I went to some play-actin’ last night. This one, specifically, which wasn’t entirely a play but was more than a monologue — “The Troublemakers,” about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s sojourn in Detroit, while Rivera painted the murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

My takeaway was that little changes. Rich people seek out artists and vice versa. The former puts up with the latter’s insults — Frida, pretending ignorance of English, would tell the Grosse Pointe matrons throwing tea parties in her honor, “I shit on you” — and the latter turns up at those parties in exchange for patronage. The piece’s high points — the pair’s arrival, Frida’s wrenching miscarriage, the debut of the murals — were the tentpoles that carried the narrative through.

Some folks I know were in it. Not a bad way to spend a Tuesday night.

But now I have little bloggage. Nope. Now I have no bloggage. Got any to share?

Before I forget, a movie recommendation we caught last weekend on On Demand cable. (It sounds strange to write “on On Demand,” but stranger to write, “a movie we demanded to watch last weekend.” How about “a movie we watched via On Demand.” Does that work for everyone?)

Anyway: “The Other F Word,” which I thought we could enjoy as a fam, seeing as how it had cross-generational appeal — a documentary about some of the most notorious punk rockers of the ’80s, now responsible fathers. It was an amusing little trifle, and if it boiled down to, essentially, “one day you’ll have children, and you’ll understand,” it didn’t make it any less charming.

The central through-line was the story of Jim Lindberg, lead singer in Pennywise (I’ve never heard of them, either, although I’m told they were big. Or maybe the pictures got small.). He has one of those double-edged swords — a band that has enough success after a couple of decades to provide him and his quartet of blondes (wife, three adorable daughters) with a comfortable California living, but only if he’s willing to spend three-quarters of every year on the road, screaming into microphones. It’s not exactly a hard-knock life, except it is. He’s a funny guy, and at one point, pausing near the bunk area on the band’s tour bus, notes that the smell is “a mix of farts, ass, feet…and a hint of balls.” I’m sure it sounded like heaven when he was 25, less so today. But what do fathers do? Take care of their families. And so he soldiers on, worrying about father-daughter dances and recitals.

Around him, his fellow punkers do the same, with varying degrees of success. The women are all but invisible, not all the stories charming — it’s depressing to hear how many of these angry men started as angry boys, abandoned by their fathers. But you have to salute their onward-and-upward response of trying to do better by their own children.

Was it worth a night out in the theater? No. Was it worth $5 and a bowl of homemade popcorn on the couch? Sure. Warning: If you choose to do the same, know that the R rating is due to profanity so thick it turns the air blue, but unfortunately isn’t deployed very imaginatively. Lee Ermey, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo woo woo.

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

Only in Ann Arbor:

A 34-year-old Ann Arbor man was sent to the hospital with a head injury after another man punched him on Saturday during a literary argument, according to police.

Things missing from this story: WHAT THEY WERE ARGUING ABOUT, although there is mention of a condescending remark that led to the fracas.

(A word we should all use more: Fracas.)

I think Prospero/Malvolio could probably riff on that one for a while. Me, I’m off to bed.

I didn’t hear every word of the “This American Life” walkback of “Mr. Daisey Goes to China,” the riveting hour of radio aired in January that turned out to have…well, you can read the stories everywhere. The economical phrase is “numerous fabrications.” But I heard enough, and for the record, the most interesting segment was the one at the end of Act 2, where, after an agonizing grilling by Ira Glass, Mike Daisey (the monologuist whose truthy monologue the show was based on) asks to come back and say a few more things.

Glass notes that he thought Daisey was going to cop to a few more fabrications. But no. He wanted to make an extended argument that embroidering the facts of his monologue about Apple’s manufacturing processes was defensible to make an emotional connection with the theatrical audience, and that emotion raised awareness, and therefore, was a type of truth, if not a journalistic one. (At least, I think that’s what he was saying.)

Glass countered that theater was one thing, and journalism was quite another, but if a person stands up on stage and says, “This happened to me, it really did,” even in a theater, then the audience has an expectation that what they’re going to hear is factual.

This fascinates me. Every so often I go on a tear against urban legends, which used to arrive regularly via email and now arrive regularly via Facebook updates. No, U.S. congressmen and presidents don’t get obscene, six-figure salaries FOR LIFE because someone told you via email. No, a bunch of U.S. Marines didn’t beat the crap out of a guy who stole the Toys for Tots donation bowl; the thing that looks like a clipping from the paper is doctored. No, the Obamas didn’t have that conversation in a restaurant, the punchline of which suggests that Michelle made her husband what he is. And every time I do, someone says, “Oh, I figured it was bullshit, but I passed it along because it’s a good story.” In other words, Daisey may be onto something. When Mitch Albom was caught pre-writing a story that hadn’t actually happened yet — an act he called “a wrong assumption,” some of his biggest defenders were readers, who said, essentially, big deal. He thought it was going to happen, and he’s real busy, and anyway it’s a good story and what’s the harm?

The harm is that facts are facts and truth is truth, and sometimes they don’t always mesh perfectly.

I think that’s the last time Ira Glass uses a theatrical piece as the basis for a show, however.

Some purty good bloggage today, plus a picture. Stand by for links!

Adrianne? Hank? Adrianne’s friend whose name I forget? Remember that bar we went to in D.C. by Union Station, the one Adrianne picked because she has that Irish nose for a good place to meet friends and raise a glass or two? Place called the Dubliner? Guess who stopped by on St. Patrick’s Day. And we missed him.

A great piece in the WashPost about the culture clash perfectly crystalized in the case of the Priest and the Lesbian and the Communion Wafer at Mom’s Funeral, which we discussed last week. A piece of work, that priest:

In 2008, he lectured at the Conservative Institute of M.R. Stefanik in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. He called for moving “away from secular political democracy or political liberalism” in order to “usher in what I would call post-secular democracies.”

“An urgent return to the religion and the metaphysical realism of the West, combined with the promotion of free economies and a sound political foundation is what is now needed to preserve civilization,” he said, according to text provided of his speech, adding that “the Western radicals think they have seen that dark world and they like it, the Eastern Europeans can awake them from their deadly delusion.”

Post-secular democracies. Wonderful.

Finally, how my husband, who just last week remarked, “Never do I feel more out of touch with my fellow Americans than I do during March madness,” spent part of the weekend:

Taking down our basketball hoop.

Food Truck Nation has engulfed the D.

A wild weather evening in our part of the world yesterday. I’m sitting in the car place, waiting on an oil change and watching the news footage scroll by, and it’s a standard-issue tornado damage — houses reduced to matchsticks, the usual. But no injuries. Presumably someone will get a splinter or a nail puncture before the mess is cleaned up, but it’s times like this we should all join hands and thank civilization for our infrastructure, the things we all take for granted — weather alerts, in this case.

I remember turning my ankle on a sidewalk-repair job in Buenos Aires that didn’t have so much as a strip of yellow tape to warn the pedestrian. The Argentine capital has many charms, but for all our whining about the lawyerizing of American culture and so forth, we live in a pretty safe country, all things considered.

(If I were writing this screenplay, this is the part in the story where I am killed by a stray bullet fired by an armed citizen practicing their right to self-defense, perhaps with ammo purchased from Michi-Gun, the actual name of an actual gun store in the next strip mall. Actual motto: “We aim to please!” God bless America.)

Speaking of which! Here’s an actual movie trailer for an actual movie with that actual title — God Bless America — which seems to consist entirely of sweet Freddie Rumson from “Mad Men” on a killing spree, taking out people who chap his ass. You know, the standard antihero thing. I’m interested in what sort of arc Bobcat Goldthwait might be able to squeeze out of that story, but not enough to pay to see it. Even with Freddy Rumson.

If you feel like going on a killing spree — or even just stamping your feet a little — watch Stephen Colbert take apart Rick Santorum’s latest. I heard the NPR version today, in which Santorum claims his previously quoted remarks — that he thought Puerto Rico could become a state, but only if they were willing to make English the “main language” — were twisted. OK, whatever. I’m sure he believes it in his heart.

The hell with that — how about a stop by the South by Southwest festival. Thanks, Hank, for the tip on this lively read of the music part of the deal. Lively turns of phrase: The Mean Jeans are “a Portland trio who sound like the Ramones with a colony of fire ants dumped down their boxer-briefs.” Yeah.

And for me, that’ll have to be it. Enjoy your weekend. I’m spending mine grading papers.

I didn’t make a pie for Pi Day. But I did eat a cupcake, in keeping with my contrarian mindset.

I wished it was pie. But sometimes you settle.

Another day I’m ending with a cluttered head, but nothing really coming to the forefront. I’m more of a stew today, so let’s see what sort of things will rise to the top with a good stir.

“Luck,” the HBO series about horse racing, was cancelled today, after a third horse had to be put down, following an on-set injury. Hmm. I’ve been giving it a chance, but I wonder why — it’s a little too self-consciously arch. (That’s redundant, isn’t it? Archness is self-conscious by nature, right?) But I liked the racing scenes, and the horses in general, although if you know anything about riding, you could see the jockeys struggling to ride the races they’d been directed to, with some hauling so hard on their mounts, the horses’ mouths gaped open. There was one making-of featurette that showed just how the cameras got that close — jib arms and a speeding truck, mostly. I liked Gary Stevens, a real jockey who acts on the side. I liked Kerry Condon as an Irish exercise rider trying to break into the bigs.

Didn’t like: All that Milchian dialogue, which some people love, but mostly gets on my nerves. And the dead horses, of course.

Great headline on a newspaper story — the only place you find ’em anymore — about the primaries Tuesday.

Page through a WashPost special section on cherry blossoms. (Man, I’m getting tired. I just typed “cherry bottoms.”)

And while we’re there, check out the photo gallery for the White House state dinner last night. As usual, Shelley O shut it DOWN, as T-Lo would say. But there were some other contenders.

And now it’s the Ides of March, only it feels more like the Ides of April around here. Yesterday I opened the windows for the first time, and once the morning rain passes, I think I’ll do it again.

But before that? Poached eggs.

Wow, what a day. So warm I drove home from Lansing with the sun roof open, IGNORING THE NEWS. I had to switch to the iPod about halfway there this morning, and it held through the afternoon commute, too. It was this story that did it; the sound of the Deep South voices saying this…

John Gentile of Crossville, Tenn., still doesn’t believe Obama is allowed to be president because his father was born in Kenya.

“I just don’t like the directions that he’s headed in, and personally I don’t think he qualifies to be president under the ‘natural born citizen.’ In the Constitution it states that you have to have two parents that were born in the United States, so that there’s no alternative allegiance by any member of the family,” Gentile said.

The Constitution actually doesn’t say that.

…just sent me around the bend. So much more calming to listen to Rod Stewart in his glory days. It made me want to learn how to play “Every Picture Tells a Story” on some random stringed instrument.

Has any one ever read anything I’ve written and said, “I wish I could turn a phrase like that girl?” I mean, other than Tim Goeglein? Because we all have gifts, but mine isn’t the guitar. (Or mandolin, in this case.)

A good day all around, today. I brought my iPad in, so Ron could watch “Game Change” on his lunch hour, and could hear him giggling from his office. His fave line: “Thanks for cutting your mullet, Levi.” I can’t believe I objected to the rate increase that made HBO Go and online streaming possible — old “Sopranos” and “The Wire” episodes have been the reason a number of boring household chores even got done in this house. Now, if only they’d add “John From Cincinnati,” a series that’s been so thoroughly scrubbed from HBO memory I’m convinced it might be my own private hallucination. Kem Nunn + David Milch = incoherence.

And now, I’m watching the returns come in from Dixie. Santorum just took Alabam’. I think I’ll celebrate with another glass of Cote du Rhone, like the urban elitist I am.

Meanwhile, some bloggage?

Charter schools by moi, mainbar and sidebar. Click and keep me employed.

A lead I think we can all agree we never want written about our death:

Charges were announced Tuesday for a gas station clerk in Detroit accused in a fatal shooting over the price of condoms in a late-night dispute over the weekend.

The kid was shot in the back. I understand the life of a Detroit gas-station clerk is perilous, but that is wrong.

I cannot get enough of Animals Talking in All Caps. Sorry, but it’s a joke that never gets old. (So far.)

Wednesday, almost! Huzzah.

As someone who has always thought it was silly that certain ethnic holidays are celebrated mainly by white people, eating in restaurants being served by the people whose holiday it allegedly is, I don’t find this cartoon — about Cinco de Mayo in Brentwood — particularly offensive. Not offensive at all, in fact.

What say you? The attached tweet says it got a Patch editor fired. Seems an overreaction to me. But that’s Patch for ya.

Sorry. All that Palin talk must have rubbed off on me.

I don’t have a great deal today, as you have probably suspected by now. The project that’s been blotting out my personal sun runs today in Bridge. Charter schools. Some of you may find this more interesting than others.

If you want something a little spicier, one of the good guys of newspaper journalism has died. Nelson Rockefeller-style.

More tomorrow, but for now — gotta work.

“Game Change,” the Sarah Palin horror flick produced by HBO, was both better and worse than I expected. Better: Julianne Moore’s performance, which was great. Worse: Her accent, which was terrible. Better: It really did humanize the woman we’ve been calling She-Who for so long, something I didn’t think possible. It illustrated — vividly — just how overwhelmed Palin was by the tsunami that hit her, how blithely she walked into it, trusting in “God’s will.”

Worse: It brought it all back. God, what a visceral dislike I had for that woman. It was the equal and opposite effect she had on all those folks on the rope line, that jus’-folks stuff she worked so well. (Amply portrayed in the film, by the way.) It started with her nomination speech, that triumph of self-flattery and sarcasm. I’m all for self-esteem, but that was ridiculous. Even considering the undercard in a national campaign isn’t required to do much during a run but play dirty if asked to and tour the B circuit without complaint, she was appallingly without substance. And so happy and proud to be so! That’s what was so galling: Hi, I’m real America! And I’m ignorant! But I’m doing the work of God!

But “Game Change,” though nominally Palin/Moore’s movie, is really Woody Harrelson’s story, playing Steve Schmidt, who opened the bottle and watched the genie quickly grant his wishes — changed the game, overshadowed Obama, rallied the base — and then flew free, with no intention of ever going back in. The game was changed so profoundly, in fact, that the maverick’s main man was left to do the final smackdown, during preparations for John McCain’s concession speech, when he had to all but wrestle Palin to the ground to get her to give up her idea of giving her own speech.

But here’s the thing: This isn’t the great She-Who movie. That won’t be made for quite a few more years. This was basically just a rehash, with the added titillation of watching what we all suspected was going on backstage at the time — mainly Palin prepping for debates by learning the difference between the British prime minister’s and Queen Elizabeth’s roles, or that Korea really is two countries, or why we’re in Iraq. Is it possible she really was that ignorant? Really? I’m worried about Real America.

The great Palin movie will come after enough time has passed that we can see not just Palin, but ourselves, with a little more perspective. It isn’t just that Palin happened. It’s that a lot of other things happened at the same time. We all went crazy, and we haven’t recovered.

In other movie news, I also watched “Hanna,” on my iPad, while cleaning closets and drawers. It was far better than I expected, in large part due to a great score by the Chemical Brothers. I’m not a score-noticer, and this is the second straight year I’ve done so. Is all the music in our house finally rubbing off on me, or is it the unexpected revelation of this decade?

Other than that, I took a semi-internet sabbath, so no links to share at the moment. Anyone have any to suggest?

Meanwhile, happy Monday. Enjoy the week, all.

Someone sent me Marilyn Hagerty’s column about the Olive Garden opening in Grand Forks, N.D. about 10-ish Thursday morning. By late afternoon, the story was everywhere and, hence, played. And so the bristling pace of the Internet’s snark cycle leaves me sucking hind tailpipe once again.

But just in case you didn’t see it, here it is, a little masterpiece of business reporting:

The place is impressive. It’s fashioned in Tuscan farmhouse style with a welcoming entryway. There is seating for those who are waiting.

My booth was near the kitchen, and I watched the waiters in white shirts, ties, black trousers and aprons adorned with gold-colored towels. They were busy at midday, punching in orders and carrying out bread and pasta.

Some years back, Alan was contacted by a journalism headhunter who asked if he’d be interested in a department head-level position in Fargo. The answer: No. Grand Forks was once part of the Knight-Ridder family, so I guess that might have beem an option, too. The answer was still no. But as the tireless, steroidal snarkers at Gawker demonstrate, this is not a North Dakota thing, it’s an Olive Garden thing; the OG appears in newspaper restaurant reviews over and over. And all I have to say about that is what Hagerty herself told the Village Voice — I told you this thing went viral — today:

If you were going to review the fine dining here, you’d be done in three weeks–there’s only about three places you could call “fine dining.”

But while we’re on the subject, let’s skip to another exemplar of North Dakota journalism, the amusingly named Jon Flatland:

Jon Flatland, a columnist, a former president of the North Dakota Newspaper Association and one-time newspaper owner, has been exposed as a serial plagiarist.

When confronted with the evidence gathered by humor writer Dave Fox, Flatland abruptly resigned from his position as interim managing editor of the Times in Blooming Prairie, Minnesota and “quickly and quietly left town,” according to the paper’s publisher.

In a profile last month of Jon Flatland and his wife, whom he met online, the Minnesota native said, “Don’t try to be someone you’re not, because if and when you do meet someone through a service like eHarmony, they’re going to find out pretty quickly you weren’t being honest. Just be yourself.” It’s unclear how many humor columns of Flatland’s included stolen material, but it appears to go back many years and involves work taken from a variety of columnists.

This guy makes Tim Goeglein look like a piker. Having seen a few clips from the papers that were running him — links in the piece — I bet I know what happened: This guy thought he might as well have been stationed on Mars, and even Google doesn’t reach that far. His mistake: Once Olive Garden gets there, Google is right behind.

But what I really want to talk about today was this little moment from earlier this week, as detailed by Jonathan Chait:

Earlier this week, a pretty interesting and telling exchange took place at a Mitt Romney town hall meeting. A student asked Romney what he would do to make college more affordable for students who struggle to pay for it. Romney’s reply was jarring:

“It would be popular for me to stand up and say I’m going to give you government money to pay for your college, but I’m not going to promise that,” he said, to sustained applause from the crowd at a high-tech metals assembly factory here. “Don’t just go to one that has the highest price. Go to one that has a little lower price where you can get a good education. And hopefully you’ll find that. And don’t expect the government to forgive the debt that you take on.”

Wow. This is the candidate who has promised to keep the pillows plumped for everyone now over 55, but if you had the misfortune of being born later (even by a year or two, like, um, me), too bad. And if you have, oh, children on the other side of the line? What then? Find a nice community college, sucka. Too bad you weren’t born rich, like my kids! This sort of redefines cynicism, doesn’t it? What country can long survive betting against its youngest members?

Ed Kilgore at Washington Monthly has more.

Boy, am I not looking forward to this campaign. Maybe we need some levity.

Shit girls say to gay guys.

And if you don’t like that, the Northern lights over Lake Superior, night before last. I’m sure if you were there, it made the cell-phone interference totally worth it.

Great weekend, all!