Spanish painter Frederico Goya frequently featured poodles in his early work. The poodle was a very popular pet in eighteenth century Spain, and Goya was even asked to include the royal dog in portraits commissioned by King Charles IV. It seemed for a while everyone in Madrid was trying to get the artist to paint his or her favorite pet. After a time, however, Goya became tired of cute little poodles and their rich pampering owners. In what would become his most infamous and gruesome work, Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Poodles so shocked and appalled his patrons that the man was never asked to paint a dog again.
At a recent sale at Sotheby’s in Sydney, Australia, Goya’s lesser-known work The Demi-nude Maja was sold to an undisclosed buyer for a record lowest price of a work by the artist. The fact that someone over the centuries had carefully painted a mustache and goatee on the subject may have been a contributing factor.
Goya’s uncharacteristically comic A Herd of Lombardy Pudding Elk Playing Poker has long been a favorite of lowbrow Spanish herbivore art afficionados.
The most famous and beloved painting indicative of lowbrow Spanish herbivore art is Senor Vermeero’s Yak With a Pearl Ear Tag.
Pearl ear tags became the must have fashion accessory of 1972 when Liz Taylor, Liza Minnelli, Elizabeth Montgomery, Liz Claiborne, and Rip Taylor wore them to a Deep Throat screening party at the home of Happy Rockefeller.
Liza Minnelli was adopted.
Liza Minnelli’s first name was originally spelled Lisa. She changed it because she felt “Lisa With An Ess” sounded too close to “Lisa With An Ass”.
Alex Haley died of a heart attack upon learning he was adopted and his real parents were Anglo-Arapaho and Franco-Filipino, though critics say that the truth value of Roots wasn’t compromised in the slightest by the new information.
The Golden Retriever best known for playing the beer-fetching “Alex” in commercials for Stroh’s beer had to be put down after attacking, biting and severely injuring a bikini-clad spokesmodel.
Stroh’s Beer was originally marketed as “Shorts’ Beer” after it’s maker, Otillio Shorts. The accompanying ad slogan “Don’t let anyone get into your Shorts” caused such outrage among Suffragettes, that Shorts pulled the product. Some time later he saw an ad for “Serutan”, decided what the hell, it’ll sound like it’s some of that imported crap if I spell it backwards, and “Stroh’s” was born.
The formula for making beer was given in dreams to various representatives of mankind all over the world at the same time, either by alien visitors from the system of Yed Prior, or the lost god Zymurgh.
Foster’s is the Australian word for “beer” and the Kiwi word for “Makes a she-hobbit look like an elf”. The Australian words for whiskey is “crystal meth”, which causes lots of confusion when Australians visit the U.S…
The kiwi “fruit” is actually a vegetable.
The kiwi bird is actually a bat.
Kiwi shoe polish is edible, but why?
The Kiwanis are actually a “Gathering”, not a “Club”…and why not?
All of the spells shown in the collectible card game Magic: the Gathering are real. Wizards of the Coast has been quietly training an elite cadre of sorcerers until it is time for the Archmage’s rise to power.
In “Magic” (1978), Anthony Hopkins just couldn’t master ventriloquism enough to be convincing, so a child actor was brought in to “play” the dummy, Fats. The kid was a terror on set, socking Hopkins in the groin several times and fondling Ann-Margret’s breasts on numerous occasions. Nobody noticed it was actually “little person” Billy Barty. “My favorite gig,” he crowed at the wrap party.
Anthony Hopkins, who is known for really researching his roles before playing them, prepared for Stephen King’s Hearts in Atlantis by actually visiting the city of Atlantis to undergo a heart transplant under the sea.
When Kenny Young took his first trip to Atlantis City, he found a discarded heart under the boardwalk and was inspired to write the love song Under the Boardwalk, which became a huge hit for the Drifters in 1964.