Detroit! Never boring, this city, and I mean never. The Wayne County prosecutor dragged the former mayor — the disgraced felon, that is — back from Texas, where he now lives, for a probation hearing, to answer questions about his finances, to wit: Why is he claiming poverty when it comes to paying his restitution to the city, while at the same time living in a mansion in the Dallas suburbs? He gets on the stand and drops the bomb: He was the recipient of a quarter-mil or so in “loans” from some of the city’s most respected businessmen, i.e. Roger Penske, Pete Karmanos, et al. The businessmen say the money was grease intended to slide the stubborn bastard out of office so the city could “heal,” etc. All released statements saying the balance owed “remains outstanding.”

But it gets better: Matty Moroun, the billionaire who owns the Ambassador Bridge, was even more generous, making his cash payment an outright gift. The Moroun prose style, revealed in the letter that accompanied the check, is a metaphor-mixin’ thing of beauty:

“My heart strings are tugged when I think of the storm your family has weathered, and my heart is heavy that you and your children have been harmed while doing everything possible to strengthen your family… Enclosed, please find a token of my affection for the Kilpatrick family.”

The letter goes on to state Moroun “thought long and hard” about “what I could do that would be an encouragement and help as you persevere and rebuild your family.” I can imagine that thought process: Fruit basket? Jelly of the Month Club? A subscription to Reader’s Digest? A free ticket to a motivational seminar? No, I know: Money.

Even better is the following paragraph in the News story:

Moroun’s spokesman on Thursday insisted that while Moroun is trying to win federal approval of a second span beside his bridge to Canada, the personal largess lavished on Kilpatrick’s wife and children wasn’t aimed at influencing Kilpatrick’s mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

No. No, I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

Of course, 50 grand is a drop in the bucket for a family like the Kilpatricks:

Kilpatrick and his wife deposited nearly $1.2 million into their bank accounts after Kilpatrick was sent to jail on Oct. 28, 2008 — and have spent nearly all of it — according to a prosecutors’ analysis.

The analysis was contained in a two-page document which was entered into evidence. It says the Kilpatricks had no money in their joint account and in Carlita Kilpatrick’s account on Oct. 15, 2008.

By Oct. 13 of this year, they had deposited $1,160,374 and written checks or withdrawn $1,150,498, leaving a balance of $21,761.

Karmanos is already bruised for having given Kilpatrick a cushy sales job with his software company when he got out of prison, defending it on the grounds that the guy was worth it. I wonder if the family’s big-spending lifestyle is a rebuke of sorts to his benefactors, a certain “don’t expect to see your money again, suckers.” I guess that’s between the Kilpatricks, their lenders, and the consciences of all involved.

P.S. Kilpatrick took the fifth when asked about his tax returns.

I suspect Moroun doesn’t care about his reputation, but the rest — patrons of the arts, titans of the charity-ball circuit — surely do. It’s a pity the term has picked up racist connotations, because in the strictest possible sense, Kilpatrick is the embodiment of the character from the folk tale: The tar baby. Everyone who touches him becomes ensnared in his stickiness. I bet the brier patch sounds like a dip in a cool lake to those guys, right about now.

The ex-mayor is still a sharp dresser, however: That four-button suit is a thing of beauty, even on a big man.

So, then: I should pause a moment and thank all of you who’ve been shopping Amazon via my store. While not a cash bonanza accompanied by treacly notes from billionaires, the income generated makes Google Ads look like the crap they are. It’ll help with my Christmas shopping, much of which I’ll be doing through Amazon, so hey — it’s a loop of love.

Only the shopping I can’t do locally, that is. Now more than ever, Michigan needs every dollar, every sales tax penny, every warm body walking through the malls. But for some things, eh, I’m happy to support the big A. I’m a one-woman stimulus package.

And if that isn’t the title of a dirty movie yet, it should be: “The Stimulus Package.”

And now it’s 9 a.m. and time for me to do a few million chores I’ve been putting off. Hoping to get Kate her H1N1 vaccine today, if the doctor’s office has any left. I’m wondering if she may have already had it — her “chest cold” week before last was accompanied by a day of 102-degree fever, and for those who have been lucky enough to get the mild version of the virus, it sounds familiar. Probably too late to test for it, but if that’s what it was and that’s all it was, I’m grateful.

Have a great weekend, all.

There was a raid in Detroit and Dearborn yesterday. The FBI went after a radical mosque catering mainly to African-American converts. The leader, who was killed in a shootout with the G-folks, appears in an Olan Mills-ish portrait looking like a character from bad community theater. From what I can tell from reading the story, this crowd looks like a lot of yak, but little jihad shack, if that makes sense. They talked a good game — strapping on bombs and the like — but were mainly criminals operating under an overlay of Islam.

At least that’s the way it looks. It’s hard to be a bad-ass Muslim convert in this country, when the indictments are handed down giving your new name followed by the a.k.a.:

A federal complaint filed Wednesday identified Abdullah, 53, also known as Christopher Thomas, as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group.” His black Muslim group calls itself “Ummah,” or the brotherhood, and wants to establish a separate state within the United States governed by Sharia law, Interim U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg and Andrew Arena, FBI special agent in charge in Detroit, said in a joint statement.

“He regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric,” an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. “Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting.”

The Ummah is headed nationally by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a state sentence for the murder of two police officers in Georgia.

H. Rap Brown is still alive? That was my takeaway. Not that these folks aren’t dangerous; I guess I wouldn’t want to meet one in a sword fight. But when I hear of groups that want to establish separate states within the U.S. where they can practice white supremacy or Sharia law or whatever, I mostly think you folks just don’t understand this country, do you? If Christopher Thomas/Luqman Ameen Abdullah wants to live under Sharia law, he can always move to Afghanistan. But that would require learning a new language, and that’s, you know, hard.

Say what you want about Jim Jones, but at least he understood that if you really want to separate from the United States, you have to actually leave the United States.

The feds shot Thomas/Abdullah after he shot one of their dogs. Both died. If anyone shot my dog, I’d have thrown in a pistol-whipping, too.

I gotta get outta here early today — I have a buttload of work to do for my other non-paying job, but that’s good news. It’s election season, and that should be your busy time. We have a very capable bunch of student interns this term, and they’re giving me copy like nobody’s business, but that requires me to edit and offer mentor-ish advice. I yearn for the succinct style of James Thurber’s editor at the Columbus Dispatch, Gus Kienan, who once told him, “Crack this miracle and bring me back the pieces,” but alas. It seems I’m incapable of writing simple notes on student copy. Everything has to be a damn treatise, and most of these folks will never write a single news story for pay in their lives. Oh, well. If they carry away no message other than, “when you write something, people will read it,” that’s good enough for me.

One bit of bloggage: For once in my life, I’m in full agreement with Sarah Palin. I’m taking this as a cautionary tale about paying attention to who your kids are keeping company with. Sometimes these yahoos stay in your life forever.

Our own Moe99 starts chemotherapy today. Hang in there, Moe.

Another quiet morning with Ruby. (Hop. Hop. Hop. Scratch-scratch-scratch. STOP CHEWING THAT! It’s a loop.) A mild day. Rain seems to be gone for a while. It brought down a fresh load of leaves, so the work I did over the weekend, raking and piling, looks completely undone. Ah, well. As soon as the coffee kicks in I’m going to get to work for reals.

Don’t I sound stupid, writing that? “For reals?” Just like the kids say. I look at Kate’s Facebook postings, and I want to faint: “hangin wit my besties CALL TEXT ME PLEEEEZE.”

“I know you know how to spell ‘please.’ Tell me you do,” I say.

“I write the way I talk,” she replies. In other words: Bug off, geezer.

The other day I retrieved one of her short writing assignments off the printer tray. With the exception of one exclamation point, I wouldn’t change a keystroke. I guess she’s mastered the art of being one thing for the adults in your life, another for your pals. A key adolescent coping skill.

Well, she’ll never take writing advice from her mother, at least not for a couple more decades. I just sent an e-mail to our Wayne State student interns at GrossePointeToday.com, recommending yet another Detroitblog gem. You can learn a lot from breaking down a piece like this to see how it sings:

Helen Turner has a mean scowl on her face. Always. It’s the look she gives customers at the diner where she works.

“I don’t take no shit off of nobody,” she spits in an Appalachian accent.

She’s behind the counter at White Grove Restaurant, a tiny, genuinely retro diner on Second Avenue near Charlotte, in Detroit’s skid row. Her customers are the city’s underclass — addicts, prostitutes, the homeless and the insane. They spend their days aimlessly roaming their neighborhood here like zombies, slowly killing time and themselves, waiting for the next handout or the next quick score.

And nearly all of them come into the diner at some point, trying to pull a fast one.

It was a pleasure to read, start to finish. It’s hard to paint a portrait like that without lapsing into cliché and stereotype. I was left wondering how the place even keeps the lights on, if Turner and her colleague, a man with whom she’s guarded the counter “for decades,” spend virtually their entire working day yelling at their customers. I guess they’ve figured out a way to make it work. It helps when Mrs. Take-no-shit guards the register; the place has only been robbed once in recent memory, and the thief escaped with his loot only because the manager didn’t have it in him to pull his own gun on a 16-year-old boy.

So let’s get to the bloggage, then:

Vanity Fair has a piece by a former member of the Letterman staff. A woman. She gets to the heart of the flaw in the it’s-only-consenting-adults argument, right here, with the extra emphasis mine:

Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let’s address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Boss/underling relationships will be with us forever. That doesn’t mean we should stop saying it’s wrong.

Shower, work, more coffee, crossword.

I bought a giant sunflower head at the farm market last week, and finally got around to hanging it from one of the trees. It took the squirrels a day to strip it bare and leave it in pieces on the ground. This guy was so excited he was like Ramona Quimby, who took a single bite out of each apple in an entire box, on the grounds the first bite is always the best.

Click to enlarge. These black squirrels are aggressive bastards, but this one will have a very glossy coat.

My iPhone’s been giving me problems for a few weeks, and Saturday I finally managed to organize myself into a trip to the Genius Bar. The Genius Bar is the only part of the Apple experience I don’t like, and the part I don’t like is the name. Also, that you have to make an appointment, but that’s a byproduct of success. I don’t think I’ve been in an Apple store in the last five years when it hasn’t been crowded.

So I get to the Genius Bar, and I tell them my sad tale of woe. He stops me one-third of the way through the narrative and says, “OK, you get a new phone. Hang on, I’ll get you one.”

This is the typical G.B. experience for me: I have a problem, they give me a new one. Alan’s computer has had its motherboard, hard drive and wifi innards replaced over the years, all without data loss. For a while I wondered if I’d get a thrilling new third-generation iPhone, but no, they replaced my second-generation model out of old inventory, or maybe it was reconditioned — they can’t tell, and neither can I. Anyway, I got a brand-new phone, and since I’d backed up the old one the day before, all I had to do was plug it into my laptop when I got home, wait a few minutes, and unplug it with everything exactly the way it was on the old one, minus the problems but including my home-screen photo of Eastern Market vegetables and custom ring settings.

In the middle of this, a man about my age approached the G.B. “I downloaded the new software for the iPod Touch, and when I reloaded it, it blew up the iPod,” he groused. “Spent an hour on the phone with tech support.”

The Genius looked regretful. “OK, you get a new one,” he said, whisking it away.

The curmudgeon caught my eye. “I was going to get an iPhone,” he said. “But not now! This settles it!”

I said nothing, but he went on. “This is ridiculous! Thing just quit!”

I said, “You’re getting a new one.” The Genius walked up at this point, unwrapping a new iPod Touch.

“Is that some reconditioned job?” the old fart said.

“I don’t know,” the Genius said. “They don’t tell us. It could be brand new, or it could be factory reconditioned. If it doesn’t work, we’ll replace it, too.”

“It has scratches on it!” crowed Mr. Grouchypants.

“Oh, no,” said the Genius, before it was pointed out the scratches were on the box, and the iPod was indeed shiny and twinkling.

“What if this blows up, too?” asked Grouchypants.

“We’ll replace it, but if that happens, the problem’s with your computer,” the Genius said. “We’ll take a look at that, if you like.” Grouchypants fell silent. Aha! Probably a PC user.

To be sure, an hour on the phone with tech support can turn anyone into a jerk — it certainly does me. But I doubt he’d get better service, or a new device, from Sony. Wait until he goes home, syncs it up and realizes, hey, I have a new iPod now. I wonder if he’ll feel guilty for jerkitude. Unlikely.

Encroaching jerkitude is a hazard of middle age. Your back hurts, your ass sags, you can’t get waited on in a deli without wearing a purple pashmina and a metallic gold tote bag, so often the logical reaction is: I think I’ll lash out at the next person forced to interact with me. I’m going to blow Dentu-Creme breath all over his or her unlined face. I try to remember this when someone is a jerk to me. (Not always successfully, I should add.) Add a keyboard and internet connection to the mix, and it’s a wonder anyone is ever civil.

I love my new phone. It’s shiny and unscratched. And it, unlike the last one, can find a wifi signal.

The boat haul-out went pretty well. The boat is out, anyway. The marina added a bunch of security since we were last there in the spring; there are now card keys and beeping gates. I don’t know if they’ve had theft problems, but it would be a miracle if they didn’t, as boats can be hard to secure and much of what’s valuable about them sits out in plain sight. Last year we passed a handsome cruiser with a high-end flat-screen TV bolted to the outside bulkhead, facing the cocktail deck. Maybe the owner found blue skies and sea gulls boring, or maybe he wanted to work on his tan while he watched golf, but a smart thief could have a field day stripping that vessel clean.

OK, time to start the day. I have no bloggage, because I realize I’m posting all my amusing links over on Facebook. Here’s an oldie from last week that still makes me giggle. Detroit, you’re a town with my kind of fun:

Farmington Hills — The Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s chief financial officer will be sentenced next month after he and his wife pleaded guilty to inciting a riot outside an Ohio nursing home.

Have a swell day, all.

The top vote-getter in the Detroit City Council primary in August was Charles Pugh. You Fort Wayners might remember him from his days as a young reporter for WKJG, although he didn’t stay long. He was clearly ambitious, and before long was en route to a bigger markets, until he ended up in his hometown of Detroit.

Most young TV reporters don’t leave much of an impression on me, as infrequently as I watch local newscasts, but like I said — Pugh was ambitious. My main memory of him was a piece he did on the correlation between the Super Bowl and domestic violence, at least three years after it had been debunked, and the debunking had been its own story. The piece was nonsense start to finish, thinly sourced and with the usual domestic-violence victim-advocacy suspects claiming their business always went up during “football season,” etc. The internet was new at the time, and I wrote the news director a note about it via the station’s AOL page, citing the debunking, etc. Crickets. I should add this is typical: Local TV reporting is so glib, and any record of it so fleeting (as I said, this was pre-internet, pre-DVR), that news directors can basically ignore all but the loudest criticism. Mistakes that would get front-page corrections in a newspaper just fly by with a shrug and not even an oops.

I tell you this so you know I’m not inclined to like him, but once I moved here and realized he was a local-media celebrity, I paid special attention. He’d refined his image in the intervening years, acquired the gloss of a big-media-market personality, and was now an out ‘n’ proud gay man. A Freep columnist wrote an admiring profile of him, I guess because it takes a certain amount of courage to be out ‘n’ proud in the black community (although certainly not in the news media). He also has a compelling personal biography, having been raised by his grandmother after both parents died violently (mother murdered, father a suicide) before he was 8 years old. He’d found a high public profile as co-anchor for the weekend morning show, the usual jokey mishmash of wire copy and live standups at pumpkin patches and fireworks venues, etc. The photo that ran with the column was hilarious: The caption said Pugh and his co-anchor were “preparing their newscast,” while the picture showed both sitting in position at the anchor desk, each staring into their own hand mirror with a look of utter absorption.

So when, a year or so ago, rumors started circulating that Pugh was considering a run for city council when his contract expired, I was interested in how it might play out. The big question seemed to be whether his out ‘n’ proud status would hurt him among religious voters, and based on the primary results, the answer was no. It’s pretty amazing to think he beat established incumbents to get the sort of vote totals he did, but until recently, he was very well thought-of.

That all started to fall apart last week, when the newspapers revealed he was about to lose his condo to foreclosure. His initial response was that he was having a cash-flow crisis brought on by having left his lucrative TV and radio jobs (which paid him in the neighborhood of $240,000 a year) to run for council (which would bring him about $80,000, with a $4,000 bump if he again finished at the top of the heap). The second-day stories said no, his financial life had been chaotic for some time; he nearly lost the same condo two years ago, and was served with eviction notices a jaw-dropping 11 times in the previous four years, when he was a renter.

In other words, this is not a guy with a cash-flow problem, but one who is seemingly incapable of managing his own finances, even with an enviable income.

And now I’d like to change direction a bit, because ultimately I don’t really care what sort of journalist Pugh is or isn’t, or what sort of city councilman he will or won’t be. (In Detroit: Bet on will.)

What I want to know is this: What the hell went wrong in this country that Charles Pugh could get a 100 percent loan to buy a $385,000 condo in the first place?

Yeah, yeah — there’s that fat income he was earning. But as we see, his credit history had to be pretty damn dismal. And check out these details:

Records show Pugh paid $385,000 for the condominium in 2005 and took two loans from Countrywide Mortgage the day he assumed ownership. One was for $77,000 and another for $308,000, which has jumped to $331,370 with interest and fees.

According to documents, Pugh was charged 8.25 percent interest, making his monthly payment on his 30-year mortgage payment $2,892. That does not include any insurance and property tax.

That’s 100 percent of the purchase price — no money down. Even knowing this was 2005, the very peak of the madness, when “liar loans” were commonplace and the only requirement for an applicant was a pulse, this still has the power to gall me. Obviously a guy who can’t make ends meet on an income like this is unqualified to be council president in a city in perpetual death throes. Pugh has a lame-ass explanation: “I’m currently going through what thousands of Detroiters are experiencing.” Well, yes, although thousands of Detroiters didn’t manage to screw things up quite so badly on an income of nearly a quarter-mil a year.

But in lots of ways, he’s right — this is what thousands of Detroiters are experiencing. Without his fancy education and income, they fell victim to door-to-door sales by smooth-talking sharpies who promised them free crack, the non-addictive kind. In a way, Pugh is the perfect councilman for this city. He certainly is a perfect representative.

I’m betting he coasts to victory, at or near the top of the field. Just what Detroit needs — another empty suit (but a very stylish one) on city council.

So: Monday. Boat taking-out day. Let’s hope for one with a lack of marital strife. Temperature looks warmish and cloudy. Fingers crossed.

Such a day to travel to Ann Arbor — the air still soft, fall colors at their absolute peak, the oblivious overprivileged students stepping in front of your car and I’m sorry but are you riding that bicycle the wrong way down a one-way street, HEADED DIRECTLY FOR ME?

She was. Swerved at the last minute. I love Ann Arbor, but sometimes I hate the reason Ann Arbor exists — students.

The online training went well. There was a segment on mobile-device info technology that turned up a few rocks for me, although again I had the thought: I hope some good new people have been entering my former industry in the years since I left it, because the people I once knew there simply aren’t up to this. I don’t think very often of my last years in the biz, but it came back to me at one point, when the speaker was discussing disseminating information across multiple platforms; I thought of the knee-jerk suspicion that accompanied every new idea in online journalism back in the day, how the immediate, gut reaction to an employee interested in trying something new was don’t, shouldn’t, can’t. And, of course, bias.

It’s frustrating to work in an environment ruled by fear. I’m sure it’s even worse now.

So I got home, got online and caught up on my Facebook buddies. Several are thinking about getting the H1N1 shot. Another is wondering whether her kids should get it. In every comment thread, there’s an anti-vaccination voice, and the position they take illustrates one of the weirder contradictions of modern life. I recommend Christopher Beam’s piece in Slate last week, about the bizarre right-left alliance against the new flu shot.

I’ve noticed one of the satisfactions the anti-vax position offers its holder, i.e., the ability to endlessly spew data into the air without having to actually consider it. People may have good reasons for not wanting the shot — and yes, “I’m afraid of needles” is a perfectly fine one — but at some level, this argument isn’t an argument at all, but more like birtherism. No matter how often someone says the vaccine is safe, you can always come back with but mercury’s a poison, is it not? “Mercury is a poison” is the “long-form birth certificate” of flu season.

Get the shot or don’t get it, but don’t bleat about mercury toxicity to one who has spent all this week clipping stories from the English-speaking press about this flu. Here’s one from the Daily Telegraph in London:

Doctors have been “unnerved” by the severity of swine flu in some patients and their rapid deterioration into a “life and death situation”, Sir Liam Donaldson, chief medical officer has said.

I don’t like it when doctors are unnerved. I don’t like it when the ones dying are otherwise healthy young people. I’m going after the shot for Kate, but at this rate, it’s looking like the vaccine is already arriving too late to do any real good.

I’m off to my Friday morning meeting. Sorry for the thin effort this week, but we’ll try for better next, eh?

Zingerman’s is simultaneously thrilling and sort of insufferable.

I’m in Ann Arbor, doing online journalism training. About to eat roast beef. Carry on, all.

I feel better, and I don’t quite trust it. You know how these things go: You step out of the shower and proclaim lo, I am healed, set off about your day and feel like crap by noon. I have a full day of training tomorrow in Ann Arbor, and I need all my strength to carry a few bags out of Zingerman’s. So I’m laying low for another 24 hours.

I am not a hypochondriac. This season more than ever anyone who coughs in public faces the wrath of all those standing within germshot, and frankly, I don’t blame them. If only it was like this every year; I remember one flu season when Alan sat between two tubercular hackers, and I had to listen to a 10-minute rant every day when he stepped through the door. There, there, dear, I’d say, pressing a glass of wine into his hand. I sat close enough to hear it all, and I know that even if the coughs themselves were germ-free, the sound alone would send a sane person right over the top.

So one more day. Carry on while I eat some Jell-o.

There are two kinds of entertainment for children. There’s the kind that is unapologetically for children. “Barney & Friends” is a perfect example. Smiling, happy, clap- and sing-along, broad as a barn — this is why kids love it and adults hate it.

There’s another kind that pitches at two levels, to adults and children. This is both commonsensical — how often are we told as young parents that if we must allow our kids to watch TV, we must always, always watch it with them — and sort of icky. For one thing, it’s very difficult to make a TV show, stage production or film that will engage both audiences equally. “Sesame Street” tries it, mostly with the guest shots of live people, and of course “Put Down the Duckie” is the swing jazz standard Louis Armstrong didn’t live to cover. The hideous “Rugrats” did it constantly, never well and frequently horribly. (I never knew what was more offensive, that Phil and Lil’s mother was a lesbian with a husband/beard, or that this is what the producers thought those crazy women’s libbers were all about.) “Teletubbies” supposedly had a big following among stoner/ravers, who found its gentle pace and trippy alterna-world a fun place to goof around in when coming down from a long evening of dance and Ecstasy.

The medium that comes closest is literature, and maybe this is why it’s noblest of all. Language is language, and just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s simplistic. Certain children’s books become classics because parents enjoy them as much as their children do, and look forward to rereading them when the roles are switched. Which might be why “Where the Wild Things Are,” the movie, worked so well for me, and might not. This really isn’t a children’s movie; Kate, at nearly 13, is about the bottom end of the demographic. It might be that Maurice Sendak didn’t even write a children’s book. Or it might be that one thing movies do that books can’t is add an element of kinetic imagination, and this is just one adult’s version of it. Whatever it is, it worked pretty well.

I can’t really improve on the pros here. Joe Morganstern loved it and Roger Ebert loved it a little less, but I have to side with Morganstern, who notes that where it breaks loose is where director Spike Jonze and writer Dave Eggers take the biggest risks. There’s no scene with owls on the beach in the book, but there is in the movie, and it works. The wild things have a lot more dialogue in the movie than in the book, but here you will get the sense, as you don’t in the book, that they really are based on Sendak-the-boy’s cheek-pinching adult relatives. (Catherine O’Hara, national treasure, plays one, and you don’t need to know much more than that.)

“Where the Wild Things Are” is a dream story, and as in dreams, all the characters are some version of Max, the boy in the wolf suit at the center of the story, and all the action is a refraction of what’s going on in his life. Max is an angry boy, remember; he’s all id, or mostly id, or at least he has id issues. (Whatever.) James Gandolfini’s wild thing is his closest doppelganger, and he has all of Max’s issues. (“He’s not sleeping in our pile!” will resonate with any single parent who’s ever grappled with the problem of the new boyfriend or girlfriend.)

I wondered how Jonze would handle the farewell, when Max makes his way back home, back from anger, back from Idville, back to civilization (place and process). I was dreading a long, drawn-out “Wizard of Oz” piece, with speeches. It didn’t go that way at all. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but: It’s perfect.

OK, then. This is not Review Week here at NN.C, only me with a bad cold, sleeping late, feeling like crap. No bloggage, because I’ve fallen so terribly behind on everything. But, as yesterday, a few supplemental pieces for extra credit:

Ernest and Bertram, the last word on Sesame Street’s central question:

One of Jim at Sweet Juniper’s occasional series on terrifying children’s books, in this case Judith Vigna’s classic “I Wish Daddy Didn’t Drink So Much.”

Back to bed for me.