nancynall.com » Hung up.
«
»

Hung up.

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.

Posted on Tuesday, June 30th, 2009 at 9:11 am
in Detroit life, Television.

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.

29 responses to
“Hung up.”

  1. Dorothy said on June 30th, 2009 at 9:51 am

    My favorite line from the NYT arti­cle: The avenue is lit­tered with oil stains, bro­ken glass and dirty piles of some­thing resem­bling egg­plant. What a sad way for those guys to go…

  2. LAMary said on June 30th, 2009 at 10:37 am

    I remem­ber how streets like that in NYC smelled in the sum­mer. Right now I’m wish­ing I didn’t.

  3. MichaelG said on June 30th, 2009 at 12:14 pm

    You can go to MS’s Bing thing (I use local​.live​.com) and see that toxic dump pretty close up. It isn’t very attrac­tive. But right near by is a huge ten­nis facil­ity. As part of the con­tin­u­ing com­men­tary on things news­pa­per, I noted that the writer got a byline and at the end of the piece five other peo­ple were cred­ited with hav­ing helped. Is the NYT sen­si­tive about this stuff after the scan­dals of a few years ago?

    http://​www​.bing​.com/​m​a​p​s​/​#​J​n​E​9​e​X​A​u​M​T​c​y​K​2​R​v​d​W​d​s​Y​X​M​r​Y​X​Z​l​J​T​J​j​K​2​p​h​b​W​F​p​Y​2​E​l​M​m​M​r​c​X​V​l​Z​W​5​z​J​T​J​j​K​2​5​5​J​T​d​l​c​3​N​0​L​j​A​l​N​2​V​w​Z​y​4​x​J​m​J​i​P​T​Q​w​L​j​c​x​N​D​M​0​N​j​E​3​M​D​Q​4​N​D​k​l​N​2​U​t​N​z​M​u​N​z​c​z​O​D​g​w​M​D​A​0​O​D​g​y​O​C​U​3​Z​T​Q​w​L​j​Y​5​M​j​E​y​N​T​Q​z​O​D​I​0​N​S​U​3​Z​S​0​3​M​y​4​4​M​D​k​4​O​D​U​5​N​z​g2OTg3

  4. adrianne said on June 30th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    Nance, your first-class snark on MJ’s death made it — in its entirety, no less — in the New York Post on Sun­day. It was reprinted under a head­line called “The King and I: Reflec­tions on the death of a pop icon, very strange man.“
    Alas, in the same story, they printed the lat­est dri­vel from James Lileks on his death. Any­way, con­grats on mak­ing it to the big city!

  5. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 30th, 2009 at 1:14 pm

    Are they sen­si­tive? Haha­ha­ha­haha … and i just love the lengthy work for hire stuff news­pa­pers make us fill out for our pit­tances these days, most of which dates from that ser­ial flap­doo­dle and the whole ques­tion of reprint right$ for ink-stained wretches (short answer, well, if we did have them, we don’t now for durn sure).

  6. Danny said on June 30th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    Yay, Nancy!

    Hey, do they con­tact you before they print what you wrote and is there any reward involved?

  7. Jason T. said on June 30th, 2009 at 1:59 pm

    Jimmy Lileks was quoted, too?

    “As I was dri­ving to Tar­get with Gnat, reflect­ing on the sort of design aes­thetic that would put a pic­ture of sun-ripened toma­toes on a box of dried noo­dles, I couldn’t help but think of my father’s gen­er­a­tion — the men who fought in the Big One — and how their strug­gle against the forces of global evil had paved the way for Michael Jack­son — a curi­ous sort of fel­low whose music I remem­ber from my days at the U, when I was wait­ing tables and still fan­cied myself a ‘left­ist,’ back when left­ists were still semi-respectable .…”

  8. Jason T. said on June 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm

    P.S.: I can’t find a link any­where at http://​www​.nypost​.com … man, vis­it­ing that web­site is like a trip back to 1999.

  9. MarkH said on June 30th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    Here’s the link:

    http://​www​.nypost​.com/​s​e​v​e​n​/​0​6​2​8​2​0​0​9​/​p​o​s​t​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​/​o​p​e​d​c​o​l​u​m​n​i​s​t​s​/​t​h​e​_​k​i​n​g​_​a​n​d​_​i​_​1​7​6​5​51.htm

    Good on you, Nance.

  10. James said on June 30th, 2009 at 2:37 pm

    Geez! Are the inca­pable of pro­vid­ing a link to the orig­i­nal blog? What weasels!

  11. nancy said on June 30th, 2009 at 3:00 pm

    Thanks, Ace. I had no idea that was coming.

    For the record, the bro­ken clock now tells the cor­rect time: I actu­ally liked what Lileks said about MJ, espe­cially the part about grab­bing his crotch to check if it was still there.

  12. moe99 said on June 30th, 2009 at 4:05 pm

    Just out: MN S.Ct rules for Franken.

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​3​0​/​A​R​2​0​0​9​0​6​3​0​0​2​2​0​0​.​h​t​m​l​?​h​p​i​d​=​t​opnews

    Oh, and I thought this essay about MJ was on a par with that of our hostess.

    http://​www​.koaxkoaxkoax​.com/​r​i​b​b​i​t​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​s​o​m​e​-​t​h​o​u​g​h​t​s​-​o​n​-​m​i​c​h​a​e​l​-​j​a​c​k​s.html

  13. Dexter said on June 30th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    http://​www​.geoc​i​ties​.com/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​j​r​/​n​e​w​s​/​D​S​C​0​2​0​98.JPG

    Of course “Hung” was going to use pho­tos of Michi­gan Cen­tral Train Depot to illu­mi­nate Detroit’s decay, and they were timely with the tear-down shots of Tiger Sta­dium , just a lit­tle over a year old, but I was dis­mayed when I saw the shots of the Book Cadil­lac Hotel in ruin. The entire hotel has been painstak­ingly restored to beauty and has been open for months.

    The show itself is pretty good, too. Now that we have been intro­duced, I am ready for the hilar­ity to begin.

  14. Dexter said on June 30th, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    Ah geez…now ya got me focussing on New York City summer-smells, and I am taken back to 1977, a Brook­lyn play­ground, deserted at noon, so I got my ball out of my car and shot a few hoops , but the whole area reeked badly of piss. This was near The Brook­lyn Museum; I was vis­it­ing a friend, who was essen­tially run out of Brook­lyn by armed rob­bers at the sub­way entrance and by bur­glars who broke into his apart­ment and stole every­thing he had. New York in the 1970s was treacherous.

  15. moe99 said on June 30th, 2009 at 7:44 pm

    Some­one should tell the Gov. of SC to stfu:

    http://​www​.bre​it​bart​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​.​p​h​p​?​i​d​=​D​9​9​5​5​K​D​G​2​&​a​m​p​;​s​h​o​w​_​a​r​t​icle=1

    I’m not sure what I would do if I were his wife and heard that he’d described his mis­tress as his soul mate.

  16. Jolene said on June 30th, 2009 at 8:57 pm

    I think if I heard that some­one were “try­ing to fall back in love with” me, my response would be, “Save your­self the effort. I’m gone.” At least, I hope it would.

  17. MarkH said on June 30th, 2009 at 9:04 pm

    Agreed, moe.

    We get it, Guv. Now please go fix your life.

  18. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 30th, 2009 at 9:26 pm

    Man oh man — “stfu” is not a phrase that i like much, but if it were ever appro­pri­ate for a sit­u­a­tion, this would be it. Stop talk­ing to the press, sir.

  19. brian stouder said on June 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm

    So, how many puns and jokes (not to men­tion buns and pokes) are in that San­ford piece (so to speak), seem­ingly throw­ing them­selves at us?

    Exhibit A:

    He said that dur­ing the encoun­ters with other women he “let his guard down” with some phys­i­cal con­tact but “didn’t cross the sex line.” He wouldn’t go into detail.

    hmmmm. Well, he doesn’t refer to Mr Happy as ‘The Guard’, apparently…but — leav­ing that aside  — what IS “the sex line”? (Bill Clin­ton, call your office)

    San­ford said the casual encoun­ters hap­pened out­side the U.S. while he was mar­ried but before he met Cha­pur, on trips to “blow off steam” with male friends.

    Between all the Governor’s ref­er­ences to “Spark­ing” and steam-blowing-off, it sounds like he (immod­estly enough)considers him­self to be a 19th cen­tury coal-fired locomotive.

    and finally we come to this infe­lic­i­tous bit -

    He pre­vi­ously announced he would reim­burse the state for money spent dur­ing a gov­ern­ment trip to Brazil and Argentina in June 2008 when he saw Cha­pur. It was then, he said, that their rela­tion­ship became phys­i­cal, and the e-mails they’d exchanged for years reflected their anguish over what they had done. “Now I am fright­ened,” he told the AP, describ­ing his state of mind at the time. “It was before safe. But now it’s not safe. We gotta put the genie back in the bottle.”

    For­get putting some genie back into his bot­tle; Sanford’s (appar­ently impos­si­ble) chal­lenge was try­ing to stuff Mr Happy (or ‘The Guard’), back into his knickers!

    What a maroon San­ford is! Remem­ber the old euphemism (for mas­tur­ba­tion) about “shak­ing hands with the governor”?

    Ohhhh — never mind!

  20. MarkH said on June 30th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    The site is a lit­tle quiet this evening, so OT back to the altMJ/Sherlock Holmes film thread for a sec. Jeff, I was miffed at myself for not remem­ber­ing that Rondo Hat­ton was the Creeper in “Pearl of Death”, and not “Woman in Green”, me being such a fan of all those Rathbone/Holmes films. Maybe it’s because I always had the hots for Hilary Brooke, the femme fatale in “Green”. But, I am sure she was the one with the dwarf in the siut­case in that one!

    Brush with Great­ness, Three Degrees of Seper­a­tion Dept.: The father of a woman I worked with in Colum­bus grew up with and knew Rondo Hat­ton very well. They remained close friends, and when Rondo died, Tom accom­pa­nied his friend’s body home on a train for bur­ial in 1949. His facial dis­fig­ure­ment was com­monly attrib­uted to the effects of mus­tard gas in WWI, but later med­ical infor­ma­tion showed that he (may have) had a genetic pitu­itary dis­or­der that allowed out-of-control bone and tis­sue growth. At least, that’s in wiki’s bio. Nice homage to Rondo in 1990’s “The Rock­e­teer”, btw.

    Lastly, in the mem­o­rable quotes sec­tion of IMDB’s “Pearl of Death” page, there’s this gem: see the last one attrib­uted to Holmes, after all the usual fun at Wat­son and Lestrade’s expense:

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​0​3​7​1​6​8​/​quotes

    Yes, spo­ken by Rath­BONE, of course.

    EDIT: Brian, I posted this before I saw your San­ford post, but, well, some­how the inclu­sion of that Holmes quote is, ah, well… a bit too obvious.

  21. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on June 30th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

    A var­nished eel? As opposed to a stained and polyurethaned eel, i suppose.

  22. basset said on July 1st, 2009 at 12:07 am

    last week, with my own ears and in per­son, I heard a Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor say dur­ing a lec­ture in Nashville that crime “is no longer an issue” in New York. Make of that what you will, I still ain’t goin’ there.

  23. CrazyCatLady said on July 1st, 2009 at 1:08 am

    I’d go to New York in a New York minute! I’m from Detroit, where the weak are killed and eaten. Last sum­mer I remem­ber a friend warn­ing me against going to Mem­phis because it was ‘very dan­ger­ous’. I went any­way. It was very sim­i­lar to Detroit, in that if you know where you can go and where you can’t, you will be ok. In my town I go where I want and need to go. I am just more care­ful in cer­tain areas.

  24. moe99 said on July 1st, 2009 at 2:01 am

    Bas­sett, I was in NYC in 1981, on a sub­way Sun am when a guy car­ry­ing a gun walked through the car as bold as brass. The 80’s were scary times there. But when we took the kids on a cruise to Bermuda in ’98 and stayed in the upper W. side both before and after our cruise, I could not believe how much things had changed for the bet­ter. There I was with my kids and instead of freak­ing out, I was actu­ally relax­ing and enjoy­ing myself. You really should visit, it is so dif­fer­ent and so much fun.

  25. Danny said on July 1st, 2009 at 2:48 am

    My the­ory is that you can go almost any­where in the world that you want between the hours of 8AM and 1PM. All the bad guys are sleep­ing it off from a full night of mur­der and mayhem.

  26. Jason T. said on July 1st, 2009 at 9:49 am

    JeffT­MMO @ 21: Var­nish­ing the eel? So that’s what Gov. San­ford calls it!

    Zing! I won­der if Jimmy Fal­lon needs any writers?

  27. judybusy said on July 1st, 2009 at 10:50 am

    Huh. I was a nanny in NYC in 1985, basi­cally a fresh off-the-farm 20-year-old. Mostly, I had a blast liv­ing there, and don’t remem­ber being too con­cerned about crime. I’d been an exchange stu­dent in Brazil and my fam­ily spent part of the time in Rio. They did a really good job of teach­ing me com­mon sense about being in cities. That, and luck, kept me safe.

  28. LAMary said on July 1st, 2009 at 11:11 am

    I lived in NYC and with the excep­tion of hav­ing my pocket picked once, noth­ing bad ever hap­pened to me. I’ve had my car radio stolen a half dozen times in LA, and once in a very posh sub­ur­ban area of Den­ver a guy tried to jump me. Crap hap­pens everywhere.

  29. MarkH said on July 1st, 2009 at 7:02 pm

    Jason T., click the link in my pre­vi­ous post for the unusual source of Jeff’s line. And, yes, it could gain legs in the horndog/popcult lexicon.

«
»