Man, Detroit is a trip some­times. Big story today in the News, about the train wreck wait­ing to hap­pen with the city’s absen­tee bal­lots. It’s the usual mis­ery:

Among find­ings by News reporters were bal­lots cast by peo­ple reg­is­tered to vote at aban­doned and long-demolished build­ings; a mas­ter voter list with 380,000 incor­rect names and addresses — includ­ing peo­ple who have died or moved out of the city; and a prac­tice of hand-delivering bal­lots from senior cit­i­zens and dis­abled vot­ers that were filled out in pri­vate meet­ings with Currie’s paid elec­tion work­ers. If the may­oral race came down to a close vote demand­ing a recount of absen­tee bal­lots, the result could be chaotic.

But this is the we’re-not-in-Kansas-anymore graf:

Cur­rie refused to explain any of the prob­lems uncov­ered by The News or out­lined in court cases. She, along with her deputy, Ver­non Clark, denied there are any prob­lems with the vote in Detroit.

“Prove it,” Cur­rie said. “P-R-O-V-E.”

Long week­end, although pro­duc­tive. Alan got the garage rearranged and I got a jump on the base­ment. (It was Take Respon­si­bil­ity for a Domes­tic Dump­ing Ground Sat­ur­day here, evi­dently.) Then we picked up Kate at yet another birth­day party — they never end — and headed off to the lit­tle d, Defi­ance, Ohio, for the annual Hal­loween parade.

I can report: It was long (90 min­utes), but there were march­ing bands, Shriners in Cor­vairs and much candy to be had. And while there were too many bor­ing entries, at one point I saw a man approach­ing at the front of yet another unit, blow­ing a ram’s horn.

“This is what? Defiance’s newest syn­a­gogue?” I asked. Hardly. It was some evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship, which irri­tated me. Give the Jews back their sho­far and get your butt out of the Hal­loween parade, I say. If you’re not will­ing to march in a devil mask and show you have an actual sense of humor, vamoose. But it was late in the parade and that might have been the 40-degree tem­per­a­tures talk­ing.

Also, I couldn’t help but notice how many home health-care equip­ment ser­vices there are in Defi­ance. (Their entry tended to be peo­ple rid­ing motor­ized scoot­ers in for­ma­tion.) But then, we were sur­rounded by smok­ers — even out­side, it was like sit­ting in a bar — and so oxy­gen deliv­ery is prob­a­bly a sta­ble busi­ness.

So, the blog­gage: Ali, bomaye! On this date in 1974, Muhammed Ali beat George Fore­man in Kin­shasa, Zaire, aka the Rum­ble in the Jun­gle. Not only that, it sparked a great doc­u­men­tary, “When We Were Kings,” which I can’t rec­om­mend highly enough.

Neglect your web­site for a while, and your karma comes look­ing for you. Peo­ple start send­ing you things that remind you how kind the uni­verse can be, some­times.

Behold, my very own Nancy doll, seen here with her accom­pa­ny­ing signed, suitable-for-framing Nancy comic strip. The doll is signed, too, although you can’t see that (you have to push up her dress; yes, she’s wear­ing undies). Thanks to reg­u­lar reader and some­time com­menter First-Time Caller, who is also Lance Mannion’s sister-in-law, and a very nice per­son who is evi­dently acquainted with Guy Gilchrist, who inher­ited the strip from the ghost of Ernie Bush­miller, or some such.

I’m so touched. My very own Nancy! I plan to cud­dle her when­ever I need an idea. I’m surre she’ll bring me luck.

Thanks, First-Time Caller.

So we’re hav­ing an excit­ing elec­tion sea­son here in the the GP Geto, aka Da Woods. By “excit­ing,” I mean “con­tested.” That doesn’t hap­pen much here, I gather. Not only does the 15-year incum­bent mayor face a chal­lenger, there are some­thing like three can­di­dates run­ning for a sin­gle open coun­cil seat. The may­oral chal­lenger came to a neigh­bor­hood pic­nic last sum­mer, so I got a sense of her, but every­one else is terra incog­nita.

Of course, as a new­comer and a jour­nal­ist, I’m look­ing for­ward to cov­er­age in the local weekly. Two weeks ago, they informed us the endorse­ments would be com­ing in the fol­low­ing issue, and then dropped this bomb: “It’s our pol­icy to endorse incum­bents except in extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances.” Ohhh-kay. That’s help­ful.

So the endorse­ments came out, and guess what? There were no extra­or­di­nary cir­cum­stances. Of the three rook­ies shoot­ing for the open seat, their pick was the guy who most reminded them of the incum­bents. What’s worse, in dis­miss­ing the may­oral chal­lenger they made vague ref­er­ence to an inci­dent that hap­pened some years back, with lit­tle expla­na­tion of the event and none of the con­text.

Because no one ever moves here, I guess, and so no need to give any back­ground.

Thank God for the Free Press. All you gotta do is explain it.

And as “con­tested” as things get here in the ‘burbs, it’s noth­ing com­pared to Detroit. You want to know what the race card looks like? Like this.

If you grew up in cen­tral Ohio, I guar­an­tee that you read the head­line for today’s entry with a lit­tle swing in your head. That’s because it was part of a jin­gle for a local car­pet store: Call Mr. Edwards, call Mr. Edwards, call Mr. Edwards — at Rite Rug! It ran for years and years and years on Colum­bus TV and radio sta­tions, the singers always kick­ing in at the very end of the ad, fol­lowed by the phone num­ber.

(Here’s how old I am: When I first heard this com­mer­cial, the num­ber was CApi­tol 8, etc. If I sat and thought about it for a while, I could prob­a­bly remem­ber the last four dig­its.)

There was another guy on local TV in Colum­bus, who pitched for Giant Don’s Fur­ni­ture Ware­house. My dad sold fur­ni­ture (whole­sale; he was a man­u­fac­tur­ers rep), so I paid par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to these. I won­dered why dad’s sales pitch never included ponies, which you got if you bought a “living-room suit,” or a sec­ond room of fur­ni­ture for only NINE CENTS. That’s right, I said NINE CENTS.

Well. Wher­ever you grew up, you can describe the local com­mer­cials. So I was inter­ested in this Wash­Post story on how even locally pro­duced com­mer­cials are fad­ing away.

Home­grown com­mer­cials — for per­sonal injury lawyers, voca­tional schools, regional car deal­er­ships and the like — are still numer­ous, of course, but a dis­ap­point­ing sobri­ety and pro­fes­sion­al­ism has crept in over the years.

I was par­tic­u­larly sorry to read that one of Kate’s favorites is, alas, not local:

And then there’s a whole group of com­mer­cials that only look local. Those Empire Car­pet ads with the lost-in-time jin­gle (“800 . . . 5-8-8, 2, three-hundred! Em-pire. Today!”) and the amaz­ingly anti­quated ani­ma­tion come from a com­pany based in the Chicago area that uses the same ads in more than two dozen cities.

Delib­er­ately badly made, local com­mer­cials have a way of scorch­ing their way into your brain, either through hor­ror or rep­e­ti­tion. When Colum­bus got cable (and our house­hold didn’t), we were intro­duced to Kash Amburgy, of Kash’s Big Bar­gain Barn, South LEB-A-NON, A-hi-a: “Remem­ber, if Kash don’t sell, Kash don’t eat!” We made a pil­grim­age there when I was in high school. A lesser Amburgy gave us a plas­tic bicen­ten­nial candy dish, in honor of our long trip. (If he knew why we were so gig­gly, he didn’t let on.)

The story’s a great read, but I have to say, some local TV ads endure in their hor­ri­fy­ing glory. You need to see some of Geof­frey Feiger’s ads to believe them. And the other personal-injury lawyers who adver­tise are pretty amus­ing, too. I never knew dog-bite set­tle­ments were such big busi­ness here.

Mr. Edwards has a web­site now. Share your local-TV sto­ries in the com­ments.

One final note: I HAVE to shop at this place:

Among other images, Ranger Sur­plus uses a brief stock clip of a nuclear explo­sion in its com­mer­cials. Its spokesman, Cap­tain Happy, wears sun­glasses and a Smokey the Bear hat and reminds view­ers “to carry a knife. . . . You’ll never real­ize its many uses until you have one on you!”

The chain’s unusual ad slo­gan — “This store is the cat’s ass” — was a bit of a fluke, says Kramer. A cus­tomer uttered it spon­ta­neously dur­ing the tap­ing of a tes­ti­mo­nial ad five years ago, and it stuck. Now it’s a badge of honor, appear­ing on T-shirts and bumper stick­ers. “Peo­ple stick their heads in the store and shout it out,” says Kramer proudly.

Well, I would, too.

Let’s check the weather fore­cast for today. Was it over­cast, chilly and spit­ting rain? Check. Was there a brisk wind blow­ing out of the north­east with reg­u­lar leaf-scattering gusts? Check. Did the mer­cury barely top 50? Oh, yes.

Well, sounds like a great day to take the boat out of the water, then!

So that’s what we did. Truth to tell, it wasn’t too bad. We are out­doorsy peo­ple, and a spit­ting, chill rain is noth­ing. We sucked it up and froze to death. And at the end of the day the Mary M was dis­masted, stripped of its fit­tings, put on a cra­dle and ready to be tarped and tucked away for a long winter’s nap.

Next spring: A new name. The lead­ing can­di­date: Lush Life.

I noticed lots of boat names today. Motion Granted — unimag­i­na­tive lawyer at the helm. D-i-i-i-i-g! Hello, fel­low jazz fan. And, of course, more evi­dence lots of peo­ple in the world hate their jobs: Ther­apy. Quit­tin’ Time. And, of course, Blowin’ Dead­line.

So that was today: Chapped hands, wept-off mas­cara and cocktail-party-level soci­o­log­i­cal obser­va­tions.

The other day, at a photo shoot, I kicked back with the photographer’s new issue of Esquire, and read most of the story ref­er­enced here. Yes, it was called “Idiot Amer­ica,” and I put it down think­ing “I wish I’d read this in a news­pa­per, but of course that will never hap­pen, because news­pa­pers don’t want to offend any­one, espe­cially peo­ple who would be con­sid­ered idiots under the terms of this arti­cle.”

You should read it. It’s about evo­lu­tion, sorta.

Late news tonight: Rosa Parks has died, proof that big things fre­quently start small. RIP.

One of my old N-S sources/connections/lunch dates checked in via the com­ments on the N-S piece, below. Hey, Pete! Good to see you here. I haven’t seen him in years, and he brought up one of the sin­gle most amus­ing sto­ries that either of us lived through. He was an actual par­tic­i­pant; I just read about it in the paper and laughed my butt off.

Pete was an offi­cer in a ser­vice club that planned to bring a cir­cus to Fort Wayne in 1986 — the Toby Tyler Cir­cus. Their posters said, “a tra­di­tion since 1881,” which, I con­tend, might lead a rea­son­able per­son to believe the Toby Tyler Cir­cus had been in more or less con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion for a cen­tury. In fact, the Toby Tyler Cir­cus had been around for about five min­utes, and laid claim to “since 1881″ on this basis: The book “Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks With a Cir­cus,” about a lit­tle boy who runs away to join one, had been pub­lished in 1881.

This was a sure sign of trou­ble. Unfor­tu­nately, it’s one nobody saw until it was too late.

The Toby Tyler Cir­cus was trav­el­ing east, and leav­ing a trail of unfor­tu­nate inci­dents in its wake, sto­ries our very bright and enter­pris­ing police reporter, David Allen, noticed on the wire when it was still near the Illi­nois line. There was a bleach­ers col­lapse, show can­cel­la­tions, the sorts of things that, if they involved more bare breasts, might have made a halfway decent episode of “Car­ni­vale.” Unfor­tu­nately, they just made hay for David, who started writ­ing sto­ries tak­ing note of the approach­ing, delam­i­nat­ing cir­cus, which was sched­uled to play in Fort Wayne in just a few days.

These sto­ries, as you might imag­ine, didn’t please the ser­vice club or the peo­ple who were in charge of mak­ing sure the show went on safely — police and fire offi­cials, who began telling David they were sure inter­ested in inspect­ing the cir­cus’ equip­ment and per­mits and all that stuff. Mean­while, the venue that was sup­posed to host this affair decided you know, we don’t need this trou­ble and can­celled their reser­va­tion. This was, like, the day before the show.

The cir­cus arrived in town, trailed by David, the fire mar­shal, var­i­ous other author­i­ties and, of course, Pete. The road manager/ringmaster kept say­ing, “Don’t worry, the show will go on! We’re a cir­cus, we make peo­ple happy! It’s our tra­di­tion!” Which I think is when the “since 1881″ busi­ness was revealed, but I’m not sure. (I’m rely­ing on my mem­ory, and my 20-year-old impres­sion was, the whole busi­ness played out like farce.)

The cir­cus spent the morn­ing shut­tling around town, author­i­ties in tow, get­ting booted from this place and that, increas­ingly des­per­ate, until finally they were knock­ing on doors out in the coun­try say­ing, “Can we bor­row this field?” (David was actu­ally fil­ing updates on this break­ing story; we were an after­noon paper, after all, and the show was sup­posed to be that night.)

At one point some­one said yes, which led to per­haps the best sin­gle quote of the story, the year, and maybe ever:

“I got a call from my ten­ants this morn­ing and they said there were a cou­ple of midgets in the back yard putting up a big tent.”

I think it was then — when the land­lord came over and evicted the midgets, when the ring­mas­ter finally faced the truth, when Pete and his ser­vice club finally grasped just how bad a horse they had bet on — that the cir­cus was finally shut down, although all they did was move on to the east and the next gig.

I think David wrote at least one more story, quot­ing a cou­ple of home­less guys who were hired to do setup in the next town down the road and never got paid. He kept a Toby Tyler Cir­cus poster up next to his desk until he left the paper five years later. I met Pete shortly there­after; he men­tioned his work with the ser­vice club. “You mean the ones who had the fiasco with the cir­cus?” I asked. He was not amused. Over time, I got him to admit it was at least a legit­i­mate story, although it took for­ever.

And just to show you how years can pass and noth­ing changes, there’s this: In 2004, when the Fel­lows vis­ited Toronto, Alan and Kate and I made a side trip to Nia­gara Falls. (I’d never been there, and the Turks in the group were all going, in part to see a great North Amer­i­can nat­ural won­der and in part to see the site of the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe movie “Nia­gara.”) While there I picked up a $3 book­let in the gift shop, about peo­ple who’ve gone over the falls in bar­rels and other con­veyances. I became con­vinced — still am — that there’s a great, great movie to be made about these peo­ple, and remem­bered that a Detroit-area man had been the last one to go over the falls. In fact, he’d been the only per­son to sur­vive a falls plunge with no pro­tec­tive equip­ment. He later more or less admit­ted he was try­ing to com­mit sui­cide, but in the imme­di­ate after­math acted like he’d planned the whole thing.

After we got back to Ann Arbor I looked up the sto­ries about him, then did fur­ther Googling. When the spot­light shifted away he was still an unem­ployed metro Detroi­ter, but like so many falls dare­dev­ils before him, he was able to trade his fool­har­di­ness for a lit­tle last­ing noto­ri­ety and a job.

As “world’s great­est stunt man.” With the Toby Tyler Cir­cus.

Which is still hav­ing PR prob­lems. Although only God knows if it’s even the same one.

Sorry it’s been a lit­tle spotty around here. Much work. I don’t think it’s a good idea to talk about work here — one of the things I’m being paid for is not to scoop my own employ­ers — but it’s fair to say this: I’m doing lots of work for mag­a­zines, and with their long lead times, this means it’s Christ­mas in my head. Talk about rush­ing the sea­son. I’ve been think­ing of chest­nuts roast­ing on an open fire for days and days, and we haven’t even carved the pump­kins yet.

Things will ease up soon. In the mean­time, tell us a cir­cus story.

Sorry for no new entry today. On Thurs­day, I shoved a 2,200-word bolus of type into the out­box, so as to clear my desk for the weekend’s work of prepar­ing a 3,500-word bolus of type to be deliv­ered Tues­day lat­est. Hon­estly, I just wasn’t in the mood to spend another minute star­ing at a screen.

(Again, do not con­strue any part of this as a com­plaint. I’m billing more in six weeks than I did all year. I might have to pay quar­terly income taxes.)

Instead of star­ing at a screen, I stared at “The Wheel­man,” which I picked up on the rec­om­men­da­tion of Ms. Lipp­man and am thor­oughly enjoy­ing, even though the author appears, from his photo, to be about 12 years old.

The pre­cip­i­tat­ing event of the book is a bank rob­bery. I love bank rob­beries, at least fic­tional ones. There’s some­thing about a stick-up that just makes sense — you have the money, I need money, give me your money. The FBI is always issu­ing press releases when­ever there’s a string of bank rob­beries in any given neigh­bor­hood, telling the pub­lic what a ter­ri­ble idea it is. If their sta­tis­tics tell the truth, it is — the aver­age amount taken in most bank heists is shock­ingly low. On the other hand, the risk is pretty low, too. You’ve got secu­rity cam­eras, sure, and the prospect of Leav­en­worth in your future, but tellers don’t resist the way, say, liquor-store own­ers do. If it weren’t for the dye packs, everybody’d be in the busi­ness.

Any­way, “The Wheel­man” is worth your time. I’m also read­ing Nick Hornby’s “A Long Way Down,” which is light as a feather, but in a good way.

Last night’s din­ner was a rare fail­ure. I had a han­ker­ing for a sim­ple, cool-weather repast of beans and rice. Nor­mally I reach for the ever-popular fri­joles negro, but I had a bunch of dried cran­berry beans and thought, what the hell. I started cook­ing with visions of a sort of chuck-wagon cow­boy bean throw­down, and instead ended up with some­thing that had way too many hot pep­pers and was oth­er­wise oddly under­fla­vored. It tasted like so many tailgate-party-style chilis I’ve tried, where in lieu of thought­ful tast­ing and sea­son cor­rec­tion, the cook just tries to make the top of your skull lift off.

But the beer was cold and after­ward I sat there, mouth aflame, hands on fire, and thought about hot pep­pers.

I thought about how care­ful you have to be when you’re work­ing with them. I never scrape the seeds out with my fin­ger­nails, lest some of that cap­saicin stuff get in my nail beds. If I throw the leav­ings down the dis­posal, I always step back when I turn it on, hav­ing got­ten a face­ful of low-grade pep­per spray more than once.

But mostly, if you don’t wear gloves — and I never wear gloves, I never remem­ber to buy them — you have to be care­ful what you touch after­ward. Here’s a short list of things you shouldn’t touch after han­dling hot pep­pers, with­out at least one and prefer­ably sev­eral sudsy hand-washings in between:

1) Your eyes;
2) Your nose;
3) Def­i­nitely your gen­i­tals;
4) Your lips;
5) and any­where else the skin is a bit on the thin or mem­bra­nous side.

I was dis­cussing this with another hot-pepper lover. I told him about an embar­rass­ing event involv­ing con­tact lenses which left me writhing on the floor and red-eyed for days. He told me about going to the bath­room, tak­ing out his unit and scream­ing in pain. But the best story was the time his wife turned from din­ner prepa­ra­tions to nurse the baby, reached down to help the child latch on, and touched both her own are­ola and, of course, the infant’s mouth.

“That was a very noisy half-hour,” he said.

Hot pep­pers — all pep­pers, really — are oth­er­wise a super­food. Oprah says so.

I said I thought the work­load would ease up by Fri­day. News flash: It won’t. The momen­tum will carry me through next week, but that’s good. Work = money (eventually…theoretically) = a merry Christ­mas, a warm house, spring prop­erty taxes and a wolf kept from the door. As a char­ac­ter in a novel I can’t remem­ber said, if you think a belch­ing smoke­stack is ugly, try one with noth­ing com­ing out at all.

A lit­tle bit o’ blog­gage: In the course of Googling some­thing, by way of look­ing for some­thing else entirely, I stum­bled across a blog of someone’s fab­u­lous Knight-Wallace Fel­low­ship year. Not mine, silly, but Julia’s, who’s not a fel­low but a spouse. It’s amus­ing to read, as I recall every emo­tion. And it’s good to see they’re keep­ing the stan­dards high, as when Paul Rus­esabag­ina stopped by Wal­lace House for lunch and a lit­tle chat. (The Flickr pho­tos sug­gest Charles is hold­ing every­one to a higher dress-code stan­dard this year.)

Rus­esabag­ina no doubt came because the fel­low­ship includes a Rwan­dan jour­nal­ist, Thomas Kamilindi, whom I was priv­i­leged to meet late in the sum­mer. He told his story to the group ear­lier this month. A wrench­ing one, as you might imag­ine:

But there was a lot Thomas didn�t tell us that I later dis­cov­ered on my own. A lib­eral Hutu mar­ried to a Tutsi, Thomas had been forced � dur­ing his time at the radio sta­tion � to broad­cast the very hate mes­sages he abhorred, the mes­sages that incited hate and vio­lence against the �cock­roaches,� as the Tut­sis were called. He didn�t men­tion that he nar­rowly escaped death on more than one occa­sion, that he has had a loaded pis­tol held to his tem­ple and was saved when an offi­cer who rec­og­nized him hap­pened by. He didn�t men­tion that while he was at the Hotel, he actively tried to get word of the mas­sacre out to the White House, the Ely­sees Palace and human rights orga­ni­za­tions. He didn�t men­tion that he gave an inter­view to French radio from the hotel, an act which resulted in the gov­ern­ment send­ing a sol­dier with the express mis­sion to kill Thomas. (He was spared when, by hap­pen­stance, the sol­dier turned out to be a child­hood friend.) And he didn�t men­tion that while he and his wife and younger daugh­ter sur­vived the mas­sacre, their five-year-old daugh­ter � who was vis­it­ing with her Tutsi grand­par­ents at the time � did not. In a BBC inter­view, he says:

“It is very dif­fi­cult to put my life expe­ri­ences behind me and to for­get. I and my wife live with it all the time. It is part of me. Some­times I shut myself in a room and cry when I think about my first born, my lit­tle girl Mamee. It’s dif­fi­cult when you know you were about to be killed and you sur­vived but your child was killed”.

You maybe see why this year is a hard one to recover from. For just about every­one.

Not much tonight. I have a long slog at the keys tonight, part of tomor­row and maybe into Thurs­day, but after that, sun­shine should break over the land and all will be good once again.

“It’s all good.” There’s an expres­sion that would sound stu­pid com­ing from my mouth. Yours too, pro­lly.

I have a blan­ket pol­icy toward all tele­mar­keters — please put us on your no-call list — but I make an occa­sional excep­tion for mar­ket researchers, if I have time. How can I com­plain about the mar­ket if I don’t make myself part of the solu­tion, I fig­ure. Just enough time passes between market-research sur­veys that I for­get how hor­ri­ble the last one was. Tonight they were seek­ing my thoughts on food shop­ping, some­thing I am well-stocked with. And so it began, after a promise it would take no longer than 8-12 min­utes:

First, there were some who’s-on-first moments when I tried to explain that I didn’t patron­ize one store exclu­sively: “I go to Costco for non-perishable sta­ples, Nino Sal­vag­gio for spe­cialty meats, cheeses and veg­eta­bles and Mei­jer for every­thing else.”

“That’s Cosso, C-O-S-O?” he asked. Hoo-boy. I should have just hung up. After I finally hung up, hav­ing rated all three stores in approx­i­mately 2,936 dif­fer­ent areas (and yes, “deli prices” and “deli ser­vice” were two dif­fer­ent ones, and “friendly check­out expe­ri­ence” was included), I checked the timer on the phone: 13 min­utes, 5 sec­onds. Liar!

Once one of these clowns asked me if a par­tic­u­lar brand of cheese led to good feel­ings in gen­eral or good feel­ings about my fam­ily. I asked if I could choose “give me a break, it’s Mon­terey jack, not single-malt Scotch” as a response. Alas, no.

Then, as if to mock me, came the robot call for Dead­beat Michelle, who used to have my phone num­ber. It comes at least twice a week. It is entirely auto­mated, and appears as “out of area” on the caller ID. I can­not ignore it because a) the edi­tors at my best-paying client and b) my dear friend John, also have “out of area” dis­plays (it seems to be related to VOIP). There is no key to press for “you have the wrong num­ber.” And so we endure.

A bit of blog­gage: When I was an adult who worked in an office with smart, witty peo­ple, I loved going to lunch with them. Joel Achen­bach says lunch ain’t what it used to be. Noted.

Once more into the breach, then.

Quite an amus­ing story in the News today, a vari­a­tion on a time­less theme in sub­ur­bia: There goes the neigh­bor­hood:

GROSSE POINTE — When Joe Rip­polone parked the lime-yellow fire truck on the cob­ble­stones in front of his century-old car­riage house on Wash­ing­ton Road, his well-heeled neigh­bors did not know quite what to make of it.

“Well, I’m from the Bronx,” Rip­polone says in his own defense. “I guess I’m used to doing things a lit­tle bit dif­fer­ent.”

I encour­age you to click through to the pic­ture. The Clydes­dale is hilar­i­ous. I guess I’m going to have to put Wash­ing­ton Road on my bike-riding route and see this for myself.

Now, there are two schools of thought on the neigh­bors’ decor: My Prop­erty, My Rules vs. Keep Up Your Lawn. The MPMR folks, when not fil­ing fevered blog posts about “post-Kelo Amer­ica,” are busy defend­ing their right to paint their god­damn houses pur­ple, and if you don’t like it, well, don’t look at it. Some­times they do.

The KUYL types worry about every lit­tle detail of your prop­erty. (They don’t worry about their own; that’s your job.) Some­times they live in com­mu­ni­ties where a com­mit­tee led by bitchy queens decides what sort of win­dow treat­ment you can use, because while they may not come into your house, they can see the back­side of your drapes from the side­walk, and they don’t like them.

I sit between the camps. If I were rent­ing, I’d prob­a­bly be happy to live in the MPMR neigh­bor­hood, on the very real chance the neigh­bors would be more fun, or at least inter­est­ing. If I were buy­ing, I’d go with KUYL and turn the base­ment into a freak pad. The lat­ter would be a bet­ter invest­ment.

MPMR peo­ple like to think of them­selves as proud indi­vid­u­al­ists, flinty lib­er­tar­i­ans, the sort of peo­ple who made Amer­ica great. Fre­quently this is a self-delusion cov­er­ing for the fact they’re really too lazy to cut the grass more than once every six weeks, move the moldy couch off the porch and the auto parts off the front steps.

KUYL are incred­i­bly sen­si­tive to per­ceived changes in prop­erty val­ues. They’re like a herd of ner­vous gazelles, ready to bolt at the first sign of trou­ble, in this case, the dan­de­lions on your lawn. They like to “encour­age neigh­bor­hood pride” by giv­ing out monthly awards for Best Use of Gera­ni­ums (Win­dow Box Divi­sion).

Oh, well. I could go on all day. I think the best sin­gle com­ment, though, was on the Det­News com­ment boards, and it cap­tured a cer­tain GP je nais sais quoi per­fectly: It’s in bad taste. Period. And it would be in bad taste in any neigh­bor­hood in any city, except maybe War­ren.

Also, that “the plumber hus­band of Henry Ford’s great-great-grandaughter” would be a great name for a band.

Share your tales of MPMR/KUYL types in the com­ments, if you wish.