#wikipedias a dealer

[applejuiceyjuice-art]

next story event: the sites go to las vegas

[miss-oranje-disco-dancer]

god i hope this is real i just want to fuck corporations in the ass so bad like shut up im stealing your dumb words

no idea where i was going with this but i abandoned it at the most disconcerting moment possible

[withnofreetime]

HETALIA ☆ WORLD STARS (#5 Illustration + Ad)

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T/N:

De Paarse Handelaar.

"Handelaar" means "trader, merchant, or dealer".

"Paarse" means "purple".

From Wikipedia: "In the politics of the Netherlands, Paars means a coalition government consisting of liberals and social democrats ( (...) blue and red, respectively)."

2. Fundación del Jardín Verde.

"Green Garden Foundation".

"El sol" means "The Sun".

3. Fekete Rozsa.

"Fekete" means "black".

"Rozsa" means "rose".

"Fekete Rozsa" means "Black Rose"

4. A királynő

"Királynő" means "Queen".

"A királynő" means "The Queen".

5. Die Goldene Note

"Goldene Note" means "Golden touch/note".

"Die Goldene Note" means "The Golden Touch/Note".

6. Der Maestro

Orchesta conductor.

[sheluvslani]

Good Luck, Babe!

Pairing: Mabel x fem!reader

Warnings: angsty, implied hookup, toxic marriage with Charlie, Mabel going back to r because she misses them

A/n: havenʻt written in forever omg, also I never watched finestkind and pretty much looked up the summary on wikipedia so… yeah donʻt get mad at me if i made shit up

Being a drug dealer wasnʻt Mabelʻs first option. An easy one, sure. But not her ideal one.

She always wanted to be an artist, her teachers in high school told her sheʻd go far. She applied for art school, but couldnʻt get in due to the amount of applicants. Never would anyone believe she was in this position now. She would drive to sketchy places, earning her a couple scratches and a couple bruises, but damn, the money was worth it.

When she met you, god was she the happiest sheʻd ever been. She still sold drugs on the side to make extra cash, but took a job at a bar downtown for her primary income, just to make you happy. The both of you even rented an apartment and moved in together, the relationship moved quite quickly but she didnʻt mind because she knew you were the one.

After what seemed like the best 6 months of your life, you noticed Mabelʻs behavior had started to change. She was much more violent than before. She would yell, pick fights for a reason as small as not picking up a sock you dropped on the floor the day before. It honestly made you rethink your entire relationship with her. She had admitted that she didnʻt want a relationship anymore, that she wasnʻt going to commit to someone she had 0 chemistry with, not knowing the impact of her words on you. You didnʻt call it off though, being scared at the thought of being with somebody else that wasnʻt her.

One night, there was a huge fight at the bar. She tried to break it up but ended up with a bloody nose and a black eye. She came home that night with an ice pack pressed to the side of her face. When she opened the door, she expected to see you there but was met with the realization that you had left.

All your stuff was packed up. Your clothes that she often wore, your jewelry that she thought looked so amazing on you, your scent that reminded her of you that once filled the space was gone. Replaced with the stench of stale coffee from a pot that she forgot to empty out this morning. The whole apartment felt so empty compared to when you were there, filling the space with the life that Mabel wished for ever since she was little.

That was over a year ago.

Since then, Mabel quit her job and started selling drugs again out of spite. She was miserable without you. She tried to forget you, she really did. She tried filling the hole you left in her with alcohol, but the warmth in her chest was nothing to the warmth she felt when she was with you.

But thatʻs also when she met Charlie, an older guy that somehow took an early interest in her when he came down to Massachusetts to pay a visit to his older brother. She met him in the bar, eventually taking him back to her place and hooking up with him. Both of them were drunk, neither knew any better. He was a great guy, sure. But nothing compared to you

But Charlie eventually fell in love with Mabel. And since Mabel knew she couldnʻt win you back because of what she did, she gave in. They got married and he moved into her apartment.

She would come home at night to Charlie passed out on the couch, beer bottles scattered on the coffee table in front of him, half-smoked cigarettes laying in dirty ashtray, and the TV on to some boring fishing program. She hated that every night she would have to clean up after him. You never did that, she thought. It was always the small things that you did that pestered her, and she wished she could take it all back.

Was this her life now, she thought. Cleaning up after some drunk, disgusting man-baby every night? Doing all the housework as he gets to sit down and watch TV all day without a care in the world?

That night, she laid down on her back, staring up at the ceiling with Charlie sound asleep next to her. Her mind was plagued with thoughts of you and what the both of you couldʻve been. Would you two be married? Moved to a different state? Have kids? God, she missed you.

She sat up, head in her hands as tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. She wished she could take it all back. Every argument, every time she made you feel like shit, every time she said something that she shouldnʻt have. You were perfect, too good for her, in fact. She quietly wiped her tears away, her eyes becoming red and puffy.

She looked down at Charlieʻs sleeping form, regret washing over her face. She was nothing more than his wife. She carefully got up out of her bed and grabbed her phone, dialing your number that sheʻd memorized all those years ago.

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

You sat in your bedroom painting your nails and watching a rerun of Friends as a vanilla candle burned on your bedside table next to you, causing a warm glow on your features.

Your ringtone on your phone started going off, so you reached over and grabbed it, answering the unknown number.

“Hello?” You spoke into the speaker as you rested the phone between your head and shoulder.

A quiet voice replied on the other line, one that you knew all too well. “Hey…” She mumbled. “I messed up…”

—--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mabel was quick to your doorstep soon after, ringing the doorbell as she nervously waited on the welcome mat, playing with the wedding ring on her finger before slipping it off and putting it inside her pocket.

You answered the door after a while, your soft gaze that she missed so much meeting her own as you stood in front of her.

A smirk tugged at your lips as you let her in. “You know I hate to say it… But I told you so.” But before she could call you out on your antics, your lips met hers, warm and inviting as she melted into your embrace.

[ago0112]

The Bear - Sleight Of Hand Movie Posters

The Bear and films go hand in hand. @chefkids has mentioned movies that influenced the Bear, @thoughtfulchaos773 talks about filmmaking please see the link (thank you for your help! :)) and we discussed the horror themes of S3. (Check out thoughtful for that too.)

We know anything that can be read or seen in a scene is important.

So, let's talk about the movie posters from S1,S2 & S3. Sorry gang, it's a bit long lol.

Each season has a set posters that depict the plot of the season and where the next might go.

S1 - All the Right Moves, Marked for Death, Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, Speed, Jumping Jack Flash, and Only The Lonely

All the Right Moves- a talented footballer who longs for something more outside his hometown and the family job. (Carmy)

Marked for Death- Main character, DEA agent, his partner is killed in an undercover drug deal. Main character returns home to Chicago to find it taken by drug dealer. (Carmy and Mikey)

Ghostbusters- I don't think I need to explain this one. Lol S3 and haunting and how they have to work together

Speed - the 2 main characters need to stop a bad guy before a bomb goes off. The characters become love interests. (Every Second Counts, Sydney and Carmy.)

Jumping Jack Flash - Whoppi Goldberg is a computer genius who needs to help a secret agent. The characters become love interests. AND HE STANDS HER UP AT A RESTAURANT. I shit you not. (Sydney and Carmy) Also, every second counts theme and calling someone cousin is in this movie.

Groundhog Day -another I don't need to explain BUT it's interesting this theme is more striking in S3. AND how Bill Murray's character falls in love

Only the Lonely - now this one I'll link here. This one needs it's own post. But essentially it's a guy who cares for his mom but he meets a girl, likes her and starts dating her despite what his family and friends say.

BUT I THOUGHT THE BEAR WASN'T A ROMANCE. THEN WHAT THE HECK IS THIS DOING IN S1 SAYING THE PLOT OF S2 and part of S3 and probably S4?!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Only_the_Lonely_(film)

S2 - Rounders, Alien, White Squall

Rounders - Main character MIKE loses 30k to mobster KGB. And how he pays it back.

Mikey had the original loan and don't forget KBL. Carmy is now left with it.

Alien - this is S3!!!! Alien life force takes over one of the crew and they get tormented (fucked) by it. (Carmy gets taken over and Sydney is left to figure out her shit :()

White Squall - S2 and S3 - how they need to overcome a storm together and learn together

S3 - 25th Hour and Say Anything

25th Hour - guy spends his last day before going to jail trying to make things right. (Possible S4? Main character has a love interest!)

Say Anything - another 80's love movie. "The film follows the romance between Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), an average student, and Diane Court (Ione Skye), the class valedictorian, immediately after their graduation from high school." <Wikipedia

What I will say about this movie is that the girls DAD does not approve of Lloyd. And Lloyd makes GRAND GESTURES.

Now, again, a romance when we're told it's not...Pppffftttttt! It's been a freakin romantic plot since the start.

Let me know what you think.

[bekolxeram]

Since there's no more plane for me to speculate over this week, I want to change things up a bit. Today, I want to talk to you about a legendary former Harlem resident.

On a faithful day in 2003, an anonymous 911 call was made requesting urgent medical assistance for a man allegedly attacked by a pit bull. When NYPD officers arrived on the scene, they found a man lying face up near the 5th floor elevators, writhing and screaming in agony. The bone deep wounds in his right forearm and leg, not matching in appearance to a regular dog attack, raised suspicions among the first responders present. The victim of an attack lying about the cause of their injury in order to protect the attacker, is unfortunately a very common occurrence. So the man was taken straight to the emergency room, and police officers planned to follow up on this case later.

3 days later, NYPD returned to the same apartment building where they found the man, to investigate an anonymous tip they'd just received about "a large wild animal that was biting people". When the officers arrived at the man's address, they heard a loud growling noise through the front door and they refused to enter the apartment. Instead, they drilled a hole through a neighbor's wall and pushed a camera mounted on a pole into it. There, they found Ming, the man's best friend who almost killed him. The one he was trying to protect.

Yes, he had a 450-pound Siberian tiger living in his apartment.

A police officer was sent to rappel down the side of the building and shoot a tranquilizer dart at the tiger through the window.

It took more than 6 men to carry Ming out of the door and into the elevator. Oh, after removing Ming from the apartment, the found Al, a 6-foot long alligator, living in another room.

The man was promptly arrested on charges of reckless endangerment and the possession of a wild animal. He ended up pleading guilty and spent 5 months in prison. During his court appearance, he explained that he grew up in foster homes, so he understood how abandonment felt. He decided to take Ming in (together with 2 other tiger cubs) from an exotic animal dealer, because they were abandoned, and he wanted to shower them with all the care they deserved.

Ming was eventually transferred to an animal sanctuary in Ohio to live out the rest of his life, among other tigers. He passed away from natural causes aged 19, in February 2019.

The man, Antoine Yates, said he didn't regret anything. When asked by a reporter what he was thinking by keeping these animals, he replied, "love, baby, love".

You can read more about Ming of Harlem on Wikipedia.

[akkar2]

Agostino Penna, Esercizi ginnici, 1782 ca., Gladiatori

Agostino Penna (1728 - 1800), Italian sculptor, restorer and art dealer.

Source: Wikipedia

[sgiandubh]

And kia... ora (?!) to New Zealand, like you've never seen it before 🤭

Just listened to Monica Gleberman's latest podcast with S. Twice. I can only urge you to do the same: it's 19 minutes long and well.. I'd just love to read your thoughts on it. By the way, I had no idea the woman even existed (happens a lot in SC world, at least to me) before she chimed in with indignation, you know... the Palestine Letter, and such.

But first, my short assessment, of course. By the way, this was recorded, I think, on November 1st, based on this X post:

Showbiz being showbiz, all grudge is now forgotten and you can listen to the podcast on Spotify, here (no subscription needed, of course):

OK, I honestly think her voice and her completely clueless, torrential debit are totally meh, but maybe that's just me. She made me think of one of those Tupperware representatives, always eager (hungry?) to sell something to you and do it quick, drug-dealer style. Some in Mordor thought she was drunk on the job (a half-emptied bottle of SS Gin was emphatically mentioned at least twice during the interview) - as usually, no humor and nasty.

I just think she was just acting too cool for school and #silly, with a severe case of ovaries going...

... on top.

Straight off the bat, the OTT praise is on steroids: how amazing S is, how he never changed, 'same sweetest person and like an amazing human being and friend to talk to and I just love you'. Kill me now, but that was unnecessary - yet still useful, since it prompted this answer (02:54):

'Well, that's very kind of you to say, but I think that's not true...I think there's...there's a lot of smoke and mirrors, this is ALL fake, um...underneath, there's a completely different human being. I have a double, actually. I AM the double. Um.. no, it's been a great journey, I'm very lucky and yeah, it's [OL] given me a lot of opportunities, as well (...).'

Translation: I am joking, but not even joking, if you see what I mean.

You'd think that was casual banter? You might want to think twice. Like all Taureans, bless their heart, S always almost heavily insists, when he wants to make sure the message gets across (07:12):

MG: ' Soooo, I don't know what's true, what's not true, but I'm just gonna assume that, you know, you looove watercolor. So, what is your favorite watercolor painting to make?'

Huh? Did I get that right? The answer does not match the clumsy question. At all. But see/hear for yourself:

S:' Err, you know what, I mean, I actually do, I actually have a couple paintings.. um.. from a..an artist called James Morrison, he was a Scottish artist.. he.. he actually painted a lot around Scotland, but he also painted up in the Arctic... the Arctic Circle... I'm kind of obsessed with him, so yes, this actually,,, this is truth...damn, I didn't know you'd actually put truths in here, but, you know...'

MG: ' OK, so we're already breaking barriers, right? Like revealing secrets so that is... that is... true.'

I shall not comment this. I do not think it needs any translation, to be honest.

The 'illiterate' S is, apparently, a keen art connoisseur and how could it be otherwise, if you only think of his mum? And Morrison is not just your average Scottish watercolorist. If you care to check his Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Morrison_(artist), you'll find interesting things, like:

His works can fetch at auction (here at Christie's in 2006), around...

... and the recent (conservative) estimates are stable. You can check them here: https://www.invaluable.com/artist/morrison-james-1932-9fybkaiqbc/sold-at-auction-prices/. A very good investment, on a volatile, whimsical market (I know very well what I am talking about).

Surely enough, some of you will just hear that horrendous cackle and the flirt fest that totally goes south by the end of the podcast. But maybe - just maybe - if you listen a bit more carefully, you'd have a rare peek behind that damn mask.

[allwormdiet]

Interlude 2

Ahh, it's time for Brockton Bay's healthiest family to debut

Flight is so cool. Flight without having to get cold or wet or getting pelted by bugs is outright unfair.

Me, utterly charmed: oh my god she's a fucking NERD

And she's a nerd who's scaring the piss out of Nazis, who would hate this girl?

Which, oh yeah, the Nazis run around in Brockton Bay, bet those guys will never sour my mood

Glory Girl's got a whole bunch of powers, huh. Can't wait to get into the exact circumstances of how she got really cool abilities as an inadequate consolation prize for whatever hell she had to endure

I'm gonna be real, the description of this throw made me flinch a little bit. Like he's a Nazi so fuck him, but I hope it doesn't turn out that Victoria is this blase about all her targets

...So if the only spines she ever breaks are Nazi spines, then I'll give Glory Girl every pass she ever asks for, but if she ever wraps a weed dealer's skeleton around a lamppost I'm going to feel a liiiiiittle more concerned.

Everything else aside, this is fucking hilarious

So these two are at the epicenter of, as far as I can tell, one of the most divisive subjects in this fandom? With the others mostly seeming to be variations on "did such-and-such character have full moral justification to do actual for-real crimes against humanity." Let's see where this takes us

I feel a little bad immediately for the contrasts between Vicky and Amy. Five bucks says it's gonna turn out Amy is like the only brunette in the whole family, and while everyone else gets to show off a little she's dressed in a sackcloth. It's very white mage, but I don't know if she even knows what a white mage is.

Also it's a minor detail in the grand scheme of things but I fear for her hair's health if it's actively being described as frizzy

So apparently between ragdolling a Nazi like it's Garrys Mod and this passage, people have chosen to interpret Victoria Dallon as a monster. I can see how they'd be mistaken on this because technically speaking they're close: she's a teenager. For a lot of people the worst version of ourselves is one that exists somewhere between the ages of twelve and twenty, don't ask me how I know that one. The guilt trip here is definitely manipulative, but so is every kid who's trying to play whatever card they have to dodge repercussions for their fuckups. This is a kid, not a master manipulator who twists hearts around in her fingers like rings. This is normal behavior within an abnormal context.

According to Wikipedia, "foreshadowing is a narrative device in which a storyteller gives an advance hint of what is to come later in the story. Foreshadowing often appears at the beginning of a story, and it helps develop or subvert the audience's expectations about upcoming events."

Fuck Nazis, and I'm gonna get in a preemptive "fuck Coil" while I'm at it

Hmm. So here we get the Docks from a third perspective (albeit a Nazi's, so let's take it with a grain of salt), and this time it's presented as something of material value. I wonder how much of that is due to the neighborhood being low-priority for the police and Protectorate, if they decided it's not worth policing if it's not going to recover any time soon.

It's also interesting seeing which names are being thrown around with the possibility of fighting over the territory. I know Squealer ends up part of the Merchants and they end up being a decent power in their own right, but I don't know if any of the others would have shown an interest in fighting for territory. I got the impression that Uber and Leet are more like unfunny and violent pranksters than anything, Circus apparently operates on their own which doesn't seem like how you'd make dreams of conquest come true, the Undersiders are sticking with the theft shtick at this point, and I don't know shit about Trainwreck or Stain. Wonder how much of this is legit speculation, how much of it is the E88 leadership blowing smoke for their followers, and how much of it is this specific guy blowing smoke.

Yeah, see, they're good kids. For now.

Current Thoughts

To pull back on the frame a little, I think this interlude was written with two goals: first and most obvious is to get us in the head of another young cape, a for-real hero this time, who will be featuring in future events to some extend, but then beyond that it's reflecting the rippling consequences of Taylor's actions. Taking down Lung was a good deed, it saved lives and weakened a major gang within the city, but now others are rushing in to take advantage of this and it could cause more harm than was prevented in Arc 1. Taylor couldn't have known these repercussions were coming, she's a high school sophomore who'd only engaged with the cape community in any way after she'd already knocked the bastard over, and she probably still would have made the play to take Lung down and save the Undersiders even knowing that there might be increased gang violence. She's big on action and she's big on pushing through to solve the problem, repercussions dealt with later, but I suspect that everything is going to ripple out in this same way until the whole city starts shaking with it.

Anyway, more to the first point, I like Victoria, she took very little time to endear herself to me and I'm not going to feel so awful about her bone-breaking habits as long as she keeps it to the Nazis

I haven't seen enough of Amy to have a full read on her yet, and I haven't gotten into her head to know how she thinks or feels, but for now I'm pretty solidly on sympathy/pity for her. I'd say something like "we'll see where she takes it from here" but I kinda already know that one

Hoo, boy. Arc 2 done with. 18 chapters in four days? That's not bad. I'm gonna stretch my legs and think for a bit and then I'll give my two cents on the whole of Insinuation.

[tino-i-guess]

I came across this painting on tiktok earlier and tracked it down and I can't stop staring. I don't know why it's so captivating, I'm usually not even this into art. I just want to keep staring at it. There's two versions of the painting I could find, one with really vibrant colours and the other tuned down but both are gorgeous.

The painting, "Pallas Athene" is by Rembrandt and one of his pupils from circa 1657. It's gorgeous and I want it in my house immediately. It belongs to the collection of Calouste Gulbenkian Museum in Lisbon. It's an oil painting, the colours are so gorgeous to me. Looking at the painting closer, it radiates with Rembrandt's love of ancient weapons.

The background of the painting is relatively interesting. There's theories that the pose and appearance of the goddess is based off of Rembrandt's son, Titus Van Rijn. If I look at her face closer, I can definitely see the androgyne. Catherine II of Russia, ever the woman of taste, bought it from Paris and later gave it to her lover before being transferred to a museum and then bought through an art dealer by the current owner.

There's debate on the theme, date and origin of the artwork. Although nowadays, it's pretty much agreed it's by Rembrandt and one of his students. I think that might by part of why I like it. The mix of student and master levels of art into one. It's so. Gods. I can't describe it. There's two main theories I could find after my surface level search. One is that it was made to celebrate Saint Luke. The other that it was part of a trio of paintings, however looking at them (Juno and Venus), I don't think that's the case. The style is too different. I won't offer an art analysis since I'm not good at those things but there are some facisnating ones. They all definitely agree on the androgyne of the figure, which is further proven by another debated aspect of the painting: the name. Not everybody agrees that it is Athena in the painting, some think it is Alexander The Great or Titus himself. Alternative names for the painting include "Portrait of Alexander in the Armor of Pallas", "Mars", "Portrait of Titus" and "Young Warrior".

I might rant about this painting more but gods, I think it's one of my new favourites.

Sources:

[mybeingthere]

Sam Gilliam (1933 – 2022) was an American colour field painter and lyrical abstractionist. Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C.-area artists that developed in the 1950s and 1960s.

He worked on stretched, draped and wrapped canvas, and added sculptural 3D elements. He was recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars around 1965. This was a major contribution to the Colour Field School and has had a lasting impact on the contemporary art canon. Arne Glimcher, Gilliam's art dealer at Pace Gallery, wrote following his death that "His experiments with color and surface are right up there with the achievements of Rothko and Pollock."

In his later work, Gilliam worked with polypropylene, computer-generated imaging, metallic and iridescent acrylics, handmade paper, aluminum, steel, plywood, and plastic.

[camisoledadparis]

THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY

based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … November 15

1919 – Paul Moore, Jr. (d.2003) was a bishop of the Episcopal Church and served as the 13th Bishop of New York from 1972 to 1989. During his lifetime, he was perhaps the best known Episcopal cleric in the United States, and among the best known of Christian clergy in any denomination.

Moore joined the Marine Corps in 1941. He was a highly decorated Marine Corps captain, a veteran of the Guadalcanal Campaign during World War II earning the Navy Cross, a Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

Returning home after the War, Moore was ordained in 1949 after graduating from the General Theological Seminary in New York City. Moore was named rector of Grace Church Van Vorst, an inner city parish in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he served from 1949 to 1957. There he began his career as a social activist, protesting inner city housing conditions and racial discrimination. He and his colleagues reinvigorated their inner city parish and were celebrated in the Church for their efforts.

In 1957, he was named Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Indianapolis, Indiana. Moore introduced the conservative Midwestern capital to social activism through his work in the inner city. Moore served in Indianapolis until he was elected Suffragan Bishop of Washington, D.C., in 1964.

During his time in Washington he became nationally known as an advocate of civil rights and an opponent of the Vietnam War. He knew Martin Luther King, Jr., and marched with him in Selma and elsewhere. In 1970, he was elected as coadjutor and successor to Bishop Horace Donegan in New York City. He was installed as Bishop of the Diocese of New York in 1972 and held that position until 1989.

Moore was widely known for his liberal activism. Throughout his career he spoke out against homelessness and racism. He was an effective advocate of the interests of cities, once calling the corporations abandoning New York "rats leaving a sinking ship". He was the first Episcopal bishop to ordain an openly homosexual woman as a priest in the church. In his book, Take a Bishop Like Me (1979), he defended his position by arguing that many priests were homosexuals but few had the courage to acknowledge it.

His first wife, Jenny McKean Moore died of colon cancer in 1973. Eighteen months later Moore married Brenda Hughes Eagle, a childless widow twenty two years his junior. She died of alcoholism in 1999. It was she who discovered his bisexual infidelity, around 1990, and made it known to his children, who kept the secret, as he had asked them to, until Honor Moore's revelations in 2008.

Honor Moore, the oldest of the Moore children and a bisexual, revealed that her father was himself bisexual with a history of gay affairs in a story she wrote about him in the March 3, 2008 issue of The New Yorker and in the book The Bishop's Daughter: A Memoir. In addition, she described a call she received six months after her father's death from a man, identified in the article by a pseudonym, who was the only person named in Moore's will who was unknown to the family. Honor Moore learned from the man that he had been her father's longtime gay lover and that they had traveled together to Patmos in Greece and elsewhere.

1939 – Réal Lessard was born in Mansonville, Canada. He led a quiet life until he was eighteen years old. He he had always dreamed of traveling and becoming an artist.

Hitchhiking, he set out to conquer the world. In Miami, he met his fate: Fernand Legros. They began an uneven relationship. Legros occasionally accused Lessard of infidelity, although he himself slept with other men. An unscrupulous art dealer, Legros quickly discovered the innate talent of Réal Lessard who painted, without knowing it, in the manner of great Fauves fromturn of the century.

Promising an art show that would never happen, Legros sold Lessard's paintings, without the knowledge of the artist, as authentic Dufy, Matisse, Derain, Van Dongen, Modigliani and many others. He managed to get everyone in his pocket – experts, beneficiaries, and even widows of the painters. The world was awash with raw Réal Lessard.

Reál and Legros on the beach at Cannes

Lessard discovered the scam but dared not speak. It will not take long for the Association of Art Dealers of Americans to intervene and the affair would culminate in a trial. Real was cleared but he had to prove that thousands of paintings, dating from his first from his meeting with Legros, were from his brush.

1941 – Holocaust SS chief Heirich Himmler orders the arrest and deportation to concentration camps of all homosexuals in Germany, with the exception of certain top Nazi officials. He also announced a decree that any member of the Nazi SS or the police who had sex with another man would be put to death.

1952 – ONE, the official publication of the Mattachine Society, Articles of Incorporation signed in the Los Angeles law office of Eric Julber. In January 1953 ONE, Inc. began publishing ONE Magazine, the first U.S. pro-gay publication, and sold it openly on the streets of Los Angeles. In October 1954 the U.S. Post Office Department declared the magazine 'obscene'. ONE sued, and finally won in 1958, as part of the landmark First Amendment case, Roth v United States. The magazine continued until 1967.

ONE also published ONE Institute Quarterly (now the Journal of Homosexuality). It began to run symposia, and contributed greatly to scholarship on the subject of same-sex love (then called homophile studies').

ONE readily admitted women, and Joan Corbin (as Eve Elloree), Irma Wolf (as Ann Carrl Reid), Stella Rush (as Sten Russell), Helen Sandoz (as Helen Sanders), and Betty Perdue (as Geraldine Jackson) were vital to its early success. ONE and Mattachine in turn provided vital help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of their newsletter The Ladder in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis was the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the organizations worked together on some campaigns and ran lecture-series. Bilitis came under attack in the early 1970s for 'siding' with Mattachine and ONE, rather than with the new separatist feminists.

In 1965, ONE separated over irreconcilable differences between ONE's business manager Dorr Legg and ONE Magazine editor Don Slater. After a two-year court battle, Dorr Legg's faction retained the name "ONE, Inc." and Don Slater's faction retained most of the corporate library and archives.

1954 – Poet and Carl Sandburg Prize winner, Rane Ramón Arroyo born (d.2010); Arroyo was an American poet, playwright, and scholar of Puerto Rican heritage descent who wrote numerous books and received many literary awards. He was a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Toledo in Ohio. His work deals extensively with issues of immigration, Latino culture and homosexuality. Arroyo was out Gay and frequently wrote self-reflexive, autobiographical texts. He was the long-term partner of the American poet Glenn Sheldon.

He published ten books of poems, a book of short stories, and a collection of selected plays. Arroyo said: "No one is more surprised than I at being read in my lifetime." Arroyo's most recent books include "The Buried Sea: New & Selected Poems" , and "The Sky's Weight." "Midwest Challenge" was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize.

The Umbrella Class assignment: bring in an object that tells your life story. Friends bought a music box, a painting of a cowboy being tamed by a mountain, a jeweled Buddha, but I was poor and had to risk being modest. Then I saw the broken umbrella, turned it inside out and exposed its ribs. There was a pun in it, rain and Rane, but the teacher said, how sad is your life? The other students nodded for their grades, but I opened up the umbrella, holding it by what was left of the handle, and it blossomed before the astonished class. Once again, when dismissed, I made magic and I got an A for seeing among the blind. - Rane Ramón Arroyo

1967 – François Ozon is a French film director and screenwriter whose films are usually characterized by sharp satirical wit and a freewheeling view on human sexuality, particularly gay, bi, and lesbian sexuality. Ozon is himself openly gay.

He has achieved international acclaim for his films 8 femmes (2002) and Swimming Pool (2003). Ozon is considered to be one of the most important French film directors in the new “New Wave” in French cinema.

Ozon often features LGBT people in his films. Some examples include:

Une robe d'été: a young gay man strengthens his relationship with his boyfriend through a brief encounter with a woman.

Scènes de lit: this features a lesbian couple and a gay couple.

La petite mort: a gay man's relationship with his estranged father.

Sitcom: this spoof comedy has numerous lesbian and gay references. The family's son comes out, engages in sexual orgies and begins an affair with the maid's husband, a sports teacher. The maid, herself, finds out she's a lesbian and seems to have a relationship with the mother, who has tried to cure her son's homosexuality by sleeping with him - she, of course, fails.

Les amants criminels: the main male character is gay and in the closet; he kills his (male) object of desire out of jealousy and enjoys his relationship with an ogre-like man who's kidnapped him and his female friend who was, more or less, his beard.

Gouttes d'eau sur pierres brûlantes: the two male characters, Léopold and Franz, are lovers - they are either gay or bisexual, while Véra, a former boyfriend of Léopold's, is now an M2F transsexual/trans woman.

8 femmes: one woman is lesbian and two others are bisexuals; the maid is ambiguous towards her female boss all the while she is her male boss's mistress. This film presents a lesbian kiss between Catherine Deneuve and Fanny Ardant. It's a gay cult movie in France.

5x2: a happy gay couple is used to highlight the unhappiness of the heterosexual couple in the film.

Le temps qui reste: this deals with the end of life of a young gay man dying of cancer.

Le Refuge: this film explores the relationship between a homosexual man and the pregnant girlfriend of his deceased brother.

1974 – Todd Klinck, born in Windsor, Ontario, is a Canadian writer, nightclub owner and pornography producer.

Klinck moved to Toronto at age 18 to study theatre at York University, but dropped out to focus on his career. In 1996, his novel Tacones (High Heels) was the winner of the Three-Day Novel Contest, and was published by Anvil Press to strong reviews in the Toronto Star and Quill and Quire.

Klinck also collaborated with John Palmer and Jaie Laplante on the screenplay for the 2004 film Sugar, which garnered a nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 25th Genie Awards, and he was a columnist for fab until 2005. He wrote an online only column for Xtra! called "Sex Play" in 2009, and a column called "Porndoggy" in the same publication for most of 2010. His writing has been published in the National Post, Saturday Night and Bil Bo K (Belgium).

Klinck and his business partner Mandy Goodhandy have launched several sex businesses in the Toronto area, including a transgender strip club, "The Lounge", an adult DVD production company, "Mayhem North", and a porn site, "Amateur Canadian Guys". In 2006 they opened a pansexual nightclub, "Goodhandy's", located in downtown Toronto. Klinck has also worked as a professional BDSM dominant, and has appeared on the television series KinK.

With Goodhandy, Klinck was chosen to be the Grand Marshall of the Pride Toronto 2010 parade.

Ted Nebbeling & Jan Holmberg

2003 – With same-sex marriage recognized by the courts, British Columbia cabinet minister Ted Nebbeling becomes Canada's first serving cabinet minister to legally marry Jan Holmberg, his same-sex partner of 32 years, one of the world's first same-sex weddings of a serving cabinet minister.

The day after his marriage was announced in the media, Nebbeling was dropped from cabinet in a shuffle. The government stated that the timing was coincidental and that there was no prejudicial motive behind this, as Nebbeling was openly gay at the time of his election. Nebbeling and Holmberg are both immigrants to Canada, Nebbeling from the Netherlands and Holmberg from Sweden.

[sneakydraws]

i wanna see fifty five goldfinch pieces 💔💔

OKAY!! So I have this little series I like to call the great decompartmentalisation of Theo decker... Let me walk you through it. I promise there's art after the massive paragraph of meandering analysis alright

You know how Theo's life is segmented into these distinct episodes? And how he himself is split into multiple different identities, and how much shame and fear there is associated with the idea of those identities mixing? For example: the straight a student living a completely, delusionally idyllic life with his adoring mother and the vanilla teenage troublemaker breaking into people's summer homes with his shady homoerotic bestie. When the two identities come into contact via his suspension, it leads to the most traumatic event in Theo's life, and honestly I suspect that might be the origin of this tendency towards compartmentalisation... I could go through the whole book here but the most prominent examples are Theo panicking at the thought of Mrs Barbour or his therapist finding out about Hobie, his cutting himself off from New York when in Vegas with his other shady homoerotic bestie (the amount of times Vegas is compared to an alien planet...) and his dual post timeskip identifies of charming antiques salesman/fraudulent art stealing junkie. And this often manifests in Theo's reluctance to let people from his different periods interact - see him rushing to stop Boris from talking to Pippa, and him keeping Hobie in the dark about the blackmail, and isn't it kind of weird that the barbours - Theo's soon to be legal family - don't really interact with Hobie and Pippa? Anyway. Basically I thought it would be cool to make a series of little vignettes of theo allowing the people and places and things that represent various versions of Him to interact and thus symbolically healing the disconnected parts of himself... Or something. I have more ideas scribbled down but somehow the only ones I ended up with proper art for is the various holidays (which, holidays are also a weirdly prevalent theme in tgf? Idk whats up with that but it's a good tool for this purpose) so we have:

Christmas Eve at Boris's, featuring Pippa and Hobie - I feel kinda bad for only ever portraying Boris with polish customs but let's be real I'm just using him to show off my own heritage lol. In Poland the main Xmas celebrations happen on Xmas Eve, traditionally with the appearance of the first star in the sky. You eat the mostly inoffensive barszcz as well some truly vile shit, such as mushroom and cabbage dumplings, mushroom and cabbage salad, other items made of mushrooms and cabbage, and finally the most disgusting dish of my life: Jewish style carp. No, it's not quite the same thing as gefiltefish, although that's the Wikipedia page you might use to get to the actual dish. All washed down with compote which I hate. You also break and eat communion wafers while wishing each other stuff, which Pippa is doing with popchyk here hehe

Christmas breakfast as a little bonus despite it not having much of a tradition - I associate it with lots of hams/cured meats, gherkins and maybe Tatar sauce (yum). Much superior to the Xmas dinner imho. Really I just wanted Theo and Boris to have a moment to themselves haha

Christmas proper at the barbours, featuring Boris and Tom cable! I could talk about all the tension and who's diffusing it but honestly I think y'all can draw your own conclusions lol. I just think it would be really funny for the infamous dis-engaged couple to each bring their delinquent boytoys and for Boris the drug dealer to actually come out looking superior

Vegetarian friendly Thanksgiving at Hobie's, as tradition requires! I think he'd love to throw one of his big Thanksgiving parties purely for all of Theo's families to get to know each other... you know, kind of an elaboration on that Thanksgiving illustration I drew a while back! This would be before all the Christmases I think. Boris is winning Mrs Barbour over with his roguish charm lol I think old ladies would like him... Theo in the corner freaking the hell out as per this project's mission statement lmao

And on a slightly different note I wanted Theo Pippa and Hobie to all visit weltys grave. I'm borrowing slightly from the polish tradition of all saint's day, when you clean, decorate and light candles on the graves of loved ones.

[realcatalina]

William Carey and Mary Boleyn

Per your request this post is dedicated to portraits of Mary Boleyn and her husband William Carey. And first thing you must be aware is that neither this portrait of William nor any of many versions of portraits of Mary are originals.

Large ovals nor large round portraits werent around in Tudor times. (Round miniatures existed.)

And Mary even as sister to the Queen never had status of royalty and wasnt supposed to wear ermine(parliamentary robes were exception). That is definitely alteration, yet it is in every single version of her portrait i know of.

I couldn't track down her original, but i found photo of William's. In which he wears lynx fur, not ermine. Much more apropriate for his status, and very often confused by people for ermine.

And it clearly says 1526, not 1528 as the copy of his portrait on wikipedia. And states he was 30 at the time, thus he was born in either 1496, or 1495. His outfit is very interesting, and i bet most you werent aware how elaborate some Tudor male outfits might be.

If colours in copies are to be trusted, the part with lines is from cloth of gold(which in lesser amount nobles were allowed to wear), combined with cloth of silver or shiny grey silk. Personally i am inclined to say silk, because it doesnt give metalic wibe.

This is 100% not Holbein's work(copy is said to be after Holbein), but possibly by artist which also painted this portrait of Henry VIII.

I have speculated it might be late workshop of Meynnart Wewyck. If it turned out to be true, then William's portrait would be proof the workshop was still around after 1525, when Wewyck disappears from records.But you know, Holbein's workshop was around for short while after his death also.

Only other painter which we know worked in England at the time is elusive Master of Brandon portrait(portraits by him bellow) in his work we see similiar basic shape of male fashion, yet nothing as elaborate, nor consistent with style of artist which painted Wiliam Carey.

Mary's portrait has at least 7 versions, not discovered by me but found by katherinethequeen.com.

Hever Castle,Warwick Castle, Holyrood Palace-Royal Collection Trust, Private Collection, Rockingham Castle, The Lord Wharton+ two more round versions.

But i want to share my observations upon them.

I have seen many copies of different portraits, and i find it very disturbing how similiar to each other they are.

Naturally across centuries copies are created by different artists, and they all put their own mark upon it...and over time the some versions become unrecognizable from original.

Here most of them are carbon copies of each other. So much so, it wouldnt surprise me if majority were mass produced by same artist, or same workshop.

Royal Collection Trust has most information about their version. Stating Portrait of a Lady called Mary Boleyn, Lady Stafford (c.1499-1543) is from c. 1630-70, and it is atributed to Remigius van Leemput (d. 1675). He was both painter and art dealer.

You might for example know his copy of Whitehall Mural:

And observant person might notice some similiarities...between Jane Seymour in Whitehall Mural and alleged portrait of Mary.

I mean, if i just did few changes. It would become disturbing.

I am not sure of course, but I wanted to make you aware...it is possibility. Wouldnt even require that much effort on part of artist.

In 17th century the public interest in old art was big, especially for portraits of royalty or important figures from history. And sometimes art dealers created the 'new originals'(fakes), by getting inspired by existing art...and adjusting some details.

If it is a 17th century fake...then Jane Seymour is not the sole inspiration, another painting would account for rest of the details.

The artist had access to royal collection and other places, in 17th century most of Tudor portraits were still instact. It wouldnt be that hard for him to copy it. With only the size of medal being bit unsual, but not impossible. Ok, gable hood missing the paste ends-but it is missing from almost every copy.

Foliage pinned to medal is very accurate but often overlooked detail, found among Holbeins sketches, and some of his work. Maybe lynx was changed to ermine.

But overall this is historically accurate outfit, consistent with Mary's lifetime. So yes, it can still be her. I cannot rule it out.

But equally so it could be somebody else. Identification of Tudor portraits(or their coppies) originating in 17th century is totally unrealiable! By that point most misidentification already occured! By 1590s it was confusion all around, some even before.

(Of course we cannot rule out 17th century identification was based upon earlier identification, but that is hard to prove without the original.)

I also have to emphasize it is not match to her husband's portrait. Lynx vs ermine, could be minor alteration. But this is not gable hood consistent with 1526.

I don't know where they got idea the fashion within Mary's portrait fits c.1535 specifically, when this gable hood was around for more than ten years! (Since late 1520s to late 1530s/early 1540s. This shape of gown also, was around for very long time!)

So what shape of gable hood would be matching William?

These two or in between:

On left c.1525, on right c.1526.

Both veils still down and split, very long ends of paste.

Now, she doesnt necessarily have to had portrait done at same time as her first husband. But William Carey was noted as art-collector, who is said to even introduce Lucas Horenbout to court.

Thus we would expect this lover of art to have portrait of his wife made alongside his own. Carey's love of everything good was however also bad thing because when he died in 1528, he left behind great debt and Mary even pawned her own jewellry. Thus chances that portraits he owned stayed within the family are not so great. But perhaps the portraits simply went their separate way.

If we could find portraits of same artistic style, of woman, maybe we would find Mary. In England matching portraits of husband and wives were a thing. Plenty of portraits you know are actually pair, from royalty:

to much humbler pairs:

(Occasionally you find some which seem as pair at first and then you find out his wife was at least 20 years older than woman you see in the portrait...it is just inscription made by same person/artist within same year.)

But it would be greatly helpful, before we even start searching for Mary's matching portrait, to find William's original.

Isssue is, I lost it. I once found the photo of original on wikipedia and i am not sure if i saved it wrongly, or if it was time when my computer crashed and i lost all my saves. It has been several years, thus my memory of it is not great.

However, i was unable to find it again, search engine cant find him.

I vaguely recall i was going through some collection on wikipedia, lots of black and white photos. Maybe to do with art lost during WW1 and WW2? And i am not sure if back then that painting was labelled as him, nor if it was collection within UK or elsewhere. But it was recognizably this same original painting.

And it annoys me so much that i cant find it again. And we need to track down its location, and provenance, etc, to have clues as where Mary might went. And let us hope it also has coat of arms, date and age. That would be so amazing! To figure out who was the older sister.

Thus my question is: Does anybody know how to reverse search image on wikipedia?

Normal reseverse search engine come blank when it comes to any findings on wikipedia.

I hope this was of some interest to you, and let me know what you think.

[klqrambles]

If I were to make a modern tPoDG adaptation (from a person hyperfixated on it)

Dorian: extremely sheltered child due to his upbringing by Lord Kelso who is a person stuck (ironically) in the victorian era. He was not allowed to socialize with other children and not allowed access to the internet until like 18. Kelso sent him to a strict Catholic private school were Dorian was likely ostracized due to his birth being from elopement though not straight up bullied due to the children’s fear of Lord Kelso. It was only once Lord Kelso died that Dorian was able to start socializing. Likely had an interest in/appreciation for art due to various pieces being in Lord Kelso’s house.

Basil: relatively successful painter. He mostly focuses on gallery/portrait work and as such does not have a large online presence. Largely closeted gay man due to having a lot of clients who may not be the most accepting. Meets Dorian at a gallery showcase.

Henry: armchair philosopher though he does also have a masters in philosophy. He’s very much a reddit troll but he does Not consider himself an “influencer”. He makes dumb pseudo-philosophical videos on Youtube to instigate fights in the comments. Would have met Dorian at Basil’s studio and said his normal dumb shit not realizing Dorian was very influenceable due to his upraising.

Sibyl: an up and coming theater actress. She hopes to join larger companies someday but is focusing on improving her craft on a local level. Dorian met her after a production of Hamlet when she came out to greet the audience.

James: 2 options: went on a study abroad or got a job abroad. Couldn’t come back after Sibyl’s death due to financial troubles.

Victoria: married to Henry due to familial pressures. The two mutually agreed to have a secretly open relationship. Writer and working through her PhD.

Alan: working on his Masters in Chemistry. Makes money by being a small time drug dealer (started with self medicating his anxiety)

Random plot points:

Henry learns about Dorian’s backstory from a wikipedia page on Lord Kelso.

Henry and Basil know Alan from having bought stuff from him before. They became close when they met each other by coincidence at a gay bar.

Dorian probably has an onlyfans

Basil unfortunately has big boomer energy

Basil is the one who originally suggested Dorian try posting photos to social media as a method of finding friends. Henry taught him how to become popular.

[things-about-cars-in-posts]

So, there's many of you now. I know we're in the How Sweet It Is Not To Know Follower Counts website and I do cherish that, but still, more people than ever in my life clicked a button that in some capacity says "I care what this dork has to tell me" and I want to acknowledge and celebrate that - especially now that this growth seems to have settled into its rhythm.

Spot when @identifying-cars-in-posts reblogged my pinned, lol.

So, for my 100th post, I felt like celebrating our love for reaching round numbers. And little in the automotive world represents it more iconically than what reigned supreme above all cars in the 1980s.

Porsche started out as an engineering firm, whose most notable contract was what would become known as the Volkswagen Beetle (and boy what a story that is). The first car of its own was the 356 seen below - a sporty body laid over Beetle underpinnings and thus still mostly made by Volkswagen. But by God, they were going to run with that recipe and perfect it 'til the sun burst.

Meanwhile, in England, a chap called Colin Chapman decides the next of his company's track cars will actually be drivable on the street, to need no trailer to go race. Thus the Lotus Seven is born and sold in kit, which avoids high taxes on the exporting of cars to the US (but those taxes would have remained had they been sold with assembly manuals… so they were sold with disassembly manuals for you to read backwards. No, seriously.).

The Porsche 356 kept getting less and less Volkswagen and more and more Porsche until in 1964, the year of the Beatles, the year of the Stones, the stone-age Beetle was left behind for good with the Porsche 911 (seen below), a blank-canvas take on the same recipe of an air-cooled rear boxer engine powering the rear wheels of a squished-Beetle-shaped sportscar. 'Twas good.

In 1973, Lotus was doing pretty well for itself. The Seven's whole 2500 sales had carried it through producing a number of other models, and a few were even in production concurrently - a lineup! Exciting stuff! Well, that and an F1 team so successful its Wikipedia page features the section "Domination in the 60s and '70s". The exciting opportunity to move upmarket, with bigger models with AC and automatics and all that bougie shit, pushed them to move away from the image of scruffy old kit car makers, ceding the Seven's production to the last two dealers that sold it, main one being Caterham Cars.

The 911 headed into the 80s old enough to drive, and Porsche's plans considered it at the end of the line, with staff already mourning it. But then the yankee at his third week as CEO saw those plans (which to Germans are basically scripture), said "to hell with that" and extended that line off the chart. Literally. He went to the lead engineer's office and physically took a marker at a development chart. They all secretly liked that.

Still, it was clear the game was changing - intercoolers, all wheel drive, active suspension... how hard could the 911 layout go if it didn't stick to its simple air-cooled roots? Well, Porsche resolved to find out by filling it with the cusp of automotive advancements and then some. And I do mean filling - a chassis that didn't even need space for a radiator was suddenly tasked with storing it, two turbos, two intercoolers, and a good half dozen oil pumps.

Yeah good luck with that, buddy. Oh, and materials? The body was kevlar, the frame was aluminium, the floor was Nomex (ever even heard of Nomex???), the wheels were magnesium and the spokes were hollow!!!! You could blow into the spokes!!! And don't get me started on the technology! Variable height, an all-wheel-drive system that distributed torque at will, electronics galore... As you may be able to guess, development was… complex.

At one point a test driver was doing 180km/h (112mph) to go get the car un-on-fire-d, and that's just one of the plenty horror stories. Hell, work started in 1983 to create a car for Group B and took so long that when said rally series died in 1986, production was just starting. Not that development would stop at the start of production, either - the first cars just got updated when the owners took them in for their service. (Can't blame them, I fix wording in weeks-old posts...) But however long it took, the resulting Porsche 959 answered the originating question "How hard can this chassis go?" with a resounding "Hard and then some".

It was comfortable and refined enough to be driven every day, but so capable it extended the limits of the concept of production car. Put it this way: it reached car people's favorite round number, 100km/h (to yankee doodles, 60mph) in 3.6 seconds. The second fastest production car did so in 4.6. That's one second of margin in a race that ends in five. Oh, and if you want to put it another way: the 959 was the first production car to ever surpass 300km/h, let alone come 1 shy of the mythical 200mph (322km/h).

Meanwhile, the handful of chaps at Caterham was still producing the Caterham Seven. It's the Lotus Seven (specifically the third revision, from 1968), but I guess in '83 the engine changed. We were saying?

They couldn't sell the 959 stateside for lack of crash test data, and America's ban on importing foreign cars under 25 years of age had no exception. That is, until Bill Gates wanted a 959 so bad he spent 13 years getting an exception passed. That's how hot this car is.

And yet, this record-breaking, boundary-pushing, master-of-all-trades hypercar sits atop the 80s automotive landscape engulfed in shadow. But how? Why? Because it failed to contend with the greatest automotive headache: humans. It was planted, practical, reliable, predictable - docile, domesticated, amicable. Perfect. But these are not meant to be cars, they're meant to be posters. And you don't get posters of what is perfect, but of what excites you. And what excites us is the visceral, the raw, the uncompromising - the wild, the feral, the dangerous. And, of course, reaching round numbers. What excites us is a lot more like the first production car to break 200mph, the Ferrari F40.

Remember how the 959 was being developed for Group B racing and then the series died? Well, Ferrari got screwed over too, with the 288 GTO Evoluzione they were developing (seen here to the right of the base 288 GTO) suddenly having no reason to be.

The lead engineer then asked Enzo Ferrari to let him turn that weekend project (literally, they couldn't spend work week time on it) into a road car to celebrate their 40 years. Enzo, nearing the end of his days, thought "Ah, what the hell, let's leave with a bang", so they set off to build what would become the anti-959. Not anti as in response, but as in antithesis. Where the 959 was an attempt to modernize the noisy, unrefined, old-school 911 -to make a supercar "tested for everyday usability to the most strenuous standards", by Porsche's words- the F40 was a reaction to, per Ferrari's words, "customers saying Ferraris were becoming too plush and comfortable": "nothing but sheer performance. Not a laboratory for the future, as the 959 is. Not Star Wars."

To exemplify: left is the 959 - note the leather and electric seats, right is the F40, note the string you open the door with.

The F40 was noisy, crashy, torrid, and the turbo lag painstakingly smoothed out in the 959 here kicked you in the back like a locked door. It would rip your head off the moment it sensed you didn't know what you were doing. But it was more exciting - to look at, to hear, to drive. And that's what won people over - including the buyers, which were near four times as many as Porsche's despite the price tag being double.

Had the 959 lost then? Well, not quite. Enter the 959 S. Doing away with much of the 959's luxuries, like adjustable suspension, electric windows, AC, central locking, and even backsea- wait, the 959 had BACKSEATS???? Holy FUCK why does no one talk about that??? Take the family on a trip to 300kphville! I was saying. They schlapped some bigger turbos on too and power went from 444hp right past the F40's 470hp to a healthy 508, that propelled it over what any roadgoing F40 ever managed at 211mph, or 339km/h. Presumably for bragging rights.

And I want to stress, these were titans clashing here. This was leagues beyond what other production cars could even comprehend. Again, the 959 hit 100km/h in 3.6 seconds. The F40 held a record by taking less than 16 seconds to go from 0 to 160km/h(100mph) and back to 0. This was witnessing superhumans fighting through the clouds.

And then in 1992, the two chaps that 'developed' Caterhams (i.e. banged new ones together in the shed) told the chap they worked for "Hey, let's make one that's really barebones and fast", rang up their ol' mate (and ex-F1 racer) Jonathan Palmer to ask to lend a hand, and bought some of the 250hp engine that powered the Vauxhall (British for Opel) Cavalier GSi in the British Touring Car Championship.

Thus, the Caterham Seven Jonathan Palmer Evolution - a raw, uncomfortable, uncompromising beast that went fast as all fuck. Now, if you don't know Sevens you may think "Ah, so just like the F40, what with its handcrank windows and the string to open the doorlatch and all". And to illustrate how far off that is: in the Seven the windows were sown on and you latched the door yourself with a press button.

And that's the standard version which had windows and doors. The JPE didn't.

The JPE had a carbon tub you were meant to call a seat, the controls, a rev counter and a tach that didn't even bother reading until 30mph, and fuck you. And this one is not even as barebones as the JPE got: this one is painted.

So while the F40 went from 1,250kg (2760lb) to 1370kg (3020lb) when adjusted to comply with US regulations and the 959 went from 1450kg (3200lb) to the lightweight S version's 1350kg (2975lb), the Seven JPE weighed 1170. As in 1170lb. 530kg. Read that again if you need to, but it had about half the power of those two and considerably less than half the car to move. And so, in January 1993, this thing -this '50s coffin with a Vauxhall engine banged together by one guy in a shed- took the Guinness World Record for fastest car to 100km/h with a time of 3.46 seconds - and the 0-160km/h-0 record with 13.1 seconds. Close your eyes and picture that.

Yet the Seven JPE is hardly known to anyone but the most hardcore of enthusiasts, and owned by barely four dozens of 'em. So did it, perhaps, ultimately lose? Not at all. In fact, none of these cars did.

Every 959 cost Porsche twice what they sold it for, but the project proved the 911's layout could stand the test of time, and its development gave Porsche technologies it gradually infused into the 911 keeping it relevant, competitive, and most importantly alive to this day.

And I think we can safely say that when Enzo Ferrari died in 1988, a year after the F40's launch, his wish to leave with a bang was perfectly fulfilled - so much so that the F40 is commonly regarded as the peak of his legacy.

And the JPE was simply the greatest Seven ever - the most raw, thrilling, pure automotive experience the streets had ever witnessed. If driving a fast car was like biking down a hill, the Seven JPE was skydiving. Hell, it was the cover car of éX-Driver, an anime about a team using old-school sportscars to rescue haywire autonomous vehicles!

Not that culturally relevant but MAN was it cool as a kid. I need to hang those damn posters one of these days. I was saying.

These are three success stories in three radically different ways. Because, as much as I've made this post all about the numbers, sometimes it's not about that. Sometimes it's about making a show, leaving a mark, being spectacular. Sometimes it's about pushing yourself to achievements you can take pride and inspiration from. Sometimes it's simply about having fun seeing just how far you can really go. Sometimes it's about deciding what you want to be and make a new favorite version of yourself, that is the best it can be at what you care the most about. And for some that may result in less popularity or success or impact or legacy than others, but those are just some of the things you can work towards. It can be okay to just work towards having a blast. Hell, those madmen at Caterham used to stay after work to build themselves track cars, race them the next day and put ‘em back in the workshop after racing them, and the company survived to this day. Because, yes, they're still around - and their new lineup topper gets to 100 in 2.8. Windshield still optional. Well, at least there's headrests now. And a wider version, for the concrete possibility that you physically don't fit.

Never change, Caterham, because you certainly never have.

Links in blue are posts of mine explaining the words in question - if you liked this post, you might like those!