My name is Rembrandt Semi-Fishe and I am a sleuth, P.I., dangerman. I go where wise men never go and where angels fear to tread. The other day I spotted this image on Fouls' wall. What did it mean? Who was this man and what was his significance? I had to know. The tag line runs, "A journey brings us face to face with ourselves." Code?
In the spirit of my fearless forebears I riffled through Fouls' documents and came across his private diaries along with this interesting entry:
"The Twentieth of Octobre Two Thousand and Eighte. Mine walle is much beautyfied by its new adornemente of Mikhail Gorbachev with Louis Vuitton bag. O wherefore Gorbachev doth embrace vacuously brand-oriented face of Westerne capytalism? The bounty on the after dinner speaker circuit doth dry up methinks. Shalle I blog about this in time? Perhapes guis-ed under one of the silly character names that spilleth recently from mine braine..."
It was time to put the old Semi-Fishe investigatory skills into action: I typed "mikhail gorbachev louis vuitton" into Google. In fine Semi-Fishe tradition my first line of enquiry was the top hit... bingo! But more questions: my honed sleuthing nose had uncovered more mysteries. The top hit was an article from a publication called the New York Times. Now, as a P.I., I peel my eyes twice a day but these guys must do it four or five times a day because they had spotted something that I had not. The little booklet poking out of the bag in the picture has some Russian writing on it. These cunning coves had translated it: "“The Murder of Litvinenko: They Wanted to Give Up the Suspect for $7,000.” Intriguing... who was this Litvinenko? And what was a "suspect"? The adventure wasn't over; next stop Dictionary.com...
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Introducing Rembrandt Semi-Fishe P.I.
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Extra Features: here is my first draft of this post written in a more regular form with a self-referential opening.
"I have very few things on the wall in my bedroom. In an early post on this blog I mentioned my snobbery about many things and one of them was "how people decorate their rooms". As such, anything that does go on my wall has to have, in my repressed mind, some kind of special significance. The above Louis Vuitton advert starring Mikhail Gorbachev is Blu-Tacked to the wall above my desk. It made frequent appearances in current affairs weeklies for a few months about a year ago; perhaps it's still going.
I think any attempt by me to explain just how extraordinary an image this is would be redundant. I'll have a shot anyway. It is unusual for former statesmen to cash in on their celebrity in this way; I think the after-dinner speaker circuit is the usual route. And then, more importantly, there is the business of a former leader of the USSR embracing capitalism and not only capitalism but its stinkiest, most vacuously brand logo oriented, gaudy face with the Berlin Wall as a backdrop. The tag line runs, "A journey brings us face to face with ourselves."
All this captured my imagination and meant that the advert would be cut out of The Week, stuck to my wall and blogged about months later. In the course of my Google search for the above image I discovered, as I suspected, a multitude of blogs discussing the advert. What I hadn't suspected was that people who peel their eyes more often than me had translated the headline the writing on the little booklet poking out of Gorbachev's bag and that it would say something completely bizarre. Without being able to read Russian I have no way of verifying this but, according to the New York Times it says, “The Murder of Litvinenko: They Wanted to Give Up the Suspect for $7,000.” What does that mean and what the hell is going on?"
Beats the picture of Kate Nash I have on my wall.
Andrew
Mm... comments. Thanks. Good to have them; keeps this thing alive.
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