Eddie Ulmann

A Farewell to Bunky

The only man I know who belonged to more gentlemen's clubs than Eddie Ulmann was the late Bobby Sweeny of amateur golf fame, who once pleaded poverty to me while signing checks to something like twenty clubs spread around the Western world. Eddie was the quintessential clubman. He cherished his ...

Une Étoile est Née

CANNES—It’s raining, the stars are hiding, the hacks and paparazzi are waterlogged and frustrated, and the shimmering images of the beautiful people walking up the red carpet are just that—images of glories long gone. The Cannes Film Festival used to be a glamorous affair when I was a young ...

Leonardo DiCaprio

The Long Slide From Gatsby

At an art shindig on Park Avenue, I spotted Baz Luhrmann, the director of the latest and very noisy version of The Great Gatsby. I found him a charming man before I was shocked—shocked à la Captain Renault—to hear the dwarfish mayor of the Big Bagel suggest an honorary American citizenship for ...

Bette Midler as Sue Mengers

Art Appreciation: The Braille Method

NEW YORK—Life is definitely beautiful…as long as one can see, that is, which for two miserable days last week I couldn’t. Having had a glaucoma operation on my eyes two months ago, I needed to use drops for a while but didn’t pay attention—too many girls in their summer dresses, and ...

Halston and Steve Rubell

Man Bites Man

Which is the most infamous bite in history? Surely Adam’s, but the one Steve Rubell took off Halston’s leg was far more expensive. Let me explain for you whippersnappers who’ve probably never heard of these men. Both died of AIDS in the early 1990s. I was reminded the time Rubell bit Halston ...

The Real Terrorists

I write this during the weekend that finally saw the end of those two dreadful Chechens who were described by many newspapers"€”starting with the Times, of course"€”as typical American teenagers. Why is it that after every outrage, family members and friends of the perpetrators are given space ...

Park Avenue, New York

The Power of Glass and Steel

NEW YORK—The search for the two Chechen terrorists in Boston was nothing compared to mine for new digs in the Big Bagel. I accrued reams of knowledge while cruising the City that Never Sleeps with real-estate agents—did you know that New York has 5,200,000 trees? April is still cold and the ...

Ekaterina Rybolovleva

Living Downwind of the Fertilizer King

NEW YORK—I chose to live on 68th Street between Madison and Fifth Avenue because it’s next to Central Park and is considered as convenient an address as any in the city. It’s not so far uptown that it’s near the DMZ—92nd Street—and not too close to the shopping shrines down by the 50s. ...

Susan Patton

Time to Hang up my Jock

NEW YORK—When the president of the United States has to publicly apologize for calling a woman “the best-looking attorney general in the country,” I know it’s time, as we used to say in boarding school, to hang up my jock. Kamala Harris is a big busty black woman with Asian blood. I will ...

Giorgos Katidis

The Thought-Crime Business is Thriving

NEW YORK—When Greek democracy was restored back in 1974, some “democratic”-leaning newspapers tried to criminalize my writings—so much so, I was sentenced to 16 months in the pokey for reputedly “anti-Greek” comments. I did not serve the sentence, which was eventually thrown out on ...