Roger Federer at the 2014 Australian Open. Photograph by Peter Myers.
At his Laver Cup in London this weekend — which Team World won over his Team Europe — Roger Federer ended his professional tennis career , a career that has said as much about fans’ perceptions of sports figures as it has about his accomplishments.
Read MoreThe latest novel in my series “The Games Men Play,” a romantic historical thriller built around the opera “Turandot,” is due out from JMS Books Sept. 17.
A number of tough deadlines have prevented me recently from blogging and ashamed of it I am, too, as there have been so many juicy storylines on which to comment — the ridiculous ruling on former President Donald J. Trump’s request for a special master, which will undoubtedly be appealed by the Justice Department;
The less than Churchillian new British prime minister, Liz Truss;
The new nonbinary Joan of Arc play, which asks the question, Does it matter that Joan of Arc was a woman? (Of course it does, since it’s one of the reasons she was executed);
And the zigzag rise of Nick Kyrgios, one of a long line of idiosyncratic players (John McEnroe, having another moment, still; Andre Agassi and Novak Djokovic, who should just get the damn jab and be done with it already) in an idiosyncratic sport.
But I want to beg my readers indulgence for a moment as I announce the Sept. 17 publication of my latest novel, “Riddle Me This.”“Riddle Me This” (JMS Books, Sept. 17)….
Read MoreWhere’s “Citizen Kane” director-star Orson Welles when you need him? The entrance gate to Xanadu, uh, Mar a Lago. Photograph by Thomas Wallace Scherzer.
This summer — like last summer and the one before it — seems to be another case of promise denied. Once again we started with high hopes or at least middling hopes. (Let’s face it: Since Covid, the bar has been set pretty low. And once again, it has not been cleared. We can each point to personal disappointments, which may or may not be of our own making. But as a society, we must consider a failure that stems from our own lack of rationality, imagination and compassion.
One example — the dominant story of the season — will suffice. No sooner did the FBI search former President Donald J. Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago for documents that belong to the National Archives than the Bureau was under attack.
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Read MoreCereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post bequeathed Mar-a-Lago to the National Park Service in 1973 in the hope it would become the Winter White House — which is what it did during President Donald J. Trump’s White House occupancy.
History, Karl Marx observed, repeats itself — first as tragedy, then as farce. So it was fitting that on the 48th anniversary of President Richard M. Nixon’s Watergate-spurred resignation, Aug. 8, the Department of Justice should search former President Donald J. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, for his alleged failure to return documents belonging to the National Archives.
Read MoreThe.Greek mythological figure Narcissus — seen here in a fresco in Pompei — gives his name to a quality and disorder that may be the defining attribute of the day. r
You know how people ask what your pronouns are nowadays, or include them in email signatures, as a result of nonbinary and trans people who identify as “they” even though it’s a plural? Well, we don’t have to ask many people in the news what they’re pronouns are. Let’s just assume they’re the unholy trinity of me, myself and I.
Read MoreWhere it all began: Novak Djokovic becomes the No. 1-ranked male tennis player in the world in 2011, defeating Jo-Wilfried Tsonga in the semifinals en route to the first of his seven Wimbledon titles. Photograph by Carine06.
I knew Novak Djokovic would win his seventh Wimbledon title. As a Djokovic fan, this one is all the sweeter given the strange, Nole year he’s having.
Read MoreCassidy Hutchinson testifying before the United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attacks. Courtesy the committee.
I always knew former President Donald J. Trump would be done in by a woman, but I never imagined it would be this woman and in this way.
I always thought the Trumpian comeuppance would come at the skillful hands of the estimable Stormy Daniels or the equally estimable House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, skilled in a different way but with the same results.
But there she is. No, not Miss America but Ms. America, Cassidy Hutchinson — earnest, principled, detail-minded, determined and crisply attired in summer-ready black and white, looking for all the world like something out of a John Grisham movie. (Back in the day, she would’ve been played by Julia Roberts. Today, she’d probably be played by Dakota Johnson.)
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