Hey, look everybody! It’s the Wayne County tax foreclosure list, in my Sunday paper!

I wonder how many pages sections it will be?

Wow, that’s a lot of foreclosures:

Hope you’re not on the list.

Yesterday’s surface-street trip through Detroit made me wonder if I’m the sort of person who gets a thrill from slumming. Isn’t it sort of ick to find ruin and degradation so interesting? Would I be so pleased to take the long way home if I had to do it on my bike, instead of in my nice safe car? Points to ponder. My gutters guy came by late in the afternoon, begging for work. He did our fall gutter blow-out last year, did a great job, and left not even a business card behind. I tried to find him in the spring, but the only thing I could remember about him was “John Friendly.”

That’s ridiculous, I thought. Johnny Friendly is the gangster boss in “On the Waterfront.” You must be getting that perimenopausal swiss-cheese brain thing. So I was thrilled when he knocked on the door last week with a flyer, which explained my confusion: His business name is John’s Friendly Tree Service, and he had indeed introduced himself the previous year as John Friendly.

“Like in ‘On the Waterfront,’” I said.

“I can’t believe you know that movie! That’s how I got my nickname!” he said. “No one knows that movie anymore.” Then he showed me the year’s big news in the Friendly household: a six-inch scar down the midline of his abdomen, next to a nickel-size hole: “Someone tried to rob me, and I wouldn’t give ‘em my truck.” Wow. We agreed he’d clean the gutters in a couple weeks when the oaks were finished, and said goodbye.

It was a reminder that there’s a good reason not to drive through the city taking pictures, although to be sure, he was shot in Eastpointe, not Detroit. On the other hand, one reason the city doesn’t spook me (much) is, it’s just so empty. Not everywhere, of course; anyone who tells you downtown is a ghost town after 5 p.m. hasn’t been there lately. It’s not exactly Chicago, but it’s miles closer than it used to be. But the neighborhoods can have an eerie ghost-town vibe, especially in cold weather.

Anyway, John Friendly was tapioca for the week, and asked if he could do the gutters now, get half his money, then come back after Thanksgiving and do them again for the other half. We negotiated a price, and I paid him the full amount up front. “I appreciate this,” he said. “I’m broke.”

I said, “I’m a writer. We invented broke.” Coming from someone living in a nice house, I’m sure it sounded just about as repellent as it reads on the page. But I know a thing or two about cash-flow problems. Anyone willing to work as hard as John Friendly will be OK, as long as he doesn’t get shot again.

Today is Birth Day, Alan’s and Kate’s twin natal celebrations. We got up early and opened presents at the breakfast table. This year’s theme: Fleece. Kate’s been craving a pair of Uggs, the sheepskin boot that’s all the rage wherever there are chilly toes. Ugg is also the sound you make when you look at the price tag, but I found Acorn makes a seam-for-seam duplicate for one-third the price with only one major difference: it doesn’t say Ugg across the heel. I discussed it with her before I bought them, and told her to expect some blonde tootsie would point this out, and she should be prepared. She said she was ready, but then they came out of the box and …didn’t fit. Looks like baby inherited her mother’s sense of humor, nonchalant attitude toward homework and a boatlike shoe size.

So, let’s get bloggin’:

Are you there, God? It’s me, Mitch: Albom does what only he can do — commune with the dead and assure us that, yes, there is almost certainly high-def TV in heaven. Or maybe something better! Mind your tooth enamel and blood sugar as Mitch talks to Bo Schembechler. (Thanks to a merciful God or perhaps an editor who took his supplemental testosterone this week, Bo doesn’t talk back.)

Detroitblog turns up another gem in a city full of them: The world’s coolest music teacher. It says he’s willing to take on a few more students. Maybe I should call him, if only for the bragging rights of taking piano lessons from a guy who played on “Goin’ to a Go-Go” and “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”

It’s funny how, even if you don’t follow baseball, the best baseball announcers insinuate themselves into your life, somehow, maybe by coming out of a thousand summer radios or your dad’s TV on warm nights. One of the best, Joe Nuxhall, is dead. He and Marty Brennaman were inseparable from the Cincinnati Reds, especially in that team’s pre-Marge Schott glory days. RIP.

There are lots of places to get your hair cut in Detroit.

God, I wish I were a better photographer.

Sorry I’m late today. Early meeting, then I took the long way home. Here’s a picture from the drive:

Just another Mack Avenue business. It inspires more faith than another barbering place close by, which advertised a “tatoo artist” on-site. Nothing like getting permanent ink from someone who can’t spell.

So since we’re already behind here and I still have 900 words to write for some actual damn money, let’s make this quick, a little platter of hors d’oeuvres for you folks today. (Slight tangent: I began my career covering the occasional society event, and typing briefs promoting them in advance. As a result, I never have to look up the spelling of “hors d’oeuvres.”)

First, reader mail that didn’t appear in the comments, from me ol’ semi-roommate Borden in Chicago:

I am one of many who interviewed Paul Tibbets, while a lowly suburban reporter in Columbus. He was speaking on a non-Hiroshima topic, an American Airlines jetliner had crashed in Chicago (circa 1977) and I got Tibbets to speculate on the cause of the crash, which was amazingly prescient. The only way to put the jetliner into its death spiral –captured on photographic film– was if the mounts of one jet engine loosened and the engine flipped, resulting in powerful thrusts in both directions and leading to a horrible swirl to the ground. Not sure if a cause was revealed by NTSB, but Tibbets had the engineer and pilot insights and I’ll bet he was correct. One macabre touch: the American Airlines flight was outfitted with cameras allowing passengers to watch their takeoffs and landings on their monitors. Can you imagine the horror–as the cabin turned upside down– of glancing at a monitor and seeing the ground coming up fast?

Yeesh.

John Scalzi finally got to the Creation Museum, and it was worth the wait: Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. Stop by now to join the 500-plus comment thread. Web journalism at its best.

Whatever else the writers’ strike is accomplishing, it’s certainly improving YouTube. Evidence here and here, and probably a million other places.

It’s deer season! The Freep is running a virtual buck pole. Many gross pictures.

Off to earn some money. Carry on.

What is it about putting pen to paper that brings up the bile?

Much of blogdom is discussing this story today, about a scandal at, yes you are reading this correctly, the World Bridge Championship. While receiving their trophy, one member of the U.S. women’s team held up a homemade sign reading, “We did not vote for Bush.” For this, the bridge world is bombing them with e-mails slinging around such terms as “treason” and “sedition.”

Not so many are talking about this story, also from today’s NYT, about the trial of an admitted cat-assassin in Galveston, Texas. The area is a huge draw for bird-watchers, and the accused runs a bed-and-breakfast catering to those tourists. He used a .22 rifle to bump off a stray that he said was preying on endangered piping plovers. The cat was not a stray, claimed a toll taker on the bridge under which the cat lived. The toll taker said he was feeding the animal, and had even strung cat toys from the bottom of the bridge.

Can anyone guess some of the language deployed by the two sides in this case? “Murderous fascist,” “diabolical monster” and “terrible menace” are but a few examples. (Note: The first two were cat-lover terms for the accused; the latter was how the birding world thinks of cats that hunt.)

Granted, we are talking about some highly eccentric people here — bridge-players, bird-watchers and cat people. Still.

While the agencies charged with protecting our national security were maneuvering for access to your cell-phone bills, something was going on in their own damn office in Detroit:

A Lebanese immigrant, Nada Nadim Prouty…well, let the dry language of journalism tell the story. It makes it so much more amazing:

According to court records, Lebanese-born Prouty gained U.S. citizenship in 1994 through a fraudulent marriage, joined the FBI’s Washington Field Office as a special agent in 1999 and joined the CIA in June 2003.

Prouty is related to Talal Chahine, a former Metro Detroiter now on the lam in Lebanon. He’s under indictment for tax evasion on a rather breathtaking scale; he owned a chain of successful Middle Eastern restaurants called La Shish, and allegedly funneled a large chunk of his profits to Hezbollah back in the old country. And guess what Prouty used her FBI clearance for? To sneak a peek at the agency’s files on the very same outfit.

The Free Press wins understatement of the year honors for describing it as “an embarrassing breach of national security, and clarifies:

Although there is no evidence that Prouty was a Hizballah operative, the episode raised questions about how she cleared multiple federal background investigations to acquire U.S. citizenship and land jobs at two of the nation’s most sensitive intelligence agencies without someone discovering that she had engaged in marriage fraud to become a citizen.

We had a seminar speaker during my year in Ann Arbor, someone from law enforcement, who had a very low opinion of the FBI. I’m beginning to see why.

The La Shish chain is still open, operating under some sort of court-approved arrangement while its owner rediscovers his native tongue. I’d like to eat there, but if I did, the terrorists would win.

Both stories make for interesting, if jaw-dropping, reading. Never underestimate the value of a native Arab speaker who looks good in a pantsuit. Apparently she has the ability to cloud men’s minds.

Anybody wanna play Random 10? Set your iPod to shuffle, on the widest possible focus (that is, on “songs,” not a particular playlist) and then tell the truth. No skipping to emphasize your coolness. I’ll start:

“The Loco-motion,” Little Eva
“Motor City Baby,” The Dirtbombs
“May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose,” Little Jimmy Dickens
“Fourth of July,” X
“Things You Left Behind,” The Nails
“Don’t Tell Me,” Madonna
“Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” REM
“Red Hot,” Robert Gordon
“Hot Rod Lincoln,” Commander Cody
“Groove is in the Heart,” Deee-Lite

Well, that wasn’t too embarrassing. Some of you may be wondering what Little Jimmy Dickens is doing in my iPod. Keeping alive the thread of country music the way it was meant to be — made by hillbillies. I still laugh when he gets to the second verse:

My laundry man is really on his toes
Found a hundred-dollar bill among my clothes
When he called me I came runnin’
Gave him back his dime for phonin’
And I heard him sayin’ as I turned to go…

I also have “Take an Old Cold Tater (and Wait)”, if you’re interested.

My search for a DV camera is slowly driving me insane. Thanks to Basset for his tips in the comments a few posts ago, but I fear they’re of no help. You see, I want a camera that will handle not just home movies but amateur journalism — among my many hopes for 2008 here at NN.C, as we enter our EIGHTH DAMN YEAR of web-based mediocrity, is to bring an occasional video to the mix. And the problem is, I know just enough about video to know that nothing will do.

I want something in the upper end of the prosumer range, with lots of features but not too expensive. I make a list of no-negotiation features, then find a model that has everything I want except for one. Or it has everything, but costs $1,200. Or is too big. Or has a user’s review calling it a p.o.s. that underlays every clip with the high-pitched weeeeee of camera noise. John says get Mini-DV for quality, but the users say the format is entering its obsolescence. Hold out for 3CCD? An accessory shoe? Manual shutter control? High-def? AN EXTERNAL MIC JACK? THE ROOM, IT IS SPINNING.

What usually happens is, I read and shop online for 45 minutes, then throw up my hands in despair and go eat a cookie. And then I see something like this, and redouble my efforts. It’s a vicious circle.

This, by the way, is New York magazine’s roundup of the best of online video. I’m working my way through them all, but so far the one I want to recommend is The Jeannie Tate Show, a talk show in a minivan. Yes, really. It’s hilarious.

That was a quick jump to the bloggage today, wasn’t it? Well, yes, but it’s pretty good bloggage, and yesterday was tops in boring. I’m off to the gym. OK, one more:

Once it was scandalous to show too much of your bosom. Now it’s apparently de rigueur to show the world your nether cleft, and not the one in back. (Although I’ve always liked Sharon Stone, that crazy old bat, so I’m giving her a pass, just this once.)

More later.

Ahem:

Paul Tibbets is dead. I predict a Bob Greene column in the next few days, remarking on how reclusive the man was, and how rarely he gave interviews (except to BOB). Note: I’ve read at least half a dozen of these rare Tibbets interviews over the years. And I haven’t even been looking for them.

Well, I was half right. The column appeared as expected, in the New York Times, but didn’t mention his reclusiveness. Although, of course, it leads with an anecdote illustrating their special relationship:

My mother, who is 88, told me last month that it had been a long time since she’d seen Paul Tibbets in the Bob Evans restaurant on the east side of Columbus, Ohio. She thought this was odd; she ate lunch there so often, and he ate lunch there so often, that his absence worried her.

As the Bob genre goes, this is lacking is sucktasticness. There’s the blah blah rehash of what’s already been gone over for decades, the soldier-who-did-his-duty nod of the baby boom to the greatest generation*, the banal you-are-there details only Bob could provide:

On the road, I would see him make up his hotel room or clear his plates in a restaurant. When I would tell him that other people would do that, he would say that no able-bodied man should expect another person to do this work for him.

Bob’s signature purple prose isn’t as evident in this one. He’s either improving, or has a better editor at the Times. I only found one example of why-say-it-once-when-you-can-say-it-twice Boblines:

On this Veterans Day I will think about the men and women in their 70s and 80s whom I would see when I was with Mr. Tibbets. These were soldiers and sailors, now grown old, who had expected to be sent to Japan for the land invasion, and perhaps die on those shores.

I love how Bob feels the need to underline that people in their 70s and 80s are “now grown old.” As a reiteration of what we’ve read a dozen or more times since Tibbets died, it’s just average. What is happening? Is Bob getting better? Ah, that question is answered in the tagline:

Bob Greene is the author of “Duty,” a book about his father and Paul Tibbets, and the forthcoming “When We Get to Surf City.”

Ohhh-kay.

* A peculiar sub-genre Joe Queenan summed up, and dismissed, in a sentence: “I want to spend the whole of my youth reading books deploring the moral bankruptcy of my parents’ generation, then, when I am in a position to inherit their life savings, ostentatiously cover the coffee table with stacks of kiss-ass, My Pop the War Hero-type memoirs praising their extraordinary valor.” — from “Balsamic Dreams”

So how was your weekend? Mine was fine. I see Norman Mailer died. Roy Edroso has his quibbles with the NYT obituary, but I found it alternately delightful, fascinating and repellant, and it pulled me through to the end. I thought it was a fair portrait of a man who could be called, quite truthfully, both an irresponsible asshole and one who never wasted a day. I ran hot and cold on his writing, but now that I think about it, I haven’t read much — “The Executioner’s Song,” “An American Dream,” parts of other novels, a bit of journalism and some essays here and there, including “The White Negro.” I have a general rule that I try to follow when considering the work of artists like Mailer, that they should be judged by their art, not by their lives, and that if you must judge them, it should be by the standards of the times they lived in. It’s particularly hard to separate the man from his output in this case, however — they were too closely intertwined. Much of Mailer’s poor behavior was, regrettably, standard-issue intellectual-class mulishness for the time, which doesn’t make it any better, just more understandable.

But running through the story of his life is another strong theme, and the flip side of his more regrettable antics — fearlessness. Mailer never shrank from anything, it would seem. If one wishes he’d chosen his battles better — Jack Henry Abbott, anyone? — you can’t really fault him for getting out there and taking his shot. I heard an interview with him on NPR, around the time “The Spooky Art,” his book on writing, was published. Still haven’t read the book, but listening to him talk about writing, what it takes, what it gives back, what it means, was rapturous. An Amazon.com reviewer sums it up pretty well:

Mailer is like a great coach in this book, inciting the reader to be braver, to work harder, to want more, to cultivate appetite and a certain recklessness that is an antidote to what he calls the “paranoid perfection” imbued by writing programs. I think Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird is a kinder, gentler counterbalance to Stormin’ Norman’s inspiring hectoring to step up to the plate–in life and in writing–and is also an excellent book on writing. Where Lamott is compassionate, gentle, a chamomile tea-offering, hand-holding tutor, Mailer is a grizzled veteran exhorting us to throw ourselves into the mix, to take chances, to aspire to more than we may ever achieve.

That’s good advice for anything, including life in general. On that note, I’ll quit the blogging for today and go throw myself into the mix, thinking of Mailer. (I have to drive to Ypsi. Hope the Mailer in me doesn’t have an accident.)

A wise man once described the calculus he made on the subject of baldness. On the one hand, the expense and daily battle of Rogaine, toupees, glue, hair plugs, not to mention the social anxiety of wondering whether people are noticing, whether one has become a figure of fun like Jim Traficant or, for you Hoosiers, Pat Bauer.

On the other hand, “making peace with baldness.” It seemed an easy choice. I agree.

So I guess we should be grateful, if that’s the word, that Christopher Hitchens did what many men are doing these days — working on their appearance the way women do — and wrote about it.
I guess you could call it a public service. Fixing the teeth, negating his classic smoking-Brit smile, was probably a good idea. As for the “sack, back and crack” man-waxing, I’m reminded of my aforementioned wise man. I’ve had body waxing and found the pain worse in anticipation than practice, but I only waxed regular skin. A man’s scrotum is a different kind of skin, and, well…

I had no idea it would be so excruciating. The combined effect was like being tortured for information that you do not possess, with intervals for a (incidentally very costly) sandpaper handjob. The thing is that, in order to rip, you have to grip. A point of leverage is required; a place that can be firmly gripped and pulled while the skin is tautened.

The impression of being a huge baby was enhanced by the blizzards of talcum powder that followed each searing application. I swear that several times [J Sister waxer Janea Padilha] soothingly said that I was being a brave little boy… Meanwhile, everything in the general area was fighting to retract itself into my body…

All this to remove hair from one’s balls? Is this now a baseline grooming requirement? I’ve changed diapers on both genders, and confronted with a denuded landscape down there — not to mention the smell of talcum powder — I’d probably start wondering if I had another David Vitter on my hands. A real woman (or man, if that’s the way you swing) doesn’t shrink from a few hairs, or even a lot of them. Bring back the natural look.

It’s times like these I think, “Thank GOD I’m married.” I just cannot imagine dating in this environment.

Have we lowered the tone enough? Have we started Friday out on the right foot? Have I implanted images in your brain that you would happily inject acid into your skull to remove? No? Then you need to check out the slide show. Not to worry — it’s safe. If you have time for only one picture, try this one.

“Sandpaper handjob” — that’s a great name for a band.

Bloggage:

Howie sent me an AP version of the falling-cow story — thanks, Howie — but I have a better one. The couple are locals, and one is a quote machine: “It’s raining cows out here, man.”

Let’s finish out YouTube week with yet another testimony to the strangeness of Japanese TV: Dogs jumping rope.

Have a great weekend, whether you jump rope or not.