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Men – the fairer sex?

Boy, nothing gets women piqued faster than telling them that men are the better-looking sex.

I had this conversation with two female friends recently, one of whom skeptically said to me, “Do you really believe that?”

Yes, I do, though perhaps not in the way they might think. Of course, the average woman – with her makeup and her Spanx – might be more gussied up than the average guy. But what I mean is that aesthetically, the best-looking man is better-looking than the best-looking woman, that I would take the Apollo Belvedere over the Venus de Milo any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Blame it on hormones. Male hormones give them bigger, hotter, lusher, more dangerous looks that read easily across a crowded room. Consider Colin Kaepernick, photographed by Bruce Weber on the cover of the new V Man magazine. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he has a nose like a toucan, closely cropped hair and lots of tattoos, which displease some of the fashion police.

And yet – wow – those eyes, like Cognac in firelight; those long, thick lashes; that cut jawline (to go with that cut body). Ladies, ladies,  do you think a woman could carry those off? ...

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Jessica Springsteen: She’s ‘the Boss’

Another Sunday, another equestrian event, this time the $200,000 American Gold Cup and Longines World Cup Qualifier CSI4* - W, presented at Old Salem Farm in North Salem  Sept 14 by the farm and Stadium Jumping Inc.

The event, which capped five days of competition, saw Jessica Springsteen of her family’s Stone Hill Farm, lead an American sweep. Aboard her equally superb mount, Vindicat, Springsteen was flawless riding early in the draw and combined precision with speed in the jump-off to determine the winner among the immaculate riders. Laura Kraut out of Stars & Stripes road aggressively to give her a run for her money aboard Andretti. (Aren’t these horses well-named?) Katherine Dinan, riding Nougat du Vallet for Grant Road Partners LLC, captured the bronze.

Springsteen – yes, she’s the daughter of Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa – has been trained by one of the best, Old Salem head trainer Frank Madden. ...

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Colin’s eyes, Russell’s, uh, thing and the NFL’s continuing female trouble

As we move from Ray Rice (former Raven) to Condoleezza Rice (future NFL commish?), I thought we’d lighten up with Colin Kaepernick – 49ers quarterback, model, sex symbol.

Colin’s on the cover of the new V Man magazine, photographed by Bruce Weber, whose gift for capturing men and homoeroticism is unquestioned. How life and art parallel one another: In my forthcoming novel, “In This Place You Hold Me” – the second book in my series, “The Games Men Play” – New York Templars quarterback Quinn Novak poses for a series of erotic photos by fashion/art photog Elliott Gardener, whom we meet in Alí’s story arc in my first book, “Water Music.” Apparently, you really can’t make this stuff up.

Anyway, back to Colin. ...

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Polo and the essence of modernism

It was a sparkling climax to the season at the Greenwich Polo Club Sunday, Sept. 7 as Royal Salute held off a surging Casablanca 10-8 in a taut match for the Royal Salute Cup.

The match, spectators were told, featured the highest quality polo in the Northern Hemisphere, with Facundo Pieres, the No. 1-ranked player in the world, the legendary Martin Aguerre and Peter Brant, the Greenwich club’s founder, anchoring the team for Royal Salute, the Scotch whisky company, while Nick Manifold, who oversees the club, and  9-goaler Hilario Ulloa (10 is the highest ranking) doing the honors for Casablanca, a polo-gear company that has a store on tony Greenwich Avenue.

If you’ve never seen this ancient sport, which dates from the Persian Empire, then you’re missing something. Polo is fast, exciting and, I suspect, more than a little bit dangerous. Just to see the horses thunder down the green expanse (10 football fields), the riders swinging their mallets as they sometimes mix it up – nose to nose and haunch to haunch – is, well, thrilling.

And did I mention sexy? Polo players are among the most attractive, masculine men in the world. ...

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For Anna Wintour, everything new is old again… when selecting a TB (tennis boyfriend)

Each August, I breathlessly await the arrival of the gazillion-page September Vogue, not for the fashion, silly, but to answer the question that flits among my neurons all summer: Who will editrix Anna Wintour anoint as her new TB (tennis boyfriend)?

For as I said in a post on this site last winter about Maureen Dowd, RGIII and Jane Austen, an accomplished woman of good fortune must be in want of a PB (pretend boyfriend).

Or, in Anna’s case, a PTB or just TB. As we all know, Anna – who has featured many, mostly male tennis stars in the pages of Vogue – has been pretend-dating Roger Federer – aka Feddy Bear – for years, sending racks and racks of clothes over to his hotel suite when he’s in town for the US Open, presumably while Mrs. Fed looks the other sartorial way.

Then in 2011, Anna’s journalistic instincts got the better of her and she decided to play the hot hand...

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Rafanole interruptus

There will be no Rafanole this year at the US Open, which gets underway Saturday with “Arthur Ashe Kids’ Day” at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadow, Queens, N.Y.

The big news is that defending champ Rafael Nadal has pulled out due to the wrist injury that kept him out of the early portion of the hard-court season.  There appears to be a pattern here:  Rafa plays lights out to ace the clay-court season, peaks at the French Open, cries when they hand him the umpteenth trophy at Roland Garros in Paris, flames out at Wimbledon, gets injured, takes some time off and starts the whole cycle again.

This would seem to favor Novak Djokovic, but wait. After a trifecta of Ws (Wimby championship, world No. 1 ranking and wedding to longtime love Jelena Ristic), Nole burned out of tournaments at Toronto and Cincinnati. The New York Times, which seems to have no enthusiasm for Nole, noted that he’s been “fending off charges” that he hasn’t been practicing much since the wedding. Fending off charges? Really? Is he a criminal? What’s next, blame the wife?

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Phelpte shows glimmers of former glory

The U.S. national championships have been a disappointing meet for fans of Phelpte, the Michael Phelps-Ryan Lochte rivalry. (Also known as Phlochte, which sounds better.)

Anyway, Phelpte, Phlochte, it boiled down to the same thing: Phelps finished second in the 100 butterfly, perhaps his signature event; sixth in the 100 back and seventh in the 100 free. Lochte was second in the 100 free and third in the 200 back.

The only time the old rivalry kicked in was in the 200 IM, in which Lochte bested Phelps, with both posting among the fastest times in the world this year. They didn’t race next to each other, however, in the center of the pool, eyeballing each other as they used to, matching stroke for stroke, breath for breath. Instead they were in outside lanes, where mere mortals dwell.

"I guess we can say this is kind of our off-year," Lochte said of himself and Phelps. "Well, I can say that." (Love Ryan, and the way he can defer to Michael in friendship while still holding his own.)

Bottom line...

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