Grim-somnia.

‘Twas a rough night last night. Bad insomnia, probably not helped by a late dinner of Alan’s chili, but never mind that. Slept horribly, which means today is a low-effort, low-achievement day, but oh well. And I missed my morning swim. But! I managed to unload the dishwasher, drank two large glasses of water and prepared a decent lunch, so here’s hoping tomorrow will be better.

In the meantime, new music from Shadow Show here.

And proud parental moment here, via WDET-FM here in Detroit:

Logrolling for my daughter out of the way, here’s one reason I slept badly: Trump’s dance party last night in Pennsylvania. It made me renew my vow, made periodically over the last few years, to not forgive any MAGAts in my extended circle, should they come groveling for mercy through the wreckage of the American republic. I know, that’s not Jesus’ way, but Jesus doesn’t have to live here, where I do, gnawing my nails to the cuticle that we might actually have four more years of this bullshit. Even if Trump loses, I expect weeks, maybe months, of civil unrest. It’s going to be ugly. My older friends remind me that the 1960s were in many ways worse, and they’re correct, but this is now. And every day, EVERY DAY, Trump is telling us who he is, and if that is who you are? Fuck off, all the way off, and don’t leave a forwarding address.

At the moment he’s being questioned by a braver soul at the Economic Club of Chicago, that is to say, braver than the limp noodle who questioned him in Detroit last week (see previous entry). If I were the “beautiful woman” he pointed to during this exchange, I’d get up, go home and take a Silkwood shower, followed by a dip in a mikvah, followed by a sage-smudging ceremony:

So you can see, it’s just not a good Tuesday. Imagine if Biden — hell, if Harris — behaved the way Trump did last night. The New York Times would be sounding klaxon horns and calling battle stations. Instead, we have this:

Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.

“Known for improvisational departures” — I ask you. Grandpa is sundowning.

Later:

Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed. After offering what appeared to be a closing statement and having his campaign play a James Brown song, Mr. Trump suggested taking another question or two. As the crowd cheered in approval, he said, “let’s go,” but then said he’d play “Y.M.C.A.” and send the crowd home.

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There’s nobody leaving,” he said. “What’s going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

I need to take a break from this stuff. Between this, the Israelis cooking refugees in tents and the Tigers losing, there’s no reason to open the paper (literally or figuratively) this week. But I’ll try to be back one more time before the end of it.

Posted at 3:32 pm in Current events, Same ol' same ol' | 5 Comments
 

The ex comes through town.

I was going to debrief you guys on Trump’s appearance — you can’t really call it a speech — before the Detroit Economic Club last week, but my week was back-loaded and I ran out of time. It was…well, it was fucking weird.

First, a little background: This was Trump’s second appearance before the DEC, which is a business group full of the city’s machers and machers-in-waiting. Another city equivalent might be the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco; I think New York has a similar group. They meet weekly or biweekly, and have speakers on serious subjects of interest to the business community, like tax or foreign policy, or topics of local interest, like the various sports teams, but almost always with a focus on the business impact of whatever the subject is.

One thing the club is very proud of is, they’ve been addressed by all U.S. presidents going back to…can’t remember. Decades. Usually these people come through when they’re still candidates, but they come through. They don’t pay honoraria; speakers come because it’s an honor to be invited to address the C-suiters of the auto companies and other industries based in southeast Michigan.

Trump first came through as a candidate, in 2016. It didn’t go well. A lot of people bought tickets with the intent to disrupt, and the first one — a woman who leapt to her feet and started screaming at him about something — came about 10 minutes in. I was there, and counted about 20 or so more, one of the yellers none other than not-yet-a-congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Security guards frog-marched each one out of the hall.

But Trump gave a speech, a prepared speech with a prompter. You can read it here. It’s full of empty promises, but it’s coherent.

Eight years later, he was invited back, most likely because of the influence of John Rakolta, a top-tier macher who served as ambassador to the U.A.E. during Trump’s term. He’s nearly the same age, and built a huge construction company here, Walbridge. Rich as Croesus, as you can imagine. Pop-culture fans may recall his wife, Terry, who was nationally famous in the ’90s when she led a boycott of “Married…With Children.” Bill O’Reilly had her on his show a lot.

(I know all this because I was hired to write a book for some anniversary of its founding, a custom-publishing job. I remember seeing Terry at the launch party and wondering why she looked so familiar. She still wears her hair the same way. She also appears to have an Instagram that reveals a fuckton of plastic surgery, but she looks damn good for 80.)

Anyway, Trump showed up last week, and it was very different. He didn’t speak as Candidate Trump, but Caesar Trump, rally-style. He walked the short distance to the podium and just stood there, while his walk-on music, Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA,” naturally, played to its first chorus. It looked like this:

The Twitter account I found this on quipped: “If his bronzer gets any darker, he’s going to have to deport himself.”

There was no prepared speech, and no disruptions. (I imagine the security was about 10X tougher this time.) He just stood there and rambled, rally-style, for TWO HOURS, Fidel Castro-meets-late-life-Elvis. The headline was that he said if Kamala Harris is elected, the whole country will look like Detroit. I don’t know what the reaction was to this; I’m told it was “muted,” as we say in Journalese. Given how hard many in the room have worked to achieve the city’s recent triumphs — new buildings, the NFL Draft, etc. — I would certainly hope so. But in my opinion, the headline should have been: Mush-brain candidate for nation’s top office rambles for two goddamn hours, but no one asked me.

Incredibly, this display was followed by an onstage conversation with his buddy Rakolta, and that was even weirder. I wouldn’t expect the ex-ambassador to question him sharply, but the rapturous brown-nosing was something of a surprise. There were many serious-but-respectful questions he could have asked, like maybe about the proposal Trump floated, to make auto-loan insurance tax-deductible; what would that cost the national treasury? Or maybe the construction tycoon could ask how we can build housing after we’ve mass-deported a large chunk of the construction workforce. But he didn’t. The opener was something like, “You have so much energy. How do you do it?” followed by an even grosser one about the impressive, successful Trump children, and how did he manage this feat? I mean, Tiger Beat magazine was tougher on Justin Bieber.

Bah. Enough. The whole event sounded terrible. But Harris got an ad out of it:

The rest of the weekend was spent celebrating a friend’s birthday. The day was in August, but the gift was Friday. For a couple years now, we’ve been experimenting with the premise that the best yacht rock is found on any streaming channel’s Little River Band Radio setting. (For non-streamers, the “radio” allows the algorithm to put together a playlist that features that artist, plus similar ones.) So when I saw the LRB was coming through town, I bought her two tickets, and she graciously selected me as her plus-one. I booked a room downtown and we made a girls’ outing of it.

The show was everything I expected, which is to say, a reconstituted LRB that contains not even one original member, plus none of the replacements are even Australian, as the originals were. But we got a fairly tight set that didn’t go on too long (about an hour and 20), and because the crowd were boomers, hardly any standing. And boy, does the LRB have a dedicated fan base; when I bought the tickets last summer, there were few good ones left. But we did OK:

The guy in front of me was a superfan, and threw up those hook-em-horns hands the whole time:

On Saturday we ate at a spectacular little patisserie, and then wandered the neighborhood. This is in the parking lot of one of those new-style restaurants made for Instagram:

We did not eat there. Our friend who lives in the neighborhood said the dinner-hour valet line is “all Cybertrucks with young women contorting themselves on the hood to take selfies.” Sounds like a place I’d be allergic to, but just as an aside to Donald Trump, not so many years ago this was a grocery with a drug marketplace in the parking lot. So hey — if that’s the way the country is headed, what’s so terrible about that?

Have a great week, all.

Posted at 12:00 pm in Current events, Detroit life | 27 Comments
 

Houses.

A former colleague of mine, Leo Morris, died a little over a year ago. He lived a couple blocks down the street from us in Fort Wayne. A nice guy, a bit of an odd duck, which sometimes came out in conversation. He mentioned once that he’d spent the weekend boxing up all the books that he had stacked on his staircase, having long ago run out of shelf space. He was down to a treacherous, narrow path, and you know how those stories often end.

Anyway, he died, and his siblings, both of whom live elsewhere, sold his house. A friend sent me a Redfin screen capture of recent sales; it seems to have gone for about $95K, then was sold again for $101K just a few weeks later, and the $6,000 probably represents the work the first owner put into cleaning it out. Now it’s back on the market for $289,900, an eye-popping amount in my opinion, but also appears to have undergone a full gut rehab. I recall a dark interior with a pool table in the dining room. Now it’s flooded with light, hardwood floors, brand-new kitchen, the works. Even the third-floor attic space appears to have been sided with cedar, a very nice touch.

I sent it to Alex, who informs me that not only are real-estate prices skyrocketing in the Fort for the usual reasons, but my old neighborhood, in the 46807 zip code, is now known as “The 07,” and is considered the hipster ‘hood.

Story of my life. Jeff Borden and I lived in a four-flat apartment house in a strip of Columbus between two suburbs (Grandview and Upper Arlington), at a time when everyone else our age was renting in German Village. (Motto: Drive our charming brick streets, but don’t expect to find a parking place.) Alan and I bought in the 07 because it was affordable and close to our office, and the houses were solid and had lots of charming architectural details. Both that old strip of Columbus and our little piece of Fort Wayne are now considered cool. I guess I really am an artist after all. Top o’ the world, ma!

I spent a few minutes punching the zip code into Realtor.com, and hoo-boy: This beauty, designed by Joel Roberts Ninde, a female architect who worked a lot around there, is a mere $319,900, and also looks like it recently underwent some major renovations.

Three thousand square feet, four bedrooms, and check out that bathroom tile. I used to walk Spriggy past that house; I think it used to be blue. The exterior is stucco, and the owner said it stayed cool in summer until the temperatures went past 90. There are several Ninde houses around that neighborhood, and they have stuff like built-in cabinetry, second-floor sleeping porches, arched doorways and other drool-worthy features.

Downside: The 07 was, when I lived there, considered a little risky ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Maybe the hipsters have improved the place. The only violent crime I saw there pales in comparison to what happens in Detroit and environs on a random Saturday. If I had to move back I’d snatch up that house and start a hipster salon, something like Laurel Canyon in the ’60s.

This one, two blocks away, was my favorite. Not on the market at the moment:

The front door is on the side. The street-facing side is a solarium, with a fireplace on the back wall, that also serves the living room. A million-dollar house in any other city in the country. Sigh.

OK, enough real-estate porn. For a while I thought I’d contracted Covid over the weekend; I was coughing from the depth of my lungs. Then I realized it started while I was making kung pao chicken, and had been a little heavy-handed with the Thai chilis. Basically, I pepper-sprayed myself when they hit the hot oil and sent up a cloud of capsaicin into my own lungs. Everything is fine now, but I can still tell it happened.

In other news at this hour, I am very, very worried about Florida. This storm is a mofo. Please stay safe, and I hope those of you in the footprint will send up a flare (so to speak) here when you’re out of danger.

Posted at 9:45 am in Same ol' same ol' | 47 Comments
 

No sweata weatha.

We’ve been having an exceptionally warm autumn so far. I know many of you enjoy this, but I suspect we’re headed for another SLAM BANG OK IT’S WINTER NOW seasonal transition, having missed out on the pleasures of fall, i.e., the slowly cooling days, the slowly turning leaves, all of it. Right now it’s in the low 70s, forecast to top out at 77 in late afternoon, and all I can think is: Where is sweata weatha? Love sweata weatha.

“You miss January, Nance?” a friend asked me last night. I do not. But it’s a week into October, and I was hoping to put away my sandals by now.

It’s not that winter won’t come. Winter is never all that far away from Michigan. But we’ve had a few of those SLAM BANG seasonal changes of late, and I’m not crazy about them. You spend Easter in down jackets, then four days later it’s 85 degrees and stays that way.

Oh well. My house has not washed down a mountainside, so this is just mewling.

Let’s go to the news! Ho-ho, this is amusing:

According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.

Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)

Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.

Actually it’s not amusing, it’s terrifying, because the rest of the paper informs us this is still anybody’s race. I mean, I’m glad the newspaper that practically considered it a crusade to get Biden to drop out is finally turning its attention to Trump, but who is listening at this point? Nobody. The few allegedly undecided voters, aren’t. As soon as early voting opens, I’m going in, casting my ballot with grim purpose, then returning to scan real-estate listings in countries where the language isn’t too hard to learn, and has some sweata weatha.

How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was fine. We saw “Megalopolis,” two of roughly six people in the theater. I’d describe it as…an ambitious mess. Those critics who keep saying, “Remember, ‘Apocalypse Now’ was a laughingstock at first” either never watched “Apocalypse Now” or weren’t there when it opened. I think it had been in theaters one weekend, and people were practically stopping me on the street to talk about the first three minutes, with the Doors and the chopper landing strut going through the frame, and the napalm. Three days after seeing “Megalopolis,” what I mostly remember was…none of it, really. Lush visuals, silly story, not much else. The girder scene, maybe? Aubrey Plaza trying her hardest, checking my phone inside my purse because I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the actress who played Julia before (she was Missandei in “Game of Thrones,” and her name is Nathalie Emmanuel) and ticking off the members of the Coppola Family Players who had parts (Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Laurence Fishburne) along with Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight and others. I think the ultimate explanation was the closing title, after FFC’s, “To my beloved wife Eleanor.” Eleanor Coppola died in April; this has the feeling of her surviving husband writing last notes and closing books.

Speaking of which, you know how Francis Ford Coppola got his middle name? His dad, Carmine, was a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1936-41, the depths of the Great Depression, and his son was born here. The Ford Motor Company basically carried the orchestra through the Depression, sponsoring their performances and keeping roofs over musicians’ heads and food on their tables. Carmine gave his baby the middle name in gratitude.

On Saturday, I went with a friend to see Jonathan Richman at the Magic Bag. The show was great, but short — one hour start to finish. Today I saw someone describe him as “Lou Reed’s nicer cousin.” He opened with this number, which I loved.

And now I’m going to enjoy this lovely Sunday. I leave you with this:

Have a great week.

Posted at 3:21 pm in Current events, Media, Same ol' same ol' | 39 Comments
 

Our depleted news resource.

I didn’t watch the debate. I came home from lifeguarding ravenous, inhaled a metric ton of pasta, did a little work and went to bed. I’m put off by the endless, ENDless pregaming for these events, the boners sprung by the entire Politico staff, all of it. I asked myself, will anything that happens tonight change my vote? It will not. I figured if Vance ripped open his shirt to show off his new swastika tattoo, I’d hear about it later. So I skipped. Sorry not sorry.

From what I’m reading this morning, I didn’t miss a thing. Republicans think Vance cleaned Walz’ clock, Democrats vice versa. Yawn.

I continue to worry about current events, don’t you fret about that. The Last Good Year is inching toward its finale, one ballistic-missile attack at a time. I read a thread yesterday about the longshoremen’s strike, and about the cozy relationship between the union president and Fat Orange Elvis, and it sounded like the girl in “Jaws” who’s trying to tell the panicking crowd on the beach the shark isn’t there, it’s over here. Last good year.

Speaking of Politico, et al, my friend Ryan — literally half my age, a former student, and author of the Last Good Year theory — said something the other day in our group chat that I’ve been mulling ever since. He said we were a better-informed nation under the old system of media-as-gatekeeper than we are today, which is in large part the utopia the earliest bloggers (99 percent of whom gave it up) dreamed of, back when we were invading Iraq and everything was democracy-whiskey-sexy. “The MSM is a lecture. The web is a conversation,” etc. I think James Lileks said that, and the whole warblog crew lifted him aloft and proclaimed him the pundit in whom they most trusted. (Note that he not only didn’t quit his six-figure MSM job — hard to find another humor columnist opening in our shrinking world — but now that his column has finally been taken from him, retaining his job, he has not ceased bitching about it.)

Anyway, don’t want to re-plow that ground. My point is, the old system wasn’t so terrible, even as flawed as it was. I’m a news junkie, and I only learned of the impending longshoreman’s strike…last weekend, I believe. And now it’s upon us, and it’s not even Wednesday. Once upon a time, an army of labor reporters would have kept us up to date for weeks, maybe months, ahead of the strike, and we’d at least have had time to process it, call our elected representatives, etc. Now there are hardly any labor reporters. One I follow is on Substack, essentially self-employed.

The old gatekeepers were overwhelmingly white and male, also older and well-to-do, if not rich. This undoubtedly left many stories uncovered. It also allowed a rich vein of alt-journalism to flourish, in the ethnic presses and the free weeklies in every city. One made their money on lower-cost advertising targeted directly at their readers, the other on racy personals and ads for escorts and strippers.

And what replaced this terrible system? Some marquee brands (NYT, WP) survive, a handful of nonprofit, serious news sites (MinnPost, Texas Tribune, the outfit I used to work for) and a whole lot of clickbait. Plus, a form of human clickbait — the influencer. The friend who likes all the things you like, will tell you about the things they like (use their product code for 10 percent off and free shipping) and lies happily to your face, but you like those lies, so it’s OK.

And don’t get me started on social media, the great bullshit amplifier of our age. I used to correct people who posted urban legends on Facebook as though they were facts, but I don’t anymore, because I was so often accused of being, essentially, a party pooper. Let people believe, etc. OK.

Don’t get me wrong. Some of these innovations have been welcome. We’re all busy. It’s nice to have some filters in our lives to productively direct our moments when we can be free to pay attention to the world outside our own bubble. And many podcasts are miles better than the hollowed-out husk of commercial radio. But for all the information we process from day to day — that I process, anyway — I still feel like there are yawning gaps in my knowledge.

And I know there are some in yours.

Anyway, that’s my rant for the day. Maybe some photos? OK. A yard sign a few blocks over:

Also, speaking of the MSM, I think this story is the very last place for a play-on-words headline, but no one asked me:

Fibs, not vicious lies, and “dog,” get it? HAHAHAHA.

Talk later.

Posted at 11:05 am in Media | 36 Comments
 

Untitled.

My friend Jimmy runs a monthly writing group in a local community center for addicts. You don’t have to be an addict to attend, but he’s a recovering alcoholic and thinks writing can be therapeutic for some. He’s very clear that the group is open to anyone, and lately I’ve found it fun and a good exercise, whether or not you’re stuck in a rut. It goes like this: You walk in, and collect four cards from four face-down stacks — a place name, an inanimate object, and animal and something else. You have an hour to write a sub-1,000-word short story incorporating all four. Today, mine were Guadalajara, paint, prairie dog and kerosene.

This is the story I wrote. It’s not Ernest Hemingway, but so what? Low stakes! Fun! Stay away from the news for a while! We can get back to that later this week, and of course you can discuss anything comments. In case you’re wondering, this story is untitled. But here it is:

“Get in the car,” he said for the fifth time. Yelling it this time.

“Guadalajara?” she called back, hand cocked to her ear, like she was having trouble hearing him. “Sorry, I didn’t bring my passport.”

And with that, the girl slipped around the fence and into the alley, where the car couldn’t follow. Tom and I looked at each other, brushes still working, because you didn’t want to be caught as an active spectator to a domestic squabble, not in this neighborhood. “MotherFUCK,” the boyfriend, or husband, or whatever-he-was-to-her exploded, before dropping the Challenger in drive and peeling off.

Tom dipped his brush in the paint and resumed his work on the fence. I had started at the opposite end, and we were working our way to the middle. We were now close enough to have a conversation, or at least the kind of conversation you have when you’re doing a job that doesn’t require much of your concentration. Painting a fence is one of them.

“She was a fine-looking woman,” I said, dipping my own into my personal bucket of Navajo White. Tom’s was labeled Ghost White, and I figured this would be a problem when our work met up in another few minutes, but the guy who gave us the job said it didn’t matter, white is white and stop asking questions. “But fine-looking women often come with a lot of strings attached. Ones you can’t use to pull her back in the car, as that guy found out.”

“Strings?” Tom asked, putting Ghost White stripes on the next panel. “Like what kinda strings.”

“They’re touchy, women like that,” I said. “You gotta pay attention to them all the time, but it’s gotta be the right kind. They want to be told they’re beautiful every day, but if they got a zit or their hair’s a mess or they’re on their period, then they tell you you’re a liar, and sometimes that starts a fight. ‘What else are you lying about,’ etc.”

“And how would you know all this,” Tom replied. “You don’t strike me as a guy with a lot of experience dealing with beautiful women.”

“See, that’s where we’re different,” I said. “I think all women are beautiful, although that one was especially so.”

Tom fell silent, and I continued my Navajo White conquest of the fence. We’d be standing shoulder-to-shoulder in a few minutes.

“My cousin Cheryl’s a woman, and she’s ugly as a dog’s ass,” he finally said. “So I think you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Five minutes it took you to think of one woman you know who’s ugly,” I said. “I’d say that proves my point.” The last few words were drowned out by the roar of the Challenger, coming around the corner again. He’s looking for his woman, I thought. I hope he doesn’t have a gun. But who could shoot a fine-looking girl like that?

He stopped the car in front of us, and revved it a couple times. Tom and I turned around.

“Where’d she go,” he demanded through the passenger window. “That bitch. I know you seen her.”

“Mister, she went down the alley and we ain’t seen where she went,” I said, turning up the Downriver twang to about 7. “I’m sorry about that.”

The tires chirped as he roared off, and half a minute later, a head popped up over the fence, like a prairie dog if prairie dogs were hot brunettes. She slipped around the end of the fence as another car pulled up, this one with an Uber sticker on the windshield. “Thanks, guys, but I need you to play dumb if he comes back again.” She blew us a kiss that melted my heart a little bit.

The Uber pulled away, the memory of her long thigh slipping into the front seat still throbbing in my vision as we turned around and saw Ghost and Navajo White close enough to see that white may be white, but these two were still only fraternal twins. A few more strokes and we’d be done.

“Time to clean up,” Tom said. I suggested we use kerosene. Outside, there wouldn’t be a fume issue. Tom went to the truck and came back with the can. The Challenger came around the block and passed us slowly, one more time. We ignored him, but he stopped anyway.

“That fence looks like shit,” he yelled. “It’s two different colors.” And he peeled out again.

“I see why she got out of the car,” Tom said.

Posted at 4:54 pm in Detroit life | 34 Comments
 

You want a ball? Here’s two.

I’m sorry I am probably the last person to tell you about the Bridgerton Ball fiasco here in Detroit last weekend. (Not as sorry as the dailies should be, who fumbled a story that went national. New York magazine even had an interview with the pole dancer. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)

I’m not a Bridgerton fan, or even a watcher, although I know the premise of the show, which is sort of a fantasy Regency-England costume soap on Netflix, now in its third season. It’s based on a series of books, and produced by Shonda Rhimes. The producers practice what you might call “Hamilton” casting, which is to say, it’s color-blind, and so London high society is chock-full of people of color, which is never remarked upon. Even the queen is black, and it’s n.b.d.

Because of this casting, the show has a lot of black fans, which led to a non-show-affiliated party or parties to get the idea for a Bridgerton Ball in Detroit. Tickets were pricey, well over $100 to start and upward from there, and the idea was that you’d get dressed up in ball gowns and tiaras for the ladies (breeches and tailcoats for the gents) and attend a party on the scale of the ones in the show. (Never seen the show, but I gather it has a lot of balls.)

The first warning sign was when the party was moved from August to September over “venue issues,” but eventually the day came, and guests arrived at a historic event space to find: Scarce food, much of it cold or undercooked. Harsh lighting against bare white walls. No seating whatsoever. No orchestra playing waltzes, but a single violinist. Some paper backdrops for photos. And a pole dancer.

This photo, from the pole dancer’s Instagram, captures so, so much:

Part of me can’t stop laughing. I mean, this interview!

Did you see any of the details that have been reported — like, that there was chicken that was served raw or that plates were being reused?

No, but when I was doing character work for them, I did try going downstairs to see what was going on. The first floor was a mob of people, where you couldn’t really walk, so I just went back upstairs.

What is character work?

They basically just had me walk around and say, “Hello, I’m your Bridgerton fairy,” and just add to the ambience of the night. I don’t know. [Laughs.] It was weird.

Did they tell you to say that? What did they tell you to do?

No, I was going off-book because I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. They just said, “Do character work.” That was it. Usually when I work, I’m going to events as Tink the Fairy, so I just switched it to the Bridgerton Fairy.

Were you dressed as a fairy?

No, I was wearing what you saw in the video. But I did have a short lace robe on over it. I was trying to make the best of it.

And another big part of me feels terrible, because it looks like a lot of black ladies (and white ladies) just wanted to play dress-up for a night and pretend they were members of a royal court, but instead got a royal scam.

I know you will be as shocked as I am that the people who put this on — an LLC called Uncle N Me — is nowhere to be found. I’d say check the Tower of London, but I know we’re in an alternate reality here.

Anything else? Oh, I have some angry JD Vance stuff, but at this point, let’s not spoil the weekend. March into it like you’re Queen Charlotte! We’ll talk after it’s over.

Posted at 5:08 pm in Detroit life | 20 Comments
 

Peeves 1, 2 & 3.

The Department of Justice made public this week a letter written by Ryan Routh, the would-be Trump assassin. In it, he writes that he expects to fail, but that he hopes others will “finish the job” and offers $150,000 to whoever does. This incensed people across the political spectrum, but particularly on the right, and for once I agree. Although I imagine any sane person would understand that a man in federal custody, and likely to remain so for many years, is going to call backsies on the $150K promise, the sorts of people who might attempt it, aren’t. Sane, that is. It just seems there should be multiple ways to indicate probable cause to a judge without revealing that detail.

But I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll leave it to them. However, I am a writer, and I just want to pick a small peeve in these stories, i.e., the labeling of any statement by a person who’s committed an act of violence as a “manifesto.”

Granted, this is mostly done by dumbass news sources, like the New York Post or Rod Dreher, but it bugs me just the same. I suppose it started with the Unabomber, and whatever else you can say about Ted Kaczynski, he took his violence seriously. His manifesto was called “Industrial Society and Its Future,” and it ran 35,000 words. Publishing it got him arrested, but he had something to say, and said it. Supposedly he has a fan club now.

By contrast, the woman who shot up a school in Nashville, Audrey Hale, left behind a journal of sorts, marked with some coherent passages but also a great deal of angry scrawling. The Tennessee Star is the only publication that published selections from it. This photo, with the publication’s watermarks all over it, gives you an idea:

To their credit, they put “manifesto” in quotes in their reporting. I’ve said before that I don’t mind it (too much) when language changes, but every time I hear some racist ranting or anguished scrawling called the same thing that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels labored over, I cringe.

Ai-yi-yi, another bout of insomnia last night. I turned off the alarm and tried to stay in bed as late as possible, but I probably got four hours, total. Since I missed morning swim, I took a bike ride in the cool, cloudy conditions, something that usually makes me feel good, but I multitasked by listening to the “The Daily” podcast, and it just depressed me. It was about the shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing, and toward the end, the reporter pointed out, correctly, that we have faced extreme housing shortages in this country before, the period after World War II being the most obvious example. It was solved in part by enormous federal incentives to build middle-class housing, the obvious answer today, as well. But will this ever be accomplished? I doubt it.

Even assuming the best-case scenario, i.e., a Harris victory and a Democratic Senate, any effort to enact a large federal program to, you know, HELP PEOPLE would be attacked nonstop by the usual suspects, who will wail and throw sand in the gears and churn out memes and do whatever possible to stop the whole thing.

I also considered how we might leave our current house, maybe downsize to a condo in a different municipality and leave this three-bedroom Colonial to someone with children in the schools. We’d get a decent price for it, but then we’d have to buy in this overheated market, and our taxes would skyrocket. Why? Because Michigan adopted Proposal A 30 years ago, which pegged property taxes to the rate of inflation or 5 percent, whichever is less. When you buy a house, its taxes “pop up” to whatever value the market placed on it by your purchase, but then they’re pegged. During the great recession, when our house lost nearly half its market value, the taxes adjusted downward, a small relief at a very scary time. Now they’re pegged again, and as a consequence, we’re paying far less than newer residents who bought after the recovery, for the same services. If we bought a new place, we’d almost certainly be paying more. So we stay put, empty nesters in a community that desperately needs school-age children, because our taxes-and-insurance nut in our paid-off house is about $500/month.

When Proposal A was passed, real estate wasn’t the volatile market it is today. The population was different. Everything was different. It’s probably time to revisit Proposal A (which had other moving parts about school funding). But the Michigan legislature now has term limits, the worst idea ever, and is now populated by people who whirl in and out of their seats, never stay long enough to develop true legislative skills and pass truly meaningful policy. And like Washington, the camps are divided and dug in. Things only get done when one party has complete control in Lansing. People wonder why the Democrats put the pedal to the floor when they got bicameral/executive control in 2022, for the first time in 40 years. That’s why.

OK, enough of that.

I was reading this Atlantic piece about legal sports gambling this morning, too. It concentrates on the personal price paid by legal gambling — the precarious households made even more so, mostly — but I wonder: We can’t be more than a hair’s breadth away from a Black Sox-style scandal in college or professional sports, can we? And when it happens, what will we do? Stick a stake in the heart of a multi-billion-dollar industry and drive gambling back into the shadows? Don’t be silly.

OK, then. In cheerier news, I have had a pork shoulder simmering in the crock pot since morning, and it’s almost time to shred it into tasty pulled-pork bits. Enjoy early autumn, wherever you are.

Posted at 2:57 pm in Current events | 29 Comments
 

Backward progress.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is an ambitious man:

Over the weekend, he proposed making America healthy again by “getting the fluoride out of the water,” which tells you where this is coming from. He’s previously announced that he only drinks raw milk. And he’s against vaccines. So, bringing back widespread tooth decay, preventable childhood diseases and the constellation of illnesses that can be traced to unpasteurized milk. Make Dentures Commonplace Again!

And still, the race remains tight. Ai-yi-yi.

And then there’s Mark Robinson story. I haven’t waded through the comments on the last post, but again: Ai-yi-yi. The phrase “I’m a black Nazi” got thrown around a lot, mainly because it was the least offensive thing he posted. Not that I ever would quote David French, but for the sake of concision, a snippet:

Even before the primary, Robinson’s horrific character was on display. Among other things, he had called school shooting survivors who advocated gun control “media prosti-tots,” accused Michelle Obama of being a man, and trafficked in so many antisemitic tropes that his election as lieutenant governor in 2020 was an alarm bell for Jewish leaders in the state.

In other words, Republican voters knew he was a bad man when they chose him. Now they know he is a very bad man.

Actually, this isn’t a terrible column, if a bit obvious:

Both parties have always been vulnerable to nominating or electing the occasional crank, but Donald Trump’s ascendance meant that a crank led the party, and the best way to join with him is to imitate him. That’s how you get a Mark Robinson, or a Marjorie Taylor Greene, or a Lauren Boebert, or a Matt Gaetz. The list goes on. That’s how leaders change institutions. They make them into images of themselves.

In this case, Trump has done so explicitly. Almost all the worst figures in the Republican Party have ridden Trump endorsements to the top of their local pyramids. Robinson received Trump’s endorsement and swamped his primary opposition. Trump even called him “Martin Luther King on steroids.”

The lesson is simple: If you want more Mark Robinsons, vote for Donald Trump.

Ugh, this stupid, stupid country. Maybe we can still save ourselves.

At least it was a good weekend. Went to a film noir screening Friday, “Victims of Sin” and “Night Editor,” both unknown to me. Saturday, enjoyed — or endured — the last hot-and-miserable summer day, which happened to be the last day of summer. Today, work and a change in the weather. And so fall arrives. And the new week begins.

Posted at 8:38 pm in Current events | 26 Comments
 

Another damn obituary.

So J.D. Souther is dead. Or maybe he styled it JD, no periods, like you-know-who the hillbilly racist. Still, a moment of silence from me.

:::a moment passes:::

:::blasts this song:::

You probably don’t know him, but I think of him as providing many entries on the playlist from a particular time in my life. He was a songwriter, and wrote a lot for the Eagles, among many others. To me, though, it all comes down to “The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band,” one album that came out in 1973 and I discovered a couple years later. It still evokes that time in Athens, when my world was school, beer in student bars, health-food restaurants, the rural roads around the county, and all that. Later on, Souther would appear on “thirtysomething” as John Dunaway, a crunchy-granola social-justice type who tempts Hope with infidelity, but she resists. When is “thirtysomething” coming to streaming, anyway? I need to reacquaint myself with these people.

Anyway, a toast to JD. Lately, all the sexy men I remember from my youth are revealed as very old men. And I know what that means.

Speaking of the decrepitude of age, let’s hurry up with this new technology, so I don’t have to get a knee replacement:

(W)hy replace a knee if just the cartilage can be repaired instead? That line of thinking has led to new techniques flipping the script on how to mend troublesome knees.

“We’re not going to stop arthritis,” says Cassandra Lee, chief of the division of sports medicine at UC Davis Medical Center, as well as the orthopedic surgeon who operated on McHatton. “But can we push that knee replacement way down the road? That is, I think, the ultimate goal.”

…Wiley and colleague Ken Gall, a professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke, are instead trying to re-create cartilage in the lab. Over the last several years they’ve developed a hydrogel composed of polyvinyl alcohol, a polymer often used in contact lenses, and cellulose fibers. Tests in a compression machine, Wiley says, demonstrated that the product could support 1,100 pounds of force, simulating five years of use. The hydrogel, which is pressed into the end of the femur bone, is being used in a Phase 1 human trial in Latin America. Wiley and Gall hope to get the green light to begin human trials in the United States sometime next year.

You should not be one little, teensy-weensy, speck of surprised to hear that the guy who killed himself and others in the OceanGate submersible disaster was a prickly egomaniac:

In 2016, OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush steered paying customers in the Cyclops I, a Titan predecessor, to the wreckage of the Andrea Doria, a ship that sank in 1956 off Massachusetts, former OceanGate operations director David Lochridge said during a hearing about the Titan’s implosion.

Yep, ol’ Tock Rush nearly got the thing stuck on the bottom, checking out the wreck of the Andrea Doria, and only turned the controls over to another with petulance. Which he had a lot of:

Lochridge elaborated on Tuesday, testifying about a culture in which his safety concerns were shrugged off to feed Rush’s ego — by accomplishing feats no other reputable deep-sea exploration company had tried because they were dangerous.

You don’t say.

In other news at this hour, happy interest rate cut. And happy birthday to Dexter, before the day slips away.

Posted at 5:38 pm in Current events | 39 Comments