Musicologists have discovered a previously unknown piece by J. S. Bach. That doesn’t happen every day.

And it may never have been played. Pretty cool.

Musicologists have discovered a previously unknown piece by J. S. Bach. That doesn’t happen every day.

And it may never have been played. Pretty cool.

I have a Chase credit line. I logged on to the site to pay my bill, and find a message:

ATTENTION! Your account is over its credit limit. Please pay now to protect your credit privileges. Please call us at 866-252-5780 immediately.

Why is my account over its limit? Because they charged me a thirty-five dollar late fee. Why did they charge me a thirty-five dollar late fee? Because I pay it on line, and Chase won’t tell you when your payment will actually post, so it’s pot luck.

I call the number, am put on hold for several minutes, and then finally get someone. She asks me what she can do for me. I explain that I’d like to get my fee waived.

“Oh, we don’t do that here. For that, you have to call 800-551-8340.”

“But this is the number that it said to call on the web site.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but that’s the number you have to call.”

So I call the other number, and wait again. I finally get a message asking me to input my sixteen-digit number. Of course, since it’s a credit line, and not a credit card, the number has less than sixteen digits. I enter it anyway.

“We’re sorry, but we don’t recognize that account number.”

I then get a person.

“What’s your account number?”

I read it to him.

“Is that a credit card account?”

No, it’s a credit line account.

“We don’t handle those here. I’ll transfer you over.”

(Note, I get no number to call if the transfer doesn’t work–I just get to go through the process again).

Ringing again.

“If you want to use our speech recognition system, say ‘yes.’ If you want to use our touchtone system, press ‘1’.”

I press one, which takes me through a menu of options, none of which are “If you’d like to waive your late fee, because our sucky web site is uninformative about when your bill will actually get paid when you pay it on line, and furthermore can’t even provide the right number to call about it, please press…”

I finally hear an option to talk to a representative, and hit it.

“Please enter your account number, followed by the number sign.”

I do this (this is probably the dozenth time I’ve done it on these two calls).

Long pause.

I don’t know if this is the exact wording of the next words I heard, but it’s close:

“If you think that we’re ending this call by mistake, please feel free to call back.”

Dial tone.

It would never have occurred to me to try to make this stuff up. No one would believe it.

There’s nowhere near as much hoopla as there was last year, for the sixtieth anniversary, but sixty-one years ago today, in bad weather in the English Channel, Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy, with huge casualties. They established a beachhead, however, and it was the beginning of the liberation of Western Europe from Nazi fascism. In light of the recent vote in France over the EU, it might be useful to read what I wrote last year, on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Paris, about the post-war quagmire there.

[Update at 9:45 AM EDT]

David Galernter had some thoughts last year on the hypocrisy and lack of knowledge of the baby boomer generation when it comes to honoring the “greatest generation.”

OK, so I don’t like boxing movies, but what’s not to like about a flick about one of the great figures in aviation history?

Well, a few things, actually. I saw The Aviator last night on DVD. It was a watchable movie, but despite his best efforts, and he is a good actor, I just couldn’t buy DeCaprio as HH. He just seemed too young, and I doubt if Hughes’ voice had that high a pitch.

Kate Blanchett captured the voice and mannerisms of Kate Hepburn pretty well, but she didn’t really physically resemble her, so that was a little jarring as well. On the other hand, I didn’t immediately recognize her as Kate Blanchett, so that’s something.

The thing I liked least about it though was too little emphasis on his technological achievements, and too much on his mental debilities. It was hard to believe that he could go from urine-collecting naked nutcase to someone who embarrassed a Senate Chairman in a hearing just a few days later. But that’s probably just my bias–perhaps Scorcese emphasised (and overdramatized) what worked best for a mass audience.

I’ve been reading a lot of good reviews of Cinderella Man, but sorry, I have not just zero, but negative interest in boxing movies, regardless of how good they are. I don’t watch live fights, couldn’t imagine actually paying money to do so, and in general have no desire whatsoever to watch one man pummel another. I have not seen any of the Rocky series (partly for that reason, but also partly because I’m not a big fan of Sylvester Stallone). If you tell me that a movie features boxing, it’s an automatic turnoff to me.

I wonder how out of the norm I am.

John Podhoretz has an amazing story about Ted Turner. Well, at least it would be amazing if it were about anyone other than Ted Turner…

Winds of Change has a Memorial Day roundup.

…we band of brothers.

Apparently, there were more Englishman, and fewer French, at Agincourt than mythology about it would have us believe:

There are people building and flying new Messerschmitt ME-262s. Looks like it would be a fun little airplane, albeit a little pricy to operate.