A question for you frequent fliers: Do you ever fly first class?

I don’t travel often, but I fly at least once or twice a year, and in all that time, I’ve been seated in first class only once. It was when the puddle jumper from Key West to Miami broke down on the runway. (Add “do you smell jet fuel?” to the list of things you don’t want to hear two stewardesses murmuring to one another back by the galley.) I missed my connection, and I was rebooked back to Columbus in first. Without going into too much detail about what happened on my last night in Key West, let me just say that a first-class seat going home felt like a gift from… well, not from God. God would never have rewarded bad behavior that way.

But it was wonderful. The wide seat, the halfway-decent food, and especially the Bloody Marys, which started on the ground and continued without so much as a raised eyebrow until I drifted off into a lovely nap somewhere over Tennessee — it all felt positively luxurious, at least as compared to the conditions in steerage. (And this was 1980. Conditions in steerage weren’t all that bad.)

I had a friend at the time who traveled often for business, and always flew first-class. It was company policy that the consulting work they did had to include the expensive ticket, and she always said that if I ever needed to travel as much as she did, I’d understand why. Oh, I understand.

Over the years, I’ve known many people who brag of their ability to get upgraded to first, either through strategic deployment of frequent-flier miles, shameless flattery of gate agents, or equally shameless lying about bad knees and hips and pounding migraines. One guy just had the gift, he said; he had mastered the combination of grovel and assertive confidence that made the person with the power helpless before the request, and would unhook the velvet rope to the front of the aircraft.

I ask because there’s always a pause during boarding when you have to stand in the aisle right inside the door, and you can examine the lucky 16 or 20 or however many who have the good ticket, and while there are always the obvious candidates — the women with expensive jewelry, the guys whose innate imperiousness screams CEO, Sarah Palin — there are always a few wild cards, too. The ratty-looking guy with the enormous stomach — does he absorb the extra cost as a comfort measure? Because I wouldn’t want to pack that basketball into coach, either. The kid staring out the window with no evident parent — an unaccompanied minor? Someone tell her it’s not like this, and not to get used to it, she’s just getting the parental-guilt upgrade.

David Sedaris once wrote amusingly about flying first-class transatlantic on Air France — I guess when you sell books like that guy, your publisher doesn’t mind paying — and being asked if he’d mind if the crew seated someone next to him, someone who spent the entire flight sobbing. Having flown transatlantic in coach, I can say that if that kind of midflight upgrade doesn’t cheer you up, you’re probably suicidal. My transatlantic flight nearly featured a mutiny; a bigger seat would have made it that much easier to bear. (Confidentially, I’ve always wanted to make that crossing on a no-name freighter, maybe in an unused crew cabin. I could get some reading done and stroll on the deck twice a day.)

But the best comment on the subject was, of course, “The Airport,” one of the best “Seinfeld” episodes ever. I’d like one of those ice cream sundaes.

Bleh day, bleh me, bleh bloggage:

Said it before, saying it again: You should add Planet Money to your bookmarks. Especially if you’re not much of a money person.

“Deliverance,” the novel, reconsidered. I missed this last week, but the novel’s been out for decades — the reconsideration didn’t get stale in seven days.

Tonight marks the official announcement of the end of the war in Iraq. Years ago, when my crappy newspaper planned a special Victory in Iraq issue, my husband spoke up at the meeting and said it was a ridiculous idea, and that we’d be there for years. It got him scowled at, but it’s good to know he was right.

And here comes another hurricane. Time to get to work.

It’s good to get away from time to time — visit your buddies, observe the strange ugliness of the Bronze Fonz, swing over to Madison for pitchers on the terrace at the Wisconsin Union. Planned correctly, and with a lot of driving, a good weekend can be as much fun as a weeklong vacation. I’m grateful to all who hosted, cooked, drove and otherwise extended Dairyland hospitality.

The souvenir of the weekend — besides a mild hangover — was one of these, a Himalayan salt plate. I didn’t spend $60 for the big chunk, but I figured for $18, I could take a chance that my disk of pink rock salt might be an interesting addition to my batterie de cuisine. It certainly was an interesting addition to the TSA workers’ Sunday, as it got my bag yanked and hand-searched:

“Do you have ashes in here?” the guard asked.

“No, but I have a disk of Himalayan rock salt,” I said. “It probably has lots of minerals in there, too. Should I unwrap it?” He said I didn’t have to go that far, but he got a chuckle that anyone would buy a chunk of salt to serve food on. Obviously someone who doesn’t watch the Food Network.

Here it is, in case you’re wondering:

Impulse purchases — they’re what make our economy strong.

I’ll be getting away a little later this week, too, taking Kate and three friends for a two-day Cedar Point adventure. We chose this late date on the advice of fellow Michiganders, who swear by the secret week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indiana kids are back in school and the Mitten rules the peninsula. Short lines for roller coasters, etc. We shall see. I think the only thing we can reasonably hope for is good weather. Fingers crossed.

For the moment, however, it remains stifling. The last few days started wonderfully, with bright blue skies, low humidity and reasonable temperatures, but once again, something happened and the heat settled in on Saturday. I am ready to wear something that doesn’t need to be white and absorbent. I guess I’ll have to wait a while for that.

Can’t have too much summer, I guess. So let’s skip to bloggage:

Because I don’t expect the relatives of exceptional people to be exceptional as a default, I am not surprised to learn that Martin Luther King’s extended family is a little, how you say, daft. But I found this story on Alveda King, Glenn Beck’s new BFF, to be instructive:

Alveda is dismissive of (Coretta Scott King), who died in 2006, saying, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … Therefore I know something about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Oh.

(And may I just say, it was wonderful to be [mostly] away from the internet for two days, and thus be spared Beckapalooza? I may throw my laptop away.)

Things you shouldn’t do when you’ve been drinking: Try to climb out on a window ledge on the 22nd floor to take a picture.

Finally, something that frosted my cookies last night and continues to do so: The egg industry says it’s time to say farewell to poached and sunny side up. Because how can they possibly keep 50 million damn chickens healthy? I’m now paying $2.50 a dozen at the farmer’s market I guess, what? Permanently.

Must run — manic Monday.

Bronze Fonz, Milwaukee riverfront.

Sorry I’m late today. School registration this morning, followed by school-supply buying, followed by FIX THE PRINTER NOW SO I CAN PRINT LIZ’S BIRTHDAY CARD followed by this.

I’ll be late tomorrow, too. Actually, I’ll be gone tomorrow. Doing a little traveling this weekend, off to see the Trowel Tart in Wisconsin. I’m flying. In case you were wondering what it costs for a 75-minute flight from Detroit to Milwaukee, the answer is: Too damn much. Northwest’s heretofore reasonable fares between its Midwestern cities went pfft when it was swallowed by Delta. Still, it offers multiple flights daily and the only non-stops, although I love to see what Travelocity’s bots can cobble together for me — sure, I’d love to go from Detroit to Milwaukee via Atlanta and Houston with a flying time of 11 hours; and I’d save $20? Sign me up.

But never mind the cost — how often do you get to visit your best friend? Never often enough. Plus, a side trip to Madison is on tap, and that includes our other great pal, Dr. Frank. Who is now, a quick Google tells us, is on YouTube. Look at that mop of Irish hair. You’d never know his mother was Eye-talian.

So, with that, I make this a lame-ass fly-by. Let’s go right to some bloggage:

Stories you can’t make up, from the pharma beat: There’s a new drug to treat impotence. It’s made by a South Korean firm called Dong-A Pharmaceuticals.

As of late yesterday afternoon, this guy was on track to be the next Susan Boyle, but what the hell, maybe you haven’t seen it yet. Most excruciating candidate interview ever.

While we’re on the topic of amusing videos, via Hank and Kim Severson, a fine collection of Wendy’s training videos from the ’80s. Go ahead and make fun, but remember — that’s when Wendy’s had its mojo working. Now? Well, Dave is surely spinning like a lathe.

Did you know the case that led to this week’s stem-cell ruling started with a complaint filed by the people behind the “snowflake babies” publicity stunt? I’m sure that had nothing at all to do with it landing on the docket of a right-wing judge. No, not at all.

OK, I’m off to pack and groom. Have a great weekend, all.

A few people forwarded me this list today, about the worst bedbug infestations in the country. To my amazement, Cincinnati tops the list. Columbus — such a clean city! — is right behind. Detroit is No. 5, Dayton No. 9, and Baltimore — hey, Lippman! Feeling itchy? — is No. 10.

For the record, I have never seen a bedbug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a problem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were moving west. I blame washed-out Brooklyn hipsters leaving Williamsburg to move back in with mom and dad in Worthington. Along with all their little friends!!!!!

The first person I knew who picked up scabies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got scabies, then crabs, then hepatitis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the scabies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever having unprotected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get scabies — he told me, scratching his arm — from sitting on the wrong couch. Yikes.

Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many travels by car, he refused to even consider stopping there. (The prices for more respectable lodgings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Holiday Inns.)

Every night I troll the nation’s newspapers and wire services for health news, and I am here to tell you: From microscopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buying another piece of upholstered furniture used, and anyone who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspection and fumigation.

Which just dislodged a memory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the soldiers begin walking home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requiring all to strip naked and submit to having their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simultaneously scrubbing down with lye soap, followed by a home-brewed dysentery remedy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remembering, perhaps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inexorable black hands holding medicine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fascinating book.

Whenever I mention it, I teeter on the brink of a doctoral dissertation. I’ll spare you and skip right to the bloggage:

Why does everyone assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cattin’ ways via a supermarket tabloid? I’ve suspected from the beginning the revelation came at her gynecologist’s office, delivered with averted eyes and maybe involving, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.

Rich people of means, please learn to grow old gracefully. Plastic surgery might fool some people in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a monster. Your wife, too.

With the retirement of the Crown Vic Police Interceptor, competitors are rushing to fill the market for police cars. The Freep showcases the contenders, including one from an Indiana startup called Carbon Motors. One of the police stations around here has a tricked-out Mustang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spending it.

Meanwhile, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Suburban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tolerate ’em, at least.

Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Payless. And they include a fetching fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Woodward some grim winter.

Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.

So, every year in August there’s this thing in Detroit called the Dream Cruise. People in classic cars take over the outside lanes of Woodward Avenue between 9 Mile and… I dunno, a few miles beyond that. Loop around, rev their engines, etc. It’s very grass-roots; it went on for a while before it became an official event, and they don’t even shut down Woodward to non-cruise traffic. (Although you’d be a fool to try to drive anywhere in the area for the whole weekend.)

My friend Michael has his office on Woodward, and while in past years he’s avoided the place like nuclear waste, the last couple he’s decided to embrace it, and hold a client-appreciation party Friday and Saturday. We went on Friday. You can find Dream Cruise photo galleries all over the web, but I give you but one:

I guess this is a 1957 Chevy custom job. The year of my birth! A friend of mine got one — not the limo, heh — from her classic-car-crazy father, for her 16th birthday. I drove it a couple of times, although its totally cherry condition made me nervous; if my friend’s dad knew how much she liked to party during her lunch breaks, he never would have given her the keys. If you ever saw a turquoise and white ’57 Chevy tooling around northwest Columbus and environs in the mid-’70s, that might have been us.

Truth be told, I don’t really get classic-car restoration and cultivation, but then, my husband has a boat, so I guess I really do.

A few years ago I did a story on hybrid drivers who “hypermile” — try to get the best possible gas mileage out of their vehicles. One was a big domestic-industry booster, and drove a Ford Escape hybrid. He and a few of his hypermiling friends put a little unit together and rolled in the Dream Cruise, and got booed. He was genuinely stung, but I think he underestimated the douchiness of the local boosters. Classics are a tricky business, as thousands of inheritors of lovingly restored Packards or Model Ts have discovered when they tried to put their dad’s baby on the market and were greeted with a parade of yawns. The classic-car buyer is middle-aged or older, and interested in recapturing his lost youth, i.e., the car he seduced his girlfriend in when he was 17. For people who are 45 today, that was only circa 1980 or so, and I’m sorry, but for my money that’s when the magic went out of the market for good. The Honda Accord and Toyota Corolla of that era were great cars, but it’s hard to imagine anyone getting teary-eyed over a restoration of one today.

I once interviewed a guy in Fort Wayne with an underground garage, a real Batcave with secret entrance and everything. He was into Corvettes, and had at least a dozen down there, all medal-winning restorations. He didn’t do them himself, but wrote the checks for others to do so, then drove away to the car shows. “Let me show you something,” he said, raising the hood on a 1970s-era monster, one of those with a 427 or 454 or some ridiculous V-8 like that. He pointed to spots inside the engine compartment with sloppy paint overspray. There was also a big, splattery drop of a totally different color.

“I saw that, and about hit the roof,” he said. “And my guy tells me, no, this was the quality of workmanship for the mid-’70s. When they’re judging, they look for those details.” Someone tell the UAW. This cracked me up.

Lots of Corvettes in the Dream Cruise, needless to say. About a million Mustangs, of every shape and size. Chrysler Plymouth Barracudas, Super Bees, all that rumbly muscle stuff. I looked in vain for a ’66 Corvair, the car I learned to drive in, the car my mother (and I, and all of us) loved, the reason she never trusted Ralph Nader again. And then I looked at Kate. Bored. To. Death.

I have to teach this girl to drive a stick shift in a couple years. It would be nice if she would show at least a minimal interest in the pedals.

So, some bloggage? Let’s see what we’ve got:

The stem-cell ruling. Sigh. Conservative jurisprudence — proudly marching backward! I hope this guy is right.

Miners trapped for months, a 60-mile-long traffic jam that hasn’t moved in more than a week — and so the human race plods onward.

Man, I’m gonna kill the inventor of the gas leaf blower. For now, though, I think I’ll go to the gym.

Last week the roof project finally concluded with a little mop-up: A guy came out to rehang the back-side gutters and install a couple more downspouts. Now our brand-new roof will shed water efficiently. I pause to stick my finger in my cheek for a weak pop, and then I wave it in the air and say woo. Big effin’ deal.

This is new for me. In the past, I had pride of ownership in almost every repair we made, to this house and to our last house. There’s something about caring well for one’s house that’s always resonated with me, but not so much anymore. It’s true that a new roof doesn’t satisfy like a new kitchen, but it still felt virtuous, because you were adding to your home’s resale value and maintaining the property, which reflected on the neighborhood and made everyone rest a little easier at night.

But our real estate market can be explained in a headline which I swear I’ve read 400 times in the last five years in the local weekly: Has the market hit bottom? The answer is always the same: Maybe. The answer is always wrong, because the correct answer is: No. So putting a roof on my house, which used to feel like forgoing a new dress to put the money in the bank, now feels more like tearing up hundred-dollar bills and throwing them into a flushing toilet. And as long as we’re reading the Obvious News, it seems I have lots of company.

When this recession is over — if it ever is — and the historians start to sort it out, I don’t think anything will be as important, in the long run, as what it did to real estate. It’s still my main disappointment with Barack Obama, that he didn’t launch a big show trial on Jan. 21, 2009 that would have marched the Wall Street shitheads who wrecked the housing market before a tribunal of foreclosed and washed-out homeowners and a judge that was a combination of, ohhhh, Al Sharpton and Judge Judy, say. His gavel would be oversized, and he’d be welcome to use it on both his bench and the defendants’ heads. A guillotine would be right outside the courtroom, and we’d use it until the rope broke and the blade dulled.

That, at least, would show we take the damage these people did seriously. People who don’t own houses or apartments get a little impatient with this, and I guess I don’t blame them, but trust me: This crash hurts everyone, owner or not. For those of us who don’t live in the places where the middle class are shut out of owning real estate — which is to say, most of the country outside of New York City, San Francisco and much (but not all) of Los Angeles — our houses are the most expensive thing we own, and are far more than a place to lay our weary heads and store our record collections. The sale of my parents’ house provided half their retirement stake. They were of the generation that saved up for a down payment, shopped carefully, bought and stayed put. No flipping or trading up for them. Three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, bought in 1962 and sold in 1995, paid off and worth seven times what they paid for it.

My generation was different, but not Alan and me, so much. This is our second house, in our second city. I pay extra principal on our house every month, although God knows why. Optimistically, it’s worth half what we paid for it. Recovery of our purchase price might be 20 years off. The Detroit Metro has special problems, to be sure, but the whole country is sweeping up this wreckage, and I will never forget who caused it. (Hint: It wasn’t Barney Frank.)

For years, for practically ever, real estate was the safest investment you could make. My mom started bugging me to buy a condo as soon as I had a full-time job. You couldn’t lose. Everybody pays something for housing, after all, and you might as well pay yourself, plus the mortgage interest is tax-deductible. And housing always went up. It didn’t rise at the redonkulous rates of recent years, but a steady 1 to 3 percent was a given.

And while I may be overstating the virtues of ownership, I still firmly believe that a neighborhood of owners is, in the broadest terms, better than one of renters. When you have a financial stake in something, you pay more attention to it. You care if the local schools are good, even if you don’t have children in them. You don’t like it when your neighbors let their lawn go to prairie (unless everyone else’s is prairie, too). You keep the walks swept. It’s the broken-window theory on a less dramatic scale, and for generations, it worked.

But that’s only part of it. Local governments rely on property-tax revenues to provide services. When property values slide, so do tax receipts. We’re only beginning to see these problems, cities letting streets go or not replacing lighting or laying off firefighters. And how long did I say it might be before recovery?

When you think about it, pretty much everything in our economy is predicated on the idea that we’ll always be growing. (Certainly our health-care costs have done that.) A few flat years we can handle. But a full-on retreat, a crash? This is new for me. Last week our boring old city council got a little testy over some penny-ante travel for the city clerk, nothing big, but one of the members grumped that they were looking at another enormous shortfall the following year, and nickels and dimes add up. I can’t imagine what they’ll be fighting over in three years. Probably which one gets to quit first.

My house, my millstone. But with a nice new roof.

So, a little bloggage? Sure. Scott Rosenberg at Salon looks at a phenomenon I’ve been seeing in my news searching for a while now: The content farms have gamed Google. Don’t be evil!

“I think his dad’s bought them off, sometimes. He’s practically selling dope out of the trunk of his car. I have to give him one thing, though. Watching his personality disintegrate made me give up pot for good. Well, that and the fact the shit makes you so fucking retarded these days. The last time I smoked was spring last year. I was so paranoid I walked out of the house and hid in that big wall of shrubs by the sorority house. And the girls started that goddamn singing. ‘Together forever. Together forever.’ Do you have any idea how much that sounds like you’re eavesdropping on some kind of blood sacrifice?” — why I added Coozledad’s blog to my RSS feed. I was missing too many of these, or discovering them days later.

Another great Tom-and-Lorenzo Mad Style entry, this one on Francine Hanson, played by the sublime Anne Dudek.

I’ve taken a casual interest in Stephanie Seymour ever since Alan and I discovered the “November Rain” video on MTV. One of us would always say to the other, “She dies in the end.” Today, the NYT did a silly-season Sunday Styles front on the disintegration of her marriage to Peter Brant, described as “a taller, more dashing version of Buddy Hackett.” Her “November Rain” role was described thusly: “she portrayed a bride who dies.” Everyone remembers her!

So have a great Monday, all. Mine will, as usual, be busy.

Well, that’s one way to man up a minivan.

I have a meeting at 9 a.m., which is to say, in eight hours. That’s followed by another meeting, an interview and the usual family obligations. My plan to have Me-Time Friday — or even a quiet hour to update my stupid blog — just collapsed, but ah well. Here, have some bloggage:

Roger Ebert, making a little list.

What is Christian Reconstructionism, and is that why Sharron Angle is such a nut case? (Some of these alarmists need to spend a year in Indiana. This stuff is just normal there.)

As seen on TV, all you people just need to get your minds out of the gutter. It’s a shake weight, OK, you shake it. Sheesh.

I may not have much today, but maybe if MMJeff isn’t too busy, he can lay out the Holy Stones of Newark/Glenn Beck story in bullet points. It’s actually kind of fascinating.

See you next week, all. Or maybe at Saturday morning market.

Wow. A new Pew Research Center survey now says that 1 in 5 Americans think the president is Muslim, and perhaps as many as a quarter believe he was born outside the U.S. I pause now for a moment and thank whatever gods may be that I don’t live in Indiana anymore, because I would surely know a few of them, and my head would have exploded by now with the strain of keeping a civil tongue in it. Hell, for all I know my current neighbors are totally down with this. One already told me her Polish priest had said he hadn’t seen so much socialism since he left the eastern bloc. I flapped my hand and said, “Gotta run.”

Truth be told, I’m trying to be more tolerant in my old age. Fat chance, sure, but I’m trying. It’s been my experience that when people are upset about something, they don’t say, “I fear a lonely death,” they say, “The president is a Muslim.” One sounds pathetic, the other like you’re engaged in civic life. For as much as they bitch, moan, and bitch some more, most people have very little to fear from individual presidents, with obvious exceptions — soldiers, Foreign Service officers, etc. Their local city council and school board representatives make more decisions that they’ll see the results of day-to-day, but even there, things are all out of whack. What starts as a curriculum change to encompass AIDS education gets all wrapped up in anxiety over one’s baby growing up and developing an inner life that does not welcome a parent, and the next thing you know you’re standing at a podium begging the board not to undermine your home teaching, which is that AIDS is God’s punishment for homosexuals.

No, not begging. Demanding. The police had to take a geezer out of a recent city council meeting in Eastpointe this week. (I’d link, but the DetNews site has been hosed for the last hour.) He hit the police chief on the head with a cell phone. He was upset that the council is considering a tax increase to cover shortfalls in the city budget. Eastpointe is a blue-collar suburb, and like every other municipality around here and probably around you, too, the council is grappling with how to sustain operations when property values, and tax receipts, have fallen off a cliff. They cut and cut and cut, and finally say, OK, here we go, it’s either a tax increase or we all start burning our garbage in the back yard. Chances are excellent that geezer will still be paying less in taxes than he did even a year ago and certainly five years ago, but for now this is worth hitting a cop with a cell phone.

What would he have done if a city councilman had leaned forward, smiled gently and said, “There’s help, you know. There are people out there who want to help you. Contact your local council on aging.” Probably showed up with a rocket launcher.

Meanwhile, thanks to Jason T., for showing me I need some new T-shirts:

Or maybe this one:

Source.

Well, it’s plain I’m a dry well at the moment, so let’s forge ahead and get the hell outta here:

This isn’t as funny as Coozledad’s account of how his bull, Llewd, got out of the pasture one night and tried to breed his own daughter, but there’s something about this clip that amuses me, and yes, I will stipulate that at the moment, I am not feeling the milk of human kindness.

Art Caplan, everybody’s favorite medical ethicist, on what happens when hospitals say treatment is futile but families say, “Press on.”

I love the internet, because there are people out there who will watch “The Rachel Zoe Project” for me, and make it far more entertaining.

And now I’m gone. Apologies for lameness. It’s just my way, today.