What a weekend, eh? It started with submersible clean-up and ended with a called-off coup. It’s amazing that I had time to go grocery shopping, but I did.

The more we learn about the OceanGate disaster, the more it becomes clear that Stockton Rush, born on third base with a long lead to home and a blind pitcher, was fortunate to the end, because the lawsuits his estate will be dealing with would leave him wishing he was dead. You could almost argue that anyone dumb enough to pay an arm and a leg to even go aboard is probably not smart enough to sue, but rich people have great lawyers. The detail that most struck me? The sub had limited propulsion, so landing in the right place to see the bow of the Titanic was pretty much a crapshoot. I learned this from a Detroit News story about a guy who took an earlier trip, which is paywalled, but I’ll quote the relevant parts:

On the day of the descent, the crew of five, including the OceanGate CEO serving as the pilot, were bolted into the submersible and sealed to avoid water leakage. A barge with the sub floated away from the ship, and the barge was sunk. The crew disconnected the sub to drop into the deep.

Weights sunk the sub for a more than two-hour journey to the ocean floor where the Titanic rests. Wortman could look out the single porthole, watching the “disco show” of red, green and blue sea life as the crew talked and listened to music. Wortman’s choice: Eminem.

Eventually, there was a complication. Wortman brought commemorative challenge coins to share and the passengers may have underreported their weight, and the sub fell faster than expected.

The faster descent meant the sub missed its destination. The hope was to land near the front of the ship. It landed roughly 300 yards off the back in a debris field of the Titanic. It was pitch black. With a light, Wortman could see ceramic tiles, wine bottles and one of the boilers. On the ascent, he saw the back end of the propellers, but the sub had to avoid getting caught in the metal remains of the vessel.

They spent about four hours on the ocean floor. A normal ascent required dropping the sub’s weights and floating to the surface, usually no more than three hours. But one of the weights didn’t drop during Wortman’s dive, consuming time to change the programming code to address the weight issue. It took 3 hours and 20 minutes to surface.

As a result, they didn’t see the bow of the ship, much of which remains intact. A later dive did see it. Hungry, tired and cold at 33-degree temperatures at the ocean floor, the passengers on Wortman’s dive agreed to return to the surface. Divers can’t recover the sub in the dark, and Wortman said he didn’t want to spend the night underwater.

Indeed. Man, remember when rich people felt they had a duty to leave a legacy behind? Carnegie libraries, major university endowments, scholarships? Also: Imagine being trapped in a minivan-size submersible listening to Eminem.

Well, Stockton Rush is plankton food now, so let’s surface and turn our eyes to Russia. Despite being something of a Russophile for much of my life, I have no idea what really happened here. A friend, who is not a cynic but sometimes leans that way, thinks the whole play was about money, that Putin had to put a nine-figure sum into Prigozhin’s Swiss bank account, and then and only then were the troops called back. Given that all involved are thugs and criminals, I wouldn’t be surprised. If this weakens Uncle Vlad, can’t complain. But as in all things Russian, beware what might be coming up behind him. As the U.S. has shown us, there are bottoms below the one we’re standing on now.

Speaking of which, Big Daddy is in southeast Michigan late this afternoon, if he isn’t here already. The Oakland County GOP is having a fundraiser with him as the big draw. They plan to give him a “Man of the Decade” award, which is something of a joke for people who can remember when he was here in 2016, and boasted from the podium that the last time he’d been in Michigan, it was to accept a Man of the Year award. Reporters, local burghers and others did their research and thinkin’, and no one could remember any such thing, or even any such award. But being bootlickers and ass-kissers of the first order, they’re going to do it for real this time, and add nine years.

The jokes, they write themselves.

OK, gotta make dinner for our little tribe of two before more world news breaks out.

In my observation, great families tend to fall apart after three generations. The old man makes the pile, the kids grow up in extreme privilege and try to do right by dad, but they don’t know what it’s like to make their own beds, much less their own fortune. (See “Succession” for more of this.) By the time the old man’s grandchildren are grown, it’s all divorce, drug addiction and dumbassery. The money may last a while, but the spark and verve is gone.

Which is how we end up with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. From a Wall Street Journal story about his presidential campaign today:

He has aired claims—debunked by public-health experts—linking childhood vaccinations to autism. He has cast doubt on the safety of Covid-19 vaccines. He has questioned whether prescription drugs have caused a rise in school shootings and whether Wi-Fi exposure leads to cancer. He has said that the Central Intelligence Agency assassinated his uncle and could have killed his father, Robert F. Kennedy, despite no concrete evidence. And he has said the U.S. is perpetuating the Ukraine war to fuel the defense industry.

…He said he is avoiding some types of campaign events including parades because his security team has determined that they aren’t safe given the risk of an assassination attempt by the CIA.

The hundreds of supporters who came to hear Kennedy’s foreign-policy speech—some who drove hours and came with copies of his books—spanned the ideological spectrum.

“All the things that he’s saying about bringing the country together, he really believes he really can do this, and he’s unlike anybody out there,” said independent voter Rebecca Giles, 54, a retired physician from Bedford, N.H., and a Kennedy campaign volunteer. Giles supported Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 New Hampshire primaries and general elections, but soured on him over his pandemic response, which she saw as heavy-handed.

He’s speaking to a Moms for Liberty convention next week in Philadelphia. Steve Bannon thinks he’s swell. I think I know all I need about this guy. (And may I just say? Having heard him speak, he has a serious case of spasmodic dysphonia. No crime there, of course, but in an age where any woman who raises her voice is dismissed as “shrill,” we’ll see whether the same standards apply to men.)

In other news at this hour, Marjorie Taylor Greene called Lauren Boebert a “little bitch” on the floor of the House yesterday and I, for one, am highly amused.

I was going to post a sensitively written story from the Columbus Dispatch about the descent of its former legendary zoo director, Jack Hanna, into Alzheimer’s, but now I’m not. I’ve read a bunch of these in my lifetime, and they all boil down to the same thing: Once this person was formidable, now they are not. It’s never not sad and it’s also barely news. We’re all gonna die someday, and the lucky ones will have all their faculties intact when they do.

With that, I beg you adieu and watch out for the CIA.

Until this weekend, I knew…thinking…one (1) person who had seen “Master and Commander,” one of my old KWF fellows in Ann Arbor. I said, “Jay, did you see any movies this weekend?” “Yeah, I checked out ‘Master and Commander.’ “How was it?” “I liked it.”

And with that, I forgot about “Master and Commander” for 20 years or so, when I learned the film, which is technically titled “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World,” is now a Thing, mainly and almost exclusively with young men, who apparently do things like this:

That’s the opening title of the film, directed by Peter Weir and starring his countryman Russell Crowe, based on – here’s another thing I simply didn’t know – what Roger Ebert calls the “beloved” novels of Patrick O’Brian, and there’s a whole series of them.

Clearly, on my own this weekend as Alan went fishing up north, it was time to check out “Master and Commander.” And like Jay, I liked it. Didn’t love it. I’m not a guy. But I liked it.

If you wanted to know what life at sea on a British man-o-war (the HMS Surprise) was like at the beginning of the 19th century (see tattoo above), this is your movie. Craftwise, it’s excellent; the battle scenes are amazing and give the viewer a real sense of what it must be like, to be far offshore on a wooden ship being hit by cannon fire. In between the framing battles that open and close the narrative, it’s kind of episodic. Here’s the scene where we see field medicine performed on deck by the ship’s surgeon. Here’s the scene where the surgeon operates on himself, using a mirror. Here’s the stop in the Galapagos Islands. And so on.

Essentially I’m in agreement with this GQ writer, a woman, who contends:

If you kidnapped a hundred of Hollywood’s top minds and forced them to work around the clock, they could not engineer a more exquisite Dad Movie. Though Master and Commander is ostensibly about the Surprise sailing to intercept a French enemy warship, the battle scenes, exhilarating as they may be, are few and far in between. The bulk of the film—and the heart of its charm—is instead a meticulous rendering of daily life at sea: the monotony of hard labor, the palpable threat of scurvy, the dirty-faced sailors who sleep in close quarters and grin through yellowed teeth. (You know it smells crazy in there.) Even better? All the screen time devoted to close conversations between Aubrey and Maturin, and their two-dude violin and cello jam sessions. You come away with a sense of satisfaction at their accomplishments and camaraderie, and just a bit of longing over a bygone way of life.

That’s just right. Check it out if you find yourself with a couple hours at your disposal and nothing on the teevee.

Otherwise, this weekend was a blur, running from one place to the next, although it was almost all fun. Met up with some friends at an out-of-the-way spot in the post-industrial stretches of Southwest Detroit. We sat on the patio while inside, a DJ mixed pop dance hits with mariachi. At one point I went inside to get another beer and noticed a satellite feed from some Spanish-speaking country, featuring, no shit, bare-knuckle boxing. I guess gloves are for “Master and Commander” fans. Saturday was a whirl of activity until I got home around 3:30 in the afternoon and said, Enough. Time for some Russell Crowe. Today I cleaned until Alan came home. We’ll celebrate Father’s Day tomorrow or later in the week; the Derringers don’t set much store on the Hallmark holidays.

Meanwhile, I read the news:

Sen. Joni Ernst says Iowans want someone who can “pull together” a divided country, and good luck with that, hon.

Yikes. The week lies ahead. Enjoy what’s left of your day, dads.

I feel like I spend half my time here apologizing, but OK then, that’s the way it is. I have an entry in my weekly planner that goes:

WORKOUTS:
MPS:
BLOGS:

As the week goes on, I add hashmarks. Workouts is self-explanatory; I aim for 5-6. MPs are morning pages, the daily stream-of-consciousness longhand thing I’ve been doing for a while, in hopes of waking up with a fully formed idea for a novel one of these days. As for BLOGS, I try for three. Often I only make it to two. This is the second of the week. I try, I fail, I’m human, and this is why I am resisting all calls to give this Substack thing a whirl.

But, as I usually say, I’ve been busy. I’m in training for a new part-time job this week, which I’ll reveal in due time. And the news has been so insanely…insane, I find myself just-can’t-evening a lot. Driving home yesterday, listening to a podcast on the arraignment the day before, and I heard Ron DeSantis pledging that if he is elected president, he will pardon Donald Trump, and calling upon all GOP candidates to do the same, and it kinda-sorta hit me: This could happen. Jesus Christ, just what I need: Another two years of doomscrolling and worrying and whatever-the-fucking.

I may need to really-really retire at some point. Just wait for Social Security to fill my bank account every month and relax. But not yet.

Meanwhile, however, this indictment is sucking all the goddamn oxygen out of my personal room. Every time I turn on the news, I’m reminded that we elected a criminal to lead the most powerful nation in the world, and could very well do it again. I’m just so…SICK OF THIS. When is this guy going to go away?

As I have, really, nothing today that you folks might say better, I’ll let this go. The weekend awaits. Let’s all enjoy it.

Today my pleasant little suburb had its “first annual” — the copy editor in me winced — “family fun bike ride.” It was clearly aimed at families with children, but they needed volunteers, so what the hell, I signed up. I’d hoped I’d get assigned to sweep, i.e., be the last in the peloton to make sure no one falls behind, but instead they assigned each volunteer to a corner, to make sure everyone stayed on course.

The course, I should add, was a rectangle. Down so many blocks, over one block, back the same number of blocks, over to the starting point. Total distance: 1.4 miles. Like I said, families with kids, and little ones. The lead and sweep positions were police, one on a bike and the sweep in a vehicle, lights blazing. We don’t take chances with child safety in the tender, fearful suburbs. I rode out to my post alone, and passed a yard where the owner gave me a cheery wave. I waved back, then noticed his side door had a Trump/Pence sign on the window. Given the events of last Friday, I wanted to circle back, stop and yell HOW FUCKING STUPID ARE YOU PEOPLE ANYWAY? But I didn’t. Look at me, the adult.

Anyway, the bike ride was fun, even though it rained. (Finally, rain. The first in at least a month.) As the last of them passed my post, I got on my own bike and rode back to the park with them. It was a grandmother and her wee grandson, who still had training wheels, and was working mightily to keep pumping away. We encouraged him, and he found his second wind. The sweeping police vehicle celebrated our finish with a siren whoop. Forty-five minutes of waiting around after volunteer registration, 12 minutes of cycling, then home.

I spent the weekend running hither and yon, and so today, bike ride notwithstanding, was all about relaxation. (And doing pre-work for next week’s work.) So I had time to read the entire lengthy obituary for Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who died Saturday. (Gift link to the obit.) What…a life. On my way back from Columbus after the moving adventure, I listened to some podcasts, and heard one, a recent “Fresh Air” episode, on Clarence Thomas, tied to a POV episode about him and Ginni. I hadn’t realized how grim and painful Thomas’ early life had been; he is the ultimate example of the therapy phrase “hurt people hurt people.” His grandfather, who raised him, emotionally abused him. White people abused him. Black people abused him. So he grew up to be an asshole. So did Ted Kaczynski, although there’s a strong case to be made that he was simply born broken.

The obit has a hell of a kicker:

Online, young people with a variety of partisan allegiances, or none at all, have developed an intricate

vocabulary of half-ironic Unabomber support. They proclaim themselves “anti-civ” or #tedpilled; they refer to “Uncle Ted.” Videos on TikTok of Unabomber-related songs, voice-overs and dances have acquired millions of views, according to a 2021 article in The Baffler.

Mr. Kaczynski was no longer the mysterious killer who had belatedly projected an outlandish justification for violence; now he was the originator of one of many styles of transgression and all-knowing condemnation to adopt online. His crimes lay in a past young people had never known, and he was imprisoned, no longer an active threat to society.

His online support did not indicate how many eco-terrorists had been newly minted, but it did measure a prevalence of cynicism, boredom, dissatisfaction with modern life and gloom about its prospects for change.

During his imprisonment, Mr. Kaczynski copied his correspondence by hand and forwarded it to the University of Michigan’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection, an archive devoted to radical protest, which has amassed dozens of boxes of Kaczynskiana.

According to New York magazine, Mr. Kaczynski’s papers became one of the collection’s most popular offerings. In an interview with the magazine, Julie Herrada, the collection’s curator, declined to describe the people so intrigued by Mr. Kaczynski that they visit the library to look through his archive. She said just one thing: “Nobody seems crazy.”

No doubt. We’ll be passing this way again, I’m sure. Have a good week, all.

Taylor Swift is coming to town for two nights, Friday and Saturday, and it appears the town has caught Swiftie Fever.

Whatever that means.

I remember standing on a corner downtown, in the Beforetimes, and watching a giant semi rumble down Woodward Avenue headed for Ford Field emblazoned 1989 World Tour. This was a couple days before the show, and I figured they needed that long to set up the stage. But with this recent visit I realize it could merely have been the merch truck. The shows are Friday and Saturday night, but the merch store opened today, Thursday, and the line was wrapped around the block hours ahead of time:

The first “Swifties” arrived more than seven hours before sales opened from a truck parked outside Ford Field. By 8 a.m., more than 1,000 fans were lined up awaiting the 10 a.m. opening to buy T-shirts, sweatshirts and other items commemorating the pop superstar’s Eras Tour.

“The merch is special, but we made so many memories waiting in line and being here and going to the shows and posting on Instagram and just listening to her music and that just means so much more to me,” said Stella Kane of Brighton, who came with sister, Ireland, 14, and arrived at Ford Field about 2 a.m. with their cousin, Ainsley Kane, 18, of Novi. “I mean, the merch is important, but it’s the memories that come with it that make it so much better.”

It’s the white-girl version of Aretha’s funeral viewing a few years back, when they laid her out in the Wright Museum of African-American History for a couple days (changing her outfit every day), for fans to pay their respects. Lots of these Swifties today didn’t even have tickets, which are selling for four figures even in the nosebleed sections. And OK then:

Swift’s 52-night, 20-city tour is anticipated to earn the singer-songwriter around $500 million, according to Forbes.

Not bad for a few months’ work. I’m unfamiliar with her body of work, although I dialed her up on Spotify while I made dinner. Perfect pop music, and I can absolutely understand why young women love her.

Otherwise, we are not experiencing the degree of misery New York is due to the forest-fire smoke, although we’re definitely feeling it. Red-orb sunrises and sunsets, and air-quality warnings every day for a week or so. We have the windows closed and the furnace running the fan. I’m not as bugged as Alan, aka Allergy Guy, but my eyes are a little itchy.

Michigan hasn’t had rain in at least three weeks, maybe more, and the northern forests are tinder-dry, just as fireworks and peak camping seasons ramp up. There was a 3,000-acre burn near Grayling last weekend, and I expect more.

Just remember: Global warming is a Chinese myth, as reported by our former president.

Speaking of whom: Indicted. Again.

Finally, would someone stuff Salena Zito in a bag somewhere:

For the record, I’ve seen nothing but constant urging for kids to explore skilled trades for years now. The column is about Mike Rowe, who is allegedly a skilled tradesman but who spends most of his time hosting a TV show and otherwise being a media guy, but never mind that. I’d link it, but paywall. Apparently he spends a lot of time talking to Fox News-type audiences. What a surprise.

OK, into the weekend we go. Swiftly!

The other day Alan remarked that The New York Times needs to employ more people who don’t live in New York. He was carping about some illustrations in this story – “that isn’t a come-along, and who wants Blundstones to wade through disaster debris?” – that for the record, I consider fairly minor quibbles. But I’d been thinking the same thing after listening to a podcast they did about the affordability crisis in large coastal cities.

Totally valid story, that one, and something we’ve been discussing in the comments here, of late. But their suggestions of the “affordable” cities young educated people are allegedly fleeing to? Austin. Phoenix. Miami. Atlanta. Um, hello? And the episode started so promisingly, with a young woman who’d left Brooklyn because she realized she’d never be able to own anything, much less the bar she aspired to run, if she stayed in New York. She’s now in Birmingham, Alabama, with not one but two bars, a big house with a yard, a car and four dogs. But those other four cities? All have median home prices above $500,000, with the exception of Atlanta, where it’s $400,000, but you’d happily pay the extra $100,000 to escape from its typical traffic jams.

I waited to hear mention of…well, why not Columbus, Ohio? Indianapolis? St. Louis? Or are they all lost to us, too? When we drove to Nashville in March, we stopped for the night in Cincinnati, and found a hotel on the Kentucky side of the river. The desk clerk informed us that we probably couldn’t get a house there, either, at least not in a nice area close to the river, for much less than half a mil.

So I guess we’re staying put, at least until Michigan comes fully into its own as the Saudi Arabia of fresh water. This column is paywalled and the Detroit News doesn’t do gift links, but it tracks precisely with my thinking after the census showed Michigan again failing to grow very much, and the powers that be announced a study group to come up with a growth strategy. I’ll quote more liberally than I usually do:

During her annual address at last week’s Mackinac Policy Conference, Whitmer said Michigan “will be a climate refuge” in one breath, but then in the next said the state shouldn’t make that the strategy to address the fact Michigan has leaped from the 29th oldest state in 2000 to the 13th oldest state in the 2020 Census.

“But our population goals cannot be cynically fueled by climigrants — these are people who migrate to Michigan because of climate change,” Whitmer said. “It’s got to be driven by our ability to address global challenges and what we have to offer.”

What Michigan has to offer climigrants is water and mostly predictable four seasons of weather. (Yes, it snows. Get over it, folks. Nature is beautiful.)

The global challenge is going to be access to fresh water. Michigan has got 21% of it — and 80% of North America’s freshwater is contained in our Great Lakes, our thousands of inland lakes and rivers, and our deep underground aquifers.

Whether it’s for human consumption, growing food, sustaining forests or building electric vehicle batteries, Michigan has the water to sustain our future and the other states won’t — and state and other officials should not be omitting that from the sales pitch of why people should move to Michigan.

Bingo, although I’m a little concerned about referring to the Great Lakes as “ours.” (Swim across all but one of them, and you come ashore in Canada.) Not only that, you can still get a house here for less than $400,000, or even $300,000. Plus we have great music, friendly people and reproductive freedom now embedded in the state constitution.

Meanwhile, Axios informed me this morning, two major insurers are no longer writing homeowner policies in California, and new-home construction is being restricted in Phoenix for, guess why, lack of groundwater.

So, Phoenix as the bolt hole for fleeing Angelenos? Miami — ha ha! Miami! with hurricanes and rising sea levels! — for New Yorkers? I don’t think so.

Waiting for a firestorm or hurricane to get you? Try Michigan. You can sprinkle your lawn here, even though we, too, are in an extended dry spell. All we have to worry about are occasional tornados. And the housing is (relatively) cheap. You can be my neighbor.

Hey, everyone. I am in Columbus, helping my brother move. It is supposed to be 86 degrees today, and I am wearing my sweat-proof underwear, to give you an idea of the glamour I’m operating under.

However! I have a great read for you today. Remember my friend Nathan Gotsch, who ran for Congress last year in Fort Wayne, as an independent? He’s been up to other stuff lately, namely producing the LGBT-themed play that got all the bigots up in their feelings. The Washington Post story about it dropped today (gift link), and it’s a great story about taking from bigots and giving it to deserving kids.

Enjoy. I’m off to sweat and clean a bathroom.

Well, I guess we have to say something about Tina Turner. It’s hard to do, because so much has already been said about her. Now that the top ranks in news organizations have been taken over by Gen X, the headlines and obits are concentrating on her ’80s period, i.e., post-Ike. That’s a defensible stance; her struggle to leave her abusive ex-husband was the turning point of her life and career, and we’re not supposed to give bad people like Ike Turner credit, even for the good things they did.

But the first time I saw Tina perform she was with Ike, and it left a mark. They were at the Ohio State Fair, we got in early enough to be in the first rows, and their performance was…indelible. (That means “it left a mark,” ha.) This must have been in their career bump after “Proud Mary,” and they performed as Ike and Tina Turner. I remember none of Ike, lurking in the back like the dark presence and bandleader he was. You watched Tina. The three Ikettes stood to Tina’s right, a few feet behind her. But they were all dressed similarly, in short dresses with fringe that never stopped shaking, because they didn’t, either. God knows how Tina could sing as well as she did, moving all the time; she must have had the cardio fitness of a Tour de France stage leader. They did slow songs, but Tina stutter-stepped through those, too, leaving it all on the stage, which was set up on the racetrack where harness races were held, the first rows seated on the track and the rest up in the grandstand. It wasn’t a glamorous venue; the fair director was famous for x-ing out those infamous tour riders that performers insisted on, delivering the same mediocre fair food to all the acts.

I’m sure Tina was used to it. Her memoir — most memoirs of performers of that era — was pretty clear about the tour grind they went through on the way to making the charts. Stage life is difficult, especially when your cheating husband is going through Ikettes like jelly beans, and beating you when you object. And they were black, which meant the chitlin circuit to start, until The Rolling Stones invited them to open in the ’60s, and they started reaching white audiences. It is said that Tina taught Mick Jagger to dance, and I believe it.

If you saw “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the biopic based on her memoir, you know all this, especially the dramatic split with Ike, where they fought in the back of a limousine in Las Vegas Dallas, she got out at a light left Ike sleeping in their hotel room and walked across the street crossed a busy highway to a Ramada Inn, where she told the manager she had 36 cents in her purse and a Mobil credit card, but would they give her a room anyway? He did, and she stayed at Ramadas for years afterward, mentioning the kindness in interviews whenever she was asked.

So it’s not surprising the interviews will mention the triumphant, you-go-girl part of her career first. I saw the Private Dancer tour in Fort Wayne, the shaggy-wig look, the Auntie Entity persona, and it was excellent. But you never forget your first Tina.

You guys can talk about that Tina if you want, but the record I’ll be playing in my head today is my absolute favorite, the Phil Spector production of “River Deep, Mountain High.” The story goes that Phil agreed to put Ike’s name on the recording, but only if he butted all the way out, and he did. So this is Tina-without-Ike, plus another bad man, but oh well.

One more small thing, no, two: She was really her own woman, embracing Buddhism and practicing it faithfully. And she left behind American racism, moving to Europe decades ago and settling in Switzerland. I always liked that about her, and pictured her hitting her singing bowl and chanting her mantra.

She also had the best single response to a question about whether she’d had plastic surgery, during her comeback. She replied yes, she had, because being beaten by her husband had left facial fractures that affected her breathing. And “I had my breasts put back in place,” she said. Take that, Ed Bradley, or whoever asked.

Did you ever see her? What did you think?

Last week Alan and I realized we are about to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, and we should do something to observe it. So we made last-minute reservations in Stratford, where the Shakespeare festival isn’t quite up to full speed just yet, but the plays are starting to open, and still at preview-level pricing.

We drove over on Saturday and saw “Rent,” one of two musicals they’re doing this year. (The other is “Spamalot,” and as I’m only a casual Monty Python fan, the choice was clear.) It was very fine. I’m not much for sung-through musicals, but this was a good production. Just a few years ago, a 1996 play about the persecution of drag queens, homosexuals, AIDS victims, anarchist professors and others might have seemed dated. As it is, the only unrealistic thing about the show was the idea that artists could squat in a loft on the lower east side of Manhattan. The rest was pretty dead-on.

I was curious who was in the original Broadway production. I don’t follow B’way closely, but I recognized Taye Diggs and Idina Menzel (or as John Travolta called her at the Oscars, Adele Dazeem). Diggs played Roger, the AIDS-cursed guitarist Benny the bad guy, and Adele was Maureen, who gets a couple of big numbers.

Living so close to Canada, I always wonder why we don’t go more often, even to Windsor. We’re so close to Canada you can see cars driving the shoreline roads, and yet, once you get there, everything is different. The accents change, people say “soe-rry” for the slightest offense, miles change to kilometers, the roads are as smooth as glass, your chance of dying in a mass shooting drops off the table. You can pick up a little French just by reading labels and street signs. Even their vodka-and-tomato juice drink is different, the bloody Caesar instead of Mary. And yet, you’re still speaking English, the currency is still dollars and cents, just different, gaily colored dollars.

God knows what Canadians think of us.

As always when I’m in Stratford, I bought books. “Station Eleven” from the Canadian-authors rack. “Birnam Wood,” which got a rave review in the NYT today, and the text of “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” which I’ve never read. And a blank journal for Kate, who stepped up to watch Wendy on short notice.

Speaking of the NYT, some great work today, not only there. First, an infuriating, extremely well-documented project on how three assholes worked a number of fake charities via robocall, raising $89 million in the process, and spending only 1 percent on the issues they were allegedly raising money for. I know you’ll be shocked, shocked to learn these guys are…well, you know.

This is older, but from ProPublica, a report on the nation’s worst-funded schools, which are falling apart. It’s not where you might think. (But once you know, it makes perfect sense.)

Finally, is it past time for Dianne Feinstein to resign?

And with that, I’m going to doze and wait for my Mothers Day dinner with Kate. Hope yours went/is going well.