6 August: Andy Warhol

Born this date in 1927 was Andy Warhol, best known for creating iconic Pop art paintings of Campbell's soup cans and Marilyn Monroe in the 1960s, and saying that everyone in the future will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

1. His parents, Andrej and Julia Warhola moved to America from Slovakia. His father was a construction worker, who died when Andrew was 13.
2. His interest in art dates from when he suffered from a nervous disorder as a child and was sometimes confined to bed for long stretches. He spent the time listening to the radio and drawing, and collected pictures of film stars to place on his bedroom walls.
3. He was a devout Roman Catholic and attended mass every day. Not only that, but he also carried a rosary and volunteered at a church soup kitchen.
4. He was co-manager of the band Velvet Underground, as well as designing album covers for them. He also designed album covers for Aretha Franklin and The Rolling Stones. His cover for the latter’s album, Sticky Fingers, was nominated for a Grammy award. Two members of the Velvet Underground released an album dedicated to him, called Songs for Drella, Drella being a nickname used by Warhol’s friends, a portmanteau of Dracula and Cinderella.
5. His silver hair was fake. He started to losing his hair in his 20s and wore the silver wigs to cover his baldness. He had more than 40 wigs, made from hair imported from Italy and made by a wig-maker in New York. One day, a girl snatched his wig off his head. Warhol wrote in his diary, "I don't know what held me back from pushing her over the balcony."
6. He nearly died in 1968 when a radical feminist author with schizophrenia shot him. Her name was Valerie Solonas and he knew her because she appeared in one of his films, I, a Man. She had some radical ideas about overthrowing the government and getting rid of men altogether, and decided that Warhol was too controlling, so she shot him. He survived although he spent two months in hospital. It could be argued that she did kill him eventually since the heart attack which killed him in 1987 might have been due to complications from the earlier wound.
7. He used to pee on some of his paintings, and encouraged his friends to do so as well. The paintings in question are a series called The Oxidations, which were created using Copper paint. Urine would oxidise the paint, changing the colour and texture. As everyone’s diet, and therefore their wee, is slightly different, he could get a variety of effects by getting other people to urinate on his paintings.
8. He co-wrote a cookbook. It was called Wild Raspberries and was a collaboration with his friend Suzie Frankfurt. Recipes included Omelet Greta Garbo (to be eaten alone), Roast Iguana Andalusian, and Gefilte of Fighting Fish, and it included 19 original Warhol drawings. Even so, it didn’t really sell.
9. His famous paintings of Campbell’s soup tins came about when art gallery owner Muriel Latow suggested to him that he should paint "Something you see every day and something that everybody would recognise. Something like a can of Campbell's Soup." It has also been suggested that he chose the cans as a subject because his mother used to feed the family Campbell’s soup and keep the cans to make metal flowers from.
10. He was an avid collector of all manner of things, including 19th century paintings, airline menus, unpaid invoices, Pizza dough, pornographic pulp novels, Newspapers, stamps, supermarket flyers, cookie jars and wigs. He had so much stuff that he completely filled his house and had to put some of it into a storage unit nearby. His collection included several works of art and a mummified human foot from Ancient Egypt.

See also: Andy Warhol quotes.

Killing Me Softly

Sebastian Garrett is an assassin. It wasn’t his first choice of vocation, but nonetheless, he’s good at it, and can be relied upon to get the job done. He’s on top of his game.

Until he is contracted to kill Princess Helena of Galorvia. She is not just any princess. Sebastian doesn’t bargain on his intended victim being a super-heroine who gives as good as she gets. Only his own genetic variant power saves him from becoming the victim, instead of Helena. 

Fate has another surprise in store. Sebastian was not expecting to fall in love with her.

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