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Achaemenid Cup
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1878
A man uses an old metal cup given to him by his grandfather for target practice. Man later has cup appraised, and discovers that it's made of solid gold, over 2300 years old, with an appraised value of over a quarter of a million dollars. Man sells cup.
Link: Achaemenid Cup
Peter Fleming - Brazilian Adventure
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 2297
Only about half way through (a slender, unfortunately abridged version), but as I bought it today that isn't so bad. It's terrific. The author, Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming), is off in or around 1933 in search of the Fawcett expedition that vanished in Brazil in 1925.
I've read a similar account in The Lost City of Z, the book, and was intrigued when I found this closer account. It's excellent.
Excerpts:
"W made amicable and expansive gestures with our arms. We grinned. We put on every semblance of delight; "Ticanto" we cried. We had been told it was the thing to say. "Ticanto," we cried with desperate geniality, wondering what it meant."
- This upon meeting a possibly hostile tribe
"Alas the alligator is a fraud. His formidable reputation -- as empty as his skin, which mountebanks formerly hung in their booths -- is, like that skin, a hallowed device of quackery, a trick to fire imaginations which have to take the tropics on trust."
- This on alligator hunting.
"Beyond that, and forty feet below it, was the river; a river half a mile wide and more: a river so big, so long expected, and so phenomenal in every way that it seemed hardly possible to have come on it so suddenly, to have no more warning that it was waiting for us round the corner of those palms than we should have had of a dog's dead body in the road: a river fired and bloody in the sunset: a river that we loved instantly and learnt at last to hate. we gaped at this river. There was exaltation in the air."
- On first encountering the Amazon.
It's so far a great book, wonderful (although abridged) reading, and curious to note the author (like Speke in the search for the source of the Nile) died in a hunting accident. How common can that be?
L'EFFET DE SERGE
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Theatre
- Hits: 1940
The trick, of course, is to invite the boy to a play, confirm a time to pick him up and then disconnect the call.
Don't answer when he calls back. He's just looking for more information, and the more information you provide, the less likely he'll be to attend.
And so you build suspense.
The play, tonight, was "L'EFFET DE SERGE" at the Grand, the last on my season tickets. I'll be renewing....
Now the Grand has lost it's partner, The Velvet Lounge, who handled the food/drink side of the theater. It was hard, really, to see how they made it, the before and after theatre crowd aren't enough to support a business that has bills 365 days a year and shows perhaps only 50. And the position of the bar, well, chances are if you weren't seeing a play you weren't popping in for a drink. Add to these handicaps the fact that if you think restaurants are bitchy and political atmospheres, what with all the out of work actors and writers and such, imagine what it's like when the restaurant opens next to the theater, with it's employed and presumably successful actors and writers and such.
It boggles the mind.
And so the boy and I are there, in the lonely empty space occupied formerly occupied by the velvet lounge, now subcontracted to some anonymous catering company that takes the liberty of charging me $8.50 for a 3 oz. glass of wine.
All the bitchiness and politics aside, I miss the Velvet.
It's a good space, this, and I hope they find a way to make some sort of restaurant/theater partnership work. But it won't be easy...
The play, "Experimental Theatre" - well, it leaves us at a loss. Not good or bad at a loss, just taking some time to digest. It's the sum of ordinary and peculiar events in the life of Serge, part of an ongoing look into people's lives as conceived by Philippe Quesne of Vivarium Studio. It's curious, thought provoking, unconventional, these are good things.
Links: La mélancolie des dragons & La mélancolie des dragons - his next production.
Ordinary Treasures
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Found
- Hits: 1716
On the rounds of the thrift shops the past few weeks, the weather having stalled the launch of Garage Sale Season.
Finds include an assortment of fine vintage cufflinks, the click-fit of gold plate and glass rubies, enamel and paste diamonds, but pretty (and sparkling) nonetheless. A handful of antique postcards - a couple of which are remarkable and I shall be loathe to send them on until I've scanned them into the computer. A 1967 Cougar Quarter (actually a Bobcat), found in my change is as well a pleasant surprise. And to round it all off, a (Canadian) 1st edition of Miracle on 34 St and a copy of Peter Fleming's "Brazilian Adventure", which I'll review shortly.
In short, the ordinary treasures one finds while passing time until the garages open and the treasure hunting can begin in earnest....
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