How do I love the Westminster Kennel Club show? Too many ways to count. It’s the first real sign of spring. Light in the sky at 7 a.m., dogs on TV 13 hours later. The dogs are gorgeous and strange and exotic and kissable. And, of course, the people.

I’m about a decade behind Christopher Guest in making that last observation, but who cares? Is there anything more wonderful than the odd lot of screaming queens, fat ladies, patricians, showbiz hangers-on and the badly dressed weirdoes who populate a dog show? I could barely take my eyes off the judge in the Working group, who reminded me of a friend’s grandmother (that would be the indomitable Cor, for those of you who’ve known me a while) in every detail from her arthritic walk to her croaky voice.

And, of course, the right dog won.

Back in the day, when I subscribed to the Chronicle of the Horse, I always looked forward to the special hunting issue, in which every working pack of foxhounds in the country was listed in a directory. It was there I learned about an even more obscure sub-niche of the sport, practiced mainly by ex-foxhunters too creaky to jump four-foot fences all morning anymore — beagling, or rabbit hunting, on foot, with packs of beagles, sometimes bassets. There was something so sweet about these groups of spry seniors in green wellies, with their ragtag packs boiling around their feet, ready for a fine afternoon’s tramp across the swampy fields, listening for the hound music. Everyone associates beagles with Snoopy, but that’s what I think about.

Good dog, Uno.

Big day today, so bloggage:

Officer Rivieri has a bad day. In that uniform, with that widdle car, I’m not surprised he feels the need to get a little macho sometimes.

Covering baseball — or any professional sport — isn’t all beer and skittles, or even franks and beans. But on the day we got four inches of snow, it’s possible to look at a dateline and sigh, just a little.

OK, off to the silicon mines. Daydream about warm vacations, if you like.

For the making-of featurette* included with our student-film project, I shot a little video with my Flip:

I call your attention to our awesome camera dolly, a DIY project made from PVC pipe and skateboard wheels. Our director is friends with the folks at InZer0, a local sci-fi series/maybe-a-movie production, and borrowed it from them. It knocks together with a rubber mallet (or your shoes), and the stand slides noiselessly. With it, we were able to do a cool little tracking shot of our talent, Teresa, walking down a hallway, checking doors on either side, with nary a bobble.

As a compromise with the Hollywood version, it’s pretty adequate to our uses.

I have a memory of one of my showbiz-nerd friends telling me the first Steadicam rigs cost $100,000, so I went online in search of other cheap compromises for low-budget filmmakers. Not surprisingly, there are zillions. I think I know what the universe is trying to tell me: It’s time to indulge my long-held dream of producing pornography with real scripts, and a real story. Something to keep ’em in the seats after, you know.

See the dolly shots and the dolly track — in Genesis’ “Invisible Touch” video. Not made from PVC, because it’s Genesis.

(*Note: There is no making-of featurette.)

Bloggage: Just the other day I asked Kate if she’d like to play hockey. Now, I’m thinking she might be better off playing, oh, chess. Oh, and in re: our earlier discussion about the relativity of luck? Check this out — a guy gets hit in the neck with a skate in a freakish accident, severs his carotid artery, leaves a red smear across the ice to remind everyone in the arena of their own mortality, and guess what his doctors say? This:

Vascular surgeon Richard Curl, who assisted Noor, said the cut was about an inch-and-a-half deep and also as wide. Doctors were astonished the skate blade did not hit any other arteries or veins or cause any further damage.

“Luck,” was a factor, according to Noor.

Thought for the day: Everything is relative.

Eric Zorn interviews his old college buddy Gerry Prokopowicz about the latter’s new book, “Did Lincoln Own Slaves?” A sample:

Q: Given that the Q&A format is often recognized by discerning readers as evidence of a lazy writer who doesn’t want to struggle with transitions, why did you choose that format for your book?

A: I got it from your columns.

You know how Michael Moore is, like, fat and evil and a propagandist and not interested in the truth at all? You know? I’m sure his ideological opponents will show the proper way to do things when “Expelled,” their documentary on intelligent design, debuts later this year. They sure got off to a good start with PZ Myers. What’s the ninth commandment again? I always forget.

Finally, Wireblogging continues over at The New Package. Come join the discussion.

More coffee, shower and work, in that order. Be still, heart.

This isn’t a lesson you have to be a writer to learn, but just in case you haven’t, let me lay it out for you:

One person’s poetry is another’s profanity. Context is everything. It’s stupid to argue why black people can call one another nigga and white people can’t. The language you use at the bar, at the frat house, at your grandmother’s dinner table, at church, at the office is likely going to vary widely.

So get over whether or not David Shuster got a raw deal from his employer over using the phrase “pimped out” to describe what Chelsea Clinton’s parents may or may not be doing in re: their daughter. He perhaps thought he was being hip and young and with-in and down with the kids, and Hillary Clinton objected. This cannot possibly come as a surprise to anyone with half a brain. You say tomato, I hear to-mah-to. Let’s chalk the whole thing up to experience.

To be sure, popular discourse has become much more, er, popular in the last 20 years. Again, you don’t need me to tell you this. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are situations where, “boy, is that guy a brainless schmuck” is far more eloquent and to-the-point than “Mr. Shuster displays a shocking lack of couth,” but while “schmuck” is a wonderful word, it means “penis” in Yiddish, and if you start throwing it around like confetti, sooner or later you’re going to meet someone who’s offended by it.

As a woman of five decades, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the casual use of the word “pimp,” if only because it’s the first syllable in “pimple,” and the fewer of those in the world, the better. But really, what a repulsive image to aspire to, that of a badly dressed man who sexually exploits women for profit. I’ll accept the word as a synonym for cheap flashiness, as well as a crude synonym for “to aggressively market for money,” but otherwise, it’s just sort of gross. And again: Context is everything. “The Daily Show” can do a story on FLIFs and no one bats an eye, but if you’re supposedly a legitimate cable-news talent, you’d better not go there. Or maybe you can go there in 2009, but not 2008. Or on Tuesday, but not on Monday. I imagine I’ll live to see the day Anderson Cooper can call the president a douchebag on the air, but it hasn’t arrived yet. (Not that Anderson would say such a thing; he’s too well-bred.)

So let’s retire the discussion before it gets tiresome. Oops: Too late.

Final note: Guess who said, in 1998, “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.” Answer: You’re soaking in it!

OK. I’m writing this on Sunday. At this very moment, I’m supposed to be on Belle Isle, shooting the final scene for our video class project, but we cancelled. The temperature is 7 degrees and the wind is blowing at, no kidding, 45 miles per hour. It seemed cruel to make two nice actors, not to mention everyone else in the class/crew, torture themselves in such conditions, particularly given the compensation everyone’s getting, which is: Nothing, plus a sandwich. So we’re shooting the indoor scenes later in the afternoon and will pick up Belle Isle when nature stops being such a cruel mistress. That’s showbiz.

But this leaves me more than the usual bit of time to scrape up some bloggage for you pimps, and here you are:

If that damn German polar bear gets any cuter, I’m moving there.

Great idea to spice up your social life: Detroit’s Guerilla Queer Bar, a movable feast that, once a month, descends unannounced on a different nightspot. In January, they chose Carl’s Chop House, one of those ol’-skool downtown steakhouses that’s been dying since forever. Earlier in the month, the owner went before city council and asked to take the place topless. From this week’s Metro Times:

The bar area is packed, with the customers laughing and bartenders hopping, filling drink orders and collecting tips. The piano player is in full swing, making the trip from Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” to Matchbox Twenty and back again, with a brief stop at Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen.” Carl’s ambience is so varnished-wood-and-carpet, it’s kitsch. If you haven’t been, it’s worth a trip. Except for the addition of a dance floor in the main dining room, the place hasn’t changed much since the days when Jimmy Hoffa would cut deals in the conference room upstairs.

What a great idea. What will those creative queens think of next? Quick, buy modern furniture.

You know how your mom told you to always wear clean underwear, so the people in the emergency room wouldn’t think you were trashy? She didn’t know the half of it. Bonus giggle: The name of the club.

Groan: Work. And so the week commences.

Well, it only took three years, but I guess I’m a real Detroiter now. Behold, what I parked next to at Starbucks yesterday:

When we moved here, people said we’d see this sort of thing all the time — mystery cars obscured with tape or fool-the-autofocus camouflage, models ready for road-testing but not the showroom. But this is the first one I’ve seen. (I really need to get out more.) It hardly looked cherry, but couldn’t have been more anonymous. The interior was terra incognita as well:

I didn’t recognize the badge on the steering wheel, but — and this is a key part of the experience — I was soon joined by another Starbucks customer, who was about to pull out of the lot, but re-parked to get out and check out the mystery car, too. And he knew everything. “That’s a BMW,” he said. Never mind the badge, “that’s the iDrive.” No clue. So he explained the iDrive, with which he was well-acquainted; he did everything but offer a supplemental reading list. This is standard local small talk, and on the whole, I prefer it to chatting about the weather. Someday we’ll have to get JohnC to talk about standing around the grill while the burgers cook at a backyard party, arguing over whether Billy Batts was driven to his funeral in a Bonneville or a Grand Prix. This is not worth arguing, as the record clearly shows it was a Grand Prix.

Anyway that’s a Toughbook on the console, powered by the cigarette lighter, wires running to a mystery port between the seats. And that’s your correspondent reflected in the window. Always happy to bring citizen journalism to my readers from sea to shining sea.

Alex noted something I was marveling at yesterday — that you never know what will get people chattering, and apparently, asking about everyone’s fun with prescription drugs is one of those all-skate topics. He suggested perhaps sex or rock ‘n’ roll for a follow-up, but I don’t have it in me. Besides, it’s snowing again and I’d like to go out and enjoy the pretty part of winter.

Do we have bloggage? We have some:

Brian Stouder recommends this story about a narrow escape from the tornadoes earlier in the week, says it passed his lump-in-throat test. I’ll leave it up to you to measure it against your own. What I’m always amazed by, in these situations, is how people rise to the occasion. A few years ago, an F4 hit Van Wert, Ohio, just as a small crowd of young people were leaving an afternoon movie. The manager saw it coming, turned around, herded everyone into the bathrooms — the only cement-block part of the structure — and there they crouched while the wind destroyed the entire building. Here’s where everyone had been sitting only a couple minutes earlier. And all survived, uninjured, except the manager himself, who had a cut on his arm. He hadn’t had any special training in evacuation procedures or where the safest part of the building was; he just thought fast. What if the movie had gone five minutes longer? What if it had been little kids instead of teenagers? What if the crowd had been bigger? What if?

A young Vince Vaughn fights a ‘roid-raging Peter Billingsley in an after-school special. Yes, that Peter Billingsley. Ralphie.

Prostitution, drinking, drugs and having Tom Sizemore as a boyfriend is tough on a girl’s looks. Ask Heidi Fleiss. And check out her co-pilot.

So, Mittens is on his way home, but was it good for the Mormons?

Friday on my mind, folks. I’m outta here.

A few weeks ago, I linked to Roger Ebert’s takedown of “The Bucket List,” in which he suggests terminally ill cancer patients have better things to do than go globetrotting, and that these things might include “convincing the doc your reports of pain are real and not merely disguising your desire to become a drug addict.”

Funny how often I’ve heard some version of this complaint. For all the wonderful drugs out there to relieve suffering, it can be awfully hard to shake a few loose from your doctor. I’d think a cancer diagnosis would be pretty much a prima facie argument for a key to the medicine chest, but maybe not.

I must look like a tough, strong peasant with a secret stash of pot in her dresser drawer, because in my experience of pain, the best I ever got was Tylenol 3. Episiotomy with tearing at both ends? Damaged knee ligaments? Lateral incisor snapped off in bicycle accident? Tylenol 3. I don’t ask for anything stronger (and, to be sure, it’s always been enough, at least when taken with three glasses of wine), but just once, I’d like to be offered a serious narcotic.

A while back I read a story about how incredibly vile the modeling industry is, and learned that lots of girls live on maintenance doses of Vicodin and clenbuterol, a painkiller and bronchodilator, respectively, both of which help with weight loss (particularly when combined with Marlboro Lights). Celebrities are always checking in and out of rehab for painkiller addiction, which developed, we’re told, after the celebrated one was injured in dance class, or something. Rush Limbaugh’s elephantine thirst for oxycodone, another one of those unfortunate aftereffects of back surgery (again: so we’re told), is legendary.

And I pass an eight-pound infant through my ya-ya, and the best I get is Tylenol 3. It came with a warning that I shouldn’t take too much, because codeine is constipating, and the last thing I’d want to do is push a hard stool through all that beat-up tissue down there. Think how painful that would be. Thanks, nurse.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Heath Ledger, accidental O.D. He had six separate drugs in his system — two painkillers, three anti-anxiety potions and one over-the-counter sleep aid. I’m baffled by this last, as you’d think, after the first five, getting to sleep wouldn’t be a problem. (And I guess, technically, it wasn’t.)

I wasn’t born yesterday; I know how these things work. Ledger didn’t have to cool his celebrated heels for 45 minutes in the doctor’s waiting room before getting a scant five minutes to convince the man with the medical degree to throw a few decent meds his way. I’m just sayin’. The next time slings are slung and the arrows land in my knee, I’m asking for the Full Ledger, or I’m going to know the reason why not.

Lots of dumb ol’ work to do today, so not much bloggage. But a little:

Fort Wayne is called the Summit City, because it sits on the watershed between the Great Lakes and Mississippi drainages. Also, because it lends a touch of cruel irony during the city’s regular floods, like the one it’s having now. Mitch Harper has a nice pic of what happens to a riverside skate park when the river rises.

When the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died earlier in the week, most of the talk was about the Beatles. But did you know he also had an acolyte in director David Lynch? Who’s sad, but not really:

Well, Maharishi dropped his body. It’s like a man is in a car and the car is old and the man gets out of the car and rolls the car into the water into a lake. Do we feel sorry for the man? The car is gone but the man is there. No problems for Maharishi. People are sad because that voice of wisdom is gone.

I wonder if this means David Lynch will keep making movies after he rolls his car into the lake, so to speak. If so, I’m hoping for more “Mullholland Drive” and less “Wild at Heart.”

Death Comes for Britney Spears, the musical. On YouTube.

Lovely snowy day out there, more on the way. This may screw up our location-shooting plans, a sentence I thought I’d never get the chance to write. Shows what I know.

Someone spilled paint all over my community last night. We had our choice of everything from heavy rain to blinding snow within a 50-mile radius. As you can see, it was not a fit night for man nor beast, although it was interesting to keep checking the weather widget as it passed through.

A moment of silence for our readers in the states that suffered more from this system.

I snagged this image because of that oddly perfect oval hovering over Windsor. I’d like to know what caused that, if anyone knows. Years ago, I used to get almost a daily e-mail from a reader in Los Angeles, a surfer my age named Paul. We had some nice exchanges about surfing, something I’ve always wanted to try but will likely have to save for my next lifetime. He had a way of talking about it that walked a line between Spicoli and Bodhi, and a lot of it boiled down to weather. Surfing was a way for a guy who lived in Los Angeles to stay in touch with the natural world, via the vast ocean on the other side of the hills. He would e-mail me weather maps of Pacific storm systems, and demonstrate why a storm here meant waves in Malibu, but one there was better news for Santa Barbara, why this place was a better winter beach and that place one for summer, how you could anticipate the waves for days, and plan your week around it. He made me understand it at a level I’d never considered before, and one that, needless to say, isn’t part of the popular image of surfing, even a little bit.

Then one day he wrote and said, “Circumstances require me to give up my internet connection for the forseeable future, enjoyed reading your blog, take care, bye” and I never heard from him again. I wonder if he’s still out there. If he is, maybe he knows why it was snowing in an oval over Windsor last night.

I’m looking at weather maps to keep myself from looking at election-result maps, because they give me a headache. There are two things I managed to mostly avoid when I was a reporter: politics and entertainment news. Of course I covered elections and the like — only the fashion reporter entirely avoids those — but I was never the one with the patience to sit down with precinct maps and exit-poll results and tap calculator keys all night. Those folks provide a huge service, but they make watching election returns pretty rough. I gather Mitt’s washed up, but we knew that was coming. Huckabee’s showing was an interesting thread, but still can’t win him the Strange New Respect award from the media. And Hillary and Obama continue to run neck-and-neck, which is exhausting, for both them and the Democrats, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed.

I don’t listen to talk radio, would only know Hugh Hewitt if he jogged down my street with his man-boobs a-jiggle, but did he really say McCain “can’t be considered a frontrunner by any conventional standard”? Whatever. These folks are delusional.

So now that we’ve established I’m tired and goofy this morning, how about some bloggage? I don’t really have any, but Fark is always on the job, and…yes, yes, this will do just fine: What do you do when you find a rattlesnake in your backyard in St. Petersburg? Call the law, of course, and if you’re lucky and they think the snake is SEVEN FEET LONG, they’ll send three cops with shotguns.

Personally, I think those guys just like to blast away.

I think this will be an early-nap day. If I made my coffee any stronger, it would be pudding. Play nice, and I’ll be back in a bit.

I found the following via a three-word Metafilter post: Bob Greene returns. I don’t think it’s precisely true — as we’ve noted here a time or two, Greene has been making quiet inroads back into respectable circles for a while now. At the same time, I think it’s important that we keep stepping on this bug every time it waves a leg in the air, because it’s plain he hasn’t learned a goddamn thing.

This one worries me, though. For starters, it seems to have a standing head (“Bob Greene across America”), which suggests it’s not a one-off pity gig thrown his way by an old colleague, but an ongoing pity gig, in which case, gloves off. For any new readers here, let me say it up front again: Bob Greene should have kept his hands off the college girls, interns and other young women he hit on, pawed over and otherwise defiled. But that’s not why he should stay out of journalism. This is: He’s a big ol’ hack.

The latest is vintage. This man couldn’t change if he tried.

It starts with a windy description of, what else, something he saw in the hotel. A woman gets onto an elevator with two strangers, one of them Bob, carrying on a private conversation via her Bluetooth headset. Garden-variety rudeness, but not so small that Bob can’t draw some grand conclusions:

My traveling companions on CNN’s newsroom-on-wheels and I had stopped for the night at this Hollywood hotel in the days before the presidential primary election in California (and throughout the nation). If people are surprised by the depth and fervency of the passions being displayed by citizens, regardless of ideology, during this year’s race for the presidency, perhaps part of that surprise is because the emotions being shown for certain candidates put to the lie something that we have recently taken for granted — something emblemized, in its own small way, by the woman in the elevator.

He goes on to make his case:

There used to be a phrase utilized to sum up the insularity of presidential campaigns: “inside the cocoon.” It referred to life within the confines of the campaign jets, or the campaign press buses — it meant that those who traveled with a candidate were in peril of developing a skewed view of the outer world, because their sole points of reference were the events, and players, involved in the campaign itself.

The cocoon theory, rather than diminish, has expanded: living in a cocoon has in large measure become the American way of life. The sidewalks are filled with people looking down at tiny screens nestled in their palms, checking for messages, searching for flashing signals from people miles away, not wanting or needing to make eye contact with the living human beings in their immediate proximity. Friendship is a strictly defined commodity granted with the tap of a key: an electronic transaction on ultimately-for-profit computer sites. The cocoon, as a bedrock principle for living, offers the illusion of safety — by shutting out all that is unknown, the cocoon promises: these high walls around you are good for you.

Keep in mind this is a man who once wrote a knee-slapper about not having e-mail — he just couldn’t get into that crazy stuff — and was then told by the Chicago Tribune IT guys that of course he had e-mail, here’s how to access it, and he did, and whaddaya know there were something like 3,000 unread messages in his in-box. So excuse me for thinking he doesn’t know shit about this. So, Bob, while I’m not a text demon, let me suggest this gently: When a pretty girl on Michigan Avenue refuses to meet your gaze, it’s not necessarily because she’s lost in a cultural moment. She’s probably texting her BFF: OMG U SHD C THS D00DS RUG!!!!! 😮

So what’s emblemized, in its own small way, by the woman in the elevator? This:

So this year’s unusual campaign for the presidency — regardless of who you may or may not be supporting — is an unanticipated step in the other direction. It takes quite a leap of faith to proclaim your belief, and trust, in someone, and something, unknown. To acknowledge that you are ready for something, and someone, different is to admit that the things with which you are familiar may not, after all, be the things on which your future is best based.

I dunno, but if you asked me why the campaign has been impassioned so far, I’d think it had something to do with the public’s eagerness to get the current presidency over with. But don’t believe me. Believe the Voice of His Generation, who thinks it’s all about “proclaiming your belief, and trust, in someone, and something, unknown”? (Note how he pads almost unconsciously; belief and trust, something and someone.) Because there’s no incumbent? That happens every eight years. Who’s unknown? Obama comes as close as anyone, but he’s hardly hiding behind a cape and mask. If this is the linchpin of his connection between Rude Lady and Election 2008, I’d say it’s a stretch that would challenge Elastagirl.

This all has to do with looking up from those screens in your palms; it has to do with gazing around you and acknowledging: maybe it’s time to let the outside in. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party or the Democratic Party; the candidates in each are trumpeting the concept of change, but maybe the change the nation is beginning to hunger for has little to do with politicians or policies, and everything to do with ourselves. Maybe the change we apparently so thirst for goes well beyond matters electoral.

Ha. Note how he innoculates himself: It has nothing to do with the Republican Party or Democratic Party. Because Bob is above such things. He is a keen observer of the human condition, not a political hack. More pure and unadulterated b.s. But even he knows this. Because guess what the very next sentence is?

Or maybe not.

I wish I were kidding.

Bob Greene made a lot of friends in high places during his career, and I expect it’s paying off for him now. But please, if anyone in a position to hire for these gigs is listening: If what you want is some sort of Heartland Voice, a cultural commentator who lives far from the coasts, out of the MSM usual suspects, I can suggest a long list of writers a thousand times more observant, sharper-eyed, and keener with a pen than this washed-up hack. They would also leave the hotel once in a while. It would come with the thanks of a grateful nation.

Sigh.

So how was your weekend? Mine was fine. In honor of the Super Bowl, I bought a bag of Tostitos and a jar of queso dip, which had the consistency and color of sinus-infection snot, but I always insist on authenticity with my Super snax. Quite the game, though. My brother called at halftime to tell me he had the Patriots and 13 points, so I think it’s fair to say there won’t be any Christmas presents from him this year. Giselle will probably be dumping Tom Brady soon, too. Poor baby. Maybe he can hang out with Bob.

Big day ahead, so play nice. I’ll be back later.

Welcome to any new readers we might have today. NN.C got a little old-media pub Thursday, in Ben Burns’ column in the Grosse Pointe News. He did not let slip our secret that we’re really Not the Right Sort to be Pointers, but did get a quip in:

Nancy Nall Derringer, who has a last name that sounds like a 1930’s bank robber, freelances for a variety of local magazines and publications both on the Internet and beyond. And her lance is always sharp.

When I leave my name with secretaries and receptionists, I sometimes say “Derringer, like the gun.” As tiny two-round pistols that can be tucked into a lady’s garter have ceded their popularity to MAC-10 machine pistols, only a few pick up on the reference. The rest say, “OK, Miss Dillinger,” and leave it at that. Nice to know my married name is still ringing the old bells.

I’d link to the story, but you have to be a subscriber to the dead-tree paper to read the website. And I suspect hardly anyone here is. But welcome to any newbies it scared up. Feel free to join our raucous discussions in the comments. First-time commenters go to a holding pen, but once I’m satisfied you’re not a spammer, you’re approved forever after.

Anyway, that story wasn’t the most interesting thing in the paper yesterday. This was, a display ad in the classified section:

I am requesting your assistance in recovering a GOLD FABERGE EGG ENCRUSTED WITH JEWELS approximately 8 inches tall, attached to a wooden base, valued at over $6,000. The aforementioned egg was taken from a home on Lake Shore Drive, during an underage house party. The subjects that stole the egg along with other jewelry, stated that the ‘egg was thrown from a car window,’ while at a stop sign at southbound Wedgewood at Roslyn, November 12, 2007.

If you have any information, please call…

If I were the editor, I’d hand this ad to my best reporter and tell him or her to go fetch me a story, but I’ve given up expecting such initiative from the local press. Nevertheless, I appreciate their publicity.

In case you’re wondering, we got a few inches of snow overnight, making a search of the Wedgewood/Roslyn intersection problematic today. Anyway, I’m sure it’s long gone. What a thing to find on your dog-walking route. Life imitates “Risky Business.”

(It goes without saying that this was a Faberge-style egg, but that’s just a quibble. There are only about 60 authentic Faberge eggs extant in the world today, and their individual value is in the millions, not six grand.)

It’s still snowing, but no day off for Grosse Pointe schoolchildren, who, like the mayor of Detroit, generally get to school in chauffeured late-model SUVs. It’s a good day for shooting some video, as was yesterday, when the storm was coming. Early afternoon, it was very cold and very clear, so I went for a walk down by the lake and found the ice at our city park as solid as my kitchen floor, making wonderful groaning noises farther out. I had my video camera, so I crept out as far as I dared and tried to capture it. The crews cutting limbs at the Ford estate took a short break, so there was no chain saw noise to ruin the effect. I was thinking of shooting something like the last five minutes on “CBS Sunday Morning,” but once I got out far enough, the groaning stopped. Dammit. So I looked at some swans, trespassed a little on the Ford grounds, and turned back.

The bad news: The water level in the lake is as low as it was in the fall. Maybe lower. We could get three feet of snow today, and it wouldn’t be enough.

So what’s going on out in the big world? It seems the wind is changing. Isn’t it funny, how one day you just wake up in August and realize that fall is nearly here? Today…well, let’s call it Strange New Respect Day. Republicans are reconciling themselves to McCain. Hillary and Obama are making nice to one another. The next phase has begun, and it’s only Feb. 1. The race for the nomination will be effectively over after Tuesday (I suspect), and then we can start focusing on November.

By the way, if there was any doubt Stephen Colbert was a comic genius, it was gone when he pegged Mitt Romney to Guy Smiley:

I mean: Perfect.

(“Sesame Street” is so far past its peak it’s not even worth discussing, but it’s useful to remember the early years, when Jim Henson’s genius still infused the Muppet troupe. From Muppet Wiki: When Count von Count introduced himself in a Beat the Time sketch in his traditional way, “They call me the Count because I love to count things,” Guy responded with, “Well, I’m Guy Smiley. They call me Guy Smiley because I changed my name from Bernie Liederkrantz.”

Bloggage: I’ve always wondered how the downturn in newspapers’ fortunes is playing out in Europe, particularly the U.K., which publishes the liveliest papers in the English-speaking world. Give a smart writer a simple assignment — a general piece on men’s underwear — and watch her run:

Come the Renaissance, as the chausses became tight hose, the braies got shorter and were fitted with a convenient flap for urinating through. That buttoned or tied flap – the earliest codpiece – wasn’t actually covered by outer layers, so Henry VIII, never one for modesty, began to pad his. Historians have suggested that beneath Henry’s appendage may have been hidden the medication-soaked bandages needed to relieve the symptoms of his syphilis. Men free of venereal disease, meanwhile, used the tumescent codpieces as a handy pocket. (“New World cigarette?” “Ah, not for me, my lord, no.”)

Among the things I learned from that article, besides the disgusting one about Henry VIII’s syphilis: Brit slang for undies includes “smalls,” “y-fronts” and just plain “pants” (distinguished from trousers). Also, “there is one delicate area of pant advancement where men are not yet ready to go – universal package sizing.” Because no man wants to go into a department store and be spotted buying the masculine equivalent of a 32A.

What Gannett is Doing to the Free Press is a standard small-talk discussion among Detroit journalists since the paper’s sale two years ago, but to me, it all comes down to the Tips Box, the Gannett trademark, you-are-too-stupid-to-live-your-life feature tacked on to too many stories. With a big winter storm overnight, there’s a huge Tips feature in today’s paper. Among the tips: Protect your lungs from extremely cold air by covering your mouth when outdoors. Try not to speak unless absolutely necessary. Roger that, sir!

It seems a fitting note to shove off for the weekend on. Try not to speak unless absolutely necessary.

Nothing like a death in the family to make you wish you were born a fish. The morning’s activities here at Chez NN.C include a whole-house search for Alan’s Social Security card. It’s for a bank thing. Of course he knows his number, but they want to see the actual card. Let me see the hands of those of you who can lay hands on your Social Security card within 15 minutes. Yeah, thought so. After a while, I thought screw it, let’s get the replacement. There’s an SSA office two blocks from here; he can bring in his passport (which we can find) and get it while he waits.

But can you get it while you wait? Good luck getting an answer. The website offers exhaustive instructions on how to request a card, but is vague on the while-you-wait part, which is important, because this all has to happen today. A call to the office was in order. The local number was disconnected, and all inquiries now go through an 800 number, which employs one of those automated voice recognition programs but NO ACTUAL HUMAN BEING, and…and…

Alan reached someone at the bank. Turns out they don’t need the card if they can see your W-2. Crisis averted. But a new resolution: This year, once and for all, assemble a “grab box” of key family documents so we can avoid this nonsense in the future. I’m not the best record-keeper, but I’m good enough, but life is simply growing too complicated.

Per Kirk’s comments yesterday, I’ve decided to stop feeling bad about enjoying the mayoral scandal. It’s the story that keeps on giving, and it would be…dare I say?…wrong not to smile once in a while. Last night’s big event was the mayor’s public apology, made at his church, but in an empty room, to one pool camera, no media allowed, no questions, in and out in 12 minutes. It was pretty much total crapola, as you might expect, all “I’m sorry” but no mention of what he was sorry for. He has to be very careful what he says now, because he’s facing a perjury investigation, and that’s not a charge to be trifled with. Once again, he showed his beguiling combination of Street and Suit, in his declaration “I would never quit on you.”

(Oh, why even mention it? I hear more mangled English on the evening news than anywhere else in my world. Last night’s neologism: “fictitionally,” which seems to mean “fictional,” but has some extra syllables, making the speaker sound extra-smart. There was also “tenor” used incorrectly, i.e. “The mayor struck the right tenor in his statement,” and this by an anchor.)

But the cherry on top was yet another performance by Steve Wilson, WXYZ’s designated Kwame-botherer. The station deployed its chopper for overhead surveillance of the church, not just to get video but to let Steve know which door he was sneaking into. So Steve was right there to yell, “Who is Carmen Slowski?” as his honor stepped out of his SUV. The mayor Heisman’d him nicely. I’d say it was like a bear swatting away a smaller animal wanting a bite from the carcass, but Wilson is easily as big as Kilpatrick. He’s truly a wonderful figure, because his distinguishing fat-man feature is a wattle that lends a comical note to the blowhard self-importance. Follow that last link, a transcript of his 11 p.m. report, to get a sense of how he rolls:

I’ve faced the mayor many times in the last few years, usually with questions he hasn’t wanted to answer…and tonight proved to be no exception. While most reporters and cameras waited at the side door…our Chopper 7 “eyes in the sky” pointed me to where the mayor was heading—the front door, so when he pulled up and finally stepped out the car, I asked him one of the questions so many of you have been asking—and got a shove in return…As I first revealed last Friday and the Detroit Free Press confirmed today, only days before the text message scandal broke a week ago, the mayor was here at a North Carolina mountain resort eating chocolate-covered strawberries, drinking fine French wine, and soaking in an aromatic bubble bath with a woman using the name Carmen Slowski. Mrs. Kilpatrick and the couple’s three boys were back home in Detroit at the time…and the mayor has never explained why records show there were two people in his room, or just who was the mystery woman sharing his bubble bath.

“Soaking in an aromatic bubble bath.” If you can’t laugh at that, you’re dead.

If the mayor’s lucky, the approaching winter storm everybody’s fretting about today will turn out to be a rip-roarer. Nothing like a foot of wet snow to get people talking about something other than bubble baths, not to mention “fine French wine.”

Note to self: Go shopping today, lay in a supply of fine French wine. If we’re going to be snowed in, might as well do it right.

Do we have bloggage? We have bloggage:

Steve Novick, candidate for U.S. Senate in Oregon, really is a guy you’d want to have a beer with. Here’s why. (YouTube link, for those of you who avoid them.)

Don’t waste your time on “Meet the Spartans.” Slate says why:

Various news sources have declared that Meet the Spartans has a running time of 84 minutes. Some online reviews peg the actual running time at 68 minutes. I went to a 5:30 p.m. screening. After previews, the movie began some time between 5:44 and 5:47. The closing credits started at 6:47. After a cast-performed rendition of “I Will Survive” (note: this was a reprise of an earlier performance) staged on the American Idol set (note: not the real American Idol set), the credits ran over a black screen. Perhaps two minutes later, the credits gave way to scenes that weren’t strong enough to make the first 60 minutes, including Spider-Man removing Donald Trump’s toupee. After about five minutes of these deleted scenes, the credits started again. They moved at about 10 lines per minute. And, considering the movie is about an hour long and probably took about six hours to make, they included a surprising amount of names; I’m guessing 8,000. By the time the credits had been slow-rolling for several minutes, the other 15 people in the theater had gone home. As the credits continued, I put on my headphones and listened to some music. At 7:09, more than 20 minutes after the credits began, I was rewarded by the aforementioned five-second, fake-Stallone-as-Britney bit. The lights went up and I left, shaken and depressed.

Not surprisingly:

This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen.

Thank God for the New York Times Thursday Styles, because who else is covering the Slow Design movement? Ahem:

Katrin Svana Eythorsdottir, another designer from Iceland, made a “chandelier” from beads of glucose that clung to twine and caught the natural light. After five months, the chandelier disintegrated (as Ms. Eythorsdottir, who wanted to create a temporary, biodegradable object, had intended). It is true that a decomposing chandelier seems sort of fast, but as it turns out a domestic object with a built-in expiration date is a slow notion, said Carolyn Strauss, a designer, curator and the founder of SlowLab, a three-year-old design think tank with offices in Manhattan and Amsterdam that’s devoted to searching out the slow in cutting-edge design. “You wouldn’t buy that chandelier and go away on a two-week vacation,” Ms. Strauss said. “It’s an object you’d really cherish because of its temporary and therefore precious nature.”

No word on the cost. Whatever it is: Not enough.

OK, friends, I’ve wasted too much of the day already. Hang in there and enjoy yours. I’m after some fine French wine.

God, I love this town. Corruption has such a happy shamelessness here. As what the Freep has branded “Text Message Scandal” unfolds, the new details keep getting weirder. The mayor has yet to emerge “from seclusion,” but Monday his ex-paramour, the chief of staff, quit her job. The battlefield promotion went to one Kandia Milton, who announced his first order of business would be…anyone?

Yes, paying $10,000 in back property taxes. It gets better:

Other problems uncovered:

• In the fall, Milton and his wife, Lisa, emerged from Chapter 13 bankruptcy. According to the bankruptcy records that the couple filed in August 2006, they owed $389,207 to a variety of creditors, including mortgages, credit cards, taxes and utility bills.

• They lost two Detroit properties at sheriff’s sales in April and May 2006.

• At one point, Milton had amassed $1,080 in parking ticket fines owed to the city.

• In April 2006, he was cited by Detroit police for failing to properly secure a child passenger. He paid a $235 fine, according to 36th District Court records.

I remember one morning back in my talk-radio days, when my co-host, a city councilman, casually mentioned that he’d paid a bunch of parking tickets the day before. His m.o. was to let them pile up in the glove compartment until his business took him to the city clerk’s office, then find out what his outstanding balance was and pay it all at once. He found this process far more efficient than worrying about having change for the meter and paying them one by one. Someone stopped me later and railed for a while about the “disrespect for the law” shown by this alleged public role model, and his shamelessness! In talking about it right out in the open! As though parking tickets were postcards from your doctor reminding you to get your cholesterol checked! The nerve!

Well, that was Fort Wayne, and this is Detroit. Meet the mayor’s new chief of staff. Model citizen.

While the News had that story, the Freep had another, a confirmation from a “fancy North Carolina resort” that the mayor, while passing the MLK holiday weekend there, officially alone and on official business — he was speaking at a King memorial breakfast — received a $504 “massage for two.”

Resort literature says, “The deluxe couples room is sprinkled with rose petals, then you and your significant other will receive a tandem candlelit Grove Park Inn Spa Massage, followed by an aromatic whirlpool bath. Sip chilled champagne while feeding each other chocolate-covered strawberries.”

The mayor’s companion is described as one “Carmen Slowski.” And yes, another media outlet noted the resemblance of the name to that of a fictional amphibian reptilian pitchwoman.

Jack Lessenberry chides us all:

You have to be a pretty stupid racist to take any delight or pleasure in this latest scandal.

OK, I’m chastened. He’s right that, beyond the cheap titillation, there’s absolutely nothing good to come out of this mess. But it does make the morning papers a lot more interesting. Let’s leave it at that.

Speaking of Detroit and its problems: I heard yet another stolen-car story the other day. I used to know hardly anyone who’d had a car stolen in circumstances short of extreme stupidity, i.e. leaving the keys in the ignition. Now I know half a dozen at least, and most around here. Hell, a couple of our local commenter JohnC’s friends had their car stolen, and it turned up on Belle Isle with a dead body in it. The story I heard the other day was typical, and had the effect of making me see certain things through a thief’s eyes. This lady was pumping her gas at one of those conveniently located stations on the service drive to a major freeway, and discovered the bad guys find it convenient, too. She unhooked the hose, turned to hang it up, and some dude jumped into the driver’s seat and was flying down the on-ramp to I-94 before she could say, “What the-?”

What’s perhaps miraculous is that they actually found the car, a month later. It was down in the D with a temporary tag, 3,000 more miles than it had when it was stolen, significant body damage and a nicely banged-up undercarriage. They snipped the OnStar wiring first thing, of course.

I used to wonder if all these new security devices on cars — the RFID fobs, GPS tracking, etc. — were absolutely necessary. No more.

Ah, well. As long as I drive an unsexy model with a stick shift, I feel a certain measure of safety. Foolish, perhaps, but let me cling to my illusions.

Time to fasten eyes on the day ahead. We had a day or two of mild temperatures, and then around nightfall yesterday the wind began to howl, and the thermometer dropped 40 degrees overnight. Yesterday: mid-40s. At this moment…checking widget…9 above. Yikes. I retrieved my garbage-can lid from the neighbor’s yard this morning, and reflected I never used to notice the weather beyond the obvious sweater/umbrella/boots wardrobe decisions. Probably because, as a younger woman, I was preoccupied with my internal weather report. It was like the Dutch Antilles, where the media doesn’t report daily conditions in anything other than a hurricane, because they’re always the same: High 70s with westerly winds of 10-15 miles per hour, chance of afternoon showers. Mine was: Steamy, with a 70 percent chance of bad decisions. Around my mid-30s I noticed I no longer worried that my palms were sweaty when I shook someone’s hand. The great cooling had begun. Someday I will reach room temperature, but until then, I have an on-spec essay to polish and throw out there for the usual rejections. Have a great day.