Spectator Life

Why is anyone even remotely interested in regime-changing a nasty, far-away foreign country that hates America when there is a nasty country much, much closer that hates us, too? OK, technically California is not a country, but it’s about the same size as Japan and Sweden. Its GDP – $4.1 trillion – is the fourth-highest in the world, behind the other 49 combined United States, China and Germany. It has as many residents as Canada. More people live here than in Spain or Saudi Arabia (and more than in our 22 smallest states combined). California is a monster in every way. That used to be a good thing: its powerful allure and economic might attracted the best and brightest from all over. Einstein taught in Pasadena, at Caltech.

“Welcome to Wayanad. From here, all plastic is banned.” Prasanth was on a mission, belly pressed to the carpet of his car, legs sticking out on the roadside. He emerged triumphant, brandishing a forgotten Coca-Cola bottle and carrier bag before starting the ignition. Crossing into the high-altitude, hilly state of Kerala, he pulled up at a designated recycling spot.  Ephemera rained out of my upturned tote bag upon strict instruction to hand over any plastics. At Wayanad’s border, two impassive security guards eyed my friend and me as we instinctively sank back in our seats. A regular driver for tourists, Prasanth shrugged off the routine check, pointing to a sign as we were waved on.  “1,000 rupees fine! See?

From his lofty BBC and ESPN perches at Wimbledon, John McEnroe is agitating people… again.In particular, he has irked Sally Jenkins from the Washington Post who has accused him of “belching up words” in a diatribe column dedicated to removing him from TV.This, however, only goes to prove that McEnroe can still move the needle. As he should. It is the McEnroe way. Dare I say, it’s the American way – brash, loud, and a bit erroneously confident.Sure, McEnroe mispronounced names this tournament, notably calling Hungarian Marton Fucsovics, “Fuskovitz,” or “Fuksovitz,” in a third round loss to American Ben Shelton. He didn’t fare much better with 26th ranked Stefanos Tsitsipas in this year’s Australian Open.

In May of last year, at the Saturday corrida of the Feria de Pentecôte in Nîmes – “no hay billetes” – I had the traveler’s luck to find myself seated next to the son of one of the late, great French toreros of the 1970s. We were seated high in the Arènes de Nîmes, the city’s Roman amphitheater completed around 100 years after the Crucifixion – a structure far superior in function and beauty to Rome’s defunct and messily eviscerated Colosseum. In Nîmes, as in neighboring Arles, the French have triumphed over the Fall of Rome in restoring these structures to something of their original purpose: hosting feats of gladiatorial courage tamed by a strict protocol. But that inheritance has once more been threatened by legislation that contests its place in the Fifth Republic.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. may have finally met his match: the green M&M. Mars, which manufactures various popular candies including M&M’s recently announced it will be changing direction from its 2016 goal of removing "all artificial colors from its human food portfolio globally"... because Americans like their candy Red 40 red, rather than beet-red. The Health and Human Services Secretary has a plan to remove American children's spoons from their "toxic soups of synthetic chemicals." It's contingent on an "understanding" he has with major food companies that Americans don't want to be poisoned. Yet it seems his and the candy industry's mutual "understanding" is breaking down.

Chet Sharma – physicist, DJ and award-winning chef – only needs to sleep for four hours a night. “I inherited [this gift] from my mother,” shrugs the Londoner when we talk one morning before lunchtime service at his restaurant, BiBi. “She has unlimited energy!” Raised in Berkshire, England, to parents with Indian heritage, Sharma has a master’s degree in clinical and experimental medicine from University College London, as well as a master’s in physics and a PhD in condensed-matter physics from the University of Oxford. It was during those seven years studying that he also moonlighted as a cook and a DJ. “I’d do university in the morning, dinner service at a restaurant [at night], and at 11 p.m.

On Saturday at the California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field Championships, the biological male athlete AB Hernandez won gold in both the girls’ high jump and triple jump. The medals came at the expense of female athletes, sparking outrage from parents, local leaders and former collegiate athletes. As Sophia Lorey put it: “Girls deserve fair and safe sports. It’s time for adults to stand up and do something.” This is just the latest injustice created by the extreme Democrat ideology that has forced itself on California, the state that will be hosting the 2028 Olympics. It’s a cruel irony that a state set to showcase the world’s commitment to fair competition on the global stage allows policies that rob its own female athletes of fairness and opportunity.

In threatening on Truth Social to withhold federal funding to California for allowing biological men to compete against women, Donald Trump was trying to restore fairness to amateur athletics. He was also setting the scene for a major showdown at the pinnacle of professional athletics: the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.The President on Tuesday cited a “transitioned male athlete” who had “won everything” as he warned Governor Gavin Newsom that funds would be cut if his executive order, aimed at protecting women’s sports, was not implemented.But in trying to make the state comply with his directive, he is also applying pressure to the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), which this week signaled it would sidestep the order.