Ashley Morris is many things — accidental composer for pornographic films, tenured professor at a prestigious Midwestern university (and you right-wingers who visit, please don’t read anything into those two items in juxtaposition — the former is a hilarious story he can perhaps be coaxed to tell again, and the latter is entirely deserved. Besides, he teaches computer science, for the lovea pete), supporter of ground-breaking television.

It’s in the latter capacity that we praise him today. He’s set up Don’t Burn the Wire, to, ehh, encourage HBO executives to renew our favorite show for another season, preferably two. Go, follow instructions, tell all your friends, forward to TV writers for major newspapers, etc.

God bless my husband. I asked him, weeks ago, “What do you want for Christmas?” He replied, promptly, “‘Every Picture Tells a Story’ on CD.” You can either read this as a) typical baby-boomer nostalgia wallowing in itself; or b) a great idea. I’m going with B. I forget, as my distance from classic rock radio grows, how many great records were made in the ’70s by artists who swiftly devolved into bad jokes. Like: Elton John. Blood, Sweat & Tears. You can’t really call Neil Young a joke, but my fave albums are still “Neil Young” and “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere,” although I guess if you’re not counting “American Stars and Bars,” “Rust Never Sleeps” and about half a dozen others, you’re just not paying attention.

Which is the long way around to saying that before Rod Stewart became a parody of himself, he made a decent record or two.

“Every Picture Tells a Story” came out in 1971. I was 14, so you can’t claim my fondness for it translates to some wonderful period in my life. I was in junior high. Life hadn’t even started yet. And junior high isn’t wonderful in anyone’s life.

Ah, it was a nice holiday. You may have read about the Midwest’s surprise snowstorm a couple days out, which crippled much of the state and pretty much ruined my Columbus relatives’ celebration — my brother moved in with my sister, who at least had electricity, unlike approximately 200,000 others — but here? It was a blissful white Christmas, if cold. I got “Wolves Eat Dogs,” by my beloved Martin Cruz Smith, and I have to keep finding other things to do, so I don’t finish it too fast. The family present was the deluxe edition of Scrabble, and we all played a game yesterday, marveling over the swiveling board. Kate, at 8, is keeping up with her parents (with a little help). She also knows what an ibex is now, and how to spell “yacht” and “waltz.” Sooner or later I’ll have to teach her chess, and then become her punching bag at that, too.

My appearance here this week may be spotty. I appear to have a faulty Airport Extreme, which will have to be remedied, because while I can put up with a lot, I can’t put up with being un-wireless again. In the meantime, I liked G. Beato’s take on the Christmas wars, if you can stand to read some more. I can just about guarantee you, though, that his will be the only one where you’ll find “high definition ass love” and “William Donohue” in adjacent paragraphs. Enjoy.

Thank God for neighbors with wireless signals that drift over property lines. My b’band seems to be hosed again, so I’ll make this brief: I’m off for a bit of traveling and a bit of celebrating, but if we keep missing each other, have y’all a merry little Christmas. In the meantime, I think Lance has something sensible to say about the Christmas wars.

Today’s the shortest day of the year. In observance, maybe I should try writing some short sentences. Not fragments. These should be real sentences. Let’s see how long I can keep it up.

Not long.

Still, though, it is the winter solstice, and through a coincidence of sun time, I distinctly remember that I started back to work at my newspaper right around the time of the summer solstice. My last full-time day is Thursday, which means I did a six-month hitch as a copy editor, and all things considered, I can’t say it was a bad time. It’s not my calling, but it was a useful interlude. At times it was like being shovel man on a coal sluice. At times I think I actually turned a sow’s ear into, if not a silk purse, perhaps a pigskin purse. I saved a few writers from themselves, couldn’t save others, wrote some good headlines, learned a bit about sports. (Yes, I was the primary sports copy editor. Talk about the blind leading the…never mind.)

My fave headline was on a story about plans for Notre Dame’s basketball teams to play more games in Fort Wayne, because they get such good crowds here: Irish I may, Irish I might see the Irish here tonight

So it’s not HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. But I liked it.

My friend Adrianne did a summer internship on the Boston Herald copy desk. She received high praise for getting “sex phones” into a head on I-forget-the-story. Probably something about sex phones.

Headlines aren’t hard to write, but they’re hard to write well. You learn a new set of rules, and you find yourself developing strong opinions for entirely crackbrain reasons. If I weren’t already inclined to prefer the term “gay” to “same-sex” as it applies to civil unions, I would simply because it fits into a tight headline space. You learn to hate educators, because they prefer the multisyllabic and hyphenated over the simple. You develop pet peeves about certain words — “mull” and “probe” and “feds.”

But you really hate page designers who favor one-column heads. The Barry Bonds grand-jury testimony story had a one-column head order. He didn’t say he used steroids, he said he used substances, and he didn’t know what might have been in them. “Substances” didn’t fit in one column; “steroids” wouldn’t have been accurate. So I ended up writing:

Bonds:
I used
creams,
oils
blindly.

Sounds like he got a rubdown in the Tenderloin. I’ve had better days.

OK, enough copy editing. Soon I’ll be an unemployed writer again, and won’t that be fun.

Because it’s the solstice, and because we can always use a new holiday, go read the NYT story on Festivus, the “Seinfeld” holiday that makes as much sense as anything. Turns out there really is a Festivus:

The actual inventor of Festivus is Dan O’Keefe, 76, whose son Daniel, a writer on “Seinfeld,” appropriated a family tradition for the episode. The elder Mr. O’Keefe was stunned to hear that the holiday, which he minted in 1966, is catching on. “Have we accidentally invented a cult?” he wondered.

“Most of the Festivi had a theme,” he said. “One was, `Is there a light at the end of the tunnel?’ Another was, `Too easily made glad?’ “

And I thought my family was strange.

Oh, and thanks to David Edelstein, film critic for “Fresh Air” and Slate, who gave us a little shout-out today. He’d asked for the world’s worst lines from biopics, and in reporting the original results (scroll down), neglected my personal favorite. If you want to know what it is, you’ll have to hit the first link.

But it was in an Oliver Stone movie. That should tell you something.

I can’t recall what I was thinking when I rose from our basement bathroom at 4:30 a.m., freshly showered and ready for my allotted 15 breakfast minutes, but it was probably something like three more days. Three more days of rising in the middle of the night and showering in the basement so I don’t awaken my sleeping family with my morning ablutions. The dog was waiting on the basement landing, a sign he needed to take an early-morning evacuation, probably a result of all the chicken skin he cadged out of last night’s entree.

He stood up, barked once, looked toward the back yard, a very Lassie pose.

“I’m letting you out, but keep your mouth shut,” I said, opening the door. He bolted out and barked again, but in an abbreviated, “I know I’m supposed to be quiet, but this is important” way. A woman was somewhere outside, crying for help.

I stepped outside. The noise was coming from somewhere catty-corner to our back yard, close by. “Help, help, please, somebody help me,” she said. I ran to the fence and called out, “What’s wrong? What do you need?”

“Help,” she called again.

I ran back to the porch and opened the storm door. It sucked the back door shut. Locked out. At 4:30 a.m., with someone nearby crying piteously for help. In my slippers. Temperature: 9 degrees.

Well, this sucks, I thought, knocking on the door, which made the dog bark, which made all the other dogs in earshot bark. No response from inside, more moaning for help somewhere in the dark. Thought: My house is for sale. There’s a key box on the front door. And I remember the combination!

Ran to the front door. Tried the combination. It didn’t work. Shitthebed. I started ringing the doorbell repeatedly. “Ohhhh help, won’t someone help me?” came the voice from the dark, followed by the comforting sound of multiple Chevy engines bearing down from two directions — the help. Ran to the curb, pointed the cops in the direction of the voice, came back to my front door. Rang again. Because while I no longer felt the need to call 911, I was still in my goddamn slippers and it was still 9 degrees. A hibernating bear came rumbling down the stairs and opened the door.

“Lock yourself out?” he said.

“You might say,” I said, running to the back to let the dog in and figure out what the hell. By now you could hear sirens, see the smoke rising against the sky. A house fire. “Husband’s still inside!” one of the police yelled at an arriving fireman. A fatal house fire, I thought, going back into the kitchen. For some reason, at that moment the kitchen cabinet popped open and out slid the roasting pan from last night’s chicken, clattering on the tile floor. If a nine-foot python had emerged from the sink drain locked in mortal combat with a rabid raccoon, I don’t think I would have been surprised. It was that kind of morning.

I skipped breakfast, called the metro desk like a good soldier, picked up a dozen doughnuts on the way in. The best thing about working for a newspaper? By the time I got to work, I knew the most important part — it wasn’t a fatal fire. An hour later, when the morning cop reporter arrived, I learned that the husband wasn’t inside, he had been out walking the dog when the fire started. (Yes, at 4:30.) It was the second police brief.

I’m always struck, when things like this happen, what a rich beat the cop shop is, at least for a reporter who likes to tell good stories. Every brush up against police news is like a glancing blow from a freight train (at least, I hasten to add, if you’re essentially a law-abiding person). Car accidents, crime, fire — these are huge events in people’s lives, and they’re frequently good stories. One morning, years ago, we had another fire in the morning here in the Fort. A passing meter reader spotted smoke, called it in and ran back to the house, where a woman dropped two young children out of a second-story window into his arms.

“Now you!” he shouted. She was already being overcome by smoke, fainted and fell out the window. The meter reader managed to break her fall and she survived with a few scratches. We got the barest details into a tight paper on deadline. The metro editor wandered over and asked the reporter who covered it for a follow for the next day’s paper.

“Why?” the reporter asked. Like: Who gives a crap? To him, it was just a no-injury fire. I thought it was a tremendous yarn, the hero meter reader who saw a 100-pound woman falling onto him and did not flinch.

Many years ago, a columnist friend of mine wrote a wonderful piece pointing this out, that every day a reporter would call “slow,” people are born, die, fall in love, divorce and do other things that don’t make the paper, or if they do, are summarized in 6-point type on an inside page of listings.

It’s all about the story.

We sold our house. Verbally, anyway.

Also, I’m opening the Wire thread early, because the season finale’s tonight, and I fear the next few days will be wack, work/chores-wise.

So to get you started, here’s a snippet from the David Simon Answers Your Questions thingie on the HBO website:

This is amazing. True story:

Melvin is now very active in Bethel A.M.E. church and outspoken against the
drug culture. It seemed perversely appropriate to cast him therefore as the
Deacon. He seems real and credible to me in the role. Having paid his debt
and served his sentence, I wish him well and look forward to getting an
expensive lesson in billiards from him.

I was right: There was a memo on the subject.

We bid on Door No. 2, a perfectly acceptable house that is, as a very serious plus, far less costly than the one we really lusted for. Alas, it was not to be. We crunched the numbers until they lay in a panting heap at our feet, and ended up with: We could do it, but it will take every dime we have. I’ve always tried to make the required things in adult life — job, house, parental responsibilities — fit the more fun parts of adult life — being able to freely curse in one’s office, taking your kid to a bar, and having a house that we own, rather than vice versa.

Thanks for all your support. Until this morning, I thought we could swing it. Then the Realtor called with his best estimate of the annual property taxes on the perfect place; they would be, almost to the penny, precisely what we pay in a year for our principle, interest, taxes and insurance on the house we live in now. Just for the taxes. Urp. That finished it off.

The runner-up is in the same school district. The house is lovely, and looks just like the one I grew up in. It’ll do fine.

And now I’m sick of the whole topic. I think we kissed 24 frogs in two days, and got two princes. I’m sick of the smell of paint and hearing, “It wouldn’t be a bad place, if you redid the kitchen.” Bleah. Offer’s being made as we speak. I’ll keep you posted.

My senator is on NPR as we speak, too. He’s taking the brave, radical stand that the war in Iraq is going badly (although he was an early supporter). He keeps calling the interviewer by name — pronouncing it the way she does, “Mee-shell” — something that always gives me the creeps. It’s so Dale Carnegie, although one of my best friends does it all the time, and for him, I think it’s a memory trick he uses. However, my senator was once brilliantly described by one of his (losing) opponents something like this: “You get the idea if you peeled off his face you’d find wires underneath.” Dead on.

Oh, but it was a good day. I think any day in a week where we get to watch yet another meltdown of a family-values conservative is a good one. I’m speaking, of course, of Bernie Kerik and, to a lesser extent, his ex-girlfriend, Judith Regan.

One of these days, you think, there’ll stop being such a good living in family-values hypocrisy, but not likely soon.

Speaking of which, I liked this Salon piece on the latest O’Reilly crusade, saving Christmas. You’ll have to watch an ad to read it, but it’s worth it:

William Donahue of the arch-conservative Catholic League insisted, “Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes.”

No wonder he’s always yelling. What a tool. But Salon is correct: It’s like there was a vast right-wing conspiracy memo on the subject. Last month: Alfred Kinsey was a sick, sick pervert. This month: Christmas is being crushed by anal sex-lovin’, Catholic-hatin’ JEWSJEWSJEWS.

More tomorrow.

This week’s open Wire thread. Oh my, but I think we should all start by reading some of David Simon’s postings on the HBO Wire forums:

Here’s the thing and I say it all the time and no one seems to believe it but the writers: To make a world credible and to make a story meaningful, the story must be pre-eminent, not the character. … We aren’t interested in preserving characters or featuring them more because the audience wants it. Forgive me, but the audience is like a small child. If given what they wanted every day, it would be ice cream and cake and seven hours of daytime television. Because the audience of a television show, by and large, feels an allegiance to what came before on a serial drama, to the scenes and moments and characters that are familiar or that pleased them in the past. On Homicide, everyone seemed to want every episode to end with Detective Pembleton going into the interrogation room and winning a case by an act of intellectual prowess. But having told that story, neither Andre Braugher nor the writers wanted to beat it to death. A story told is a story over and so if you don’t want to watch The Wire because anything familiar and pleasing is no longer available to you as a viewer in the amounts you desire, then okay, I understand. But you were never really watching The Wire then, in my opinion. That’s not to convince you that you shouldn’t like what you, or want what you want, or make your own choices as to what stories you wish to enjoy on television or in any other medium. But all of the angst over please don’t kill Avon, please don’t kill Stringer, please don’t kill Omar, please don’t kill Marlo, please don’t let Kima die or let McNulty get even with Rawls or whatever — what can I say? You can’t petition this show on behalf of character. We don’t care about character except to the extent that good characters serve a story well. Story is all.

And to think I said, “Please don’t kill Omar.” Now I feel bad.

But what an episode. Stringer…(strangled sob). Discuss.

Too tired to blog much of anything at the moment. Why? Just returned from a whirlwind two-day house-hunting trip to the D. You could duplicate the experience by driving 3.5 hours and then spending the next 48 hours climbing in and out of a car, followed by another 3.5 hours home. That Kate managed this trip without misbehaving significantly is only proof she is an angel sent from heaven.

We left the dog at home. Good call.

The good news: We found a house. It’s perfect in nearly every detail.

The bad news: It’s tens of thousands more than I wanted to spend. Not to mention the taxes.

The next two days will be spent figuring it out. Any advice? Leave it in the comments. P.S. I’m leaning toward buying it anyway.