Yep, up late dancing around the maypole catching up on work. Open thread!

I got a call sometime in January from an old pal, asking if I’d like to have lunch in two hours, spur of the moment, and I said yes. It was a wonderful lunch and a wonderful time, and I resolved that if I had the chance to see an old pal again, I’d do it, because once you hit 50 you just never know. I missed my college-newspaper reunion two weeks ago, and I regret it, but we did make time for Dr. Frank Byrne’s 60th birthday party in Madison over the weekend, and I certainly don’t regret that, even though it required a too-early flight out and a too-late flight home and the weather was fairly shitty. It was still a great party, and a day-after breakfast, and somehow — Frank swears — it remained a surprise.

He swears. He’s too nice a guy to say otherwise, but if it’s true, I don’t know how she did it, because it was one big party. All his kids flew in from their various outposts, his mom and sister showed, and there were a few from Fort Wayne, as well as the expected horde from Madtown.

I’ve been living in Detroit long enough that my eye is thoroughly scuffed to the decay; I hardly notice it anymore. But man, did I notice Madison. What a prosperous, money-soaked town. There was a demonstration going on down at the capitol, where we didn’t linger. (See weather report, above.) I mentioned that when we arrived at the party.

“I see they were demonstrating at the capitol.”

“They’re always demonstrating at the capitol. The news would be if they weren’t.”

I gather this will continue until the election, and if Walker isn’t recalled — polling says he has a good shot at prevailing — likely for a while afterward.

That photo below was taken in the student union — the Rathskeller, where we drank beer because of the rain outside, on the famous Memorial Union Terrace. Frank’s favorite summer socializing spot, by the way. Send him out for a pitcher, but don’t expect him back for 45 minutes; he has to stop to talk to a few million people along the way.

(We stayed at the Hotel Red, by the way — Mrs. Frank got a rate. The showers were amazing. I could marry that damn shower. If you ever get a chance to experience one of those multi-head, crazy-ass showers, do so. It made up for the chill rain.)

Our last stop on the way out of town was a record store, where we bought Kate the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” album, along with Black Flag’s “In My Head.” “If my parents bought me these records when I was 15, I’d have checked the refrigerator,” the clerk said, but didn’t say for what. I left it at that. Some things, you just leave unexplained.

Where is Nance?

I don’t recognize the church of my youth. This version is the one that appears in movies where nuns and priests never smile, have filthy secrets and abuse children. Only this woman, a teacher in a Fort Wayne Catholic school who asked the wrong boss for a few days off, isn’t a child:

During the meeting, Kuzmich told Herx repeatedly she was a “grave, immoral sinner,” and that should news of the treatments get out there would be a scandal, according to court documents.

Emily Herx’ grave sin? Trying to conceive through in-vitro fertilization. She asked for time off to have the procedure done. For which, this representation of Christ on earth, Rev. John Kuzmich, told her she was a grave, immoral sinner.

I’m reaching the point where I not only will never rejoin the church, I can’t believe I ever even considered it. Dear Pope Benedict, please enjoy your smaller, purer church. I hope no more members disappoint you.

By the way, I predicted the inevitable Kevin Leininger column defending Kuzmich a few hours ago. I think it’ll be in Saturday’s paper. We’ll see.

It’s been a day for jaw-droppers. For the last few months, a coalition has been gathering signatures, trying to put repeal of the state’s emergency-manager law on the state ballot this fall. They gathered 100,000 more than what they needed, and presented them to the state board of canvassers, which yesterday deadlocked on accepting them, because — get this — the font on the petitions was the wrong size. It had to be 14 point, and there were even printers who testified it was 14 point, but the font was Calibri, which is thinner, and sometimes looks smaller. Too bad! A tied board means it doesn’t pass, and the room erupted — see this nice photo in the News.

Next stop: Court.

Finally, a nice Brian Dickerson column on the final-final denouement of the Case of Little Leo Ratte and the Overzealous Child Protective Services. It’s a good story, and I think we discussed it when it happened: Pop-culture-sheltered U of M professor takes his little boy to a Tigers game and buys him a bottle of lemonade, not knowing that Mike’s brand is the kind with alcohol in it. A security guard sees the boy sipping from it, alerts the fuzz, and the family is swept up in a Kafkaesque nightmare of foster homes, court orders and the like. The family is on the brink of pushing through a law to keep this from happening again. More power, etc.

Finally, another great Sweet Juniper on the fauxtopias of suburban Detroit. Highly recommended.

Happy weekend, all.

I really need to keep up on the rest of the paper. As many of you know, I ignore the sports section. Sorry, sports fans, but it’s just too late for me. I read world/nation, metro, business and arts. There are many fine sportswriters in the world and I look them up when I can, but keeping up is something I don’t have time for.

So it was that I learned that a Los Angeles Laker named “Metta World Peace” elbowed an opponent during a game the other day and was ejected. Shouldn’t there be some explanation of the name? Wait, there was explanation of the name? Back when it was changed? From who? Ohhhh, Ron Artest. That guy. He started the brawl at the Palace. And now he’s calling himself World Peace, but I don’t get the Metta. Can anyone explain this? He sounds like he’s still a long way from peaceful.

During my time on the sports copy desk — a six-month stretch that will provide me with a lifetime of boring dinner-party stories — I came to think of basketball as Armpit Season. Picture after picture of armpits. It got old.

In ten days, I’m going to a Tigers game, however. Because free tickets + warm spring night (I hope) = awesome.

Bloggage tonight? Yeah, some:

A stupid Kathleen Parker column. (Yeah, what else is new, right?) A funny Charles Pierce comment on it.

David Simon has a blog (a website, anyway). E-i-e-i-o.

It took some hard pushin’, but I birthed ‘nother project for Bridge. Public-employee pensions, woo, but it’s over. I spent a chunk of today reporting a much lighter piece, and once the end-of-the-term grading is done, I’ll have a much lighter step to match.

Parts one, two, three, four.

And in the meantime, all I have to do is kill dozens of comments out of my email, not from Bridge readers but from Mlive, the newspaper/digital platform where we share our content. Apparently there are people in the world who have nothing better to do than snipe back and forth on newspaper comment boards.

Life is too short for that, but maybe not when your main point consists of honk and the person you’re arguing with says honk-honk.

Good lord, but there’s some bloggage to get to today, so let’s.

This was destined to go viral the minute the judge said, “Hot dog!” So enjoy. (You can’t see his hot dog.)

A naked man runs through my neighborhood. And I MISSED IT. Streaking isn’t back; he’s just a meth casualty released from the psych ward too soon.

Frank Rich on something that isn’t exactly news, but a decent primer on the sugar daddies swinging their moneybags in the current election.

And speaking of public-employee pensions, David Von Drehle tells a story better than I ever could — Rhode Island’s.

Off to edit some copy.

I’m beginning to think medical marijuana is a ship that’s leaving without me. I have absolutely no problem with people using it however they like as medicine, and I know there are many sick people with real illnesses who are legitimately helped by it. I also know that legalizing it for medical use is de facto legalizing it for recreational use, and why pretend otherwise. If the state’s voters approve of weed as a treatment for cancer and back pain and free-floating anxiety, then let’s stop fooling ourselves.

That won’t happen. Our attorney general is making this a jihad of sorts, and I could make a speech about this, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll direct you to a rather ingenious idea related to the issue — repurposing of an Upper Peninsula copper mine as an underground pot farm. Kind of a trippy idea, when you think about it — you could stage a killer Harold & Kumar movie down there.

It would help to be stoned to property grok this pearl-clutcher from the News today, about fear of crime in Birmingham, another wealthy suburb on the west side. Actual quote: “I don’t know what the world is coming to.” Everybody in my Facebook network is howling over it, and I can’t say I blame ’em.

In honor of J.C.’s enhancement of Deborah’s photo yesterday, let’s run this one again. The Enhance Supercut!

And because supercuts are funny, No Signal:

From Bill, the official obit for Jay Z.

And goodnight.

Just because it was Sunday, I threw my bike in the car and took my lard ass off to Belle Isle. Yes, yes, I could have ridden there, but it’s early in the year, the weather wasn’t quite right and I just didn’t want to face that feeling of being very far from home and not willing to pedal another 50 feet.

Good thing, too. The wind was wicked, a stiff 25 miles or so out of the northeast, which meant the windward side of the island was pretty fierce. Even more than cold, I hate riding in a strong wind, and I think I know why — it’s the closest actual cycling comes to spinning class, that sense of pedaling with an anchor. Bleh. But I made my two loops, and then noodled off here and there to see the parts of the island I see less often. The consent agreement between the city and state will call for Belle Isle to be run by the state for a while, and I can hardly see a downside to that, starting with the phase-in of an entry fee. It won’t be steep, and if it discourages the sort of people who’ve treated the island as an after-dark partying stop, so be it. It’s too nice a place to squander.

So around I went, twice, seeing what there is to see. Waterfowl, mostly. Everyone must still be nesting, because there were only two goslings in evidence, but lots of jumpy geese and — ack — swans. You want to see a bird that can make you wish you were dead? Say hi to a swan protecting a nest. I went out on a deserted fishing pier, checked out the boats that were already in the water at the Detroit Yacht Club and watched a men’s eight launch from the Boat Club. Rowing is a sport that’s always attracted me, but never enough to do more than dabble. Watching those guys blow away from the dock, inches above the waterline, made me think there are other ways to get your exercise. Like pedaling against a tough headwind.

Otherwise? Eh, a nice weekend. Eastern Market, laundry, a Saturday-night show in a second-floor performance space, which convened as the ball game was letting out. The Tigers won; you could tell by the facial expressions, but it might have been the elation over getting back to the nice warm car. That wind couldn’t have been fun to sit in.

Bloggage? A little:

The blessing of the purses. Because, that’s why.

A fireball and explosion seen across much of Nevada? Be not alarmed! Probably just a meteor.

And was that a freaky “Mad Men,” or what?

Happy Monday.

I sent Coozledad an Electric Six T-shirt and all I got was this beautiful watercolor of his pet crow, which Alan just brought back from the framer today:

A terrible photo, I know. Alan wanted to wait until daylight, but I insisted. Here’s a decent detail shot, from Cooz’s own blog. It’s just spectacular, and I’m amazed he’s this generous. I think I’ll send him an old ratty hoodie next, in the hope he’ll reply with some diamond earrings or something. We’ll walk it around the house for a week or two, until the crow tells us where he wants to hang (as long as it’s out of direct sunlight, or close to a bathroom).

This almost counters the news that we lost yet ANOTHER commenter, albeit one of the less-chatty ones — JayZ(the original), who, we learned from Bill, “passed away suddenly in France on Easter Sunday.” May I just say? That’s a line I’d like to see in my obituary someday, if that’s even possible.

I really don’t know what to say about that, other than I’m sorry.

And now it’s week’s end, “30 Rock” night, and I’m having a brownie and a second glass of wine, because why not? Tomorrow I’m going to hit the gym and it will surely hit me back, but I don’t care.

Bloggage?

Professionalism ain’t what it used to be.

The flight path of the pilot whose plane augured in to the Gulf of Mexico today. Lost pressure, blacked out, adios — it’s the same thing that happened to Payne Stewart’s plane a few years back. Arresting to see the final tracings.

Keep talkin’, liberal man. I’m sure it’ll do a lot of good.

Me, I’m going to bed. Have a great weekend, all.

I’m not going to go on about Dick Clark. Y’know? R’spect, but let’s not go overboard. I was a fan of many of the shows that were all bigfooted out of existence by “American Bandstand,” and what were they? “Hullabaloo,” “Where the Action Is,” and, of course, Jerry Rasor’s “Dance Party.” You never saw that one? That’s because it was a local:

Years and years and years later, I hung out at a club with our own Jeff Borden, and every so often they’d project clips from “Dance Party” over the dance floor, just for the ironic frisson of it all, because the music in the club was more likely to be the Ramones or Human Sexual Response. Good times.

Anyway, I sort of lost it after Clark insisted on coming back to “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” after his stroke. I didn’t know whether I should be a) happy that a stroke victim wasn’t having any of that societal disapproval of slurred speech; or b) horrified. You can’t speak clearly anymore, Dick! It’s a tragedy, but you had a good run! Let someone else take the helm! You’re 100 years old!

Knowing when to leave — that’s a tough one. I guess he figured it out for himself. Andy Rooney was about a decade overdue. Something to remember for all of us contemplating retirement.

I’m done with my horse-eating project at work and did so just in time to enjoy my two (2) craft beers, along with a falafel wrap at my new favorite local. I read a couple of chapters in “American Gods,” which I can’t decide if I like or not. It’s certainly a page-turner, but I’m sort of allergic to this genre. Can it rise above? Time will tell. It’s a great premise — a sort of underground trip to find gods of yore and beyond-yore. We shall see. In the meantime, it was good falafel accompaniment.

Bloggage?

Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb? Hell if they know.

The University of Michigan joined Coursera. Have any of you guys ever done one of these things? Some of those courses look sort of interesting.

Just a few more days to get through, and then it’s May, and may I just say? That will be awesome. Have a great downslope of the week.