maryte wrote: 
processing...

Now this is a good thread...

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
3. The short-lived Video of the Year Grammy (soon split off into what are now Best Music Video and Best Music Film) was awarded only twice. Its first recipient was the now sadly deceased Michael Nesmith (1942-2021) — yes, the Monkees guy — for Elephant Parts (1981), a massively influential VHS compilation of comedy sketches and what we today call music videos. (Canadian cult rockers The Tragically Hip named themselves for an Elephant skit.) Nesmith pioneered the format in his earlier Nickelodeon program PopClips (1980-81), which Wikipedia describes as "the direct predecessor of MTV," and continued it in Michael Nesmith in Television Parts (1985). The latter, incidentally, marked the TV debut of '90s SNL staple "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey."

The Wronger Box publishes a few trivial tidbits that are usually "hmm I had no idea okay" and sometimes "holy smokes that's cool."

2. Flaming June (1895) is the most famous work of Sir Frederic Leighton (1830-96), who in 1896 became the first Brit elevated to a lordship specifically on the strength of painting (and promptly died the next day, resulting in the shortest-lived peerage in UK history). Its pose was modeled on Michelangelo's Night (1526-31) from the Sagrestia Nuova in the Medici Chapels.

June's provenance is a bit of a mystery, as it was a big deal in the early 20th century but then abruptly vanished, only to turn up in the early 1960s hanging over a chimney in some random house. Shortly thereafter a young Andrew Lloyd Webber supposedly saw it on sale for a mere £50 but was stymied when his grandmother refused to lend him the money to buy it.

The devalued canvas was eventually purchased in Amsterdam quite cheaply by Luis A. Ferré (1904-2003), a Puerto Rican industrialist who would go on to found the pro-statehood New Progressive Party and serve as Governor of Puerto Rico from 1969 to 1973. Ferré was in Europe to build out the collection of the Museo de Arte de Ponce (MAP), a then-fledgling institution that now occupies a building designed by our old friend Edward Durell Stone and is considered one of the finest art museums in North America.