Self Portrait XVI

Sonnet And The Pooch

Sonnet and I spend the late afternoon in the park. The kids just old enough for me to think: one day it will again be only me and her.

Sunset, Richard Park

Aggie arrives to surprise the Shakespeares for an overnight at her place. God bless Aggie. She recently accepted a career job at Deloittes and her transition to London complete : from house cleaner to nanny to office job to office manager and now Deloittes, the largest private professional services organization in the world with 170,000 staff working in 150 countries, delivering audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services through its member firms. You go, girl. This allows Sonnet and me a weekend to ourselves and we begin at favorite Le Caprice with Todd and Jenn and Eli, who are in town for a wedding. Todd remains a partner at a large buy-out firm (and owns Dunkin Donuts, amongst other assets) while Eli a successful i banker at Morgan Stanley. We go back to those early, brow beaten, years where many of the best adventures lie.

"Nirvana when you are working so hard you could care less about dying."

--Gar Miller, Managing Director, Energy Group, First Boston, 1989 to me, Erik and John Delaney in the elevator

Style

Despite howls of protest, I drive into town with the kids and Aneta to meet Sonnet at the Royal Academy to see the mostly mediocre exhibition on British sculpture ("The show represents a unique view of the development of British sculpture, exploring what we mean by the terms British and sculpture by bringing the two together in a chronological series of strongly themed galleries, each making its own visual argument. . ."). Eitan, who races through the galleries with an aim to finish in five-minutes, back-tracks to find me and whispers: "There is an inappropriate art work in the next room" which makes me think with worry: It must be pretty bad. Turning the corner gallery, I find a wall display of "Page 3" girls, titties on flash display. The boy and I shuffle through the room while he covers his eyes and looks away - I like the redundancy. My suggestion that he might wake up one day to find a woman's breast the most interesting thing in the world receives horror and I tell him not to be too hard on himself should my prognostication hold true.

Otherwise, since I am with the kids yesterday, our day spent building a launch pad for model rockets, which I built 35 years ago with Todd. Now I have to buy the kit and revert to 1978 or '79.

Half Term

Before - During - After

Savoy

The majestic Savoy re-opens following a two-year make-over. Her 268 rooms offer panoramic views of the Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The renovations closed the hotel from December 2007 until October 2010 and cost £220 million or £120 more than budgeted when the Prince Alwaleed bought the property with the help of my friend Ramsey. The over-runs due mainly to structural upgrades - the hotel opened its doors, after all, in 1889 and lacked modern communications and safety features. The Savoy's American Bar famous to GIs on furlough during WWII - so much so, in fact, (as rumour notes) that the 50-meters running up the entrance the only road in Britain where the driver on the right-hand-side, American style. It is one of three places in London to have a properly prepared martini.

Sonnet and I took "high tea" at the Savoy on our first visit to London in May 1997. I do recall vividly the two Oscar Wildes lounging in the peacock's chaise longue marking new visitors and passing their pithy observations between themselves like fine little farts.

La Famiglia

Sonnet with Stan and Silver in Santa Fe, New Mexico, August 2010.

Oil

The world reacts to Libya's violence : oil prices at two-year highs and climbing. Brent Crude $107 a barrel this morning. Who benefits, I wonder? Libya produces 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, exporting 1.2 million barrels or 17th globally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The UK makes 1.3 million barrels daily and exports 775,000 (After the Gulf, there is pressure to suspend deep water extraction from the North Sea, pictured). Britain ranks 20th. Number One is Russia at 9.5 million barrels daily. While Russia the top producer of oil, they are ranked #2 by exports after Saudi Arabia. Russia exports 5.4 million barrels per day while SA seven million. According to secret reports released by Wikileaks, Saudi Arabia may have exaggerated its crude oil reserves by 40% - if true, Saudi might not be able to control prices which has often been the country's role with the assumed largest oil caches.

Image from Getty

Me: "What do you think young people do when they are in love?"

Madeleine: "I don't know. Go to the toy store?"

One Aldwych

In the elevator.

The Golden Head

From the Tate Britain. Artist Andrew O'Connor's work, "The Golden Head," completed in 1905. Here is what the museum says: "O'Connor was an American sculptor who specialised in funerary and public monuments, and portrait busts. He lived in Paris from 1903 to 1914 where he came under the influence of Rodin and Dalou. This head is an idealised portrait of O'Connor's second wife Jessie, who was the model for many of his sculptures. A version of this head crowns the funerary figure in the monument to General Thomas in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. This funerary figure is a seated female shown in an attitude of mourning and reflection."

Thames Grey

The Thames this morning from another direction, this time eastward. My shot taken with my mobile phone from Waterloo Bridge. To my right is the Southbank Center and in the distance, St Paul's, the Barbican and Canary Wharf. Damp. Moldy. Grey. Cold. These words come to mind.

Half Term Blues

The kids two days into their half-term break and even Rusty bored. Now, as I write, the Shakespears enjoy a "staring contest" at the dinner table (Sonnet working late). Yes, I want to holler at them to be quiet (makes sense to me at least) but instead I let them have their fun. How restrained. Madeleine notes sharply, "Eitan, you're just faking!" which makes me wonder: How does one fake a staring contest?

Me: "Ok, I want to see a book report over half term."

Madeleine: "You are always trying to ruin our break!"

Me: "How many pages? How about five?"

Eitan, Madeleine:

Sonnet: "Five is a bit long. How about two. Both sides of a page."

Me: "Two it is. Now I want it to be about a book you've read and no jacket covers, Madeleine."

Madeleine:

Me: "And, to help you out, maybe you want to form an argument. Like for Harry Potter, you could discuss whether Harry mature enough for the responsibilities of being a wizard."

Madeleine: "Of course he is."

Me: "Good, now put it on a piece of paper."

Madeleine: "I could just research it on the Internet."

Me: "That is what you won't be doing. Two pages, please."

Drivers License

Aunt Marcia recently found my long-lost California drivers license, gone since freshman year in college. I remember searching frantically for it. Those looking closely may notice my birth year, doctored using the "5" in "1530 Euclid Avenue." This got me into The Tunnel and the Palladium as well as all the alcohol I wished to consume. Marcia asks if Larry confiscated my license when I took the Bronxville family car? But that is for another story.

Eitan's Cake

Eitan bakes an orange cake whose ingredients include unsalted butter, two eggs, golden caster sugar, flour and baking power. And, of course, one orange.

Madeleine: "Why do you read the newspaper any way?"

Me: "That's a good question."

Madeleine: "It's a waste of time."

Eitan: "Mr B wants us to read the newspaper every week. So we can talk about it in class."

Me: "Like what?"

Eitan: "Sports and everything. Wayne Rooney's bicycle kick."

Me: "Sounds like you've got it covered."

Eitan: "I suppose so."

Eitan, on this photo: "I sort of look like a teen-ager."

Mark Fast

Photo by Sonnet from Mark Fast's collection, which Sonnet and Madeleine see yesterday in town.

.01 Seconds

A fascinating series of photos, below, of the 100-meter butterfly final at the 2008 Beijing Olympics pitting Phelps against Serbia’s Milorad Cavic (on the right). Without Phelp's magic touch, the quest to surpass Mark Spitz's seven Olympic golds would have come to an end at race seven.

Trellick Tower

Sonnet has the idea to visit Lisboa, early, for the best cream pastries and fried pork sandwiches in Notting Hill. Years ago in Maida Vale and pre-kids, we walked to Lisboa most Saturday mornings then the Portebella market for vintage whatever. All my cuff-links from then. Lisboa on the Golborne Rd and near the horrific Trellik Tower, pictured, which has fascinated me for years. Trellik, next to the Grand Union Canal littered with dog shit, a 31-storey block of flats designed in the Brutalist style by architect Ernő Goldfinger (Ian Fleming hated the building so much he named a central Bond villain after the architect). The tower completed in '72 and now recognised as Grade II* listed building.

Once this a Portuguese neighborhood but now there is little left from that era. The grey, wet, weather prevents us from a further stroll.

Sonnet heads to the Craig Lawrence knitwear and Betty Jackson catwalks. This afternoon she takes Madeleine to see John Rocha. Fashion week, dude.

'58

Moe and Grace before the Rotary Dance. Grace wears her high school sweater and was a cheer-leader at Upper Arlington High School outside of Columbus, Ohio, from 1956-1958. She tells me the school mascot was the Golden Bear. Jack Nicklaus, whose nick-name "the Golden Bear," was graduated a year ahead my mom; he was captain or co-captain of the football, basketball and baseball teams "and played a little golf on the side which none of us really knew about." Grace led cheers for the football and basketball teams and notes the teams pretty good. "There were six of us, three sophomores and three seniors."

On Upper Arlington High: The school has received a number of accolades, including the highest number of National Merit Semi-Finalists in Ohio's public schools for three of the last four years,a nationally award-winning student newsmagazine, Arlingtonian, and the National Cup for the top orchestra in the country. It was the only school district in the nation to receive three White House honors as Service Learning Leaders.

More important for our story, the high school sports teams are consistently ranked among the top Division I schools in Ohio, particularly in the sports of football, golf, tennis, basketball, water polo, cross country, lacrosse, and swimming. The Upper Arlington football team captured the Division One state title in football in 2000, and were led by Jeff Backes, who earned the Mr. Football Award for Ohio, and Simon Fraser, who went on to play for the Ohio State Buckeyes and Cleveland Browns. Upper Arlington is tied with the Cincinnati all boys school St. Xavier High School for the most Ohio High School Athletic Association team state championships both with 42. Upper Arlington has won 105 state titles overall, including sports not sponsored by the OHSAA.

"How people keep correcting us when we are young! There is always some bad habit or other they tell us we ought to get over. Yet most bad habits are tools to help us through life."
--Jack Nicklaus

On Our Wedding Invitation

Me: "Well, Eitan, I am sorry to inform you that your mother and I not invited to the Royal Wedding. "The invitations went out this week and we did not receive the golden invitation. Unless it should arrive in today's post, that is."

Eitan: "Well, who cares?"

Me: "It's a Royal Snub."

Eitan: "I wouldn't want to go if I had a ticket anyway."

Me: "Hear, hear."

Eitan: "Did you really want to go?"

Me: "I wouldn't have said no. Just to see Kate's dress."

Eitan: "Her dress? Are you mad?"

Me: "These things are important."

Eitan: "For an adult maybe."