Having enjoyed a few days of not having to be under the same roof as her husband, the First Lady of this once-great country wishes people would stop paying so much attention to what she wears. To which I reply: Then stop dressing so goddamn weird.

I have Tim Gunn and “Project Runway” to thank for introducing me to the concept of an outfit being “costume-y.” That is to say, it moves beyond style — which flatters and communicates something about the wearer — and becomes something that calls attention to itself alone. Also, it makes people looking on say, essentially, WTF?

Lady Gaga’s meat dress is an easy example of this, in contrast to, say, one of her other many fun evening outfits.

Lots of attention was paid to FLOTUS’ overseas wardrobe, but perhaps most to the meet-your-British-overlords equestrian ensemble, complete with pith helmet. Especially the pith helmet, which scholars explained elsewhere has a particular attachment to colonialism, but honestly? I don’t think that entered FLOTUS’ head for even a second. I don’t think she was sending a message to white nationalists or anything like that. I think she’s playing dress-up. She saw a picture of a Kenyan coffee plantation in a book and duplicated the look.

I mean, she’s also wearing riding boots; why? Is she getting on a horse? Walking somewhere that snakebite might be feared? No. Any old broad-brimmed hat could shield her face from the sun, but the picture of the coffee plantation had a pith helmet, so a pith helmet it is.

Where does anyone even buy one of those things? It’s a puzzle.

Then there was the other outfit, which she saved for the pyramids of Egypt:

I think this one came out of an Indiana Jones movie. It makes absolutely no sense to me. The hat is fine — again, strong sun — and there’s nothing wrong with a pantsuit, but the hat with the pantsuit and then the windblown necktie? Hello, Dr. René Emile Belloq.

It’s really baffling. If we’re all supposed to pretend that Melania Knauss entered this country as a “model,” shouldn’t she have learned something about clothing along the way?

Ugh, a Sunday after a tough week with another one ahead. I am coping by arranging as much as possible ahead of time, a to-do list and food prep and all laundry done and all the rest of it. I’m also avoiding the news even more than I did last weekend. I went to the library and checked out three books, all of them novels. This isn’t avoiding reality, it’s bolstering sanity. There comes a point where you just can’t take this crap another day.

One bit of news I did see this weekend is about the melee that broke out after the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Vegas Saturday night. The bout was between Irishman Conor McGregor and Russian Khabib Nurmagomedov, which made me reflect, first, that Ireland was the old source of great-white-hope fighters, and Russia is the new one. Besides the Ukrainians (Wladimir Klitchko and his brother Vitali) and the famous Triple-G (Gennady Gennadyovich Golovkin, aka Triple G, and boy do the announcers like to draw that one out in the introductions), there are a shitload of ferocious fighters from the north Caucasus, i.e. Muslim Russia. When we saw Claressa Shields fight here in Detroit in June, the undercard had a couple of Chechens on it, and Nurmagomedov is from Dagestan, right next door.

And now that I think about it, Dearborn has a little bit of a boxing community, which makes me wonder why Russia and why Muslim Russia. Anyone have any ideas?

OK, I think I’m done for now, and I hope this week brings you peace, quiet and as little static as possible. God knows we need it after last week.

It’s impossible to get through life without offending someone, but this feels like a particularly wearisome week for offense.

There’s this lady:

Linda Dwire was outraged over two women speaking Spanish in the aisle of a grocery store in Rifle, Colo., on Monday. She confronted them over what she believed was an erosion of American values.

Then another woman intervened to restore civility in a personal moment inflamed by national tension over immigration policy and American identity.

“I’m calling the cops. You leave these women alone! Get out!” Kamira Trent roared in a video taken by one of the women.

Man, I hear languages other than English spoken in public all the time. In fact, most aren’t even Spanish. I recognize Spanish. I’m pretty good with most of the other common tongues around here, too — Arabic being the big one, but in a typical week, it’s not unusual to hear many, many others. My favorite is when you hear some version of Whatever-glish; I once eavesdropped on a Latina in a Mexican restaurant who was switching, at top speed, between Spanish, English and slang that almost qualified as its own dialect. It was dizzying, blahblahblahblahBITCHPLEASEblahblahblah. It didn’t make me worry about American values. But you knew that.

And there’s this oft-remarked-upon plague, the leaf blower. (Disclosure: I own one. But it’s the far, FAR quieter electric version:

A bunch of neighbors were sitting around the other night, talking yard work, and the conversation returned to a frequent target: a certain ex-neighbor, now long gone, who was unduly fond of his leaf blower. This is a familiar tale, how he tormented the block every autumn weekend chasing leaves around his small yard with his shrieking machine, leaving behind the lingering stench of gasoline fumes and resentment. I never met this fellow—he moved out before I moved in—but his legacy is secure: He is The Asshole With the Leaf Blower.

Perhaps that’s redundant. The tragedy of the leaf blower is that it makes assholes of us all, users and neighbors alike.

You can say that again.

And then there’s this column. Headline: I watched a rape. For five decades, I did nothing. Yep, it’s pretty raw. Read at your own risk.

Guys, I’m trying to get back into the groove of three entries a week, and I know this is pretty thin, but it’s been a far busier week than I anticipated. So go and have a weekend, and I’ll see you here afterward.

I think it was a few weeks back, writing about vomit, that I wondered whether adults older than college age are still drinking like they are in college. Which no one should do, because college drinking is insane.

(Yes, this has to do with Brett Kavanaugh.)

After reading the latest sheaf of stories, most of them in the NYT, and summarized well in today’s edition of their podcast, The Daily, I’m more convinced he’s likely an alcoholic. It’s possible he stopped or cut way back when the full responsibilities of adulthood settled on his shoulders, but if he had, I’d think he’d have enough distance from his college years to speak frankly about them — how much he drank, how he feels about it, etc.

But he can’t. As classmate after classmate comes forward to offer eyewitness testimony that suggests this man was no boy scout, I’m convinced his reaction would be the same: Liars! Liars, all of them!

Which sounds kinda, I dunno, alcoholic-y.

After I worked on the college-drinking package that we did for Bridge a few years ago, I wondered if we were pearl-clutching, that what we’d reported on is just the ol’ Kids Being Kids, aka It Was Ever Thus. But the more I see the way post-college adults drink these days, I think not. I think the emphasis on puke-and-rally/Animal House-style drinking sets a pattern that can be hard to break. Some days, I look at the $15 craft-cocktail trend as being almost a form of temperance, in the sense that it’s almost impossible for a standard middle-income person to drink very many of those, unless they have a very thick wallet.

But often, when I go to those in-between bars — not a dive, not a twee cocktail lounge — I see grown-ass adults with graying temples drinking like DKE bros at the end of pledge week. Candy-flavored vodkas, shots, the whole nine. That sort of pattern is dangerous. Once that becomes your normal, you’re a giant step closer to an AA meeting.

I think so, anyway.

I have to hit Publish and get this thing on its way, but before I do, I have to say I haven’t read the New York Times’ ginormous investigation on how the Trump family worked the loopholes — and in some cases, engaged in outright fraud — to accumulate and protect its wealth. But I did listen to the Daily podcast, which summarized it, and it’s pretty appalling. Reading 14,000 words will take some time, but the Daily will only take 30 minutes. I highly recommend it.

Gotta run. Happy Wednesday.

I spent part of a busy weekend migrating my photos to Google’s photo app. I’m trying to extend the life of my phone a while longer; at four, it’s apparently ancient, at least according to the tech writers covering the new generation of iPhones, who assume everyone in the world wants a new phone every year.

Anyway, with G-photo doing auto backups at the default quality, I can delete all the ones on my phone and free up some space for more crap, like scooter-rental apps. Twice in the last week I’ve wanted to grab a scooter and spare my aching feet (plantar fasciitis acting up), only to find the available ones were from the company I don’t have the app for, dammit.

But that’s a tangent. Google photos are amazing. As soon as it synced with my phone, it started sorting everything, with almost terrifying accuracy. It recognized Kate’s face in pix taken from age 3 to present day. It recognized our old neighbor Allie with a full set of dreadlocks and a shaved head. At first it thought Spriggy and Wendy were the same dog, but once I corrected it, boom, two folders. Then, sometime overnight, it got into “things.” There are 41 Things folders; and I’m sure more are coming. It sorted food pix into Baking and Cooking. Landforms are divided by Beaches, Cliffs, Waterfalls, Caves, etc.

It’s not 100 percent accurate — it put all my sunrise pix into a folder called Sunsets, which bugged me, because what, it can spot my daughter’s eyebrows in a group picture from a homecoming dance six years ago, but not read a time stamp? The Flowers folder includes shots of a birthday cake for J.C., which included a frosting flower on top. But that cake is also in Baking, so no biggie.

It got me to spend some time with old photos this weekend, which most of us don’t do. It also dug up pix I thought had long been deleted, including this one, which I’m calling “selfies are stupid:”

(There are about three dozen selfies in my G-photo account.)

Here’s the view from the top floor of Michigan Central Station, after the official launch event Ford put on in June:

That’s going to be nice when it’s finished, assuming it gets finished.

It was a pretty good weekend — dinner with friends, a bike ride, and a Saturday-night stop at an after-hours party, whoop di do for a person who’s generally asleep by 11. I regret to say the after-hours was nothing much, though — fun enough, but I’ve been to a million of these so far, and the only difference between the legal, before-closing variety and this one was: Open marijuana smoking and nitrous balloons for recreational gas-sipping. Not my thing, although I do remember a party in Fort Wayne where a friend offered that particular canapé, and ran into his landlord when he was carrying the tank in — “Carl, I didn’t know you were a scuba diver!,” etc.

I don’t really have any bloggage today. I stopped reading Kavanaugh takes Friday afternoon, because I’m full-up and only awaiting the inevitable confirmation vote. And Kavanaugh takes were all there were to read this weekend.

Well, there was Tom & Lorenzo on Lady Gaga. I generally agree, although I think her boobs look like they’re in pain.

So let’s face the week ahead with strength and honor. It beats cowardice and scandal.

You know? Thursday was such a god-awful day, so full, beginning to end, with the worst this country has on offer, that I think the best thing to do today is declare an open thread and say go ahead and get it out.

Happy weekend, everyone. At least a tolerable one.

I find the news of the day so disorienting I’m just going to download a bunch of random slides, post-it notes and half-scribbled cocktail napkins in my head, none of which have any point, but what the hell, here goes:

I’ve been commuting via bus lately. Probably a column in that one, but for the purposes of this discussion, all you need to know is that I was walking my neighborhood without Wendy, which I usually don’t do. I was trudging home on a steamy day. On the next block over, I walked up on a yard with a loose dog. Biggish, not a leviathan, and very friendly. Some sort of pitty/boxer-y melange, the sort that, when it wags its tail, the whole back half swings back and forth. I stopped and petted, of course, because I like dogs. A woman working in a yard a door or two down called the dog — Moxie, Maxie, something like that — closer to her. A squirrel was scampering around her, oddly close, for a squirrel. Also, it had pricked ears.

She reached down and scooped it up. It wasn’t a squirrel, but the tiniest puppy I think I’ve ever seen. The pup wore a eensie little collar with an ID tag that nearly covered her chest: Sophie. She was a Yorkie/chihuahua cross, and nine weeks old.

“I took her to the vet today. She weighs .88 pounds,” she said. I cuddled Sophie for a minute, and gave her back. She’ll be bossing Moxie/Maxie around soon enough.

* * * * *

I keep thinking about something that happened in July, when we went to Fort Wayne for an afternoon, for one of our old neighbor’s, sadly and unexpectedly deceased, “celebration of life.” (I always have to put that phrase in quotes; it doesn’t sound natural to me.)

The event was at Foster Park, which you locals most likely know — lovely gardens close to the entrance on Old Mill Road, a golf course behind, tennis courts, picnic pavilions. We were in a pavilion, reached by the main park road, which is paved. The parking is sort of haphazard; most people kinda bump onto a gravel shoulder, diagonally.

As we were leaving, carrying our cooler to the car and saying our goodbyes, I heard a child wailing. I looked over, and saw a little boy, maybe 3 years old, sitting on the park road, a few car lengths away, just where the gravel shoulder joined it, crying hysterically. A car was coming, too fast, and I held my breath; I didn’t have time to grab him, but surely there was an adult nearby who would.

The car passed the boy with room to spare, but no adult appeared. He continued to cry. I walked over and looked around. No obvious parent in sight, so I picked him up, said, “Let’s find your mom.”

We walked toward the nearest potential group of suspects, near the playground. “Point to your mom if you see her,” I told him. He was still crying, nowhere close to calm. I started asking random people; no one knew. The deceased neighbor’s daughter, a sometime nanny, speaks Spanish, and asked the boy where his mom was. No answer. We walked deeper into the playground, and I started calling out, “Whose little boy is this?” Again, nothing.

Finally, finally, a kid pointed to a woman sitting on a bench, waayyyy on the other side of the playground. She was on the phone. I walked over to her, the boy still yelling his head off.

“Is this your son?” I asked. Without even interrupting her conversation, she nodded and held out her arms. The boy reached back. OK, then.

“He was sitting in the road,” I said. She nodded in that yeah-I-hear-you way, while continuing to uh-huh-uh-huh whoever she was talking to. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so I walked away.

I looked back once. They were sitting on opposite ends of the bench, he in the hiccup-y end game of a crying jag. She? Was still on the phone.

Some people don’t deserve children.

* * * * *

I mentioned I’ve been taking the bus lately. Frankly, the extra time it takes me to get downtown is balanced by the lack of concern over parking and traffic.

It’s also an eavesdropper’s dream, a reward for anyone with eyes to look around the world and see what’s there. The other day I got on to find a man in surgical scrubs, carrying his clothes in a plastic bag, wearing a surgical mask. There’s a hospital two stops up, so the explained where he came from. But what happened to him? What was wrong with him?

I spent a few stops thinking about that, looking out the window. When I looked back, he was gone.

There are about a million stops on my route. The drivers don’t stop if no one is waiting. If there’s a hobo sleeping on the bench, they’ll slow down and honk. If the sleeper doesn’t stir, no stop.

Before I know it, we’re at the Rosa Parks Transit Center, where I take my bike off the rack and ride the last few blocks to the office. It’s a great way to start the work day. In summer, anyway.

Two summer pictures to close things out. Aretha, a mural at Eastern Market:

And the prettiest tomatoes ever:

And that’s it for the midweek memory dump. Have a nice Wednesday.

I went to a party Saturday night. Somehow I ended up in conversation with two younger men, one of whom was a former major-league ball player (third base). They were friends of the host, in town for a weekend of sports and gambling.

They were staying at one of the downtown casino hotels, and the night before they, along with the father of one of them, had won more than $40,000 between the three of them. Baccarat.

“Like James Bond,” I said.

He got the reference, always a good sign in an age when James Bond now plays Texas Hold’em.

“So, what are you going to do with your winnings?” I asked. Both said they intended to go back to the casino that very night and keep playing, and that if they lost it all, they wouldn’t consider it a bad day at all.

“It’s entertainment,” one said.

I honestly don’t get it. If I were fortunate enough to win more than $20,000 in one sitting, the last thing the pit boss would see are the soles of my feet, leaving in a hurry. I know this is how casinos work. I know this is why they’re one business you almost have to work to fail at (ahem, POTUS), but it’s still baffling. The conversation moved on. It took a few unusual turns, but ended with my plus-one, a girlfriend, offering common-sense therapeutic relationship advice to the third baseman, which he received gratefully.

“I never thought of that,” he said.

Truth be told, he reminded me of Tim Robbins’ character in “Bull Durham.” But that’s a pro athlete for you.

What a weekend, all around. Fall arrived after a day of strong winds. Friday started hot and humid and ended chilly and overcast. Saturday, however, was perfect sweater weather. I bought apples at the market, and considered the last peaches, but passed. I bought some last week, and they took a while to soften, but they were fine and delicious. There’s always a day when I buy the last peaches of the summer and they’re terrible. Better to end on a high note, like any love affair.

So now it’s well and truly fall. The windows are closed, although today was lovely. I hit the gym, like an idiot. Should’ve been out on the bike, but at least I rode there and back. But leg strength needs a certain focused attention, and today was leg day. Google “Bulgarian split squats” and pity me, because I sure pity myself.

On to the bloggage!

So much of this stuff seems old, because most was gathered last week, before Thursday/Friday slipped out of my grasp. But what the hell, here you go:

Provocative headline: Everything you know about obesity is wrong, and totally worth the read.

You may have seen this already, but I found it so, so infuriating. It’s choir-preaching for sure, but to those of you who might wonder why women don’t report sexual assault, a sobering report about one young woman who did. Conclusion: Texas sucks, but so does everyplace else.

One of those cool NYT data presentations, about the links between counties via number of Facebook friendships. You’ll be mousing over this one all day.

Finally, because we need some good writing, Hank looks at twofour terrible TV shows, one of them a rebooted “Magnum P.I.”

So, “Magnum P.I.,” what am I to make of you? What is there to say about a show nobody asked for that oozed up anyhow from pop-culture’s toxic nostalgia barrel and now premieres Monday on CBS? Revived from your 30-year rest in the rerun crypt, you have achieved a new existence, Magnum — dipped in heavy gloss and buffed to a shine. Tires squeal, things explode, Dobermans bark. Still we feel nothing.

… You are not good at the thing you’re trying to be, New Magnum, and instead of resurrecting a feeling, you’ve run right over it with that bright red Ferrari. Instead of declaring a creative or timely purpose (like your network friend and fellow exhumee, “Murphy Brown”), you are merely a piece of content placed between commercials. Your existence is cold and cynical, Magnum, predicated on the previous success of reboots such as “Hawaii Five-O” and “MacGyver.”

On to Monday, folks. Hope the week goes well.

To add to yesterday’s comment-thread discussion about Caitlin Flanagan: Yes, she’s one of those annoying “contrarians” who made her rep yelling at other women for a variety of perceived offenses – working while having young children, enjoying marital sex less than she does, etc. (At least this is what I’m recalling; I don’t have time to go spelunking for those links.)

That said, she’s an excellent writer, and she’s done a couple of outstanding pieces for the Atlantic in the last few years — one on fraternity drinking culture and the legal steps frats have taken to insulate themselves from any liability connected to that, and another on a death at Penn State related to, yes, fraternity drinking.

So you takes the good with the irritating, I guess.

Wednesday already. Big week, only halfway done. Tomorrow I have an evening event for one job, and the guest of honor can’t attend. Fortunately, his wife will stand in for him, and the only duty I’m down for is “assist the photographer,” so I guess I can handle it. I’m dressing for that one at my other job, but will be one of those women shlepping through downtown in a nice dress and sneakers, because man, me and heels don’t get along anymore. I’ll put them on at the venue and take them off the instant I leave.

Now that you’re full up with my wardrobe notes, what else is there to discuss today?

The Kavanaugh situation, obviously.

And this, of course:

A little song, a little dance/ a little mushroom…no, I can't profane the memory of Chuckles this way.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) September 18, 2018

Oh, and this, something I wrote yesterday. It’s about those annoying rental scooters.

And with that, I have to leave early. Sorry, but you should see my to-do list.

I was just thinking of all the women I know who have had an experience like the one Christine Blasey Ford describes having with a 17-year-old Brett Kavanaugh. And I can’t count them all, not if you throw in all unwanted, sexual, rape-adjacent touching, pawing and manhandling. Mine were comparatively minor, but then, I’ve always been tall-ish and built fairly solidly, and maybe that discouraged some guys who might have been inclined to do so. For years, I envied those tiny girls whose boyfriends could hold them on their shoulders during the encore at the Elton John concert. I guess I shouldn’t have, although who knows whether that had anything to do with it? My point is: This is a common occurrence. It really is.

So now, Sunday afternoon, we can already see how it’s going to go. Senate Republicans will lash themselves to the mast; there’s no way they’ll back down now, not after they helped put a pussy-grabber into the Oval. And now, a few more women will contemplate their choices and decide they can do way better in November. This is a true dilemma, i.e., a choice between two equally bad outcomes.

I pause at this moment to remind you that Douglas Ginsburg was forced to withdraw from consideration for a seat on the Supreme Court because he smoked weed.

They’re not only not backing down, they’re going to be real pricks about it to the end:

A lawyer close to the White House said the nomination will not be withdrawn.

“No way, not even a hint of it,” the lawyer said. “If anything, it’s the opposite. If somebody can be brought down by accusations like this, then you, me, every man certainly should be worried. We can all be accused of something.”

I can’t even. So I won’t.

Speaking of bad men, though, do give a read to Sarah Weinman’s snappy riposte to John Hockenberry’s use of “Lolita” to explain his own bad behavior. It’s good. But man, between him and Jian Ghomeshi and Kavanaugh, it was kind of a Bad Men weekend.

Fortunately, none of them live under this roof, so it was mostly running errands, going to shows, eating good food and watching my only child drive away in her new car, which will help the overnight parking situation in our driveway. We went to the local contemporary-art museum Friday night to do something we never do, i.e., see a DJ set by Questlove, in town to promote a new book, something about food. I just wanted to hear him make music, and he didn’t disappoint — his knowledge of pop music is encyclopedic, and hearing him weave and blend deep cuts, decades-old Top 40 and about a million beats into one seamless, irresistible groove was great fun. However, after about an hour of this, it became steam-bath hot in there, so we booked.

Saturday, Kate and her new band — now a trio, after they lost their vocalist a few months back — played out for the first time. I couldn’t get close, so I mainly listened to Kate’s bass lines from the bar while Alan watched from a closer vantage point. Here’s their single, if you’d like to listen. And here’s a picture, because I thought she looked cute, but then, I’m prejudiced:

How was your weekend?

Man, do these weeks slip away from me. Election season is heating up, I have two jobs, and the next thing I know, it’s Friday. But that’s better than being bored, no doubt.

Let’s contemplate injustice, shall we?

You’ve probably been keeping up with the story about the man in Dallas, shot to death by a female cop, who mistakenly entered his apartment, thinking it was her own, and thought he was an intruder. It’s an outrageous act, certainly. But that isn’t stopping the police from revealing that a search of the victim’s apartment turned up — get ready to be shocked — marijuana:

The search warrant executed in Jean’s apartment at South Side Flats specifically sought fired cartridge casings, fired projectiles, firearms, ballistic vests, keys, evidence of blood, video surveillance systems, and contraband such as narcotics and other items used in criminal offenses.

The inventory return yielded:
2 fired cartridge casings
1 laptop computer
1 black backpack with police equipment and paperwork
1 insulated lunch box
1 black ballistic vest with “police” markings
10.4 grams of marijuana in ziplock bags
1 metal marijuana grinder
2 RFID keys
2 used packages of medical aid

Ten grams!? Why, we have a kingpin here, no doubt.

Marijuana will most likely be legal in Michigan in a few more months, and in the entire country within a decade. But as long as you can imply that the man shot to death in his own apartment by a copy who entered illegally, you can make him the villain. With someone.

Anybody near the Carolinas right now? How’s it going down there? By the time most of you read this, the story will be very different from right now. A nine-foot storm surge is possible in parts of the Norfolk river basin. Watch this video to the end, and marvel:

The latest iteration of our IMR group's work. This is what storm surge looks like. #Florence will make landfall in the next 36-48 hours and bring with it, 6-9 feet of potential storm surge. @parkertwc will show you what that looks like. @LocalNow @weatherchannel #NCwx #SCwx pic.twitter.com/mG9JjOOJeM

— Ryan Davidson (@RyanDavidsonWX) September 13, 2018

And while we’re watching videos, check out this one.

And with that, I’m checking out of this heartbreak hotel. Happy weekend.