A depiction of the murder of St. Thomas Becket by knights of his friend King Henry II of England. From the Carrow Psalter, 1250, ink, gold and parchment. Courtesy Walters Art Museum.
OK, so who had Pope Leo XIV versus President Donald J. Trump on their fight card, let alone bingo card?
Today, many shocked posters on the internet are saying they didn’t. But I did.
Read MoreThis has been a fabulous season for hair.
Let me clarify – not actual hair, which summer wreaks havoc on, turning fine locks limp and coarse tresses frizzy. No, despite its Donner Party-quality snowstorms, winter remains hair’s best season – low humidity, don’t you know.
But this is proving to be the summer of metaphoric hair. First, we have one of the great hair performers in history – Donald Trump, who accepted the nomination for president of the United States Thursday at a Republican National Convention that was by turns angry, hate-filled, surreal and meh. Then The New York Times – which often covers the city as if it were a foreign country – expressed surprise at some men here spending $800 on a haircut. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Roger Federer, whose stylists include Tim Rogers of Sally Hershberger’s downtown studio. ...
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American Pharoah has arrived at Keeneland in Lexington for the Breeders’ Cup Classic Saturday, the final race of his career. He’s going to face an older woman, Beholder; older guys like Tonalist and Honor Code; and old rivals like Frosted and Keen Ice.
But hey, is that any worse than the naysayers, the ones who remark that he’s good but not great – certainly not as great as the greats of the 1970s, Secretariat, Seattle Slew and my beloved Affirmed; and, that if he doesn’t win the Breeders’ Cup, he really won’t be considered great.
This is the same conversation about Novak Djokovic, who will lead the field at the BNP Paribas Masters Paris, which begins also on Saturday and runs through Nov. 8. If he doesn’t repeat in Paris and at the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals in London the following week, he won’t have had a great season.
Let’s review, shall we? ...
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So Roger Federer and Switzerland finally have their Davis Cup. Fed defeated Richard Gasquet 6-4, 6-2, 6-2 to win the opening singles match Sunday, Nov. 23 and give Switzerland the three matches (out of five) it needed against France.
"It's not for me. I've won enough in my career and did not need to tick any empty boxes," Federer said of the emotional win. "I'm just happy for everybody else. I'm happy we could live a great tennis historic moment in our country."
Yeah, uh-huh. Let’s not pull any punches here. Winning the Davis Cup was the only thing Federer hadn’t done in tennis. Tennis and thus, the Davis Cup may no longer be a big deal in this country, as American men’s tennis is somewhat in disarray. (If you want to see America win the Cup, check out my novel “Water Music,” part of “The Games Men Play” series, in which Iraqi-American prodigy Alí Iskandar delivers the goods.)
But tennis and the Cup are still a big deal internationally. With this win, Fed’s career is complete. It has to be satisfying, particularly as rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic helped the Spanish and Serbian teams respectively to Cups.
But Spain and Serbia have a lot of tennis depth. Switzerland has Feddy and Stan “the Man” Wawrinka. Credit “the Stanimal” with playing lights out against Jo-Wilfred Tsonga on Friday, then teaming with Fed to win the doubles Saturday. ...
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Christmastide – which actually begins with the birth of Jesus and ends with his baptism – is also a time for commemorating martyrs. St. Stephen, considered by the Church to be the first martyr, is remembered on Boxing Day, Dec. 26, while Dec. 29 is the feast of St. Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, who was murdered in the cathedral there on Dec. 29, 1170 by the henchmen of the king he loved, Henry II. (The feast day is generally the day the saint died, not his or her birthday.)
Becket’s relationship with Henry, as you might imagine, was a complicated affair that has proved catnip to artists, filmmakers and writers like poet T.S. Eliot (“Murder in the Cathedral”). My favorite interpretation is Jean Anouilh’s Tony Award-winning play “Becket,” which became a highly entertaining movie starring Richard Burton and Peter O’Toole, who died just recently.
Anouilh had reimagined Sophocles’ “Antigone,” with its iconoclastic heroine, as a metaphor for the French Resistance. In “Becket,” he gives us a homosocial, if not homoerotic, account of a strong male bond broken by a lack of self-knowledge. Read more
Read MorePeter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia"
Peter O’Toole, who died Saturday in London at age 81 after being ill for some time, was an expert at playing the men who played the games.
From T.E. Lawrence, who helped Arabia win its war but was outmaneuvered in trying to help it secure its peace; to Henry II, who manipulated his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, friend, Thomas Becket, and sons as if they were chess pieces; to old King Priam, not to proud to beg Achilles for the body of his son Hector, O’Toole left an indelible mark embodying men who had seen the worst of conflict but refused to yield the field. His Priam, a father who had lost a beloved son, on his knees before Brad Pitt’s Achilles, a son who would never see his father again, was the best thing about “Troy” – a reminder, as Nelson Mandela was in a different way, that enemies can put aside their differences for a greater good.
I had adored O’Toole since seeing him as the young Henry II to Richard Burton’s title character in the 1964 film of Jean Anouilh’s “Becket,” one of the great power “plays.” It’s a homosocial, if not homoerotic, story of a king who appoints his pal first chancellor of England and then Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the church there, never understanding, as political theorist Michael Harrington once observed, that the job makes the man. Becket was happy to serve Henry until he got a boss with greater authority – God. The scene on the beach in which the two meet for the last time is one my sisters and I read and reread as children.
After that, I followed O’Toole’s career religiously, from some very funny performances (the “Topkapi”-like “How to Steal a Million” with Audrey Hepburn) to the deeply poignant (the title character in “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”). I even enjoyed his singing in the uneven but still stirring “Man of La Mancha.”
So I was delighted as a journalist to cover the press conference for “Troy.” Picture a room filled mostly with Web “reporters” who looked like Comic Book Guy from “The Simpsons.” Read more
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