Bond + dungus = Shane

The monumental snowpocalypto and Bond events of the last two days inspire the feature of this web gem.

He's baaaack!

Way back in August 2010, TCD broke the news of the lying liars at Entertainment Weekly and their wicked plot to convince espionage fans that the James Bond movie franchise had run its course. Read "Suck It, Entertainment Weekly" here.

EW finally overturned its verdict this week with the good news that the 23rd installment is back on track and will release November 9, 2012. Book it.

Daniel Craig as Bond and Sam Mendes directing. Apparently Mendes is an Oscar winner? Was American Beauty really that good? And when is Sean going to get an encore performance?

Bond Toys

The most obscure television channel in 'Merica picked up the slack on a Thanksgiving tradition gone missing. 007 was back in the Turkey mix as SyFy Network picked up the Bond Marathon over the weekend. This will crush Crash, but I gave up the standard Thanksgiving fare of Home Improvement in favor of Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig and, more importantly, their ladies. Bond's prowess with the female is rivaled only by his arsenal of gadgets and cars as well as his enemy's toys. One of the best is the yacht of villain Maximillian Largo from Never Say Never Again. The boat was called the Flying Saucer in the movie and in non-Bond real life was once owned by The Donald.





For Bond geeks, Flying Saucer is from the Italian Disco Volante, the name of bad dude Emilio Largo's yacht in the fourth Bond installment Thunderball. Never Say Never again is pretty much a remake of the 1965 original.

Ian Fleming could party

And now apparently you can, too. Fleming's Jamaican retreat, called Goldeneye, at which he penned 14 Bond books that became 18 Bond movies, is reopening as a resort with Fleming's actual residence as its focal point. Below is an old shot of the original house. It looks pretty freaking relaxing.



Access the hotel's seriously, seriously underwhelming website here.

Because the website is so weak, I thought I'd make up for it on my own as a lifetime Bond fan and drop some Fleming/Bond knowledge bombs.

While it's reasonably well known that Fleming named the Bond character after ornithologist James Bond (whose family first brought Fleming to Jamaica), according to an article in the UK's "Telegraph" (JVining?) the character inspiration was a real life British spy in the 1500s named John Bond. The real Bond family motto was "The World is Not Enough." Sounds familiar. Fleming heard tales of olde John while a student at the Durnford School. Place sounds like a prison.

After school Fleming joined the Navy and was quickly promoted through the intelligence ranks. In WWII he planned Operation Goldeneye to ensure that communication with Gibralta could be maintained in the event that the Nazis invaded Spain.

The first Bond book was published in 1953, Casino Royale.

The book entitled For Your Eyes Only also contains the story lines for A View to a Kill and Quantum of Solace. Octopussy and the Living Daylights were also one book.

As for his partying? I'll let the olde boy have the final say...

"I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much." - Ian Fleming

Suck It, Entertainment Weekly

In a world full of bad news, this might be the worst...



But at least Entertainment Weekly is the most illegitimate of the news sources TCD follows and this cover/story cannot be true. Otherwise it would be a disaster the likes of which this world has ever seen. Bond is the greatest thing that happened to movies, MGM, TBS and Spike TV all at the same time. Dudes around the world consider Bond to be a Keystone Species. That is, if the franchise goes, the world is over. So dudes of the world unite. Save 007. I would watch Timothy Dalton on repeat if that is what it takes to save save Bond. Seriously.