Link salad: Death, Japan, etc

( This got long. But dolphins! And space aliens! )

ETA: The Beatles Rock Band scored a sort of eyebrow-raisingly rapturous review from the Times; and this story merely confirms my suspicions that Spike Jonze is something like a genius, and that "Where the Wild Things Are" is the movie I most want to see this fall. Also, fur-covered novelization by Dave Eggers? Sign me up! There aren't enough fur-covered books in my life, that's what I say.