Yesterday I had a conflict, between a need for some vegetables and a little exercise vs. about a million unreturned phone calls. As you all know, when you’re waiting for a call, the phone waits until you’re out or mowing the lawn or in the bathroom to ring; this is the first rule of phoning. But what is all our technology for if not to serve us, so I forwarded the landline to the iPhone, mounted the bike and rode off to the vegetable stand a couple miles up Mack Avenue.

On the way back, “Spirit in the Sky” faded out, and my ringtone — the “old phone” ring, the metal-bell ring — faded in. I touched the “answer” button and coasted to a bench in the park strip about 100 feet farther down the road. Sat down, had a conference call and a little chitchat, using the earbuds and the mic attached to the cord, and we all heard one another just fine. When I hit “end call,” “Spirit in the Sky” faded back in from pause, and I rode on home. It was the fades that got me. I don’t argue with anyone who says Apple can be a little too twee in their product design, but let me just say, it’s nice to have a few things in your life that not only work well, but better than well.

Snowed again today, and probably for the rest of the week, which is good, because otherwise I might be reduced to staring at the wall and wondering what it’s going to feel like to still be working when I’m 85, probably cleaning toilets for the occupying Chinese army or something. (Relax: I intent to be a spy. No one notices the old cleaning woman. You might as well be invisible.) In the meantime, if you live in metro Detroit and have lost your house to foreclosure (but not your computer), you are instructed to e-mail me immediately. If not, enjoy a little bloggage:

Yesterday I was trashing graphic designers, but I hope it goes without saying they’re not all bad. My former employer once sent a reporter halfway around the world for a story, and ran two of the dumbest graphics I’ve ever seen with his reports — one showed the time difference between Fort Wayne and Central Asia, and the other detailed his plane connections traveling there. These ran every day for two weeks, and I winced every time. Needless to say, this wasn’t the New York Times, where graphics mean something. Here, an amazingly detailed and nuanced breakdown of the no votes on yesterday’s bailout package, by district.

An entertaining read on the retirement of a Detroit homicide detective, with the obligatory hard-bitten quote:

An envelope kept in his desk drawer is a collage of family highlights and back-alley insanity. There is a photograph of a fishing trip; his son in his naval uniform; Carlisle and his wife, Nancy, at their wedding. Then there is the one of the man with his face half shot off; a nude woman dead in an abandoned garage; a corpse under a Christmas tree. “More people are murdered around Christmastime in Detroit,” Carlisle said of that photograph, the tree shining in the window. “I think it’s to avoid buying Christmas gifts.”

Bicycle commuting at night is hazardous, particularly on Woodward Avenue, which is eight or 10 lanes across in this stretch; still, people have to get to their jobs, and some of them are poor, and sometimes they pay the ultimate price.

I may be scarce around here for a couple of days, but I’ll do my best. In the meantime, commence your bickering. Only 35 days before we can break into separate groups and commence gloating!

I just looked at my calendar for this week and groaned, although not entirely with misery. Any week with a to-do list including “build props for zombie movie” and “escort French journalists through bad neighborhoods” can be many things, but not boring. One of the things I wanted when I left Indiana was a more interesting life, and it looks as though I got it, at least this week.

On the other hand, I’m glad I stocked up on coffee last week.

My perambulations this week took me far from my east-side nest, which is always interesting. In any city that sprawls the way this one does, people tend to get a little dug in. Yesterday I went to Warren. Among the bumper-sticker descriptions of Warren: Second-most corrupt city in Michigan and Hometown of Eminem. I found myself in a dollar store, when three or four Eminem clones walked in: Elaborately carved but badly maintained facial hair (those multi-prong goatees), tattoos that climb up the neck, cocked ball caps, baggy everything.

One had a girl with him, who was apparently leading the shopping expedition. She wasn’t in a good mood, and it was easy to see why: Her boyfriend, one of the Em-ulators, liked to swat her with random objects. Not like he was seriously trying to hurt her, but not friendly, either. He’d pick up, say, a roll of wrapping paper and slap at her legs with it. “Whaddaya think of this? (slap) Huh? (slap) Huh?” She’s ignoring this, but with the pressed lips employed by parents trying to remember the baby-book advice on how to deal with toddler temper tantrums. I’m watching this, thinking, I don’t care what kind of union job that guy has, I don’t care what he does in bed, I don’t care if he has a nice car. You can do better.

What happened to young men? It’s like women got a little autonomy and they fell to pieces. I’m reminded of George Clinton’s comments, which I quoted here before but bear repeating:

Though he’s popular with rappers, Clinton says he doesn’t completely understand the hip-hop culture. “I can’t get used to [rappers] saying the things they say to girls and then expecting them to make love to that,” he laughs. “One guy was cursing this one girl out and I said, ‘Man, don’t talk like that to that girl,’ and she said, ‘Oh, here comes Captain Save-a-Ho.’”

Anyway, that was Warren. Dollar-store Warren, granted, but still.

Just got an e-mail from a reader:

Looks like the Chicago Tribune has redesigned its way into irrelevancy as unveiled today by Publisher Tony Hunter and Editor Gerould Kern. We’ve seen it all before: So many over-sized graphic elements that there is no room for the news, bullet points, “consumer” stories, Hollywood gossip, stories reduced to charts, graphs and other elements (except, of course, copy), etc. etc.

The “new” Trib’s take on one of the biggest stories of the decade, the bail-out plan hammered out by Congress? Well, you won’t find it on the front page (no space, what with the top half of Page 1 taken up by the two-line name plate, reefers and giant photo). No–this major story only merits Page 4. And after discounting the big photo, breakout box of bullet points, head and tagline (”News Focus”) you get — not much information, that’s for sure. The story is paired with a piece by the paper’s “On Money” columnist opining on how the Wall Street debacle will impact the nest eggs of soon-to-be-retirees. So much for actually informing the public.

It’s the second paragraph I want to discuss. I’ve had it up to here with redesigns, and did long before this. Every top management change I’ve witnessed seems to be accompanied by a sweeping redesign of the paper, and it took me years to figure out why: Because it’s easy. It’s easy for the people who order them, anyway. (It’s hell on the people who actually have to do the work and live with the result.) For the first year of the new team’s tenure, they get to spend large chunks of time doing what they like best: Going to meetings and marking up page proofs. It’s not that expensive, and then they get to write a big Page One column talking about how wonderful and reader-friendly the new design is, before collecting their MBO bonus.

I count graphic designers among my best friends, but many are not journalists, and someone needs to ride them with a curb bit, lest they claim one-third of the front page with a great sprawling promo for “Spider-Man 3,” and yes I’ve seen it.

Anyway, it’s the part about the bailout package being buried inside that interests me. It seems newspapers are truly in a no-win situation with some of this stuff. At my old paper, we used to make fun of our competition, which was edited as though every reader had one source for news — the competition. When the first space shuttle exploded, it happened at 11:30 a.m. Our little afternoon daily was able to get something in the home edition, but it was badly outdated by 5 p.m., when not only did everyone know, but had been watching saturation coverage of the tragedy on TV all afternoon. The coverage continued all night, too If ever a story called for a second-day headline on a morning daily, it was that one. And yet, their head was? Yes: Space shuttle explodes. Duh.

Today it’s a whole new ballgame, and not only are readers looking for immediacy, they’re looking for expertise. I haven’t even glanced at the bailout stories in today’s Detroit News, because I’m reading the NYT and WSJ for my primary source. If there’s a terrorist bombing in London, I’m not relying on the AP to keep me posted — I’m going to the London dailies. And so on.

Granted, I’m an early adopter, and probably one of the savvier readers in the circulation base for a local daily. I have fast web access, and time to spend reading it. Others don’t, and what they read in the Detroit News or Chicago Tribune will be the bulk of what they know about the situation. The challenge for editors planning a news budget for today is, how do you edit for both groups? This has always been the challenge, but it’s much more profound now.

There are also staff-development issues. Ambitious business reporters dream of landing at the Journal or at the business desk of a national daily, but those jobs are scarce. Some very good ones are at large metros or regional dailies, doing a very good job, and think this is a story they should be covering. For all this talk you hear at journalism conferences — we stopped covering earthquakes in Tokyo, and now print all soccer team pictures submitted by readers, and it’s a huge success! — you have to ask what sort of reporter wants to spend their career writing cutlines for soccer team pictures. Answer: Not bloody many.

So I’m not so bugged by the bailout being inside — as long as a movie promo isn’t outside — but I’d be interested in seeing how good the story is. And I want to know what others think.

Meanwhile, I have to get to work. Perhaps you’re asking yourself: But Nance! Did you make a pie this weekend? Why yes, yes I did:

That’s apple, with a crumb topping. Dee-lish.

Armchair media critics welcome. Get crackin’.

Open thread to remember Paul Newman, who died yesterday.

Sometimes nothin’ can be a real cool hand:

Don’t shoot!

That’s “the end of the world as we know it,” for you non-REM fans. Wouldn’t fit on one line.

I don’t know about you, but when a day opens with an account of the Treasury Secretary on bended knee before the Speaker of the House, continues with clips of the Republican vice-presidential candidate sounding like Miss Teen South Carolina, lurches on to another bank failure and it’s not even 9 a.m. yet, well…that’s not a good day. One should consider going back to bed. I did. Decided, instead, to read a movie review. Hey, it’s Friday. Is Spike Lee still the most overrated director since Steven Spielberg? Check:

The role that black troops actually played is an important story, and might have been a powerful one in Spike Lee’s hands. Indeed, a sense of that power can still be gleaned from the DVD version of Rachid Bouchareb’s “Days of Glory,” a magnificent French-language film that played here two years ago, and told essentially the same story with different skin shades — four Algerian soldiers in the French army fighting bravely against the Nazis for the nation they love while their fellow French soldiers treat them like scum, and their casually despicable racist officers use them as cannon fodder.

But the Bouchareb film allowed the awful ironies of the situation to speak for themselves, while Spike Lee keeps hammering them home with agitprop fervor and clumsy actors playing racist officers as crude cartoons.

Yep. Is Roger Ebert still his No. 1 fan and water-carrier? Hmm, three stars, but I know it’s in here somewhere…oh, OK. Here it is:

In a sense, the scenes I complain about are evidence of Lee’s stature as an artist. In a time of studios and many filmmakers who play it safe and right down the middle, Lee has a vision and sticks to it.

You might have gathered I’m not a fan. Fortunately, Spike Lee’s movies are easy to avoid and, in the grand scheme of things, not much of an irritant. However, one of the great periods of Hollywood flowering came during the Depression, when our parents, or our grandparents, escaped from their dreary lives an hour or two at a time at their local movie house. Now that it looks like we’re in for a sequel to the Depression, it might be nice to have a few decent movies in town, too.

(Well, there’s always “Nights in Rodanthe,” in which, I read, “an elusive band of wild horses shows up for a symbolic gallop on a beach” [WSJ]. Can’t! Wait!)

I’m invited to a small debate gathering tonight at JohnC’s house, but given that we don’t know if the debate is actually happening, maybe not. Hey, John — maybe you should make it a Depression-themed gathering. Have everyone bring a donation to a soup kitchen, or a cake made without flour or eggs. I hear things are tough all over. Mrs. Fuld (nee: Mrs. Lehman Bros.) is even selling her art. I hope Uncle Sam has the guts to seize the checks.

If you guys are looking for something to discuss in the comments, maybe everyone could take a stab at describing an economy in which the credit lines are frozen. Hardly anyone has done so publicly, or if so, they say, “You wouldn’t be able to get a mortgage or car loan.” Since most people are, at any given moment, not shopping for either one, it makes it easy to turn the page and say, “not my problem.” I don’t think most people know how credit works, how lines of credit and short-term borrowing affects, literally, every segment of the economy, how business relies on short-term credit to stock their shelves and longer-term instruments to install new equipment, etc. So Econ 101 for any dummies who might stumble through here and need the education. I figure it can’t be any less useful than more ranting and gloating.

So, bloggage?

“It really is true what they say: Those who do not study the past get an exciting opportunity to repeat it.” — Jon Stewart, national treasure. It gets good at the one-minute mark:

Well, at least you’ll be able to get some decent pot around here without risking your neck.

Finally, when was the last time you heard someone say, “I thought I’d be wearing a jet pack by now. Where’s my jet pack?” Well, it’s here!

Have a good day and weekend. I’ll be casting zombies.

I once asked the owner of my gym what inspired him to put such a detailed sign on the entrance to the basketball court. He replied, “Years and years of experience.”

To paraphrase Homer Simpson: Testosterone: Fuel for humanity’s engine, and also useful for starting big fires.

UPDATE: And while we’re on the subject of hormones, I snickered at the picture accompanying the National Enquirer’s* story about Sarah Palin’s supposed extramarital affair, which could have carried the caption: “Gov. Palin explains why they broke up.”

* “…a more solid investigative outfit than many people think” — Rod Dreher

Well, this has certainly been an …interesting campaign season, hasn’t it? Two weeks ago, I thought there was a good chance Obama was finished. Last night, it’s looking as though McCain is toast. All of it — “suspending the campaign,” Palin’s foreign-affairs cram course (which, unfortunately, brought the “Caribou Barbie” image home — world leaders and colorful native costumes sold separately!), the Letterman thing — makes him look desperate and weak, and that’s a very bad thing to be when you’re running for president at a time like this.

(”The Letterman thing,” I realize, makes me sound like one of those “low-information voters” who votes based on who did better with Ellen and Tyra, but the truth is, no one has aged into his Jack Paar elder status quite as gracefully as Dave. Doing the late-night chat shows is as important as doing “Meet the Press,” and McCain should have known that.)

Today, though I know the chat about this will be lively, let’s try to give one another a break. One reason I’ve come to hate the four-year election cycle is how easily I allow my buttons to be pushed, how culture war pushes everything else to the side. Deb spoke yesterday of yelling like a crazy lady when she sees a McCain yard sign, and I know exactly what she’s talking about. I’m grateful there are so few signs of any sort on my block, because I really don’t want to start doing the same thing. For a while when the war was going very badly, one of the houses in the next block had a sign in the yard that was phrased as a command: SUPPORT PRESIDENT BUSH AND OUR TROOPS. I had to avert my eyes. I didn’t want to put a human face to the house. I wanted the social lubricant of neighborliness to remain intact as long as possible.

I bring this up because we’ve already had a player carried off the field here, our old pal Jeff the Mild-Mannered, who wrote me last night:

I seem to be provoking more unpleasantness than is my preference, and it isn’t a position i’m used to occupying; that, and at 47 i’m already on lisinopril, and don’t need to up my dosage, so i’m just going to gracefully bow out through the election week. When i’m tempted to be extremely un-mild mannered in response to others, it’s a sign i need to pause and reflect and (forgive me) pray.

Others have written similar thoughts, and have taken shorter time-outs, and surely others have simply stopped commenting and reading without announcing it. One of my conundrums as a blogger has always been how I might “monetize” this site, and it reminds me of how I was always told to monetize my career when I was a columnist. People would say, “You need a niche, a cause, something people will associate with you,” but I could never do it. If I made this site all about politics I would doubtless pick up more outside linkage, and traffic, and maybe 35 more cents in my Google Ads account at the end of the month, but I’d hate doing it. I’d rather keep this blog about a lot of different things than one big thing, and attracting people who are interested in a lot of different things and like to comment on them.

One thing I like about Jeff is his willingness to take unpopular positions here, and I’ll miss him. Even though he’ll be back in six weeks or so.

Let’s keep talking about the events of the day. Let’s just try to remember that the other guy is not necessarily the enemy.

If you need to, when feeling overheated, you can play this video, and repeat as needed:

Puppies! All better now.

A little bloggage:

“Mad Men” fans, take note. Emma turned me on to this Flickr set of an artists’ images inspired by the show, but did you know this same artist has a shop at Zazzle? I’m getting the Betty-smashes-a-chair T-shirt as soon as I hang up with you.

Amy Welborn, Catholic blogger, left Fort Wayne earlier this year and has written about her impressions of her time there. You Fort people might like it. Or might not.

Gym-bound. Back later.

I’m behind on my e-mail. Funny how that happens. You get caught up, spend a day slacking and then, boom. At times I like this I remember the stories I’ve read about e-mail amnesty declarations, in which one purges the in-box and washes one’s hands. I also think of the early days of the fax machine, when the librarians (which is where our newsroom kept its main fax) would hand-deliver faxes to your desk the moment they arrived. Within six months they had installed a mailbox setup, and you picked up your own. And six months after that, the boxes were clogged with restaurant takeout menus and entries for some guy in the sports department’s NCAA pool.

E-mail’s getting like that. Now everyone wants to send you text messages, at 20 cents per. Wonderful. Something you have to type with your thumbs, can’t be much more than a few phrases and costs half as much as a letter sent via U.S. Mail. We’re always figuring out a way to do things better, aren’t we?

On the other hand, I’m always amazed, whenever a new communication technology emerges, how swiftly we figure out what it’s good for, which niche it fills. A text is perfect for a certain sort of message, e-mail for another. We even agree, sort of, on the etiquette of when one has violated the code somehow, how breaking up with someone via text or voice mail is tacky (and how sending takeout menus via fax should be).

However, the e-mail I have to return is from my BFF, with whom I’ve had a years-long correspondence, and deserves better than Im awesome!!!! on her phone.

So hang on, Deb, all will be revealed, eventually.

I’m trying very hard not to be upset by the news lately, but then I wonder: Isn’t denial of this sort a one-way ticket to the Stress-Related Ailments ward? Isn’t [Samuel Jackson voice] great vengeance and furious anger [ / Samuel Jackson voice] the logical, normal reaction to recent events? I thought I had it tamped down, and then Gretchen Morgenson, the NYT business reporter/columnist, was on “Fresh Air” yesterday — stream it here — and it came roaring back. “Why should I believe people who were lying to me five minutes ago?” she asked, quite reasonably, and it was all I could do not to load all the garden implements into the back of the car and set a course for Washington. Instead, I took a shower and wondered if I have the privilege of witnessing the end of the American era. I think so. It’s pretty clear the future belongs to our Chinese brothers, and our next part is to be the Fading Empire Rife with Corruption, Clinging to Outdated Ritual.

I just hope I can get a job. I hope the fading empire needs a few writers.

Which, before I set to work catching up on e-mail, seems as good a place as any to transition to the bloggage:

LGM’s Paul Campos in the Rocky Mountain News, on what Wall Street and the Detroit Lions have in common. Relax, it’s semi-amusing and not angry at all. (BTW, Fox Sports is reporting Matt Millen’s been fired.)

Suzanne Vega tells a few of the many stories behind “Tom’s Diner,” an a capella pop oddity that was influential far beyond its do-do-do-dos.

Hey, Detroiters, look what Matty Moroun’s up to now. Go down to Riverside Park and take some pictures. (Amusingly, when we did our film challenge last summer, this was the park where most of the teams got their obligatory Ambassador Bridge shots. Bastard.)

Off to work I go.

When I was in St. Louis, I stayed with my friends Vahe and Cindy, whom I know through my journalism fellowship, back in the dark ages. Both work for the Post-Dispatch, and Vahe is recently returned from the Beijing Olympics. He said our fellow Fellow Adi Gold, who is Israeli, had sent him a story from a Tel Aviv newspaper after Michael Phelps won his second gold medal. That was the relay, if you recall, the squeaker won in its last leg by Jason Lezak. The headline, Adi said, translated to “Two Jews and a black man help Phelps to a gold medal.”

In the great tradition of sleep-deprived people everywhere, “two Jews and a black man” became the week’s punchline for a segment of the press room, Vahe said, culminating in the inevitable “two Jews and a black man walk into a bar.” (I don’t even know if it’s true. I’ll take their word on Lezak, but “Garrett Weber-Gale” doesn’t exactly sound like Abe Rosenberg. Whatever.) So let’s keep the dream alive, eh?

Two Jews and a black man would agree with me that the Wall Street bailout is a raw deal for taxpayers. I’m tired; I blame the midnight interruptions of two Jew and a black man, carousing under my bedroom window. Let’s try that new restaurant tonight, what’s it called? Oh yeah: Two Jews and a Black Man. It’s fusion cuisine.

Anyway. I really am tired this morning, and have no one to blame but myself, but I’m going to the gym come hell or high water, so not much from me this morning. You people seem to have a talent for carrying on with or without a bartender. Just a little bloggage:

You’ve probably seen the gossip stories about the “Brazilian supermodel” who had a fling with young John McCain on a steamy weekend in Rio 51 years ago. I call your attention to the photo of the paramour in her younger days, which today would be reason for any self-respecting modeling agency to throw her out on her padded ass. However, I’m reminded of a story about body image in Brazil that ran in the NYT a while back, which related the original lyrics to “The Girl from Ipanema.” There’s a verse in there about the roundness of her bottom, which translates to “more than a poem, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” I’m sure two Jews and a black man would agree.

Finally: Hey, Henry Paulson! Why not buy my shitpile?

Back later, or maybe not until tomorrow. Depends.

Really. Don’t look where you want to look. Look at her feet. That woman must be a hell of an actress, because I can tell you, those dogs are barkin’ but she doesn’t let you know.