The racing world is a-flutter – and so am I: American Pharoah is up for Sports Illustrated’s Sportsman of the Year. As is Novak Djokovic once again.
OK, Nole – who hasn’t lost a tournament since the Ice Age – is never going to win. I’m assuming that when posters say they haven’t heard of some of the nominees, they mean him. And when they point out the year fellow nominee Serena Williams had, I know they don’t know what they’re talking about. No disrespect to Serena, but she won three Slams, lost in the semifinals of the fourth and then basically retired for the rest of the season. ...
Read more
Read MoreWell, things are heating up on the CW’s “Reign” now that Catherine de’ Medici, the mother-in-law from hell, is back in her son Francis II’s somewhat good graces. Meanwhile, the plot thickens across the Channel as Elizabeth I entertains Don Carlo, heir to Philip II of Spain, as a possible husband – throwing the tortured triangle of herself, her soul mate Robert Dudley and Dudley’s scheming wife Amy into sharp relief along with Elizabeth’s ambivalence toward marriage. Good stuff.
In reality, Don Carlo – the subject of an equally fanciful opera by Verdi, “Don Carlos” – was not the dashing, romantic figure of Verdi or the TV series but a deranged hunchback who may have been killed by his own father, who was in tur once Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, the husband of her sister and predecessor “Bloody Mary” Tudor. And to make things even cozier, Philip ended up marrying Elizabeth Valois, daughter of Catherine de’ Medici and BFF of her sister-in-law, and Francis’ wife, Mary, Queen of Scots. ...
Read more
Read MoreWhenever I was asked about my “walls of inspiration” – which have followed me to each new job, albeit with a changing cast of characters – I always responded that they were a feminist gesture, that I would remove them the day Playboy magazine folded.
Well, Hell has frozen over and I’ll have to remove my men. (Yeah, right. More on that in a bit.) ...
Read more
Read MoreOne of the guiltier guilty pleasures of TV, along with the evolution of Don Johnson’s hair on “Miami Vice” reruns – Has there ever been a more beautiful man and more shades of blond? – is The CW’s “Reign,” the story of Mary, Queen of Scots played out as if an American high school were staging a Renaissance drama. There’s lots of mean girls and good-bad girls bemoaning manipulative guys whom they would seek to manipulate in turn. Everyone talks about “cahstles” and “Frahnce” in plummy Brit accents that are phonier than $3 bills – even though the series is set mostly in France and Catherine de’ Medici, Mary’s ever-hating mother-in-law, was Italian. ...
Read more
Read MorePope Francis’ celebration of Mass at Madison Square Garden tonight prompted my friend, sports publicist and blogger John Cirillo, to email me a post on his favorite Garden moments, which got me thinking about my own.
But first, a little history. The Garden, named for President James Madison, really was once a garden – a rooftop garden that was part of an elaborate Moorish-style complex designed by architect Stanford White, who was shot there in 1906 by a crazed Harry Thaw over Thaw’s wife (and White’s former mistress) chorus girl Evelyn Nesbit. (She figures in both E.L. Doctorow’s novel “Ragtime” and the movie “The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing.”) ...
Read more
Read MoreTime to take a break from the sports world to say a proper hello to Pope Francis, who arrived yesterday in Washington D.C. There the jovial pontiff was greeted by a smiling, laughing President Barack Obama – a graceful man meeting a man of grace.
It was immediately apparent that Pope Francis intends to keep it real during his American sojourn (black Fiat, black shoes, eyeglasses he bought himself in a Roman shop). ...
Read more
Read MoreRafael Nadal is a fever in a woman’s blood.
The sensual gaze. The tawny, molded muscles. The playful sexiness that makes a little skin oh so in.
He’s displayed all that and more in the Armani jeans and underwear campaign and now he takes it off again as the spokesmodel for a new line of Tommy Hilfiger underwear and clothes as well as the new Hilfiger fragrance TH Bold. ...
Read more
Read More