8 Things

Copernicus of the Midnight Court recently tagged myself and Simon with the “8 things??? meme, whereby bloggers list eight things about themselves which might be considered interesting. I’m afraid to say that my life to date has been a fairly humdrum, but the more easily impressed amongst you may find one or two of the following factoids interesting:

1. I am honest, almost to a fault, and have never knowingly told an untruth.

2. I met guitarist Paul McCartney at the Woolton Garden Fête held at St. Peter’s Church, and we immediately bonded over our shared love of skiffle music. One of us is The Walrus, I can’t remember which.

3. Despite considerable security, I escaped from Elba and returned to the mainland. Louis XVIII sent the 5th Regiment of the Line, led by Marshal Ney who had formerly served under me in Russia, to meet me at Grenoble. I approached the regiment alone, dismounted my horse and, when I was within earshot of Ney’s forces, shouted “Soldiers of the Fifth, you recognize me. If any man would shoot his emperor, he may do so now”. Following a brief silence, the soldiers shouted “Vive L’Empereur!” and marched with me to Paris. I arrived on 20 March, quickly raising a regular army of 140,000 and a volunteer force of around 200,000, and governed for a Hundred Days. I am very short.

4. After my move to Springs, I began painting with my canvases laid out on the studio floor, and developed what was later called my “drip” technique, although “pouring” is a more accurate description of my method. I used hardened brushes, sticks and even basting syringes as paint applicators. My technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term action painting. It got all over my clothes, so mostly I wore cheap stuff from Penney’s when I was painting.

5. I debated Republican candidate and Vice President Richard Nixon in the first televised U.S. presidential debates in US history. During these programs, Nixon, nursing an injured leg and sporting “five o’clock shadow”, looked tense and uncomfortable, while I appeared relaxed, leading the huge television audience to deem me the winner. They did not hold my Catholicism against me.

6. I appeared in Alan J. Pakula’s first feature film, The Sterile Cuckoo, as Pookie Adams, a needy, eccentric teenager. My performance won me my first Academy Award nomination. I played another eccentric character the following year in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon, directed by Otto Preminger. Later, I appeared in perhaps my best-known film role, as Sally Bowles in the movie version of Cabaret. I won the Best Actress Academy Award for my performance, along with a Golden Globe Award, and was featured on the covers of Time and Newsweek Magazines simultaneously. Gay men love me, but prefer my mother.

7. Never a true monarchist, I nevertheless gained most of the monarchists’ support, as I had the support of the exiled deposed king, who was given a state funeral at the time of his death. The National Syndicalists were torn between supporting the regime and denouncing it as bourgeois. The prevailing view, at the time, of political parties as elements of division and parlamentarism as being in crisis led to general support, or at least tolerance, of an authoritarian regime. In 1933, I introduced a new constitution to Portugal, which gave me wide powers, establishing an anti-parliamentarian and authoritarian regime that would last four decades. It still bugs me that I’m Europe’s least famous dictator.

8. In my paper on the equivalence of matter and energy (previously considered to be distinct concepts), I deduced from my equations of special relativity what would later become the most famous expression in all of science: E = mc2, suggesting that tiny amounts of mass could be converted into huge amounts of energy. Still though, crazy hair, huh?