Danny, ever the stirrer of foul things, wants to throw down. From the previous thread comments:

Hey, Nance, I was at the zoo a few weeks ago and we were checking the Pandas (yes the World Famous San Diego Zoo, of course) and one of the keepers and I were chatting. She said that the Panda was indeed a bear and that if it felt threatened it would attack.

The reason I mention this is I seem to remember a few years ago that you said that a certain editor whom you were fond of sent you a little blurb (cartoon panda with a thought bubble?) on your copy explaining how it really wasn’t a “panda bear.” Was that because your usage of the word “bear” was incorrect with the word “panda” or was it because the editor thought it was a sloth and not a bear?

Because it’s not ursine, is what I was always told. But keep in mind, Danno, that was in the Pleistocene era of journalism, when you could still find a glue pot and a green eyeshade somewhere in the newsroom. Needless to say, it was long before Professor Google, which explains:

After almost a century of debate, scientists were finally able to test the genes from pandas and determine that they are actually a species of bear.

Well, that’s a relief. Or maybe not. It’s always difficult when your long-held beliefs are challenged. Next you’ll be telling me it’s OK to say “first annual.” Then it’ll be time to hang up the ol’ jock.

I also learned in the overnight comments that the one, the only Scott Lemieux was in Detroit Metro earlier in the year. Did he call? Did he arrange a meetup for D-town fans of LGM? Noooo. And to think, this is the man whom Lance Mannion’s wife, the Blonde — who made a ghostly apparition-like appearance in yesterday’s entry, under her pre-internet name, Miss Montgomery — raved so wildly about when she met him in person last year, at some New York blog thing. (Sometimes it sucks to live in the Midwest. Detroit blog things just aren’t the same.I kept pressing for details:

“But what was Roy like? Was Roy everything you dreamed he’d be?”

“Who? Oh, he was OK. But Scott Lemieux was hilarious.”

As should be plain, I am a little discombobulated this morning. I frequently am on Friday, when I hit the week’s finish line like one of those marathoners who cannot go one more step. The week was full of drudgery, but paying drudgery, so it had to be done. I did a 900-word Q-and-A on Tuesday and Wednesday — Tuesday for the interview with Mr. Big Stuff and Wednesday for the writing. I always think Q-and-As, i.e., stories written entirely in the subject’s own voice, will be easier. All you have to do is record your talk, transcribe what they say, edit it down, slap an introductory paragraph on the top, turn it in, send the the invoice. Well. I transcribed close to 3,000 words, which took hours, and then discovered something about Mr. Big Stuff: He doesn’t do tangents, apple-polishing, blather. He spoke in complete sentences, even complete paragraphs. The mild headache of transcription — he spoke slowly enough that I was generally able to keep up with the sound file — was replaced by the big one of trimming. Ugh. I felt wrung out and run over, but I made deadline. Yay me.

On the plus side, I had an errand that took me out to Belle Isle, Detroit’s wonderful park-in-the-river. Like everything here, it’s tragic, too — much of it is neglected and closed and on its last legs. But a pretty lady doesn’t get unpretty just because her dress is torn. It was a gorgeous day, sunny, winds out of the south at a flag-snapping clip; it was a pleasure just to make the circle drive and take it all in. Guess what was in Blue Heron Lagoon? A blue heron.

A little bloggage before I go? Sure:

Crocs are on their last…legs, I guess. Why do people hate Crocs so? I don’t own them, but I don’t care if you do. It helps if you’re around young girls, upon whom they look perfectly fine and make cute pool shoes. My own young girl, at 12, now scorns them, preferring a Ferragamo-knockoff sandal I found for her this-summer “good shoes.” She wore them to the Green Day concert earlier in the week, one of those moments when you can see what she’s going to be when she grows up. Shudder. A little more childhood, please.

I won’t be shaving my eyebrows off. Bad hipster doofus, apparently.

Or you guys can discuss Sonia Sotomayor, if you like. The few moments of the confirmation hearings I was able to endure threatened to explode my brain. Jon Stewart sums it up nicely.

Folks, I’m going to Ann Arbor. Enjoy your weekend.

Kate and I had some bidness in Royal Oak last night, and started for home right about the time this happened. I’d estimate we were moments behind the action, which if you don’t want to click, is this, in summary: A tanker truck crashed on I-75 about 8:30 p.m. and burst into flames, involving another semi and a car. The fire melted and collapsed the 9 Mile Road overpass and, as the journos like to say, sent a roiling plume of heavy black smoke 200 feet into the air.

We weren’t on 75, but I-696, another freeway that crosses it, about a mile north. From that overpass we were able to briefly see the whole thing — the smoke, the terrible fire, the location. About this far away, but in the other direction.

So what did I do? Called Alan at work, told him to tell the city desk. I’ll be calling the damn city desk until I die. When I was in Fort Wayne, at the beginning of my time there, we still had stringers to cover the rural areas, paid them a pittance to be there when tankers crashed and burned in their neck of the woods. Most of them were old, veterans of days when being a newspaper reporter meant something (which is to say, barely more than it means today). But they brought real enthusiasm to the job — no one could cover all the angles of a feral dog pack terrorizing rural sheep herds — and, by our eyes, real comedy, sometimes.

Our man in Adams County was Simon Schwartz. (Carrying that name in that neck of the woods is like being called Abe Goldberg in New York City. It’s an insider’s name.) He was well into his 80s, and had health problems that sometimes took him off duty for a spell. But at least twice a week, he typed up the week’s news on onionskin paper, on a manual typewriter probably as old as he was, addressed them with a quavery hand and always added a note off to the side on the envelope: RUSH. The editors got a kick out of that one, but I’ll tell you, when a natural-gas explosion in Berne took out a house and burned its occupants, man, Simon dragged his old bones out of bed and got to a phone, dictated the news on deadline and filed a follow by mail, which was rushed to the metro desk.

As I recall, he added a cover note to the editor with whom he’d been working, whom he addressed as Miss Montgomery: “They say (the burn victim) is suffering terribly. It must be like the way sinners will suffer in the fires of Hell. A useful reminder to prepare for Eternity!”

I’m sure Simon is in Eternity by now, and I hope, wherever he is, he’s not suffering. Any man with that kind of work ethic can’t be all bad.

Anyway, the fire is still smoldering here in Detroit this morning. Love quotes like this: “There’s still something burning under there,” (a fire chief) said. “We poured water on the section that collapsed and it boiled.” The freeway will be closed indefinitely, and the overpass, which was brand-new, will have to be rebuilt. Cause of the crash? Still unclear, but it looks like speeding. A car lost control on the curve. A useful reminder to slow down.

I don’t have much bloggage, but I have some:

The Brits have had our language longer than we have, which is how they can come up with so much great slang.

Chickens as art objects.

And now time for breakfast, and the gym. I spent hours at the keys yesterday. Time to spend a few hours away, eh?

I was born in November, 1957. If I read his obsessive ongoing autobiography closely, James Lileks was born in August, 1958. How the hell did I get so much older than him, anyway? Ahem:

Kids today. No respect for kids of yesterday. Thing is, we were required to know every fargin’ thing about the 60s when we were coming up, being schooled in the ways of the Most Important Musical Genre Ever. You were required to nod at your elder and respect their sage ways, and thus I found myself in a few dorm rooms listening to peers explain why Crosby, Stills, Nash, Young, Reefer and Cocaine were incredible not just for their harmony and song-writing skills, but their abilty to make music that on longer than three minutes. To which you could only say: may all your girlfriends take “Love the One You’re With” to heart everytime you’re out of town.

What the hell is he talking about? I have no recollection of this. There was no bright line between ’60s music and ’70s music. There are few bright lines in any art form, but I guess if you wanted to pick it apart, you could find places where the next thing seemed to arrive allofasudden, but it certainly wasn’t between the ’60s and ’70s, unless you’re talking disco, but I don’t think he is. Rather, I think he’s pooching his little lip out and pouting that in the ’60s, we elevated drug addicts and America-haters to the Top 10.

Of course, I had older brothers and sisters, and picked up their enthusiasms along the way. I started listening to pop music when I was very young; everybody did. You tuned your AM radio to WCOL and left it there until 1972 or so, when WCOL-FM started playing some crazy stuff called “progressive rock” in the overnight hours. (Yes, way — they were country-and-western during the day, and at 9 p.m. or so the Stetsons went home and the hippies took over.) But everyone still listened to the Top 40, too, and the ’60s were a rich, rich time for that. You had everyone from the Jefferson Airplane to Glen Campbell to Martha and the Vandellas elbowing for space. I can still recall, as vividly as the moon landing, the DJ telling everyone they’d be playing the new Rolling Stones single at 2 p.m. sharp, so be there if you wanted to hear it first. And that’s where I heard the opening cowbell of “Honky Tonk Women” for the first time, in my bedroom, on my transistor radio.

Checking Wikipedia; it was the same summer as the moon landing, and guess what the B-side was? “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” In many ways, the ’60s were better, Jimbo.

I asked a friend of similar age for a reality check. He replied, “my bet was his little turntable in his room with the cowboy wallpaper only had Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Sgt. Barry Sadler and the soundtrack to Patton.”

Lileks has made some money trashing the ’70s, but I won’t have any of it, especially where music is concerned. There was some great pop music made then, and for some genres — I’m thinking soul and funk — there wasn’t any better time, before or since. I wouldn’t imagine Parliament/Funkadelic made it all the way to Fargo, however.

But don’t trust me; I even liked disco, at least in its natural habitat, i.e., the disco. If you’d ever joined a dance floor full of sweaty, shirtless men waving their hands in the air to “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real),” you would, too. And as for the bright line between the ’70s and the ’80s, which Lileks loves, I have only to note that I heard quite a few of those early New Wave tunes in the disco, and the shirtless men danced to those, too. They fit right in for a reason.

Eh. I hate all this genre fascism. Bring back the melting pot of ’60s Top 40. There are still places in this racist town where you can turn on a rock station and hear their top of the hour promos: Today’s best rock…and NO RAP. Oh, that’s comforting. Meanwhile, I was driving home late last summer listening to an R&B station, black DJs, black artists, the usual. They were in their Saturday-night old-school groove, Prince and LTD and so on, and guess what they slipped into the mix? Thomas Dolby, “She Blinded Me With Science.” I’m glad they’re not as tight-assed as their colleagues at the rock stations.

Enough. Now I’m boring myself. So let’s start the bloggage off with an unveiling:

WashPost pop-culture writer and NN.c reader Hank Stuever has a blog! Yay! It’s called Tonsil and it’s not about throats, but a build-up for his great new book, due out in November, “Tinsel: A Search for America’s Christmas Present.” (It’s available for pre-order on Amazon, via Nance’s Kickback Lounge.) I for one hope Tonsil will live beyond Christmas, since Hank’s voice is one we need to hear more of:

When the Post was starting a far too many blogs in the mid-‘00s, I carped in an in-house memo that none of the paper’s writers should be blogging at all; we should be writing stories that are blogged about. I also have enormous issues about writing for free.

Well, some things have changed. I still work at the Post (last I checked), but I feel like now I have some reasons to blog. (As for writing for free, well, it’s a fucking renaissance out there, isn’t it? So long, six centuries of the printed word! Hello, crapola!)

Anything else?

…it’s nice to be able to type the word “fucking” and just hit publish.

Yes, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m working my way through “Tinsel” now, and will discuss it at length as we get closer to its pub date. (Or when it “drops,” as the hip-hoppers have taught us to say.) It’s Christmas in July in my recreational reading, but as life in Michigan will teach you, winter is never that far away. In the meantime, bookmark Hank, and ignore that pimpage of yours truly in his first entry. This is a mutual-admiration society built on mutual admiration.

Next item: Next month our little family, plus dog, will be vacationing in Chicago for a couple of days, before moving up the west coast of the Mitten to spend the rest of the week at the beach. Any interest in a modest Chicago meetup? Grab a big table at someplace like Buca di Beppo and pass around a platter of meatballs? If so, e-mail me separately.

Breakfast time, and a lot of work ahead. Enjoy it.

It looks as though we’ve galloped up on another anniversary of the first moon landing, Apollo Whatever. Which means it’s time for a fresh look at something I wrote about after the last anniversary, a column I called “Lie, Memory.”

At the time, I relied on a story in one of the newspapers from “the region” — the rural areas around Fort Wayne that made a person like me…well, very glad that he lived in the relative cosmopolitan oasis because man, did they get some strange crime in those parts.

The story gathered the recollections of local residents about the historic event. I don’t have it with me, but it was filled with anecdotes that ran like this:

“Yes, I remember it well. I was in kindergarten at the time, and the teacher brought a TV to class. We all gathered around and watched as Neil Armstrong made his way down the ladder of the landing module and said his historic words. Of course, at the time, I was more upset by the fact we had to miss our recess!”

You see the problem with this. The moon landing was in July, when most kindergarteners are far from classrooms and teachers. And the moon walk was late at night — for a kid, anyway. It was certainly after my bedtime, and I was 11. There’s simply no way that person was remembering correctly. But that’s what memory does. Thankfully.

(When I wrote that, I got a very angry letter from a reader, calling me a big ol’ poopyhead, spoiling people’s memories that way. Doesn’t anyone in the world care about facts?)

I bring this up because Jon Carroll repeated the old story about Gaylord Perry:

Chronicle sportswriter Harry Jupiter was standing next to Alvin Dark, who was then managing the Giants, as Perry took batting practice. Like a lot of pitchers, Perry was a less than impressive hitter. “This Perry kid is going to hit some home runs for you,” said Jupiter sarcastically.

“There’ll be a man on the moon before Gaylord Perry hits a home run,” replied Dark.

Seven years later, on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and uttered his somewhat confused memorable words. An hour later, Gaylord Perry hit his first home run, at Candlestick Park against the Dodgers.

On the west coast? Possible. The first steps on the moon were at 8 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, so yeah, they could have been playing at Candlestick Park. But it’s always worth a stop at Snopes, where we see the first red flag — the story they research said man would be on the moon beforehand, and given that the July 20, 1969 game was during the day, it could only be true if…

Oh, who cares? There are more ridiculous stories tied to the moon landing than Barack Obama’s birth certificate. The “Good luck, Mr. Gorsky” story. (Jews in Wapakoneta, Ohio, in the 1940s? Please.) The “heard the call to prayer on the moon, returned to Earth and promptly converted to Islam” story, which is surprisingly sturdy in the Muslim world, but again, preposterous. And, of course, the “they did it all in a studio” myth, my personal favorite.

I’m always amazed at what people are willing to believe. Of course, it helps when a story supports your own prejudices. Someone sent me the “dash don’t be silent” story a few weeks ago. Swore it happened right here in Detroit. Snopes, people, check Snopes first.

I have a killer day today, followed by the usual killer night. So a bit of killer bloggage:

Barack Obama’s Teleprompter self-destructs, and yet he carries on. (May I just note here how happy I am to see copy editors ignoring AP style on spelling the name of the device, which decreed it must be TelePromTer? I always hated that. Maybe the stylebook has changed; God knows I haven’t consulted it in years.)

Whaddaya know? Seymour Hersh was right.

And no, she’s not going away. Who could have seen this coming?

Back later, maybe, but probably not.

If it’s a gorgeous day in midsummer, it must be time for the annual tour of the canals, and Nance’s report on how our wordplay skills are holding up. Your correspondent:

Yes, she’s one of those jerks who wears mirrored sunglasses, which anyone can tell you is a hostile act. Not every day, however. Self-portrait in the journo-kayak.

First up, a Chris-Craft:

Chris-Craft used to make beautiful mahogany boats. Maybe, for enough money, they still do. For everyone else, Go Go.

Detroit fish are so tough, we catch them with wrenches:

Swan family:

These birds are not to be messed with. They are excellent parents and the size of battleships. The one standing guard hissed at me, and I moved away fast. The cygnets are growing their adult plumage, and looked sort of tufty.

Go ahead, leave. Everyone else is:

For all the livin’ left undone on Imalivin II, I suppose:

When trompe l’oeil is a bad idea:

At least make it a freshwater fish.

The stern isn’t set up for it, but adding a comma to this name…

…would give it a note of poetry. The comma goes in the middle, of course.

Best name of the year, so far. And it’s frequently open for business. Not today, alas:

That’s it for today, folks. Condolences to Dexter, who left this comment a few minutes ago on the previous thread: My beloved 14 year old Labrador Retriever passed last night at around 8 P.M.
Her name was P-Dogg Princess. She went quietly as I stroked her head.

Sorry, Dexter.

Even a peaceful suburb grows interesting after midnight. I went to bed at 1:15 a.m. and laid lay for a while listening to the night sounds. A few blocks away, I could hear an animal in distress, and tried to figure out what it was. Definitely not a cat, not quite a dog. Coyote? Possible, but again — not quite canine. I finally pegged it as a mortally wounded rabbit, which scream like little girls under those circumstances. Maybe an owl or hawk dropped it en route back to the tree. And then…

Two shots fired from a large-caliber handgun, the throaty kind. Pop pop. Instant silence.

Oh. OK. Remind me not to play the stereo too loud. A few minutes passed, and just as I was drifting off, the wounded-bunny sound started again.

I let sleep take me down, and hoped whoever was policing the neighborhood had good aim.

The birds started at 6 a.m., by the way. By 9 a.m., they’ve all vacated the arbor virea under my window and are off doing their bird activities, and you can’t hear a peep. But by then the lawn equipment has started. As I speak, someone has one of those goddamn power washers idling nearby, and all I can say is, I’m glad I don’t have a large-caliber handgun.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead, as Warren used to sing. I didn’t know he meant it literally.

Little Miss Grumpypants on a beautiful summer day. More coffee, stat.

So I’ve been reading about Senator Ensign, and wondering how things can get worse for him. The people who would have forgiven him for the affair surely have to be rocked back on their heels by the payoff to the paramour by…his parents? Mommy and daddy? Cleaning up after a 51-year-old man? And they say young people today are over-reliant on the ‘rents. They learned from the best. My mother bought a rug for me when I was starting out, a 9-by-12 raw-edged remnant, and I felt covered in shame. I told her I’d pay her back, and I never did, but still. The idea of her paying hush money to someone I’d shtupped would be unbearable.

This lesson keeps presenting itself over and over, and no one seems capable of learning it: Those who live by the “values” sword will die by it, and so let’s have mutual disarmament. I don’t know much about Ensign beyond that he’s a Republican with the usual Republican opportunism when it comes to lecturing others about family and marriage and so forth. Clearly these guys do it because they think it works, but when are they going to understand that when you do that, you are putting up big glass windows in your house, and when you act in conflict to your stated “values,” you are passing out a big basket of rocks.

So why not let it drop? Affairs happen. People are imperfect. We are all sinners. We live in a fallen world. Take your pick of platitudes, but mainly, cock your ear toward President Obama and recall his response to questions about Bristol Palin’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy last summer: “My mother had me when she was 18.” Don’t just listen to the words, but also the subtext: Life is a messy business sometimes. Knowing that none of us get out of it alive and far fewer unscathed, why not stop making “family values” a cornerstone of your platform? Democrats get away with this not because of their enabling media stooges, but because they never claimed to be paragons in the first place.

And I don’t care how rich your parents are, any man who would let mom and dad pay off his mistress should just go ahead and put his balls in escrow.

Bloggage for the weekend:

Don’t read this Eric Zorn story if you’re in a place where crying is frowned upon. Yes, it’s a dog story. Meanwhile, Jim at Sweet Juniper found a dog clubhouse. Love the comment about how they all play poker and smoke cigars.

From the I Love Detroit file: 167 people are running for City Council, and in such a crowded field, have to find their own ways to stand out. Like John Cromer:

He’s basing his campaign on appealing to felons by promising to remove questions about criminal records from the city of Detroit’s job applications.

In Detroit, that may well be enough of a constituency to put him over the top.

Elitism watch! Mary Katherine Ham at The Weekly Standard gets a big yuk out of Anderson Cooper not understanding what Cool Whip is, and embeds the YouTube clip to prove it. Only it’s not Cool Whip, it’s Redi-Whip, dumbass, and even if he doesn’t know what it is at first, he catches on quick. Once Kate said, “I wish Spriggy could talk.” And I replied, “But what if he said stuff we didn’t want to hear?”

“Like what?” she said.

“Oh, like…’I don’t like it when you pet me that way, and I’ve never liked it.’”

She caught on fast. “Yeah. Or, ‘Kate was eating the Redi-Whip right out of the can with the refrigerator door open,’” she said, and then stopped, abruptly. Sometimes it’s best not to even let the dog in on your secrets.

Have a good weekend, all.

UPDATE: Google suspended my AdSense account. No, I don’t know why. Yes, I appealed. No, they didn’t accept my appeal. Have you ever tried arguing with Google? It’s like scratching your nails down the side of the Sears Tower, hoping to draw blood. In the meantime, I’m looking for a new ad network, because the loss of that TWO HUNDRED THIRTY SIX WHOLE CRAPPY DOLLARS is really going to put a dent in my income this year. Suggestions? I’m all ears.

I’ve had more conference calls in the last week than in the previous (mumble) years of my life, which is to say: Two. And they weren’t even for business. After failing to learn our lesson last year, our little troupe of Mickey-and-Judy amateurs is entering another 48-hour film challenge. This one. Possible genres: Buddy Film, Comedy, Detective/cop, Drama, Fantasy, Film de Femme, Holiday Film, Horror, Mockumentary, Musical or Western, Romance, Sci Fi, Superhero, Thriller/Suspense. Lord save us. If we don’t like any of these, we can reject them for one from the wild-card pool, which contains such agony as Martial Arts/Stoner, Silent, Tragedy. And so on.

Well, it is a challenge, after all.

For those who care, I’ll be tweeting the experience, with pictures when I can, which will update my Facebook status. It starts at 7 p.m. July 24 and ends 48 hours later.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the Mockumentary idea, probably because “Bruno” is all up in my grill wherever I look. The New York Times has a story this morning about male shaving, and reports that Sacha Baron Cohen had to endure “repeated waxathons” to get hairless enough to play his gay Austrian character. We know what his natural state is, so I hope he had Jackson-strength drugs to help him get through.

The story references the Gillette videos we discussed here a few days back; once again, NN.c commenters surf the wave first. I didn’t watch the one on male armpits, and it’s a good thing, too, because I don’t care what funny reason they give (“an empty stable smells better than a full one”), a man with shaved armpits is an abomination to women. Men should be men.

We don’t have a Sacha Baron Cohen for our movie. But we do have a female ventriloquist who can sing and has 22 dummies. I’m hoping we draw Horror. Nothing like a singing ventriloquist dummy for maximum creeps.

A lot of bloggage today, so let’s hop to it:

Not long ago a journalist of very close acquaintance, ahem, had to participate in the destruction of many, many copies of one of the sections he helps produce, because somehow a photo slipped through, in which an extremely sharp-eyed reader might notice that one of the people in the photo was wearing a T-shirt that read “Go Straight Edge or go fuck yourself.” They don’t do that in Nashville, evidently.

I posted this on my Facebook yesterday. It’s a story about the latest Little Photoshop of Horrors, a picture essay in the New York Times Magazine that turns out to have been substantially tinkered with. This has happened before, and it will happen again, and for the life of me I don’t understand why, but then, I never understood photographers.

Short version: Photographer Edgar Martins has an assignment — to travel the country and document the subprime meltdown. So he sets out, and finds some lovely pictures (which you can’t see, because the NYT yanked them all off the website), but he cannot resist tinkering with them. Now he and the paper stand embarrassed if not disgraced, having handed their enemies a big fat stick to beat them with. And for what? Some symmetry. Like I said, I never understood photographers.* *Although I do appreciate them.

Think of an American visiting France who believes that if he just speaks louder, he will be speaking French. — the sublime Dahlia Lithwick on Sarah Palin.

Man on dog? A Fox News host tries to explain how Americans “marry other species.” I see so many of these Fox & Friends clips on Gawker, I’m starting to think they’re angling for the publicity. Funny.

It’s an all-pop culture blog today, because that’s what we have at the moment. The news out of China yesterday was about the so-called ethnic Uighurs, which the guy on NPR kept pronouncing “wiggers,” and wandering into the report halfway through, for about two seconds I wondered what Eminem had to do with China. It’s like the stupidity of Michael Jackson’s funeral was flying through the air on invisible wings.

So, then:

You know who also played at the Motown 25th anniversary concert, the one where — we have been reminded approximately eleventy jillion times in the last, GAWD, TWELVE DAYS — Michael Jackson unveiled the moonwalk to the world? Anyone?

Adam Ant.

You could look it up. I just did, and ran across both the YouTube video (which I recommend for its excruciating badness) and this amusing recap from a blogger, c. 2006. He notices things — commercials for the Commodore 64 personal computer, and Anacin. (This was before we learned aspirin is pure poison for everyone other than middle-aged people expecting a heart attack.) And it wasn’t just Adam Ant. Two other acts of the future played. Get ready: DeBarge and High Energy.

I think it’s useful to be reminded of this stuff from time to time. Berry Gordy had his streak, for sure. He caught a big wave, surfed it perfectly, and rode it all the way to a nice beach in Los Angeles, and has spent the rest of his life telling people about it but not once even coming close to duplicating it. His best artists got out from under his grinding bootheel as quickly as they could, Stevie Wonder and M.J. among them. His new discoveries sort of define “forgettable.” While I remember DeBarge, a Jackson family with 78 percent less talent, it’s mainly for a story a hotel manager in Fort Wayne told me after they passed through town on tour, about how they ordered room service consisting of a $500 bottle of cognac and a six-pack of Coke, and yes, they mixed them.

High Energy is lost to the ages, or at least my creeping Alzheimer’s. As for Adam Ant, well, Berry was all about maximizing the audience, and that crazy English kid had that “Goody Two Shoes” song on the charts, and, what? You don’t remember “Goody Two Shoes,” either? Well, maybe Journey was busy or something. The early ’80s was a bit fallow, pop-wise.

Why am I talking about Adam Ant? Oh, right: Because Jon Mayer played at M.J.’s funeral concert — you know, the noted soul artist. In 25 more years, I think we’ll be saying, yes, he was the Adam Ant of his day, and dated Jennifer Aniston.

If you have but one Jackson-memorial story to read today, make it the WashPost’s:

Carey, wearing a long gown with a plunging mesh neckline — demure, for her — performed her version of the Jackson 5 hit “I’ll Be There,” and looked meaningfully toward Jackson’s casket.

The musician Usher also looked toward Jackson’s casket during his song, then walked toward it and placed his hands on it.

Jennifer Hudson did not interact with the casket but sang a from-the-gut version of “Will You Be There,” accompanied by a troop of backup dancers. Somber, funereal backup dancers, yes, but backup dancers nonetheless. No one tried to moonwalk. It would have seemed disrespectful.

…His transformation of his own face took more than 20 years, as did his journey from beloved, giggling child-star to bizarre, fragile child-man.

The public’s transformation of Michael Jackson, from mutant to messiah, took less than two weeks. “Michael . . . made us love each other,” Sharpton called out. “It was Michael that made us . . . feed the hungry.”

God, it’s almost like you were there.

Elsewhere on the beat, the New York Times has been running some odd culture stuff lately. A few weeks ago, they brought us the shocking news that many people who start blogs lose interest in them after a while. Today, get ready to be blown out of your chair:

Dirty movies just don’t have stories anymore.

Wha-? Huh?

The pornographic movie industry has long had only a casual interest in plot and dialogue. But moviemakers are focusing even less on narrative arcs these days. Instead, they are filming more short scenes that can be easily uploaded to Web sites and sold in several-minute chunks.

I had no idea they had even a casual interest, but then, I think the last dirty movie I saw in long form was by the Dark Brothers c. mid-’80s, and while I don’t think I lasted even seven minutes, I did see what we amateur screenwriters like to call the first act. No plot or script was in evidence then, either.

This seems to be the peg:

Plot-centrism was in full bloom in 2005 with the release of “Pirates,” about a ragtag group of sailors who go after a band of evil pirates.

That movie, with a budget of more than $1 million, had special effects (pirates materializing from the mist), and, yes, lots of sex. Two years later, the movie’s studio, Digital Playground, spent $8 million on a sequel — a remarkable sum in an industry where the average movie costs $25,000, according to the director of the two movies, Ali Joone.

I missed the era of “plot-centrism?” Pirates materializing from the mist? I need to get out more.

Finally, a last bit of bloggage, in which Billy Dee Williams comes up in discussion at a Detroit City Council meeting. That august body takes on a serious issue — malt-liquor ads that imply it’s the fastest way to something, perhaps date rape — in their own special way:

Councilwoman Martha Reeves said her beef is the way the cartoon ads portray Williams: “He’s ugly.”

I need to go in search of my brain. If you see it, mail it home.

Twenty minutes! That’s all the time I have before I have to hit the ground running, and I really should wash my face and put on a bra first, so make that…15 minutes! Let’s bunt this post with a cleanout of my iPhone photos, stupid picture-notebook stuff I’ve been carrying around thinking this might make a blog item, but probably won’t. (And usually doesn’t.) But maybe when we combine them, we can get a much bigger lame-ass blog. Let’s find out. First, a Proustian memory-prod:

Pyramids of this stuff were stacked in the window of my local paint store, which I don’t visit often, but it’s next door to the bakery, which I do. It went up around the end of the school year, and even though this area doesn’t do much in the way of student rentals, there’s something about this no-nonsense product — “Detroit’s Original”? Really? — that conjures up memories of end-of-term moving day, of packing the boxes and suitcases and carrying them to the truck. The stuff you thought was so important in September turned out to be not-so-much; in fact, September is a distant memory. You leave behind a few loose papers, maybe some hangers in the closet. Soon the painters will be here with five gallons of Detroit’s Original Xtra Hide Apartment Flat, and that will be the end of your chapter in this place.

OK, so not exactly a madeleine. Let’s move on.

I have so many stories that begin “I knew the newspaper business was finished when…” that I really look like an idiot. If I knew, why didn’t I leave when I had the chance? Answer: Because I’m lazy and inert, and suck at everything else. But here’s one of those I-knew moments, in the Pets aisle at Target:

Do you realize, in a few more years, reporters won’t be able to make jokes about their work today being used to housebreak dogs tomorrow? It’ll be like the expression “dropping a dime.” What’s that? A pay phone? And it once cost a dime? Why didn’t they use Skype, grandpa? Shaddup, kid.

Finally, I’ve seen several of these vehicles around town in the last couple years:

They have signs on posts, too, but at least two and maybe three white vehicles — I’ve seen an SUV and this van — with the same message. SOMEONE KILLED R*SA, and dammit, they’re going to let the world know about it. (I don’t dare use this woman’s name, as I suspect they troll Google every 30 minutes, and the last mailing list I want to be on is theirs.) I went to the website, and it appears they do have a valid complaint; patients should not fall off the table in the cath lab. Nevertheless, it’s possible to view this as cruel and unusual punishment for poor Dr. B*rman.

And now it’s been 15 minutes, and I must begone. Begone! And have a swell day.

We were sailing when Sarah Palin announced she was advancing in another direction, so I missed the fun of the announcement. Saw a minute or two here and there on the web, which was about as long as I could stand; whenever I hear her supporters say, “She drives liberals crazy!!!” I can only agree. I think they misunderstand the reason, however. It’s not because she has a child with Down Syndrome or a rifle or an unwed pregnant daughter. And sorry, crazy-man-I-found-via-James-Wolcott-and-I-will-think-twice-before-doing-that-again, it’s not because of this:

Finally, but by no means least, she wears figure-flattering clothes, grooms herself beautifully, and walks gracefully and confidently in high heels.

It’s just annoying, at an elemental level, to think that a person could get so close to the presidency who writes like this:

Alaska’s mission – to contribute to America. We’re strategic IN the world as the air crossroads OF the world, as a gatekeeper of the continent. Bold visionaries knew this – Alaska would be part of America’s great destiny.

Our destiny to be reached by responsibly developing our natural resources. This land, blessed with clean air, water, wildlife, minerals, AND oil and gas. It’s energy! God gave us energy.

So to serve the state is a humbling responsibility, because I know in my soul that Alaska is of such import, for America’s security, in our very volatile world. And you know me by now, I promised even four years ago to show MY independence… no more conventional “politics as usual”.

And we are doing well! My administration’s accomplishments speak for themselves. We work tirelessly for Alaskans.

I’m aware, with every passing year, that no one really cares about written or even spoken expression in any meaningful way. A catch phrase, a snappy delivery, a one-liner or two — that’s all anyone expects from people in the public eye. But even I, who thought I’d seen all of Sarah Palin anyone needed to see, was…what’s the word? Le mot juste? Oh, hell, let’s go with the obvious and trite: I was offended. Yes. Offended by this rambling, nonsensical exercise in narcissism. What the hell is she talking about? Alaska, sure. Commitment, not so sure. Sarah, certainly. And all those capital letters. MY independence. AND oil and gas. And exclamation points! We are doing well!

Sarah is, anyway.

I’m a writer, and I have all the writer’s irrational prejudices about people who don’t understand subject-verb agreement and the importance of proper spelling. I’m aware this makes me something of a snob and elitist, but I don’t care. This shit ain’t rocket science, and people who write competently, never mind stylishly, are indicating by their example that they respect writing. People who respect writing are more likely to read. And readers are smarter, there I said it.

The case has been made that Palin is smart, but a different kind of smart. Not fancypants Obama booklearnin’ smart, but hardscrabble shoeshine-and-a-smile bachelor’s-degree-by-way-of-five-schools smart, the sort of smart that used to be called shrewd. Hmm. OK. I acknowledge there are different kinds of intelligence, that a person who is genius at negotiation but dumb at math is no dummy, and that a person who is great at math but cannot learn that it’s wise to pay attention to one’s personal grooming may well have a brain dysfunction, but I’m still a writer, and I still say it’s spinach and I still say the hell with it.

One interesting thing about Palin’s statement you only see in the written version, as painful as it is to read: She capitalizes “outside” when speaking of “Outside special interests.” Outside is, of course, Alaska code for the lower 48. Could any other politician with national aspirations get away with trashing the rest of the country?

I wish you’d hear MORE from the media of your state’s progress and how we tackle Outside interests – daily – SPECIAL interests that would stymie our state.

Oil companies — not a special interest. Mining — not a special interest. Commercial fishing — not a special interest. What color is the sky in Sarah’s world?

A bit of bloggage:

I’ve read uneven reviews of “Methland,” but Walter Kirn’s in the NYT was over-the-top positive. I don’t trust Kirn, but this may be a library reserve-list item. There’s been a lot reported about meth, but not as much about the why, why a drug so toxic and dangerous could take root in what is allegedly the blissful countryside. It seems Nick Reding’s book gets close:

The agricultural conglomerates that have gobbled up Oelwein and similar farm towns may feed the world, but they starve the folks who work for them, breeding a craving for synthetic stimulants that conveniently sap the appetite while enlarging the body’s capacity for toil. These offal-streaked Dickensian mills are also magnets for desperate immigrant laborers who, in some cases, blaze the smuggling trails that run up into the Corn Belt from Mexico, home to the gang lords who own the superlabs that, increasingly, dominate the meth trade.

“Vicious cycle” is not an adequate term. As Reding painstakingly presents it, the production, distribution and consumption of methamphetamine is a self-catalyzing catastrophe of Chernobylish dimensions. The rich, with their far-off, insulated lives, get richer and more detached, while the poor get high and, finally, wasted. In the meanwhile, the traffickers fatten in their dens, expanding their arsenals and their private armies, some of whose troops are recruited from the ranks of the pale zombies their business spawns.

This is one reason I get so impatient when the Rod Drehers of the world paint such rosy pictures of the world outside the cities. I’ve been to Dekalb County, friends — it ain’t all sustainable organic farming and chickens in the yard.

So how was y’all’s weekend? Mine was fine and dandy. Alan installed a screen door on our back door, a feature that had been missing. It’s the best thing we’ve done since we made Kate. Nothing says summer like the back door standing open to the screen.

And a hot week awaits to enjoy it. Enjoy yours, but already my responsibilities are prodding me.