I don’t get to the office as often as I should, although I do when I can, and I’ll be going more now that the weather is breaking and commuting isn’t such an ordeal. What’s the truism? If you want people to get things done, let them work at home. If you want them to be creative, put them together. Lately I have a lot to get done, so I’ve been staying home.
But today I went in. I had to do a radio show first, then headed to the office. Three doors from my building, a homeless man brayed, “You a sexy lady! Yeah, you like Beyoncé. You woke up like this!” I guess I should have scowled, but the thought of being compared to Beyoncé is so absurd I had to laugh. Another homeless guy heard this and added, “I second that!”
I should get into the office more often. The other day one of my colleagues was talking on the phone, looking out the window, and saw a hooker servicing a client in the alley, next to a dumpster. The best moment? When she stood up, lifted her skirt, turned around and offered the goods, and the john backed off, waving his hands hell, no.
She said that when she told this story later, the most common reaction is, “Did you record it?” No.
I realize those two anecdotes may make it sound like I work in some kind of cesspool of vice. I don’t. The hooker story was amazing, as Detroit has cleaned up its downtown and central city so much that you just don’t see that sort of stuff at all anymore, let alone in broad daylight. As for the homeless guys? Well, they have eyes, don’t they?
A little bloggage:
This has been going around a couple days, but it is hilarious and probably NSFW: Martha Stewart, absolutely killing it at the Justin Bieber roast. Of course she didn’t write the material, but she delivered it so well, you’d think she did.
Drew Miller, a Detroit Red Wing, almost lost an eye when he was hit in the face by a skate on Tuesday. Fifty stitches. Very scary. But when he appeared at a presser today and I saw the picture, all I could think is, when that thing heals, he is going to be the sexiest man alive. Scars are so fabulous, and a good facial scar is the best of all. I know how sick that sounds, but you’re looking at the country’s other No. 1 Omar fan.
The Hoosier fiasco continues. A friend there emailed this week to say, “I am fully fed up, fed up of course with dingbats who claim that RFRA doesn’t target gays, but also fed up with people who act as if this is an anti-gay Kristallnacht. It was a hamfisted sop by Rs for their reactionary base, a kind of consolation prize because the anti-gay marriage amendment was shot down. RFRA was a clumsy overreach by the ruling clique, and now they and Gov. FumbleBlunder are eating the shit they cooked in their own kitchen.” Shit cooked in their own kitchen — that’s it exactly. Meanwhile, here’s yet another analysis, by Amy Davidson at the New Yorker. There’s not a great deal new here, but a good turn of phrase that doesn’t bring to mind shit in a kitchen:
Pence said that the Indiana law “simply mirrors federal law that President Bill Clinton signed in 1993”—which is correct only if the mirror is the kind that adds twenty pounds when you look in it.
Have a great Thursday, all. We’re over the hump.
Dexter said on April 2, 2015 at 12:31 am
Lots of great topics but I am a little stunned because a lady I first heard of over 50 years ago and have heard sporadically over the years has passed away. Unless you are over 60 or a retro-Beatles fanatic, you likely never heard of Cynthia Lennon, because she and her husband John called it quits many decades ago. Still, she’s the mother of John’s son Julian Lennon, and for Beatles fans this is huge and sad news. She was 75.
Now as to sexy shout-outs, I get a daily spam email from someone named “Adrienne” , titled “YOU LOOK SEXY I’D LIKE TO …” and I never open up the email to read what Adrienne wants to do with or to me. I think it started when my 20-year old grandson visited…young men like internet porn, and Adrienne got my account somehow. I wish she’d find a good man, get a termnal STD and die and leave me alone. Bitch.
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Sherri said on April 2, 2015 at 1:46 am
That’s not even the worst skate-related hockey injury. Clint Malarchuk was cut on the neck by a skate, severing his carotid artery. There’s a really good 30-for-30 short about Malarchuk and how the injury affected him: http://grantland.com/features/clint-malarchuk-20-year-road-recovery-latest-30-30-documentary-series/
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Jolene said on April 2, 2015 at 3:14 am
That hockey player was pretty handsome even without the scar, and, man, is he lucky. That the scar is both above and below his eye, but the eye is unaffected, is remarkable.
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Dexter said on April 2, 2015 at 4:07 am
I was watching live TV when it happened. Drew waved his glove at the bench as a distress signal and just made a hard bee-line for the locker/trainer’s room. Scary stuff.
As everyone knows, many hockey skaters have lost front teeth (and others) I was recalling a great Fort Wayne Komet, Lionel Repka, who played almost 50 years ago. Lionel was ruggedly handsome, full head of curly or wavy hair. Now back then skaters did not wear helmets, so you could see their faces. When Lionel smiled at a kid and waved during pre-game skate-arounds, he’d grin and his look transformed: he became Mad Magazine’s Alfred E. Newman. Here’s a photo of him with his store-bought teeth in…he actually favors a modern-day Bruce Springsteen here: http://fwnextweb1.fortwayne.com/jg/projects/komets/records/images/repka.jpg
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David C. said on April 2, 2015 at 6:17 am
A facial scar from skin cancer removal like I have probably isn’t sexy. Just a hunch. It seems like the back story makes the scar.
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Jolene said on April 2, 2015 at 6:43 am
David, just make up a story, ideally something involving both risk and gallantry.
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Alan Stamm said on April 2, 2015 at 7:41 am
“By the way, is wedding pizza a thing in Indiana? Just asking . . .”
— Charles Blow, column in The New York Times, April 2, 2015
http://nyti.ms/1y2fbNw
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alex said on April 2, 2015 at 7:50 am
So the Indiana legislature has reportedly reached some deal with business leaders that would preclude any sort of discrimination in the “religious freedom” law. It would still have to pass a vote and Pence would have to sign it, and it’s not a foregone conclusion that either will happen, but those who would oppose this compromise are likely to get a lot of attention for their votes and their reasons why.
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beb said on April 2, 2015 at 8:12 am
Scars are not sexy. At least not big ones. A long time ago i saw a guy who had an accident cutting up timber. The chain on his saw flew off and smacked him in the face. He face (and this was after it healed) looked like hamburger.
Hockey players also didn’t use to play with mouthpieces, which is why so many of them lost so many teeth.
David Letterman, famous Indiana native, says that Indiana is not the state he remembers growing up as a kid. I was born and raised in Indiana and have to second that.
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Suzanne said on April 2, 2015 at 8:13 am
Dexter, I get emails from “Adrienne” too. She thinks I’m hot. Who knows where these come from? I’m the only one who uses my computer, so it must be that some site I visited sometime sold my email to someone. Who knows? Every site you go to anymore wants you to set up an account with username and password. A while back, I tried to delete some of my accounts at sites that I no longer visit much and found that it was nearly impossible. I guess my name, address, etc will be in the Dell.com website forever.
I am getting tired of all this Indiana craziness. The governor should not be governor, the bill was pretty obviously passed for the reason everybody thinks it was, and the fact that the people that passed it have been shocked at the backlash shows me how out of touch with reality they are. Indiana leads the nation in methlab busts, has an HIV epidemic brewing in the Southern part of the state, and the jobs aren’t flowing across the borders like Daniels and Pence promised if only we let business have their way and let them pay nearly no taxes. But not to worry. We’ll keep that 5% of the population that is gay in check. It’s enough to drive me to drink, but not on Sunday.
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alex said on April 2, 2015 at 8:22 am
Dex and Suzanne, one thing I learned recently is that if you use Adobe apps like Flash Player and Acrobat that are “free,” they do come with a price — adware/malware. This is supposedly how they recoup the cost of providing stuff free. You have to buy the programs if you want to be free of the kind of crap you’re describing, or obtain other programs to combat ads and malware.
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Deborah said on April 2, 2015 at 9:01 am
I get hundreds of crap emails a day, some go directly into a junk mail folder that I can “delete all” at once. The rest have to be deleted one by one, which is a pain. I suspect all of you have this happen too. It must work for the senders because why else would they do it?
Every hockey game I’ve ever been to, maybe 10 or 12 in my whole life, has been bloody. But it is an exciting sport to watch.
Omar was my favorite character too.
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adrianne said on April 2, 2015 at 9:06 am
OK, Dexter and Suzanne, I can finally admit it: I AM the Adrienne who’s been sending those come-on emails all these years. I thought that by cleverly disguising my first name by changing one letter I could evade discovery, but no.
btw, thanks for sharing Martha Stewart at the Justin Bieber roast. She was fabulous!
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4dbirds said on April 2, 2015 at 9:24 am
Now I’m depressed. I thought I was the only one Adrienne said was hot.
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MichaelG said on April 2, 2015 at 9:32 am
It’s OK, 4dbirds. You’re also the only one to get an email from that Nigerian prince.
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brian stouder said on April 2, 2015 at 10:29 am
4dbirds, adrianne never told me I was hot, so the inevitable conclusion is –
she has pretty good taste!
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Joe K said on April 2, 2015 at 11:35 am
If anyone has a chance, go to you tube and Google James Corden late late show and Katie Couric, playing a April fools joke.
Pilot Joe
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alex said on April 2, 2015 at 11:36 am
And “the fix” is in. And the beat goes on. So although it’s still legal to discriminate against gays in most of Indiana, you won’t be able to invoke religion as a defense in the places where it’s not.
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LAMary said on April 2, 2015 at 11:37 am
A lot of Russion women think I’m hot.
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nancy said on April 2, 2015 at 11:51 am
Alex, that’s a glass-half-empty response. They had to add LGBT protections for doing business, which was the whole point of the IRFRA in the first place. Yes, it’s still legal to discriminate on a broad basis, but you gotta bake that wedding cake.
Here’s the AP’s lead, which someone just emailed me: “Indiana’s Republican legislative leaders have unveiled changes to the state’s new religious objections law that has faced criticism it could allow discrimination against lesbians and gays. The amendment to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act released Thursday prohibits service providers from using the law as a legal defense for refusing to provide services, goods, facilities or accommodations. It also bars discrimination based on race, color, religion, ancestry, age, national origin, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or United States military service.”
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alex said on April 2, 2015 at 12:17 pm
So we get to rub the right’s face in wedding cake. Including that pizza-faced gal from Walkerton. She could use a little frosting.
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Sherri said on April 2, 2015 at 2:11 pm
Beb, mouthguards are only a some protection against a frozen puck or a hockey stick. Mouthguards are typically only worn on the top teeth, for one thing, and a puck or stick to the mouth area can shatter bone, which can knock out teeth in a mouthguard. A full face shield would be the best protection, but almost no NHL players use one. College hockey requires one.
Most pro sports teams have a team doctor at games; NHL teams also have a team dentist on hand: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2332368-blood-sweat-and-teeth-wild-nights-with-nhl-dentists
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Bruce Fields said on April 2, 2015 at 2:12 pm
Everybody gets spam eventually, it’s nothing you or anything in your house did. There’s no way to keep your email address secret when everybody you correspond with knows it.
If you don’t see lots of spam every day it’s probably just because your mail provider has really good spam filters.
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nancy said on April 2, 2015 at 2:18 pm
Are any of my Michigan readers planning to vote no on Proposal 1, and wouldn’t mind talking about it? Email or drop a message here.
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Sherri said on April 2, 2015 at 2:46 pm
Bruce is right, there is no way to eliminate spam, because even if you’re careful with your email address, your friends may not be as careful, and lots of services you sign up for not only want your email address, they want to troll your address book as well.
I do spend some effort to try to keep my spam away from my email address that I use for corresponding with friends, by never using that email address to buy things on the internet or to sign up for things. I use a different email for that. I have several other email addresses that I almost never read if I need an address that I don’t want associated with the email I use to buy things.
That doesn’t make my correspondence email spam-free, but it keeps it to a dull roar. My ISP’s spam filtering is a little too sensitive (even after I turned it down) and catches too many false positives, so I regularly check the spam folder at my ISP, and the amount of spam there is a fraction of the spam that I get on the email I use for buying and signing up on the internet.
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brian stouder said on April 2, 2015 at 5:06 pm
A clip which will be all over the news this evening – or at least it should! – will be when, earlier today, chief-goomba of the Indiana legislature, Brian Bosma (short for ‘bossman’?) was asked if the stipid law they passed was intended to persecute gay people – and he said “Nothing could be truer….uhhh errrr – nothing could be further from the truth!!”
You can’t make this stuff up
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Deborah said on April 2, 2015 at 6:02 pm
Calling Dr. Freud, calling Dr. Freud.
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alex said on April 2, 2015 at 6:09 pm
One kind of spam I’ve been seeing is from friends whose address books have been hacked. At first blush, it looks like an e-mail from a familiar contact but then it starts out with “Did you see this amazing product on Oprah?” Or Dr. Oz, etc. then there’s a link I don’t dare click on but looks like weight loss gimmicks or online pharmaceuticals.
For all of the hoopla about the RFRA this week, I must say there hasn’t been any water cooler banter around the office. I’m grateful that people are businesslike and the general ethos there is to stay out of the fray of the culture wars. Which is what the state Chamber of Commerce and companies like Eli Lilly have been telling the Indiana legislature to do for years. Now maybe they’ll listen instead of sowing discord. On the other hand, I’ve been avoiding one watering hole where I’m sure the air is acrid with more than the lousy food. The owners love our money but they’d probably be the last people to put a sticker on their door that says all are welcome. One of the last times I was there I had some doofus telling me about his conversion from avowed atheism to being a Southern Baptist. I wonder who taught him this method of marketing his church as it surely couldn’t work on any authentic nonbeliever or anyone devoted to another creed.
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Sherri said on April 2, 2015 at 6:37 pm
Jeremy Affeldt is a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants and devout Christian; everybody who knows anything about Affeldt knows that Christianity is a big part of his life. Here is his most recent blog post:
https://jeremyaffeldt.wordpress.com/2015/03/31/beacons-of-love-3/
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David C. said on April 2, 2015 at 6:53 pm
I know there are a lot more Christians like Jeremy Affeldt and our Jeff(tmmo)than otherwise. I wish they would speak up more and not let the haters have the microphone so much. I guess they’re too busy getting stuff done than acting like moralistic exhibitionists.
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David C. said on April 2, 2015 at 6:53 pm
Make that Jeremy Affeldt.
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Deborah said on April 2, 2015 at 7:15 pm
Sherri, that was a great link, not only do I agree with the theology, but also the urban planning. Building a gargantuan mega church in the wasteland of suburban sprawl just can not be sending the right message about inclusiveness etc.
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Connie said on April 2, 2015 at 7:39 pm
Nancy, the latest issue of our local monthly, Westend Monthly just had an editirial against Prop 1.
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