I’m on record calling the Cadillac Escalade EXT “the world’s most baroque and preposterous vehicle.” Ah, well — I guess I was overheated. I’d like to retract that statement, and propose another model for the honor, the Lincoln Mark LT pickup truck, seen above.

Sorry for the crummy picture, shot at the mall today; here’s a photo gallery. Drink in the utter absurdity of this miracle that only Detroit could offer the world — a high-end luxury pickup truck. The first time I saw one on the freeways here — and here, Detroit, is the only place I’ve ever seen one — I nearly ran off the road. But lo, I had my digital camera with me! I attempted to take a photo at 60 miles per hour, forgetting to turn off the flash and getting instead a very bad picture of the inside of my windshield. (Not to mention the obvious inattention to driving. Guilty as charged.)

Since then the shock has worn off. I probably see one…not every day, certainly, but often enough. Maybe one or two a month? That’s about right.

After a year and a half, I’ve think I’ve gotten a handle on the auto industry’s cultural influence here. I’m accustomed to the lopsided domestic/import ratio you see on the roads. I know about the employee discounts that cement hometown loyalty, which some companies seem to extend to the furthest reaches of “family” — if your fifth cousin once removed works for a Big Three automaker, you qualify. (I exaggerate, yes.) I think I’ve even grasped the just-love-cars attitude that keeps Detroiters trading up every two years simply because man, it’s nice to have new metal in the driveway, isn’t it? My friend John showed me his OnStar system one day driving back from a shopping mall, and I was impressed. (“OnStar, can I help you?” “Yes, where am I?” “You’re on Big Beaver Road, just getting on I-75, southbound. What can I do to help?”)

But I don’t understand a Lincoln pickup. I just don’t. Even in Texas. Even the boots-and-tuxedos crowd would laugh at this thing, wouldn’t they?

I mean: Wouldn’t they?

The WashPost linked to this, the results of a Q magazine poll of Uncool Songs It’s OK to Like. No. 1 on the list: “Livin’ Thing,” by Electric Light Orchestra.

No one asked me, but if they had, I’d say that’s definitely uncool, top to bottom, and not OK to like.

But of course I started thinking about my own list. It’s all on my iPod, and I share it with you now:

Very Uncool Songs I Secretly Adore

“Midnight Blue,” Lou Graham He’s the lead singer of Foreigner, and this sounds like Foreigner, but it’s somehow even worse. I treasure it for the lyrics: I remember what my father said/He said, “Son, life is simple. It’s either cherry red or midnight blue.” Dude, quit bogarting that roach.

“Magnet and Steel,” Walter Egan I guess if you’re looking for a metaphor for attraction, this is as simple as it gets, eh? I like the chick singers oooooing in the background, the memories of my life when this was on the radio, all of it. Uncoolness factor somewhat mitigated by its inclusion on the “Boogie Nights” soundtrack, later restored by the claims of WalterEgan.net, which identifies him as “renowned and enduring singer and songwriter of the million-seller rock classic ‘Magnet and Steel’.”

“Float On,” the Floaters A guy I used to work with remarked, “That’s pretty much says one-hit wonder, doesn’t it? When the name of the band is incorporated in the name of the first single?” Ayup. And never mind the many unpleasant images associated with the word “floater,” from police slang for corpses discovered in water to what we deposit in the toilet every day. Still, how can you not love a song in which the members of the band each take a verse, identifying themselves by name and zodiac sign, and then tell us what kind of woman they love? Libra, and my name is Charles/Now I like a woman that’s quiet/A woman who carries herself/Like Miss Universe Bonus uncoolness points: They may have been the only soul group from Detroit that couldn’t make a second hit record.

“30 Days in the Hole,” Humble Pie A fine example of false-start recording, where before the music actually begins we get 30 seconds or so of studio dreck — coughing, chairs scraping, or, in this case, the band’s singers trying to harmonize, a capella, on the title phrase. It’s so Spinal Tap. You know, like they’re really Robert Johnson, and someday music scholars will want to hear every peep they ever made in an attempt to divine their true greatness.

“Indian Giver,” 1910 Fruitgum Company Bubblegum was teenybopper music, something for 12-year-olds to squeal over while their older sisters sneered and went back to the liner notes on their Doors records. But a lot of it was plenty catchy, and this one is my favorite with its tom-toms-around-the-signal-fire chorus, and– Oh, hell, it’s simpler than that: When I hear it, I think of the pool and summer. I can practically smell the chlorine.

“The Yellow Rose of Texas,” Mitch Miller Yes, I said Mitch Miller. Follow the bouncing ball, and all that. On the uncoolness scale, he’s in league with Lawrence Welk. And yet. This song always comes on the iPod when I’m laboring up a hill on my bike, and it gives me the strength to go on. It’s a march — how can you not fall in step? The last time I heard it, I finally noticed the “yellow rose” part, which I only recently learned was southern slang for a pretty mulatto girl. I went a-Googling, and became perhaps the last American to learn the story of Emily West, the original yellow rose. I noted with pleasure that Miller utterly bowdlerized the lyrics — how uncool!

“Gimme Dat Ding,” The Pipkins A source and I once bonded over our shared secret love for this silly novelty hit, a ragtime piano number with what sounds like Tiny Tim at the mic with Wolfman Jack singing descant. And they knew exactly how much a person could tolerate of this: It clocks in at 2:14 seconds.

“Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” Diana Ross Sure, it was a No. 1 hit, but I think it rates major uncoolness points because it captured Diana Ross at her most awful — in her Miss Ross/Miss Thing diva-be-too-cool-for-the-room period (which, yes, she never left). And yet, I love it for one reason: I saw Miss Ross sing this in concert, in Dayton, Ohio. She spent most of the show swanning around the stage, talking to the audience and only intermittently bothering to break into song. When she sensed interest flagging, she’d fling her arms upward and her hair back, and everyone would scream. It was ghastly. Some years later, I saw a drag queen do the same song, in a crummy gay bar, and she put so much goddamn mustard on it that I was nearly in tears — that was a performance. Every time I hear the song now, I think of the night a man named Eric outworked a woman named Diana.

“Dreams of the Everyday Housewife,” Glen Campbell OK, this one I don’t have on my iPod; it really is wreck-on-the-freeway awful, and my fondness for it is rooted in the numb horror it inspires. People forget not everyone was young and getting laid in the ’60s, and lots of them listened to top-40 radio, too. I’d put this on a CD called Traditional Womanhood, along with Tammy Wynette’s “Stand By Your Man,” “Wives and Lovers” by Jack Jones and the collected works of Bobby Goldsboro.

“Real Live Girl,” Robert Goulet I link this one with the Campbell tune. It really hasn’t aged well, has it? Not in a world with $6,000 sex toys and “Silence of the Lambs.” What lyrics: Pardon me miss, but I’ve never done this with a real live girl/Dreams in your bunk don’t compare with a hunk of a real live girl… Ewwwww. And yet, it’s Robert Goulet — how can you not love it?

“She’s Gone,” Hall and Oates This blue-eyed soul duo had many, many hits; someone must have liked them. But I always thought of them as the Taylor Hicks of the ’70s; totally uncool. Except for this number, which I turn up when it comes on the radio, but only if the windows are up. Oh, and “Sara Smile,” too. Um, and “Out of Touch,” but that’s IT. And I still hate Hall and Oates, but especially Daryl Hall; I once read the particulars of a paternity suit against him, filed by a girl who was recruited from the crowd at a show by one of his pimps. Cattle in the auction ring are treated with more dignity. Ewwww.

“I Love,” Tom T. Hall I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups, bourbon in a glass, and grass. I can’t believe it! SO DO I!

Oh, God, stop me before I spend all day on this. Any additions? You know where to leave ’em.

Sometimes you just want the TV on for background noise. Volume at a low murmur, a moving painting pushed up against the wall. It’s not too distracting that way. I’ve also found it’s pretty much the perfect way to appreciate “Scarface.”

It was on AMC last night. I never watch movies on AMC — there are commercials, and the profanity is scrubbed, but last night I was paying 98 percent of my attention to something else, and besides, it’s “Scarface.” The worst movie ever made. You think losing a few f-bombs is going to hurt the experience?

But actually, I came away from this multitask-aided viewing sort of liking it. How the hell could that happen? I dunno; maybe because I paid attention to the women this time. I liked seeing scrawny, slight-breasted women like Michelle Pfeiffer and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio in plunging necklines. (Nowadays Posh Spice is the model.) I liked Mastrantonio’s ridiculous Afro, and the scene where Pfeiffer listens to her husband crab about everything while he takes a bath. (She sits at her vanity, polishing her nails and tooting cocaine, which seems the right strategy.) Of course, I loved the stupid accents: Toe-nee, we jost got mah-reed yesterday! We were goin’ to soo-prize you!

And, of course, I liked how Miami seems to be entirely populated by young blondes walking down the street in string bikinis. Oliver Stone and Brian DePalma at their best.

It was a short, intense week, but now all my work is done, and it’s Friday! And it’s beautiful! And it’s warm, but not so hot. So I’m giving you this lame-ass entry and a few links:

Lance Mannion speaks for me and many others when he takes note of the tut-tutting over the tone of the Lieberman race — something I’ve paid less than close attention to, although I know it’s pretty ugly — with this cri de blog:

And everybody on down the food chain to the lowliest of the low—I mean me—has again and again expressed their frustration, dismay, and anger at the way insider pundits, politicians, and analysts insist on covering politics as if they live in a universe where Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Roger Ailes of Fox News (not the good Roger Ailes) and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and before them Lee Atwater, Morton Downey Jr, Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Joe McCarthy, and Father Coughlin, had all never been born and as if the poisoned state of political debate was the Democrats’ doing, a bug they keep catching because they refuse to wear their galoshes in the rain and then pass along by not covering their mouths when they cough.

Uh-huh.

The proprietor of Detroitblog is a secretive fellow (he obscured his WHOIS entry), and I suspect for good reason: Evidence suggests he’s a journalist in the employ of one of the dailies, and if word leaked to his bosses that he was blogging on the side, they’d perform their usual First Amendment-inspired clampdown on his right to free expression. Because everyone knows that once you go to work for the princely salary a newspaper pays, they OWN you, brother, you and EVERY WORD YOU WRITE.

Oh, I digress. Anyway, he has a lovely post up, with pictures, on the encroachment of the urban prairie in inner-city Detroit. He had permalinks for a while, but no more, but he doesn’t update often, so if you just go here, I’m sure the post will be at the top for at least a few days.

Hey, thanks! We’re all pretty again!

Maureen Dowd used the phrase “came a cropper” in her column today (TimesSelect link; don’t bother), and she used it correctly. It was almost punctuated correctly, too, but we should maybe not ask too much. I’ll settle for proper usage, particularly of phrases you see used incorrectly all the time.

A nit-picker who wanted to be absolutely correct would write “‘came a cropper,” if you’re interested. The phrase comes from foxhunting and means, literally, to fall off your horse and hit the dirt. You need the apostrophe to indicate the first word is abbreviated; it’s “became a cropper,” i.e. a farmer, by embracing the farmer’s workplace head-first. I never understood the phrase until I saw it, punctuated correctly, in a photo caption for a book about foxhunting. (I think it was the famous picture of Jackie Kennedy going off, headfirst, wearing white string gloves, looking fab as usual.) Anyway, that explained it for me, and ever since, I’ve been noticing how many people get it wrong. “Came a-cropper” is the usual screwup, which suggests bonny lasses walking through fields of rye, croppering or whatever.

“Hear, hear” — that’s another one. It means, “listen to what this person is saying, because it’s the truth” or, simpler yet, “I agree.” And yet, at least 50 percent of the time it’s used, it’s written “here, here,” and I don’t know what that’s supposed to mean, unless you’re summoning a waiter. I found it in a novel written by an author whose work I respect, and I sent him an e-mail pointing it out. No reply.

As usual, The Straight Dope gets it right.

Tack/tact — I sprout more gray hairs every time I see this one. It’s a sailing term, and refers to the zigzag course boats must make as they sail into the wind. If you’re approaching a port that lies directly in the eye of the wind, you have to get there via a series of 45-degree course adjustments. “Let’s take another tack,” means, “Let’s approach this from a different angle.” And yet, I always, always see it written “tact,” and who the hell knows what that means, because I sure don’t.

Please don’t get me started on the anxious/eager difference, which isn’t difficult to understand, and yet even editors can’t get it right, many days.

And people! The principles of one’s faith? Are TENETS! Not TENANTS!

Bookmark this site. It’s a good reference to keep handy.

UPDATE: A commenter in the Ruins thread points out that a “copse” is, by definition, a small group of trees, and so you don’t need to say “copse of trees,” as I did in that post. Hmm. Good point, but I’m calling poetic license on that one. I’ve never heard the word used alone before. My online dictionary tells me its roots are in the 16th century word “coppice.” I guess if you said, “Henry, amble over to that copse and fetch me a fern,” probably people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. As when you use the phrase “‘come a cropper,” perhaps. As my daughter says these days: what-evuh.

Couple bits of bloggage:

The Poor Man answers all your Mel Gibson questions. Including the one that most interested me: Q: Gibson apparently blew a 0.12 on a breathalizer, which is only 150% the legal limit. What is that, like 3 beers? I barely even mention the Jews until I’ve put away a 20-pack. Is Gibson a wuss?

This is perhaps of local interest only, but perhaps not: Jack Lessenberry appreciates Maryann Mahaffey, longtime Detroit City Council president, who died last week. A fine portrait of what old-school liberals are, in their Platonic ideal. Bonus, a four-paragraph summation of what’s wrong with newspapers these days, at the very end.

Amy Welborn linked to this interview on Mercatornet.com the other day, about the Gardasil HPV vaccine. Pay special attention to the questions. For the sort of smug tut-tutting we’ve come to expect from religious conservatives, it really can’t be beat: …not everyone who contracts cervical cancer does so through her own fault, so to speak. So to speak. Through her own fault. What a fine Christian. Most days I’m not for bomb-throwing, but I think this commenter on the issue over at Alicublog cuts right to the heart of things: The argument comes down to this. Both sides know that people are going to have sex before marriage, the difference is the so-called liberals believe that they shouldn’t suffer and die for it, whereas conservatives think suffering and death is exactly what the f*ckers deserve.

Yup.

Another busy day today. Have at it in the comments.

I read Scott Smith’s “A Simple Plan,” loved it, finished it and never picked it up again. For me, that’s sayin’ something; I’m a big rereader. Honestly, though, I couldn’t bear to experience the story again — that’s how much it creeped me out.

The story took place in and around northwest Ohio, for one thing, Alan’s ancestral homeland. I’ve told him more than once that I have no intention of living there, ever, so he can forget the whither-thou-goest stuff if he ever gets a hankering for a Defiance zip code again. Smith’s portrait of a certain sort of semi-rural, tank-town hopelessness was so on the mark that it made my chest grow tight. He absolutely knows what it’s like to live in a place like that, especially when you haven’t exactly chosen it. As I recall, the main character, Hank, is a bookkeeper for a farm-implement business, which puts him in the white-collar class but just barely, with a salary that allows for little more than a version of paycheck-to-paycheck life, and with no future. Plus he has a brother with the IQ of Forrest Gump to look after, and a pregnant wife. Seldom has the tightening noose of a disappointing life been rendered quite so well.

So in the midst of this falls, literally, the solution to all his problems: A whole lot of money. While chasing a dog one wintry day, Hank, his brother and his brother’s drunk friend find a small plane crashed in a copse of trees. It’s been there for some time, to judge from the condition of the pilot’s body. Next to him is a large duffel bag, filled with $4.4 million in cash.

They start speculating on the source of the money. Clearly it’s ill-gotten gains; otherwise someone would have come looking for it, reported the missing plane. So why shouldn’t they take it? But they need more information, and so they — or rather, Hank — comes up with the plan: They’ll take the money, and sit on it, until spring, until the plane is found, the pilot identified and they have an idea who’s missing $4.4 million. Then they’ll wait another decent interval, and one by one, not all at once, they’ll leave town for plausible reasons and go start new lives in better places, each a millionaire. All they need to be is patient, and wise.

It’s a simple plan, really. Of course it falls apart almost immediately.

The story requires a reader to believe Hank is a good person who makes one bad decision on impulse — and it’s not to keep the money — and finds himself sliding headfirst to moral ruination. It’s not such a hard one to swallow; I’ve skated on far thinner ice while suspending disbelief. And I have no illusions about the depths to which good people can sink under the right circumstances. One benefit of giving up God is, it frees you to see that evil exists in every one of us, and it’s our struggle to contain it that gives life its crazy tension.

So now it’s 12 years later, and Smith is just now getting around to publishing a second novel, “The Ruins.” I can’t tell you much about the plot without spoiling it, but here’s why Alan put it down halfway through: Smith no longer finds his greatest villain in the murky forests of the human heart, but in the jungles of Mexico. The rave by Stephen King on the back cover should give you a clue: We’re in the Land of the Supernatural, and while I don’t think Smith has exactly performed a bait and switch — it’s his second book, after all — I see why the Amazon reader reviews are decidedly mixed. “I wanted to see stupid people do stupid things and suffer for it,” Alan said. “But not like this.”

The people aren’t stupid, just young. And American. And on vacation. A potentially fatal combination, as anyone who’s ever held those three cards can testify. Two couples go on vacation to Cancun, hook up with a German and a trio of Greeks in that sort of sign-language, we-speak-only-a-few-words-in-common way that’s fueled so well by alcohol. The German is sad because his brother is missing; he fell in love with a pretty archaeologist headed for some ruins inland, and went off to find her. He hasn’t been heard from since. But he left this map…

When the four make a series of dumb calls, each one complicating their situation a little more, we’re still rooted in familiar territory. But then the story steps off the path, literally, and we’re in King Kountry, and well, I finished the story, and it was as horrifying as I thought it would be. But it didn’t freak me out the way “A Simple Plan” did, because I’d have to believe that what did happen could happen, and I never believed that.

And if the whole thing was metaphor, well, 12 years was a long time to wait for a poorer retelling of “A Simple Plan.”

Still, it has a very flashy website.

Yes, some d’bag in Turkey hacked our little collection of websites. If you’re seeing this, it probably looks different, which I hope will be temporary. My web guy’s on vacation in Kentucky, so it may be a while before he can restore it to its former loveliness.

Meanwhile, this is a test.

UPDATE: Thanks, Danny. So the RSS feed is fine and you can see individual posts if you access via the feed, but no main page. To make matters worse, the guy whose living room the server occupies is getting his e-mail bounced. Still working on it; of course this is a day when I’m working a story on a deadline tighter than paint on a wall. Argh.