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.

This one goes out to the 614, yo.

Via Romenesko, news that what I’d previously believed was one of the more elaborate and amusing circulation-boosting gimmicks in newspaper history, the Columbus Citizen-Journal’s “Miss Citizen Fair,” was nothing but a retread. It’s identical in nearly every detail to the Minneapolis Tribune’s mysterious Mr. Sly, which dates to 1906.

The game: The mysterious Mr. Sly walks the streets of Minneapolis, with a cash reward on his head. Clues to his identity and whereabouts are published in every edition. Every day, the reward gets bigger and the clues better. There’s a strict procedure to claim your prize: You must be carrying a copy of that day’s paper (in Mr. Sly’s day, you had to have the right edition). You must lay your hand on him. And you must say, “You are The Tribune’s Mysterious Mr. Sly. Do you deny it?” If he didn’t, he took you to the newspaper office and paid out your reward.

Miss Citizen Fair didn’t require a touch, but you did have to carry a paper and say , “You are Miss Citizen Fair.” She usually got through a week to 10 days of the two-week Ohio State Fair before she was identified. The clues started with a vague, whole-body silhouette and concluded with close-up photos of her shoes, earrings or ponytail.

I don’t need to tell you that as a child, I was enthralled by the hunt for Miss Citizen Fair, who usually turned out to be some circulation district manager’s college-age daughter. She was photographed with the lucky winner on the last day, passing a check for a couple hundred bucks. If I were writing one of those “you know you’re from Columbus” lists, I’d include Flippo the Clown, Dick Clifton’s Ramblerland, and Miss Citizen Fair.

You’d think I would have figured this scheme wasn’t original by now, but what can I say? My History of Journalism class didn’t cover it.

The New York Times ran an old recipe in its magazine Sunday, for something called Teddie’s Apple Cake, c. 1973. I looked at the picture and thought, Mmm, might have to try that one. I left the magazine open on the kitchen table, and when Alan stumbled in, exhausted from a day spent doing battle on the Field of Mars, he took one look at it and said, “I want that cake.”

“OK, I’ll make it,” I said. Later, he said again, “I really want that cake.” I took this as a mandate. So when he called in sick the following day, having been felled by a Force 5 head cold, I decided to make Teddie’s Apple Cake as part of his therapy.

Readers, I’ll cut to the chase: Teddie’s Apple Cake is one fine cake, and very therapeutic. Next time I make it, I’m going to follow the lead of the Wednesday Chef, who cut the sugar a bit and substituted dried fresh cranberries for raisins; my sole criticism is that it’s a tad too sweet, and the cranberries will be a nice contrast. My contribution: The recipe calls for an angel-food cake pan, but I’d guess you could substitute a bundt pan in a pinch. It’s a big, chunky cake, so it may not unmold from a bundt perfectly, but you could take that chance.

What I want to talk about today is the counter-narrative in the Sunday NYT story, seen here:

Boris Portnoy, the pastry chef at Campton Place in San Francisco, says that the cake’s texture reminds him of Black Magic Cake, a moist oil-based chocolate cake, the recipe for which could be found on the back of a Hershey’s Cocoa tin.

But like most chefs who try out the old recipes for this column, Portnoy was frustrated by its simplicity. ‘‘It’s just good and normal, but kind of one-dimensional,’’ he says. We agreed to disagree, and then he had his chance to make something multidimensional — and vastly better.

Portnoy came up with a number of modern desserts inspired by the flavors and ideas in Teddie’s apple cake — one involved walnuts, olives, an almond mousse and roasted quince; another black walnuts, dulce de leche and olive oil.

Friends, this is one reason people are afraid to cook these days. The hours and hours of cooking shows, the time spent watching the “Top Chef” contenders sweat out the arrangement of one sprig of watercress, an artful smear of sauce and a single scallop on a triangular white plate has terrified way too many people who are perfectly capable of claiming their place at the stove. Just look at the phrase in that first quoted paragraph: “frustrated by its simplicity.” Most people are delighted to discover something that looks complicated isn’t. And look at those alternative takes on the recipe — olives, roasted quince, dulce de leche, mmm yummy, just what I’m looking for in an apple cake. Olives. I ask you.

I’d be happy to eat Boris Portnoy’s pastry, and I’m sure it’s wonderful. But I think even Boris would admit that the best food is peasant food, and peasants don’t have time for almond mousse. Give me a nice lumpy stew over a perfectly pureed root vegetable melange with a little dab of creme fraiche any day.

(And how many people have watched Padma Lakshmi take a bite of some contestant’s creation on “Top Chef” and thought, “I bet she’s going to run offstage and puke it all up in five, four, three, two…”)

If you keep reading that story, you’ll learn that Boris rejected the olives in favor of something, er, simpler. At least flavor-wise. You still have to pick some thyme and do some gymnastics with egg whites. I might try that recipe. But I bet Teddie beats it hands-down.

I’ve been sent so many YouTube gems of late I was thinking of doing an all-video post, but instead we’ll make it all-video bloggage:

Who has time to put these things together? Crank that soulja boy, Barney.

Christianity is certainly, um, strange these days.

And finally, this is my godson, the next Ginger Baker.

Happy baking.

Today’s fun fact to know and tell: Michigan state legislators are about to take an 18-day break, earmarked for deer hunting. Someone once told me that opening day of gun season is a school holiday in West Virginia; I don’t doubt it.

But today isn’t opening day of anything but the polls. I’m alerting the media there will be a photo opportunity to capture me voting later this morning. Not much on the ballot here — a couple of school-board seats, and a power grab by the mayor of Grosse Pointe Woods to take full control of city council. He already has a 4-3 majority, but that’s not enough, I guess. I’m voting against his endorsed candidates; if the last seven years have taught us anything, it’s that dissent is good. Also, we need some oxygen in our commercial district and a view to the future that’s wider than that of a 70-year-old retiree.

Note: The above paragraph contains more information about the council race than you could read in the local weekly, which told me a lot about each candidate’s degrees but nothing about the power split.

OK, then. This will be brief. I’m on another of my semi-annual Get Your Shit Together binges, which requires me to spend less time online and makes my life very boring. Not only to you, but to me — yesterday I finished my to-do list and, in the grips of a near-spasmodic desire to get the hell out of my house, took a drive into Detroit. Always, always a treat. I regret I forgot my camera, because, as usual, the city served up a heapin’ helpin’ of ugly-lovely treats. My two new favorite business signs: LIQUOR ISLAND and, at an exterminator’s, ROACH KILLER. If I lived in Detroit, I would so totally buy my booze at Liquor Island, you’d probably never see me anywhere else.

The drive was so entrancing I pretty much forgot the excuse for my errand — to hit some junk furniture stores in search of another refinishing project. Craigslist has been no help, as it seems the entire industry has been taken over by particleboard. Doesn’t anyone discard nice oak pieces that have been painted for decades? Is everyone trying to get rich on eBay? Curse them all.

OK, the bloggage:

As bad as local TV news gets here, it can always get worse: In Fort Wayne, they asked two mediums to predict the mayor’s race. If nothing else, this was as pretty a package you can get on a redefinition of “it’s all bullshit:”

Both mediums use meditation to peer into the future, but they both said their visions are just a peek into what might be.

“I only see what’s destined at one moment in time. There is still free will, free choice to off set what is destined,” said Peters.

“Nothing is written in stone,” explained Smith.

Off to vote! Alert the media!

Join us today, friends, for another edition of…

…Tim Goeglein theater!

Actually, today’s episode doesn’t suck the way it usually does, which is to say it isn’t about his parents’ deep love of Jesus, his interest in an obscure operatic composer, or… no, I’m wrong. This column, about Hoagy Carmichael, is standard-issue Tim — overwritten, oversugared, over-Hoosiered.

Instead of ridiculing it paragraph by paragraph, let’s stack up the usual TimBits.

How many “one of the most” superlatives appear in the first paragraph?

Three:

…one of the most luminous of all American mid-century composers, one of the most beloved composers of the classic American popular music songbook, and one of the most unusual bright lights in a starry field.

In one paragraph!

Does the column claim a Hoosier connection to a well-known person, state that this individual is extricably connected to Indiana in some way and wouldn’t be the person he or she grew up to be without this background, and further, that it was always calling him or her home? Yes:

He was from old American stock and was born and raised just down the street from Indiana University in Monroe County. …Though most of his composer contemporaries were urbanites, Carmichael came from what was then still a very small town in the southern part of our state. He got back as often as he could, but in a large sense, he never left. You can see it in his music.

Does the column give a nod to non-Hoosier influences, but claim that, deep down, Indiana is far more important? Yes:

He was deeply influenced by Irving Berlin and Louis Armstrong; he venerated Duke Ellington and George Gershwin; yet his own music was sui generis. He loved jazz, especially in the years of his apprenticeship. The jazz influence is self-evident in many of the songs he wrote – “Rockin’ Chair,” “Old Man Harlem,” “New Orleans.” The dominant figure of his music, though, was his Hoosier upbringing: small-town and rural America, born of a family that did not have much money but gave to him a boyhood full of what he called “memories of solid things, warm and endearing things,” and these are what he celebrated in songs that will be played forever.

Is this Hoosier influence credited with something far, far larger, thus inflating the state’s value in the grand scheme of things? Yes:

The real him had a remarkable life: a brilliant songwriting partnership with the great Johnny Mercer, a film and TV career, but above all a giant place of reverence in the hearts of millions of Americans who needed and loved his music as America was emerging as the unchallenged leader of the free world. America and Hoagy Carmichael’s music came of age together. It all began in Bloomington in his living room under the tutelage of a mother who always called him Hoagland – “a boy with dusty feet coming into the cold parlor where stood the upright golden oak piano,” he later wrote. Southern Indiana was the center of his life and his aesthetic inspiration.

It’s too bad, but maybe it isn’t: Hoagy Carmichael deserves all the respect and accolade he received in his life and continues to receive in death, and Tim Goeglein can’t take anything away from him. Here’s something I wish he’d address in a future column: Why is Indiana’s role in all these artists’ lives to spawn them, give them a few soft-focus memories of childhood, and then chase them the hell out of town? The obvious answer — that Hollywood is in California and New York City is in New York and there’s not much in between — isn’t the entire one. Frequently embryonic great artists run off to those places at the first opportunity because they’re so uncomfortable in the fleecy cradle of their youth. Cole Porter was from Peru, Indiana, but can anyone see him spending a minute there once the train left the station? James Dean? Even Hoagy, with his love of black jazz and ragtime could hardly have been happy in a place where the Klan was still strong well into the 20th century and lynchings weren’t unheard of. (Never mind that both Dean and Porter were gay.)

The problem remains in places like Indiana, Ohio, Alabama, and dozens of places that wave farewell to their brightest young people, whether bound for careers in showbiz or software engineering, and wait until the kids make it big before claiming credit for them. Until then it’s “hey, queer bait.” I hear even John Mellencamp is taking abuse down in southern Indiana these days, for his failure to support the commander in chief.

Just wondering.

Friends, this is it for me today. Oh, wait: Something for Robert Rouse. See you tomorrow.

How often do you get a day like today, when you can root for the Patriots, see them win, AND see your brother make both ends of his bet on the game (he took the Colts and the points, and the under on the combined score)?

Sorry, Hoosiers. I just grew very very tired of all that Battle of Good vs. Evil pregame hype. And Peyton Manning is a smug little shit. And I’m mainlining so many reruns of “The Wire” on demand these days that I feel like I actually live in Baltimore. And that requires me to hate the Colts. So I do.

Time to pour a glass of baby’s blood, and regard the world with a carmine smile.

Fun fact to know and tell: If bottom slime isn’t washed off with a hose when the boat is still wet, you’ll be removing it inch by inch with a chisel all winter. Note: This is not our boat. It’s a big gaudy fishing rocket with triple 300 hp outboards. Shudder.

Ah, the melancholy of a boatyard in autumn: Carhartt padded jackets have replaced shorts. The waterfront restaurant is closed for the season. There’s not a girl in a bathing suit, or a girl, period, in sight. (Except me. And as a female long past my sell-by date, it’s a scientific fact that I am, in fact, invisible.) Instead of boats passing up and down the channels, it’s forklifts and jeeps with winches and the shrink-wrapping crews everywhere. And us. Another fall, another day spent watching Alan yank repeatedly on an outboard starting rope. If I had a dollar for every yank I’ve seen the course of our relationship, I’d be blogging from my luxury houseboat tied up at Pier 66, Barbados.

The details are boring — hell, the whole day was boring, or would be to you guys. As for me, I did my part, and once we got the motor running again, the day went smoothly. I’ve learned, during these routine mechanical failures, to remain implacable while Alan howls obscenities at the sky. (If I had a dollar for every one of those, I wouldn’t be blogging at all. I’d have my houseboys taking dictation.) I think before I make a stupid suggestion (“Are you sure there’s enough gas?”). And I appreciate my surroundings.

There was less to appreciate this year. Sorry, Gov. Richardson, but not only can you not have any Great Lakes water because we don’t want to give you any, there’s not much left. Lush Life was sitting on the bottom when we left our slip for the year, and though a strong push freed her — thank God; I can only imagine the obscenities that little development would have required — that’s what you call a pretty low ebb. Granted, the water’s always down in fall, and Lake St. Clair is shallow enough that a stiff west wind can drop the water on the American side by a few inches, this is close to unprecedented. I hope we get shitloads of rain and snow this winter, because I don’t fancy poling.

In other decline-of-the-American-empire news, we’re also running out of gas. The price jumped by 30 cents a gallon mid-week, pushing us over the $3 mark. The local Fox affiliate did a story. I’ve mentioned before that I prefer Fox’s local news because it’s so unabashedly interested in the knuckle-dragger market that, perversely, it makes it easier to endure. The Fox story consisted of interviewing drivers as they gassed up at $3.25 prices, and adding another voice of the common man to the anvil chorus, doncha know. Why did they suppose prices were so high? As one, they answered: “The economy.”

No one mentioned the price of crude, the drop in interest rates, inflation. Not that you’d expect people interviewed at a Detroit gas station to be Alan Greenspan, but even the distant ringing of a clue would have been refreshing. But they all said “the economy,” and they all said it exactly the same way: “It’s the economy,” suggesting someone was asking a leading question, or maybe they were just that dumb. Anyway, the story wasn’t on for very long — nothing is, because the audience has the attention span of toddlers at a birthday party. And then it was on to a shocking armed robbery of a convenience store caught on tape. In Dallas.

Sometimes it’s fun to be a misanthrope. Sometimes sucking the gall-soaked rag of bitterness tastes pretty good.

Or maybe I just need some more coffee. And a shower. And a million phone calls, and some office-straightening. So, on to the bloggage:

This may be of interest only to journalists and media nerds, and its backward-running narrative makes it hard to follow, but if you have the time, it’s a wry giggle. Short version: Wall Street Journal runs an editorial that insinuates union officials live high on the hog and need more congressional oversight. As part of the argument, they toss off an astonishing figure: That one “Jimmy Warren,” treasurer for the United Steelworkers and AFL-CIO, earns a salary totaling $825,262. Wow. Having recently learned that Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, knocks down around $150,000, this seemed, well, high. It also seemed high to the steelworkers’ media-relations people, who’d never heard of him. Turns out Jimmy Warren is a treasurer in a local in Alabama, and makes $8,252 and…anyone? Yes, and 62 cents, making the fat salary quoted by America’s leading financial newspaper a rather comical and gruesome error of misplaced decimal points. What’s more, the wrong-o figure came from a Human Events website on the “highest-paid union bosses,” which includes officials from such proletarian, blue-collar labor outfits as the players’ organizations for the NBA, MLB and NFL, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild, etc. And Jimmy Warren is still on the list. Oh, well. Mistakes happen. Picky, picky.

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.

OK, outta here. Have a great weekend.

Happy day after Halloween. This is not a premonition of the passing of any member of our household — I hope. (Anyway, that member of the household is licking himself at my feet as we speak.) However, when he does go, I’ll already have his calaca ready.

Today we have our bi-annual flirtation with divorce boat-hauling chore. Back later, if I survive.