The aluminum beer bottle. Is there no frontier in food and beverage packaging we cannot explore?

Although, at $13.99 for one day of Internet service, not bloody much.

Be a showgirl in the comments. Sparkle!

Not everyone gets to stay up late enough to see “The Colbert Report,” and I hope I’m not spoiling anyone who catches it on the next-day reasonable-hour replay, but last night’s guest was David Simon, and guess whose name he dropped? Ashley Morris’. (You can watch the clip here, and thanks, Del, for digging that up.)

I’m so proud of my stupid little blog. It may not have many readers, but it has the right readers.

(Pause.)

Where is my money?

(Pause.)

For those of you new to this blog, after Ashley left us suddenly in 2008, our web wizard J.C. set up a script that pulled every comment he ever made here into a single thread. The link’s in the right rail, or here. What I find amusing about it is that, even severed from the posts he was talking about, they still make a certain amount of sense, and you can dip in and out of them at will and still get a feeling for the man. Here’s one from near the top:

In St. Petersburg in 1997, I was walking down Nevsky Prospekt, and stopped at the Grand Hotel Evropa. They were advertising “Bud and Burger: $8”. After a week in Eastern Europe, this actually looked good. So I order my burger, get my Bud (they can’t call it Budweiser there because the Czechs own that name), and pound it down. I walk up to the bar for another Bud, and this gorgeous blonde is standing beside me. Being a fearless virile American heterosexual, I say to myself, what the hell. So I look at her and say “Hi, what’s your name”. She responds “Two hundred dollars”. Without missing a beat, I say “Is that your first name, your last name, or is that what your friends call you?” She looks confused, thinks for a second, then says again “two hundred dollars”. Finally, I’m served my Bud, and I walk away. And out in front of the hotel were all of the Russian Mafia guys wearing the uniform: khaki pants, black shirts, italian loafers with no socks, and wrap-around sunglasses. Oh, and they were all leaning on black mercedes, black BMWs, or black somethings. I didn’t follow my Rick Steves guide and try to strike up a conversation…

For those even newer to this blog, Ashley provided the loose framework of the character in “Treme” played by John Goodman. It’s an “inspired by,” not a “based on” characterization, so don’t go getting any ideas; it’s not a line-for-line copy. But knowing that Creighton Bernette’s lines were in some cases lifted from Ashley’s blog, it was funny to read this, in Hank’s review today:

His character was added to the array late in the show’s assembly and his dialogue is saddled with distilling “Treme’s” social commentary.

When a British journalist interviewing Creighton asks if New Orleans is worth rebuilding — since its destruction and sinking is considered by many to be Mother Nature’s fait accompli — the belligerent Creighton assaults him, tries to hurl his TV camera into the Mississippi River and lets loose with the fiery counterargument that is “Treme’s” (and New Orleans’s) broadest concern: The floods were a man-made disaster, triggered by a hurricane but caused by years of government neglect and an inept federal response.

While essential to any story of life in New Orleans, such moments are nevertheless “Treme’s” burden to bear. No matter how hard the writers seemed to have worked to avoid it, much of Goodman’s dialogue in the early episodes has the flavoring of op-ed screeds, and it sometimes seeps into other characters’ scenes.

That’s what a blog is, isn’t it? One long op-ed screed. Ashley’s blog is still up, and while not quite a ghost ship, it’s tended intermittently by his widow, Hana (who was paid for her husband’s inspiration). Spammers have flooded the comments, but I recommend the “greatest hits” links down the left rail, especially “My Life in Porn,” because it links back here in sort of an orgy of log-rolling and ass-kissing.

Hank says “Treme” is good, by the way. It premieres Sunday. Although I will not be seeing it until Tuesday. I’ll explain that later.

Thinking about J.C. and his web wizardry, he asked me once, when we were discussing how I’ve still not made a last will and testament, “All I want to know is, who has control of your online content?” I thought for half a second, and bequeathed it all to him. As far as I’m concerned, if a blood vessel bursts in my brain today, I trust J.C. to keep the bar open. This ghost ship could sail for years. Maybe we can set up a guest-bartender system.

One bit of bloggage today:

By my count, this is the second near-tragedy to strike the Milwaukee Brewers sausage race in my memory. HOW MUCH LONGER MUST THIS DEATH RACE BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE? (This one’s the first.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go chase down a rabbit. Back later.

Folks, I slept extra-late this morning. Then I read the paper extra-long. I made an extra-good breakfast (eggs scrambled with fresh spinach, garlic and cheese, Trader Joe’s heat-n-serve naan and the last grapefruit of the season, improbably sweet in its parting gesture). I do this because yesterday I started coming down with ANOTHER GODDAMN COLD, and I am bound and determined to kill this one in the cradle.

So, late start and empty head today. Glad I have Eric Zorn, who posted this clip from the White Sox’ opening day:

“Best play I’ve ever seen,” said Eric, and while I don’t have the wisdom to second it, it is pretty remarkable. The Sox obviously have the Obama mojo going for them. Back later, or maybe not. You folks talk amongst yourselves, like you always do.

I admit I spent too much time yesterday reading New York magazine’s cover story this week about “the Half-Hooker Economy.” I don’t know what to think about it; I just don’t have enough foundational information about how high-end nightclubs and the ho’s and athletes who patronize them actually work. I do know a little about rich people, however, and it’s this: Deep down, they’re cheap. I have a hard time believing that no matter how drunk they are, they spend six-figure sums in a single night, paying a thousand bucks for a bottle of Gray Goose vodka, but who knows? It’s not like this is my world. (And, to be sure, there are lots of weasel words in the piece, lots of “up to” and “can be as high as” and “she has seen” in there. I don’t think it would survive a rigorous fact-check.)

I was almost through with the piece before I realized I’d been tricked into reading yet another story about yet another hybrid of prostitution. Is there no end to the public’s thirst for learning the ugly details of how sex is exchanged for money and luxury goods? Evidently not. Even when they trot out the same details the same way. Ahem: cntrl/F college:

Kim became a bottle girl after she graduated from a very good college on the East Coast. “I figured: I’m cute, I’m young, I can make a shitload of money, so,” she says, holding up two middle fingers, “fuck it!” She had previously worked as a restaurant waitress, and she wasn’t naïve about the difference between that job and this one. “If you say you’re a bottle waitress, it’s better than saying you’re a stripper. But it’s the same thing as being a stripper,” she says. What she means by stripper is someone who is a touchable commodity. There is never money exchanged, but there are gifts the following week. Pairs of Louboutins, Louis Vuitton bags, trips. It’s not unusual for a bottle waitress to take two days off and fly to Vegas with a client. She won’t get fired for that, so long as when they return, the client will spend large at the club.

Every story like this features a college girl, and not just any college girl. No one holding an associate’s degree from the Everest Institute appears in stories like this, only those from “very good” schools “on the East Coast.” The code: Not even that fancy Ivy League education will save your daughter from getting Tiger Woods’ hand prints all over her butt. Your girls are at risk, even with MBAs.

Feh. I stand by everything I wrote back then. Maybe the more interesting question is why we aren’t training more girls to recognize this game for what it is. A beautiful young woman is a perishable asset. I think I mentioned a disturbing “This American Life” episode a few months back, about the drinking culture at Penn State, i.e., pretty much all colleges. It was horrifying top to bottom, but the worst was a throwaway section about how girls have to dress to get into frat parties, where the kegs flow all night and you can get hammered away from the prying eyes of the police. They show up on doorsteps wearing the tiniest dresses and the tallest heels, looking as hawt as they can make themselves, hoping to be admitted by the doorman.

I suppose some of these girls will go on to become party girls at high-end nightclubs, angling for a spot at Derek Jeter’s elbow. Does Penn State count as a very good college?

So how is everyone’s springtime going? I’m looking at my backyard forsythia now, in full and lovely bloom, and I’m hoping for just a few notches less warmth over the next few days, so they stay a while. These summer temperatures got everything going allatonce, and I waited a long damn time for that yellow, I want to appreciate it. On the other hand, Alan is suffering with pollen allergies — the warmth was accompanied by a hot wind, which blew everything around and made the allergic miserable.

I’m so glad I avoided these things. Can’t even say.

So, some bloggage:

The WSJ takes on a trendlet you might call “extreme foreclosure.” Rather than post a link to another story most people can’t read, I’ll just point you to the Gawker summation.

Why it’s OK to hate Mississippi.

Why everyone should have Awful Plastic Surgery bookmarked.

Why I’m outta here: Work. Shopping. Spring break.

One of the things that makes life interesting are the unforeseen consequences of great events. There’s an earthquake; buildings fall down; things fall down in the buildings. The journalism about the event will concentrate on things like the Richter scale, deaths, damage and recovery. It won’t talk about your grandma’s china that fell out of the breakfront and smashed to bits, and how losing it that way was, in the end, sort of a relief, because you’re really a more modern person, and a casual entertainer, and dragging that century-old Havilland around was sort of weighing you down, but what can you do? It was your grandmother’s china. But in a small way your life was changed. It didn’t make the news.

I think of this often these days. The Grosse Pointes, like all communities in southeast Michigan and many elsewhere, are finally starting to deal with the consequences of the real-estate collapse. Doing our taxes this weekend, I noticed that once again, our property taxes have fallen, which means receipts at city hall have fallen, which means finally, finally, the Pointes are being forced to do what they should have done years ago — consolidate services across the five municipalities.

And then today brings a Wall Street Journal story, which you may not be able to read if you’re a non-subscriber, so I’ll summarize. The headline sort of says it all: Bank of Mom and Dad Shuts Amid White-Collar Struggle. It’s about the increasing inability of middle- and especially upper-middle-class parents to pay their adult children’s bills. It starts with college tuition, which I think any parent can understand, but it ventures into areas of “support” I thought were limited to trust-fund brats:

Angelica Hoyos, a 26-year-old living in Los Angeles, has put her photography and sculpture career on hold since her parents pulled the financial plug earlier this year after the family’s granite-countertop business suffered. Ms. Hoyos has moved in with her boyfriend, cut spending and earns about $1,000 a month doing free-lance design work and baby-sitting.

“My artistic career is put on the side because I have to make a living,” she says.

We also meet the Johnsons of Fairfield, Conn., whose two older kids are in college and whose youngest is just starting her search for one, but who are also suffering, even though they had considerable college savings. The older kids are plucky, saying they’re willing to take out loans to finish school at Johns Hopkins (at $50K each per year), and the youngest isn’t even thinking about the pricey diplomas. Mr. Johnson feels bad, however:

Further expenses such as first homes and weddings are out of the question. “They’re going to have to elope,” he says.

Take heart, Mr. Johnson. Not having a $150,000 wedding never hurt anyone.

Everything is relative. The Johnsons, we’re told, are living on one-fifth of their pre-crash compensation, and while the story goes on to say Mr. J. made “up to $550,000 a year,” and one-fifth of that is still $100K, anyone can understand how they feel blind-sided. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe the Johnsons, and the Hoyos, just lost grandmother’s china. In the end, they might be freed by it. Certainly Angelica will be, who will learn sooner rather than later that when you have “a photography and sculpture career” that requires a parental subsidy, it’s not a career at all.

I’ve read stories like this before. A while back, the New York Times noted the reduction in the number of hipsters lounging around the hot areas of Brooklyn, now that mom and dad were no longer able to front their kids a New York City living stipend. Many of them were, like Angelica, nominally artists who had chosen to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, doubtless for the community of fellow artists and all the sidewalk cafes. I suspect by now many of them have faced the truth: They weren’t really artists but layabouts who know how to stretch a canvas. Now they know the truth. I hope it set them free.

(Artists: If you’re serious, try Detroit. Thriving arts community, tons of fun, and so cheap your parents won’t have to contribute a dime. Srsly.)

My parents helped me here and there when I was young and struggling, although the sums were vastly different. They paid for my college, but it was a hell of a lot less money for four years of state school back then. My mom bought me a $150 carpet remnant for my first apartment, and contributed $1,000 to both my wedding and my first house purchase, both of which I objected to, but they said they did it for my older siblings, and so they were doing it for me. Everything is relative. My wedding cost about $5,000 all-in, which was at the time one-third the national average. Who’s to say, though, that the ridiculous excess we’ve seen in recent years in just that area, weddings, isn’t due to nice people like the Johnsons, who just wanted to help their kids have a swell party, and ended up helping inflate the whole business? Would college tuition be as overpriced as it is if more kids had to work their way through, and couldn’t absorb the twice-inflation rate tuition hikes that have been normal now for, what, 30 years?

The financial crisis over the last two years smashed a lot of china. If it breaks the trend of extended adolescence, in which adults stay children well into their 20s and even beyond, thanks to the helping hand of mom and dad, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Everyone has to grow up sometime.

Bloggage? Some:

A pretty good column by David Carr on She-Who’s bootstraps, you betcha.

I haven’t been paying much attention to the California governor’s race, although it’s certainly interesting. Sez one voter in this story: “I prefer Meg Whitman because she has corporate experience and expertise to create jobs.” How many times do we have to learn the lesson that business experience =/= equal political savvy?

If you can stand to read one more thing about the iPad, our very own webmaster got his over the weekend. I won’t be buying until the second generation, if then.

And speaking of which, here’s his latest web-infant: Trowel Tart. The Tart is one of our very own, who is remaining anonymous for now because of her employer’s problems with outside work. The Trowel Tart’s her name and gardening’s her game. Drop by.

Yeesh! So late! Must start work. Have a great day.

Somebunny’s wishing you a pleasant holiday. Open thread.

Until I read the obits/appreciations yesterday, I had forgotten about David Mills’ Misidentified Black Person series. In a 2007 letter to Romenesko, the bible of media news, Mills pointed out the problem:

In the late 1980s, as a feature writer for the Washington Times, I wrote a piece about a cable-TV movie, and I’d interviewed its star, Avery Brooks. Insight magazine reprinted the story, and ran a photo of co-star Samuel L. Jackson over the caption “Avery Brooks.” Imagine my embarrassment.

I confronted an editor about this, and she kind of laughed it off. I don’t think Insight even bothered to run a correction. At that point, Sam Jackson wasn’t the movie star he is today. But black folks in D.C. were seriously digging Avery Brooks as Hawk on “Spenser: For Hire.” So any black person who picked up that magazine and saw that error probably felt a little pinprick of insult. “Guess they think we all look alike.”

He further announced he’d be tracking the problem. Three months later, he had enough, just in the athletes category, to fill another column.

Some were funny, and some were pathetic. In 2005, he pointed out, the Washington Times confused Robert Bobb, then a Washington D.C. city official, now financial manager for Detroit Public Schools, with Marvin Gaye. Here’s Marvin Gaye. Here’s Robert Bobb. You tell me. Leontyne Price is an operatic soprano fond of turbans. Lena Horne is a cabaret singer. Price is darker-skinned, with a broad nose and full lips. Horne has a narrow nose and thinner lips — in fact, Horne was sometimes advised to “pass” as white to increase her earning power. The AP confused them in a photo caption. Well, they are both singers whose names begin with L.

You can see all of Mills’ blog posts on MBPs, as he called them, here. Hat tip to TV writer Alan Sepinwall for remembering how they were tagged; further hat tips for naming his blog What’s Alan Watching?, an acknowledgment of a brilliant one-off by Eddie Murphy that sank under the waves so fast I thought I had hallucinated it. Sepinwall explains here; it was a pilot that never got picked up, but aired in 1989. Once.

One more great Mills post: Attack of the Giant Negroes.

Too soon.

Well, it’s spring fer shure here in Michigan; by the forecast, it’s nearly summer — 70s today, nudging 80 tomorrow. And I have found an outdoor exercise pen for Ruby Rabbit in the classifieds, so I must away to pick it up soon. But before I go, a short story my brother-in-law Bill told a few years ago (which my search engine says I haven’t told before, and I hope it’s telling me the truth), which relates to the warning we always hear at this time of year: Please, don’t buy your children chicks, ducks or rabbits as Easter pets.

Years ago, it was commonplace for children to receive poultry or lagomorphs for Easter presents, sometimes dyed Easter colors. I never got one, but I knew many kids who did, and the story was always the same — the chicks were either stressed or squeezed to death, and the bunny ditto, if it wasn’t “released into the wild” by Dad within three days.

Anyway, one year Bill’s younger brother, Dickie, got a duckling. And the duckling did not die. Despite being played with by several children, the duck not only survived Easter, it grew to maturity, shedding its pastel-dyed feathers for adult plumage and becoming a literal pain in the ass in the bargain. It lived outside and, perhaps brain-damaged by life away from its flock and lots of hand-feeding, became a butt-nipper, chasing the kids around the yard to pinch with its powerful beak. It finally became intolerable, and the duck was taken to grandma and grandpa’s farm for a more natural life. Grandma and grandpa lived in the country near Circleville, Ohio, and the duck was released into their flock with the usual fanfare.

On subsequent trips to visit the grandparents, Dickie would sometimes ask where the duck was. It was “down by the pond,” or “roosting under the porch,” but never where he could see it, and in time, he stopped asking. Of course, you all know what happened to the duck: It nipped grandma’s butt not long after arrival, and she, a country woman who did not tolerate insolent waterfowl , snatched it up, swiftly dispatched it and served it for dinner. Everyone but Dickie seemed to realize this.

Flash forward many, many years later — like, five years ago. Bill and Dickie are now about to collect Social Security. One day they’re sitting around talking, and Dickie wonders aloud, “I wonder whatever happened to that duck.” Bill said, “Grandma killed it. She was always a mean woman.” And Dickie was astounded. This had never occurred to him in the half-century or so since that long-ago spring, and for a moment he was eight years old again: Grandma…ate my duck? Sometimes our childhood illusions should be left intact.

So don’t buy your kid a live chick, duck or bunny for Easter. Although, if you do, it’s always possible you’ll get a good family story out of it.

This morning brings sad news: David Mills, aka Undercover Black Man, aka writer/producer/whatever on “The Wire,” “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “Treme,” died suddenly yesterday on the set of “Treme.” The story linked above — and I have no idea what the Investigative Voice is, sorry — says it was an aneurysm.

It’s awful when a person this talented is cut down in the prime of life. I didn’t know David, but like lots of people in that orbit, we exchanged a few e-mails from time to time. This detail from the story above should provide a hint as to what we had in common: While attending (the University of Maryland), Mills started a newspaper devoted to George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. You should not be surprised to learn that one of Mills’ first big splashes in TV writing was “Bop Gun,” an episode of “Homicide” that takes its name from a P-Funk song. It also contains this priceless throwaway detail: A perp confesses to shooting someone over the destruction of a rare Eddie Hazel record, a reference maybe 12 people in the country got, but that’s why you watched “Homicide,” for the chance you might be in that 12. (Why isn’t this show in syndication anywhere? I just learned this morning that episode also features a 13-year-old Jake Gyllenhaal. And I don’t think I’ve seen it since it aired in 1994.)

Mills died barely a week before “Treme” is set to premiere — April 11.

I can’t find it now, but in one of our e-mail exchanges, I told Mills a blog post of his had prompted me to fill out my P-Funk collection via iTunes, and we went back and forth a little about guilty-pleasure pop hits. He said one of his was Diana Ross’ “Remember Me,” and then I downloaded that one, too. It’s fairly cheesy, Diana at her Diana-est, basically a more uptempo version of “I Will Always Love You.” I guess now I have someone to remember when I hear it.

Damn it anyway.

So, a little bloggage:

Google Maps added a bike feature, suggesting the most bike-friendly routes between locations. Here’s the map from my zip code to Belle Isle. I’d say they have some bugs to work out, but it’s a good start.

If you haven’t read the story I linked in the previous post, you are required to do so now. I am reminded once again of Jim at Sweet Juniper’s offhand remark: One of the great things about this city is, frequently there’s nobody around to tell you you can’t do something. Like open a strip club in your house.

Where is Jon Stewart’s MacArthur Fellowship?

If anyone cares, my windshield was only cracked, not broken, and it’s been like that for years, literally. Alan borrowed my car in 2006 and came home with a crack in the windshield the width of my hand, and claimed no knowledge of how it happened. Little by little, it expanded, and now it’s about 18 inches long. Although it’s down at the bottom and restricts my view not at all, it’s the sort of thing that would be an easy add-on ticket for a cop interested in chop-busting. Bonus: In the four years I’ve had it, the ownership of the glass shop changed and the price dropped from $590 to a little over $200. It pays to wait.

And now to think about my windshield not even a little — a bike ride.

Every so often, I tell our Wayne State students that everything you need to know about writing an engaging feature story can be learned by reading Detroitblog. I think I’m going to be doing it again soon.

I have to leave and run my car off to the broken-windshield place. Until I get back and get sufficiently caffeinated, enjoy. I promise: You will.