I went to the Museum of Ventura County recently; it only took me 10 months to check it out in their new digs. It’s very very nice. I feel a burst of civic pride, something I rarely got in SF. Sorry SF, but your mishandling of any large civic structure? Oy.

I had sort of forgotten about the George Stuart Historial Figures© until I walked in the gallery. Then I suddenly remembered being batshit obsessed with them when I was a kid. They are remarkable, detailed and tiny. They get changed out regularly. I was a little bored when the calendar said they were displaying historical figures of Czarist Russia, but I changed my mind fast.

Well hellew, Anna Ivanovna, Empress of Russia from 1730 to 1740! Empress Elizabeth I over there is not amused. You have got to read about Anna here and here. Just one of the many, many fun facts:

Finding delight in humiliating old nobility, she arranged the marriage of old Prince Galitzine. The couple were presented with a fleet of carriages, each pulled by a different farm animal. The couple had to ride an elephant. Anna dressed them as clowns, and had them spend their wedding night naked in a specially constructed ice palace during the exceptionally harsh winter of 1739–40.

Then we have Prince Potemkin:

… arrogant, demanding of his courtiers and very changeable in his moods but also fascinating, warm and kind. It was generally agreed among his female companions that Potemkin that he was “amply endowed with ‘sex appeal'”. Louis Philippe, comte de Ségur described him as “colossal like Russia”, “an inconceivable mixture of grandeur and pettiness, laziness and activity, bravery and timidity, ambition and insouciance”.

Hubba hubba!

And then we have Rasputin. The myth, the man. What was really up with him? Did you know that his daughter emigrated to the US, became a tiger trainer, and died in 1977?

I love Wikipedia!

And then there are these losers. I do admit I love the tiny cigarette.