Watchin’ the State o’ the Union, drinkin’ a second glass of wine, thinkin’ some thoughts. Among them:

Hey, there’s my congressman. Hansen Clarke. Big clapper. Well, it’s a big night for the D, on all fronts. We get major shoutouts in the SOTU, and the Tigers sign Prince Fielder. Here’s a rerun the Freep dug up from the vaults, about young Prince when he was a Little Leaguer in the Grosse Pointe Woods-Shores Little League. Note the photo. He has a great look in his eye, but clearly took that McDonald’s ad he did with his father to heart. On the other hand, one of the things to love about baseball is that some great players look like they enjoy an extra Pabst Blue Ribbon or three on the off days.

And it’s a good day for my darling daughter, entering the homestretch of midterms week. Today is history and gym. Yes, gym. They’ve been doing parts of it for the last week or so, and today is the 20-minute run, followed by the written test.

“A written test in gym?” her mother asked. “What sort of questions?”

“About stretching and stuff,” she said.

I hope she aces it. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her she’s getting off easy, gym-wise. Our system required .75 credits of gym to graduate, and every year was .25. You got senior year off, if you didn’t skip it chronically, which my friend Jeff did, to avoid getting his ass kicked for being an obvious homosexual. When they threatened to withhold his diploma, he signed up for six weeks of summer-school gym, which consisted of riding bikes and playing cards indoors on rainy days. No locker rooms, no ass-kicking, and the diploma arrived in August instead of June. I asked if he’d do it all again, knowing he missed “Pomp & Circumstance” at Vet’s Memorial and the all-night party.

“Absolutely,” he said.

Tells you everything you need to know about gym.

If she completes this year satisfactorily, Kate will never have to set foot in another high-school gym for anything but dances and pep rallies before graduation. So I hope she remembers how to stretch.

Bloggage? Oh, I’m sure we have some:

The SOTU featured warnings that “the middle class is under threat because of growing disparities between the rich and everyone else in America.” You don’t say. Did I link to that piece in last Sunday’s NYT, about Apple and its work at Foxconn, the Mordor-like Chinese factory where our favorite devices are born? No? You should read it, if you have the chance. It’s long, but like a horror movie, it’s hard to tear your eyes away. When Steve Jobs demanded an scratchproof glass screen for the iPhone, and demanded it be perfect in six weeks, they knew where to turn:

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

…When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

That’s why the middle class is in trouble — because we cannot compete with slave labor, essentially. What? You don’t want to live in a dorm attached to your workplace (eight to a room) and be roused at midnight to work a 12-hour shift in the factory that was built by the government? Lazy, lazy, lazy.

I missed Our Man Mitch’s rebuttal last night. Was it any good?

This makes me immediately seek detox with celebrity gossip. Here’s a photo of Demi Moore, and even though it is only head and shoulders, shows the outsize-head-on-tiny-body prototype so common in movie stars. Bonus: Patton Oswalt’s tweet stream after being robbed of an Academy Award nomination.

Time for work. Hump day!

Pix ‘n’ linx on a night when it’s so windy I regret that I live under tall trees. Only on nights like this, but they happen often enough that I pass an uneasy night every few months. We are paying for yet another April-in-January morning — nearly 50 today. And now the warmth must be banished. In 35 mph gusts.

So let’s ask Flickr for “wind” in the Creative Commons area. This is nice:

Thanks, Richard White. That’s a lovely country you have there. (England.)

Now, some linkage:

New York magazine, in what we all hope is hyperbole, promises us the slimiest campaign season ever. It probably isn’t hyperbole. Oh, I can’t wait.

If you want to feel better, though, here’s Gabrielle Giffords finishing the town meeting she started a little over a year ago, and didn’t finish. I love her bad-guys-don’t-get-to-win spirit. This is a great country.

Duff McKagan — yes, that one — on the SOPA affair:

The legislation’s meant to combat theft of creative works like movies and music from overseas web sites. But when I turned to the Twitter and Facebook, I saw an overwhelming dog pile of support against the bills. Excuse me, but where were you all when piracy started to decimate the music industry? Why didn’t you take a stand against that? Those free records felt good, huh?

The fury from the Internet class is that the broad language in the pieces of legislation will be bad for start-ups, might prevent the next YouTube, or give the government the ability to take down a whole site because of one link to copyrighted works. In short, they’re opposed to the legislation because they think it will be bad for the Internet business.

Bad for business. Anti-piracy legislation could be bad for the Internet business. It almost takes my breath away. Internet piracy has claimed half of the recorded music business, and made the prospect of making a living as a musician harder for artists of all rank and file. Why didn’t Google, or Facebook, or Wikipedia ever stand in solidarity with musicians, actors, and writers – most of whom have never known fame and fortune – as their works were stolen with no recourse on their sites?

You gotta admit, the guy has a point. Barn doors and horses and all that, but someone needs to say it.

And now it’s, what? Tuesday? Is that all? Seemed like a long Monday. Let’s hope it speeds by.

So, Joe Paterno is dead.

[Pause.]

He got off easy. He died surrounded by family and the echo chamber that allowed him to leave the world secure that even if he “wishes he’d done more,” what could he have done, anyway? He’s an old man. He’d never heard of that “rape and a man” thing. He’s olllld. Stop picking on him. He’s a national treasure and he lives in the same house he bought as a newlywed and he walks across campus and he endowed a library and he’s Joe Pa.

Trials, and investigations, and more probing questioning, might have turned up a few things that wouldn’t have gone over well. When you say you “wish you’d done more,” Mr. Paterno, when exactly did you reach that conclusion? In 2002, 2003, or last November?

When I heard the news this morning, I posted a tweet that said only, “JoePa beats the rap.” One of you who saw it replied at some length via Facebook. I’ll let you read it and tell me what you think:

One that was self-inflicted, and deeply deserved.

I don’t even pretend to be unbiased about this. I was sexually abused when I was a kid, and like this situation all of the adults who could have done something pretended that it didn’t happen. But that was in the 1970’s and what my family did was more or less the societal norm for the time. Yes, they should have had the backbone to confront it head on instead of letting me sort it out for myself at age ten, but they at least had that fig leaf of an excuse.

Paterno doesn’t get that pass. McQueary came to him in 2002 and told him he had seen Sandusky RAPING a boy in a Penn State locker room shower. Paterno was then 75 years old and he had never heard about molestation or even gay sex between consenting male adults? Like hell. You can’t spend one week, let alone five decades, in male team sports without getting a thorough description of how male-male sex works. To believe that Paterno was able to morally guide his teams for decades on drugs, cheating and sportsmanship but he didn’t know that some sick men like to stick their pee-pees in boy’s behinds (Paterno wanted to act like he was an infant on the subject so I’ll put it in terms he might have preferred) – is to be delusional. He knew what McQueary meant. You can not be a functioning adult – or a parent – and not be aware of child molesters and what they do.

Not acting on what McQueary reported was bad enough, but what was worse is that everyone – Paterno, McQueary, the AD and president – did not lift their eyes even a millimeter to see all of the other ways Sandusky could be destroying the lives of many boys. They knew he ran a home for troubled boys. They continued to allow him to run his youth football camps at Penn State. What were they thinking? That fucking a ten year-old in a semi-public place was a fluke? That just because he took extraordinary measures to have access to young boys it wouldn’t happen again?

They were wrong.

There are eight known victims of Jerry Sandusky, I guarantee there are a lot more who won’t come forward. Paterno, McQueary, and the PSU admins involved knew about this for at least nine years, possibly longer, and they did nothing. I suspect because they didn’t know how to stop Sandusky without killing themselves professionally and the football program, but their motives are irrelevant. They could have stopped a serial child molester, and all of them made a conscious decision not to. They didn’t rape those kids, they just made it possible for Sandusky to do it.

Since this broke I’ve heard a lot of sportswriters say that this was “difficult” because you had to consider Paterno record outside of covering up a molester in his program. I think that’s kind of the ultimate real-life “Otherwise, what did you think of the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” moment, and I think that moral character is defined when it’s tested.

But if you want to make that claim, then you also need to look at the reach of what Sandusky did and Paterno enabled.

I am exceptionally lucky. I didn’t turn to alcohol or drugs to cope with this and, most gratefully of all I didn’t become an abuser myself. For years I was terrified that I would this to a child someday. In my late 40’s, I have a good marriage to an amazing woman. I have friends, and I have peace.

But it wasn’t until my late 30’s that I stopped having flashbacks where I would taste his cock in my mouth. (I would apologize for the language but this was an assault. I need for you to feel it like a punch so you can understand what these kids will go through.) I went from being a kid who they wanted to bump up two grades to not caring. I became a clown and that was helpful in other ways, but it’s not going to get you into college. I learned how to deal with any problem I’d face on my own, at the expense of never making myself fully vulnerable to anyone. There’s nothing anyone can do to destroy me – because I won’t let you get that close. That’s how I’ve found peace.

Some of Sandusky’s victims won’t be as lucky. Thirty years from now some of them will be addicts, some will be alcoholics, some will be abusers and molesters themselves. The ones who are lucky will patch together something that works for them without hurting anyone else. It will get smaller in their mirrors but it will never fully disappear.

It may not be as personal for someone who hasn’t gone through this, but putting that aside I can’t understand how attachment to a college sports program can trump even an academic understanding of what molestation is and what it does to its victims, and how those two things should be prioritized. And I live in Bloomington freaking Indiana – I know something about iconic coaches, winning programs, and how people lose their shit when both end badly. But Bob Knight never hurled a flower pot at a kid, and Woody Hayes didn’t swing at a ten year-old. Is the infatuation with adults playing a children’s game so great that not even covering up for and enabling a molester doesn’t deserve a hearty “How fucking dare you?” If this doesn’t cross the line, what would?

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. And rot in hell, Joe.

That’s pretty powerful, don’t you think? We have a long history in our culture of not speaking ill of the recently dead, and I’m not so cross-eyed on this subject that I can’t see that Paterno did good things along the way, and not all of them in coaching football. I know we all hope we won’t be judged by the worst thing we’ve done in our lives, but I also agree with our commenter — character is defined when it’s tested. Paterno was tested, and failed. By failing, he almost certainly enabled Jerry Sandusky to abuse other boys. All the endowed libraries in the world won’t balance that scale.

Another writer says much the same thing.

I should say, finally, that I’m not smug about this. But I’m not blind, either. I only hope that when the chips are down, I’ll be able to do the right thing. It’s not easy for anyone.

[Pause.]

So, with that, some bloggage?

The great Emma Downs on a rift between bookselling brothers:

At one time, Sam and Joel Hyde were more than brothers. They were business partners, co-owners of Hyde Brothers Booksellers, the dusty, crowded and cozy used bookstore on Wells Street.

The partnership lasted 10 years and both Sam and Joel describe the parting as amicable. But it was also fraught with long discussions about what Sam owed Joel and vice versa. The process of divvying up the store’s inventory alone was a slow process, Sam says.

At one point, Joel asked Sam what he would pay for the paperbacks Joel was leaving behind.

“Nothing,” Sam said.

And the discussions would start all over again.

It’s a good read no matter where you’re from, but better if you’ve shopped at the original Hyde Brothers. Thanks for the find, Brian.

And with that, the week begins. Sorry to bum you out so early, but I’ve spent the last two hours reading nothing but apologias for kindly Grampa Joe. Not here you won’t.

I think I’m starting to lose my perspective on media criticism. Have I been away too long? Am I cynical to the point of…cynicism? I need a reality check. Watch this, and tell me I’m crazy to think it’s — what’s the word I’m looking for? — vile:

It’s a long piece, and I’m sorry to ask you for 11 whole minutes of your time. Asking someone to watch Charlie LeDuff is a little like asking them to watch Morton Downey Jr., c. 1982. Is this a new thing? Is this what TV news people do now? Pose dramatically, do stupid visualizations of their narrative, and build an 11-minute piece out of the fact one’s grandfather was a “mulatto,” whatever that meant in the American South at early midcentury, and then have the nerve to call their piece about it — wait for it — “Black Like Me?”

You people who do genealogy research (Alex?) and are familiar with the racial issues it sometimes brings up (Alex!) are going to have to calibrate me a little. Because this is chapping my ass. I’m starting to believe I have found the next Albom. And that’s saying something.

I had a work-at-home day, and what a perfect day it was: Take Kate to school just as the sky was lowering, work near a window through a lovely, brief snowstorm, then watch it clear off and get all sparkly while the high pressure moved in with the cold air. A red-tailed hawk landed on my garage roof, and that cleared off the crowd at the bird feeder for a good long while. I rooted for the predator to find lunch somewhere, if not at our feeder.

And now it’s Thursday night, and I’m about to shut down the internet, because I understand Newt Gingrich is thundering at some CNN sap, and the only thing that can fix that is some “Project Runway.” But before I do, a little bloggage:

I’m late posting this from Charles Pierce, his account of How The Greatest Health-Care System In The World Works, an account of something that happens to someone, and likely many someones, every single day in this country:

I mention all of this because, tomorrow night, the five remaining Republican candidates will get up on stage and they will promise to repeal even the tepid, insurance-friendly reform of the way we do health-care in this country. Willard Romney will do this even though the tepid, insurance-friendly reform is one he virtually invented. They will have nothing to replace it. They will argue for “market-based” solutions. The above — that is a “market-based solution.” And, by the way, this is the kind of thing that zombie-eyed granny starver Paul Ryan wants to put elderly people through in place of Medicare. Phone trees. Automated voices. Hours of their dwindling lives on hold, waiting for purportedly live persons who won’t be able to help them. And zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan is considered by people in my business to be a serious thinker on these matters.

Every single one of these Republicans will make the argument that, because of the entire morning I spent dealing with the preposterous way we do health-care in this country, that I am a “freer” person than are the people in Canada, or New Zealand, or Germany, or Finland. That I had to spend an entire morning mired in bureaucratic absurdity means I have retained my “freedom” as an American.

I’m not up on Paula Deen, you guys. I don’t watch cooking shows for the most part, but I pay at least some attention to pop culture, and I knew she was known for buttery, sugary, over-the-top, borderline-white-trashy food. I didn’t really have many thoughts on her diabetes diagnosis other than to say that it’s too bad, until I saw this and fell to the floor, insensate. Bacon-wrapped, deep-fried macaroni and cheese? Oh-kay.

Finally, thanks to Paddyo, what it’s like to have a rabbit in your life, and apparently, no limit on what you’ll spend on vet care. Sweet, but crazy.

In the interest of being anti-SOPA but pro-intellectual property respect, no photo today, because I don’t think the Associated Press allows wholesale reproduction without a license. A link, then, to L.L. Bean’s answer to the comical automotive corporate mascot: the Bootmobile.

I want one.

Linx ‘n’ pix today, then. What do we have?

Speaking of SOPA, looks like young Ben Quayle was a co-sponsor. Apples, trees, and what they say about them.

I thought Sally Jenkins’ piece about Joe Paterno was a bit much, but I wasn’t half as offended as this guy was. By that I mean, I know Paterno (and his handlers) were playing the Poor Sick Old Man card, but I didn’t think Jenkins was playing it, too. (I’ve been far more offended by her close relationship with Lance Armstrong.) YMMV, as we say on the Internets.

No dispute about this, though: Sports Illustrated’s piece on the Thrilla in Manila, unearthed from the vault this week in honor of Muhammed Ali’s 70th birthday. Fabulous.

PJs in public — threat or menace? Menace!

Happy Thursday, all.

After yesterday’s overcast start, the day brightened into something a little less leaden. The sun was safe behind many veils of clouds, but the rain stopped and what ho, I have an interview at the coffee shop on the corner? Think I’ll wear my raincoat in this mild, 50-degree weather. I called my editor in Lansing after I got home. It was 52 here, but 100 miles to the west, 32. And sure enough, soon the sky darkened again, the wind changed from southwest to northwest justlikethat, rain blew horizontally for a while and tomorrow it’ll be winter again. Highs in the 20s.

Do I start every blog with a weather report? Yes, I do. I am a Midwesterner, after all.

And at the moment I’m a Midwesterner with just two squares of a Green & Black white-chocolate bar left, the spoils of a splurge trip to Whole Foods Saturday. Whole Foods in Ann Arbor, I should add — a childhood friend was passing through, and thought she’d give me a shout, see if I was up for lunch. These days, I have a refuse-no-friends-who-are-passing-through policy, especially when I haven’t seen them in years. You never know when you’ll get another chance.

So we went to Zingerman’s Roadhouse. It was an episode of “Portlandia” come to life, with the waiter introducing himself, sketching out the restaurant’s philosophy (“comfort food and barbecue”), its policy on sourcing (local, of course) and then expressing his deep delight that he would get to break my friends’ Z-cherry, so to speak. All of this would be intolerable if Zingerman’s didn’t dollar up on the hoof so well. You pay through the nose, you put up with this seemingly endless bullshit, but when the food arrives, there is nothing to do but say, “This may be a side dish of macaroni and cheese priced at $7.50, but if there’s a dish of macaroni and cheese worth $7.50? It tastes like this.”

Cindy ordered the go-go grilled cheese sandwich. She asked if she could change the cheeses. But of course. Could she maybe have some cheddar with a little Maytag bleu? Certainly, our waiter said, adding:

“How old?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How old on the cheddar?” There was a choice. One year, two years, or five. She asked for the one-year vintage. It was an excellent sandwich, and the mushroom soup was even better.

I had lentil soup, with a side of sauteed spinach. I’m going through a big sauteed-spinach phase. So easy. Buy it by the bag, prewashed, throw a little olive oil and garlic into the pan, get it going, toss in the greens and wait until they wilt down into iron-rich deliciousness. Sometimes I have it for breakfast, with a poached egg. Florentine, but without the mornay sauce. Popeye never asked for mornay sauce. It gives me the strength of 10 old bags.

Weather and food. Yep, that’s about right.

Fortunately, we have much good bloggage today:

First, quite the arresting slide show of the Italian cruise-ship disaster. Alan tells me they actually drifted to that position so close to the rocks, but I’m not sure. This overhead view plainly shows barely submerged rocks. How much pinot grigio was this captain drinking? The first rule of marine navigation: If you see rocks sticking out of the water, don’t drive the boat there. (It’s possible that’s some sort of lens flare or other trick of the light. Still. Awful close to those rocks, cap’n.)

My education sources keep telling me the lecture is dead. It’s not only not dead, it’s pretty lucrative — if you’re the lecturer, anyway:

In official Washington, there is an afterlife, and it’s a crowded, cacophonous place. Called the public speaking circuit, this D.C. Elysium is bound by the same transactional laws as the realm that preceded it. But instead of political parties, it is governed by speakers bureaus that promise visibility to those who sign up. In the past 30 years, a proliferation of bureaus has promoted, booked and enriched former lawmakers, candidates, consultants, Cabinet members, political reporters and gadflies.

“Let’s say you are secretary of something — there are two ways you are going to make a really good living: a lobbyist or a speaker, or a combination of the two,” said James Carville, the political consultant and a client of the Washington Speakers Bureau.

The bulls got out at Coozledad’s place again. Spoiler: Purley was OK after his encounter with the truck. I’m so glad, as Purley is the cutest bull ever. You let Mrs. Gingrich set eyes on him, and he’ll be a character in her next children’s book.

Me, on one side effect of the college competition — the common-app crush.

For once, a photo I find more interesting than Tom & Lorenzo. Spike Lee is a Christian now? Mariah Carey looks drunk, but considering she showed up in a version of the same dress that other lady did, maybe she had a reason. And yeah, Shelley shut it down. She looks better every year.

And with that, the hump day commences. Not you, Purley! Down, boy.

Tuesday morning comin’ down, in the form of what looks to be an all-day rain. After a brief cold snap we’re back into the 40s, and while the warmth is better than cold (I guess), it’s certainly dreary. Let’s pick an appropriate picture from the ol’ Flickr stream. Ah, here’s one:

Chili — with or without corn — will taste good today. Photo by J.C. Burns, nicked from his Flickr stream, used under a Creative Commons license. Let’s hop to the links, shall we?

Jim Griffoen at Sweet Juniper! on how they managed to sneak a bit of American toy kitsch into their neighbors’ perfect apartment. How perfect?

So we’ve got these wonderful German neighbors who are such sophisticated design nerds they make us look like Randy Quaid and his wife emptying our RV’s septic tank into the storm drain. One is a professor of architecture (and since most architects already try to look like Germans, you can imagine how ahead of the curve these two are). They have pretty much every piece of iconic midcentury furniture in their immaculate Mies van der Rohe townhouse. It’s like the furniture wing at MOMA.

We had a neighborhood garage sale a few months ago and when this family stopped at ours, the architect saw her four-year-old son having a blast while playing with some of my son’s old toys and she said with a delightful German bluntness:

“I see he likes these toys, but the design is not good and they would not really fit in our home.”

The New Yorker on Callista Gingrich. Fact I didn’t know: She writes children’s books! Well, of course she does, being a strict Catholic who spent her prime childbearing years in unmarried congress with a married man, only to win the big prize (the man) and discover it really wasn’t what she wanted anyway, but it came with a shitload of fancy jewelry and the chance to play Pretend Mommy with her children’s book-authoring career. Every self-respecting child I know would flee from her in terror. Well, book-signings are rare, anyway.

Finally, I am long overdue with this, which ran last week, when my friend Sammy Smith, spouse of J.C. Burns and likely the creator of today’s pot of chili, was settling affairs in Michigan following the death of her mother. She and her father (the Botanist) visited the Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame, and found a photo of then-governor Albert Sleeper signing the bill granting women’s suffrage while selected members of the gender “look on,” as the caption-writers always put it. One is Sammy’s great-grandmother. I like the picture because the women, dowagers all, look like they have the assembled power to stab the governor to death with their hatpins if he doesn’t come across.

Anyway, condolences to Sammy, and a good Tuesday to all.

Car prom! Took my camera! Let’s get started:

The North American International Auto Show is held in the vast space of Cobo Center, which may not be as vast as your city’s convention center, but is pretty big. The show runs for two weeks — the first couple of days is the media preview, followed by industry days, the Charity Preview (aka Car Prom) for one night, and then the show opens to the public, and once it does it’s no longer possible to be handed a flute of champagne by an Italian beauty at the Maserati space, which goes to show you the public always takes a screwing. But Alan worked a week’s worth of hours and then some in about three days, and deserved a pleasant night out. That’s what we got.

So let’s go to the show. Hi, Miss Michigan USA!

As you can see, some people took the black-tie designation seriously and some people went with the modern designation. Everybody looked fine, if a little Fellini-like under the lights. But no matter, the wine is flowing and let’s stop for loyalty’s sake at the hometown heroes, Ford.

That’s the 2013 Ford Fusion, one of the hits of the show. The auto writers called that grill “aggressive,” apparently because it protrudes a bit, which along with the squinty-eyed headlights gives it an aggressive, don’t-mess-with-me face, a new feeling for a mid-priced mid-size sedan. The female Ford car models, er, “product specialists” all wore those white dresses. They looked sharp.

Over to Lincoln. This is the MKZ concept, but mostly it’s just me trying to do something with all the shiny in the frame:

The Cadillac ATS:

They’re touting this as a competitor for the BMW 3 series, which made BMW scoff, I’m told. Whatever. I’d market it as a domestic-made luxury sedan for patriotic Americans who want to support the 99 percent. Domestic is back, baby.

Speaking of luxury, this is a Maserati SUV which will be made in Detroit. Yup:

Side view at the link. I guess I was taken with yet another set of squinty headlights. Also the idea of a Maserati SUV. Someone call LeBron.

If Kate had rich parents, they’d buy her this for a Sweet Sixteen present:

Too bad for her she doesn’t. It’s one of the redesigned Beetles, made a little flatter and less cute, now with guitar-y rock’n’roll-osity. Maybe it’s because I remember the special-edition lemons of the ’70s — anyone for a blue-jeans Pacer? — but I think they’re all kind of silly. The King Ranch interior package for the Ford trucks and SUVs has been around for a while; some people found the cup holders a good place to leave their empties:

The many open vehicles made for a nice place to take a load off. I think this was a Mini Cooper I was sitting in:

Speaking of cute little cars, here’s the front end of that Smart pickup-truck concept from last week:

Look, it’s smiling at you! Aren’t you all ashamed of all the mean things you said about it? It’s like you were picking on a kitten or something.

A few odds and ends. I seem to recall one of you regulars is a foot man; here’s some eye candy for you:

I can’t remember if that was on a guest or one of the product specialists.

Black tie on the People Mover:

Finally, the afterglow at the Ren Cen, where the view from the glass elevator (how ’70s!) was of America Junior across the river:

Better pictures of the Charity Preview and the show in general are available at the Detroit News website. Especially this one.

And this is your correspondent, signing out:

But no, we have some bloggage first:

Joe Paterno speaks, to Sally Jenkins at the WashPost:

Paterno’s hope is that time will be his ally when it comes to judging what he built, versus what broke down. “I’m not 31 years old trying to prove something to anybody,” he said. “I know where I am.” This is where he is: wracked by radiation and chemotherapy, in a wheelchair with a broken pelvis, and “shocked and saddened” as he struggles to explain a breakdown of devastating proportions.

…How (Jerry) Sandusky, 67, allegedly evaded detection by state child services, university administrators, teachers, parents, donors and Paterno himself remains an open question. “I wish I knew,” Paterno said. “I don’t know the answer to that. It’s hard.” Almost as difficult for Paterno to answer is the question of why, after receiving a report in 2002 that Sandusky had abused a boy in the shower of Penn State’s Lasch Football Building, and forwarding it to his superiors, he didn’t follow up more aggressively.

It’s worth reading for the account of how he was fired alone.

Every audience-member’s nightmare — one’s cell phone goes off during a performance of the New York Philharmonic — turns the culprit into the culture-pages version of That Guy Who Cost the Cubs a Pivotal Game. You can see why he insisted on anonymity. I recall a profile of Wynton Marsalis from a few years back, which described a similar incident. Marsalis, without missing a note, picked up the tune of the ringtone, wove it into his improv and wove it back out to the exact point where it went off — the last two notes in “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance With You.” And that’s why he’s Wynton Marsalis and everyone else is just a player.

Oh, I can’t wait until campaign season ramps up, so we can see more ads like this. Evil French!

The week awaits. If you have the day off today, enjoy it.

Hunter Thompson ain’t seen nothin’ like this.

Oh, it’s so nice to watch “Project Runway” again, in real time. Lifetime has done its best to ruin it, but it’s still worth your time, if you don’t mind all those promos for “Dance Moms” along the way. Tonight’s challenge is to make a ball gown suitable for opening night at the opera. The winner was one of two or three that deserved it (Austin). Now here comes the boot. I’m thinking it’s going to be Sweet P. And yes! I’m right. I knew she was toast. Her dress looked like something you’d wear to a beach party, not the opera.

Reality television. It’s not my thing, but sometimes, it’s my thing.

Every so often I think about what the next new thing’s going to be, in any field. Not long ago we were talking about R.E.M., which broke up after 30 years. The Beatles were together for, what, seven? When was the last real new thing in pop music? Hip-hop, I figure — something no one had ever heard before, that enough people flipped over (and the right people hated) that it took its place in the parade. Same with TV. Reality TV made its first big splash with “Survivor.” A friend told me it wouldn’t last. “Reality TV is OVER,” he was always declaring. The last time he did, it was 2002.

Reality TV. Not over.

How about some bloggage?

A very oldie, but something I hadn’t read before, until someone unearthed it for the New Hampshire primary — Henry Allen on New Hampshire. Cruel and unfair, but it feels right to me. The place sounds like northern Michigan.

Six things I love about Detroit, by some Internet guy I should know more about, but don’t.

Matty Moroun’s terrible, awful, no-good, very bad week. And one that made applause break out in the courtroom.

I’m going to bed.