Thursday Deposed Monarch Blogging

Ertugrul Osman V, head of the Ottoman Dynasty, is 93 years old and lives in Manhattan.

Otto von Habsburg, rightful Emperor of Austria, is 82 and lives in Bavaria.

Georg Friedrich Ferdinand, Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia, is 29 and owns a pretty castle in Germany. He is also 146th in line to the English throne.

Mariya Vladimirovna Romanova, 52, claims the throne of Russia, yet splits her time between France and Spain. Her claim, apparently, is contested.

The French throne is claimed by Henri Philippe Pierre Marie d'Orléans, of the Orleans family, and Louis Alphonse, of the Bourbon family. The former is 72, and the latter 31.

The Qing Dynasty has no apparent claimants.

Random Facts About John Milius

Auteur of such films as Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn. Noted right wing nutcase.

His favourites films are Howard Hawks' Red River, Gillo Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers, Raoul Walsh's They Died With Their Boots On, John Ford's The Searchers and They Were Expendable, Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch, Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurais, Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita, John Huston's The Treasure of Sierra Madre, David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia and Orson Welles' Citizen Kane.

The Battle of Algiers is particularly interesting, although not really all that surprising when you think about it.

Wrote "U.S.S. Indianappolis" scene in Jaws (1975).

One of my favorite scenes in all of film.

Is a personal friend of the Coen brothers and was the inspiration for the character of Walter in the The Big Lebowski (1998).

Well known, but fascinating nonetheless.

Milius has recently become productive for the first time since 1997, writing several episodes of "Rome" and producing a film on the life of Romulus Augustus, last Emperor of the western half of the Empire.

Dolls

This, really, is the most disturbing thing that I've read all year.

"He asked me if I could make him a silicone dog, because he was a breeder, and he didn't want to hurt his dogs anymore, he said. He talked like right out of the movie 'Deliverance.'" McMullen's surfer-dude lilt plummets into a pungent drawl, "'Aw, I don't want to hurt ma dawgs, I like ma dawgs ... kin you make me one so ah kin still use it fer the sex?' And when I realized that he was legitimate, I was shocked. And I just politely said no, I'm sorry, gotta go, click." Another prospective customer sent nude pictures of his 60-year-old mother, wanting a custom-built replica. Then there was the surgical pathologist who wanted a vagina duplicated from a specimen he had in a jar.

Yarr

Yarr.

And arggh.