Of the many strange and improbable events in the life of Pablo Picasso, The Statue Affair is the one that everybody thinks you're making up when you tell them about it. Picasso believed that, by handling works created by artists, you drew into yourself shamanistic energy from them, particularly ancient pieces, little handled. Seriously. So, one day Apollinaire's borderline psychopathic lover/secretary, Gery Pieret, heard Picasso's admiration for a set of Iberian sculptures currently stored in a back room of a museum. So, he got himself some large trousers, a very big coat, walked over, stuffed the statues in his pants, and walked out with them.

Picasso accepted them, obviously knowing that they were stolen, but he felt that, since the statues were Spanish, and he was Spanish, he had more right to them than the museum, so he withdrew their energy and then dumped them in a cabinet. Nothing came of it for several years until the Mona Lisa happened to get stolen, and Pieret used the opportunity to approach various newspaper editors with stories about his own brilliant thievery of years past. Pretty soon fingers got pointed at Apollinaire and Picasso for their roles and they headed out to throw the Iberian heads in the nearest river, but didn't because there were too many people around. Apollinaire got pinched and interrogated for days, since every time he made up a new story about what was going on, and finally Picasso came in too and flatly denied Ever Having Seen Apollinaire, and stuck to that story, screwing over his friend to give himself a bit more of a chance at survival.

As we'll see in coming chatter boxes, this is not unlike Picasso. As a human, he was an egotistical, self-centered, misogynistic, mean-spirited, superstitious ass, but there is no questioning the magnitude of his presence in the history of art, and so I hope you will find it to be delightful having him as a black hat in the coming months!

- Count Dolby von Luckner