NEW YORK—Who was it who first coined the expression “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings?” The great Yogi Berra got credit for it, but what he really said was “It ...

NEW YORK—Election-night parties are usually dreadful affairs, with the idiot box blaring and hysterical listeners screaming out the latest info. American TV pundits are smug ...

NEW YORK—Back when people used to read newspapers, they called it a “human interest” story; now it appears as just another statistic. The utter drivel expressed daily by the ...

NEW YORK—Election-night fever is heating up, and I hope the party I’m giving on the evening of Nov. 3 will not end in fisticuffs. All my guests except one are Trump haters, so ...

NEW YORK—It’s nice to finally be in the Bagel, a place where the cows have two legs and no bells around their necks. I walk daily around the park that lies two blocks away ...

New York, New York, once a wonderful town The people are crap and the mayor’s a clown The only safe space is a hole in the ground... NEW YORK—I could go on, but why be so ...

Juliette Gréco’s recent death in her 90s brought back some melodramatic memories. Back in 1957 Gréco was one of France’s premier chanteuses of torch songs, a very sexy young ...

GSTAAD—It is not exactly a stop all the clocks occasion, let alone cut off the telephones, but I’ve finally come to a decision: My looking-at-cows time is over. I am going to ...

GSTAAD—I’ve been wrestling all week with indecision, the kind that tests one’s soul, and the uncertainty is killing me. It’s like having to choose between Keira Knightley ...

GSTAAD—I’m not usually nonplussed, but this is very strange: The memoirs of Barbara Black, the wife of my good friend Lord Black, simply do not make sense where certain people ...

GSTAAD—It snowed during the last two days of August up here, and why not? We’ve traded freedom of speech for “freedom from speech,” so on an upside-down planet, snow in ...

GSTAAD—I experienced my first Zoom conference last week, and didn’t think much of it. As the great Yogi Berra once remarked, “You can observe a lot just by watching,” but ...

GSTAAD—The jokes about keeping a mistress are old and I’ve yet to hear a truly funny one: “The difference between a wife and a mistress is like day and night,” “She’s ...

GSTAAD—Birthdays at my age are for the birds, but always a good excuse for a party. Messages of good wishes began early on, with loyal Speccie reader Arnold Taylor ringing from ...

SERIFOS—There’s no high life here, only family life, so I’ve been hitting the books about great Greeks of the past, and they sure make today’s bunch look puny. ...

ISLAND OF SERIFOS—Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: Island life is not for me. Island life off a boat, jawohl, but island life without a boat, nyet! Family czars ...