If you don’t watch “American Idol” you are excused from reading another word. I’ve simply given myself over to the cultural sluice on this one. Kate adores it, and so we watch. And I don’t mind — it’s entertaining in its own way, and if you don’t ask too much of it or yourself, it’s a very enjoyable ride for the viewer. Plus, it’s one of the very rare shows that the whole family can watch together, which is a huge part of its appeal. Just when you think the whole world of entertainment has been sliced and diced into niches, sub-niches and sub-sub-niches, along comes something that’s the 21st-century equivalent of “The Wonderful World of Disney,” only with Simon Cowell. That’s an improvement.

With all that’s written on the subject, I didn’t think there was much more to be said, but Virginia Heffernan manages to find a few more things to say, many of them amusing:

Mr. Cowell, the pitiless judge who still brings to the show the spirit of its British progenitor “Pop Idol,” seemed baffled by the piety Americans brought to the task of singing. Insisting that he wanted nothing but a vanilla hottie to showcase the Pygmalion talents of a guileful music packager, he still couldn’t stop them from singing their hearts out and thanking their moms and God.

To his credit, he eventually let himself be blown away. And he dropped Posh Spice as his paradigm of a musician, settling for Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. (Mr. Cowell, we shouldn’t forget, used to package puppets, cartoon characters and wrestlers as pop stars; he is new to virtuosity.) He and his compatriots had apparently never tangled with contestants like Kelly Clarkson, who’d grown up singing country, or Ruben Studdard, who’d grown up singing gospel. As for the contestants in those early seasons, their sincerity never dropped.

And on everybody’s favorite barfly:

The most recent seemingly insuperable problems at “Idol” have not come at the hands of the stern father figure, Mr. Cowell, but from Ms. Abdul, his gentler counterpart. Known at the outset for her busty tops and sweet cheerleading — her “mom I’d like to sleep with” vibe — she has lately become a different kind of mother. Dazed, delirious, sulky, petulant, lascivious: she often looks tired and confused, running some words together and inventing others.

Two years ago, a contestant named Corey Clark said Ms. Abdul had courted him and then done him professional favors. ABC deemed the charges exciting enough to devote an ominous and moderately persuasive episode of “20/20” to them, which did double duty as a hit job for the network’s entertainment division.

No specifics seemed to stick to Ms. Abdul, who Fox maintained had done nothing wrong, but the aura of loucheness is almost palpable. Gone is the perky soccer mom with the ’80s dance moves. She now regularly wears the pliant smile, smeared makeup and bedroom eyes of a woman who’s about to pass out.

See, that’s what I mean about entertaining: Kate can appreciate the wholesomeness of the boy singers; Alan, our family’s only real musician, can groove on the finer points of the performances; and I, the sicko culture vulture, can wait for Paula to pass out.

I noticed, last week, the talent gulf in the women was embarrassing. Six skinny white girls who can’t project to the back rows of a powder room up against three or four ladies of color who blow the roof off the dump. Every girl wants to be told she’s beautiful, but is there any compliment more deflating than hearing Simon say, “At least you’re pretty”?

Last week the men sucked eggs, but they improved this week. I voted for the Hispanic kid who took on Nina Simon’s “Feeling Good.” Brave boy.

Now, I take my leave. I have to generate story ideas today, which requires two things: A hot shower and a little light exercise to oxygenate the brain. Please, post no Antonella Barba pix in the comments; we run a clean shop here.

This just in: Spring approacheth. The equinox is still a month off, the weather of late has been atrocious, but yesterday when Sprig and I were mincing along the treacherous, icy sidewalk, trying to avoid falling on our canine and human butts, suddenly, there it was — that ineffably subtle change in the air that says, Hold on, I’m comin’.

At first I thought it was way too early, and then recalled that it’s usually the second week in August when I notice autumn off on the horizon, approaching on his dun-colored horse. That is, six months ago.

Then the sheet of ice I was baby-stepping on cracked, and icy water swept over the dog’s paws. He looked pissed. Can’t blame him.

Speaking of dogs. I recall a line from an essay — Thomas McGuane, I think — saying the best dogs refuse to be completely domesticated, that the streak of wildness that remains in them is what makes them worth sharing your lives with. I think of this whenever my own gets into some sort of trouble. Like yesterday. I finished lunch, got a couple of Girl Scout cookies for dessert, and dropped the last quarter of the last Samoa on the floor, because it’s nice to share. Went back upstairs. Shouldn’t have.

Kate has her GS cookie orders bagged individually and sitting on the floor of the family room, awaiting delivery. I’ve been telling myself they’re safe because they’re double-wrapped in plastic and cardboard. When the dog sticks his nose into a bag, I say, “Get out of there” and he does without objection. A couple times I’ve thought I heard something and checked it out, only to find the cookies untouched, the dog peacefully sleeping on his bed, which is what he does most of the time these days.

Until yesterday. Thank God Girl Scout cookies are packaged in super-noisy crinkly plastic packaging, because I heard the plunder in progress from upstairs, ran down and caught him before he did too much damage. Only one box had been torn open. Samoas, of course.

“Bad dog!” I said. He didn’t slink or cower. You knew durn well I was a snake before you brought me in.

Kate used to have a videotape of a BBC production of Beatrix Potter stories. The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse is about the fussy, compulsive cleaner and tidier-up of her little mouse burrow. A giant toad in a waistcoat stops by one day and asks for some honey. She says she doesn’t have any, the liar.

“Mrs. Tittlemouse,” he says, in this low, growly, BBC-Cockney accent. “I can smell it.” It’s the filthiest line I’ve ever heard in a children’s production. This cookie event will be known in the future as the Mrs. Tittlemouse Incident.

So, bloggage:

Emma is learning to play the violin. As always with Emma stories, when she changes gears away from her own experience to talk to others — the people who actually justify doing the story — I get impatient. Who cares about these boring people learning the guitar at 50? I want to hear more about Emma:

For years, I’ve operated under the deluded fantasy that, given the opportunity, I could rival Itzhak Perlman on the violin. Not that I’d ever had a lesson. No, this fantasy was born after watching a 5-year-old on “Sesame Street” play a feisty version of “Mary Had A Little Lamb.” A 5-year-old can’t even tie her own shoes, right?

And this was the writer my alma mater let slip through their fingers. (Bonus: Downloadable audio clips of Emma playing “Mary,” as well as “Good King Wenceslas.” Itzhak Perlman can relax a while longer.)

I know some of our readers are into general aviation. Spriggy would like to be taken for a ride like this, although he requests a nice soft cushion in the back seat:

If the central fashion revelation of Oscar night needs to be made any clearer, it’s by comparing this photo of Helen Mirren to this photo of Jessica Biel. Central fashion revelation: You can look as great at 50-plus as women half your age. Central fashion lesson: Ladies of all ages, bras are our friends. Central overall lesson: Worst show ever.

Sometimes the headline says it all: Police say driver in fatal crash was using laptop.

Back later. Carry on, you crazy kids.

Kate and Allie (yes, really) finding Nemo.

I give the place a lot of grief, but never let it be said I don’t give Fort Wayne its due, either. The renovation of the main library, a gut-to-the-studs bump-out, was a major project, the centerpiece of an $80 million bond issue for improvements system-wide. A remonstrance, in which the arguments ran from “that’s too much money” to “splutter taxes splutter eggheads splutter a café?!?” failed, and so construction commenced more than three years ago. The entire main branch was relocated a few blocks down the street for the duration. When it became clear we were leaving Fort Wayne for good sometime in 2004, one of my first thoughts was: I’m not going to see the library completed. Damn.

Eighty million smackers is a lot of money. Noted. However, it won’t even buy a middling stadium anymore, a facility that policymakers everywhere are convinced is a veritable golden goose for any city. But I don’t follow most sports, and step into their arenas only rarely, whereas I’m in a library at least once a week. When my child was younger, it was more often. It helped that the Allen County Public Library was such a rich well of resources, a facility that seemed to belong in a city three times the size of Fort Wayne. And it wasn’t the crown jewels — a top-three-in-the-country genealogical collection, a rare-book room with everything from an unopened copy of Madonna’s “Sex” to a complete set of Edward Sheriff Curtis’ “The North American Indian” folios — that I used. They just kept up with everything, from new fiction to kid-lit to internet resources to music and DVDs. The staff was friendly and sharp. I was grateful for it every time I stepped through the doors.

So. Came the weekend, and one of Kate’s playdates fell through, and we had time on our hands. Where to go? No question.

I only took a few pictures. If you want to see pictures, go to the ACPL’s Flickr page, which documents every nook and cranny. My immediate first impression: They were right to aim high. To call Fort Wayne “fiscally conservative” is laughingly inadequate; Midwestern frugality is the bass note of every discussion of spending tax dollars. There’s a main traffic artery on which you drive with your heart in your mouth, so narrow are the lanes. They are the absolute bare minimum allowed by law, constructed to save a few shekels on concrete and land under the administration of a previous, tight-fisted mayor. To drive on Lake Avenue is to experience a literal manifestation of penny wise and pound foolish — it’ll have to be widened at some point, at a cost that dwarfs what it would have been to just make them wider in the first place — but nobody cares. The editorial pages call the old miser not a bullheaded obstructionist but a necessary voice of fiscal restraint. Whatever.

It would have been easy to do the same thing with the library, to address parking and space issues a little bit at a time, settling for good-enough rather than great. But library administrators didn’t, and the public backed the play, and good for them. They bought themselves not just a wonderful facility but a new focal point for downtown. Example: The plan called for the abandonment of one block of Webster Street, even though the building wasn’t going to grow significantly in that direction. Instead they built a wide plaza at the main entry, an outdoor gathering place suitable for everything from political speechmaking to lolling with a good book. (I’m assuming there’ll be some benches there once the weather turns.)

And that’s apart from the other public spaces within — a theater, meeting rooms, acres of study tables and computer work stations. There’ve been some criticisms that the 21st-century design slights the books, but I think it’s more a question of scale; the spaces are so vast now that the books take up less space than they used to. In any event, the new library eliminated one of the odder traits of the old one — storage. There were two basement levels, and if the catalog said the book you wanted was in storage, you filled out a slip and sent it down on a dumbwaiter. An unseen library troll fetched it for you and sent it back up in a few minutes, which was always amusing. (I always wanted to send down a cupcake or love note or something.)

Now all the books are in the public stacks, and the basement levels are underground parking. You swipe your library card to raise the gate.

When the old library closed, Kate mourned the loss of the children’s department, which was cramped but cozy, a place we both loved. The star attraction was an aquarium featuring a single occupant, which we called Mr. Fish. The new children’s section is vast, with several play areas and, well, a big upgrade in the aquarium department — two semicircles of beautiful saltwater tanks, along with a tubular bubble display that drives the toddlers wild with delight. One of the librarians recognized us, and after marveling over the tall girl at my side who has replaced the little storytime regular, we asked whatever happened to Mr. Fish.

She made a face. “Poisoned,” she said, when a kid poured soap into the old tank. “The new ones are a lot taller,” she said. “I don’t think anyone will be able to reach that high.” Or will want to, I expect. It’s all too beautiful.

Finally, the café, a detail that drove the remonstrators crosseyed. The library is a draw for lots of out-of-towners, mostly amateur genealogists. Downtown Fort Wayne can be a dreary place after dark and in certain seasons, and a place to get a sandwich and coffee without going too far was always these visitors’ No. 1 request; the circulation desk used to give out a photocopied list of all reasonably priced restaurants within walking distance. But a restaurant struck many as the ultimate unnecessary detail, a luxury for the sort of Starbucks-haunting layabouts the new place would be sure to attract. Why, there’s a Taco Bell right across the street; couldn’t they be happy with that?

The café shares a space with Twice Sold Tales, the used bookstore run by the Friends of the Library. I ducked in to see if I could score some cheap hardcovers, and found a few, only to see that the Friends’ cash register was unattended. A sign instructed me to take my purchase to the café register and pay there. I looked over. A line had formed that was nearly to the door, at least a dozen people. The lunch crowd, in other words. I put the books back and left empty-handed but heart-full. I’m so proud of the old place. They aimed high and hit a bullseye.

We have two items on the agenda today:

1) Set the speed-dial on stun, start firing at 10 a.m. and, insha’Allah, score tickets to the Iggy Pop concert at the Fox Theatre in April, and;

2) Drive to Fort Wayne. Kate’s been clamoring for a trip to see her old friends there, and we finally got it together. I intend to collect on payment for that big editing job I did back around Christmas time, the payment being: Dinner. I told my host to choose a venue suitable to the quality of the work, which means we might end up anywhere from Joseph Decuis to Coney Island. It’ll be a short stay — 36 hours at the most — so I doubt I’ll be picking up the tab for all comers at Henry’s, but one of these days, Alice…

(Acknowledgement of The Truth Department: Detroit is a coney-crazed town, and its Mosque No. 1, so to speak, is a greasy little place downtown called Lafayette Coney Island. It’s open all the time, a great stew of humanity, with swarthy countermen and that ineffable Billy Goat vibe. At bar-closing time, it resembles the set of a Fellini movie. But I ate there exactly once, and feared for my health. I still have yet to find a coney here that’s the equal, taste-wise, of Fort Wayne’s Famous. So I wouldn’t mind eating there at all. They serve Cokes in the little 6.5-ounce bottles. Mmm.)

So let’s kick off the bloggage with a Fort Wayne theme. Hoosiers of the 3rd congressional district, this is your congressman, a man who claims 65 percent of all drug-related ER admissions are for marijuana use.

Man, I’m tired of people tailgating me, too. But I stop short of gunfire.

Do we want to wait until they develop weapons of mass destruction? Or do we want to nip this chimp thing in the bud? Your call, America. Bonus amusement: The landmark observation also supports the long-debated proposition that females — the main makers and users of spears among the Senegalese chimps — tend to be the innovators and creative problem solvers in primate culture.

I’m not laughing at Britney anymore. If only she could sing, you could call this breakdown the Full Judy Garland. (Here we see the female chimp using a crudely fashioned spear.)

Ever wonder just how the camera adds 10 pounds? Slate’s bird-dogging that one:

Bad lighting, mostly. The flat, even illumination on the red carpet makes it hard for the camera to capture dimension, unlike in a photo shoot with flattering soft lights. Cast from an angle, light creates shadows that sculpt the face and body by hiding unwanted flesh. Softer lights can hide wrinkles and smooth out the skin for women, while harsher lights on male faces exaggerate lines for a chiseled look. Without the aid of shadows, however, light exposes the imperfections of the face and body and makes the resulting image bigger and flatter. That’s why everyone avoids white dresses—which cast fewer shadows under even lighting—except the thinnest actresses, like Nicole Kidman.

Off to bird-dog Iggy! Back after the weekend.

Louis Farrakhan is coming back to Detroit, the birthplace of the Nation of Islam. His face is emblazoned on billboards at several major freeway interchanges, advertising his talk this weekend at Ford Field. Interesting to note how the dailies are playing it; Farrakhan’s pretty sick now (cancer) and there’s speculation this will be his last major speech. Anyway, he and the Nation of Islam have lost their mojo, and his ability to shock anyone probably peaked in the ’90s. Whatever appeal Islam had for African Americans ebbed in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war, but Farrakhan’s still swingin’, so he’s news.

The Freep played its advance with Farrakhan as toothless-lion-in-winter, emphasizing the Nation’s Detroit roots and its appeal to non-Muslim blacks. Farrakhan and his group “have been accused of anti-Semitism, a charge the Nation denies.” Hmm. Because, you know, just because you call Judaism a “gutter religion” doesn’t make you an anti-Semite. I once heard Farrakhan claim he couldn’t be anti-Semitic because he loved the Semitic peoples of the Middle East — you know, the Arab ones, the same ones who happily sold native Africans into slavery for centuries, and the ones practicing genocide in Darfur.

The News at least bothered to ring up the Anti-Defamation League for a comment. Both stories emphasized the good the Nation has done in the black community, and good is truly the word for it, when you can inspire people to stop taking drugs and take care of one another. Still, it’s hard to see the difference between the Nation and the Promise Keepers, offering salvation with one hand and a whole list of people to hate (Jews, gays, crackers) with the other.

Man, I had one of those epic sleeps last night — 9 hours, more or less, and after two cups of coffee I still can’t wake up. Had vivid dreams that I can’t remember, except that one featured my old colleague Mike Dawson, Emma’s ex-husband. He wandered through one of my dreamscapes, like Abraham Lincoln and that beaver. I will remember Mike forever for his killer impersonation of Deion Sanders speaking at the Fort Wayne Prayer Breakfast a few years back. Sanders, in the usual manner, laid out the depths of his degradation before his religious redemption: “You don’t know what it’s like to have one…two…three women…in the bed…and still not be…SATISFIED.” I’m sure that was a jolt to the spine of all the Lutherans in the audience.

OK, since this entry is clearly going nowhere, let’s go to bloggage:

Once women watched Diane Keaton in a movie and said, “I want her wardrobe.” Now they say, “I want her kitchen.” Inevitable, probably.

When my friend Debi moved from Michigan City, Indiana up the coastline to Milwaukee, I attended her going-away party. There were lots of jokes and jests that suggested she was leaving Paris for Mayberry — that her old hometown was an oasis of culture and that the Dairy State was full of obese cheese-eaters, hats with earflaps and alcoholism. I remember thinking this was not only stupid but wrong, but every so often I read a story under a Wisconsin dateline that makes me think those Hoosiers were on to something.

Off for more coffee. Back later, maybe.

After messing with iTunes today, I bring you…

Selections from the album art file!

Remember “The Original Kings of Comedy”? I liked the difference between old-school and hip-hop: In old-school, there’s five guys and one microphone, in hip-hop, 20 guys and everybody has a microphone. That’s David Ruffin on the far right, a man confident enough to rock both that suit and the glasses. Of course, if you could sing like him, you would, too. (I’d bet a dollar that picture was taken somewhere in Detroit, and I’d love to know where.)

Funny to think about, but this is what passed for bad-asses in the mid-’60s. More James Dean than John Lennon, but if a boy wearing boots like the one on the left came to pick up your daughter in 1964, you’d be right to worry. I like it because it looks like every one of those guys held a day job at a tool-and-die shop somewhere. And maybe they did.

The post-Diana Supremes, here. I love the hair, of course, and the black turtlenecks. If anything said, “It’s not the ’60s anymore,” this picture did. That’s Jean Terrell at the top, Cindy Birdsong on the right and ever-faithful Mary Wilson at left. Their first album, post-Diana, was called “Right On.” I like the ’70s Supremes for their lack of Diana-ness, but mostly for “Up the Ladder to the Roof” and “Nathan Jones.”

Today’s lesson: When someone smarter than you gives you advice, take it.

For years now, John, my computer guru, has been telling me to mind my metadata — tags, labels, genres, playlists. Take the time, when you download music, e-mail, photos, to put it where it belongs, or at the very least, slap a digital sticky on it. And remember to delete the crap you don’t want anymore. On today’s giant hard drives, single files can knock around like lost children in Calcutta, and someday you’ll need to find them, and where will they be? In Calcutta, that’s where.

Did I listen? Only with half an ear. And then, today, I accidentally deleted my “purchased music” playlist, and now all my iTunes Music Store tracks are at large in the Calcutta of my music library, which is a vast and crowded place, let me tell you. For reasons that have to do with the personal radio station of my iPod, WNN-dot-C, playin’ the sets that only one insane person would assemble, the ones that bump Tyrone Davis up against It’s a Beautiful Day and then hop to some Funkadelic and maybe some tango jazz from our Buenos Aires trip to take us to the top of the hour — to do this, I need my Purchased Music playlist, now vaporized.

One thing John has taught me, however, is how to solve my own problems (”Always happy to help, Nance. Really.”), so right now I’m figuring out a way to fix it. I’m sorting them by the iTunes proprietary file suffix (.m4p) and reassembling it.

Jeez, what a pain in the ass. Why do I have to learn everything the hard way?

Don’t answer that.

In the future: Mind your metadata, people. You’ll thank me.

(By the way, does anyone else have a K-tel album in their iPod? I do, now: “K-tel Presents: The Vogues and the Equals: Back to Back.” And to think, all I wanted was “Five O’Clock World.”)

Hump Day in Winter Break Week. I may yet go insane.

Because it’s never too early for a child to learn how to mock the failings of others, and because if I have to endure one more Disney Channel sitcom my brain will burst into flames, and because Kate had already done her reading, her chores, and whatever else she had to do yesterday, and was ready to settle down for a perfectly defensible 45 minutes or so of television time, because of all this…

I let her watch “Wife Swap” last night. I watched it with her, in fact.

The families were a hip, urbane San Francisco quartet of museum-goers and mildly loony (by SF standards) personal habits (feng shui, sage-burning), and an utterly crackpot Iowa farm clan, who practiced “unschooling,” lived like pigs (bacteria is good!) and ate everything raw, right down to the chickens. I try, whenever we watch so-called reality TV, to keep a running director’s commentary going, explaining about editing and how once you allow cameras to record your life, you’re pretty much at the mercy of them, but after a while it trailed off. The Iowans, with their black toilet and raw chicken salad, were clearly insane.

So then you get the next parental situation: The family’s mental illness is, how you might say, sub-clinical. I don’t think there’s anything in the DSM-IV about brushing your teeth with a combination of butter and clay. (”Yeah, it tastes like dirt,” the teenage daughter says.) I know from long experience — in an Iowa-like state that also begins with an I — that this family’s peculiar beliefs and practices, while unusual, are hardly unheard of. If Kate ends up in the world with any sense of adventure, sooner or later she’s going to run across folks like this and needs to learn coping skills, which include the phrases, “No thanks, I’m not hungry” and “How close in the nearest main road, and how do I get there?”

I was pleased to see she picked up the most preposterous statements right away, as when the Iowa dad, in scoffing at San Francisco mom’s neat-freak squeamishness about germs, asked, “Would God put anything on the earth that would hurt us?” Kate, recently recovered from viral influenza, immediately expressed the idea that why yes, God did that very thing, you moron.

Harder to explain was the clear emotional instability in the house, as when the Iowa family went out to eat in a restaurant, consumed fried everything and paid a predictable gastrointestinal price the next day, and dad behaved as though his children had been fed cyanide milkshakes. And the son who couldn’t confront a contrary opinion without tears, followed by a march into the kitchen to gulp down a raw egg.

OK, the part where the Iowa mom goes out to eat in San Francisco, and the husband insists she shave her legs and underarms, and she says, “In that case, I’m gonna need some scissors?” — that was cruel.

So I think we came through the experience OK. I’ll leave the meta issues of what a brush with national TV exposure does to a person for middle school. But since most of you folks are adults, you might enjoy this, from Radar magazine: Prisoners of YouTube, a thoughtful and sensitive look at what this sort of accidental celebrity brings to a person’s life. HT: Eric Zorn.

So, bloggage:

Did you know that, according to an “unscientific survey,” “the average Grace Lee was a Korean American college graduate who had taken 3.5 years of piano lessons”? Neither did I. The next time “The Grace Lee Project” comes around on the Sundance Channel, we’ll watch that instead. (Demographic note: The name Grace is making a comeback, trend-speaking, but it wasn’t always so. I long ago realized that the only women younger than 40 named Nancy anymore tend to be Asian. My name is too ’50s for words, but Asian Americans, fond of traditional American names, still like it. For about six months I was getting puzzling e-mail from some Knight Ridder internal listserv, and finally realized the computer had mistaken me for one Nancy Na in San Jose, presumably Vietnamese-American.)

Fat Tuesday is extra-fat in Detroit. In Hamtramck, they call it Paczki Day, paczki being Polish for “jelly doughnut.” Think I’ll go get one. At least they’re cooked.

My car repair — not much of a repair at all, but a simple oil change/wiper blades/fix-the-rear-window-squirter deal — took forever. Fortunately, I had “The Looming Tower,” which now occupies the On the Nightstand space on the right rail, and which you should all run out and buy, because it is a terrific book. It enabled me to pass hour after hour in the customer lounge at the Buick/VW dealer without even being tempted to get into a snit. Also, there was a TV in the lounge, and at one point it was showing something called the Dr. Keith Ablow Show, specifically an episode featuring Kim Mathers, ex-wife of Eminem.

I want to lay out a few things up front, the most important being that I spend very little time thinking about Eminem, at least not compared to, say, George Clooney. But Eminem’s a local, and even though he’s not the kind of guy who you might see eating a media noche at the Cuban joint downtown — he seems to be well into his Graceland period — he’s still a presence here. Once when I was driving home from the Apple store with my friend John, he got off the freeway at 9 Mile Road, two exits earlier than he should have. I pointed this out and he said he just wanted to drive me past a restaurant called Gilbert’s Lodge, where Eminem once worked as a busboy. That kind of thing.

Anyway, in the very little time I’ve spent thinking about Eminem, I sometimes think about Kim. His muse, you might say. They say Bob Dylan wrote “Just Like a Woman” for Edie Sedgwick, and Eric Clapton wrote “Layla” for Patti Boyd Harrison. Kim got “97 Bonnie & Clyde” and, of course, “Kim”:

Get the fuck away from me, don’t touch me
I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!
I SWEAR TO GOD I HATE YOU
OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU
How the fuck could you do this to me?

The first time I heard that song was around the time Kim went on the lam from some drug charges, and was arrested at Weber’s Inn, a pleasant but decidely unhip hotel just down the road from our house in Ann Arbor. I imagined her sitting by the pool in dark glasses and brown lipliner, an inch of dark roots showing in her blonde hair, drink in hand, and I thought: Can’t blame her, really.

So I was amazed to see this woman on this cheesy afternoon TV crapfest, looking not just presentable but lovely (she has excellent bone structure, evident even in her mugshots), speaking coherently and calmly about her ex-husband. I closed my book and watched for a while. Eminem, whom she calls Marshall, has an ego problem (big surprise there), and a zipper problem (ditto) and a problem expressing love for women, which she blames on his mother, who may be the only other female in the world who has fared worse in Eminem’s lyrics.

None of these are penetrating insights, but coming from Kim, whose life has been nearly as action-packed as her ex’s, it struck me as actual maturity. Dr. Keith played a 911 tape from one of her escapades, in which Kim’s mom lays out the crime in progress, which involved Kim taking her dad’s Navigator (you gotta love Detroit; no one says “the car” when they can sneak in a make and model) and her other daughter’s son, and leaving, which was specifically against a court order, or whatever. The 911 operator gets confused, because these situations are confusing. Whose son? Whose car? Who has custody? She gets it straight, and then asks where Kim might be going in the Navigator.

“I think down to Harper and Cadieux to buy some drugs,” the mom says.

(The other woman in the waiting room looked at me, and we both acknowledged that we knew that corner, although we declined to do a fist-pump. The hometown name rings out.)

At this point I was unsure what this show was supposed to be about, but as with “Springer,” it doesn’t really matter. Dr. Keith asked Kim what she wants now, and she said she wants to be a good mom. I imagine she has the usual supplies — big house in suburbs, Navigator of her own, good help — and is starting to understand the ones you can’t see with your eyes, like self-knowledge. If she’s still able to hold her head up after “Kim,” I’d say she has the backbone to start.

On the other hand, she supposedly capped off this interview — which, in the Detroit hip-hop world, had the gravity of a full hour on “60 Minutes” — by calling a radio station and telling the DJ, on the air, that her ex has a small weenie and needs Viagra to make it work. Sigh. Hell hath no fury, etc.

What? This content is unbecoming to the blog? OK, how about some Britney Spears head-shaving? Please, no cuffs/collar jokes.

So, we’ll try to raise the tone with some bloggage:

Why I love David Sedaris: Because if you’ve ever been in the sort of house trailer described here, you know he nails every detail. (Yes, we’re continuing the white-trash theme here, but this is from The New Yorker.)

This is a little Grosse Pointe-centric, but I know we have some history buffs in the readership, so here goes: The GP Historical Society has a fine online exhibit of the old days here in the GP, including some great pictures of the staggering homes our local plutocrats erected along the lakefront. Nearly all of them are gone now, reduced to rubble by the simple fact that even today’s plutocrat has little need for a house with 60 rooms, requiring a staff of 25. I especially recommend the section on the Dodges, and their jaw-dropping domiciles (Rose Terrace I and Rose Terrace II), not to mention this little bit of ephemera:

LETTER FROM THE WALLET OF HORACE E. DODGE SR. - CIRCA 1920

“For the following reasons I am unable to send you the check asked for:

I have been held up, held down, sand-bagged, walked on, sat on, flattened out and squeezed. First, by the United States Government, for Federal War Tax, the Excess Profit Tax, the Liberty Loan Bonds, Thrift Stamps, Capital Stock Tax, Merchants License and Auto Tax, and by every Society and Organization that the inventive mind of man can invent, to extract what I may or may not possess.

From the Society of John the Baptist, the G.A.R., the Women’s Relief, the Navy League, the Red Cross, the Black Cross, the Purple Cross, the Double Cross, the Children’s Home, the Dorcas Society, the Y.M.C.A., the Boy Scouts, the Jewish Relief, the Belgian Relief, and every hospital in town.

The Government has so governed my business that I don’t know who owns it. I am inspected, suspected, and examined and re-examined, informed, required and commanded so I don’t know who I am, where I am, or why I am here. All I know is I am supposed to be an inexhaustible supply of money for every known need, desire or hope of the human race; and, because I will not sell all I have and go out and beg, borrow or steal money to give away, I have been cussed, discussed, boycotted, talked to, talked about, lied to, lied about, hold up, hung up, robbed and nearly ruined; and, the only reason I am clinging to life is to see what in the H-ll is coming next.”

Only a guy who lived in Rose Terrace I could whine like that.

Finally, speaking of local celebrities, we were eating dinner the other day, and as usual, one end of the table was strewn with the day’s mail, including a copy of Car & Driver. The cover featured three jillion-dollar sports cars, Maserati, Lotus and something else, I forget. Alan tapped the Lotus and said, “I saw one of these downtown the other day. Guy asked me for directions.”

“Anyone famous?” I asked.

“I dunno,” he said. “Some black guy, about seven feet tall. I was surprised he could fit in the thing, actually.”

“He was probably a Piston,” I said. “Did you say anything to him?”

“Yeah. I said, ‘Is that a Lotus?‘”

My husband. Such a Detroiter.

Alan would like the record to reflect the following, which I have agreed to stipulate:

1) It wasn’t his idea to get me a Scum Buster for V-Day. For years, I have asked for one. Recalling our experience with the Black & Decker Snake Light (underpowered, broke almost immediately), he always thought this was a joke. Finally, after about three successive Christmases when I said, “I guess Santa forgot my Scum Buster,” he said, “You’re serious, aren’t you?” And I replied, “You betcha.” He said, “Maybe for Valentine’s Day.” (He wasn’t serious.)

2) V-Day was not particularly romantic in our house because I was working the 6-9 news-farming shift and was unable to make a fancy dinner or even buy a bottle of wine. Nevertheless, as 9 p.m. approached and Kate went to bed, I said, “I guess I STILL don’t get my Scum Buster. I guess I’ll have to buy it MYSELF.” And on and on until finally he brought out the brand-new deluxe model with on-board cleaner reservoir and nine-count-’em-nine attachments. It was a very exciting moment.

To those who believe this gift shows a lack of romance, all I can say is this: While a clean bathroom doesn’t exactly get me hot, a filthy one is a real buzzkill.

(For our first V-Day, Alan bought me pearl earrings. I wore them at our wedding and still wear them several times a week. One had to be replaced after Spriggy the Puppy possibly ate it, or maybe it went through the vacuum cleaner. So it’s not like the man doesn’t have any romance in his soul.)

(And what did I get him? I baked some cupcakes. What do I look like, Venus?)

OK, then. Off to get my car tinkered with. I’m taking “The Looming Tower” and at least one crime novel, and plan to switch back and forth between them.

Talk amongst yourselves. I’ll be back later.