From Cebu With Love

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! This is 2021's last Rude. In the meantime, I'll resend you this year's most provocative columns. Were you forwarded this email? [Sign-up to Rude Awakening here.]( [Unsubscribe]( [The Rude Awakening] From Cebu With Love - This is 2021's last Rude. - I'll be on holiday until January 3rd, though it won't be much of a holiday! - In the meantime, I'll resend you this year's most provocative columns. 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My covenant with you is simply this: to provide the most entertaining, informative, and helpful daily newsletter it's in my power to write. I hope I've lived up to your standard. You've certainly lived up to mine. To Beau Jon, Jorge, and Todd, I owe special gratitude. You've been kind, yet nothing gets past you! To my pre-Rude mates, Hung-Wah, Trav, Eamonn, and the one and only Duke of Omata, who’ve given me their support, professional appraisal, and verbal sparring to hammer out some ideas. I hope we all can raise a glass together one day soon. One more: Chris Carroll, my publisher. Chris took a chance on an unproven writer he didn't know from Adam. I count my lucky stars daily that we've formed such a close professional relationship, and dare I say, friendship. I hope I've made him look like a genius! With all that said, it's time for some fun. Dah Na Na Nah Na Na Nah... Indiana Jones. Batman. And James Bond. (Sherlock Holmes and Harry Flashman came later.) Sure, it was the movies that did it. Roger Moore was my first Bond. Does anyone remember how many times For Your Eyes Only played on HBO in the 80s? One hundred, two hundred times? Though The Spy Who Loved Me was Sir Roger's favorite film, I think For Your Eyes Only is his best by a long way. Sir Roger had to act in that film, and he was terrific. Julian Glover (Grand Maester Pycelle, to you whippersnappers) was the evil Kristatos. Topol played Bond's ally, Columbo, with glee. Pierce Brosnan's late first wife, Cassandra Harris, was Columbo’s girlfriend. And Carole Bouquet's eyes still haunt and resonate. I didn't start reading the books until much later when I was in England. They still read books there! I had read Casino Royale long before the film came out in 2006. Live and Let Die and Moonraker were the next two in the series. Though I bought the rest of the books, I stopped reading them for a reason that escapes me. So when the lights went out in Cebu, I needed something to do, and the first thing I thought to myself was, "Start reading again ya big nonce!" Technology, though excellent for all its applications, dulls my imagination. Since it had been a while, I thought I'd start at the end. Octopussy and The Living Daylights is a book of four 007 short stories Ian Fleming wrote earlier but were published together in 1966. The stories are “Octopussy,” “The Property of a Lady,” “The Living Daylights,” and “007 in New York.” I had read “The Living Daylights” and “The Property of a Lady” already, but I thought it was time for a reread. I wasn't disappointed. If you were wondering who Oberhauser really was and how the film writers came up with Spectre's stupid plot, read “Octopussy.” It's an excellent short story about Major Dexter Smythe (Octopussy's father in the film) and his wartime treachery. Bond catches up with him years later, and the story reveals itself. 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The man 007 is tailing - and the reason for the tail - is so Cold War you feel positively Baltic reading it. “The Living Daylights” is the last story of Ian Fleming's they turned into a film. The short story on which the film is based is fantastic. The story makes up the "lady with the cello” assassination scene in the movie. Eon Productions, the company that produces the official Bond films, deserves credit for building a great movie around that little story. Incidentally, it's one of my favorite Bond films. Timothy Dalton was great in the film, but his colder, more mature Bond was too early for American audiences. Daniel Craig benefited from two decades passing, and 9/11 happening before the Yanks could handle that kind of Bond. Finally, “007 in New York” was Fleming's answer to his American critics. Fleming didn't like New York City - many Englishmen I know don't - and had written a negative review of the city in The Sunday Times. The story was a consolation to those Americans, and it's pretty amusing. A Feast For My Senses But the main course was From Russia With Love. President John F. Kennedy had named the book one of his top ten, and both Fleming and Bond became household names. I loved the film version. It's my favorite Sean Connery film, and perhaps it's still the best in the series. But I wasn't prepared for how quickly I'd turn the book's pages. It's easy to see why a man like Kennedy would love it. Anyone interested in the Cold War, espionage, and romance would love it. Ian Fleming isn't known as a great writer, but some passages clipped me around the ears. I rarely mark up a fiction book. There's too much frippery and silliness in many of the stories I read. But I felt like a Professor of Life named Ian was directly speaking to me. Maybe all good authors do the same. Let me share a few with you. When Bond was flying over the Alps to Istanbul for his rendezvous with Kerim Bey: Bond put the thought of his dead youth out of his mind. Never job backwards. What-might-have-been was a waste of time. Follow your fate, and be satisfied with it, and be glad not to be a second-hand motor salesman, or a yellow-press journalist, pickled in gin and nicotine, or a cripple - or dead. My goodness, I wish I read that 17 years ago... or earlier. Kerim Bey, Head of Station T (Turkey) on money: "Ever since Croesus, the first millionaire, invented gold coins, money has depreciated. And the face of the coin has been debased as fast as the value. First the faces of gods were on the coins. Then the faces of kings. Then of presidents. Now there's no face at all. Look at this stuff!" Kerim tossed the money over to Bond. "Today it's only paper, with a picture of a public building and the signature of the cashier. Muck! The miracle is that you can still buy things with it." I hasten to remind you this passage was written over 40 years before the euro would be introduced! Again, Kerim talks to Bond about the unknowns on their Orient Express train journey. Every damn quant on the planet should read this before they code a trading algorithm that could blow up the system. This is a billiard table. An easy, flat, green billiard table. And you have hit the white ball and it is traveling easily and quietly towards the red. The pocket is alongside. Fatally, inevitably, you are going to hit the red and the red is going into that pocket. It is the law of the billiard table, the law of the billiard room. But, outside the orbit of these things, a jet pilot has fainted and his plane diving straight at the billiard room, or a gas main is about to explode, or lightning is about to strike. And the building collapses on top of you and on top of the billiard table. Then what has happened to that white ball that could not miss the red ball, and to the red ball that could not miss the pocket? The white ball could not miss according to the laws of the billiard table. But the laws of the billiard table are not the only laws, and the laws governing the progress of the train, and of you to your destination, are also not the only laws in this particular game. That's one of the best explanations of unforeseen happenings or the consequences of Black Swans that I've read. And it's got a remarkable story around it, too. So I'll leave you here, to enjoy your holidays. I wish you and yours the happiest of the season's greetings. I can't wait to see you in 2022! All the very best, Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening [Whitelist Us]( | [Archive]( | [Privacy Policy]( | [Unsubscribe]( Rude Awakening is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. 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