When Philip Pullman wrote <I>His Dark Materials</I>, he thought he might have written a story that would appeal to a "a few clever kids and a few intelligent adults." The series has been translated into 40 languages and has sold 15 million copies. If he was that wrong about that, he's probably wrong about what it's about, too.

Needless to say, I'm not in London waiting in line at O2 arena but that doesn't mean my thoughts, like those of about every other music fan on the planet, aren't turned to what's going to happen this evening when Led Zeppelin ends two decades of silence and lets it rip in what's being billed as a one-off show for charity.

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<A HREF="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7127463.stm">New research</A> seems to reveal that the loss of "white matter" because of aging is what causes us oldies to get all addle-pated. I'm not sure I buy the premise that young brains are automatically more "in sync."

As further evidence that the American empire is on the decline, I submit the 8:00 set Friday night at the Blue Note on West 3rd Street in New York City, where three front-and-center tables of Europeans—twenty young to middle-aged, professional-looking men and women, who all seemed to be part of the same tour group—made more noise at a jazz club than I think I’ve ever witnessed. Shushing and shaming, from me and others in the audience, had but short-term impact; they’d quiet down for a few minutes and listen to the trio on the bandstand (more about them, in a moment), but then got back to the main business of yakking, chuckling, and generally treating the whole proceedings as the soundtrack to their merry Manhattan vacation and us poor jazz fans as mere props in the spectacle.