Another day, another sex scandal at Michigan State. Spartans awoke today to discover USA Today had ripped the sheets back from the bed of their beloved football coach, Mel Tucker. And found him under there, masturbating while having “phone sex” with a woman, a rape survivor, who goes around the country educating college athletes about sexual violence and harassment in sports. Consensual, he says; not so, she says.

I mean.

I read the whole thing, and while I suspect neither party – Tucker or his accuser, Brenda Tracy – is telling the whole truth, at this point it doesn’t matter. When you’re the highest-paid employee (more on that in a minute) at a major university that’s still recovering from the Larry Nassar scandal, you don’t have “phone sex,” or whatever this was, with a woman not your wife. You don’t FaceTime her from your bed, chest uncovered, to complain about your dead marriage. You don’t flirt and comment on her Instagram photos and ask whether she’d date you if you didn’t have the ol’ ball and chain. And so on.

But here’s the thing: Tucker has an insane contract, $9.5 million a year for 10 years, funded in part by two wealthy alumni, the details of which the Free Press had to sue to uncover. He’s the second-highest-paid coach in the country, and the contract is probably responsible for inflating the salaries of many other college coaches. It was forged after a great opening season, and followed by a disappointing one, and now this. At least all the stories so far are pointing out that if Tucker is fired for cause, they don’t have to buy him out. Whew.

I was discussing this with a friend earlier today, and he said, “I guess what we learn from this is, men never learn.”

No, it appears they don’t. At least Tucker is 51, still an age when sex is mostly not a problem. Rudy Giuliani, 79, drooling over an assistant he allegedly called Big Tits, can’t say the same thing. On the one hand, you have to salute the raw biological urge that keeps leading men like this over various cliffs. On the other, holy shit what a dummy.

As another friend said of Bill Clinton at the time the Lewinsky affair broke: “Washington is full of beautiful, sexy, thirtysomething adulteresses who’d have been happy to run over and haul his ashes, but no, he had to pick the 25-year-old intern who was practically doodling ‘Monica Clinton’ in the margins of her notepads.”

He said:

According to Tucker, he became aroused when Tracy made a comment about needing to hit the gym more to look better without clothes on. They then discussed how having phone sex could complicate their relationship, he said, but Tracy suggested once would be harmless and he agreed.

“Unequivocally, there’s no doubt about it,” Tucker told the investigator, case documents show. “She was the one who said we’ll do it.”

She said:

Tracy denies all of that. The call started off normal, she said. But when she sent Tucker a photo of them together from the spring game, she said he responded by commenting on her buttocks and calling himself an “ass man.”

She remembered Tucker’s voice getting deeper and weirder as he continued talking about her buttocks. She asked him what he was doing, and he said he had a “hard dick” and was touching himself.

“You’re touching yourself?” Tracy asked, according to the investigation report. Tucker responded, “Yes.”

Ew.

Once again, however, the larger issue is MSU’s response when they received this report, in July. Did they immediately suspend Tucker? No. Did they suspend him before the football season started? They did not. They only did so after the USA Today story dropped, which is to say: Today.

Well, I hope he’s been saving his money.

After hearing about the earthquake in Morocco, I went into our photos from our trip there in 2019, remembering the charm of the medina, how parts of this thousand-year-old settlement still look like they haven’t changed much. The view from the rooftop of our riad:

I wonder how much of it was damaged.

I was never much of a Jimmy Buffett fan. Which is to say, I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t buy his records or certainly, lord knows, call myself a Parrothead. The first song of his I remember hearing was “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” which I loved, and still do. But everything else? Overplayed and ultimately drilled into my brain by aggressive radio programmers. I’d purely love to never hear “Margaritaville” again. But I won’t be that lucky.

In 2016, in the days after we returned from Iceland, my friend Dustin took me with him to the Buffett show at Pine Knob amphitheater here. It was …fine, I guess. Nothing objectionable about it. Here’s a picture from that night, with Jimmy out front in blue:

That’s a big ensemble for a singer-songwriter; I count three guitars, keys, two background singers, steel drums, conga drums, regular drums, bass, a shaky-percussion-stuff guy and I’m not sure about the guy at the top left – maybe steel guitar? Can’t tell. That’s 12 souls making music; pretty easy to make a big sound that way. I’m sure this was during the number I wrote about on this very blog at the time:

That said, it was fun, although by the end I could fairly say I was sick of steel drums, the stupid talking coconut and especially the insistent pandering to the locals. By which I mean? The song – don’t ask me to name it, because I don’t know – about beautiful places. The accompanying video montage started with images of Buffettville, beaches and swaying palms and so on, but transitioned to the cool blue lakes and pine forests of Michigan, before ending with a giant map of Michigan, just in case the drunker members of the audience didn’t get it.

But how can you argue with his success? And that, it seems to me, came down to the exquisite timing of certain boomers, who right-place-right-timed it into a fortune. Much of his music was crap, but he was perfectly positioned to cash in on the rest of it. Parrotheads were the original superfan cult, way before the Beyhive and Swifties, formed before social media – or even the internet – made it possible to connect online. (I recall reading one power city for Parrotheads was Cincinnati, stocked as it was with fresh-scrubbed Procter & Gamble sales people whose professional lives were so bland and boring they leapt at the chance to spend a night pretending to be a sozzled beach bum.) Opening the Margaritaville restaurants was a natural move at a time when places like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood were making millions. The books? Why not? His brother-in-law was Thomas McGuane.

Basically, Jimmy was “extending his brand,” as we say these days, years before Gwyneth, Rhianna, Lizzo or any other pop-music celebrity was. Showbiz is gig work, forever and ever, and even successful gig workers can fall off a financial cliff. It’s nice to have multiple income streams. Diversify.

Couple other points to make: I really liked this piece by Greg Olear, on Substack, about “Margaritaville,” both song and concept:

Margaritaville is not a place; it’s a state of mind. And it’s not a healthy state of mind, not a lucid state of mind, not a happy state of mind. “Margaritaville” is awesome; Margaritaville sucks. What’s more, our drunken narrator knows it sucks. That’s why he calls it that, channeling the Rat Pack: to be ironic. He’s not bragging about being wasted on cheap tequila, as it appears at first glance, and as college kids who take to the song assume; he’s articulating his shame—confessing his sins—and by doing so, coming to terms with his pain.

…He is heartbroken. He is wallowing in self-pity. But there is no blame game—not anymore. Unlike certain FPOTUSes that come to mind, he is able to accept responsibility and own the consequences of his actions. There is no festering grievance. There is no embrace of full-on misogyny. He doesn’t start up a podcast and emulate Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson. He doesn’t take the red pill. He doesn’t text Mark Meadows about barges coming for the Biden crime family. He looks deep within himself, admits the error of his ways, and grows from the experience.

“Margaritaville” is about a brokenhearted guy who hits rock bottom before turning his life around. That’s the genius of the song. The genius of Jimmy Buffett is that he was able to parlay the chill, fun-in-the-sun vibes of his greatest hit into a commercial empire.

It goes on from there, and is absolutely correct, although anyone who watched Reagan youth waving the stars and stripes to “Born in the USA,” an angry, bitter song about the loss of the American dream, can only shrug. I disagree the song is genius; it’s just misunderstood, probably thanks to the bouncy melody, marimbas and all the rest of it. Even “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” another song about regret and bad choices, is embraced by the fans as romantic, not tragic. The marimbas are subtler in that song, but you can hear them in the background, like the sound from a party a ways down the beach. American pop-music fans aren’t deep thinkers. As they used to say on “American Bandstand,” if it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, it’ll be a hit.

Anyway, farewell to Jimmy Buffett, a brother-in-law whose books far outsold a great novelist, a restaurateur who made a fortune on cheeseburgers, a musician who cashed in magnificently on a few happy-sounding tunes, a guy who toured when he felt like it, paying 11 people to back him up. I don’t know if he had any last words, but if he did, I hope they were “use sunscreen.”

A simple Parrothead couple at Pine Knob, 2016: A cooler, a kiddie pool and a summer late afternoon.

One of the stories in journalism these days is about artificial intelligence, and what it’s doing to the industry, as news organizations race to their ultimate goal of having no actual employees (but still lots of readers/viewers).

My alma mater, the Columbus Dispatch, was embarrassed when the AI it was using to write high-school sports stories (thereby confirming the silent opinion of scores of newsroom observers of the sports department, ha ha just kidding not you Kirk but definitely that one guy whose name I forget) glitched so badly it was turning out stuff like:

“The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday,” the story reads.

May I just say that I would buy, and wear the shit out of, a T-shirt that reads “Go [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]],” especially if it came in Dri-Fit. Mistakes like that never would have seen the light of day in the olden days, but apparently this one did, because AI not only wrote that sentence, it published it, too. Oopsie.

Today, The Detroit News had a great story about a guy in Port Huron, the sort who would have once been described as a “gadfly,” who has set up an entire local-“news” website written by AI, right down to fake photos of the non-existent reporters whose bylines appear on the stories.

Here’s “Dwight Dixon:”

And here’s “Jurgen Diggler:”

Can’t forget “Stephanie Love:”

I would link to The Detroit News story, but it’s paywalled, because real reporters have to eat and pay rent. But I’ll summarize the best I can: The owner of this site was hard to find, and was traced through the administrators of a Facebook page connected to another publication, which was eventually rebranded as the Blue Water Current, and it sounds as though everyone involved is a real piece of work:

One of the administrators of the Current’s Facebook page is Kevin Lindke, who works at Blue Water Healthy Living. Smith [owner of Blue Water Healthy Living] said he hired Lindke in June because he liked how the self-appointed community watchdog kept tabs on public officials.

Lindke routinely files public records requests and scours government documents and court transcripts. He sometimes breaks news on his popular Facebook page before the local newspaper.

He isn’t above ad hominem attacks, referring to frequent targets as “Twerp,” “Miss Piggy” and “Lying Little Munchkin.” He disparages public officials daily as drunks, philanderers and pedophile sympathizers.

(May I just say? We waste a lot of time talking about whether we’re courting civil war or whatever, but if someone called me or anyone else a pedophile without producing a rap sheet to back it up, I’d be on their doorstep with an axe, not hiring that person. So I’m already inclined to think everyone in this story is not what you’d call quality folks.)

Lindke says his goal is to be a “trusted and respected local news source,” but so far it’s not going well, as the AI is producing copy like this:

“The occurrence of the storm on July 20th, a date forever marked in our collective memory, bore witness to the unwelcomed presence of golf-ball sized hail.”

Also, Lindke referred to his “staff” thusly:

“We’ve assembled a top-tier team of writers,” he wrote on Aug. 4.

Anyway, I don’t want to bite the whole News story. I visited Blue Water Current and found a story about the death of Jimmy Buffett. Here’s the top:

I screenshot it because another thing in the DN story is, this guy pulls down stories without explanation. The rest of it doesn’t improve, but it’s a good reminder that AI only regurgitates what it’s learned by reading human-written prose, and hoo-boy is this a good reminder of how shitty that can be. Besides that “iconic” and dumb alliteration in the lead, I also spotted “outpouring,” “arguably,” and this kicker:

In the wake of his passing, one thing is clear: Jimmy Buffett’s music and spirit will continue to inspire and bring joy to generations to come. So, here’s to Jimmy Buffett, the master of chill. Raise your margarita in his honor.

In other words, we have taught AI all this stuff. And people think great writing doesn’t matter anymore.

Boy, do I owe you guys a blog. I just put the last huge work obligation of summer in my rear-view mirror, and am looking forward to a very relaxed September. It is…my summer. I don’t care if it’s not as warm as August. It will be perfectly pleasant and it will belong to me.

My huge work obligation? I was working, through a contractor, on the social-media team for the Detroit Jazz Festival this past weekend. What that meant was up early and grind, grind, grind out content for all the channels, trying to cover three stages with 60 performers, drop the sponsors’ names, tag the performers so they share, etc. As someone who spent her career basically answering one question – What can I write that people might want to read? – it’s a little dizzying to consider the dozens that come with this hybrid of journalism, marketing and diplomacy. So I didn’t consider it (too much) and just tried to enjoy the music, which was pretty great. The artist in residence this year was a jazz drummer and hip-hop producer, and his three day-closing sets got progressively more hip-hop as the festival went on. I absolutely respect his vision that jazz and hip-hop have more in common than not, but I was also amused that at his closing-night show, he put a rapper on stage who introduced her new single, “Drunk AF.” I’m sure Billie Holiday was laughing somewhere on the astral plane.

The gig came with perks, including four nights’ lodging at the hotel in the RenCen, the hulking skyscraper complex at the foot of Woodward Avenue (and next door to the festival venue). It’s been a local joke since the day it opened that it’s almost impossible not to get lost there, and it took me about 24 hours to get my bearings. Just to give you an idea: The hotel’s “motor lobby” was on the first floor. The actual lobby was on the third. You took different elevators depending on whether your room was on the east or west side of the tower. Also, there are floors below the first which are not basement levels. But I figured it out well enough to guide an elderly couple to the Panera, so: Win.

You step out the back door and hello, what’s that:

Yes, cruise ships – one cruise ship, anyway – have discovered the Great Lakes. It’s so weird to see the Octantis go by on its voyages up and down the lakes. The ports of call leave something to be desired; I mean, there’s a few cities with halfway-decent downtowns, Mackinac Island and…I’m stumped. But, and this is something else I learned this weekend, via the TV in my room, tuned to CNN: Viking’s market niche is well-to-do seniors who don’t want to see children running around, nor onboard casinos. So the Great Lakes cruises, which are very expensive, concentrate on education and relaxation. I hope the guests enjoyed the jazz festival.

Here’s something else I saw wandering the de facto GM showroom on Level A (the RenCen being GM’s corporate headquarters):

That’s a pickup truck, and I was standing directly in front of it. The hood was about at my nose level, and I am not a short person. It boggles the mind that people who don’t need to haul around landscaping supplies or anything heavier than a laptop want vehicles like this, and yet: They do. Trucks and SUVs are the profit engine of the American auto industry. I mean, imagine parallel parking that thing. (Shudder.) And I’m an excellent parallel parker.

I have some more thoughts, including about Jimmy Buffett, but I’ll save them for another day. For now, it’s time to enjoy summer. Also, do some laundry.

A few years back we watched a small, amusing movie called “Adventureland.” Starred Jesse Eisenberg, Kristin Stewart and…I forget. It was about a recent college graduate who can’t find a job in his major (Renaissance studies) and ends up at a second-rate amusement park, in a “seasonal job” with a lot of co-workers who are more or less the same age. It was scratching in my brain for the first part of the summer until I remembered why every day reminded me of it, at least a little bit. Not that our waterpark was entirely Adventureland, but there were distinct elements, mainly because for the first time in my life since I was a teenager, I was working with teenagers. It was kind of a shock, but also lots of fun.

The endless energy, oh my god. One day I was sitting on a post next to a crowd-control barrier that was about, I’d estimate, 40 inches off the ground. One of my fellow guards walked up to it and effortlessly leaped over it, box jump-style. Like a deer. At the end of the day, when I’d be dragging my ass to whatever dinner Alan had prepared for us, they’d be on to the second shift. They could walk in hungover and refresh themselves with a short dip in the pool. It was something to see.

On the other hand, I had skills they didn’t, for instance: Telling time. I learned early on that if someone asks, “What time is it” and you answer “ten ’til,” they will stare blankly until you say “two-fifty.” On the other hand, they could communicate volumes thumb-typing their thoughts on their phones, using a million abbreviations that made their texts as hard to understand as hieroglyphics. But it was lovely, lovely, being in their midst after 40-some years of working with so-called adults. Their amusing slang, their incredible knowledge gaps (“man, Hawaii is really out there, isn’t it?”), the way they … well, let’s put it this way: No one knows shit about anyone else’s life. It made me think of the newspaper business, when we’d try to figure out what readers wanted, without talking about whether they were even readers in the first place. We all live in bubbles. It’s good to get out of your own, even if you have to go around for a few weeks as the old-ass white lady in the lifeguard crew.

In a few hours, I have to get up for an early workout. In the meantime, here’s some bloggage:

The bloodbath of the Michigan GOP, thanks to fealty to Donald Trump:

The Michigan Republican Party is starving for cash. A group of prominent activists — including a former statewide candidate — was hit this month with felony charges connected to a bizarre plot to hijack election machines. And in the face of these troubles, suspicion and infighting have been running high. A recent state committee meeting led to a fistfight, a spinal injury and a pair of shattered dentures.

This turmoil is one measure of the way Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have rippled through his party. While Mr. Trump has just begun to wrestle with the consequences of his fictions — including two indictments related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 results — the vast machine of activists, donors and volunteers that power his party has been reckoning with the fallout for years.

Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of crazy people, if you ask me.

I hope you’re in Adventureland yourselves right now. See you soon.

I should warn you, this will go on for a while. Not today, but I’ll be processing the experience of my summer employment for a while.

I don’t know about you guys, but this last winter about broke me in two. I decided I wanted to spend the warm months a) outside as much as possible; and b) around young people. After reading a few stories about the shortage of lifeguards and the role of geezers in filling the gap, I thought, what the hell, go for it.

It so happened a waterpark in Detroit offered the best deal: A whole $15/hour, which stood in contrast to my own suburb, which was offering, I shit you not, $11.10. Most of the other clubs, parks and municipal pools were in that neighborhood. I think it was the dime added to that eleven bucks that bugged me the most. You could make more, a lot more, at any fast-food joint in town, but then, it’s lifeguarding, the cool summer job. Right?

Wrong. While there are some kids who still want to sit in the sun twirling a whistle and getting a tan, a lot are polishing their college application essays with fulfilling social work, volunteering, etc. It so happened I met another lifeguard at the top of the water slides a couple weeks ago, when a trio of well-built, supremely confident and otherwise cocky teen boys – which is to say, I pegged them for Grosse Pointers at a glance – came through for a few runs while I was posted as topside traffic cop. One was wearing board shorts with GUARD on one leg.

“You working?” I asked him, and he nodded yes, at the Detroit Yacht Club. “What are you making there?” Twelve bucks an hour to start. I told him he’d earn $15 here, but he’d earn every penny. “How many saves have you had this summer?” I asked. “For the whole club? Maybe four?” he answered.

“One of our guards had five in one day,” I told him, and pushed his tube into the flume. Down he went into the three-foot catch pool, where it was pretty common to have to fish frightened children and adults of shaky physical confidence out, or at least boost them to their feet so they could make their way to the steps.

I forgot to mention another reason I took the training and looked for this job: I’m interested in swimming as a social-equity issue. The data is plain: Children of color are far more likely to lack water skills, and drown disproportionately. The NYT had an excellent essay a couple weeks ago that explored the reasons, which are mostly understandable to anyone who’s lived a few summers: Lack of pool water, lack of a swimming tradition, lack of a swimming culture, lack of swimming role models, and a long history of discrimination at the gate to the inviting blue water beyond. Something I learned in my reading this summer: Faced with court orders to desegregate pools in the ’60s and ’70s, many cities just shut them down, permanently. White kids moved to private clubs and backyard pools. Black kids did without. And it shows in drowning statistics.

They told us in training that most guests can’t swim. We did everything to keep them safe; free life jackets for anyone who asked, little kids kept behind the three-foot line, but still, a day with no rescues was pretty uncommon. These weren’t dramatic Baywatch saves, but just jumping in and pulling someone into shallower water, where they could stand up. Even then, some people would, and did, panic and have to work to calm down. My first save, I jumped into the water after a girl who had slipped off her inner tube when the waves started up in the wave pool, and by the time I got to her, someone had already pulled her to safety. My last, a kid got that look — chin in the air, panic on his face — and I tossed him my rescue tube without going in myself. He grabbed it, pulled himself to the wall, said thanks and worked his way down into a safer depth. Very little high drama.

It made me think, a lot, about how I learned to swim, at the Devon Road pool in Upper Arlington, Ohio. The main pool, a rectangle, sloped from baby-pool depth to nine feet, and there were two ropes dividing it. To earn the right to pass the first rope, you had to pass Turtle B in the Red Cross swimming lessons everyone took (easy), but to make it past the second and into the deep end, you had to pass Turtle C, which required you swim back and forth across the width of the pool with only a touch at the wall in between, no resting. I had a hard time my first couple of tries, while my friends who passed were given the golden ticket to not only the deep end, but the real prize — the diving pool. It was a truly memorable moment when I finally made it, and collected the vinyl badge my mom would sew onto my swimsuit. I have been comfortable in water ever since, and the older I get, the more precious pool time is to me; it’s a profound pleasure of not only summer, but the whole year. Why swim for exercise? The older you get, the more it becomes the one thing you can do that doesn’t hurt.

But here’s something that occurred to me as the summer wore on: One reason swimming skills are still too rare? Waterparks themselves. The Devon Road pool had no slides, no splash pads, no wave machines. The deepest water at the park where I worked was six feet, and most people never went that far. But the rest of the park was shallow and inviting to people who couldn’t swim a stroke, and as I twirled my whistle and watched over it, I thought of the waterparks I’d been in, and had been built in the decades since I passed Turtle C. Kate and I would visit Soak City at Cedar Point when she tired of riding roller coasters, where she’d go down slide after slide and I’d float on the various lazy-river attractions. Affluent suburbs are less likely to build traditional swimming pools and more likely – at least around here, with months of cold weather to endure – to install indoor facilities with few lap-swimming lanes but lots of play opportunities for kids with February cabin fever. They’re fun, absolutely they are, but they don’t have much of a barrier to entry beyond buying a ticket.

Our park was on the east side, in Detroit. Suburban families would come sometimes, usually early in the day, and I learned to spot the Grosse Pointe kids pretty early. They all swam like Michael Phelps. You had to be four feet tall to ride the slides, but I waved through more than a few borderline kids who’d proved they could get from splashdown to the exit steps with three or four perfect strokes of freestyle. “You swim really well,” I’d tell them. “Yeah, I swim on my team,” they’d reply, the dead giveaway. One mother told me the Grosse Pointe pools started lessons for kids around 3, and there were plenty enrolled. (Well, it is a boating community, and it’s a life skill.)

One day, my shift ended with a break, and I thought I’d get a jump on closing duties by doing a few of the little chores we were expected to do — picking up trash, collecting abandoned life jackets, etc. I was in a remote area of the deck when came up on two women who were clearly getting high, although they were trying to hide it.

“Can you swim?” one asked.

“Well, I’m a lifeguard, so I’d better,” I replied.

“I should learn,” she said. “I never did. I should do that one of these days.”

“Yeah, you should,” I told her. “You never know when you’ll fall out of a boat.”

She looked a little startled. But it’s true. It’s a life skill. Life-saving, actually, every time you get in the water.

More later. It was a fun summer.

We went sailing yesterday, and it was perfect for it — clear and sunny and a steady-but-not-overpowering breeze out of the southwest. Motoring into the marina, we passed a smallish Boston Whaler flying a largeish — like, queen-size bedsheet size — American flag from one side of the Bimini top. Behind it, I could see another flag flying, and call me a cynic, but I had a strong feeling what it would be, and sure enough, the breeze lifted it so we could see: LET’S GO BRANDON.

Reader, I flipped him the bird. Don’t think he saw it, but I’m not letting that stuff go anymore.

This will be a bit of a mishmash. As usual, I start with an apology for my scarce presence around here. I’ve been working a second job this summer. Here’s a clue: I have the best tan I’ve had since high school.

Which is to say: I’m a lifeguard at a local waterpark. It has been a crazy summer, and I will tell you more about it when the season officially ends for me after this week. I got into it because I kept reading about the lifeguard shortage keeping pools from opening, or keeping them on shorter hours, but it’s turned out to be so much more than that. The biggest surprise is how physically exhausting it’s been. It’s not the physical activity (which isn’t all that much), but the sitting in the sun all day, even with shade umbrellas and sunscreen and frequent breaks and chugging water, just saps my strength. I can’t believe I actually thought I’d ride my bike to and from the park every day (four miles one way). I often end the day scowling at my car because it’s one space away from the closest possible spot in the parking lot. And there’s a mental exhaustion that comes from keeping focused attention on the water, especially when most of the people in it can’t swim.

Fortunately, Alan has stepped up and usually has a delicious meal waiting for me when I come through the door at 7 p.m. But I go from dinner to a couple hours of TV to a half hour of reading in bed to zzzzzzz.

My thoughts are with our California readers, especially L.A. Mary, as they deal with the hurricane/tropical storm. It looks like the worst of it is over, but SoCal simply isn’t set up to deal with rainfall of this magnitude. (Of course, many areas where it’s common aren’t anymore, either. :::raises hand:::) But I just read the the L.A. River peaked well below flood stage, and is falling now. So that’s good.

Here’s a funny story about Ron DeSantis’ awkwardness, which may have already been discussed in comments because it’s a few days old, but honestly I haven’t even glanced at ye olde comments in that time. Still, it’s a gift link and this made me laugh:

As he sought to connect with voters and donors, critics said DeSantis had resembled — to quote a couple of posts — “a robot put together from scrapped spare parts from Disney’s The Hall of Presidents” or “an extraterrestrial in a skin-suit trying to learn to be human.”

Been there, felt that.

Finally, Neil Steinberg expresses for the millionth time the jeez-would-you-GO-AWAY-already feeling so many of us have, but it still seems worth saying:

It’s the whining that most exasperates me. Don’t they ever tire of it? Yes, Donald Trump is famous for the lies that firehose out of his mouth, as easily as he draws breath and almost as often.

But it’s the constant complaining that drives me mad, if I didn’t tune it out — I can’t imagine watching Trump’s interview this Thursday with Tucker Carlson, his half-clever way of drawing whatever scant interest there might be away from the first Republican presidential debate, a gathering of gnats, all of whom, with the exception of born-again Chris Christie, can’t even muster the internal fortitude to string together a few critical words against the liar and bully, fraud and traitor whom they would defeat.

Yep.

OK, I have to do a few chores around this dump, drink some water, maybe clean my bathroom. I had some photos to share, but for some reason the server isn’t accepting them. I’ll try again later. Thanks for tolerating everything.

There are a lot of special events – attractions – that happen through the year. I’m not into most of them, but that’s fine, not everything is for everyone. Air shows are a particular who-gives-a-crap thing; I mean, stand around craning your neck all day to watch planes fly overhead? For others, maybe, but not for me.

Then, Sunday, this happened not far down the road:

A MiG-23 fighter jet crashed today at the Willow Run Airport of Thunder air show in Michigan. The two pilots reportedly ejected and are both unharmed

pic.twitter.com/0h9LBZ3f1R

— Flight Emergency (@FlightEmergency) August 13, 2023

That’s a Russian MiG-23, part of the Thunder Over Michigan air show near Ypsi, and it did a big ol’ oopsie into an apartment complex parking lot. The pilots ejected safely, and the plane, amazingly, hit only parked cars when it came down.

It’s the ejections that always amaze me. I recall, from “The Right Stuff,” that ejection is incredibly dangerous. Pilots are basically igniting an explosive under their seats, and all kinds of bad things can happen on the way out. Isn’t this how Goose died in “Top Gun,” in fact? Hit his head on the canopy as he was launched into the wild blue yonder? But if the choice is between Maybe Dying and Definitely Dying, of course anyone would choose door no. 1. Still. Freaky.

Anyway, one more piece of Russian hardware gone for good. Sorry, Vlad. Maybe your tech just isn’t what it could be. Or pilot error, who knows.

So much news these past few days. Maui on fire. Trump on fire (in the pants region, anyway). Rodriguez dead. Ohio’s Issue 1, buh-bye. And this bullshit in Kansas. I haven’t been able to keep up, at least not here, but I trust you all have been able to.

This will return to normal soon. For now, watch the plane crash.

You remember a few days back, when I said my planner has three lines at the bottom of the weekly page? Logging workouts, morning pages and blogs? I just looked at it and realized, oops.

But life has been crazy-busy this week, and this weekend in particular. It ended with us seeing “Oppenheimer,” thus completing the Barbenheimer cinematic diptych of the summer, so: Checked that box, but missed my blogging window.

I didn’t like “Oppenheimer” nearly as much as “Barbie,” but then again, the fact they’re both films is about all they have in common. It certainly has its place in the world, but my viewing suffered from not being a science nerd well-acquainted with every brilliant PhD who worked on the Manhattan Project. I knew about Oppenheimer, knew about Teller, but beyond that? Not much. So a great deal of the sub- and backstory was lost on me. And sorry, but why anyone would think they need to see this in IMAX is baffling — most of the action consists of people talking to one another in medium shots. In fact, my biggest disappointment was that the detonation of the first bomb, the Trinity test, was not really the film’s climax; it goes on for an hour afterward.

Maybe the draw is seeing Florence Pugh’s breasts in IMAX, I dunno.

We settled for a regular old wide-screen movie theater, and it was just fine (breasts and bomb). The explosion was very well-done, and I’m glad Oppy’s famous reaction line from the Bhagavad Gita was underplayed; I get the feeling someone like Spielberg would have dolled it up more. But the performances were very good, the story important, and it left me with lots to think about, including how a person with a brain like Oppenheimer’s interacts with the rest of the world. I certainly don’t understand quantum physics or mechanics, but the fact this achievement was followed by the 20th century equivalent of the MAGA era must have been almost physically painful for people that smart. It certainly made me wince that we only recently had a president who spoke of nuking hurricanes and countries and so on, as though these were special effects to be deployed, not weapons of mass destruction. Speaking of dumb.

Do I have bloggage? Why yes I do:

Neil Steinberg parts with one matchbook he’s been holding on to for 40 years, and has an epiphany: I could get used to this:

I’m at an age when I’m surrounded by great masses of detritus, aka, crap. Files and furniture, notes and boxes, mugs, souvenirs, relics. I hate to include books, which are holy, but hundreds of books, most of which I’ll never read. After I wrote the above, I went to walk the dog, and can’t tell you how good I felt. The mixture of performing a small kindness plus the liberation of divestment was a real boost. Only a little thing, true: an old, used matchbook. But it’s a start of the great give-away that will end with me being put, possessionless, into the ground.

Death-cleaning. It becomes more important the closer you get to, um, death, and damn, but it feels great.

Alan and I used to watch “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” when we first got together, so it has some special significance to me. Losing Paul Reubens last week was tough, but we’re all going to the undiscovered country eventually, so I wasn’t upset. This Hank Stuever appreciation of Pee Wee (gift link) was very good and exactly right, I thought:

There were a lot of ways to both fall in love with Reubens’s character and to also find him annoying, but there was no denying that he, along with other retro acts (the B-52’s come to mind) had harnessed a longing for and a lampooning of a B-movie, mid-century vibe: In the high time of Pee-wee Herman, every fun city had at least one gift store that sold inflatable Godzillas and cat’s-eye sunglasses and chile-pepper Christmas lights along with sardonic, non-Hallmark greeting cards.

And, more important:

Now, in a culture derailed by childish taunts and vicious politics (“I know you are, but what am I — infinity”), fixated on all the wrong kinds of nostalgia, where drag queens and other groovy outliers are publicly pilloried and accused of trying to corrupt children, it is becoming quite clear that things are increasingly less safe for anyone who deigns to be different. Just when the world could use Pee-wee’s keen and welcoming sense of humor, we lost him.

Yep.

OK then, deeper into August we go.

While the rest of the country waited on the Georgia indictment, we had a state-level one today: The pro-Trump losing attorney general candidate and a state legislator were both indicted by a grand jury today. The charge: That sometime after the 2020 election, they and others convinced a number of township clerks in rural Michigan to turn over their voting equipment, which they then took to various locations, disassembled and tried to reverse-engineer the “vote-switching” they claim stole the election from their guy.

If they were any stupider, they’d have difficulty brushing their teeth.

From the NYT story (gift link):

The charges against Mr. DePerno, which include undue possession of a voting machine and a conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer or computer system, come after a nearly yearlong investigation in one of the battleground states that cemented the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.

Former State Representative Daire Rendon was also charged with two crimes, including a conspiracy to illegally obtain a voting machine and false pretenses.

Four felonies for the big guy. All this was known before the nominating convention last year, but the party still made him their nominee for AG, widely considered the most vulnerable of the three executive offices up for re-election. (Incumbent Dana Nessel has made some mistakes. She also got a little overserved at the UM-MSU game.) They nominated him anyway. All three – the governor and Secretary of State being the other two – were very fortunate in their enemies, and won by wide, comfortable margins.

Some might ask, why did the clerks turn over the equipment? One of the individuals who accompanied DePerno had some sort of bullshit title and organization that sounded official, and wore a sidearm. Nothing like cop energy to intimidate a government official. Some wouldn’t go along with it, though, and bless ’em.

And now, as I write this, I see that the Trump indictment has been unsealed. Let us all discuss that, then, in this storm of falling shoes.

Oh, but before I go, I need to ask you southwesterners: Are these worth buying? I know the Hatch legend, but they always seem a little soft and ready to spoil, probably because Michiganders don’t know what to do with them. Do they travel well?