Well, God has finally dropped everything else, and the planets have aligned (including my beloved little Pluto).
The New York Times has finally bit the bullet and done it: It’s running a piece on Novak Djokovic in the Men’s Style section Friday.
That must really have killed The Paper of Record (which could also be called The Paper of Roger Federer). Apart from the inexhorable Serena Slam watch, The Times’ US Open coverage has been much Roger, much of the time. The Gray Lady is like a royalist longing for the Stuart Restoration, just waiting for the once and future king (that would be Feddy) to rid the world of that Cromwellian imposter (that would be Nole) and assume his rightful title as US Open/Wimbledon/French Open/Australian Open champ and eternal No. 1. (And how fascinating is it that one of Nole’s Peugeot commercial echoes this meme?)
But the Nole article by David Shaftel, who apparently interviewed Nole during the Rogers Cup, is titled “Novak Djokovic is No. 1, Like It or Not.” And we know that for The Times, the answer is Not. ...
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Read MoreWell, Rafael Nadal is out of the US Open (again) and Tim Tebow is out of the NFL (again). As a fan of both, I’m sorry to see them go but not surprised.
Rafa was up to two sets and 3-1 in the third against Fabio Fognini (yes, I know, Who?) in the third round of the Open Friday night into Saturday morning when, depending on your viewpoint, Rafa lost it or Fabio staged a fab comeback. ...
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Read MoreWhen people ask me about the subject of my upcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding,” I tell them it’s the story of a gay, biracial quarterback’s quest for identity, acceptance, success and love amid the brutal beauty of the NFL.
It’s also the story of the workplace. What, you may ask, can we learn from the atypical workplace of the NFL? Ah, but you see, I think the violence of the NFL is a metaphor for today’s brutal workplace – one in which employees are set up to fail by 24/7 demands, no opportunity to take the vacations they earn, weak benefits and eviscerating bosses. It’s the picture The New York Times paints of Amazon. ...
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Read MoreFootball is war as theater. Violence is endemic to the sport. So it comes as no surprise that New York Jets’ linebacker Ikemefuna Enemkpali should sucker-punch his teammate, starting quarterback Geno Smith, over a $600 plane ticket Enemkpali purchased for Smith that he has yet to reimburse.
Enemkpali, (in-em-PAUL-ee) who was arrested during his Louisiana Tech days for battery of a police officer, was immediately released by the Jets. Even as NFL altercations go, this hits a new low in stupidity, and, of course, the snarkarazzi was out in force. ...
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Read MoreOn Aug. 1, I'll be at The DCCenter for the LGBT Community's OutWrite Book Festival with my novel "Water Music" -- about the loves and rivalries among four gay athletes. I'll sign some books, do a reading (at 3:25 p.m.) and share news about "The Penalty for Holding," the second book in my series "The Games Men Play." If you're in Washington D.C., I'd love to see you at The Reeves Center 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The event is free to attend. For more, click on to http://thedccenter.org/outwritedc/exhibitors.html.
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Read MoreBoy, the Public Editor’s column in the June 28 edition of The New York Times really struck a chord with me. The column by Margaret Sullivan wondered if both The Times and its readers are served by reporters who write books, people like columnist and PBS commentator David Brooks, whose latest work, “The Road to Character,” has been the subject of several columns that linked to his website. Readers complained not only about his shilling for his book but about errors in the book that have since been corrected.
While I haven’t read the book, I thought the premise of related columns – that the individual needs to be subjugated to the good of the community – was essentially illogical and unrealistic. ...
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Read MoreThis has been a big year for the classical nude. But then again, when is it not?
From the moment the Renaissance uncovered Roman copies of sculptures of ancient Greek gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, the nude has defined our highest aspirations for the body, from the art of Donatello and Michelangelo to the neoclassical works of turn-of-the-19th century Paris to the highly formal, erotically charged photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe, just to name a few.
“Not only is it the longest lasting, most influential visual form for representing the human body up to the present day, but it has also become so powerfully naturalized as merely ‘the nude’ that we have often lost the ability to see it as a specific historical type, with a particular history, geography and canon,” curator Jonathan David Katz wrote in the catalog for “Classical Nudes and the Making of Queer History,” at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in Manhattan last fall. ...
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