A few years back, I accepted a freelance assignment to interview the three kings of the Detroit restaurant scene. Two of them ran trendy fine-dining establishments, the third a chain of mid- to upper-middle Italian places.

Five or six years later, no one talks about them at all anymore. One went broke, the other reorganized, and the chain is still chugging along. The last time I ate at one I swore I would never spend another penny there, because life is too damn short, and their dedication to serving mediocre food just pisses me off these days.

I think I’ve mentioned before that my biggest disappointment after moving here was the surprisingly lousy restaurant scene. Whenever I mentioned this, people would say, oh you need to try this place out in West Exurbia. It was named restaurant of the year by six magazines and three newspapers! We ate there last month and it was surprisingly reasonable — we got out for under $300.

I don’t want to eat at those places, at least not more often than annually. I want decent, moderately priced places you can drop in on, that won’t cost a fortune. I want a burger place, a pasta place, a Mexican place, a Middle Eastern place, a steak place, a fish place, a few surprises. (I don’t care if I never eat another coney for the rest of my goddamn life, by the way. That’s one burden I’ve been spared, not being a native.) And it’s taken me a while, but little by little, I’ve filled most of these slots. And I’ve found most of them in recently opened places in Detroit.

Last night Alan and I met for dinner at Green Dot Stables, typical of the new sort of place popping up around here. It’s a former Teamsters hangout, and doesn’t seem to have been redecorated under the new regime. No reservations required, just show up. They serve sliders, fries, simple sides and salads — all in tapas-size portions, all served in cardboard trays. The waitress circulates frequently and the menus stay on the table, so if you find yourself still hungry after your initial order, you can throw another $3 slider on the tab, no problem. Drinks come in what looks to be the old Teamsters glassware, only the last time I ordered a summer soda, made with cucumber- and lemon-infused syrup, the chef’s own concoction, something I doubt the union boys were into. It was delicious.

We got out — three sliders, soup for Alan, salad for me, an order of truffle fries later, couple of local craft beers — for $30 on the nose.

The transformation of the local food scene in the last few years has been remarkable. The explosion of urban farms, and the sorts of people who tend them, has led to a new kind of restaurateur, not interested in fine dining so much as good food. There’s a little imitation French bistro we discovered last year, after I sampled the chef’s ratatouille at a cooking demo at the Eastern Market. We pulled up in front and Alan said, “This can’t be right. This place looks like a methadone clinic.” Around back, a little kitchen garden had been scratched out of the ground, and inside they were serving crepes, quiche and the aforementioned ratatouille. You can carry in your own wine, with no corkage fee. Now when I want to go there, Alan says, “Oh, I had lunch there twice last week.” Well, it is near his office.

That’s Le Petit Zinc, if you’re taking notes. Have I mentioned Supino pizzeria, the best thin-crust pie I’ve had in my whole damn life? And even the Park Bar, a place I started patronizing on Kate’s music nights last year, has a Romanian family handling the food, in the Bucharest Grill off in the corner. Try the schwarma. I like the falafel too, but the best in town is the Harmonie Grill, near Wayne State. Ground chickpeas are very cheap; you can almost always feed yourself to bursting for under $10.

I think about those restaurant guys I wrote about, and they seem almost silly now, with their river views and white tablecloths and oh did I mention? Stevie Wonder dropped in last weekend. All I want out of the world these days is something good to eat. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to find it.

So, bloggage?

I try not to overlink to the NYTimes; I know some of you don’t have subscriptions. But this is a blog post from yesterday, remembering the Chase Manhattan bank robbery that became the basis for “Dog Day Afternoon.” Many fascinating details on many levels; do not miss the slide show. Attica! Attica! Attica!

I found this cringeworthy: Dax Shepherd plays the Michigan game. When newspapers try to be fun and playful, it almost always ends up this way. But maybe you’ll like it.

It had to happen sooner or later: Driving down I-96 Monday morning, passed a little nook of woods, cut back deep enough that it’s a good bet very little sun ever shines down directly. And saw? A red sumac, living up to its name. Bright autumn color, the third week of August.

Well, summer never lasts forever. As Ned Stark is always telling us.

So, winter is coming. But first will come fall, which explains the next thing I saw: A minivan with what looked to be a professionally made rear-window cling sticker: I WILL NEVER VOTE REPUBLICAN AGAIN.

Oh, what a long, long autumn it will be.

As usual, Charles Pierce has a better handle on this than I have. In the rest of my life, we have conversations now and again about tribalism, which seems to be the only word for a world with bumper stickers like the one above, not to mention party leaders like this one, who took it upon herself to elaborate on what Todd Akin said:

Ms. Barnes echoed Mr. Akin’s statement that very few rapes resulted in pregnancy, adding that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it. That’s more what I believe he was trying to state,” she said. “He just phrased it badly.”

Blessed. Hmm. I remember, many many many years ago, when the idea of adopted children searching for their biological parents was just starting to take hold, watching a TV documentary about it. They’d had a couple happy-ending stories, and then one that was, well, the opposite: A woman who had been raped — legitimately! — in the classic sense, dragged into a dark alley and raped by a man of a different color. She had the child, gave it up for adoption, and 20 years later opened the front door to find a biracial young man standing on her doorstep saying hi mom. The woman was horrified and, frankly, terrified.

She’s probably dead by now, and I can’t imagine the reunion went anything other than badly. Maybe the son would like to talk to Rep. Akin.

Well, let’s not dwell on this unpleasantness, shall we? We need something fun. How about…dog shaming. Via Hank. I laughed so hard I think I aspirated a bit of food.

You could try a cat shaming site, but face it — cats can’t be shamed.

Happy hump day, all.

It’s still undetermined as I write this, but if I were a betting woman, I’d wager that Todd Akin is toast by the time you read it. What else is there to say about the guy? I really have nothing to add, but I’d like to draw your attention to this piece from TPM, which isn’t unique today, about the myth of no-pregnancy-from-rape that persists in many quarters. Garance Franke-Ruta takes it apart — with citations that may make you feel a little nauseous — here. Avert your eyes if you’re breakfasting, as you’re about to read about secretions:

The odds that a woman who is raped will get pregnant are “one in millions and millions and millions,” said state Rep. Stephen Freind, R-Delaware County, the Legislature’s leading abortion foe.

The reason, Freind said, is that the traumatic experience of rape causes a woman to “secrete a certain secretion” that tends to kill sperm.

That’s from the Philadelphia Daily News, but it’s something I’ve read or heard elsewhere, often enough that I’ve come to think of it as the obverse of the other side’s protestor-who-comes-in-for-an-abortion story, as detailed by Frank Bruni earlier this year.

“Really, that’s so very rare, it just confuses the issue,” one woman told me in an interview. And many others, since.

You see the obvious implications here: If you got pregnant, then it must not have been a real rape, right? (Dirty dirty dirty slut. Enjoy your shaming, and learn.)

But the news cycle moves so fast, I’m relatively confident that most of you have already thrashed this out by now. So let’s move on! To skinny-dipping:

On a trip billed as a foreign policy fact-finding mission last year, a large group of Republican members of Congress, and some of their staff and family members, decided to take a swim in the (Sea of Galilee) after a long day.

Several members — including Representative Steve Southerland II of Florida, who jumped into the water holding hands with his 21-year-old daughter — said they were moved to dip for religious reasons. (The sea is believed by Christians to be the location where Jesus walked on water.)

While most of the members remained clothed, or largely so, Representative Kevin Yoder of Kansas decided to disrobe entirely, as reported first by Politico on Sunday. This sent most of the members fleeing for the shore, said a participant, and prompted a harsh rebuke the next day from Representative Eric Cantor, the House majority leader who was on the trip but did not swim in the sea.

Now, I’ve admitted to this practice myself, although I’ve mainly limited it to the Great Lakes and a few unnamed farm ponds and so forth. But I hope this admission has more grace than Yoder’s:

“A year ago, my wife, Brooke, and I joined colleagues for dinner at the Sea of Galilee in Israel. After dinner I followed some members of Congress in a spontaneous and very brief dive into the sea and regrettably I jumped into the water without a swimsuit.”

I, on the other hand, regret nothing. Right, Borden? I certainly don’t regret this spontaneous gift from Coozledad:

Yoder, row your bone ashore.

A year ago, my wife and I
Had some dinner
Drank so much I pissed my clothes
(a beginner)
So I dived into the sea
(for a brief rinse)
Ben Quayle had to follow me
(only makes sense)
Refrain-
Yoder pack your junk away
Gal-li-lee-uh
No one here but old Ben Quayle
Wants to see yah.

This morning my Facebook was ablaze with Tony Scott suicide news, with a few expressions of disapproval. As usual, more was revealed, and now it looks as though he might have had some reasons. (Or might not have.) His work was uneven, but like his brother, he favored that lush cinematography that featured lots of blowing curtains. The first film of his I saw was “The Hunger,” which I remember as a pretty good guilty-pleasure Whitley Streiber thriller and a fairly mediocre adaptation, but quite lovely to look at, and isn’t that half the battle? I also remember the audible revulsion when Susan Sarandon kissed Catherine Deneuve. Well, that was Columbus in the ’80s.

Whatever made him go over that bridge railing, I guess he had his reasons.

Tuesday, is it? Well, I hope whatever you do today, you have your own reasons.

Forsooth, “Henry V” was a disappointment. It’s really too bad, as it’s my favorite of the history plays and one I was really looking forward to. I told Kate all the way there that it contains one of the greatest follow-me-boys speeches in the English language, and she should watch for it. Alas, as drama the St. Crispin’s Day speech played more like Ben Stein in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” than, well, this:

Love me some Kenneth Branagh. What’s he up to these days? I heard him interviewed on NPR around the time this film came out, and he talked about the day he was playing Henry V onstage, and lost the glove he needed for a key scene. Shakespeare doesn’t specify many props in his plays, but the glove in “Henry V” is key. So he had to turn to the actor at his side and ad lib, in Elizabethan English, something like, “Fluellen, hast thou seen my glove?” Fluellen blanched and ran offstage to fetch another out of wardrobe, while Branagh wandered around the stage, freestyling in iambic pentameter to the other actors. As he did so, he spotted the glove; he’d dropped it a few feet away. He picked it up, returned to his mark, and continued the scene, just as Fluellen runs back onstage with a second one. I doubt if many people who were unfamiliar with the play even noticed the glitch, although he said that when he was leaving the theater that night, a passing car stopped, the window rolled down and a voice came from within: LOVED THE BIT WITH THE GLOVE.

Fortunately, the weekend improved after that. “The Pirates of Penzance” was a great deal more fun, and “42nd Street” even better. But you know, it’s really hard to go wrong with a) tap dancing; and b) “We’re in the Money.” I remember when the show opened in 1980, it wasn’t well-reviewed. It must have aged better, because it passed as a pleasant blur of tappin’ and singin’ and lots of sparkly costumes.

And now I’ve had my dose of theater for a while, at least until someone presses tickets to something else in my hand.

Stratford has changed since we were last there, and hasn’t. Same restaurants, same tourists, same townie kids hanging downtown after dark. I considered asking if any of them knew Justin Bieber, but thought better of it. After all, there’s plenty of Bieber-material on the web. (David, Adrianne? CLICK THAT.)

And so concludes the week of vacation. I saw friends and family, absorbed culture, rotated my tires. I’ve had worse weeks.

You guys, on the other hand… Did I mention what my heart did when I came home, after 36 hours without internet service, and found 136 emails waiting for me, nearly all comments? Did I? Well, it sank. It sank because I knew I’d soon have MEGO syndrome, and I did. Is this what it’s going to be like through November?

Please, say no.

On the other hand, when this is part of the election-news cycle, how can things not get crazy from time to time?

So, because I have to get ready to go back to lovely Lansing, a few notes:

Would my fifth cousin a million times removed, my reader in Connecticut who does Nall genealogy, get in touch? I got an inquiry from a Googler looking for Nall family info.

While this story in Salon takes some cheap shots at Tampa, I do think its foundational thesis is sound: If a world run on Tea Party principles is something we want, then Tampa is what we’ll get.

A good week to all.

I did a little cycling today — nothing crazy, but as usual, you go for a ride, you start thinking about dying on a ride. Twice in one week recently, I had motorists pull out in front of me, close enough that I had to do the I’M RIDIN’ HERE Ratso Rizzo thing. Both drivers were on their phones. One was on her phone and looking at a cute doggie being walked on the other side of the street.

Whenever this happens, I’m amazed at how angry I can get, justlikethat. I think it has to do with the nature of the exercise — your legs are pumping, you’re feeling good, the blood is running high, and then someone gets in your way, and THIS WILL NOT STAND. I’ve stopped listening to the iPod on the bike the last year or so, because music only makes it worse. God help you if you cut me off and “The Rockefeller Skank” is in my ears, because I’d kill someone under those circumstances.

So I guess what I’m saying is, I understand how the lawyer in New York got hit by a lunatic cyclist who simply couldn’t accept the fact that a crowded urban park is perhaps not the best place for speed training.

It’s so hard to compromise, especially when you’re a high-achieving New Yorker. Where I live, the residents get amazingly whiny about being asked to lock their damn cars, as though they live in Mayberry and not across the street from one of the most lawless cities in the union. I guess in New York, when you’re a hard-charging Type A training for your ninth triathlon — and of course you’re doing the Olympic distance, and not the wussy sprint — no one wants to be told they should put that bike on a train and go somewhere you can do 35 mph speed pieces. Not when Central Park is right down the avenue.

And now you’re bored to death. Here’s another lawyer story:

Remember the guy, a Michigan assistant attorney general, who was obsessed with the gay student-body president at the University of Michigan? And put up a scurrilous blog about him, and stalked him, and went on Anderson Cooper, displaying perhaps the most obvious case of shall-we-say-supressed-weirdness ever?

The student-body president is still dealing with him, and today won a $4.5 million settlement against him. I haven’t been following the case terribly closely, but I heard the victim offered to drop it all in exchange for an apology. Refused.

And while it might be fashionable to think this is about freedom of speech and gay rights, what it makes me think is, how the hell did this guy get hired as an assistant a.g. in the first place? I know not every lawyer can be Atticus Finch, but lordy.

Not too much of a segue here, but if you live in Michigan or care about actual election-related shenanigans, I suggest you read this. It’s sort of appalling.

We’re off to Stratford in the a.m. Three plays — Henry V, Pirates of Penzance and 42nd Street. We few, we happy few. Please, play nice while I’m gone, eh?

Because the laptop is in the midst of a 30-minute software upgrade to Mountain Lion;

Because you guys spent all day fighting, not that I object to those things, because it made cleaning Kate’s closet more interesting, what with the many, many breaks I was taking;

Because no one wants to hear about anything else I did today, which boiled down to biked/swam/cleaned/sorted/grocery shopped/software upgraded…

here are a few links.

I don’t know what’s more depressing about this story, that an IQ of 125 is enough to disqualify a person from service as a police officer in certain parts of New York state, or the fact it apparently took 16 years for the case to make its way through the courts. But hey, here you are: Court of appeals upholds job discrimination on the basis of intelligence. The plaintiff chose a career as a prison guard instead.

Well-known local personal-injury attorney, who is blind, suffers significant but not life-threatening injuries when he’s hit by a cyclist in Central Park. P.S. He is blind, and was in a pedestrian walkway. So far the chatter online is about the police estimate that the cyclist was traveling at 35 mph at the time of the crash. Most seem to believe this is a wild exaggeration. I think they’re missing the point; serious urban cyclists travel at breathtaking speeds these days, and I saw them with my own eyes when we were in NYC a few years back. It may not have been 35, but it was way up there. I can’t imagine what would happen if, say, a blind person took a wrong step or two. (I guess we know now.)

Anyway, I’m sure the conversation will center on the fact that this is a PI lawyer who was hit, and ha ha ha, that cyclist better hope he has a good lawyer, too. I’d rather it be about the WTF speeds of travel in a crowded urban park.

Me, I’m still enjoying being off. Play nice today, if you can, eh?

Back at home after a little gallop through the addresses of my life. Fort Wayne, Columbus, then back up I-75, a chunk of it with Kate at the wheel. We spun through the Ohio State area on the pretense of a college visit. As usual, the whole place seemed to be under construction. As long as I lived in Columbus, the OSU campus was under some sort of construction. That’s good, I guess — a place needs to grow, and living in the land that progress forgot, sometimes it’s easy to forget that. But there’s nothing like a few orange plastic fences to make you say, “Eh, well, that’s the place right over there. You think you might want to go here, we’ll make a formal visit later.”

We went to Magnolia Thunderpussy, a record store, aka the Place That Could Not Be Named in the Columbus Dispatch. Every time the football team had a big win or loss, reporters would head down to High Street to interview business owners. If you chatted up the clerks or managers there, the copy desk always changed the name of the business to “a High Street record store.”

Good times.

Kate got a Sublime CD, a Wavves LP, and I got a De La Soul CD. And then the mother/daughter team trundled out for Sally’s Hillbilly Cheeseburger.

I will say this: Columbus looks like a thrive-o-polis. The Tea Party should stop disparaging government, because show me a place where government is the foundation of the economy, and I’ll show you a place where things aren’t so bad. At least better than, say, Fort Wayne, where all my old landmarks are now spouting weeds and FOR LEASE and AVAILABLE signs. The cheese and onion enchiladas at La Margarita are still the platonic ideal, however, so there’s that. To be sure, it’s not so much that things are collapsing as changing — Dupont Road and West Jefferson seem to be hanging in there.

Alex lives closer to Dupont, and we spent some time wondering when the real estate wave would reach the shores of his little sliver of a lake, which has the advantage of being a little sliver, which means no ski boats, which — to me, anyway — spells D-E-S-I-R-A-B-L-E.

And that was my long weekend. The next two days I plan to exercise without worrying about when I get home, clean closets and then heading to Stratford for some theatuh.

You?

Bloggage:

Olympic swimming fanfic. Wonderful.

Friend-of-NN.c Laura Lippman has a new book out. Here’s how she came up with the main character.

Why, Fareed Zakaria, why? Why?

Vacation continues. I’m enjoying it.

The Big Lebowski branded merch. But of course.

Sally’s hillbilly cheeseburger.

At Alex’s house, Leo, Indiana. Garden, garden-and-lake and Alex, with fruits of garden.

Looks like it’s official. New thread, cuz I know you guys are going to want to talk about that.