I don’t have to explain to my genius readers — and certainly not to Ashley, raging defender of New Orleans — that no one really gives a crap about urban America anymore. As long as we have Broadway, as long as we have major league baseball in a downtown stadium with a nice sports bar nearby, that’ll do for most of us. Most of the U.S. lives in suburbia now anyway. Certainly the registered voters do. And you know what that means.

Certainly I do. But my suburb is cheek-to-jowl with one of the most notoriously dysfunctional cities in the United States, and let me tell you, reading my morning newspaper is rarely boring.

If you’re a boxing fan, you probably know about the Kronk gym. It’s where trainer Emanuel Steward shaped Tommy “the Hitman” Hearns, where dozens of lesser-known pugilists have trained and fought. If you saw Out of Sight, there’s a great scene with George Clooney, Ving Rhames and Don Cheadle, shot there. (Cheadle remarks on the famous thermostat setting preferred by Steward: Boiling. Keeps everything loose.) Like virtually everything else in Detroit, it’s struggling. Correction: Was struggling. Now it’s on the canvas, most likely KO’d.

What did it? A losing string of boxers? Competition from a better operation nearby? If only. No, someone stole the plumbing:

The thieves broke into the boiler room Sunday night and stole all the copper pipes, cutting off water to the gym, which forced it to close for the foreseeable future. …The rising price of copper has sparked increasing thefts of pipes, wire, even the coils in air conditioning units in Detroit and around the country. The price has more than doubled in the past year, and has been hovering around $3.50 a pound this month on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

And that, perhaps, explains another curious item, in yesterday’s paper. It was in the news digest, which is, in my experience, the place to spot news before it’s news. Everything starts small; big stories are born as tiny paragraphs:

A 24-year-old man, who police said most likely was trying to steal electrical cable, was found electrocuted in a field in southwest Detroit on Monday. …(A police spokesman) said area hospitals also have reported an increase in treating people for electrical wire burns.

The cable thefts, the story notes, are the reason for power outages in the area. Listen to the morning news, and every so often you’ll hear of a Detroit school closed “due to a power outage,” the announcer says. The power seems awfully iffy in some neighborhoods of Detroit. Now we see why.

It’s not exactly the butterfly-typhoon connection. Actually it’s a lot closer. Thieves steal infrastructure, and institutions that depend on the infrastructure collapse. The price of copper is up, and therefore children will miss school, young men will have one less opportunity to work out their aggression in a controlled, socially approved setting, thieves will die in fields trying to get a piece of the action.

And what is threatening the fabric of America? This week? I dunno. Probably gay marriage.

So the Raleigh News & Observer ran a Page One note Friday, warning their readers that they would find nudity in that day’s paper. It read:

Today’s Life, etc. section includes a photo of a famous fresco by Michelangelo that includes nudity. The headline was, “Advisory to Readers.”

Here’s the fresco:

Yup, that’s nudity, all right.

Actually, as often happens with these things, I’m wondering something else, that is, who felt the need to describe the image as “famous.” It’s certainly true, but is such a trite and tinny modifier that it’s more amusing than accurate. And yet, I can imagine the near-unconscious impulse that put it there: Already nervous about the shocking transgression of putting a 500-year-old image of Adam’s wenis in a family newspaper, the mind seeks justification. “Important?” Nah, sounds too eggheady. “Glorious?” Nope, that would be editorializing. I know, I know — “famous.” That’s the ticket. If anyone objects, we’ll just point out how famous it is. Paris Hilton is famous, after all, and that’s why we put her in the paper.

It might also have been inserted by the copy desk. There’s a wide streak of pigheaded literal-ness on the desk that would insist on the modifier, because otherwise why use the image? The story’s about how different religions depict God, so why use this one? Because it’s FAMOUS.

OK, OK. I’m jesting because if I stop I will start to throw things. (This is a throwin’-things kind of Monday; be forewarned.) And how’s this for a tin-eared engagement with the readers? From the ombudsman’s blog:

Well, we’ll find out just how sophisticated an arts community this is with reader reaction to today’s Life Etc. front page.

Oh, is that what this is? A test of sophistication? Just shut UP.

Guess what the second graf of that entry says: Displayed across the page is the famous Michelangelo fresco… Famous!

I think it’s really pretty simple, and I think Mitch Harper nailed it:

The newspaper is either filled with unworldly and unsophisticated rubes or it is a window on how the newspapers views its readers. I suspect it is the latter. The newspaper shows what disrespect it has for its readers but is also a measure of the disrespect they have for the quality of their own product.

Yup. Yup. Yup.

So, bloggage:

I was offline most of the weekend, and when I came back I found the Pope had provoked Muslims. That is, the Pope quotes from a 14th-century dialogue between two forgotten scholars, and the Religion of Peace responds with angry demonstrations, death threats, effigy-burnings, possibly the murder of a nun and other peaceful acting-out. In the Free Press a local Muslim is quoted saying, “Our religion is the most peaceful religion.” Noted.

Life imitates “The Wire” in this NYT piece on a local body collector, local being Detroit, bodies being “the ones found lying around the city.” A nice detail:

Do not judge him. A happy attitude is necessary in his profession. It keeps the mind from shattering, salts one’s sanity. Call the job dirty. Call it 14 bucks the hard way — $14 a human body, $9 an animal. He said he made $14,000 last year. He made most of it at night.

UPDATE: There’s an outstanding video version of that story on NYTimes.com, too.

Back later. Be peaceful.

When I win my Oscar, or my Pulitzer, or Peabody, or Chamber of Commerce Parent of the Year (third runner-up), or whatever lies in my future, I have to thank these two guys. Of course we’d all have to live to 150 for that to happen, so the Knight-Wallace Fellows spent much of the weekend thanking them anyway, for what they gave us and what we still hope to give back.

The highlight of the weekend was the giant Introduction of the Fellows. It took forever, but it was worth it, the microphone passing around the room and all 200 or so of those assembled telling everyone what we did at Michigan, what we ended up doing after and how the former helped the latter. And you know what? It was inspiring.

These last few years have been grim in journalism — newspapers cutting off limbs, television news descending into WWWA-TV, the usual platter of miseries — but journalism is as important as ever. More important, even. And there were a lot of horror stories; “I went to Ann Arbor for a year, and all I got was my job eliminated” was not a unique storyline. But by and large, those people landed on their feet, doing things differently, doing things better. A pox on corporate journalism, but dammit, we may pull through after all. The stories were wonderful: A network producer goes independent. A demoted reporter goes back to school. An editor starts a foundation. A writer becomes a documentary filmmaker. A columnist becomes a novelist. A TV guy becomes an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs were everywhere. That was the theme of the weekend — going unilateral. Stickin’ it to the Man. But still, doing it better than the Man ever dreamed of.

So thanks, Charles (Eisendrath, the guy in the hat, director of the program) and thanks, Mike (the other guy). I had the time of my life, and continue to do so. Every day is a winding road; long may you drive.

…and it feels so good.

Just a note: This weekend is the semi-regular reunion of the Knight-Wallace Fellows, over Ann Arbor way. Of course I’m going, which means I’ll be scarce around these parts until the last thunderous round of applause has faded from the air. That is, sometime on Sunday. Until then it’ll be lectures and seminars and maybe, MAYbe, a little drinking.

And it all starts with lunch in about two hours, when fF Vince Patton arrives in Grosse Pointe and demands to be shown around. So I have to clean the house. Later, dudes.

I love when I can spot myself, unnamed, in someone else’s writing:

Fort Wayne Observed and Indiana Parley allow Harper to satisfy his desire to comment on politics, government and local oddities, and both daily newspapers offer blogs by staff members. But many other blogs are embarrassing exercises in pointless narcissism.

Gotta love it.

Next aspiration: To be a thinly veiled character in a Lance Mannion short story! Give me long legs and a nice ass, Lance.

We’re going to have to figure out a way to handle the Wire discussion threads. HBO is making new episodes available through its On Demand service starting a week before their official air dates. So while the rest of you suckas just watched the premiere, I spent my lunch hour yesterday watching episode 2.

I was one of those who would have been heartbroken if the show had been cancelled after three seasons, but not devastated. Which is to say, I thought the circle had been closed on all the major plotlines, to whatever extent that’s possible. We knew what happened to the Barksdale crew, and who would succeed them as west Baltimore’s drug-dealing Wal-Mart. We knew how Jimmy McNulty would settle his tortured soul. We knew the Major Crimes unit was a done deal. The beat went on. So if HBO had pulled the plug, I’d say, “Very bad decision; this is the best show on television,” but I wouldn’t experience series interruptus, so to speak.

Well. I was wrong.

Every season this show keeps getting richer. Season one: Cops and robbers. Season two: Cops, robbers, working-class heroes. Season three: Cops, robbers, politicians. And now, in season four: Cops, robbers, children. After only two episodes, it is already breaking my heart.

What “The Wire” seeks to do, among many things, is to show urban America to the rest of America. This is no small task. When we first moved here, several mothers confided in me that they never went to Detroit, outside of the safe-for-suburbanites downtown attractions (stadiums, theaters, a few restaurants), for any reason, and that I shouldn’t, either. I told one that I’d recently gone to the Eastern Market (also safe for suburbanites), and she, a lifelong Detroiter, said she’d never been there. In her life.

“It’s really very safe,” I said. “There are thousands of people there on Saturday morning.”

“It’s not the destination,” she said. “It’s what might happen on the way there.”

This is not an irrational fear. Detroit is a big, poor, ravaged city with all of the associated problems. The husband of one of Alan’s coworker’s was carjacked at gunpoint at a gas station in a not-particularly-bad east-side neighborhood recently. City officials are always pointing out that things are looking up, that the city’s not as bad-off as it was, and they’re right — the crack epidemic of the ’80s/’90s was the agreed-upon low point — but, as Ving Rhames says in “Pulp Fiction,” things are still pretty fucking far from OK.

But in the city, life goes on. People live and die and go to church, the mail is delivered, babies are born, leaves that are green turn to brown. “The Wire” seeks to show us how everyone’s doing. Of course the bottom line is: Not good, but it’s not all bad, either. Part of the genius of the show is how its roving spotlight can find little success stories, too, sometimes right alongside the bad, sometimes part of the bad. In the episode I watched yesterday, in the establishing shot at a shabby boxing gym one of the characters is running, we see a poster on the wall under the legend, “Our Platinum Patron.” It is of a young Avon Barksdale, whom we already know as a murderous drug dealer. But he was once a boxer, and he bankrolled the gym when it was getting started, and now his drug money is being used to keep young men away from the corners, away from drug dealing. In the city you can’t get on your high horse about where money comes from; there’s just not enough of it to go around, and so you don’t ask questions.

The show’s writers also like to show us how identical attitudes compare to one another at different levels. In the same episode, a corrupt state senator throws a fit in his friend the mayor’s office. The senator is the mayor’s deputy campaign chairman, and he’s just been subpoenaed; the police are interested in the source of some of his campaign contributions. He feels personally insulted by this attention: “How am I supposed to finance the whole ticket? With contributions from Korean grocers? Am I supposed to ask a man where his money comes from?” And guess where some of his money came from? From Avon Barksdale. It’s all connected.

This season’s main narrative looks at a quartet of four boys at the tipping point, in middle school, when their destinies are still in question. One is the son of an incarcerated-for-life executioner, whose mom is living well on the subsidy paid to good soldiers who take the rap and keep their mouths shut; one has one of those fiercely protective mothers who has a decent job and a keen interest in her son’s future; one is being raised by wolves, so to speak, and the wolves are so impaired and dysfunctional they can’t even feed him; and we don’t know much about the fourth, except that he has his own ideas. More will be revealed.

In screenwriting class, we were taught that every minute counts — that you can’t waste valuable production time or risk your audience’s attention, so you must move the plot along in every scene — “raise the stakes.” This is one reason your life probably isn’t as exciting as a movie, because life raises the stakes on a much more leisurely timetable. One of the things TV can do, because a season runs 13 hours rather than 90 minutes, is show us some of life’s smaller moments. There’s a lovely one in episode two, where Namond, the kid whose dad is in prison, visits him there, along with his mother. I’d wager very few readers here ever visited their father in prison, and experienced the odd authority of a jailed father. The competing influences of that scene — dad behind bars, but still the source of the family’s money, and hence someone who must be respected; a kid who’s still embarrassed to have a dad in such a place; a mother who must keep the man happy to keep getting her grubstake — were dizzying, and yet they were all there in about two minutes of screen time, including a tender moment between father and son on opposite sides of plexiglas that still felt entirely natural and unforced.

That, my friends, is hard to do. (I should add: And still the plot was moved along, and still the stakes were raised. I’m going to be thinking about how the writers did that all day long.)

One more thing, and then I’ll shut up: One of the perverse rewards of low-budget TV is the chance to see new faces, actors who haven’t made their bones yet and are willing to work in an offshore (from Hollywood and New York, anyway) production. There are hardly any recognizable actors in this show (the corrupt state senator turns up in commercials sometimes), and that helps the audience lose itself in the stories; we really feel we’re eavesdropping on real life. But the child actors, this season, are incredible. These are not Disney Channel faces; the kid in the middle even has a little acne.

Today brought some good news: “The Wire” has been renewed for a fifth season. The show’s creator, David Simon, says next year will “look at the role of mass media in contributing to cities’ dysfunction.”

Season four has barely started, and already I can’t wait for season five. That, folks, is good TV.

I have lots to do today and little to say. You can use the comments as an open thread if you wish — maybe that’ll spark my imagination, if the grocery shopping doesn’t do the trick — or you can say something about these tables. First, the “before” of my mom’s old sewing table, which I started restoring in the spring:

It’s finally finished. The “after:”

I’d say it cleaned up purty good. (Next project: The room it sits in. Yes, that lamp will go. So will lots of other stuff.) And finally, here’s the guest of honor’s setting at my brother’s birthday party, held at my sister Pam’s house:

In her semi-retirement my sister has become an antiques dealer, specializing in glass and ceramics. However, she keeps drinking the profits, so to speak. That china was an auction find, and she got it for an incredible price. It’s gorgeous and flawless and pink, so it’s both midcentury and firecracker-hot, as recent eBay transactions reveal. But even though some gay hostess w/mostest would probably give her four figures for it, she cannot let it go. Truth to tell, I don’t blame her. It really makes a nice table setting.

Back later.

God, my breath must smell like Dentu-Creme. I opened the Columbus Dispatch yesterday to the real estate section and read this:

Randy Carr didn’t bother with a home inspection before buying the century-old Victorian brick house on Neil Avenue. “I didn’t hire an inspector to find out what was wrong with the house,” Carr said. “I knew everything was wrong. The insurance company wouldn’t cover it.”

Hmm, sounds like a real wreck, I thought, reading on. (Sometimes, on Sunday morning, you need to look at the real-estate section before you move on to the news.) And then the dawning revelation: I not only know this house, I’ve been in this house, I’ve partied in this house, I’ve been impressed by this house, and whaddaya know, it was falling down all around me:

Although (former owner Corbett) Reynolds had tackled some roof repairs, exterior painting and interior remodeling, he hadn’t been able to keep up with the maintenance of a huge house.

“If the ceiling started crumbling, he would tack up a piece of plywood and paint it black or something very dark. Then he filled the room with his art. People would come in and say, ‘What a great house.’ But what they were looking at was his art.”

Count me among those fooled. I dimly recall a restored-to-Victorian-perfection house, with parlors and butler’s pantries and everything fussy fussy fussy. (A friend of mine rented the third floor, but he was friends with his landlord, and it seemed that every time I visited I’d end up walking through the main house on one errand or another.) One day I came over and the place had gone bipolar — gone were the horsehide couches and glass lamps and all the Victoriana and in its place was black. He’d painted the walls black, the ceiling black, the woodwork black (the woodwork!), and filled the room with Warhol prints lit by little spots. It was jarring, but very cool. I recall thinking, “Someday someone will have to strip that woodwork and will curse his name,” but until then, hey, it was his house and he could do what he wanted with it. Who’d have ever thought all that black was hiding water damage, the same way black pants hide a fat ass.

Corbett, the original owner, was an artist and something of a partying visionary. He owned an abandoned movie theater on the west side, which he rechristened Rudely Elegant and opened as a nightclub. Then it closed, and he went to a schedule where it would only be open one night a month, for an invitation-only theme party. I thought it had something to do with his liquor license, but after I attended the first one I think it was more about the preparation needed.

The first one was the Red Party, held in February. (Link warning: Main page is OK, subsequent photos may be NSFW or homophobes.) The space was filled with dancing bare-assed cherubs and neon hearts. Then came the White Party, the Colors Party and the most infamous of all — the Black Party, which was all about leather. I might still have the flyer for that one, which featured a nude Ohio State cheerleader in a black mask and a black rooster. (It was the Chinese Year of the Cock, which would have made it…1981.)

Needless to say, while no one made me feel unwelcome at these events, it was pretty obvious they were not aimed at my demographic, so I never stayed long. It was always worth the cover charge just to see how they’d decorated, though. Googling around, I see that Wikipedia gives Reynolds shared credit for inventing the circuit party, which the Red Party was.

The real-estate story in the Dispatch didn’t mention any of this. I guess it would have been a tangent.

So, bloggage:

As everyone knows, Peggy Noonan gets on my last goddamn nerve. Which is why I’m singling out this blue-moon rarity, a column of hers I actually like. It’s about what the 9/11 victims said when they were able to make phone calls in their final moments:

Something terrible had happened. Life was reduced to its essentials. Time was short. People said what counted, what mattered. It has been noted that there is no record of anyone calling to say, “I never liked you,” or, “You hurt my feelings.” No one negotiated past grievances or said, “Vote for Smith.” Amazingly –or not–there is no record of anyone damning the terrorists or saying “I hate them.” …This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they’d guess. And this: We’re all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won’t make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.

And that seems like enough to leave you with now. Have a good day.

I was feeling energetic and expansive this morning, preparing for the first bike ride in days. I had errands to run and thought I might want to try some fun new hit singles from the iTunes music store. It — the store — suggested Hanson’s “MMMBop.” (No, I don’t know WHY, and I’m not sure I want to know.) What a capital suggestion; I long ago buried my shame over having a secret love for bubblegum (in small, sugar-free doses, if possible).

When it started to play, I was startled to realize I’d never actually heard the entire song before. Like everyone else in the world I remember a video of three cute California sk8r boys playing around on their Tony Hawk decks. Of course I remembered the chorus, which was everywhere at the time:

Mmm bop, flip ta ba du op
Du daba, du op
Flip ta ba du
Ye-ah
Mmm bop, flip ta ba du op
Du daba, du op
Flip ta ba du
Ye-ah

But this song, to my astonishment, has verses. And they suggest a certain world-weariness that’s disturbing in three blonde California teenagers:

You have so many relationships in this life
Only one or two will last
You go through all the pain and strife
Then you turn your back and they’re gone so fast
Oh yeah
And they’re gone so fast…yeah
So hold onto the ones who really care
In the end they’ll be the only ones there
When you get old and start losing your hair

Start losing your hair? Hanson, at the time, had more hair on their three heads than you can find in some entire middle schools. But there was still another surprise to come:

This song is four minutes and 28 seconds long. What the hell? The compact between artist and consumer in bubblegum music is pretty clear, if you ask me: You get in and out in 2:30, and if you go any more than 14 seconds past that, you’d better have a damn good reason. You have a hook, a little verse or two, and the whole thing better be about chaste teen love, not hair loss. For this we will happily buy your records, request them when they reach oldie status and keep you touring on the state fair nostalgia circuit until you get tired of it. You can’t go writing four-minute-thirty singles! It’s just not done!

But maybe it gets you this:

Yes, you read that right: 20th Century Masters. Hanson. I ask you.

I sent this to Emma. She reassured me that my recollection of just what Hanson was, and is, was not lunacy:

God. I remember when I interviewed them over the phone.
Zac: What are you eating?
Me: Chips. Are you flirting with me?
And that was about as good as it got.

Still a cool single, though. Although it needs to be a lot shorter.

Like most mothers, when I saw the photos of Suri Cruise, I had one immediate thought: “Eh, cute kid, but my baby was far, far cuter.”

And I have evidence:

Here’s Kate at the same age Suri is now. Note her superior cuteness in every way. And the photo wasn’t taken by a world-famous photographer, but by me.

A bonus, to underline her staggering cuteosity:

When I used to walk both her and the dog at the same time, sometimes we would literally stop traffic. I had to fend off Hollywood agents waving million-dollar contracts promising to make her the next Welch’s grape juice child. (“As if,” I’d tell them. “Call me when you have Scorsese ready to deal.”)

You know what gets me? All this talk about her hair. As you can see, Kate was born with a ton of hair. That was the first thing anyone said about her: The nurse peered up my ya-ya and said, “Wow. That’s a lot of hair. (pause) On the baby.” Well, that was nice to know. And it was. Hair on a baby makes for extra cuteness. Welcome to the world, Suri. We’re not sure about your parents and the world is crazy, but hey, you’ll always have those photos.

(Thanks to J.C. for digging these up using his mad metadata skillz. My only digital copy of these photos was on a damn floppy.)