When you read as much news as I do, you quickly have to institute your own filtering devices to set aside the stuff that isn’t interesting or relevant. Generally speaking, I ignore the politics of states where I don’t live, haven’t lived and never expect to live, with exceptions made for good stories, amusing characters and whoppin good yarns (hello, Texas!).

So I don’t really know what to think of the governor of New Jersey declaring himself a poofter, other than a few general impressions, among them:

1) While I’m pleased he came out, even just a few steps ahead of a process server, I’m never fooled by these guys who claim to have just, oops, “discovered” they’re gay. I guess all people are different, but gentlemen, please. Give us some credit.

2) I’m really glad I’m not his wife, but I guess that’s a rock/hard place situation for anyone. You have to sit there and look supportive. Think of Mrs. Kobe; at least she got a big rock on her finger for that duty. All Mrs. New Jersey will get is a divorce settlement that will leave her feeling like the world’s biggest fool.

Or maybe not: As I’ve said approximately a million times, the only people qualified to judge a marriage are the people in it, and sometimes not even them. Mine’s fine, but maybe tomorrow it won’t be. It happens.

OK, then.

Bloggage: Jon Carroll got linked to by Romenesko for today’s column, which if you read it you’ll see is filled with nostalgia for a certain journalistic good old days. But I liked its conclusion:

This wallow in nostalgia was fun, but I do have an actual point to make: If you get a chance to be where stuff seems to be happening, take it. Someone told me last night that Berlin is the new Paris; go to Berlin. Go to Shanghai. Collect a whole lot of memories — you can’t sell them on EBay, but they do sustain you through the harder times to come.

And it doesn’t matter how old you are. Adventure is an equal-opportunity employer. Bangalore is waiting for you, brothers and sisters. Or, of course, you can stay here, because we, too, walk among giants; you have only to open your eyes.

True. Latuh.

Don’t want to load you down with NYT links today, but I thought this essay in Sunday’s book review was necessary. Laura Miller writes on the dearth of serious fiction about what we do for a living, i.e., work. (Although, I must say, she takes the long way around getting there.) This is something I’ve noticed for a while — how often main characters are either married to money or inherited money or do something so vague for their money that we don’t even know what it is. And, face it, for most of us, work blots out the sun. You’d think, in this ambitious age, there’d be more of it in our fiction.

In the annals of human-interest stories, one hardy perennial is this: People Who Screw Up and Don’t Understand Why, Even Though Everyone Else Does. That’s probably why I plowed through this fairly lengthy profile of Tammy Thomas, a disgraced, banned-for-life cyclist trying to rebuild a life wrecked by some fairly obvious doping activity.

(I say “fairly obvious” if only because Thomas looks so drenched in steroids she’s thisclose to sprouting a penis, although that’s probably unfair — I don’t know what she looked like when her training-table diet was strictly over-the-counter. In any event, she’s mistaken for a man regularly.)

Nevertheless, the profile is an interesting picture of a different sort of drug addiction — not to euphoria or oblivion, but winning:

“At some point, the athlete has a choice to stop or keep going,” she said. “But you start to think that if you don’t take something, you’re going to lose. And who’s going to cheer for someone who finishes last in a heat?” She added: “Athletes don’t really care about their bodies. They care more about winning.” … Thomas doubts that anyone in the Olympics is clean because every athlete has “access to a whole medicine cabinet full of drugs.” In 1999, for instance, she said she injected herself with an iron supplement for suckling pigs that she had bought from an online veterinarian. She could not find injectable iron for humans, which is supposed to boost performance. Five years later, at the injection site on her buttocks, there is still a lemon-size black-and-blue mark.

Sad, sad story.

At some point when you’re preparing for company, it doesn’t seem worth the trouble. Who gives a rat’s ass if the damn sink is clean?, you think. Don’t listen; this is the devil talking. In truth, a clean sink is everything your guests want, even though it appears they don’t notice. They do, on a subliminal level. Subliminal is good; it’s what we want when we entertain.

All this by way of saying that supertalented mystery novelist and internationally acclaimed beauty Laura Lippman swung through town Friday on her book tour, and had dinner here at NN.C Central. Emma joined us. We had ourselves a time. We talked and talked and talked, and although I’d like to reproduce at least some of the sparkling conversation, I won’t. Some people like their privacy, and also, I had some wine, and my reporting wouldn’t be reliable. But it was fun, sort of like the Algonquin Round Table with beet salad, and it made me wonder if I oughtn’t run a salon for touring writers. (I could serve my beet salad, which did what it always did; went all the way around the table and ended up back at me, more or less untouched. Beets are a hard sell.) Next up: Hank Stuever? It could happen. Come on down! The guest room sheets are still unslept-upon, and I could make my beet salad.

Anyway, buy Laura’s book, seen here:

It’s very good.

After so much fun, when Saturday brought another in a lovely string of days, I knew we had to seize the moment, so we headed lakeward. I paddled back to the Puddle to see my friends the swans, now down to two cranky parents and one teenage cygnet. The other was nowhere to be seen. A hungry pike? A coyote? Nature, red in tooth and claw, isn’t saying. Whatever happened, it wasn’t because the parents weren’t on the job, because those are some on-the-job swans; one hangs back to threaten intruders with his terrifying, six-foot wingspan. I didn’t do anything to convince him I was friendly, because a healthy distrust of people is good for a wild creature.

And just so I did the full sublime-ridiculous continuum, I took Kate to the sandbar for some swimming later. The sandbar is a spit of shallow water that sticks out from an island in the lake, where people go to stake their boats and tip the brown bottle. I’ve learned to watch out for the rental pontoon boats, and wasn’t disappointed — as we paddled up, a tattooed specimen with what can only be described as a mohawk mullet pointed and hooted, “I need me one-a them! I gotta gets me one-a them!” Whether he was talking about the kayak, me or the 7-year-old in the bow I have no idea; we parked well away. This is, I realize, all payback for the years I spent as a dissipated young adult partying on boats in the U.P. (Is there photographic evidence? Oh, hell yes.

Bloggage:

Confused about the drug war? Jon Carroll explains it all for you.

When Rick James died, I knew the WashPost would do a special appreciation of him, and I knew who would write it. And I was right.

Safari keeps crashing, so I’m gonna go. More tomorrow.

…no time to talk about it. At least, no time to talk about it AND make a stab at getting six hours of sleep, which I’ve vowed to do. So, we’ll see you here tomorrow, which is maybe Monday afternoon, maybe Monday evening.

So does that mean I can sign off…

…’til Tuesday?

Voices carry.

Bye.

The GOP may have all the money in the world, but the Dems have better music. From the NYT, the lineup for a loosely organized tour supporting Democratic candidates:

Representatives of the artists’ coalition said they planned about 34 shows in 28 cities on the tour, called Vote for Change. In Ohio on Oct. 2, for example, Mr. Springsteen, R.E.M., John Fogerty and Bright Eyes are to perform in Cleveland, while the Dave Matthews Band, Jurassic 5 and My Morning Jacket are set to play in Dayton. Meanwhile, Pearl Jam and Death Cab for Cutie are to take the stage in Toledo, and John Mellencamp and Kenneth Edmonds, known as Babyface, are to play in Cincinnati.

Oh, but don’t worry, the Republicans have a lineup, too: Mr. McKinnon added that Mr. Bush had drawn his own support from the entertainment world, citing stars like Lee Ann Womack, Kid Rock and Jessica Simpson.

Rock on.

The background: Katherine Harris, the former Florida secretary of state, the woman who oversaw the 2000 recount, the one who buys mascara by the 55-gallon drum — yes, that one — is running for re-election. And she’s running off at the mouth. You can follow that link, but here’s the gist: While making a campaign stop in Florida, she said the U.S. has thwarted “at least 100 attempts” at terror attacks in this country since September 11, one of them just 100 miles down the road in Carmel, where “a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested in the plot and that explosives were found in his home.”

Carmel’s a suburb of Indianapolis. The plot, Harris said, was to blow up the power grid of the whole area.

Anyway, as near as anyone can figure, no one knows the first damn thing about any of this, including the sheriff and the governor. Of course, as Harris said, this was “classified” information, “although obviously not classified to me.” (Or anyone else, at the moment.)

It seems to me there are a number of conclusions you could reach about this:

1) Katherine Harris is a damn fool; or
2) Blow up the power grid in Indianapolis? What, Louisville wasn’t important enough?

In other crazy-lady news at this hour, Mary Kay Letourneau is out of prison. “Free to love again,” one of my colleagues sighed today. Indeed.

Some years ago, because I was bored and there was nothing else in the video store, I rented “Showgirls.” (My God, I just realized Roger Ebert gave it two stars. TWO stars. Must have gotten all those twinned aereolae on his brain, poor boy.)

Anyway, I rented “Showgirls.” Never have I been so regretful that it was just Alan and me in the room that night. Not that Alan isn’t fun to bounce wisecracks off of, but that’s a movie that requires a houseful of company, well-seeded with the wisecrackiest gay men you know. My friend Ron, with whom I once had a series of bad-movie dates, would have peed his pants over it. At every turn in the story, when the question is: Low road? Or lower road? “Showgirls” just takes a flat-out dive for the one below that, and it is just a hoot. When Elizabeth Berkley licks the pole! Ahhhhhh!

Now Jon Carroll has finally gotten around to seeing it, and I’m pleased to say he adds significantly to the “Showgirls” canon. Describing a …well, I guess you’d call it a “love” scene:

Kyle has this very large house out in the desert, and behind the very large house is a very large swimming pool, and after a night of flirtation, Kyle and Elizabeth find themselves making the showgirl with two backs in the shallow end.

And this goes on. And on. And on. It goes on beyond all reason; you could go get popcorn at the beginning of the scene and still get back in time for the final 45 thrashes.

So who wants to have a “Showgirls” party? Invite me!

I have an iPod with more than 700 songs on it (using a mere 20 percent of its capacity), a record collection with thousands more and probably half a dozen radios lying around the house. And yet, the song I can’t get out of my head today is on none of them, only the hard drive in my head: Dean Martin’s “You Can’t Love ‘em All.”

The song starts with a long intro, with Dino and three different girls:

Hello, doll.
Hello, doll.
Eight?
Date.
Hello, doll.
Hello, doll.
Ten?
Amen.
Hello, doll.
Hello, doll.
Twelve?
Twelve-fifteen?
See ya then!”

The gist: So many ladies, so little time.

I never actually owned this record. My friend Paul did, and it was one of those that made me wonder why people waste their time on Weird Al Yankovic and Dr. Demento. Found humor is always more amusing.

Summer departed for a few days, then returned with the proverbial vengeance — back to the high 80s. I celebrated with a 90-minute jaunt up the Rivergreenway to Memorial Stadium and back. It was Amateur Sunday, with the usual crowds of meanderers, helmet-less goofs and others who just…got in my way as I made my Lance-like way along the stinking sewers of the St. Marys and St. Joseph rivers. How dare they slow the progress of the shrieking white-hot flash that is the Nance When Her iPod is Pumping Just the Right Tune? What is it about exercise that makes people aggressive? Is it the adrenaline, or is maybe a little testosterone mixed in there, too? Never in my life have I gotten runner’s high, but often I’ve thought that if anyone ever tried to mess with me while I was flying along, I would rip his heart out, show it to him, and then eat it raw.

There’s a cheery thought with breakfast, eh?

Two things:

Dong Resin was gone so long I took him off my bookmarks. Now he’s back with the usual genius: I would vote for Sharpton, however. In a heartbeat. We’d be the cool country again in about a week. Non-white countries would take us serious again, the others would at long last shut the f*** up. What would France have to say to us under the Sharpton regime? Nothing, that’s what. That should have been Al’s campaign button : “Let’s Scare The Tits Off Of Everyone Else.”

In the more responsible part of the commentary corral, read Slate on M. Night Shamalamading-dong, and impress all your friends.