It didn’t take Vladimir Putin to resurrect the Soviet cultural experience. We have it right here in the Metro:

Just another day at the Comcast service center. We were picking up some boxes that would enable our secondary TVs can get more than four channels. Or something. On the Indiana BMV Scale of Existential Misery, it didn’t rate very high — there was a Tigers game on for the line’s viewing pleasure, and I had my phone. And even without it, I’m not a terrible waiter. Those who cannot spend an idle 30 minutes without climbing the walls lack inner resources. I have inner resources in spades (it’s why my butt is so big).

I felt worse for the workers, who toiled inside a bulletproof fortress worthy of a Detroit liquor store. I understand people hate their cable company, and I understand the equipment has some value, but it seemed like overkill for Warren. Note, also, the chartreuse walls of the inner sanctum. Multiply by 40 hours a week. I’d be deploying the escape chute by Tuesday.

Afterward, it seemed time for lunch, and Alan had a suggestion: Lazybones Smokehouse, the best barbecue shack you never heard of. Plunked in a depressing stretch of an ugly road in Roseville, surrounded by machine shops and other places filled with men who think “cilantro” is the dance that took Pam Anderson out of “Dancing With the Stars,” it has the distinction, Alan says, of being “a restaurant where I’ve never seen a woman customer.” OK, happy to be a rarity, then. The building stands out from the gray landscape with a mural featuring pigs pitching horseshoes while cows and chickens watch. It features…where do I start? Every meat you can think of, seven kinds of sauce, combos that either make you smile (“The Hog Trough,” your choice of four meats atop a mountain of fries) or wince (“The Smokestack Lighting,” chopped burnt ends, applewood bacon, cajun sausage, caramelized onions and cheddar on a hoagie bun), but essentially everything that’s worth barbecuing.

We both ordered pulled-pork sammiches with slaw served Memphis-style, Texas spitfire sauce, then sat down to wait. There are two large tables, where you eat family-style. True to form, the only other eat-in customers were men. Young men. Two were discussing dating. One had a night out planned with a young woman, but he wasn’t hopeful, because she didn’t give good text. I think this was an internet or some other sort of blind fixup, and he was, to my mind, unreasonably fixated on the fact she couldn’t summon up witty repartee in 140 characters or so. I weep to think I brought a young woman into this world, who will have to shop for a husband among these scratch-and-dent specials. One arm was heavily tattooed, although the rest of his outfit suggested an office job, one that requires a plastic ID tag in plain sight (i.e., all of them, these days). Again: I weep.

And that’s the sort of day you have when it’s a million degrees outside and even more humid.

I looked at the Rush Limbaugh wedding album y’all were discussing yesterday. Two takeaways: Mrs. Limbaugh the Fourth has an excellent hairdresser, and an even better plastic surgeon. We see so many bad boob jobs, we forget what a good one looks like, and unless I miss my guess, when that lady goes back to the earth she will leave a pair of silicon bags behind. (See no. 16 in this Gawker photo array). Also, ex-squeeze me? He got a military color guard? Does every 4-F Vietnam-era pussy get that? I guess if the check you write is big enough, but I am appalled. I know, I know: Appalling man is appalling. Still.

Speaking of bad boob jobs, Renee, what were you thinking?

I’ve never been a fan of the Huffington Post. Their steadfast advancement of quackery is a big reason.

Writers have elevated procrastination to a high art. As seen here.

Ha ha ha.

And now I’m gone. Gonna go for a bike ride, damn the humidity. The Miley Cyrus tweeting around here has become deafening, and I want to see if she’s drawn a crowd to her set down in the Farms. Wish me luck. I’m taking a camera.

I must begin today with a mea culpa — it appears the passenger who pushed Steven Slater’s button for the last time was a woman. I had assumed it was a man, but now that I think about it, there’s no reason to believe men have any kind of corner on the jerkoff market. And I don’t know why I assumed that the sort of person who would push a flight attendant that far would have to have XY chromosomes. I’ve known for years that women can be horrible people. I’ve known many of them. And to my male friends, I apologize.

Now, is anyone going to find her? I really, really want to meet her, if only to see whether I know her. And I expect to. Diva bitches tend to come in types. I expect this one will be Still Trying to Catch Daddy’s Attention, perhaps mixed with a little I Grow Old, and Thus Invisible, Therefore I Rage. The latter is the one I see most often in my orbit, and it’s sort of sad, unless, like me, you’ve always craved a cloak of invisibility, in which case aging has this fairly cool upside. But it drives some women insane, and so they grow giant metallic purses, and jangly jewelry, and start slamming overhead-compartment doors on the innocent. Me, you’ll find in my endless rotation of jeans/khakis/white-or-black T-shirts, taking notes.

So, Ted Stevens was on that plane that crashed yesterday. My first thought was cruel — that given the amount of air travel even average Alaskans do in the course of life there, and given how often these planes are small, and given the extremes of weather, etc., that aviation has to rank right up there with alcohol and suicide as the main killers of Alaskans. I wonder if the reporters in Anchorage and Fairbanks have certain phrases on user keys, to save time: “missing and feared dead,” perhaps, along with “killed when the small plane he was riding in smashed into…” and “the search continues, but authorities now describe it as a recovery operation.”

Then I noted Stevens’ age: 86. Eighty-six? No one can say he didn’t get his full measure. To live to 86 and then die in a plane crash? That might be the Official State Death of Alaska. That’s tombstone material: Caught a flight to the undiscovered country, 2010.

So, DryErase Girl was a hoax. Color me…not very surprised. She was too pretty and actressy to be real, and the gag, while clever, raised too many questions: She sent 33 photographs to everyone in her office? How did she know they’d open and read them in the right order? Why did she change her clothes and hair and take off her glasses for the last two pictures? (I’ll tell you why — the last two were shot on a callback. And she had a lazy director. Continuity, people!)

This is being referred to as a “meme.” Meme is one of those words I struggled to get my brain around when it first started popping up everywhere, and finally I threw up my hands and decided there were already perfectly good words to describe a meme — a viral idea, basically — and we didn’t really need a neologism. Although I have used it many times, if it keeps getting used to describe things like DryErase Girl, I’m going to get medieval on its ass.

Someone sent me this piece from Slate last night, about the wildfires in Russia. Scary:

The disastrous Russian heat wave has exposed a key failing of Russian society: The flow of information has stopped. There is not a single newspaper that even strives to be national in its coverage. The television is not only controlled by the Kremlin; it is made by the Kremlin for the Kremlin, and it is entirely unsuited to gathering or conveying actual information. …As a result, no one knows where the fires are burning—unless they are burning right next to you. There is no map that would tell you whether your loved ones are safe or whether there is a fire along your planned travel route. Often, there is also no way to call for help. In a telling exchange, a blogger wrote to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complaining that his village, close to the epicenter of one of the fires, no longer had even the ship’s bell residents had once used to call for help. In a bizarre move, Putin responded by ordering that the ship’s bell be restored to the village.

Say what you will about the media in this country, at least we know what Bristol Palin’s love life is like at any given moment.

Finally, from the Department of Six Degrees of Separation, Johnny Carson’s greatest hits are going online, and as usual, the story mentions one of my husband’s best stories:

In the meantime, the johnnycarson.com site will feature between 40 and 60 video clips — from Ann-Margret’s spirited performance of “I’ve Got the Music in Me” to an appearance by Myrtle Young, the potato-chip lady — that will be updated to reflect current events. And there’s more to come, including a new “Tonight Show” DVD collection that Carson Productions plans to announce later this year.

It’s Myrtle Young, of course, as all Fort Wayners know, or should. My husband Alan made Myrtle a star, starting with the story he wrote about her in the paper, which she rode into a final chapter of her life that landed her on Letterman and Carson, and to travels all over the world as a sort of ambassador of potato chips. She was a sweet lady, as this clip, which TV Guide called the funniest moment on TV, ever, demonstrates. It was funny, sure, but I laughed harder at the line in Alan’s story about her trip to Los Angeles, which was the first time she’d ever been on an airplane. The stewardess said there was a flotation device under her seat, and she got up to check, just to make sure. Everyone honors Myrtle. I honor the messenger. (And also John Bordsen, the editor who got the letter she wrote to the paper after seeing an item about an inferior potato-chip collection in the “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” comic, and passed it along to Alan.)

An easier day ahead. Expected temperature: 91. Groan.

The first time I flew on a plane I was 10 years old. We — my mother and sister and I — were going to the Bahamas on vacation, and my mother insisted I wear a dress. My sister wore a dress, too.

I wasn’t one of those people who flew often, and still am not. But at some point it all changed, and…

Oh, why spin it out? You all know what I’m going to talk about: Steven Slater, the awesomest flight attendant EVAHR. Faced with a jerkoff customer, he responded in kind, but with real style, cursing the jerkoff and announcing his resignation via the plane’s PA system, stopping to grab a beer from the beverage cart and then deploying the inflatable escape slide. Exit stage left! Zoom.

The following prediction hardly counts as going out on a limb, but still: I predict Slater will be the new Chesley Sullenberger. If Sully was the hero of the cockpit, Slater is the hero of the rest of the plane, filled with cranky passengers and the flight attendants who are charged with keeping them in line, at a salary right around that of a school janitor. And we’ve all know the jerkoff who finally pushed him to the breaking point — the guy who has to get up as soon as the wheels hit the runway, who has to be the guy standing in the aisle during the long taxi to the gate, who cannot take a simple request from another without dropping the F-bomb. His bag was heavy enough that when he pulled it down from the overhead, it hit Slater on the head. I know that jerkoff. (I sat behind him on the way to San Francisco a couple years back.) His bag has the weight and density of a thousand-year oak because he’d rather cut off his arm than check a bag, because he’s so important he has to be the first one off the plane, barking into his phone all the while.

As you can see, I’m on Team Slater.

The New York Daily News has more deets:

“To the f—–g a–hole who told me to f–k off, it’s been a good 28 years,” Slater, 38, purred, cops said. “I’ve had it. That’s it,” he added, a passenger said.

The News also saw fit to add that when the guy was arrested, he was already in bed “with a boyfriend.” Well, hell yes he was! This is a man who knows what he wants! Carpe some diem, mofos: Sugar, I’m home from Pittsburgh. Show me how much you missed me.

They’re charging Slater with the usual wilted bouquet of charges — criminal mischief, reckless endangerment, whatever. He’ll get a fine and community service, and some rich person will pay the fine, preferably one who will then hire Slater to work on his private jet. David Geffen, maybe, or Barry Diller.

In the meantime, I hope we’ll see him on “The Daily Show” very soon.

A few years ago, the Wall Street Journal did a piece of harrowing, heroic journalism, a tick-tock on what it was like inside a plane stranded for hours on the tarmac at Detroit Metro during an endless weather delay. I don’t use the word “harrowing” lightly, either — the description of the rising tension, heightened by the slowly fouling air and mutinous mood, was like feeling a constricting snake slowly swallow your leg. At one point there was serious discussion among the trapped passengers of deploying the exit slide and making a break for it, and frankly, I’m astonished none did so. I imagine the next time it happens, someone will. Steven Slater has shown it can be done.

I’ve never quit a job in such dramatic fashion. I go the boring, old-fashioned way — with a terse letter and two weeks’ notice. One of these days, I’ll hire a band to walk into my boss’ office and sing “Take This Job and Shove It.” But not yet. (For one thing, I’m now my own boss. It would be sort of weird.)

Other bloggage? A little:

Last night I stopped behind a pickup with two homemade signs in the back window — one a quote from Abraham Lincoln I didn’t recognize, something about the sin of doing nothing in the face of great evil, another from the Bible, ditto on not recognizing it, ditto the sentiment. “Look, a dickhead teabagger,” I said to Kate. “But you can’t say ‘dickhead.’ I just hate these guys.” Oh, well. All parents fail from time to time. But when you’re provoked like this, profanity is the only logical response. Escape slide!

Pictures of the Russian wildfires. Amazing.

OK, need to relax. Time for Daily Bunny.

And now to work.

I feel like I spent half the weekend in the kitchen, but lately the weekend is when I get the chance to do it. There was a birthday party Sunday afternoon, and the host wondered if I’d bring something for dessert. (I’m getting a pie rep with this bunch.) The traditional birthday dessert is cake, however, so, the challenge: Make a birthday cake in high summer-fruit season. This is what I came up with. Behold, Suzanne’s Summer Birthday Cake:

Nothing special: White layers, whipped-cream frosting, fruit atop, fruit between. As I told Alan last week, you really don’t have to be much of a cook at this time of year. You just have to be a good shopper and assembler.

When I finished I boxed up the cake and arrived at the party an hour early. No one was there yet, including the host, although he had thoughtfully left a cooler of beer on ice in the back yard. So I opened one and got in the pool. Weekends are brief enough around here.

When I bought the whipping cream, the bagger at the grocery held up the carton and said, “Is this whipped cream?” I said, “Not yet. But when you pour it into a bowl and get your mixer involved, it will be.” He looked astounded. Poor kid; no doubt the product of a Cool-Whip household. I’m not one of those foodies who sneers at Cool-Whip. It has its place in many delicious things, including my Thanksgiving Waldorf salad. But I’ve had many such encounters in grocery lines, and I always feel sad for kids who can’t tell onions from garlic, let alone the tricky stuff like shallots or fennel. (I once wrote about this in my column, and got a hell-yeah phone call from a man who raved that he’d asked a grocery clerk for a No. 5 can of something, and the clerk didn’t know what he was talking about! Can you believe?! I confessed that actually, I didn’t know the can numbering system, either, and he hung up in disgust, his what-is-the-world-coming-to quota filled for the day. It’s always something, but nowadays we have Google, which explains all.)

It occurred to me on the way to the car — esprit d’escalier, grocery store-style — that I’d missed the opportunity to really blow the kid’s mind by telling him that if you left the mixer running for a while and skipped the sugar, you’d end up with butter. Oh, amazing heavy cream. A sauce base, a cake frosting, a corn-on-the-cob dressing, ass fat — is there anything you cannot be?

Since my weekend’s experiences amounted to so little, let’s skip right to the bloggage, eh?

Reason to be glad you’re not Muslim: Ramadan starts amid yet another week of brutal heat and humidity.

The president shoots hoops with NBA stars, prompting the usual right-wing skrees. I can’t believe he’d step on a court with LeBron James. I wonder if the pros let him win.

Speaking of which, Glenn Beck is now comparing the Obama administration with “Planet of the Apes.” How…innnnteresting.

And one bit of seriousness — how the recession is filtering down to the local-government level. We’ve been very lucky so far in Suburb-land, although I know the last few budget years have been hair-pullers for city managers and councils. At this point the discussions of consolidation of services among the Pointes is just getting started, baby stuff compared to the drastic measures in the article, about shut-off streetlights and shut-down budgets. Anything happening in your town?

As for me, I have 10 million things to do before 3 p.m. See ya.

* Another inside Columbus joke.

Perhaps you wonder what the glamorous life of a blogger is like. Perhaps you wonder how I come up with the many fascinating topics I poke at like a dissected frog five days a week in this space. Perhaps you think, “I could do that, and get a few hundred unique visitors at a blog about nothing.”

Reader, you could. You want a shot at guest-blogging here? Maybe leading to a permanent spot? It could be arranged. God knows I could use a longer weekend.

Seriously, though, it’s one of those mornings where I wonder if J.C. will write me a program that keeps track…not just of posts, but maybe of total words published here. I’m thinking it has to average out to 3,000 a week, times 52… 156,000 words, or roughly two books’ worth a year. All over my morning coffee. This is either madness or graphomania, and maybe the same thing.

Last summer one of my blog fans said, “Surely there’s a book in this.” I said, “Yes, I’m sure people will buy a highly perishable product between hard covers that was previously — and still is — available free in 700-word chunks online.” But columnists still publish anthologies, don’t they? True, but I never buy those. Or rather, I buy them when they’re published by friends. And my favorites have been the ones vanity-published by friends, or on presses so small they might as well have been. Occasionally I still pick up those produced by Mike Harden, for my money still the best newspaper columnist you never heard of, a generalist out of the Jim Bishop mold, still writing in the Columbus Dispatch from retirement. I used to read his collected works when I was out of ideas myself, and over time got to where I can even recite chunks from memory. He once wondered what would happen if the great poets had labored on Madison Avenue. Like, for instance, James Whitcomb Riley:

When de frost is in de fuel line
And de DieHard’s kind o’ dead
And you 50 miles from nowhere
With icicles on yo’ head
You’ll be wishin’ an’a hopin’
As yo’ shoes fill up with snow
Dat you’d bought it at Sohio,
And let dem pay de tow.

That’s a joke only middle-aged Buckeyes would get. Sohio’s gasoline offered Ice-Guard ™ protection. No fuel-line freeze-up, or Sohio pays your tow. They sponsored the weather report on every radio station in town, always with that promise. Only once in my life did my car stop running in a cold snap, and I wondered, briefly, if I might have fuel-line freeze-up. How, exactly, would I go about collecting my reimbursement from Sohio? Would I have to prove that was Sohio gas in the tank? I paid cash for gas; surely they’d fight me. And then I’d have to provide testimony by a certified mechanic that yes, it was fuel-line freeze-up that had caused my car to stop on U.S. 33 between Lancaster and Athens, probably in some sort of legal deposition, and by the time it was all over, I’d get a few lousy bucks to cover just the towing charge. What a ripoff, and…

I twisted the key again. Car started right up. Reverie over.

No, one footnote: Sohio became Amoco. Amoco became? Yes: BP. Sohio was swallowed by BP. I will always miss their logo:

That cup was given to me by a fellow Buckeye, and I gave it to J.C., another fellow Buckeye.

And now I have bored the pants clean off you, and it’s time to get to the bloggage:

Jack Russell Terriers — little bastards. That story is equal parts hilarious and tragic, but at the end it’s about how a Jack Russell can chew off his owner’s goddamn toe, and still end up the hero.

Wife suspects something’s going on, finds out her husband has another wife and family. How? How else? Via Facebook.

Speaking of which, if you’re not reading the Wall Street Journal’s series on internet privacy — rather, the lack thereof — you’re missing a chance to get simultaneously terrified and infuriated. Particularly today.

And now, I should go do some real work. Maybe write a book.

I’m trying to analyze yesterday’s primary results, in which a moderate Republican, Rick Snyder, triumphed over four others, and by “triumphed,” I mean, “shamed them.” The two tea party candidates, Dutch and Smirky, came in second and third and split the right wing down the middle. Dutch, Pete Hoekstra, would have been the lesser of the two evils, but only incrementally, and besides, Snyder beat him like a drum. How shocking to discover that a movement based on ideological orthodoxy can’t attract a sufficiently orthodox candidate to please everyone.

Or, in the case of Nevada, a sane one.

The Democrats nominated a fiery populist, Virg Bernero. Conventional wisdom is that we’ll have a Republican governor in fall, and my guess is, Snyder will beat Bernero like a rented mule. I can live with a Gov. Snyder.

Elsewhere, Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, who stayed holed up in her bunker all night, fell hard to a state senator, Hansen Clarke, so that’s showbiz. And in my state-rep primary, the harder-right tea party organizer lost to a more moderate Republican who dropped lots of green buzzwords in her platform literature. Michigan is a more moderate state than many, and I don’t want to draw grand conclusions in a time of economic emergency, but I’d say that for the time being, we’re less interested in stopping ENCROACHING MARXISM than in getting the economy’s engine running again. Just a thought.

It wasn’t a terrible day, but a frustrating one. I had the strong sense of running very hard and gaining no ground, which is never pleasant. So I went for a fast bike ride in hot-soup weather conditions, then remembered I needed milk and OJ. Stopped at Kroger, stepped into the blessed AC and promptly began sweating like someone having a heart attack. I must have looked alarming, because an old lady told me to go ahead of her at the checkout. The guy in front wasn’t giving any ground, checking out with a case of Miller High Life tall boys. He did tell me, more than once, that his children didn’t like skim milk, and called it “water milk.” I didn’t tell him that my husband didn’t like Miller High Life, no matter what size the can. On the other hand, I just put a six-pack carton of his current favorite in the recycling, and glimpsed the price tag: $9.69. FOR A SIX-PACK?!?? Jeez. Oh, well. Bell’s Oberon, if you’re wondering.

And then I salvaged what remained of the day with a tomato and corn pie, recipe left in the comments last Friday by I-forget-who, but I thanks you just the same. It was delicious. If you make it yourself, be advised you can use Pillsbury pre-made pie crusts (I did) and any old kind of cheese you want (I did) and even add ingredients (I’d suggest bacon), and you will not be sorry. Less-juicy tomato varieties would make it less soupy, but if you just squeeze the pulp out of about two-thirds of them (leaving a little for taste), everything will work out juuuust fine. It was the kind of dish that really salvaged the evening, even if Kate wouldn’t touch it. More for me.

Today, I’m trying to change my luck. “Transformers 3” is hiring paid extras, so I just submitted my deets and headshot. I think I really missed my chance by not joining the “Red Dawn” cast of thousands last year; with my figure and excellent pronunciation of Russian, I was a natural to play a stout lesbian prison-camp guard who makes lusty eyes at one of the young Wolverines — you know, the Mary Woronov type.

By the way, when is “Red Dawn 2010” going to be released? I have about half a dozen films featuring Detroit friends and acquaintances to see, and all of them are backed up like aircraft in a holding pattern. Like “The Irishman.”

Bloggage: Jolene recommended this to me, and I finally got around to reading it. It’s heartbreaking, but essential, a typically excellent Atul Gawande look at a medical topic — end-of-life care, in this case. I will spare you the snarky remarks about Sarah Palin and death panels.

Oh, and the NYT does yet another story on the thriving Detroit arts scene. These reporters must take a number at some of these installations. Oh, well: Beats ruin porn.

And that’s it for me. Where do these summer mornings go? (You’re looking at it.) It’s blistering hot and looks like a storm’s a-comin’, so I might as well get some work done.

Count me among the multitudes who didn’t know Mitch Miller was still alive. May he rest in peace, wherever that may be. Like many people of the roughly Sally-and-Bobby-Draper generation, I remember the bouncing ball on “Sing Along With Mitch,” although we never sang along. Mitch and the Gang blur together with all those ’60s-era variety shows — the King Family, et al., all of which would be blown out of the water by the glorious subversiveness of “Laugh-In” and the Smothers Brothers. I loved all of it — well, not Lawrence Welk or “Hee Haw” — and sometimes I think about why.

It was the music, of course. The Smothers Brothers taught me “John Henry,” Mitch Miller “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and the King Family…can’t remember. If nothing else, they taught me that there’s no way that much yellow hair could run in one family. Although, now that I think about it, my grandmother taught me that.

Me: Isn’t it amazing that they’re all blonde?
Nana: Not when you get it out of a bottle, it isn’t.

Seriously, though, who is teaching American folk music to kids anymore? Maybe these songs were chosen precisely because they’re in the public domain, but it doesn’t change the fact they’re great songs. John Philip Sousa fretted that the rise of the phonograph would make piano playing and family singalongs in the parlor obsolete, and it took a while, but he was right. I can no more imagine the three of us harmonizing on “Hang Down Your Head, Tom Dooley” than I can see us forming an act and playing Vegas. For one thing, I don’t know the words. Kate, on the other hand, doesn’t know the song even exists.

Her choir’s concert last year included numbers by Leonard Cohen and Coldplay.

The best Miller obit I could find is the one linked above; like all good obituaries, it doesn’t skimp on the shadows:

He had to threaten to fire (Rosemary) Clooney before she would record the gimmicky, fast-paced song, which he insisted she sing with a fake Armenian accent. But within weeks of its release, “Come On-a My House” was one of the biggest-selling records in the country and went on to sell more than a million copies.

…Although he became a legendary A&R man, Miller’s musical tastes weren’t in sync with the changing times as rock ‘n’ roll took control of the airwaves.

Miller reportedly turned down Elvis Presley in 1955, telling Presley’s manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, that Presley was asking for too much money. And he told Buddy Holly’s manager that he wasn’t interested in Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day,” which went on to become a hit.

Simply put, Miller didn’t like rock ‘n’ roll, which he referred to as “musical illiteracy.” Time did not alter his opinion.

Maybe he thought he could wring another hit out of the public-domain songbook. There’s a danger in never looking forward.

So. Phyllis Schlafly was in town a couple weeks ago, dragging her dessicated bones to a fundraiser for some tool in Oakland County. The local Fox affiliate covered a protest afterward; evidently she said something obnoxious. I know, I know, dog bites man. I was more interested in the coverage, which was so glib and pro-forma — I believe the word “controversial” was in the copy about nine million times — and mispronounced Schlafly’s name throughout (Shaff-lee) that I didn’t pay attention to the muddy recording of her remarks:

One of the things Obama’s been doing is deliberately trying to increase the percentage of our population that is dependent on government for your living. For example, do you know what was the second biggest demographic group that voted for Obama? Obviously the blacks were the biggest demographic…

“The blacks.” Huh. Where is she still able to get her hair done like this? That’s what I’d like to know.

My alma mater is the No. 2 party school in the U.S. Well, it’s a rebuilding year, obviously.

Life imitates “The Wire,” Detroit division: Drug dealers work out of senior homes.

Finally, Jon Stewart and his new facial hair tackled Chelsea Clinton’s wedding last night, and said everything that needed to be said. Never have five photographs and a non-news event generated so much bullshit. Until the next time, of course.

UPDATE: Coozledad plunked this in comments, but it deserves better:

There really were two Americas all along, weren’t there?

The New York Times discovers a trend:

At DePaul University, the tip-off to one student’s copying was the purple shade of several paragraphs he had lifted from the Web; when confronted by a writing tutor his professor had sent him to, he was not defensive — he just wanted to know how to change purple text to black.

And at the University of Maryland, a student reprimanded for copying from Wikipedia in a paper on the Great Depression said he thought its entries — unsigned and collectively written — did not need to be credited since they counted, essentially, as common knowledge.

Last year sometime, a local college teacher offered some pieces by his class, who were preparing multimedia journalism projects. Since multi is what GrossePointeToday.com is aiming for, I said send those puppies in.

The first one to arrive had one of those jarring prose shifts midway through that always sets off the alarm. Suddenly, the writer began capitalizing Important Concepts and her sentences took on a distinctly different rhythm. As some of you know, we made a splash a while back with this very thing, and I snipped a sentence from within and asked Professor Google what he thought. Lifted, intact, from Wikipedia. Contrary to what you might think, I hated being the spoiler, but I let the teacher know, and the usual kerfuffle ensued. The details are unremarkable, except for this: The teacher said a full written apology was part of her sentence. It never arrived. I’m sure she didn’t understand the reason.

This doesn’t surprise me; the line between citation and theft has always been smudgy, and copy-and-paste didn’t start with cntrl-C/cntrl-V. It confused me as a student, and it confuses me still, sometimes. The term “common knowledge” means it belongs to everyone, after all, so I was always wrestling with some citation or another — did I have to footnote dates? Simple facts? I think the only reason it comes easier now is because I’m accustomed to reporting, with all its attribution and colons. Police gave this account of the incident: But I’m very glad I don’t have to write papers anymore, and I’m sure my payback for pointing out a certain Bush administration official’s plagiarism will come when Kate does this, unwittingly, down the road.

My friends already down that road say the next thing is high-school projects, in which teachers try to head this stuff off at the pass with some ridiculous procedures — in-class research, hand-written drafts, etc. It’s a real aggravation that makes research papers, never anyone’s favorite thing, even more painful.

Anyway, that’s a good story. I recommend it.

There were lots of good stories this weekend. The Wall Street Journal is rolling out a project on internet privacy from the business angle, i.e., what your browser is telling marketers about you. It’s no accident you keep getting served ads that eerily track with your interests. I’ll say this for that 3A Tiffany’s ad in most national publications — it doesn’t care that I’m not in the market for expensive jewelry. I get to look at the pretty rings and all they know is, I subscribe to a national newspaper. Which says a lot right there.

Related: Watch how you tweet, Facebook and YouTube. But you knew that.

Tomorrow is Election Day in Michigan — the primaries for governor, etc. I notice the tea-party candidates hereabouts are full of contempt for the bank bailouts, but are oddly silent about the other big one, which involved a pretty important industry around here. I noticed tea-party types in Fort Wayne praising GM for keeping the plant there open, not mentioning what the alternative pushed by their confederates would have been. Paul Ingrassia at the WSJ takes a look a year later:

…the bailout was about as popular as a flat tire. Many Americans nursed longstanding grudges for cars like the 1978 Dodge Omni, in which a wiring defect caused the horn to blow whenever the steering wheel was turned. (No kidding; check Consumer Reports.) Others understandably feared that General Motors would become Government Motors.

But what alternative, really, did Mr. Obama have? Had GM and Chrysler collapsed and been liquidated, investors would have picked up some of the pieces. That would have taken years. Meanwhile, the parts makers that supply GM and Chrysler would have collapsed too. Those same parts makers also supply Ford, Honda, Toyota and others, whose U.S. factories would have faced havoc.

The impact on the broad U.S. economy—including the car dealers in all 50 states, advertising agencies, accounting firms, etc.—would have been somewhere between difficult and disastrous. Nobody really knows. The Detroit bailout was like changing a diaper: a dirty job that had to be done because the consequences were worse.

Finally, speaking of plagiarism, a recipe, at Deborah’s request, copied (by hand) from Alice Waters’ “Chez Panisse Vegetables.” I have my problems with Waters as a food-policy expert but certainly not as a chef, and this bean gratin might have been my favorite thing from Saturday’s dinner. Healthy, light, delicious, made with fresh beans, available in markets year-round but especially now:

Fresh shell bean gratin

2 to 3 pounds fresh shell beans (cannellini, cranberry, pinto, flageolet, etc.)
salt
6 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 onion
4 cloves garlic
1 or 2 sage leaves
optional: 1 small bunch greens (broccoli raab, chard, mustard, turnip, etc.)
2 medium tomatoes
1/2 cup toasted bread crumbs

Shell the beans. Yield will vary according to variety, but you want to end up with about 3 cups shelled beans. Cook them with just enough water to cover by an inch. (Fresh shell beans absorb very little water.) When they have come to a boil, add salt and 2 tablespoons olive oil, and lower the heat to simmer. Cook until the beans are tender, about 30 minutes. Drain the beans and save their liquid.

While the beans are cooking, dice the onion and cook it in 2 tablespoons olive oil with the garlic cloves, peeled and cut into slivers; the sage leaves, chopped; and some salt. Cook over low heat until soft and translucent. If you wish, cook a small bunch of greens with the onion; add a little of the bean water along with them, if you do. When the onion is cooked, add the tomatoes, roughly chopped, raise the heat, and cook for a minute or two more.

Combine the beans in a gratin dish with the onions, tomatoes and greens. Add enough bean water to almost cover. Taste, correct seasoning, and pour the rest of the olive oil over the gratin. (You can prepare the gratin in advance to this point, even the day before, and refrigerate it.) Finish by topping with the toasted bread crumbs, and bake in a preheated 350-degree oven for 45 minutes. Check occasionally and moisten with more bean water if it seems to be drying out.

Alice says you can use a variety of beans, which sounds really good, but you have to cook each separately, as the cooking times will vary.

And now Manic Monday commences. Must have food for sustenance! I’m thinking eggs scrambled with spinach, shallots and goat cheese and a big-ass fruit salad on the side. I love summer, I do I do I do I do…

So, I understand there’s a wedding this weekend. I’ve heard this line delivered several times in the past month, always ironically. Gail Collins:

Finally, I am happy to report that Chelsea Clinton is getting married on Saturday. Perhaps you hadn’t heard.

I gather this means the wedding has received redonkulous press attention in the media-saturated east, where the bride and groom live. But honestly, even media-saturated me hasn’t been paying all that much attention, and I probably wouldn’t have paid any at all if it weren’t for the fact the wedding is allegedly taking place in Rhinebeck, N.Y. It so happens we went to a wedding in Rhinebeck, when was it? Seven years ago. A fine time it was, taking place on the grounds of a country inn. This was the wedding I think I’ve mentioned before — the theme was “candy,” and was integrated into everything from the invitation (which arrived in an edible white-chocolate box) to cocktail hour (which featured sticky-sweet drinks) to table assignments (on all-day suckers) to the party favors, which included a custom CD of romantic music labeled to look like a peppermint twist. Scott, I still have it, and listened to it just the other day. It holds up. Track 1: Gene Wilder singing “Pure Imagination,” from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” One of the band members flirted with me, and I’m glad I remember, because I think that’s the last time that’s going to happen, ever.

I don’t know what the theme of Chelsea’s wedding is, if there even is one. I hope it goes swimmingly, and it almost certainly will. New York magazine offers an FAQ full of links, if you’re interested. I’m not, particularly, but I did learn one thing I hadn’t known before: Chelsea is a vegan.

I always hated this sort of “journalism,” i.e., a) covering people who didn’t want to be covered; and b) hadn’t done anything to deserve unwelcome coverage. Shout a rude question at a dirty politician doing a perp walk? Not my thing, but there’s no shame in that. Put up a “slideshow” of nine frames, showing the bride-to-be covering a distance of about three feet, her face and head covered by a floppy straw hat? That’s WWD’s thing, I guess, but it would make me feel dirty. I don’t even like reading it:

Asked on the street what she found most challenging about planning a wedding, Chelsea Clinton looked up briefly but remained silent and lowered her head again.

You don’t say.

If we want to cover political weddings, surely there are more publicity-hungry candidates out there. Oh, wow:

“Bristol (Palin) definitely has some interesting ideas for her wedding,” Us Weekly executive editor Caroline Schaefer told NBC News in a story that aired Thursday morning on TODAY. “She wants to wear a Carolina Herrera gown … in white. She would like Levi and little Tripp to wear camo vests.”

Now this is interesting. The camo-at-the-wedding idea isn’t unique to Bristol, you should know. About a year ago, in that endless week between Christmas and New Year’s, we stumbled upon a marathon of something called “My Big Redneck Wedding” on Country Music Television. As entertainment, I could take it or leave it, but as anthropology? Fascinating. From the “about” link:

Each episode, hosted by Tom Arnold, will feature a different redneck wedding, each with its own rustic eccentricities, whether it is a four-legged best man, a romantic beer can canopy, a celebratory shotgun salute or a reception filled with mattress surfing and mud wrestling.

Honestly, the standard camo detail is so commonplace at these things it wasn’t even worth mentioning, unless it was done in truly interesting fashion: One bride wore one of those headpieces that comes down on your forehead, with the attached veil? Camo. Another had a camo train. The grooms wore camo so often that more conventional black tie was the exception, rather than the rule. It sounds as though Levi and Bristol’s wedding will be all of a piece. And that thing will deserve a slideshow. I really can’t wait.

OK, I’m outta here. We have comp’ny coming tomorrow night, which means I have to clean the house and start assembling the beer-can canopy. Any suggestions for the menu? I thought I’d go to the Eastern Market tomorrow and see what looks good, but if anyone knows of something new and interesting to do with sweet corn and tomatoes (most likely to be found in abundance tomorrow), I’m all ears. (Ha ha. Ears.)

A great weekend to you and yours. I’m gone.

Paul Fussell’s great book on American social class stratification — titled, duh, “Class” — is pretty out of date in the details by now. Written at the dawn of the go-go ’80s, it missed how much that decade changed the relationship between class and money, never mind the ’90s and ’00s, which blew it out of the water.

But a lot of the details are timeless, including my biggest takeaway, which is probably not unique to him, but he gets credit for being the first writer to point it out to me: The hallmark of the middle class is fear. Fear of slipping a rung, either in reality or just in the eyes of others. It explains so much about how middle-class Americans dress, talk and otherwise comport themselves.

Middles love euphemism (“Excuse me, but where is your powder room?”). They like their labels on the outside of their clothes, so everyone knows they bought the right designer purse or necktie. They fret over the condition of their lawns and the shine on their cars. Etcetera. And so it was that I picked up my Detroit News today and immediately identified the area’s biggest residential foreclosure as a distinctly middle-class house. Hell, it might even be proletarian. Who else would build an $18 million, 13,777-square-foot house in a subdivision, complete with bowling alley and “custom wine tasting and cigar rooms?”

“It’s like going to Disney World,” said real estate agent Chris Knight, who has sold the home twice. “It’s a phenomenal, one-of-a-kind special property. Waterfalls, ponds all over the place, streams. Lots of Venetian plaster walls. Imported this, imported that …”

Venetian plaster, you say? It’s so much…classier than regular plaster.

The story reminds us this pile of Venetian plaster — inevitably described as “a mansion” — is not alone in its sad little subdivision, Turnberry Estates:

A third of the subdivision’s homeowners have either faced foreclosure in the past two years or had mortgage problems, public records indicate.

Since March 2008, one house was lost to foreclosure; three were scheduled for sales but avoided them; and two foreclosure sales are pending — including (former Detroit Lion) Charles Rogers, according to the Legal News. The former No. 2 NFL draft pick faces a sale Aug. 31 after defaulting and owing $1.17 million, according to a Wednesday notice in the Legal News.

Turnberry Estates has to stand for something bigger; the writer in me demands it. Nowhere do you see so much evidence of how disconnected wealth and responsibility got in the last 25 or so years than you do in housing — not just in these vulgar money pits but even in more modest upscale homes (always homes, never houses), with their media rooms and enormous closets and wine cellars and poker rooms and all the rest of it. I knew a guy who built a 10,000-square-foot house when he married a woman who had two daughters. They needed the space, he said; they would have a live-in housekeeper to watch the girls when they wanted to do impulsive newlywed things like go out to dinner or fly to New York for the weekend or whatever.

They’re divorced now. But you knew that.

My house is 2,000 square feet. The people who built it raised seven children here, in three bedrooms. My last house was about the same size. The previous owners had five kids — and one bathroom. My friend with the 10K house had separate bathrooms for each daughter. The first thing they did after moving in was convert a dead-air space into a deluxe closet.

Do I sound resentful? I’m not. Enjoy your money, rich people. But when my house is foreclosed upon, I bet it’ll be easier to unload than the $18 million Venetian plaster showplace. Even with a cigar room.

So, some bloggage? Probably we can rustle up some:

The New York Post falls for a wrong-o. Did an accused killer who swallowed rat poison get an emergency liver transplant, as the paper crowed? Um, no. But that is one great headline: Thug’s op is liver worst. Congrats to the greatest copy desk in tab-dom.

Thanks to Rana (I think) for reacquainting me with Tom and Lorenzo, the Project Rungay bloggers who dabble in “Mad Men” on the side. I can take or leave them on the episode guides, but their commentary on the clothes is first-rate. I loved their latest, on Betty Draper last season, including her slammin’ Roman holiday getup. They’ve got great things to say about all the madwomen, though, so warning: You can get lost in that site. But in a good way.

The Michigan oil spill now stretches for 35 miles of the Kalamazoo River, and yes, pals, it looks like we have another BP on our hands. Who could have predicted? And so on.

Kate’s going to the Warped Tour show with her dad tomorrow, and I promised her I’d get her a new guitar strap to collect autographs on. So time to hop to it.