Blog

Time for the NFL’s young guns?

Well, I’m disappointed that Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers lost to Russell Wilson and the Seattle Seahawks, but I had a feeling it was going to be the Hawks. And it may well be their year, though I’ll be rooting for Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos.

The press, of course, will be looking at many storylines for this Super Duper Bowl. There’s Peyton playing and possibly winning at MetLife Stadium, bro Eli’s home, just as Eli and the New York Giants beat Tom Brady and the New England Patriots at Lucas Oil Stadium, Peyton’s then home as the Indianapolis Colts’ quarterback. Then there’s the possibility of a major storm – the Farmers’ Almanac says so – which may prove nothing compared to the cold front that might greet Gov. Chris Christie. (Will his fellow pols like Gov. Andrew Cuomo be treating him like he has cooties?)

But perhaps the biggest storyline will be the possible changing of the guard. Read more

 

 

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Bury our hearts at (her) wounded knee

Well, what a weekend it’s been for rivalries – the subject of my novel “Water Music” just released last week.

Peyton (Manning’s) Place proving too much for The (Tom) Brady Bunch. Young Guns Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson squaring off. (See separate post.) Former No. 1 Ana Ivanovic taking it to current No. 1 Serena Williams at the sweltering Australian Open, where the 100-plus temps have turned out to be a formidable opponent. (Last year, the players slipped and slid their way out of Wimbledon. Now they’re going under Down Under. What’s up with that?)

But here our thoughts turn from the court and the gridiron to the rink and another era to discuss “The Price of Gold,” Nanette Burstein’s fascinating new ESPN documentary about Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, which aired on ABC Jan. 18. If you were of a certain ago 20 years ago almost to this day, they need no introduction. Read more

 

 

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Is gay the new black?

Recently, I was giving someone a pitch about my new, gay-themed novel, “Water Music,” which bowed last week – a pitch that I sometimes end defensively with, “Well, it’s not for everyone.” (I really must learn to stop demurring like that.)

Or maybe not, because when I say that, my listeners often respond as this man did: “I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s an idea whose time has come.”

This week seems to have confirmed that. HBO has a new series, “Looking,” about gay men searching for love in San Francisco. Unlike Showtime’s “Queer as Folk” (2000-05) – which was, let’s face it, all about hot guys (and women) having hot sex – “this show is at such a time when suddenly gay people can conform to heterosexual blueprints of how to live,” out actor and “Looking” star Russell Tovey told the Sunday New York Times (Jan. 19). “You can get married, you can have kids, you can have joint mortgages, you’re recognized as next of kin, which is all fresh.”

Tovey, who’s actually made a career of playing straight guys (the athlete Rudge in “The History Boys”), stars as a closeted footballer – soccer player to us in the U.S.– in John Donnelly’s play “The Pass” in London.

So is gay the new black – in more ways than one? Is Ellen DeGeneres, who’ll host the Oscars again (March 2), the new Oprah? Read more

 

 

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Mother and child reunion

How heartbreaking that new film “Philomena” sounds. It’s the story of a woman in search of the love child she was forced to give up by the Irish nuns to whom she was sent after her “indiscretion.” The Sunday New York Times had an excellent, spoilers -riddled article Jan. 12 about the fate of the real child, Michael Hess, a gay man who perhaps not so improbably became a Reagan-era lawyer in Washington D.C. and died of AIDS. The emotional kicker was that he was buried in his mother’s native country in the hopes that she would find him.

Which she did. But all those years when they could’ve had a relationship. All that waste. I could weep. Come to think of it, I did.

There are few more complex relationships than mother and child, which plays a part in my just-released first published novel, “Water Music.” I’m not here to judge why women get pregnant outside of marriage, why they keep or give up their children or why they have abortions. I’ve never been pregnant. The whole thing is beyond me.

But I would like to comment  on something that struck me in The Times’ article, and that is the idea that Hess’ friends and associates found him ultimately unknowable. Read more

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Lit by lightning

I’m reading “Divine Fury: A History of Genius” (Basic Books, $29.99, 312 pages), which is just the kind of  book I like – one in which the author takes the intellectual ball and runs with it. Darrin M. McMahon must be good at it. He also wrote “Happiness: A History.”

Genius, as he notes in his introduction, has meant many things to many different times. The word comes from the Latin, but the Romans, who cannibalized Greek culture, were really borrowing from the Greek “daimon.” Your daimon was – is – your guiding spirit, the link to the divine. Indeed, “Daimon” is the title of my unpublished novel about Alexander the Great, who like the Emperor Augustus and a host of ancient luminaries saw his daimon – his genius – as proof of his divinity. It wasn’t until the 18th century that we got the modern definition of genius as extraordinary creativity and accomplishment and not until the 20th century that we got the IQ tests that sought to quantify it. 

McMahon rounds up the usual suspects... Read more

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