Well, lots of things, but up there in the top five would be that I had no photographers following me around when I was 19.

(What’s the old saying? “The girls all get prettier at closing time.” No. And I don’t even want to know what that stuff is all over her face. She looks like she’s about to suggest we go get some French toast.)

Warning: A beautiful day is in progress at this very moment, the trees are blooming, I have much to do today and a yoga class starts at the gym in one hour. Translation: Expect short shrift. Here, have a few crumbs from the table.

From reading the message boards here and there, it’s plain there are two kinds of Sopranos fans in the world: The kind who want lots of mob business and whackage, and the kind who are content to watch Edie Falco reinvent denial every week in intense kitchen scenes. I’m the second kind. In fact, the mob whackage sort of gets in the way. We’ve had two in the last two weeks, and in both cases I’m thinking, “Who is this? And why do I care?” For us, the mob story is only the frame; the canvas is the psychological drama of watching Tony try to keep family away from Family, and failing. In these last few episodes, we — I, anyway — want some payoff. We want to see him finally pay, and pay dearly, for the life he’s led.

Well, the payback has begun, and, true to form, it’s a bitch. His outburst at Carmella over her spec house might as well have been made to the mirror. In Vito Jr., there’s yet another reminder of the toll mob life takes on a family. The gambling, particularly ironic in that Tony has always referred to such people as “degenerate gamblers,” is self-abuse. As for me, I’m keeping a copy of “The Western Lands” close, because I think that’s the key:

The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls. Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that’s where Ren came in.

Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.

Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out, depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense — but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to Heaven for another vessel.

The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead.

Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk’s body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western lands.

Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.

Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.

So. Speaking of seven souls, I see Warren Zevon’s ex-wife has not only published a book, it’s a book about her ex, and it was done at his request. What’s more, it sounds…not terrible:

The Mr. Zevon on these pages is surprisingly image-conscious, abusive, petty, jealous, sordid, vain, shopaholic and even banal; among his obsessive-compulsive tics was buying the same kind of gray T-shirt over and over again. His diary entries often focus on such things, so they are less scintillating than the literary lyrics for which he is known. Among the livelier entries is this one: “Went over to Ryan’s. Later in the evening I got stuck in the elevator — Fire Dept. had to come. Not as much fun as it sounds.”

But this lack of show-business artifice is precisely what makes the Zevon story so telling. What was even more unusual than his dark thoughts — like resenting the fact that Jackson Browne and Neil Young had lost people close to them and written beautiful, much-admired songs about those deaths — was his willingness to admit to those thoughts. On his deathbed, discussing the merits of having a funeral, he said, “I just don’t want to have to spend my last days wondering whether Henley” — Don Henley of the Eagles, who did not attend — “will show up.”

I guess that’s next on the nightstand.

You know those people who kill family members and then hide the bodies in freezers? Do you ever wonder what goes on inside their heads? Wonder no more. The DetNews offers an odd demi-interview with one of these guys, pegged to a more recent dismemberment murder hereabouts. It’s hilarious at many levels, including the one where, after a shockingly brief sentence (10 years), the killer says his crime is “water over the dam,” and that he paid his debt to society. And the banal details: “For three years and three months, (the body) lay atop frozen hamburger and kielbasa wrapped in brown butcher paper.” On the other hand, it sounds like no one missed the wife, who slept with her daughter’s boyfriend, among other unmotherly things.

Finally, in the thick of journalism awards season, congrats to our old pal Ron, winner of the coveted (because all awards must be described so) Golden Wheel.

Time for downward dog. Woof.

Jack Valenti came to Columbus once, and I can’t say when, except that I was old enough to read the newspaper and Jim Rhodes was governor. Valenti was paying a call on Big Jim, and the Dispatch story about it said the secretaries were all a-twitter. Why? Valenti was a good-looking man, but he’s no Clooney, either. I think it was just that he knew Clooney, or the day’s Clooney-equivalent; he reflected the Glory of Hollywood, something rare in the Ohio governor’s office. Especially that governor.

(I’ve heard many stories about Rhodes’ boorishness, and I don’t know how many are true, but here’s one, reported by an eyewitness: The governor was meeting with the presidents of Ohio’s public universities, a group he was not inclined to think much of, education bein’ for lawyers and fags and so forth. This one spoke, and that one spoke, and then the president of Kent State chimed in, and Big Jim stood up and stepped over to his bathroom, which opened onto the office. “Keep talkin’!” he said. “I can hear ya fine!” As the KSU president went on, haltingly, the governor of the Buckeye State had a nice, long, relaxing pee. With the door open. He had issues with Kent State.)

Anyway, Valenti. I don’t recall what he was doing so far from Hollywood, but it had something to do with the industry. The obits said he was a b.s. artist without peer, with a Texas drawl :

In his many public utterances, he orated and declaimed, grandly and voluminously, as if addressing the Roman Senate about the urgency of conquering Gaul. A fan of Shakespeare and Yeats and Greek mythology, Valenti spoke in baroque phrases, filigreed and curlicued — all inflected with a slight Texas accent. From his tongue, an opponent’s proposal wasn’t merely unacceptable; it was “an arrow dipped in curare.” And as spun by him, America wasn’t just a great and fine nation; it was “a free and loving land.”

Some people found such verbiage pompous and smarmy, particularly since Valenti, who wrote all his own speeches, was usually talking about something relatively mundane, such as DVD piracy or runaway movie-production costs. Such lofty language would have been ridiculous — if it weren’t such a pleasure to hear a man so out of step with ordinary speechifying.

One had to marvel at the self-confidence it took to gather oneself before an illustrious audience and utter such preposterous phrases as “springing full-blown from the head of Zeus.” And the thing was, you never remembered what a rival had to say.

Well, that’s the lobbyist’s secret charm, isn’t it? Blow into town, get the secretaries all steamy, fill the governor’s ear with sweet nothings, and on to Washington or Cannes or wherever.

Personally, after hearing what some of the Democrats had to say last night, a reference to curare would be welcome. Where did great political oratory go? This is one reason I can’t dislike Jesse Jackson; the guy understands that a speech is, on some level, entertaiment, and he delivers.

Not much to deliver, today, and I apologize: I have a busy day before I blow out of town late this afternoon for a weekend “camping trip” with Kate’s Girl Scout troop. I call it “camping” because we sleep in bunk beds in a heated lodge, making the experience less woodsy and more like a weekend in a bad hotel. But there will be S’mores, and wine if I have anything to say about it.

Back after the weekend.

I needed to get some movies from the library, for a story I’m writing. (Can’t tell you much, but hint: It involves movies.) They had one I needed but not another one, and then I looked up, and what did I see at eye level: “Ben-Hur.” Well. This seemed positively karmic. (What did we say before we all knew about karma? Oh, right — “coincidental.”)

I took it home, and tried to think of the last time I watched it all the way through. Decades at least. The running time is 212 minutes, so it’s not the sort of thing you watch while waiting for a chicken to roast. It’s on cable every so often, and certain scenes are classics, the kind you stop and watch when they flip past — the chariot race, of course, and the galley-slave parts, when the evil Roman general wastes lord-how-many lives just to see if Charlton Heston can maintain a punishing pace at the oars, pushing the overseer to bang his drum faster and faster. (As if. Charlton Heston could withstand anything. He was the Chuck Norris of his day, without the roundhouse kicks.)

I put in the DVD after Kate went to bed, and soon was in the first-act scenes of Judah Ben-Hur meeting his childhood friend Messala, newly returned to Judea as the Roman tribune. And it’s, like, the gayest scene ever. Long, smoldering glances. Silences charged with eroticism. They did that Roman hand-to-forearm clasp, and held it. I’m thinking, “Go on, Charlie. Kiss him. You know you want to.” Dennis Quaid didn’t give off pheromones like this when he was cruising the bars in “Far From Heaven.” Someone asked how that sister of yours was doing, historical-movie code for the Girl Who Will Divide Them, and it’s like they’re exchanging small talk about the weather.

Why didn’t I notice this before? Maybe because the last time I saw this movie I was 19 years old. Long before Google was invented. Laptop open, “homoeroticism in Ben-Hur,” and in about two seconds was reading this in Wikipedia:

In interviews for the 1986 book Celluloid Closet, and later the 1995 documentary of the same name, screenwriter Gore Vidal asserts that he persuaded director Wyler to allow a carefully veiled homoerotic subtext between Messala and Ben-Hur. Vidal says his aim was to explain Messala’s extreme reaction to Judah Ben-Hur’s refusal to name fellow Jews. Surely, Vidal argued, Messala should have been able to understand that Judah, his close friend since childhood, would not be willing to name the names of his fellow Jews to a Roman officer. Vidal suggested a motivation to Wyler: Messala and Judah had been homosexual lovers while growing up, and then separated for a few years while Messala was in Rome. When Messala returns to Judea, he wants to renew the relationship with Judah, but Judah is no longer interested. It is the anger of a scorned lover which motivates Messala’s vindictiveness toward Judah. Since the Hollywood production code would not permit this to appear on screen explicitly, it would have to be implied by the actors. Knowing Heston’s aversion to homosexuality, Vidal suggested to Wyler that he direct Stephen Boyd to play the role that way, but not tell Heston. Vidal claims that Wyler took his advice, and that the results can be seen in the film.

(Charlton Heston denies this, btw. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.)

I realize, for serious film buffs, this qualifies as the ultimate Duh observation. But I guess there are holes in everyone’s knowledge base, and I’m glad this one was filled. Next week: Why keeping the shark out of sight until the last 20 minutes was the right thing to do for “Jaws.”

And I only just realized that by watching “Ben-Hur,” I missed Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War.” Damn.

If bloggage is light around here lately, it’s because I brutally trimmed my bookmarks earlier this week, in a no-doubt futile effort to cut down my goofing-off temptations. If you see something you think I should link to, send it along. In the meantime, here’s a story about a topic near to my head if not heart these days: How newspapers should handle online reader comments, on individual stories; it’s the trend that’s sweepin’ the nation. This was the subject of the letter to the editor I wrote a few weeks ago, which I might as well have set fire to in an ashtray; it was to the Free Press, and I was prompted to do so after reading the comments on the story about the guy who was first thought to have died from a homophobia-inspired beating, but turned out to have spinal stenosis, instead. (It’s complicated, but it’s not really important for what we’re talking about.) Free Press readers chimed in to say, “I bet he was used to taking a pipe from behind” and other witticisms. You should have seen the chatter after a black kid with an unusual first name was named Mr. Basketball. The Klan probably made printouts for next year’s banquet.

Anyway, I pointed out that it’s useless to fret over your attention to diversity in the newspaper if you’re going to let people attach comments like this to stories, and leave them up, unchallenged. That’s what the above-linked story’s about. Discuss, if you like. I’m off to the gym.

If anyone’s interested, here is a remembrance of David Halberstam worth reading. By Henry Allen, WashPost genius writer nonpareil.

Early on in my residence here in the lovely D, I described the daily freeway traffic as a Ben-Hur chariot race. I don’t often fall in love with my own clever turns of phrase, but I stand by that one. And if you haven’t seen “Ben-Hur,” my God, check out the totally awesome FOUR-MINUTE trailer on YouTube. You get a big chunk of the chariot race around the 2:30 mark. That’s the morning commute here. Really. They issue you one of those whips at your first real-estate closing.

I guess lots of places are like this, but Detroit (and Chicago, to name another) combines those elements of speed, aggressiveness and close quarters you find in older cities, the ones that had big footprints before the freeways were built. The new roads required that neighborhoods either be demolished or sliced in two, which wasn’t easy or cheap then or now, and so tended to occupy the bare minimum of space. The entrance/exit ramps on the oldest parts of the Lodge, Ford and Davidson expressways here are short, and join freeways that frequently clip along at 75 miles per hour, even in the right lane. You want to know why Detroit automakers have had such a hard time giving up horsepower and bulk? Because every day their executives commute to work on these crazy-ass roads, and goddamn, you need a car that goes from zero to white-knuckle in about three seconds. Where’s my whip? Get over, jerkoff! Let me in!

So last night I was heading home from my class at Wayne State, which I always take at a gallop, because by the time I get home I have less than 30 minutes to pay the sitter, take her home, brew coffee and tuck Kate into bed before I start news-farmin’ at 9. I was moving along with the flow of traffic on I-94 when I glanced down and saw: 80 mph. Jeez, but you are a local now, aren’t you? I changed lanes (without signaling, because no one does) and dropped down to 70. As I said, 80 was flow-of-traffic speed, but even with seat belts and air bags, that’s a stupid pace to set on an urban freeway. I am someone’s mother and someone’s wife, and they would not be better off without me. Plus, we live in a two-story house. Not wheelchair-accessible.

The other night I caught most of “Drive,” the new Fox show about, as the promos reminded us about a million times, “an illegal cross-country road race.” Apparently it’s not only illegal, it’s a blind course that the participants, who have all been coerced in some way, navigate via cryptic text messages. It makes little sense, but the story is still building and in between befuddlement, there’s lots of enjoyable, hot car-on-car action.

Then I noticed something: All the cars were American-made. This may well be a sponsorship/product-placement issue, but it worked, dramatically speaking. One woman drove a Taurus, the new mom drove a minivan of indeterminate American lineage, the young men tended to be outfitted with classic, pre-OPEC muscle cars. The Taurus and the minivan were visual jokes among the Firebirds and Challengers, but it was a GM executive’s dream, all this American iron speeding down the Georgia blacktop, jockeying for position. I tried to imagine the action with Camrys and Accords, Tundras and Pathfinders, and it didn’t work. Whatever else Detroit gave the world, it gave it some pretty cool cars, and could again, I believe.

I pay more attention to car commercials than I used to; after all, the value of my house now rides on the fortunes of the auto industry. The other day one for the Dodge Avenger came on, and it featured…cupholders. Evidently the Avenger has heated and cooled cupholders. The Caliber has illuminated ones, for all those times you’ve struggled to find your coffee in the dark, I guess.

I’m not optimistic. Maybe they could get their mojo back selling chariots.

Bloggage:

Roger Ebert, still swingin’.

How amusing: You can buy a “House” T-shirt emblazoned with one of the good doctor’s favorite sayings: “Everybody Lies.” Including, you’ll see if you click through, the show’s producers, who would like us to believe female doctors spend their days making rounds in plunging necklines and towering heels. Oh, and pearls. I wish I’d saved the first note I got from Dr. Frank, back when we were arranging to meet for our first lunch. From memory: “I will try to find a tie without too much bloody sputum on it.”

To work I go. Keep your whip hand nimble.

Nobody edits Mitch Albom. That’s the only explanation I can think of. He just opens his laptop, types any old crap, and they put it in the paper:

I was sitting at the Pistons game, fans screaming, giant men racing up the court, when Matt Dobek, the Pistons’ PR vice president, pointed at a TV and said, “My god, did you see this?”

There in the corner of the screen, was a “breaking news” alert: David Halberstam killed in a car crash.

Yes, I think we’ll all remember where we were when we heard the news of David Halberstam’s death. Mitch was schmoozing with NBA executives. I was sitting on my Ikea chaise lounge, trying to write some fiction for my workshop tonight. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn I was procrastinating by reading the wires.

Halberstam, who was 73, would have understood the “breaking news” part.

That’s good to know.

A Pulitzer Prize winner from his Vietnam days, he was as good a journalist as we’ve produced in this country. And since he wrote famous books about the news business, the sports business and even basketball, I guess the setting was not altogether inappropriate.

Mitch, one writer to another: Beware the obvious adjective, i.e. “famous” books. If the books were obscure, no one would give a fig.

But the news itself? Halberstam? Dead? This made no sense. Not a car crash. Not on a Monday. Not being driven by a graduate student in northern California. You couldn’t imagine Halberstam going out that way. Maybe covering some war in some hot zone. Maybe dying at his desk in New York, copious notes piled in giant stacks around him. But not like this.

For a man who made his bones writing about it, Mitch is surprisingly flummoxed by death. Mitch can never believe how people can just…die. And in such unexpected ways! Even on Mondays! As I recall, he was similarly amazed to hear of Bo Schembechler’s passing. The old coach was 77 years old and had had two — two — heart bypasses. And…yet…he just…died? Halberstam was 73, still in good health, but hey, everyone who rides in a car can die in a car crash. Hell, he could have choked on a piece of popcorn; hasn’t Mitch ever watched “Six Feet Under”? Mitch would be more comfortable with death in a war, a “hot zone,” never mind that Halberstam hadn’t covered a war since Vietnam. Or maybe dying at his desk, surrounded by “copious” notes. (Oops, the obvious adjective again. A lawn appears in a subsequent passage. In what condition? Why, “manicured,” of course.)

I tried to turn back to the game. I failed. In his later years, David had become a friend of mine.

Ah, so now we get to it. This is one of those Mitch’s-friend obits. The first one of these I read was Mitch’s tribute to Warren Zevon. Now there was a death with some irony attached. A decades-long smoker dead at 56 from mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer not related to smoking. A writer could do something with that. But, and color me astonished, Mitch’s tribute to Warren quoted the dead man praising Mitch. Mitch is never uncomfortable quoting someone with the opinion that Mitch is a wonderful writer. Bo Schembechler was another F.O.M.: When we finished our book together, the publisher asked if there were any dedications or thank-yous we wanted to insert. I listed dozens of Bo’s relatives, friends and former players. Bo only wanted to put in one sentence. He wrote “I want to personally thank Mitch Albom. The poor son of a bitch had no idea what he was getting into.”

Ha ha! As I was saying to my close friend Tony Bennett the other day…

Oh, why go on? What is the point of this? I still have fiction to write, and picking on Mitch is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. You can’t stop him; he’ll be writing his treacly novels and Broadway play tie-ins and Hallmark Hall of Fame TV movies until that day when we all look up at a nearby TV screen and gasp as one to read: Best-selling author Mitch Albom dies of exploded head; “stress of ego too great,” docs say…

I just hope he goes before Tony Bennett.

One last note: One of Halberstam’s most “famous” books was “The Reckoning.” It was about the decline of the American auto industry, based guess-where. It’s not mentioned in Albom’s column.

Bloggage:

If anyone cares, yes, I think Sheryl Crow is kidding.

Brooke Shields demonstrates what makes a first-birthday party tolerable for the adult guests: beer. (Actually, the more I see of Brooke, the more I like her. Talk about a girl who could have turned out differently. And a beer-drinker to boot.)

If I still lived in Indiana, the bureau of motor vehicles would have made me a believer by now, or at least encouraged it through license fees. Doghouse Riley explains.

The genius of Oliver Stone, screenwriter, via YouTube. Absolutely NSFW, unless you have headphones.

Back to the fiction. Someone, help me feel poetic ‘n’ stuff.

I told you so:

Nurse who wanted new life with lover convicted of killing, dismembering husband.

And what are they teaching in nursing school? Ahem:

During the trial, prosecutors said McGuire organized William McGuire’s 2004 death using her expertise as a nurse so she could begin a new life with her lover, her boss at a fertility clinic.

Who knows what menace is creeping down the hospital hall in white shoes?

I don’t think Alan was happy with my choice, but I picked “Casino Royale” for Saturday’s On Demand movie night. Bond movies should be the ultimate date movie, don’t you think? Men can swoon over beautiful, doomed Vulva Fantastique, or whatever ridiculous moniker they’ve given this year’s pulchritudinous cannon fodder, and women get to fantasize about Bond, James Bond. He can kick ass, make love like a champ and never minds putting on nice clothes. What’s not to like?

Well, maybe I’m getting old. But Bond is starting to bore me. And when “Casino Royale,” overwhelmingly praised as the best Bond in decades, can’t do the trick, it’s time to give it up.

Not that it wasn’t a rip-roaring entry in the Bond canon. Not that there were insufficient explosions, wussy stunts or a shortage of evil bad guys who weep blood. It’s just that, at some point, you either dig watching stuff blow up or you don’t.

I brightened a little, seeing Paul Haggis’ name on the screenwriting credit, along with two others. It suggested he may have been brought in for a rewrite and polish, and maybe he was. There were a few zingers in the script, but not enough. We know what’s going to happen: Clever opening title sequence; big wham-o chase scene; the mission from M; the briefing on the toys and gadgets; introduction of the villain, who must never be named Bob Smith or John Jones, but Francois the Vile; relocation to one or more exotic locations, preferably in warm climates for maximum bikini utilization; a few more wham-o action sequences; an early love scene in which the girl must die immediately and another in which the girl must die later; more wham-o action; really big wham-o action; finale in which Bond has rolled into the arms of yet another babe, and roll credits.

It’s the same formula followed by he-man pulp fiction of the time (Travis McGee, etc.). I think the reason so many people still think of Sean Connery as the best of the Bonds is because he had the advantage of being first. I was just a kid when “Goldfinger” came out, but it had a cultural impact not unlike that of the Star Wars movies. Oddjob the villain, the bowler that was really an instrument of decapitation, the Aston Martin that sprayed oil out the tailpipes to foil pursuers — kids at school talked about these endlessly, although none of us had seen it, being too young for the spicy scenes of Connery kissing Honor Blackman, the first Bond girl, the fabulously named Pussy Galore.

True fact: The Columbus Dispatch, in its review of and stories about “Goldfinger,” never used her character’s full name, calling her “Miss Galore” on all references. Other true fact: Honor Blackman was 38 when “Goldfinger” was released, three years older than her co-star. She turns 80 this year and has been working pretty much non-stop for 60 years. Mercy.

Anyway, “Goldfinger” was huge. “Secret Agent Man” was a hit for Johnny Rivers, and for a while there, it seemed everyone wanted to be in bed with James Bond, one way or another.

I don’t want to quibble. It was an enjoyable enough movie, with all the traditions honored — gadgetry, lots of product placement. (Thanks for the Astons, Ford Motor Co. Good of you to provide laptops, Sony.) Bond is a man of his time, too, whatever that is, and so the plot turned on such pivots as cell-phone technology, and there was a big, juicy parkour wham-o, and the climactic poker game in the Casino Royale was — Jesus wept — Texas Hold’em. I haven’t seen all of the Bond films, or even most, but this may be the last for me, even with Daniel Craig’s pretty blue eyes and fabulous profile. They’re going to have to work hard for my next $3.99, and more wham-os aren’t going to do it.

Only one bit o’ bloggage today, thanks to Basset, who passes along…23 pairs of perfect breasts. Probably not safe for work, unless you sit with your back to a wall.

Well, it finally happened. A moment of silence, please, for my old PowerBook, now pushing up daisies on my desk, just about as dead as dead can be. I was happily pecking away, leaving a comment for Lance Mannion, when the cursor froze and, metaphorically speaking, it dropped to the floor clutching its chest. It may still be possible to resuscitate it — and I plan to try, because you always need a few more old computers lying around the house — but it certainly isn’t possible to do my work on the thing, and so I went over the river and through the woods to the Apple store on Saturday.

The PowerBook is dead, long live the MacBook. It has a built-in camera:

With special effects, I hasten to add.

Oh, well. Any fatal error has a good news/bad news component. Good news: It didn’t happen during tax preparation. Bad news: I hadn’t backed up for a while, so some stuff is just lost, at least until I can recover it, which may be a while.

All this by way of saying posting may be light for a few days, as I figure out a few things, including where the hell my copy of MS Word is, because I can’t find it anywhere. It’s not like a writer needs MS Word, oh no. I can pull it off the last backup, but I’d like a clean reinstall.

Anyone feel like hitting me for a video chat, do so. And no, I will not take off my shirt.