I didn’t get to the sports section of the NYT until later in the day yesterday, and am late in blogging this, but I doubt many others beat me to it. I don’t normally spend much time with that section, so it was a joy to see this handsome face dominating the page. (In the NYT, the Daytona 500 goes below the fold.)

It’s Greg Louganis, looking cuter than ever with salt-and-pepper hair and matching goatee. I didn’t know he’d been MIA from American diving since retiring in the late ’80s, and the story was pegged to his low-profile return to coaching “athletes with wide-ranging ages and abilities,” the story notes, adding:

To watch him dissecting a beginner’s front dive tuck during a practice last month was like observing Meryl Streep teaching an introductory acting class.

It goes on to note that he’s spent the past 23 years stabilizing his health (he has AIDS), practicing yoga, exorcising the standard array of personal demons and training dogs for agility trials, of all things. It almost sounded like he was hiding from the world, but then I thought back on what the world was like when he was a magazine-cover face, and thought, can’t blame him.

We’ve come a long, long way since 1988, when gay celebrities like Louganis were in an impossible position — unable to come out, but entirely unwilling to hide. I believe it was Jeff Borden who came back from the Los Angeles TV writers’ tour in 1984 and reported he’d heard from a Sports Illustrated writer that Carl Lewis was going to win every track-and-field event he entered, and then, at the height of his popularity, at his Mark Spitz Wheaties-box peak, come out of the closet. He was going to force America to admit that someone they loved was something they hated, and make them realize their position was unsupportable.

The Olympics came and went, and no Carl Lewis coming out. At the games, he came across as cocky and arrogant, making his value as an celebrity endorser less than golden. I guess he went for the money, because to this day, you can still find stories like this, from 2007:

One of the unspoken subtexts of all this, the shortfall in the public’s affection, the aloofness, the Michael Jackson comparison, even the red stilettos, was the question of Lewis’s sexuality. Some fellow athletes spread the story that Lewis was gay. He denied the rumour, but, whether by coincidence or not, Coca-Cola withdrew an advertising deal and Nike stopped using him in the States after the LA Olympics. One Nike executive was quoted as saying: ‘If you’re a male athlete, I think the American public wants you to look macho.’ The high jumper Dwight Stone perhaps hit the mark when he said: ‘It doesn’t matter what Carl Lewis’s sexuality is, Madison Avenue perceives him as homosexual.’ Lewis himself later said: ‘They started looking for ways to get rid of me. Everyone was so scared and cynical, they didn’t know what to do.’

Oh, well. The crisis for Louganis came when he admitted his HIV status some years after after the Games, and the media seized on the moment in 1988 when he’d hit his head on the diving board during competition, and allowed a doctor to treat the bloody wound without gloves. No matter that the country’s leading AIDS expert said the chances of a successful transmission under those circumstances were steep indeed. No matter he personally apologized. No matter the doctor tested negative. Every columnist needing to feed the beast weighed in — this number very well may have included me — and many of them disapproved. To them, Louganis’ Carl Lewis moment should have come on worldwide television, poolside, when the team doctor was bearing down on him to treat his bleeding head. Louganis proved not that strong. No harm, no foul, but lots of finger-shaking along the way. There was even a contingent who fretted about the other divers who entered the pool after Louganis; what about them, Mr. Olympics? Did you think about them in your selfish need to keep your condition private?

By the mid’90s (when Louganis revealed his HIV status), the first drugs that would make AIDS a chronic, rather than swiftly fatal disease were coming into wider use. But in the 1980s, the atmosphere was quite different. We knew by 1988 how one was infected with HIV, that you had to work pretty hard to get it, but it had served to make spilled blood into a metaphor for menace, not just for the person it was spilling from, but everyone who might come in contact with it. Hospital dramas on TV all featured a plot line where some nice nurse was accidentally stuck by a junkie’s needle. An ACT-UP demonstration was rousted by cops wearing thick yellow rubber gloves. Think back on all the people who used to work with bare hands and don’t anymore, from boxing referees to the ladies at the Red Cross. Christians speak of being washed in the blood of the Lamb, i.e., Jesus. Good thing this single guy who hung out with 12 other guys lived before retroviruses, or otherwise, ick.

I pity anyone with HIV who had to live through that era, but I’m very glad Louganis came out the other side with a satisfying life. I’m not a bit surprised he preferred to work with dogs. They don’t talk, and know the proper use for most newspapers.

Another fun thing I read in the same section yesterday: The Washington Nationals held open auditions for their mascots — giant presidents — last week:

For those who survived the physical test, auditions also consisted of an individual interview with members of the entertainment staff — which included questions like “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” and answers like “pass gas in church.” Some candidates were ready to be spontaneous.

“I think my whole life has been leading up to this,” said Eileen, a 31-year-old schoolteacher from Alexandria, Va. “I walked around my college campus as a crash test dummy telling people not to drink and drive; I’ve been the Chick-fil-A cow and my school’s panther mascot. As the cow, I got my tail pulled a lot but knew exactly how to deal with it. I’m so ready for this.”

Fun fact: The Thomas Jefferson mascot is known as T.J.

I should read sports more often.

So, anything else going on? Pot calls kettle black, downs oxycontin milk shake. Indiana restaurant shows rare sense of humor, immediately apologizes. You can tell Foxy Brown was drunk in this photo, because only drunk chicks (and drag queens) think celery-green eye shadow is a good idea. Still, she kinda rocks it, don’t you think?

No, nothing else going on. Have a great Tuesday.

Well, that was interesting — a prediction for up to two inches of snow, and the overnight total was 10. And while everyone is bitching at the moment and I’ll probably be among them when the shoveling starts, there’s not a thing wrong with 10 inches of wet February snow falling on Michigan. Our ecology depends on a certain amount of moisture transfer from south to north, and last summer was dry. I’ll take it.

In the meantime, it’s a good morning to spend about 30 minutes here on the couch, catching up. Sorry I’m a little late today; this is a school vacation week, winter break, i.e., Keep Michigan Ski Destinations Solvent Week and I plan to spend it sleeping late. Because I don’t have much time, how about a little mixed grill?

I failed in my internet sabbath, but I managed to cut back enough — and pick up enough sleep — that my mood improved immeasurably. I was heartened to see the Wisconsin demonstrations continued, and picked up steam. Krugman:

Why bust the unions? As I said, it has nothing to do with helping Wisconsin deal with its current fiscal crisis. Nor is it likely to help the state’s budget prospects even in the long run: contrary to what you may have heard, public-sector workers in Wisconsin and elsewhere are paid somewhat less than private-sector workers with comparable qualifications, so there’s not much room for further pay squeezes.

So it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.

In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.

Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes.

And if you missed this in the comments over the weekend, Coozledad has a contribution for your next open-mic night (with apologies to Paul Simon):

They rounded us teabaggers up and we’re off to Wisconsin
I stashed some oxy right here in my bag.
So we bought a case of Miller Lite
Skoal Bandits and Moon Pies
And rode off to teabag Wisconsin
Cathy I said as we boarded the charter in Branson
Dollywood seems like a dream to me now
It took me four hours to clean up
from eating those hot dogs we got at the Stuckey’s
Snacking on the bus
Little Debbies and Fritos
She said the man in the corduroy looked like a Jew.
I said be careful he probably works for George Soros!
Toss me a Xanax there’s probably one stuck in your waistband
right by that cheeseburger and your cellphone
So I knocked back another beer
She passed out in the seat
And a green fart rolled out the window.
Cathy we’re going to be lost when we get to Wisconsin
What they call barbecue ain’t the same thing
I hope they’ve got us some motorized shopping carts
I’ve come to teabag Wisconsin!
Done come to teabag Wisconsin!

I was singing the line about the man in the corduroy suit during my grocery shopping. I hope anyone who overheard had a sense of humor.

Well, I was ahead of the wave, and now I’m behind it: Blogs, they are so over:

The Internet and American Life Project at the Pew Research Center found that from 2006 to 2009, blogging among children ages 12 to 17 fell by half; now 14 percent of children those ages who use the Internet have blogs. Among 18-to-33-year-olds, the project said in a report last year, blogging dropped two percentage points in 2010 from two years earlier.

Former bloggers said they were too busy to write lengthy posts and were uninspired by a lack of readers. Others said they had no interest in creating a blog because social networking did a good enough job keeping them in touch with friends and family.

Haven’t they figured out the secret yet? Let Paul Krugman do the work!

Finally, today’s question for the baseball nerds in the group: Why do pitchers and catchers arrive before everyone else in spring training? Is there a reason?

Shovel time.

It’s just as well that the weekend is coming, as I need to unplug from the internet and stop paying attention to politics for a while. I’m starting to feel that old sourness, the simmer I maintained from roughly 2004 through 2008…no, through now, that pecked-to-death-by-ducks feeling.

Part of it is — when will I learn? when??? — paying attention to Sarah Palin again. She “slammed” Michelle Obama over her breast-feeding proposal, in CNN’s headline. In the copy, she “took a swipe” with this nonsensical comment:

“No wonder Michelle Obama is telling everybody, ‘You’d better breast-feed your baby,” she said at a Long Island appearance on Thursday, after slamming President Barack Obama for rising gas prices and other items — like milk — since he took office. “Yeah, you’d better, because the price of milk is so high right now.”

Because the price of milk is, what? The White House’s responsibility? Is she making a joke? Infants aren’t fed milk, at least not directly. Should we bother to point out no one is saying “you’d better” breastfeed? Or by doing so are we falling into her trap?

Meanwhile, her wingman, Michele Bachmann:

“To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies? You wanna talk about the nanny state, I think you just got a new definition.”

Oh. Again, no one suggested government should “buy” a breast pump for anyone, only that women should consider it for their babies, and that the IRS considers the cost deductible as medical supplies. This sounds very reasonable to a reasonable person; the benefits of breastfeeding are well-known, for both mother and child, and encouraging more of it is like encouraging healthy eating across the board, but as we well know, $P is opposed to that, too. Except when she’s claiming we all have first responsibility for our own health, in which case it’s a good thing.

(Most poor women — the ones most in need of financial support for breastfeeding — will find many pumps out of reach, financially, at least when they’re purchased new. However, there is a wide range of alternatives to the one I used, the Medela Pump in Style, which retails for $350. Those include the vast secondhand market (I paid $100 for mine, used), rental and the old favorite, “hand expression,” i.e. self-milking. But I wish more women would give breastfeeding a try; it is truly one of the best things I ever did. And I did it for a year, working most of that time. I never needed one of these. Mrs. O’s on the side of the angels here.)

And I’ve been watching the Wisconsin protests with mixed feelings, as I cannot avoid the spin from both sides, but having it all spun through my brain leaves me with this conclusion: This is not about public employees learning to give back or whatever. This is about busting their unions, and don’t even tell me it isn’t. Anyway, I guess this is the left’s tea party. The capitol building was so packed the people who work there were having trouble getting through the halls. And while this legislation will no doubt pass eventually, I can’t begrudge folks a few days of …well, not rage, exactly, this is Wisconsin. Disgruntlement? The Democrats’ run-and-hide strategy is nothing new, either; Molly Ivins wrote some of her best columns about this when tactic was used in Texas in the ’80s. Meanwhile, wait until the unions are gone — then the fun really starts. Wisconsin teachers are prohibited from striking under terms of their current contracts. When those are gone, well, careful what you wish for, King Walker.

(For an alternative on how one might successfully bargain with a union in a time of diminishing public resources, see here. I’ve linked before, but there you are.)

All is not grim, however: “I Am Number Four” looks like the best generator of hilarious bad reviews since “Sex and the City 2,” even without the “smells like number two” headlines. Ebert:

I like science fiction. The opening shot of “I Am Number Four” holds promise, as John (Alex Pettyfer), the narrator, explains that he is a Mogadorian, no doubt from a planet named Mogador. Specifically, he is Mogadorian No. 4. Don’t expect me to explain the Mogadorian numbering system. He is hiding out on planet Earth and doing everything possible to disguise himself as a box-office attraction like Edward Cullen.

Paul Constant:

Oh, and there are aliens called Mogadorians, who are evil and who want to murder John for some evil reason. They have evil monster dogs that look almost exactly like every other evil monster dog in cinematic history, from Ghostbusters onward. And John has some kind of power that can do whatever he needs at any given point. (He can cast light out of his palms like a flashlight, push things around with telekinesis, blow shit up, and… jump-start cars?) It’s just one scene of generic sci-fi garbage after another.

And so on.

So. Here’s to an internet-free weekend. Think I’ll clean a bathroom.

I’d like to go on the record to register my astonishment at how much discussion the RoboCop statue question has engendered hereabouts, but I really shouldn’t be too surprised — this is exactly the sort of topic for which talk radio, blogs and newspaper columns were invented, the equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

It all started when the mayor’s staff, in responding to a tweet, nixed the idea of a permanent RoboCop, and from there, the internet swung into action. It took just six days to raise $50,000 via Kickstarter, which should be more than enough to pay an artist’s foundry bill and stick him somewhere on the riverfront. As for all the arguments against, which boil down to It’s Not Serious and There’s a Better Way to Spend $50K, I say (shrug).

My thinking may have been influenced by a weekend in lovely Milwaukee last year, where you’ll recall I met yet another fictional character who lived in a real city, represented in statue form:

The Bronze Fonz stands there all day, offering photo ops for all. Fun fact: Sylvester Stallone funded his own Rocky statue, and was miffed when the Philadelphia art museum refused to place it at the top of the steps.

Of course, if it were up to me, I’d add ED-209…

…as a salute to the glitches in all of us.

For what it’s worth, I recall liking that movie. It had the usual ridiculous Paul Verhoeven ultra-violence, and a coke-fueled cynicism that will always be associated with the Reagan administration, in my memory. Peter Weller carries the lead role acting mainly with his mouth, an impressive achievement. There’s a show that seems to be playing on all background TVs throughout, called “I’d Buy THAT for a Dollar!” I want to see that show someday. As for Detroit being the model for our dystopian future, I remind you the film was shot almost entirely in Dallas.

So, who watched “Jeopardy!” this week? I didn’t see all three nights of Watson’s triumph, but I saw enough. The revelation, for me, was in how much we need more carbon-based life forms like Ken Jennings. I’d forgotten how much I missed him — a guy who wears celebrity lightly and always keeps his sense of humor, proof that fame doesn’t turn everyone into Sarah Palin.

The new governor of Ohio — not a Sarah Palin, but a cocky shit in his own right — stepped in it recently, calling a Columbus police officer who issued him a ticket an “idiot” in a public forum. Because I believe police are entirely capable of being idiots just like the rest of us, I watched the dashboard video of the stop. Didn’t see anything idiotic going on. I’d forgotten those Columbus P.D. uniforms, with the white shirts and hats. There was a story a few years back about a couple of Columbus cops doing something heroic — I forget what. They were photographed sometime after the heroism, and were cited by supervisors for not wearing their hats, as per department policy. Now that’s idiocy, guv’nor. Just so’s you know.

So, this has been something of a meander today, eh? Any more bloggage? A little:

The Amish Bernie Madoff. Priceless.

Come the revolution, I hope women like this are sentenced to life in Carhartt coveralls:

After Ana Pettus, a 42-year-old mother who lives in Dallas, watched a gold minidress with a plunging, fringed V-neck go down the runway at the Balmain show in Paris last year, she knew she had to have it. She bought the piece—she wears it as a tunic instead of a dress—along with three others from the fall 2010 collection at the Paris boutique of the luxury French fashion house. Price tag: €55,150, or about $74,000.

Fashion weeks in New York, Paris and Milan generate a tremendous amount of press and buzz for some of the world’s most expensive clothes. But many of the runway styles are actually purchased by a small group of customers, not all of them from the isle of Manhattan. And unlike celebrities and socialites, who often get designer clothes at no charge in exchange for publicity, these customers pay full price.

Things not to do when you’re pulled over on suspicion of drunken driving: Start drinking from a bottle of scotch and play the “don’t you know who I am?” card. Adios, Miguel Cabrera.

And adios to you, too. Have a great Thursday.

As soon as I heard the terrible news about Lara Logan, I knew it would only be a matter of time before a handful of numbskulls, marching forward under the banner NO MORE POLITICAL CORRECTNESS, would say something charming.

It didn’t take long. Roy has a roundup. It’s the Daniel Pearl story with sex and a prettier victim. That is, there are lots of she-asked-for-its, sprinkled with what-else-can-you-expect-from-those-animals, and a certain amount of what-exactly-happened-in-this-sexual-assault (and please, spare no details).

I’ll go in a different direction: What happened to Logan isn’t shameful in any way, and she should talk about it.

There was a movement in this direction some years back, in journalism circles. The editor of the Des Moines Register, I b’lieve it was Geneva Overholser, wrote a column asking, if rape isn’t “about sex” and is an assault like any other, why journalists have a widespread shared agreement not to name victims in news accounts. Maintaining the veil only serves to silently reinforce all the ugly prejudices about victims — that they’re ruined, somehow, and should never talk about it.

A woman came forward in the wake of that column, Nancy Something, and told her story to Overholser a Des Moines Register reporter, who wrote about it in painstaking detail, using her full name. It was a compelling read, and underlined her point. What happened to Nancy Something was an assault, plain and simple, that just happened to take a sexual form.

And nothing changed. If anything, the atmosphere regarding reporting crimes got even chillier. Look at a newspaper from the 1960s, and that’s one thing that strikes you — how much more open that sort of reporting used to be. If you got mugged in an alley, you could expect to find your name and address printed in the paper, as well as what hospital you were taken to, and what your condition was at press time.

I understand Overholser’s position, but I don’t share her belief that changing the journalism will change the nature of the crime. Every single one of us practices something I call “distancing,” i.e. the immediate calculus, upon hearing upsetting news about misfortune befalling someone else, of how this would not have happened to us. We wouldn’t have been in Detroit at that hour. We would never buy real estate in a city below sea level. We never accept opened bottles of beer from strange men. And so on. It’s far, far worse when it’s rape, because, as we’ve learned to accept for a while now, so often the perpetrator is someone we know. (But it wouldn’t be something we know, because we have such great people sense. And also, we would never wear anything that tight and low-cut, and we aren’t blonde, and so on.) It’s taken us a long damn time to get to where it’s acceptable for a woman to not be a virgin when she gets married. I think we’ve got some ground to cover before being beaten up = rape.

But maybe having Logan talk about it would help. Although who knows? Reading some of those reactions Roy rounded up, I’m wondering if it would make things even worse.

So, bloggage:

Let Jimmy Kimmel harvest the low-hanging fruit of the Harry Baals story. And then let Jon Stewart get the good stuff.

And that’s it for me, alas. This week, Wednesday is the new Tuesday.

Saturday night was out of the ordinary, for us — a choir concert for two middle schools and the high school they feed into. (Except that Kate will not go to that high school, but never mind that.) I suppose the intent was to show the whole vocal-music program from farm team to majors, and if so, it was impressive. I’ve always liked Kate’s choir and her teacher, but the high-school program is something else. I’ve not watched many episodes of “Glee,” but the little school’s nemesis, the well-funded, always-perfect Vocal Adrenaline? I saw them Saturday night.

The teacher has been there for a while, and is known for the rigorousness of her program, her high standards and her temper. A series of events a few years back led to the revelation of some ugly events in her personnel file — thrown staplers, verbal hectoring, the usual things you expect from a temperamental perfectionist — but an investigation by the state board of education left her in place. She had enormous support from the parents and her former students, but the damage was done. She was revealed as the Bobby Knight of show choir.

Now, I don’t know all that much about show choir, but I did a little reporting on marching band when I was in Indiana, and I suspect they’re the same. That is, they long ago stopped being about fancy marching during football halftimes and are now about intricate choreography, custom arrangements of current pop music and special effects, all displayed on a competitive circuit that’s unknown to virtually everyone who doesn’t have a kid participating. And those competitions are dominated by a handful of large, wealthy suburban schools with booster clubs that don’t mind paying top dollar for special-team coaching and flag-squad uniforms designed to sparkle just so under stadium lights. And other things. Lest you think I exaggerate, one proprietor of band-supplies store told me about an effect used by a Carmel school a year or two previous — a piece of fabric nearly the length of the field, called a “fly,” that required special equipment to launch. The thing was shot in the air, it gracefully unfurled just so, and it drifted over the field, hiding the band from the audience’s eyes for a few seconds before settling in a puddle on the other side. While the band was hidden, it was scrambling into a new formation, so that when the fly landed, ooh, look!

Rumored cost of the fly effect: $100,000. Ryan Murphy, the creator of “Glee,” is an Indianapolis native. While his fictional school is set in Ohio, their nemesis, Vocal Adrenaline, goes to Carmel High.

So, back to Saturday night. The middle-schoolers went first, the talent preview, the scouting report. And then it was time for all the high-school groups, and there were many — the Beginning Women, the Advanced Women, the Men’s Glee, the Pointe Singers — men’s, women’s, combined. (The concert ran for two hours. Tickets were $15, not including the afterglow at one of the nicer restaurants in town.)

Everyone was so good it made your heart ache. The women sang like angels, starting with a couple of numbers that showcased their control before breaking it up with a little musical comedy — “I Wonder if I Love That Boy Too Much,” a doo-wop number about stalking. (If it’s unfamiliar to you, that’s because it’s one of those numbers written for show choirs. Not so many current pop songs; sorry, Gleeks.) The boys’ big showstopper was “The History of Rap,” a medley that ran from the Sugarhill Gang through Jay-Z, and managed to get within sight of minstrelsy, but stopped short enough to remain inoffensive, if you’re not offended by nearly 30 boys, nearly all of them white, tho’in’ it down to “California Love.”

And the choreography! If you think it’s step-ball-change and an occasional grapevine move, well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Quite a bit. Which reminded me of another thing that came out during the state-board investigation — that practices routinely run from after school to 11 p.m. That the reaction among her boosters boiled down to, “What? You think this stuff comes easily?” says a lot about the state of these non-athletic extracurriculars, not just choir, but band, theater, and all the rest. The quality of the performance rises steadily; this was honestly as good as a lot of musical theater I’ve seen. The question is, are you willing to pay the price?

Kate likes choir, but she’s not taking it next year, and besides, her high school’s program is, frankly, not in this league. She’s going with music theory and will (I hope) learn composition. Which I also hope will serve her throughout her life.

I’m so late it’s not even funny. So a quick bloggage scan:

Tomorrow marks the fifth anniversary of the last time Clarence Thomas opened his mouth during Supreme Court oral arguments:

If he is true to form, Justice Thomas will spend the arguments as he always does: leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling, rubbing his eyes, whispering to Justice Stephen G. Breyer, consulting papers and looking a little irritated and a little bored. He will ask no questions.

Thanks, Bush 42! 41!

Another great Dear Sugar advice column you should read. Aimed at people in their 20s, but good advice no matter what the age.

Happy Valentine’s Day, all. I’m off to work like a field hand.

A number of people have sent me links to the various Harry Baals stories of recent weeks, perhaps in the belief that I had not heard of it. Readers, I have. I lived 20 years in Fort Wayne, and of course I knew we’d had a mayor in the past named Harry Baals, although I did not know he was the longest-serving in the city’s history, so there’s one thing I learned this week. Fort Wayne is not New York City, and Baals was no Fiorello LaGuardia, but it seems he needs some recognition.

Lately a website run by the city asked for suggestions on what to name its new city/county office building, currently called Renaissance Square, although elderly residents persist in calling it “the ol’ Wolf & Dessauer,” after the department store that was an institution for so long. Nothing institutional changes quickly or easily in Indiana, but sometimes it can change with a certain amount of style, or try to. And the option to change the name of Renaissance Square to the Harry Baals Government Center has been the runaway favorite since the question was posed a few weeks ago, and in the last days, since the story went national? As of last reload, it now has 21,410 votes. Its closest competitor, another wiseacre choice (“the Thunder Dome”) has 1,774, and the one after that, which doesn’t seem to have any hidden testicle or action-movie jokes in it, the Chief Little Turtle Center, stood at 866.

What were we just saying about our inner 15-year-old? You don’t have to tell me there are plenty of snickering jokesters in the Fort. Baals has had some official honor for a while now; there’s a street named after him, although it begins and ends in a city park, so no one has to put it on their nice letterhead or anything. The street signs are stolen so often that in recent years the replacements have read “H.W. Baals Drive.” And as I recall, one of the city’s brewpubs has had a Harry Baals Irish Stout on the menu, and that sound you hear is the rumbling of Harry turning in his grave whenever its name is invoked, because of course Baals is a German name, and he would probably prefer a lager.

The story finally broke out this week because the city announced it didn’t care how many votes the proposed new name got, the building was not going to be named for Harry. Here’s a glimpse of what drove me insane about life there: The deputy mayor, when pressed for a reason by a TV reporter, said that Baals was mayor of the city, and the building would be for both city and county offices, and it wouldn’t be properly respectful of our rich heritage in the county, blah to the blah, etc. I like to think that in Detroit, someone would go on the record saying, “No, we’re not going to name our building after testicles. Grow up.”

But then, of course, the reporters had a sturdy news peg, and a great headline — City scratches Harry Baals, etc. — and it went straight to the late-night talk-show monologues, and that brings us to today. I guess I should take a position, and it’s this: Name the building for Harry. Open a shop in the lobby selling every kind of branded tchotchke anyone can think of — T-shirts, beer-can cozies, keychains, whatever. Trademark everything. Play it cool here, if you like; a simple HARRY BAALS GOVERNMENT CENTER is fine, no need to roll in the gutter, as much as you might be tempted to go with I WENT TO THE HARRY BAALS GOVERNMENT CENTER AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TEABAG.

I remind you the Lansing Lugnuts turned around with a renaming, and the revenues brought in by their branded merchandise were nothing to sneeze at. In fact, I think they’re a business-school case study now. The New Normal in government is, if there’s a revenue stream, stick a straw in it. They’d be fools not to.

And it’s not like there isn’t a precedent right down the road in Muncie. Ball State University was named for its benefactors in the home-canning company (now expanded into “one of the world’s leading suppliers of rigid metal packaging products and services, primarily to the beverage and food industries”). While there’s a fair amount of snickering over Testicle Tech and certain cheers at the football games, everyone’s learned to live with it.

So now that we’ve dispensed with that [brushes off hands], here’s the whiteboard in the classroom where I held office hours yesterday:

I can make out “open = freedom = puppies = milk = America!” and that note at the lower left is intriguing, “gubmint motors” balancing with “Eminem imported from Detroit.” I’m sorry I missed this lecture. Sounds like it was a good one.

So, bloggage? Sounds like CPAC was a hoot. Someone called Dick Cheney a war criminal? I assume that unwise soul was hustled out for some waterboarding. Roy tried to blog it for a while (scroll down) but finally decided life was too short. Can’t blame him. Donald Trump showed up? Are you kidding me?

Not much else, but here’s something I found via Hank, the sort of personality profile every newspaper with ambition used to run all the time, now confined to a few of the bigs and writer’s paradises like St. Petersburg: Meet the sheriff who has appointed himself the country’s smut police.

And with that, I think I’ll head on out. Have a great weekend, all.

In the case of resigning fit fun classy guy Rep. Chris Lee, I think I have nothing to say. Except maybe, this: Are we all 15 years old inside? Does our emotional development in adolescence stay with us forever? It’s like a grain of sand in an oyster, only instead of giving you a pearl, you get those Blackberry/mirror self-portraits: Here I am flexing the guns. It’s appalling.

And may I just say this? I have never, at any stage of my life, found politicians attractive at all. Show me a girl who sleeps with elected officials, I’ll show you a real sicko. Rock stars I understand. John Boehner? No.

Day two of Too Early to Blog week is today. Fortunately, I have collected much linkiness.

Thanks to Hank for finding this fine appreciation of “Broadcast News,” pegged to the Criterion Collection DVD release. It rolls around from time to time on cable, and I usually stop to watch at least a few minutes. It’s amazing how much worse the journalism it predicted turned out to be, but as a romantic comedy, it’s hard to beat.

An acquaintance of mine bought this book for her son, and said so far she’s found four typos in it. So far.

Dunno why I’m including this, except that I like to see animals doing what they’re best at, and in slo-mo high-def video? It’s kind of mesmerizing.

If today’s office hours are anything like yesterday’s, look for me in comments.

As usual, or rather, as is too often the case, I’m overbooked. For the next two days, I have committed to getting downtown in a state of bodily cleanliness and mental alertness by 10 a.m., which means this must be wrapped in the next 12 minutes, and pals? I don’t have much.

Figures, as I don’t feel as though I’ve left my house for anything other than a chore or a dire errand in days. It’s 7 degrees at the moment, which doesn’t exactly invite going out for a ramble.

But go out I must, and it’ll be good to get the blood circulating and see some new faces. In the meantime, I have some bloggage:

Sally Jenkins, WashPost sportswriter, takes a look at the just-completed Super Bowl and says: Enough. And says it well:

A tipping point was reached with this Super Bowl, for me. It was the screwed-over anger of those 1,250 people without seats that did it. Those travel-weary, cash-whipped fans paid small fortunes to go to the game, only to discover their stubs were no good, because fire marshals declared some sections unsafe. All of a sudden the whole thing seemed offensive. It was just too much.

For absurdity, how about those four Navy F-18s flying over the stadium – with its retractable roof closed? Everybody inside could only see the planes on the stadium’s video screens. It was strictly a two-second beauty shot. Know what it cost taxpayers? I’ll tell you: $450,000. (The Navy justifies the expense by saying it’s good for recruiting.)

Mark Bittman, after last week’s manifesto, presents the accompanying slogan: Eat real food. I am so glad I don’t watch Oprah. This would drive me insane:

Ms. Winfrey, who has been on more diets than the rest of us combined, challenged her staff to “go vegan” for a week. Intriguing, except her idea of surviving without meat and dairy — no explanation given for why we should go from too much to none — is to fill your shopping cart with fake versions of both, like meatless chicken breasts and dairy-less cheese.

Finally, what does it say about the newspapers in Fort Wayne that this week’s Richard Lugar talker, linked all day yesterday on memeorandum, was produced by one of the city’s anemic TV news departments? It contains snark material…

Lugar’s spacious Washington office is so covered with books that it looks like a library. The bookshelves are a testament to Lugar’s longevity.

(Wrong verb, trite modifier, etc. etc.)

…and the usual Hoosier politics jaw-droppers. Brian, I assume this Pat Miller is the radio host?

“[We’re saying to Lugar] thank you for what you’ve done. We respect you greatly as a person and for what you’ve done in the past. But to go forward, we feel it’s going to need to be a different candidate,” Tea Party activist Pat Miller told NewsChannel 15 in January.

I expect so, and having suffered through pieces of his show from time to time, I recall a host so dumb he made Mike Pence look like NPR material. That’s saying something.

So now it’s been 12 minutes, and I have to get away. Let’s hope for more tomorrow. Thanks, as always, for stopping by.

There was another estate sale last weekend in Grosse Pointe, a big one in a big house, with the magic words in the ads that always brings the stampede: “Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo.”

There are two kinds of estate sales around here: The kind where someone died, and you’re asked to take your pick of the old-lady furniture after the heirs have stripped off all the Chippendale and Stickley. Sad, tired, dusty and pee-smelling, these sales are hardly ever worth my time, although if you like small appliances from the ’50s, you can pick up a trinket or three. And then there are the ones sometimes called “moving sales,” where the sellers are much younger, the stuff newer. I always assume it’s a bankruptcy sale. Not much of a stretch.

But old or young, I can’t help but construct elaborate narratives in my head about the family whose stuff I’m considering. The woman’s clothes are a size six, but her shoes at 10s? Model type, obviously, tall and lanky. Walk through the library, inspect the books on the shelves: lots of chick lit and biographies of sports figures? She sat home reading many nights while he entertained clients at Wings games. The kitchen has a six-burner stove fit for a restaurant, but looks brand-new? She heated Lean Cuisine after he came home and said he’d already eaten in the grill room at the club. (Was that someone else’s perfume on him? Why did he pull away from a kiss?) They keep witless, inspirational knickknacks scattered around, river stones engraved breathe or believe, little needlepoint pieces propped against a desk lamp: Follow your heart. Their artwork is so bland it blends with the wallpaper, although it’s priced very high (probably because of the frame).

I do all this to make myself feel better, of course, although lately I look at these 6,000-square-foot showplaces and think what the heating bill must be in January.

By the time I got there, all the shoes had been snapped up. The furniture was meh and there wasn’t even much in the kitchen. There was some corporate-branded swag in an upstairs bedroom, and a little Googling revealed the owner was a high-ranking executive for the swag-brander, and that the brander was struggling. Bankruptcy? Still possible, but given the way of the world it’s also entirely possible they’re just selling it all and relocating somewhere warmer and sunnier, where they’ll restock with all new river stones and Jimmy Choos and semi-literate sports bios. My guess is, they’ll land on their feet. The rich so often do.

Today’s interlude in lack of character and schadenfreude concluded, let’s take a look at the bloggage, shall we?

Jim at Sweet Juniper has an excellent post on dealing with his inner food snob. At least he acknowledges he has one. The worst ones just judge, judge, judge.

In the Department of Animal Justice, one of my former colleagues Facebooked this oddity, about a man who bled out after being sliced by a fighting cock. I’d heard of the practice of attaching sharp blades to a rooster’s spurs to make the game bloodier and deadlier, and while it’s possible to enjoy this particular outcome, I was more interested in how, exactly, one arms a rooster. Google led me to this photo-heavy blog about cockfighting in the Philippines; gory and distasteful pictures, but fascinating just the same.

I’d like it on the record: I couldn’t care less where Keith Olbermann will be working next.

Something I don’t want to read as my daughter enrolls to take biology next year.

Off to work.