The weekend is over and not a lot of fun was had — work and errands and the usual seemed to pile up a bit higher this week. But I did some reading and walked the dog and got some exercise. The Metro Times Blowout was this weekend — it’s a local-music festival, the loud kind — and I got to one show Friday but happily turned my wristband over to Kate the next night. Saw some friends, drank a couple of beers and finished off with the final concert of Kate’s jazz season. One of the mothers called for a group picture but couldn’t get her camera to work, so I did her a solid and emailed her mine:

As stated before in this space, they really put the “creative” in Creative Jazz Ensemble, what with having three violins and all. They also have three guitarists, but two were no-shows for this show. Good thing my little girl was there to be the bottom, as one of the numbers was “Papa Was a Rolling Stone,” and you really can’t do that without a bass.

One other thing from Saturday: Watched “Her,” which immediately became my favorite movie of 2013. It won best original screenplay at the Oscars, and no other nominated film of the last year came close to it. It’s about a lonely writer, Theodore, in some vague future version of Los Angeles who falls in love with the disembodied voice of his computer operating system; think Siri after about 20 more generations of improvement. The story is great enough, but what I really fell in love with was the setting of a smoggy Los Angeles where everyone walks around talking, but not to the people around them. Computers have pretty much replaced human contact — the scenes of Theodore’s interaction with his flesh-and-blood friends don’t look like nearly as much fun as his playful chats with Samantha, his OS. Even lonely bedtime masturbation can be done online with a partner with just a few voice commands. His job is writing customized letters for others, to others. The world is entirely a service economy, and this is what we’re selling — canned emotions and disembodied love.

Seriously, I recommend it to anyone who considers these things, and given that we’re a disembodied community here, most of whom don’t even know what other members look like, it almost suggests a virtual movie club.

So, I’m going down to make a simple dinner and see what Sunday-night TV has in store. A little bloggage today:

Jazz hands! A Minneapolis Star-Tribune reporter embeds at a high-school musical and files a report.

God, I hate circuses.

Meanwhile, back in Detroit, the Cinco de Mayo parade is cancelled after someone is shot to death pretty much smack in the middle of it.

Happy Monday, all.

The New York Times specializes in a type of affect-less reporting on the problems of rich people. I recall a piece from around Thanksgiving a few years back, which detailed the difficulty of getting high-end appliances repaired when you’ve installed them in your country house, which may be in some shithole Adirondacks village where they’ve never heard of a Sub-Zero refrigerator. Can you imagine?

Here’s another, about a “cabin” in the Hamptons which cost, all in, about $5 million. Sample quotes: “I have three pillars in my life: I work, I spend a lot of time with my family and I work out.” “With the harsh winter, we’ve already had our roof leak. It’s a constant work in progress to keep everything maintained.” The exterior cedar will have to be refinished every five years. I’m really, really rooting for this house to become the monster it already seems to be, and for it to consume its owners, Mr. and Mrs. Mattis.

Not that I wish to start the weekend on a sour note. Perhaps the Mattises are lovely people. But I doubt it.

Speaking of other people who may be lovely, but with whom I doubt I could stay in a room for even five minutes, ladies and gentlemen, Alice Waters:

When you’re in New York City, how do you decide on where to eat?

I’m always concerned first about the provenance of the food. I want to know where it comes from, so I go to the farmers market and see who buys there. I see what chefs are buying there, and I know by now, because I come to New York a lot. There’s a group who are very serious about everything that they serve, not just the salad. So I can count on the Union Square Greenmarket, but there are a lot of young chefs that I know personally or am connected with in some way, or with the restaurant or the extended family of the restaurant.

Because God forbid you should put one forkful into your mouth that you can’t recite the provenance of. Who was I reading a while back, some conservative who noted that in the ’50s, if you knew a typical housewife, she’d be very concerned with who you had sex with, but not at all with what you ate. The first was society’s business, the latter personal. Today it’s exactly the opposite.

Which brings me to one of my favorite new shows this…I guess we don’t really have “seasons” anymore, do we? That would be “Silicon Valley,” which is about guess-what. A trio of young app developers rent rooms in the house of an older man, Erlich, who struck a little oil with his own app and cashed out. He calls the house an “incubator,” and requires that any work developed there owes him a 10 percent equity share. Erlich fancies himself a mentor figure, but he’s only a few years older than the early-20s dweebs he rents to. One of his early laff lines: WHO ATE MY FUCKING QUINOA?! Which is especially funny when you see him eating (which he does a lot), because he’s always scarfing up ramen or some repulsive energy drink. The other day he walked into the frame eating a pink-frosted Pop-Tart. Hilarious.

No mention is made of the Pop-Tarts or energy drinks, because you don’t have to. Everyone walks around talking about “making the world a better place,” which mainly involves talking about it and yelling about quinoa. I’m sure they’re all very concerned about who produces their eggs, but buy an American car? Hell no.

Let’s skip to the bloggage before I find someone else to shower disdain upon.

Gerry Adams, yes that Gerry Adams, questioned in a murder case more than 40 years old. He’s now a member of the Irish parliament. Fascinating. (Speaking of “The Long Good Friday.”)

And I think this news has been reported before — that is, the discovery of a now-submerged former land bridge across Lake Huron — and now researchers have found structures built there, nearly 9,000 years old. Hunting blinds and rock formations built to drive caribou into ambushes.

I feel like I will be ambushed myself if I don’t get to the gym tonight. So that’s where I’m going. Have a great weekend, all.

Someone asked about the incident with the gin when I was 19. It’s not much of a story — just one of those afternoons where G&Ts were the perfect drink, until they weren’t. I recall the sun dazzling off the water. I felt like I believe the British must have felt in the last days of empire, and then there was that foghorn of nausea and oh, well.

I’ve mentioned this before about a million times, but Atul Gawande’s long New Yorker essay on nausea changed my whole way of thinking about it. He noted that a person who gets sick tonight on tequila or gin or whatever might never touch it again for the rest of his or her life. Yes and no, in my case. Yes to gin, but I’ve been beer-sick and wine-sick many times, and lived to drink both another day.

I drink less these days than I have in my entire adult life, but I enjoy it far more. Good wine is cheaper than ever, small-batch whiskey is the new vodka, craft beer has advanced past its silly phase — sorry, but I don’t think anyone appreciates raspberry flavors in a lager — and is now hitting its stride with good, deeply flavored brews of all sorts and for all seasons. It’s a good time to be a social drinker.

Oh, sorry: TRIGGER WARNING FOR ALCOHOLICS. Too late, I know.

I guess I’m the last person to have anything to say about the Sarah Palin speech in Indianapolis last weekend, but honestly, what is there to say? I actually found it embarrassing to watch, what little of it I could stand. She’s truly gone down the tunnel of narcissism into some strange reality on the other side. Her hair is messy, her face looks…like she’s been having some work done and her voice? Crazytown. Better to contemplate who I was embarrassed for. Palin? No, she’s incapable of it. The country? Sure, but too vague. And then I thought of people I’d known in 2008 who thought of her as the bee’s freakin’ knees. I don’t really know them well, but if I saw one today? I think I’d have to avert my eyes.

So, the world took Bob Hoskins away yesterday. Y’all know I’m a big “The Long Good Friday” fan, and I watched the last two minutes twice after I heard the news. I’ve seen it a dozen times at least, and it never loses its power. George Clooney did it in “Michael Clayton,” and I hope he had the good grace to admit it was an homage.

A nice quote here from the man, a few years back:

He learned about acting, he says, not from watching other actors but from studying women. ‘Men are completely emotionally dishonest, whereas women have an emotional honesty which is extraordinary. And drama is about private moments, it’s about the things you don’t see in the street, and men don’t show that. So I decided to watch women. I became a stalker, I suppose! It’s got nothing to do with femininity, it’s to do with emotional honesty. If you go home one night and there’s champagne on the table with your dinner and she’s done up but she’s pissed off, you know it. You know where you are with a woman. You don’t know with blokes. And that’s basically how I learned to act – just watching women.’

Oversimplified, but a sharp observation.

Finally, a nice essay by Mark Bittman on the power of comfort food. In his case, lox and bagels. Hello, Thursday, and we are over the hump.

Again, apologies for missing a day. Blah blah blah busy blah blah. Monday night, in search of sources for a story, I ended up at a neighborhood cooking night in Detroit, in which four couples get together and everybody makes a dish on the big Viking stove.

The house was a lovingly restored Tudor in an old Detroit neighborhood, and by lovingly I mean fabulously. One of the hosts showed me around the dining room, which had been gutted by fire in the ’70s. So they tore out the quick-fix drywall and had an artisan duplicate the oak paneling, which was stained dark. You could tell it was new because the pocket doors slid noiselessly and without friction. The fern on the dining room table was the pop of color in what could have been a gloomy interior, and of course the custom stained-glass windows helped. The living room was similarly beautiful, and full of fantastic midcentury furniture, which went perfectly with the Tudor architectural details, because good design of different eras can make beautiful music together, when the right eye does the combining.

I don’t need to tell you the gender mix of the couple, do I? My old boss Derek used to say that straight America wants to keep gay people down because we’re afraid they’re going to do everything better than we do. Has there ever been any doubt?

But I got a great idea for a salad — arugula dressed with oil and balsamic, and topped with oven-roasted oyster mushrooms, tossed in a bread crumb/parmesan mix. The artisanal cocktails were pretty cool, too, but I didn’t partake. (Gin. Haven’t been able to keep it down since an unfortunate incident at the age of 19.)

And then it was Tuesday, a swimming workout day, the first one after spring break. The pool is presided over by an older gentleman, a retired teacher who used to be a coach for one of the high-school teams. He told me he’d give me some stroke-refinement work this week, and so he did. Swimming is a repetitive motion, and chances are, once you start, you don’t change much. I always breathe on my left side, and have since I learned the freestyle, maybe 50 years ago. Today he had me do some one-arm drills, breathing on the other side. I am not ashamed to say I felt like I was drowning, even with fins on my feet. But I cannot deny that after a few lengths of this, I felt newly symmetrical. You do a thing, and then you do it differently, and suddenly you can do it better.

He also had me swim a few lengths just regular, but because fins were already on my feet and a pain to take off and put back on, I swam with them. And felt like an OUTBOARD MOTOR. These fish are onto something, I tell you.

And now I’m going to wrap this quickly, because I have yet more crap to do. So…

I’ve heard this many times: A person vehemently opposed to Obamacare is asked, “Well, would you support a plan that requires people to buy health insurance?” Sure, that’s OK. Apparently now it’s a thing.

Later, all.

Because I believe my little girl should be free to have her own life, and write about it someday, I mention her less here than I might be inclined to. But it seems noteworthy to mark milestones when they come along, and we had one this weekend.

Around Christmas, Kate and two of her friends formed a band. They call themselves the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad, a reference you Quentin Tarantino fans should pick up on. Their vision was clear from the beginning: All girls, playing their own brand of psychedelic punk, not just a cover band. They worked hard through the long winter, practicing at one’s house (not ours, but the one whose guitar-playing father had already turned the garage into a studio). The search for a singer took a while, but eventually they found someone, and through this connection and that connection, they had their first gig Saturday.

It was a venue that appears in no Google searches, probably because it barely exists. It’s a brick building with one room and a boarded-up storefront, probably a former mom-and-pop grocery or barbershop or what-have-you. The neighborhood is terrible, as in your-car’s-safety-is-in-God’s-hands terrible, and there was enough light in the sky to see just how terrible as we drove up. These are the neighborhoods in Detroit that freak me out — the ones where the blight is well-entrenched and mostly still standing, but there are still many occupied houses. Imagine living next to a standing burned shell, or between two of them, for years on end. It might leave a person with a bad attitude.

“If only we had a film crew to capture this milestone in your early career,” I mused as we drove past a house with a collapsed front porch roof. Well, at least it’s pretty damn punk.

But we found the guy who runs the place, and with many, many misgivings, left the girls to do their own setup and sound check while we went to the Northern Lights Lounge for a drink and some hummus. We returned as the DVAS were just about ready to take the — well, it wasn’t quite a stage. More like a clearing in the corner.

And they did great, with a tight little set of originals, and two covers — the Jimmy Neutron theme song and, because we are where we are, some Stooges.

The place was so murky inside even my flash pictures couldn’t penetrate it. We’re going to have to go with arty here:

With all due respect to the venue, I hope they don’t play there anymore. They’re already good enough that they shouldn’t have to.

It was a busy Saturday. I drove to Lansing to meet with one of the Bridge columnists I edit, who was signing copies of an Upper Peninsula literary collection called “The Way North,” which I can recommend to any Yoopers looking for a taste of home. I’m still in the poetry section, but I’m liking it quite a lot.

Sunday? A 14-mile bike ride into the teeth of a chilly wind. WHERE IS WARMTH? WARMTH I REQUIRE.

Bloggage, then:

I’ve really become a fan of Neil Steinberg, who puts a lot more effort into his blog than I do. This one in particular.

As long as we’re talking Bridge, one of my faves of the weekend — a Vietnam-era vet objects to the word-inflation of “hero.” I totally agree.

Living paycheck-to-paycheck on $90K a year? You bet. Another great deep dive from the WashPost.

Hello, Monday. I’ve heard you can’t be trusted. But I hope everyone’s week is fine.

Well, Oberlin was splendid. It better be, for tuition, room, board and fees adding up to 60 grand a year. I wish I were kidding. Yes, I know only Chinese nationals pay full retail, but that is one hard swallow to even contemplate. One of my friends has a freshman at Michigan, and is getting no, zero, zip, nada discount of any sort, because their family income is over $100,000. While that’s certainly in the comfort zone, that’s two adults working, and the university thinks it’s enough that they should be able to swing a $25,000 annual expenditure with no help from the institution. Just think about that a while.

But the school was great. Small classes, wonderful facilities, impressive alumni. It wasn’t as gothic and grand as the University of Chicago, not in as lively a location as Tulane, but it had plenty of grandeur of its own, and then there’s the matter of the “E system” for designating bathrooms in the co-ed dorms. Signing up for the tour, in the basic information, Kate was allowed to indicate her gender as M, F or Other. If you’re transgender, you will find no fluffier nest, I bet.

Well, I wanted her to get a sense of what life might be like at a small, progressive liberal-arts school. Now she knows. (Expensive.)

And now it’s back to the grind. As I mentioned in yesterday’s comments, I have been relishing the Cliven Bundy news of the past few days; most of the story transpired without me — I’m paying attention to Michigan news more often these days — but it doesn’t take much to get caught up. So, it turns out this guy is less an embattled symbol of Western pluck than a welfare mooch? Noted. Loved this understated graf in the NYT:

He said he would continue holding a daily news conference; on Saturday, it drew one reporter and one photographer, so Mr. Bundy used the time to officiate at what was in effect a town meeting with supporters, discussing, in a long, loping discourse, the prevalence of abortion, the abuses of welfare and his views on race.

And then he launched into his “let me tell you what I know about the Negro” speech, and I think that will be that for the rancher with the big ol’ hat.

These sorts of nasty jerks are thick as thieves in Real America, especially in the wide open spaces. A normal person looks at southern Nevada, land so dry and scrubby you wouldn’t think it could support a prairie dog, and wonders what the hell people are thinking, running cows across it. The fact they’re doing so free of charge, or at below-market rates, merely rankles, until someone like Bundy or the National Review brings up the “government land” thing. As Dave Weigel points out, Bundy’s “cause” of transferring federal land to private hands has been dealt a setback by their accidental Palinesque spokesman. Good. It’s not “government land,” it’s public land, and let me remind you, the same people pushing for a selloff were the ones who were saying logging Yellowstone National Park would have have prevented the severe fires of 1988. Screw them. This land is your land, this land is my land. And I’m not selling, and Cliven Bundy ought to pay his damn bills and shut his stupid mouth.

No, he shouldn’t. Keep giving press conferences and sharing your colorful opinions, Cliven.

So, a quick bit of bloggage before we all pop off for the weekend, eh? As I think I’ve mentioned before, a particular local attorney has carpet-bombed the billboard and bus-sign market sector with advertising, and what advertising it is, featuring her platinum-blonde, Photoshopped-mouth self. She’s a Lebanese Christian immigrant, and specializes in personal injury, but also handles immigration affairs, and I can only imagine how her cupid-bow mouth and Muppet-like eye makeup is seen in the Arab community here, but boy, does she make serious bank. The Metro Times finally did the first serious profile of her I’ve yet read, and it’s pretty good. Apparently she’s a lovely person. Who knew?

Have a lovely weekend, then. Hope it’s warm where you are.

A restless night last night, which meant a gritty-eyed morning. When I really can’t sleep and know it’s going to be a while before I can, I move to the guest room. Wendy moves with me. She jumps up on the bed — forbidden elsewhere — and makes herself comfortable. Sometimes she cuddles up to my back; sometimes she’s down at my feet. Inevitably, though, come morning? She’s smack in the middle of the bed and I am clinging to the side. This is how it always ended up when Kate was a toddler, too. How do they manage that? I think it’s by asserting the rights of the innocent to take all the damn space they want. If you needed the middle of the bed, you’d be there, right? Dogs and kids need that space.

As you can see from that bang-up beginning, it was a long day in the saddle today. I watched the temperature fall as the wind picked up and had that mournful spring experience of closing the windows for a chilly day following a warm night. Tried and failed to get a bike ride in, although the day was salvaged with dinner with friends passing through town. Fortunately, there’s some pretty good bloggage.

I don’t know how you can fail to love a story that includes an old man trying to hit a reporter with a crutch, an antisemitic mayor who says he’s “hurt” to be called antisemitic, the quote “I personally know and love a Jew” and a local establishment called the Hillbilly Gas Mart, and if you do, come and sit by me.

The American middle class is no longer the world’s richest. Quel surprise.

Mumps are on the rise at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Again: Quel surprise. Yes, there’s a vaccine.

I’m reviving the long-dormant NN.c tradition of the Pie of the Month, now that I have an office and co-workers again. Today, I made Betty Rosbottom’s raspberry mousse pie in a chocolate brownie crust. The cookbook it came from is 30 years old, and whaddaya know? Here it is, sans copyright but pretty much word for word the way it appears in Rosbottom’s book.

Can you copyright a recipe? That’s an interesting question. I wonder if I care enough to look up the answer. Probably not.

But the pie was very good, although not very good for an office offering. Soon, fruit of all sorts will be back in season, and the PotM will be something that draws the FBI agents from their several individual offices in our Detroit building. I don’t know what they’re up to, only that every so often when I go to the vending machines on the tenth floor for a soda, I run into some guy with a gun and a badge on his belt. Today we ate lunch at a restaurant around the corner, and sat next to a table of uniformed and plainclothes state police. It’s the safest corner in the city.

The state boys — I prefer the U.P. usage — had one of their cruisers parked outside the restaurant. I was unaware we are the last state police department to still use the gum ball roof light design, even though they’re now equipped with LEDs. I just like the cars, as long as they’re not pulling me over.

So, a lovely day today. I took the first early-morning bike ride of the season. It was chilly and the sun was blazing over the water. I tried not to look directly at its dazzle, but at one point I glanced over and thought, huh. Sharks. Don’t see that very often in fresh water. It was two swans turned ass-up to root for whatever they eat off the bottom, but for the life of me, it looked like a couple of dorsal fins.

I’m making no sense, right? Skip to the bloggage, then.

I found this excoriation of Franklin Graham via Neil Steinberg, who noted that Franklin’s father skipped every chance to take a strong moral stand on the issues of his day, preferring to suck up to presidents. I’m not well-versed enough on my Billy Graham Crusades history to know whether that’s true, but his son is certainly a shit.

If a motor vehicle has to crash into my house, please, let it be the Wienermobile.

And so the week is underway. Forward!

I know bad weather happens on Easter, but honestly, I can never think of any in my recent memory. Maybe it just doesn’t register, or fades quickly, like the pain of childbirth. Whatever the reason, we had a pretty glorious Easter, weather-wise, and most of the other -wises, in that we had good food and chocolate and ham and eggs. I’m sure Jeff was working overtime and then some, but it is the busiest day of the year in his line of work.

As for me, I saw a Muslim girl at the Eastern Market, wearing a hijab, with a pair of bunny ears on top. Our wonderful country of weirdness.

We went to Toledo to meet my sister-in-law for Easter lunch — it’s about halfway between us. Somehow we got to talking about this and that, and she said her employer-paid health insurance offers a rebate for people who exercise four times a week for 30 minutes. It’s self-reported, she said.

And how much of a rebate do they get? Fifteen bucks per quarter. It’s hardly worth lying on the reporting forms.

I was wondering about this because I read something recently about “the internet of things” — all the interconnected devices that make our lives easier. I think we’ve discussed the Next thermostat here before, but there are also all these fitness trackers like the Fitbit and Nike Fuel Band, et al. I got one of these for Christmas, the Misfit Shine, and I really like it. It meshes narcissism with tech geekery with data analysis. I cannot deny that I check it several times a day, and that it motivates me to walk more often in pursuit of the points that make it blink and send me attagirl messages via my phone. I’m on a long-term, low-pressure quest to chip away a few pounds, and stupid stuff like this makes a difference

I don’t have to spend much time on the website, though, to see a definite dark side — the bundled packages “ideal for office groups,” where everyone gets a wearable tracker and competes to reach fitness goals. Is it so crazy to imagine a time when your insurer wants to know how often you’re making the 1,000-point standard, and determines your premium based on it?

I think it’ll happen. And I think the technology will advance, but also the shadow economy that will collect your tracker and attach it to a dog for 45 minutes or so before dropping it back in your mailbox.

Honest, boss, I don’t know why I can’t lose these extra pounds. I’m working my ass off at the dog park.

Let’s not let fear of surveillance put a pall on a gentle Sunday night, fading into golden light with a dog nearby and a single hot dog on the grill. (After that midday feed, I don’t feel like eating much.) Time to skip to the bloggage:

A friend of mine here in Detroit is one of those urban farmers you’ve heard so much about — the one with the ducks. She had her annual Easter Eggstravaganza, and I know a few of you threw her some money so she could make it free for all the neighborhood kids. Here are the event photos, at least the series where every kid in attendance got his or her picture taken with a duckling. Don’t know if that was the same duck in every picture, but you get a sense of the fun that was had. Lots!

I liked parts of this essay about Elmore Leonard, which ran last week in Grantland’s Detroit series. The writer understands which books were the best (at least, he agrees with me). Other parts, not so much, but it’s a fine effort.

And that’s enough for a day when we’re all recovering from chocolate poisoning. Happy week ahead, all.

Everything’s coming up green. Finally.