Some of you may not be watching “American Idol,” and who can blame you. I’m not, but Kate is, and every so often I wander through the room while she’s catching up with the recordings that are stacked like cordwood in our DVR. (I suspect her interest is flagging, too.) So maybe you saw this clip and maybe you didn’t — it’s the Black Eyed Peas stinking up the room with a live performance of whatever their new single is. Oh, right: “Rock That Body.” Wow. Original. What was the name of their last single? “Bodies That Rock?” Or was it “Rockin’ My Body?” I can never remember.

It’s a pretty good example of what too much pop music has come to — bands selected by labels based on how good they look in videos, then bound over to producers who smush them through the best technology and support staff money can buy, until they emerge, glossy and sexy and autotuned to a fare-thee-well, to put on huge arena shows with lasers and explosions and backup dancers and lots and lots of costume changes, all for $150, minimum, for a floor seat, and it all works really well until it doesn’t, and you can see it in that clip. Is anyone in sync? Is anyone even remotely close to …I guess it’s not “notes,” exactly, or “music,” so let me put it this way: Is anyone yelling the part they’re supposed to yell with any degree of precision? I can’t see it. Lots of busywork up there, with everyone marching around and waving their hands in the air and demanding that everyone else wave their hands in the air and rock that body! come on come on rock that body! come on come on rock! that! body!

It so happened that a couple of days later, I was in the gym, and whoever was in charge of the radio had tuned it to the urban-pop station, which is to say, it’s a little rougher than the sub-niche of pop that Taylor Swift rules, and there’s hip-hop in there but not the really hard-core stuff, just cut after cut after cut of Black Eyed Peas-style party music — that thumpy, looped club-style foundation, over which are pasted this or that autotuned singer, asking us to rock our bodies, or shake them, or shake them while rocking, whatever. After 15 minutes of this, I was ready to kill someone. After 25 I said to the gray head on the next machine, “I don’t care what anybody fucking says, the music we listened to when we were young was better than this. Not different. Better. BETTER.” He said that’s why God made iPods, but seriously, if I worked in a store that played this bilge all day I’d seriously consider pouring acid into my ears.

You think this is just another rant of a baby boomer, and maybe it is. Get me some Dentu-Creme. But I think what pushed me into the red zone today was this story in the NYT, about the Live Nation/Ticketmaster takeover of virtually the entire concert industry, and the new music-business model, which is to write off recorded-music sales in favor of a robust gouge at the ticket office, so that nine-figure “360-degree” deals with people like Madonna and Jay-Z can be financed.

Madonna played here on her last tour, a last-minute addition in what calls itself her hometown. I’m told Ford Field’s seating was discreetly draped, the better to mask all the unsold seats. (It’s tough to sell $200 tickets in a state with 17 percent unemployment, Madge. You should know that.) The show was marked by top-notch production values — in that there were many props and costume changes — and a robot-like performance by the star, who treated the concert stage as yet another two-hour cardio workout in a lifetime full of them. Even Britney Spears, that old train wreck, was getting $100 a head for her autotuna-palooza last year.

May I see the hands of any soul out there who thinks Britney Spears is actually singing during these shows? Or Madonna? You are spending hundreds of dollars on tickets and t-shirts for the chance to watch the big star on a Jumbotron. After taking Kate and her friend to the Miley Cyrus 3-D concert movie a couple years ago, I reflected that there should be a lot more of these things, because $30 for the three of us (plus popcorn) had saved us $75 a head to see her down at Cobo, and the seat was better, the parking was free and we got to go backstage! Plus, one of the Jonas Brothers threw his drumstick at the camera, and we all flinched! Cool.

There aren’t many days I go to the gym and think, thank God I’m an old bag, but friends, I saw Elton John blow the roof off of St. John Arena, and I was so close I could almost pluck those big sunglasses off his face, and it cost me ten bucks. There were cynics and money-grubbers in the business then, too, but we got out with the shirts on our back.

These days, I’m shopping for tickets to “Tosca,” which is playing at the Detroit Opera House the weekend of our anniversary. TIckets are steep — pushing $100 for the main floor — but you’re paying for a lot when you see an opera. What I don’t understand is the $9.75-per “convenience charge” tacked on by Ticketmaster. And guess what they’re charging for me to print the ticket on my own printer? Two-fifty each. As Tosca herself might say: Siediti e ruotare.

Some bloggage:

Thanks, Sarah Palin, for all you do to make this country a better place! States warn of ‘Obamacare’ scams: In Illinois, a telemarketer recently sold an elderly woman a fraudulent health insurance plan that supposedly protected her against “death panels,” the state insurance director says.

The things you find when you check your pingbacks: Coozledad, again.

And as I have too much to do tomorrow, it’s off to bed with me.

Some rather startling photos from the funeral of Malcolm McLaren in London yesterday. The Sex Pistols’ manager was laid to rest in a coffin emblazoned TOO FAST TO LIVE TOO YOUNG TO DIE. I suppose we’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing — the “fun” funeral, that is — as the generation-that-younger-people-wish-would-not-be-named starts heads down the Ghost Road in greater numbers.

I feel the same way about this that I do about all the other rituals my contemporaries found wanting, when it came to be their turn: [Shrug.] Every so often I meet a hand-wringer who frets that, by throwing out (insert number of years) of tradition, we have somehow ruined the wedding/funeral/christening/whatever. I reply that when a person has lived a full life and — in McLaren’s case, anyway — had at least a reasonable allotment of years, what’s the problem with turning their funeral into something other than damp hankies and hushed conversations? And if the old model was so satisfying, why did it suck so bad? It’s one thing to be laid to rest by a clergyman who knew you all your life. But I’ve been to many, many funerals where the officiant needed crib notes and all but mispronounced the decedent’s name. Bah. Throw it out.

When things started to turn bad in the newspaper business, I had a fantasy: I would take my buyout money (ha!) and start a small business out of my bedroom, providing digital slideshows with musical accompaniment for funerals. These would play during visiting hours, and anyone who wanted one could buy the DVD. I even had a name: Kinflicks. I still think it was a good idea, although it would have made a lousy business, because it’s so easy to do now that most funeral homes prepare them in-house, or else it’s punted to a nerd cousin who knows how to drag and drop. (My slideshows would have been distinguished by the quality of music, I decided; none of that “My Way” stuff. Instead, maybe “Anarchy in the U.K.”) At the time, the idea of having a slideshow play at a funeral, even at a visitation, was sort of edgy. Now every Slumber Room has a flatscreen.

I don’t know what McLaren’s funeral was like, aside from the casket, but if you haven’t seen it, Roger Ebert has a fabulous remembrance of his intersection with the Sex Pistols, which includes a few scenes from a planned Sex Pistols film, to be directed by Russ Meyer. As always with Roger, it’s the details that sell it:

I’ve mentioned before that, for Russ, typing was synonymous with writing. If he didn’t hear the typewriter, no writing was being done. When I was writing “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra Vixens” for him, he located me in his living room (all office furniture) and listened from his upstairs office. When my typewriter fell silent, he’d call down, “What’s the matter?”

Which is as good a way as any to kick off the bloggage:

While Rome burned, the SEC…watched porn?

Look out, world, Monica Conyers is already planning her next chapter. I’m sure MMJeff will be pleased to hear what it is: Divinity school.

I haven’t had anything to say about “Treme” yet, I know. I’d like to watch a couple more episodes and let the vibe set in. But in the meantime, a story that gives background on one of the subplots — the disappearance of LaDonna’s brother in the Orleans Parish Prison meltdown/flooding. What does one do with a prison full of inmates in rising waters? Good question.

Can you give a dime, a dollar, or a pair of socks? Restore Stephen Baldwin!

So, what’s the tackiest funeral you’ve ever attended?

I got up with Kate at 7:30 this morning, made her lunch, saw her off to school, prepared the coffee stuff but didn’t press the button on the machine, and sat down with the laptop for the morning stretch. Stretched my legs along the couch, unfurled the afghan against the chill. Hmm, this is comfy.

Two hours later, I woke up. Ruby was staring at me. The laptop had gone to sleep, too.

So I lost my blogging time this morning. Fortunately, I had some stuff set aside.

I’ve avoided Nike products for some time, on the grounds that if I’m going to pay a huge sum for a pair of sneakers, I want the money to go to the Chinese serfs who made them and not the spoiled-brat athletes who endorse them, but now I have one more: The swoosh stands by its men. Even the creeps. Especially the creeps.

The dog cart built by Jim at Sweet Juniper for carrying his kids around town is a huge success. Chapter 2, plus a little appreciation of the beast of burden.

And because you can’t have some sweet without some bitter, a few-days-old piece by our own Coozledad: “The Neighbors.” Read. Some of you already have, but the rest: Read.

I’m told there was a time here when crossing the border from Canada to the U.S. here was no big deal, for most mainly a matter of friendly waves and have-a-nice-days. This was especially true for boaters; I’m told of waterfront restaurants on the St. Clair River where “customs” consisted of writing your name in pencil on a slip of paper dockside. Among the many things we can thank Osama bin Laden for is the fact some nice Canadian ladies can’t take a yoga class in Royal Oak anymore. It’s a teacher-training class, to be sure, but reading this can certainly chip away at one’s inner peace:

All the trouble began in early 2009, when the state of Michigan cracked down on yoga studios, licensing them as “proprietary schools.” Makowski complied, then described her school as a “licensed vocational school,” on her website.

That description, U.S. border officials say, triggered new problems at the border. Officials demanded the Canadian students get student visas to attend their Sunday class. The students agreed — until Makowski discovered she first would have to be certified by the Department of Homeland Security to accept foreign students — a process that could take a year or more — and that’s typically required of colleges, not yoga courses. It’s classic Catch-22.

It starts out being a rule about not letting more Arab students take flight training, it ends up being about yoga. Go figure.

And now off to work, lazy bum that I am.

I’m in the market for a bookcase. I’m always in the market for a bookcase. If you have a bookcase, call me and I’ll at least take a look. In this case, I’m looking for a tradeup — the one piece of furniture that persists “above stairs” in our house from my salad days is an old particleboard p.o.s. bookcase, and I’m ready to be shut of it. I considered painting it — still might, if I can’t find a decent replacement — but would prefer to replace it with something a little nicer. So I’m on Craigslist several times a day, getting reacquainted with my Craigslist luck.

What is Craigslist luck? An example; here is a table Amy Welborn found on her Craigslist (Birmingham, Ala.), for $50:

Look at that thing. It’s gorgeous. Maybe teak? Fifty bucks. Meanwhile, I clickclickclick on linklinklink advertising “bookcase! nice!” and see wrecks that make my particleboard disaster look like vintage Stickley. They’re all asking $80. Or more. And I’d have to drive an hour to find it. Bah.

In all fairness, I have to say all my Craigslist luck hasn’t been bad, but the good stretches were only when I was partnering with someone else. Our filmmaking escapades have all owed a lot to Craigslist, but we must have been piggybacking on someone else’s good luck. I understand people use Craigslist to find jobs; the only writing jobs advertised there are the ones for content farms, where they pay $3 for 400 words. Sex addicts use Craigslist to find so-called casual encounters; if I ever did such a thing, I’d meet an ax murderer.

I do two Craigslist searches when I check — “bookcase” and “grosse pointe.” You never know when someone in your neighborhood will be selling something interesting. And may I just say? Affluent people are the absolute worst to buy secondhand goods from. They think every piece of crap they own is worth a thousand bucks, and all their prices are firm. I saw a woman a couple years ago selling a “brand-new” iPhone for $450. At the time, you could buy one in an Apple store for $400. I sent her an e-mail asking — politely! — what the extra $50 was for. She replied, “Ha ha I already sold it asshole.”

That must have been some case.

Craigslist cut the legs out from under my industry, and now it curses me.

Bloggage? Sure:

For the record, I think the FDA has better things to do than fret about sodium. However, this line from a LGM post on it gave me a smile:

Conservatives have evidently worked themselves into something of an incoherent snit over the FDA’s plans to limit sodium in processed foods. If I understand the anxiety correctly, a cooperative effort between the federal government, industry representatives and public health experts to gradually (and I would imagine quite modestly) reduce sodium levels over a ten-year period is pretty much the sort of thing that Pol Pot did before depopulating the cities and having everyone gouged to death with bamboo.

Hysteria on the right is going around, however; Lance Mannion finds a hilarious essay in Reason and runs with it. Back when past-life exploration was trendy among Shirley Maclaine types, I observed that everyone who claimed an acquaintanceship with prior lives was a princess or Cleopatra or the king of all druids; where were the anonymous serfs and scullery maids? I believe the same affliction exists on the right, too, as Lance points out:

You know, I always thought it was me and my bad habits of stereotyping and making sweeping generalizations about people, but it’s often seemed to me that there is a type of Conservative of the more corporatist and self-congratulatory “libertarian” bent who believes that the only reason he’s not a titan of industry is that America has gone downhill since, oh, about 1876.

This type seems to think that if he were suddenly blown through a wormhole in time and dropped in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territories just after the Civil War with nothing but the clothes on his back and a Swiss Army knife he’d show up back here a year later, rich as Croesus, having dug a gold mine out of the mountainside with his spoon and fork and corkscrew attachments and incidentally having invented the telephone, the electric light bulb, the internal combustion engine, and time travel.

Actually, Lance is on something of a roll of late. Today, the stunt restaurant and why it’s bad.

Something I’ve long believed about television, Gawker speaks out loud: It’s time for TV’s old guard to retire. As someone between the age of Morley Safer and Lisa Ling, I’m of two minds. While I think it’s admirable many of these folks are still swingin’ decades past conventional retirement age, it’s unsettling to turn on “60 Minutes” and see Andy Rooney, still at it at 91. I thought that figure — Rooney’s age — was an outlandish exaggeration on Gawker’s part, but no. He’s really 91. Of course, I never liked Andy Rooney, and the compliment that always made me wince back in my columnizing days was this: “I like your column. It’s sort of a combination of Erma Bombeck and Andy Rooney.” Gee, thanks.

Hey, look — someone just sent me an invitation to a premiere screening of “You Don’t Know Jack” tomorrow night, a little perk of being tangentially connected to the creative community in the location where it was shot. Too bad I can’t go. Working. To afford my HBO, where the film will eventually screen in my living room. Ah, well.

I’ve been sitting here for 45 minutes, pinging around the web, looking for inspiration. Friends? It isn’t out there, or if it is, I don’t know where it might be. Meanwhile, a lovely day is in progress, and I need to take out the trash. You want bloggage? That I have:

I want it on the record: If, when my daughter is grown, she dresses like, acts like, grooms herself in imitation of, or otherwise appears to be influenced by Kim Kardashian’s entire gestalt in any way, shape or form, I will consider myself a failure.

Sweet Juniper: Your forsythias don’t care you’re gone.

I have agreed to do craft services (i.e., provide food for) a friend’s short film production for one day next month. Meals: 2. Crew/cast head count: 36. Vegetarians: 3. Vegans: 0. Kitchen facilities: Still unknown. Suggestions welcome. I’m in a mood to wow someone. I’m thinking a big ol’ mess of carnitas with enough beans and roasted vegetables to satisfy the non-carnivores. But if you have a better idea, I’d like to hear it.

Rahm Emanuel says he wants to be mayor of Chicago someday. How do the Chicagoans in the room feel about that?

The Pope’s cologne.

To the gym.

Question of the day for a cool-but-sunny Monday: When did bacon become a joke?

Bacon, says Alton Brown, is “meat candy.” It’s certainly tasty, and has always been my favorite breakfast protein — I can barely tolerate those insipid American sausages — but only recently did I become aware that eating it is something of a comedy act. Sites like This is Why You’re Fat and “recipes” like the Bacon Explosion have turned my not-particularly-guilty pleasure into a sideshow.

What happened to two eggs, two strips and out the door? Now we have the KFC Double Down, a bacon “sandwich” between two “buns” of fried chicken breast. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight shows that even fast food can be number-crunched, and demonstrates that, while bad, the Double Down isn’t the worst thing you can order, all things considered. Urp. I prefer Sam Sifton’s digestion of the sandwich at the NYT; while I generally am game for a taste of almost anything, this is one I’ll experience entirely vicariously, especially when it gives me an excuse to read The Onion’s review:

Instead of the expected chicken filling, the Double Down sticks two different kinds of cheese—pepper jack and a mystery variety created by the devil himself to win souls and punish humanity by inciting a massive wave of gluttony-induced heart attacks—bacon (yes, bacon), and something called “The Colonel’s Sauce” between two fried, breaded chicken-breast patties. (The Colonel’s Sauce, incidentally, only sounds like a crude euphemism for ejaculate.)

Rule No. 1 of adventurous eating: Beware of all secret sauces. You really don’t want to know the secret. Although the Big Mac’s is obvious: Some sort of mayo/thousand-island-dressing mashup.

Anyway, back to bacon. I think the problems started when gluttons started adding it to cheeseburgers. You ask me, proteins can be combined in another medium — bouillabaisse is fish stew, paella a big ol’ mess of fried rice — and sometimes on a sandwich (submarine), but not on a cheeseburger. Make up your mind: Do you want a bacon sandwich or a cheeseburger? You can’t have both. But that, I think, was the tipping point. Soon bacon became a joke ingredient, the magic un-PC add-on for everything from cookies to martinis. You think I’m joking. Go ahead, click.

The NYT link above explains that food has always tolerated a certain amount of silly showmanship, mentioning the custom of putting a napkin on one’s head while eating an ortolan. (I’ve read about this. Supposedly it concentrates the exquisite aroma of the endangered French songbird. Also, it keeps God from seeing you do such a vile thing.) We all know about turduckens, and even Julia Child has a recipe for a whole boned chicken stuffed with something else, but God almighty, who goes to the trouble of boning a chicken while leaving it intact? I bet that one came out of some decadent regal kitchen seeking to impress a bored monarch. Peasant cooks — the real gastronomic pioneers — don’t have time for such silliness.

But this new bacon stunt work is just silly, the sort of thing you link and pass around Facebook, but never cook and never eat.

I stand corrected: John Scalzi ate a piece of Bacon Explosion. Someone made it for him as a joke. This may be the single best description of it I’ve ever read, and now I don’t even have to think about it anymore:

Oh, God, imagine there’s bacon on one side of my mouth and sausage on the other and they meet and have hot and angry make-up sex in the middle while a salt lick cheers them on.

As for me, I’ll stick with bacon with pancakes, with eggs, sprinkled on a salad, the occasional carbonara and your late-summer BLTs with tomatoes straight out of the garden. You take your bacon cheeseburgers, your bacon explosions, and your Double Downs right back to hell, stunt eaters of the world. You are embarrassing the pig. You should be ashamed.

So, bloggage:

In keeping with today’s sodium-heavy theme, a story about Detroit’s salt mines, and relations with the neighbors. (Not good.) I think Joe or someone else mentioned them a while back, so there you are.

On those annual get-to-know-the-freshman-class memos, the ones that college in Wisconsin prepares every year to remind the faculty that some of the kids in their classes have never even seen a typewriter, let alone used one, someone should add: The 18-year-olds of today have never known responsible Republicans. I was IM-ing with a younger friend the other day, and realized he had no idea what a Rockefeller Republican was. Jacob Weisberg asks who killed them, and fingers who else? Bill Kristol.

Oh, look: Comcast is backing RightNetwork, a new cable channel focused on “entertainment with Pro-America, Pro-Business, Pro-Military sensibilities.” Looks like Kelsey Grammer is involved. Funny how actors shouldn’t be involved in politics when it’s lefty politics, but on the right they get the Strange New Respect Award. Kelsey, once again, you can’t have it both ways. Although evidently you do.

Hello, manic Monday. Have a good one.

It’s a Slept Late and Still Can’t Wake Up All-Bloggage Post today, pals. Sorry. My body doesn’t take well to cross-country travel. So let’s away:

One of my Facebook friends posted the thing that was going around yesterday — Barack Obama “abolished” the National Day of Prayer but let a Muslim group pray on the Capitol grounds, copy and paste this as your status if you are offended!!!!! — and while it was tempting to just ignore the guy, I thought I’d take the opportunity to try to edify him instead, which led me to Snopes’ dedicated Barack Obama page. Appropriate reading for Tax Day, I’d say. Jesus Christ, but there are a lot of racists in the world. Which is sort of a duh statement, I know, but some of these surprised even me. And I’ve covered a Klan rally. (P.S. He did not abolish the National Day of Prayer. But you knew that.)

This ran last week when we were gone, but Lance Mannion’s complaint about Kelsey Grammer’s silliness has a certain timeless quality. And then there’s the lede:

The only reason for letting Kelsey Grammer blather on about his politics in this interview in New York Magazine is the irony of a Conservative Republican playing a cheerfully out and happily married gay man in a musical comedy that gets a lot of its laughs from making fun of the French version of a Conservative Republican’s discomfort at discovering his daughter’s future mother-in-law is a female impersonator who goes by the stage name of Zaza.

A good run-on sentence is hard to do. Like French farce.

Thanks to mild-mannered Jeff for finding this, the Most Ridiculous Detention Slips of All Time. My favorites are No. 4 and No. 8. Especially No. 8. Pam, Joey, seriously: No. 8. (Although I suspect a fraud. But it’s a believable fraud.)

The SEC just charged Goldman with fraud. Great. This will no doubt crush the market like a bug. Oh well, I wasn’t going to retire, like, ever.

Another oldie, but not moldy, and thanks, Linda, for passing it along, because I would have missed it: The WashPost pursues one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time: What happened to the P-Funk mothership? Not in an abstract sense, but the actual stage prop. Somehow fitting that its last stage appearance was in Detroit. Represent.

Gawker covers the Michigan Militia field day. Yes, way. This is the most succinct summing-up of why-us I’ve yet read:

But militias have long been a part of Michigan’s culture. The state is home to 47 of the approximately 500 militias in America, according to the FBI. Michigan is the Long Island iced tea of militia cocktails—blend New Hampshire’s libertarianism with Massachusetts’ cynicism, and add equal parts gun culture, expansive forests and, at 17 percent, the highest unemployment rate in America.

This is the only story you need to read in the Wall Street Journal today: Say hi to the most envied rich-guy yacht in the world. Russian, natch.

And now I’m off to do…something. Drink more coffee, I think.

EDIT: Almost forgot this last, and I don’t want to do that. In Victorian literature, a dog cart is a light buggy for when you don’t want to hook the team up to the big carriage. In Detroit, a dog cart is Jim Griffioen’s ingenious repurposing of his jogging stroller, pulled by his German shorthair, Wendell. Cutest. Pix. EVAR.

Today’s to-do list:

1) Deposit money in IRA.
2) Mail tax form/check to city of Detroit. Amount owed: $5.
3) Order kick-ass GoPro HD camera for self as a tax-refund, just-because-you’re-you present.
4) Clean house.

That’s a pretty good to-do list. As a self-employed person, April 15 is supposed to be gloomy, but it hasn’t been for the past couple years, since we got Alan’s withholding adjusted. My new year’s resolution is an aggressive savings plan, and once I get it calibrated, we can do some more adjusting to get to the theoretical ideal — zero owed on April 15 (other than the first quarterly, of course). I’m enough of a peasant that I love refunds, however. It feels like found money.

Some years ago, a weenie editorial writer for the other paper in Fort Wayne wrote a tax-day column proclaiming his love for paying taxes. Signing that check to Uncle Sam, he wrote, made him feel like a real American. He envisioned his money flowing into road-building, national parks and health care for grandma. Taxes, he concluded, are good. For this he was roundly ridiculed by our paper’s editorial writers, whose tax dollars mainly go to food stamps for the lazy poor, boondoggle public-works projects and high-calorie lunches for Tip O’Neill (the big-government bete noire of that moment). Taxes are bad.

(And that, we were often told, was why newspaper readers in Fort Wayne were the luckiest in the world. They had a choice in editorial pages.)

Taxes just are, in my book. And today I don’t have to write a check. Except for that camera, about which I’m already having second thoughts. It’s such a bauble, even if the purchase price does include a waterproof housing and several mounts. While we were in Vegas, one of my filmmaking friends said he’d always wanted to do a short documentary about a day in the life of a Detroit street dog. I think this is a great idea, and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It seems a small strap-on camera of this sort might be a valuable tool in such a project. In fact, it might even be…tax-deductible.

Sold!

A few housekeeping items:

A long-overdue change in the nightstand book, right rail. The other day I was pre-ordering something from Amazon (pub date of Martin Cruz Smith’s new Arkady Renko novel: August. Sheesh.) and needed something to fill out the order. I IM’d Laura Lippman on Facebook and said this was a one-time limited offer to pimp any book, by any friend or fellow traveler, and I would buy it sight unseen, no questions asked, just on the power of her recommendation. She suggested “True Confections” by Katharine Weber. Sold. I read it on vacation, and friends? She did not steer me wrong. It’s a wonderful, funny, breezy novel about the candy business, love and marriage, work and truth and all the rest of it. I’m finished with it, but leaving it on the nightstand for a while.

I have a few thoughts on “Treme,” but I want to watch the whole episode again, uninterrupted, to fully absorb it. My first is the same as Ray Shea, a NOLA blogger who pointed out one quibble: In the scenes were people are returning to their homes after the flood, everyone’s door opens easily. As a former 20-year resident of a flooding city, I can second that — the door of a flooded house never opens easily. It’s warped and swollen, and stuff is piled up behind it, and, well. That’s not much of a criticism, but when I saw Clarke Peters’ clothes still hanging in his closet, looking pretty damn clean, I thought of it. (Real NOLA residents have their own thoughts, here.)

My other first impression: Jesus Christ himself must have written some of that music. Watching “The Civil War” for the first time many years ago, the Ken Burns project, my pal Lance Mannion turned to the room after the first musical break of Afro-American spiritual music and said, “And Southerners thought these people were less than fully human. Imagine that.” Yes.

But more later.

And now off to the long-neglected gym.

I wish I could afford/had time to travel more, but it’s almost always good to be home. I’m glad that at this late point in life, I finally got a chance to see Las Vegas. It was as advertised, and not, although complaining about false advertising in a city where everything is fake, from the smiles to the boobs to the hospitality — that’s like complaining about the weather. It’s just the way it is. Deal.

What I liked: The glorious absurdity of the place. That you could get a drink anywhere, at any time of day. The look of the MGM Grand lion at sunset:

Fremont Street. Hoover Dam. The dancing waters at the Bellagio:

Watching Kate play “Anarchy in the U.K.” to an audience of prisoners on Guitar Hero in the arcade at Bally’s:

Among other things. What I didn’t like: The way the maps lie. (“Across the street” means “half a mile away.”) The way the old business model — everything’s cheap as long as you don’t mind seedy — has given way to one in which nothing is cheap, but it’s still most of the way to seedy, just the high-gloss, breast-implant variety of seedy. Great restaurants, but frightfully expensive. Fancy hotels, crammed with people gawking at the fanciness. Like the Bellagio lobby ceiling:

Finally, I grew weary of being nickel-and-dimed. It’s true you can do anything in Vegas, at any hour of the day or night, but it’ll cost you. Everyone has a hand in your pocket, and every inch of the place is designed to empty them as quickly and efficiently as possible. For instance: Someone told me I wouldn’t be able to take Kate into a casino, and so I’d be doing a lot of detouring. Scoff. You can take kids into casinos all you want. (According to law, they can’t “loiter” there.) We walked past more slot machine and blackjack tables than we did fat people. You have to walk through the casino to get anywhere. (They have slot machines in daycare centers, I am certain.) Add-on fees are everywhere; our friends Clark and Aimee were charged a daily fee at their hotel for, no kidding, electricity. A simple ATM withdrawal — from a bank’s machine, not one of those private things — costs $5. I know that staff works for tips, but by the third day, all the forelock-tugging grew wearisome. My last act of defiance was to stiff the valet at our hotel as we were checking out; I had no small bills, and damn if I was going to give him a tenner for putting my suitcase into a taxi. Sorry, bub.

Filmapalooza was OK, a little thin, but the talk by Jason Reitman was quite enjoyable:

I asked him about shooting in Detroit. He said if Detroit could do for the city what it did for its airport, it would have no problems whatsoever. From a visual perspective, he’s right. He talked a little about subject and theme, although he called it “location and the deeper thing.” “Thank You for Smoking” was about a lobbyist for a vile industry, but the deeper thing was freedom of choice. “Juno” was about teen pregnancy, but it was really about innocence and growing up.

Everything I need to know about writing I already learned in the newspaper business.

And the NAB show, the National Association of Broadcasters, the show to which Filmapalooza adhered, was a wonder. Acres and acres and acres of whiz-bang doo-dads, lights and cameras and action and software. Everyone’s showing a 3D television rig — no thanks, anyway — but the thing I found most interesting was the big thing in budget filmmaking: Shooting on a single-lens reflex still camera. This guy showed this film, shot entirely on a Canon 5D. You need a lot of SD cards, but who cares when you can carry your whole rig in one hard-side suitcase?

(They’re shooting the final episode of “House” this way.)

I almost bought one of these at a 30 percent discount, and still might. I have until tomorrow to decide. It all depends on how my tax refund shakes out.

And now we are home. Green and cool and blessed humidity. What did I miss when I was gone?

She-Who wants a bendy straw. And you’d better provide one. No, two.

Gene Weingarten won a second Pulitzer? His long-time editor explains how it happened.

The cilantro/soap thing, explained.

On to taxes.

And it’s good that it is, because this place is starting to get on my nerves.

Jason Reitman speaks today, then awards tonight and back home tomorrow.

It’s been a nice break. God bless this crazy country of ours, eh?