Sunday matinée

"Blessings, my children."

(Artwork by Bob Bienpensant)

Gundulić's Dream

We really have to watch out, otherwise this blog turns into yet another Facebook page. Anyhow:

Glenn sends this picture to a few friends, including us...

(Click to enlarge)

...and writes: "Boy, those guys sure were busy back then. Is that Michael observing from the shore? His guardian angel was a snappy dresser! Maybe my bible expert could tell me about this painting."

Not bad, Glenn's guess, because, turns out---Google reverse image search---this is a reasonably famous painting by the Croatian artist Vlaho Bukovac titled Gundulić's Dream. And this Gundulić is apparently Ivan Gundulić, a fervent advocate of the Roman-Catholic counterreformation during the 17th century.

And then Sacha (the model for Jack Horn in the Green Eyes), who also got Glenn's letter, sends another picture, namely this one...

...and writes:  "Definitely Michael! More hair though!"

And then there's a mini-flurry of more emails:

"Michael needs more hairs to survive here [in Switzerland] at this moment." (Chang)
"Yes, the alpine sun is strong. Make sure he wears his hat..." (Sacha)
"I will tell him,it is cold here." (Chang)
"FDLMFAO" (Glenn)
"Is there anything you don't know?" (Glenn again).

I will teach you a lesson folks, watch out:

History of the world --- Venice (3)

When yours truly arrived in Venice 25 years ago for a brief sojourn at the Business School, Massimo, his correspondent, picked him up at the airport and took him to a down-town café stuffed with pastries, liqueur bottles, and high tables inviting patrons to stand and drink sprits, small glasses of white wine with a schuss, a few drops of Cinzano, say. The spritz then was the stuff of true Venetians, tourists wouldn't know and drink Chianti or Campari instead---if they would drink in the morning, that is, because true Venetians had two spritzes at breakfast. Habits have changes in the meantime; the spritzes have tripled in size and been taken over by tourism, so true Venetians refrain from the stuff and drink lager instead.

"I'll spritz you."

I spent two weeks in Venice as a non-tourist and learned a lot, especially about tourism. Already then, Venice was almost completely touristicated---cool, folks, what an ugly word, "touristicated," but the spell checker doesn't recognize it so it's possibly a neologism¹---, and the locals behaved like a dying breed. They would avoid tourists like the plague, would only patronize their own restaurants (hidden away in secret alleys where the food was three times better), would not speak English, would not know about directions, would not make appointments because you only had to step into the street to meet friends, would sit on roof-top terraces and enjoy life, would spend week-end afternoons in secluded gardens (not having sex, by the way, just dozing off jointly for a few hours), would recognize the voices of the passing gondoliers at night (while still enjoying life on the roof-top terraces)...

Need a job?

(Maud sent this:)

Goood evening!

Is the pope gay?

That's the question that keeps us erotic writers up at night. And the answer is....

Georg Gänswein is the Camerlengo (chamberlain) of Pople Benedict XV (or XVII? --- who cares)

The camerlengo does all sort of things, like, like declaring the pope officially dead when the pope dies.

Lavender not in our garden

Dirk informs us by email that our lavender picture represents the lavandula stoechas, which blossoms March - June. Sadly, he continues, it is often mistaken for the common lavender of the Mediterranean area, ie. the lavandula officinalis and the lavandula angustifolia, which blossom June - August.

lavandula stoechas	lavandula officinalis

lavandula angustifolia	The bard

While I am putting Dirk's helpful comments into this blogpost, Chang is looking over my shoulder. "you've got the wrong lavender," he says. "We could have had the official lavender. But we didn't. They f@#ed us again." (He means Rubinio, the local pépinieriste where we buy the wrong plants). "Ask our money back," he continues, "call them, they sold us frass." That's what he always says, but he has a point. The lavandula stoechas not only isthe wrong plant, it also sounds the wrong plant. Compare that with lavandula officinalis, which looks terrible, but surely enlivens the popal, I mean, papal gardens, and blossoms from June through August, while Benedictus naps in the sun and enjoys sweet lavender dreams. Didn't the bard already sing in his famous sonnets "Here's flowers for you: Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram." "Yes, he did," Chang intersperses, looking over my shoulder again, "but not in his sonnets, it's from A Winter's Tale."

I disagree, of course, so we have to google (in the past, you had marital disputes, but now you have googles; not you, not yet?...we provide marital google advice at competitive rates).

Google, Shakespeare, google, Shakespeare & lavender, google. And there it is. Chang is right. A Winter's Tale. But that's not all. The thing that jumps off the page is the lavendula spica. What is this? Shakespeare's lavender is not the angustifolia, not the officinalis, not the stoechas. Yet another lavender, the lavendula spica. What now?

Stay tuned.