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German scholars think they have deciphered the 3600 year-old sky disc of Nebra. I'll believe almost anything, so long as James Spader doesn't smack himself in the forehead and say, "I just remembered—I do speak ancient Egyptian!"
Happy Friday, lovely. I'm sorry for missing you yesterday. I started on several different entries, actually, but none went where I wanted. Which isn't necessarily bad — entries often take unexpected turns — but these entries, in particular, simply seemed not right enough for this space.
And, you ask: This entry does seem right enough?
Yes, I answer, it does. Obviously. It's here — isn't it? — and, so, it must be right enough. And of the others, yesterday's un-entries? Of the others:
One entry had to do with a performance of many golden voices in one golden…
Lovely essay on Greene's friendship with a genuine Foreign Office undercover agent. Peter Edmund James Leslie was an ex-Anglican priest who converted to Catholicism, owned shares in a diamond mine, worked as an arms salesman, and served as a Vice-Consul—in others words, he was the very template of a Graham Greene protagonist.
This almost 10-year-old Billboard article is still timely. The next time a record label whinges about how the major labels are important cultural institutions preserving our musical patrimony, I'm going to email him this. Grrrr.
On the eve of the release of a new DVD edition of Empire of the Sun, J.G. Ballard muses on how strange it can be when Hollywood options your life—or something like it.
My friend Jeff Wong sends this "Beatles Anomalies List," suggesting that it's the audio analog to other obsessions for geeks who need a life—people like me, in other words.
Apparently there was some sort of awards ceremony in LA last night, but news of it has only just reached Brooklyn. I stopped caring about the Oscars years ago (pretty much around the time I became a voting member of NARAS and realized how little the Grammies had to do with musical quality), but I never cease to be amazed by how much they seem to matter to other non-film-industry people. Mark Evanier has a nice essay about the post-ceremony media frenzy—and he totally pwns Tom Shales.