NEW YORK—At a chic dinner party for some very beautiful young women, your correspondent shocked, shocked the attendees by quoting an even greater writer than the greatest Greek writer since Homer—Rod Liddle, a Spectator magazine columnist—with his explanation of why royalty matters: because it is “anachronistic and undemocratic.” Hear, hear! A particularly attractive young woman, Alissa—on a par with Lily ...
NEW YORK—Tennessee Williams wrote Baby Doll, his only screenplay, with her in mind, and she was considered the sexiest blonde bombshell ever, much sexier than Jean Harlow, whom she portrayed on film. She was great in The Carpetbaggers, The Great Divide, Harlow, Giant, and countless other ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s hits. Carroll Baker is now 91, still very much compos mentis, and without makeup a lively dinner companion as I, ...
NEW YORK—The concept of creativity and invention can be a doubled-edged sword: It can be fresh, uplifting, and original, like the Off Broadway play directed by Michael Mailer I’ve just seen, or it can be a phony rip-off of a Shakespeare classic, a terrible modern take on Hamlet, blackness, and homosexuality that I have not seen and do not plan to. What makes me laugh is the reviewer of the Bagel Times who gave a good one to ...
Despite the catcalls and boos from some friends and even my wife, I was tickled to death on that November night of 2016 when The Donald was proclaimed America’s 45th president. It had a lot to do with my dislike for Hillary and Bill, as well as my Republican Party sentiments, something I lived to slightly regret once I sat and broke bread with ex-president Clinton two years later. It was a cousin by marriage, princess Maya ...
NEW YORK—The most likely place to be injured, even killed, in the Bagel is the sidewalk, any sidewalk, where bikes and scooters run free to mow down the old, the infirm, and those unable to perform lifesaving, matador-like avoidance moves. Yep, marauding bikers use the sidewalks of New York to beat the traffic and intimidate people, and have managed to impose their illegal presence on sidewalks as a beleaguered police force ...
NEW YORK—The fact that a sailor on leave cannot whistle at a pretty girl’s legs is scientific proof that America is beyond help and finished for good. That also goes for hard hats, who along with sailors were among the whistlers back in the good old days before woke ruined men, women, and the country in general. Already radical activists have destroyed the notion of womanhood as well as that of biology by using words such ...
Just as I finished complaining last week of the inability of Americans to string together a complete sentence, I realized they make up for it by being the worst-dressed people this side of the Ukraine. J.Crew has been in the news lately because the company has yet again changed hands, with hacks waxing nostalgically about preppy style and all that ’60s stuff. All I can say is, how can they tell? Hacks wouldn’t know what ...
NEW YORK—Is it poor little ol’ me imagining things, or are Americans becoming stupider by the minute? I’ve been traveling and running into the species, and I swear that the most intelligent thing I’ve heard recently from a New Yorker is “Like, you know, like, uh, you know, uh, like, uh...” This moron was talking in a loud voice and did not give the impression of having been hit rather hard over the head with a ...
Never paraphrasing the classics was a given until woke sensibilities became a must. It was brought to mind by the BBC’s adaptation of Great Expectations, with the convict Magwitch knocking the Empire, and Miss Havisham taking opium on the side. What they should have done is have Pip hustling coke for a fellow Magwitch convict named Escobarian, bringing it daily to the addicted old lady, and Estella sniffing—no pun ...
GSTAAD—As everyone knows, the balder, shorter, and more repellent the seducer, the more lavish the lunch he produces for the dumb blonde. Lunch is that symptom of decadence and dalliance for which there is no longer room in today’s functional world. In today’s rare civilized lunch, there are only two purposes: the seduction of a lady or the exchange of serious ideas. The latter was achieved last week in an outdoor lunch ...
GSTAAD—Tom Sizemore, the American character actor who recently died broke and homeless at 61, was a hell of a thespian. In films such as Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and Heat, he played tough soldiers and gangsters whose actions obscured a soft heart. Acting is not mugging à la Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino. It’s what Sizemore conveyed subliminally. I never met him, but he once rang me from L.A. with a ...
GSTAAD—The man in the white suit is not exactly a matinee idol around these parts. The mauvaises langues have it that the rich fear him more than the poor because they have more to lose. I’m not so sure, although it does make sense. It did not in the past: Spartan kings were on the first line of battle, unflinchingly eager to show their troops how to die. Samurais worshipped a heroic death, shunned opulence, but were ...
GSTAAD—Okay, sports fans, it’s time to spill the beans. Sometime last year I wrote about rich man’s kickboxing, the art of punching and kicking at someone holding up pads, the best conditioner I know if done correctly and nonstop. I also call it the most Christian of sports because there’s a lot of outgoing and receiving nothing in return. It goes something like this: left jab, right cross, then left jab and right cross ...
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a property in the Swiss Alps is in no need of a house in New York City. With apologies to old Jane, I am seriously contemplating giving up living in the Big Bagel after close to seventy years. It’s elementary, dear readers, the place simply ain’t what it used to be; in fact it’s the lack of glamour and chic, the utter coarseness of everyday life, and the ...
GSTAAD—They’re whispering that it was the biggest haul since the Brink’s-Mat gold bullion robbery of 1983. Others say that compared with the Graff swag of last week, the Great Train Robbery was a mere bagatelle. Nobody knows nuthin’, and while the fuzz remains schtum, the on-dit is that it was the greatest robbery since the Louisiana Purchase, the trouble being those who say such things think the Louisiana Purchase is a ...
Attendees listened intently and cheered her to the rafters. She got a cool million for an hour-long speech, which is more than Boris or Blair could ever hope for. And it wasn’t even her specialty—she’s an ecdysiast—but during the recent Hedge Fund Week in Miami, Kim Kardashian was the star speaker. It tells me all I want to know about hedge fund managers, as I had a good teacher long ago, one John Bryan of toe-sucking ...
