There are few more individualistic activities than tennis and few more fiercely individualistic people than tennis players.
“Battle of the Sexes,” which opens Friday, Sept. 22, gives us the iconic clash between two such individuals – tennis star Billie Jean King and former champ Bobby Riggs – in a 1973 match that was both a media event and a cause célèbre in the then-rising women’s movement. (King would win 6-4, 6-3, 6-3.)
At that time, there was no LGBTQ movement, and tennis players did not make the lavish livings they do today. The men were still something of barnstormers earning little more than beer money, and the women – whom they did not necessarily treat well – made squat. ...
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Read MoreAmanda Hess’ Sunday New York Times Magazine piece about our ambivalence toward anti-aging is but the latest commentary about the disconnect between ourselves and our bodies, and by “ourselves” I mean women and their bodies. It is a disconnect that affects men as well – though not to the extent that it does women.
Hess describes how Allure magazine has declared war on “anti-aging,” featuring Helen Mirren on the cover, draped in a boy-toy – the same Helen Mirren who played Cleopatra, of whom Shakespeare wrote, “Age cannot wither her nor custom stale her infinite variety.”
And yet, Hess notes, the same issue of Allure carried an ad for the new L’Oréal Paris moisturizer, part of its Age Perfect brand (of which I’m a big fan), featuring – you guessed it, Helen Mirren. ...
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Read MoreFor me, it was the equivalent of an actor bowing on Broadway or an entertainer headlining Vegas – a reading at Barnes & Noble in Eastchester, N.Y.
On the evening of Sept. 7, I read the second chapter from my new novel “The Penalty for Holding” (Less Than Three Press), which describes the hero’s early years in Indonesia, before an audience of some 50 admirers. ...
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Read MoreIf there’s one thing I couldn't stand in all the Monday morning quarterbacking about Hurricane Irma, it’s those folks who said it was all a lot of “hype.”
What would it take to get their attention, I wonder? You have close to 40 people dead in the U.S. and Caribbean. You have millions without power – which means without air conditioning, fresh food, hot meals, transportation, communications and medical treatments. No school and no work. You have a wide, deep swath of destruction. And you have parts of the Caribbean that are decimated.
Plus, as with any hurricane, the aftermath is sometimes worse than the storm. What made Hurricane Katrina such a killer – apart from government mismanagement – was the flooding that followed. ...
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Read MoreScooch over, Harvey and join Sandy, Katrina, Andrew and (here insert your personal past hurricane nemesis) on the long couch.
As the Repubs learned yesterday, there’s no political storm quite like Hurricane Donald. (Here we cue a fabulously appropriate folk song that figures in my novel “Water Music” – “The Wind and Rain” – beautifully realized by the band Crooked Still.)
He blew through Washington D.C., cutting a three-month deal to raise the debt ceiling with Dems Nancy Pelosi and “Chuck Chop” Schumer, the Minority Leaders of their respective Congressional Houses, leaving the repudiated Repubs to wonder in the manner of hurricane survivors, “What the hell just happened?” ...
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Read MoreI had hoped to be writing more about tennis with the US Open underway. I had hoped to be resting from my labors on Labor Day.
But as Eleanor Roosevelt said of World War II, “This is no ordinary time.” With challenges and crisis on the home front and abroad, the time demands we go within to reach out, that we roll up our sleeves intellectually, physically and spiritually and use pleasure as it was always meant to be used – as a dessert rather than a meal.
Perhaps, however, it is still possible for me to write about tennis while also writing about character. Both are subjects of a new book by James Blake...
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Read More“Getting there is half the fun.” So they say.
Not so if you’re going to the US Open at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park in Queens. Miss that left off Exit 13 D on Grand Central Parkway, and you’ll have to circle around after dallying in LaGuardia Airport renovation Hades.
Even if you make the left, the surly officer will deflect you from the drop-off at Lot 3. Finally, a more sensible officer will take pity on you and your driver and you’ll find yourself in the park before the center’s entrance. ...
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