formerly the head of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri Project, which is far and away the world's largest collection of ancient papyri, is accused of having stolen some of the Project's papyri and having sold them to the Green Collection, a Christian non-profit organization which runs a museum dedicated to the Bible.
This is really horrible. I hope Obbink proves to be innocent. Stealing and selling ancient artifacts in his care is just about the worst thing a papyrologist can be imagined to have done. Criminal charges have not yet been brought against Obbink, but -- well, it looks really bad. The only possibilities I can imagine are either that Obbink is guilty, or that he has been very skillfully framed. His claim is that he's being framed. We'll see.
I dreamed last night that there was a suspected link between Hollywood and the Obbink scandal. In real life, I am aware of no such suspicion. In my dream, I was selected to serve as a liason between papyrologists and Hollywood during this difficult time, presumably because I know a few words of Latin and have acted in some plays at the community-theatre level and lower.
I dreamed that I was at a Hollywood fundraiser, in order to reach out and establish trust with some Hollywood big-shots, and that my mission wasn't going well. People in Hollywood were very nervous about the scandal, nobody knew me, and nobody trusted me. Antonio Banderas was staying right at my elbow. Apparently he had been given the assignment of keeping an eye on me. His hair was shoulder-length, he was wearing a tuxedo with a white jacket, and he was not overflowing with affection toward me: not smiling, not talking more than he had to, just staying close, as if he were guarding me in a basketball game.
Then all of a sudden he noticed a counter where they were giving out... well, it seemed to be some sort of confection which doesn't exist in real life, as far as I know. It was halfway between a cinnamon roll and a cookie. Ooh, Antonio wanted one of those. One or maybe even two. I darted over to the counter, came back with two lusciously-glazed cookies and gave one to Antonio. He finished it quickly, and I gave him the other one. This definitely cheered him up, but did not make him friendlier.
Then I noticed that the back of his white jacket had been drawn on with a felt-tipped pen or magic marker. Some sort of goofy parody of tailor's markings, with great big dotted lines. I couldn't imagine that Antonio would be happy about this. I could easily imagine that he would blame it on me.
If this weren't enough, Antonio informed me that Salma Hayek was about to arrive, and that she had some sort of official message for me. This made me more nervous than the magic marker on Antonio's otherwise-immaculate white jacket. I was afraid that Salma would find me unattractive. Especially when I was standing so close to Antonio. I wished that I had some time, a few months, to work out really hard and diet very strenuously, before meeting Ms Hayek for the very first time.
But Salma never showed, and after a while Antonio went away.
The benefit was being held in a brand-new multiplex cinema which was interchangeably ugly with every other brand new ugly multiplex cinema anywhere in the world. The entire dream was inside the multiplex, and there was no way to tell whether we were in LA, New York, Duluth, London, maybe Dubai, or somewhere else. I'd heard jet-setters complain about how every new airport in the world looked like every other new airport. It occurred to me that not only did all new multiplex cinemas look the same -- they all kind of looked like airports.
Movies were showing on all the screens throughout the event, with the lights on in the screening rooms, and with no walls between the screens. You could see several screens at once. I assumed they were going to put the walls in before the thing officially opened, but I didn't know. On one of the screens was one of the big-budget animated movies, of which there have been so many in the past couple of decades that for me they have all became a blur. I thought I heard George Clooney's voice coming from that screen, playing a squirrel or a rabbit or something. I happened to turn around at that moment and see George Clooney himself striding down an aisle, all grey: grey hair, grey tux, grey shoes and socks, looking like a gosh-darn movie star. "Hey George, you in this one?" I shouted, waving my head at the screen behind me. George smiled tensely, recognizing me, said, "I think so," and kept moving.
I sat down and tried for a couple of minutes to involve myself in the animated movie, until I noticed a couple of guys sitting behind me who looked like goons. They weren't wearing tuxes, they weren't even wearing suits. One of them had biceps as big as footballs coming out of the sleeves of his black T-shirt. And they sounded like goons, too. Given the general air of hostility toward me at the place, instead of waiting to see whether these particular goons were going to come after me, I went for a walk, looking behind me all the time.
Back out in the lobby, a short guy in an orange suit had three guys spread-eagled against a wall and was frisking them. I asked him to show me his ID. He didn't look like a cop to me. Maybe that's just because I'm old, and there used to be more requirements for cops to be tall. But the guy didn't show me any ID. And I was frustrated, what with huge movie stars icing me, and goons and whatnot. So I wrestled the guy to the ground and searched him, found no badge, no gun, no cuffs, no law-enforcement ID of any kind, nothing. I told the three guys spreadeagled on the wall that I was pretty sure they were free to go.
The short guy in the orange suit kept laughing at me the whole time, a creepy heh-heh, heh-heh laugh.
I was going to leave the building and go for a walk, but I woke up instead.
No comments:
Post a Comment