Liner Notes

Every year, private collectors buy and sell some of the world’s most valuable pieces of art. Picasso, Rembrandt and others have passed hands in the auction houses of the super rich. But you don’t have to have deep intellectual or artistic taste to want to spend a lot of money in an auction house; you could just buy ELVIS’ soiled underwear.

At an auction in early September, several items from the King went up for grabs, including a pair of stained underwear worn at a show in 1977 and a Bible cherished by Mr. Presley for most of his life. The Bible was given to him in 1957 by an aunt and uncle. No word on who bought him the drawers.

The Bible sold for £59,000 (about $94,000) to an anonymous call-in bidder. This was over double the reserve price set on the item. One reason that the item fetched so high a price is that the pages had annotations by the King about the King of Kings. That’s meta.

The underwear, however, failed to meet the reserve price of £7,000. The sad part is not that no one was willing to fork over £7,000 for some used underwear worn by Mr. Viva Las Vegas himself; it’s that somebody out there was willing to spend £5,000 on them. I’m pretty sure they have vending machines in Japan for this kid of thing, bud.

Cee Lo Green has been keeping busy in the entertainment industry. Once merely a voice, now he’s entering his third season as a coach on The Voice. He’s also recently signed a deal with NBC to create new projects for the network, including a scripted show that is somewhat based on his life: Everybody Loves Cee Lo? The show, in the earliest possible stages of development, would be written by Ali Leroi (Everybody Hates Chris) and would highlight his home life and his music career. He’ll probably have a zany best friend.

There haven’t been many plot details released (because frankly the show is little more than an idea at this point), but if I had to guess I’d say it’ll unfold something like this: Cee Lo will see someone driving around town with the girl he loves. Conflict and comedy will ensue from that point forward.

Dr. Dre is now the wealthiest man in hip-hop thanks in no small part to his headphones, Beats by Dr. Dre. The headphones, which now account for more than half the sales of high-end headphones ($100+) in the United States, have given Dre the cash boost he needed to unseat Jay-Z, who previously topped the Forbes list. Jay-Z, it appears, should’ve been watching his throne.

HTC, the mobile electronics company, paid 300 million for a controlling interest in Dre’s company last year, of which the Dr. himself collected 100 million. This also proves the importance of a doctoral degree; runners up on the list like P. Diddy, Jay-Z, and Lil Wayne do not have the credentials of the good Dr. Dre.

They say great minds think alike. Genius is drawn to itself. Hemingway and Fitzgerald were friends. That’s certainly the case with E.L. James, writer of the popular BDSM trilogy 50 Shades of Grey and the members of the Black Eyed Peas. In an interview with The Sun, James said that when she was writing the now famous sex scenes in the trilogy, she would often be listening to sexy songs to psyche herself up. “I have songs that I write sex to,” she said.” One of them is The Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Sexy.’ That is a very sexy song.” Yes, in order to write sexy things, James decided to listen to “Sexy” by the Black Eyed Peas because it is sexy. It’s a difficult line of logic to follow, but the results are apparent. One in every five books sold this year was from the 50 Shades trilogy. Though the song itself does not appear anywhere in the trilogy, there is still time to add it to the film’s soundtrack.