Let’s talk about birds for a moment:
But now it’s the guys’ turn:
Let’s look at stuff that doesn’t make your brain hurt, then:
That should help ease the pain of Monday a little…
Month: December 2023
Classic Beauties: Mistresses (3)
As threatened promised last week, let’s look at some French royalty and their squeezes. Today we’ll look at just one (for reasons that will become apparent): Louis XIV a.k.a. the Sun King. (The numbers in parentheses indicate the number of children he fathered with each.)
Athenaïs de Montespan (7)
Louise de la Valliere (5)
Bonne de Pons d’Heudicourt
Catherine Charlotte de Gramont
Anne de Rohan-Chabot
Claude de Vin (1)
Isabelle de Ludres (1)
Marie Angélique de Scorailles
(she probably would have given him yet another baby, only she died in childbirth)
And those are the ones we know about. Formidable.
Looking Back
I have to admit that while I liked Cream’s studio albums, I never cared for their live performances, which one of my musician friends once described as “three guys all playing something at the same time”.
Nevertheless, I would recommend to you all this very sympathetic retrospective of Cream’s founding, flaming and falling…
…followed by a look at their last concert series at the Albert Hall — played, it should be said, when they were old, had lost all their youthful baggage (drugs, booze, pointless squabbling etc.) but still retained more than a few traces of their musical prowess. Jack Bruce even makes the old and terrible Gibson “violin” EB-1 bass guitar sound okay, which is a feat all by itself, while Eric and Ginger do nothing more than work their usual magic.
It’s not a bad way to spend a couple-three hours on a Saturday.
News Roundup
(the first of our Christmas ads for the season)
And off we go.
...sounds about right. The pity is that the kid will get charged with murder instead of getting a pat on the back for vermin removal.
...is anybody surprised by this?
From the Department of Education:
...get ’em young, honey, go to jail. Also, keyword: Arkansas.
...does anyone think that an application of Hammurabic Law would be excessive? No? Me neither.
...so one assumes that if a bunch of angry Jews were to disrupt Eid that they’d get the same treatment? LOL
...keyword: Turkey. And now it’s a heavenly body… anyone? Bueller?
...Go Navy.
...should have fired back.
...actually, he got fined for tossing a brick through her window. What’s not surprising is that she wants him back. It’s a lovely story.
...key word: Russian.
...I got nothing. Not even a link.
...sheesh; when even the world’s most clueless woman gets it right, you have to know.
...if you’re going to do something like that, you have to pick the best-lit ride in Disneyland. And he did.
And now: INSIGNIFICA!!!!
...as once again, we see the perils of letting Spell Check edit your newspaper.
Finally, in Hottie News:
...of course she looks incredible: she’s Monica freaking Bellucci, FFS.
Then and now, exquisite.
Breakfast gin, Kim? I think so.
Brilliant Deception
Okay, go ahead and judge me, but I howled with shocked laughter when I read this little tale:
For months my boyfriend led me to believe he was busy caring for his elderly mother – but she’s been dead all along and his lies were a front for him having sex with another woman, and living with her.
Sometimes, you just have to tip your hat to a master.
Reading Matters
For some reason, I’ve recently been reading French History, because why not? I don’t know how it got started, but it did: and once started, I couldn’t stop. Here’s the bibliography, so far.
The Collapse of the Third Republic — William Shirer
The Franco-Prussian War — Michael Howard
Dawn of the Belle Epoque — Mary McAuliffe
The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900-1914 — Philipp Blom (re-read, because it’s brilliant)
The Marne, 1914: The Opening of World War I and the Battle That Changed the World — Holger H. Herwig (told from the German side)
The French Army and the First World War — Elizabeth Greenhalgh
France and the Après Guerre, 1918–1924 — Benjamin F. Martin
La Belle France: A Short History — Alistair Horne (I’m still busy with this one; I’m only up to the succession of Henry II in 1547, so still a way to go.)
On deck: France On The Brink — Jonathan Fenby
Yeah, that’s what’s been keeping me busy over the past three weeks. All are well recommended except the last one (because I haven’t read it yet).
One last note: I cannot recommend The Vertigo Years highly enough. When people talk about the social- and psychological dislocation of the Information Age, you have to know that we’ve experienced it before: when the Age of Speed dawned, in around 1900. If you read no other book from the above list, this is the one.
