I stuck to my guns (sorta) and broke away at noon today for a short bike ride. Not much of one — just a couple errands to the post office, the bank, but enough to feel like my ass isn’t entirely made of blubber. Apparently, autumn is well under way — I rode through a yellow blizzard of ash leaves, nearly wiped out on ping-pong-ball size acorns, and still got a little sweaty.

The post office errand was to forward a mailer to the Lansing office for possible Truth Squadding. If you’re in Michigan, you can find many of the state’s political ads and related communication vetted there. Please to click, keep us going.

It’s going to be a long month. Which I think I said yesterday, but it bears repeating.

Change of subject.

Alan said the other day that he hoped the Pussy Riot story went on and on, because he so enjoyed hearing Diane Rehm say “Pussy Riot” in her quavery voice on NPR. I feel the same way about the University of Tennessee butt-chugging story. If you aren’t up to date: Apparently a frat boy was hospitalized with a sky-high blood-alcohol level, and evidence at the scene suggested he’d ingested box wine via enema.

Please don’t ask me why. Do I look like a frat boy? I don’t see how squirting wine up your ass would hit the bloodstream faster than sending it down the traditional pipe, but then, it is far more entertaining, and it requires reporters to say “butt chugging” over and over again. Again, this is a story where all you need to do follow the Gawker tags, and you can keep up just fine.

And what is the tag? Why, butt chugging, of course. Butt chugging, butt chugging, butt chugging.

The University of Tennessee has been officially crossed off Kate’s college list. Just kidding — it was never on it.

Let’s skip to bloggage:

Herman Cain visited Ann Arbor recently:

“Aw, shucky ducky,” Cain’s speech began. “Now let me see if I’m in the right place — uh, Go Blue?”

Ah, yes, Go Blue indeed. And what the hell, go red, too — after all, this was a cross-party fiesta. Just ask the uncomfortably pluralized Job Creators Solutions group, the organization that brought Cain and the College Truth Tour to Ann Arbor. According to their website, the College Truth Tour is a bipartisan initiative devoted to setting students straight on matters of the economy. And if you have any doubts about the bipartisan-ness of a lecture from a Republican presented by the College Republicans, never fear — the bleeding hearts got their word in. Specifically, from the back row of the auditorium, usually offering a poignant rebuttal to whatever poignant point Cain made. Just listen:

“The United States does not have a sugar daddy,” Cain yelled. “Who we gonna borrow from?”

“Australia!” someone shouted from the crowd. “Germany! China!”

And the geography lesson continued for another thirty seconds.

Remember when presidential candidates didn’t immediately descend into sideshow after they withdrew from their race? I blame Bob Dole and his damn Viagra ads.

First, let’s kill all the foodies. Or at least make them shut up for a while. The worst of them, anyway.

Southeast Michigan, meet your soon-to-be newest congressman. If you can find him.

I’m going to watch a history lecture. Good night.

Brothers and sisters, I have spent too many days stuck inside through these early fall days, staring at a computer screen. And the reason I know this is, I finally took a break and got out for a bike ride of decent length on Saturday. And it? Was glorious.

In fact, it was so glorious that it persuaded me to redouble my efforts to get some things back into boxes, and try to restore something like sanity to my day. Work in one box, exercise in another, blogging in another, extracurricular writing in yet another. And more goddamn exercise, because it makes everything better.

Two months ago, I was getting up at 6 to ride to the pool and swim laps. Now I’m lucky to drag my ass out of bed by 7, and little exercise follows. Must. Show. Discipline. Fall is such a dangerous time, in many ways. Not all the changes of the new year are good ones.

So, in the interest of keeping things short, how about a quick few links, and then I can go do some butt crunches or something:

The Columbus Dispatch is generally a very conservative newspaper, but their polling generally has a good track record, and they spend the money to do it right. Something to remember when you see they have Obama up by 9 points (in Ohio), as early voting gets under way.

A column about the NFL refs’ lockout, and what lessons might be learned by American labor. Something I haven’t read yet, and enjoyed.

Our own MMJeff tries a little fun in his weekend column: Did Jesus own a dog?

Anonymity in political fundraising: One cautionary tale. (Link fixed.)

We now return you to October, already in progress. October! Already!

I love news stories that really challenge my expectations, and this one certainly did:

A day after the state announced a streamlined process for getting a voting-only ID, long lines at some PennDOT offices forced patrons to wait for hours on Wednesday.

“I’ve been here for two-and-a-half hours,” said (Elsie) Torres, who ultimately waited more than three hours to receive her ID.

Other patrons who spoke with this reporter at the PennDOT center at 8th and Arch streets said that they had to wait between one and four hours to get an ID that will allow them to vote Nov. 6 under a new state law.

Poor people lead difficult lives, and the idea of spending three hours of a single day standing in line to get…an ID? Is pretty amazing. We’ll see how this election goes. But when this happens, people willing to get back up after being knocked down, it’s heartening. This stuff is important.

Although I hate that “this reporter” usage. If you can’t go full first-person and say “me,” just say they spoke to the Associated Press. At least, that is this reporter’s position.

And speaking of poor people, did anyone see Frontline this week? “Dropout Nation” was a stab right in the heart, a look at four high school students in a single high school at high risk for not finishing. It’s a school in Houston where kids are mostly poor and mostly non-white, and most of the teachers we see aren’t. But they are heroes, professionals who give their students everything. The students are truly tragic characters, born two miles from the racetrack when everyone else is assembling on the starting line, failed by every significant adult in their lives. (Some even before they’re born. Who names a girl “Sparkle,” for cryin’ out loud?) You can watch the whole thing at the link. It’s long, but I recommend it.

Eh, if I get through this week it’ll be something of a miracle, but I’m lurching toward the finish line.

So let’s get there, eh?

Thank Coozledad for today’s entertainment; he sent me this a while back. It’s Elvis Costello, performing at the White House two years ago:

Enjoy the delightful four and a half minutes, and you will enjoy it. It got me thinking about…well, about a lot of things. First thing: Who determines who plays at the nation’s No. 1 venue? I’m not naive enough to believe it’s entirely up to the First Family; it’s surely a combination of their preferences, the WH social secretary, and some constellation of other parties weighing in. Timing certainly plays a part, don’t you think? There’s a time when the performer who was once rebellious and not suitable for a presidential audience suddenly becomes so. There’s a time when the cellist is ready for his Lincoln Center honor. But surely the First Family has something to do with it.

So. Today, a thought experiment, and I encourage you not to yield to the easy temptation of snark. Suppose Romney wins the election. Who plays in his White House? Who will be the first performers we’ll see in the East Room with Mitt and Ann in the front row center?

I’m honestly curious. It occurs to me that, for all I know about the Romneys, I have no idea what stirs his soul, besides dressage and his church. Do Mormons have a pop-music vein worth tapping?

I ask this in part because I read this story earlier tonight, about Romney’s church activities in Massachusetts. Another few thousand words that tells you a lot but, in the end, only makes the picture murkier.

On to the bloggage:

This is, what, Jimmy Hoffa’s ninth or tenth possible final resting place? They won’t find him there, but if they do, oh how sad that would be. A driveway in Roseville? (Trust me: It ain’t much.) If he can’t be in the end zone at whatever NFL stadium he’s supposedly in, at least let him be buried under the I-696/75 interchange, which is the last place I heard (on inside information, natch).

OID: Leg on a stretcher. Fake leg. Still.

Finally, one for you Vietnam vets. The napalm girl, later. Beautiful.

Such a lovely surprise this weekend: “Detropia,” a new documentary about our troubled neighbor, which played to a nearly packed house Saturday night hereabouts.

I understand this is of limited interest to those who don’t live nearby (or in similar cities), but for those of you who like film, documentaries, or who have any sort of connection to this place, I do recommend it. With some caveats.

They are: This isn’t a “news” documentary at all, more like jazz — meditations on a mood, improvisations on a theme, observations rather than commentary, although of course you’re free to fill in the blanks, and in fact are encouraged to.

The takeaway is that Detroit is the industrial age’s coal-mine canary, and that no one has sufficiently answered the question of what comes next. You may or may not agree, but the question — posed by one of the Detroiters whose activities serve as a through-line — is worth asking.

One scene features the UAW local president laying out the harsh reality for a room full of workers at one of the surviving plants, American Axle. It is a take-it-or-leave-it shit sandwich of 20-30 percent wage cuts across the board, and these are not good jobs in the first place — the top tier is around $18 an hour (down to $14), with the $14-per-hour folks knocked down to $11. The union moves to not even consider the offer, and it passes unanimously. The plant closes, a foregone conclusion.

I looked at these men and women, and thought, for the millionth time: What are we going to do with you? These aren’t lazy people. They want to work. They need to be paid a living wage. Twenty-two grand a year for life in an axle plant? Are you kidding me?

We say this over and over and over: Not everyone is cut out for higher education, but everyone can work. But where will the laid-off American Axle workers find it?

They are the 47 percent. By now, anyway. Neither presidential candidate has a concrete plan for their future. The Germans still have a healthy force of factory workers, don’t they? How do they manage it? (Don’t answer, I know. They take education and training a lot more seriously than we do.)

All is not grim. There’s a marvelous character, Tommy Stephens, a retired teacher who runs a blues club in a particularly bombed-out neighborhood, a stone’s throw from the urban farm site I wrote about earlier this year, although it’s a club in the street corner-in-Detroit sense, not, say, the House of Blues. But Stephens is funny and smart and won’t give up, and in that sense is the reason I like this screwed-up place so much.

Anyway, recommended.

And just in case you find all that too depressing, there’s this, from the Atlantic, on the booming startup culture downtown. It won’t be enough to save all 139 square miles, but it’s something.

So, bloggage:

Boy, is this story depressing:

A lot of voters are lukewarm about the guy they support, but they are white hot about the guy they loathe.

“If they had Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein and Barack Obama running, Barack Obama would be my last pick,” says Ray Morrison, 70, a retired steelworker and truck driver who lives on a country road west of the city. “If you want to know the true story about Obama, you have to watch Fox a little bit. I hate him.”

Here’s Cheryl Doran, 50, a waitress at the family restaurant Naples, speaking of Romney: “I think he’s the devil. I have no use for him.”

Al Fenner, 68, a bishop in the Shepherds Walk mission downtown, doesn’t think the president is “all-American” and believes that Obama once said that “he would stand more with the Islamic rather than with the American way.” Asked to cite a specific instance of Obama saying that, Fenner answered: “Go on YouTube and find it. I would not quote it if it were not true.”

I assume he’s talking about this, which I’ve seen referred to over and over again in the last few weeks. “But he’s a Muslim! He admits it!” etc. Watch the video, and you can see this admission in much the same way you see the cast of “Mad Men” sing along with Rick Astley.

Well, we still have five or six weeks to go, so why dwell? Hope your weekend was great. My apple pie turned out just fine.

Didn’t you guys start to talk yesterday about how to report race in crime stories? This is the rule I’ve always followed, which may or may not be the rule anymore. I’ve been gone from institutional daily journalism a long time.

The rule is: Don’t report race unless it’s important to the story, which can vary. When a suspect is at large and might be a threat to others, someone another person might see and report to police, by all means do so. The problem comes when the description is something impossibly vague like “a white man wearing blue jeans” or “a black man of medium height.” In the case of the two Grosse Pointe girls who were robbed, the description was pretty thorough, and included height and weight, clothing and, yes, race. The guy was armed and had escaped into the neighborhood. Totally defensible to use his color in the story.

Otherwise, if you wouldn’t write that someone was robbed by a person with red hair, I leave it out.

Others don’t follow the same rules. Our weekly newspaper here will sometimes write, for instance, “The 16-year-old was released to his 32-year-old mother.” Ooh, very subtle, just in case you didn’t catch on to the fact the perp was, how you say, not from around here. The worst of all was when they transcribed the written confession of a teenage female car thief, semiliterate spelling, fractured usage and all. It was repulsive, but I’m sure their readership got a real yuk out of it.

Meanwhile, here was the story TV did.

I can’t tell you how much I despise this sort of thing — the stupid hand gestures, the weird delivery, everything, including the obligatory exchange with the anchor at the end, which might as well run:

“Now I am asking you a question we both already know the answer to, in an effort to show you have deep knowledge of this situation.”

“And I am answering, both of us fully aware I’ve never set foot in this place in my life.”

Every crime story about this place has to talk about how peaceful it is, how unexpected the crime is, and of course, how the sucking maw of Detroit lurks just around the corner. It’s our cow picture, the cow picture being the standard photo of Columbus that ran for years with every single national-media story about how the city was starting to really come on strong. There’s a place at the end of the street where I grew up, where Ohio State University has some farm fields for the ag school. Sometimes they graze dairy cattle there, and when the air is clear, you can sometimes catch a nice pic of a cow in the foreground and the city’s skyline behind.

The cow picture. Because Columbus is shedding its cowtown image! Get it?

Oh, well. Moving on.

Anyone heard of Art Prize? It’s a festival held every year in Grand Rapids, where public art is installed all over the city for a few weeks, and the public votes on it. I’ve never been, and honestly, when I first heard about it, I imagined a lot of earnest crap and/or hostile Richard Serra stuff.

Looks like I was wrong. I love the taxidermy piece, and of course the wooden bicycle. Might be worth a road trip.

Time for bed. Hope your day was fine. Mine was busy.

An actual hour to spare at the end of the day? Well, then, it must be time to jump into something I signed up for months ago — “A History of the World Since 1300,” the Coursera offering I thought I’d take a whirl at.

It is, I figure, the closest I will ever get to Princeton.

Also, I’m writing more about education these days, and online education is a comer. One principal I talked to says every kid in school today should take at least one online class, because that is the future. Who am I to deny the future? Hello, Coursera.

The first shock, however, was as old as 1975, when I first went through the checkout line at the College Book Store in Athens, Ohio: The textbook was something like $80. But you people have been particularly wonderful about using the Kickback Lounge lately, and I have enough Amazon credit built up that it became a what-the-hell purchase. It arrived today, and it’s a very nice textbook, I guess, which is my way of saying: I hope I can sell it in December.

Today’s lecture was in four parts, which is unbelievably convenient, as I was able to watch one part during lunch, another couple before and after my shower, and the last one while I made dinner. “People and Plunderers” was the title, beginning with the concept of wealth and ending with Genghis Khan. Professor Jeremy Adelman is a smooth-lecturin’ Canadian who uses words like “portmanteau” and if he’s unnerved by talking to a camera instead of a classroom amphitheater (because there is no way this isn’t one of those giant classes), he gives no sign.

Because you guys helped pay for the text, I’ll keep you updated on my progress. For now, I need to read Chapter 11.

I have 70,000 classmates, by the way. Are you one of them?

Actually, Genghis was a good end to the day, which wasn’t one of the best in recent memory. Besides the usual annoyances, there was the external stuff — the enervating public discussion about the 47-percent story, plus an armed robbery in Grosse Pointe that…well, I need a new sentence for this. Tell you what: I’m going to italicize all the words that make this story a migraine headache:

On Sunday morning, two young girls, 14 and 11, were walking home from church when they were accosted by a man who shoved one to the ground, showed a gun and stole her cell phone before running off. Oh, and did I mention this? The girls were white, and the man, in addition to being 250 pounds, was black.

Which means that any story about this event will grow repulsive comments like metastasizing cancer, each tumor more irregular around the edges than the last. But because this is Grosse Pointe, it can’t stop there. This was the follow by one of the largest news outlets in the state, yes, which saw fit to mention that the father of one of these girls showed up at the GP city council meeting the following night and had the gall, can you imagine, to call Detroit “a third world country.”

The incident is causing concern among residents of the community, a city that stands in stark contrast, both demographically and economically, to its neighbor Detroit.

Really? There’s a blinding observation for the second paragraph of your story, bub.

Yech, sometimes I think I should have stayed in Columbus. Or moved to San Diego.

So let’s move on to the bloggage, most of which was made obsolete by the terminal velocity of the Romney story. But there was one passage in the David Brooks column that I think needs to be put in neon somewhere:

The final thing the comment suggests is that Romney knows nothing about ambition and motivation. The formula he sketches is this: People who are forced to make it on their own have drive. People who receive benefits have dependency.

But, of course, no middle-class parent acts as if this is true. Middle-class parents don’t deprive their children of benefits so they can learn to struggle on their own. They shower benefits on their children to give them more opportunities — so they can play travel sports, go on foreign trips and develop more skills.

People are motivated when they feel competent. They are motivated when they have more opportunities. Ambition is fired by possibility, not by deprivation, as a tour through the world’s poorest regions makes clear.

And what the hell, here’s The Onion: Romney Apologizes To Nation’s 150 Million ‘Starving, Filthy Beggars’

Outta here, pals. I have stuff to read. Happy hump day.

I had a long day, and have spent my blogging time tonight watching Rachel Maddow explicate the Romney fundraiser tapes. What do we think of those? Honestly, they made me sad more than anything. I don’t see anything good coming out of a place where a presidential candidate can state that nearly half the country is dependent on government and doesn’t want to take responsibility for themselves, and the audience doesn’t start jeering.

But that’s just me.

On the up side, we live in a country where a stupid magazine cover like this is responded to with the #muslimrage Twitter party, which turned the afternoon into a happier place:

I’m having such a good hair day. No one even knows. #MuslimRage

Lost nephew at the airport but cant yell for him because his name is Jihad. #MuslimRage

I emailed my former Muslim student Mariam, whose last Facebook update was about being SO PISSED about the NHL. If that doesn’t count, I don’t know what is.

I guess what I’m saying is, I’m pretty beat. Carry on amongst yourselves.

Almost forgot: I have a package on Rx drug abuse, medical marijuana and other mind-altering substances running in Bridge. Links will go live after 8 a.m. Hit ’em and keep me employed.

You might think I’m watching “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo,” but I’m not. It’s one of those shows you don’t have to watch, because so many other people are watching and tweeting about it for you. Check in with a blog or two, and you’re updated in two minutes. And so I can tell you, that if you have a sensitive stomach, you will not want to watch the Honey BB family’s secret recipe for “sketti,” nor will you want to watch them play one of their fun family games, “Guess Whose Breath.”

But if you are, the clips are here.

Perhaps, if you don’t have the belly flutters at the moment, I can reveal what goes into the Honey Boo Boo family sketti recipe? It’s described here and there as “butter and ketchup,” but that’s not true. It’s margarine and ketchup, unless Country Crock is one of those margarines that isn’t even the conventional stuff, but something more like an edible polymer. Every so often, when some reporter is tasked with coming up with a fresh angle on an election pregame story, they’ll dig up the various local elections over whether or not margarine could be sold pre-colored. Yes, young’uns, that was an actual ballot question in many communities, and if I recall correctly, Columbus was one of them.

This website is a little freedom-y for my taste, but I think its account of “the war on margarine” gets the basic facts correct. If I’d been voting then, I’d have opposed colored margarine, which I grew up calling oleo. Nay, nay, let it be sold in its natural fishbelly-white state, and see how much you like it then.

And I used to buy the liquid stuff that comes in a squeeze bottle. It keeps for years, literally, and is still the only perfect product for making grilled-cheese sandwiches.

Now you know (one of) the worst thing(s) about me.

A perfect weekend, weather-wise, and although I wished I’d done something big and outdoorsy, I did get out a bit, pedaling to the bank and hardware store but mostly catching up on everything — dry cleaning, groceries, the usual Saturday grind. It’s easy to imagine this endless summer won’t end, but of course it will. A few more fine, sandal-weather markets, though, please?

Some linkage:

A couple weeks ago, news of a terrible hate crime swept the local airwaves, of a Jewish student at a party in East Lansing when he was accosted by two punks who yelled “Heil Hitler,” knocked him down and stapled his mouth shut.

Or so he said.

The whole story sounded suspect from the start. “Heil Hiter,” really? Stapled his mouth shut? A stapler attack? That the treating physicians didn’t see reason to even flag as such, and the police weren’t treating as such? Yeah. Well. This weekend the ADL said they were no longer convinced, either. I’d love to know what really happened, but I doubt we’ll ever know.

I haven’t read many reviews of Mitch Albom’s new book, but thanks to Jolene for passing along a pretty good one from the WashPost. And Entertainment Weekly — of all places — came up with this great line:

Albom, a speaking-circuit regular, appears to have composed his novel in PowerPoint. Each short chapter is broken up with bold-type subheadings, letting readers skim the already thin narrative ever more quickly, in outline form. Think of all those precious moments saved!

For Brian Stouder, the class ring story — finally.

Off to bed because my eyes won’t stay open anymore. Let the week commence! Let the coffee brew!

Well, I looked up some of the “Innocence of Muslims” movie — here’s one clip, and you can find many more — just to see if it’s as cartoonishly bad as everyone’s been saying. And you know what? It is. I’ve made movies on pocket-change budgets that looked like “Lawrence of Arabia” in comparison.

Middle-school costumes, fake beards from the pop-up Halloween store, and all those sparkling-white California-actor teeth. But the worst of it? They shot on a green screen. We had a green-screen shot in one of our challenge movies; it took forever to light the goddamn thing. But that’s the great thing about working with people who care; even when the stakes are low and it’s just a silly challenge movie, they honor their work by doing it well. Note, by way of contrast, well, the whole clip. Muhammed looks to his right and the light’s on his face. He gets up, and the light is from the other side. But that’s nothing compared to the way he’s seemingly floating over the desert floor.

The guard is a porn actor. The rest say the Muslim-bashing lines were dubbed in later. The whole story is seemingly made for Gawker, if it weren’t for the dead ambassador and all.

Jesus, why are people so stupid? I ask you.

I’m exhausted; how about you? Some linkage? Sure.

Pretty, pretty Cathy Cambridge.

Duck lips galore. With some horrifying photos.

Can a light-skinned black woman with delicate features play a dark-skinned, heavy-featured African-American icon? Ask the people fretting over whether Zoe Saldana can play Nina Simone.

Zzzzzz.