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 year, it means that he will have a hell of a playoff. If only it were that simple. I just watched the Yankees lose the fourth and ...

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 karate means command of the mind as well as the body. Although there are countless styles and thousands of so called grand masters, ...

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 was nothing he could do, as he had stepped out without his ...

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 are still going through fifty years after the Dodgers left town for the wide open spaces of Los Angeles. Here’s Rabbi Kushner ...

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 which would do justice to an Edward Hopper painting, and the interior resembles the way small inns used to look like before Planet ...

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 turns dark-haired women into fair ones? I suppose we’ll never find out. Never mind. Greek ladies are hot-blooded, whereas Northern ...

The late, great President Nixon once told me that the West was acting unfairly towards the Russian Bear. Instead of helping a prostrate Russia, we cheered while the Russkies suffered defeat and humiliation. Now the chickens have come home to roost, and Russia is bent upon the recovery of her assets, her authority and her capacity to intimidate. Instead of whining, Uncle Sam should put himself in Putin's place. Most of the ...

On a beautiful, crisp Saturday morning on the first of the month I flew from Gstaad to the chateau de Dampierre, the duc de Luyne’s seat southwest of Paris. My old friend Jean Claude Sauer was getting hitched for the fifth time, to a wonderful girl by the name of Brigitte—incidentally, the fifth Brigitte he has married in his long and colourful life. (He obviously loves the name although he insists it’s a ...

The most recent proposal from the Project for a New American Century has certainly struck a nerve among Americans—although that shouldn’t make us think it won’t sail through successfully, like the invasion of Iraq. In a recent press release, PNAC called on the U.S. government to institute the military draft, and induct U.S. servicemen and women directly into the Israeli Defense Force. “We decided it would be easier ...

The night Diana died I was dining with Jeremy Menuhin, son of the great violinist, and my close friend Oliver Gilmour, a symphony orchestra conductor.  This was in Gstaad, and we got into an argument over Diana’s behavior. “The mother of the future King of England cannot be seen with a coke snorting no good playboy like Dodi Fayed,” said Oliver. “But she’s only doing it to bother that ...

The Greek fires which are ravaging the country may be a tragedy, but it’s a tragedy fuelled by greed. Once upon a time, Athens was the most romantic city of Europe.  Laid out and built by Bavarians—the first post-independence King was Otto of Bavaria—it was a marvel of wide boulevards, sidewalk cafes,  parks and neo-classical public buildings. I remember as a child living in the Kolonaki area, on a ...

Here’s a bagatelle, a French word denoting something unimportant, however cute. It has to do with Paul Gottfried. History has repeatedly proved that the nobility has always been better fitted for the business of ruling. Paul, mind you, is noble in his mind and behavior, which as far as I’m concerned, trumps nobility of birth.  Recently he had invited me to speak to one of his seminars—an honor—one ...

Sixty two years on, American and European commentators continue to blather on about the unwillingness of Japanese prime ministers to apologize about World War II. The Yasukuni shrine, where Japan’s 2.5 million dead soldiers are buried, has the same effect on our all-knowing ones as a man sucking a lemon in the front row of a concert has on a flutist playing Mozart. Every time a Japanese premier visits the shrine, the ...

Bankers should act like bankers, and not kebab salesmen. The latter try and sell to anyone within hearing distance. In the good old days, bankers lent money to those who could repay. When greed set in during the go-go days, they started lending to people unlikely to repay them. But there was a catch. The bankers covered themselves by selling the bad loans to others, greedier than themselves, and made a profit out of doing so. ...

Here, at last, is the Taki plan to save George W. Bush's presidency from the disaster it has been turned into by his neocon advisers. What W needs is a great big fat win which will overshadow Iraq, hog the headlines, and catapult him in the polls. The operative word is Palestine. His latest call for an international conference, one that is supposed to give birth to a contiguous Palestinian state, is a good ...