The first ladies.

Let’s forget Silda Spitzer for now. The question at hand is this: Did Carlita Kilpatrick, wife of Detroit’s mayor, walk in on the jaw-dropping sight of a stripper “touching her husband” as part of said stripper’s performance, leave the room, come back with “a wooden object” and commence beating on the bethonged skank?

(“Wooden object” — snerk. In my mind, it’s a rolling pin. In reality, probably nothing so fitting.)

Pity the wife of a political bounder, these days. I think we’re reaching a tipping point. I never agreed with Chris Matthews’ belief that the secret of Hillary Clinton’s success is her husband’s dowsing rod, but even allowing for it, it can’t last forever. Women can empathize with a wronged spouse, but no one likes to back a self-deluding fool. My gut says there’s more sympathy for Donna Hanover no-longer-Giuliani, pitching a public fit over her scoundrel trying to move his girlfriend into the spare bedroom, than over the spouse whose coping mechanism is to pour another martini and think of the children.

That’s why they do it, of course — for the children. They stand up with Daddy as a way of telling the kids to not be afraid, we’re all presenting a united front. Your home will not break up over this. At least for now, we’re joining hands and supporting one another, because that’s what families do.

I have no idea what the “might not be safe” activities might constitute. My money’s on coprophilia; someone else I know suggests erotic asphyxiation. It’s a truism that powerful men are among the most enthusiastic bottoms in their sex fantasies — every so often, you just have to give up control — so keep that in mind, too.

Anyone who wants to take up that in comments, go ahead, but maybe the rest of you might want to wear latex.

I’m ducking out of this entry early — the weightlifting class at the gym starts in 15 minutes. I’ll add some bloggage after I return. If you like, my last-episode Wire blog is over at The New Package (or NuPac, as we’re calling it now). For now, my flabby ass takes precedence.

Posted at 8:49 am in Current events, Detroit life |
 

64 responses to “The first ladies.”

  1. brian stouder said on March 11, 2008 at 9:01 am

    Well, today, thanks to nn.c and http://dictionary.reference.com/

    I learned what coprophilia is. WooHoo!! Last night Pam and I also noted the “might not be safe” remark, and that the salesperson said something like ‘Do you want to have sex or not?’ –

    which made me think that the Governor didn’t want to wear a condom…..but now I see that I may not even have been in the right city or state, let alone on the right track!

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  2. Jim said on March 11, 2008 at 9:03 am

    The ability of this city to react to current events is amazing. WOR just played “I’m Client No. 9,” set to the tune of “Love Potion No. 9.”

    Journalistically speaking, I find it very interesting that the NYT decided to break this huge story on its web site, not the print edition. I think “dead-tree” editions are going to disappear faster than we realize.

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  3. 4dbirds said on March 11, 2008 at 9:20 am

    Hubby and I spent a little time last night also wondering what constitues an unsafe sex act to a pro. Hubby was most interested in who would pay 5 grand for a session.

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  4. WhiteBeard said on March 11, 2008 at 9:20 am

    You got me, Nancy, I had to look up unnatural sex practices (no color photos, please) to find the scatalogical meaning of coprophilia re Gov. Eliot (Ness) Spitzer but I totally agree that the high and mighty can sink to new lows in their bedroom romps.
    And I, too, feel truly sorry for the grim-looking First Ladies and wonder if the First Gentlemen would be so inclined to stand by their women so honorably.
    On the stressful urge to exercise, I have found that taking two low-dose aspirin immediately lessens the need, leaving me to lift nothing heavier than my wifi laptop.

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  5. Peter said on March 11, 2008 at 9:40 am

    Oh boy, I didn’t catch the might not be safe part; I guess this is going to get worse before it goes away.

    I know he’s over the top sanctimonious, but still, there’s a point where you just wish he’d quietly leave and we just forget about the sordid stuff. If he didn’t steal from the public coffers, fine, let’s not try you in public but don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

    I really think there should be a better way to handle situations like this. I know there’s a downside, but there ought to be a way someone could just say they need time with the family, and we let it go at that. It’s not an issue with me about handling delicate issues; it’s more along the lines of fitting the punishment to the crime. If he has any decency he’ll leave, and that should be punishment enough.

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  6. ashley said on March 11, 2008 at 9:58 am

    Well, I live in the land of swamps and corruption, but can anybody tell me why this is even a tiny bit different than David “Diaper Boy” Vitter getting caught?

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  7. ashley said on March 11, 2008 at 10:00 am

    BTW, Laura Lippman, according to her website, had a book signing at 5:00 a.m. today. 5:00 in the friggin’ morning.

    Somebody needs a new agent.

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  8. Harl Delos said on March 11, 2008 at 10:20 am

    Coprophilia might be messy, but it’s not dangerous. They probably mean BDSM, which is dangerous enough that participants use a “safeword” code that means “stop”. (A friend tells me that “I should NEVER have chosen “more” as a safeword.”) Tops are much in demand, which seems strange to me; you’d think people would want to be in charge.

    I think “dead-tree” editions are going to disappear faster than we realize.

    The dailies will. Weeklies, I don’t know. Grocers have a hard time using the internet for advertising, and so do local retailers and local service businesses. And people *want* to see those ads. But a weekly can do this just as well as a daily. I see afternoon papers dying first, then morning papers, then Sunday papers, with community newsweeklies and pennysavers being around for a long time.

    Ever since high school, I always subscribed to both a daily and at least one out-of-town daily, sometimes as many as four daily papers, and I bought a paper in every town I passed through when I took a trip. Even after I exited the news business, I kept reading.

    About five years ago, though, I stopped subscribing to ANY dailies. It was just too much of a hassle, hauling unread newspapers to the curb. I buy a newspaper to read while waiting on my meal when I go to a restaurant.

    I look for the WSJ circulation to really drop. They used to have six columns on a 34″ web, and now it’s almost a tabloid. They used to have 3 feature stories on the front page, now it’s one. And they used to be twice the price of other dailies; now they are three times as much. I used to really enjoy reading it, but no longer buy it.

    Forbes, though, has increased their circulation while lowering their standards. Maybe it’s because they’re giving it away for $12 for 26 issues. You can coast only so long, before you stop being toast of the town and you start being toast.

    It was one of the best-edited magazines in the 1980s, right up there with Clay Felker’s New York in the early 70s, but these days, Malcolm Forbes in his grave must be disappointed with what Steve Forbes is publishing.

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  9. Andrea said on March 11, 2008 at 10:21 am

    Laura Lippman was on a (pretaped) segment of the local CBS morning show this AM and explained that the book store in Brunswick is across the street from a busy MARC train commuter stop and that the ladies who own it open at 5am to catch the commuter traffic.

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  10. Harl Delos said on March 11, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Well, I live in the land of swamps and corruption, but can anybody tell me why this is even a tiny bit different than David “Diaper Boy” Vitter getting caught?

    He’s a neo-con, and thus other neo-cons are willing to forgive.

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  11. blogenfreude said on March 11, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Re: Vitter – the Republicans actually applauded him when he returned. Standing O, as it were.

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  12. Andrea said on March 11, 2008 at 10:45 am

    I found it interesting that this story took off with the speed of light on a national level on the Internet and cable news channels, but the story about Detroit’s mayor, I first read about here. Is it a black v. white thing, local v. state, or something else? Just curious on what others think.

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  13. ashley said on March 11, 2008 at 10:45 am

    So can somebody tell me the difference between the Spitzer case and the Vitter case, other than the fact that Spitzer had hotter ho’s? I’m not getting something.

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  14. Kirk said on March 11, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Well, it was only because of drug-riddled, socialistic, salacious, evil media influences that Vitter even began to consider the possibility of being a freak. So, obviously, he overcame (this is why his neo-con buddies offered hearty applause). Spitzer’s just a run-of-the-mill arrogant hypocritical egomaniac.

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  15. nancy said on March 11, 2008 at 10:53 am

    Andrea, the Spitzer story hit the afterburners for the same reason a blizzard in New York City is national news, and a blizzard in Chicago is a brief in the digest. It’s New York, and everybody’s bellybutton is fascinating there.

    No, that’s unfair. Objectively, Spitzer is the newly elected governor of one of the most important states in the nation, a man who made his bones as a crusading prosecutor — the irony is too obvious. The NYT broke it, and it’s the most influential paper in the country. Detroit’s scandals are apples/oranges (and, to be sure, Textgate made the NYT, too).

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  16. ashley said on March 11, 2008 at 10:59 am

    It’s New York, and everybody’s bellybutton is fascinating there. No, that’s unfair.

    No, that’s correct.

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  17. brian stouder said on March 11, 2008 at 11:26 am

    So – to paraphrase the old joke, if you’re introduced to Elliot Spitzer, and invited to “shake hands with the governor”, what do you grasp a hold of?

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  18. nancy said on March 11, 2008 at 11:27 am

    His wallet.

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  19. Kafkaz said on March 11, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Harl–why in heavens wouldn’t it be dangerous? Human fecal matter (sigh, I can’t even believe I’m writing this) is a major vector (sheesh) for all sorts of diseases and parasites.

    Anyway, who knows what all he was really after? About the most I’m willing to guess is that it was something he was afraid to ask his wife for, thought she wouldn’t do, or didn’t want her to do, since “nice” girls don’t. A “milf” is only a “milf,” it seems, when she’s someone else’s wife or mother. The one closer home is apparently seldom as appealing. Damn that whole Madonna/whore thing to hell and back.

    It seems tough to make the case that someone who will forever be known as “diaper boy” has really emerged unscathed, though.

    I mean, unless we’re talking Captain Underpants here, it’s pretty hard to imagine the world in which that would be construed as a positive thing.

    But, the glee over this one was probably pretty well summed up by the spontaneous cheering at the NYSE.

    Meanwhile, beating up the stripper still seems a bubble off, doesn’t it? Give the chick a nice tip, provide her with some contacts at a local agency that can help her explore other options, and send her home. This strippper’s dead. Yikes.

    Nice little universe we have going, here.

    I will forbear to post “The Excrement Poem,” but there is one. Maxine Kumin.

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  20. 4dbirds said on March 11, 2008 at 11:39 am

    Ashley, IOKIYAR

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  21. beb said on March 11, 2008 at 11:49 am

    There’s something rootten about the Spitzer case. Yes, he’s confessed he’d hired a hooker. but why was the federal government looking into a prostitution ring? Why did Spitzer’s bank report a money transfer to the feds that was far less than the amount stipulated by law for reporting? This sounds a lot like that Alabama governor, a democrat like spitzer, sentence to prison for corruption only to have republican stateofficials complain that spiegelman had been railroaded.

    And here in Detroit, what’s up with previous investigations into this wild party story? The State Police supposedly looked into it and found nothing, but now we have a woman coming forward claiming to have seen the original police report, abnd had since disappeared. Did the state police really investigate? Because it doesn’t seem all that hard to have found people who knew about the party and the beating.

    What up with that?

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  22. del said on March 11, 2008 at 11:55 am

    More poo-flinging — my kids’ favorite character in Captain Underpants book — Professor Pippy Pee-Pee Poopy Pants.

    Wikipedia shows that David Vitter replaced Bob Livingston (he of the Larry Flynt $million sexual shenanigans bounty). Ashley, what’s goin’ on down there?

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  23. del said on March 11, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    Beb, a lawyer friend believes that Michigan’s AG (R) Mike Cox, yes, that’s his name for all you’ns outside MI, laid off investigating Mayor Kilpatrick’s wild party because of his own past. He fathered a child out of wedlock (always paid support though) and has a scar on his face from a knife wound (bar fight I think). Anyway, he’s now married to a woman who is not the mother of his kid, and some time back had to announce his own adultery. I think his wife was at his side for the cameras. Don’t remember all the details but local democratic provacateur and former gubernatorial candidate Geoffrey Feiger was somehow involved. Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press wrote a column about adultery still being a crime in Michigan. My friend’s annoyed that Cox or someone from his office testified in court that the party was “urban legend.” As you probably know, many metro Detroiters believe otherwise.

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  24. Peter said on March 11, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    Well, IMHO, the difference between Detroit and New York is that I don’t think Kwame ever said he would clean up the place and throw the bums out. Our holier-than-thou friends Craig, Vetter, and now Spitzer are a different story. This guy is caught doing the very thing he railed against.

    I got to tell you, if this was Arnold, or Bill Richardson, I think there would be a lot of tut tutting but it would be gone in a few news cycles. They never claimed the moral high ground.

    And as far as I’m concerned, Craig and Vetter should have done the right thing and left. To get a standing O just shows howhypocritical these asswipes are.

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  25. Harl Delos said on March 11, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    Harl–why in heavens wouldn’t it be dangerous? Human fecal matter (sigh, I can’t even believe I’m writing this) is a major vector (sheesh) for all sorts of diseases and parasites.

    Once it leaves the human body, it’s easily contaminated, and is a fertile breeding ground for all sorts of stuff. But copraphilia normally involves the fresh stuff. Skin is a *much* better barrier to disease and parasites than the lining of the colon; if it didn’t make the generator of the copra ill, it probably won’t make the recipient of the copra ill, either.

    Semen is also a highly fertile breeding ground for all sorts of stuff. In fact, there are diseases that are so difficult to spread, that if they don’t have that nourishment, they simply cannot be spread from one person to another. The technical term for these diseases is venereal disease. Semen, on the other hand, dries quickly, and once it’s dry, it’s not very hospitable to growths.

    When AIDS is spread sexually, it’s almost always a male giving it to someone else, not a female, because that’s the direction the majority of body fluids normally flow. When strictly-lesbians get AIDS, they usually blame drug use.

    It’s messy and smelly to change diapers, but you’re not likely to get sick, because it’s fresh. On the other hand, the folks who pick up the trash have the highest morbidity rates of any city employees – much higher than policemen or firemen.

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  26. moe99 said on March 11, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    I understand Spitzer’s endorsement of Hillary was off the campaign website within hours of the breaking news.

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  27. 4dbirds said on March 11, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    All I know is that as a mother, I’ve been peed on, pooped on, spat on, bleed on, snotted on, vomited on, bit, pinched, hit, kicked, had my hair pulled and never received anywhere near $5000.00 for the ‘privilege’.

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  28. Kirk said on March 11, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    Harl, I didn’t have the time to wade through the whole thread but I noticed you mentioned Balyeat’s the other day. Would that be Balyeat’s in Van Wert?

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  29. nancy said on March 11, 2008 at 1:29 pm

    I’m really starting to regret mentioning poop, even in medical terminology.

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  30. Dwight said on March 11, 2008 at 1:50 pm

    Let’s forget Silda Spitzer for now.

    Oh, let’s don’t. Let’s delve into the hypocricy with the same clucking tongue of “Expect to see a lot more of these kinds of stories” contempt you had for Craig.

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  31. Danny said on March 11, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    I’m really starting to regret mentioning poop, even in medical terminology.

    No sh*t.

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  32. Kafkaz said on March 11, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    Even in daycare settings where all due precautions and then some are taken, E. coli, Salmonella, Shigella, Giardia, pinworms, hepatitis A, Cryptosporidiosis, and Rotavirus can all spread. All start with fecal contamination, and it doesn’t take much. People don’t have to look sick to be active carriers, and the contamination isn’t somehow introduced once the substance leaves the body. Something as simple as one person’s lack of thorough hand washing can lead to a whole bunch of illness, and not only in a daycare setting. It’s hard to imagine that more thorough engagement would be substantially safer, though I suppose a person really determined to indulge could always vet their potential partners, or stick with one known and trusted person.

    Meanwhile, kids probably consume pounds of dirt and who knows what all else over the course of a normal childhood, and usually get along just fine.

    In the adult realm, dirt (the flinging and the wallowing) is an entirely different thing, it seems.

    Dav Pilkey’s world is way more appealing.

    4dbirds: Totally agreed. I’m owed some major backpayments, here. Still remember bathing that first kidlet, and wondering why my bangs were dripping when we were done. Enlightenment: it wasn’t water.

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  33. brian stouder said on March 11, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    I confess, this remark on poopy passion made me laugh

    or stick with one known and trusted person.

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  34. Kirk said on March 11, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    I’m reminded of a story about a former major league pitcher, a willing (or paid) woman and a glass coffee table.

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  35. Kafkaz said on March 11, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    Diction is everything.

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  36. 4dbirds said on March 11, 2008 at 2:30 pm

    a willing (or paid) woman and a glass coffee table.

    I heard that was Danny Thomas.

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  37. Danny said on March 11, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Nancy, I noticed your current bookshelf is The Abstinence Teacher. Curious, I went to Amazon and read the reviews and I am just kinda surprised that you would gravitate towards this type of thing. It sounds to me like a pretty shallow attempt at promoting a secular progressive worldview by creating monstrous caricatures.

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  38. alex said on March 11, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Say it ain’t so, 4D. Not Marlo’s dad. Not the children’s hospital guy. Please. I’d much rather it were someone like Dick Cheney.

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  39. Jeff said on March 11, 2008 at 2:38 pm

    You’re all getting excited about coprophilia (#1 worst work in archaeology — historic-era privies, but they produce such great artifacts and preservation levels; the one that was behind the bar where Babe Ruth grew up, right smack in left field of the faux-olden-tyme ballpark of Camden Yards, produced some wonderful flasks and keys and other iron-mongery of the era).

    But the money should be on asphyxiation-related play, including worries about the safety of the john — prostitution’s worst nightmare, i’m told, isn’t being beaten or even killed as much as being the last one to see your client alive, especially when he dies in your presence.

    The commonality of this kink baffles me way more than the much-less frequent fetish kinks that make the headlines. We lose teenage boys, adult married men, and truckers in hotel rooms all the time to this one, and it rarely is called what it was/is — heck, what do we call it? So it’s another “death by accidental strangulation,” and the families tend to prefer the faint hint of possible suicide to actually telling anyone how the person was found, which usually relieves all doubt.

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  40. nancy said on March 11, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    I’m not deep enough into “The Abstinence Teacher” to have much of an opinion about it yet, Danny, but having seen “Little Children” and “Election” in movie form, it convinced me I should find at least one of this guy’s stories in book form.

    So far — < 100 pages -- it's not too caricature-y. But I have a ways to go. And yeah, I heard the Danny Thomas story, too, from a friend of mine in Hollywood. The other enthusiast of this practice was -- and this pains me -- Chuck Berry. Spy magazine had a story about it, way back when.

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  41. John said on March 11, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    This is dissolving to some of the comedy riffs from “A Dirty Shame”.

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  42. Harl Delos said on March 11, 2008 at 3:15 pm

    Harl, I didn’t have the time to wade through the whole thread but I noticed you mentioned Balyeat’s the other day. Would that be Balyeat’s in Van Wert?

    I know of none other.

    And I know of none *like* it. An extremely long menu, and everything appears to be cooked from scratch. Back in the 1950s, the owner used to really scream at his help, so my folks stopped going there; whether or not the help “deserved” it, it’s not pleasant to hear. I went some in the 1980s and 1990s, and was quite pleasantly surprised at the quality, the portions, the prices – and I kinda thought the decor was a kick, too.

    This country used to be full of independent restaurants, offering great home cooking. These days, it’s hard to find something that isn’t a chain – and chain restaurants tend to have mediocre cooking at best.

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  43. ashley said on March 11, 2008 at 3:18 pm

    It’s the Kevin Gilbert and Michael Hutchence show! Somehow I find that a bit easier to stomach than the David “Diaper Boy” Vitter or Chuck Berry show.

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  44. nancy said on March 11, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    Oh, and Jeff, as to autoerotic asphyxia — some years ago, after a couple of a.a. deaths in the area, the Huntington County Sheriff’s Department (Indiana) brought in an expert to lead a session on it, geared toward helping cops tell the difference between suicide and accidental strangulation, which can mean a lot when insurance and investigators get involved.

    Within a few weeks, one of the cops who’d had the training was dead. Just couldn’t wait to try out his new trick, I guess.

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  45. Jeff said on March 11, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Point, made. Confusion, remains.

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  46. Harl Delos said on March 11, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Say it ain’t so, 4D. Not Marlo’s dad. Not the children’s hospital guy. Please. I’d much rather it were someone like Dick Cheney.

    It’s not like he anyone was hurt. He wasn’t kicking dogs or stealing candy from babies. Nobody was harmed, and if you and I don’t understand how or why it gave him pleasure, well, that isn’t important, is it? Everybody oughta be allowed a little slack, shouldn’t they? It’d be a boring world if everybody was the same.

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  47. brian stouder said on March 11, 2008 at 3:48 pm

    It’d be a boring world if everybody was the same.

    BUT – at least we could all have faith in our damned coffee tables!

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  48. 4dbirds said on March 11, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    helping cops tell the difference between suicide and accidental strangulation, which can mean a lot when insurance and investigators get involved.

    One of my first “line of duty” investigations as a young army legal clerk was the A.A. death of a soldier found in an ammunition bunker in Germany. I remember thinking how awful for his mother, losing her son and then finding out exactly how he died. At that time, suicide could result in his death being “not in the line of duty” and the possibility of his serviceman’s group life insurance not paying out. That’s probably changed, hopefully changed now that we have more awareness of depression.

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  49. Jeff said on March 11, 2008 at 4:13 pm

    It hasn’t changed, and cops will generally do all they can to help you keep the determination off of suicide, especially when the decedent’s pants are down, whatever’s around his neck.

    Yes, it’s always “his.” Once again, women don’t seem to have these frailties.

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  50. nancy said on March 11, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    “Six Feet Under” once featured an AA death as an opener, and filled in a few details I was unaware of. (Not that I’ve made a study.) The lemon wedge in the mouth is the one that sticks in the mind. It’s supposed to wake a guy up at the teeth-clenching moment and remind him to let go of the rope.

    [Pause.]

    I’m reminded of a Woody Allen line, in “Manhattan,” where someone says they’d recently learned they were having “the wrong kind” of orgasm. “Every one I’ve had has been right on the money,” he says. My thoughts exactly.

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  51. alex said on March 11, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Lest we forget, in Huntington in the 1980s there was quite a spate of AA deaths, which was why a seminar was being held on the subject. At the time, the local press dubbed Huntington “the world capital” of autoerotic asphyxiation. Statistically the number was way out of whack for a town so small, but presumably this was owing to local word of mouth about the to-die-for orgasms.

    I remember the description of the discovery of one victim as told by a friend who lived there. The guy had gone out hunting and didn’t come home, so his family reported him missing. He was discovered hanging by a noose, pantless, a pornographic magazine spread wide open on the ground beneath him.

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  52. Kirk said on March 11, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Re: Balyeat’s:
    I spent a little more than a half-year in Van Wert in 1974. Lived for a couple of weeks in the Key Post Inn downtown, across the street from Balyeat’s, so I took a lot of meals there. It was good, down-home grub, and I think I remember them having some pretty good pies. I don’t remember anyone getting yelled at.

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  53. alex said on March 11, 2008 at 4:57 pm

    Kirk, Harl, Dexter–

    Fascinated with the name Balyeat because it’s in the Huntertown graveyard but don’t know much about it. Took note of Balyeat Road in Wren or Wilshire a couple of years ago.

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  54. Kirk said on March 11, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    I remember being on or crossing Balyeat Road on more than one summer evening as I tooled around the county in search of a buzz.

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  55. Harl Delos said on March 11, 2008 at 8:30 pm

    The place has been around for 70 or 80 years. I assume it was named for the founder, but I’ve never met anyone named Balyeat in Van Wert County or anywhere else.

    They used to have billboards announcing they were famous coast-to-coast. I’m not sure if they were in some sort of Duncan Hines type guidebook, or if they were just pointing out that they had a distinctive name and they were on Lincoln Highway. They talk about the National Road being the first federal highway, but Lincoln Highway was the first one that ran coast to coast, wasn’t it?

    When I was going to school at the University of Dayton, I heard about and drove Dixie Highway, but I didn’t realize it was other than a local road; I figured it was like California road in Fort Wayne. I don’t know where Dixie goes, but I ran into it later in Cincinnati.

    And now, they’re promoting the World’s Longest Garage Sale every year on US 127, except that it seems to stop somewhere around Cincinnati and not extend all the way up to Jackson.

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  56. Suzi said on March 11, 2008 at 9:21 pm

    Lest we forget, in Huntington in the 1980s there was quite a spate of AA deaths, which was why a seminar was being held on the subject. At the time, the local press dubbed Huntington “the world capital” of autoerotic asphyxiation. Statistically the number was way out of whack for a town so small, but presumably this was owing to local word of mouth about the to-die-for orgasms.

    Do you remember the sick joke that followed all of that? About all of the guys working for the same company?

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  57. Suzi said on March 11, 2008 at 9:28 pm

    Ever hear of accidental mechanical asphyxia? This fits in nicely — so to speak:

    Friend of Falwell” Minister Dies During Bizarre Sex Play

    http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389×2008564

    I’m staying far away from the scatological discussion.

    All sad for the families though.

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  58. mouse said on March 12, 2008 at 12:56 am

    Little late on this Nance & Suzi but I believe all the victims of the autoerotic asphyxia ring down in Hunington worked at the same place………Beecher Tool & Die.

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  59. Gasman said on March 12, 2008 at 2:23 am

    I’m still doubled over with laughter over the “bethonged skank.”
    Thank you Nancy. I will remember that one.

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  60. Suzi said on March 12, 2008 at 9:30 pm

    Mouse, you’re right, that’s the place. I remember I totally fell for that joke.

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  61. Suzi said on March 12, 2008 at 9:35 pm

    Bethonged skank named Strawberry!! Gak!
    I really liked the rolling pin image.
    Guess that fits if you’re making a Strawberry pie.

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  62. Calvin O'Reilly said on March 13, 2008 at 11:27 pm

    9 out of 10 times, the simplest answer is the correct answer. “Unsafe” in this case means sex without a condom, pure and simple.

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  63. Harl Delos said on March 14, 2008 at 6:31 am

    9 out of 10 times, the simplest answer is the correct answer. “Unsafe” in this case means sex without a condom, pure and simple.

    It also turns out that it wasn’t $4300, either. It was only $1000.

    My next door neighbor says he misses the 1960s, when “safe sex” meant not telling her your real name.

    (It seems strange to use the phrase “only $1000”. My first car was $250, and I fought hard to get the price down from $300.)

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  64. michaelj said on March 17, 2008 at 9:10 pm

    And that’s clever?

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