Sleeping Muse and Falling Rocket

“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a  lifetime to paint like a child.” ―  Pablo Picasso

In 1814, the explorer and later MP William Bankes, on a visit to Madrid, purchased what he believed to be an early version of Velasquez' masterpiece Las Meninas. He proudly displayed it over the fireplace in his gallery at Kingston Lacy. It hangs there to this day, hanging next to a portrait of a young cardinal he had purchased in Rome. His pride and joy later came to be thought a fake, a copy, probably painted by Velasquez' son-in-law Juan Mazo. It has more recently been re-evaluated yet again as a genuine Velasquez (though x-rays at the Prado suggest otherwise.) What Bankes did not know, what art historians discovered long after his death, was that the young cardinal hanging anonymously nearby was in fact a genuine Velasquez.

Wittgenstein and Hitler were at school together from 1904-5. Wittgenstein was six days younger, but two years ahead in class.

Manet made a pilgrimage to the Prado just to see the work of Velasquez.

Max Weinberg, of the E Street Band, played drums on Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart and Meatloaf's Paradise by the Dashboard Light.

Director Allison Anders first film, Border Radio, was funded in part by her parents and in part by actor Vic Tayback!

In 2009, the Pasadena Playhouse produced Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes, starring Kelly McGillis as Regina and Julia Duffy as Birdie!

Surely, it is time for a film ABOUT Roman Polanski. It needs to star Simon McBurney.

So I was watching an episode of That Girl. Donald has finished his novel and gives Ann the completed manuscript to read. She promptly loses it, or thinks she does anyway. Many lies and shenanigans ensue. After it is found (in Donald's office) it is rejected by a publisher. Ann reassures him that "Hemingway had a trunkful of rejection slips!" Clearly, the episode was inspired by the loss of Hemingway's suitcase full of manuscripts by Hadley in 1922. 

Saw Much Ado about Nothing at Bard on the Beach in Vancouver BC. My daughter loved it! Especially when she noticed that the play is the source of her nickname "My dear Lady Disdain."

The Primrose Hill house where Sylvia Plath died had previously been lived in by William Butler Yeats. The flat where Jimi Hendrix died was immediately next door to Handel's London Home.

Dear Leonard Cohen, "She tied you to her kitchen chair She broke your throne and she cut your hair"??