Art gallery in a former police precinct. Another Detroit attraction.
Banksy, too:
It’s about that time…
He was singing “Hail to the Victors,” and closed with a raspberry to “those cheaters, Ohio State.”
Here’s something to be thankful for: Remember Andy Didorosi, and the scrawny pit bull he found on the street a few days back? Probably not, because I underplayed the link here, so here’s the nutshell:
Andy is a guy I wrote about for Bridge. He got this crazy idea to open a bus company in Detroit, and that’s what he’s doing — shuttling barflies around on the weekends, keeping a few drunk drivers off the road, hosting a rolling party. So the other night, he finds this starving dog huddled by the side of the road. He tempted her onto the bus with a can of Alpo and started the work of figuring out what could be done for her. If you follow that first link, you’ll see she had a very tough few days — having recently given birth (puppies likely stillborn), she had mastitis, intestinal blockages and was starved down to bones and hide.
But they got her taken care of, and now she seems to be on the road back to health, gaining weight and strength. She’s Andy’s dog now. Her name? Andi.
Besides spreading the news within his own social network, he attracted some attention from the Free Press, which did a story. Now, you journos in the audience know that nothing opens readers’ wallets like a dog story, and the reporter included a link to the Paypal donation address. He ended up collecting several thousand more than he could possibly spend on Andi’s care, especially now that she’s out of the woods.
Last night, it came up on my Facebook — a new rescue. Those of you who aren’t on FB might not be able to see that page, which is about Angel, a dog even more abused and close to the edge than Andi. She needed emergency surgery tonight, and the last time I checked, it looked like she’s very close to death, but who knows? Andi was pretty sick a few days ago.
When a lot of people drop $7,000 and change into your bank account, you have to do the right thing. I’m glad Andy’s doing it.
And now that it’s Wednesday? I’m thankful the holiday is nigh. I’m getting the Friday after Thanksgiving off for the first time in years, and friends? I’m looking forward to it.
No links today, and happy Thanksgiving to all. I’ll be back Monday, unless I see some good photo posts between then and now.
On Election Day, I woke up at my current ridiculous hour — 5 a.m. After I read the entire Internet and a chapter from Friday’s book-club selection (“The Leisure Seeker,” Michael Zadoorian) I laid in a puddle of self-loathing, watching a debate between my angel and devil. By now it was 6:45.
Hey, fatty. You should be exercising. This book isn’t that good.
But my knee hurts.
Your knee hurts because you don’t exercise. It’s a loop.
And then, just to make sure the angel and devil would be joined by a third visual cliché, a light bulb appeared over my head. (How did cartoonists illustrate “I just had an idea” before Thomas Edison? Candles?) I know: I will get up and walk briskly to my polling place! It’s not exactly an eight-mile run, but my knee hurts. It’s something. Better than nothing.
And so I got up and pulled on a few layers and headed out, looking frankly a little rumply and just-out-of-beddy. As I drew closer to city hall I reflected on the genius of this plan, as I’d be able to enter via a different door and bypass the sign-wavers in the parking lot, at least some of whom I’d know. Then I saw the parking lot. It was full. Those people couldn’t possibly all be waiting to vote, could they?
They could. And were. Even with more machines than I’ve ever seen, it was almost a 30-minute wait to vote. I filled out my ballot with grim purpose and started home, striving for a sweet spot for the footfall to not make every step say ouch. I detoured through the alley because of construction on a storefront, and saw what appeared at a distance to be a fried-chicken thigh lying near a dumpster. (I was behind the Chicken Shack.) As I grew closer, it revealed itself: A wallet.
A wallet with a credit card, and an EBT card, and a little bit of cash, and a driver’s license. I went around to the construction crew: Anybody here named Aaron? No. So I walked back to city hall and turned it in to the police. Regular readers who haven’t been bored into stupefaction may recall I lost my own wallet a few years ago, and it was delivered back to my door, intact, by a kind soul. This was not just a lost wallet, but a chance to repay a karmic debt.
I also found the guy on Facebook, and messaged him. Did what I can. When a guy’s getting food stamps, he can’t afford to lose his wallet.
I’m writing this while watching election returns come in, but it’s early. I have to be up at oh-dark-nothing to get to Lansing for the post-election stuff, and it’s likely I’ll be asleep by the time this thing is called, so this may have to be an open-thread day. Just in case there are a few of you who would like to discuss anything else, some conversation-starters:
A starving-dog story with a twist, involving the Detroit Bus Company, which I wrote about for Bridge a few weeks ago.
A few months ago, something took me into the vortex of Timothy Ferriss, author of the “four-hour” bullshit franchise. Want to get rich and not work too hard? Buy “The Four-Hour Work Week.” Did you know you can be fit and strong and have a six-pack? No? Why, you must not have read “The Four-Hour Body.” I hear that in the latter volume, Ferriss claims he can give a woman a 15-minute orgasm. Your initial reaction may be mine: Who the hell wants one of those? (I’m kind of with Woody Allen on the orgasm question — mine have all been right on the money.) Without having read the books, I feel I can safely say he’s full of shit, not just for the 15-minute orgasm claim, but also because it’s said that this man weighs his own feces for some health-related reason. So when I heard his latest book, some other four-hour thing, is not having a very easy time of it, all I could think was, it couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Finally, remember 2 Live Crew? “Me So Horny,” Tipper Gore, all that stuff? He’s settled down, as we all tend to do with age. What’s he doing now? Coaching high-school football. Interesting guy. Good story.
Now to schedule this post and wait for the news to roll in. Fingers crossed for all my votes, and yours, too.
UPDATE: OK, I’m still up. Mourdock just ate dirt in Indiana. I may need to survive on coffee tomorrow.
Halloween fell on a Wednesday this year, which is the night I take Kate downtown for her music-lessonin’, and I take myself out for a midweek drink. People think of Halloween in Detroit in terms of arson and mayhem, but there’s also this:
And that can only mean?
JUGGALOS:
Right outside where I was planning to eat dinner, too. No problem — I’ve been doing this long enough I know the alternate parking places. So I parked, fed the meter, and took a few snaps:
The pizza has something to do with the band, but frankly, I’m afraid to Google it. On the whole, though, they’re nice kids. I asked before every picture. People are nice when you ask. Note the license plate — South Dakota.
And face it: Nobody takes the trouble to get dressed like this and doesn’t want people to pay attention.
Whoop-whoop! Fam-i-ly! Fam-i-ly!
You can watch this, if you really want to know more. A rare short documentary that’s worth the 24 minutes or so it takes to watch.
And that’s about all I have today. Juggalos. Oh, here’s Tom Nardone, the head of the Mower Gang, on Conan last night. A little late for pumpkin-carving, but not a bad segment.
The days tick ever-closer to election day, when my life will get a lot easier. Yours too, I suspect.
The week is on a downslope. Enjoy it.
Well, hello, Sandy.
Monday was a difficult day all around — an over two-hour drive home (90 minutes in ideal conditions) thanks to a freeway wreck, but I was lucky, because I missed the snare on the morning commute, when a scare over the I-96 shooter shut down the road entirely. And then the misery started, with the howling wind, the rain and a DVD player that at first balked at season one of “Homeland,” the one bright spot to the day.
We got it worked out, but to say I slept fitfully was an understatement. So a few links, and let’s start mainlining coffee.
I hope those of you who were closer to the storm — we were about 650 miles from the eye, mind you — are safe and sound today. During my long bout of insomnia last night I kept refreshing the NYT and Twitter, blanching at the awfulness, waiting for one of the three oaks within crushing distance of my house to give up the ghost.
Storms, snipers, malfunctioning digital technology. Hello, America. Stand by for news!
This has been one of the strangest races of the season, one where you’d think you’d have more of, well, a race. Instead, Pete Hoekstra is phoning it in and counting down the days until Debbie Stabenow hands him his hat and sends him back to Washington not as a senator, but more likely a lobbyist:
After initially balking at running against Stabenow, Hoekstra jumped into the race and immediately stirred controversy with a Super Bowl ad that accused Stabenow of excessive government spending. The ad, which some saw as racially insensitive, featured a Chinese-American actress speaking in broken English. It seemed to cost him some support.
Since then, the campaign has been largely quiet, rarely making headlines. No debates. And rare public appearances except in television ads.
While trailing in the polls, Hoekstra spent the last weekend of September in Israel to study the upheaval in the Middle East rather than campaign.
I remember when the Labor Department tried to tighten up regulations to protect children working on farms, and the pushback suggested they’d just told an army of apple-cheeked Amish children that they could no longer gather eggs in the henhouse. Nope, it was more about keeping them from being crushed to death in silos. Too bad they let themselves be pushed back.
A story we’ve all heard too much of, but here’s a little more: How small media kept the Lance Armstrong story alive when the big guns were all wearing yellow bracelets. And prevailed. (Note: Link fixed.)
The WSJ and NYT have their paywalls down during the storm. Take advantage by reading this non-storm story, about? The difficulty of making red and blue find a little purple:
In past election years, about a quarter of her clients wouldn’t date a member of the opposite party. Now it is three-quarters, (a matchmaker) says.
Finally, before I go, of course it was too bad about the Tigers. But let me ask the question being asked all over Detroit today: If we had won that series, and spent the night running through the streets, setting fires and what-have-you, we all know what the headlines would say. So why, in San Francisco, do these folks get to be “high-spirited fans?” Just wondering.
I didn’t go to TEDxDetroit this year, after attending the one two years ago. It was, shall we say, a mixed bag. Upside: Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Downside? Hard to say. Maybe the woman who’d opened a fitness studio where they did aerobics to Bollywood movie-soundtrack music. That’s it? That’s the “idea worth spreading?” You can do aerobics to the “Slumdog Millionaire” score? Ohhh-kay.
But in the end, I think it was this:
I guess everyone who owns a smartphone has a love/hate relationship with it, but this was an eye-opener for me. I couldn’t imagine speaking to an audience where two-thirds were staring down at a screen while I was supposedly the object of their attention. And it’s encouraged! You’re supposed to be tweeting it, the official hashtag is announced, and everyone’s tweets fly by on the screen behind the speaker. I guess this is how it’s done now, but it would make me nuts.
Anyway, two people I’ve interviewed recently were speaking at TED this year, and it was held Friday, so I dipped in and out of the live stream. The first person I heard was described as an “awesomeness expert” who would instruct attendees in “how to be awesome.” Everyone had some snarky detail added to their introduction; one, named Charlie, got a Charlie-bit-my-finger joke, delivered in a British accent. I couldn’t help but notice how many “social media experts” work for firms that appear to have been named by a child — Tiny Fish Partners, or Sleeping Dog Design. (No wonder “Mad Men” is such a hit. Adults! Wow!)
As it turned out, both guys I tuned in for were good, and both told large chunks of stories they told me, so there you have it: If you were reading Bridge, you knew all this stuff weeks ago.
And that was the weekend, although it also featured scallops, and that was very good. Pan-seared with lemon sauce, creamed spinach and oven-roasted potatoes, and “Sleepwalk With Me” afterward on the TV box. Roger gave it 3.5 stars, his readers, 3. I’m with the readers, but it was nice to see Lauren Ambrose again. The story is autobiographical, with the star, Mike Birbiglia, telling a story from his own life. Birbiglia is an average-guy shlump and Ambrose is a ginger-haired goddess, so it was strange to see him onscreen, falling out of love with a woman who so outclasses him in the looks department, but there you are. Hollywood has been asking us for years to swallow the idea that the hot young starlet of the moment wants to fuck, oh, Jack Nicholson, to use but one example out of zillions.
That’s one thing I loved about “About Schmidt,” one of Jack’s more recent films — for the first time since he hit 50, he was given a female partner his own age. She dies in the first 15 minutes, but while it lasted it was shocking.
So, bloggage:
In case you missed Basset posting this in the comments Friday, this is the Democratic candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee. Yeah, this guy:
And with the election just days away, he has not actually put that sign in a yard. Instead, it resides inside candidate Mark Clayton’s pickup. “VOTE FOR,” the sign says. The rest is hidden by the seats.
“Jesus did not have a campaign staff. And he had the most successful campaign in human history,” Clayton said recently, when asked if all this adds up to a winning run against incumbent Sen. Bob Corker (R). Jesus “didn’t even have pictures or a Web site.”
This may be America’s worst candidate.
Clayton, 36, is a part-time flooring installer, an indulger in conspiracy theories — and for Democrats here, the living personification of rock bottom. In a state that produced Democratic icons including Andrew Jackson and both Al Gores, the party has fallen so far that it can’t even run a good loser.
I’m late getting to this, but last week saw the death of Emanuel Steward, Detroit’s legendary boxing trainer. As I’ve mentioned here about a million times, I’m a latecoming boxing fan, and have come to appreciate “Manny’s” incisive commentary during many Saturday nights spent with HBO. Among his insights, according to the NYT: “You can’t feel quick in black shoes.”
Meanwhile, his sister says she has her “ass-kicking boots on,” and is stripping his gym of everything, including the ring, to “safeguard his legacy.” How leaving his fighters with no place to train does that, I’m not sure.
One more week until the election is upon us. Let’s see what it brings.
The World Series! Playing on my television box! And I’ve had three beers — my limit, and really, enough to enjoy the game without falling asleep. And…Justin Verlander just threw a big fat pitch up the middle to Pablo Sandoval, who sent it out to the kayaks. Maybe I should turn it off. My interest jinxes teams from Little League to the pros. Don’t want to wreck the boys’ chance.
OK, so.
(And now I’ve been watching the game for a while, and it’s 4-0 in the fourth. Universe? I am making it clear: DON’T CARE ABOUT THIS, NOT ONE LITTLE BIT. THE GIANTS CAN WIN, SURE! COOL CITY, COOL TEAM. WHATEVER.)
I should watch “American Horror Story.” Save your jokes, please.
Well. So, after Donald Trump’s October surprise fizzled from irrelevance into silliness, I’m feeling like November is a foregone conclusion. Every vote counts, guards up, etc., but if I were a betting woman, I’d bet on Nate Silver’s frontrunner. But it’s still a horserace, and so it must be a narrative. Only today we’re calling it a trajectory.
It’s like the D.C. sniper, only not, because this guy hasn’t killed anyone (or even hit one). But unless they catch this guy soon, I think you’ll be reading about him. I drove through this area Monday. Didn’t take evasive maneuvers.
Finally, what Tom & Lorenzo might call your daily pretty: The very best in nature photography. Love the fox shot. Enjoy.