Yesterday I mentioned two websites where Joe Detroiter could post celebrity sightings; for the purpose of argument, let’s call them the MSM site and the non-MSM site.

Guess which one quickly became laden with joke posts like this: I saw Rod Stewart, Tim Biakabatuka, Master P and a disheveled priest playing hacky-sack outside of the Wendy’s at Five Points. None were wearing any pants. Guess which one had its link taken down for a while, no doubt to expunge, oh, most likely this post: I met Mitch Albom at Vipers the other night. He was making up stories and pretending to listen to people when they talked to him. He told me it’s a lot harder writing for the Freep now that he has to stick to the facts and can’t embellish crap anymore.

Someone always wants to stick it to the Man, eh?

Just to show you the so-called MSM does a lot right, though: This story, a depressing but somehow comical look at the culture of passed-out and shitfaced teen drinking.

Day three of Super Bowl week. I am catching the excitement. I mean: the excitement! It was so exciting today. I got my hair cut. My hairdresser is precisely the demographic for this week — young, pretty, hip.

“Are you catching the excitement?” I asked.

“I guess I’m not star-struck,” she said. Not going to the game, not interested in the parties, not even. She’s too busy trying to plan her wedding. We discussed Em and Kim’s recent nuptials, and agreed Kim made the right move by going back to brunette.

Others are pretty star-struck, however. “I hear Hef has the house at the corner of Jefferson and” I-can’t-remember, one of my neighbors said. While I guess it might be amusing to drive past the house and hope for a glimpse of Hef in his jammies, I…don’t think so.

Posting may be a bit half-hearted this week. Getting adjusted to a new routine, and as usual, it’s happening in a crush-busy fortnight.

(I’m sorry, but every time I see this movie poster, I think about the runaway boob in “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.”)

I mean, you know, just speaking of the Super Bowl.

And so it hath begun. The dailies have their own gossip blogs, but I prefer the Detroit Yes celebrity sighting thread. And I wonder what the Freep will do when they find this in their reader-participation celebrity-sighting thread:

I met one of my fans, Candy that I used to bone back in the day and she was so so nice.

Quick, someone call Deborah Howell.

For the record, I drove through the city on 94 again today — another hop to Ann Arbor and back — and it was still clean, still amazingly pleasant and the route lined with happy billboards welcoming all to Grittyville. While I doubt there’ll be any celebrity sightings out this way, if there are, I’ll keep you posted.

What is lost when a newspaper leaves town — in this case, Hazard, Kentucky.

Saturday was the one-year anniversary of our move to Grosse Pointe. I marked it by visiting an estate sale.

Now, the rules of estate sales are these: There are few bargains. The prices are too high, and because you’re dealing with an agent and not the owner him- or herself, the prices are firm until the very last hours, when they fall by a predetermined margin, usually half. Which strikes me as ridiculous. I’m not the world’s greatest fan of dickering, but when you’re inviting the world into your home to paw through your old bed linens, clothing and LPs, the least you can do is make the price a little more flexible.

But that’s OK. I’ve come to think of these as cultural spelunking, a license to snoop around in places I’d likely never see otherwise. The sale Saturday was in the Farms, on one of the Good Streets, in an unmistakably Good House, the kind that’s big without being ostentatious, full of long hallways with many doors to slam or hide behind. (I share Joan Didion’s rather sneering dismissal of houses with too much “open space” — doesn’t anyone value a good book and a closed door anymore?) In other words, a WASP house.

Grosse Pointe is a famously WASPy community, or preppy, if you’d like to include the Catholics. The country went through its preppy-love period, but that was a long time ago. The 1980s and everything after reset the standard for wealth in this country, and now when we think of the upper classes we think not of madras and duck prints but Mercedes-Benzes and boob jobs and too much jewelry and private planes and all the rest of it. It’s possible, today, to look at these folks — preppies — and feel sort of sorry for them. I’m sure they were as horrified by what happened to the Republican party as I was.

But they still exist here. Last summer I spotted a woman wearing a grosgrain-ribbon watchband and a necklace of plain silver links, the one closest to the clasp a solid silver oval engraved “T&Co. 1837.” It’s not a neon sign, but it’ll do.

The house I saw Saturday struck me as pretty typical of lots of estate sales — Livia Soprano model stairway lift, general air of dustiness, hadn’t been painted in a generation, you know the drill. The house had great bones, closet space to make one weep with joy. It was the sort of fixer-upper taken on by a young couple with a huge professional income and a drill sergeant of a wife to stay home and oversee it all. When it’s done, they’ll either get divorced, put it on the market or start all over redecorating.

(Note that knowing nothing about the people involved doesn’t stop me from making sweeping pronouncements about them. See how useful stereotypes can be!)

Anyway, estate sales always make me a little sad. At one, in a room so high-ceilinged that the bookshelves that climbed up there had to be serviced by a rolling library ladder, one of the things left to paw through were boxes of family pictures. “Where are the kids?” said one shopper, angrily, flinging a handful back into the box. “This is their history; why don’t they take care of it?” I didn’t point out that every picture seemed to have several duplicates, and it’s entirely possible they each had their own set. Or, it could be that this was a family the children wanted to forget. That’s the thing about estate sales — you can invent your own narrative.

This sale contained only one picture, and it was unlabeled, suggesting it may have been simply forgotten in the move, a picture of a teenage girl and her long-haired date dancing at a prom, unmistakably in the mid-’70s — if “The Virgin Suicides” had been a happier story, it could have been a still from the movie.

Anyway, I wandered around the rooms a few times, picking up and rejecting many cracked plates and chipped glassware, marveling at the copious Christmas decorations (there are always copious Christmas decorations), watching the last shoppers dicker over the dregs. Finally, I made my selection — this silver pitcher. It’s a tennis trophy. Someone was runner-up in the doubles competition in 1966. This was one of half a dozen similar trophies, all engraved silverplate, useful for something other than memory and ego. I rejected two trays and some sort of vegetable dish before finding this, which will look nice holding a few sunflowers or some margaritas this summer. For ten bucks, it’s pretty but useful, the quintessence of prep. I think it’s the closest thing to a Grosse Pointe sacred object you can find.

*****

And speaking of anniversaries, I just remembered: Sometime earlier this month I passed the five-year anniversary of NN.C. I knew I had an excuse to buy something wood this month.

A trip to Ann Arbor today, and what a pleasure it was — the trip, that is. Could this be Detroit? This smooth, rut-free highway, the clean-swept shoulders, the embankments kept free of trash by what appears to be a squadron of orange-suited workers? Are there no lane closures? What is this thing called I-94? I don’t recognize it.

All I have to say is: We should have a Super Bowl every year. It sure lights a fire under public-works projects.

The local slogan for all this is “The world is coming.” Well, come on in, world. At least the trip from the airport will be nice.

So, I see Oprah isn’t so dumb after all:

She added that she believed “I made a mistake” when she said that the truth of the book mattered less than its story of redemption.

In a live broadcast of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” from her studios in Chicago in which she interviewed Mr. Frey, Ms. Winfrey apologized to her audience for her call to “Larry King Live” earlier this month defending the author. Today, Ms. Winfrey, alternately fighting back tears and displaying vivid anger, berated Mr. Frey for duping her and her audience.

Well, I bet that was pleasant. You cross Oprah, you’re going to pull back a bloody stump.

Oh, and look! There’s video! The O looks majorly pissed.

Good for the O. She knows how to do the full reversal with her head held high. Maybe because she now holds the head of James Frey on a platter.

I was once a passenger in a car going very, very fast. The car was pulled over. As the trooper approached the driver’s-side window, another passenger said, “Tell him the accelerator stuck! Tell him the accelerator stuck!”

The trooper walked up. Asked for license, registration and what the hell.

“The accelerator stuck,” my friend the driver said. You can imagine how this encounter turned out. So it was with a chuckle that I see Defamer has Joaquin Phoenix’s number. After noting that the young actor was in a “serious car accident” after “his brakes went out,” the D noted:

We were comforted by his flack’s statement, even knowing full well that when a publicist says a celebrity client’s “brakes went out,� it’s basically the car accident equivalent of telling you they were hospitalized for “exhaustion.�

Yup.

Well, folks, that does it for me tonight. Have a swell weekend.

Note to mothers and other sensitive souls: Avoid the New York Times this morning. First, seven kids, being driven by their 15-year-old sibling, die when their van is rear-ended by a semi.

Worse: six-year-old strangled by playful golden retriever.

Some days, the Wall Street Journal is comforting.

Big today today, busy busy busy, so not much time to dilly-dally here on this busy busy day. A few links:

The Poor Man deconstructs the Deborah Howell thing (if anyone cares) entertainingly in Let’s stage an all-star panel on blogger ethics in my pants.

In Fort Wayne — speaking of things no one cares about — there’s been a mini-drama going on in blogs and (to a far lesser extent) in the newspaper, regarding a student’s expulsion over the “publication” (photocopying, I presume) of a “book” about his high school. It’s supposed to be a hilarious send-up of Carroll High School life, written in the tone and spirit of Jon Stewart’s “America (the book).” School officials responded to this impertinence in the usual Allen County high-school-administrator fashion — i.e., they expelled the kid. (Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen had nothing on these folks.) One thing you need to know: The kid is either a founder or a member of the Allen County Teenage Republicans, which means he’s getting an awful lot of hand-holding and support from non-teenage Republicans in the area. And all this discussion has been happening with only a few people having actually seen the book in question.

Well. Nathan Gotsch at Fort Wayne Observed has scanned and posted all 14 pages, and now we can all judge for ourselves. My take: Expulsion was overreacting, but if this kid thinks he has a career in comedy, he has inordinately high self-esteem. My further cynical take: In two years he’ll be at some comfy university, offering $100 for examples of professors with liberal bias. Yawn. Fifteen minutes up….now.

When I first saw “Top Gun,” I came out — of the theater — and said, “Jeez, what an incredibly gay movie.”

But when you say that to two friends outside a movie theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana, no one listens. You have to be Quentin Tarantino, and then everyone hails your genius.

Still, it’s good to know I was right all along. The site seems to be getting slammed with bandwidth issues, so you may have to check back. (UPDATE: People report they’re getting through fine. It may be a Mac-based Windows Media Player thing. I finally got to see the whole thing, but it took a couple reloads.)

I watch less TV than you may think, reading this space. Sunday nights on HBO are pretty much my only appointment viewing, and everything else pops up on my screen when I’m too tired to do much of anything else. However, it seems I write about everything I watch, so.

Last night we watched the American Idol audition show. God knows why, but it seemed like the closest thing to family TV on in the 8 p.m. time slot, and Kate thinks Simon is funny. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with some of the people we saw and the things they said, bleeped or not, and I’m relieved they saved Rhonetta for the last moments of the 9 o’clock hour, by which time Kate was long abed. But on the whole, it was amusing to see the parade of Idol aspirants and their atrocious singing. Where did they ever get the idea they were good at it? Bad shower acoustics, or karaoke? Or do they know they suck, and are just hoping to get a particularly pungent poke from Simon? I know that’s why I’d be there.

Anyway, I think Tom Shales gets it just right: ‘Idol’ is the newest reiteration of American vaudeville. We can’t throw rotten tomatoes, so Simon does it for us.

Something else I’ve been watching lately: “Sopranos” reruns. HBO is showing the last season and the earliest ones on two different nights. I’m struck, watching the first two seasons from a distance of five years or so, how clearly you see the shift in David Chase’s writing (or instructions to the writers). About a third of the way through season two, you can see where he got fed up with hearing critics and viewers describe Tony as a nice guy, and started underlining precisely what he is — not a nice guy. Not nice at all. The season two wrapup, which ends with a Mafia-movie cliche, a montage of evil images intercut with the crime boss’ above-board, “good” life, was particularly well-done (for a cliche). All the season’s plot lines were wrapped up, in a parade of lonely images that were all aftermath, after Tony has done his dirty work — Meadow’s friend’s father, packing up his car to start his life over as a ranch hand, after Tony busted out his business over gambling debts; the junkie nodding out in the lobby of the Hasidic-run hotel, once a respectable business, now a whore’s nest; the parade of lonesome losers going in and out of the porno book stores; and, finally, the waves crashing on the shore, under which Tony’s best friend, Big Pussy the FBI informant, sleeps with the fishes, sent there by Tony Himself.

I think the series could have ended right there. But I’m glad it didn’t. I think the further explorations of how the evil permeates his life and corrupts everything it touches — his wife, his children — were worthwhile. Over and over again, Tony sees this — the episode where he briefly adopts his late father’s mistress was wonderful — but can’t quite accept it, and chooses to turn away. It’s the choice that kills you.

This isn’t a question I spend a lot of time contemplating, but if you were to ask me to name a radio host who makes Sean Hannity look like Walter Cronkite, I’d immediately answer, “That’s easy — Glenn Beck.”

WOWO picked him up in Fort Wayne when I was still there, and it took about seven seconds before I pegged him as yet another contender for the Formerly Fat Man’s throne, should he ever feel like retiring or dying of a drug overdose. He came to town to lead one of these “Rallies for America” before Fort Wayne started sending its young men off to Iraq — flag-waving whoop-de-dos with lots of purple mountain majesties and Republicans.

But it was in Ohio where Beck made a big splash, grilling the mayor over a case of violence in Columbus Public Schools. I was discussing this case with a friend, and got as far as that previous sentence — “he grilled the mayor over a case of violence in Columbus Public Schools” — when he interrupted me with the obvious question: “What does the mayor of Columbus have to do with how the schools handle their affairs? That’s the school board’s job.” What an excellent point. Unfortunately, the mayor lost his temper when he should have just hung up, and oh my, but many points were scored.

Anyway.

So who, then, does CNN hire for a new show? But of course. I’m a couple days late with this, but I think San Francisco’s Tim Goodman sums up CNN’s problems pretty well:

Meanwhile, CNN’s Headline News has hired talk-radio host Glenn Beck, who is just to the right of Attila the Hun. The network tried to pass him off as some kind of affable conversationalist. That lasted about four, maybe five seconds, until all kinds of media watchdog groups pointed out Beck’s hate speech — calling Hurricane Katrina victims “scumbags” and saying he hated some of the family members who lost relatives on Sept. 11 because, well, they complained too much.

Sorry to start with the bloggage and not have any same ol’ same ol’ today, but yesterday was a socks-on-the-lampshade sort of day and today is going to be of the nose-to-the-grindstone variety. I took an assignment thinking it was something I could accomplish with one hand and a few enjoyable phone calls, and I’m now realizing it’s going to take actual, you know, hard work.

I hate when that happens. And it happens every day. But you know what? I still wouldn’t give it up. It occurred to me the other day that while I’m not yet making a living, I am making a life, and that counts for a lot.

More later, maybe. It’s time you learned the truth: I do all this while waiting for phone calls to be returned.

One of our regular commenters has a funny one in the post below about newspaper ad policies:

I have in my possession a deeply hilarious list of prohibited words from from my newspaper’s ad manager after an adult entertainment ad containing the phrase “golden shower� actually made it into print.

The memo concludes, “If you have any advertisers currently using any of these terms, please inform them of our change in policy.�

All this as a setup to point to a letter I wrote to Romenesko today. Someone at the Louisville Courier-Journal changed Ray Nagin’s “chocolate city” comment to “predominantly African-American.” And the paper’s dumb ol’ readers thought this was worse than the original remark — go figure.

UPDATE: My old colleague and near-roommate Jeff Borden chimes in with his recollection of the Day Readers Were Spared Andy Capp’s Ass.