Around two-thirds of the way through the 1962 James Bond film Dr. No, the eponymous villain gives 007 a tour of his hideout. During the tour, Bond does an obvious double-take at one of Dr. No’s paintings:
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For those of us born well after the film’s release, the double-take is confusing. Why is Bond interested in this painting? Why does he have such a startled reaction to it?
The scene was an inside joke for people of the era, especially British viewers. And that’s because it references one of the strangest art heists in history.
The man in the painting is Arthur Wellesley. Born on April 29, 1769 to an aristocratic English family in Ireland, Wellesley attended several top-notch schools. But the death of his father and the subsequent exhaustion of his estate required Wellesley to seek work. So, on March 7, 1787 he was accepted into the British Army as an ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot. After namedropping and schmoozing the right people, Wellesley was promoted to lieutenant. He was then sent to India and promoted to major general after victories at Srirangapatna and Mysore, and in the Second Anglo-Maratha War. Thereafter, he returned to England, where his services were soon needed against France in the Peninsular War, which culminated in his famous victory over Napoleon at Waterloo. Wellesley became a national hero, and a grateful George III named him “Duke of Wellington”, which is how you probably know him.
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The likeness was created by famed Spanish painter Francisco Goya. Unlike many artists, Goya was popular and well-regarded in his own day. He is known for being both the last of the “Old Masters” and the first “modern” painter, in much the same way that Beethoven is considered the last great composer of the “Classical period” but also the first of the “Romantic period”.
“Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all the dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”
If you’re on Facebook, you’ve probably heard of the “30 Day Music Challenge”. Basically, you post a link to a song or YouTube clip every day for a month. Some versions of the challenge have silly guides, like “Day 1 – A song that makes you think of your best friend”. While I have accepted the challenge, I’m not following those rules. I’m just making it up as I go.
Here are the songs for days 11-20; part 1 is here and part 3 is here.
Day 11: “Bette Davis Eyes” by Kim Carnes
I went to the skating rink a lot in my grade school years… only I never really skated all that much. I’d take the $4 my mom would give me for skate rental and play pinball and video games instead. However, there was one time when a bunch of kids from my school were there, and they convinced me to get out on the rink. I was wobbling around out there, like you do, when suddenly “Bette Davis Eyes” came over the speakers. All the kids from my school who weren’t skating let out a squeal and rushed to the rink. But, more importantly, the older folks rolled their eyes and skated off. I did a couple of laps around the rink, staring at the reflected disco lights on the ceiling and surrounded by my friends. Although I was only 10 at the time, I had just discovered the generation gap, and realized that there was much as thing as “my” music versus “their” music. And for some reason this made me deliriously happy. This song, this moment in time and space were mine, not theirs. I wobbled around the rink throughout the song in a daze with a giant grin on my face. Although I was unaware of it at the time, it was the same feeling people at Woodstock or people who saw Blondie’s first shows at CBGB must have felt, albeit on a much smaller scale.
Day 12: “Pump Up The Volume” by M\A\A\R\S
Shortly after I got a car, I got a job delivering flowers for Flowerama at Gwinnett Place. My high school sweetheart Jodi worked there too, and so it was nauseatingly sweet all around. But then Valentine’s Day came. My boss bought an entire (tractor) trailer full of roses and rented a vacant storefront as a staging area. He also hired Cindy Bollegar as a temp. I had been working for 18 hours straight when my boss asked me to get some roses from the trailer and take them to the staging area. I got the flowers and took them to the room, where Cindy worked alone. We made some small talk for several minutes, and then I signaled my intention to leave by letting out a deep sigh and unenthusiastically singing “Pump up the volume, pump up the volume, pump up the volume…” To my complete shock, Cindy looked at me with one of the most come hither looks I’ve ever seen and sexily said “Dance! Dance!”. I leaned in to kiss her. She leaned in to me. And just then the door opened, and Jodi walked in. I don’t think she saw anything, and if she did she certainly never mentioned it. A small part of my mind was FURIOUS with me for almost cheating on my girlfriend. Another small part was FURIOUS that I wasn’t able to seal the deal with Cindy. The other 80% of my brain, the part that hadn’t been to sleep in 30+ hours by this point, just wanted the other parts to shut up and leave it alone. To this day, every time I hear this song, I think of Cindy’s blue eyes, and that devilish smirk of hers saying “Dance! Dance!”
Day 13: “Caro mio ben” by Cecilia Bartoli
I saw Cecilia Bartoli at Emory in 1995 and she did this song for her third or forth encore. Every single neuron in my mind was intently concentrated on her persona and her voice, and every hair on my neck and arms stood at attention. I knew enough Latin to roughly translate it on the fly (it’s the saddest song ever written), but I was just BLOWN AWAY by her voice. It’s sometimes hard to believe that so much beauty can exist in this world.
“The old lady was clever enough and he thought that if she had started from any of the right premises, more might have been expected of her. She lived according to the laws of her own fantasy world outside of which he had never seen her set foot. The law of it was to sacrifice herself for him after she had first created the necessity to do so by making a mess of things. If he had permitted her sacrifices, it was only because her lack of foresight had made them necessary. All of her life had been a struggle to act like a Chestny and to give him everything she thought a Chestny ought to have without the goods a Chestny ought to have; but since, said she, it was fun to struggle, why complain? And when you had won, as she had won, what fun to look back on the hard times! He could not forgive her that she had enjoyed the struggle and that she thought she had won.
What she meant when she said she had won was that she had brought him up successfully and had sent him to college and that he had turned out so well-good looking (her teeth had gone unfilled so that his could be straightened), intelligent (he realized he was too intelligent to be a success), and with a future ahead of him (there was of course no future ahead of him). She excused his gloominess on the grounds that he was still growing up and his radical ideas on his lack of practical experience. She said he didn’t yet know a thing about ‘life,’ that he hadn’t even entered the real world – when already he was as disenchanted with it as a man of fifty.
The further irony of all this was that in spite of her, he had turned out so well. In spite of going to only a third-rate college, he had, on his own initiative, come out with a first-rate education; in spite of growing up dominated by a small mind, he had ended up with a large one; in spite of all her foolish views, he was free of prejudice and unafraid to face facts. Most miraculous of all, instead of being blinded by love for her as she was for him, he had cut himself emotionally free of her and could see her with complete objectivity. He was not dominated by his mother.”
– Flannery O’Connor
“Everything That Rises Must Converge”
My #1 celebrity crush, Jill Wagner, is leaving her co-hosting gig on the ABC show Wipeout.
This is good in a way, as Wagner has wanted to get back to acting, and even has a new show, Teen Wolf, due to start soon. It’s also good because I’ve been tiring of Wipeout for some time now. I DVR the show, and mostly just watch the parts with Wagner. I think I can get through an entire episode in around 14 minutes these days.
But it’s also bad, because I’ll miss getting my weekly “Jill fix” on the TV. But, as they say, ever upward! I hope Jill goes on to something bigger and better… so I can watch her every week! 😉
Here’s a pic from her Twitter feed, one of the last from the Wipeout set:
This season (if it happens!) marks the ten-year anniversary of the AFC North. The division was created in 2002 when the Houston Texas entered the league, and all conferences were divided up into four divisions of four teams each. There was never any doubt that Pittsburgh, Cleveland and Cincinnati would land in the new AFC North, but there was a time when it seemed like Baltimore might end up in the AFC South with Jacksonville, Tennessee and Indianapolis. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed, and thus one of football’s best rivalries is the twice-yearly battle between the Steelers and the Ravens.
Here’s a few fun facts about the AFC North:
– In the 153 weeks of its existence, the Steelers have been in first place the most: 56 weeks (38% of the time). The division lead has been tied 44 weeks, an amazing 29% of the time. The Ravens have had the lead for 28 weeks (18%), the Bungles have had the lead 20 weeks (13%) and the lowly Browns have had the lead for just 3 weeks (2%).
– Every AFC North division winner has had 10 wins or more per year.
– Only once have three of the four teams held first place in the same year. In 2002, the Browns were in first place in weeks 2-4. The Ravens took the lead in week 5. There was a tie in weeks 6 and 7. In week 8, the Steelers took over the lead for the rest of the season.
– Three of the division’s ten crowns were decided by a tie-breaker.
– In the division’s first six years, the division winner was the only team to advance to the playoffs in four seasons (Cleveland got a wild-card in 2002, Pittsburgh in 2005). But in the last three seasons, two AFC North teams have advanced to the playoffs.
“We may be only one of millions of advanced civilizations. Unfortunately, space being spacious, the average distance between any two of these civilizations is reckoned to be at least two hundred light-years, which is a great deal more than merely saying it makes it sound. It means for a start that even if these beings know we are here and are somehow able to see us in their telescopes, they’re watching light that left Earth two hundred years ago. So, they’re not seeing you and me. They’re watching the French Revolution and Thomas Jefferson and people in silk stockings and powdered wigs–people who don’t know what an atom is, or a gene, and who make their electricity by rubbing a rod of amber with a piece of fur and think that’s quite a trick. Any message we receive from them is likely to begin ‘Dear Sire,’ and congratulate us on the handsomness of our horses and our mastery of whale oil. Two hundred light-years is a distance so far beyond us as to be, well, just beyond us.”
– Bill Bryson A Short History of Nearly Everything
