The Giuliani campaign reminds me of the Japanese Empire towards the middle of 1945: One disaster after another.  Let’s see. The Tokyo fire bombing took out 150,000 civilians and burnt most of the city; then came the loss of Okinawa, Hiroshima, Nagasaki—and to top all that off the Soviet ...

If Faustus was willing to sell his soul to the Devil for sex, wealth and power, Eliot Spitzer, governor of New York, has settled for power— sensing full well that the other two follow naturally. Mind you, money doesn’t enter into it.  His father is a real estate shark billionaire who, ...

Libel laws are supposedly not as strict as they used to be, but don’t you believe it. For example, and I will not mention politically incorrect things one was permitted to write in jest back then. When Liberace died of AIDS, I wrote “Ashes to ashes, dust to ...

Having been a sportsman throughout my youth, I learned early on never to second guess athletes. One day you can’t miss a backhand even if you try, as they say—and the next you’re flailing like a dowager. Fans don’t ever get it. Nor do sportwriters. If A-Rod is having a hell of a ...

It is now close to fifty years that karate—the art of empty hand fighting—has been popular in the West. Karate’s aim is to develop a synergism of the will, the nerves and the muscles which manifests itself in the maximum controlled release of energy, speed and strength.  Good ...

Once, walking down my street towards the park, we came face to face and I refused to give way and bumped into him. He protested. "In the past, people like you would get off the sidewalk for people like me under the penalty of death..." said I, evoking a Samurai custom. He was appalled but there ...

Robert D. Novak may have thought of him as a fraud, as did Jackie Onassis, who was an expert—after all, she did look at the mirror daily—but in my mind he was the real deal and a very good president to boot. Richard Nixon came to mind when reading about the pain certain Brooklynites ...

The Waverly Inn on Bank Street, here in the Big Apple, is the hottest ticket in town. Owned by Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair honcho, it became the chicest place for dinner even before it opened. (Graydon opened it unofficially for friends of his). It is located on a quiet Greenwich Village street ...

D'Annunzio's sexual gymnastics did not help his reputation with literary critics, who passed moral judgements instead of assessing his work. He was an obvious target for irony, especially by Anglo-Saxons, such was his flamboyance as well as his physical appearance. (He lost an eye in World War ...

I simply can’t understand why so many Greek women resemble Scandinavians. Everywhere I look there are blondes, fat blondes, short blondes, hairy blondes, but nevertheless blondes. Could it be the carbon dioxide emissions that causes this phenomenon, or is there something in the water that ...