Today I plan to spend most of the day at the Volk­swa­gen dealer’s, get­ting the car ser­viced. I assume the inter­net ser­vice is still a sin­gle crappy, for-your-convenience 90’s-era PC with track ball mouse — yes, way — so I’m tak­ing a bunch of work that will ben­e­fit from no inter­net distractions.

That includes you guys.

If I’d had time, I’d have writ­ten some­thing yes­ter­day for today, but yes­ter­day was like today, only sun­nier and warmer. I did get a chance to see “Hung” on demand, the lat­est set-in-Detroit series to take advan­tage of those fat tax incen­tives. I believe most of it is shot else­where, but the credit sequence and the pilot had some seri­ous D-town loca­tions, the most amus­ing being the final scene, in which the main char­ac­ter finds his son wait­ing in an all-night line to buy con­cert tick­ets. The line is at Harpo’s, and both Alan and I guf­fawed at the idea of a nice sub­ur­ban mom allow­ing her teenage son to spend the night out­doors at the cor­ner of Chalmers and Harper Avenue in Detroit; he’d be safer in South Waziris­tan. I seem to recall the for­mer Mrs. Eminem used to buy her drugs in that neighborhood.

Oth­er­wise, I liked the pilot. The rest? We’ll see. Any­thing with Jane Adams can never be a waste of time.

No blog­gage, but why I love the New York Times: Their reporters can use “Sty­gian” in a lead.

Back later, I hope.

You know what the world needs? More chore­og­ra­phy like this:

And like this:

(Every year at my all-white junior high and high school, there was a tal­ent show, and there were always two lip-synch acts, always Motown, always the most pop­u­lar kids in school — the cheer­leader girls did a Supremes/Martha & the Vandellas/Marvelettes, etc. num­ber, and the jock boys did a Temptations/Four Tops, etc. song. I won­der how they learned the chore­og­ra­phy, this being before YouTube and even video­tape. No one ever noted the odd­ity of white kids dressed in match­ing orange tuxe­dos and/or sequined fish­tail gowns, imi­tat­ing black music acts. Berry Gordy really did bring the races together, didn’t he?)

I’m post­ing those clips because, as promised, I spent the week­end try­ing to ignore M.J., but a few nice pieces cut through the sta­tic, and one was writ­ten by Alis­tair Macaulay, the NYT dance critic, who looked at noth­ing but Jack­son the dancer. When­ever some­one names this or that MTV phe­nom as a great dancer, I always won­der how you could tell, as the quick-cut edit­ing that defines music videos can make any­one look like a great dancer. Move, cut, move, cut, etc. — I always thought danc­ing was how you put the moves together. Paula Abdul’s “Straight Up” is a pretty good exam­ple, and now that I watch it again I notice that the sus­tained shot at the begin­ning is a pretty long one, and could have been a stand-in. I take her word it’s really her, but music video, more than any other medium, took dance and chopped it up into a series of tricks. (Two-left-footed me could prob­a­bly be made grace­ful with a good edi­tor.) So it’s nice to watch these old J-5 per­for­mance clips and be reminded that in his case, it was real, and in that, I can start to find a lit­tle empa­thy with the departed.

Dancers and ath­letes thrill us with a few years of amaz­ing phys­i­cal feats, and too many spend the rest of their lives pay­ing for it. A few years back, our late pal Ash­ley Mor­ris tipped me to a story on a Hall of Fame run­ning back, a man who once had thighs of an out­ra­geous, fear­some cir­cum­fer­ence, who now can­not climb the sta­dium stairs to watch his own son play col­lege ball, and I’m sorry but I can’t remem­ber who it was. I once read an inter­view with Mikhail Barysh­nikov, who talked about the con­stant pain that dancers live with, even young ones. He was in his 40s by then, long retired, but still took class when he could. One quote stuck with me: “A dancer knows what kind of day he’s going to have the moment he gets out of bed.” (Misha in “Giselle.”)

Any­way, Macaulay notes:

But to watch “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough” (1979) is to be amazed at just how much charm the 20-year-old Mr. Jack­son had, and the charm gets more infec­tious as the danc­ing pro­ceeds. You begin by notic­ing the pelvis, doing its char­ac­ter­is­tic pul­sa­tion, and you rec­og­nize how close you are to the world of John Tra­volta in “Sat­ur­day Night Fever.” Fairly soon, you take in the heels, or rather the action of the insteps that keeps rhyth­mi­cally lift­ing the heels off the floor, and then, in var­i­ous ways, you see the rip­ple of motion between feet and those very slen­der hips.

But Mr. Jack­son was an upper-body dancer too: there’s a mar­velous moment here when he tilts back and stays there. Now go to “Bil­lie Jean” in Motown’s 25th-anniversary cel­e­bra­tion (1983). You can see that already every­thing is much more chore­o­graphed, both in the bad sense of unspon­ta­neous and the good sense of dance struc­ture. Most of the time his danc­ing is so aflame you don’t feel any lack of fresh­ness, and he’s so alert that you hardly have time to laugh — though I think you ought, hap­pily — at the way his busy pelvis keeps hoist­ing his pants up and reveal­ing his off-white socks. (The chang­ing expanse of socks becomes part of the rhythm.)

“Busy pelvis” — now there’s a great name for a band. (Video HT: Hank.)

How was your week­end? We spent part of it trav­el­ing for the wrong rea­sons — Alan’s 94-year-old Aunt Martha, the last of the Smith sis­ters, his mom’s side, went to her reward last week, and the funeral was Sat­ur­day. “Reward” is lit­eral when you’ve lived that long; we all agreed that the wind really went out of her sails when Alan’s mom died, fol­lowed by her last sib­ling, Dorothy, a few months later. The cir­cle is closed, and the organ­ist was instructed to dial back the mourn­ful tone by 30 per­cent or so. The lunch and fel­low­ship after­ward took place among the still-standing struc­tures of Vaca­tion Bible School, which evi­dently had a class in Roman his­tory — there were draped tents, plas­tic swords and CLOSED BY ORDER OF CAESAR AUGUSTUS signs here and there. They even had a lit­tle aque­duct made of ship­ping tubes sawed in half lengthwise.

Alan reports VBS is where he learned to sing, “Oh I’ve got joy joy joy joy down in my heart,” etc. VBS is a real Protes­tant tra­di­tion, ain’a, JeffT­MMO? I had no such expe­ri­ence, although after years of CCD classes they’d have had to take me there in leg irons.

Oh, and we had a col­lec­tive eye-roll over the last hours of Martha’s life: After her heart attack, she was taken to the local hos­pi­tal, where, even though she had a DNR order, etc., they insisted on trans­port­ing her, BY HELICOPTER, to Toledo. They did the same thing to Alan’s mom, even though all agreed her case was hope­less and she would end her life in hos­pice care within a few days. The Toledo hos­pi­tal is like the Atlanta air­port — you can’t go any­where with­out pass­ing through their ER first. And we won­der why health-care costs are staggering.

Even though it’s Mon­day, it’s a fine and sunny day and I’ve got joy joy joy joy down in my heart. I think this is due to me get­ting more sleep, how­ever. Off to bicy­cle through my weekly cop-shop rounds and find out where the bod­ies are buried. (Like they’d tell us. Hah.)

Jesus Christ, my brain is going to explode before MJ gets planted. This will be like Princess Diana with three-quarters of the IQ points sucked out, worse accents, big­ger phonies and more baldly obvi­ous money-grubbing. Who ARE these mutants? Do I share a coun­try with them? How soon can we move to Den­mark or Uruguay?

Even with the TV only mur­mur­ing in the back­ground, the stu­pid­ity seeped through the room like a toxic gas. After a while I started jot­ting down the lines that pen­e­trated my con­cen­tra­tion. Entirely out of con­text, of course:

He’s cred­ited with chang­ing the way music videos were done…with chang­ing how artists were mar­keted. …These peo­ple have come here to rec­og­nize this.

…And I was wear­ing these beaded socks by Bob Mackie, and he kept telling me, “Cher, I just love your socks.”

Larry King was really in a class of his own, run­ning what he called “this spe­cial, sad edi­tion of Larry King Live.” He asked one guest, a doc­tor: “What could be done to bring some­one back from car­diac arrest?” (The doc replied: “Resuscitation.”)

He pushed his celebrity guests through the mill like sports-talk radio callers the night a big coach gets fired. Disco icon Donna Sum­mer. Donna, you knew Michael, did you not? What are your thoughts, Donna? Donna, what was his great­ness? His great­ness was per­fec­tion, Larry. Will you be doing a trib­ute song tonight? I will, Larry. Thank you, Donna. Join­ing us now is Sheryl Crow, who knew him well. Sheryl, how are you feel­ing tonight?

Randy Jack­son called it “one of the biggest shocks of my life­time.” The heli­copter took off from the hos­pi­tal, bound for the coroner’s office. Where is this heli­copter going? You wouldn’t hap­pen to know, Randy? Randy didn’t know.

Madonna “couldn’t stop cry­ing.” Maybe she can draw on this mem­ory the next time she’s called upon to act.

Write it down: Drug over­dose. In true Hol­ly­wood fash­ion, his stom­ach con­tents will con­sist of brown rice, organic veg­eta­bles and Fiji water, while his blood­stream coursed with more industrial-strength opi­ates and tran­quil­iz­ers than you could find in 10 hard-case men­tal hospitals.

I’m turn­ing off the TV, and I won’t turn it back on until Eliz­a­beth Tay­lor has been wheeled home from the funeral ser­vice. You all carry on, but like For­rest Gump, I think this is all I have to say about that.

Jeez, Far­rah Faw­cett was 62? Groan. How the time do fly. For the record, I was young when she was young (but older!), and I lived through the era of the Poster. This poster, of course:

In about five min­utes, Farrah’s poster replaced Carly Simon’s cover photo on “No Secrets” as the erect-nippled fan­tasy queen of the dorm room. It was time. Amer­i­can boys might go for a brunette from time to time, but sooner or later they always come back to the arche­type of the Cal­i­for­nia blonde. (Faw­cett was from Texas, but then, many of the blondes in Cal­i­for­nia are from else­where.) I argued over that poster many a night, always met by the same implaca­ble male shit-eating grin: But I like it. OK, fine. Far­rah was blot-out-the-sun beau­ti­ful and sold a mil­lion blow dry­ers to a mil­lion women who aped her hair­cut, but she was never really threat­en­ing. Take note, Angelina. It’s pos­si­ble to be a sex sym­bol with­out mak­ing other women want to put a tack on your chair.

It was the smile, of course. And the fact that noth­ing but the hair looked exces­sively fussed-over. Since every woman fusses over her hair, it bound her to us, instead of push­ing us away, the way breast implants and see-through blouses do. She isn’t show­ing an acre of skin, only the results of a healthy, ath­letic lifestyle and the sort of thor­ough­bred good looks that some peo­ple get through the luck of the genetic draw. You know what that poster says? Don’t hate me because I’m beau­ti­ful. It wasn’t some­thing she could help.

Far­rah also wasn’t a man-eater. There was that unfor­tu­nate early mar­riage, after which she dropped the –Majors from her name and appar­ently swore off mat­ri­mony for­ever, even as she set­tled down with one man, Ryan O’Neal, for nearly 20 years. And while she had many ups and more downs, most appar­ently of her own mak­ing, she always seemed to be car­ry­ing her own weight. She worked in crap and qual­ity, she went off the rails for a while, she had too much plas­tic surgery, but she was writ­ing her own story, not depend­ing on oth­ers to take care of her. Is it pos­si­ble the girl in the poster, who angered so many fem­i­nists, turned out to be one herself?

I am think­ing of another pic­ture of Far­rah, which you prob­a­bly won’t see in the obit roundups. It was from a book I bought from a remain­der table, “Cheap Chic,” by the edi­tors of Rags mag­a­zine, now defunct. The pic­ture looks like it dates from her pre-famous, mod­el­ing days, and fea­tures her in plain old Levis, white sneak­ers and a man’s white shirt, tails knot­ted at the waist. She’s pos­ing on a skate­board, show­ing evi­dence of skate­board com­pe­tence and the cus­tom­ary sunny smile. She looks great, of course, the essence of the Amer­i­can blonde beauty but warm, not Grace Kelly cool, fresh and clean and scrubbed. Don’t hate her because she’s beau­ti­ful. She was just one of the lucky ones.

I sup­pose you guys will want to dis­cuss the lat­est GOP flame­out, and I can’t blame you. This is good because I have morn­ing oblig­a­tions and won’t be able to sit down and think until lunchtime. So come back then.

In the hours since all this broke, I’m find­ing my posi­tion toward Gov. San­ford soft­en­ing, if only a bit. Noth­ing in his con­stricted moral­ity pre­pared him for this, and while you can’t excuse the betrayal of his fam­ily, I can’t help but empathize with him — he really did look half-poleaxed yes­ter­day. What­ever else this thing was, it does appear to have been a love affair, and not just another tawdry mistress-boffing. If noth­ing else, the e-mails con­firm that.

I guess what I’m say­ing is, this was a ner­vous break­down as much as it was an expla­na­tion. I think Roy got it right in the first half of this post.

OK, then. Off to cycle and sweat, and back in a few hours.

I think Time mag­a­zine touched this story a while back. Cer­tainly some smart busi­ness reporter must have done it by now, too, look­ing at the dark world of the inter­net, where oth­er­wise straight-arrow cor­po­ra­tions come out to play.

Exhibit A: Gillette offers you tips on how to shave your groin. Why would you do this? Because “when there’s no under­brush, the tree looks taller.” Ha ha, let’s pause for a moment and lis­ten to Don Draper spin in his grave for a moment. (Lung can­cer took him. Too soon.) For the curi­ous, Gillette offers sim­i­lar videos cov­er­ing armpits, chest, head, and back. (The videos use ani­ma­tion, not live mod­els, so they’re SFW.)

Exhibit B: Bud­weiser recy­cles the old standby — guy buy­ing porn gets embar­rassed — into a Bud Light com­mer­cial. Two min­utes of jokey fun about mag­a­zines called Tongue in Cheeks, and you don’t even notice you’re watch­ing a com­mer­cial for watery beer. I have to say, how­ever, that the cast­ing is per­fect — that guy looks exactly like the sort of cubi­cle drone who picks up a sixer of Bud Light on the way home from work, then decides to make a night of it with a dirty mag­a­zine. The real star of the show is the other cus­tomer in line, who is prob­a­bly buy­ing some­thing other than beer.

I’m sure there are dozens more out there. Mar­keters aren’t stu­pid. Pube-shavers need a lot of razor blades. So you can’t run a spot like that on “30 Rock” — who cares? If they don’t tell you how to do it, some­one else will, and they’re not as likely to tout your prod­ucts. Sooner or later this stuff will end up on main­stream TV, and so you’d best watch those and get ready, because I’m sure Rod Dreher is already prepar­ing a big whiny blog post on them, only by then he’ll be writ­ing for the god­damn New York Times. (Sooner or later Ross Douchehat will run out of material.)

You know what else hap­pens when you clear away the under­brush, gents? You look like the kind of guy who thinks an opti­cal illu­sion really fools some­thing other than the eye. Go buy some Bud Light.

Here’s another video I found en route to look­ing up the Gillette spots. By the hit count I may be the last Amer­i­can to actu­ally see it, but still recommended.

Another scorcher ahead — mid-90s, we’re promised. So while we’re all sit­ting in the nice a/c, con­tem­plate what the hell with Gov. San­ford. Argentina? Did he go for a spur-of-the-moment tango les­son? I could hear Keith Olber­mann in his second-most insuf­fer­able per­sona last night beat­ing this dead horse to a bloody pulp, and this isn’t going to help. But still — this guy sounds like he has a few screws loose.

You’ll be liv­ing in a van down by the river! Another gem from Detroit­blog, a por­trait of one of those sin­gu­lar community-activist types that make city life worth living:

In the early ‘80s Hume bid on a neigh­bor­ing city-owned marina, won as the low bid­der, then the city can­celed the sale with­out clear expla­na­tion. Hume sued, the city set­tled. He took the money, bought video cam­eras and started a com­pany called Pub­lic Eye Video, a one-man oper­a­tion that taped all coun­cil meet­ings after he found crazy state­ments made by coun­cil mem­bers never made it into the meet­ing min­utes. “I video­taped their asses, so at least some­body would have a record of what the fuck they’re say­ing,” he says.

It drove them nuts. They tried to shut him down, but learned they couldn’t because it was a pub­lic meet­ing and he had a right to record it. Then they tried to cut off his use of their elec­tric­ity, but he found a way to buy it directly from the City-County Build­ing author­i­ties instead. At one point coun­cil mem­ber Kay Everett lost it in front of his cam­era, shout­ing at Hume, “You’re very close to get­ting this thing rammed down your throat!”

As I’ve said many times in the last few years: And peo­ple won­der why I love this crazy-ass town.

Head­line of the day: “‘You Light Up My Life’ Com­poser is Crim­i­nal Sex Mon­ster, Nat­u­rally.” Hell yes.

Off to beat the day into sub­mis­sion. I sus­pect it’ll be sweaty.

I really don’t want to be a pill about this, but here goes: I keep run­ning into the World’s Loud­est Lawn Ser­vice. No mat­ter where I go, they are my neighbor’s choice for lawn care, lawn treat­ment and espe­cially run­ning a god­damn gas-powered edger — talk about the world’s stu­pid­est lawn chore — around the perime­ter of the lawn, prefer­ably twice, get­ting right up next to the pave­ment so sparks fly from the blade and the sound goes SCREE SCREE SCREE for 30 min­utes or so.

After which they will fire up the gas-powered blower.

The blower is always last. I am accus­tomed to work­ing in news­rooms, and I like to believe there’s no noise I can’t tune out if it’s just con­sis­tent. Tele­type machines, phones, col­leagues with dron­ing nasal voices explain­ing tax pol­icy to their edi­tors — all of these can become white noise with a lit­tle mind yoga. (In fact, I’ve often thought tele­types are even sooth­ing, that chug­ging sound they make, occa­sion­ally punc­tu­ated by bells. New lede! Writethru! Fixes Burns’ title, adds spokesman com­ment, back­ground!) But peo­ple oper­at­ing gas-powered lawn equip­ment are like the sorts of peo­ple who own motor­cy­cles — they don’t know this thing we call “idle.” The sound of a motor just going put-put-put doesn’t sat­isfy. And so they must throw in lit­tle revs every 12 sec­onds or so, goose the throt­tle a lit­tle, just to show all the other bitches out there how we roll.

Ann Arbor wasn’t lawn-crazy. You found shaggy, weedy lawns in the nicest neigh­bor­hoods in town; leggy saplings, lit­tle more than lig­ni­fy­ing (look it up) weeds, sprouted in every park strip. Tree Town always looks a lit­tle scruffy and mossy, the sign of a pop­u­lace pre­oc­cu­pied with grad­ing papers or trans­lat­ing ancient Greek or argu­ing over Hugo Chavez, and far too bohemian to worry about some­thing as stu­pid as crab­grass. Also, quiet.

Ah, well. The owner of my gym says his aches and pains remind him he’s alive. I sup­pose, when you open win­dows, you have to lis­ten to your neigh­bors from time to time. I just wish they’d let me fin­ish my god­damn cof­fee before they start.

The New York Times has a pretty good pack­age today on the Steve Jobs liver trans­plant, and the ques­tion it’s rais­ing. Look­ing for jus­tice in Amer­i­can health-care resource allo­ca­tion is a fool’s errand, but I am inter­ested in the investors’ angle, i.e., can a CEO with this high a pro­file get away with claim­ing pri­vacy when he’s obvi­ously gravely ill? This is a pub­licly traded com­pany and Jobs is hardly another cog in the Apple wheel. I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing any­one else’s thoughts about this. I’m equally amused by how quickly Jobs aban­doned the alter­na­tive ther­a­pies he was said to be try­ing after his diag­no­sis. Noth­ing like an organ trans­plant to make one a believer in the mir­a­cles of west­ern med­i­cine. Which is one way of say­ing one rea­son Amer­i­can health care is so expen­sive is because, hello, you can get a liver trans­plant. You can take statins. You can replace your damn knee when it falls apart. I’m old enough to remem­ber ads in mag­a­zines for trusses. I’m sure Jobs had great insur­ance, but still.

OK, off to the gym. Speak­ing of achy knees. Back later, but not for long, because hello? Eighty-six degrees and sunny? I’m going to the pool.

Up north to a wed­ding this week­end. Always fun to attend wed­dings. They beat funer­als, for one thing. There’s cake. And usu­ally wine, and fre­quently champagne.

There was cer­tainly no short­age at this wed­ding, which was held in the north­ern Michi­gan woods. Not all the way off the grid, but edg­ing in that direc­tion — cater­ing, but with porta-potties and an explicit warn­ing from the wed­ding cou­ple not to wear heels, because of the walk in from the road, which was decid­edly unfriendly to del­i­cate footwear. But once back there, it was a lit­tle oasis of love­li­ness, with a blue color scheme. The bride wore a $30 gown she got at Good­will and had altered to her taste; why wear Vera Wang to trail behind you down a dirt path en route to the for­est clear­ing? Any last-minute fit alter­ations just went with the color scheme:

The cou­ple was said to be going for an effect that was “rus­tic, not red­neck.” I’d say they suc­ceeded. All guests were invited to camp on the sur­round­ing acreage, and many took them up on it. We didn’t, and stayed at another guest’s nearby hunt­ing cabin, which had the ben­e­fit of win­dow screens on a night when the mos­qui­tos were feel­ing par­tic­u­larly blood­thirsty. On the other hand, I bet the after­party was a blast.

Leav­ing, it occurred to me the last wed­ding I went to in north­ern Michi­gan was also held right around the sum­mer sol­stice. The sky after 10 p.m., as we were leaving:

They prize sum­mer in the north. “Three months of bad sled­ding,” etc.

That was my week­end. How was yours?

On the way we passed the Perma-Log Co., a com­pany about which the name says every­thing. I regret that the web­site doesn’t fea­ture the other perma-items from the company’s acreage on M-33, which included perma-Stonehenge and perma-Easter Island heads. Both of which would be perma-cool in our front yard, I think. (CORRECTION, 9/2: Web­site updated. Check out Easter Island, Michi­gan.) North­ern Michi­gan kitsch doesn’t have quite the same feel as that of, say, south­ern Ohio. Not so many fat ladies bend­ing over or ply­wood sil­hou­ettes of a guy lean­ing against a tree, but there’s noth­ing like a flying-bird wind­mill to let you know you’re not in the city anymore.

Actu­ally, there are lots of ways to tell you’re not in the city, once you get out of it, headed north. The entire econ­omy of north­ern Michi­gan, never robust in the first place, seems to rest on com­pe­ti­tion between hos­pi­tals to land your next heart attack, at least to judge from the bill­boards. In between those bill­boards are other bill­boards adver­tis­ing schools that can get you in a scrub top and work­ing in the wide-open world of health care faster than the next one. Noth­ing really says, “We are a region of the obese and old” more clearly than this. I bet, in places like Port­land and Cal­i­for­nia, you might see the occa­sional ad for sports-medicine and laparo­scopic knee surgery.

But we also sat with one of our film­mak­ing party, who moon­lights as a DJ. One of his gigs is the local women’s roller-derby team, and he shared their favorite requests — 2 Live Crew, and assorted other acts whose lyrics fea­ture max­i­mum degra­da­tion of women. This tick­les me, as it sug­gests rol­ler­girls know more about what fem­i­nism entails than those who have PhDs in gen­der stud­ies. There’s some­thing about pic­tur­ing these jam­mers and block­ers, any one of whom could kill you with her bare hands, throw­ing ‘em up to “Me So Horny” that cracks me up.

Blog­gage? Surrrreee:

We’ve had a local story break­ing in the past few days, with the Fox affil­i­ate lead­ing the way. The cov­er­age — all blus­ter, pos­tur­ing and “as I told you exclusively” — has been excru­ci­at­ing, but not as excru­ci­at­ing as this, which I beg you to watch, because besides being excru­ci­at­ing, it’s also sort of awesome.

The eti­quette of the Crack­Berry, some­thing I admit I strug­gle with myself. Noth­ing like those lit­tle inter­sti­tial spaces in life for mul­ti­task­ing on your smart­phone, I always say. Noth­ing like a lit­tle Wur­dle to fill up a two-minute bath­room break in a meet­ing. When does it cross the line into rude­ness? A ques­tion for our time.

My ques­tion for today is, can I get every­thing done that I have to get done? Only if I sign off now and go pick the dog up from the vet’s board­ing ken­nel. Latuh.

Some­times I think the rea­son so much fuss is made over places like Pic­tured Rocks and Sleep­ing Bear Dunes is because they’re parts of the Great Lakes shore­line that look dif­fer­ent from all the other parts. Kid­ding. But all of my northern-Michigan pic­tures fea­ture the same low line of conifers on the hori­zon, like they’re fol­low­ing me around.

The back­packs are the tell in this week’s Embar­rass­ing Pho­tos — that’s Isle Royale, August 1991. Ten days or so in the back­coun­try in north­ern Lake Supe­rior, one of the pret­ti­est and least-visited National Parks in the coun­try. Saw: Moose, pileated wood­peck­ers, mis­cel­la­neous eagles, a snake swal­low­ing a toad, a load of canine poop shot through with hair, which is about as close to one of the island’s wolves as one should ever get. Heard: Loons, the wind whip­ping across a series of cor­duroy ridges like ocean waves. Did not hear: Inter­nal com­bus­tion engines. Allowed: Nerves to relax, leg hair to grow. The shower when we came out of the coun­try was one of the best of my life. The rest was unset­tling, to learn that while we’d been gone there’d been riot­ing between blacks and Jews in Crown Heights, a coup in the Soviet Union and a tree that fell on J.C. and Sam’s house, nearly cut­ting it in two.

It sort of made us want to turn around and go back in.

[Pause.] Well, “error estab­lish­ing data­base con­nec­tion” just ate the bot­tom half of this post. I’m tak­ing that as a sign that it was worth­less and weak and start­ing my Fri­day chores on sched­ule, instead of try­ing to recre­ate it. Blog­gage? Sure:

Roy dis­poses of the Andrew Sullivan-led Twit­ter rev­o­lu­tion, plus a video. (I actu­ally own that record. Even as a cal­low youth, I won­dered if any­one had actu­ally asked seven-eighths of these peo­ple to even play Sun City, so they could refuse.)

Well, now we know why her husband’s staff code-named her “Ghetto:” Mon­ica Cony­ers can be bought with a pawn-shop shop­ping spree. Allegedly. In fair­ness, she also has more upmar­ket tastes.

And with that, another half-assed effort limps to a close! A few more like this and I may beat this blog­ging jones after all.

…now this is a suc­cess strategy:

Irate par­ents demanded last night that the school board and admin­is­tra­tors take action over sto­ries assigned in Camp­bell High School Eng­lish classes that they found objec­tion­able, includ­ing sto­ries by authors Stephen King, David Sedaris and Ernest Hemingway.

The sto­ries included Sedaris’ “I Like Guys,” which deals with homo­sex­u­al­ity; “The Crack Cocaine Diet” by Laura Lipp­man, which includes explicit sex­ual mate­r­ial, rape, mur­der and drug use; a Hem­ing­way short story that includes statu­tory rape and dis­cus­sion about abor­tion; and a King story called “Sur­vivor Type.”

I once met an author, who when I told him I liked his book replied, “Please, then call your local library and demand it be taken off the shelves.” Lucky Laura!