I hate those weekends when you spend all your time indoors, but it was one of those weekends when it had to be done. The teaching chores had to be done, and hallelujah, I got ’em done. And I also did the laundry and the grocery shopping. The house is still a wreck, but we all have clean underwear and something to eat.

And while it may be a holiday for you, it’s not for me. I’m heading out in a bit for my usual manic Monday, taking a few minutes to drink some coffee and listen to a speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Did you know Grosse Pointe was the site of one of his last speeches before his assassination? It was, in March 1968, and after a few years of saying, “I should check out the online resources on that,” I’m finally doing so. The local historical society has a page devoted to the event, which packed the local high-school gym with 2,700 souls, who by and large treated him well and warmly, if you can ignore the many hecklers, clearly audible on the tape. They were from a group called Breakthrough. If you look at their materials, their main objection to King was that he was soft on communism: “He has taken up the banner of the Viet Cong by calling for an end to the War in Viet Nam on Communist terms.” One loudly denounced him as a “traitor” before walking out — “dramatically,” the newspaper found it necessary to note. At one point, King even turns over his microphone to a Navy vet for a brief rant about anti-war protestors. The script could have come from the blogosphere, c. 2003.

But the parts that really sting, 43 years later, are passages like this: “There is no more dangerous development in our nation than the constant building up of predominantly negro central cities ringed by white suburbs. This will do nothing but invite social disaster.”

Dr. King, you were right. But I don’t think, if we had it to do over again, that anyone would do anything different. Anyway, worth a listen for King scholars, armchair or otherwise, and a break from that other speech you hear so much at this time of year. (Brendan Walsh, one of our local school board members has a few thoughts on it, here.)

Bloggage:

I’ll have a filet o’ fish: Canoeing through McDonald’s. In Australia, where else?

Just a reminder to those of you who have struggled with infertility: Children are not distributed by a benevolent and loving God to those who most deserve them. In fact, sometimes it seems the opposite is true.

There was some chatter about the new Miss America yesterday in comments over the weekend. Talk about an event that’s passed its prime; who even knew it was on? Fortunately we have Tom and Lorenzo to break things down, at least. Shocker of the event: The new Miss is only 17? I didn’t think that was possible under pageant rules, but then, I didn’t think having it in Vegas was possible under pageant rules, either. Anyway, she seems like a nice girl. I look forward to a year of not knowing her name.

So, then, time for me to shove off.

I hope someone here has noticed that I’ve said not word one about Ted Williams until now. I’ll admit to having passed the link along in the first day of his story, but it was in a private e-mail, to a radio person whom I thought might appreciate the essential weirdness of it back when it was fresh. But after that, I held my tongue, because I saw how many people in my Facebook network were posting the clip from the Columbus Dispatch, and I knew what would happen.

I knew Williams would be an overnight sensation. I knew someone would give him a big break. He would be taken in, cleaned up and hustled off to the Today show to warm hearts. He’d be Cinderfella for a week, a month, a… no, just a week. A week is all we can spare a story these days. A week is the new month, a month is the new year. A year is, well, who cares? These days years run forward and backward and probably into a fourth and fifth dimension.

After a week, he would fade away, but until then, I wasn’t going to say a word. Because? BECAUSE THIS GUY IS HOMELESS. DO YOU THINK HE BECAME HOMELESS BECAUSE HE FORGOT TO PAY THE RENT? Also, because even a sane, well-balanced person would go crazy under such treatment, being the week’s designated heartwarmer. Gabby Giffords’ aide, Daniel Hernandez, is this week’s. He seems like a nice young man. FOR NOW.

Williams imploded right on schedule. He turned himself in to a rehab facility — on television! — for none other than Dr. Phil. I assume it’s the standard 28-day residential program. Whew. Now I don’t have to think about him for a month.

A woman from People magazine interviewed for a journalism fellowship the year after my class, and her idea for the year was outstanding — spend it researching and writing a book about people who become accidental celebrities. Overnight sensations. At the time, the Elizabeth Smart case was in the news, and she mentioned that family as the textbook case for the total weirdness that can overtake a person thrust into the public eye with no active effort on their part. Remember how strange that case was? How many press conferences the parents called, how generously they provided hours of video footage of their home movies, how welcoming they were to any old news crew that wanted to drop in and poke around their two artfully decorated houses? They were the first people I’ve seen in a while who could outlast a crowd of reporters; it seemed they never said, “OK, one more question and we’re going to wrap it up.”

And then when Elizabeth was found, they got right back into the groove — more press conferences, no question left unanswered. It was merely strange until I read that Elizabeth had asked to audition to play herself in the TV movie about the case. At the time, a smart person could speculate pretty accurately what went on during her captivity, and it was confirmed in her recent court testimony about it: She was raped daily for nine months. And she wanted to relive it on a film set, shot by shot. Clearly, this publicity stuff is powerful medicine.

But back to Williams. He admitted to “problems with drugs and alcohol.” And yet some producer thought he’d make for a few minutes of warm hearts.

Who are these producers, and how old are they? Eighteen?

And so another week lurches to a close. I’m hoping next week will be calmer, as I don’t have too many of these in me. How about a little bloggage?

We haven’t had an OID (only in Detroit) story for a while: It’s auto-show week, and during that time all the companies have fleets of cars not just under the exhibit lights of Cobo, but out on the streets as well. One of BMW’s haulers was loading high-end Beemers onto a truck outside the Book Cadillac Hotel when he was distracted for, he estimates, 60 seconds. Oops.

We’ve all seen the best-of lists for 2010, so now it’s time for the worst-of. NYMag considers the movies. Admittedly, No. 1 was easy to predict, but it was nice to see “Black Swan” made the list, too.

Amy Chua, the crazy Chinese mother, finds the “I was drunk” excuse of the media age: It was the editing. Thanks, Moe, for digging this one up.

Whatever you do, don’t do it there: The peculiar slight of adultery conducted in [ominous chords, organ sting] the marital bed.

This weekend looks like heaven to me. Enjoy yours.

Earlier this year Last year my friend Clark had an idea for a short documentary film — a day in the life of a Detroit street dog. He said he’d brought it up before among our little guerrilla tribe, and no one liked it, but I loved it. Immediately I started imagining how we’d do it: We’d need some sort of ride-along expert, either a vet or (the guerrilla, zero-budget solution), a vet student, preferably someone with access to the specialized equipment you’d need, including drugs. We’d need a radio-collar system to keep track of whatever dog we settled on as our star. We’d need at least one but preferably several small, wearable video cameras, like the new GoPro, along with specially fitted harnesses for the dogs to carry them on their chests. And we’d need a crazy crew who wouldn’t mind working all night in some of the city’s worst-of-the-worst neighborhoods, probably following our subject on bicycles, carrying equipment in backpacks. We’d have to be our own security, which would mean no security.

It’s still a great idea. But after several fruitless phone calls to the city and the Michigan State vet school, along with a back-of-the-envelope budget estimate, I decided it wasn’t going to be done by us.

It’s not going to be done by the Discovery Channel, either. The channel applied for and was approved for a tax credit for nearly $560,000 to make a series called “A Dog’s Life,” about guess-what:

Besides using crews to film the dogs, the project would attach small cameras to the animals to capture Detroit life from a dog’s-eye view.

Bad news for the Discovery Channel: The city turned them down for permits, saying such a portrayal would be bad for the city. Note to the Discovery Channel: Try Flint. They’re hungrier, and unless I miss my guess, the problem is just as bad there. My vet, who works as the on-call professional for animal emergencies for several different police agencies, said the problem was always bad, and became critical when the foreclosures started; people would simply turn their animals out to fend for themselves. Weird breed mixes are a common sight in the city. Most have at least some pit bull in them, but you really do see all kinds — Wendell, Sweet Juniper’s dog, was a resident of the Detroit streets before he was adopted, and he looks pretty close to purebred German shorthair. Jim has written several times of what an enthusiastic bird dog he is on the neighborhood’s pheasants, so it stands to reason.

Filming them is still a good idea, and it can be done for a lot less than a million bucks. Fly under the radar, and you don’t need permits.

OK, this is the second-to-last day of Hell Week, i.e., the first week of classes at Wayne. I have to hit the shower, the gas station and probably several other places before heading downtown, so quick bloggage:

I only caught the end of the president’s speech in Tucson last night, but before it was over I predicted it would drive conservatives crazy, and whaddaya know?

Good gravy, this flooding in Australia is positively Biblical.

I’ve been reading some of the inside-baseball mea culpas and discussion over the early misreporting from Tucson this weekend, and it strikes me as a huge waste of time. Every study I’ve read says people want news NOW, and don’t mind if early reports in a breaking situation are wrong, as long as they’re corrected quickly; in fact, they expect it. Reporting Gabrielle Giffords to be dead, and then correcting it a few minutes later, doesn’t strike me as an egregious mistake after a woman’s been shot in the head point-blank. It happened with Jim Brady during the Reagan assassination attempt, and it’ll happen again.

What do you civilians think? As for me, I think I need a shower. Later, all.

I got some new knives for Christmas, and boy, are they sharp. Last night I shaved off about a third of my left index fingernail below the quick while chopping vegetables for a roasted-vegetable pasta. Not as much blood as you’d think, but my finger, even wrapped in two Band-Aids, is as sensitive as…something very very sensitive. And the Band-Aid slows my typing speed by about 30 percent. And I have to be downtown at 10, and we had a significant snowfall overnight. All of which is me making excuses for short shrift today. But you knew that.

The pasta? Why, it was delicious. Oven-roasted squash, onion, garlic, sage and kale, tossed with bowties. I’m enough of a pro in the kitchen that I tracked down the fingernail before I dressed the wound.

The snow? They’re saying we got 3-5 inches, I say 3 tops. But over here on the far eastern side of the state, along the Lake St. Clair banana belt, we rarely get the maximum.

So let’s get to the bloggage, eh?

The right has settled on its terms, and we are calling it “blood libel.” First tossed out by Professor Heh Indeed, amplified by the Wall Street Journal’s headline, now passed down to the proles by Sexy Sadie. Too bad she never talks to the regular press; maybe someone could ask her if she knows what the original blood libel was. As Roy points out, “the Southron is the Jew of liberal fascism.”

Why David Edelstein and I would get along like aces: We agree on the greatest films ever shot in New York City — “Sweet Smell of Success” and “Dog Day Afternoon” among them. I think “The French Connection” belongs in the top tier, too, if only for the chase scene under the elevated train.

An old one from Roger Ebert that one of my FB friends noticed; I hadn’t read it yet, so here you go: Standup rules.

And now I must fly. My finger hurts.

One of the things Saturday afternoon’s grim news did was shove out of the way Saturday morning’s grim news, i.e., this trollbait in the Wall Street Journal, which I dearly hope you can read, as, well, hoo-boy. Modestly titled, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” it kicks off:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

It goes on from there at great length, detailing how the author, Amy Chua, put her children on the road to success by laying a whip on their backs, hard and often. Never mind the Meanie Mom ooga-booga lead — the real fun comes later on, which Chua casually describes her beliefs about parent-child relations, i.e. that children “owe everything” to their parents, and hence must do precisely as they’re told, all the time, and tolerate casual insults (“fatty,” “garbage”), which Chua sees as evidence of bracing honesty and tough love. Actually not even tough love, as the word “love” doesn’t appear anywhere in the story. We wouldn’t want to get the idea she’s a softie, after all, not that we would after we hear the account of how she got her 7-year-old to learn “The Little White Donkey,” a piano piece:

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have “The Little White Donkey” perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, “I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?” I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

A Western parent would have given up long ago, but not this superior mother:

…I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

You know this story has a happy ending, right? Yes, Lulu learned to play “The Little White Donkey,” and her mother glows with self-approval.

Well, like I said: I know when I’m being trolled. At over 2,000 comments, it’s all building to the crescendo of an online chat with the superior mother on Thursday. But that’s not what I want to discuss, but rather something Mother Superior drops casually:

I’ve noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

I’ve noticed that I read this truism frequently. I’ve also noticed that it isn’t borne out in my experience. To read some commentators, “self-esteem” is a subject you can major in in American public schools. Children are constantly being petted and affirmed and bolstered with praise, I’m told. And yet, I look around, and I don’t see much attention being paid to it, if any. Oh, you hear a reference here and there to something building self-esteem, but it’s not something that gets special emphasis. In fact, now that I think about it, the parents I know also assume “strength, not fragility” in their kids. They’re just not quite so…what’s the word…psychotic about it, as Chua.

Of those hundreds of commentators, most say Chua is a lunatic, but a fair number fall into the “well, I wouldn’t go that far, but she’s on the right track with rejecting all that self-esteem nonsense.”

Troll. Bait.

Bloggage? Sure:

You’ll never smear honey on your toast again. At least not supermarket honey. I didn’t even know you could give antibiotics to bees.

One minute they’re bumping chests, the next minute, tumbling down the shoulder of I-75 — yet another death worth of a “Six Feet Under” open.

Po’ Sawah Pawin. That is all.

Many years ago, I did some reporting on mental illness, and interviewed the mother of a man diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She was a real piece of work, and I recall thinking I’d have gone crazy with her as a mother, but I’m sure her burden in life was no small thing. She was insistent that her son had been made crazy by psychedelic drugs, mainly pot and LSD, which he’d taken in his early adulthood. He was a child of the ’60s, and that’s what children of the ’60s did.

I’m sure she knew that mental illness typically presents in early adulthood, and she probably knew that perhaps millions have experimented with the same drugs without tipping over into insanity. To her, it was the X factor that explained the inexplicable: How did this happen?

I’m willing to believe the drugs were a catalyst, paranoia and hallucinations being a well-known symptom of both schizophrenia and hallucinogenic drug use. A catalyst, but not the only catalyst. So is stress. So are the mystifying chemicals swirling around in our bodies. But who’s to say a brain with hallucinations and paranoia just coming to the boil might not be nudged another degree or two by a drug that induces both? People prone to depression should avoid alcohol, because alcohol is? Class? A depressant.

There’s been a lot of talk these past 48 hours about how much the martial rhetoric of the tea-party right may have contributed to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. You know — that wonderful conservative Democrat, cut down by a crazy leftist (in the Fox News narrative). There’s a lot of discussion about Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map I posted Saturday. For the record, I don’t think this Loughner kid saw that map and had it act like the queen of diamonds did on Raymond Shaw in “The Manchurian Candidate.” But I do think an unhealthy mind, looking around for weak spots to blast through like so much hot lava, can be affected by the zeitgeist, whatever it is at the moment.

A pretty vague statement, I realize.

A friend of mine likes to quote a line he first heard in an interview, that when people go crazy, they tend to go crazy in three main areas — sex, religion and aliens. They flock to others who believe they are watched at all times by a shadowy being in the sky, which is also pretty much the monotheism argument for good behavior. Does that make religion bad? Of course not. Does that mean Sarah Palin had a hand in Loughner’s action? Of course not. But I wouldn’t want to be her today, either.

One of the ten thousand things about that peabrain that has bugged me from the get-go is this: The way Palin dragged into the mainstream, and held up for celebration, a certain sort of political attitude I used to only hear on talk radio. Lock and load! …I’ll give up my guns when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers. …Don’t retreat, reload! And so on. I am not a fan of Andrew Sullivan by a long shot, but I’m fascinated by this passage he found on Palin’s Facebook page:

To the teams that desire making it this far next year: Gear up! In the battle, set your sights on next season’s targets! From the shot across the bow – the first second’s tip-off – your leaders will be in the enemy’s crosshairs, so you must execute strong defensive tactics. You won’t win only playing defense, so get on offense! The crossfire is intense, so penetrate through enemy territory by bombing through the press, and use your strong weapons – your Big Guns – to drive to the hole. Shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win.

Focus on the goal and fight for it. If the gate is closed, go over the fence. If the fence is too high, pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, parachute in. If the other side tries to push back, your attitude should be “go for it.” Get in their faces and argue with them. (Sound familiar?!) Every possession is a battle; you’ll only win the war if you’ve picked your battles wisely. No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!

How many times would you have to read that before you realized she’s talking about a basketball tournament? She — or whoever handles her web stuff — headlines the piece, “Warning: Subject to New Politically Correct Language Police Censorship,” so it seems her ghost is having a bit of fun here, but it’s of a piece with other things this staunch Christian writes about politics — it’s a battle, requiring big guns, artillery, lots of ammo. Ha ha, those politically correct language police! She certainly has made “don’t retreat, reload!” a rallying cry of sorts, offering it in March (when the crosshairs map made its debut) and to buck up Laura Schlessinger in August. It’s mentioned in her first book, attributed to her father, although anyone who’s spent any amount of time reading bumper stickers knows it didn’t originate with him, either. That’s one reason so many of her supporters like her. Hey, my dad used to say that!

When you’ve made political disagreements — which are about ideas, after all — into something that requires big guns and heavy artillery and armies, when you’ve literally targeted a woman who gets shot in the head a few months later, can you really pull the shocked-shocked act when people notice the connection? Really? Honestly, I wasn’t all that surprised by the shooting of Giffords (although I thought it would be the president someone would take a shot at). I’ve been expecting it for months, since those water-the-tree-of-liberty T-shirts started showing up at tea party rallies. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Palin’s people are calling the notorious crosshairs “surveyor’s symbols.” The fact they’re floating that preposterous bullshit, along with their hastening to take the graphic down, suggests that while they’ll still protest furiously, they still feel something warm on their hands, and it’s not maple syrup.

In the end, it may well be that Loughner was answering only to the voices in his head. What a wonderful world it would be if that was the only place we ever hear Palin’s again, too.

Folks, I have to be out of range for most of today, which means I may not be able to participate much, or approve comments that get hung in moderation. All I ask is that we keep it civil (which you almost always do), and that some of you (and you know who you are) try to keep it on the rails. Can we do that? I know we can.

Let’s start a new thread for discussion of this news.

Meanwhile, I’m posting this because Mrs. Palin’s web people have taken this charming graphic down. I want it to stay up, in as wide distribution as possible, for obvious reasons.

As the Bunk would say: “Happy now, bitch?”

I had to go bra-shopping yesterday. For many of you ladies, this means swinging through Wal-Mart or Target, finding your size along the ABCD continuum, and then choosing between all the options — front or back closure? Black, white, nude or pink? A little pink bow at the middle, or plain? Racerback, convertible back, strapless? And so on.

My problem is more complicated. I recall a soundbite from a designer who did a gown for Aretha Franklin to wear to some awards show: “She wanted strapless. Do you have any idea what sort of engineering work goes into a strapless gown for Aretha Franklin?” Now that I think about it, it’s sort of a cheeky thing for a man to say about his client, who should rightfully get some discretion from her dressmaker. Now that I know more about the Queen of Soul, it’s entirely possible her check bounced.

Anyway, I’m not Aretha, but I can no longer shop at Wal-Mart or Target. If I ever lose 20 pounds or so, the problem may be eased somewhat, but I was in the far outer regions of those stores’ selections years and pounds ago, and likely will be again, barring surgery. Some of us are just made that way. It’s not a glorious problem to have, in case you’re wondering; I’d rather have been born with $20 million, and spend my life worrying if people really like me, or my bank account.

And while the problems at my end of the size spectrum get easier every day — thank you, obesity epidemic! — I still prefer to shop with an expert at least once every couple of years, and that means I have to take myself to Harp’s, in Birmingham.

Harp’s is a legendary lingerie store. It’s the second one I’ve patronized in my life, the other being Town Shop in New York City. Both had, amusingly enough, the same power at their core — an ancient lady who sits behind the counter, a tape measure around her neck that she rarely needs to use because she’s seen every size, shape and color of boob under the sun. She can size you at a glance, under two sweaters and a winter coat. Modesty in fitting rooms is out of the question, because she looks at your chest with the same eye your mechanic turns on your fuel-injection system.

Both ancient ladies are gone now. Mrs. Harp died a while back, Selma Koch of Town Shop a few years before that. I’ve quoted Koch’s New York Times obituary here before, but just in case you missed it, here’s the lead:

Selma Koch, a Manhattan store owner who earned a national reputation by helping women find the right bra size, mostly through a discerning glance and never with a tape measure, died Thursday at Mount Sinai Medical Center. She was 95 and a 34B.

Betty Harp lived to be 93. Obviously something about spending your days surrounded by breasts leads to long lives. She, too, had a great obit, once you got past the part about fitting bras on the angels in heaven:

A master saleswoman, with a sense of style and a knack for making women feel beautiful, attributed to her great success. She owned stores in Hamtramck, Ferndale, Warren and finally, Birmingham. For 63 years she fit generations of mothers, daughters and granddaughters, six days a week – only resting on Sunday.

Any woman who left her store, left with an uplift and a story to tell. Known for her youthful, cosmetically untouched face, wit and spunk. Her secret to life – “Eat very little, use Vaseline or olive oil as a face cream, work like hell and don’t take crap from anyone.”

Mrs. Harp is gone, but she trained her staff well, and the lady who waited on me also didn’t need a tape measure. She also sold me a camisole in the new miracle fabric of I-don’t-know-what, but lordy, does this thing stretch. One size fits 0 to 24, and they’re highly recommended for pregnancy layers. Their website touts them as solutions to the problem of plumber’s butt in the current style of low-rise jeans. That’s women’s style for you — sell you a problem, then sell you a solution.

I bought the camisole after touring the rest of the store and its array of treasures — the high-end European stuff, those panties Scarlett Johansson wore in the first shot of “Lost in Translation” — and decided that whatever else I am, I am not the sort of person who drops $29 on a pair of panties. This camisole is intriguing, however. So smoothing! I’m going to experiment a bit.

Lots of good bloggage today, so let’s get started:

Via Eric Zorn, a hidden treasure from the Chicago Reader — a short-lived, ’70s-era magazine for teen girls called Star, presumably because they couldn’t call it Starfucker and sell it on respectable newsstands. As the Reader writer points out:

The second issue is my favorite so far. The advice column runs a letter allegedly from a girl who’s worried about her 15-year-old sister sneaking out and dating guys old enough to go to jail for having sex with her, and the columnist actually scolds her for being a drag.

Thanks to Mitch Harper, for remembering my interest in clowns that go bad, or, in this case, have bad visited upon them:

Two street clowns were found dead in southeastern Mexico along with messages allegedly from a drug gang accusing them of working as army informers, their families said Tuesday.

Police busted a Nigerian drug mule at the Detroit airport the other day, carrying — in her stomach — an astonishing 2.5 pounds of heroin in those little oval packages we all remember from “Maria Full of Grace.” The story is remarkable mainly for the photograph of the 91 packages all cleaned up and lined up on a hospital tray, and to think what it took to swallow them all.

Finally, regular readers know how much I love the work of Roy Edroso over at Alicublog. I knew he’d hit a rough patch of late, but I didn’t know there was an Edrosothon in progress to help him get through it. Now you know, too.

A great weekend to all.

Huh, wha-? I have a blog? It’s Thursday? I’m supposed to write something?

Sorry. It’s one of those sleep-deficit mornings. Thursday is Kate’s jazz-band rehearsal, which means I have to get up extra-early, and today it was extra-extra-early, because my neighbor, an extra-extra-extra-early riser, was up shoveling snow under our bedroom window. I could tell the depth of the snow (a dusting) from the sound of the shovel: scraaaaape…scraaaaape…scraaaaaaape. Very thin snow can turn to glare ice, so I don’t blame him for keeping things tidy, but it was just, criminy, 6 a.m. So I resolved to skip the morning coffee and go back to bed after dropping her off.

It was the right idea. You know you’re sleep-deprived when your emergency-deficit catchup sleep contains vivid dreams. It was my house dream. I always dream about houses when I dream at all, and it’s always the same one — I’ve recently taken possession of a new house, one that looks ordinary until I find a door within that leads to many more rooms I haven’t seen before, whole wings of neglected fabulousness, with grand dusty furniture and sometimes even an indoor pool. I think I have an idea what this dream is about, but if any of you armchair Freudians would like to weigh in, feel free. Let’s stipulate up front: The house is me. Most things in dreams are reflections of our selves, I’m convinced. We are born, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out why we exist. Apparently I’m missing my calling as a home-rehabber. Or maybe I contain an indoor pool.

Since we’re late today, and scattered, let’s just make it a mixed grill today, shall we?

Because I expressed disappointment with the pilot, and because I think good work should be recognized, I have to take back my earlier comments about “Detroit 1-8-7.” From a rocky start, the show has markedly improved. No, it’s not “The Wire.” It’s not “Southland.” It owes too large a stylistic debt to “NYPD Blue.” but it has shown real improvement over the course of its first season, and the last couple of episodes have been a pleasure to watch; the writers, the crew, even the actors getting a real sense of the city. I’d like to see what they can do with a second season. Of course, having said all that, I have now bestowed Nance’s Kiss of Death upon it, and whaddaya know, prospects for a second season are growing dim. Nevertheless, Michael Hodges’ story about the locations manager’s thoughts on the city’s look are worthwhile if you’ve ever been here. (Although I don’t know how he managed to, in a citation of city-based TV shows, throw “LA Law” in there — one shot almost entirely on stages in the showbiz capital of the world — and leave out the David Simon portfolio. But I’m not his editor.)

“Detroit 1-8-7” has also been a boon to the city’s creative community; it seems a week doesn’t go by that someone I know or sorta-know doesn’t have a speaking part, and that’s cool. Maybe, if the show is on the bubble for renewal, the drastically lower costs of shooting here, thanks to the tax credits, will play the deciding role. Here’s hoping.

This was, of course, one of the big stories on the health-care news farm last night — the vaccine-autism link, long discredited on a scientific basis, is now revealed as something worse than just bad scholarship, but actual fraud. I know some of you are alternative-health care enthusiasts, and I don’t want to cast aspersions on whatever works for you. (Yes, even coffee enemas.) But this movement away from one of the modern age’s great medical triumphs has been especially pernicious, with its victims the people who most need our care and protection — children. The fact that twits like Jenny McCarthy, and her great enabler, Oprah Winfrey, are still walking around raising questions and offering alternative theories just galls me.

A couple years back, “This American Life” did a show with the theme “ruining it for the rest of us,” and featured a story on a measles outbreak in some flannel-and-Birkenstocks outpost in the Pacific northwest. One of the interviews was with a mother whose baby had gotten measles just before he was supposed to get the vaccine, thanks to vaccine protestors in his daycare facility. There were complications, and while the child lived, he ran a sky-high temperature for days, and didn’t really shake it for weeks. It was a terrifying story for anyone who’s nursed a sick child, and the la-de-da attitude of ignoramuses like McCarthy and her confederates is simply appalling. Someone needs to be punished for this. Start with Andrew Wakefield, the original perp, but don’t forget the blonde, too.

And with that, I think I’m finally up and at ’em. Good rest of the day to all.

Here’s an idea to get us through January. Call it Stash the Santa, Leave the Lights. If you decorate the outside of your house for the holidays, come twelfth night/epiphany (i.e., tomorrow) you are strongly encouraged to strike all the Christmasy stuff — the Santas, the creches, the wreaths, the reindeer, whatever. But leave the lights. If your display consists entirely of white lights outlining your spruce tree, leave ’em up. If you put up blue ones, so much the better. (Red and green? On the bubble. But multicolored is fine.)

The idea is to say, Christmas is over and we’re not going to depress anyone by leaving Santa on the lawn until April, but it’s a long few weeks before we start to see anything approaching the softer light of spring, and so we’re going to let the candle of civilization burn in the dark a while longer. Until Valentine’s Day, say.

Who’s with me?

I don’t think Alan will be. Disassemble half the Christmas lights, then bring in the other half six weeks later? Winter sucks. Deal.

Well, that was my idea, anyway.

How are all of you this morning? We’re starting the year off right, with a glugging floor drain in the basement. It’s good that I handle Christmas on a pay-as-you-go basis, as January always seems to hold a few of these nasty surprises. There’s also the appraisal for our house, revealed yesterday, which came in at — calculating here — 52 percent of its 2005 purchase price. Yay, us! We’re po’.

There are times when the only reasonable response to such a pickle is to saute some spinach with garlic and then scramble a couple of eggs in there, too. There is little that can’t be faced on a spinach breakfast. Ask Popeye.

So while I wait for C&G Sewer Service, a question: Where would we be without Jon Stewart? Even in the clips roundups the day after, he’s better and funnier than anyone else on late night. The battle of the would-be Republican National Committee chairmen alone is worth your time. It’s hilarious to watch these tools caper for Grover Norquist. (If it weren’t so terrifying, of course.)

Charles Pugh — once the dumbest reporter on WKJG-TV in Fort Wayne, now the dumbest city council president Detroit has had since the last one:

City Council President Charles Pugh is dissolving his controversial nonprofit after taking criticism for secrecy surrounding it. The Pugh & You: Move Detroit Forward Fund was set up in March to raise money for staff travel and community outreach. But it caused heat for hosting a $5,000 a table fundraiser in August for Pugh’s 39th birthday. Criticism increased when Pugh refused to disclose donors that a staffer confirmed included a strip club operator who gave $500.

(A great picture, too. It needs a thought bubble: Once again, Kwame ruins it for everyone.)

I saw a couple of kids in downtown Grosse Pointe in shorts the other day. The temperature was edging toward balminess, so I thought perhaps they were just encouraging warmer weather. No. Turns out this is the thing, these days. Who knew? (I’m with the choose-your-battles parents. As long as hypothermia or frostbite isn’t a real risk, let ’em suffer.)

And with that, I sign off to await the arrival of a plumber-y looking van in the driveway. You?