i’m watching an art theft documentary and they’re interviewing this art history professor from new york who was asked to go with the fbi to authenticate a rubens that had been stolen but it was a sting operation so they had to pretend like they weren’t the fbi, that they were some private buyer about to pay $3.5 million for it, and the fbi was like “this is a VERY delicate operation because you never know how they will react to what you have to say so let the agent do all of the talking, don’t say a word to anyone just nod if it’s the rubens, the last operation we did the guy in your position got shot because things went wrong in a second” and then it cuts to the professor’s interview and he says “i wasn’t going to fly down to miami to be a part of an undercover fbi sting operation to handle what could be rubens’s aurora and just NOT say anything. i was gonna have to ad lib a little” and then he tells the interviewer that when he & the fbi agent got to the hotel while he was examining the painting he started lecturing the other people, first on how badly they had wrapped it, and then about like how it had been painted, the history of it, what the subject was and what she was doing, etc etc, and he was like “i hadn’t taught a class on rubens in 15 years, so for me it was like being back in the classroom except my students couldn’t leave”
at one point during the deal the professor turned to the woman selling it and he said “isn’t this just the most beautiful rubens you’ve ever seen outside of a museum?” (because the fbi had told him earlier that this piece had been stolen from a museum) and THEN he said “where on earth did you get it from?” and the group of people the woman had with her was like taxidermy-fox.png but the woman was like “inheritance” can you IMAGINE the fbi agent about to have a fucking aneurysm when this random guy you’ve brought in just to nod if it’s the right painting not only starts giving an impromptu lecture but then he asks how they got it
omg BLESS YOU for the link and the time stamp that was as glorious as described by the OP
holy gosh. So the painting was wrapped in a manila envelope and the professor did NOT appreciate this:
I was so outraged that they would have been so casual about the handling of this picture that I immediately scolded them and said “This is no way to wrap a Reubens.” And I said “Next time be sure you have in wrapped up in bubble paper….They all were kind of nodding and smiling sheepishly.”
Tony Stark, Iron Man 1: A Soft Boy. Floppy hair and lil smiles. Obviously in love with his secretary and Just Trying To Do The Right Thing. Highkey Vengeful as fuck, many smouldering looks to the camera. You May Swoon.
Tony Stark, Iron Man 2: Dying. In what way, you ask? In All Ways.
Tony Stark, Avengers: Unresolved Sexual Tension With A 90 Year Old. (This is all the movie is.)
Tony Stark, Iron Man 3: Just a Tired old man. Will jump if you speak too loudly. Been through hell and talks about the war a lot. Should probably be on medication. Spiky hair 2 represent Spiky Lifestyle. It’s a thing.
Tony Stark, Age of Ultron: Oh Fuck robots everywhere fuck fu-
Tony Stark, Civil War: Is just trying his best. Best is no longer enough. Long-time bro and fuck-buddy on the DL, Captian America, leaves him for another mans. His eyes look sad a lot. Painful.
Peter Parker: Drags his feet into the living room of the compound and drops his school bag on the floor and proceeds to dump himself onto the couch. Face smashing into the pillows.
Tony Stark: strolls into the living room and notices Peter laying there with his head mushed against the pillows
Tony: what’s wrong kiddo? How was school?
Peter: (kinda muffled from the way his face is pressed up in the pillows) I totally failed my lab safety test today.
Tony: (kneeling down next to him) why? What did you do?
Peter: (turning to look at Tony) they asked me what steps I would take in the event a fire breaks out.
Tony: (eyebrows furrowed) and?
Peter: “large one’s” was apparently the wrong answer
First of all, “…they were surrounded on all sides by echoes and images of themselves, in a world where image and object had not yet torn themselves apart” is one of the most poetic phrasings I’ve ever heard.
Third, the original opens with: “Every so often, I get the urge to drag someone into a cave, and show them something unspeakable.”
I had another point, but it got lost in the artful prose of this article.
I feel like “every so often, I get the urge to drag someone into a cave and show them something unspeakable” is something that’s okay for a paleolithic cave art expert to say, but like, absolutely no one else
lmao i lost at least 7 followers after reblogging that…. anyway if you exclude nonbinary people you’re ignoring the white stripe of the trans flag; aces and aros are not straight and thus lgbt+ because theyre literally not attracted to the opposite sex, trans women are real women, and physical dysphoria is not required to be considered trans
me watching the terfs, aphobes and transmeds disappear from my follower count
