So, every year in August there’s this thing in Detroit called the Dream Cruise. Peo­ple in clas­sic cars take over the out­side lanes of Wood­ward Avenue between 9 Mile and… I dunno, a few miles beyond that. Loop around, rev their engines, etc. It’s very grass-roots; it went on for a while before it became an offi­cial event, and they don’t even shut down Wood­ward to non-cruise traf­fic. (Although you’d be a fool to try to drive any­where in the area for the whole week­end.)

My friend Michael has his office on Wood­ward, and while in past years he’s avoided the place like nuclear waste, the last cou­ple he’s decided to embrace it, and hold a client-appreciation party Fri­day and Sat­ur­day. We went on Fri­day. You can find Dream Cruise photo gal­leries all over the web, but I give you but one:

I guess this is a 1957 Chevy cus­tom job. The year of my birth! A friend of mine got one — not the limo, heh — from her classic-car-crazy father, for her 16th birth­day. I drove it a cou­ple of times, although its totally cherry con­di­tion made me ner­vous; if my friend’s dad knew how much she liked to party dur­ing her lunch breaks, he never would have given her the keys. If you ever saw a turquoise and white ’57 Chevy tool­ing around north­west Colum­bus and envi­rons in the mid-’70s, that might have been us.

Truth be told, I don’t really get classic-car restora­tion and cul­ti­va­tion, but then, my hus­band has a boat, so I guess I really do.

A few years ago I did a story on hybrid dri­vers who “hyper­mile” — try to get the best pos­si­ble gas mileage out of their vehi­cles. One was a big domestic-industry booster, and drove a Ford Escape hybrid. He and a few of his hyper­mil­ing friends put a lit­tle unit together and rolled in the Dream Cruise, and got booed. He was gen­uinely stung, but I think he under­es­ti­mated the douch­i­ness of the local boost­ers. Clas­sics are a tricky busi­ness, as thou­sands of inher­i­tors of lov­ingly restored Packards or Model Ts have dis­cov­ered when they tried to put their dad’s baby on the mar­ket and were greeted with a parade of yawns. The classic-car buyer is middle-aged or older, and inter­ested in recap­tur­ing his lost youth, i.e., the car he seduced his girl­friend in when he was 17. For peo­ple who are 45 today, that was only circa 1980 or so, and I’m sorry, but for my money that’s when the magic went out of the mar­ket for good. The Honda Accord and Toy­ota Corolla of that era were great cars, but it’s hard to imag­ine any­one get­ting teary-eyed over a restora­tion of one today.

I once inter­viewed a guy in Fort Wayne with an under­ground garage, a real Bat­cave with secret entrance and every­thing. He was into Corvettes, and had at least a dozen down there, all medal-winning restora­tions. He didn’t do them him­self, but wrote the checks for oth­ers to do so, then drove away to the car shows. “Let me show you some­thing,” he said, rais­ing the hood on a 1970s-era mon­ster, one of those with a 427 or 454 or some ridicu­lous V-8 like that. He pointed to spots inside the engine com­part­ment with sloppy paint over­spray. There was also a big, splat­tery drop of a totally dif­fer­ent color.

“I saw that, and about hit the roof,” he said. “And my guy tells me, no, this was the qual­ity of work­man­ship for the mid-’70s. When they’re judg­ing, they look for those details.” Some­one tell the UAW. This cracked me up.

Lots of Corvettes in the Dream Cruise, need­less to say. About a mil­lion Mus­tangs, of every shape and size. Chrysler Ply­mouth Bar­racu­das, Super Bees, all that rumbly mus­cle stuff. I looked in vain for a ’66 Cor­vair, the car I learned to drive in, the car my mother (and I, and all of us) loved, the rea­son she never trusted Ralph Nader again. And then I looked at Kate. Bored. To. Death.

I have to teach this girl to drive a stick shift in a cou­ple years. It would be nice if she would show at least a min­i­mal inter­est in the ped­als.

So, some blog­gage? Let’s see what we’ve got:

The stem-cell rul­ing. Sigh. Con­ser­v­a­tive jurispru­dence — proudly march­ing back­ward! I hope this guy is right.

Min­ers trapped for months, a 60-mile-long traf­fic jam that hasn’t moved in more than a week — and so the human race plods onward.

Man, I’m gonna kill the inven­tor of the gas leaf blower. For now, though, I think I’ll go to the gym.

Well, that’s one way to man up a mini­van.

I try to engi­neer my week so that Fri­days belong to me and only me. I start work­ing on Sun­day after­noons, and I front-load my work week to the point that by Wednes­day, I am start­ing to get a lit­tle breath­ing room. Some­times it works, some­times it doesn’t, but if all goes as planned, by noon Fri­day, I’m cruis­ing.

Some­times it doesn’t go as planned. Last Fri­day, I got a call from one of my friends from my fel­low­ship year, an Israeli who’s now U.S. bureau chief for Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest daily (I think) in Tel Aviv. Could I put together some­thing quickly on the Flint Slasher? For actual money? Any­thing for you, Adi. (And any­thing for a lit­tle money. I spend so much time writ­ing for lit­tle or noth­ing, I’d for­got­ten what that’s like.) And so off I rolled around lunchtime, cruis­ing for Gene­see County instead.

And? A very sad place. Granted, I was on the po’ side of town. I remem­ber, after “Roger & Me” insulted con­ser­v­a­tives with the sug­ges­tion that per­haps cap­i­tal­ism isn’t win-win for every­one, read­ing some­thing spe­cific to Flint in one of their ide­o­log­i­cal house organs, which arrived by the truck­load at my paper’s edi­to­r­ial page. Yes, down­town Flint retail was dead, the writer said, but that’s because every­one was shop­ping at the brand-new mall, etc. etc. Per­haps. (That’s cer­tainly what hap­pened in Fort Wayne.) And surely a com­pre­hen­sive tour of the area with experts would have revealed a fuller pic­ture of the place. But I drove around a bit, and my over­whelm­ing impres­sion was Spring­steen­ian: Fore­man said these jobs are goin’, boys, and they ain’t comin’ back to your home­town. In Detroit, the ruin is Roman — you can see what was once a great city under the decay. In Flint, the dis­as­ter befell some­place far more ordi­nary. Which made it starker, and sad­der.

The term for these sorts of excur­sions is “para­chute jour­nal­ism.” I was happy to pack my chute and leave at the end of the day. And the result? Your basic fly-by visit by some empty suit.

Poor Adi. Dead­line was 2 p.m. Sat­ur­day, but that was for the final, fin­ished prod­uct. Trans­la­tion is a bear, espe­cially on dead­line.

And so the week begins. It’s a spe­cial one for one of our group: Laura Lippman’s lat­est, “I’d Know You Any­where,” drops tomor­row, and oh, how the praise has flowed. Ama­zon says it will be arriv­ing by tomor­row, but hasn’t shipped yet. “Three Sta­tions,” which I also pre-ordered and is pub­lished the same day, has shipped. So I’ll pay twice for ship­ping. But I’m happy to give my fave writer all-important “veloc­ity” in first-week sales.

A lit­tle blog­gage? Ohhh-kay:

An out­sider expe­ri­ences fair food, swoons. A nice wrap-up of what’s being deep-fried this year.

The Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts, recon­sid­ered.

I noticed this when I was in Ann Arbor a few years back. It blew my mind then, and still does: Col­lege stu­dents who check in with their par­ents mul­ti­ple times a day. I called my mom once a week, and that was because we had free long dis­tance (Ohio Bell was our family’s coal mine).

And now, hav­ing flown by, I must fly. Ta ta.

Paul Fussell’s great book on Amer­i­can social class strat­i­fi­ca­tion — titled, duh, “Class” — is pretty out of date in the details by now. Writ­ten at the dawn of the go-go ’80s, it missed how much that decade changed the rela­tion­ship between class and money, never mind the ’90s and ’00s, which blew it out of the water.

But a lot of the details are time­less, includ­ing my biggest take­away, which is prob­a­bly not unique to him, but he gets credit for being the first writer to point it out to me: The hall­mark of the mid­dle class is fear. Fear of slip­ping a rung, either in real­ity or just in the eyes of oth­ers. It explains so much about how middle-class Amer­i­cans dress, talk and oth­er­wise com­port them­selves.

Mid­dles love euphemism (“Excuse me, but where is your pow­der room?”). They like their labels on the out­side of their clothes, so every­one knows they bought the right designer purse or neck­tie. They fret over the con­di­tion of their lawns and the shine on their cars. Etcetera. And so it was that I picked up my Detroit News today and imme­di­ately iden­ti­fied the area’s biggest res­i­den­tial fore­clo­sure as a dis­tinctly middle-class house. Hell, it might even be pro­le­tar­ian. Who else would build an $18 mil­lion, 13,777-square-foot house in a sub­di­vi­sion, com­plete with bowl­ing alley and “cus­tom wine tast­ing and cigar rooms?”

“It’s like going to Dis­ney World,” said real estate agent Chris Knight, who has sold the home twice. “It’s a phe­nom­e­nal, one-of-a-kind spe­cial prop­erty. Water­falls, ponds all over the place, streams. Lots of Venet­ian plas­ter walls. Imported this, imported that …”

Venet­ian plas­ter, you say? It’s so much…classier than reg­u­lar plas­ter.

The story reminds us this pile of Venet­ian plas­ter — inevitably described as “a man­sion” — is not alone in its sad lit­tle sub­di­vi­sion, Turn­berry Estates:

A third of the subdivision’s home­own­ers have either faced fore­clo­sure in the past two years or had mort­gage prob­lems, pub­lic records indi­cate.

Since March 2008, one house was lost to fore­clo­sure; three were sched­uled for sales but avoided them; and two fore­clo­sure sales are pend­ing — includ­ing (for­mer Detroit Lion) Charles Rogers, accord­ing to the Legal News. The for­mer No. 2 NFL draft pick faces a sale Aug. 31 after default­ing and owing $1.17 mil­lion, accord­ing to a Wednes­day notice in the Legal News.

Turn­berry Estates has to stand for some­thing big­ger; the writer in me demands it. Nowhere do you see so much evi­dence of how dis­con­nected wealth and respon­si­bil­ity got in the last 25 or so years than you do in hous­ing — not just in these vul­gar money pits but even in more mod­est upscale homes (always homes, never houses), with their media rooms and enor­mous clos­ets and wine cel­lars and poker rooms and all the rest of it. I knew a guy who built a 10,000-square-foot house when he mar­ried a woman who had two daugh­ters. They needed the space, he said; they would have a live-in house­keeper to watch the girls when they wanted to do impul­sive new­ly­wed things like go out to din­ner or fly to New York for the week­end or what­ever.

They’re divorced now. But you knew that.

My house is 2,000 square feet. The peo­ple who built it raised seven chil­dren here, in three bed­rooms. My last house was about the same size. The pre­vi­ous own­ers had five kids — and one bath­room. My friend with the 10K house had sep­a­rate bath­rooms for each daugh­ter. The first thing they did after mov­ing in was con­vert a dead-air space into a deluxe closet.

Do I sound resent­ful? I’m not. Enjoy your money, rich peo­ple. But when my house is fore­closed upon, I bet it’ll be eas­ier to unload than the $18 mil­lion Venet­ian plas­ter show­place. Even with a cigar room.

So, some blog­gage? Prob­a­bly we can rus­tle up some:

The New York Post falls for a wrong-o. Did an accused killer who swal­lowed rat poi­son get an emer­gency liver trans­plant, as the paper crowed? Um, no. But that is one great head­line: Thug’s op is liver worst. Con­grats to the great­est copy desk in tab-dom.

Thanks to Rana (I think) for reac­quaint­ing me with Tom and Lorenzo, the Project Run­gay blog­gers who dab­ble in “Mad Men” on the side. I can take or leave them on the episode guides, but their com­men­tary on the clothes is first-rate. I loved their lat­est, on Betty Draper last sea­son, includ­ing her slam­min’ Roman hol­i­day getup. They’ve got great things to say about all the mad­women, though, so warn­ing: You can get lost in that site. But in a good way.

The Michi­gan oil spill now stretches for 35 miles of the Kala­ma­zoo River, and yes, pals, it looks like we have another BP on our hands. Who could have pre­dicted? And so on.

Kate’s going to the Warped Tour show with her dad tomor­row, and I promised her I’d get her a new gui­tar strap to col­lect auto­graphs on. So time to hop to it.

We had a car­jack­ing here in the Woods last week­end, just a cou­ple blocks from my house. Armed car­jack­ing, very scary — a woman leaves a busi­ness and goes to her car, parked on one of the busiest thor­ough­fares on the east side. Gets in, rolls down the win­dows to let the heat out, a guy dives through the pas­sen­ger win­dow and puts a gun to her head. Pushes her out the driver’s door, roars off.

Well, they caught him. This is the sequence: After the car­jack­ing, he heads up to Roseville, and tries to rob a woman in a gro­cery park­ing lot. In the scuf­fle, he drops the keys to the jacked car. Steals a deliv­ery truck, aban­dons that in a chase, heads into an apart­ment com­plex, where he hides in one of the units after break­ing in. He changes his clothes, help­ing him­self to some of the ten­ants’, and escapes on a bicy­cle.

So how did they catch him? He went back for his clothes. You can see how police grow cyn­i­cal.

Guy was paroled last week. He’s look­ing at life now. Ob-la-di, ob-la-da.

Vio­lent crime brings out the dis­tanc­ing in all of us. “Dis­tanc­ing” is what I call the phe­nom­e­non we all indulge in from time to time: Some­thing bad hap­pens to some­body else, and we try to fig­ure out why that could never hap­pen to us. I never go into that area after dark. I would have left when they said the hur­ri­cane was com­ing. I would never marry an alco­holic. And so on.

Auto theft in gen­eral is so wide­spread in Detroit that you hear a lot of anec­do­tal com­ments on how to avoid it. Don’t drive here, don’t buy Chrysler prod­ucts before a par­tic­u­lar model year, etc. Some peo­ple go limp — an acquain­tance lives in a loft con­ver­sion in a sketchy neigh­bor­hood, and never, ever locks her car. It’s rifled from time to time, and some­day some­one might fig­ure out how to get it started and drive it off, but she prefers that to replac­ing a win­dow every three months.

And now I give you mine: Be just a lit­tle more trou­ble­some and/or less attrac­tive to thieves than the next guy. I’d never own one of those $3,000 road bikes, and don’t mind that my unglam­orous hybrid bike is a lit­tle dirty. It looks dowdy in most bike racks, which is the way I like it. I also drive a stick shift. Some­one might try to jack it, but I’m count­ing on the wide­spread lack of manual-transmission skills to deter all but the most deter­mined thieves.

Alan thinks this is crazy, but I recently read on the Face­book page of a well-known crime nov­el­ist that she prac­tices the same strat­egy. Hmpf.

If I’m ever shot to death in a car­jack­ing, I’m sure the last words I’ll hear are, “Bitch, what is this shit?”

So, some blog­gage for what looks to be a hot, steamy week­end:

Lance Man­nion is on vaca­tion, but of course, writ­ers never go on vaca­tion. Get a dune, you two!

The curse of Water­loo con­tin­ues. Bret Michaels busted for pot in Deliv­er­ance, Indi­ana.

Got a note from Deb — not Deb­o­rah, Deb — last night. She lives in Mil­wau­kee. Sue’s out that way, too. They got six inches of rain last night in about two hours, and she was send­ing the boys out to bail the win­dow wells, which were full to the brim. Is this the most excit­ing thing to ever hap­pen in Mil­wau­kee? snarks Gawker. Oh, shut up.

Finally, Tucker Carl­son keeps earn­ing his rep­u­ta­tion as a lying, double-crossing weasel, over and over again. Ezra Klein pro­vides some back­story.

Time for the Fri­day get-down. Enjoy your week­end.

Mitch Albom got the Red Smith Award from the Asso­ci­ated Press Sports Edi­tors this month. It’s a life­time achieve­ment award, the sort of thing you get with your gold watch and appoint­ment with the death panel. Mitch, at 52, is prob­a­bly cov­er­ing the gray in his hair but nowhere near retire­ment, but hey! That’s entirely in keep­ing with his career! By the time Mitch hits what would be retire­ment age for you or me, we’ll all be watch­ing white smoke pour out of the Vat­i­can chim­neys as he’s elected the first Jew­ish Pope. George Clooney will be work­ing as his house­boy. And so on.

Over time, I’ve reached a sort of peace with Albom — I only get my dan­der up when he wan­ders off the sports pages. Which is often. But this isn’t one of those times. Let the APSE give him what­ever award they want. I don’t even work for news­pa­pers any­more. They made their bed, and they can lie in it, the feebs.

Then, yes­ter­day, some­one sent me this, from Dead­spin. Snicker:

…the Happy Meal the­ol­ogy of (Mitch) Albom’s books that would’ve made Jonathan Liv­ingston Seag­ull want to fly into the near­est wind tower.

I know it’s not just me who hates him. I once bat­ted around the idea of a sep­a­rate Mitch blog with another Detroit writer, or maybe even pitch­ing a col­umn to the Metro Times, in the grand tra­di­tion of Bob­watch, the Chicago Reader’s Bob Greene snark­fest. Among sports­writ­ers, how­ever, I’ve always assumed the dis­like of Albom was based far more on jeal­ousy than any­thing else. The num­ber of sports­writ­ers I hon­estly respect as writ­ers, period, is pretty low, and I’ll bet the over­whelm­ing secret thought most of Mitch’s col­leagues enter­tain is this: Why didn’t I think of this shit first?

How­ever, Dead­spin lays out a pretty good col­lec­tion of argu­ments as to why this award is the equiv­a­lent of Pia Zadora win­ning a Golden Globe. Its cor­ner­stone is this Dave Kin­dred col­umn about why Albom’s 2005 trans­gres­sion — lav­ishly cov­ered at the time, I won’t go into it here — ought to have dis­qual­i­fied him for this sort of lau­rel for­ever.

Well-argued, but as I said: That’s the APSE’s busi­ness. I was more inter­ested in fol­low­ing the other links, espe­cially this one, for which I reserve a com­ment I know many of you find offen­sive, but I can­not help myself: Jesus fuck­ing Christ. If I recall cor­rectly, Mitch’s 2005 shenani­gans cost this man two weeks’ pay in the final arbi­tra­tion. I guess not every­one can hold a grudge as long as I can.

Oh, well. Deep breaths. All bet­ter now.

Some of you may have noticed these new entries are arriv­ing later in the day than they usu­ally do. I’m sleep­ing later, plus I’m get­ting ham­mered with work from my hyper­local site. Which is good for me, but may neces­si­tate another sched­ule rejig­ger­ing, because I can’t keep this up.

So let’s skip to the blog­gage:

Not quite OID, but close: Lit­tle girls set up lemon­ade stand, which is robbed. (Note to self: GREAT MOVIE SCENE.) In what news­pa­pers love to call “an out­pour­ing,” they’re find­ing this is prob­a­bly the best thing to hap­pen to them, ever.

Coo­zledad, remem­ber when you said you found a worth­less eHow arti­cle on burn­ing pel­lets in a wood stove? One of the writ­ers speaks:

“I was like, ‘I hope to God peo­ple don’t read my advice on how to make gin at home because they’ll prob­a­bly poi­son them­selves.’

“Never trust any­thing you read on eHow​.com,” she said, refer­ring to one of Demand Media’s high-traffic web­sites, on which most of her clips appeared.

Finally, a sweet story for cat lovers. Because you know what a softy I am in my tiny black heart.

Happy Thurs­day. Where did the damn week go?

“Diver­sity,” the way it’s used now, is such a damp, earnest word, a good thing pro­moted into some­thing we need to “cel­e­brate.” Which is why I haven’t made tracks to the Con­cert of Col­ors, “Metro Detroit’s Diver­sity Fes­ti­val,” in the time we’ve been here. I envi­sioned a lot of old white men in dread­locks and young black men in rasta tams, both nod­ding along to some faux-African world-music thing made with puz­zling indige­nous instru­ments.

But a cou­ple years ago I learned that Don Was shows up every year, to lead a cav­al­cade of Detroit acts in a sin­gle show, span­ning a wide range of gen­res and rep­re­sent­ing almost every cor­ner of the area’s musi­cal her­itage — you know, a diverse show — that I started think­ing this might be worth my time.

Last year he dug up Ques­tion Mark. Huh. Didn’t know he was a local.

And while Sat­ur­day was beastly hot, it wasn’t so hot you couldn’t move, and so we headed down­town. The Don Was All-Stars were per­form­ing on the main stage of the orches­tra hall, free of charge, and it seemed air-conditioning might be involved. It was. And it was quite the show, 15 dif­fer­ent per­form­ers span­ning the range from rock to blues to trip-hop to… I dunno, I get lost in all these gen­res.

There was this guy, Andre Williams, and be advised that link takes you to a trailer for a recent doc­u­men­tary about him, that the clip auto­plays, and the lan­guage is NSFW from about the first sec­ond. There was also Alberta Adams, who is now 93 years old and per­forms from a wheel­chair. But there was also Ingray, young and loud described as hav­ing recently relo­cated to Detroit from Bosnia (please, hold your wit­ti­cisms). They played “Immi­grant Song.” Doop & the Inside Out­laws brought the coun­try. By the time Kim Weston came out for the finale, in what looked like one of her old Motown gowns, you really couldn’t say you hadn’t been enter­tained.

As the crowd was fil­ing out, the MC said, “Stop in next door. They’ve got some Pun­jab house music going.”

Alan said we should. I was dubi­ous. It sounded like every­thing I’d feared, but it turned out to be the rev­e­la­tion of the night. These guys:

This is Red Baraat, self-described as “ban­gin’ bhangra and brass funk,” but if that doesn’t help, let me try: If Desi Arnaz left Havana bound for New Orleans, but was detoured through Amrit­sar, this is the band he would have assem­bled when he landed. Soprano and bari­tone saxes, trum­pet, trom­bone and yes, that’s a sousa­phone. But the cen­ter­piece is Sunny Jain, the band’s founder, on the Indian dhoul drum. At first I thought we wouldn’t get in, because the crowd was so dense. It turned out there were plenty of seats avail­able because every­one was in the standing-room space in front of the stage, danc­ing ecsta­t­i­cally. Well, not every­one was ecsta­tic. One guy was vogu­ing. Some were shak­ing their bot­toms. A cou­ple tried to do a vari­a­tion on the jit­ter­bug. But most peo­ple just moved where the dhoul took them. We saw only three num­bers, and left the hall rav­ing, CD-buying fans. A good dhoul player can do that, I guess.

The CD is good, but the show is bet­ter. Here’s the tour sched­ule. If they’re com­ing to your neigh­bor­hood, you are com­manded to go.

And that was the week­end, besides the usual pie-baking and a Friday-night movie excur­sion. Cherry and blue­berry, and “I Am Love,” which left me think­ing Tilda Swin­ton is wor­thy of being the new Meryl Streep (she speaks Ital­ian with a Russ­ian accent, and top that, Ms. Yale School of Drama) and that cherry-pitting is the most tedious job in the sum­mer kitchen. I rec­om­mend both, prefer­ably at once — pie and movies.

Blog­gage:

The Catholic Church is mark­ing the 50th anniver­sary of the birth-control pill by advo­cat­ing no birth con­trol other than “nat­ural fam­ily plan­ning.” Because birth con­trol is bad, except when it’s their birth con­trol, in which case it’s just fine. I have really fallen far, far away from the church of my bap­tism, because when I read stuff like this…

“Why does the church do this?” Ponkowski says to about 10 young cou­ples tak­ing a required pre-marriage class. “It wants us to have the best life pos­si­ble.”

…I sprain my eye­balls, rolling them.

I’ve been catch­ing up with old episodes of “Mad Men” in prepa­ra­tion for the new sea­son. I feared I would be los­ing Betty Draper, who is not my favorite part of the show, but my God, her clothes. Advance pub­lic­ity for sea­son one would sug­gest she’s still a part of the show, and what’s more, she recently bought her­self some black opera-length gloves. Oh yah.

Finally, this looks inter­est­ing. Haven’t read it. I will, as soon as Wild Mon­day set­tles into Some­what Tamer Tues­day. Have a good week, all.

Photo of Red Baraat by Amy Touchette.

Another sti­fling week­end, although it didn’t start that way. The older I get, the more I feel like all my sweat glands are rerout­ing to my head. I shlepped my first load from the East­ern Mar­ket back to the car, and could almost feel my head turn into a sprin­kler, pore by pore.

I’m sure this is yet another age-related hor­ror, but for the time being I’m choos­ing to see it as a trib­ute to my thick hair.

Or it might have been the load, which was mostly blue­ber­ries and tart cher­ries, so that pie sea­son may con­tinue in spec­tac­u­lar fash­ion. I go to a par­tic­u­lar stand for both, presided over by a man who’s a bit of a grump, but whose prod­uct is supe­rior in every way. A woman walk­ing by asked if she could try one of the tart cher­ries. He nod­ded, she popped one in her mouth, and com­menced to squeal­ing about how hor­ri­ble it was, “so sour! How could any­one eat this?!” She was older and, you’d think, of the gen­er­a­tion who might actu­ally have baked a pie with her own house­wifely hands and know the dif­fer­ence between eat­ing cher­ries (sweet) and pie cher­ries (tart), but I guess not. Thank You brand pie fill­ing has been around for a while. Thank you, Thank You, for doing your part to dimin­ish our national sup­ply of food knowl­edge.

Eh, who cares? More tart cher­ries for me, although today’s pie is blue­berry. So rich in antiox­i­dants, it’s prac­ti­cally a vit­a­min.

I haven’t writ­ten much about the Banksy busi­ness of late, mainly because I only recently learned who Banksy is (a real graf­fiti artist, as opposed to graf­fiti van­dals), and when­ever I come late to a story like this, I always fear I’m miss­ing huge chunks of the back­ground, but here goes:

Banksy did two pieces recently in Detroit, at our sto­ried Packard Plant. The aban­doned plant is usu­ally called the city’s most noto­ri­ous and cer­tainly its biggest eye­sore, at over three mil­lion decay­ing square feet. Our lit­tle gang of film­mak­ers has shot two shorts there, and it rou­tinely turns up in the national press, per­haps most mem­o­rably when a bunch of hooli­gans pushed a truck out one of its win­dows and ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Jour­nal.

Any­way, Banksy stole in, did a cou­ple paint­ings, and stole out, his usual m.o. Appar­ently, the way you find out about Banksy works is by watch­ing his web­site, where he posts pho­tographs of it in situ, with enough visual clues to tell you its loca­tion. Word was slowly get­ting around about one of them when the own­ers of a local gallery arrived with jack­ham­mers and other heavy equip­ment, and phys­i­cally removed the entire wall, tak­ing its half-ton bulk back to the gallery, where it’s on pub­lic view. They said their con­cern was that the work be pre­served, that sit­ting out in the law­less Packard site, it was only a mat­ter of time before some­one painted over it or oth­er­wise defaced it. And since peo­ple have been steal­ing the plants in bits and pieces for years, it didn’t seem like much of a crime.

(Edi­to­r­ial aside from an admit­ted art moron: Isn’t that part of the point with graf­fiti? Its imper­ma­nence? Banksy is miles beyond your local bone­head tag­gers, but he still oper­ates like one. There have prob­a­bly been hun­dreds of Banksy pieces cov­ered by build­ing own­ers who didn’t like what he’d done to their prop­erty. I know he’s now famous and chic, but …what­ever.)

The gallery own­ers say they never intended to sell it, just to pre­serve it, and so far, they’ve been true to their word.

Now comes a party with a law­suit, claim­ing own­er­ship and say­ing gimme back my Banksy. But here’s where it gets weird:

Biore­source Inc. sued 555 Non­profit Stu­dio and Gallery on Tues­day, ask­ing a judge to force it to return a mural by famed graf­fiti artist Banksy that it removed from the plant. In the law­suit, Biore­source Inc. claimed it owns the Packard Plant and that Romel Casab is the company’s pres­i­dent.

Casab has been rumored to be owner of the plant for years. But prior to the law­suit, the only owner or agent of Biore­source on record was Dominic Cristini, who is in prison in Cal­i­for­nia on Ecstasy charges.

Talk about OID! For years now, I’ve been dri­ving guests past that place, strug­gling to answer the inevitable ques­tion, “Why doesn’t some­one tear it down?” At first I assumed the plant, obvi­ously aban­doned and pre­sum­ably in tax for­fei­ture, was owned by the city, which couldn’t afford to demol­ish it. (It would cost mil­lions and mil­lions.) I knew there had been until recently one busi­ness, Biore­source, oper­at­ing out of a small part of it, and I once saw Casab referred to as its owner, but I didn’t know until now that the plant’s legal own­er­ship is a mys­tery. The dis­pute over one painted wall has flushed out some­one will­ing to be the owner of record, with all that implies — respon­si­bil­ity for doing some­thing to a dan­ger­ous hive of law­less­ness and anar­chy.

So far, the strat­egy seems to be: Allow the place to be over­run with arson­ists, scrap­pers and all man­ner of crazy Detroit types, and maybe, in time, it’ll just fall down, and the earth will reclaim it.

My guess is, noth­ing will be set­tled by this law­suit. But if it leads to any­thing impor­tant down the road, I’d say that was a con­se­quence even Banksy couldn’t have pre­dicted.

See, art does mat­ter.

Any more blog­gage? Oh, a lit­tle:

Lance Man­nion went to the post office and got into a chat with some LaRouch­ies. Do you know what Lyn­don LaRouche’s mid­dle name is? Hermyle. Now you know.

Finally, a note of con­do­lence to my friend and old radio co-host Mark GiaQuinta, whose father Ben died yes­ter­day at Mark’s Fort Wayne home at 87. While this obit has some nice moments — Ben was a state leg­is­la­tor for some years — I think I’ll pre­fer the Face­book notes Mark has started post­ing, promis­ing more in the days lead­ing up to his Sat­ur­day funeral. From today’s, about his expe­ri­ence in World War II. His com­pany was fight­ing around a Ger­man town called Welz in Novem­ber 1944, in what sounds like the runup to the Bat­tle of the Bulge. They had taken the town and cleared out some snipers and Ger­man 88s when some­thing else hap­pened:

As dad stood on a ridge out­side the Welz and over­look­ing a road, he spot­ted a wounded Ger­man writhing in pain from his injuries. Dad then saw a jeep with an Amer­i­can army medic. Some­how he got the atten­tion of the jeep dri­ver and was able to point to the wounded Ger­man who was unable to rise from his fallen posi­tion. The jeep stopped and the medic and dri­ver attended to the Ger­man sol­dier, lifted him to the jeep and drove him away. Just a few min­utes later, and directly in front of where dad stood, some­thing quite dra­matic occurred. The door of a cam­ou­flaged pill box (a con­crete bunker hold­ing a machine gun crew with a small slit for the gun tur­ret) opened and out came the Ger­man sol­diers with their hands up. With them were a num­ber of women and chil­dren who had been hid­ing in the pill box.

The Ger­mans, hav­ing seen the humane treat­ment offered to their com­rade, decided to sur­ren­der to dad and his bud­dies. Had dad not seen the sol­dier, those in the pill box and cer­tainly some of the Amer­i­cans advanc­ing toward it would likely have been killed. Think of the changes that have occurred in our lives as the result of dad’s instinct to direct the sav­ing of the wounded enemy sol­dier. Of course, we will never know what this meant with respect to the Ger­mans and oth­ers, but dad prob­a­bly saved his own life that day. I and my won­der­ful broth­ers and sis­ters can look at lov­ing spouses, our beau­ti­ful sons and daugh­ters, and the lives we have been blessed to share with each other and say thank you dad. Your instinct to help another human being gave us each other. We saw that drive to help oth­ers many times in the years we had you with us.

Some­times the most impor­tant shots in any bat­tle are the ones you don’t fire.

Off to start another crazy week. Here’s hop­ing you enjoy yours.

I had just bought a case of Spriggy’s expen­sive special-diet food shortly before he died last sum­mer, and, going stir-crazy from three days con­fined largely indoors, it pro­vided a per­fect time to do what I’ve been mean­ing to do for­ever, i.e., bun­dle it up and drop it off at the shel­ter.

Yes, I could have taken it to the Grosse Pointe animal-adoption cen­ter, but I was in a more adven­tur­ous frame of mind. We headed out for the Michi­gan Humane Soci­ety, the orig­i­nal Ani­mal Cop sta­tion house, which sits on the free­way ser­vice drive with the usual Detroit archi­tec­tural details — the park­ing lot enclosed by chain link topped by razor wire and with a full-time secu­rity guard; the mul­ti­ple signs point­ing the way to the cor­rect door, NOT THIS DOOR NO DELIVERIES THIS DOOR ENTER ON FISHER ONLY. There was a par­tic­u­larly strange one telling peo­ple to sur­ren­der ani­mals only to clearly iden­ti­fied MHS employ­ees; oth­ers might want their ani­mals for profit, crim­i­nal or “reli­gious pur­poses,” and might do them harm.

And peo­ple won­der why I find this place so inter­est­ing.

As we fol­lowed the signs to the ONLY AUTHORIZED ENTRY DOOR, two peo­ple passed us going the other direc­tion, each hold­ing a young pit bull puppy at arms’ length, the pups stretched out to their full length with puz­zled looks on their faces. The cacoph­ony of the doomed (or at least pro­foundly unlucky) beasts inside started to swell. The lobby wasn’t as bad as I’d feared, although there was a young girl hold­ing a big mutt on a leash, and I couldn’t see any­thing good com­ing of it. The dog looked old and very very tired and was in the midst of what looked to be an epic shed­ding episode. Two wor­ried cats sat in cages on the counter, one nude to the skin at the col­lar line. A man was nego­ti­at­ing some paper­work with another; I sus­pect it had to do with the big shed­ding mutt.

“Can I help you?” some­one said. I turned over my 11 cans of Sci­ence Diet k/d and three cans of gas­troin­testi­nal for­mula to the clerk, whose expres­sion said this was an unusual occur­rence on a 97-degree day. I con­sid­ered ask­ing for a tour, but it’s clear the place was oper­at­ing at some­thing shy of bat­tle sta­tions, so we took a long look around and left. “Come on, you guys,” the clerk said, lift­ing the cats off the counter. I asked about the naked-neck cat. “Flea allergy,” she shrugged; no big­gie.

Out­side adja­cent to the park­ing lot, a young woman played fetch in a fenced area for a gal­lump­ing, black Lab-y look­ing dog — exer­cise for one of the lucky ones con­sid­ered adopt­able. Inside the pen was a small shelter/shading struc­ture for longer turnouts. It was dec­o­rated: BAD DOG painted graffiti-style on the back wall. It’s always good to keep a sense of humor about your job.

Michi­gan­ders, they can always use help.

Just got an e-mail from one of our reg­u­lars here. Her sister’s been very sick with some seri­ous intesti­nal com­plaints and recently spent some time in the hos­pi­tal. They come from rural poverty; our friend escaped, sis didn’t. She suf­fers from sub­clin­i­cal psy­cho­log­i­cal issues and is mor­bidly obese, but has been able to eke out a hard­scrab­ble liv­ing at Wal-Mart. Friend writes:

The next time I hear some­body bitch about why we don’t need health-care reform, they had bet­ter fuck­ing look out. I just talked to my sis­ter. She just got her hos­pi­tal bill: $23,000 and change. The por­tion for which she is respon­si­ble: over $7,000. That is approx­i­mately what she has earned thus far this year from Wal-Mart. And she does not qual­ify for hav­ing her bill waived by the hos­pi­tal because she prob­a­bly will exceed their poverty thresh­old, with an annual income that exceeds $11,000. Think about that. Could either of us even live on $11,000 a year, even absent health-care bills in the four dig­its? And that’s just the hos­pi­tal bill.

She is hav­ing prob­lems again — she’s jaun­diced and has been throw­ing up bile for a cou­ple of days. She sees her doc tomor­row but absolutely refuses to go to the hos­pi­tal again because she “can’t afford to miss any more work.” (And she can’t afford another hos­pi­tal bill, either.) She has noth­ing left in sav­ings and is liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. Barely. I’m send­ing her money as we’re able, but Jesus, what the hell can we really do short of hop­ing to hit the lot­tery? We’re not awash in cash either.

I don’t expect her to live a long and healthy life–not with her habits, weight, health his­tory and all the rest of it–but I strongly sus­pect her death will be has­tened by the lack of afford­able health care.

Yes, it prob­a­bly will. It does every day. Just remem­ber: This is the great­est health-care sys­tem in the world.

Blog­gage? Sure:

Poor Tyson Gay. First his name is changed to “Tyson Homo­sex­ual” by the Amer­i­can Fam­ily Asso­ci­a­tion, and now this.

OID: How to steal an ATM in Detroit. And not suc­ceed.

We had an old man die in Grosse Pointe yes­ter­day, appar­ently because of the heat. (Still check­ing.) What’s the toll where you are? Storms expected later, fol­lowed by a 10-degree drop. Hurry, storms.

And have a great day.

I was buy­ing pine nuts at the East­ern Mar­ket Sat­ur­day, at one of the bricks-and-mortar stores. I was there rel­a­tively early, but by no means break-of-dawn hours, and some­thing seemed to be miss­ing. They’re rear­rang­ing the check­out area, but it wasn’t that. The crowds? The store wasn’t over­run, but was plenty busy. The sound sys­tem clicked to life with the open­ing hand claps in “Where Did Our Love Go?” and the woman behind me in line began to sing along with Diana Ross.

Of course. The Motown was miss­ing.

It’s hard to over­state how per­va­sive Motown music is in Motown. Close to half a cen­tury since some of these songs were on the charts, and you still hear them, daily, in an aver­age day’s errands. It’s the pre­ferred Muzak in stores all over the Metro, pre­sum­ably because in a vast, mul­tira­cial, fre­quently acri­mo­nious place, it’s the one thing every­one can agree on. We all like the Supremes. Every­one knows “Mickey’s Mon­key.” It doesn’t mat­ter if you go stag, it doesn’t mat­ter if you go drag, you’re sure to have some fun, I’m telling every­one, most every taxi that you flag is going to a go-go. And when you get there, they’ll be spin­ning some Ste­vie Won­der.

I hear Motown in the gro­cery store, Motown at the gas-station pumps, Motown at fancy-dress affairs, because it’s a way of hon­or­ing the city’s his­tory and African Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion and pre-riots glory, while still get­ting even sub­ur­ban toes tap­ping. There’s a Motown store in the air­port, where you enter the North­west (now Delta) ter­mi­nal, and of course it’s always play­ing Motown. I won­der if the clerks go insane with it after a while, or if it just becomes white noise.

You think about Motown the record label, and the way it has squat­ted over Motown the city, and it’s no won­der most peo­ple else­where know lit­tle about the depth and breadth of music the city has pro­duced, before and after. I under­stand why you don’t hear Eminem or Kid Rock at the air­port, but couldn’t they throw in some John Lee Hooker or White Stripes? The MC5 didn’t have “moth­er­fucker” in all their lyrics. They play Bob Seger, you say, and yes, they do. But for every Bob Seger song, you’ll hear 25 spins of “Tears of a Clown.”

I love this music as much as any­one, but even I can get a lit­tle impa­tient with it. If you’re going to play it that much, give us some B-sides and deep cuts for vari­ety, if noth­ing else. And stop play­ing “Tears of a Clown.” I mean it. That one’s about to join “Respect” and “Dark Side of the Moon” on my If I Never Hear It Again, I’ve Already Heard It Quite Enough, Thank You playlist.

So, it sounds like every­one had a nice hol­i­day. We’re hav­ing a heat wave in my part of the world — maybe in yours, too. As dur­ing cold snaps, now is the time when general-assignment reporters at news­pa­pers all over the affected area pick up their phones and pre­tend to be deeply engrossed in pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tions when their bosses stand at the end of the bullpen with that eenie-meenie-minie-moe look in their eyes. No one wants to do this weather story. A good tor­nado? Sure, I’ll roll on that in a heart­beat. But the heat-wave story makes you stu­pider just think­ing about it, let alone report­ing it. You talk to an indul­gent ER doc­tor at a local hos­pi­tal, one who is per­haps being hazed by his col­leagues. He gives you his expert med­ical opin­ion on how one might avoid heat exhaus­tion: Stay in air-conditioned build­ings as much as pos­si­ble. If you must go out, make sure to drink plenty of flu­ids, but not alco­hol or caf­feine. Really, water is best. Avoid stand­ing in direct sun — seek shade. If you feel dizzy or oth­er­wise impaired, by all means, stop what you’re doing and rehy­drate.

On the metro desk of the Nance Times, we tell peo­ple that heat waves are an excel­lent time to exer­cise stren­u­ously out­doors, right around 4 p.m. Don’t drink water; in fact, high heat is an excel­lent time to lose that pesky water weight. Have a beer if you’re thirsty. Have five! Then have a long nap on the front lawn, prefer­ably in direct sun­light.

So, some blog­gage for an indoors-in-the-AC day? Sure:

When I was grow­ing up, Cracked mag­a­zine was the B-team ver­sion of Mad. When did they start run­ning sto­ries like this? It’s actu­ally fairly smart.

What do we think of Floyd Lan­dis’ lat­est spill on Saint Lance? I find it pretty con­vinc­ing, but you? Maybe not.

If you’re not read­ing Coo­zledad when he gets cranky, you should.

Via Hank: One of the Stranger’s bet­ter writ­ers goes to see Gallagher’s act in sub­ur­ban Seat­tle. Yeah, he’s still alive. No, it ain’t pretty.

Wel­come back to the week. Short one. Yay.