We had some fairly apocalyptic weather this weekend — apocalyptic for around here, at least. OK, maybe just “bad” would be less hysterical. What it did was rain buckets and buckets all day Saturday. Then we had a little bit of a break, and then the remnants of the hurricane arrived and it rained more buckets Sunday. In between, we had a little dinner party.

I spent much of Saturday afternoon cooking, and it was nice, with the windows open enough for a breeze and the rain pitter-pattering outside. And then everyone arrived and the kitchen seemed to burst into flames, it was so hot, and I wondered, is this some change-of-life thing? but everyone else seemed hot as hell too, and of course if you turn on the A/C it takes two hours, minimum, to cool everything down, so basically we just suffered. You can’t control everything, I guess, especially hot air masses pushed by monster storms. But there was something about the heat and the shortening days and the buckets of rain and the dinner conversation and “This American Life” on Saturday that made me think, man, we are all screwed. The second chapter of TAL was about the do-nothing Securities and Exchange Commission, and how they’ve sat around on their confused asses for the last couple of years, while Wall Street has waltzed the economy to the edge of a cliff, and I reflected that the campaign has become whether a mean photographer made John McCain look like a monster or if Barack Obama wants to teach your kindergartener how to put on a condom. I said a while back that if Obama could put the Wall Street message in simple language in a 10-minute stump speech with lots of pullout quotes, he might could maybe win this thing.

Of course, at this rate, it might be too late for that.

The dinner party was nice, in case you were wondering. Beef tenderloin, fresh green beans and corn, new potatoes, a little gazpacho to start. Blueberry-peach pie. Very WASPy, very basic. Oh, and since I walk past it in our container garden all summer and daily say, “You know, I need to do more with that tarragon,” a sauce bearnaise for the beef.

Beef tenderloin and bearnaise sauce during a financial meltdown is known as whistling past the graveyard.

This seems a good point to segue into the bloggage, since it falls under the classification A Few More People I Don’t Feel Sorry For: Remember all those people in Galveston who, when told to evacuate, yelled, “Hell no, we won’t go!” while all their friends lifted a glass and gave them a rousing hell yeah? Do you have some sympathy to spare now? Ahem:

With no water or power, no working toilets, no food or phones, people faced growing public health concerns here on Sunday. More than 2,000 residents who had defied an evacuation order were taken off the island, and state officials tried to ensure that no one could return.

“The storm was easy,” said Brenda Shinette, 51, who rode out the hurricane in her home but went to a shelter Sunday hoping to be taken to the mainland. “It’s what came after that was terrible.”

“We have no showers, and the food is spoiled,” Ms. Shinette added. “I feel like I want to pass out, but I can’t tell if it is from too much heat or too little food.”

She said the lack of toilets had become so bad in her neighborhood that she had been avoiding eating so she would not have to use the bathroom.

No? I didn’t think so.

Eminem has a new album coming this fall, and with any luck, an end to his Graceland period. It’s not doing anyone any good.

I should get to work. Just got a Facebook friend request from a guy I knew in Fort Wayne, since moved on. He was just laid off when his paper folded unexpectedly. And here I am making a no-budget zombie flick. Talk about fiddling, etc.

Enjoy financial Armageddon!

Oh, and a quick update, in keeping with our Armageddon theme today: The News’ sports page screams AS BAD AS IT GETS in Armageddon-size type, and they’re not talking about Wall Street, but rather the Lions, and once again Wojo speaks for us all:

DETROIT — This can’t keep happening. It’s cruel and unusual and flat-out absurd. And yet, for the Lions and Jon Kitna, it happens again and again, until fans scream to keep from crying. Every time there’s a glimmer, it’s gone. Almost every time there’s a game to be won, it’s lost.

The Lions are wandering in a bizarre world of their own making, with no clue how to get out. They tossed away another one Sunday, rallying from a 21-0 deficit to take the lead, then collapsing and losing to Green Bay 48-25.

An offhand comment Kirk made in the previous thread leads me to try this experiment.

As regular readers know, this has been a lively place of late. Our discussions/fights/shoving matches over the upcoming elections have made our threads beefy, but unwieldy. Really, some people, on some days, would just rather talk about dogs. But after watching the Palin interviews from yesterday, I’m sure we still have a few things to get out of our systems, so this is now the open, election-only thread. No holds barred! Mixed martial arts! Cage match!

If you want to have tea-party chat about dogs, or rougher chat about anything else, see the previous thread. But for All Things Electoral And Particularly Palin, this is your thread.

(Speaking of mixed martial arts, Alan and I had our first extended look at Ultimate Fighting last Friday — the bar TV was tuned to Spike while we waited for the Dirtbombs. It was, without question, the most awful thing I’ve seen in…well, maybe ever. We watched a man get his face pounded to a pulp while another man straddled him and [shudder]. The winner welcomed his 7-year-old son into the ring afterward to accept the crowd’s cheers. “That kid better enjoy it,” Alan said. “Because in a few years he’s going to be changing his dad’s diapers.”)

Although it doesn’t quite rise to the level of this election year’s Pledge of Allegiance moment — did Barack Obama call Sarah Palin a lipsticked pig, or did he not — I’ve found the examination of this even more minor issue fascinating.

That is: Is the fact Palin got the first passport of her life only last year significant?

Roger Ebert says yes (original link dead; Free Republic copyright violation substitutes):

And how can you be her age and never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer’s $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.

You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin’s travel record is that of a hopeless provincial.

As you can imagine, this column has ignited the knuckle-draggers, including James Lileks, who does his best imitation of a minor character from Sinclair Lewis with this zinger:

We have cathedrals; they’re just younger.

I suspect I know why Palin never traveled: Children. She married young and every few years she’s had another kid coming along, and if there’s anything to make a woman say, “You know, maybe another year in Vegas isn’t the worst thing in the world,” it’s the idea of making a trans-Atlantic flight with a small child. Also, and this is harder to quantify, but my guess is, if you live in a place like Alaska, the priority for your time off is pretty simple — sunshine and warmth — and Arizona or Florida is where you go, maybe Hawaii. Or it’s entirely possible Ebert’s suspicion is correct, and she really has no curiosity about the rest of the world. In which case it’s not exactly a campaign issue, but it is interesting.

I remember hearing the same thing about George Bush, and reacting the same way. Bush, son of privilege, a man who had both the money and the time, reached his late 40s without having traveled more widely than North America. (Like all good Texans, he’d been to Mexico.) If this makes me an elitist, so be it, but if you’ve got the resources, you should travel, and travel outside the country. When the Powerball tops $150 million and people around me spin lottery dreams, I don’t even have to think about it. I’d take the money and hit the road, and I wouldn’t come home until I got tired of it. And then I’d hit the road again, and I’d do the sort of travel I’ve only fantasized about: A month in Shanghai, summer in St. Petersburg, beaches in Corsica. India. Japan. Brazil. The Galapagos. Australia. Africa from top to bottom. And that’s only the beginning.

Without making this a discussion of Palin’s provincialism or lack thereof, where have you traveled and where would you like to travel? What was the biggest surprise of the trip? And do we think the dollar will ever recover enough to make travel outside the U.S. possible for the middle class again? (If the answer is no, name a place where you can still get a lot for a little, because my feet are itchy to be on the road again. I thought I’d take Kate to Europe by now, but when the cost is X thousands of dollars, plus 40 percent currency-exchange adjustment, plus 26 percent VAT, the answer is, “Maybe next year.”) And finally, why is it important to leave your country once in a while (and how do you explain that to a pinhead who think it’s about touring museums and cathedrals)?

And if you’re not in the mood for that, here’s some bloggage, an amusing piece from Slate: Walter Sobchak, neocon. Yes, with clips from “The Big Lebowski.” What’s more delicious?

Me, I get to interview a Rockette today. Envy me, world.

Maybe you’ve heard: Detroit is a big sports town. An economic-development expert with the city once told me that’s both a blessing and curse, mostly in the favor of fans. People who like to watch sports have their favorites, but to some hard-to-quantify extent a major-league franchise lifts all boats. You can see this in my hometown of Columbus, which for years has tracked a steady course of economic growth and prosperity to eclipse Cleveland and Cincinnati, but sports-wise, was stuck with Ohio State University. When they finally got a team, it was hockey, and an expansion team with the dumbest name in the league (the Blue Jackets? Huh?) but no matter — corporations finally had a place to buy luxury boxes, there was suddenly an Arena District to fill with yuppie bars, and the city was able to claim a little bit of big-league glory for itself.

Detroit, meanwhile, is a dying city with terrible prospects, but still manages to support four major-league sports, and not only that, they’re usually competitive in three of them. Fans here are spoiled enough that some don’t even start paying attention until the Wings, Pistons or Tigers are contending for a championship.

And then there’s the Lions. The worst team in pro football.

They have a beautiful new stadium downtown, legions of fans who buy tickets and suffer with them year after year. Their Thanksgiving Day home game is a centerpiece of the local celebration. And yet, their insistence on reaching and staying at the very bottom of the league appears unmatched. Take the season opener this past Sunday in Atlanta, previously thought to be the worst team in the league. There’s nothing like the facts to punch up a good sports column, I always say:

Atlanta started a rookie quarterback, Matt Ryan, in the opener Sunday, and all he did was complete a 62-yard touchdown pass on his first throw. From there, it actually got worse for the Lions, if you can believe that. …Besides a new quarterback, the Falcons had a new coach and a tough new runner, Michael Turner. All Turner did was run 66 yards for a touchdown on the game’s second possession. He finished with 220 yards, a team record. The Falcons finished with 318 yards rushing, a team record.

Hey, don’t ever suggest the Lions aren’t capable of making history.

That’s Bob Wojnowski of the News. Here’s Michael Rosenberg in the Freep:

What is it like to be Rod Marinelli these days? Imagine putting a group of engineers together to build an airplane. You tell them it might not be the best airplane in the world. It doesn’t have to be as big as a 747 or as fast as the Concorde, but it will run on time and use fuel efficiently and get you where you want to go. Then, on the day of its first flight, you go out on the tarmac and find … a unicycle.

A day after his team lost, 34-21, to the lowly Atlanta Falcons, Marinelli stood by his team. Someday soon, he said, that unicycle will fly.

Mitch Albom just stomped his little foot on the ground like Rumpelstiltskin.

There’s a feisty movement around here called Fire Millen, aimed at guess-what for the team’s president, Matt Millen. Mainly they spread digital graffiti; when they’re in full cry, every story on the Freep website, no matter what it’s about, has at least one “Fire Millen!” in the comments. Why he hasn’t been fired, particularly after weeks like this, remains a mystery. JohnC, who follows sports, says it’s because old Mr. Ford (William Clay, Jr.), who owns the team, doesn’t really care about it. Possible. Rich folk love to throw their money away on losing causes, but at some point you’d think they were capable of being embarrassed, but maybe not.

Meanwhile, Kate has learned the truth, and every time we drive down I-75 past Ford Field, she says, “Home of the losers!”

Maybe we can get Thanksgiving tickets this year.

Bloggage:

Via Metafilter, a guy who makes a list of 50 things he always wanted to do, quits his job and vows he can’t go home until he completes the list. He’s at 44 after more than a year. Someone help this guy ride a horse through a covered bridge so he can get to 45, ‘k?

It’s been a while since I’ve visited Lifehacker, the site that teaches you a few neat tricks (not, I regret to say, how to ride a horse through a covered bridge). Today: How to fold a napkin around a wine bottle so you don’t drip on the tablecloth, and the legitimate — i.e., non-porn — uses for the Incognito mode in Google Chrome.

Time for the gym. Talk Fight amongst yourselves.

Give Detroit this, people: It has manly testicles, oozing spleen and can’t get out of the bathroom before it needs another shave. Only here can a mayor, indicted on no fewer than 10 felonies, lurching through a nearly year-long scandal, seemingly needing a pry bar to remove himself from office — only this man, on the day he strikes a deal that calls for resignation and a seven-figure restitution and surrender of his law license and jail time and a five-year probation/moratorium on running for public office, can say, upon his exit:

“Detroit, you done set me up for a comeback.”

I mean, it’s hilarious. Isn’t it? How can it not be? It’s true. If this were a slasher movie, this would only be the first time the killer is thought to be dead. He’s got six or seven reanimations left in him, and when he comes out of jail, with his redemption narrative, he’ll start rebuilding his base. By the time the clock runs out on the five years, well, “tanned, rested and ready” doesn’t really describe it.

I love this town. It’s never boring. You know what else? People don’t posture (so much). You get the boilerplate shout-outs to God’s will and all, but for the most part people don’t pretend to be Moses here. Politics is bare-knuckled, the race card is played so often its corners are cracked and curled, but I like to think at the end of the day everyone can sit down and have a drink. Maybe that’s naive, or just wrong — there was a shoving match in a Detroit breakfast place during the primary season, between members of opposing candidates’ camps — and maybe it’s projection. Detroit politics, with its pander bears and open-handed thievery, seems positively angelic in comparison to recent days. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing “Milk” this fall, the other political movie featuring Josh Brolin.

Folks, I be exhausted. I’m steeling myself for a bike ride and the wind is blowing about 25 knots — my least-favorite fair-weather conditions, but it must be done. So let’s skip to the bloggage and start the weekend early, eh?

Why do people even attempt fiction, when real life is so much more interesting? The fascinating tale of the Aquatots.

Be still, my heart: I love the way my new boyfriend Javier says “John Travolta.” (Video link.)

The tourism-ization of the shoulder season: Halloween becomes a reason to vacation.

I can never write a zombie movie like this one, in which the z-virus is spread through…conversation. Now that’s imaginative.

Off to reignite my own.

* That’s elitist for, “How uppity.”

While the rest of you were watching the former mayor of New York, squiring his third wife, mocking the Democratic nominee for president as “cosmopolitan,” Detroiters were waiting to see if their mayor was going to jail now or later. Kwame Kilpatrick’s plea deal, being crafted in the wake of a quasi-impeachment hearing yesterday, was on, then off, then on, and then it rained and everybody went home. Today it’s most likely on; no one expects K2 to be mayor at the end of the day. Every picture of him taken recently shows him in another of his fine suits, steepling his hands against his mouth and scowling.

The sticking point is jail time. He’s facing 10 felony counts, and the prosecutor wants him to do at least a few months behind bars. The people of Detroit, meanwhile, prove eminently quotable: “The mayor shouldn’t go out like a punk.” “He’s an empty suit and the next suit he’s going to wear is a pinstripe suit.” “The man spent his whole life trying to be famous. Now the best he can do is be infamous.” (May I just say? It’s nice to see the owner of a barber shop knows the difference between fame and infamy. Gives me hope for the language.)

UPDATE: That’s all, folks.

Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan got caught telling the truth — see approximately nine million other sites for audio and transcripts, or click the following link — but Scott Rosenberg brings up the greater point: Where was all this honesty in Noonan’s column?

Now, if Peggy Noonan wrote a column every week that was as honest with her readers as she is here, with her colleagues, when she thinks the microphone is off, I would read it religiously. She’s part of a world that I don’t inhabit. But now I have a bright picture of the fact that she’s not writing what she knows and believes.

Exactly right. Exactly. And if there’s one thing that makes reading the best blogs so refreshing and reading most newspaper commentary a little like being stuck in an airless room, it’s this. Of course Noonan is a GOP operative with a high-paid sinecure on a right-wing editorial page, and she’s expected to represent for their side. She’s a columnist now, but could be a speechwriter in a Republican administration by this time next year. Nevertheless, it’s true: Too many writers simply aren’t honest with their readers, and even if you can’t put your finger on it precisely, it’s obvious when it’s happening. It’s why Mitch Albom is so grating, a guy who made millions writing a book advising others to slow down, savor, smell the roses — and uses it to catapult himself into a stratosphere of hyperactive multi-platform media personality-fying that ensures all of his work gets half his attention. People know he’s a fraud, even if they can’t quite say why.

The reason so many people writing for newspapers hedge and qualify and cavil is, they have more to lose. Jim Harrison uses a line every so often, something about consecrating every day and writing like your hair’s on fire. That’s it.

Bloggage: Moving van arrives at Detroit’s mayoral mansion, then leaves. If it’s someone’s idea of a joke, it’s a pretty good one.

Many are writing about Sarah Palin’s speech last night, but Roy’s one-liner won’t be beaten: Governor Palin’s address tonight was basically Reba McEntire doing a one-woman show on the life of Phyllis Schlafly.

Finally, anyone want to babysit Friday night? Alan and I are going to see the Dirtbombs:

(Hell, maybe she’s old enough to come along, too.)

School started today, and I’m a busy person these days, so not much from me. On today’s to-do list: Write treatment for short zombie film; track down Hollywood producer/director last seen in Michigan. I hasten to add these two jobs are unrelated. And to think I could have been a dental hygienist.

(The other day our director called to say, “I called Dan, just to pick his brain.” Ha ha ha.)

All I’m going to leave you with today is this:

Culture wars suck. It’s pointless, enervating and takes time and energy away from important matters. And yet, like gorging on potato chips and chocolate-covered peanuts, it’s hard to stay away. So when I broke my internet diet and dropped in on Rod Dreher, I wasn’t surprised to read this:

I’m listening to three young blogger-radio reporters from a lefty Canadian radio program (lots of “aboot” in the air) talk about their day. They’re on the other side of the blue curtain here, so I don’t know what they look like. One was just on the phone coordinating with “the Socialist World people.” A woman reporter from the site just joined the two guys. She’s been out reporting, and said she talked to an Evangelical about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.

“She was really beautiful,” the woman said. “This pregnancy thing hasn’t turned them off. If anything, it’s rallying them to embrace her.” The reporter said this as if it well and truly was shocking. She wasn’t being condescending at all; she was really shocked. She spoke with the amazement of an anthropology grad student on her first dig.

Well, of course. Being foreigners, their knowledge of the United States isn’t as deep as ours, and so they assume that when people are willing to spend decades of their lives talking about teenage sluts who don’t deserve birth control and HPV vaccines (“the slut shot” — I’d never heard that charming turn of phrase before this week; thanks, Free Republic!), they might back it up when the chips are down. Stupid foreigners. Spend a little more time in this country, and you might learn a thing or two about the breathtaking hypocrisy of these folks. If Hillary Clinton really wanted to back Barack Obama, she’d cut a very simple 30-second spot right around now, laying out five random facts about Sarah Palin, and add, “Imagine what they’d be saying if I was the one who did these things.” Fade out.

I am looking forward to seeing the newest Palin son-in-law (almost) tonight, who I understand has now dropped out of high school. This story keeps getting better.

I’m not from a union family. My mother reluctantly paid dues to the Communication Workers of America out of a sense of obligation — “they get me my raises” — but never joined. My dad was a salesman. Labor Day was just a long weekend with a cookout.

My first real contact with organized labor was the printers’ union at The Columbus Dispatch, which even then was defanged, the linotype machines having been set aside some years earlier for electronic typesetters. I recall being baffled by their rules (non-union members were not to touch the columns of type being spit from the computer), their pecking order (shop steward? is this a shop?) and their rituals (the coffee-pot thing; some sort of Friday lucky-number drawing), and a little touched by their dignity. Even I, stupid as I was then, could tell that these guys’ time was over, that all their tetchiness about rules was a version of some dotty old lady putting on her white gloves for tea when the only one stopping by is her imaginary friend. Little by little they retired or moved to other jobs, and I imagine that entire shop doesn’t even exist anymore.

Organized labor has been in eclipse for some time now, and the forces of management have done an excellent job briefing the general public on all their sins — the featherbedding, the abuses, the corruption by organized crime, etc. More to the point, in a global market, it’s easy to find others willing to do a job for far less than your contract stipulates, and to find some apologist who will explain, “But $5 a day is good money in (fill in name of Third World country).”

Last year one of the TV stations sent its handsome anchor to China, to show the dinosaurs back home how they do it in the ascendant world power. To anyone with a lick of sense, it looked like a horror show: Workers who leave their homes and families for months at a time to relocate to their factories, where they’re housed in dorms and work the sort of hours that would appall even the cruelest robber baron. This was all reported enthusiastically, enough so that the handsome anchor’s pretty partner, in making chit-chat after the segment, had this to say of the American worker: “I don’t want to say lazy, but…”

I was taking a writing workshop a few months after this, and one of the other participants was a graduating law student preparing for the bar and a career in labor law. He said he and his friends were planning an expedition to a concert where the handsome anchor (he’s a musician, too) was performing, “to call him out.” That’s Detroit for ya. I don’t know if they ever did, but at Labor Day, it’s something to think about: That corrupt, lazy, featherbedding union force had its time in the sun, and that was in improving factory conditions, raising the hourly wage and generally making this country a place where you don’t have to live in a dormitory next to the factory to make a living. This is a good thing. Let’s not forget it.

We went to the Detroit Labor Day parade yesterday, hoping to catch a glimpse of Obama. That was a long-odds hope and it was borne out when we arrived to find Hart Plaza full and the crowd spilling out in three directions. But we got near a Jumbotron, only to discover there was no sound, and by then it felt like it was 99 degrees, so we booked. Turned out Obama declined to campaign and instead sang a few bars of “Chain of Fools” anyway, so there you are. My own video notebook is here, and shitty enough I decline to embed it.

I did get a T-shirt, though.

Bloggage:

I took Richard Cohen off my bookmarks months ago, but every so often his broken clock tells the correct time. Like today.

I didn’t go to Slow Food Nation. Sounds like I missed some good meals, but some fairly awful public events.

Finally, I really don’t want this blog to become a gossip site regarding the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee. For one thing, everything we post here becomes stale in, like, 25 seconds; I fully expect the next bombshell to come out of St. Paul will be that some member of her family is running a medical-marijuana grow house during the 20-hour days, and further, that this is evidence of her strong family values. For another, to me, the only thing we really have a right to discuss as voters and decent people is the so-called vetting issue. How McCain managed to pick this crazy lady, with her possible background as a secessionist, never mind her colorful family, is the real issue here. All the rest is noise. I’m not going to police comments on this, but why don’t you read John Scalzi’s take on things, which basically tracks mine about 99.9 percent.

‘kay? ‘Kay. Have a good day.

OK, folks, in honor of Labor Day and our blood pressure, I’m closing comments on the previous post. This one will be open, but please let’s stay away from speculation on Sarah Palin’s pregnancies — Four or five? Inquiring minds want to know! — and otherwise keep our hearts and minds out of the gutter.

However, feel free to check back. We are heading off en famille to downtown Detroit, hoping to catch the Labor Day parade and perhaps a glimpse of that nice young Irish politician everyone’s talking about, Barry O’Bama. May blog some pix from the road, and will be carrying the Flip in case of shoving matches.

Solidarity forever, for the union makes us strong!

Welllll, just offhand…

The capsule version: He overpromised but — far more important — did not underinspire. The promising will be the GOP talking points for a while, wondering how you can cut taxes while offering trillions in new programs, blah blah blah, but these speeches, the acceptance speech at the end of a convention, aren’t about policy, they’re about spectacle and mood, and it’s hard to find fault with any part of it. (Although some do.) Obama looked smart, confident and optimistic; my heart actually fluttered a bit when he said, “America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.” Exactly right. As much as I despised George Bush eight years ago, if you told me that by 2008 we’d be embroiled in a no-win war, torturing prisoners, practicing extraordinary rendition — I’d never have believed you. Not even George Bush is capable of that, I’d say. No, but the delegator-in-chief found someone who is.

There’s always time to screw this up, but the GOP is going to have to work pretty hard to top this with a guy who can’t read a TelePromTer and the governor of Alaska.

What did you think?

So.

Folks, it looks like I’m onboard for this zombie movie, so expect zombie preoccupation around these parts for a while. I have no idea what I’m going to write. All I know is, we have a great location — an unrenovated spooky mansion in Palmer Woods with, of all things, a third-floor ballroom — and a choreographer, who’s going to give us some fight-scene blocking and maybe some other stuff — as well as much of the old crew from “Gas Man,” including Dan Phillips, our makeup guy, who killed time during slow periods on our last shoot building latex special effects for his bag of tricks:

I guess I’m going to have to get to know a slaughterhouse manager pretty well, too. We need a source of fresh braaaaaaains.

Off to rent “The Evil Dead” and/or attend the Michigan State Fair.