ON BOARD S/Y BUSHIDO, OFF IBIZA—As everyone who has followed the America’s Cup fiasco knows, it is now up to international courts to decide who shall defend what and where. The egregious Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli is the holder, and has been sued by Larry Ellison, an American sick-making, money-grubbing billionaire, whose stink pot, Rising Sun, has to be among the … [Read More]

SINDELFINGEN—Sindelfingen is a suburb of Stuttgart, and is known as the German Detroit, except that Sindelfingen is a vibrantly green and leafy town of 60,000 people, half of whom are employed by Mercedes, whereas Detroit is a dying, crime-ridden city of burnt-out blocks and empty lots where angels fear to tread in case they’re mugged and their wings ripped off and … [Read More]

Fifty-four years ago this month, dizzy with happiness at having been freed from the jail that was boarding school, I ventured down New York’s 5th Avenue looking for fun and adventure. I knew a place called “El Borracho,” Spanish for drunkard, where my parents used to dine. The owner was an agreeable Catalan, who had decorated the walls with paper smudged … [Read More]

This being my last week in the Bagel, the butterflies have arrived with a vengeance. Stuttgart, I am told, will be no picnic. Two top judokas, one Japanese, the other German, are in my age group, which I find quite ironic. My boat is named Bushido — the way of the Samurai warrior — and my admiration for the Wehrmacht’s fighting … [Read More]

Not that I had any doubts about how pig-headed, stubborn and ungrateful George W. Bush is, but confirmation of it never hurts. A friend of long standing revealed to me how Brian Mulroney, the ex-prime minister of Canada, and Tony Blair both went to see Dubya in order to plead Conrad Black’s case during the closing days of the Bush presidency. … [Read More]

We had a preview of sultry August here last week, with temperatures going as far up as 93° Fahrenheit in Central Park, filled to the brim by girls in their summer dresses, and others less modest in their tiny bikinis. For some strange reason, one doesn’t notice men in their summer best, not that men dress nowadays for a walk among … [Read More]

I am always intrigued when people decide to marry.  I wonder if the union will last, and whether or not the bride and groom are aware of what they’re actually getting themselves into. These days, it seems few people believe in the family of yore, where husbands and wives seldom separated, and children were rarely, if ever, born to unwed mothers. … [Read More]

Is Marijuana Legalization a Big Government Plot? “Should it be legal? Yes. Do we want it legal? No.” This counterintuitive wisdom on marijuana legalization comes from “Charlie,” a colorful, sixty-something marijuana entrepreneur working out of Boston’s Shawmut. From behind a Pancho Villa-mustache, “Mark,” a colleague with three decades in the business, concurs: “Every time I go over to Hempfest, I chant: … [Read More]

The hardest thing in the world for an athlete is to get out of bed in the morning. Show me a man who jumps out of bed and I’ll show you someone who has never trained for top competition. It’s the brutal   preparation that makes one flinch when taking the first morning heavy, unsteady steps toward the bathroom. Yes, it’s … [Read More]

A recent profile in a New York glossy described him as a member of Wall Street aristocracy, a man to whose parties the rich and powerful trip over themselves to attend, a networker nonpareil, in short, the greatest big hitter who has ever graced this poor earth of ours. Leave it to a celebrity-obsessed rag to get it so wrong. His … [Read More]