Williams and Novak Djokovic though it’s certainly not for lack of effort on their part.

Holder of the Serena Slam (all four Slam titles at once), Serena will no doubt win the US Open that begins on Aug. 29 and succeed Steffi Graf by capturing the Grand Slam (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon and the US Open) in one calendar year. She will be remembered as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, to play the game. Simply put, there is Serena and there is everyone else ...

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It’s Pluto(palooza) time

July 14, 2015

Vive la France and vive Pluto.

Tomorrow, July 14, Bastille Day (alias the Frenchy Fourth of July), New Horizons spacecraft will do its Pluto flyby. NASA TV will have a live broadcast from 7:30 to 9 a.m. EDT. But here’s the thing: We won’t know if the flyby has been successful – or if the probe, which looks like a grand piano wrapped in gold and silver foil, has hit debris and exploded – until 8:53 p.m. EDT when we get our first bit of data. We’ll get our first look at Charon, Pluto’s rival moon, at 7 a.m. EDT Wednesday, July 15. (Remember that Charon in Greek mythology is the ferryman who delivers the dead to Hades, or Pluto, lord of the underworld, so it’s all good in terms of keeping our mythological ducks in a row.) We’re also going to get a gander at Hydra, another of Pluto’s five moons. (And another Greco-Roman mythological reference: The Hydra was the seven-headed monster Herakles, or Hercules, had to battle.) Then at 3:25 p.m. Wednesday, finally, it’s Pluto time, with the little planet that could showing us its heart. (No, Pluto, we heart you.) ...

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Pluto is ready (or not) for its close-up

July 9, 2015

On July 14, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly by the former planet known as Pluto. Already, the spacecraft is sending back pictures that have scientists “drooling,” which is a bit like calling Marilyn Monroe a dumb blonde and then collecting every MM photo you can.

You see, back in 2006, a fraction of the members of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) voted to demote Pluto to dwarf status. (Something about size and crossed orbits and not owning its Kuiper Belt neighborhood, etc.) So even though tiny Pluto has five moons, it was out.

This did not sit well with the kind of Earthlings who champion the oppressed or are tiny themselves (card-writing schoolchildren, especially those who had to memorize “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles,” or some such to remember Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.) ...

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Sail away, sail away, sail away – ‘The Stylish Life: Yachting”

July 7, 2015

In my debut novel “Water Music,” the four gay athletes at its core explore their relationships during a vacation on Mykonos, the home of tennis player Alex Vyranos.

Alex is the son of a man who has made a fortune working for an Onassis-style shipping tycoon. At one point, Spyros Vyranos lends his son a company yacht, the Semiramide, to pilot his three friends to the neighboring isle of Delos, birthplace of Apollo. Spyros has warned Alex that the Semiramide is not a toy. He doesn’t want him drinking and sailing He doesn’t want the four winding up on TMZ.

Of course not, papa, Alex remembers telling him as he takes a swig of Dom Perignon at the wheel of the Semiramide, feeling all the power, freedom and escape that a yacht has to offer. ...