The morning of the health-care decision at the Supreme Court, before the decision was handed down, I tuned in to the local right-wing AM talk station, figuring it might be amusing to hear the pack tuning up. Alas, the host was beating, with no particular enthusiasm, a drum that anyone could tell his heart wasn’t into — the “stoning” of a Christian group whose only crime was to show up at an Arab-American heritage festival in Dearborn and start yelling REPENT at the assembled Muslims, punctuated by waving a pig head around.

I have to admit, I didn’t have the patience to watch the whole video, but I did drag the playhead to the 9-minute mark, when the stoning allegedly starts. “Stones, rocks and debris,” is what the subtitles say. It’s impossible to tell on the shakycam video, but it mostly looked like water bottles to me. When you think about it, it’s probably easier to find those lying around at a street festival in an urban environment than it would be to find stones, even stones comma rocks. But whatever. I didn’t hear anyone screaming ahhh my eye!!!, but I did hear a lot of ouch! hey! that hurt! which would seem to indicate more of a water-bottle assault than a truly dangerous, rock-based one.

Which isn’t, of course, justification for the violence at all. But when you show up at an ethnic festival loaded for bear — this far shorter video gives you more of a sense of things — the least you can do is not whine when the bear bites you.

The Arab-American News has a pretty comprehensive story on this. I know it’s going around the right-wing blogs, so just in case you’re looking for the rest of the story, y’know?

And now, we haz a sad: Ruby left us behind this weekend. After three years of absolutely uneventful good health, she didn’t come out of her cage Thursday for her usual morning hop-around. I left the door open, and when noon came and went with no appearance, I dragged her out for some amateur veterinary care. There was a little bit of blood around her bottom, nothing alarming, but I took her to the professionals, who gave her antibiotics and a rather vigorous manual exam, but in the end, with rabbits, it’s mostly a matter of shrugging and conjecture. No fly strike (thank GOD), maybe a vaginal infection (yes, go ahead and laugh), maybe a hairball, maybe…? Who knows? You can’t exactly do exploratory surgery on a rabbit. I gave her the antibiotics on schedule and other recommended care, but she turned the corner downhill fast. I missed a followup call from the vet on Saturday, and that might have made a difference, but probably not. We gave her fluids when we could get her to swallow them, petted her a lot, told her she was a good bunny. She died Sunday morning in a pool of sunlight, looking out at the back yard.

I blamed myself for missing the vet’s call, and did my penance by digging the grave myself. I think the whole exercise of grave-digging is for us to remember the deceased, even a three-pound pet rabbit. Ruby lived in our kitchen, and we had many conversations while I made dinner, and I’m not ashamed to tell you I played her part in a high, squeaky voice:

Give me some of that lettuce. Now. I’m terribly, terribly hungry.

Sure, Ruby. Would you like a little of this bacon, too?

I’m a strict vegan, and I wish you’d stop bringing that stuff into our house. Don’t my beliefs count for anything around here?

Not nearly as funny as Animals Talking in All Caps, but we had our moments.

She liked dried cherries and bananas. She was simultaneously afraid of everything and unafraid of us stinky primates 50 times her size — we were rabbit-punched many times. She enriched our lives with her beauty and grace, and sometimes watched “Cops” with us from her perch on the back of the couch.

Wherever she is now, I hope to meet her again someday.

I think I’ve mentioned Thaddeus McCotter, current dead-duck congressman for a few of the western ‘burbs, from time to time. Local politics here is frequently weird and worth talking about just for the entertainment value, but McCotter was mainly just baffling to me. When he announced he was running for president last year, I guffawed — I’d barely heard of him, and I live here.

Anyway, things went about as you’d expect on that front. He did win a lovely consolation prize from the state legislature, which gerrymandered him a fine district that is even more rock-solid GOP than it was before, enabling him to stay in Congress without working very hard and, y’know, build the brand for 2016, or whenever.

Our own Connie lives there. Maybe she’s seen him around.

Anyway, this year he was faced with the task of submitting signatures for re-election, a rote duty that could have been accomplished in an afternoon by two half-bright staffers in the right location. Instead, his office turned in a batch of petitions loaded with photocopied and duplicated signatures, so clumsily rendered the fraud was evident at a glance. The early estimates were that something like 80 percent would be thrown out, and while there was talk of an investigation and a brave write-in campaign, after just a couple of weeks McCotter announced he was withdrawing from the race, leaving the only legit candidate a Tea Party rookie who raises reindeer for Christmas festival displays and advocates that all U.S. military bases on foreign soil be closed.

Through it all, I kept asking people, basically, what the hell? And no one could really say why.

Today the DetNews dropped a hilarious story about what might have been distracting McCotter from his job. What else? Hollywood:

As U.S. Rep. Thad McCotter’s short-lived presidential run fizzled last year, the Livonia Republican turned to another aspiration: writing a TV show.

“Bumper Sticker: Made On Motown” starred McCotter hosting a crude variety show cast with characters bearing the nicknames of his congressional staffers and his brother. They take pot shots about McCotter’s ill-fated bid for the White House while spewing banter about drinking, sex, race, flatulence, puking and women’s anatomy. It features a cartoon intro and closing snippet with an Oldsmobile careening through Detroit and knocking over the city’s landmarks. The double-finned car has a Michigan license plate reading: “Made on MoTown.”

I urge you to click through and behold the story of a man having the world’s worst midlife crisis, not to mention a serious crush on S.E. Cupp, who, when contacted, said she didn’t want to talk about him.

Personally, I think he should try to get a meeting with Charlie Sheen. Between the two of them, they might get something going.

I read this story on the iPad when a 5 a.m. thunderstorm blew through the neighborhood, and feared I would wake Alan with my giggling.

How was your Fourth? Ours was hot and hotter and hotter still. Went sailing, grilled out, saw “Moonrise Kingdom.” If you saw fireworks, I hope they went better than San Diego’s.

Back to work.

Long day yesterday, followed by long night, followed by no blogging in the evening, so this will be short. However, when you wake up, open the paper’s website and are confronted by two headlines, this…

Detroit bus drivers seek bedbug relief

…and this…

Michigan officials fight drunk driving with talking urinal cakes

…I know you guys will have lots to talk about.

As it turned out, last night’s activity was the Detroit News’ Michiganians of the Year awards, and the editor, in his greeting remarks, mentioned the staffers left back in the newsroom to produce the Daily Miracle. Sounds like they might have had more fun.

Also, I recommend Stephen Colbert on the ACA ruling yesterday. Especially for the poster of John Roberts holding a pink gavel.

And I just looked at the forecast for the next week. Bleh. Better put nose to grindstone. So I can pay the electric bill, assuming the power doesn’t go out.

This story starts with two people:

Charles Pugh, Detroit city council president;
Laura Berman, Detroit News columnist;

There are more players, but let’s introduce them as the story plays out. Pugh is a former television “journalist,” in the sense that he was most recently part of the local Fox affiliate’s fun ‘n’ smiley weekend morning news team. As I’ve mentioned here before, he once worked at WKJG in Fort Wayne.

So the city has been going through a protracted financial crisis, a serious, national news-making one, with lawsuits and deadlines and in the middle of this, Pugh takes the opportunity to release a 48-minute video on YouTube called “Charles Pugh’s 60-Pound Weight Loss Secrets.” Because he did lose 60 pounds over the course of the last year, and boy is he proud of it.

Berman wrote a column for the News that, while taking care to congratulate Pugh on his accomplishment, because that’s sort of the modern equivalent of freeing a nation from an oppressive dictator, gently chided him for maybe not keeping his eye on the ball:

Green tea and spinach for lunch are terrific. And so is Pugh’s single-minded passion for improvement. If only he would channel that same missionary spirit to saving the city he’s been elected to help lead.

You ask me, it was a very gentle chiding. Maybe super-gentle. It attracted an admirer in the person of Josh Sidorowicz, who happens to be an intern — an intern! — at Automotive News this summer. He tweeted that admiration, adding, “Too bad @Charles_Pugh has been such a disappointment for the city of Detroit so far.”

Well.

Evidently Pugh’s weight loss has left less padding over his sensitivity nerve, because he immediately started a tweet-fight with Sidorowicz (an intern!) defending his priorities and calling Sidorowicz “offensive and inaccurate.”

The kid didn’t back down, so Pugh became a tweetin’ machine, a string hilariously captured in this Jalopnik post, until, perhaps emboldened by getting a Free Press reporter fired earlier this year, he took it to a higher authority:

@joshsidorowicz Josh, do you think the folks at Automotive News would be interested in your inaccurate, offensive commentary? Just curious?

What a cheap little bully. So this is what it’s come to: City still falling apart, but if you want to get the city council president hot under the collar, remark that maybe his abs aren’t all that important. See what happens.

Pugh has already said he’s one-and-done and won’t be re-upping with the city council, so I’m thinking he’s laying groundwork to host his own weight-loss infomercial show.

So, bloggage:

Owe $4 million from your doomed-from-the-start presidential campaign? Sounds like you need a little bit of Tuscany!

After Monday’s SCOTUS news, I’m giving the individual mandate odds of zilch. Please, prove me wrong, universe.

And if you missed this in the comments yesterday, don’t miss it now: Sorkinisms, with an echo in the room. Good one.

I know many of you probably don’t feel the tragedy of Saturday morning’s post. Something like 80 percent of Michigan’s tree-fruit crop was KO’d by the two weeks of summer we had in March, and when it means you’re deprived of cherries and peaches a few months later, well, that hurts.

Nevertheless, I made m’self a pie. And none other than Hank Stuever and his partner Michael were here to help us eat it. What a weekend. It was well-spent.

Hank and Michael are en route up north, and wanted to see the infamous city along the way, so we entertained them, cobbling together a two-day schedule that included a sail, dinner, a drive out Woodward and through some of the worst blight in the city (Robinwood Street), then into Palmer Woods, across Eight Mile and all the way up to Cranbrook, where we beheld where the Demon Barber of Bloomfield Hills performed his most famous haircut.

And then, because it’s required of all out-of-town visitors, we went to Slow’s. The meal was, conservatively, two million calories. I may not eat again for a week.

The weekend was capped by fireworks. So you could say it was a good one.

And because I spent so much time away from the keys, I don’t have a great deal of bloggage. This is sort of grimly amusing: Home prices in the city of Detroit are now below $10,000. So what can you get at what price? Some jaw-dropping bargains.

One weekend with you: Republicanpalooza in Utah over the weekend.

Do you know how rare a true tie is in track and field? Too close to call.

The week awaits. Summer in the city.

The first — and only — tart cherries of the season. It’ll be a one-pie summer, cherry-wise, and damn that crazy March weather, anyway.

Ears still ringing, but maybe…a tad less? It’s possible. Anyway, today I decided to stop obsessing over it. Kate and I celebrated the last day of school by riding bikes down the road to our favorite burger joint, which has the advantage of the best onion rings in town. We arrived around 7:30, and I hoped at least one of the bar TVs would be tuned to “Jeopardy!,” but no dice. It was dueling entertainment shows, both of which had “exclusive” photos of Matthew McConaghey’s wedding. The photos were identical. No one knows what “exclusive” means anymore, I guess.

Usually I use bar TV as an opportunity to practice my lip-reading. It’s amazing how much you can pick up without the captioning on, and given the way my hearing is of late, it’s probably a useful skill to start working on.

The big news today is that the new bridge to Canada is finally a done deal — it will be announced Friday, everyone seems to agree — with no help from the legislature. The governor has made this thing a priority since he was elected, but the troll who owns the old one has stopped at nothing to mess up the works. Finally, with the Canadian government picking up every dime of the construction cost, it looks like it’s going to happen through something called an interlocal agreement. So here we are, about to announce a major piece of infrastructure that will bring jobs, improve trade and otherwise polish the state’s finally brightening economic picture and? The cheese — the governor — stands alone. Today, the legislature warned him to not dare spend a dime of public money on it. American public money, anyway.

This is what the American public has come to: A half-billion dollar asset that everyone agrees is desperately needed, and a local county commissioner calls it “a government bridge.” Thanks, you tea party numbskulls.

Somebody’s weeping over this, and it isn’t Jesus.

Let’s skip to the bloggage, so I can go nurse my ringing head:

A particularly good Colbert bit the other night. I like the ones where he seems to be on the verge of cracking up himself.

T-Lo write their last Mad Style of the season. It should not pass unnoticed.

And with that, I’m off to bed. I have to get up early tomorrow.

Making’ mozzarella.

Sometime early in the first cocktail hour — one of seemingly millions of cocktail opportunities last week — a gentleman of Anishinabe Indian heritage directed me to the far side of the shrimp station, where a vodka company had set up one of those ridiculous exercises in branding. You gotta see this, he said.

Three attractive servers stood behind a bar made entirely of perfectly clear ice, decorated with flowers and flanked by two large frozen vertical S’s. You gave your martini order to one, who shook it up and handed it to one of the flankers, who gave you a frosted glass, then climbed a stepstool and motioned for you to hold your glass under a spout at the bottom of the S. She then poured your drink into a funnel frozen into the ice, and it snaked through a tube and exited at the bottom, into your glass. Quite cold.

“That’s very clever,” I said. My new pal said he thought so, too. We talked some more and I said I didn’t want to keep him from networking and I’d see him around. I stepped out onto the 800-foot-long porch of the Grand Hotel to sip my cranberry Grey Goose martini, and thought about how this very island belonged to the Anishinabe, and not all that long ago. Then the world revolved around the sun a couple hundred times, and here we were, May 29, 2012, and I was just served a French vodka martini in the largest summer hotel in the world in the company of one of those folks, and he works for a high-end grocery store and I work for a think tank.

What a weird world it is.

I’ll have more to say about the conference; I’m still sorting it out in my head and on my desk. It was a pretty lavish affair and I met a lot of people and heard a lot. On the final day I was felled by a virus of undetermined lineage. I spent Friday and Saturday writhing in misery back home in my guest room, but seem to be on the mend now. I am at least cheery enough to have gotten a mighty chuckle out of the fact I spent most of the past week hearing that DETROIT IS BACK, BABY and today the city’s Grand Prix came thisclose to being called on account of a pothole.

In the meantime, my only bit of bloggage is this: What am I bid for this lovely portrait of Andrew Breitbart as a knight?

Have a great week.

A friend of mine, one of the filmmaking crew, used to tell his wife, when she pointed out what a ridiculous, expensive, frustrating hobby he had, “At least I’m not a Civil War re-enactor.”

I have one for Alan now: At least I’m not a steampunk enthusiast.

God bless these nice ladies and their hobby, but I left the World Steam Expo in Dearborn Saturday deeply happy I didn’t let this lady talk me into buying a corset, even at two-for-one pricing:

She was very nice, and did her job well; she almost had me convinced that a simple navy pinstriped corset was just the accessory to spice up a shirt-and-jeans combo, and oh, what it does for your back! I told her I’d think about it while I took a lap of the vendors’ area, and left without returning. As you might expect, there were a lot of corsets on display, or rather, there were a lot of enormous bosoms teetering atop whalebone stays. There were also more top hats and cutaway jackets than you could count, masks, weird goggles, baroque jewelry and this sort of thing:

It’s a “weapon” of some kind. I guess this is all predicated on some sort of sci-fi genre, but whatever it is, I can’t get into it. “It’s goth for geeks,” one T-shirt read. But I had other places to go.

Specifically, here:

Yes, it’s the Detroit Electronic Music Festival, aka Movement, aka Techno Fest. Note that there’s nobody on stage. That’s because all the movement was being controlled by a DJ standing behind one of the pillars. Techno — what a deeply predictable and extremely monotonous genre. We sat through hours of this stuff, and soon I could predict when the bass drops were coming based entirely on how bored I was. It was like watching a puppet show with no story or dialogue, just dancing puppets. I can enjoy this stuff in small doses, but an entire afternoon and evening of it only underlined why it helps to be stoned out of your gourd to fully appreciate it. Fortunately, we stuck to the bitter end — Kate was bound and determined to see some dubstep act that was last on the program — and Alan and I stayed at the main stage for these guys:

Public Enemy! Now in their 25th year, a fact they reminded the audience, most of whom were embryos or less at the beginning of that time frame, about 6,000 times. I give them respect for lasting, respect for being who they were in 1987, major respect for “Fear of a Black Planet” and “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” but when Flavor Flav takes a moment to pimp his soon-to-open soul food restaurant, I got a little impatient.

Speaking of which, I had to love the line in the linked story, above, about the project:

“We season the actual chicken and then bread it so it’s almost like a double whammy,” said Harmon.

I’m not holding out much hope for that one.

But it was a good show, and when it was over, I was very glad to get home and feel the beat resonate in my bones.

I hope your weekend was very fine. As I mentioned last week, I’m off for the great white Up North first thing Tuesday, and will be there most of the week. Look for something, but not much, here.

Summer is officially under way. Let’s make it a good one.