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.