OK, this is just weird. Remember how on Monday we told you about how Nate Silver had sort of spoiled the Oscars for everyone in New York Magazine (but not really because we all know who is winning everything anyway)? Now Jeffrey Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere points us to Pete Hammond’s latest Envelope column, which suggests some major upsets of the Best Picture variety thanks to a strange whisper campaign that’s a brewing among the olds.

We wonder what Mr. Silver would make of this intel:

“Another eerie sign came this weekend when three, count ‘em, three (older) academy voters whose opinions I respect all said the exact same thing to me at different times. They weren’t voting for ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ because ‘it’s just not an Oscar picture.’ I thought it was very strange that I would suddenly be hearing virtually the same kind of reasoning out of the mouths of three different academy members, but there it was. All of them, by the way, had cast their Best Picture vote for ‘Button’. Dare I say it? A SIGN????”

Well, it’s hard to take anything you write seriously when you use so many question marks. We’re going to assume that his post is meant to be cheeky (or an attempt to find something to write about when everything seems so tidily sewn up for a Slumdog sweep?) because we can’t abide by Benjamin Button winning any award unless Fincher goes back and gives us our old-man baby. Or a hologram Brad Pitt accepts the award as Benjamin when he’s seven.