I’m in the market for a bookcase. I’m always in the market for a bookcase. If you have a bookcase, call me and I’ll at least take a look. In this case, I’m looking for a tradeup — the one piece of furniture that persists “above stairs” in our house from my salad days is an old particleboard p.o.s. bookcase, and I’m ready to be shut of it. I considered painting it — still might, if I can’t find a decent replacement — but would prefer to replace it with something a little nicer. So I’m on Craigslist several times a day, getting reacquainted with my Craigslist luck.

What is Craigslist luck? An example; here is a table Amy Welborn found on her Craigslist (Birmingham, Ala.), for $50:

Look at that thing. It’s gorgeous. Maybe teak? Fifty bucks. Meanwhile, I clickclickclick on linklinklink advertising “bookcase! nice!” and see wrecks that make my particleboard disaster look like vintage Stickley. They’re all asking $80. Or more. And I’d have to drive an hour to find it. Bah.

In all fairness, I have to say all my Craigslist luck hasn’t been bad, but the good stretches were only when I was partnering with someone else. Our filmmaking escapades have all owed a lot to Craigslist, but we must have been piggybacking on someone else’s good luck. I understand people use Craigslist to find jobs; the only writing jobs advertised there are the ones for content farms, where they pay $3 for 400 words. Sex addicts use Craigslist to find so-called casual encounters; if I ever did such a thing, I’d meet an ax murderer.

I do two Craigslist searches when I check — “bookcase” and “grosse pointe.” You never know when someone in your neighborhood will be selling something interesting. And may I just say? Affluent people are the absolute worst to buy secondhand goods from. They think every piece of crap they own is worth a thousand bucks, and all their prices are firm. I saw a woman a couple years ago selling a “brand-new” iPhone for $450. At the time, you could buy one in an Apple store for $400. I sent her an e-mail asking — politely! — what the extra $50 was for. She replied, “Ha ha I already sold it asshole.”

That must have been some case.

Craigslist cut the legs out from under my industry, and now it curses me.

Bloggage? Sure:

For the record, I think the FDA has better things to do than fret about sodium. However, this line from a LGM post on it gave me a smile:

Conservatives have evidently worked themselves into something of an incoherent snit over the FDA’s plans to limit sodium in processed foods. If I understand the anxiety correctly, a cooperative effort between the federal government, industry representatives and public health experts to gradually (and I would imagine quite modestly) reduce sodium levels over a ten-year period is pretty much the sort of thing that Pol Pot did before depopulating the cities and having everyone gouged to death with bamboo.

Hysteria on the right is going around, however; Lance Mannion finds a hilarious essay in Reason and runs with it. Back when past-life exploration was trendy among Shirley Maclaine types, I observed that everyone who claimed an acquaintanceship with prior lives was a princess or Cleopatra or the king of all druids; where were the anonymous serfs and scullery maids? I believe the same affliction exists on the right, too, as Lance points out:

You know, I always thought it was me and my bad habits of stereotyping and making sweeping generalizations about people, but it’s often seemed to me that there is a type of Conservative of the more corporatist and self-congratulatory “libertarian” bent who believes that the only reason he’s not a titan of industry is that America has gone downhill since, oh, about 1876.

This type seems to think that if he were suddenly blown through a wormhole in time and dropped in the Black Hills of the Dakota Territories just after the Civil War with nothing but the clothes on his back and a Swiss Army knife he’d show up back here a year later, rich as Croesus, having dug a gold mine out of the mountainside with his spoon and fork and corkscrew attachments and incidentally having invented the telephone, the electric light bulb, the internal combustion engine, and time travel.

Actually, Lance is on something of a roll of late. Today, the stunt restaurant and why it’s bad.

Something I’ve long believed about television, Gawker speaks out loud: It’s time for TV’s old guard to retire. As someone between the age of Morley Safer and Lisa Ling, I’m of two minds. While I think it’s admirable many of these folks are still swingin’ decades past conventional retirement age, it’s unsettling to turn on “60 Minutes” and see Andy Rooney, still at it at 91. I thought that figure — Rooney’s age — was an outlandish exaggeration on Gawker’s part, but no. He’s really 91. Of course, I never liked Andy Rooney, and the compliment that always made me wince back in my columnizing days was this: “I like your column. It’s sort of a combination of Erma Bombeck and Andy Rooney.” Gee, thanks.

Hey, look — someone just sent me an invitation to a premiere screening of “You Don’t Know Jack” tomorrow night, a little perk of being tangentially connected to the creative community in the location where it was shot. Too bad I can’t go. Working. To afford my HBO, where the film will eventually screen in my living room. Ah, well.

Question of the day for a cool-but-sunny Monday: When did bacon become a joke?

Bacon, says Alton Brown, is “meat candy.” It’s certainly tasty, and has always been my favorite breakfast protein — I can barely tolerate those insipid American sausages — but only recently did I become aware that eating it is something of a comedy act. Sites like This is Why You’re Fat and “recipes” like the Bacon Explosion have turned my not-particularly-guilty pleasure into a sideshow.

What happened to two eggs, two strips and out the door? Now we have the KFC Double Down, a bacon “sandwich” between two “buns” of fried chicken breast. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight shows that even fast food can be number-crunched, and demonstrates that, while bad, the Double Down isn’t the worst thing you can order, all things considered. Urp. I prefer Sam Sifton’s digestion of the sandwich at the NYT; while I generally am game for a taste of almost anything, this is one I’ll experience entirely vicariously, especially when it gives me an excuse to read The Onion’s review:

Instead of the expected chicken filling, the Double Down sticks two different kinds of cheese—pepper jack and a mystery variety created by the devil himself to win souls and punish humanity by inciting a massive wave of gluttony-induced heart attacks—bacon (yes, bacon), and something called “The Colonel’s Sauce” between two fried, breaded chicken-breast patties. (The Colonel’s Sauce, incidentally, only sounds like a crude euphemism for ejaculate.)

Rule No. 1 of adventurous eating: Beware of all secret sauces. You really don’t want to know the secret. Although the Big Mac’s is obvious: Some sort of mayo/thousand-island-dressing mashup.

Anyway, back to bacon. I think the problems started when gluttons started adding it to cheeseburgers. You ask me, proteins can be combined in another medium — bouillabaisse is fish stew, paella a big ol’ mess of fried rice — and sometimes on a sandwich (submarine), but not on a cheeseburger. Make up your mind: Do you want a bacon sandwich or a cheeseburger? You can’t have both. But that, I think, was the tipping point. Soon bacon became a joke ingredient, the magic un-PC add-on for everything from cookies to martinis. You think I’m joking. Go ahead, click.

The NYT link above explains that food has always tolerated a certain amount of silly showmanship, mentioning the custom of putting a napkin on one’s head while eating an ortolan. (I’ve read about this. Supposedly it concentrates the exquisite aroma of the endangered French songbird. Also, it keeps God from seeing you do such a vile thing.) We all know about turduckens, and even Julia Child has a recipe for a whole boned chicken stuffed with something else, but God almighty, who goes to the trouble of boning a chicken while leaving it intact? I bet that one came out of some decadent regal kitchen seeking to impress a bored monarch. Peasant cooks — the real gastronomic pioneers — don’t have time for such silliness.

But this new bacon stunt work is just silly, the sort of thing you link and pass around Facebook, but never cook and never eat.

I stand corrected: John Scalzi ate a piece of Bacon Explosion. Someone made it for him as a joke. This may be the single best description of it I’ve ever read, and now I don’t even have to think about it anymore:

Oh, God, imagine there’s bacon on one side of my mouth and sausage on the other and they meet and have hot and angry make-up sex in the middle while a salt lick cheers them on.

As for me, I’ll stick with bacon with pancakes, with eggs, sprinkled on a salad, the occasional carbonara and your late-summer BLTs with tomatoes straight out of the garden. You take your bacon cheeseburgers, your bacon explosions, and your Double Downs right back to hell, stunt eaters of the world. You are embarrassing the pig. You should be ashamed.

So, bloggage:

In keeping with today’s sodium-heavy theme, a story about Detroit’s salt mines, and relations with the neighbors. (Not good.) I think Joe or someone else mentioned them a while back, so there you are.

On those annual get-to-know-the-freshman-class memos, the ones that college in Wisconsin prepares every year to remind the faculty that some of the kids in their classes have never even seen a typewriter, let alone used one, someone should add: The 18-year-olds of today have never known responsible Republicans. I was IM-ing with a younger friend the other day, and realized he had no idea what a Rockefeller Republican was. Jacob Weisberg asks who killed them, and fingers who else? Bill Kristol.

Oh, look: Comcast is backing RightNetwork, a new cable channel focused on “entertainment with Pro-America, Pro-Business, Pro-Military sensibilities.” Looks like Kelsey Grammer is involved. Funny how actors shouldn’t be involved in politics when it’s lefty politics, but on the right they get the Strange New Respect Award. Kelsey, once again, you can’t have it both ways. Although evidently you do.

Hello, manic Monday. Have a good one.

It’s a Slept Late and Still Can’t Wake Up All-Bloggage Post today, pals. Sorry. My body doesn’t take well to cross-country travel. So let’s away:

One of my Facebook friends posted the thing that was going around yesterday — Barack Obama “abolished” the National Day of Prayer but let a Muslim group pray on the Capitol grounds, copy and paste this as your status if you are offended!!!!! — and while it was tempting to just ignore the guy, I thought I’d take the opportunity to try to edify him instead, which led me to Snopes’ dedicated Barack Obama page. Appropriate reading for Tax Day, I’d say. Jesus Christ, but there are a lot of racists in the world. Which is sort of a duh statement, I know, but some of these surprised even me. And I’ve covered a Klan rally. (P.S. He did not abolish the National Day of Prayer. But you knew that.)

This ran last week when we were gone, but Lance Mannion’s complaint about Kelsey Grammer’s silliness has a certain timeless quality. And then there’s the lede:

The only reason for letting Kelsey Grammer blather on about his politics in this interview in New York Magazine is the irony of a Conservative Republican playing a cheerfully out and happily married gay man in a musical comedy that gets a lot of its laughs from making fun of the French version of a Conservative Republican’s discomfort at discovering his daughter’s future mother-in-law is a female impersonator who goes by the stage name of Zaza.

A good run-on sentence is hard to do. Like French farce.

Thanks to mild-mannered Jeff for finding this, the Most Ridiculous Detention Slips of All Time. My favorites are No. 4 and No. 8. Especially No. 8. Pam, Joey, seriously: No. 8. (Although I suspect a fraud. But it’s a believable fraud.)

The SEC just charged Goldman with fraud. Great. This will no doubt crush the market like a bug. Oh well, I wasn’t going to retire, like, ever.

Another oldie, but not moldy, and thanks, Linda, for passing it along, because I would have missed it: The WashPost pursues one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time: What happened to the P-Funk mothership? Not in an abstract sense, but the actual stage prop. Somehow fitting that its last stage appearance was in Detroit. Represent.

Gawker covers the Michigan Militia field day. Yes, way. This is the most succinct summing-up of why-us I’ve yet read:

But militias have long been a part of Michigan’s culture. The state is home to 47 of the approximately 500 militias in America, according to the FBI. Michigan is the Long Island iced tea of militia cocktails—blend New Hampshire’s libertarianism with Massachusetts’ cynicism, and add equal parts gun culture, expansive forests and, at 17 percent, the highest unemployment rate in America.

This is the only story you need to read in the Wall Street Journal today: Say hi to the most envied rich-guy yacht in the world. Russian, natch.

And now I’m off to do…something. Drink more coffee, I think.

EDIT: Almost forgot this last, and I don’t want to do that. In Victorian literature, a dog cart is a light buggy for when you don’t want to hook the team up to the big carriage. In Detroit, a dog cart is Jim Griffioen’s ingenious repurposing of his jogging stroller, pulled by his German shorthair, Wendell. Cutest. Pix. EVAR.

Today’s to-do list:

1) Deposit money in IRA.
2) Mail tax form/check to city of Detroit. Amount owed: $5.
3) Order kick-ass GoPro HD camera for self as a tax-refund, just-because-you’re-you present.
4) Clean house.

That’s a pretty good to-do list. As a self-employed person, April 15 is supposed to be gloomy, but it hasn’t been for the past couple years, since we got Alan’s withholding adjusted. My new year’s resolution is an aggressive savings plan, and once I get it calibrated, we can do some more adjusting to get to the theoretical ideal — zero owed on April 15 (other than the first quarterly, of course). I’m enough of a peasant that I love refunds, however. It feels like found money.

Some years ago, a weenie editorial writer for the other paper in Fort Wayne wrote a tax-day column proclaiming his love for paying taxes. Signing that check to Uncle Sam, he wrote, made him feel like a real American. He envisioned his money flowing into road-building, national parks and health care for grandma. Taxes, he concluded, are good. For this he was roundly ridiculed by our paper’s editorial writers, whose tax dollars mainly go to food stamps for the lazy poor, boondoggle public-works projects and high-calorie lunches for Tip O’Neill (the big-government bete noire of that moment). Taxes are bad.

(And that, we were often told, was why newspaper readers in Fort Wayne were the luckiest in the world. They had a choice in editorial pages.)

Taxes just are, in my book. And today I don’t have to write a check. Except for that camera, about which I’m already having second thoughts. It’s such a bauble, even if the purchase price does include a waterproof housing and several mounts. While we were in Vegas, one of my filmmaking friends said he’d always wanted to do a short documentary about a day in the life of a Detroit street dog. I think this is a great idea, and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It seems a small strap-on camera of this sort might be a valuable tool in such a project. In fact, it might even be…tax-deductible.

Sold!

A few housekeeping items:

A long-overdue change in the nightstand book, right rail. The other day I was pre-ordering something from Amazon (pub date of Martin Cruz Smith’s new Arkady Renko novel: August. Sheesh.) and needed something to fill out the order. I IM’d Laura Lippman on Facebook and said this was a one-time limited offer to pimp any book, by any friend or fellow traveler, and I would buy it sight unseen, no questions asked, just on the power of her recommendation. She suggested “True Confections” by Katharine Weber. Sold. I read it on vacation, and friends? She did not steer me wrong. It’s a wonderful, funny, breezy novel about the candy business, love and marriage, work and truth and all the rest of it. I’m finished with it, but leaving it on the nightstand for a while.

I have a few thoughts on “Treme,” but I want to watch the whole episode again, uninterrupted, to fully absorb it. My first is the same as Ray Shea, a NOLA blogger who pointed out one quibble: In the scenes were people are returning to their homes after the flood, everyone’s door opens easily. As a former 20-year resident of a flooding city, I can second that — the door of a flooded house never opens easily. It’s warped and swollen, and stuff is piled up behind it, and, well. That’s not much of a criticism, but when I saw Clarke Peters’ clothes still hanging in his closet, looking pretty damn clean, I thought of it. (Real NOLA residents have their own thoughts, here.)

My other first impression: Jesus Christ himself must have written some of that music. Watching “The Civil War” for the first time many years ago, the Ken Burns project, my pal Lance Mannion turned to the room after the first musical break of Afro-American spiritual music and said, “And Southerners thought these people were less than fully human. Imagine that.” Yes.

But more later.

And now off to the long-neglected gym.

I wish I could afford/had time to travel more, but it’s almost always good to be home. I’m glad that at this late point in life, I finally got a chance to see Las Vegas. It was as advertised, and not, although complaining about false advertising in a city where everything is fake, from the smiles to the boobs to the hospitality — that’s like complaining about the weather. It’s just the way it is. Deal.

What I liked: The glorious absurdity of the place. That you could get a drink anywhere, at any time of day. The look of the MGM Grand lion at sunset:

Fremont Street. Hoover Dam. The dancing waters at the Bellagio:

Watching Kate play “Anarchy in the U.K.” to an audience of prisoners on Guitar Hero in the arcade at Bally’s:

Among other things. What I didn’t like: The way the maps lie. (“Across the street” means “half a mile away.”) The way the old business model — everything’s cheap as long as you don’t mind seedy — has given way to one in which nothing is cheap, but it’s still most of the way to seedy, just the high-gloss, breast-implant variety of seedy. Great restaurants, but frightfully expensive. Fancy hotels, crammed with people gawking at the fanciness. Like the Bellagio lobby ceiling:

Finally, I grew weary of being nickel-and-dimed. It’s true you can do anything in Vegas, at any hour of the day or night, but it’ll cost you. Everyone has a hand in your pocket, and every inch of the place is designed to empty them as quickly and efficiently as possible. For instance: Someone told me I wouldn’t be able to take Kate into a casino, and so I’d be doing a lot of detouring. Scoff. You can take kids into casinos all you want. (According to law, they can’t “loiter” there.) We walked past more slot machine and blackjack tables than we did fat people. You have to walk through the casino to get anywhere. (They have slot machines in daycare centers, I am certain.) Add-on fees are everywhere; our friends Clark and Aimee were charged a daily fee at their hotel for, no kidding, electricity. A simple ATM withdrawal — from a bank’s machine, not one of those private things — costs $5. I know that staff works for tips, but by the third day, all the forelock-tugging grew wearisome. My last act of defiance was to stiff the valet at our hotel as we were checking out; I had no small bills, and damn if I was going to give him a tenner for putting my suitcase into a taxi. Sorry, bub.

Filmapalooza was OK, a little thin, but the talk by Jason Reitman was quite enjoyable:

I asked him about shooting in Detroit. He said if Detroit could do for the city what it did for its airport, it would have no problems whatsoever. From a visual perspective, he’s right. He talked a little about subject and theme, although he called it “location and the deeper thing.” “Thank You for Smoking” was about a lobbyist for a vile industry, but the deeper thing was freedom of choice. “Juno” was about teen pregnancy, but it was really about innocence and growing up.

Everything I need to know about writing I already learned in the newspaper business.

And the NAB show, the National Association of Broadcasters, the show to which Filmapalooza adhered, was a wonder. Acres and acres and acres of whiz-bang doo-dads, lights and cameras and action and software. Everyone’s showing a 3D television rig — no thanks, anyway — but the thing I found most interesting was the big thing in budget filmmaking: Shooting on a single-lens reflex still camera. This guy showed this film, shot entirely on a Canon 5D. You need a lot of SD cards, but who cares when you can carry your whole rig in one hard-side suitcase?

(They’re shooting the final episode of “House” this way.)

I almost bought one of these at a 30 percent discount, and still might. I have until tomorrow to decide. It all depends on how my tax refund shakes out.

And now we are home. Green and cool and blessed humidity. What did I miss when I was gone?

She-Who wants a bendy straw. And you’d better provide one. No, two.

Gene Weingarten won a second Pulitzer? His long-time editor explains how it happened.

The cilantro/soap thing, explained.

On to taxes.

One of the things that makes life interesting are the unforeseen consequences of great events. There’s an earthquake; buildings fall down; things fall down in the buildings. The journalism about the event will concentrate on things like the Richter scale, deaths, damage and recovery. It won’t talk about your grandma’s china that fell out of the breakfront and smashed to bits, and how losing it that way was, in the end, sort of a relief, because you’re really a more modern person, and a casual entertainer, and dragging that century-old Havilland around was sort of weighing you down, but what can you do? It was your grandmother’s china. But in a small way your life was changed. It didn’t make the news.

I think of this often these days. The Grosse Pointes, like all communities in southeast Michigan and many elsewhere, are finally starting to deal with the consequences of the real-estate collapse. Doing our taxes this weekend, I noticed that once again, our property taxes have fallen, which means receipts at city hall have fallen, which means finally, finally, the Pointes are being forced to do what they should have done years ago — consolidate services across the five municipalities.

And then today brings a Wall Street Journal story, which you may not be able to read if you’re a non-subscriber, so I’ll summarize. The headline sort of says it all: Bank of Mom and Dad Shuts Amid White-Collar Struggle. It’s about the increasing inability of middle- and especially upper-middle-class parents to pay their adult children’s bills. It starts with college tuition, which I think any parent can understand, but it ventures into areas of “support” I thought were limited to trust-fund brats:

Angelica Hoyos, a 26-year-old living in Los Angeles, has put her photography and sculpture career on hold since her parents pulled the financial plug earlier this year after the family’s granite-countertop business suffered. Ms. Hoyos has moved in with her boyfriend, cut spending and earns about $1,000 a month doing free-lance design work and baby-sitting.

“My artistic career is put on the side because I have to make a living,” she says.

We also meet the Johnsons of Fairfield, Conn., whose two older kids are in college and whose youngest is just starting her search for one, but who are also suffering, even though they had considerable college savings. The older kids are plucky, saying they’re willing to take out loans to finish school at Johns Hopkins (at $50K each per year), and the youngest isn’t even thinking about the pricey diplomas. Mr. Johnson feels bad, however:

Further expenses such as first homes and weddings are out of the question. “They’re going to have to elope,” he says.

Take heart, Mr. Johnson. Not having a $150,000 wedding never hurt anyone.

Everything is relative. The Johnsons, we’re told, are living on one-fifth of their pre-crash compensation, and while the story goes on to say Mr. J. made “up to $550,000 a year,” and one-fifth of that is still $100K, anyone can understand how they feel blind-sided. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that maybe the Johnsons, and the Hoyos, just lost grandmother’s china. In the end, they might be freed by it. Certainly Angelica will be, who will learn sooner rather than later that when you have “a photography and sculpture career” that requires a parental subsidy, it’s not a career at all.

I’ve read stories like this before. A while back, the New York Times noted the reduction in the number of hipsters lounging around the hot areas of Brooklyn, now that mom and dad were no longer able to front their kids a New York City living stipend. Many of them were, like Angelica, nominally artists who had chosen to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, doubtless for the community of fellow artists and all the sidewalk cafes. I suspect by now many of them have faced the truth: They weren’t really artists but layabouts who know how to stretch a canvas. Now they know the truth. I hope it set them free.

(Artists: If you’re serious, try Detroit. Thriving arts community, tons of fun, and so cheap your parents won’t have to contribute a dime. Srsly.)

My parents helped me here and there when I was young and struggling, although the sums were vastly different. They paid for my college, but it was a hell of a lot less money for four years of state school back then. My mom bought me a $150 carpet remnant for my first apartment, and contributed $1,000 to both my wedding and my first house purchase, both of which I objected to, but they said they did it for my older siblings, and so they were doing it for me. Everything is relative. My wedding cost about $5,000 all-in, which was at the time one-third the national average. Who’s to say, though, that the ridiculous excess we’ve seen in recent years in just that area, weddings, isn’t due to nice people like the Johnsons, who just wanted to help their kids have a swell party, and ended up helping inflate the whole business? Would college tuition be as overpriced as it is if more kids had to work their way through, and couldn’t absorb the twice-inflation rate tuition hikes that have been normal now for, what, 30 years?

The financial crisis over the last two years smashed a lot of china. If it breaks the trend of extended adolescence, in which adults stay children well into their 20s and even beyond, thanks to the helping hand of mom and dad, that’s not entirely a bad thing. Everyone has to grow up sometime.

Bloggage? Some:

A pretty good column by David Carr on She-Who’s bootstraps, you betcha.

I haven’t been paying much attention to the California governor’s race, although it’s certainly interesting. Sez one voter in this story: “I prefer Meg Whitman because she has corporate experience and expertise to create jobs.” How many times do we have to learn the lesson that business experience =/= equal political savvy?

If you can stand to read one more thing about the iPad, our very own webmaster got his over the weekend. I won’t be buying until the second generation, if then.

And speaking of which, here’s his latest web-infant: Trowel Tart. The Tart is one of our very own, who is remaining anonymous for now because of her employer’s problems with outside work. The Trowel Tart’s her name and gardening’s her game. Drop by.

Yeesh! So late! Must start work. Have a great day.

In my perambulations here and there yesterday, I ran across this, linked to a link to a link I was following. I don’t know how I missed it in 2008. Titled “The First Time I Heard of Barack,” it’s a gem. Ahem:

During the period of roughly February 1992 to mid 1994, I was making frequent trips to Moscow, Russia, in the process of starting a software development joint-venture company with some people from the Russian scientific community. One of the men in charge on the Russian side was named V. M.; he had a wife named T.M.

V. was a level-headed scientist while his wife was rather deeply committed to the losing Communist cause – a cause she obviously was not abandoning.

You already see where this is going, don’t you?

Bitter, bitter T. has one too many vodkas and lets the truth slip!

“Yes, it is true. This is not some idle talk. He is already born and he is educated and being groomed to be president right now. You will be impressed to know that he has gone to the best schools of Presidents. He is what you call “Ivy League”. You don’t believe me, but he is real and I even know his name. His name is Barack. His mother is white and American and his father is black from Africa. That’s right, a chocolate baby! And he’s going to be your President.”

I waited for V. to wrestle her to the ground, cut out her chatty tongue or otherwise show concern for such treasonous blabbing. No. He lets his wife go on and on:

She rattled off a complete litany. He was from Hawaii. He went to school in California. He lived in Chicago. He was soon to be elected to the legislature. “Have no doubt: he is one of us, a Soviet.”

Note to “Tom Fife,” the author of this gem: When rewriting “The Manchurian Candidate” for dissemination to Free Republic-like websites, don’t stick too close to the original. It was brilliant to have Angela Lansbury be the ultimate bad guy in the original, but it’s OK to mix it up a little for the remake. Otherwise people call you derivative.

Funny that I should run across it yesterday, when the local news was full of stories about the Hutaree, whose name I’m still not clear on pronouncing — I think it’s Hoo-TAR-ee, and for what it’s worth, I don’t find them especially alarming, although maybe if I were in law enforcement, I might not be so blasé. But I think they’re a perfect example of what we started discussing low in the comments yesterday, representatives of a certain kind of rural hopelessness. Reading the Free Press and News stories about the group’s rural Michigan stomping ground was a short course in class signifiers:

He lived in two rusty trailers in Clayton on a messy yard strewn with toy guns, a flagpole and a Porta-John.

…Spurgeon attended the wedding of Joshua Stone earlier this month at the church and said he was surprised when the groom and other male attendees wore military-type uniforms.

…Donna Spurgeon said all the Stone children were home-schooled. They were smart, polite and artistic but socially awkward, she said.

Two generations ago, the Stone clan would have lived in a ranch house down the block from the Dairy Barn. The menfolk would have worked in light industry, as mechanics at the farm-implement dealer, maybe even as insurance agents or store owners. Everyone would hunt and go to the Methodist, Presbyterian or Lutheran churches in town. No one would be home-schooled. But something went wrong. What went wrong? Daddy hurt his back, and the insurance company just wants him to take his Oxycontin and shut up. Junior went up to Detroit to see the Bob Seger show and got carjacked; he won’t make that mistake again. Shelley got a job down at the wire-harness factory, but they closed a few years back, sent the whole shootin’ match down to Juarez. And now here we are, and the kids are getting married in camo. Have you ever heard of such a thing?

The News story has photos of the camo wedding, as well as the trailer.

As part of my research for this book I’m working on, I ran across this account of the New Bethel Church shooting case, c. 1969 in Detroit. You may notice many parallel elements with the Hutarees. Separatism, violence. Old wine, new bottles.

Some may point out that you know you’re crazy when the Michigan Militia is helping the police track you down, because you give their kind of crazy a bad name. All I’m saying is, it’s out there. And who knows what they’re reading on the internet.

Bloggage? I guess I have a little:

I was intrigued to see David Brooks’ column hed today: The Sandra Bullock trade. I was not surprised to learn it had nothing to do with Sandra Bullock, beyond a vague sort of anecdotal connection. That’s Brooks, however. And that’s why we have Gawker.

Ricky Martin came out of the closet. It sounds classier in Spanish: Hoy ACEPTO MI HOMOSEXUALIDAD como un regalo que me da la vida.

And now I’m off to the gym. Where are you off to?

I regret to say that the weekend mail did not contain my invitation to the Obama family’s White House seder. As the weekend’s NYT story points out, you don’t have to be Jewish to love the springtime tradition of a long ritual dinner featuring matzoh, horseradish, charoset and four cups of wine — but it takes real guts to host one if you’re not, and I admire the first family for doing so.

I understand some Christians hold seders at Passover, as a way of honoring the first of the Big Three of Monotheism, but I don’t know if I could do that. You know how people resent converts to any religion, the way they take the plunge into whatever your particular baptismal font might be, and then surface telling everyone what they’re doing wrong? That’s what it would feel like. You need a real Jew at the head of the table. I suppose if anyone could pull that off, though, it would be our multi-racial, multi-cultural president.

One detail from that story sticks with me:

Then came what is now remembered as the Macaroon Security Standoff. At 6:30, with the Seder about to start, Neil Cohen, the husband of Michelle Obama’s friend and adviser Susan Sher, was stuck at the gate bearing flourless cookies he had brought from Chicago. They were kosher for Passover, but not kosher with the Secret Service, which does not allow food into the building.

Offering to help, the president walked to the North Portico and peered out the door, startling tourists. He volunteered to go all the way to the gates, but advisers stopped him, fearing that would cause a ruckus. Everyone seemed momentarily befuddled. Could the commander in chief not summon a plate of cookies to his table? Finally, Mr. Love ran outside to clear them.

Mr. Love is Reggie Love, whom the NYT calls Obama’s “personal aide.” The job is informally known as “body man.” A politician’s body man — Hillary Clinton has a body woman — is a combination doppelganger, stand-in and walking purse. The body man carries your cell phone and hand sanitizer, gently takes your elbow when you need to be freed from a too-clingy supporter and opens the door for you. The body man frees a big part of your brain for other things.

Remember when George W. Bush, in China, spoiled his exit by trying to open a door that was locked? He should have paid attention to his body man, who was standing by the correct exit.

It goes without saying that the body man has the best seat in the house for watching presidential history in the making, but it takes the right kind of person. If you think you’re too good to fetch a plate of macaroons, it’s not the job for you. On the other hand, note Love’s position in this photo and ask yourself: Would I be willing to carry the Kleenex for this sort of fringe benefit? I would.

It’s a relatively new position in American politics, and I don’t think any have written their memoirs yet. I expect the best ones never will.

Love will be at this year’s seder. Just in case anyone tries to bring unapproved cookies.

So, as long as we’re a little light and gossipy today, someone tell me, maybe someone who follows the gossip columns a little more closely than I do: Is Jennifer Lopez still a diva?* Still buying Creme de la Mer for her ass, still insisting that she be surrounded by her special grapefruit-scented candles at all times? Does she still keep her eyebrow shaper on retainer? Travel with a beauty entourage?

I have to wonder. Not that Lopez is some sort of hagatha at 40, but at some point you have to get over yourself, and if you keep making movies like “The Back-up Plan,” it’s going to come sooner rather than later. Just the trailer — the funniest, most marketable moments of the movie — makes you want to stick your head in the oven. The woman’s capable of doing good work. She did it once (“Selena”) and did it again (“Out of Sight”) so I guess she has it in her. But lord spare us from more rom-coms where the audience is supposed to identify with her in her million-dollar shoes.

Tina Fey — now there’s an everywoman. If she weren’t so busy making television, she could turn out three of these a year and still keep it fresh. I have to watch “30 Rock” on demand, so I can re-run it and catch all the funny lines that slipped past when I was laughing at the last one. This week’s contender was Jack Donaghy’s: “(Irish Catholics) mate for life. Like swans. Like drunken, angry swans.”

“Date Night” — now there’s a romantic comedy. That one I’ll see. Eventually. Maybe I should write one. What do you think of “Body Man” as a title?

Any good bloggage? No. It’s all depressing. Suicide bombers in Moscow, lunatics in the Michigan woods — it’s just not a good day.

So try to have a good one, and I will as well.

* I know I had some comments a few days back about overuse of this word, but I think J-Lo qualifies.

Hey, pals. I spent the morning writing a column for GrossePointeToday.com, which some of you might enjoy. Here’s the top:

For many years, center-left people like me knew who the bad guys were — the religious right. We learned to recognize their code words, their iterations and mash-ups of “family,” “values,” “faith” and “life.” (They, in turn, knew ours — “diversity,” “tolerance,” “embrace” and the all-important “people of” usage.) I suppose, in the back of my mind, I knew the pendulum would swing away from them someday, but as long as they could get respect from the people who spent my tax money, the watchword was vigilance.

What I didn’t expect was the emotion I felt watching the strange, bumbling comedy at the War Memorial Thursday night (March 25), where a little-known Grosse Pointe Farms group called Point of Relevance sponsored a presentation by one Linda Harvey, a Columbus, Ohio woman whose group, Mission: America, seeks — quoting from their website here — “to equip Christians with current, accurate information about cultural issues such as feminism, homosexuality, education and New Age influences.” Harvey came expecting to speak to the like-minded Point of Relevance. But they were outnumbered by a crowd of my people, scrambled via social networks and e-mail, holding signs and itching for a confrontation.

As a journalist, I’ve seen many such divided crowds, taunting one another. But I’ve never looked at the other side and felt this: Pity.

You can read the rest here. I’m not much for the cross-posting thing — most of you live elsewhere, I know — but I can’t be two people, people!

Besides, I have some good bloggage today:

Hank found a photo from the White House’s Flickr stream, and got a pretty good blog post out of it. It’s of special interest to those of you who write, for the living or for the love. If you follow his link back to the original on Flickr, you can blow the photo up huge and examine it in detail. It’s worth it.

But don’t stay there — on the White House’s photostream — too long. You can get lost in there.

This letter, “from a doctor who will not comply,” is racing around the internets. I’m calling b.s. on it. From the too-generic name (Linda Johnston, MD) to the suspicious lack of any identifying details (city or even state of practice), to the casual use of questionable statistics (Obamacare creates 150 new government agencies), to the oddly literate, flowing prose, the letter is pegging my meter. The time-stamp on my Facebook call on this was about 8:30 a.m. I’ll apologize if I’m wrong, but if I’m right, I want credit.

And while we’re on the subject of doctors, real ones, I know the one in this NYT story today. Mike Mirro is a cardiologist in Fort Wayne, one of the very very best, and this story is important. Read.

With that, I’m out. Have a great weekend.

I don’t know how worried to be about the threats against Congress members who voted for health-care reform over the weekend. I’ve always believed that those who make threats do so out of cowardice, that they cannot keep their mouths shut because it’s operating as a safety valve. On the other hand, conventional wisdom says people leave warnings when they’re planning violent acts, warnings that are almost always ignored because of (see above).

I told someone yesterday I expect to see a government building explode before the end of the year. I wonder what the Fox News counter-narrative on that will be.

It would be irresponsible to speculate. So let’s not. Let’s look, instead, at the state of publishing today. Exhibit A: Jennifer Love Hewitt, author.

Stipulated: It is a fool’s errand to spend even a minute of your finite number on earth asking yourself, “Why was this published, and not that?” And yet, it can hardly be avoided, can it? At least Sarah Palin sold a lot of books. (Although, ahem, I’ve seen a copy of “Going Rogue” sitting on the new-releases shelf at my public library — one patronized by many, many Republicans — for days and days on end. Common sense tells me a book that drew rock-star crowds just a few months ago should not be sitting there, unloved and un-checked out, for that long. I’m starting to wonder how many books she-who sold, after all.)

But honest: Jennifer Love Hewitt? Jennifer. Love. Hewitt. The book is called “The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt, And I’m A Love-aholic.” That’s under her name, so, as the NPR blogger whose work is linked above notes, this means her name is on the cover twice, with a little subliminal zinger thrown in there with “Love.” The major revelation of this book, I’m told, is that it is in these pages that JLH admits to gluing Swarovski crystals on her “precious lady” as, I dunno, kind of a day-brightener, I guess. She refers to this region as her “va-jay-jay,” and now would be the time, LA Mary, to subject her to some serious medical-level questioning:

Are you saying you glued crystals on your vulva, then? No? Well, what do you mean by va-jay-jay, then? On your pubis? Yes? Excuse me, please, I need to make a call. Be right back. …[I need security at intake, please. Security at intake. With restraints.]…Yes, OK, you were saying?

JLH’s book has a pink cover. She wore a pink dress while promoting it. That’s pretty much all you need to know about Jennifer Love Hewitt, author. Also, this:

“This is embarrassing and personal, but once a month, since I was twelve years old, I go to my favorite jewelry store and try on my dream ring.” She is 31 years old. If this is true, she has made roughly 225 trips to the jewelry store to try on engagement rings. I do not know where to go with this.

I’m going to go back to worrying about crazy teabaggers. It’s less upsetting.

Bloggage:

A suburban high school here is wrangling over its ban on so-called freak dancing at the prom, and the DetNews does a story. My quibble is with the graphic, which implies the lambada was once a “controversial” dance. My contention is that no one ever did the lambada at all, that the entire dance was invented for one zero-star movie, and I think the graphic supports me on this — the lambada couple looks like it’s doing the hustle, or whatever you call it. Meanwhile, where’s the freaking? Sheesh. (Kids at the middle-school dances I chaperone were asked to sign an agreement that there would be no freaking all year. Thank God we have held the line!)

Meanwhile, medical marijuana was approved by Michigan voters more than a year ago, and still no one knows what the law is.

And I’m lame and done.