A let­ter from the Depart­ment of Sil­ver Linings:

RENO, Nev., Nov. 5 — As his wed­ding day approached last spring, Mar­shall Whittey found that his money could not keep pace with the grandios­ity of his plans. But rather than scale back, he chose instead, like mil­lions of home­own­ers across the coun­try, to bor­row against the soar­ing value of his home.

He and his bride, Holly Whittey, exchanged vows on the grounds of a sump­tu­ous pri­vate estate in the Napa Val­ley. They spent their hon­ey­moon at a resort in Tahiti.

But now, in an omi­nous por­tent for the national econ­omy, Mr. Whittey has grown tight with his money. His home is worth far less than it was a year ago, and his equity has evap­o­rated. And like many other invol­un­tary adopters of a newly eco­nom­i­cal lifestyle, he can bor­row no more.

I’ve become accus­tomed to read­ing bull­shit like this about hedge fund zil­lion­aires, money man­agers and other solid-gold-toilet vul­gar­i­ans, but any­one want to guess what Mr. Whittey does for a liv­ing? He’s a sales man­ager at a floor­ing and tile com­pany. In an area with a build­ing boom at full steam, I’d imag­ine he knocks down a good buck, but not enough to afford his pimp­tas­tic wed­ding with­out tap­ping the home-equity ATM. In his atti­tude toward money, I expect he’s like a lot of peo­ple in that part of the coun­try, where ben­jamins are like buses — there’s always another one com­ing along. And I hes­i­tate to say he deserves what he’s get­ting, since all he’s get­ting at this point is a rather easy les­son in how to econ­o­mize, far eas­ier than many of us have got­ten over the years. May I see the hands of every­one who’s had to econ­o­mize in order to eat at some point in their careers? Yes, I thought so. This bozo — and many other bozos like him — are only liv­ing with­out restaurants.

And yes, I know that even Mr. Whittey’s pain is real to him, and the decline in his for­tunes is shared by every­one, and that money he spends so fool­ishly every day sup­ports real, non-foolish peo­ple in his chain of con­nec­tions. Still: Cry me a bloody river.

Girl­friend is surly today, isn’t she? Not really. Just under-caffeinated and under-showered. So let’s make this quick, since it’s a bloggage-rich day:

I was hav­ing a major walking-into-walls day yes­ter­day, so the news of the Robertson/Giuliani alliance cir­cled my head for a while before com­ing in for a land­ing. My reac­tion was to quote well-known Hoosier sage John Mel­len­camp: Noth­ing mat­ters and what if it did? As usual, Roy puts it bet­ter.

Fred W. McDar­rah died Tues­day. If the name means noth­ing to you, it’s because you weren’t read­ing the Vil­lage Voice in its glory years, when McDar­rah was a staff pho­tog­ra­pher. I was a sub­scriber, but I’d never heard this story:

As Mr. McDarrah’s renown as a Beat chron­i­cler grew, his sec­ond, inad­ver­tent career took shape. One day in the late 1950s, accord­ing to sev­eral news accounts of the period, a breath­less Scars­dale matron phoned him at his office. Did Mr. McDar­rah know where she might rent a real live Beat­nik, not too dirty, to read poetry at a party she was giving?

Mr. McDar­rah, who by this time knew hun­dreds of Beat­niks (a few scrubbed and all need­ing cash), hap­pily com­plied, and a going con­cern was born. Shortly after­ward, he placed the fol­low­ing adver­tise­ment in The Voice:

add zest to your tuxedo park party … rent a beat­nik. com­pletely equipped: beard, eye shades, old army jacket, levis, frayed shirts, sneak­ers or san­dals (optional). deduc­tions allowed for no beard, baths, shoes, or hair­cuts. lady beat­niks also avail­able, usual garb: all black.

Calls flooded in. For $15, The New York Mir­ror reported in 1960, the client got one Beat and a half-hour of poetry. Two hun­dred dol­lars bought three Beats, who read poetry, answered ques­tions, played the gui­tar and, of course, the bon­gos. Mr. McDar­rah, who took a small com­mis­sion and let the artists keep the rest, sup­plied Beats for school groups, photo shoots, meet­ings and catered affairs in and around New York for about two years, till the early 1960s.

As an agent, Mr. McDar­rah was care­ful to pro­tect the tal­ent from the clien­tele. He would not pro­cure lady Beats for bach­e­lor par­ties. Nor would he rent a Beat of any kind to a children’s party. He once turned down a request from a scout­mas­ter look­ing to hire, for a speak­ing engage­ment, any Beat­nik who was a for­mer Eagle scout. (Mr. McDarrah’s refusal in this case may have owed sim­ply to the sheer impos­si­bil­ity of fill­ing the order.)

Neces­sity is the mother of inven­tion: The anti-rape device. Ouch! Women seem to be show­ing their teeth all over lately, most notably in Seat­tle, where a woman bit off her ex-boyfriend’s lip while they were kiss­ing, then spit it on the floor, where it was found cov­ered in cat hair. And in Fort Wayne, a gal named Con­stance got right to the point:

An argu­ment between a man and his girl­friend of nine months turned so heated Wednes­day morn­ing that the 49-year-old woman is accused of bit­ing the man’s groin area and refus­ing to let go, accord­ing to a prob­a­ble cause affidavit.

Con­stance Marie Man­ning, of the 7200 block of Hick­ory Creek Drive, is also accused of strik­ing her boyfriend with a dog fig­urine – caus­ing it to break – and chas­ing him with a kitchen knife.

You know what makes that story funny? It’s not Con­nie McToothy, but the reporter who thought to include that detail about the dog figurine’s fate, and set it off with em dashes. Our local weekly’s reporters are con­sti­tu­tion­ally inca­pable of trans­lat­ing police-report lan­guage into Eng­lish, and so every drunk-driving arrest is reported thusly: “The offi­cer noted a strong odor of intox­i­cants com­ing from the driver’s facial area.” We look for this price­less phrase every week, and we’re rarely disappointed.

And finally, two more YouTube links I for­got yesterday:

Via Ash­ley, the New Orleans story, in 65 sec­onds, per­formed by smart kids.

Ken, I’ve con­tracted some­thing: Bar­bie breaks the bad news.