I slept poorly last night, and what else is new. Woke five minutes before the alarm, picked up the iPad to see if Trump kicked the bucket overnight (alas, he didn’t), and texted my boxing-workout group chat that I was going back to sleep.
I did not go back to sleep. Laid there for five minutes, got up and got dressed, hit Starbucks for a giant cappuccino and was the first to arrive. Hit the bag for 47 minutes, did the core set, came home for eggs and more coffee and at the moment? I. Feel. Great. The message is either to push through discomfort or get the extra sleep, because I promise you it will not last.
Might as well get this done first, then.
Big news here yesterday: Former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan dropped out of the governor’s race. His stated reason: The world has become even more divided since he announced he was leaving the Democratic Party to run as an independent, and there’s no longer a path for a uniter who seeks to bridge the divide, join hands across the aisle, and all that stuff. Big cities being cynical places, there’s a large cohort who believe this is a flimsy explanation, and speculate on two alternatives: One, that he’ll be the next president of the University of Michigan, or two, that he’s working a scheme with Jocelyn Benson, the presumptive Democratic nominee (primaries aren’t until August), where he’ll join her on the ticket as her lieutenant governor.
I can be shockingly naive at times, but I think I believe his initial explanation. He left the party in 2024, after the disaster of the presidential race, and regard for the Democrats was at a low ebb. It’s still not exactly high tide, but even haters are going to vote against the ongoing Republican disaster, and a few lefties are doing very well, especially in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed, a Bernie bro, is leading the polls for the U.S. Senate nomination. I have doubts about his ability to win the general, so I’m still on the fence. It is incredibly difficult to run an independent campaign in the best of times, the higher you go on the ladder. Which is to say, most successful indie campaigns are at the municipal level, a few more at the state-legislative tier, and not many above that. In times like these, it’s almost impossible. I’m not interested in joining hands across the aisle at the moment. I’m interested in taking a flamethrower to the other side of the aisle, in fact. So I get it.
But like I said, I’m often wrong and I could be very wrong here. I don’t see someone like Duggan willing to settle for second banana to Benson. The presidency at U-M would be a cushy perch, but honestly, not that influential. So we’ll see. I need to talk to smarter people before I lay money on anything.
And now, here we are: Movement weekend! The big techno fest, where you don’t even have to set foot in Hart Plaza, where the festival actually is, to participate, because bars and clubs all over the city will be bumping house music through Memorial Day. I’ve got my eye on a couple of opportunities to drink a cold beverage and nod along with the beat. So that’s where I am this Friday.
I hope your weekend goes swimmingly.
Jeff Borden said on May 22, 2026 at 8:56 am
It is weird to me that I slept better while working in a high stress job than I do as a 75-year-old geezer with almost zero responsibilities.
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Jeff Gill said on May 22, 2026 at 9:34 am
My wife informs me that after the Memorial Day ceremonies on Monday, we fill out my Medicare paperwork, so I got that going for me. (Gunga galunga.)
Big changes here in Brigadoon with the long-time family owned grocery being bought out by Lucky’s Markets, so the Ross family can enjoy a well-earned retirement (all the sons are already on Medicare). Soft opening last night, official opening at 8 am; I went and got in ten minutes early as they were letting people come on through. It’s jarring, but familiar, and the prices for everything are gently higher. I hope they do well for all sorts of reasons.
But I found it fascinating, after getting back from yet another retirement party in Columbus for one of Joyce’s colleagues, to sit and listen to Paul McCartney (sorry, Sir Paul) talk to Stephen Colbert about how much he dislikes change. Paul. McCartney. Who with John & George & Ringo utterly transformed popular music & celebrity culture, in some ways starting in that same space in Feb. 1964, which performance on Ed Sullivan’s show I believe I dimly recall… in part because my mom thought they were “not such a big deal.” She was partial to Petula Clark, the Beatles not so much.
Colbert was not interviewing for irony on his last night, but it certainly grabbed me. Paul McCartney saying as the Late Show ended in the Ed Sullivan Theater that “I really don’t like change.” Because that’s part, or all, of why my mother didn’t like his band: they were clearly a significant change to her, and she didn’t like it. Now everything is new to her, every day, and she’s happy. I’m just trying to eke the last bits of amusement out of listening to a Beatle talk about how his phone updates and cookie acceptance pop-ups drive him crazy, “because I really don’t like change.”
Well, you say goodbye, and I will keep trying to say hello. (Oh, and the Elvis Costello/Jon Batiste song was probably the ending before they could confirm Sir Paul, and with all due respect, it made a better close, not that I didn’t enjoy the McCartney eyebrow, then his pulling the switch, and a final nod to Tommy Westphall. But the ghostlight ensemble was just right.)
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alex said on May 22, 2026 at 10:16 am
I fell asleep shortly after Colbert’s hello/goodbye show began, awakening on the couch at 3:48 AM with my contacts still in and a cocktail glass full of melted ice and Crown Royal undisturbed beside me. I suppose I can try again sometime when my beverage is coffee.
Speaking of Medicare, I need to choose soon. I’d wanted to go with State Farm for Medigap but they don’t offer Part D. A friend recommends Humana because they do both, plus they offer the Silver Sneakers program which pays for gym memberships at participating facilities. I was looking at prices and the supplemental insurance is still gonna sock me, but not as bad as my ACA plan, from which I received a letter this week informing me that the carrier is pulling out of Indiana after 2026.
Awaiting delivery of a 500,000 BTU weeding torch so’s I can go all scorched-earth on invasive honeysuckles, cattails and other pests. Too bad it won’t be here in time for the long weekend, for which we’ve devised no plans whatsoever.
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Mark P said on May 22, 2026 at 11:02 am
Perhaps the one bright spot in my life right now is that I can sleep. I am usually asleep within a few minutes of lying down, and I sleep until my bladder taps me on the shoulder. Then I go back to sleep. The rest of my life … well, I miss it.
The great thing about regular Medicare is that when you need to see a doctor, you make an appointment. No arguments about referrals, no arguments about what treatment you need, just go. So far, at least. The current “administration” seems to like insurance companies, so we may see Medicare transform, before our very eyes, into something more like Medicare Advantage.
I don’t wish harm to anyone, but I wish Satan would just collect all the
Republicans right now and take them straight to a burning pit of fire and shit. I mean, why wait?
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Julie Robinson said on May 22, 2026 at 11:31 am
Almost every night, the 3-5am worrying shift, sometimes 4-6 or the worst, 5-7.
Our trainer is working on Memorial Day, so we are too. But then we’re going to the movies with the whole family, Prada 2 for the ladies and the Mandalorian thing for the guys. Think I want to rewatch Prada 1, along with the Colbert finale. I thought about staying up for about two seconds.
Good luck with Medicare choices, all. Definitely don’t get Advantage plans! Although I’m actually pretty happy with our current one, which does included gym membership. The referral process is just contacting our primary care physician, who does the rest. We don’t have to wait for permission from the company like we did before. Downside is the drug copays, and D’s heart meds are the worst. Still, previous generations with his condition would have died, so I like this alternative.
Lucky’s opened a bunch of Florida stores in 2019 and they were a brief bright alternative to the Publix monolith, but they didn’t survive Covid. Maybe Jeff’s is a different company?
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Deborah said on May 22, 2026 at 12:39 pm
My sleep routine has been this way for a few years now: I go to bed ridiculously early, somewhere between 7:30 and 8:30, I wake up around 1, spend about 1 or 3 hours reading or doom scrolling then back to sleep for another few of hours. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do during the day. Every once in a while I’ll sleep through with no wee hours wake up, but that’s rare.
I did a stupid thing out of desperation because I couldn’t get an appointment with my dermatologist until September about two aggravating sun spots (pre-cancerous) below my lower lip. I had some left over chemo cream from a few years ago when I had a bunch of sun spots on my forehead etc. That stuff basically burned off my skin, but no more sun spots on those places. So I thought I’d put some on my current sun spots right below my lips, big mistake. You put the cream on before bed, wash it off in the morning and put Aquaphor on it all day long. Only that cream was not meant to go on lip skin, which it’s hard to keep away from when the spots are directly below my lower lip. Ouch, ouch, ouch, now my lower lip is essentially one long blister across the length of it. Stings and burns like hell if I try to use salt or lemon juice or drink an alcoholic beverage. People probably think I just got botoxed. I’m thinking about covering the unsightliness of it with a mask but the mask touching my lip would be excruciating.
This is the same kind of cream that Trump must have used on the side/back of his neck, when he had that raw area showing above his collar and everyone speculated about what could be wrong with him. It takes a few weeks to clear up, when I had to use it on my forehead it took more than a month to go away. This is all because I spent too much time out in the sun growing up in Miami, before anyone thought to use sunscreen, or even knew it existed.
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Suzanne said on May 22, 2026 at 1:52 pm
I agree with Julie to avoid the Medicare Advantage plans. They seem great until something really goes wrong and you need something that is out of the Advantage plan network. My plan (Mutual of Omaha) doesn’t include free Silver Sneakers perks or free toothpaste and OTC meds like my mom’s Advantage plan does, but she has always complained about the drug plan with them. And when she needed some rehab, they were very stingy on paying.
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Jeff Gill said on May 22, 2026 at 2:59 pm
Julie, this Lucky’s is an Ohio small chain of family run grocery stores, so probably no relation there at all. A Saltzman family runs them, and I think I’ve now met most of them, between BZBA and this morning. https://www.luckysmarketsohio.com/
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LAMary said on May 22, 2026 at 11:19 pm
No matter what time I go to bed I wake up at 6:30. I feed the cats, eat my daily avocado and 2 boiled eggs and have a small cup of coffee. Then I walk three miles. That’s six times around the loop streets with steep climbs and steep drops. I say hello to every dog who seems friendly and see little kids being bundled off to preschool (Harris and Rosie are favorites). I see Peggy who was an exec at Cedars Sinai, raising money and generally being brilliant and sweet. She walks her dog Wilshire, who was given to her by her son, a policeman at the Wilshire police station about 10 years ago. I see an occasional coyote and greet them with an evil smile and a small rock thrown hard enough to discourage their visit to my little schlepping loop. I see the two boys who shoot baskets in their driveway waiting for their mother to drive them to school. They speak English, French and Spanish. I say hello in Dutch to keep up.
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Gretchen said on May 23, 2026 at 12:54 am
I’ve no patience for the both-sides, hands across the aisle sorts. We have one who looks to be a favorite for Senate here in Kansas. If they haven’t noticed that the other side has been burning bridges and burying the ashes fo 30 years, they’re not qualified.
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basset said on May 23, 2026 at 2:35 am
Stayed up and watched Colbert, looking for some kind of statement or call to action or something at the end… afraid not. Got off to a slow start too, I didn’t recognize a single one of those people interrupting from the audience.
So, the question now is… what to watch after the news now? Nothing, probably.
Having our usual holiday weekend here, no plans, no invitations, no trips to the country because I’m still coming back from my knee operation and can’t drive, Mrs. B hasn’t driven in years.
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Dave said on May 23, 2026 at 2:45 am
And here I thought most everyone knew who Bryan Cranston is, Basset.
I wasn’t expecting Paul McCartney, who knew.
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basset said on May 23, 2026 at 2:51 am
Meanwhile… our event for this weekend was literally in the front yard. Jr. had just parked his car on the street and come inside when an unlicensed, uninsured 16-year-old driving her mother’s car without permission ran into his little Nissan and knocked it 48 feet (we measured) into the grass and up against a tree.
Both cars will more than likely be totaled, according to the police and the wrecker driver… no injuries apparent but the girl was taken to a hospital to be checked out before a trip to juvie for charges of no license, no insurance and joyriding. Have to wonder just how fast she had to be going to push Jr’s car clear across the yard like that.
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basset said on May 23, 2026 at 2:58 am
No, Dave, not familiar with him and have never seen “Breaking Bad” or any of the shows on his wiki page. Guess I’m just out of touch.
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Peter said on May 23, 2026 at 3:13 am
Bassett, I event seen Breaking Bad either, and I haven’t seen many episodes of Malcom in the Middle, but Bryan was Tim Whatley, Jerry’s dentist who converted to Judaism for the jokes, in Seinfeld.
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ROGirl said on May 23, 2026 at 5:15 am
Kramer accused Jerry of being an anti-dentite.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ythrdCsOFJU
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basset said on May 23, 2026 at 5:50 am
No “Seinfeld,” either. Sorry.
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Dave said on May 23, 2026 at 10:25 am
That’s ok, Basset, you’re still my Beatles authority and I suspect, other fine music of our teen years, young adult, era.
Breaking Bad sucked me in after our son kept saying, “You’d like this show, Dad”.
It’s an awful thing to lose your car when you had no intentions of changing cars. Driving, how hard can it be, probably one of her thoughts on a bad judgment day.
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Mark P said on May 23, 2026 at 10:35 am
Basset, the unlicensed driver is probably aiming for “habitual offender.” My cousin is in his early 30’s and currently in prison. Stupid traffic offenses is the way he started. More than 10 years ago he was already known as a habitual offender for stupid shit like that. He found that shit don’t pay the bills.
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Julie Robinson said on May 23, 2026 at 11:34 am
basset what a pain in the butt. It’s always a huge hassle even when it’s the other person’s fault.
I’m prescribing you a Beatles marathon to lift your spirits. We went to a concert of John Williams music last night and it took me right out of myself. I’m still smiling and replaying it all in my head.
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basset said on May 23, 2026 at 1:39 pm
Now that I think of it, this is three consecutive totals for Jr, none of them his fault:
Hit from behind while stopped at a light
Hit from the side by a driver fleeing the police… they had him pulled over and just as Jr came by he made a run for it
Yesterday’s incident
Not attached to the car or anything, but I sure would like to have the first one back… Camry with 305k, probably would be past 400 by now.
And we won’t go into how Mrs B has managed to total two Volvos. Surprised to see how little it takes to write one off.
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Mark P said on May 23, 2026 at 2:03 pm
My friends had a nice Mini Cooper that was involved with what seemed a minor front-end collision. The body shop repaired it, and it was immaculate. But when the insurance rep looked at it and figured the electronics repairs, he totaled it.
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susan said on May 23, 2026 at 3:25 pm
A friend totaled one o’ them fancy heated/defrosting with turn signal outside mirrors (driver’s side). Just THAT cost him more than $2,000 to replace.
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Julie Robinson said on May 23, 2026 at 3:39 pm
Man oh man, we’ve been lucky to not need any body work lately. That’s ridiculous.
And speaking of ridiculous, a house in the neighborhood just sold for $740,000. 1332 sf, 1 1/2 bathrooms, 3 bedrooms, no interior pix so you know it’s a teardown. It is on the lake, but still.
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basset said on May 23, 2026 at 4:17 pm
Same deal with one of the Volvos, Mark… hit on the right front corner and didnt look bad, I drove it onto the rollback. insurance said the electrical stuff was all up in the corner that got hit, rather than take a chance on having to track down problems now and forever they wrote it off.
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alex said on May 23, 2026 at 6:06 pm
When I hit a deer with my Toyota Tundra pickup with quite a bit of mileage on it, I pleaded with State Farm not to total it and they didn’t. It spent 45 days in the body shop at a Chevy/Buick dealership where they kept bugging me to sell it to them, but I wasn’t interested in parting with it then and I’m still not, even with 317K on the odometer.
Just made this NYT recipe that popped up the other day and it’s great: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1025349-orzo-salad?unlocked_article_code=1.klA.EOAG.bZL8caYAzA_u&smid=share-url
Used the brine from the kalamata olives as part of the dressing and went heavy on the mint.
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ROGirl said on May 24, 2026 at 9:43 am
After his network show ended, Colbert aired an episode of the cable access show Only in Monroe on youtube and I ended up watching the entire thing. He had me at Kaye Lani Rae Rakfo, one of the co-hosts (hometown girl), and Miss America 1988. Since it’s Michigan-centric, other celeb appearances include Jack White, Jeff Daniels and Eminem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJTXB5uT_C4
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Jeff Gill said on May 24, 2026 at 9:02 pm
And apparently Paramount is trying to shut down reposting of that tour de force. Only in Monroe!
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Brandon said on May 24, 2026 at 11:04 pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/paramount-denies-suppress-stephen-colbert-public-access-show-1236605374/
“Stephen Colbert’s return to Monroe in the Only in Monroe episode was financed and produced by CBS Studios and was posted on Stephen Colbert’s YouTube channel in collaboration with Monroe Community Media and The Late Show’s YouTube channels,” a CBS spokesperson said. “As is our regular practice, we send copyright notices to unauthorized websites that post copyrighted content from CBS and our network/studio talent such as Stephen Colbert. However, for this episode, have decided to waive further enforcement of this standard industry practice until additional review.”
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Jeff Gill said on May 26, 2026 at 7:33 am
The Granville Memorial Day parade & program get a nice overview here: https://www.thereportingproject.org/see-photos-licking-county-commemorates-memorial-day/
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