A former mayor of Columbus liked to say he did his best thinking in the shower, and was fond of sharing the many steamy ideas he got there. When I’m in the shower, I am very nearsighted and have a hard enough time remembering all my ablutionary chores — shampoo, condition, shave legs, exfoliate, etc. — to do much thinking. But as I have all those labels close to my face, I do take a moment to read them. And I have to tell you: Wow.

I used to use a brand of Costco shampoo that promised my hair was being hydrated with essence of kelp. Which makes it good for hair why? Because it grows in water? What is in its essence that would be good for hair? Is kelp oily? I don’t think so. Maybe all those otters who frolic in it leave behind lanolin or something.

I don’t use that shampoo anymore, having switched to another Costco brand. It, too, offers moisture, but not from kelp.

Perhaps kelp is in the Moisture Nutrient Complex(tm), or one of the Pure Natural Extracts. Hard to say, but it does have gentle cleansers and it is sulfate-free. Do note the long list of natural extracts in the actual ingredient list. Is this where people who finish with non-dean’s list degrees in chemistry end up?

Here’s my conditioner. It makes me laugh:

It has three naturally derived extracts that penetrate the hair, each to its own layer. Now there’s a trick, and I want to meet the man or woman who made it happen.

“Members of the board, I’m telling you, this triple-extract formula promises a breakthrough in hair-conditioning technology. We will penetrate the core, moisturize the middle and wrap the exterior of every strand! And it will be pleasantly scented, and look like a beige goo! We will transform the daily shampoo into hair therapy!”

Only it would all be in German, because Neutrogena. No, I’m thinking of Nivea. Neutrogena is based in Los Angeles.

But for total label nonsense, it’s hard to beat a brand that once carried the hair-and-makeup room for “Project Runway.”

Yes, TRESemmé, where the product instructions are presented as a friendly bit of advice from the brand’s lead stylist. I also love that “this product” paragraph, with its bold 97-percent-less-breakage claim, carefully asterisked, which presents the comparison: “vs. non-conditioning shampoo alone.” OK.

I once read a simple explanation of what soap is: A fat that strips another fat. A Lebanese man at Eastern Market sells this wonderful olive oil, and has lately started offering olive-oil soap, unscented, for $5 a bar. I think I’m going to buy one. Maybe use it on my hair.

One final note. I use this stuff, and like it:

Just soap with scratchy stuff in it. I loooove to exfoliate.

Do we have some bloggage? We do.

Those of you on Facebook? Stop clicking stuff to see what happens when the bear reaches the hiker standing on the cliff, or naming a city with no E in it. Like so much of Facebook, it’s a scam. “Like-farming.”

A great, funny read from Monica Hesse on Gwyneth Paltrow’s new book, including two recipes! For a black-bean chili and a new condiment called Spicy Cashew Moment:

The book opens with Gwyneth describing her quest to clean out her system and become more healthy after having a migraine she mistook for a stroke. (She thought, she says, that she was going to die.) Her doctor prescribes a diet: “No coffee, no alcohol, no dairy, no eggs, no sugar, no shellfish, no deepwater fish, no potatoes, no tomatoes, no bell pepper, no eggplant, no wheat, no meat, no soy.”

It’s fascinating to witness a cookbook composed from a place of such intense deprivation — a purported goal of simple nutrition transformed into a complicated Gwynethian odyssey. I’ve been a vegetarian for a decade; blindfolded, I can differentiate between soy, almond, rice and hemp milks. But my day of cooking with Gwyneth sent me to heretofore uncharted crannies of Whole Foods Market.

I keep seeing recipes calling for hemp seeds. Where the hell do you find those? Are they even legal in all 50 states?

The longer I work among the data-mad, the less susceptible I am to emotion-based arguments, but this one touched me, even if it did come via Maureen Dowd:

Scalia uses the word “homosexual” the way George Wallace used the word “Negro.” There’s a tone to it. It’s humiliating and hurtful.

I guess we should be cheered, because no one says “sodomite” anymore. At least not from the bench.

Happy Thursday to all. It’s supposed to be warm. Halle-freakin’-lujah.

Late start today, and I apologize. A poor Sunday sleep makes Nance a wrung-out rag on Monday evening, but honestly, I can’t even plead that. I felt fine last night, but chose to power-watch some more “Homeland.” I now have three episodes to go in season 2. A perfect place to stick a bookmark in the story? Hardly.

Yesterday was actually a pretty good day, even for a Monday, which is typical. Though I’m sure it’s mainly coincidence, I have my best days when everyone else is having terrible ones, and yesterday I learned of two premature, tragic deaths in my extended social circle.

For those who’ve been here a while: My former News-Sentinel colleague Emma Downs lost her husband, who suffered a heart attack on Valentine’s Day and had been hospitalized ever since. Forty-two years old with a 7-year-old son. And Marcia K., who used to comment here for a while but doesn’t anymore, and who has suffered her own share of grief in the interim, got another when her nephew was one of those killed in the massive pileup on I-77 in Virginia over the weekend. One month from graduating Duke Law. This is, truly, a broken world.

But I had a good day and was rewarded with another week of vacation. So I’m taking it, because, as these examples abundantly illustrate, you never know.

That won’t be until June, however. In the meantime, here’s an open thread. I have to get back to work.

First (long) bike ride of the season was Saturday. Fifteen miles at a bit of a clip left me thinking:

1) God, am I out of shape.
2) Even for Detroit, this is a lot of broken glass on the street.
3) I need a road bike.
4) No you don’t. Get your ass in shape and stop thinking equipment is the answer to this scurrying-on-a-wheel feeling.
4) But I’m in my top gear and I’m scurrying! I need a bigger ring.
5) Shut up and look at the scenery.

So I did. It was a gorgeous, warm day, which in Detroit means all the snow is gone, but the detritus of the winter has not yet been cleaned up or overgrown. Belle Isle is not looking good, which makes sense in a bankrupt city I suppose, but a trash-strewn shame just the same. The conservancy folks haven’t gotten busy yet, so we’ll see what we have in another month. And even on a bad day, Belle Isle has the river and a breeze and lots of birds, so — did I say breeze? Whose idea was it to make eastbound the first part of this ride, anyway?

The bike will only come when the right Craigslist bargain drops into my lap. But for now, I think another couple of padded-crotch shorts are definitely in order. Plus a lot more time in the saddle.

All in all, it was a grateful-to-be-alive sort of day. I needed it.

Saturday night was the dilemma of the season: “The Ten Commandments” on ABC or a gorge on “Homeland,” screening as part of Comcast’s free-everything weekend? I did a little of both, savoring just enough of the restored Technicolor cheese-fest and then three straight hours of watching Claire Danes do her face-crumple cry thing on Showtime. “Homeland” has grown on me, although I can see it painting itself into a corner this season, but if ANYone think they’re going to spoil the second half of the season for me in comments, I will CUT YOU. It’s better than any other Showtime series I’ve seen, by a mile. There are those who like “Dexter,” but I watched it a couple times and meh. “Nurse Jackie” had me for a time, but then meh. Dollar for dollar, I’m still an HBO girl. And I hope that soon I won’t be an anything girl, because I’ll be out riding my bike so much.

I hope everyone had a pleasant Easter. We went to Toledo for lunch with Alan’s sister, then to the museum for a couple of hours. It’s a very good museum for a city its size, thanks to the Libbeys and other responsible local tycoons. I spent a little time with “Alex,” a Chuck Close canvas.

I wish I could afford more art. If I won the lottery, my indulgences would be, in order: Travel, art, land. Not a house, land. All I really want out of a house anymore is a fireplace and a decent kitchen, and not even that’s essential. Art-wise, you go through our house, and you can see our starving-reporter days (framed posters), then less-starving (framed prints), then photos, and a painting or two. I still like everything we have on the walls, whatever that means.

Do I have bloggage before I make dinner and we watch “Game of Thrones?” Why yes, I do:

Laugh-out-loud funny is Anne Lamott, describing dating in late middle age, something I hope I never, ever have to do:

…91 percent of men snore loudly – badly, like very sick bears. I would say that CPAP machines are the greatest advance in marital joy since the vibrator. It transforms an experience similar to sleeping next to a dying silverback gorilla into sleeping next to an aquarium.

…Yet union with a partner — someone with whom to wake, whom you love, and talk with on and off all day, and sit with at dinner, and watch TV and movies, read together in bed, do hard tasks together, and to be loved by. That sounds really lovely.

Who is killing the prosecutors of Kaufman County, Texas? (Texas has a Kaufman County? Who knew?)

In Detroit, “garden supply centers,” particular those with “hydroponic” on the sign, is a nudge-wink that means “medical marijuana will be in your future sooner than you think.” Apparently this is the same elsewhere, too, although for one couple, it just meant fresh vegetables year-round. To the police’s embarrassment.

Monday awaits! Enjoy your week, y’all.

There’s no use pretending the story of the day is anything but Buzz Bissinger. Sorry, homosexuals, even your landmark Supreme Court arguments can’t steal the spotlight from this:

I own eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves. Those who conclude from this that I have a leather fetish, an extreme leather fetish, get a grand prize of zero. And those who are familiar with my choices will sign affidavits attesting to the fact that I wear leather every day. The self-expression feels glorious, an indispensable part of me. As a stranger said after admiring my look in a Gucci burgundy jacquard velvet jacket and a Burberry black patent leather trench, “You don’t give a fuck.”

I don’t. I finally don’t.

But this meltdown-masquerading-as-an-essay is more than 6,000 words long, and that’s just 100 words and change. There’ so much more, including but not limited to sex, marital, kinky and pathetic; money, vast and unthinkable; magnums of champagne; Tom Ford cosmetics (used by the author) and so much, much more. Long story short: Buzz Bissinger, author of “Friday Night Lights,” has been going insane for the last few years, and has spent nearly $600,000 on high-end clothing, most of it from Gucci, lending the piece its ridiculous, wan headline, “My Gucci Addiction.” It’s like calling a deep dive into the culture of high-school football “High School Football.”

Don’t drop out, no matter how embarrassed you are, before you get to the sex part. Because that’s really the icing on this cake of tawdriness.

If you think I’m maybe getting too much glee from another’s public confession, be advised BB has been something of a jerk of late. Now we know he was being an even bigger jerk on the websites of the world’s high-end retailers.

I’ve known some shopaholics before; some of them had untreated mental illness, usually bipolar. My next-door neighbor in Fort Wayne was a house cleaner, and told me of trying to organize the closet of one of these souls — unsuccessfully, as it turned out, as she just went out and refilled the closet floor with a million more bags. You get a hole inside, you look for a way to fill it.

Speaking of filling holes, and change, and going a little nuts, here’s a story to bum out all your journalists: A 17-year-old just earned more than you will in your lifetime by inventing an app that boils your lovingly crafted story down to 400 characters. Yes, not words, but characters — that’s the new currency.

I guess we can talk about the homosexuals after all. I’ll go out on a limb and say Prop 8 will go down 6-3, with Alito and Sca-mos on the other side. Anyone want to float a different idea?

There’s very little of a bum mood that can’t be banished by a Monday-night screening of “Sunset Boulevard” on the RetroPlex channel. What a great movie. I can’t believe they made a stupid musical from it. Why try to improve on perfection? “Sunset Boulevard” had me as soon as Joe Gillis said he was going back to his $35 a week job behind the copy desk at the Dayton Evening Post.

It’s the pictures that got small, all right. William Holden — such glorious self-loathing.

So, Monday night and the week is off to a pretty good start. Kate got an A+ on an impromptu essay in her AP class, so it seemed to call for a celebration. Mexican food, a Diet Coke, the simple things. Alan’s still sick, but it won’t last forever. And Saturday’s forecast is for bright sunshine and 48 glorious degrees.

In the meantime, drink deep of some pretty good bloggage, although it will only depress us again:

A story you can sip or drink deeply from, one of those Planet Money/This American Life collaborations, looking at the thorny problem of disability. As in: How many Americans are suddenly so designated:

In the past three decades, the number of Americans who are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.

The federal government spends more money each year on cash payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.

In other words, people on disability don’t show up in any of the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the story of these programs — who goes on them, and why, and what happens after that — is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It’s the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden, increasingly expensive safety net.

The story itself is a quick read, the link to the radio show a deeper dive.

But because a story that grim deserves a little palate-cleanser, how about this, via Bassett:

Some Tennessee legislators feared creeping Sharia, but sometimes a floor-level basin is just a mop sink. Not a foot bath.

The first step of the week is the hardest. Welcome, Tuesday.

First day of spring. Ah, the sweet smell of …nothing green in the air. Not around these parts. The high temperature didn’t reach the freezing mark. The sun came out for a while, but worked only a half day. The birds have been singing their springtime songs for a few weeks now, but other than a few mild days here and there, the weather hasn’t caught up.

But there was this:

Tilted Axes, a strolling band of electric guitarists, organized by Patrick Grant, a Detroit-born-but-since-relocated artist. Each player carried a little Marshall amp the size of a cigar box, hanging from his belt. It wasn’t much of a procession, but it was fun, and you have to admire anyone willing to parade around in 27-degree weather just for the hell of it. Look at those sad little clumps of snow clinging to the base of the parking meters. That’s late winter in hell.

I know, I know — in four months I’ll be bitching about the heat. But right now it’s cold.

Here’s a remarkable piece, and I’m sorry my Russian isn’t good enough to translate directly, but I trust my source: It’s photos of bears huffing gas fumes, and showing the results, i.e., a bear sprawled in the snow, looking much like a homo sapien huffer. Is the need to alter our consciousness the same across all mammalian species?

As for the “50 most perfectly timed photos ever,” I suspect some ‘shopping. But some nice pix, just the same.

Since we’re doing videos, here’s a great one: Donny & Marie singing some Steely Dan:

How can I top that? Well, I have a big story dropping at 8 a.m. I’ll add the link when it does. Meanwhile, enjoy the downslope of the week. UPDATE: Why young people don’t vote in Detroit.

Oh, and thanks to Charlotte for finding this: Welcome to Michigan, Elaine Stritch. If I ever see her in a coffee shop over on the west side, I think I’ll scream. She is SO BEST.

Never underestimate the power of a good headline, I always say. Take the Daily Mail on Monday:

Why does the devil in ‘The Bible’ look exactly like President Obama?

This is what I get for watching “Girls.” I’m missing “The Bible,” but fortunately, I have Jeff watching for me. Of course I clicked the link; if the Brits know anything, they know how to get you to look at their paper. He didn’t look exactly like Obama, but yeah, there’s a resemblance — maybe if Obama gay-married Frank Langella and they genetically engineered a baby. Well, I’d expect nothing less from the Mark Burnett production house.

How about another from the U.K.? The Scottish Sun: Meet the woman with the world’s strongest VAGINA. Yeah, “vagina” in all caps, just in case we might miss it. How do they know how strong it is? She inserts an egg-like thingamabob up there, with a hook attached. She attaches dumbbells to the hook and holds them there, with the power of her ya-ya. There’s a video; never mind the content warning, everything is discreetly hidden from view. She’s Russian, and says she’s achieved this power after “20 years of vigorous training.” OK.

Let’s pick an American newspaper at random. (Spins in circle, points finger at…The Columbus Dispatch.) “Bill would allow school safety levies.” OK, well — legislatures are notoriously difficult to brighten up, unless they’re fighting with canes on the floor. (Or fighting about vaginas.)

The problem with headlines (these days) is SEO. To attract search-engine interest — absolutely essential in this day and age — heds have to be dumb, obvious and boring. The Obama/Satan and strong-vagina stories had the advantage of being lurid stories where even dumb, obvious headlines couldn’t be boring. Although I’d like to try; I bet a few copy editors could muck those up. Groups claim depiction of demon resembles prexy, perhaps, or Russian woman lifts weights — intimately. Prexy is a great headline word, along with solon. And “intimate” has been standing in for dirty, dirty sex for a long time now.

And now here we are, and here are some less-alluring heads on some fare more interesting stories, eh?

The WashPost on the peculiar trend of “Moorish American nationals” squatting in unoccupied homes. This seems to be an African-American thing, but I recall a rural white version from my Hoosier days. I think they called themselves “sovereign citizens” and did much the same thing, declaring their homes tiny little nations.

Last year, the Michigan legislature repealed the motorcycle helmet law. Twelve months later, motorcycle deaths up 18 percent. Alan and I drove behind a couple riding a motorcycle through Grosse Pointe. Both unhelmeted, although the woman was wearing a straw hat with fluttering ribbons she was clasping to her head with one hand, the other wrapped around the man’s waist. She seemed to think she was the cutest trick in shoe leather, and she was. I hope she never does it again, however.

If, like me, you were bothered by the knee-jerk criticism of Rob Portman over his turnaround on gay marriage, please read this, about Debbie Stabenow’s personal stake in better mental health care. I take turnarounds however they come; we are all human, and shaped by the events in our lives.

And with that, I approach the hump of Wednesday.

If you don’t spend your late-winter Sundays rooting through the comments on posts here, then you’ll want to read this Yahoo Sports piece on the Steubenville rape case. Unlike the entirely predictable outrage from the usual suspects, this gets to the heart of the matter:

The boys drank. They drove around. They went to each other’s houses until 2, 3, 4 in the morning. They exploited permissive parents who let the party continue. They, according to so many locals, knew there were bars that would serve them, liquor stores that would supply them and adults who would look the other way. They were football players being football players.

They slept wherever and whenever they crashed, preferably with some girl. Any girl.

They were allowed the freedoms of young adults, yet lacked the maturity to handle that freedom.

I expect we’re all aware of towns like this; there are probably hundreds of them from sea to shining sea, and not necessarily in forgotten places like Steubenville, where it seems journalists are required to note that the team “serves as a point of pride for the city dealing with economic hardship after the collapse of the steel industry.” Rundown ex-steel towns are like this. Affluent suburbs are like this. Big cities. Small towns. And it’s not just football. Hockey, baseball, just about any sport played by young men draws these insane adult cults of enablers who set up situations like this. It only takes a spark. There are lots of those.

A couple years ago there was a minor dust-up in GP, a failed coup against one of the coaches, engineered by parents who felt their boys weren’t getting the playing time they deserved. One was said to be gunning for his kid to break a pass-receiving record, and felt the coach was holding the kid back. It died down pretty quickly, but it made me think of the stories Kirk would tell about Art Schlichter’s dad, back when his son was playing high-school ball. We all know how that story turned out.

Every so often I read that football will soon cease to exist, because of the head-injury issue, that in a couple decades we won’t believe we ever let young men smash their heads against one another with such dire potential consequences. I don’t believe it. It will always live in places like Steubenville, and a lot of others, too.

So.

How was your weekend? The sun came out Sunday, and I dragged Alan out for a walk up and down the Dequindre Cut, a pleasant but chilly two-mile stroll. We were practically the only people on it, which always leaves you feeling a little weird, even on a Sunday, in Detroit. However, there was at least one security guy patrolling and, this being Detroit, there’s an emergency call station about every 50 feet, and no, I’m not kidding.

Because we were in Detroit, we missed Ryan Gosling, who apparently was in Grosse Pointe at the same time. He’s directing a movie. Dunno if he’s staying around there, or shooting, or just wanted a Starbucks and happened to be nearby. The story says Christina Hendricks is one of his actors. Woot. I’d much rather see her buzzing around the Pointes, and I know a lot of men would, too.

Speaking of Joanie, the season 6 promo photos, in living color.

I’m sort of sad Hunter Thompson is dead, because he would have done a great job at CPAC. Roy’s clip roundup will have to do.

And now it is Monday. Sigh. I hope your week goes quickly, if you want it to.

Long-time readers may remember that a decade ago (argh) I spent a year at the University of Michigan on a sabbatical journalism fellowship, and part of that experience was a week in Argentina. Buenos Aires, specifically.

Relax. I didn’t meet the Pope or anything.

But we did have one seminar, as a group, with the Madres de Plaza de Mayo, the mothers of the men and women who were disappeared during the Dirty War of the 1970s. It was a difficult session, what with the awful personal stories and the long translations; a couple of our group were leaking tears by the end of it. During the question period, I asked whether any of them had gone to the church for help. They sat up. The church was a part of it!, they said. The military leaders considered themselves quite humane and sophisticated, because they offered their victims final absolution before they were taken up in the planes to be pushed out over the River Plate.

So when you tell me the new pope is an Argentine and a septuagenarian, my first question is, what did you do in the Dirty War, father?

As frequently happens, the answer isn’t simple or easy. Well, it’s not my church anymore. And I do wish him well. He sounds like he has a lot going for him.

I’m working on not caring about things I’m not required to care about. This is a start.

Not much bloggage today. Google Reader, adios.

I can’t wait to not see “Spring Breakers.” I hope Kate feels the same way.

Charlie LeDuff in a spot of bother. I predict it will blow over like a 20-minute shower.

This week feels 10 days long already. I hope yours is going swimmingly.

Got up early and headed down to the Motor City Casino and Hotel for the Detroit Policy Conference, put on by the regional chamber of commerce. You know how these things go: There’s an exhibitor space for sponsors. There’s coffee and bagels. There are skirted tables and name tags and a stage with a sectional seating arrangement, where the panelists will sit and be questioned.

(Oddity: In many ways, this was a 3/4-day version of the June Mackinac Policy Conference, also a regional chamber event. Same typography, same big-screen TVs, same coffee and bagels, same furniture. I assumed the Mackinac furniture was provided by the Grand Hotel, but it was exactly the same as today’s furniture, in all but color, making me wonder if the chamber’s event people actually have a furniture stash, and whether it comes over on the ferry. Today’s furniture was pure white. Nobody said anything that drew blood.)

And there was a “buzz board,” provided by one of the media sponsors. What is a buzz board? A new wrinkle at these events — an electronic screen that scrolls tweets from the audience using an agreed-upon hashtag. I cannot look at one without feeling an overwhelming sense of mischief. The last event I attended had one, and it was entirely automated; if the hashtag was correct, the tweet went into the stream. And so one guy tweeted: “My name is misspelled in the program.” Another said, “Anyone want to duck out early and get some beers?” The possibilities for bad behavior are almost limitless, particularly if the buzz board is behind the speaker.

The most interesting single detail: A young venture-capital executive speculated we’re only a few years away from commercial use of drone aircraft — small, helicopter-like deals that will enable, say, same-day deliveries from Amazon. They could land on your driveway, or some sort of community helipad. You could rent one for a few bucks to send a frozen casserole across town to your flu-bound mother-in-law.

There was also a keynote that painted a picture of a thriving downtown, complete with photos that would leave many suburbanites agog. People on the street! People gazing out floor-to-ceiling windows of tastefully decorated loft workspaces! STREET-LEVEL SHOPPING FOR NORMAL STUFF LIKE SWEATERS!!!!! That was the opening session. The closer said the city is
done for, stop dreaming. So you really can’t say the chamber doesn’t entertain an alternate viewpoint from time to time.

Bloggage? I have virtually none. Being on Twitter all day, I could only dimly perceive the outlines of this ridiculous Bob Woodward story. One word: Sheesh.

Limping into the weekend on insufficient sleep, I can only say: I hope yours is restful.