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Refreshing Friday.

A lovely Fri­day in Ann Arbor, it was. Who said lib­er­als don’t know how to run any­thing? The tax rate there is approx­i­mately the same as it is in this Repub­li­can strong­hold, and every time I go over there the place is run­ning like a Swiss watch. I rolled in off the free­way, parked in a high school field, climbed aboard a city bus (which, its sig­nage help­fully informs, runs on com­bi­na­tion biodiesel/hybrid tech­nol­ogy), and was car­ried to the down­town art fairs in min­utes. I’d like to tell you I spent the day absorb­ing the hun­dreds and hun­dreds of booths in the fine, sunny weather, fea­tur­ing artists in every imag­in­able medium, but the truth is, I pretty much went straight to a bar and spent a cou­ple hours there, drink­ing Bell’s Oberon.

I didn’t drive an hour just to drink alone. My buddy Rob Daumeyer, drove all the way from Cincin­nati. Rob is one of those peo­ple who’s always telling you how stu­pid he is, how slow-witted, how thick and dull and sludgy between the ears. I guess that way, when he says some­thing really funny, which he does about once every 80 sec­onds or so, you think, “He’s pretty funny for a moron,” and then he can steal your wal­let. Or some­thing. Need­less to say, he is no dummy. Rob was my com­pan­ion dur­ing our won­der­ful year in Ann Arbor, ’03-’04. He summed up the post-Fellowship expe­ri­ence thusly: “Every­one is so smart here. They’re always talk­ing about lit­er­a­ture and art and world affairs. Where I live, peo­ple say, ‘You ought to buy a boat,’ and that counts as sparkling con­ver­sa­tion.” Maybe it was the Bell’s Oberon, or maybe the deliv­ery, but that cracked me up. And so true — when­ever I go to Ann Arbor by myself, I eaves­drop. One day in an Indian restau­rant, I tuned my ears to three dif­fer­ent tables, where the lunch con­ver­sa­tions were: Hugo Chavez, mon­e­tary pol­icy at the Fed, and the plight of Iraqi Kurds. No won­der no one there wor­ries about their crabgrass.

Walk­ing back to the bus stop, wait­ing for the third Bell’s to burn off, I bought a pair of ear­rings for Kate. I’m wear­ing them now. What the hell, she already has three times as many as I do.

Note that I have changed the book on the night­stand. Besides Hank’s “Tin­sel,” I’ve added T.C. Boyle’s “The Women.” You’d think one of the country’s most respected nov­el­ists, writ­ing for a respected pub­lisher, could afford a decent copy edi­tor, and yet, there it is, page 32:

And then some­one said, “Here, here,” and they were all lift­ing glasses…

Groan. I see this mis­take so often it makes my head hurt. And no, Danny, we haven’t had a DNA rul­ing yet — it’s “hear, hear,” not “here, here,” and if any­one wants to mix it up over this one, well bring it on. I’m right.

I bet they don’t make this mis­take in Ann Arbor. Where every­one is so smart.

(Else­where in the same chap­ter, Boyle has a female character’s hair sweat­ing under her “caf­tan.” I guess that’s pos­si­ble — lots of caf­tans have hoods — but given that the same char­ac­ter appears later with her head wrapped in a towel, is it pos­si­ble he meant “tur­ban?” That mis­take is almost beyond belief, but you never know.)

Well, just look where all our prowess with the lan­guage has got­ten us: Every so often, when we’re watch­ing HBO, a promo for “Hung” will come on. The announcer says, “Crit­ics agree: ’”Hung” is big, wicked fun…’” and Alan yells, THAT’S MY HEADLINE. It is. This is what we cling to, we lan­guage wizards.

Mean­while not all is per­fect over there in A2. Street fashion:

brastrap

She wore a 36C. I could read the size. My mother used to call vis­i­ble bra straps “slovenly.” I think she got it right.

Maybe she was think­ing of Huge Chavez.

Mean­while, some tasty­cake blog­gage today:

You know those makeshift memo­ri­als* left for Michael Jack­son. A siz­able one grew out­side the Motown Museum after M.J. croaked, because if there’s one thing this city embraces like a squishy teddy bear left out in the rain, it’s crazi­ness. You rarely know what becomes of them, but not in this case, because the whole shootin’ match was scooped up, loaded into two open-back limos, taken to the ceme­tery with a police escort, and buried under a head­stone with a nice, taste­ful, under­stated inscrip­tion that I think Joe Jack­son would be proud of. In the only evi­dence I’ve seen that maybe some­one in Detroit has two brain cells to rub together, the police now call the four-car escort “a mis­take.” I’m speech­less. Read all about it.

* “Makeshift Memorial” — still a great name for a band. Happy Mon­day, all.

Posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 1:47 am
in Current events, Detroit life.

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71 responses to
“Refreshing Friday.”

  1. Connie said on July 20th, 2009 at 6:57 am

    Hear, hear. Then there is the right to bare arms. Really, I read that just the other day. And the topic was guns, not tan­ning. And the con­stant con­fu­sion between sight, site, cite. Also that amaz­ing new word, Wal­lah! Used to make me laugh, but now see­ing it makes me wince.

  2. Colleen said on July 20th, 2009 at 7:30 am

    Peo­ple really need to tow the line with lan­guage. They can’t be given free reign.

    I have a for­mer boss who has a favorite phrase: “With mal­ice of fore­thought”. Um yeah. No.

  3. John said on July 20th, 2009 at 8:01 am

    Colleen, it’s “knead” or “kneed”, but def­i­nitely not “need”.

    I knew a girl once who called the afore­men­tioned slovenly dis­play by its ini­tials, VBS (vis­i­ble bra straps). Took me a while to fig­ure out she wasn’t talk­ing about Vaca­tion Bible School, but then again, I was slower when I lived in the South!

  4. Connie said on July 20th, 2009 at 8:19 am

    In an arti­cle I read the other day on SI​.com the writer referred to the bur­rows of New York. He did not mean the subways.

  5. Dorothy said on July 20th, 2009 at 8:58 am

    Speak­ing of need­ing a copy edi­tor: over the week­end Mike picked up a copy of Saturday’s Mount Ver­non NEWS. An adver­tise­ment beg­ging peo­ple to sub­scribe showed the gifts you could earn for vary­ing lev­els of sub­scrip­tions. For the big­gie, a whole year’s sub­scrip­tion, the price was “a umbrella”. How can a news­pa­per DO that?! And not one per­son saw it and said “uh oh — gotta change this!”???

  6. Colleen said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:06 am

    I for­got “right of pas­sage” and “shoots” when they mean “chutes”. Saw that last one in the Colum­bus Dispatch.

  7. nancy said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:09 am

    The “Blog” of “Unnec­es­sary” Quo­ta­tion Marks

  8. coozledad said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:10 am

    It’s not so much the bra straps as the back boobs. I wish I could say for cer­tain I’m not sport­ing a pair of them myself.

  9. Dorothy said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:13 am

    Oh and how could I for­get the real estate com­pany here in town whose name always makes me want to scream?? “Real Estate Pro’s”

  10. Lex said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:01 am

    [[My mother used to call vis­i­ble bra straps “slovenly.” I think she got it right.
    Maybe she was think­ing of Huge Chavez.]]

    Yeah, see­ing Chavez’s man-bra on CNN Inter­na­tional (appar­ently the FCC will fine you if you show it domes­ti­cally) can cer­tainly make you feel like you need a shower.

  11. coozledad said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:02 am

    The best man­gled lan­guage sign I’ve heard of is one adver­tis­ing a dance studio’s “Spring Rectal”.

  12. moe99 said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:13 am

    Well, a very long time ago (pre-1970)my Aunt Marg saved an adver­tise­ment from the Defi­ance Cres­cent News that was adver­tis­ing a “Men­strual Show”

  13. 4dbirds said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    If lan­guage is ‘liv­ing’ then it will and must change. While I feel very slightly supe­rior when some­one mis­uses their/there/they’re, I think the who/whom thing can be thrown out as far as/so far as I’m concerned.

  14. Dorothy said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:29 am

    Hey totally OT but may I give a shout out to my niece Janet??

    http://​news​.book​web​.org/​6​9​2​3.html

  15. brian stouder said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:37 am

    Dorothy — very, very cool!

  16. Connie said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:46 am

    Dorothy — very, very brave, when world class inde­pen­dent book­stores around the coun­try have been shut­ting down.

  17. mark said on July 20th, 2009 at 11:09 am

    Good luck to your niece, dorothy. I haven’t been to Athens, Ga., but it sounds like a good spot for what she is attempting.

    I vis­ited George­town, D.C., last week, as I have done on occa­sion for the last thity years or so. Sad how few local stores, and espe­cially book­stores, have sur­vived the past few decades. A for­mer facil­i­ties vp for Ban­nana Repub­lic once told me of the great effort put into find­ing trendy, off­beat loca­tions for new stores, and then the great dis­ci­pline of clos­ing the stores when the unique­ness of the area is suf­fi­ciently destroyed by the influx of chains that fol­low Ban­nana Republic.

    Her rule of thumb: When “Baby Gap” opens it’s past time to close.

  18. Lou Gravity said on July 20th, 2009 at 11:15 am

    None of these com­ments phases me in the slightest.

  19. Connie said on July 20th, 2009 at 11:34 am

    Nancy, Salon just today caught up with the shaved eye­brow trend. http://​www​.salon​.com/​m​w​t​/​b​r​o​a​d​s​h​e​e​t​/​f​e​a​t​u​r​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​7​/​2​0​/​e​y​e​b​r​o​w​_​b​l​e​a​ching/

  20. paddyo' said on July 20th, 2009 at 11:46 am

    Being an apostrophe’d per­son, I tend to notice the many insults to that unap­pre­ci­ated punc­tu­a­tion mark, espe­cially the mis­uses for plural pur­poses. I long ago stopped count­ing the mail­box and front-porch signs declar­ing this or that dwelling is the home of the fam­i­lies “Adam’s” or “Jone’s” or “Smith’s”

  21. Sue said on July 20th, 2009 at 11:47 am

    I under­stand the Michael Jack­son memo­r­ial but­ter sculp­ture planned for the Iowa State Fair has been can­celed, too. How quickly we move on.

  22. ROgirl said on July 20th, 2009 at 11:55 am

    Two peo­ple quoted in the MJ story are, um, priceless.

    One said, “I think I cried for him more than when some fam­ily mem­bers passed.” The other went on the record say­ing, “I am 21 years old and look at him as a role model. He shaped the lives of so many.”

  23. MarkH said on July 20th, 2009 at 12:39 pm

    The apos­tro­phe thing dri­ves me crazy as well. A guy I know with a blog (lives in Obetz, Nancy’s brother’s ‘hood) insists on putting one in EVERY word end­ing in ‘s’. He’s threat­en­ing to pub­lish a book com­pi­la­tion of his entries, and I hope he finds an edi­tor. Wow, look at all my apostrophes…I think they’re cor­rect, though.

    What really dri­ves me nuts is lazy-asses using your, for you’re. Also, insure for ensure. There are so many oth­ers I can’t think of now. And can some­one put a blaz­ing sign some­where declar­ing, “irre­gard­less is not a word!!”

    One of the (few) things that stuck with me from my for­mal edu­ca­tion, espe­cially J-school, was the pre­ci­sion of lan­guage, spelling, punc­tu­a­tion. It’s also one of the many things I like about this blog, that it comes up on a reg­u­lar basis with real stu­dents of language.

    And, moe…absolutely priceless.

  24. kayak woman said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:08 pm

    I don’t know, if you hang around the planet A-squared long enough, you run into plenty of nin­com­poops. I’d like to think I’m not *quite* down at that level but you won’t find me sit­ting around a restau­rant dis­cussing Hugo Chavez. And I am sure I’ve prob­a­bly said some­thing like, “you ought to buy a boat” on one or two or three occasions.

    That said, Ann Arbor is a great place to live and raise chil­dren and although I com­pletely avoid the art fairs these days, I love that we have them. Lends a cer­tain fes­tive atmos­phere to the whole city. Cheers!

  25. Rana said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:22 pm

    I’m alter­nat­ing between twitch­ing at all the typos and mala­propisms and mis­spellings, and laughing.

    On the amus­ing end, stu­dents who con­fuse “insight­ful” with “incite­ful” and mistype “def­i­nitely” as “defi­antly” are quite com­mon. It lends a cer­tain aggres­sive tone to their prose that I’m pretty sure they did not intend.

  26. nancy said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:29 pm

    Oh, A2 has its share of nin­com­poops, as do all places. My favorites were the dust-ups over ide­ol­ogy, i.e. Boy­cott the Food Coop Over its Israeli Oranges — Yes or No?, and the old les­bians across the street with their Howard Dean sign, who would labo­ri­ously shovel the snow back out into the street, so con­vinced were they that road salt would kill the grass on the park strip.

    I guess it’s just a ques­tion of what sort of nin­com­poop you prefer.

  27. MarkH said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:30 pm

    Sue — a buddy of mine liv­ing in Des Moines says it’s going to be a but­ter Neil Arm­strong now.

  28. Julie Robinson said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    Around here you often hear ads for liv­ing room suits. Won­der if they include a vest or a sec­ond pair of pants?

  29. paddyo' said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:31 pm

    MarkH – agreed on the apostroph’e, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t note one teensy thing in your post: the use of a for­wards ‘ instead of a back­wards ’ with the word ’hood. ’Course, it depends on the font as to whether you can see it as you write a com­ment here. It’s another of those ones that drive me crazy, like rock ‘n’ roll instead of rock ’n’ roll … but I’ll read­ily acknowl­edge that THAT one is wayyy off in the weeds for most of us.

  30. derwood said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:35 pm

    “irre­gard­less is not a word!!”

    ahhhh Mark! It’s a run­ning joke in our quar­terly all employee meet­ings to see how far into it our VP uses the word “irregardless”.

    The other favorite is “debot­tle­neck­ing the pipeline”. Exactly how do you debottleneck?

    My gram­mer isn’t the best but I know when to use your, their, and ensure the cor­rect way.

    So how does this crew feel about the comma before the “and” in a list? Dri­ves my wife(journalism and com­mu­ni­ca­tion back­ground) crazy. We are required in our indus­try and inter­nal style guide to always use the comma.

    That’s enough fun…have a great Monday!

    –daron

  31. paddyo' said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    I like drop­ping the comma, a la 30-some years of news­pa­per­ing, but now that I work for a fed­eral gov­ern­ment agency, I run across the extra comma all the time.
    Not to men­tion Cap­i­tal­iza­tion of Damned Near Every­thing That Crosses My E-Mail or Desk.
    You’d think the Ger­mans had won World War II or something.

  32. KLG said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:49 pm

    Been to Ann Arbor. Lived in Athens for 22 years. There should be a good inde­pen­dent book­store in down­town Athens. But Ann Arbor it isn’t, even if both com­mu­ni­ties are foot­ball crazy. Back in Geor­gia now, so I’ll look for­ward to vis­it­ing your store. Good luck, Janet!

  33. moe99 said on July 20th, 2009 at 1:52 pm

    http://​blogs​.dis​cov​er​magazine​.com/​b​a​d​a​s​t​r​o​n​o​m​y​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​2​4​/​t​h​e​-​b​l​u​e​-​a​n​d​-​t​h​e​-​green/

    fun opti­cal illusion

  34. brian stouder said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    They taught me, when list­ing items, that a comma before the con­clud­ing “and” was optional; use one or not.I think if gram­mar was really pre­cise, arbi­trary ‘style books’ would be unnec­es­sary. Any­way, I greatly abuse excla­ma­tion points and paranthesis…but that’s ‘style’, eh? (!!)

  35. MichaelG said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:15 pm

    I don’t get it. The whole thing past me by.

  36. Mindy said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:23 pm

    I’ve got a won­der­ful lit­tle book called Anguished Eng­lish that’s a col­lec­tion of butchered words, phrases and head­lines. The ones that come to mind — “Iraqi Head Seeks Arms”, “Grand­mother of Eight Shoots Hole in One”, and “Her­shey Bars Protest”. The best exam­ple hap­pened to a kid in his fresh­man year in col­lege. He wrote some­thing like, “She tripped on the hem of her skirt, fell down a flight of stairs, and lay pros­ti­tute on the floor.” His pro­fes­sor wrote in the mar­gin of his paper, “My dear sir, you sim­ply must learn to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between a fallen woman and one who has merely slipped.”

  37. Dexter said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:30 pm

    You’d think cof­fee houses would be places of lively con­ver­sa­tion, but in Ann Arbor most cus­tomers are tex­ting or com­pos­ing emails and star­ing into their phones even as they grasp for their lattes. The cof­fee­house on State near Hoover is an excep­tion.
    When the kid was at OSU, I dashed into that Star­bucks that’s near the Horse­shoe and said “hello, I’d like a cap­puc­cino…” and the clerk made the hands-down sign telling me to quiet down, peo­ple are study­ing here! And as I glance around quickly, indeed there were icy stares…how fuck­ing DARE this dinosaur invade our lit­tle island of “study” to come here and order cof­fee!
    I have only been in one Star­bucks since, a friendly place in Charleston, SC.

  38. Dexter said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    nance: Any late break­ing news on the Ann Arbor News build­ing sale?
    http://​www​.mlive​.com/​b​u​s​i​n​e​s​s​/​a​n​n​-​a​r​b​o​r​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​s​s​f​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​3​/​a​n​n​_​a​r​b​o​r​_​n​e​w​s​_​b​u​i​l​d​i​n​g​_​w​i​l​l​_​b.html

  39. LAMary said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:44 pm

    Today I got two emails from my super­vi­sor. One told me that a co-worker’s father had past away and the other asked me if we had any liable can­di­dates for an open job I’m work­ing on filling.

  40. LAMary said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:51 pm

    At least she’s not a wise Latina.

    http://​jezebel​.com/​5​3​1​8​6​9​3​/​w​h​i​t​e​-​h​o​u​s​e​-​t​u​r​n​s​-​t​o​-​h​e​a​d​-​o​f​f​-​m​o​r​e​-​r​e​g​i​n​a​-​b​e​n​j​a​m​i​n​-​rumors

  41. Dexter said on July 20th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    LAM: …looks like your super­vi­sor has reached her/his level of incom­pe­tence.
    How peo­ple that damn stu­pid rise to any level of man­age­ment is no longer a mys­tery to me, it is just the way it works.
    Con­do­lences to Dad’s family…it’s a bitch to past away.

  42. whitebeard said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:09 pm

    On bra straps show­ing, but what if there were no bra at all. Just say­ing. Hor­ri­bly off-topic but I was just sent a joke that is price­less.
    Here­with: The coach had put together the per­fect team for the
    Detroit Lions. The only thing that was miss­ing was a good
    quar­ter­back. He had scouted all the col­leges and even the
    Cana­dian and Euro­pean Leagues, but he couldn’t find a
    ringer who could ensure a Super Bowl win.

    Then one night while watch­ing CNN he saw a war-zone
    scene in Afghanistan . In one cor­ner of the back­ground,
    he spot­ted a young Afghan Mus­lim sol­dier with a truly
    incred­i­ble arm. He threw a hand-grenade straight into
    a 15th story win­dow 100 yards away.

    KABOOM!

    He threw another hand-grenade 75 yards away, right into a
    chimney.

    KABOOM!

    Then he threw another at a pass­ing car going 90 mph.

    BULLS-EYE!

    “I’ve got to get this guy!” Coach said to him­self. “He has
    the per­fect arm!”

    So, he brings him to the States and teaches him the
    great game of foot­ball. And the Lions go on to win the
    Super Bowl. The young Afghan is hailed as the great
    hero of foot­ball, and when the coach asks him what
    he wants, all the young man wants is to call his mother.

    “Mom,” he says into the phone, “I just won the Super Bowl!”

    “I don’t want to talk to you, the old Mus­lim woman says.
    “You deserted us. You are not my son!”

    “I don’t think you under­stand, Mother,” the young man
    pleads “I’ve won the great­est sport­ing event in the world.
    I’m here among thou­sands of my ador­ing fans.”

    “No! Let me tell you!” his mother retorts. “At this very moment,
    there are gun­shots all around us. The neigh­bor­hood is a pile
    of rub­ble. Your two broth­ers were beaten within an inch of
    their lives last week, and I have to keep your sis­ter in the
    house so she doesn’t get raped!”

    The old lady pauses, and then tear­fully says,

    “I will never for­give you for mak­ing us move to Detroit!”

  43. MarkH said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    paddyo’ — see? SEE? What did I say about the stu­dents of lan­guage here?! You are cor­rect, of course, and not teensy at all, in my book. But…wait a minute: your are cor­rect again. As I look at my key­board, I don’t see a choice between for­ward and back­ward, just the sin­gle quote mark and (shift)double quote mark. Is it just the font, or does it auto­mat­i­cally come up in these things dependng on whether the venue (this blog format)senses that it is prior to, or just after the word? How did you get it to do that for the rock n roll entry? Only one font here that I can see. Let’s see how ‘this’ looks. EDIT: Does the com­puter know that there is one before and one after, and print cor­rectly? How does one get the apos­tro­phe to appear cor­rectly (back­wards) before the word?

    Daron, I hear ya. I brought ‘irre­gard­less’ up because one of our VPs here does the same thing, every day.

    Ahh, details. Or, as my old mechan­i­cal draw­ing teacher used to say, “details seem like tri­fles, but tri­fles make per­fec­tion, and per­fec­tion is no tri­fle”. Some­thing like that…

    Mindy’s post reminds me of a head­line I saw years ago in a J-school les­son. A mil­i­tary fighter had crashed into a New Jer­sey McDonald’s where a children’s birth­day cel­e­bra­tion was in progress. Head­line: “Jet kills 22″; kicker above: “Crashes kids’ party”.

  44. KLG said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:21 pm

    Student’s study at Ohio state? Whilst drink­ing there latte’s!! Hoo new?

  45. Sue said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    Any of you have trou­ble with words that delib­er­ately mis­spell them­selves? I type in ‘com­plaint’ per­fectly of course and it comes out ‘com­pli­ant’ half the time. The odd thing is that it’s only about five words that do that to me con­sis­tently. Haunted key­board, obvi­ously.
    And I’m not fond of the British habit of adding “t” instead of “ed”. I don’t see it as often any­more, so maybe it’s fad­ing out. ‘Spelt’ is a grain and ‘smelt’ is a fish, ok? It just looks so awkward.

  46. Hexdecimal said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    Back in the day when I was a proc­tor at IPFW, my super­vi­sor would remind me [almost daily] that “Peo­ple who are tak­ing a test were not to be ref­ered as testis!” As in “Testis must use a num­ber 2 pen­cil when tak­ing the test.”

    That was a fun year.….

  47. Catherine said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    How about pleaded vs. pled?

  48. MarkH said on July 20th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

    And, cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment: hanged vs. hung?

  49. Deborah said on July 20th, 2009 at 4:12 pm

    I read The Women, over the Christ­mas hol­i­days I bought the book at a T.C. Boyle read­ing at the F.L. Wright designed Unity Tem­ple in Oak Park. When I got the book signed it took for­ever because Boyle had a con­ver­sa­tion with each and every per­son in line. He lives in a Wright designed house in Cal­i­for­nia (I for­get where). He teaches at USC, so it must be some­where fairly near LA. I enjoyed the book but then, I’m a sucker for archi­tects (mar­ried to one, work at a design firm). I also like gos­sip so those two inter­ests work for the sub­ject of the book.

    I perused the com­ments in this thread dur­ing a late lunch at the office, my col­leagues all wanted to know why I was laugh­ing so hard. “Spring Rec­tal” had me snort­ing salad out of my nose.

  50. nancy said on July 20th, 2009 at 4:17 pm

    The book is fine so far, Deb­o­rah, but just as Wright was bugged by imper­fec­tions in build­ing design, so am I bugged by those in lan­guage. Espe­cially with a writer as exu­ber­ant as Boyle, it’s like get­ting all dressed up and hav­ing spinach in your teeth.

  51. 4dbirds said on July 20th, 2009 at 4:20 pm

    I don’t under­stand. Shouldn’t every­one of a cer­tain age get a spring rectal?

  52. Catherine said on July 20th, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    Has any­one read Lov­ing Frank *and* The Women? My book club read the first, and I’m not sure I need to read two books about FLW and his mon­u­men­tal ego. But I love TC Boyle — have prob­a­bly said this here before, but The Tor­tilla Cur­tain is a great read and cov­ers nearly every­thing you need to know to under­stand LA.

  53. coozledad said on July 20th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    Here’s an inter­est­ing archi­tec­ture blog, rem­i­nis­cent of NEST, but with a slightly wider per­spec­tive:
    http://​blog​.oun​ode​sign​.com/

  54. Deborah said on July 20th, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    I read a biog­ra­phy about Wright ages ago, don’t remem­ber the title or author. Have been to a lot of the Wright houses/buildings which I think are amaz­ing. In my mind the guy really was a genius, but he does seem to have had quite the ego. Lots of archi­tects have giant egos, believe me. I don’t know why that is, may have some­thing to do with the scale of their work. They are often highly edu­cated and it takes a long time on the job to learn how build­ings are built. In a cou­ple of weeks we are going to Fin­land to tour the work of Alvar Aalto, another archi­tec­tural giant, who died pen­ni­less and alco­holic (that list is fairly long).

  55. Jean S said on July 20th, 2009 at 5:48 pm

    and what about dived vs. dove?

    I see phased/fazed all the time.…and dan­git, there was a major blooper in the NYTimes recently and I’m for­get­ting it. Dang dang dang. Y’all would have appre­ci­ated it (yes, I know, that should be “all of y’all”).

  56. kayak woman said on July 20th, 2009 at 6:27 pm

    “Oh, A2 has its share of nin­com­poops, as do all places.”

    I hope my ear­lier com­ment didn’t sound snarky. I was actu­ally crack­ing up at your descrip­tion of Ann Arborites.

    I think maybe those old Les­bians may be onto some­thing. I do not shovel snow back into the street and my lawn is a disaster.

  57. Scout said on July 20th, 2009 at 7:42 pm

    Some ran­dom thoughts:

    – I am get­ting a kick out of the for­mal­iza­tion of the word les­bian with a cap­i­tal L.

    – I could have sworn it is rock n’ roll.

    – One of my pet peeves is loose instead of lose.

    – Mindy, you totally crack me up.

    – Spring Rec­tal — snort — now that’s funny! Reminds me of one of the chain restau­rants here in Phoenix that had a burned out let­ter G for years; noth­ing like a hearty steak din­ner at the Black Anus.

  58. Dexter said on July 20th, 2009 at 7:47 pm

    Ann Arbor also has Zingerman’s, espe­cially nice when you carry non-specified upper limit AMEX Black. (I don’t.)
    If you only go twice a year, you never tire of Ker­ry­town.
    http://​www​.ker​ry​town​.com/

  59. kayak woman said on July 20th, 2009 at 8:33 pm

    Er, that cap­i­tal L on les­bian was my typ­ing error. I don’t go to Zingerman’s all that often, unless you count get­ting cof­fee at the Plum Mar­ket, which is walk­ing dis­tance from my west-side house. And I don’t ever tire of Ker­ry­town but I don’t get there all that often either. Old Tired Crabby Work­ing Moom here. (insert smi­ley face)

  60. LAMary said on July 20th, 2009 at 8:54 pm

    TC Boyle lives in Mon­tecito. Oprah’s neighborhood.

  61. nancy said on July 20th, 2009 at 8:58 pm

    I thought Santa Bar­bara. Are those two close?

  62. LAMary said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    They are close. Mon­tecito is south of Santa Bar­bara and is much more expen­sive. Santa Bar­bara is pretty pricey, so Mon­tecito is way up there. The ex worked for the San Ysidro Ranch for about a year about 16 years ago. It’s a very lovely resort in Mon­tecito, and as a perk, we could get a free room mid­week if there was a vacancy. My older son was two or three then, and we would drive up the coast and stay in For­est Cot­tage, which they’ve since sold, and my son would ride a sweet lit­tle pony named Stormy to his heart’s con­tent. For­est Cot­tage was as nice as it sounds, with a deck built out over a creek. With some minor prod­ding, I might tell you what very very famous per­son checked out right before we checked in one time. Like REALLY famous. I slept in the same bed he had slept in.

    http://​www​.sanysidro​ranch​.com/

  63. nancy said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:33 pm

    [Prod.] [Prod.]

  64. LAMary said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:34 pm

    Mick fuck­ing Jagger.

  65. nancy said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:41 pm

    [Touches fin­ger to tongue, then to Mary. Tsss.]

    That’s pretty impressive.

  66. LAMary said on July 20th, 2009 at 9:46 pm

    I didn’t meet him though, and they had cleaned the place up so I can’t claim I got his shower drain back­wash or anything.

  67. MichaelG said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:15 pm

    Did you get clean sheets?

  68. LA mary said on July 20th, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    I assume so.

  69. Dexter said on July 21st, 2009 at 2:24 am

    MONTECITO MEMORIES from YouTube
    1) These folks would have made great pas­sen­gers on The Titanic, and
    2) What bet­ter song selec­tion than the one these drunks are wail­ing?
    3) These peo­ple are WAY to happy that their man­sions are burn­ing to cin­ders while they party along. Some­body was way over-insured.
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​Z​u​p​Q​8​QitQ3c

  70. Dexter said on July 21st, 2009 at 2:50 am

    corn­ho­lio set the fires…
    http://​www​.myteespot​.com/​i​m​a​g​e​s​/​I​m​a​g​e​s​_​d​/​d​_​7​2​08.jpg

  71. Cosmo Panzini said on July 21st, 2009 at 3:54 am

    Yeah, I hate those ads for escorts who claim to be “discrete”.

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