As soon as I saw the first alert on this story, I knew it was going to go big. I’ll quote liberally from behind the paywall:

A parent from an opposing football team reportedly entered Grosse Pointe South High School following a Nov. 6 Michigan High School Athletic Association football game and defecated in a hallway, the school district said in a Nov. 9 statement.

The Grosse Pointe Public School System said a “review of the District’s security camera footage confirmed that an individual who was a parent of a Bedford High School student entered the school building without authorization and defecated in a hallway.”

GP South has had a very successful season, and is in playoffs now. They don’t normally play Bedford, which is in Monroe County, south of here near the Ohio border. South gave Bedford quite a thumping, 42-0, and I guess someone’s dad didn’t take the loss well, dropping a deuce in the hallway before heading back to Bedford. Over the course of the social-media discussion, which is 90 percent poop puns and the rest puke emojis, someone will pop up to caution us all not to be in a rush to judgment. Maybe this person had an urgent need and couldn’t hold it anymore! Perhaps he couldn’t find the bathroom in time! Which might be maaaaybe possible, if he hadn’t passed all the outdoor bathrooms near the football field and then however many more he might have passed in choosing a spot indoors. And even if that had actually happened, wouldn’t you think a normal mortified adult would scramble to find some paper towels and clean it up? It’s not like he can kick dirt over it, like a cat.

I wonder if he walked around the spot a couple times, like Wendy does.

TV already has the video, with the man’s face blurred out. Someone, probably a lot of someones, know his name.

I think I’ve mentioned before that one of my trainers is also a high school coach. He said last year the players had to protect their field before and after the game, because the Catholic football academy they were playing was trying to plant a flag in it. This is, I gather, a fairly recent phenomenon at the college level, and it’s trickling down to the prep level. This particular Catholic team, my trainer said, is full of grown-ass adults who shriek obscenities at the refs when things don’t go their way. Which is at least better than taking a dump in the opposing team’s school.

Yay, sports!

So, any bloggage? Sure. I don’t know what’s going on with Haley Stevens, but it’s sounding more and more like a nervous breakdown. May she get the help she needs, the turncoat.

The man who postulated the Monty Hall Problem is dead. His obit is a great read.

Fun fact I learned via Bluesky this week: Pete Hegseth’s nickname in the Pentagon is Dumb McNamara.

Happy Wednesday! Over the hump.

In this fraught election season, I’ve learned to listen to my spouse.

When I hear him mutter “oh for FUCK’s sake,” I know he’s glanced at his phone to read another push notification. Today it was what can legitimately be called a bombshell, i.e., Haley Stevens, the loser in Michigan’s Democratic U.S. Senate primary, endorsing the Republican Mike Rogers, after spending a couple of days tiffing with the man who beat her, Abdul El-Sayed.

The kids have an expression: Main-character syndrome, to describe a person who can never see a situation without seeking to make it all about them. Haley Stevens has a terminal case. In this case, I think she’s being guided by her fiancé, a lawyer and strongly pro-Israel activist, who no doubt helped guide millions in AIPAC money to her campaigns. But this is only speculation.

Speculation based on hints. Like this, from Politico over the weekend:

“Jason is vaporizing Haley’s future so that he can be a main character in this moment and it is sad to watch her participate in that,” Caitlin Legacki said of Stevens’ fiancé Jason Turkish in a social media thread, saying that during the primary he was “an extraordinarily toxic presence, was verbally abusive to staff and had some of the worst political instincts I’ve ever witnessed.”

So he has main-character syndrome, too.

Also, this, a Facebook post by Ray Wert, the husband of Mallory McMorrow, who was the third candidate in the primary and who dropped out before the election:

I’ve known Haley Stevens for a long time. Until now, she has always had staff to protect her, prop her up, and keep her safe from her own irrational behavior. What we’re seeing now? This is just raw, unfiltered Haley.

The Haley who flip-flops and goes from thought to thought without rhyme or reason. The Haley that calls you at 3 AM to yell at you, and then calls you back at 5 AM oblivious to the fact that she even spoke with you at 3 AM. The Haley who bends to the last and loudest voice that tells her something.

More often than not that last voice is now her fiancé. And as you can see by what one of her former staff people posted earlier here on X, that appears to potentially be a really troubling relationship.

Ultimately, I don’t think it will matter. About 1.4 million votes have already been cast statewide, and given the circus this has caused, I doubt there will be a stampede to clerk’s offices to spoil and recast ballots. I think, ultimately, she will be seen for what she is — a turncoat. But I don’t know. No one knows. We won’t know for a few more days.

And man, am I tired. So tired. Between Halloween and current events, I could use a long vacation.

On Sunday, I went to an open house for a new funeral parlor opening in Detroit, run by Lynch & Sons. No fearsome diagnosis at this end, I should add. One of the Lynches is a friend, and I went to be supportive. This beauty was parked out front:

A 1939 Packard, duplicate of the hearse driven by the patriarch of the family, the original Lynch, who sent his family into funeral service. One of his sons told me he and his brother are the only ones who know how to drive it.

“Three on the tree?” I asked. Yes, he replied, and I said, “I can drive it.”

I can. I can drive a three on the tree, a four on the floor, and any other pattern you want to throw in. The paddle shifters in my Subaru are a mystery to me, but I’ve never used them. On Saturday I was passed by a Waymo driverless taxi. Can’t drive that. Wouldn’t want to, either. I bet the steering on that hearse is a workout, though.

Oh my, am I tired. This may be the last update until after the election, although you never know. Let’s all cross our fingers and hope for deliverance. Onward!

A parking ticket for Kate’s car arrived at our house the other day. This has happened before, because her car is still registered to her dad. Normally it’s one of those high-tech meter-expiration citations, where the second the time runs out, the meter takes a photo of your plate and mails you the ticket. (I hate those. You should get a few minutes grace if you’re returning to your car. Damn surveillance state.) But this one was more troubling — parking in a handicap spot, which she swears she didn’t do. A $200 fine. It all happened in Hamtramck on Labor Day.

:::swimmy visual effects, harp glissandos:::

She does remember parking on the street, and a resident coming out to yell that she was in his spot. “It’s a public street,” she told him. “I’ll be gone in 30 minutes.” He continued to shake his fist from the front door, and she walked away. There was no ticket on the car when she returned. More than a week later, it arrived in a hand-addressed envelope, which was weird. Other things were weird, too — the color of the car was wrong, and not by a shade or two. The plate, make and model was correct, but it’s not a green car, not even close. I normally would have let her handle it, but she’s got a lot on her plate right now, so I took it on, because readers? I smelled a rat.

Called the Hamtramck PD. The officer allowed as it was unusual for a ticket to be mailed, but not unheard of, if say the officer was called away before it could be completed.

“Are there photos of the violations?” I asked. “She said she saw a handicap spot in front of another house, but she parked well out of it.”

The officer allowed as how there should be photos or body cam footage, available via FOIA request. I made one as soon as I hung up, then called the court to let them know I was seeking more information, and would either pay or contest when it arrived.

Today? It arrived:

I am reaching out on behalf of the City of Hamtramck’s FOIA Coordinator. The City of Hamtramck is in receipt of your document request pursuant to Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act, MCLA §§ 15.231, et. seq. After conducting a reasonable search of records in the possession of this public body, we have determined that no records exist that are responsive to your request.

Now I will roll into my November Zoom court date armed with Defendant’s Exhibits 1 and 2, a photo of Kate’s car showing its correct color, the FOIA response showing no photos of the alleged violation exist, and your honor, as the state is offering no proof beyond this :::shakes ticket derisively::: piece of paper, I am moving for a directed verdict of NOT GUILTY.

How did this happen? Parking is scarce in Hamtramck, especially the weekend of the Labor Day Festival, and likely this homeowner, who lives near one who has a legal handicap spot (I checked on Google Street View), called the cops and told them some snotty girl was parked in it. They probably let him offer the information over the phone. Whatever happened, I think I saved Kate $200.

This is my life in retirement.

Also, watching this dipshit senator from Missouri make an ass of himself, and be corrected by a woman:

Sen. Eric Schmitt thought he caught Jack Smith in a lie. Instead, he outed him as a fan of former Iowa Hawkeyes star Caitlin Clark.

In a quest to frame former special counsel Jack Smith as a liar during his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Schmitt asked him if he was in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 2024, for an NBA basketball game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks — amid mounting drama around the Atlanta-based criminal investigation into Donald Trump led by prosecutor Fani Willis.

Smith clarified that he didn’t go to that game. But he did go to a different one on the same day: He was in College Park, Md. to see the Maryland Terrapins women’s basketball team play the Iowa Hawkeyes, led by phenom Caitlin Clark, who dropped 38 points that night in a win over the Terps.

It appeared that Schmitt misinterpreted a text message reference to the “hawks” among Smith’s deputies, who discussed reserving a seat for Smith in the front row.

Haw haw Hawkeyes!

OK, then. I have a big day Wednesday, so I’m going to get this checked off my to-do list. Later, all.

As everything has to come to an end, so to has the 47th annual Detroit Jazz Festival, and my burden is significantly lightened. Posting to social media is a strange thing, not journalism but with elements of it, not quite marketing but with elements of that, too. Truth be told, far more marketing than journalism, but sometimes you can say that about The New York Times. But it was four long days with lots of running around, buttonholing artists for stop-and-chats, being on the lookout for interesting things on and around the various stages.

Truth be told, I cannot top the City of Detroit genius who came to the festival and gave us the Unc Cam:

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A post shared by City of Detroit (@cityofdetroit)

This was my breaking news:

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A very fragile and interesting moment I feel fortunate to have captured (not well, but at least I captured it).

The hotel where we all stayed, the Marriott at the RenCen, is enormous, and was also accommodating the Islamic Society of North America and a large Indian wedding. So when any random elevator door opened, you might be sharing it with men in shalwar kameez or a thobe, women in abayas or long dresses with a hijab in contrasting print trailing behind, raven-haired beauties in saris with hennaed hands, or some dude all in black carrying a saxophone case. Today it was a teenager in a T-shirt advertising “a better way to wudu.” I asked him what the better way was; he said it involved a special sock. (Wudu, for those who don’t know, is the ritual bathing before Islamic prayer, and the problematic part is the feet. The University of Michigan at Dearborn, after repairing too many bathroom sinks accidentally torn from the wall by clumsy wudu, installed footbaths.)

Anyway, it was a good weekend of exhausting work and excellent music. Plus uncs. And this lady, the one on the right…

…who is famous. I asked her where she got her sunglasses. She said Reykjavik. I saw her every day, always looking amazing.

Now, friends, I am bone-tired and intend to sleep until my body has had enough. I want you to know that I haven’t forgotten this blog, nor you readers. I now intend to enjoy Adult Summer — the six weeks of good-enough weather that follows Labor Day — to the fullest.

The pedestrian/cycling lane on the new bridge has been open about two weeks. The Derringers took their first shot at it today. The weather report was favorable, the schedule was clear, and so we did it.

It’s a beautiful bridge, still clean and sparkling under the blue sky. The suspension cables give you some great details in the pictures. And there are many made-for-Instagram angles.

But ultimately, it’s the sky and the water and the other people on the bridge.

That’s Alan.

It’s a long climb up, and I regretted not checking my gears first, because I’m stuck on the big ring on the front. I mean, I made it, but I was glad for the downhill. On the other side, we blew through customs in a trice. “You have any weapons?” the Canadian border agent asked. “We’re bicyclists, not bikers,” I said. And that was that. Then it was two more miles into downtown Windsor for some Chinese food, and the whole thing in reverse coming back home. My sense was the Canadian climb was steeper, the American climb longer but shallower. So pick your poison. It’s a workout either way.

But overall, I think this bit of infrastructure is brilliant. There was solid bike travel both ways, and plenty of pedestrians, too. I’m not saying it’ll have a major impact on cross-border tourism, but any way you can get people crossing the border is a good thing. Now for an entrepreneur to park a food truck on either side, and you’ve got the start of an economy. In another couple of years, who knows what can happen. All because you made it easy for people who don’t travel in cars.

Just one bit of bloggage today, called to my attention by my Ohio people. An ad for Vivek Ramaswamy, running for governor there. It’s almost like the whole state hasn’t been in the grip of the GOP for years now. I hate this timeline.

But let’s have a good weekend anyway. Summer is fleeting. Let’s enjoy it, even if it rains.

Sometimes people ask if I miss being a working journalist. The answer: No. No, no, a thousand times no. I still have major respect, even awe, for people who continue to do it in this environment, but I have zero desire to join them. Every so often I’m inspired to write something for others to read, similar to what I do here but less messy. I have outlets for that. I don’t feel the urge to do it more than every so often.

Forgive me. I’m having a lost day. Slept very very badly last night, missed my workout, feel like shit. Spent much of the day working without much spark or pleasure, feeling gloomy about everything. Stuff like this, from my city’s email newsletter:

Built with AI, probably ChatGPT. It’s simply amazing how quickly this style has taken over the internet. I see it almost every day, and so much of it is ludicrously wrong — the tennis ball about to hit the woman’s head, the weird jewelry hanging from her neck, the fact that isn’t Lake Front Park, the flag with the weird stars (because without them, we might not know where we are, right?) — to name just a few. “Game, Set, Play.” The leaves on the court. The overall busyness of it. Graphic designers are going out of business because you can send ChatGPT a press release, and it will vomit up something like this.

I figure, if you’re going to oppose data centers, and I do, you have to not do the things that require data centers, like turn perfectly understandable words into AI slop flyers.

But creativity isn’t entirely dead. You may remember that back in May or June, I wrote about the revived, very stupid idea to turn Belle Isle, currently a state park, into a commonwealth or protectorate or something, where very wealthy people could live tax-free, in return for being job creators, or something. It was an idea first rolled out in 2013, when the developer who dreamed it up self-published a novella set some years in the future, after Belle Isle had become the Dubai of the Detroit River. It was a very strange book, with an undercurrent of homoeroticism that was immediately evident to any reader smart enough to know the meaning of the word. Also, a monorail. And F1 racing.

Anyway, a local journalist, Jeff Wattrick, wrote several scathing stories about it for Deadline Detroit, back when the site was new and fully staffed. He most memorably called the Commonwealth of Belle Isle something like “the HOA from hell, with police powers.” When the idea was rekindled late last year, pegged to a b.s. poll and Trump’s idea of “freedom cities” and a very compliant media willing to do anything for content, Wattrick was no longer in daily journalism, but still a writer. He started noodling around with a fictional sequel to the original story, and ended up with a 60,000-word novel. He’s started trickling it out on Substack, along with shorter interstitials about related this and that, like the b.s. poll and other stuff.

“Belle Isle 2: Belle Isler” is a slow starter, because he has to deal with the problem any sequel writer has: How much to assume your readers already know about the world you’re building. There are some very niche humorous moments: A discussion of setting up an emergency blood bank goes sideways, because the idea of donating something and not getting fair market value in return is anathema on Belle Isle. But once the action really starts, it’s showing a lot of promise. It’s a Hiaasen-esque first draft, but I’m enjoying it.

I hope I sleep better tonight.

On Wednesday, I was asked by a friend to do a favor that involved sitting in her house for a few hours. So I did. It was very hot outside, and she had robust a/c. When I arrived, the sky was clear and the sun, punishing. When I left around 6:30, the sky was overcast, not with clouds, but with smoke.

And now it’s Thursday morning, and Michigan has the worst air on the planet. Not the Midwest, not the entire country, the whole damn world. A quirk of the wind has swept wildfire smoke from Canada and Minnesota into our state, and the map footprint is eerie; of course there’s bleeding into other states, but the worst of it seems to stop at the state borders. Good news, Toledo! All the air-quality scales are pegged in the Hazardous zone. As bad as it is in Detroit, it seems to be even worse in the U.P. Here’s the Mackinac Bridge:

Another view:

We have our own a/c on, with the fan running constantly. Morning swim was cancelled. The lakefront park is closed. But never fear! John James, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for governor, the emptiest suit that ever did empty, the man whose whole campaign is, to steal a phrase from Jon Stewart, “a noun, a verb and a helicopter*,” had this to say:

As Governor, I’ll put Michigan first, demand answers, and push Canada to take real action.

As the quip goes, tell me you know nothing about wildfires without telling me you know nothing without wildfires.

* James was a helicopter pilot during the Gulf War, or “Desert Storm,” as he patriotically calls it, every time. He brings it up…a lot.

In other news at this hour, while I was sitting at my buddy’s house yesterday, I did some rabbit-hole moseying, and came upon the latest from the Indiana Policy Review, which exists as a sinecure for the former opinion-page editor of my alma mater in Fort Wayne. He’s been there since roughly 1990, so that’s a pretty good sinecure. The fact the organization barely exists at all speaks more to the pity the wealthy founding families have for their pet mouthpiece, but never mind that.

This week’s column by him (the lower-case “tcl” at the end stands for T. Craig Ladwig) is remarkable for its naked bigotry and elevation of Indiana’s lieutenant governor, right-wing Christian scold Micah Beckwith, to something resembling relevancy. (It’s a quirk of Hoosier politics that the governor and lieutenant governor don’t necessarily run as a team, as they’re independently nominated by the party faithful. The gubernatorial candidate can make their wishes known, but the delegates don’t necessarily have to do their bidding. So in this case you get a more or less normal Republican serving with a lunatic wingnut like Beckwith.) Lately, Beckwith, a pastor of sorts, has been on about the Muslim Menace, and tcl is right there with him:

The need to confront the Muslim scourge in our cities is dividing the Republican Party — or so you would expect. In Indiana, however, only Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith is speaking out while other GOP leaders sit silent for fear that Julia Carson’s grandson, Andre, will call them bigots.

Indeed, the governor upbraided Beckwith for not choosing his words more carefully, for not thinking before he speaks.

OK, if the governor wants a careful word choice, how about “seditious”? That’s when you demand that your religion exempts you from a society’s norms, mores, laws and core beliefs to the degree that you would overturn them to be replaced with your own.

Freedom of religion? Do you think the Founders had in mind someone like Genghis Khan, a devout follower of Tengrism, the shamanic religion that worships “the Eternal Blue Sky.” His armies killed as many as 40 million people, estimated to be 11 percent of the world’s population at the time.

It is terrifying to realize that the leading minds of our GOP are willing to abide an openly hostile, globally controlled Islam as a benign curiosity.

To use a not-that-great internet witticism twice in one blog, tell me you know nothing about American Muslims without, etc.

And no, I don’t know what Genghis Khan is doing in there. But I chuckled when, later in the column, he mentions “the unassimilable Muslim population.” I’d like to escort this elderly hayseed on a tour of Dearborn, Michigan. He’ll see some assimilated Muslims, oh yes he will. They make delicious hummus.

OK, gotta clean the house today. Company’s coming for the weekend.

I was trying to think of something non-Trumpy to blog today, and then I saw this, and honestly, I got nothing better, so let’s start the weekend with a smile and have a good weekend, all.

Last fall I mentioned that I’d purchased a birthday gift for all three of us, the November babies — a two-hour cruise on the J.W. Westcott, the mail boat the services the freighters on the Detroit River. We thought we might be able to schedule it right around Christmas, but the cold weather and ice came in early, and they said we’d be better off waiting until spring.

We set it for Sunday. The day couldn’t have been more perfect — the smash-cut to full summer I’d been predicting for a while. It was clear blue skies, 80 degrees, not a hint of rain and not even that much wind to make the water choppy. The party limit was six, so it was the three Derringers plus friends Dustin, Will and Cam, Kate’s boyfriend.

Upriver or down, we were asked. Down, we decided. None of this see-our-lovely-riverwalk-and-Belle-Isle for us; that’s easy to see. But to go down to look at the dirty ass crack of the industrial Midwest? Yeah, that’s more our speed.

We set out from the Westcott dock in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge and passed under the nearly complete Gordie Howe Bridge — which our idiot president has threatened not to “allow” to open…

…and got up close and personal with a bulk loader that looks surprisingly good, maybe because it’s only eight years old. Dig that cute little lifeboat. Best wear your seatbelt when it makes its getaway.

Past the zombie-apocalypse hellscape of Zug Island…

…and into the Rouge River aka the other American river to catch fire, back in the day. (Ohioans know the other one — the Cuyahoga, in Cleveland.) It’s much improved, but I wouldn’t go swimming in it for all the tea in China. But it’s where the stuff that makes other stuff gets delivered and taken away and made into more stuff. Aggregate, coke, all that stuff. Even the tugboats look like they’ve seen some shit.

The bridges got out of our way.

Except for on the way back, when we had to stop to let a train go past. Then it was back up the river to the dock and, later, a table for six at a nearby Mexicantown spot. We all agreed it was a fine day out.

This is a trip to take when you’re convinced the city has no more to show you, that you’ve seen it all. You haven’t. I hope it’s a nice day for your cruise, too. And you get to do a mail delivery to a big ship. Although the crew said it’s mostly Amazon boxes these days. And pizzas and Door Dash.

Now I’m dehydrated and sun-dazzled and ready for an early bed. Two more days of summer heat before it moderates again. Eighty-seven tomorrow.

Filled up the tank of my Subaru Outback on Saturday. Seventy-five bucks. I haven’t driven it today; took my bike to a spot three miles distant to have Mother’s Day lunch with Kate. It was a pretty day, on the cool side, so I didn’t arrive all sweaty.

Pro tip, though: If you plan on drinking beer, a jumpsuit is a bad choice. As someone funnier than me observed, once you’re in the bathroom, it’s just you and your bad decisions.

Look at the weeds growing up around the struggling little street tree. Sometimes I wonder if the sheer homeliness of Detroit’s physical footprint is doing something to my brain; sometimes I’ll see some truly wondrous public installation of something, somewhere other than here, and wonder what it must be like to enjoy that sort of thing on the regular. But Mack Avenue resists all such beautification. As Elmore Leonard is said to have written, during his advertising career, “Some cities get by on their looks. Others have to work for a living.”

One thing about a bike ride down a city avenue, you find yourself with time and reason to run little errands. Into Staples for a dry-erase marker I (and only I) can use for the Wednesday whiteboard workout at the pool. Into Village Market for a teres major for dinner. Certainly I didn’t opt for a filet mignon, once I got a look at the price: $50 a pound. On sale. And then home for an afternoon snooze, because: Mother’s Day. And beer.

Here’s something Jeff Borden sent the other day, when he was in Hyde Park, where the Obamas once lived:

Too good to be true? Perhaps. But every so often I see something like this, and I’m gobsmacked, yet again, by the speed of our fall. I saw the first posters for the MMA fight on the White House lawn, and I wanted to cry. I remember the week after the 2016 election, sitting in the conference room in Ann Arbor, and our fearless leader confidently said Trump would get bored by the job and quit after six months, or else he’d be impeached. Well, he was half right. We thought the job would change the man. We never reckoned on this particular man, however.

Let’s go into this week with a spirit of optimism, however. You never know what any day will bring.