Many years ago, I did some reporting on mental illness, and interviewed the mother of a man diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. She was a real piece of work, and I recall thinking I’d have gone crazy with her as a mother, but I’m sure her burden in life was no small thing. She was insistent that her son had been made crazy by psychedelic drugs, mainly pot and LSD, which he’d taken in his early adulthood. He was a child of the ’60s, and that’s what children of the ’60s did.

I’m sure she knew that mental illness typically presents in early adulthood, and she probably knew that perhaps millions have experimented with the same drugs without tipping over into insanity. To her, it was the X factor that explained the inexplicable: How did this happen?

I’m willing to believe the drugs were a catalyst, paranoia and hallucinations being a well-known symptom of both schizophrenia and hallucinogenic drug use. A catalyst, but not the only catalyst. So is stress. So are the mystifying chemicals swirling around in our bodies. But who’s to say a brain with hallucinations and paranoia just coming to the boil might not be nudged another degree or two by a drug that induces both? People prone to depression should avoid alcohol, because alcohol is? Class? A depressant.

There’s been a lot of talk these past 48 hours about how much the martial rhetoric of the tea-party right may have contributed to the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona. You know — that wonderful conservative Democrat, cut down by a crazy leftist (in the Fox News narrative). There’s a lot of discussion about Sarah Palin’s crosshairs map I posted Saturday. For the record, I don’t think this Loughner kid saw that map and had it act like the queen of diamonds did on Raymond Shaw in “The Manchurian Candidate.” But I do think an unhealthy mind, looking around for weak spots to blast through like so much hot lava, can be affected by the zeitgeist, whatever it is at the moment.

A pretty vague statement, I realize.

A friend of mine likes to quote a line he first heard in an interview, that when people go crazy, they tend to go crazy in three main areas — sex, religion and aliens. They flock to others who believe they are watched at all times by a shadowy being in the sky, which is also pretty much the monotheism argument for good behavior. Does that make religion bad? Of course not. Does that mean Sarah Palin had a hand in Loughner’s action? Of course not. But I wouldn’t want to be her today, either.

One of the ten thousand things about that peabrain that has bugged me from the get-go is this: The way Palin dragged into the mainstream, and held up for celebration, a certain sort of political attitude I used to only hear on talk radio. Lock and load! …I’ll give up my guns when they pry them from my cold, dead fingers. …Don’t retreat, reload! And so on. I am not a fan of Andrew Sullivan by a long shot, but I’m fascinated by this passage he found on Palin’s Facebook page:

To the teams that desire making it this far next year: Gear up! In the battle, set your sights on next season’s targets! From the shot across the bow – the first second’s tip-off – your leaders will be in the enemy’s crosshairs, so you must execute strong defensive tactics. You won’t win only playing defense, so get on offense! The crossfire is intense, so penetrate through enemy territory by bombing through the press, and use your strong weapons – your Big Guns – to drive to the hole. Shoot with accuracy; aim high and remember it takes blood, sweat and tears to win.

Focus on the goal and fight for it. If the gate is closed, go over the fence. If the fence is too high, pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, parachute in. If the other side tries to push back, your attitude should be “go for it.” Get in their faces and argue with them. (Sound familiar?!) Every possession is a battle; you’ll only win the war if you’ve picked your battles wisely. No matter how tough it gets, never retreat, instead RELOAD!

How many times would you have to read that before you realized she’s talking about a basketball tournament? She — or whoever handles her web stuff — headlines the piece, “Warning: Subject to New Politically Correct Language Police Censorship,” so it seems her ghost is having a bit of fun here, but it’s of a piece with other things this staunch Christian writes about politics — it’s a battle, requiring big guns, artillery, lots of ammo. Ha ha, those politically correct language police! She certainly has made “don’t retreat, reload!” a rallying cry of sorts, offering it in March (when the crosshairs map made its debut) and to buck up Laura Schlessinger in August. It’s mentioned in her first book, attributed to her father, although anyone who’s spent any amount of time reading bumper stickers knows it didn’t originate with him, either. That’s one reason so many of her supporters like her. Hey, my dad used to say that!

When you’ve made political disagreements — which are about ideas, after all — into something that requires big guns and heavy artillery and armies, when you’ve literally targeted a woman who gets shot in the head a few months later, can you really pull the shocked-shocked act when people notice the connection? Really? Honestly, I wasn’t all that surprised by the shooting of Giffords (although I thought it would be the president someone would take a shot at). I’ve been expecting it for months, since those water-the-tree-of-liberty T-shirts started showing up at tea party rallies. I’m sure you’ve heard by now that Palin’s people are calling the notorious crosshairs “surveyor’s symbols.” The fact they’re floating that preposterous bullshit, along with their hastening to take the graphic down, suggests that while they’ll still protest furiously, they still feel something warm on their hands, and it’s not maple syrup.

In the end, it may well be that Loughner was answering only to the voices in his head. What a wonderful world it would be if that was the only place we ever hear Palin’s again, too.

Folks, I have to be out of range for most of today, which means I may not be able to participate much, or approve comments that get hung in moderation. All I ask is that we keep it civil (which you almost always do), and that some of you (and you know who you are) try to keep it on the rails. Can we do that? I know we can.

Let’s start a new thread for discussion of this news.

Meanwhile, I’m posting this because Mrs. Palin’s web people have taken this charming graphic down. I want it to stay up, in as wide distribution as possible, for obvious reasons.

As the Bunk would say: “Happy now, bitch?”

Huh, wha-? I have a blog? It’s Thursday? I’m supposed to write something?

Sorry. It’s one of those sleep-deficit mornings. Thursday is Kate’s jazz-band rehearsal, which means I have to get up extra-early, and today it was extra-extra-early, because my neighbor, an extra-extra-extra-early riser, was up shoveling snow under our bedroom window. I could tell the depth of the snow (a dusting) from the sound of the shovel: scraaaaape…scraaaaape…scraaaaaaape. Very thin snow can turn to glare ice, so I don’t blame him for keeping things tidy, but it was just, criminy, 6 a.m. So I resolved to skip the morning coffee and go back to bed after dropping her off.

It was the right idea. You know you’re sleep-deprived when your emergency-deficit catchup sleep contains vivid dreams. It was my house dream. I always dream about houses when I dream at all, and it’s always the same one — I’ve recently taken possession of a new house, one that looks ordinary until I find a door within that leads to many more rooms I haven’t seen before, whole wings of neglected fabulousness, with grand dusty furniture and sometimes even an indoor pool. I think I have an idea what this dream is about, but if any of you armchair Freudians would like to weigh in, feel free. Let’s stipulate up front: The house is me. Most things in dreams are reflections of our selves, I’m convinced. We are born, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to figure out why we exist. Apparently I’m missing my calling as a home-rehabber. Or maybe I contain an indoor pool.

Since we’re late today, and scattered, let’s just make it a mixed grill today, shall we?

Because I expressed disappointment with the pilot, and because I think good work should be recognized, I have to take back my earlier comments about “Detroit 1-8-7.” From a rocky start, the show has markedly improved. No, it’s not “The Wire.” It’s not “Southland.” It owes too large a stylistic debt to “NYPD Blue.” but it has shown real improvement over the course of its first season, and the last couple of episodes have been a pleasure to watch; the writers, the crew, even the actors getting a real sense of the city. I’d like to see what they can do with a second season. Of course, having said all that, I have now bestowed Nance’s Kiss of Death upon it, and whaddaya know, prospects for a second season are growing dim. Nevertheless, Michael Hodges’ story about the locations manager’s thoughts on the city’s look are worthwhile if you’ve ever been here. (Although I don’t know how he managed to, in a citation of city-based TV shows, throw “LA Law” in there — one shot almost entirely on stages in the showbiz capital of the world — and leave out the David Simon portfolio. But I’m not his editor.)

“Detroit 1-8-7” has also been a boon to the city’s creative community; it seems a week doesn’t go by that someone I know or sorta-know doesn’t have a speaking part, and that’s cool. Maybe, if the show is on the bubble for renewal, the drastically lower costs of shooting here, thanks to the tax credits, will play the deciding role. Here’s hoping.

This was, of course, one of the big stories on the health-care news farm last night — the vaccine-autism link, long discredited on a scientific basis, is now revealed as something worse than just bad scholarship, but actual fraud. I know some of you are alternative-health care enthusiasts, and I don’t want to cast aspersions on whatever works for you. (Yes, even coffee enemas.) But this movement away from one of the modern age’s great medical triumphs has been especially pernicious, with its victims the people who most need our care and protection — children. The fact that twits like Jenny McCarthy, and her great enabler, Oprah Winfrey, are still walking around raising questions and offering alternative theories just galls me.

A couple years back, “This American Life” did a show with the theme “ruining it for the rest of us,” and featured a story on a measles outbreak in some flannel-and-Birkenstocks outpost in the Pacific northwest. One of the interviews was with a mother whose baby had gotten measles just before he was supposed to get the vaccine, thanks to vaccine protestors in his daycare facility. There were complications, and while the child lived, he ran a sky-high temperature for days, and didn’t really shake it for weeks. It was a terrifying story for anyone who’s nursed a sick child, and the la-de-da attitude of ignoramuses like McCarthy and her confederates is simply appalling. Someone needs to be punished for this. Start with Andrew Wakefield, the original perp, but don’t forget the blonde, too.

And with that, I think I’m finally up and at ’em. Good rest of the day to all.

Slept very badly two nights ago, which meant I had to go to Defcon IV last night — the guest room (for total silence and darkness) and an over-the-counter sleep aid, which doesn’t so much help me fall asleep, but keeps me that way through the little wee-hour disturbances that tend to rouse me. I got the six solid hours I require for function, but the downside is morning grogginess. I’ve been watching Gawker.tv clips in an attempt to regain my sense of humor, and it seems to be working. I laughed, anyway.

The movie in that clip — “The Craigslist Killer” — was advertised at one of the movies I saw over the holidays. That’s the movies nowadays: Arrive early, and you not only get previews (which always start late), but a pre-show, as well, featuring commercial after commercial. One was for “The Craigslist Killer,” another for Axe body wash, a fragrance I would happily work a shift running a honeywagon to avoid. Have you seen these? There’s a whole series of them, all about washing balls, washing back doors, washing ball sacks. You’ll feel like you’ve been locked in a room with a 14-year-old boy. Old Spice did it miles, miles better, and it probably smells better, too.

What is it with young men and their fragrances? When my nephew was a teenager, he and his friends went around in clouds of stinkum, more than I ever recall wearing as a girl. I guess they’re self-conscious about their rapidly changing, suddenly mystifying bodies. I don’t mind a nice-smelling man, but my definition is perhaps a little different: A man should smell like clean skin and soap. Even a little hint of b.o. doesn’t bother me; it just means he’s working hard. Whereas I take one whiff of Axe and think: Jersey Shore.

So, let’s skip to the bloggage, shall we?

Two video bits kick us off today. First, for fans of “Boardwalk Empire” or just digital magic in general, a quick walkthrough of the major visual effects used on the show. Yes, yes, they built that huge boardwalk stage in Brooklyn, but they built a lot more on a hard drive. My favorite was the boat, and the maiming of poor, haunted Richard Harrow:

And our own J.C. Burns was BoingBoing’d yesterday, when someone stumbled across his signoff video from WOUB-TV in Athens, Ohio, c. 1977. Groove on the cool ’70s hair and swingin’ fashions, all:

I knew a few of these people. I see Bill Dickhaut makes an early appearance. You pronounced his name “Dickout,” and you can imagine the jokes. You think you’re so funny when you’re 19. Here’s to all the people with funny names, who suffer for it. I like to think it’s not such a cruel world anymore; far more funny names in the world. One of my professors from that time was Korean. Sung Ho Kim. He said he went through grad school in the U.S. being called Wong Hung Lo by his classmates, and it was months before he realized what was going on, at which point he demanded to be called Wong Hung Up.

This story, about the state budget crisis in would-you-believe?-Texas! is weird — it seems to cut off after the lead. I wanted to know a lot more. But the figures are jaw-dropping, even with the weasel word “potentially:”

This month the state’s part-time legislature goes back into session, and the state is starting at potentially a $25 billion deficit on a two-year budget of around $95 billion. That’s enormous. And there’s not much fat to cut. The whole budget is basically education and healthcare spending. Cutting everything else wouldn’t do the trick. And though raising this kind of money would be easy on an economy of $1.2 trillion, the new GOP mega-majority in Congress is firmly against raising any revenue.

Which sent me googling for comparison; Michigan’s shortfall is $1.9 billion, which is regarded around here as apocalyptic. And look here at this photo of the new governor at his first staff meeting, which included his chief of staff — Dennis Muchmore. (See above.)

One final thing: Please stop sending me the incredibly sad pictures taken by the latest French duo to go through town, set up their tripods, and take pictures of Detroit’s very picturesque ruins. I haven’t been so moved since …the last batch, which were probably also taken by Frenchmen. There are so many French journalists wandering through town the hotels have probably renamed the continental breakfast for them, the way the hotels in Honolulu had miso soup and fish on the breakfast buffet in the ’80s. Yes, they’re lovely photos, but I’ve seen versions of every one for years now, and the accompanying stories are always wrong in some fundamental way, and I’m just tired of reading them. They’re perfect examples of how you can get every fact right and still miss the truth.

Off to get some work done. And catch my rabbit.

If I didn’t get my fill of movies-in-the-theater during the holidays, I came pretty close. For all my posturing as a cineaste, the plain fact is most of my viewing is via DVD, so much so that I’ve started noticing how much I’m coming to resemble Kate at her first in-theater movie (“Elmo in Grouchland,” in the year Three): Sitting on Alan’s lap, happily scarfing popcorn, the movie started and she froze. Her hand didn’t move from the popcorn bag, and neither did she, for many long moments. That wide screen was pretty overwhelming.

Nowadays, when I see a movie in a real theater, I need to ask myself, “Was the cinematography in ‘True Grit’ that good, or did it just look good to someone who’s seen the last two Coen brothers’ movies on a not-even-16:9-TV?” Answer: Yes. It’s that good. And after “The King’s Speech,” I had to marvel at Colin Firth, who played two-thirds of his performance with the camera about three inches from his nose. Or maybe they set it back a few feet and used a long lens, but he still filled the screen. And when you fill the screen, you better know what every muscle in your face is doing, and to the extent he seemed to have control over all of them, well, it’s Oscar-nomination time for Colin.

The last of the three was “The Fighter,” and I think I enjoyed that one best of all, and I’m not sure why, although let’s check off its pleasures: The fabulous Melissa Leo, Christian Bale playing a crackhead dancing right up to the edge of chewed scenery but not stepping over, the fabulous Amy Adams, a perfectly fine Mark Wahlberg, and boxing. I’ve come to appreciate boxing late in life; too many Saturday nights spent on the couch watching HBO bouts has finally paid off, and I can see the sport of it now. It’s not just two guys pounding each other, it’s scoring and strategy and plans of attack. The film is based on a true story, and I was glad not to be a lifelong fight fan, because I didn’t want to know the ending. Alan said afterward he could see it coming like a punch in slo-mo, but not me.

But it raised the question about things like that. I don’t think I’m being spoiler-y here about “The King’s Speech” when I tell you the story — about how King George VI learned to master his lifelong stammer — all leads to a climactic address before the entire British Empire, via radio, and that he manages to pull it off. There wouldn’t be much of a movie if he had stood in front of the microphone and gaped like a landed fish, after all. And yet, you watch it unfold with your heart in your throat. The director, Tom Hooper, keeps the suspense high by showing Britons gathered around radios around the world, all gnawing their fingernails to the quick, waiting for their king to buh-buh-blow it. You empathize, the great miracle of storytelling.

The other wonderful thing about “The Fighter” was its several scenes of lively arguments between large groups of people, everyone talking at once, that reminded me how hard it is to capture these things. I guess it’s a credit to the director. When you watch your share of amateur-made short films, that’s the first thing you notice. One person talks. Then another person talks. Then the first person replies. And so on. It’s just not the way life unspools, especially when you’re arguing. I’d love to watch David O. Russell at work. He directed my all-time favorite rom-com, “Flirting With Disaster,” which contains a dinner-party scene just like that — audio chaos, everyone yap-yap-yapping over everyone else. Just sublime.

Anyway, I recommend all three. “The King’s Speech” isn’t a big vitamin sandwich on whole-wheat bread, either. It features Eve Best as Wallis Simpson — how wonderful is that?

Pretty wonderful. As is our first bit of bloggage today, from our own Coozledad. He always wanted to live with a sexual athlete. But he might have arranged the furniture more wisely.

Last night was a slow news night. Some people were late for church, and it made the main page of the New York Times.

Do not take health-care advice from celebrities. A new year’s resolution that’s easy to keep.

Finally, a sad story from a former Freep reporter: Farewell, Detroit. It broke his heart.

As for me, I’m just freezing. The long dark slog toward the light begins with the disassembly of the holiday displays. And it’s Monday. Urg.

For what it’s worth, I think this will be the last entry of the old year. The de facto holiday weekend begins tomorrow, so I might as well get down with the program, and give myself a couple days off as well. I plan to spend them brooding and cleaning. I brood while I clean, and vice versa. Nothing like a dirty bathroom for a good brood. And when it’s all over, you have a clean tub, which always improves my mood. This week I put the finishing touches on a long-simmering creative project, reread it all, and came to a conclusion: Well, this sucks. Get me rewrite. Time for a brood. And a workout. And the removal of all this Christmas stuff.

I get an annual Christmas newsletter from a couple of old friends. She’s a state officeholder in Ohio, he’s a lawyer, and some of you know who I’m talking about by now, but if you don’t, sorry, I’m not going to name them. They’re a loving, ambitious family, and over the years, I’ve found their annual chronicle of their year — and their successes, always their successes — a little oppressive. Their kids are all well-adjusted, smart and attractive. Even their dogs and cats are photogenic. Year after year, the newsletter details trips to glamorous overseas destinations, scholarships, admissions to exclusive schools, election to office, and one year, even a Robert F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. When you’re like me, and your successes have not featured photo ops with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, and your holiday letter could boil down to a phrase or two — another year older, no longer wearing anything other than Bermuda shorts in summer, love, Nance — opening theirs is sometimes an uncomfortable exercise.

This year’s letter arrived with a big disappointment in the lead — sorry, friends, no insider’s tour of the United States Senate for you in the new year — and then settled into its usual tone of optimism. There was even a guffaw, one made for a Christmas letter, in which their youngest son, already supporting himself as a full-time college student by working as a waiter in a jazz club and “modeling when assignments come along that he can fit into his schedule,” was approached about auditioning for “The Bachelorette,” but turned them down. (I told you this family was special.) And it occurred to me that success of all sorts is relative, and I’m putting 2010 down in the win column. We all stayed healthy, employed and afloat in some very stormy seas. That will have to do this year.

I hope you can read this appreciation of Quincy Jones (Wall Street Journal, paywall, etc.) pegged to his new book. If not, I’ll share one morsel I loved:

As (Michael) Jackson’s producer, Mr. Jones selected the songs—plowing through 800 to find nine—hired the musicians and engineering team, and supervised the recording, mixing and mastering of his three monster hits. Yet Jackson lost his appreciation for Mr. Jones’s contributions. “All he does is sit there and hold his head,” said Jackson, according to Mr. Jones. Jackson’s father, Joe, claimed the producer spent too much on “Thriller,” though the budget was well under $1 million. Thus far, the album has sold about 100 million copies.

Have they given out the Darwin Awards yet? Because I think we have a late-season winner.

It’s easy for the mayor of a city like New York to think your job is somehow greater than its description. Michael Bloomberg should have studied the career of Chicago’s Jane Byrne — in the end, it’s all about snow removal.

And with that, adieu for the year. See you on the new calendar.

I simply refuse to pay close attention to wonk-circle chitchat during a holiday week, but I gather this piece on the current fashion for libertarianism was the subject at hand yesterday.

I read it. It made sense. It seemed fair. Of course, libertarians hated it. I gather they thought it got mean toward the end. I’m taking that as a sign it was pretty good. This passage got to the gist pretty well:

There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because “states’ rights” had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Of course, we’ll never get there. And that’s the point. Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they’ll never have to prove it works.

I like that because it restates what I’ve been saying for years: Being a libertarian means never having to say, “So help me God” on swearing-in day. Today we have a few exceptions, but not enough to change libertarianism from a philosophy to a party. All you need to know is that Ron Paul is pro-life to know what a joke it is. Sorry, ladies — your liberty stops when you get knocked up.

And also, this:

It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers. At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. At worst, as in Ayn Rand’s teachings, it’s an explicit celebration of narcissism. “Man’s first duty is to himself,” says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. “His moral obligation is to do what he wishes.” Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project, since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission. The message: Never compromise. If you don’t get your way, blow things up. And there’s the problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility. The result wouldn’t be a city on a hill. It would be a port town in Somalia. In a world of scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies. And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, you’d be surrounded by assholes.

(I think someone saw that video.)

OK, then. I have to say, with all my complaining yesterday, I do love the pace of this week. Fifty percent of the world is on vacation. No one calls. I can sleep late. Why yesterday, I even took time for a luncheon graze through Costco — they had all the party dips and spreads out for sample. I bought a bottle of champagne just to be a good customer. And then reflected that my life is pathetic, and all I need is a Christmas sweater to tip all the way over into total nerd-dom.

A quick skip to the bloggage? Sure:

Lesbians — they’re just like us! They go on vacation, wear silly hats, and shop at Hermes.

Of all the things that would upset the right about $P, it took…s’mores? We live in Crazytown.

Take that disembodied hand off my knee, or the best of the year’s worst Photoshops.

Think I’ll go do some more pretend work.

All that talk yesterday about Christmas carols reminded me of when Kate was in elementary school, and how the Christmas choir concert would unfold. Mrs. DeCarlo always mixed the grade levels up, and the kindergarteners usually came in the second half of the program. One year, as the curtain rose on the assembled little ones, the man next to me slapped his palms together once and said, “Yeah! Now for the good stuff!” His child was not in kindergarten; he just knew what he was talking about.

Mrs. DeCarlo didn’t stint on the material, either — they always sang the most charming songs, frequently with hand gestures. My favorite was “Christmas is Coming” with new lyrics: Christmas is coming, and we are getting fat / ’cause we eat too much of this and that. It was so sweet it made your teeth hurt. A little boy in the first row began potty-dancing to such an urgent extent that the other music teacher helped him into the wings. He returned during the second number to scattered applause.

It was like that every year. K-1 are the rock stars of any school concert.

Folks, I’m hanging up the laptop for the rest of the week. Too much left to do, too little to say. (Obviously.) I might toss up some photos, but this will be it until Monday. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and until then, here’s some bloggage to chew on:

An interview with the Christmas innkeeper, by John Scalzi:

The baby is born, right? And then these guys show up. And they say, we have brought gifts for the child. And I say, that’s nice, what did you bring. And they say, we have brought gold and frankincense and myrrh. And I say, you’ve got to be kidding.

What’s wrong with that?

Let me quote another Christmas song for you. “A child, a child, shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold.” Really? Silver and gold? And not, oh, I don’t know, a blanket? An newborn infant is exhibiting signs of possible hypothermia and your response is to give him cold metal objects? Who ever wrote that song needs a smack upside the head.

A wonderful Detroitblog on the real Santa. He drives a sleigh — you really must see the picture, it’s a hoot — and he’s black. I’d love to see his naughty list.

Robin Givhan, the Washington Post fashion writer, is leaving the paper. Too bad. I’d love to see a compare-and-contrast piece between Michelle Obama and, oh, Jane Sullivan Roberts. I can’t believe we have a first lady who wears Marc Jacobs. I don’t know if the Obamas will be gone in two years or six, but when they go, I will miss ’em. They are the most photogenic First Family in…maybe ever.

Who have you showered with lately? Barney Frank schools a reporter from CNS. (You can tell CNS is a shoestring outfit, because they can’t afford a good microphone.

Roy has finally had enough of the war-on-Christmas nonsense. Note cleverly hidden racism in the Christmas card that poor National Review writer is allegedly forced to buy (“Whass Happenin’ on the Holidays?”). Yeah, that’s all that’s available where I shop, too. What a load.

Not to end on a sour note, but I’m off to the Eastern Market. List, checked twice: Ham, nuts, peppermint bark, whatever else tickles my fancy. Merry Christmas! The New Year comes later.

I generally have the chance to attend a big, splashy, over-the-top Broadway musical — i.e., the ones where tickets start at $100 and climb swiftly upward — about once a lifetime, if that. I find ticket prices like that a little hostile. In fact, now that I think about it, the only show like that I’ve seen, if you rule out a few also-rans, is probably “Miss Saigon,” which I didn’t even like. I thought the helicopter stunt was showoffy, and, well. Give me a night of Eugene O’Neill and I’m happy. I think theater should be all about talking and minimally dressed stages, but your mileage may vary. No judgment. Life is a cabaret, old chum.

So it may be that I’m looking at the ongoing train wreck of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” with unsympathetic eyes. You tell me:

An actor performing in the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” was injured during a performance Monday night, according to the police and several witnesses.

Theatergoers who attended Monday’s performance of “Spider-Man,” a $65 million musical featuring complicated aerial stunts, said that they saw a performer playing the title hero fall about 8 to 10 feet into a pit during the closing minutes of the show, and that some equipment fell into the audience when this occurred. A video of the performance showed a line holding the performer apparently snap.

The story goes on to reveal some remarkable facts. I caught the tail end of a public-radio segment about the problems the show is having getting up to speed, but it sounded far more routine than this — the accident described above is only the latest and most serious in a string of mishaps that have included concussions and some sort of injury suffered by actors in “a sling-shot technique meant to propel them across the stage.” Oh.

The show’s budget is at $65 million. I wonder what they’re paying for insurance.

I know this production — it seems wrong to call it a “play,” somehow — is directed by Julie Taymor, the MacArthur-branded genius of the Disney musicals. Since her branding, her work has been a tetch uneven, at least if you accept the critical consensus that “Across the Universe” was a disorienting p.o.s. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, but just one paragraph of his review gave me a headache:

Julie Taymor, famous as the director of “The Lion King” on Broadway, is a generously inventive choreographer, such as in a basic-training scene where all the drill sergeants look like G.I. Joe; a sequence where inductees in Jockey shorts carry the Statue of Liberty through a Vietnam field, and cross-cutting between dancing to Beatles clone bands at an American high school prom and in a Liverpool dive bar. There are underwater sequences which approach ballet, a stage performance that turns into musical warfare, strawberries that bleed, rooftop concerts and a montage combining crashing waves with the Detroit riots.

A swift recovery to the fallen actor, whose injuries we don’t even know the extent of, yet. Best of luck to this production; the world needs all the art it can take. I’d say “break a leg,” but somehow I think that would be in bad taste.

Tuesday of Christmas week — time to check the list a third time and run around buying last-minute stuff I should have gotten weeks ago. Also, groceries. Apparently there are two other people living in this house, and they expect to be fed from time to time. So I’d best be doing that soon. Any bloggage? Sure.

Via 4dbirds, PolitiFact takes on a meme circulating through the right/left/crazy blogosphere: No, Virginia, the government does not want to regulate your backyard garden. These people will believe anything.

Stop laughing. This isn’t funny. It’s NOT funny when someone shoots himself in his sleep. In a car. On the Ohio Turnpike. Well, the guy is from Detroit; he had his reasons.

MMJeff wanted to draw attention to this story, so consider it drawn. A plan to make homelessness history? Good luck with that. How to address the voluntary homeless, the street kids and other spare-changers who make street navigation in places like San Francisco and Seattle so irritating? Not much mention made of those. The plan is ambitious, however, and I wish its executors well. Like the producers of “Spider-Man.” But we shall see.

Some years back, my paper ran an interview with the author of a new book. I forget the title, but it was a guide for younger women who marry older men, which the author had done. How this happened was glossed over in a sentence:

“Bob was married when he met Tiffany, but he soon separated from his wife, and they began their relationship.”

Oh.

I believe Bob was a dentist, and Tiffany was a hygienist in his office. Oh.

A friend clipped the story, and scrawled in the margin: She broke up a family, and now we’re doing an approving story about her.

For once, we were ahead of the curve. For the first time in maybe ever, this NYT story from the Vows pages was on both memeorandum, the political blog aggregator, and wesmirch, the gossip blog aggregator. You can see why:

Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla met in 2006 in a pre-kindergarten classroom. They both had children attending the same Upper West Side school. They also both had spouses.

Blah blah blah about how well they got along and what fast friends they became, and:

They got each other’s jokes and finished each other’s sentences. They shared a similar rhythm in the way they talked and moved. The very things one hopes to find in another person, but not when you’re married to someone else.

Ms. Riddell said she remembered crying in the shower, asking: “Why am I being punished? Why did someone throw him in my path when I can’t have him?”

In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O’Connell’s, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, “I feel exactly the same way.” Then she left again.

Well, you can see how this would be a talker across the spectrum. The National Review sent its designated old maid to tut-tut. Even Gawker and the Village Voice joined the fun of beating up on John and Carol Anne.

I’ve known a couple or two who got their start like this. It’s unfortunate, but it’s really not the worst behavior I’ve seen in 53 years of life on the planet. I believe following your feelings should end when you start following a stroller, but everybody’s different, and besides, without couples like John and Carol Anne, who would we beat up on? My puzzlement is best summed up by the Voice writer, who wondered, “Why would you sign up for this? Why would you apply to air your family business? WHY ARE YOU SO DAMN PROUD OF YOURSELVES?” Well, yeah.

There is one blanket exception to the rule I would make in all cases, and that’s when one spouse decides he or she wants to leave for a same-sex partner. In those situations, the most decent thing you can do as an onlooker is button your lip, avert your eyes and silently Be There. I’m still waiting for the Times to Go There. Maybe next year.

Not much going on here today. We’re into the holiday slide, methinks. School is out, but work carries on. We had the Nall Family Christmas Saturday, which went very well, although my brother overbought, as usual. He could head these situations off at the pass if he did a little advance planning, but as usual, the last couple of days were punctuated by phone calls from the mall. The most famous of these came one year, 60 minutes before dinner was to start, and went like this: “Does Nancy need a vacuum cleaner?”

I didn’t. But this year I got a soap dispenser with an electronic sensor, which cracks me up. Did I activate the optional blinking-light timer, which runs for 20 seconds, so that your hands get good and washed? You need to ask?

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

I know the Irish drink, but I had no idea the Brits were this bad:

The foul smell is ominous. Downstairs in a central London pub, a woman has passed out on the floor of the ladies toilets, lying on the cold tiles with her dress pulled above her waist and knickers at her feet.

Intoxicated and at risk of choking on her own vomit, this is no teenage tearaway but a respected economist and middle-aged chief executive of an international company. It is Christmas party season in the City.

The City being, of course, the financial districts of one of the world’s most important cities. A great rewrite of “Silver Bells” is just waiting to happen.

This guy hangs out at a corner I sometimes pass en route to the freeway. Sometimes I wave. I used to think he was homeless and crazy, but I can see the iPod wires in this clip, and he’s obviously oriented enough to know what season it is:

Off to work. Happy Monday, all.