I’ve been quote-unquote retired for a few years now, and I still think of the weekend as something special, look forward to it, get that Friday-on-my-mind feeling, and in fact think Friday night is the best night of the week. In Columbus, we got paid on Friday, and the table we assembled at the bar next door was long and loud. No separate checks. The rule was, you kept an approximate tally of your own damage as the night wore on and threw your cash on the table when you left, with a little extra for the tip. If you stayed until the end, you might get stuck with a bill for more than was on the table. Or, if everyone had overestimated, you might walk away winners. At a time I my life when I was on such a tight budget that I would put $5 in quarters in a mesh coin purse that I hung on a hook by my door — so I knew that whatever happened, I’d have bus fare to get to and from work, back in the days when the fare was 50 cents each way — walking away winners was like getting a little bonus.

I stayed late a lot, but mostly because I so enjoyed Fridays. I still do.

This week, I had a Friday dinner date with the friend I dogsit for. This was my thank-you for a week of service in the coldest week of the year, plus cleaning the coffee pot, a gripping take you might recall from a few weeks back. We went to She-Wolf, a spot that specializes in Roman cuisine. Had a pasta thing, and a fish thing, and gelato. It was all delicious, and it was a perfect Friday night. The rest of the weekend? Sunny, warmish, nice. Bought eggs, was thankful I already filed my taxes, ate too many jellybeans. Went to the library. The usual.

And I missed “The Ten Commandments,” but Alan is no fun to watch it with. You need to make it a party, with at least two gay men and lots of people who can say funny things about the next big moment coming up onscreen. Alan just thinks it’s dumb.

“THE TEN COMMANDMENTS” IS NOT DUMB.

OK, enough. Another thing I tried to do this weekend, and should do on more weekends: Pay no attention to whatever Tubby is up to. I stay informed, but there’s a limit to how much of this shit I, or anyone, can take. I go back and forth with my friends who practice 100 percent ignorance — and I stress that I mean “ignoring the news,” not actively cultivating stupidity — about how responsible that is. Some news will always break through, but I think to be an engaged citizen, you have to be well-informed. That said, I understand the agita that being well-informed causes mere mortals these days. I think my solution is mini-breaks. And I definitely think it’s wise to avoid shit like this (gift link reluctantly extended):

What do you wear for your first trip to space?

If you are like most people, probably whatever spacesuit or astronaut outfit the company (or government agency) you are flying with provides. However, if you are Lauren Sánchez — journalist, pilot, children’s book author, philanthropist and fiancée of Jeff Bezos, the second-richest man on the planet — you have another idea. You think, “Let’s reimagine the flight suit.”

Yes, it’s a liberally illustrated, ass-smooching feature on what Jeff Bezos’ arm candy has “reimagined” for what’s supposed to be an 11-minute trip on her boyfriend’s spaceship, and it’s about as gross as you’d expect, with quotes like this, from the designer:

“Simplicity was important, and comfort, and fit,” Mr. Garcia said. “But we also wanted something that was a little dangerous, like a motocross outfit. Or a ski suit. Flattering and sexy.”

I’ll say this for the :::checking::: children’s book author: She knows how she caught her boyfriend’s eye, and she means to keep it, if it takes all the lip filler in the world to do it.

Now, here I am getting agita again. Let’s do some yogic breathing and try to start the week off right. Happy Monday. In just four more days, it’ll be Friday.

Oh, hey, this isn’t worrisome at all, is it?

A lawyer’s spring break trip to the Dominican Republic with his family ended on a troubling note at Detroit Metro Airport on Sunday: He was detained by federal agents, questioned about his clients, and asked to give up his cellphone, he says.

But Dearborn attorney Amir Makled, who is representing a pro-Palestinian demonstrator who was arrested at the University of Michigan last year, stood his ground. He didn’t give up his phone.

…What followed was a 90-minute, back-and-forth verbal tussle between Makled and two federal agents, who, he said, ultimately released him without taking his phone, but looked at his contacts list instead. For the 38-year-old civil rights and criminal defense attorney, it was a daunting experience that he says highlights a troubling phenomenon that’s occurring across the United States: Lawyers are getting targeted for handling issues the administration of President Donald Trump disagrees with.

What’s worse is what happened when he tried to clear passport control. This is an American citizen, mind you:

Mom and the kids got through with no problem. But when Makled’s photo was taken, a notification popped up and Makled said he heard one agent ask another agent: “Hey, are the TTRT folks around?”

TTRT? Is the Tactical Terrorism Response Team. For a Muslim lawyer coming back from vacation. The TSA people repeatedly asked him to give over his phone, and he refused because, he said, there was information therein covered by attorney-client privilege. They told him they wanted his contacts list. He ended up letting them look at it, and the encounter ended.

As I wrote on Facebook earlier this week, it’s time to stop asking whether we’re “at risk” of becoming a fascist autocracy. It’s clear we already are.

I got an unexpected work assignment yesterday, and should probably hop to it. Short blog, but sometimes that happens. How about another picture from this weekend? Not mine, but I admire its sauciness:

I want to say a couple things about media coverage of Hands Off before it gets too small in the rearview mirror. Generally speaking, it…wasn’t great. Both the WashPost and the NYT did stories, focused on their local areas but fleshed out with details from other cities. USA Today, of all things, did a pretty good job, and I suspect got their local Gannett outfits in on it, because here in Detroit the Freep kicked the News’ butt, and that doesn’t happen all that often.

But there were notable missteps. A local TV station said “hundreds” attended the Detroit march, a laughable shortfall later changed for the web story. And both the News and TV felt the need to ring up the Michigan GOP chair for a whining quote.

I don’t recall this happening during the Tea Party protests. But the two situations, more than a decade apart, aren’t directly comparable, either.

If nothing else, the shitty coverage reflects how hollowed-out local media is today. Never chalk up to a grand conspiracy what can be more easily explained by: the weekend crew. Never the A-team in any outlet, it’s likely to be all the short-straw holders in the organization — the young and inexperienced, toiling for a similarly distracted and overworked supervisor, all charged with filling a newscast or a diminished Metro page with stuff like fatal accidents, fun runs and other weekend afterthoughts. If anyone was counting on the media to help us through this, that cavalry isn’t coming. Trust me on this: I rewatched “Spotlight” Friday night, and it was almost from another century. A fully staffed newsroom! An investigative team given time and resources to work! A supportive research team, with dusty archives in a library! It just doesn’t exist anymore except in rare, rare exceptions.

Two more signs, the first salty, the second very salty:

Finally, here’s a Substack column to read and tell me if I’m crazy because I think the guy is on to something:

After the fall of the USSR, America pressured Russia and other former Soviet republics to quickly privatize their public assets, allowing wealthy individuals from America and Europe to dramatically increase their fortunes. It seems evident that similar conspiratorial forces are now seeking to do the same to the United States, Shock Doctrine-style. To understand this, we must consider who will benefit — fantastically — from the collapse of American economic stability.

Trump’s tariffs aligns with a plan to transform the U.S. fully into a serf society ruled by tech and AI interests. To create a pliant population, you must first destroy the middle class.

…I understand why Krugman wants to view Donald Trump’s trade policy—especially his erratic, often self-defeating tariffs—as the bumbling chaos of a vicious bumbling orangutang motivated by ignorance, populist posturing for FOX, and petty vendettas. But these apparently stupid and erratic policies are, in fact, logical instruments, when seen from a different perspective. They are designed to destroy the American middle class so our country eventually becomes a serf society similar to Russia or, eventually, North Korea, with no free thinking allowed. This will give maximum freedom for billionaires but no freedom for those trapped under economic and legal obligations as the country goes down in flames.

It makes sense. Peter Thiel put JD Vance in the job for a reason. And JD Vance is one heartbeat away, and 40 years old.

Shudder.

Let’s hope the week unfolds well, shall we?

I guess most of you saw at least something about the demonstrations on Saturday. Hands Off 2025 ranged from sea to shining sea, and organizers said at least 500,000 RSVP’d for the events. I didn’t even know that was an option; I just showed up. (Or maybe I did, saw the RSVP link that required me to give them my email, and thought: Nah, I get enough junk mail already.) Anyway, based on the turnout in Detroit on a chilly, overcast, rain-threatening day, I’d say the crowds exceeded expectations.

There were several thousand marching here. At least 8,000, I’d guess. The course was from the Detroit Institute of Arts to Little Caesars Arena down the southbound sidewalk of Woodward, then back on the other side of the street, 1.7 miles each way. The returning side was back at the DIA while some were still leaving the grounds. Lots of people, lots of horn-honking from passing motorists.

I made a sign, because George Soros promised me an extra $10 if I did:

Thanks to Dorothy for the idea. It was clever, but not cleverest by far. A selection of my own photos:

And some bangers I found on social media, mostly Bluesky:

Here’s Fort Wayne, with Mark the Shark’s granddaughter and her great-uncle Phil:

P.S. Her dad’s a pediatrician, and that little girl looks EXACTLY like her grandmother.

The biggest media fail I’ve seen so far comes from the Detroit News, which so dropped the ball they ended up posting a story about the march in Wyandotte, a downriver suburb. Three hundred people showed up, Debbie Dingell spoke, and they gave four paragraphs of pushback to the chairman of the state GOP, who sneered at what he called a “fake grassroots organization.” Are you kidding me? It was so grassroots it smelled like a new-mowed lawn. At least he didn’t talk about outside agitators or paid protestors, but I don’t know what the reporter left in her notebook. (And George Soros better pay me that extra ten bucks!)

I took the bus there and back, because we’re down to one car this week and Alan was supervising some plumbing fiddling over at Kate’s before she moves in. Stopped on my walk back from the bus stop for a slice of Buddy’s Pizza, and a nice Girl Scout was selling cookies outside. Now that’s what I call a good day.

Posting early for timeliness’ sake. Hope your Hands Off was fun and heartening, too.

It’s amazing, how events like this week’s can make you understand things like the butterfly effect. I just looked it up: “The Apprentice” first aired January 8, 2004. I was living in Ann Arbor. It was a Monday. The Knight Wallace Fellows had our seminars on Tuesday and Thursday, so the following night would have been the first of the new year. If I recall correctly, it was a duck barbecue at the director’s house. None of us would have suspected that a fuse had been lit the previous night, that one TV producer had breathed life into a monster that would blow up the richest country, a beacon of freedom all over the world, not 20 years later.

You “Game of Thrones” fans remember little Arya Stark, making her way in the wilderness and putting herself to sleep at night with her own form of fantasy-novel doomscrolling: Reciting the list of people she wanted to kill for having wronged her. I have my own list, although I’m not homicidal and some of them are dead already (hey, Roger Ailes!), but Mark Burnett, producer of “The Apprentice,” is on it. He’s a very public Christian and has never once expressed regret for having rehabilitated this transparent phony, this con man, this moral homunculus who just today cost my household 3.37 percent of our life savings, into what we used to call presidential timber. Today presidential timber is a termite-infested telephone pole.

A Kennedy Center Honor is coming for Mark Burnett. Bet on it.

Today I got an email from an old friend who asked I use no identifying details in telling their story. They and their spouse are laying the groundwork for permanently leaving the U.S. for Canada in the next year. The details involve applying for permanent residency, picking a home base, checking out neighborhoods, etc. This sentence in their letter stood out:

I have admired Canada since I first started visiting here in 2001. I’ve simply given up on the U.S. Even if Trump and Vance were to die tomorrow, the GOP and Fox have so corrupted the country I see no way to truly combat an active embrace of falsehoods. It’s never going to end.

I’m reminded of a line from Neil Steinberg, way back in the first Bad Administration: I’d rather be on the last train out of town than the first. Me too, but I don’t fault my friend one bit. Meanwhile, measles is starting to spread in Michigan.

OK. Sorry to be a downer, and after I was feeling pretty good yesterday. It’s hard to stay on the sunny side, this week.

Check out this interview with Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “one of the best-known evangelicals in the United States, famous for his writings on faith.” Today, his faith compels him to support you-know-who, and to argue against empathy. Here’s one passage:

You’re talking about the Venezuelan immigrants who were deported to El Salvador. The White House claims that they were all gang members, but we actually don’t know that. It seems like some of them were not. Time magazine wrote about these men: “Inside the intake room, a sea of trustees descended on the men with electric shavers, stripping heads of hair with haste. The guy who claimed to be a barber began to whimper, folding his hands in prayer as his hair fell. He was slapped. The man asked for his mother, then buried his face in his chained hands and cried as he was slapped again.” The President and his Administration were revelling in this.

I think you ought to have a concern about the mistreatment of anyone. Look, I take a very Augustinian view of state power. You know Augustine, the Church Father?

I’ve heard of him.

This is the main Western theological tradition in Christianity. Am I making sense?

Yup.

An Augustinian view of government says that government coercion is never pretty. It is necessary, but it’s never pretty. And, when government acts in a coercive manner, it always leads to some form of pain. That’s what government coercion is. And so I am not justifying it. I’m simply saying that if you are going to return people against their will to their country, where they are seen there as gang members and they’re going to be treated as criminals—

They were Venezuelan, and they were sent to El Salvador, but go on.

O.K. No, that’s true, but at least in theory, they are to be sent back to their home country. And I think that’s a part of the spat between the Trump Administration and Venezuela at the moment. But, I also think the vast majority of Americans would say, Look, our understanding of refugees who are legitimate refugees does not include gang members who clearly are coming to the United States with an effort to expand their colonization of criminal activity.

We just don’t know for sure that they were gang members. There’s been some reporting that suggests some of them are not.

I understand that, but want to be honest with you, and I think you’ll be honest with me. Look, you can’t say that everyone with that tattoo is a gang member, but there’s no reason anyone other than a gang member should have that tattoo.

One of the “gang members” had another tattoo entirely, but do go on, Reverend.

OK. Three blogs this week is the best I can do. Let’s see what the financial markets do tomorrow. Maybe we’ll all be penniless by next Thursday, eh?

Happy weekend! Hands off!

Happy Liberation Day, fellow Americans. Elon Musk spent more than $20 million for his candidate to lose a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, and all he got was this stupid hat:

On, Wisconsin!

So that was nice to wake up to today, as was the lack of physical misery. I finally got around to getting my second shingles vaccine Monday, and it kicked my ass hard. (Keep in mind this description comes from a total wimp where physical discomfort is concerned, which doesn’t bode well for a cheery old age.) It was roughly 24 hours of low-fever no-fun, and as I lay in bed, whimpering, I wondered what it would be like if I was a Wisconsin voter in the election-security era Republicans want to return to — i.e. only in-person voting, only on Election Day. I might have chosen to sleep through the day. Or what if the weather had been like it is today, a driving, cold rain that’s threatening to flood roads and make even a quick scuttle to the garage miserable? Ditto. This is but one reason I’ve come to loathe Republicans.

But we have at least some limited good news to enjoy today – the narrowing of the margins in the Florida races, the blowout in Wisconsin. Maybe it’ll light a little flame in the national party. Maybe they’ll decide it’s better to fight than to roll over and play dead. We can hope, anyway.

So, Wednesday. The rain pushed me to look at Saturday’s march weather, and it’s not good, but I don’t want to be dissuaded. Somehow, walking in a cold rain means more than coming out on a perfect spring day. And as we say at this latitude, there’s no bad weather, just the wrong clothing.

As I’m still a little tapped, here’s some bloggage to consider:

Another banger by Roy, this one on JD Vance, as he considers what, exactly, about Vance attracted Trump’s eye:

I know Tubby likes to have stone bastards around him, but he also likes to keep people close that he can smack around. Fortunately for him, some of his freakshow inner circle can fulfill both functions — like I’ve said, this is the last respectable job any of them will ever have, and they know it. And he’s also got a couple of fuckfaces he can definitely treat like shit whenever he wants: one’s “Little Marco” Rubio and the other is Vance. Trump sends them out specifically to step on their own dicks, which they always do, and he not only gets the pure joy of that spectacle but also a chance to send the world a message: That he’s the kind of guy that can and will do that to people, so everybody better watch out. He can’t really do that to Miller or Musk, but he sure as hell can do it to these clowns whenever he likes.

Exactly right. The Greenland trip was a fiasco, concluding with VP ChubbyCheeks essentially threatening military action to a (for now) ally, while standing on its soil, the sort of diplomatic…you can’t even call it a “misstep” or “faux pas,” it’s such a dick move. Tubby isn’t going to live forever, and none of these guys have what it takes to keep the movement together. Vance will end up going back to blood, I suspect — drinking from a shoulder-supported jug with “XXX” on the front and yelling at his TV.

I can hear sounds from the back yard even through this downpour, and sure enough, it’s what I’m calling the motorcycle gang — the flocks of starlings, grackles and red-winged blackbirds that come through every spring. The latter are notorious for defending their nests, to the point that some local parks have to restrict movement near where they’ve chosen to do so. It’s pretty funny; every year some runner or child gets dive-bombed, leading to an outcry on social media, where stupid causes go to nest. I just watched one perambulate through the yard, making his shrieky call and flexing his epaulets with every one. Must be mating season.

OK, then. Enjoy the day, no matter what it’s doing outdoors, and remember: Wisconsin is lighting our path.

I’m thinking of going to a Hands Off demonstration this coming weekend — there are several in the metro area. But I need some ideas for a sign. Bottom line: I want it to be mean, because fuck those guys. So far I’ve got:

HEY ELON
YOUR SON
is NOT a
HUMAN SHIELD

Too obscure?

Or

ELON MUSK:
GENEROUS WITH HIS SEMEN
STINGY WITH YOUR MONEY

Too wordy.

Or

VANCE & TRUMP:
FATMAN & ROBIN

This only works if you know the Burt Ward Robin.

Something along those lines. If you have any brainstorms, drop ’em in the comments.

An amusing story in the WashPost today (gift link) about the disappearance of the Oval Office ivy.:

The ivy sat atop the fireplace mantel for most of the past 50 years, providing a backdrop for meetings with countless leaders and foreign dignitaries at the White House. It has filtered the air breathed by Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Whitney Houston.

Cuttings were given to exiting staff members, to propagate their own plants. “Countless” people have Oval Office ivy descendants in their own offices and homes now. A sharp-eyed trustee of his own ivy plant noticed something different on the mantel now:

In its place, conspicuously, are seven gleaming decorative objects, seemingly made of gold. A Maryland writer named Jamie Kirkpatrick noticed them earlier this month, around the time of the contentious Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, when the mantel was visible in nearly every photograph of Trump and Vice President JD Vance arguing with Zelensky.

What were those? Kirkpatrick wondered. Golf trophies?

No. And they’re not trash, but they are golden objects for a president who loves golden objects:

They’re artifacts from the White House’s own collection. The central gilded bronze basket, called a compotier, was made in France around 1815 and gifted to the Nixon administration in 1973. To its left and right are a pair of urns from the Monroe Plateau, a set of gilded tableware acquired by President James Monroe in 1817, shortly after the British burned the White House. The outer two sets are from a collection acquired during the Eisenhower administration that are usually displayed in the Vermeil Room, which is named after its contents. (Vermeil is gilded silver.)

Click through for some shots of the ivy before and after the gold-plated president sent it back to the greenhouse. God, what a jerk.

Another gift link, to a story in the NYT, about a woman who rode her “medical freedom” to an early grave:

In 2007, more than 1,440,000 Americans were diagnosed with cancer. Dawn Kali was one of them. Then in her mid-30s and raising three kids, Ms. Kali’s natural warmth and openness made her a popular waitress at the raw-food restaurant where she worked in San Francisco. When her doctor told her she had Stage 1 breast cancer, the fact that survival rates for her cancer type were in excess of 90 percent (and rising) did little to soften the emotional blow. Ms. Kali knew what cancer entailed: a barrage of medical treatments that seemed to sap people of their quality of life. And then they’d die anyway. “That’s not going to be me,” she swore.

Nope! Instead, Kali fell in with a quack:

She discovered “The pH Miracle,” a 2002 book written by a charming self-proclaimed naturopath named Robert Oldham Young. Mr. Young asserted that deacidifying the body through diet, exercise and his pH Miracle-branded pills and creams could cure virtually any sickness. Cancer, Mr. Young taught, was merely a symptom of an acidic internal environment. His credibility was bolstered by his appearances on national talk shows that featured him as a diet guru.

Ms. Kali adopted Young’s “alkalarian” program: an all-liquid, low-acid diet of vegetable smoothies supplemented by Mr. Young’s proprietary pHour Salts, purified water drops and green powders. Soon she was drinking a gallon of juice each day. Now, she controlled her treatment. The prescribed combination of a strict diet, meditation and exercise left her feeling empowered.

It also left her cancer free to spread. You can guess how her story ends. I will say that Kali did finally wise up, but too late. The story is about much more than Dawn Kali, and I’ll bet you can guess whose name pops up.

OK, then. A nice weekend. Kate closed on her house! She moves soon.

We celebrated with champagne, and took some of it at the kitschy basement bar, likely to be a rehearsal space:

I did my friend Jimmy’s fun-fiction class again. The class is in Hamtramck. Followed this deep thinker through a few stop signs:

Sigh. As my friend Deb texted me last week, just once I want to wake up, look at my phone and not say, “Jesus Fucking Christ.” Let’s all have a good week, eh?

Seems I’ve been neglecting this venue in recent days. Sorry about that. Life and work has piled up, but the pile is manageable now, and so: Back to it.

Like most of you, I’ve been watching the unfolding of the Signal scandal — and it is a scandal, and not one I’ll affix “-gate” to — with a growing sense of horror. The initial horror of the deed, followed by the exasperated horror of the spin: Seriously this is not the big deal you think it is, nothing classified was shared, anyway Signal is secure, anyway that guy should have revealed himself anyway HILLARY DID IT FIRST, etc. As a friend said, wait until Hegseth leaves his phone in a bar somewhere. Because you know that’ll happen. But at this point I don’t have anything special to say about it that hasn’t already been said, so let’s just continue that conversation.

I do have a number of photos to share.

Got my car washed yesterday, because it was shamefully dirty. I don’t know about your car wash, but mine is like an explosion of small-market capitalism, the long hallway from the drop-off to the pickup bays lined with windows — so you can watch the wash, of course — and under that, stacks of stuff for sale because you never know what you might be missing. Peanut-butter pretzels are big this week; a while back it was barrels of cheese puffs. Office supplies of the sort sold near the checkout lines at Staples — tissue, Post-its, legal pads. Lots of car-related stuff like air fresheners or steering-wheel covers (a product I’ve never used, nor felt the need for). Shop towels, microfiber and cotton, in bulk. Lately they’ve been selling generic versions of those Scrub Daddy sponges. There’s a mechanical horse for children to ride while they wait. Self-published books by local authors, and the traditional bulletin board of business cards. But lately I’ve been taken by the family-business displays, like this:

The car wash is called Mr. C’s. That is the original Mr. C, although I’m sure he perished long before it opened. That is one impressive mustache. Sicilian, of course, because northern Italians weren’t the main immigrants from the boot, but rather, the impoverished southern ones. A framed obit near this photo tells more of the story. Sorry the picture is so crappy, but I can read it:

The subject being remembered is the second Mr. C, son of the mustache man. After the original Mr. C came here and earned enough money, he came back to Sicily, married, and left his pregnant wife behind while he crossed the water again and started his grocery business, “pushing a vegetable cart on Detroit’s east side.” At some point he sent for his family; his little boy was 6. The cart became a store, then another store, and by the time that little boy retired in 1969, he went to work in his children’s businesses, which by then included another market, and then a line of delis. The car washes came in 1991, across the street from one of the delis. His son, Vito Jr., is now called Bill. (Or was — this obit is from 2000. Dunno if he’s still with us. The top-tier wash is called “Bill’s Best,” and that’s the one I got.) The Mack Bewick Market is now deep in the hood; it was owned by a friend of a friend’s father for a time, and was notable for not having any bulletproof plexi between the customer and the clerk, “however, the clerks were never more than an arm’s length from a gun,” friend reports. I found a social-media post by someone who said “you could get ANYthing there,” and she wasn’t talking about drugs, but rather, the things that make hood life possible, like low-cost infant formula, counterfeit license stickers for your plates, etc.

An inspiring family story. I wonder how they feel about current U.S. immigration policy.

It’s been chilly this week, but it won’t last, and yesterday Alan raked up all the plant detritus, mulched it with the mower, ran out the gas in the snow blower and set the stage for the first green shoots, expected soon:

We’ll check back in a few weeks, see how it shapes up.

Finally, I followed a link on an old blog a few days back and lo, it still works, and isn’t this story more interesting now:

Boeing should have rejected then-President Donald Trump’s proposed terms to build two new Air Force One aircraft, the company’s CEO said Wednesday.

Dave Calhoun spoke Wednesday on the company’s quarterly earnings call, just hours after Boeing disclosed that it has lost $660 million transforming two 747 airliners into flying White Houses.

This was in 2022, and Boeing was already $660 million in the hole, and responsible for all cost overruns, under a contract signed during the first Trump administration. Meanwhile, I read this story last month:

President Trump, furious about delays in delivering two new Air Force One jets, has empowered Elon Musk to explore drastic options to prod Boeing to move faster, including relaxing security clearance standards for some who work on the presidential planes.

What could possibly go wrong! Keep an eye on this. It could get good — or funny!! — really fast. I want someone to only finger-tighten the bolts holding down the POTUS-only toilet. If regular civilians have to fly on planes with the doors blowing off, it’s the least they can do for us.

Thursday already! Have a great one.

I’m sorry, I can’t stop laughing at this:

President Trump is demanding that Colorado take down its “purposefully distorted” painting of him hanging in the State Capitol.

“Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before,” Trump said in a post Sunday on Truth Social. “The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one [of] me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older.”

…“I am speaking …to the Radical Left Governor, Jared Polis, who is extremely weak on Crime, in particular with respect to Tren de Aragua, which practically took over Aurora (Don’t worry, we saved it!), to take it down,” Trump said. “Jared should be ashamed of himself.”

The portrait:

Now this is Monday content I can get behind. The president, who considers himself a next-level handsome specimen of mature masculinity, with a year-round tan due to his many masculine outdoor pursuits, and he leans forward like he does because he’s making a masculine point, dammit, not because he wears lifts in his shoes — doesn’t like his portrait, which makes him look like a chubby-cheeked demon. And Barack Obama looks wonderful! HOW DARE THEY?

A few more fat portraits, a few more Tesla demonstrations, and we might have the beginnings of a foothold. As Democrats, with very few exceptions, are proving themselves worthless in this struggle, then we’ll just have to keep on strugglin’ on our own.

A busy weekend. The Derringers took a proactive stance toward dealing with our anger by? Taking a gun class, the one Michigan requires before you can get your CPL, or concealed pistol license. I have no intention of packing, I hasten to add. But it was interesting to see the law detailed (such as it was, kinda — more on that in a couple sentences). And the course included an hour of range time, so I got to see what all the excitement is about, and honestly, I don’t get it. The vibe on pistol ranges is so unpleasant to me, the bro-y bullshit of it all. The guy shooting next to me was wearing earmuffs emblazoned FJB, and in case you were too stupid to get it, LET’S GO BRANDON as well. For a rank novice, I shot pretty well.

The teacher was a piece of work. He chuckled through the entire 8-hour class, and swore like the Marine he once was. Having worked in newsrooms, nothing about the language offended me, and maybe when you’re teaching in a super-macho gun store, you think no one will be bothered by the ass-rape jokes you make after every! Single! Mention! of Jail! But I know a few gay people who are arming themselves for the unpleasantness they have every reason to believe is coming, and some of them certainly would be. But we graduated, and got our certificates, and now I have to consider whether it’s worth $100 to be legal, so to speak. I just don’t see the point. I don’t live in the world gun-toters do, with their constant vigilance against the violence they are sure is stalking them, personally, every minute of the day.

I used to work with a man — Leo Morris, for those of you who remember him — whose brother, a Texas resident, was radicalized by the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre of 1991. He started packing, and swiftly got to the point he “felt naked” without his holster and sidearm. He was always trying to get Leo to do the same, taking him shooting when they got together, etc. I lost touch with Leo in his later years, but a few things he wrote made me think that maybe his brother’s paranoia had taken hold in Leo. (He began using the phrase “constitutional carry,” for instance.) But one thing gun school did for me is make me realize: There is virtually nothing I could shoot someone over. A physical attack with serious intent to kill or maim me or my family is the only thing I can think of, and that would require so much advance planning — I’d have to have the gun, the gun would have to be loaded, I’d have to be able to get to it, etc. — that it strikes me as intensely impractical. So I guess I’ll just have to trust that a lifetime of prudent behavior will save me from losing my life to gun violence, as it does millions and millions of Americans.

The guy teaching the class, the chuckling Leatherneck, sketched out so many scenarios where violence is right there waiting to strike you down that I had to think: What a way to live. He was carrying, I am not kidding, THREE weapons — two on each hip and one down the back of his pants. Talk about paranoia. And he was responsible, if you take him at his word. He doesn’t carry when he’s going to be drinking, he said. He practices often. And so on. But if you’re armed, then it almost requires you to be hyper-vigilant at all times, and that? Is exhausting. I have enough shit to worry about.

I keep thinking about the FJB-earmuffs guy. Alan, who shoots skeet, reported that there was a chronic ammunition shortage during the Obama administration, due to persistent rumors that the president was coming for the guns AND the ammo. He did neither, but we’re not talking about the smartest, savviest, best-informed people, either. And neither did Biden, but oh my those Macomb County Republicans aren’t going to let that stop them from putting him on their stupid gun earmuffs. The way people talk on social media when, for instance, someone’s TV gets stolen or car is broken into, makes me think they…don’t think. You can’t shoot someone over a TV, or your car stereo, or any other property crime. People imagine they’d be able to drop to the floor, find a cover position, calmly draw their weapon and return fire with deadly accuracy? In a movie theater. In a grocery store. In any mass-panic situation. You are not John Wick, and John Wick doesn’t exist. And even if you did act within the law — the guy was coming through your window, knife in his teeth, etc. — imagine the aftermath. The cops. The cleanup. Having to walk past the spot where you shot and killed a man, every day. You’d have to move! I would, anyway. Totally not worth it to me. I’d just run out the back door.

OK, I’ve gone on enough, and it’s time to finish editing this video. The week ahead promises temperatures in the 40s, ugh. Might as well do some spring cleaning and file the taxes. Later.

Journalism these days is so focused on anniversaries — it can be reported in advance, relies on “experts,” and allows editors to plan their news budgets — that it was natural the five-year anniversary of Covid’s first appearance in this country would be a big thing, although not that big. I sense the wound is still a little raw, so the observances have been…muted, shall we say.

We all have our memories. The overwhelming weirdness of it all is how it stands out for me. I was already doing a fair amount of work at home, so that wasn’t a shock, but for Alan, it was. The sound of the Microsoft Teams audio alert calling him to yet another online meeting is seared in my brainpan. He remembers working on the car that first weekend of shutdowns, outdoors on a typical late-winter afternoon, being struck by the near-constant sirens, presumably ambulances arriving at the hospital a half-mile away. Kate was on tour with her band, and it was like jumping from one melting ice floe to the next, each venue less sparsely populated than the next, culminating in a van breakdown in rural Utah. She settled into her own room, defeated.

“Don’t worry,” I told her. “By Memorial Day this will all be past us.”

Well. Shows what I know.

I’ve probably shared the above previously, and we all have our own memories. I reread a one-year anniversary story I did for Deadline Detroit around this time every year, just to remind me how crazy it was. I particularly linger over the recollections of a black funeral director:

The real trouble started when government offices closed. We couldn’t get death certificates. You have to have an official cause and manner of death to bury, and especially for cremation. I rented a refrigerated truck. My holding room was overflowing. Hospital morgues were overflowing. It was late May to June before I could finally catch up.

Without death certificates, families can’t collect insurance. And because people were dying so young, nobody had a will or plan. Some people had their living wills, medical power of attorney, all those things in order, but that wasn’t the majority. Then you had households with multiple Covid cases, like a husband and wife in the ICU at the same time. If one died and the other was on a vent, no one could speak for them. So someone had to get emergency guardianship. It complicated all the situations. It hit my community so hard, and we were screaming and it’s like nobody heard us. I’d hear these people saying, “We have to open up. I can’t go to my restaurant anymore,” and I’m having trouble getting gloves because of the hoarding. Without gloves, I’m out of business.

Yes indeed. So it’s interesting to read one group’s memories and takeaways, i.e., conservative chatterboxes. To listen to them, it’s all about FREEDOM and VACCINE MANDATES and GOVERNMENT LYING and DYING WITH COVID, NOT OF COVID, and SHEEPLE. More than a million Americans didn’t die (except for grandma, who took her last breath alone while her tearful family watched on an iPad). And for what? A silly flu? Never again!!!

Well, OK. And when Croaky’s oversight allows bird flu to mutate and become the next pandemic, we all know what to do. But there won’t be stimulus checks, no special unemployment, no public-health measures.

I took some pictures. This is one of my favorites, from September 2020, some Grosse Pointe teens having a socially distanced hang in a middle-school parking lot:’

Of course some fashion rules must be upheld, no matter the situation. I mean, we’re not savages:

I’ve had eight Covid shots, and no Covid (to my knowledge; I know asymptomatic cases exist). I wonder if I’ll be able to even get one this fall.

How was your St. Patrick’s Day? I went out for the first time in years, to two spots: The Gaelic League and Nancy Whiskey, a great Detroit dive. I had fun, and confined my drinking to two Harps and a shot of Jameson’s. An old man kissed me on the lips. I came home and told Alan. “Did he try to slip you some tongue?” he asked. No, I’m happy to say.