Vi King

I Say, Yes, Ursula Andress
You know, the bikini babe from "Doctor No" who played Honeychile Rider, and whom, in the novel, dealt with a local sex pest by salting his bed with a poisonous spider.
     Of course, that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything, which is pretty much par for the course here at BOOUM! - I had to get the blog name in, just in case you'd already forgotten what we're called.
     Okay, Art?

This, ladies and gentlemen, is Victoria King.
(Hence, Vi King)

     What?  You were expecting rampaging Norsemen with horned helmets running amuk (which is mixing cultural metaphors, since "amuk" is from the Indonesian, I believe*) amongst their medieval compatriots?
     No.  As you can see, Vi was in "Code of Silence" and also "The Thin Man", but because she was a definite bit-actress, that's the only photograph I can find of her.
     And that's the Intro for today.  Excuse me whilst I go put out my lunch.  Motley, take over whilst I'm gone and put on a display of stunt-juggling.

Just the thing, motley.

Thrasybullus
It's been a while since I mentioned this ancient Greek chap, but all you need to know is that he came to prominence after Athen's disastrous expedition to Sicily.  A group of oligarchs, whom we would know by the modern title "backstabbing twods", took advantage of the general bad state of things in Athens to mount a coup, getting rid of the democratic government.
     Enter Samos.  NO!  That's not ancient Greek for "Sam"; it was a city-state.  Art?

To mid-starboard

     The oligarchs in Samos had been tipped off by the Athenian tyrants, except the Athenian army in garrison there found out and defeated the plot.  They then got rid of their own generals and elected four who were believed to be far more democratically-inclined; and Ol' Thras was one of them.  This is not quite how you expect armies to go, but the ancient Greeks were really out there.  Not only did they want democracy back, they were still fully committed to fighting the Spartans, who must have been rubbing their hands with glee at what had occurred in their enemy's capital.
     The Frightfully Democratic Army's next move was to return to Athens, where the tyrants were mis-behaving awfully.

Athenians having a good argument, as usual

     I think that's enough of Ol' Thras.  One can only take so much Hellenic internecine squabbling.

"GRILSE"
Yes yes yes, the tale of another crossword clue.  What else do you want, a picture of the soggy landscape beyond the back door?  The weather is so bad there will have been flood warnings, I guarantee it.  Which would suit a grilse just fine.
     The clue was "Girls upset by eastern fish (6)".  Of course I got it, because I'm so wonderfully aware wordwise.  Art?

Grilse

     Apparently a grilse is a kind of flibbertigibbet salmon, one that has migrated out to sea for a single winter, decided that the briny deeps are not for it, and has returned home to freshwater rivers, the flighty fish -

Grilled grilse

      - where it becomes someone's dinner.  Should have stayed at sea, mate.  I doubt they taste any different from any kind of salmon, but I can stand to be corrected if you know better.

Weird Films That Were Never Made
I refer you back to that BBC source article, about 6 films of surpassing weirdness that never got made, and considering some of the films I've seen, that has to be quite the metric.
     Their first mention is for Ol' Stan, that being what we at the blog call Stanley Kubrick, and a long-cherished project of his, about Napoleon.  Art?

It never happened
(Sigh)

     Conrad hasn't checked up on the background details of this project, though doubtless Ol' Stan had done a ton of background research for it.  The thing is, doing something like this on an appropriately epic scale would have been prohibitively expensive; the Beeb item mentions in passing the hiring of 40,000 Romanian soldiers to play entire armies.
     It would have looked great, of course; we have "Barry Lyndon" to judge by for a film set a good eighty years earlier.  Art?

Dig the groovy tricornes
(Their hats, for those unclear)

     I wouldn't say this film concept is weird so much as it's Incredibly Ambitious, and because Nappy is widely viewed as a villain across Europe - with the exception of France - it might not have had a large audience**.  

Narnianimals
That is to say, the animals of Narnia.  Conrad was reminded of these yesterday whilst having a look at the works of CS Lewis.
     In case you have been living on the Moon, or a submarine survival complex, for the past 70 years, let me explain that the land of Narnia is inhabited by animals that are able to talk.  Art?

They can all speak, all of 'em

     The thing is, they aren't restricted to just saying "Want food!" or "Need toilet!" or "Human tasty!" - actually strike that last - and can carry out sophisticated conversations about the Consolations of Philosophy and Lithium Wafer Battery Design, which means that, in addition to having profound language skills, they also have a commensurate IQ.
     Okay, consider Reepicheep, who is a large mouse***.

Ol' Reepi, with mighty human for scale

     So, he has an intellect quite the equal of a human, especially the human Eustace shown above, all crammed into a mouse-sized brain?  How does it all fit?
     I know you're going to respond "Magic!" which is all well and good, yet we've not explored the limits of this speech thing.  Take the grilse above, for example; does it lie there on the grass choking out "Please! <hack hack> Please - <hack> don't eat me!"

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS FISH?
(And, if found, would you consider eating him with a side order of chips?)

     And, on that tasteless yet tasty comment, we are done!


*  HOORAH!  Yet another word not derived from Greek or Latin.  Excuse my exuberance.
**  Allegedly, Steven Speilberg is looking into it.  Look very hard, Steven!
***  This might be an euphemism for "A rat"