Here’s an ad on Detroit’s Craigslist. The heading is “Models needed for VIP Super Bowl Party.” It’s above the one that asks for “Go-Go Dancers needed for VIP Super Bowl Party.”

You are being asked to join us for a VIP SuperBowl party, the client wants their party to be the “talk of the town”, so all we ask is you mingle, dance, socialize, network and have a good time. O-Yea, and get paid for it. Send your information and photo to the above email address and we will contact you with further details.

Call me crazy, but when someone can’t spell “yeah,” I get a little suspicious.

Someone told me today that the big SB parties are flying in “planeloads” of top-grade strippers for the festivities. I wonder where the local talent will be working.

What, you’ve never seen a Hanukkah parade before? Fifty cars with electric menorahs on top, including, of course, the traditional Hummer limo.

Just another December night in Oak Park, Mich. Happy Hanukkah.

Thought I’d stop in and throw a little holiday bloggage your way.

The gauzy Currier-and-Ives veil Capra drapes over Bedford Falls has prevented viewers from grasping what a tiresome and, frankly, toxic environment it is. When Marx penned his immortal words about “the idiocy of rural life,” he probably had Bedford Falls in mind. B.F. is the kind of claustrophobic, undersized burg where everybody knows where you’re going and what you’re doing at all times. If you’re a Norman Rockwell collector, this might not bother you, but it should — and it certainly bothered George Bailey. It is all too easily forgotten that George himself wanted nothing more than to shake the dust of that two-bit town off his feet — and he would have, too, if he hadn’t gotten waylaid by a massive load of family-business guilt and a happy ending engineered by God himself. Gary Kamiya says what I’ve always thought — Pottersville isn’t THAT bad a place.

And remember a few days ago, when Slate called “My Humps” a song so bad “as to veer toward evil?” Darlin’s, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The UPS man delivered The Last Package of Christmas today, and wished me a happy holiday as he left. So I did what all good Americans are supposed to do these days: I flew into a rage.

No, I didn’t. Anyone who visits here knows I’m part of the problem on this one, part of the liberal pinko conspiracy taking Christ out of Christmas and turning Jesus’ birthday party into an amorphous year-end observance of giving and spending, food and liquor. It’s true: I’m no longer Christian in any but a cultural sense, and the secular version works for me. Kate’s school party this year featured recreation stations devoted to the Big C, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. She came home with gelt and a black, red and green placemat, and this is fine with me. The world is different than when I was her age — this is to be expected — and if my public-school Christmas pageant was more religious than most you’d find in a parochial school, the time for that is past. It leads to crappier Christmas pageants, but it doesn’t feel like going backward.

I also smashed the shreds of my daughter’s Santa belief last year. It was time. This is what I said: “There is no man who lives at the North Pole and flies around the world with a reindeer sleigh. But there is a Santa. I am Santa, and this — this is important — you are Santa. Santa Claus is a symbol for the spirit of giving and care for others we all try to embody at this time of year.”

Maybe I didn’t say “embody.” But that was the gist.

She was disappointed. She knows the Reason for the Season, but this was a loss. Still, this year she took money to her school’s Secret Santa Shop and came home with something for everyone on her list, gifts that indicated she’d thought of those people, considered who they are and what they might want and need, and chose accordingly. Progress.

I said I was only culturally Christian, but if you’re into that sort of thing, it seems Amy gets it pretty close to exactly right here:

The really traditional Christian remembrance of the Nativity is not about sweetness. It is about awe, fear, and trembling, and it is shot through with hints of suffering to come.

Look at it closely, with clear eyes. At every turn in this story of this baby there is threat and fear and powers circling, attempting to strike at the light.

This has always been the year-end holiday for me, religious or not, and maybe it’s because I tend toward gloom and pessimism — a single light in a sea of darkness. Concentrate on the light, whatever it is for you. It really is all we have.

Here’s one of my favorite Christmas stories: Years ago, in a newsroom far, far away, budget cuts were already taking their toll on the year-end party. The woman whose job it was to put the thing together was tasked with having a lunch and arranging entertainment with a criminally small budget. My first year at the paper, we’d had lunch catered by a semi-gourmet restaurant down the street. By just a few years later, the last year this woman did it, she opted for a mediocre caterer, who served chicken breasts that looked as though they were boiled in ditch water. The entertainment was a local elementary-school choir, brought in to perform musical selections from the school’s Christmas pageant.

There was no Noelling, nor Rudolph, nor even Jingle Bells. The music was entirely unfamiliar, something about a boy who doesn’t Believe, and at the end there was more, some oral interpretation by a young woman who was sweeping the state speech tournaments that year. Her showstopper was a dialogue between two women, both African American. (As was the girl. As was two-thirds of the choir. As was hardly anyone in the newsroom.) The younger one was a modern black woman, the older her grandmother, who persisted in believing most people were good and well-intended.

As the dialogue went on, it became clear the older woman was a fool, too ignorant to see evil and racism everywhere. Finally, the younger woman explodes: “But Grandma, they call us niggers behind our back!”

We looked at one another. If there was even a shred of hope that we could salvage some goodwill toward men from the wreckage of the day, it was gone now. The party was officially a failure. My friend David got up at the end, stretched and said, “Bad food, lousy music, tension between the races — ah, merry Christmas.”

The next year two of us wrestled the budget away from the woman whose heart was clearly no longer in it, and for about a few more years we spent it in a different way, in the bar next door. We had food and drinking in a cozy basement space, and drunken caroling in the men’s room — “three urinals flushing!” (swoosh!) — and it was fun again.

I’m not sure what the point of this story is, except that the holidays are a strange and funny and wonderful time of year, and also that if you have a choice in how to spend your money, it’s better to opt for Buffalo wings and cheese lumps and liquor after quitting time than bad chicken and racial accusations at midday. Make a note.

Posting will be intermittent, but not non-existent, for the next week or so. Back to full strength in 2006. Happy, happy holidays to one and all. I appreciate the gift you give me every day — your time and attention — and I thank you for it.

My sister’s friend Pat in Atlanta sent me this picture. Her story:

Our family was out and about one beautiful Saturday….putz-ing around town, shopping, etc. We had included our two dogsinour adventures…as one of our stops was to the local park for the dog’s weekend walk. After stopping by a local sandwich place to get a bite to eat, we decided to pop into Kmart and browse about. My youngest son had not eaten his sandwich completely, and had neatly wrapped the leftovers in a napkin to bring home. Since the dogs were in the car and we were about to go into a store, we decided to put the leftover sandwich in the glove compartment for safekeeping (away from the dogs).

You can see what happened next. Wilma wasn’t going to let any glove compartment keep her away from her treat, and if she didn’t exactly vanquish the foe entirely, We’re sure that she would have broken through eventually.

No word on what sort of dog Wilma is. Maybe Pat will share.

One more quick bit of bloggage before I head out to tie up some loose ends — This priceless story from the Free Press, on the downfall of a self-styled superhero:

JACKSON — Several years ago in this modest mid-Michigan city, a masked man swooped down from the ether, donned a purple cape and declared himself Captain Jackson, defender of the citizenry.

“Crime fighter busted for drunken driving.”

It only gets better, because of course this story is not about drunken driving, oh no. It’s about whether the paper should have unmasked Captain Jackson. It includes this priceless quote:

“My patrol days are over, I’m afraid,” Frankini told the Free Press by phone last week, before failing to show for an interview Tuesday. “We’re gonna keep going, but I guess not in Jackson. We’re definitely in danger, I know that. We’re like David Hasselhoff from ‘Baywatch’ — he had this singing career and he was popular everywhere but America. Why they decided to destroy one of the best things I know in Jackson, I have no idea.”

Somehow I think Peter Parker has this guy trumped in existential suffering, but you knew I’d say that, didn’t you?

Have a swell day, bad dogs and good guys everywhere.

Warren Zevon died more than two years ago, and ever since, I’ve been wondering if I could learn to love again. Never mind the essential question of whether a woman my age should even have an imaginary rock-star boyfriend; could my heart stand it? After all, chances are anyone I would pick would be old ‘n’ stuff, and likely headed for decrepitude at roughly the same accelerated rate I am. Musicians are famous for their misspent youth, which has a way of catching up with one later in life. (Hello, David Crosby. Hello, Keith Richard. That blood change working out for you?) Anyone I loved would be far more likely to take sick than your average Backstreet Boy. Does a girl need this in her life?

Well, yes. Mooning over unattainable performing artists with which one has made an entirely imaginary bond keeps one young. At least as long as firearms stay out of the picture. This is something I believe.

So congratulations, Rodney Crowell. I picked up “Fate’s Right Hand” over the weekend and decided it’s you. Sorry, but I won’t be able to see the shows the way I saw Warren’s, but what the hell — I’m buying the back catalog. This is the best I can do.

I should listen to more alt-country. The “alt,” I’ve found, means “not a redneck asshole singing about wanting to take a poke at Osama if only he didn’t have this three-record deal that keeps him tied down stateside.” You want to go out drinking with Lucinda Williams, you know?

Speaking of excitable redneck assholes, have you ever seen Bill Maher do his Kobe Teeth character? Not too far off the mark, if you ask me.

After blogging yesterday’s story about the Kronk, I had to see if the script for “Out of Sight” was online. It is. “Out of Sight” is a remarkable movie, proof that once Jennifer Lopez had something close to acting talent, among other things. It’s also, for my money, the best single Elmore Leonard adaptation, mainly because the screenwriter, Scott Frank, had the sense to leave the source material alone. Except in the final scene, which isn’t in the book, which shows that even Leonard can be improved upon, if you do it right:

Before Foley can say anything, the back door is opened once more and the Marshal helps ANOTHER PRISONER — a black man with a shaved head — into the back of the van.

FOLEY
I don’t know.
(then)
It’s a long way down to Florida.

Late night with the writing group tonight. It was our Christmas party. The order was “bring something to eat or drink,” so four out of five brought drink. Karen brought latkes, like the good Jewish girl she is. Make a note: Latkes and merlot are enough to make a party.

Of course, it helps to have scandalous conversation, too. Make another note: Being single can be stressful, but boy, do these girls have some good stories.

Maybe some links tomorrow. For now? Zzzzzz.

TOMORROW: Linkage I offer to thee. Where Tommy Hearns trained, where George Clooney and Don Cheadle (and Ving Rhames and Steve Zahn) acted — that’s the Kronk Recreation Center. Like most Detroit institutions, it’s having a rough time of it. Like some, it has people trying to save it.

The feats of strength! The airing of grievances! Festivus catches on outside the world of “Seinfeld.”

Our server was under spam-attack last night, and so we shut comments down. It should be back up momentarily, although if the attack returns, it’ll go away again.

I thought robots were supposed to be a force for good.

Today’s chapter of Mundane Hijinx is all about meatloaf.

(Or is it meat loaf? Whatever. I like the one-word version.)

OK. So regular readers know my dog has a history of plundering food in the car. Which means everything that happened today is my fault. But really, I think my actions were defensible.

It felt like a meatloaf kind of night — a Monday, cold, dark December, the perfect weather for one of my local meat market’s bestest loaves. I stopped to pick one up after dropping Kate at her after-school play date. It was still frozen, in a foil pan, with a hard plastic lid. So when I decided to stop at the dry cleaner and pick up Alan’s shirts, it didn’t seem necessary to put it in the trunk or anything.

But alas. When I came out of the cleaner’s and found Spriggy hard at work on the floor of the front seat, I still didn’t think he’d penetrated the perimeter. It was hard plastic, and I’d only been out of the car for maybe three minutes. Of course he had. In only three minutes he’d opened the bag, dislodged the plastic and had put about four inches of tooth grooving on the surface, gnawing the semi-frozen surface efficiently and quickly.

“BAD DOG! BAD DOG!” I yelled at him. You know what he did? He growled at me. In other words: “Get your own meatloaf. This is mine.”

(I guess he imagined he was an Inuit sled dog, eating his meal of frozen reindeer meat at the end of the run across the ice pack. Only of course, as a terrier, he wouldn’t actually be pulling the sled. He no doubt saw himself as a coxswain of sorts, barking orders while standing on the cargo.)

But that was only half the fun. After I cooked the meatloaf and took it out of the pan to slice it, guess what happened? I dropped it on the floor, and had to yell, “Get back! Get back!” while I picked up the still-blistering thing and heaved it onto the counter.

We ate our portion from the unchewed end. My burned fingers still hurt. Spriggy got to lick up all the grease.

I’ve long suspected this dog has a guardian angel, or maybe a guardian poltergeist. Things just seem to fall his way, sometimes literally. Someone wanted him to have that meatloaf.

It’s Spriggy’s world. We’re all just living in it.

So, bloggage:

We all know that some cultures value virginity above all sense and reason, but you never thought you lived in one, did you? Well, you are wrong. I like Amy Alkon’s comment thread on this. Especially this one: She should have put the five grand towards a plasma TV. Her husband could enjoy that more than once.

Cute overload is the berries.

Why do people waste their time building websites like Fancy Parking? Because people like me will link to them, that’s why.

What is it about the Columbus Dispatch? Me and the D are like Michael Corleone and organized crime — they keep pullin’ me back in, although not for paying work, just for the Christmas party. I try to attend every few years.

“Do you still know people there?” my brother-in-law asked.

“No one ever leaves that place,” Alan said. He’s right. A few, maybe, but I’m always amazed at how many folks from my early-’80s tenure are still there, and I’m grateful at how many of them still want to talk to me when I show up at their Christmas party. Many even will buy me a beer.

It was a fun evening. Columbus passed a no-smoking-in-public-places-even-bars ordinance earlier this year, and I have to say: Wow. I generally have no problem with smoking in a bar, but on a night like this, everyone packed ass to elbow and the air humid with the collective respiration, having the place smoke-free made all the difference between a pleasant evening and one after which you undressed on the back porch so as not to bring reeking clothes into the house.

Alan was coming down with a cold and ducked out for a walk anyway. He said later, “I went past a restaurant with no name on the front, and mostly gay couples inside.” Probably somebody’s house. German Village — feh. Always too trendy for the room.

And then it was the Nall Family Christmas celebration, and the Sunday drive home from Columbus, which I try to plan around one of my favorite public radio shows, To the Best of Our Knowledge. I’ve never heard it anywhere but on WOSU, and I don’t know why, because it’s really a fine, relaxing listen. It’s like a less intense “This American Life” — a handful of pleasant conversations and interviews arranged around broad themes. Very broad themes, sometimes. Today’s were Death and Family (in two separate hours, not “death and family”). The interviews were with everyone from a cancer specialist to some guy from Monty Python’s Flying Circus. A Sunday Ideas section for the drive. Which beat the real paper Sunday, and its tales of presidentially approved domestic spying. That kind of stuff makes me drive off the road.

Bloggage, then:

Something that’s likely not on your radar screen, and hasn’t even registered much in Detroit, is the dust-up between the Ford Motor Co., the American Family Association and various gay-rights groups. To my way of thinking, Ford came down on the right side of this thing eventually, but I can surely not be the only American tired of all this crap.

You mean it’s dangerous to let your kid go online without adult oversight? You’re kidding. Ahem: Justin’s mother, Karen Page, said she sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Her son seemed to be just a boy talented with computers who enjoyed speaking to friends online. The Webcam, as she saw it, was just another device that would improve her son’s computer skills, and maybe even help him on his Web site development business. “Everything I ever heard was that children should be exposed to computers and given every opportunity to learn from them,” Ms. Page said in an interview.

Heaps upon piles of snow today. Very wet snow, too — the temperature sat at around 32 degrees all day. (That’s zero for you Canadian readers.) Snow is great for writers — you can stare out at it with your chin on your hand, or go out and push it around if you get blocked.

I did both. I forgot to mention, one of our household gifts to ourselves this year was a snowblower. I’ve disdained them in the past, but that was before I got a long driveway, and now I can’t imagine living without it. It’s more satisfying than mowing the lawn. I took it out at midafternoon in hopes it would make some of my calls be returned. It didn’t, but I got the driveway cleared. Afterward, I glowered at a downspout that seemed entirely clogged with ice. I disconnected it and ran hot water over it, piece by piece, until the huge chunks of ice fell out and it ran clear. Why is such a task so absurdly satisfying? Because, unlike writing a big essay, it gets done and when it’s done, stays done, pretty much. I can concentrate on clearing the downspout in ways I can never concentrate on writing.

Should have been a gutter-cleaner. Clambering around on roofs, I’d think about essays I want to write.

Now the snow’s shin-deep. And it’s perfect for packing. A winter fun-derland!

Now, to the bloggage.

This is not bloggage, but in checking the TV guide, I just found these shows on TLC, back-to-back: “The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off,” followed by “Born With Two Heads,” followed by “Archie, the 84-Pound Baby.” Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

Hey, dads! Looking for a meaningful gift for your teenage daughter? How about a symbolic representation of her hymen, in precious metals? Plus: There’s a suggested ceremony, woo-hoo.

I can’t stand to read one more word about That Cowboy Movie, but I gritted my teeth and got through these, and I was glad I did.

I like good design as much as the next girl, but this is ridiculous.