It’s super something.

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.

Posted at 10:42 pm in Same ol' same ol' |
 

17 responses to “It’s super something.”

  1. alex said on January 31, 2006 at 11:37 pm

    Kids will be kids, no matter what schools and judges do. The law of natural selection will continue to be the ultimate arbiter when it comes to teen partying. Yes, there will always be Judge Martones trying to play God, but they’re not God, just mere hurdles in the somewhat more complex minefield these days that is childhood.

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  2. Dave said on February 1, 2006 at 7:32 am

    I’m going to short out the keyboard with my tears for these poor misunderstood youths in the complex minefield of childhood.

    I drank some in high school, but always with the knowledge that if I was caught, I would have to take my punishment from the court plus a good ass-kicking from my parents. Maybe they think they are too important to be punished. That they are some kind of Jenna and not-Jenna lite.

    Also, as someone who went to the prom in my beat up Volkswagen Rabbit, I think Hummer going in a Hummer lime should be a crime in itself.

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  3. Jill said on February 1, 2006 at 8:29 am

    I graduated from Troy Athens in ’94 – doesn’t look like a whole lot has changed, except now they get caught (oh, and the Hummer limo – the kids hadn’t reached that level of wealth, yet).

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  4. Dorothy said on February 1, 2006 at 9:07 am

    Sorry but I did not find anything the least bit comical about the underage drinking story. In fact I nearly had tears in my eyes at the end of the article because I was thinking of my son. No, he was never cited for underage drinking. However in his senior year of high school he did get stopped for speeding, and at his hearing the judge was extremely firm. And fair. And I wrote him a letter thanking him for taking away Josh’s license for 3 months.

    Josh was clocked doing 90 MPH on I-75 around Cincinnati. He and a friend were drag racing, and to say we were stunned at the news was an understatement. His dad and I were very hard on him, and doled out our own punishment as well. He was remorseful and took his punishment quietly. He was shocked to lose his license since the girl he was dating at the time had recently been to court for speeding, and only got a slap on the wrist. He thought he’d get the same treatment.

    Speeding and underage drinking can bring about dire consequences, and the sooner these kids learn it the better off they are. I applaud the judge for what he did. It’s something every judge should enforce – and the fact that he sticks to his principles so strongly is impressive to me.

    Forgive me if I’ve written about this before. Don’t mean to bore anyone with it again.

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  5. basset said on February 1, 2006 at 9:14 am

    as the father of a 16-year-old son who is just starting to drive… I have to agree with Dave & Dorothy, misbehavior must have its consequences.

    as a graduate of a rural high school at least ninety miles from anywhere you might possibly be able to hire a limo even today… and having gone to the prom in a ’63 Chevy… the Hummer limo bothers me too.

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  6. Dorothy said on February 1, 2006 at 9:42 am

    Did you make the English beef yet, basset? If so, how did it turn out?

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  7. Connie said on February 1, 2006 at 10:48 am

    Well, while you’re asking Dorothy, did you read Maybe a Miracle, the book I recommended to you?

    And Nancy, is the new routine related to all these trips to A2 on 94? Is there something you’re not telling us?

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  8. Dorothy said on February 1, 2006 at 11:54 am

    Not yet Connie. I have the title written down and the paper in my purse. Haven’t been to the library in awhile. I did purchase a new book this past Sunday – “Biggest Brother”, the story of Major Dick Winters from Band of Brothers. That, and I work full time, and I started a new afghan recently, etc. etc. I’d love to eliminate the job so I could sew/crochet/read/surf more but that won’t happen for a bit!

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  9. nancy said on February 1, 2006 at 12:53 pm

    Actually, I thought the teen-drinking story was “comical” in a blackly humorous way. I keep imagining the judge coming across that web page. I think teen drinking has passed a tipping point and the culture of party-til-you-puke on college campuses is truly dangerous to a small but significant number of kids and innocent bystanders. Another post down the road for that topic.

    And yes, the new routine is a new gig for me, and the trips to Ann Arbor have been for training. However, the work I’m doing is in the evenings, which means I have to readjust my posting/sleeping schedule. E-mail me, Connie, and I’ll tell you more about it.

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  10. Dorothy said on February 1, 2006 at 2:21 pm

    I guess you could call that part humorous. I imagine those kids were pretty stunned to find out how the judge discovered them.

    What I hate more than anything is hearing about parents who try to intercede and get decisions turned over, etc. The gall of them! I would never dream of doing something so ballsy. In my son’s case I was mostly thankful that (1) he did not get hurt or (2) he didn’t hurt anyone else. The car was not wrecked, etc. But of course I wanted to just smack him across the room when I found out about it. I hope I never experience that sick feeling again when the phone rang, and I saw “Cincinnati Police” in the caller ID box that night.

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  11. mary said on February 1, 2006 at 6:08 pm

    A kid who’s been in my older son’s class since kindergarten has parents who fix up whatever he’s done, deny his guilt, minimize his responsibility. In the fifth grade he shoved a classmate into the street, and the kid was hit by a car (luckily, no serious injuries, but bad enough…). He ran away, and my son, who was walking a few feet away, stayed with the hurt boy and the hysterical driver. The mother of the kid who shoved campaigned to get the sidewalks widened on that street. Her words to me the morning after the incident were,” I guess we all learned a lesson from that.” I asked her if the lesson her son learned involved running fast. About a year and a half later, in middle school, same kid, caught with drugs in his locker and backpack. His parents somehow got the charges dropped, the whole thing made to go away. Two years later, picked up for truancy and vandalism, no charges, no punishment. I can’t wait to see what he’s doing at 18. Interestingly, I had a recent conversation with this mother, although our kids are not in the same circles anymore. She told me that her husband got a call from a lawyer, and now he has to pay child support for a child he fathered 17 years ago. In this mother’s words, “Shit, it was just a one night stand, and now it’s costing us thousands.”

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  12. nancy said on February 1, 2006 at 6:12 pm

    “Shit, it was just a one night stand, and now it’s costing us thousands.�? I’ve heard similar charming people describe this as the “I fucked Lisa tax.” I ask you.

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  13. brian stouder said on February 1, 2006 at 7:19 pm

    “I ask you.”

    I paid support for 16 years – every single week, off the top, before I looked at any other bill. And of course, there were (and still are!) lots of other bills….and we also paid for lots of other things related to my son.

    If a person wants to be crass, I suppose they could call it the “fulfilling just one (and the easiest, at that) of my responsiblities on this earth, to a human being I helped bring into it” tax.

    I have zero tolerance for people who bitch about doing THE BARE-ASSED MINIMUM that they are required to do – if not by their own consciences, then by Johnny Law

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  14. alex said on February 2, 2006 at 12:13 am

    Confession. I grew up in an overprotective household where I rebelled like a holy hellion and yet my scrapes were always magically forgiven. My parents didn’t try to cop some intimidating attitude to get me out of situations; rather, it seems people were fond of them and couldn’t be mean to their child. Not a good lesson for me some would say, as I was an arrogant asshole who took full advantage of it at the time, but in the long haul it really resonated with me just how much good will with others meant when it came to embarrassments and ignominies that might have otherwise come back to haunt me. I have a whole lot to be grateful for, including my own life which I risked more times in my foolish youth than I care to remember.

    “There but for the grace of God… ” seems to have been the mind set of many authority figures in my life, parents themselves. Now that’s compassionate. That’s Christian. Zero tolerance? That’s an invention of those with zero empathy and zero brains and in the long haul it gets zero results. After all, what lessons does it teach besides intolerance?

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  15. Dave said on February 2, 2006 at 8:31 am

    Alex, I don’t think this case is a very good argument against zero tolerance policies. It’s easy to recognize a stupidly applied zero tolerance policy. Not allowing students to take tylenol because it is a “drug”, no cutting the of cakes with cake knives because a knife is a weapon; these are examples of criminalizing the not even remotely criminal. Under age drink is against the law and shouldn’t be excused. Drinking and publicly posting the evidence while they were on probation was stupid and against the law. So I guess I’m a bad Christian and am going to hell, but I think the judge took the proper action. And if it saves the world from three more kids who think the sun shines right out of their assholes all the better.

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  16. Nance said on February 2, 2006 at 8:52 am

    I’ve with Dave in this case. This wasn’t zero-T gone awry, but a pretty textbook example of a girl who needed to be taken down a peg. The punishment was harsh, but so was the insult, and I can’t ante up too many tears.

    What bugs me is a case like one a friend of mine was involved with in FW a few years back: A spring trip to Cedar Point, on a bus, chaperoned and someone brings a flask. It gets passed around. The adults find out. Every kid is questioned, and every one who admits to seeing it AND NOT SAYING ANYTHING ABOUT IT is booted to the alternative high school for the fall semester. That sort of policy just encourages kids to become slick liars.

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  17. basset said on February 3, 2006 at 9:53 am

    I did make the English beef, was really tasty… even though my wife can’t abide horseradish and I left that out.

    horseradish, of course, being the main difference between that recipe and the beef stroganoff we know and love

    but it was good on wide noodles.

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