IVANA

 TRUMP.

 

I awoke this morning with Ivana Trump's drawing room filling my mind. I spent so much time there I could draw it. And how many times have I run up and down that staircase they say killed her? There are other steps in her beautiful house but I watched her zip up and down those steps to see her secretary Dorothy Curry.

We found ourselves all smiles and polite at the coffee dispenser backstage at a Givenchy fashion spectacular in Paris. Surrounded by naked top models hopping in and out of lushness. Laugh we did, Ivana was wicked with the jokes. A couple of weeks later at the Oscar de la Renta show in Bryant Park in Manhattan, here comes Ivana with her dark and broody model future husband. I love sitting in the front or second row where the models emerge because it's magnifico to see the white hot designers fussing with the tiniest finishing touches to define the look. A dab at the hair here and a nonchalant nudge of firebrand fabric. Oscar was a picture to watch doing this. Another sublime individual. Naughty.

Through that fleeting wonder Ivana and her beautiful young person sat slightly in front of me. She turned and looked at me. I said, the required, "Hi", never imagining that she'd recognise me. "Oh, Ivana", I went on, "... you remember me?". With a charming snap back she said, "That's why I'm smiling at you!" I did not miss a trick and all of that Australian bravado came bursting out of me. I said these words to one of the wealthiest women on Earth, "Ivana, do you want a job?" Without a moment's pause she wrote a huge Ivana scrawl on to her programme, her personal numbers and passed it back to me. So I rang and the fun began. I wanted to do a show with the wealthy ladies of le world on Ivana's yacht scooting about on the French Riviera. You know, all trellis and roses.

I spent squillions of minutes with her in that deluxe brownstone house of hers in the Upper East Side. She splayed with perfect lighting across her chaise longue. "You know Ian, the Paris couture rooms have perfect models of my body so that I don't have to go there and stand around ... I'm very big at the top, see". When only the breast will do.

She told me that there are only a handful of ladies world-wide who can afford 250,000 euros for a dress. I asked her where in the hell could you wear one, "There's a group of us who have dinners in New York … we wear our latest couture, to compete".

Like poker with dresses.

Honestly there's too much to tell, but I liked her so much for her fantastic barbs and tossed over the shoulder jokes. "The Donald" [she named him that], "Has no idea that I own his name in Washington, I think I can use it one day". With a cackle that subject was done. She controlled The Donald. She really did and I have a nagging belief that she was the one who decided all of the big financial deals and when he lost her, he lost the Trump smarts.

As I was leaving one day, just about to go down those stairs, "Ian, Ian come back I want you to see something". She was brandishing a video cassette. After a bit of groaning and complaining, she got the video up and running. "I sell my fashion jewellery on cable. People call in live and buy so much of everything. Watch me carefully ... see my eyes going down. I am looking at a computer board that tells me how much I've sold. When it gets to a million I go home".

Then she showed me her flower arranging room in a crevice beneath an upper level staircase glimmering with astounding white. "I do my own flowers every morning you know?". There I was thinking the massive jardinieres were filled by serfs. I was very wrong, every morning at 5 am, refrigerated trucks pull up and thousands of dollars of glorious floral wares fall into the hands of the lady with the snips. Try as you might you will be unable to imagine the floral expanse of the Ivana mansion.

I went to the Victoria's Secret show at the famous Armory building on Park Avenue. All of New York's wealth and glamour sat on bleachers that looked down on the famous catwalk ... and their eyes were fixed on the audience arrival point at the end of that runway. I blithely walked across into the centre of the space and to my thrill Ivana came from the other side. She threw her arms around me and gave me the world's biggest kiss. In front of all of New York and ... The Donald.

Bogey and Bacall never had it so good.

Soon after I was at a fashion show at Studio 54 with Ivana. The picture you see above is true history. The second after this photograph was taken Donald burst- in pointing at me. He lashed out with, "Why is he doing a TV show with you … why you? I should have a show. That's it I'll get my own show and I'll use it to run for president". And, indeed he did. It was the beginning when the Earth tilted just a bit.

Here's a real power email I thought you'd enjoy seeing. A few months later Ivana clearly wanted to see me in Europe; I was in Australia. Please look at how sublimely the out-of-sight-rich give you an order.

DOROTHY CURRY

Dear Ian:

Hope all is well with you and that 2003 will be a prosperous one!

No doubt you will be attending the Paris fashion shows and I just wanted to let you know that Ivana will be there as well.

Best wishes/Dorothy

Hey, Ivana, I'll see you there. It's heaven isn't it?

 Masterpiece Magic

 The Massey Vivisection.

The original Edward Massey Vivisection illusion at the Magic Circle London.
This is a legendary stage illusion that was nowhere to be seen. Most thought it had been lost, destroyed. Then, like magic, there it was again.

Important British television executive and magic expert John Fisher acquired it. Then he donated it for display in the exquisite purpose-built Magic Circle of London building.

Above: A publicity photograph from Howard Thurston. It was built for him.
Thurston, one of the illusion greats of the 20th. Century.

It is very large as most illusions of the kind can be. The Magic Circle magicians, those masters of concealment, managed to find the perfect display place though very hard to capture on video. I think I got there. 

Much fun anyway.

Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt. 

His final chilling video

Cast what is left of your mind back to 1967. A stretch for XMills.

From the 15th. of December of then.

Chilling to see a blissfully unknowing person just before end of life.

This is Harold Holt’s missing interview about his plans for the weekend immediately before his death

Not seen anywhere since as far as I know.

This clip from Gippsland in Victoria was kept from 'the television' except for the news broadcast from provincial and relay station GMV 6 two days before Harold drowned. It was not shown immediately after the death because the station management thought it to be in bad taste. There was also the angle of a secret woman. So much was withheld.

I was whippersnapper producing and writing for stars at the legendary radio station called 3UZ when the tragic news flashed, '... the prime minister is missing'. All sorts of tapes and film came through the following day. I was right in the thick of it.

The conspiracy theorists were out in force then as well. Tongues wagged, 'He was taken by a Chinese submarine and now lives happily over there'. Even then we yawned and moved away. Making stuff up never goes away. That's where clips like this show that unedited film does not lie.

At my radio station I suggested that all Top 40 surf music and The Beach Boys took a rest. That was half of the playlist.

A mirror finish.

The true tale of Snow White. 

This is a sensational story. Buckle up. Your brain may need a white stick and a seeing-eye dog.

Read carefully and prepare your mind for the spin dryer.

The magic talking mirror from Snow White still exists.

Let that sink in.

I do mean the real mirror from, "Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?"

Do not doubt it. The mirror still hangs on a wall in Bavaria. It proves to be the looking glass written about by the fairy tale masters the brothers Grimm in their Snow White story.

And we thought the whole tale was made up.

The truth of this is beautifully researched. You can see the real mirror at the Lohr Castle. A castle that looks very much like the one in the 1937 Walt Disney Snow White film.

Here is how the Disney imagineers saw the fabled mirror. Such stylish artistry. How wonderful would it be to float around a castle in such an exquisite purple cloak. How would you like to run your fingers around that queen's lovely cloak room? I got close very close to that when I found myself let loose in Liberace's actual closet. I am not tripping, I was there.

This is a spectacular animation. It was the very first animated full-length movie and I recommend you buy it and knock yourself out.

Here's the part where you put your reality check into holding pattern. There is plenty of evidence that Snow White is a true story. 

Stupefyingly, all of the records, names, places and documents still exist and are held in the city archives at Lohr. These sources were checked and double checked by the chemist and historian, Karlheinz Bartels in Bavaria.

The story you know is all there. The sad, lovely princess made into a hard working slave by an evil stepmother monster. Then there's the prince, the dwarfs and the mirror.

Stories come from somewhere and this one came from Bavaria. Here are the facts. I'll make it quick and punchy. Settle back and munch on a poisoned apple.

The tales that made Walt Disney and others very rich were written by the Grimm brothers. They did not invent what we call fairy stories, they just wrote down the tales that people had told for centuries. 

Folklore and myth was the Google of then. The Grimms were collectors and historians. Sometimes they rolled a couple of stories into one for better drama and romance.

With Snow White they took a local Germanic story and added some fables by a wonderful tale collector from Italy, Giovanni Battista Basile. The Grimms were his fanboys. 

Basile's Italian story called The Young Slave is only vaguely like Snow White. It does have an evil stepmother but there's a baron instead of a prince. Most folktales have those sorts of people.

In Bavaria, history reveals that the true Snow White was a noble woman named Maria Sophia Margaretha Catherina von Erthal. She was born in that village of Lohr am Main in 1725. Locals recorded that she was known for her 'praiseworthy virtues', just like the lovely girl in the famous story. History books from that time called Maria Sophie an 'angel of mercy and kindness'. The town folk loved her.

Maria Sophia’s father remarried in 1743. The stepmother, Claudia Elisabeth von Reichenstein arrived and hated the existing children. Her bitch quotient was 10.

The famous talking mirror is in the Spessart Museum inside the Lohr Castle, where Maria Sophia was born and raised. It was a product of a famous Lohr Mirror Manufacturer, Kurmainzische Spiegelmanufaktur.

Lohr mirrors were said to tell the truth. They spoke the truth about the way people looked. These were known as talking mirrors. Oh yes they were.

If you can find an elaborately-worked Lohr mirror, they have messages about truth inscribed into the frames. This famous Snow White mirror in the Lohr castle says in fashionable French: 'Elle brille à la lumière' or, light shines from her. Thus, she is beautiful.

This is the original mirror at the castle.

The precise words written down by Wilhelm Grimm in the story were, "“Mirror, mirror, here I stand. Who is the fairest in the land?”

In the same way as the fairytale, Maria Sophia fled from her stepmother and met the dwarves around the mines at a town called Bieber 35 kilometres from the castle. The road and all the parts in the story are still there, even the signposts. 

Snow White's wishing well is right there near the historian Dr. Bartel's pharmacy.

The mines dotted around the castle had children and dwarfs as miners. Larger people did not fit inside the tiny tunnels. The whole tale happened just a jot away from the famous crystal and quartz mines where the indelibly wonderful Bavarian crystal comes from. Look up! Low-flying chandelier!

In the story, after the poisoning of Snow White by the evil queen, the dwarfs display her in a beautiful crystal casket. The Lohr district was then acclaimed for its local glass makers of Spessart who made beautiful transparent boxes as well as windows.

Never quite explained in later versions of the story and the Disney feature was why the dwarfs put Snow White in a crystal casket. We have always assumed that it was better to show off her sleeping beauty. However there is another idea. 

The evil queen became so frightened of the magic mirror when it began telling the truth about her fading beauty that she developed a psychological illness we now call crystallophobia. That is a morbid fear of reflections in glass and mirrors. and dangerous shattering. The vain and fearful stepmother would have been very unlikely to tamper with Snow White's crystal casket. The dwarfs were smart.

Now, let's get into the dangerous juice of the poisoned apple that caused Snow White or Maria Sophia to collapse into a coma. This entire region is filled with apple orchards. Some of the world's most deadly plants still grow alongside those apple trees. Atropa belladonna or the 'Black Cherry' has an anaesthetic effect that produces a sleeping rigor mortis that can kill people. You might know the plant as deadly nightshade. Dr, Bartel's chemical expertise was invaluable in matching the effects of a poison administered with a lethal dipped apple. But why would an aristocrat like Maria Sophie's mother head down the path of attempted murder of her pretty step-daughter?

In Charles Mackay's outstanding book from 1841, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, he explained the poisoning rage of the 16th and 17th Centuries:

"Ladies of gentle birth and manners caught the contagion of murder, until poisoning, under their auspices, became quite fashionable. Women put poison bottles on their dressing-tables as openly, and used them with as little scruple upon others, as modern dames use eau de Cologne or lavender-water upon themselves."

Mackay says many graveyards of Europe were closed down when they overflowed with countless thousands of poisoned victims.

Run, Snow White, run!

It all adds up. 

It's so great to know this dimension at last. 

The evil queen would not be pleased.

SIGN.

My name as a work of art. By Warhol.

Andy Warhol art is now worth millions in the hundreds.

Here Andy drew my name as a work of art.


"You are now valuable" he said. 

I laughed, "Does that make me your statement?"

He said, "Great".

Music. Water. Fountain. Kitchen-style.

Another presentation of He Has No Shame Productions.

Makes anyone's kitchen glamorous. The dancing water speaker system revolution.

Who needs the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas when you can have this near the fridge?

Yes this is a moment of relaxing nonsense.

Nice work by my Nikon at 2 a.m. in the eerie dark. These still cameras and handheld devices are very impressive doing the video routine. So fast. One press of the red button and off you go to glory.

No fuss and fuddle whatsoever. Ever, so what?

All shot, hot and on the dot.

With the lot.

Now, where's my yacht?

Been smoking pot?

Apropos to Nothing.

Swissvoice telephone, Huon Pine Apple, Christian Lacroix scarf 

and the coolest blue TDK headphones;

Nikon camera in action.

Suck on this*

 *             Everything Rhymes with Orange.                  

Miracle orange crate label from California, 1927.

1930 — 1940.

Here's a surprise, orange rhymes with orange.

In Ireland it also rhymes with the name of the O'Range family. And they're very pleased. 

The O'Range family from Ireland on a sightseeing trip.

You have to wonder why the whole English-speaking world thinks that nothing rhymes with orange.

I can help you there. Most people did not know that orange does not rhyme with anything until H. R. Pufnstuf. Yes, I did say puf and I did say stuf.

This H. R. Pufnstuf was a late 1960s television show in America with shockingly warped costumes and people fraudulently dressed up as talent. Once you hear the theme tune to that show it never leaves your head again. You are warned. 

This was a really damp try at making a show like the exceptionally cool, funny and nutty Hanna Barbera masterpiece of TV, The Banana Splits. The Krofft brothers designed the sets and costumes for the Banana show, but lost the mad fun somehow when they made Pufnstuf.

In just one episode of H. R. Pufnstuff there was a tuneless song called Oranges Poranges. You can see it on YouTube. 

It's not linked here because I did you a big favour. I saved you from hearing a witch screeching this dreadful song. It could damage your mental health, so keep away. Even Prozac gets the jitters.

However, the song sucked in everyone. 

This Oranges Poranges song was never a hit or even recorded. It started a meme. The Pufnstuff show ran for just seventeen episodes. That’s interesting because the infernal programme seemed to go on forever.

But from then on, the whole world knew that nothing rhymes with orange.

Here are some of the words of Orange Poranges. Please brace yourself:

People keep on saying that

The one word that's a gem

It's oranges called 

that's got no rhyme

But we got news for them.

Ain't they never heard of 

oranges smoranges, who said,

Oranges smoranges, who said,

Oranges smoranges, who said,

There ain't no rhyme for oranges.

Ain't they never heard of oranges, 

poranges, smoranes, koranges

...or kumquat!

Yes, a song not made for delicate ears.

And, oh dear, ain't no rhyme for oranges?

Ain’t that ain’t-worthy? 

Ain't it?

Shouldn't that be, "There isn't any rhyme for oranges?" You can thank me later.

This is later. 

So, thank me.


And, oh no, not another clockwork orange joke. 

Tick, damn, tock.

I don't give up easily. Here's another one.

Now a tangerine break. Just for the sake of extreme beauty.  This video.

Then when your mind is in the right place you'll be ready for the real brain sweeteners you'll see below.

Yes I know everything online is supposed to be short, but this is seven sublime minutes. And being mesmerised is wonderful for your health.

This is too easy to say, of course, but this is something you will remember for the rest of your life.

Orange riff:

Lower Manhattan, seen from the Eagle Rock Reservation, West Orange, New Jersey, 

April 26, 2013. Gary Hershorn for REUTERS.

Now let's squeeze the juice out of some orange facts. 

The colour orange was named after the fruit, in 1542. Not the other way around. How thrill-packed is that?

Nobody had given a name to that colour between yellow and red on the spectrum. That's because nobody knew what a spectrum was.

The first time an orange was called an orange was in a dead man’s will and testament in 1512. The document still exists in the London Public Records. Yes, it's still there. So off you go, what are you waiting for?

Because of that testament will, some poor sap had to explain the word orange to Henry the Eighth when the king wanted to grab the lands of the dead man. The ravenous king was so excited that he ate a whole orange tree. 

No, he didn't eat one, I made that up, but we all know Henry the gigantic ate anything that came too close. Clever people never left their arm on the table during Henry's dinner time. 

If you ever visit the Tudor king's dizzyingly vast suit of armour in The White Tower at the Tower of London, it will take a day to walk past it. Whole fun runs have collapsed exhausted trying to sprint the width of it.

Henry V111 fat armour.

Steady yourself now.

You might as well see Henry's fat armour.

How big? 

That's not an orange; that's a planet.

Here, a workman carries the 'thin' armour Henry wore when he was a narrow 17 year old. 

Handle, with care.

Here's a decorative fact. Sweet oranges as we like them were not bred properly until the 1700s.

Before then most oranges were sour. Imagine the face-pulling and wincing that went on before that. Just like watching dud acts on TV talent shows.

At the start oranges were called Nauranges from the Sanscrit language. Then as people said, "an norange", then the 'n' gradually went away. You probably goo essed that.


I am simplifying things, but we are looking at a lost language. And I am sure you would prefer me not to go into that. Donations will be accepted to stop me.

I found my fascination for orange info because there are many great tricks and magic illusions that use oranges. I decided that it was an interesting idea to fun-up this page with a picture I took of a some magical apparatus. 

So here is the orange magic equipment that started all of this. It's a damn good thing. It uses an orange. 

It's called Rice Orange and Checkers. Someone really thought hard about that. Everything jumps around invisibly from vase to tube. It's such a bewildering thing. And very valuable.

An elegant set of objects to cause bedazzling transpositions. With rice where the checkers should be. Then the orange becomes rice. Needs showmanship to stop audiences going, "Wha?" But it's the exotic equipment that people love to look at. Ask a stripper.

You can see my beautiful orange trees at the back. They still flourish and yet they were planted in 1927. The oranges are great to eat too.

That led to me thinking about other fabulous magic equipment decorated with the colour orange. Then I jumped to other favourite pictures of orange things. Isn't it great the way the internet makes our minds play?

Just listen to this. An orange is one of the only things where the name is the thing itself. You can't eat a red, eat a blue, eat a yellow, eat a green, eat a purple, eat a white, eat a black and so on.

Oh wait, a lemon is lemon and a lime is lime. But they're just citrus copycats who can't think for themselves. 

A lemon should be called a yellow and a lime should be called a green. That is that.

But here's another warper of a thing. There is something else where the name is the colour of the thing itself. That's the violet. And here is where it gets spooky. The word violet doesn't rhyme with anything either. Isn't that ultra?

You have my permission to go into cardiac arrest. Or break open your wardrobe and go into cardigan arrest. And if you like V-Neck sweaters, then that’s just you.

You can eat violets too. There's even a recipe for delicious candy violets. If your sweetheart isn't sweet enough you can munch her violets.

Before the colour orange was named after the fruit, the colour was known as ġeolurēad (yellow-red). Go on, try rhyming something with that. if your lover or squeeze is called Violet, that serves you right for going out with a drag queen.

This is how the Oxford Dictionary says you pronounce orange /ˈɒrɪn(d)ʒ/.

This is how they say you should pronounce the word pronounce … /prəˈnaʊns/.

And how you say 'say' … is …  /seɪ/. 

Got that?  /ɡɒt/ /ðat/?

The orange is a hesperdia berry. Though asking for a chilled glass of hesperdia juice is not a good idea.

The web number for orange is #FFA500 you can put that into any colour box in Photoshop or any other design software and, like magic, orange will happen.

Tang!

Now you can look at all these orange images I like. Everyone knows you like looking at pictures more than reading text like this.

Ah, but before I go, a guy called R. Espy came up with a bit of a rhyme with orange. It’s not that long ago in 1986. It's a pretty good attempt.

He wrote, 'The four engineers wore orange brassieres'. Not bad.



Bra-vo.

Engineers. This picture is really laying on the joke. Though there are some things in life nobody can resist [especially me]. 

Sorry men. 

I kept the image small fellers so you won't be recognised in the supermarket.








Here I am sipping on a thrilling orange sherbet
ice cream soda in the wonderful Pann's 
diner in Los Angeles. 

Pann's delicious eatery looks just like Fred Flintstone architecture outside because it is. The style is called Googie. It was named after another coffee shop called Googie. It was a happening thing in the 1950s with bowling alleys and all the rest. It simply got sucked into The Flintstones and The Jetsons. Googie is very space age too. It is such a Los Angeles style. 

The Jetsons. 1960s futuristic TV cartoon series from Los Angeles.

McDonald's is pretty much that Googie look as is Randy's food stand with the huge doughnut in Inglewood and the gigantic sausage and bun at the Tail O' the Pup hot dog stand icon in West Hollywood. These places are daydreams for the eyes.

More orange. The road to a place called Orange. It's in New South Wales in Australia.

Nice filter work huh?

I love the city of Orange because they don't grow oranges there. How excellent.

It was named after that Dutch royal person Prince William of Orange who was a war bestie with Australia’s land surveyor.  Such convenient pal-ship. Thank the lord the place was not named after Prince Trash of Rubbishland.

But they do dig up tons of copper and gold there. That's the kind of orange colour that we all like, don’t we?

Gold. A reminder:

Yep, you can't go past lush.

The jacket's good too.

Something should be said. We owe a huge debt to the artists of Valencia in Spain. They created some of the most startlingly beautiful art for orange crates. The local produce. Studios like Graficas Valencia were filled with revolutionary artists whose work influenced poster and label makers everywhere. It’s easy to bring that vibrant style to mind. It even created some of the look of places like California where it flowed with ease into the Spanish styles that ebbed up from Mexico.

Now orange, orange and more of it. No rhyme or reason to it. Except that it’s all so lovely to look at.

Valencia oranges in Valencia. Be still my beating heart.

My exquisite Abbott Magic Vasudeo's Pyala & dynamic silk.

In my orange grove on Mt. Pleasant. Water disappears 
from bowl and nobody can find it. It's that good.

If you use orange juice instead of water,
I might think you are, no doubt,
the smartest person in
the world.

Orange Juice, seminal 1980s Post-Punk band from Scotland.

Sculpture by Dale Chihuly, Frederick Meijer Gardens 

& Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Just a flick away from the Abbott 
Magic Company in Colon.


This was invented at Abbott's 50 years before.
The illusion is called The Super Botania.
And the effect is breathtaking as it
comes from nowhere at all:

Roterberg Rice & Orange illusion with cones.

Spiral Water Vanishing Canister

 in orange by U.F. Grant.