Catching up with January New Yorker Magazines, I've just read a longer than seems necessary article about Van Gogh's famously mutilated ear. A pair of German art researchers have written a book to convince us that Gauguin actually was the one who did the cutting - with his fencing sword. The immediate reaction is "so what?"

I've been having the same reaction when "news" pops up on my AOL homepage with a picture of some actor or actress saying, "remember X from X TV show from the '60s or '70s?" Not only do I not remember, I wonder whether the apparently now retired actor wants a trumped up new 15 seconds of attention reminding the world that he or she was once considered glamorous.

I make that connection because the final paragraph of the Van Gogh article observes that in his last year or so he continued painting furiously with the insane conviction [he had been in and out of asylums] that someday his garish colors and somewhat cartoonish portraits would be appreciated. Unlike most people who harbor such delusions, he was correct. Meanwhile those remembered or not remembered actors are not [I assume] insane and have probably made lives for themselves without such illusions of glamor.