Psych! It was TACO Tuesday after all! And now we’re in a position where Iran is collecting tolls on a strait that was free a month or so ago, the one that we totally don’t need, that isn’t our problem, that should be secured by the countries that didn’t start this war and never wanted it. And also, it’s a ceasefire, but Israel is still bombing sound Lebanon.

Well-done, boys. I smell a Nobel in your future.

Good lord, am I tired. Spring break was last week, and this week it’s back to the 5 a.m. alarms — with one at 4:20 a.m. — and it is killing me. I’m trying different strategies to cope; this week I’m trying to return to bed when I get home at 7-ish, abjuring coffee until I reawaken sometime between 8:30 and 10. Today I awoke to seven million emails and twice that many texts. I don’t think this is working. Then again, it’s Wednesday, the 4:20 a.m. day. Approximately eight more weeks of this bullshit, and then I’m off until next fall.

I’m an early riser by nature, but it depends on getting to bed at a reasonable hour, and the Trump administration isn’t making that easy to do. One of a million reasons I hate them.

Over the weekend we watched an above-average rock documentary on Netflix, “Becoming Led Zeppelin.” It concentrated only on the first two albums, and how the band members developed into the musicians who could make them. (Spoiler: They started as actual musicians. Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were session players of long standing, and both could read a chart. Jones could write one.) That sent me down the YouTube rabbit hole for one of my favorite Obama clips, the one where he’s introducing Led Zeppelin at the Kennedy Center Honors, his charm and humor on full display. And that led me to that evening’s performance of “Stairway to Heaven,” by the Wilson sisters, Jason Bonham and a choir of dozens. If you have a few minutes, both are worth your time. It will remind you keenly of what we once had, and what we lost.

Time to get into the shower. Have a good rest of Wednesday, all.

A belated happy Easter. It didn’t quite sneak up on me, but it also kinda did. Kate, her boyfriend two other friends came over for brunch. One of us was a vegan, so that was a challenge, but extra-firm tofu can be dressed up a million ways. I made frittatas for the five non-vegans, a bunch of sweet potato hash with the tofu, fried potatoes, a nice Meyer lemon cake. It was fine. Food is never the most important part of a party; the company is. It was good company, and we had a nice time.

I did, anyway.

But I did fall asleep on the couch after everyone left, or at least dozed while watching “Michael Clayton” for the twelve thousandth time.

God, I remember holidays when they were the occasion for a genuine unplug, especially one that falls on a weekend, but we can’t do that anymore, can we? Not if you want to be a conscientious citizen:

That guy could ruin… anything. I don’t even have a metaphor. And yet, here we are, surrounded by cowards and toadies and hand-wringers, and somewhere out there is a monster who will assume the weight of that straw and, back broken, start planning — or stop planning and start implementing — a plan to damage as many Americans as possible. But the shithead will be cosseted behind layers of security. Someone else will suffer, and he won’t care. It’s just how he is.

So I don’t have much for you today. Let’s wait for Real Spring to arrive and hope for the best.

Early in our relationship, which is to say a long time ago, Alan gave me a very nice fountain pen. A Montblanc Meisterstuck, to be exact. I think he paid $140 for it, at a pen store on Calhoun Street in Fort Wayne. I’ve used it off and on over the years, because a fountain pen isn’t just something to write with. You gotta maintain it, too, clean it and keep the correct ink source nearby. At one point it spent several years in retirement, in the pencil cup on my desk, until I decided it was a shame to have such a beautiful pen and not use it, so I took it to the fancy-pen spot at the luxury mall in the suburbs, and they cleaned it up and returned it to service.

The thing about this pen are the details. The six-pointed white star on the tip of the cap, for example. It’s supposed to suggest a snow-capped mountain, as the company is named for the highest peak in the Alps. The pen-store clerks will tell you that in the Arab states, where luxury goods are in great demand, the company sells pens with just a round white tip on the cap, for obvious reasons. The nib has 4810 etched on it, the height of Mont Blanc in meters. Google will tell you the correct number is 4805.59, but the higher number is based on the height including the ice cap. Climate change probably has it closer to the Google number, so it’s fitting that this century-old company sticks with the bigger one.

I’ve been using it ever since. I find handwriting a to-do list is more satisfying than making one on my laptop. I also do a little journal-writing, the occasional check, this and that. When I travel, it goes along, in the elastic pen loop on my planner. I like it. The other day, I idly looked up what it would cost to replace, should what often happens with pens come to pass.

Reader, I nearly died: $810.

A friend of mine is in the Use the Good China camp. Open the special bottle, use the crystal, use the good china. What are you saving it for? Why leave it in the cabinet? And I agree, mostly. At the same time, I went to the pen place where I buy my Montblanc cartridges and bought a $35 Pilot fountain pen, plus a box of ink cartridges. I now use the two pens on alternating days, but only the Pilot will leave the house. At least I don’t have to worry about someone stealing it, although it is a cute purple. The Pilot blue ink is a little brighter, a little bluer. Here’s Fancy Pants and Purple Pop side-by-side.

If you’re wondering, I also use luxury pencils. I have a box of Blackwing 602s in my desk drawer, a sharpened one on my desk. I hardly ever write with pencils, but when I do I appreciate every little thing about the Blackwing. I gave Kate a box for Christmas, to go with the NYT crossword-puzzles book in the same package. (And a pencil sharpener, the small appliance people forget until they need one.)

It’s the little things. The things you touch. The things that are connected to the work you do in a primal way. I do nearly all my writing on a keyboard, but if you’re a writer you should have a decent pen. Now I have two.

Did anyone watch the president Wednesday night? I tried, or rather, I heard it coming from Alan’s iPad. But I noped out after five minutes, figured I’d read the NYT story the next day. Didn’t miss anything.

Happy weekend, all.

There was a guy I used to see on bike rides in Fort Wayne. A cross-dresser, I guess you’d call him. “Transgender” might be the current term, but from the gossip about this guy, he had a wife and lived as a man, and wasn’t trans in his daily life. But when he got on his bike he was wearing a cheap blonde wig that looked like it came from Party City, a black lace top and enormous fake boobs underneath. I mean: E. Nor. Mous. They looked like balloons. He’d add wraparound sunglasses and blast down the bike path, turning heads the whole way. He never stopped to talk to anyone. Just a blonde, balloon-boobed sight to see.

Well, as often happens, if you live long enough, you learn some things. As soon as I saw the leaked photos of Kristi Noem’s husband, I knew where I’d seen it before, and I learned it’s a fetish with a name: Bimbofication.

If you didn’t see the pix, I just described the look. And apparently Bryon Noem is deeply into it, deep enough that he goes online to chat up sex workers catering to his preferences, one or more of whom dimed him out to the Daily Mail.

I’m not here to kink-shame. The guy on the bike path was harmless. Bryon Noem is likely harmless. It explains, perhaps, why his wife was able to have an affair with Corey Lewandowski without even bothering to conceal it. I learned they’ve been married since 1992, longer than Alan and me. They have adult children. They’re grandparents. They have an understanding, I’d bet.

In a Democratic administration, such a revelation would have Republicans clutching their pearls and grabbing smelling salts with the other hand. Today? Eh. Avert your eyes, nothing to see here.

Me, I’m more worried about tonight’s presidential address. That he will declare victory in Iran is a given. Alan thinks he’ll also announce we’re leaving NATO, far more worrisome.

As usual, Putin is laughing his ass off. World War III, dead ahead.

No Kings weekend! I was a little concerned when I saw the date. Marcy 28 is early to plan an outdoor demonstration at this latitude, as years of frozen Opening Day Tigers fans can tell you. And to be sure, it was chilly. But the sun was out and the sky blue and I put my T-shirt over my longjanes and sweater, and was fine:

No sign this time; the shirt would have to do. The Grosse Pointe crowd was hundreds strong, on both sides of Mack Avenue, and pretty much a reflection of the area — older, white, pushing strollers and walking dogs. After I got my steps in walking both sides of the street, look who I ran into:

Kate, collecting signatures for Abdul el-Sayed, the most progressive Democratic gubernatorial candidate.

From there, I headed to Clark Park in Detroit for one of that city’s demonstrations. Very different vibe there. Younger, leftier, more interested in, what’s the word? Intersectionality. There were lots of tables for Palestinian rights, labor rights, etc. Buy a keffiya and support the cause, etc. The main reason I went to this one was to meet a friend, contribute to the headcount and then repair to one of the dozens of great Mexican restaurants in the neighborhood. It’s important to stand up to injustice, but you gotta leave time for lunch.

As always, the signs were great. Here’s one man’s opinion of the top 10 nationwide, and I agree. Especially the one about Tiger Woods. Timely!

Speaking of which, I’m torn between human empathy for an obviously troubled and drug-addicted mess of a human, and the guy who is dating Don Jr.’s ex, accepted the Medal of Freedom from Trump and seems to be on Team MAGA. You know what I mean? On the one hand, get him some help (again) and on the other? Fuck that guy.

Funny, the things you learn when you look up a Trump, in this case Don Jr.’s ex, Vanessa:

Trump Jr. had proposed to her with a US$100,000 ring (equivalent to $165,000 in 2025) that he had received as a gift from a jeweler in exchange for proposing to her in front of paparazzi outside of the jeweler’s store at the Short Hills mall in New Jersey.

And still she said yes. The whole family, pieces of shit to the last one.

While we’re on trivial subjects like this, check out what our tax dollars are buying (and don’t give me any crap about how it’s “privately funded.” That’s only how much the president will stuff in his pockets) on the White House grounds. The specs on this new “ballroom” are insane. There are steps that lead nowhere, sightlines disrupted, etc. And what’s more:

As recently as October, the president was still increasing the ballroom’s capacity, the kind of decision needed at the concept stage. And the White House has said it plans to begin building in the spring, a timeline that would mean construction documents would have to be prepared even as the design was still under review. (Before a judge demanded in December that the project seek review by these two commissions, the administration appeared poised to skip them entirely.)

He ruined the Rose Garden, is in the process of turning the Treaty Room into another guest bedroom (for who?!) and now has dug up the walkway on the Colonnade between the executive offices and the residence. He’s putting down black granite, having already fucked it up with that stupid “presidential hall of fame.” I hope he slips and falls and smashes his skull on it. Maggots will likely pour out.

OK, then. I seem to be losing my cheerful mood, post-protest. Gotta finish the taxes and do a few other chores. Later, all.

My school district is being sued in federal court. The story might be paywalled, so I’ll quote a bit more liberally than I usually do:

A parent filed suit in federal court March 23, saying the Grosse Pointe Public School System violated his First Amendment right to free speech and also defamed him when it banned him from district buildings after he posted a video critical of a LGBTQ+ flag in a classroom and suggested the teachers were indoctrinating students.

According to the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit, Gary Pruitt was attending his child’s back to school night at Parcells Middle School in September 2024 when he saw LGBTQ+ flags in the school. He contacted the principal to ask what was being taught to students. The principal referred him to the district’s interim superintendent, who suggested he contact the school board.

…Later that fall, Pruitt posted a video of the flag in a classroom to a Facebook group for district parents. In the video, he said the flag represented “radical programming being forced upon children by adults.”

He also posed a question: “Do you want to continue to let these groomer teachers push their distorted worldview upon your children … or would you like to stand with us in speaking out against it?”

Afterward, the district banned Pruitt from its school buildings and other district facilities, with, Pruitt said in the lawsuit, police showing up at his home to deliver a letter informing him of the ban. Pruitt said the middle school posted a photo of him in the middle school office, identifying him as a trespasser, which caused other students to ridicule his child.

Pruitt saw the flag during back-to-school night, and later entered the school (seemingly after hours) and walked the halls until he found it, shooting video all the while, giving running commentary as he did, then posted it on Facebook. Today he wonders why the school won’t let him back in.

I keep thinking about the word “emboldened.” The worst people in the country are feeling emboldened now. They want veto power over everything they don’t like. Tolerance? What’s that? If there’s a gay pride flag somewhere in my kid’s school, that just means SOMEONE is telling SOMEONE that being gay or lesbian or bi or whatever isn’t a hanging offense, WHICH IS NOT WHAT I’M TEACHING THEM AT HOME AND IT WILL NOT BE TOLERATED.

It’s true that parents go a little nuts around middle school time, when kids start to be more sexual. (I do not believe in a latency period, Dr. Freud.) It’s freaky when you realize that one day your little girl will probably have sex with someone before she marries him, or your son might be interested in boys more than girls. I recall getting Kate the HPV shot when she was…about 12, I think. There was a little shudder, thinking that my baby would eventually be someone else’s, and not in the same sense. But I recognized it as normal, acknowledged it and let it go. Some people can’t do that.

Why do these folks live in cities, I often wonder. Move to some rural outpost and tie your kid to a fencepost like a dog. Not too many pride flags there. (The same percentage of gay people, however. And groomers.)

Grr.

I’m in a crabby mood, as you can see. The rest of my week is going to be pretty busy, so this may be it until the weekend. Or maybe not! One never knows. Enjoy the midweek.

I saw this on Bluesky today. Using an image because I’m not sure why, but enjoy, if that’s the word:

Friends, I’m starting to think we’re in trouble here. I know the cabinet is stuffed with toadies, each one more toadying than the last, but at some point people — even his own people — have to be getting a wee bit concerned. They’re not all pushing 80. The soft bed of wingnut welfare is not unlimited in size and scope; at some point the grift will run out, and there will be no more book contracts, sinecures at right-wing think tanks or panel spots on cable news. Everyone has to be thinking exit strategy, and not just from Iran.

Meanwhile, our portfolio continues to drop in value as the stock market declines. Young people can’t find jobs — in a labor shortage. The other day I watched that Netflix doc on “the manosphere” and I was struck by…well, by a lot of things, but at one point the host, Louis Theroux, talks to two young men who idolize one of the rancid “influencers” Theroux is profiling. These boys are not, needless to say, the sharpest knives in the drawer. Rather, they’re the kind of dumb fucks who will pay an extra $20 to get their comment featured during a live chat for a second or two, who believe these trashy grifters who claim to have made £1,500 before they got out of bed, because their crypto or supplement brand or parlay or something else rose in value. Of course these two youngsters want their own piece of the pie, and talk about red pills and blue pills and all that stupid shit. (I had to explain the concept of red and blue pills to Alan, who never saw “The Matrix,” bless his heart.)

“The 9 to 5, that’s the matrix,” one said, and all I could think is, son, you have no idea. Once upon a time we all had one, yeah, one job. If you went to college, that one job was the e-ticket to at least the middle class and maybe higher. It was often a pain in the ass, maybe you considered your own soul-crushing, but at 5 p.m. you could slide outta there like Fred Flintstone down the dinosaur tail and start the portion of your life known as “personal.” You weren’t reachable 24/7. You didn’t have to be “making content” all the time to keep your idiot followers happy.

And in time, even the bad job memories fade. I recently learned one of the bosses of my youth is in ailing health, and I called him and we had a perfectly pleasant 45-minute catch-up. All was forgiven. (This is not true for all bosses, I should add.)

I started work on an essay that began with a working title — the unquiet death of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy — but is evolving into something else. I was thinking offering it to the Freep, but it’s a little too women’s-pages for an op-ed. I’ll let it marinate. But it gets into this, a little bit, the idea that once upon a time we weren’t all grubbing for the few dollars that haven’t been hoovered up by Jeff Bezos, et al, and life was better.

Meanwhile, how many of you saw Zohran Mamdani’s St. Patrick’s Day message?

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

[image or embed]

— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@mayor.nyc.gov) March 17, 2026 at 11:23 AM

A generational talent, this guy.

How was everyone’s weekend? I spent mine working on our taxes, and I must say, TurboTax has lost a step; it’s not giving me the performance I’ve come to expect. I’m going to investigate FreeTaxUSA next year, but for this I’m committed, and it’s not going well. Stupid Intuit spent too much money on lobbyists, and not enough on user interface.

I did find time for the Sunday swim, followed by the vast feast to fill the hole that inevitably asserts itself in the shower afterward. Then I felt logy all afternoon, but I closed my rings with a vengeance, so who cares.

Have a good week, all.

Apologies for light blogging this week. I’ve been having trouble sleeping, which isn’t helping anything. This morning I was drowsy after three cups of coffee, but still had to go feed Kate’s kitties (short tour for the girls), so I stopped at Starbucks and got the Not Quite Dan Campbell Cappuccino (three shots) and feel somewhat fortified. At least until the next crash. Onward!

As I’m the approximately twelve millionth person to note, the firehose of shit coming out of Washington and the Middle East is nearly impossible for a mortal to keep up with, but one relatively minor story pushed its way into my peripheral vision, and that is the insanely toadying federal arts commission(s), all of whom are hand-picked for maximum ass-kissing, and you probably already heard this, but are you fucking kidding me:

For nearly two centuries, the White House’s main entrance — framed by a row of graceful Ionic columns — has been a signature image of the seat of American power.

Now the Trump-appointed head of a federal arts commission is proposing to replace them with a more ornate style favored by President Donald Trump. Those more decorative columns, a style known as Corinthian, are considered the most luxurious in classical architecture and appear on buildings such as the U.S. Capitol and the Supreme Court. They have long been deployed on Trump’s properties, and the president has handpicked them for his planned White House ballroom, too.

“Corinthian is the highest order [of column], and that’s what our other two branches of government have,” Rodney Mims Cook Jr., the Trump appointee who chairs the Commission of Fine Arts, a federal panel charged with advising the president on design matters, said in an interview last week. “Why the White House didn’t originally use them, at least on the north front, which is considered the front door, is beyond me.”

Really? It’s beyond you? The story goes on to say the president hasn’t asked for this, and Cook hasn’t discussed it with him, but like all good whores, Cook knows how to give the customer what he wants before he asks:

Cook’s proposal to overhaul the front entrance to the White House, known as the North Portico, reflects a common dynamic in Trump’s Washington, where the president’s deputies and allies often anticipate and implement his desires — and frequently upend decades of tradition and norms in the process.

This is Rodney Mims Cook Jr.:

He looks exactly like the kind of guy who’d prefer a Corinthian column to an ionic one. The difference, for those of you who forget your Comp Arts slides, below:

Ionic:

The ones at the White House are simpler than this, just the scrolled top and no fluting on the uprights.

Corinthian:

As you can see, Corinthian columns just cry out for gold leaf, don’t you think?

Anyway. That wasn’t the only lamprey-level ass-kissing for the week. Here’s what the Commission of Fine Arts committee on coins wants to do:

The proposal calls for a 24-karat gold coin depicting Trump leaning on a desk with clenched fists, based on a photograph taken by his chief White House photographer and now displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Such gold coins from the U.S. Mint typically sell for several thousand dollars.

The proposed design:

Dig those cheekbones on Pigface.

I know that compared to the increasingly probable WW III, this should be minor stuff, but it’s especially grating, and I want these people humiliated and punished, then humiliated and punished again. Etc.

And I want them to leave the White House columns alone. Haven’t they ruined it enough already?

OK, to the TRX straps, then a shower, then a nap. I can feel the fatigue gathering behind my eyeballs already.

I guess spring is almost here. St. Patrick’s Day is Tuesday, Sports Connections today was all about the NCAA tournament, the Oscars are tonight, we’re in Daylight Saving Time and I didn’t fall asleep after lunch today, even though it was huge. (Culver’s. I regret nothing. Well, maybe the chocolate shake. Defense: I had just come from a 2K yard swim, and that is HONGRY work.)

Most of you will read this after the Oscars. I only made one prediction on my 2026 Bingo card, that “One Battle After Another” would win best picture, but I fear it will be shut out by “Sinners,” or maybe “Hamnet.” I’ve seen “Sinners.” It was fine, but OBAA was better, in my opinion. I am not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences, so my opinion is a fart in the wind.

I suppose most of you saw that Metro Detroit made the news last week, when a pissed-off Lebanese immigrant drove through the front door of a synagogue preschool and exchanged gunfire with the security guards before shooting himself in the head. The first stories noted that he’d been recently divorced, and unnamed family members had been killed by Israeli missiles in recent days. As I sad more than once after learning this news, an explanation is not an excuse. Today, the Israelis claimed his brother was a member of Hezbollah.

I think we can all agree it was a tragedy, even though no children were harmed and one security guard suffered a broken leg. Violence begets violence.

And what’s happening in the other big news of recent days? The president is asking our allies — do we still have any? I mean, besides Russia? — to help escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, an act so cheeky it would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. “You! Get over here and clean up my mess!,” etc.

This NYT story on the death of the Giving Pledge — a briefly trendy push for the mega-wealthy to give half their net worth to nonprofit causes — is interesting. When I did election work in 2020, in particular the verification of absentee ballot requests in Detroit, I had a brand-new laptop to work on, which might have been purchased with the money pledged by Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation. Alas, the idea of protecting free and fair elections is now BOR-ing, and Zuck has taken his money elsewhere. Bezos built a yacht so vulgar it requires a second yacht to follow it around with the toys and helipad. I hope that laptop still works for someone in Detroit, somewhere.

Meanwhile, the president’s toady on a federal arts commission also wants to replace the White House columns with something fancier. Probably gilded, too.

Alan says, “I don’t want to pay $5 a gallon for gas, but I’d happily do it if it means the end of this.” I’ve never agreed more.

Meanwhile, the U.P is right now getting anywhere from one to four FEET of snow, and a blizzard to boot. I can’t wait to see the pictures.

OK, then! On to the Irish takeover of the Dakota Inn! Happy St. Paddy’s Day, and let’s get through this week without a nuke going off somewhere.

Man, this may be my last year lifeguarding. Even for an early riser, a 5 a.m. alarm four days a week* is…a lot, as the kids say. My certification is good through next spring, so we’ll see, but I’m tired of being tired.

Spring break is in a few more weeks. We’ll see how I feel then.

* On the fifth weekday, the alarm goes off at 4:20 a.m.

Anyway, there’s more than the usual bloggage, presented with some guilt feelings, because paywalls. Here’s a column I wrote for the Freep this week, but it’s definitely paywalled and few of you are Freep subscribers, or even live in the state of Michigan. It’s about my feelings on the anthropomorphizing of animals, especially pets, and that link goes to the un-paywalled version.

And here’s another Freep column, not by me, that simply enraged me. Why? Getta loada this:

When a colleague and I arrived at the North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan, on Feb. 24 to visit a potential client in U.S. Customs and Immigration detention, we were completely unprepared for the indignity that awaited: Being told that we had to take off our bras.

Yes, this is a lawyer writing, and it goes on:

Things got even weirder when I tried to make it through a metal detector. After removing my coat and shoes, the machine beeped for a third time as I tried to pass through. That’s when the screener asked if I was wearing an underwire bra. When I said “yes,” she informed me that my bra was the problem, and that I could not get in without passing the screening.

“I can give you scissors to cut the wire out,” she said coldly. Given the price of bras, that wasn’t happening. I headed to the car and angrily flung my bra off. My colleague, also wearing an underwire bra, did the same. Braless, we were finally allowed in.

I’d have flung it in the screener’s face, personally, or maybe wrapped it around her neck.

The cruelty is the point, as we say.

Finally, a fabulous piece from the London Review of Books, looking at two of them (books, that is), one on Randy Andy and his grifting family, the other Virginia Giuffre’s memoir of being trafficked to him, and many others, by Jeffrey Epstein. The cheek of these people:

Years ago, before it was fashionable, some of the youngsters in the family were calling Andrew ‘the Nonce’, and there was general dismay at the Yorks’ reckless avarice. The British royal fantasy has a few sustaining mythologies, and one of them is dignity, a quality defined, after Andy and Fergie, more by its absence. The late queen can be held responsible for much, but nobody could accuse her of seeming to enjoy her role. For the Yorks, however, enjoyment was everything, and the notion of royal sacrifice, arguably a red herring in the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was finally obliterated by their actions.

…The Yorks charged Hello! magazine a quarter of a million quid for pics of their ‘homelife’. They took £126,000 from the Daily Express for an interview. She charged £50,000 for her vague involvement in a film, Young Victoria, and signed on to start the second leg of the Whitbread Round the World Yacht Race in Montevideo, demanding £38,000 worth of first-class air tickets to get there. While other poor buggers in the family were opening jumble sales in Inverness, Andy and Fergie were sniffing out freebies in the dodgiest corners of the world, as confirmed in Lownie’s remarkable catalogue of half-hidden truths.

Spoiler: The Andy-sired princesses are no better.

OK, then. Wednesday is my 4:20 alarm, so I’m going to wrap this, pour another glass of wine and go to bed early. Really early. Happy midweek, all.