I hope your holiday was pleasant. Mine was, although at some point I shifted into hibernation mode — all I want to do is sleep, a condition that will likely last until we change the clocks again. Sleep and eat. You ask me, the bears have the right idea.

Maybe cutting back on carbs will help. She said as she finished the last slice of birthday cake.

If any of you doubt that I basically pull every entry on this blog from my nether regions on a daily basis, I offer as evidence the preceding two paragraphs.

I’m a little rusty this morning. Lots went on over the weekend, lots coming up. We had a production meeting/casting session for the upcoming 48-hour film challenge, and I took a moment to look around the table at all the smart faces there and reflect on what these Michigan tax incentives for filmmakers have wrought. The difference between what we brought to the party in June 2008 and what we have just over a year later is pretty remarkable. Not that the 2008 team was bush league, but most of the people we have now, from actors to crew, have serious professional filmmaking experience, and it shows. A year ago, casting the zombie movie, some of the people auditioning had trouble reading. Saturday, we had a 13-year-old girl who most recently worked with Rob Reiner. In fact, as I looked around the table and asked myself who’s the weak link in the chain? It’s me. Time to bring it, I guess.

We also had house guests, John and Sam, for Saturday night, when we finally celebrated my birthday. Lovely cake and presents. Pork tenderloin with an Indian spice rub on the grill, yum yum. We discovered that even though both John and Sam are plugged in net people, being childless they’ve missed many YouTube classics — Charlie Bit Me, the Panda Sneeze, and of course, the Dramatic Prairie Dog. John learns fast, however, and quickly threw together this video homage with his iPhone and one of my birthday presents, which we’re calling…

…Dramatic Horse Pen.

That’s a pen from some cowboy museum on John and Sammy’s recent trip out west. Punchline: It doesn’t work. Glad it’s good for something.

And now my attention is drawn by the events of the day — the president’s speech on Afghanistan tomorrow, the next phase in heath insurance reform, and, of course, Tiger Woods’ marriage, about which I could not care less. I am interested in human behavior, however, so before we go on, let’s stipulate something that is, to me, as plain as that Escalade wrapped around the tree, yonder:

Woods is lying. He’s lying about the accident, he’s lying about whatever preceded it, and he’s lying about the role his wife played in it. He probably started the whole chain of events by lying to her, too, the classic, “Who, me? I wasn’t with her! The National Enquirer is lying!” That’s OK — everyone lies sometimes, and none of us would want to live with a 100 percent truth-teller. Sometimes the greatest honesty comes out of gentle deception, etc. I’m thinking today of his wife, who I’m going to speculate was wielding that golf club not to rescue her husband, but to threaten him and perhaps knock his block off. Eric Zorn and I have been exchanging e-mail on the subject, and he contends her target was the car all along — nothing like a smashed window to punctuate your peril when you’re trying to escape the fury of a Swedish giantess. I think maybe she was aiming for the man himself, which would be pretty damn stupid on her part — any physical injury to the ATM machine she shares her life with would imperil its future smooth operation. But then, I doubt Woods married his wife for her brains. Maybe that’s what he found in the New York “social director” he was allegedly dallying with, an intellectual equal to his Stanford-educated brain.

Let’s take a look at this TMZ item, though, one that says Tiger was shopping Zales (Zales? Yeah, that sent up a flag for me, too) for a “Kobe Special,” i.e., a big flashy rock to appease her feminine furies. I’m reminded of the female comedian who, after the original Kobe special was delivered, remarked, “Just what every woman wants — a big shiny reminder of her husband’s infidelity.”

Let me just go on the record here, and say I hope my child will grow to adulthood knowing that her mother never went after her father with a golf club. Good lord, Elin, one misjudged swing and you’re talking closed-head injury and the rest of your life being the next Dana Reeve. Suck it up.

Ten a.m. looms, dragging behind it a busy day. We’re back to the mangle, folks, and starting the long slog to Christmas.

Brother Rod Dreher comes in for a certain amount of abuse in this space, but when he’s right — or at least in the ballpark of right — I have to give him his due.

I saw this excerpt from She-Who’s recent interview with Barbara Walters, demonstrating her awesome foreign policy skilz:

“I believe that the Jewish settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

The editor in me saw She-Who’s signature trait, the intellectual insecurity that leads her to blather, in the belief that if you throw a whole lot of words into an answer, it sounds more thinky. Before he was famous, Dave Barry occasionally worked as a writing teacher to private businesses, and he said something funny about memos — that they’re like balloons, and the game is to bat them around the room so that they land somewhere other than your desk. You bat them by adding a few more words and sending them on their way. Take a look at She-Who’s answer again, and take out the extra air:

“I believe that the Jewish [Israeli] settlements should be allowed to be expanded upon, because that population of Israel is, is going to grow. More and more Jewish people [Jews] will be flocking to Israel in the days and weeks and months ahead [future]. And I don’t think that the Obama administration has any right to tell Israel that the Jewish settlements cannot expand.”

Part of this is the difference between speaking and writing — tell them that instead of tell them, for instance. But it’s that “days and weeks and months” I find so telling; why not “days and weeks and months and years and decades and centuries,” Mrs. Maverick? Because she was following the rule of three; three puffs of air into the memo balloon and off it goes to become someone else’s problem. But also, well, let’s let Brother Rod pick it up from here:

When I heard that, I thought, oh, here we go.

Really? Why? He goes on to quote from a report on She-Who’s meeting with Billy Graham, from whom she wanted “his take on what the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq,” according to his son Franklin. Dreher goes on:

What the Bible says about Israel, Iran and Iraq. That’s a tip-off that she reads the Bible as a guide to geopolitical events in the End Times. This is very common among a large portion of Evangelical Christians — according to a leading expert, between 50 and 60 million Americans hold Palin’s belief about the Jewish ingathering to Israel in advance of the Apocalypse — but can you imagine an American president making her foreign policy based on a belief that “The Late, Great Planet Earth” is a reliable source of information about the future?

I confess, I was so busy feeling smug and superior about She-Who’s speaking style I didn’t even consider what she was saying, beneath the surface, anyway. A lot of Christian conservatives lurve Israel and all that she does, even her fringiest residents, and I know that they consider certain events there key to their beliefs about the end of the world and the return of Christ, but I guess I didn’t know they thought it was coming so soon, in the days and weeks and months ahead. So for pointing that out to me, I’m grateful to Crunchy Rod.

I thought a lot of this millennial nonsense was swept aside by 9/11. I’ve spoken before in this space about Gershom Gorenberg’s marvelous “End of Days,” a book about the way the Big Three monotheistic faiths converge upon a single plot of land — the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. But his book was published around the time of the millennial turn, the fears surrounding which look pretty silly compared to planes flying into buildings.

Or maybe not, when the person holding them has aspirations to high office.

I never read the “Left Behind” books; did I miss anything?

Well, as some of you have indicated, news that it’s my natal anniversary seems to have leaked to the world. Kate and Alan just left on a mysterious errand, and I’m guessing they’ll return with a cake. In the meantime, I still have some housecleaning to do, and then the real fun starts — the Wednesday-night pie-baking before the feast. Expect light-to-nonexistent posting for the remainder of the weekend, but rest assured, I am enjoying the celebration.

Never ask an idle question on a blog, unless you want it answered. In this case I did, and I’m grateful to my old pal Vince for checking with his own pal Eddie, a native speaker of…I think Mandarin Chinese, although it could be Cantonese, and it may be both. (He’s a smart guy.) Anyway, I asked yesterday if anyone knew the meaning of the Chinese character in the “Red Dawn” remake, seen all over town these days.

And guess what, Eddie does: “It’s the date when the Communist Party told the Chinese people, regardless of their party affiliation, to stand up and fight against Japanese invasion” in 1935. (If you’d like to read Chairman Mao’s statement in its entirety, it’s the second footnote here, and let me warn you, Chairman Mao did not write in bumper stickers.)

So: Inside joke to those savvy enough to understand, key to some plot point, or just something the graphic designer liked? Whatever, thanks Vince, and thanks Eddie.

On edit: Vince writes: Eddie speaks Mandarin. (and Taiwanese, English & Japanese.) But reading the text has no regard for Mandarin vs Cantonese. The symbols are the same.

Noted.

Huh. I just realized I have to clean my whole house in the next two days, including two bathrooms, and that will, well, sort of suck. I’m editing copy for GrossePointeToday.com at the moment, I have a gym session that cannot be skipped in the Week of 10 Million Calories, and after that, I’m scheduled for a root touch-up. That can’t be skipped either. My daughter: “Make sure you get your roots done. I don’t want anyone to think you’re my grandmother.” Oh, excuse me, Miss Teenage Poopypants.

So what does that leave you folks? Photographic evidence of how balmy our fall has been:

That’s the neighbor’s forsythia, apparently fooled into believing November is actually March. How’s the weather where you are? That’s what grandparents talk about, right?

Back later this afternoon, no doubt. But not now.

I had an errand downtown Saturday, but alas, the block I was trying to reach was closed off. Parked police cars with lights flashing sat at either end, and in between were what appeared to be either soldiers or the baddest-ass SWAT unit in the tri-state area. Bomb scare? I thought, but only for a few seconds. Because lo, we are in Michigan, and Michigan is Hollywood’s sugar daddy (for the time being).

At first I thought it was more “Red Dawn,” which is seemingly everywhere these days. The “police station” is still wearing its wardrobe:

The red star with the whatever-it-is Chinese character is a logo throughout the film. If anyone speaks the language, I’d be interested in knowing what it means. Probably “tax incentives.”

Ah, but this is the conquered America of Barack Hussein Quisling Bow-down Obama, so this police station is well-fortified against the people it protects and serves. Street level:

And just in case you wanted to know what city our fair one is standing in for, the front door:

I tried to take a shot of the set that was working Saturday, but alas, the iPhone has no telephoto function. And I don’t think it was “Red Dawn.” The Guardian building is where they’ve been shooting this Wesley Snipes actioner, “Game of Death.” Imdb synopsis:

After a botched assassination attempt on a Diplomat, everyone from the Diplomat and his bodyguards to the group of assassins behind the attempt ends up at the same hospital where they fight it out.

Someone I know is working on this production. She calls it, “‘Die Hard’ in a hospital,” which is either the ten-thousandth or ten-thousand-and-first “Die Hard”-in-a-(fill in the blank) thumbnail. Did the people who made “Die Hard” v.1 know what they were doing? Maybe. I still stop to watch it, and all of its sequels, when I surf past them on cable, if only for a few minutes. Wouldn’t be the movie it was without Bruce Willis, of course, but he was well-served by the various British straight men they threw up against him, particularly Jeremy Irons. When Alan Rickman quotes Plutarch to the Japanese industrialist before busting a cap in his ass, well, that’s a moment that sticks with you, too.

But the genius of it was to simply ask the question everybody with half a brain asks when suffering through most action movies: Wouldn’t it hurt to pound someone in the skull with your bare fist like that? Bruce Willis stops from time to time to say “ouch” — that’s the ground broken by “Die Hard.” So simple. So successful.

That’s about the end of the verisimilitude*, however, and “Die Hard” was the beginning of action-movie loot hyperinflation. The first installment was about the theft of $600 million in bearer bonds, whatever those are. (Bearer bonds were very big in ’80s/’90s action movies, and that link explains why — they’re popular for money laundering — but I think their popularity is also tied to the alliteration of their name, as everyone from Alan Rickman to 50 Cent can sound cool saying “bearer bonds.”) By the third “Die Hard,” Jeremy Irons was plotting to steal all the money in the world, or at least all the gold held by the Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan; he had to carry it away in a convoy of dump trucks. This raises so many questions in the mind of even a half-bright moviegoer — how does one launder a dump truck full of gold? (Bearer bonds!) Hell, how does one even get it out of North America? — you could even forget that this is a summer movie and you’re not supposed to think about it.

But it was too difficult to top, and by the last “Die Hard” I don’t even remember what the bad guys were after, only that Bruce brought down a helicopter with a fire hydrant, and it was awesome.

* My personal quibble with action-movie reality: The noise factor. People are always firing machine guns or having explosions happen five feet away, and no one ever stops to say, “I can’t hear you! My ears are ringing from that explosion!” I spent one measly hour on a firing range Friday, wearing foam earplugs and earmuff protection, and every round above .38 caliber still made me just about jump out of my skin.

Oh, well. Monday bloggage? Sure.

Lots of blogs are reading “Going Rogue” so you don’t have to, but few are striking the perfect tone that Lawyers, Guns and Money is. They’re up to Chapter 4 now, but it’s all on the main page, still, so just scroll down and work your way up. I was interested to read this note about Chapter 3, which calls out the She-Who/Lynn Vincent casualness with her chapter epigraphs:

So far as bungled epigraphs go, the third chapter is arguably the winner so far, attributing this nugget of wisdom to the renowned former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden:

Our land is everything to us…. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember than our grandfathers paid for it — with their lives.

Now, if that’s not the sort of thing you’d expect a hall of fame basketball coach to say, that’s because, of course, he didn’t. Students of American Indian history might recognize that passage as belonging instead to John Wooden Legs, the post-WWII Northern Cheyenne tribal leader who — though a contemporary of John Wooden’s — was not the same guy.

Yes, yes — it’s absurd to expect much from Sarah Palin, but imagine if these sorts of gaffes had appeared in books by Hillary Clinton or Obama himself.

Exactly. Confusing John Wooden, the basketball coach, with John Wooden Legs, the Indian? That’s funny.

Ah, Monday. Police rounds, Russian lesson, followed by abs/glutes class in the evening. My life is sometimes indistinguishable from Paris Hilton’s.

Which reminds me of a story I forgot to blog, about a team of teenage burglars in Hollywood, who broke into various stars’ homes when they knew they’d be out partying. Among the victims was Paris Hilton, hit on multiple occasions, aided by this killer detail: She keeps her house key under the mat. No kidding.

Later!

Turnipalooza! Also, vegetarianism beckons when the holiday main course is still breathing.

I favors a .45.

Late edit explanation: Alan said, “Brother Mouzone favors a Walther PPK380. Omar was the one carrying the .45. He said the Walther tends to jump in the hand.” Whatever. But I admit the error.

Someone at the gym sent me one of the parody videos for the Shake Weight. No links here, as they’re about as difficult to find as Vi@gra spam, and I don’t want to be responsible for offending any of you. But it raises the question of what, exactly, the Shake Weight peddlers thought they were doing when they made a piece of exercise equipment that practically begs for parody, whose very own infomercials feature shirtless men exulting, “30 seconds into it, I was already covered in sweat.”

I guess what I’m asking is, is it possible to stake a business plan on an item that will be entirely sold as a dirty joke gift at bachelor/ette parties?

(She said, in a country that made fortunes for the inventors of the Pet Rock and Love Sheep.)

Now that we’ve kicked things off with our customary how-low-can-we-gooooo salvo, I just want to say that those of you who accuse liberals of being obsessed with Sarah Palin may have a point. On the other hand, take a look at this. I’ve been laughing over that picture since I first saw it a version of it on Facebook last night. It’s the reason I think political satire is impossible; how on earth do you compete with reality? Especially when reality gives you quotes like this:

City resident Mark Little said he’s so genuinely tantalized with Palin and her book that he said “it will be the first book I’ve ever read.”

Elsewhere in the same story:

“She’s got the common people’s touch, and we love her. She doesn’t sound like a highfalutin politician. She wants to save us from ourselves and she wants to give us the opportunities to be free.”

Somewhere. H.L. Mencken in smiling. No, he’s peeing his pants laughing.

And so we have arrived at Friday. Guess what I’m doing again in three weeks? Making another 48-hour challenge film! Oy vey. We’ve been invited to participate in the 48 Hour Shootout, for winners of the city competitions. Top prize: $1,000 and screening at the, no shit, Cannes Film Festival. Odds of beating the polished competitors from Los Angeles, New York and other dream cities? Pretty damn slim, but what the hell, we’re in. The rules are slightly different for this one: Everyone gets the same genre/subject and prop. Last year’s was “found money,” and the prop was a bag/suitcase/duffel containing $500,000 in prop dollars (or local equivalent currency, as this is an international competition). Nicely metaphoric for film hobbyists, I’d say. I only saw one of last year’s entries. It was about a guy who takes in a stray dog. The first day he takes it for a walk, and it finds a $10 bill. And so on.

So I’ll miss a weekend of Christmas shopping. So what?

And now it’s the last weekday of my husband’s vacation, and we are celebrating: First we’re going shooting, and then to the DIA to see the Avedon exhibition. Just try to put us in your demographic slot, Liberal Media! We are square pegs!

And I’m outta here. Have a great weekend.

Alan came back from a short fishing trip yesterday, which took him through western Michigan. Our many commenters who hail from that whiter, Dutchier, more pious part of the state can attest it has a lot in common with northeast Indiana — Fort Wayne with more blueberries, if you will.

Alan has a tolerance for commercial radio that I lack, so I rely on him to report on that front of the culture. He skipped around the dial, where every other talk station had a heavy Christian underlayment and a tone of barely muted hysteria and fury; the key phrase was “what can we do?” What can we do to stop them from bringing the terrorists to New York? What can we do to get Larry David arrested for pedophilia? (If you saw last week’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” you know what I’m talking about, although all of HBO came in for condemnation.) What can we do to stop the Communist/Marxist/Stalinist takeover of health care? And so on.

Someone was promoting this book: “Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them.” Hank Stuever made some funny throwaway comments about subtitles the other day, in the context of praising a nonfiction narrative that was so good, it didn’t even need one. (It was “The Good Soldiers,” if you’re wondering, and if you ordered it through the Kickback Lounge, I’d be obliged.) Green Hell’s reminds me of those idiot meetings we used to have in my newspaper days, when our overlords would pound into our heads that it’s not enough to simply tell a story, we must cover that “and what you can do about it” angle or risk endangering their end-of-year bonuses. I wonder if smart people on the right took enough MassComm or semiotics classes in between their MBA work to understand the pitch underlying “and what you can do about it.” Because the answer is right there on the book’s cover, although not spelled out: Buy this book, for starters. Or watch my show. I used to think Blue America was angry in the last days of the Bush administration, but that anger is like a demon that simply found another host. And a mouthpiece, but we will speak no more of she-who-must-not-be-named today.

Except this: One of my Facebook friends says she-who is book-touring through the Fort today. I figured she’d be at one of the mall bookstores, or some other venue that could handle the crowds, and she is, sort of — she’ll be at Meijer. For you non-Midwesterners, Meijer is a regional Wal-Martish big box. I guess I knew they sold books there, but it’s not like it’s a big part of their product lineup. But they are indisputably Real America, and she-who’s not even going at the one I used to patronize, in the southwestern suburbs. She’s going to the north-side Meijer, even realer Real America. They may have a hitching post outside for Amish buggies; a lot of businesses up that way do. Photo op alert.

Ain’t gonna study culture war no more. At least not today.

In lieu of bloggage today, a question for the crowd: How are you coming down on the mammograms-at-50-not-40 question? I’m curious because I have long suspected what is being said out loud today, that for women without a family history or other high-risk genetic indicators, having yearly mammograms before 50 is like chicken soup for a cold — it won’t hurt, but it probably isn’t doing any good, either. However, I’m willing to accept that I could be wrong, and I’m wondering what the wisdom of the comment section might turn up. It strikes me as a perfect example of why health-care costs are so high — we all want the Cadillac, but at Yugo prices. So: Anyone?

It’s time for another edition of Short Attention Span Theater:

In honor of “unfriend” being christened a word by the New Oxford Dictionary, I decided to do some. My Facebook is becoming ridiculous, not only a time suck but a ceaseless update on the lives of people I wouldn’t recognize with a gun to my head. In a few cases, they’re people I’d recognize, but cross the street to avoid.

And so (cracking knuckles): The guy who posted video of Red Skelton doing his pledge of allegiance routine? Buh-bye. The alter ego of one of my old writing-group buddies? Probably outta there, although her regular self stays; she’s doing some anonymous-blogging thing, but jeez, do I have to keep up with non-existent Facebookers, too? Probably gone. Dunno this person, but her status updates are funny, so she stays. And then my mind wandered, and I gave up that project. Net friend reduction: Two, one a non-existent person in the first place. The internet has destroyed my attention span.

I’ll do anything to avoid reading one more thing about S- – - – P- – - -, but every so often something squeaks past my P- – - -Filter that I’m not sorry about. This brief passage quoted by the guys at LGM, for instance:

When Gerald Ford took over, I knew who he was because I remembered reading about him and seeing him a picture in a scholastic magazine. He’d been America’s vice president then, sitting parade-style atop the backseat of a convertible, waving at the crowd. Now he was our president!

Note the exclamation point. (I’m assuming that “him a picture” part is the blogger’s transcription error.) When I’m editing our student reporters, I sometimes find myself on a search-and-destroy mission for exclamation points, and my stock line is to save them for the next time you are eyewitness to a Hindenburg explosion, and even then, hold your fire and let the facts speak for themselves. You hardly ever need exclamation points in mundane copy, and to use one to punch home the fact that a man who was once vice president is now president…well, let’s just say that’s a punctuation tool the rest of us get to use about you, Mrs. P:

I can’t believe a three-time cancer survivor in his 70s would choose this nitwit for a running mate; it’s not hard to imagine a scenario that could make her president!

Sometimes, even facts that speak for themselves need a certain boost. Sometimes they need a boost and afterburners:

…it’s not hard to imagine a scenario that could make HER president!!!!!

If a student turned in a story with that passage in it, I’d underline it and scrawl “word, dude” in the margin.

It is, of course, pathetic when a person older than 30 uses the word dude. Far from fading away, dude is now unisex; Kate and her friends call one another dude. When I was at the University of Michigan in 2003, I nearly blanched when a girl in my screenwriting class, a sweet-faced cherub with the sort of complexion S- – - – P- – - – would call peaches and cream, casually discussed what a pain her film-history professor was. Direct quote: “So I’m all like, ‘dude, quit jumping on my nuts. I’ll finish the paper.’” She was headed for Hollywood after graduation; I’m sure she fit right in.

Speaking of yawning gaps between the generations, the other day I was using a yardstick. Kate said, “Hand me the meter stick.” What are they teaching you at that communist school, I wondered. “It’s a yardstick,” I protested. “What’s the difference?” Kate replied. What’s the difference? I can’t believe this girl is the daughter of Mr. Measure 10,000 Times, Cut Once.

Roughly three inches, if you’re taking notes.

Jeez, what a train wreck. Next time, people. Until then, tip your waitresses, but feel free to stiff me.