The London Times reported today that Brian Grazer, Oscar-winning producer of The Da Vinci Code, American Gangster, and A Beautiful Mind, is looking for a new "personal cultural attaché". This from an email advertising the job: “This person is responsible for keeping Mr. Grazer abreast of everything that’s going on in the world, political, cultural, and musical. They’re also responsible for finding an interesting person for Mr. Grazer to meet every week, an astronaut, philosopher, monk, someone who’s made an impression in their field”. My favorite part: “Mr. Grazer may ask you to read any book he’s interested in and tell him about it.” It’s come to this, folks: the rich hiring others to read books for them. A walking, breathing Cliff Notes for the elite. Go figure.
The job pays $80K but don’t get your hopes up. You’ll be competing against others such as Ed Cooke, 26, a philosophy and psychology grad student at Oxford University who recently failed to make the cut. Among his other qualifications, Cooke came in 7th in this year’s World Memory Championships (the winner correctly remembered the order of every card in 54 inter-shuffled decks that he had only looked through once), speaks three languages fluently, and studies the "philosophy of Rugby".
The Occasionally-Examined Life 