It seems half the peo­ple I know are going gluten-free. Gluten is the new sugar, no, the new lac­tose — some­thing you can claim a vague “sen­si­tiv­ity” to and give up, there­after pro­claim­ing you never felt bet­ter. While I know that celiac dis­ease is real and that peo­ple actu­ally suf­fer from it, I’m a lit­tle dubi­ous about many of my newly gluten-free friends’ health claims. But I have a prej­u­dice. When I was in fourth grade, the teacher asked us to spec­u­late on what is meant when bread is called “the staff of life.”

I raised my hand. “That you’ll die with­out it?” The teacher chuck­led and called on some­one else, but I stand by my con­tention. Life with­out bread not only lacks a staff, but a point.

Alan was a health reporter for a time, and brought his deep skep­ti­cism to the job. It’s his con­tention that 99 per­cent of all self-diagnosed food aller­gies and sen­si­tiv­i­ties are b.s., that for every per­son who goes into ana­phy­lac­tic shock after eat­ing peanuts or shell­fish, there are 99 who claim “aller­gies” that basi­cally boil down to being a picky eater. If ice cream makes you fart, that does not mean you’re lac­tose intol­er­ant. (Bloody diar­rhea is another mat­ter, and yes, you’re wel­come for that obser­va­tion. I sup­pose there’s a mid­dle ground where you’re con­fined to your room until you stop smelling like a dairy that’s been aban­doned dur­ing a heat wave, but everything’s a spectrum.)

But this gluten thing is sweepin’ the nation. Just a brief scan of the celiac dis­ease entry on Wikipedia makes it sound nearly crip­pling, and no one in my cir­cle who’s given up gluten can really claim to have had it, but may I digress and gross you out some more? From the wiki:

The diar­rhoea char­ac­ter­is­tic of coeliac dis­ease is pale, volu­mi­nous and malodorous.

That’s as opposed to the scant, sweet-smelling diar­rhea, I guess. Ha ha.

Crunchy Rod, between posts on eco­nomic cat­a­stro­phe, the Bene­dict Option and the usual mania, posted a while back that his house has given up gluten and casein (milk pro­tein) and they’re all feel­ing bet­ter. (I only wish this was reflected in his writ­ing.) The post attracted the usual com­ments, wherein some peo­ple claimed that mak­ing one change in their diet led to clearer think­ing, retrac­tion of an autism diag­no­sis, etc.

Speak­ing as one who has always had a cast-iron stom­ach, who can eat vir­tu­ally any­thing with no ill effects what­so­ever, who has never even expe­ri­enced heart­burn, whose sum total of bad dietary out­comes boils down to “no mat­ter how good it sounds at 2 a.m., White Cas­tles at clos­ing time are almost never worth the morning-after mis­ery,” it is per­haps hard for me to empathize. If one doesn’t have celiac dis­ease, how can cut­ting one food from one’s diet make that big a change? Maybe if you replace it with some­thing health­ier, more com­plex carbs or whole grains, I can see it. Oth­er­wise, I’m still skep­ti­cal. I note how many peo­ple are diag­nosed with these con­di­tions by “alter­na­tive” doc­tors, and trash the AMA all you want, but I used to sit next to an alt-medicine crack­pot at work, and I formed my own opin­ions, par­tic­u­larly about iri­dol­ogy.

The U.S. is a far more diverse place than it was when I was a kid. Dif­fer­ent eth­nic­i­ties bring dif­fer­ent genes into the mix. I’ve heard it said that Asians can actu­ally smell white peo­ple, that we reek like aged Ched­dar to noses that don’t mess with milk past the breast-feeding stage. So I won’t rule it out. But can any­one tell me what a mixed-bag-of-European-genes per­son like me has to gain from giv­ing up her twice-weekly loaf of rus­tic Ital­ian bread?

The ques­tion to the crowd today: Gluten — threat or men­ace?

So, blog­gage:

One of the train­ers at my gym is try­ing to sell two Final Four tick­ets. Great seats (he says), all three games, $2,000. Yes­ter­day it was $2,500. I don’t know what this means — the price reduc­tion, that is — but I hear through the grapevine that there are still seats avail­able. Every­one blames The Econ­omy, but if you’re in the mar­ket, yo, I can hook you up.

Jeff TMMO posted this to Face­book, and as of five min­utes ago, so had two oth­ers, so heads up for the hey-martha story of the week and prob­a­bly the month. The head­line alone is a clas­sic: Police charge man with OVI after he crashed motor­ized bar stool. And there’s a picture!

Brian men­tioned Google’s inva­sion of pri­vacy a few days ago. A too-perfect story along those lines, that we won’t bother to check out further.

Hey, John Rich: Screw you, too. Love, Detroit.

Off to the gym. Times like these require all my strength.

Today starts the Grand Exper­i­ment, i.e., no Detroit paper-made-of-paper on my doorstep today. Our progress so far…yesterday I got the Sun­day Free Press, and no New York Times. On Sun­day, this is like get­ting the bill and the mints at the cash reg­is­ter, but no break­fast. I actu­ally had to read Albom. Alan insisted on call­ing for our copy, and it was deliv­ered six hours later by an old man in a bat­tered car. He walked with a limp as he made his way up the walk, but his man­ner was courtly and his apol­ogy, sin­cere. A new com­pany is doing the deliv­ery, he said, and this was an early glitch. So sorry.

Today there was a New York Times, but no Wall Street Jour­nal. Since I can’t speak Eng­lish until after my cof­fee, I opted to han­dle it online. In red type on the Ser­vices page:

Due to some delays in your area today, you may expe­ri­ence late or missed deliv­ery of The Wall Street Jour­nal. We are sorry for the inconvenience.

It’s sad when the old world meets the new. Noth­ing but blood on the floor. And yes, the ironies have occurred to me: This is hap­pen­ing on a day when the biggest local story in months is break­ing. Also, that the per­son who pays more than $700 a year for news­pa­pers is the one being incon­ve­nienced, so we can cater to the free­load­ers. (Jeff TMMO linked to some­thing Jim Lileks had to say on this sub­ject today, but I won’t, because as usual he buries his point in sev­eral hun­dred words of blather about what he had for din­ner Fri­day night. Kind of like, oh, me.)

But it’s Mon­day, it’s cold and there’s snow on the ground. Let’s turn our thoughts to hap­pier sub­jects, shall we? Not what I had for din­ner Fri­day, but what I made for dessert two weeks ago. Speak­ing of news­pa­pers, the New York Times food-front main story a few weeks ago was about whoopie pies. Noth­ing like a pic­ture like this to get your mouth water­ing. Nor­mally my bak­ing runs toward more tra­di­tional fare, but it looked like some­thing Kate would enjoy mak­ing with me, and so we gave it a whirl.

Ours did not resem­ble the Times’:

But they were quite tasty, although if you’re plan­ning to fol­low the same recipe, a word of advice: The cakes are fine, but drop the pre­pos­ter­ously rich but­ter­cream fill­ing and just go ahead and whip up a bowl of plain old cream, with lots of pow­dered sugar and vanilla. The recipe is adapted from Zingerman’s Bake­house in Ann Arbor, and once you look under the hood of one of their con­coc­tions, you see how they jus­tify their prices. There’s just no rea­son for every one of those suck­ers to have the equiv­a­lent of a half-stick of but­ter in it. Use whipped cream, refrig­er­ate briefly and hand them out at a child’s birth­day party. Yum.

A house­keep­ing note: Start­ing today, I’m intro­duc­ing some small steps toward a mod­est mon­e­ti­za­tion of this site. Oy, you don’t know the time I’ve grap­pled with this, but what I’m grop­ing toward is a few lit­tle trick­les that might add up to a stream some­day. Today, I’m reviv­ing my old Ama­zon Asso­ciates store, which I’m embed­ding in the “On the Night­stand” link. Click on Ms. Lippman’s lat­est, and instead of being taken to some review of her work — all of which have been very com­pli­men­tary, by the way — you’ll go to my Ama­zon store, Nance’s Kick­back Lounge. If you buy the book, or any­thing else, through me, I get four whole per­cent of your pur­chase. But you can buy any­thing there, not just “Life Sen­tences.” I’ve high­lighted a few of my favorite cur­rent books, movies and so on, but if you sim­ply access the greater Ama­zon site via my store, it all goes back to me. (Click on the “Pow­ered by Ama­zon” logo to access their main page.)

In com­ing weeks and months, I’ll try a few more things, most of which will be unob­tru­sive and that which isn’t, I hope, will be some­thing you’ll enjoy. My work­ing model is, if it’s in yo’ face, it’s gotta be some­thing extra. We’ll see.

I men­tioned snow on the ground. It came through last night, a lit­tle squall that when it started deliv­ered flakes the size of coast­ers, it seemed. We all stared out the win­dow, resent­ing the hell out of it, even though it won’t stick and won’t last past 10 a.m. today. I resented it even more for being so pretty — the big flakes were very Hall­mark. At least they were last night. Today, they’re just sort of…Monday. Enjoy yours.

Every so often I won­der what the fall­out will be from all these news­pa­per jour­nal­ists being thrown from the train. A few will drown them­selves in drink and self-pity, a few more will find their right­ful call­ing in a toll­booth some­where, a few more will land on their feet in other media out­lets, but most will leave the busi­ness entirely, and I won­der how that will work out.

(Shout-out to one of my old edi­tors, Car­olyn Focht, for the toll­booth ref­er­ence. She once used it to dis­miss a par­tic­u­larly low-performing copy edi­tor — “that guy should be work­ing in a tollbooth” — and I don’t think I’ve yet heard a more suc­cinct dis­missal of a cer­tain sort of office dullard. She was always funny. When she was a reporter, a dis­grun­tled reader sued her and the paper for libel, seek­ing $6 mil­lion in dam­ages. A reporter from the other daily asked her for a com­ment. She said, “I don’t have six mil­lion dol­lars.” The case was dismissed.)

One of the things about news­pa­per work is, it’s the best job pos­si­ble for a gen­er­al­ist. If you’re inter­ested in a lit­tle bit of every­thing, if you can hold up your end at a cock­tail party dis­cussing every­thing from oph­thal­mol­ogy to opera, a news­room is par­adise for you. So while you might expect reporters and edi­tors to dis­pro­por­tion­ately end up in fields that require com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and run­ning one’s mouth — i.e., law school — I’m not so sure. Plenty are too old to make that sort of 90 degree turn, for one. I think ex-journalists are going to be widely scat­tered through­out the econ­omy, doing every­thing from police work to teach­ing to cook­ing. When I talk to my bought-out col­leagues, most of them solidly middle-aged but still years from retire­ment, I’m always inter­ested in what they really want to do. Many want to write nov­els, but more than a few want to water plants in a green­house. Or run a lit­tle beer joint with bowls of nuts on the bar. Or advo­cate for the oppressed and under­served via a non-profit.

What I think is going to be really inter­est­ing is how the skills from both jobs mesh, or don’t mesh. I wouldn’t hire a jour­nal­ist if I were run­ning a Ponzi scheme, for instance. They’re such nosy employ­ees, and they have all the law-enforcement phone num­bers on speed-dial. I also wouldn’t seek out an ex-reporter if I wanted a sir-yes-sir type; it kind of runs con­trary to the DNA. But you might want an ex-reporter if you needed a bird dog; my luck­i­est bought-out pal segued grace­fully from inves­tiga­tive report­ing to just plain inves­ti­gat­ing, for a state gov­ern­ment office, and now has sub­poena power, and let me tell you, that is a man to be feared.

If noth­ing else, we might get some good blog­gers out of the Great Delam­i­na­tion. Meet Heather Lal­ley, for­mer fea­tures reporter in Spokane, now bought-out and headed for culi­nary school in Chicago, spe­cial­iz­ing in bak­ing. Check out her blog, Flour Girl, about the jour­ney, with a recipe in nearly every entry.

Here’s some­thing else I’m think­ing about of late: Pop­ulist rage. Every­one I know is walk­ing around in a state of low sim­mer, hop­ing some­one wear­ing a T-shirt embla­zoned Lehman Broth­ers Team Build­ing 2003: Bon jour, Monte Carlo! wan­ders through their field of vision, just to give them some­thing to punch besides the wall and sofa cush­ions. But the thing about rage is, some­times it gets a lit­tle unfo­cused. So I was intrigued by this WSJ story today, about the reac­tion to the spread­ing ubiq­uity of red-light cameras:

The vil­lage of Schaum­burg, Ill., installed a cam­era at Wood­field Mall last Novem­ber to film cars that were run­ning red lights, then used the footage to issue cita­tions. Results were aston­ish­ing. The town issued $1 mil­lion in fines in just three months.

But dri­vers caught by the unfor­giv­ing enforce­ment — which mainly snared those who didn’t come to a full stop before turn­ing right on red — exploded in anger. Many vowed to stop shop­ping at the mall unless the cam­era was turned off. The vil­lage stopped mon­i­tor­ing right turns at the inter­sec­tion in January.

The story goes on to point out this is one more munic­i­pal ser­vice that’s been pri­va­tized. The cam­eras are fre­quently run by pri­vate com­pa­nies that take a cut of the haul, as much as $5,000 per month per cam­era. And so the argu­ment about hav­ing noth­ing to fear from the law if you keep your nose clean tends to fall apart in the face of such obvi­ous money-grubbing. Note this detail, too:

Munic­i­pal­i­ties are estab­lish­ing ever-more-clever snares. Last month, in a push to col­lect over­due taxes, the City Coun­cil in New Britain, Conn., approved the pur­chase of a $17,000 infrared-camera called “Plate Hunter.” Mounted on a police car, the device auto­mat­i­cally reads the license plates of every pass­ing car and alerts the offi­cer if the owner has failed to pay traf­fic tick­ets or is delin­quent on car taxes. Police can then pull the cars over and impound them.

New Britain was inspired by nearby New Haven, where four of the cam­eras brought in $2.8 mil­lion in just three months last year. New Haven has also put license-plate read­ers on tow trucks. They now roam the streets search­ing for cars owned by peo­ple who haven’t paid their park­ing tick­ets or car-property taxes. Last year 91% of the city’s vehi­cle taxes were col­lected, up from “the upper 70s” before it acquired the tech­nol­ogy, says city tax col­lec­tor C.J. Cuticello.

This is dan­ger­ous stuff. One of the con­ser­v­a­tive movement’s many shivs to the body politic has been the demo­niza­tion of gov­ern­ment in all cases, under­min­ing we-the-people in favor of them-the-low-bidding-corporation, which, we’re told, always does the job bet­ter than some lazy pub­lic employee, who prob­a­bly has a really good health plan, too. Munic­i­pal­i­ties that pri­va­tize their dirty work, par­tic­u­larly for such offenses as rolling through a right turn on red, are breed­ing a cul­ture of resent­ment and dis­con­tent among their own res­i­dents, and that’s a nasty chicken that will be com­ing home to roost one of these days.

How­ever, until it does, we have spring, full sun­shine and a lovely-but-chilly day to look for­ward to. That’s how it is in Michi­gan, any­way. So I’m going to make beds, drink one more cup of French Roast, write two sto­ries, rewrite another and go to a meet­ing. Woo, Friday!

I’m in the process of redesign­ing my old web­site, Grosse Pointe Today. Erase and cor­rect: I am a spec­ta­tor and occa­sional con­sul­tant at the redesign of my old web­site, etc. It reminds me once again that noth­ing is more con­fus­ing, unre­ward­ing and oth­er­wise mad­den­ing than design in gen­eral and web design in particular.

This is no knock against design­ers. Some of my best friends, etc. But design­ing for the web is sort of like being asked to design a tire that will work on every vehi­cle now on the road, some of which are pulled by horses. There are stan­dards, yes, but there are many more con­flicts. What works on this ver­sion of Fire­fox will not work on that ver­sion of Explorer, vice versa and dou­ble on Wednes­days. Don’t even get me started on the users, who range from bleeding-edge early adopters who won’t use the site until we roll our own iPhone app to those who believe Google is the por­tal to the entire web.

Add to this the cacoph­ony of expert opin­ion weigh­ing in on what is and isn’t correct/respectful/smart, and you can see why I some­times lie awake nights star­ing at the ceil­ing. I’m a con­tent per­son. I respect design, even love it (see above, best friends, etc.), but I have firm opin­ions about its place in the world, cul­ti­vated after years in the news­pa­per busi­ness, years that coin­cided with the rise of design. Over the past cou­ple of decades in ink-on-paper, there have been many ver­sions of The Thing That Will Save Us, and for a while it was design.

I should pause here to state my prej­u­dices: Design is a pack­age. The pack­age must be attrac­tive or no one will pick it up and unwrap it. But equal atten­tion must be paid to the con­tents of the pack­age, and that got pushed aside dur­ing this era. I tell peo­ple I knew things were dif­fer­ent when I noticed what would hap­pen when a big story was break­ing on dead­line. In olden times, the top edi­tors would come out to the city desk and stand behind the edi­tor as the story was writ­ten and pol­ished, read­ing and mak­ing sug­ges­tions. Then one day I looked up and they were all stand­ing behind the design edi­tor, watch­ing the page being laid out. Their main inter­est in the story was how long it would be, if we could break out the back­ground grafs into a side­bar and whether we had a loca­tor map.

As the phys­i­cal size of news­pa­pers shrank, design­ers were really in their ascen­dancy, because every reduc­tion required a redesign. God, top edi­tors loved redesigns. It was good for months and months of their favorite activ­i­ties — hav­ing meet­ings and offer­ing opin­ions. It would be rolled out with every­thing from free dough­nuts on the copy desk to a front-page col­umn by the edi­tor in chief, tout­ing how the new design would make the news­pa­per so much eas­ier to “use.” I don’t use news­pa­pers, I read them, so you can see why I remained cool to these events.

It’s not unusual today to pick up a major met­ro­pol­i­tan news­pa­per and find no more than three sto­ries on Page One, espe­cially if a new Spider-Man movie is open­ing that week­end, because the flag will have been pushed down three inches by a giant Spider-Man who’s hooked a line to the T in “Times,” pro­mot­ing the six-inch “review” inside. That page will win a design award. The movie critic will be furloughed.

But that’s yes­ter­day. Today it’s all online. Web­sites are both read and used, and so things get really com­pli­cated. What we’re striv­ing to put together at Grosse Pointe Today v.2 is — will be — a com­mu­nity news and infor­ma­tion web­site, and I’ve already accepted it’s the “infor­ma­tion” that peo­ple really want, not the city coun­cil cov­er­age. Fit­ting it all into one easy-to-navigate pack­age is prov­ing to be a huge job, and I don’t envy our designer one lit­tle bit, although she has her own things she likes about it, i.e., “the pic­tures don’t have to be high-res.” But putting together a one-stop shop for All Things GP is not easy.

Of course, as the say­ing goes, noth­ing worth doing, is. And, truth be told, it’s fun to make it up as you go. For all the civ­i­liza­tion out there, the web is still a law­less place, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Any­way, this is one rea­son I’m so dis­tracted of late, as our launch date draws closer and I plow my way through copy, pho­tos, cod­ing and more e-mails than you can pos­si­bly imag­ine. I look for­ward to throw­ing chunks of the AP style­book out the win­dow, how­ever. I plan to utterly ignore the dif­fer­ence between “con­vince” and “per­suade.” (You watch, though — I’ll be lec­tur­ing con­trib­u­tors about less and fewer before the first week is out.)

When we get the site all the way up and run­ning, I will invite your opin­ions, espe­cially from you jour­nal­ists. We’re told there must be mad exper­i­men­ta­tion in our field, and that’s what we’re doing. Empha­sis on “mad.” So I’m off to plow through that 39-page bolus of copy once again.

Because I spread my news­pa­per read­ing through­out the day, I didn’t see this gem from yesterday’s WSJ until after I’d posted for the day. Besides, as it’s a WSJ story, I don’t even know if many of you can get to it. It’s about a pair of Bernard Madoff’s more unusual vic­tims; I’ll try to clip judi­ciously and sum­ma­rize efficiently.

Hed: Couple’s Dreams of Immor­tal­ity at Death’s Door, Thanks to Mad­off / Artists Who Design Homes to Pro­long Life Lost Their Life Sav­ings; Undu­lat­ing Floors

Of all the dreams that were crushed by Mr. Madoff’s crime, per­haps none was more unusual than (Arakawa and Made­line Gins’), of achiev­ing ever­last­ing life through archi­tec­ture. Mr. Arakawa (he uses only his last name) and Ms. Gins design struc­tures they say can enable inhab­i­tants to “coun­ter­act the usual human des­tiny of hav­ing to die.”

The pair’s work, based loosely on a move­ment known as “tran­shu­man­ism,” is premised on the idea that peo­ple degen­er­ate and die in part because they live in spaces that are too com­fort­able. The artists’ solu­tion: con­struct abodes that leave peo­ple dis­ori­ented, chal­lenged and feel­ing any­thing but comfortable.

They build build­ings with no doors inside. They place rooms far apart. They put win­dows near the ceil­ing or near the floor. Between rooms are slop­ing, bumpy moonscape-like floors designed to throw occu­pants off bal­ance. These fea­tures, they argue, stim­u­late the body and mind, thus pro­long­ing life. “You become like a baby,” says Mr. Arakawa.

Yes, what Japan­ese design­ers are to fash­ion, so too are Arakawa (who is him­self Japan­ese) and Gins to archi­tec­ture — insane. The slideshow of the couple’s work is sim­ply hilar­i­ous; the descrip­tion of “slop­ing, bumpy, moonscape-like floors” doesn’t really do jus­tice to the real arti­cle, which look as though even a crawl­ing baby would have prob­lems nego­ti­at­ing them. The story quotes a cura­tor at the Guggen­heim, who says “many of their sup­port­ers don’t lit­er­ally accept the couple’s mes­sage on immor­tal­ity but appre­ci­ate it in a ‘metaphor­i­cal’ way.”

Well, that’s com­fort­ing. And what about the clients?

At least one ten­ant says he feels a lit­tle younger already. Nobu­taka Yamaoka, who moved in with his wife and two chil­dren about two years ago, says he has lost more than 20 pounds and no longer suf­fers from hay fever, though he isn’t sure whether it was cured by the loft.

There is no closet, and Mr. Yamaoka can’t buy fur­ni­ture for the liv­ing room or kitchen because the floor is too uneven, but he rel­ishes the lifestyle. “I feel a com­pletely dif­fer­ent kind of com­fort here,” says the 43-year-old video direc­tor. His wife, how­ever, com­plains that the apart­ment is too cold. Also, the win­dow to the bal­cony is near the floor, and she keeps bump­ing her head against the frame when she crawls out to hang up laun­dry, he says. (“That’s one of the exer­cises,” says Ms. Gins.)

Alas, how­ever, this archi­tec­tural foun­tain of youth is at risk of dry­ing up, as the cou­ple invested their life sav­ings with Mad­off, and you know how that story ends. They’re try­ing to sell their “sem­i­nal work,” a series of 84 eight-foot-high pan­els, for $17 mil­lion, but fail­ing that, their dream of build­ing a “‘reversible des­tiny’ vil­lage with homes and parks that would com­bine their the­o­ries of life into one com­mu­nity,” alas, will, dare I say, die.

Which I can say I appre­ci­ate in a metaphor­i­cal way.

(Peter’s going to show up to lec­ture me for being a Philis­tine any minute now, I’m sure.)

Actu­ally, I’m sorry to see Arakawa and Gins’ work be com­pro­mised. When the only peo­ple Mad­off was steal­ing from were run-of-the-mill greed­heads, you could make an argu­ment for com­plic­ity. But when he came for the artists? To quote Bugs Bunny: This means…war!)

As I looked at the slideshow of Arakawa and Gins’ work, I thought about the pur­poses of the avant-garde, not just in archi­tec­ture, but else­where. Are they cul­tural stalk­ing horses or just…Bjork? Take Newt Gin­grich, embry­onic Catholic. I vote, in this case, for “just an asshole.”

The morn­ing is slip­ping away and I have a 39-page bolus of copy to plow through, part of a new project I’m work­ing on, which I’ll tell you about in due time. (It’s not a book.) There will also be some minor house­keep­ing announce­ments here and there, but noth­ing that will change your NN.C expe­ri­ence, except in the sense that I’ll be spread even thin­ner and more eas­ily dis­tracted. How­ever, I’ve learned over time that when that hap­pens, it’s rarely the blog that suf­fers, mainly because I have so many sup­port­ers who keep me at it. Take, for exam­ple, my web­mas­ter J.C., who sent an e-mail yes­ter­day announc­ing he’d been mess­ing around with “SQL queries, and had iden­ti­fied the times I’ve dupli­cated head­lines for a post, fol­lowed by a damn list:

(Groan.) (2 times.)
A day away. (2 times.)
Can’t talk now… (2 times.)
Can­cel my sub­scrip­tion. (2 times.)
Caught up. (2 times.)
Dis­cuss. (2 times.)
Dry. (2 times.)
Excuses, excuses. (2 times.)
Fol­low­ing up. (2 times.)
For your con­sid­er­a­tion. (3 times.)
Good news, bad news. (2 times.)
Grr. (2 times.)
Happy Hal­loween. (2 times.)
Happy new year. (2 times.)
Home­work. (2 times.)
I ask you. (2 times.)
It’s a tough town. (6 times.)
Link salad. (2 times.)
Memento mori. (2 times.)
Mon­day, Mon­day. (2 times.)
Mov­ing on. (2 times.)
My back pages. (2 times.)
No com­ment. (4 times.)
Ouch. (2 times.)
P.S. (2 times.)
Proud to be an Amer­i­can. (2 times.)
Rec­om­mended. (2 times.)
Ripped from the head­lines. (2 times.)
Sat­ur­day morn­ing mar­ket. (3 times.)
Sigh. (2 times.)
Snicker. (2 times.)
State fair. (2 times.)
Teevee. (2 times.)
The tyranny of choice. (3 times.)
Thin­ner. (2 times.)
Tids & bits (2 times.)
Tues­day night pie. (2 times.)
Update. (2 times.)
What’s it worth to you? (2 times.)
Wrong num­ber. (2 times.)
Yawn. (2 times.)

This is sort of com­fort­ing, because I thought it would have been more. “It’s a tough town” is actu­ally an old Knight Rid­der joke, so obscure I don’t dare detail it here. But now you know.

A few weeks ago I got an e-mail from the folks at Pom Won­der­ful, the super-expensive fruit juice in the Mae West bot­tle. Appar­ently they trawl the web look­ing for food blog­gers, and the souf­fle post came up in the net. They asked if they could send me a free case. I didn’t reply. But I did Google the woman’s name on the e-mail, to see what turned up, and what ho, there were sev­eral blog posts that ran some­thing like this: “The Pom Won­der­ful arrived today! It sure is deli­cious! Yum yum! Thanks, Pom Wonderful!”

Wel­come to the future of jour­nal­ism. Which is a lot like the past, only maybe with a bit more transparency.

Here’s how the 20th cen­tury Jour­nal­ism Ethics 101 class would ana­lyze my offer from Pom Won­der­ful: Turn it down. I’m not a food blog­ger, and even if I were, if I wanted to write about pome­gran­ate juice, I should buy my own. That way, my opin­ions are not influ­enced by the fact they sent me a case free of charge — about $22 for an eight-pack of eight-ounce bottles.

In real­ity, it doesn’t work like that, mainly because com­pa­nies don’t ask first. If I had an office with a pub­licly listed address, I’m sure they would have just sent it with a press release, and once it’s in the office, it’s too much trou­ble to send back. Every news­room in Amer­ica gets piles of free­bies, most of slight value, sent in the hopes the prod­uct might turn up, by name, in a story down the road. Among the things in my own house that I didn’t pay for: An apron with the “Hell’s Kitchen” logo on it, a blue bowl and a sin­gle spoon (part of a cereal pro­mo­tion), T-shirts galore, an airline-size bot­tle of Chivas Regal, books, bookazines, oh my the list goes on.

Dif­fer­ent news­rooms have dif­fer­ent dis­tri­b­u­tion poli­cies for this stuff. In Colum­bus, it all went into a drawer, and when we had enough for every­one in the depart­ment to get one or two pieces, we drew lots on a Fri­day and dis­trib­uted it amongst our­selves. In Fort Wayne, who­ever opened the mail would stand up and say, “Any­one want a bowl and a spoon?” or “Any­one want a banana bread mix?” or “Any­one want a T-shirt?” and if no one said yes, it went into a pile and either found a home later or went into the trash. The other paper held a semi­an­nual sale, and the money went to a good cause, or maybe the news­room flower fund, I can’t recall. Later, we had an edi­tor who thought that, eth­i­cally, she was beyond reproach, and the rule became: All gifts, no mat­ter how small and crappy, must be donated to char­ity. And so every quar­ter or so some­one would have to drag a box of junk, most of it use­less, to the United Way office. Sources say they rarely smiled when they saw us com­ing, as I doubt there was a press­ing need among their client base for giant but­tons that played the Pur­due fight song.

You may notice some­thing: No one ever opened the bowl-and-spoon box and said, “Wow! Great idea! Let’s do a story on cereal!” or “You know, this banana bread mix is just the thing for the busy home­maker with no time to smash ripe bananas! Get right on it, cub reporter!” It is safe to say we are thor­oughly jaded about this crap. (Although mainly that’s a mat­ter of degree. I’ve been on fashion-writer out­ings where there were draw­ings for dia­mond jew­elry or designer clothes, and there was no jad­ed­ness there, I regret to say.)

I should pause here to note that this applies only to news­pa­pers. Mag­a­zines are another breed of cat, par­tic­u­larly fash­ion mag­a­zines, which have a much cozier rela­tion­ship with their adver­tis­ers. We all saw “The Devil Wears Prada.” I’m told the movie over­sold the leg­endary Vogue sam­ple closet, but only in the sense that it implied staffers were free to plun­der it at will. They are not.

Any­way, here’s my point, a few hun­dred words later: Blog­gers, some of whom are ama­teur jour­nal­ists, are the new recip­i­ents of the banana bread mix and pome­gran­ate juice, and some of whom don’t know you’re sup­posed to dis­close how it came into your kitchen, as well as not­ing that they didn’t give it to you because they like your smil­ing face. Some­one on Face­book noted the other day that the travel-writing game is already fill­ing with pro­fes­sional PR peo­ple who have no qualms what­so­ever about rec­om­mend­ing a resort with crummy food or dirty bath­rooms, because hey, they got a free vaca­tion. It’s buyer beware all over again.

That said, there’s a restau­rant in Ster­ling Heights here with a sig­na­ture drink — the pome­gran­ate mar­tini. God, is it good. I don’t know what they make it with.

Blog­gage:

There’s a new res­i­dent at Coozledad’s Veg­e­tar­ian Farm and Pet­ting Zoo, and lordy, is he ever cute. I think his dif­fi­culty com­ing into the world was due to that adorable Dis­neyesque punkin head of his. Also, watch the YouTube link, just in case you’re called upon to assist a labor­ing Holstein.

Roy drops in on Brother Dreher, and finds his read­ers dis­cussing where to move when they aban­don Obama’s Amerikkka. Remem­ber all that right-wing jeer­ing about Alec Baldwin’s threat to move to Canada? Yeah, me too.

Oh, and just in case you missed this when Moe posted it in com­ments over the week­end: Extreme shep­herd­ing. Really enter­tain­ing video.

Me, I’m off to edit cit­i­zen jour­nal­ism. Because I’m crazy that way.

The pay-per-view choices on Sat­ur­day night at our house came down to “Milk” or “Pineap­ple Express.” I know I’ve been say­ing I want to see “Milk,” but I was kinda sorta hop­ing Alan would be lured into the Pineap­ple camp by the pres­ence of Danny McBride, star of our new favorite HBO com­edy, “East­bound & Down.” Alas, he voted for “Milk,” and so “Milk” it was.

And it wasn’t bad, if you don’t count against it that it prompted a new vow from my cor­ner of the couch: No more biopics, at least not of peo­ple whose story I already know. I don’t know how many more two-hour chunks of my life I want to give over to these earnest, med­i­c­i­nal sto­ries squashed into stan­dard three-act struc­ture, per­haps tarted up with a few invented anec­dotes or imag­ined jux­ta­po­si­tions. (Milk, dying, looks poignantly out the win­dow of City Hall at the opera house where he’d seen “Tosca,” another oper­atic assas­si­na­tion tragedy, only the night before. Oh yeah, I’m down with that.) Or maybe it’s just that it’s dif­fi­cult to make pol­i­tics cin­e­matic. All those maps and papers and clip­boards. Direc­tors and writ­ers fall back on the most movie-like thing about pol­i­tics — a man lead­ing a march and/or deliv­er­ing a speech through a bull­horn before a cheer­ing crowd — until you get sick of the story entirely and start appre­ci­at­ing things like the set design and wardrobe. Loved Emile Hirsch’s glasses — I had my own pair, back in the day. Loved the ringer T-shirts, a look I could never endorse. Loved the 501s and flan­nel shirts. Loved Josh Brolin, and loved that the script didn’t dwell over­much on Milk’s the­o­ries about Dan White’s closet sta­tus. In the end, there’s noth­ing more dan­ger­ous than a fail­ure with a gun.

And as some­one whose ini­tial aware­ness of San Fran­cisco, as a child, was as the cen­ter of the hip­pie move­ment and the neces­sity of wear­ing flow­ers in one’s hair, it was inter­est­ing to see what that replaced, the city’s working-class roots, now thor­oughly buried by yup­pi­fi­ca­tion. Milk’s voiceover men­tioned in pass­ing that the Cas­tro was once an Irish-Catholic neigh­bor­hood, and I’m all, really? I had no idea. And per­haps because the polit­i­cal story wasn’t exactly a page-turner, I started think­ing about cities like that. White rep­re­sented the resent­ful long-time res­i­dents being pushed aside by the wave of the future, Harvey’s peo­ple, the gay men who col­o­nized a place where they could kiss their lovers on the street and not get their asses kicked for it. I thought of a com­ment I read on a blog recently, from a reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive in San Fran­cisco who feels per­se­cuted because he has four chil­dren and another on the way, and, I dunno, peo­ple glower at his dou­ble stroller, or something.

I thought of the hun­dreds of places in the U.S. where a per­son like that might feel right at home, but of course it’s unlikely that per­son would want to move to Salt Lake City or Fort Wayne or Hol­land, Mich., because a) it’s not home; and b) there’s a strong pos­si­bil­ity he likes feel­ing per­se­cuted, just like Jesus. I guess what we all want is to feel at home wher­ever we live, whether we’re there because of cor­po­rate vicis­si­tudes, fam­ily oblig­a­tions or choice.

I also thought of the peo­ple on the short end of all such gen­tri­fi­ca­tion, who wake up one day to find their neigh­bor­hood is fill­ing with peo­ple rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent from them, who move in and say, “Finally, I have found my true home.” My guess is they’d feel like Palestinians.

And then I recon­nected with the thread of the movie, and dis­cov­ered the Briggs amend­ment was still keep­ing Har­vey Milk awake at night. Tried not to think, I could be laugh­ing at pot­heads right about now.

Lance Man­nion spent Sat­ur­day night being dis­ap­pointed by another hol­i­day movie release. It was that kind of weekend.

Sigh. I’m think­ing about movies to avoid think­ing about the econ­omy. I’m try­ing very hard not to despair. But I am start­ing to won­der where we’ll be in a year. We’re both work­ing hard — every­one I know is work­ing hard — and you have to believe work leads to some­thing good, but of late I’m start­ing to con­sider light­ing a match to the whole place and going on wel­fare some­where with a sunny cli­mate. Kind of like AIG.

A lit­tle blog­gage for you to bat around on a Mon­day? Let’s see what we can do:

I found this via Meme­o­ran­dum, as I don’t usu­ally read the Sun-Times. Most of you are aware that the big trend in city man­age­ment these days is to sell off the assets to pri­vate con­cerns. These schemes are easy to sell, because the num­bers are so eye-popping and it fits in with the gen­eral idea that gov­ern­ment can’t do any­thing right and pri­vate busi­ness will find new effi­cien­cies. Yes, we’re told, the price may go up in the short term, but ser­vice will be hugely improved.

This worked with the Indi­ana Toll Road. Nine-figure sum to maintain/improve other roads in the state, fol­lowed by toll increases. But the plazas were improved, and lanes added, and reg­u­lar com­muters would find the roads eas­ier to use.

But what can you do with a park­ing meter? How can you improve ser­vice at a park­ing meter? Well, you can’t. Chicago pri­va­tized its meters last month; Carol Marin explains:

…A month ago, when the City of Chicago pri­va­tized park­ing meters, rates were imme­di­ately jacked way up, and you now have to feed 28 quar­ters into the meter to park a car in the Loop for two hours. In exchange for a 75-year lease, the city got $1.2 bil­lion to help plug its bud­get holes.

But by hand­ing over munic­i­pal park­ing meters to a pri­vate com­pany, the city has given its cit­i­zens a colos­sal case of sticker shock. The cost of most meters will quadru­ple by 2013.

Detroit park­ing meters take plas­tic, btw. I love it so much I don’t even pay atten­tion to the per-hour cost.

Just for laffs: One of Josh Marshall’s read­ers finds a small tragedy deep within the Mad­off vic­tim state­ments, sub­mit­ted by e-mail.

Some­thing I read in the Free Press this morn­ing: The annual exhibit of work by stu­dents and staffers at Pewabic Pot­tery has been attract­ing metro Detroi­ters since the ‘70s. The just-opened show is loaded with edgy and provoca­tive cre­ations… All in favor of ban­ning the words “edgy” and “provoca­tive,” espe­cially as they describe ceramic, raise your hand.

(You wait. I’ll go to this show, and find a dis­play of din­ner plates with giant holes in the middle.)

And so it is Mon­day, which for me means: Time to study irreg­u­lar Russ­ian plu­rals. Dosvidanya.

So, the White House will have a vic­tory gar­den, a bit of news appro­pri­ately released on the first day of spring. Glad to hear it. I’m look­ing for­ward to see­ing how it turns out — I’ll go out on a limb here and pre­dict “spec­tac­u­larly,” mainly because I’m not in charge — but I’m par­tic­u­larly inter­ested in see­ing the shapes it makes the president’s ene­mies con­tort them­selves into, given their calm, con­sid­ered reac­tion to the Spe­cial Olympics joke and the Wednes­day night cock­tail par­ties.

The main story has a map graphic, and I’m puz­zled by all that let­tuce. Even a thin fam­ily like the Oba­mas can’t eat that many sal­ads, and let­tuce will be a non-starter in a D.C. cli­mate once the sum­mer really set­tles in. My guess is, this is the ini­tial plant­ing map, and there’ll be quite a bit of mod­i­fi­ca­tion down the road.

It so hap­pens I’m think­ing sim­i­lar thoughts here at Casa de NN.C. We are infa­mous for our con­crete back yard, but we do have a lit­tle till­able patch at the back of the lot that could be put into use as a gar­den. It would involve tak­ing out a tree, not a big one, but it’s the stuff that would come after that dis­cour­ages me. I’ve writ­ten before about the incred­i­bly aggres­sive ani­mal pop­u­la­tion here, prob­a­bly a direct result of Detroit tough­ness in gen­eral. Squir­rels here can be reli­ably counted on to strip tomato plants clean. The rab­bits carry switch­blades. My vic­tory gar­den would have to be fenced and pos­si­bly roofed with chicken wire to dis­cour­age loot­ing by the ani­mal kingdom.

And any gar­den pro­duce we grew our­selves would take away from my weekly trip to the East­ern Mar­ket, the most pleas­ant errands of the warm sea­son. So maybe not. The tree lives another year.

The Oba­mas’ gar­den will fea­ture hys­sop, notable for being the des­ig­nated paint­brush used to mark the Israelites’ homes with blood dur­ing the first Passover, in Egypt. This is clearly a coded mes­sage to Obama’s fol­low­ers to pre­pare for the Great Purge of Con­ser­v­a­tives; I’ll be start­ing some in a con­tainer as soon as the threat of frost abates.

They’re also grow­ing col­lards. Rush Lim­baugh can get some laughs out of that one.

The map doesn’t show, but the story states, that there will be two bee­hives “for honey,” which strikes me as a bit showy. For pol­li­na­tion, sure, but as we’ve dis­cussed here before, grow­ing your own food and being a loca­vore tip­toes dan­ger­ously close to being a bor­ing jerk some­times, and I hope the Oba­mas don’t use their pri­vate bee­hives to lec­ture their guests about the top notes of the local honey. (That said, I bought a small jar of local honey last sum­mer at the mar­ket, in part because the label amused me — “Detroit honey” sounds more like a vari­ety of heroin to my ear — and because I won­dered if it would glow in the dark. The whole metro area has seen so much old-school man­u­fac­tur­ing over the last cen­tury that it’s safe to assume every square inch of soil con­tains more heavy metal than Ozzfest. And yet, I still eat it, because I assume it coats the innards against more exotic invaders.)

On my season-opening bike rides last week­end, I checked out my friend Steve’s place. Steve used to write a gar­den­ing col­umn for the paper in Fort Wayne, and has tilled every inch of his own yard, right down to the park strip. He’s gen­er­ous with the bounty; a local dog-walker has his per­mis­sion to take one leaf of Swiss chard every week to feed her iguana. Most of his stuff is behind fences, but the park-strip plot is still there, heaped with com­post and wait­ing to be tilled. He rotates, like a good organic farmer, so I don’t know what’s going in that spot this year. I’m hop­ing for heir­loom toma­toes. Or maybe some hyssop.

What’s in your garden?

There was a ter­ri­ble acci­dent not far from here Mon­day, up in Macomb County. A gutter-level alco­holic with a BAC at nearly three times the legal limit drove her van into a car full of teenagers wait­ing to make a left turn. All the kids — four of them, ages 15 to 19 — died, and the drunk received only minor injuries. They charged her with four counts of second-degree mur­der, a wise choice under the circumstances.

Every day, the story seems to get worse. We’ve known for a while now that the dri­ver, a woman named Frances Din­gle, had been drink­ing “at a party” ear­lier in the evening, and had been warned not to drive, but did so any­way. Today we learn that the “party” con­sisted of a con­fronta­tion with a man whose fiancee was drink­ing with Din­gle, and he took her keys, and she tore the mail­box off his house, and, and, and.

The pic­ture was of a stra­tum of soci­ety where alco­hol use more closely resem­bles what goes on in a drug house. When I was preg­nant I did a lit­tle read­ing about fetal alco­hol syn­drome, after read­ing a truly mind-blowing — and utterly irre­spon­si­ble — pas­sage in Newsweek mag­a­zine that said, “even a ‘hooray, we’re preg­nant’ glass of cham­pagne” can have a neg­a­tive effect on a fetus. I’d read “The Bro­ken Cord” a few years ear­lier, Michael Dor­ris’ heart­break­ing mem­oir of try­ing to get help for his FAS-afflicted son, born on an Indian reser­va­tion. I was puz­zled, then and now, why it took so long to diag­nose the boy. Alco­hol has been a part of human cul­ture for so long, surely some­one had noticed the link between women who drank heav­ily dur­ing preg­nancy and the men­tally retarded babies they gave birth to. Which led to me the “gin babies” of Vic­to­rian Eng­land, and gin in gen­eral dur­ing that era, which was a sub­stance we’d rec­og­nize more read­ily as crack cocaine.

I’ve been around drinkers and drunks all my life, but few like the ones described in recent sto­ries about the acci­dent, or the father in “The Prize Win­ner of Defi­ance, Ohio,” whose model was to come home with a bot­tle of Kessler’s and a six-pack, and sit at the kitchen table tak­ing it like med­i­cine, grow­ing meaner by the minute. No tipsy cheer or social lubri­ca­tion for these folks, just pound pound pound, and then oblivion.

The first thing they teach you about alco­holism is that booze is booze, and that even if you drink high-dollar stuff, or just beer, or just wine, or always among oth­ers and never alone, or never before 5, or what­ever, you’re exactly the same as the guy who drinks hair spray. Maybe you’re better-dressed, or better-employed, but at the end, your poi­son is his poi­son. It just tastes a lit­tle better.

I keep imag­in­ing Frances Dingle’s life, the bouts of home­less­ness, the shat­tered rela­tion­ships, the push-me-pull-you of cycling through rehab to drunk tank and back, the final deci­sion to get into her huge van and push it to free­way speeds down a crowded thor­ough­fare. She hit the median strip at around 60, the cops esti­mate, which launched it air­borne and into the lit­tle Chevy Cobalt full of kids. They didn’t have a chance. Doesn’t sound like any­one did.

[Pause. Claps hands together.] OK! Happy time now!

Via the Boston Globe’s excel­lent Big Pic­ture blog, Scenes from a Reces­sion.

A while ago Ruth Mar­cus was root­ing for Car­o­line Kennedy to be a U.S. senator…just because. Because it would be sooo cool. Today? Leave AIG alone!

Gawker says the for­mer leader of the free world got dissed with his book advance. What about the peo­ple who have to read it, eh? What about them?

My new stan­dard of excel­lence is Five Lester Frea­mons. Thanks, NYMag!

Oop, almost time for Flex Appeal at the gym. Later, all.

I didn’t learn of Natasha Richardson’s ski­ing acci­dent until late yes­ter­day, which I think is healthy — not the acci­dent, but the fact the news was out in the world for hours before I looked up and saw it. (I was lis­ten­ing to Gretchen Mor­gen­son on “Fresh Air.” Stream here, for the brave. The show’s about AIG, and warn­ing: May cause head injuries from smash­ing one’s head against the desk. Short ver­sion: The bonuses are the least of it.)

Any­way, back to the unfor­tu­nate actress. I’ve writ­ten before at how the dig­i­tal gos­sip net­work, or “press,” for a bet­ter word, is a true throw­back to an ear­lier time in jour­nal­ism. I’m amused by how they mimic the most breath­less prose of the old tabloids — “we can now exclu­sively reveal…,” “told this reporter in a run­way chat at the Golden Globes…,” etc. Now it seems they have another claim to the grand press tra­di­tions of the olden days. Get it first, worry about accu­racy later.

Scan­ning the reports via Wesmirch, in the space of 15 min­utes I was led to believe we’d be see­ing Ms. Richard­son tread the boards again after a rea­son­able recov­ery inter­val, no she’s brain dead, no she’s not brain dead, yes she has swelling, no she’s in a med­ically induced coma, whoops she’s dead, no she’s not, etc.

Lat­est reports are that she’s brain dead, again, but by now, who would trust any­one? Here’s to leav­ing fam­ily tragedies to the fam­i­lies involved, and typ­ing up a sedate death notice later, based on a press release.

Besides, if you’re read­ing the news for enter­tain­ment, the gos­sip pages can’t beat the police blot­ter. Noth­ing like a drug addict for laffs:

That Decem­ber morn­ing, act­ing on a tip that Keith (who is on pro­ba­tion), had been seen using heroin, the pro­ba­tion offi­cer demanded that Keith report to a nearby drug-screening clinic in 20 min­utes, pre­pared to pee in a cup.

Keith knew his own urine wouldn’t pass muster. To leave the clinic with­out hand­cuffs, he’d need to cadge some untainted pee from a friend. And of course he’d need a Whizzinator.

You have to laugh at peo­ple who can split hairs about the rel­a­tive purity of a bag of dope, yet some­how believe that giv­ing a urine sam­ple through a dildo will fool a pro­ba­tion offi­cer who deals with junkies all day. The Whizzi­na­tor ruse is pred­i­cated on the idea that cops are so mor­ti­fied by the chore of mon­i­tor­ing urine drops that they will look away dur­ing the col­lec­tion process and not see such a lame-ass gam­bit. Of course, some junkies make it so easy:

Sold on the Inter­net for about $300, the Orig­i­nal Whizzi­na­tor comes in five flesh tones. I tracked Keith down after sev­eral law enforce­ment sources told me he had made the crit­i­cal mis­take of using a Whizzi­na­tor designed for a some­what darker-skinned individual.

A very funny story. Go read.

OK, then. How was your St. Patrick’s Day? Mine was lovely, in the sense that it didn’t snow, and I was able to get out and lift a sin­gle glass (work night) of Bel­gian lager in cel­e­bra­tion. Yes, Bel­gian — our friend John C. was spin­ning Irish tunes (in the sense that “click­ing the track­pad” now sub­sti­tutes for turnta­bles) at the Cadieux Cafe, our local Bel­gian bar. They were hav­ing corned beef and cab­bage, but I opted for a Bel­gian Dip instead, and relearned the les­son I always man­age to for­get between trips to the Cadieux — nut­meg is a Bel­gian cook’s favorite spice. I’m not opposed to nut­meg per se, but believe it belongs in cook­ies and cakes, not mashed pota­toes and roast-beef sandwiches.

Still, the Bel­gians do have a way with pomme frites, I must say. And while the tra­di­tional March 17 beer choice is Guin­ness, I opted for Stella Artois and go ahead, abuse me for it. I can­not stom­ach that dark stuff with­out bring­ing on the sort of bil­ious­ness and fart­ing that pre­vails in, I’m guess­ing, the Lim­baugh house­hold. It’s not for mixed company.

Once again, another entry approaches the 700-word mark with­out hav­ing a direc­tion, a point or much of any­thing else to rec­om­mend it, other than a Whizzi­na­tor. And to think I was look­ing at my site stats the other day and think­ing 1,000 page views a day was a wor­thy goal to reach for this month. (It pretty rou­tinely bumps around in the 950 range, and if there’s any­thing we’ve learned from the busi­ness com­mu­nity of late, it’s to always be striv­ing.) Alas, it will have to wait for a day when I’m not rewrit­ing memos. And so, with that lame excuse, I turn things over to you guys. You are the wind beneath my wings.