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Our favorite UK gambler by far is great, gristled fat man, [b]Fitz, an obsessive compulsive, whisky-guzzling forensic psychologist played by great Scot Robbie Coltrane, who alternately wins and loses two or three times a show the title to a home that's already stretched his finances heavenward. So why does he do it,? his wife asks when he greets her after a night of revelry by throwing large wads of money on the bed. "Ah lake ta!," he snorts cheerily. For more on the actor behind the character, check out the inside pages of this unbelievably expensive book listed at Amazon under Great Scots .
Cracker A New Terror
DVD
Quote:
Fitz(following the delivery of a disturbingly memorable toast to the bride at his daughter's wedding reception): Casino!
Wife: Jenny!? No.
Fitz: As soon as we're $200 up, we'll go home. How's that?
Wife: One, we don't drink. Two, we go for fun, not to do anything heavy, and three, non-negotiable, by the way, you give me your plastic.
Fitz: Yeah, OK. You're a cruel woman.
(Later in the casino, at the roulette table)
Fitz: See how they back the same numbers time after time - anniversaries, birthdays. See that guy on the right of the two heroin addicts? Born on the tenth, married on the 14th to some domineering bitch, had an un unconscionably ugy baby on the 24th and, God help him, had an even uglier one...
Millionaire The Philanderer, Gambler, and Duelist Who Invented Modern Finance
Hardcover
By Janet Gleeson
Quote:
On the death of France's most glorious king, Louis XIV, in 1715, few people benefited from the shift in power more than the intriguing financial genius from Edinburgh, John Law. Already notorious for killing a man in a duel and for acquiring a huge fortune from gambling, Law had proposed to the English monarch that a bank he established to issue paper money with the credit based on the value of land. But Queen Anne was not about to take advice from a gambler and felon. So, in exile in Paris, he convinced the bankrupt court of Louis XV of the value of his idea.
Law soon engineered the revival of the French economy and found himself one of the most powerful men in Europe. In August 1717, he founded the Mississippi Company and the Court granted him the right to trade in France's vast territory in America. The shareholders in his new trading company made such enormous profits that the term "millionaire" was coined to describe them. Paris was soon in a frenzy of speculation, conspiracies, and insatiable consumption... (From the inside book jacket)
This death of Louis XIV was to govern, as death will, the course of many lives besides his nephew's; but none perhaps more signally than that of John Law, the Laird of Lauriston, with which it had no apparent connection. The news of that death and of the circumstances attending it reached Mr. Law in Turin, where in the autumn of 1715 he was paying court to Victor Amadeus of Savoy. His passport to the Savoyard's favour had been a letter from His Majesty's brother-in-law, Philip of Orleans. The warmth of that letter's commendation by so exalted a personage provided mystification for King Victor Amadeus when contrasted with what was known of Mr. Law. For, be it said at once, the Laird of Lauristan's was a disturbing history. A fugitive from England, where he had sensationally broken prison a dozen or more years ago, after having been sentenced to death for a duel in which he had killed his man, he had since been a wanderer in Europe, with no means of livelihood other than gaming, by which it was notorious that he had amassed a fortune. Report computed this at four or five million livres, and whilst the figure was certainly exaggerated, it was no more to be doubted that he was rich than that he could add to his wealth whenever he chose to approach the tables. (-- p. 2)
The first I had heard of Curly was when my sister Agnes wrote to me 'Julia has married such a common little man. He's a Turf Accountant. He looks like one of those that seduce landladies' daughters in their braces. Julia is of course lucky to marry anyone....'
Years later, after my grandmother's funeral, I met Curly. I was not surprised to find him fairly frightful, but I was enormously surprised, on this occasion and subsequently, to see how my son took to him. Brian delighted to go spinning off with Curly in his three-year-old Jaguar to the pictures on a Saturday afternoon. The first time, Brian was brought back at half-past eight, brimming with the exotic new world which he had tasted. 'Curly was carrying seven hundred and fifty on him, he showed me, great bundles of fivers...and after the pictures we had fish and chips in a pretty nice restaurant in Leicester Square, and after that we went to a house to meet a lot of Curly's friends. They were all playing cards, and there were piles and piles of cigarette ends in the ashtrays and fivers all over the place. And the chaps were terribly keen on the game, they had their coats off --'
'Sitting in their braces,' I said.
'That's right. And Curly's going to take me to the races when the season starts.'
'Did they give you anything to drink?' I said.
'Oh yes. There was ginger ale. Sam -- that's one of Curly's friends -- gave Curly a snifter -- that's brandy, you see, and I think he was pouring one for me, but Curly said, "Something soft for the youngster, Sam, else his old woman's going to create." That was awfully funny, because Curly winked at me; and he looked awfully funny.'
'Were there any ladies?'
'No,' said Brian. 'No dames. But there was a photo of a smasher on the grand piano.' (-- pgs. 53-53)
Our only complaint about Sparky is the dearth of her writing, which is always as fresh as an unexpected smack in the face.
A chick flick classic based on Hans Christian Andersen's dark tale of the sort of punishment girls can expect when they choose dancing over duty. Competing for the Most Red award in the film are Scotswoman Shearer's magnificent head of hair and, of course, the shoes.
In this scene, rich girl Vicky, recently selected to join the company on its European tour, has just been given her chance in the form of the lead role in a new ballet, which is coincidentally to be scored by her MCP boyfriend-to-be, the evil, grimmacing Julian Craster. However, not everyone shares the moody artistic director's vision.
Boris Lermontov (based on the great Ballet Russes impressario, Serge Diaghelev, and played to perfection by charmster Anton Walbrook): She'll be all right.
Serge Ratov (the cute old fudd who designs the ballet's sets): I hope so.
L: Still unconverted, Sergei?
S: Well...of course, she's a charming girl, but...
L: Well, I know nothing about her charms and I care less, but I tell you, they won't wait till the end, they'll applaud in the middle.
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
Paperback
By James Boswell
The Hebrides adventure [The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides] capped the most settled period of Boswell's life. He was 32 then - reasonably content and cheerful, a busy, respectable advocate making a decent living, with a loving wife and the first of their five children. Eventually, however, he began drinking heavily, losing money at cards, visiting prostitutes. In his profession, he hurled himself into lost causes and earned a reputation for erratic behavior. After his father died in 1782, it was his turn to be the Laird of Auchinleck, a man of distinction. But soon enough the satisfactions of country life began to pall. And then, late in 1784, Samuel Johnson died of congestive heart failure at age 75. (Boswell's Scotland, p. 72)
Quote:
Life of Samuel Johnson
Paperback
By James Boswell
...Boswell also took care to compose his book in what he called "scenes," [Boswell biographer Adam] Sisman points out, skillfully dramatized little playlets piled one atop another. It was a technique all but unprecedented at the time. The result was biography as intimate epic - a stirring narrative with a glamorous supporting cast and the loquacious warts-and-all hero at center stage. Published in 1791, the book was an immediate success. A review in Gentleman's Magazine called it "a literary portrait...which all who knew the original will allow to be THE MAN HIMSELF." The statesman Edmund Burke told King George it was the most entertaining book he had ever read. The massive, two-volume set was expensive - it cost two guineas, four times as much as a typical book - but the first printing of 1,750 copies sold within months. (Ibid., p. 72)
For more of author Tom Huntington's truly top-drawer writing, click here on Historic Traveler.com.
Well, chickabiddies, how are you all? Minding what Nursie says and eating your spinach like good little men? That's right. I know the stuff tastes like a motorman's glove, but they say there's iron it, and that's what puts hair on the chest.
Lord Tilbury, having taken time to make a noise like a leaking siphon, resumed his reading.
Well, now let's get down to it. This week, my dear little souls, Uncle Woggly is going to put you onto a good thing. We all want to make a spot of easy money these hard times, don't we? Well, here's the lowdown, straight from the horse's mouth. All you have to do is to get hold of some mug and lure him into betting that a quart whisky bottle holds a quart of whisky.
Sounds rummy, what? I mean, that's what you would naturally think it would hold. So does the mug. But it isn't. It's really more, and I'll tell you why.
First you fill the bottle. This gives you your quart. Then you shove the cork in. And then - follow me closely here - you turn the bottle upside down and you'll find there's a sort of bulging-in part at the bottom. Well, slosh some whisky into that, and there you are. Because the bot. is now holding more that a quart and scoop the stakes.(From Chapter 2 at pgs. 13-14)
Thus does London's freshest popinjay Monte Bodkin lose his albeit tentative grasp on a position as interim editor of Tilbury's celebrated newsletter, Tiny Tots.
Back to dear Sparky in top form, laying on the usual good humor - this time, celebrating that infamous murderer, the 7th earl of Lucan, along with a fine cast of fakes, including a fraudulent lady psychiatrist with some fairly unorthodox healing practices.
Quote:
'The most secure way of keeping my identity private is not to reveal it. But if I do have to make it known that I am Lucan, as in the case of consulting a psychiatrist as you see I have decided to do,' he said, 'the only secure way is to know something secret about the psychiatrist equal in criminality to my own case.'
'Murder would be difficult to equal,' she said. 'The sandwich was first invented by the fourth Earl of Sandwich in the eighteenth century who was a gambler like yourself, if in fact you are Lord Lucan. He devised this means of nourishment at odd hours without the necessity of leaving the gaming table for his meals, Mr. Walker.' (-- p. 27)
Dr. Bell and Mr. Doyle The Dark Beginnings of Sherlock Holmes
DVD
Quote:
Dr. Bell (Ian Richardson), explaining the thickness of local rozzers' to young med student Conan Doyle: My own observations bade me to conclude that the authorities here investigate as little as possible, and then only when success is certain. The result? That the murderers they do detect are hardly worthy of the name. A traveller bludgeoned over a game of cards. A man steals a horse after slitting its owner's throat. A woman sets out to poison her husband and uses so much arsenic that she ends up half dead herself.
Ian Richardson's diction and tone are so perfect, we breathe easier knowing he is not in the used car or insurance business.
The first story told of Will is about his prowess as a runner. His earliest job in the Ettrick Valley was as shepherd to a Mr. Anderson, and this Mr. Anderson had noted how Will ran straight down on a sheep and not roundabout when he wanted to catch it. So he knew that Will was a fast runner, and when a champion English runner came into the valley Mr. Anderson wagered Will against him for a large sum of money. The English fellow scoffed, his backers scoffed, and Will won. Mr. Anderson collected a fine heap of coins and Will for his part got a gray cloth coat and a pair of hose.
Fair enough, he said, for the coat and hose meant as much to him as all that money to a man like Mr. Anderson.
Here is a classic story. I heard versions of it - with different names, different feats - when I was a child growing up in Huron County, in Ontario. A stranger arrives full of fame, bragging of his abilities, and is beaten by the local champion, a simple-hearted fellow who is not even interested in a reward. (-- pg. 9)
A geneology excercise taken to dull extreme. Not Munro's best.
In Monterey there lived and worked a harness-maker and saddler named McGreggor, a furious philosopher, a Marxian for the sake of argument. Age had not softened his ferocious opinions, and he had left the gentle Utopia of Marx far behind. McGreggor had long deep wrinkles on his cheeks from constantly setting his jaw and pinching his mouth against the world. His eyes drooped with sullenness. He sued his neighbors for an infringement of his rights. He tried to browbeat his daughter Elizabeth and failed as miserably as he had with her mother, for Elizabeth set her mouth and held her opinions out of reach of his arguments by never stating them. It infuriated the old man to think that he could not blast her prejudices with his own because he did not know what they were.
Elizabeth was a pretty girl, and very determined. Her hair was fluffy, her nose small and her chin frirm from setting it against her father. It was in her eyes that her beauty lay, grey eyes set extremely far apart and lashed so thickly that they seemed to guard remote and preternatural knowledge. She was a tall girl; not thin, but lean with strength and taut with quick and nervous energy. Her father pointed out her faults, or rather faults he thought she had.
"You're like your mother," he said. "Your mind is closed. You have no single shred of reason. Everything you do is the way you feel about it. Take your mother, now, a highland woman and straight from home - her own father and mother believed in fairies, and when I put it up to her like a joke, she'd shoot her jaw and shut up her mouth like a window. And she'd say,'There's things that won't stand reason, but are so, just the same.' I'll take a wager your mother filled you with fairies before she died."(Opening paragraphs of chapter 7 at p. 33)
When I wake up, well I know i'm gonna be,
I'm gonna be the man who wakes up next to you
When I go out, yeah I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you
If I get drunk, well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who gets drunk next to you
And if I haver up, Yeah I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's havering to you
But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door
When I'm working, yes I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's working hard for you
And when the money, comes in for the work I do
I'll pass almost every penny on to you
When I come home(When I come home), well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who comes back home to you
And if I grow-old,(When I grow-old) well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's growing old with you
But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door
Da Da Da Dun Diddle Un Diddle Un Diddle Uh Da ...
When I'm lonely, well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who's lonely without you
And when I'm dreaming, well I know I'm gonna dream
I'm gonna Dream about the time when I'm with you
When I go out(When I go out), well I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who goes along with you
And when I come home(When I come home), yes I know I'm gonna be
I'm gonna be the man who comes back home with you
I'm gonna be the man who's coming home with you
But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
Just to be the man who walks a thousand miles
To fall down at your door ...
You may talk about your lancers, or your Irish Fusiliers,
The Aberdeen Militia or the Queen's Own Volunteers;
Or any other regiment that's lying far awa'
Come gie to me the tartan of the gallant Forty Twa.
Strolling through the green fields on a summer day
Watching all the country girls working at the hay,
I really was delighted and he stole my heart awa'
When I saw him in the tartan of the gallant Forty Twa.
Oh I never will forget the day his regiment marched past
The pipes they played a lively tune but my heart was aghast,
He turned around and smiled farewell and then from far awa'
He waved to me the tartan of the gallant Forty Twa.
I stood there on the dockside as his ship pulled out to sea
And pray'd that my own bonnie lad would soon return to me
But many the pipe will sound no more and many the lad will fall
When fighting for the tartan of the gallant forty twa
Once again I heard the music of the pipers from afar
They tramped and tramped the weary men returning from the war
And as they nearer drew I brushed a woeful tear awa'
To see my bonnie laddie of the gallant Forty Twa.
Step lively, now, along with the boys!
The Laurel and Hardy Collection
DVD
Featuring comedy classic, Bonnie Scotland
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