{"id":218,"date":"2004-05-28T20:20:01","date_gmt":"2004-05-29T00:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=218"},"modified":"2006-01-02T09:52:22","modified_gmt":"2006-01-02T14:52:22","slug":"foreign-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/foreign-relations","title":{"rendered":"Foreign Relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe I’ve been too tough on the French & the Russians. Here’s a story about Marat Safin at the French Open<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Safin was still annoyed about being penalized a point for dropping his shorts early in the fifth set Thursday.<\/p>\n

“I felt it was a great point for me,” the former U.S. Open champion said. “I felt like pulling my pants down. What’s bad about it?”<\/p>\n

To celebrate a drop shot he hit for a winner, Safin grabbed his shorts, pulled them down to his thighs and leaned over. The crowd cheered and laughed.<\/p>\n

“Nobody complained,” Safin said. “Everybody was OK. It wasn’t like really bad.”<\/em><\/p>\n

There’s also a pretty interesting article about the two faces of Vladimir Putin in this week’s BusinessWeek<\/a>. I’d link to it, but it’s premium content and you need to be registered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe I’ve been too tough on the French & the Russians. Here’s a story about Marat Safin at the French Open: Safin was still annoyed about being penalized a point for dropping his shorts early in the fifth set Thursday. “I felt it was a great point for me,” the former U.S. Open champion said. … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Foreign Relations”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-3w","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1455,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/shopping-list","url_meta":{"origin":218,"position":0},"title":"Shopping List","author":"Gil","date":"April 15, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Mad Mix went outlet shopping this weekend, but only came back with the Woodbury Common Playlist. (I, on the other hand, managed to find some exercise shorts, a new French-press coffee mug, and a briefcase from Kenneth Cole that goes by the name \"Flappy Gilmore.\")","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5263,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/keeping-it-unreal-coming-up-short","url_meta":{"origin":218,"position":1},"title":"Keeping It Unreal \/ Coming Up Short","author":"Gil","date":"May 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"A few days ago, I wrote about my disappointment at visiting The Liquor Store, J. Crew's men's boutique in TriBeCa. I mentioned the $250 straw hats as one of the \"not found in our other stores or catalogs!\" items. It turns out that the store has an even wackier waste\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Fashion"","block_context":{"text":"Fashion","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/fashion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7492,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/podcast-war-is-a-self-licking-ice-cream-cone","url_meta":{"origin":218,"position":2},"title":"Podcast: War is a Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone","author":"Gil","date":"December 1, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Virtual Memories \u2013 season 3 episode 29 - War is a Self-Licking Ice Cream Cone \u201cThere is a great tradition of very brilliant, outside-the-box, non-traditional, dynamic thinkers in the Marine Corps. . . . At the same time, our totem animal is the bulldog, not an animal known for its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/e\/ir?t=voyantpublishing&l=as2&o=1&a=1416561110","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":17548,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-640-cecile-wajsbrot","url_meta":{"origin":218,"position":3},"title":"Episode 640 – Cecile Wajsbrot","author":"Gil","date":"May 27, 2025","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 640: C\u00e9cile Wajsbrot \"What struck me was the coincidence, the collusion between what Virginia Woolf was describing in Time Passes and the things I saw in that documentary about the Forbidden Zone.\" With her bewitching and beautiful novel NEVERMORE (Seagull Books, translated from French by Tess Lewis,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wajsbrotcomp.jpg?fit=1177%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wajsbrotcomp.jpg?fit=1177%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wajsbrotcomp.jpg?fit=1177%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wajsbrotcomp.jpg?fit=1177%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/wajsbrotcomp.jpg?fit=1177%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1510,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-may-18-2007","url_meta":{"origin":218,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: May 18, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"May 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In which the Virtual Memoirist provides links to miscellaneous sites and posts. 2Blowhards offer up a ton of architecture links. * * * Tintin's going big-screen? In exactly the wrong way? (For some reason, I keep envisioning the Charles Burns Dog Boy shorts on Liquid Television) * * * Firefox\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":508,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/french-tickler","url_meta":{"origin":218,"position":5},"title":"French Tickler","author":"Gil","date":"March 11, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a not-so-nice biography out about Bernard-Henri Levy, the Frenchman who wrote a book about the murder of Danny Pearl. Here's a quote from the biography's review:Character assassination in France is less of a sport than in Britain, because the French care less about character, and in the culture that\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}