La Venganza Será Terrible (oficial) · Alejandro Dolina

LVST 7 de abril de 2026

·1 hr 6 min·5 clips

Louis XIV bought 500 jars of a beauty cream called 'Aphrodite and Faon,' whose label promised that the beauty it provides and the years it removes come not from nature but from the art of the gods.

1. La Venganza Será Terrible, April 7 episode, presents a comic essay on how to recover a girlfriend who has left you, followed by a history of 17th-18th century European beauty customs. 2. Alejandro Dolina hosts with Barton as co-host; production by Maike Iglesias and Eugenia Gorostiza; historical research by Cora Barengo; sound by Miguel Vincent. 3. The episode's opening segment uses the frame 'as Lenin's lover said, what is to be done?' to launch a catalogue of recovery strategies — all analyzed for absurdity and ultimately dismissed. 4. Asking 'are you sure?' fails because she has already decided; composing an impromptu tango fails because she is 'tired of your songs'; a 'reptile gesture of humiliation' fails because it makes the abandoned party less desirable, not more. 5. The hanging-from-a-lamp-post strategy is elaborated: the lamp post does not care, the new boyfriend appears and asks why you are there, and Dolina concludes 'I had not even hung myself yet and you already found a replacement.' 6. A 'fictional girlfriend' strategy is proposed: hire a friend to walk past the ex's house saying kind phrases loudly, to provoke jealousy — but Dolina acknowledges this more often causes the ex relief than regret. 7. The essay escalates to the notary public solution: if the girlfriend left because you sell churros and she moves in intellectual circles, spend 15 years studying to become a notary ('escribano'), then pass her house with a bronze nameplate hanging around your neck. 8. Barton warns that in 15 years the ex may have 'decayed'; Dolina responds that the true egoist only worries about the decay of his objects of desire, not about his own. 9. The 'bolillero' segment advises keeping a small drum of conversation topics for use with romantic partners: Dolina demonstrates by pulling number 24 — a north-African wind that buries people in sand — as a topic to introduce mid-silence. 10. When a woman says 'I want to talk about us,' the essay warns this is not a farewell but an entanglement; Dolina and Barton debate how to respond to 'what am I to you?' concluding that quoting Wittgenstein about games of words is the most effective evasion. 11. The beauty history segment opens with French whitening creams: 17th-century French courtiers used mixtures of cucumbers, sulfur, dill, and lime, suffering such severe burns that they had to disappear for months to recover. 12. 18th-century itinerant vendors sold 'Aphrodite and Faon' cream promising beauty 'not from nature but from the art of the gods'; Louis XIV bought 500 jars and had them applied nightly. 13. The mythological origin of the product name: Faon was an old, ugly, poor boatman who ferried Aphrodite (disguised as an elder) without charging; she rewarded him with an ointment that made all women of Lesbos fall in love with him. 14. Parisian women used 'mouches' (artificial adhesive moles) as a coded social language: left eye = engaged, right eye = seeking, chin = married, eyebrow = widowed. 15. Fashion escalated to women wearing eight or nine mouches simultaneously; preacher Massillon delivered a court sermon ending 'the only thing missing is to put moons on the chest,' after which several ladies did — creating 'la lune de Massillon.' 16. Louis XIII established the fashion of men's wigs; to avoid sourcing grey wigs from actual grey-haired people, the fashion of powdering wigs white was invented. 17. The segment on Fernando of Naples notes the king attended his wife's harp concerts without bathing, and a maid was hired to walk through rooms exhaling perfume as there were no vaporizers. 18. A comedic set piece stages Dolina calling the fire department while his house burns: too polite to say 'fire,' he asks the major's name, inquires about the fireman's pole, and debates what words to use before conveying the address, as firemen prepare to deploy. 19. The episode closes with a philosophical reflection by a co-host on braids as cultural symbols: Chinese mandarins' long queues indicated rank, sailors' braids had their own code, and the Patricios regiment's braids were symbolically charged enough to cause imprisonment at the Braid Motel (later the National College). 20. The episode's final segment is 'I am dating one' — advice to women on how to identify a 'blue prince' vs. an ordinary man — presented as a comic reversal of the opening men's-perspective segment.

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