This episode contains a fine example of how we play up favorable coincidences when they exist. In the course of some “research” on the Boleyns and the Iceni, I found out that they both had ties to Norfolk and exploited that fact like crazy when I actually sat down to script the thing.
http://www.ftg-comic.com/2007/06/26/index.php
One week away from the big 50th Episode of Frederick the Great, and things are in full swing. Today we check in with Frederick as he attempts to do whatever it is he thinks he is supposed to be doing to help Emily Dickinson and Anne Boleyn take down Catherine of Aragon. But just what is Anne’s game? The Invasion of Britain begins in Episode 48: In Italy They Have No Ice Cream!!
– Geoff and The Count
Back when I was in the depths of grad school, I used to come home Thursday nights and attempt to blast all of the day’s tortured attempts at Discussion out of my head by popping open a can of Oranjeboom and sitting down for two hours of ridiculousness courtesy of the WWE. Soon, Geoff and Holland started joining me in this small ritual. We ate oversized pizza, drank Oranjeboom, read comics, and watched wrestling, and in that time we cheered for none louder than Chris Benoit.
Maybe it was because his Finishing Move, the Flying Wolverine, ended up knocking himself unconscious more than it devastated his opponents. Maybe because he always had the appearance of a lumberjack they just happened to let wrestle that night. Whatever it was, comics were put aside to see how they were going to have him heroically lose that week. We stopped watching The Wrestling a while ago, but those memories are some of the best in my life, and so that’s how I’m choosing to remember Benoit.
As regards the comic, historically 1521 is indeed right around the time that Anne Boleyn was returning from France to her family in England. She and her sister had gone to the court of King Francis to pick up some sophistication and worldliness. Of course, sophistication in sixteenth century Europe meant sex, lots and lots of sex. Francis actively encouraged all of his courtiers to maintain multiple mistresses, and himself regularly took the pick of the litter for his own bed. Young Anne was surrounded by talk of Methods of Seduction, Favorite Positions, and the like, and so it is perhaps little surprise that on returning to England she found little trouble in detaching the barren Catherine from Henry’s affection.
– Count Dolby von Luckner
There is a deli near where I live that has a large sign by their gelato counter proclaiming that “In Italy they have no ice cream… only gelato!”
This sort of sweeping statement sticks in a man’s mind while he is enjoying his gelato. How did Italy come to be an ice cream free region? Did Mussolini have something to do with it? Given that gelato is much better than ice cream, does it matter that Italians don’t have access to ice cream?
It would be like saying, “In Spain they have no lemon-lime soft drinks… only Lemon Fanta!”
(And how come they don’t market Lemon Fanta in the States? Did Big Lime slip Coke some big green to ensure that all lemon sodas in the US carried the foul taint of lime?)
Or maybe, “In Canada they don’t have KFC’s Famous Stacker Bowls… only food that isn’t collectively shat into a bucket!”
(Although, I’m pretty sure that Stephen Harper was powerless against the spread of the Colonel’s culinary dystopia. And while normally a good thing, the man is no Il Duce.)
Anyway, the point of all of this is that gelato is a tasty treat. It is also something the Italians got right.
–Geoff