One of the mantras I’ve repeated from time to time is a universal truth about marriage: The only people qualified to judge a marriage are the people in it. Marriages — relationships of all sorts — are living things, like gardens. We might feel qualified to walk by and offer advice from the picket fence, but really? It’s none of our business.

So stipulated. But if Mr. and Mrs. Newt Gingrich feel confident enough about the necessity of their presence in public life to shove themselves into my newspaper, I’m not going to feel bad about judging. Right now, the word spreading through the wreckage of the clownmobile caravan of the GOP presidential field is this: It’s all her fault. Or, to put it more crudely: He’s pussywhipped.

And I gotta say, you can spend hours spinning out fantasies about what their intimate moments are like:

He: How was your day, dear?
She: Don’t you dare speak to me.
[Thirty frosty minutes pass.]
He: Look, I’m sorry. You know what lunches with the Wall Street Journal editorial board are like. It ran long!
She: WE used to have lunch together.
He: What, you think I’m having nooners with Dorothy Rabinowitz? Are you insane?
She: That’s it! Take your things to the guest room!
[One hour passes.]
He: I brought you something from Tiffany’s. I’m sorry, honey.
She: You DID fuck her! Wait, are those natural pearls? OK, you can come back.
He: Will you wear your special nightie?
She: They aren’t diamonds. Don’t press your luck.

Ahem:

Among the issues leading to the resignations, according to knowledgeable sources, was the two-week vacation that Gingrich and his wife, Callista, insisted upon taking against the advice of his top political staff. Coming as it did after one of the most disastrous campaign launches in recent memory, it raised questions as to whether Gingrich would be willing to “commit time to the grassroots,” said Tyler.

Well, we all knew this would happen sooner or later. Republican pockets are very deep, and while it was certain that someone would pay to keep the self-proclaimed Smartest Republican in the World out there shaking hands and writing unreadable books, it was probably not going to happen when the money was going for baubles, and the recipient pays you back by describing your next-generation star’s policy proposals as right-wing social engineering. The campaign was doomed from the get-go. The end was humiliating. I think we won’t have Newt Gingrich to kick around anymore.

But I, for one, will miss the photos of Mrs. G’s many fun outfits. Here, an obscured view of Wednesday’s turnout, in canary.

While we’re talking politics, one of our Marks asked what journalists thought of the crowd-sourcing analysis of $P’s Alaska emails. I think: [Shrug.] At some level it’s an acknowledgement of reality; people are going to do this anyway, so invite them to partner with the big boys, maybe? Ultimately, if the things are newsworthy, then let the pros do the work. God knows we need it. If nothing else, there might be some entertainment therein. I expect we’ll find out soon.

And now I have to wrap and follow Alan to the Subaru dealer, where the Outback is getting its 50K checkup. Which reminds me I’m six months late in getting my own, so maybe I should make that appointment, too.

Not much bloggage today; it’s been an exhausting week. But here’s this:

I like that girl. Also: Remember, man, that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return. Maybe even to a Goodwill store.

A great weekend to all.

The heat has broken. Some angry bruises moved through on the radar in the middle of the night, and dropped temperatures like a rock, although not as much as expected. And it didn’t rain more than a few angry spitballs here and there. After one of the wettest springs in anyone’s memory, we’ve now gone a week without rain, and already my neighbors’ sprinklers are coming on in the wee sunrise hours. Is it enough to awaken the household’s most fitful sleeper? Why yes, it is, although I can usually fall back into a doze afterward in the click-click-click white noise. It could be far worse, I know; neighborhoods with wild pheasants get to listen to them crow at the same hour.

A few years ago, I interviewed the head of the groundskeeping crew at Comerica Park about lawn care, for some short thing in a local magazine. Ask the experts, etc. What’s the biggest mistake people make with their own lawns, I asked.

Overwatering. Ha ha.

So how’s everyone today? I’m counting the last few before the end of school, and it can’t really come soon enough. Today and tomorrow are the de facto final days, as next week is a blur of promotion/honors ceremonies, celebratory end-of-year lunches out and, once again, a trip to Cedar Point. At least I don’t have to drag her there this summer; she’s had enough roller-coastering to hold her for the year, and my policy on the Point is every other year. No, this summer I have to drag my daughter and three of her friends to Cleveland, for the Warped Tour show we’re missing because the Detroit stop falls during her summer camp. (Oh, to be 14 again.) The bargain I struck: I will take you to Cleveland, but you must go to the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame with me on the same trip. Agreed. And, you must watch the 20-minute movie that ties rock ‘n’ roll to Delta blues and African tribal rhythms, because lo, it is educational. Agreed. Kate has much sneering contempt for what she calls “butt rock,” which seems to boil down to “anything my parents like, or the parents of any of my friends,” although she’ll allow that the Ramones might still approach coolness. And though she’d never, ever admit it, she might occasionally have a thought that her parents’ taste in butt rock might exceed that of her friends’ parents, one of whom asked her, while playing Guitar Hero, if her mother (that would be me, in this convoluted sentence of unclear antecedents) was “a member of the Kiss Army” back in the day.

“Jesus Christ, no. Are you kidding me?” I replied in horror upon hearing this. I try to keep the pottymouth to a minimum around her, but if anything called for taking the Lord’s name in vain, it’s the idea that I ever, ever listened to Kiss with anything approaching pleasure and affirmation. My sole grudging acknowledgement of their presence on earth is a copy of “Detroit Rock City” in my iTunes, and even that is the Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ version, a gift from Ashley Morris when we moved here. Ashley liked Kiss, but his overall coolness trumps the Lame factor, and besides, he was younger than me. We all have our guilty pleasures from high school, but the first Kiss album was released when I was already in college, and was listening to Roxy Music. I stuck the first Roxy Music CD in the car player last winter, and asked Kate what she thought of “Re-Make/Re-Model.” She listened for about four seconds and delivered her default shrug. Which means: Butt rock.

OK, then. The morning is fleeting, so let’s skip to the bloggage:

I followed the link LAMary posted yesterday to Jezebel post on rabbit showjumping. I’d seen the video before, but I hadn’t seen the amazing still photos of the same activity in the Daily Mail. In my riding days, I probably looked at a million photos of horses clearing fences, but these are fascinating in a whole new way. It’s striking how similar the jumping form of the two animals is. Now all they need is some mouse “riders,” and we’re on our way to Cute Overload. A final note: The headline and story both refer to rabbit jumping as “dressage.” You’d think a daily newspaper in a country where equestrian sports were invented would know what dressage is, but obviously not. It ain’t jumping.

I generally stay away from any site with “watch” in the title, but these clips of David Barton, yet another right-wing scholar, beggar belief.

I’ve been neglecting Tom & Lorenzo lately, mainly because their redesign bugs me, but I need to get back in the habit:

What’s the point in showing up to a children’s benefit if you’re going to scowl like a mafioso in all the pictures? Once again, he looks like a kid wearing his big brother’s suit. It’s not a bad suit and normally the fact that it’s too big on him wouldn’t cause us to take so many points off, but his perma-scowl is pissing us off and making him unpleasant to look at, so… Score: 4/10. Lighten the fuck up, dude.

Who else could this be about? Marc Anthony, Mr. J-Lo.

OK, must dash.

I’m telling you, if you’re not following the news from Mexico these days, you’re missing one hell of a story:

DURANGO, Mexico — Two gunmen stormed into a drug rehabilitation center in the northern city of Torreon on Tuesday, killing 11 people and wounding two.

…Drug cartels are known to use rehab centers to recruit addicts, leading rival gangs to attack the centers. Dozens of people have died in shootings at centers across Mexico. The worst incident left 19 people dead in Chihuahua city last summer.

Eleven people, justlikethat. And this sort of thing happens pretty much weekly. A later paragraph gives the total body count since President Felipe Calderon started the drug war in 2006: 35,000.

Which sort of set me up for the next story I read this morning, from a dateline closer to home:

Adrian — Ed Schmieding was known for his high-quality flowers, his skill with all things planted and potted. Together with his wife Linda, they sold flowers, Queen Anne’s lace, sunflowers — even ornamental grasses — to local florists. Out in the country northwest of Adrian, the Schmiedings’ property was a hub of horticulture: four greenhouses, dozens of acres over three plots of land, tractors, irrigation — everything a green thumb would want.

But several years ago, things began going poorly. Linda’s back went out, neighbors said, and Ed got throat cancer. They pleaded poverty to the local township, asking for a break on their property taxes.

“He had cancer and he wasn’t making any money from his flowers,” said Al Boggs, Rome Township supervisor. “He went to a cash crop, eh?”

State police now believe Ed and Linda Schmieding, both 60, had one of the largest marijuana production facilities ever discovered in the Lower Peninsula, using their greenhouses and rolling 23 acres to harvest more than 8,000 pot plants, estimated to have a street value of at least $8 million.

The odor of the plants “glistening with THC” was so strong, the story says later, that you could smell it from the road. But it also states that after the Schmiedings scaled back their flower business and presumably went into a better-paying crop, they didn’t ask for any more hardship exemptions on their property taxes. The Schmiedings said they sold to medical marijuana dispensaries, but of course they were in violation of the law, which strictly regulates that stuff. I disapprove of most drug use, but I ain’t gonna lie to you: I hope the Schmiedings beat the rap. Or, at the very least, avoid prison. Michigan spends enough on prisons already. A nice couple from Adrian has no business there. (Assuming they’re nice. One newspaper story doesn’t mean anything, and it may well be that Ed and Linda have a mass grave on those 23 acres, just like the Mexican cartels. I’m just going with a hunch here.)

When does this insanity end? The urge to self-medicate is as old as humanity. We know this. We also know some do it better than others. And we know that some people’s medicine will find a way to them, no matter what its legal status. A lot of those 35,000 corpses in Mexico were in the game — as we “Wire”-heads like to say — but a fair number weren’t, and what of them? What else were the Schmiedings to do? Sell their acreage and move to town, I guess, and sign up for Medicaid when the money ran out. They chose to grow pot.

Y’all know my feelings on the subject:

But good grief, it’s a plant. There has to be a better way.

I still have real work to do this morning, and I’m bound and determined to get to the gym for weights class, so I have to skip early. But let’s see what we have in the way of bloggage:

Nice profile of New York Post columnist Andrea Peyser, shrieking harpy to wandering wee-wees everywhere.

I asked Kate if she wanted feather extensions. “NO,” she informed me, rather firmly. Not a camp follower, this one. Good to know that if she changes her mind, we can always raid her father’s fly-tying supplies.

Ninety-four degrees yesterday, the same for today, maybe a smidge higher. Friday’s high: 70. Welcome to crazytown, but right now, I gotta go.

I’ve largely stayed out of the Anthony Weiner story. It seemed to require a level of commitment I’m increasingly unwilling to make, particularly for a story that required me to look at a boner. Nothing against boners in general; I just… well, let’s say that I’m really tired and I have a headache and I just ate a full meal and I have to get up early tomorrow and leave it at that.

But now all has been revealed, so let me just throw a few things out there, and maybe you all can run with them:

Lesson No. 1: You can look like this and still have your husband act out sexually like a teenager. In fact, you could almost argue that it’s more likely to happen.

Lesson No. 2: I remind you, in case you wonder what sort of people are on the other side, that Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, the Indian/Pakistani beauty referenced above, was widely whispered to be a lesbian during her time as Hillary Clinton’s assistant. Because of course Hillary must be one, and who else would an aging lesbian choose to have carrying her BlackBerry than a young, beautiful lesbian? I don’t need to tell you who was doing the whispering. Always useful to remember that whatever Weiner did, at least he didn’t do it while telling unmarried people they should practice abstinence, while cruising men’s bathrooms and insisting he’s not gay, etc. On the other hand, you want people you generally agree with to behave themselves. Sometimes they don’t. These are not mutually exclusive positions. Grow up.

Lesson No. 3: Of all the jokes made about this, the James Franco bit from Jon Stewart might be best of all.

Lesson No. 4: Remember Photomat? Fotomat? Those little kiosks in parking lots where you could drop off your film and, three days later, pick up your vacation pictures? I can’t remember what the value-added element was over standard drugstore photo processing; probably the drive-through aspect. Anyway, if we still relied on other human beings to develop our pictures, there’d be less of this nonsense going on. Each of those little digital cameras is a Pandora’s box containing all the misery in the world.

Lesson No. 5: MSNBC needs to embed shorter Rachel Maddow clips. Nevertheless, this is pretty good, especially once she gets to the Post-Bill Clinton Modern American Political Sex-Scandal Consequence-o-Meter.

Lesson No. 6: I saw Dexter on Facebook yesterday, predicting the New York Post would use WEINER ROAST in a headline today. No. No, no, no, no, no. Something far better. Lesson: Don’t ever try to second-guess a great tabloid.

And with that, I’m done talking about boners. I don’t want to think about boners for a while. Whatever the world is poking me with on the great standing-room-only subway of life, it better not be a boner. So let’s hop to the more amusing bloggage:

A father notes his son is totally embarrassed when he, dad, waves at son’s passing school bus. So he decides to make a game of it, and starts dressing in costume for the morning waves, a different one every day. Of course he kept a blog. Note that dad is missing a leg. That doesn’t have anything to do with this — he lost it in a motorcycle accident, a little googling reveals — but it did come in handy on pirate day.

The Coozledads have a new foster child at their vegetarian petting zoo. A crow.

Not quite OID, but D-centric: There’s a fight going on here, which most of you probably haven’t heard about, on a proposed second bridge between the U.S. and Canada across the Detroit River. I’ll boil it down as succinctly as I can: The current bridge, the Ambassador, is privately owned, and has helped make its owner, a grumbling octogenarian who lives on the American side (in Grosse Pointe Shores!), a billionaire. The state of Michigan believes any crossing that important should be in public hands, and preferably international hands. Both sides agree the Ambassador needs replacing, but the owner wants to build the second one himself right next to the current one and keep it the title, and the state, along with Ontario’s provincial government, wants to build it a mile or so downstream, to keep trucks from rumbling through the heart of Windsor, among other reasons. Lately, the grumbling octogenarian has gone on a PR campaign. He hired Dick Morris, of all people; you know, Mr. Charming? The latest move: Sticking mock “eviction notices” to the front doors of the residential neighborhood most affected by the proposed new bridge. Charming:

Dolores Toth, 81, who has heart problems, began to shake after reading the notice, said her son, Steve. “How low can you go?” Steve Toth said. “This isn’t something you do, I don’t care who you are.”

And with that, I’m outta here. I need to take a picture of my underwear and mail it to someone.

One of my neighbors has outdoor speakers, and is enjoying them now. I’d never before noticed how lame the great American songbook can sound when given the full attention of a certain sort of cocktail pianist — the kind who plays as though paid by the note. “Someone to Watch Over Me” is a lovely song, but less so when you can practically see the performer energetically tickling the ivories. Every one of them. In glissando.

Oh, well. It beats the Shirley Bassey/Barbra Streisand/Steve and Eydie compilations I sometimes hear coming from that direction. I didn’t know Shirley Bassey had a career beyond singing the “Goldfinger” theme until I met one of my boyfriend’s mothers, who was exactly the sort of woman Mike Myers immortalized in Linda Richman. She loved Shirley Bassey. So do many people, evidently. Something I didn’t know before today: She’s Welsh, like that other great interpreter of James Bond movie themes, Tom Jones.

Welcome to the week, after a lovely weekend. Saturday was stiflingly hot, but I guess I’ll take it. And yesterday was better, but Sunday is really the beginning of my work week, so meh. I did take a little time to run bike errands. Went to Lowe’s, in the mall near beb’s and CrazyCatLady’s house, which Grosse Pointe mom-scuttlebutt says is LIKE TAKING YOUR LIFE IN YOUR HANDS OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU WENT THERE. Two years ago, I got an email with approximately 7,000 forwards in the address field, from a woman who claimed she had her purse snatched there. I don’t doubt it; it happens. Someone else had added, along the way: “And I know there are frequent forcible rapes in the parking lot.” This I do doubt, but what can you do? People will believe anything if it confirms already-existing fears. But I needed some Dishwasher Magic, and it wasn’t going to buy itself. It’s a straight, bike-friendly shot west from my house, through Harper Woods, a middle/working-class suburb, and the route takes me down a street with towering oaks and deep, enormous lots, even though the houses on them are fairly modest. You can get a glimpse, here and there, of fabulous gardens and, yes, the occasional above-ground swimming pool. (I always want to ask if that’s the InstaRust model or the Skeeter Breeder.)

Then there’s the mall, and Lowe’s had Dishwasher Magic, as well as one of the local police chiefs, dressed in weekend shlump-wear, with no apparent sidearm. He must feel safe there. But as I was already warmed up and in the mood, I rolled farther down Old Homestead Road, to St. Sabbas the Sanctified, surely one of the weirder things to sit smack in the middle of a middle-class residential neighborhood around here. I’ve written about this Russian monastery before, part of the “patriarchal Bulgarian archdiocese of America, Canada and Australia,” although I haven’t been back since. I was interested to see whether the brothers have expanded their footprint at all — I think they’re on about six lots now. Couldn’t tell. It being Sunday, I assume they were at prayer. A hired tree guy was taking down a sizable maple limb wrenched loose in a recent storm. I remembered my main takeaway from my first visit — women must cover their heads, lest they arouse demons — turned around and pedaled home.

Some bloggage today, much of it excellent:

Brian Dickerson on the Kevorkian problem, i.e., yes, he did it wrong, but how often does the clumsy person who does it first ever do it right?

For “Game of Thrones” fans, a map of Westeros. Click to enlarge.

Don’t think that just because this story is about how Anna Nicole Smith met her elderly husband, you don’t want to read it. I was hooked here:

It began—all of it, really—when an old, sad man decided to give his life one last go.

J. Howard Marshall II was sitting in the backseat of his Mercedes sedan one afternoon in Houston in October 1991. He was 86 years old and in the throes of a terrible mourning. He was, his staff worried, suicidal.

Dan Manning, Marshall’s friend and personal driver, was particularly concerned.

“J. Howard,” Manning said, looking up at him in the rearview mirror, “I’ve been thinking.”

There was a pause. “Go ahead.”

“I’ve been thinking maybe it might be time for a new young lady.”

J. Howard looked at Manning in the mirror. He said, “You might be right.”

The GOP’s unyielding orthodoxy — no new taxes. An examination of what it’s gained and lost.

And is that it? I believe it is. Time to take the morning’s breakfast out of the oven — a spinach-and-garlic frittata — and see if it was worth the trouble. Happy Monday, happy week, all.

Perhaps in keeping with his recent presentation as Barnacle Bill the Sailor, Kid Rock showed up to a press conference in Detroit yesterday on a standing paddleboard. Er, a paddle surfboard. Whatever. A board that you stand on, while propelling yourself with a long-handled paddle. You’ve seen them. They’re a thing now.

He was accompanied by two Red Wings, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the paddling, except that they’d be familiar with holding long sticks.

I’m well-acquainted with paddle sports; our household owns not one but two kayaks. My first marital argument, I remind you, came on our honeymoon, when we squabbled over my front-seat driving in a two-person kayak on Monterey Bay, the front being the passenger seat in paddling. The woman guiding the tour suggested we were both too strong to be in one boat, and no, it wasn’t an omen or anything.

Everything I know about paddling suggests standing is a dumb way to do it. A paddler will encounter a strong current crossing the Detroit River — although less so on that side of Belle Isle, the city park/island where the presser was held — and you want to be low, so that your body doesn’t becomes a sail, taking you someplace you don’t want to go. Also, no PFDs on any of them. Bad role modeling, gentlemen!

A quick Google tells me stand-up paddle surfing is a Hawaiian practice that allows a surfer to see more of what’s coming, wave-wise, which makes perfect sense. On flat water far from a coastline, it’s just a way for everyone to say, “Hey, look who’s coming across the water” and avoid the frequently ungraceful exit from a boat in front of a bunch of cameras.

If they really wanted to look cool, they’d have showed up on horses.

The above demonstrates a problem with modern life. In the past, if I wanted to know something about standing paddleboards, I’d have called someone. We’d have chatted for a while. Maybe I’d get a story idea out of it, maybe not, but it would involve one person talking to another. Now, a quick clatter on the keyboard, all questions are answered, sometimes in way more detail than I ever sought, but no contact with a fellow human.

This technology, it is wonderful, but not 100 percent.

It is Friday, Friday, time for fun-fun-fun-fun, so let’s go to the bloggage. I have a mind to ride my bike to my morning meeting, which means I have to get out of here early.

The mayor of Warren, a suburb here, is sensitive about his age, and a quick Google image search (sorry for bad-mouthing you two paragraphs ago, Professor G.) suggests why — he is an odd-looking duck, given to coloring his hair, twice-daily exercise and a stated preference for dating younger women. This has bugged some people for a while, and this week, some challengers in the current election cycle sued to require him to tell the world how old he is. I can’t wait to hear the final figure.

A biopic about Dick and Liz (which I don’t need to explain to my elderly readership, do I?) is in the works, directed by my man Marty. I’m so there.

Gin & Tacos looks back at one of the odder events of the Cold War — Mathias Rust’s landing of a Cessna on Red Square 24 years ago.

Finally, a great story out of Florida by none other than one of our commenting community, John Wallace:

Today St. Lucie County Sheriff Mascara announced the arrest of a (Subway) sandwich shop employee who was selling marijuana as well as sandwiches to people who asked for “extra meat.”

I don’t know what’s funnier — the extra meat or the fact St. Lucie County’s sheriff is named “Ken Mascara.”

Happy weekend, all. I’m outta here.

On the first of every month, I:

1) Verify and repair the permissions on my hard drive;
2) Empty the trash on my hard drive;
3) Throw my contact lenses away and start wearing a new pair.

I have no idea why I do the first two, except that someone told me it’s a good idea, like flossing. OK, whatever. The contact lens thing still bugs me, though. I believe I paid $300 for my first pair of Bausch & Lomb SofLens, in the early ’80s, or approximately $50,000 in today’s dollars. That was two months’ rent for me, but so worth it. They were revolutionary! B&L bought magazine ads with a photo of water droplets on a pane of glass. “Can you tell which is the Bausch & Lomb SofLens?” the copy ran. No, you couldn’t. That was also the experience of millions of early adopters when they dropped one of the slippery little buggers on the sink. But unless you were a millionaire, you learned to tell them apart; after all, each one cost $150.

That was only the beginning. There was a whole chemistry set of solutions that came with them — cleaners, storage, disinfectant, a weekly soak that involved tablets fizzing in little plastic vessels. Or you could go for heat disinfection, which meant boiling your lenses for a few minutes. Both were a pain in the ass, but the contacts were wonderful. You didn’t get that squint the hard-lens wearers all had, and soft ones could never “pop out,” which happened frequently. It was common, at the time, to walk into a room and find one or two or three people on their hands and knees, searching a shag carpet for a tiny piece of plastic, which might or might not be found. If it was, the grateful party would scurry off to the bathroom for a re-insertion or, depending on his or her comfort with carpet germs, merely pop it in the mouth for a re-wet and do it on the spot.

That was pretty gross. But it happened all the time. What were you going to do? Carry it home in your pocket? Lenses, hard and soft, were expensive. You could buy insurance for contacts.

Hank Stuever once wrote me about losing a lens when he was a kid, on a hayride. His mom took him back to the scene of the crime to look for it, hours later — expensive! — and they actually found it, a single contact lens on a hay wagon, which must be the modern equivalent of the needle in a haystack. And what did young Hank do next? Squirted some solution on it and put it back in his eye. I understand Hank’s mother is now a nun. If she’s ever nominated for sainthood, I think the fact her son isn’t known today as the blind TV critic should count as one of her miracles. (Finding it could be No. 2.)

I wore my last pair of contacts for five years. I’ve always been scrupulous about care, and I didn’t wear them every day, but often enough that my optometrist gaped in horror when I told him how long it had been since I’d re-upped. In that time, he informed me, pretty much the entire industry had gone to two-week or four-week, even daily disposables. You bought lenses by the box now, and it was important to throw them away on schedule, lest you tempt eye infections. Part of me thinks yeah yeah and wants to mention all those shag carpet lens searches, and once I did. My current optometrist replied with a confession to having once retrieved a lens from the sink drain at a college party, rinsing it a little under the tap, and popping it back in.

But you don’t need to do that anymore, she added. Lenses are cheap now. Kate wears daily-wear and I, month-long multifocals, and my total expenditures for both of us, including solution, probably is about what I paid for my first pair of SofLenses and all their attendant solutions. Today she told me she was coming to the bottom of her box, and would I please order more, the way you ask the designated grocery-buyer in the household to put ketchup on the list.

I spared her the 700-word lecture you just read. Why bother?

A little bloggage before I go? Sure:

My former colleague Dave Jones, an Ohio State grad and now a sportswriter in Pennsylvania, speaks to the Jim Tressel affair from the place where it matters most. Mr. Albom, this is how you stir emotion in a sports column. Not the way you do it.

This story — about how one guy, Joshua Kaufman, was able to retrieve his stolen laptop, using a program called Hidden — just about sold me on it. Funny, too.

In keeping with today’s theme of God I Am So OLD, may I just say that reading today’s news, about Andrew Anthony Weiner and the underpants-boner picture, only underscores the above. God, I remember when John Tower was run off the reservation for drinking too much and hitting on women. Imagine, in 1989, being told that the news in 22 years would involve whether an elected official did or did not send a photo of his wing-wang — with his phone! — to a woman, and that the stories the morning of June 2, 2011 would be led by the elected official’s failure to categorically deny whether that was his wing-wang.

I hope I live another 22 years. God knows what we’ll be talking about then.

Happy Thursday, all.

To the surprise of all who know him, Alan announced one day a couple weeks ago that the time had come for him to get an iPhone. He’s no Luddite, but he is the most phone-indifferent man I know. He forgets his phone, or leaves it in the car, or in the boat bag, or in a pair of pants he hasn’t worn in a while. If I had a nickel for all the times we’ve looked for it by calling it and seeking out the ringing from the dry-cleaning pile, I’d be writing this from Barbados. He doesn’t want to be one of those guys with a holster on his belt and the constant yap-yap-yapping, and I’d say he’s succeeded.

But then he lost his iPod, and the dirt-cheap clamshell spent the night on the deck of the boat during a shower, and he had a mixed-signals night trying to find Kate that would have been aided by text messaging, and the day finally came. Down we went to the AT&T store, re-upped with the Death Star for another two years, exchanged my dying 3G for a 3GS and got the same for Alan. And now I know if I call him, he’ll answer, because that sucker hasn’t gotten far from his hand since last weekend, and here’s why:

The radio. My poor husband has a musically adventurous soul at a time when radio has been turned over to corporate monsters to squeeze of every extant dollar. There is satellite, true, but hello, I DO NOT NEED ANOTHER MONTHLY BILL, and the sub- sub- sub- sub-nicheification of the market, while gratifying for people who are into that sort of thing, doesn’t help much. Maybe I like dubstep-influenced hip-hop, who knows, but I can’t find it, I can’t spend hours tracking it down and I’m not going to spend hours listening to a station devoted to it.

Fortunately, there are a few radio stations out there that still cater to people whose tastes run beyond sales charts and Grammy nominees, and almost all of them have web streams now. One is CJAM, a Canadian station from the University of Windsor that Alan picks up when he’s driving home from work at 1 a.m. or so, but only for a few minutes. Is there anything more evocative than a radio station playing great music in the middle of the night? I can’t tell you how many mornings I’ve found him scouring the internet for clues on some unidentified track that faded out before it was ID’d. I’m not sure if we ever put a label on the selection he described as “Jimi Hendrix at 50 fathoms,” but lord knows we tried. Another is KCRW, the public station out of Los Angeles, and its “Morning Becomes Eclectic” show, which exposed David Chase to A3 and “Woke Up This Morning,” which became the theme for “The Sopranos.” Still another is WWOZ, out of New Orleans and specializing in the music of that city; we had it on for a few hours the other night, and it was a revelation.

We turn ’em on, plug the iPhone into the stereo, and forget all about Clear Channel and the rest of those bastards, if only for a little while.

“Can I plug this in on the boat and not go over my data limit?” he asked the other day. Criminy. Have I unleashed a monster? He might need an upgrade to the higher-use plan. Speaking of monthly bills.

By the way, if you know the answer to that question, I’m all ears. What is the data use of streaming radio?

I have a car repair scheduled this morning, so off I go. First, bloggage:

I’m staying away from Weinergate, having had my fill, for the moment, of stories that involve or suggest bulging underwear. Someone else tell me if I need to care about this.

While we’re at New York magazine, three more tiny photos of the next lavishly photographed Princess Clotheshorse, Charlene Wittstock, whom I will continue to refer to as the Teutonic blonde giantess. Because if the shoe fits, etc.

Granny finally passed, at 106. Another Detroitblog gem on her banner year.

Mind your manners on the airplanes, please.

And I’m outta here. Happy Wednesday.

Thanks to all who said Movement 2011, aka Detroit’s techno music festival, would be worth the visit. It was. Totally. Excellent people watching, set to the persistent thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of electronica. Let’s not talk, today, about whether it qualifies as “music” or not. Clearly it is. The musicianship consists of weaving these aural tapestries. If you’re accustomed to going to a show where you pay attention to the stage, where there is a clearly identifiable performer playing an instrument or singing or whatever, it can be a little weird, granted. So, is that Poindexter standing behind the sound board the Space Time Continuum, or just their sound guy? The answer to that question is, who gives a fig, because you didn’t go to see them. You went to see this:

This is a version of a common look for girls. The synthetic-fur leg warmers are called “fluffies.” The colors are day-glo, presumably for the black-light possibilities. The semi-nudity? Well, it was everywhere:

This doesn’t bug me, for the most part, which is to say, “as long as it’s not my daughter.” We’re only young once; as Nora Ephron tells young women today, “If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini and don’t take it off until you’re 34.” It’s the juxtapositions that unsettle, all this slutwear and stripper gear worn with pacifiers and Oscar the Grouch backpacks. I guess that’s the point. To unsettle. To greedily accept the gifts of adulthood (sex) while clinging to those of childhood (pacifiers, Oscar the Grouch), all while wearing leg warmers made of cheap acrylic.

Then there were these people:

Such fun folks. We went on Saturday. I wish we’d seen Fatboy Slim, but he was the Monday headliner, and Monday it was 90 degrees, and my appreciation of almost everything would have changed under those conditions. For one thing, I’m sure the fluffies would have been left at home. Monday was the day to go sailing, and we did. The farther you got from shore, the more the stifling temperatures were left behind, and it was one pleasant way to pass an afternoon, especially when you knew that the morning’s work was waiting for you when you got back, i.e., red potato salad with caraway, a strawberry-rhubarb pie and some beef tenderloin marinating in sesame oil and soy sauce, ready to skewer and grill with some red pepper, onions and mushrooms. A good ending to a long, fine weekend.

Which had some fine reading, as well. A few links to sample:

From the WashPost, a profile of the oldest competitive female bodybuilder. She’s 74. Check the photos; they’re pretty amazing. The question for me, though, is this: Is looking like that worth eating the way she does, i.e., on chicken breasts, green beans and (gag) egg whites? Worth thinking about, over the next piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie.

Via Roy, a New Yorker profile of the recently departed Gil Scott-Heron, who died last week. I don’t know how I missed this the first time around (last year), a portrait of the artist as a crackhead.

While you’re noodling around at the New Yorker, you might also enjoy Atul Gawande’s commencement address at Harvard Medical School last week.

For those of you reading this back in my native state, the Sports Illustrated package on the sins of St. Tressel. I read it with mixed feelings; thankful I really don’t care about this stuff, and yet, there’s a certain head-shaking mood that pervades it all. Can we do away with college football programs entirely? Or set it up as some sort of minor-league, self-supporting adjunct to higher education (yes, I know it already is) and drop the charade that this has anything to do with college?

EDIT: Oh! Almost forgot! David Von Drehle, aka the Master of Disaster, has filed again, this time setting the standard for the best twister story, ever. Absolutely worth your time, particularly in light of this particularly dumb post from Jeff Jarvis, suggesting articles are now “luxuries” when someone like Brian Stelter has already wandered through Joplin posting to Twitter. Read and compare, tell me which one you prefer. I’m on Team Von Drehle.

OK, another hot one on tap, and I have lots to do. Hitting the ground, running and sweating. Starts now.

Now with wildlife.