Slept very badly two nights ago, which meant I had to go to Defcon IV last night — the guest room (for total silence and darkness) and an over-the-counter sleep aid, which doesn’t so much help me fall asleep, but keeps me that way through the little wee-hour disturbances that tend to rouse me. I got the six solid hours I require for function, but the downside is morning grogginess. I’ve been watching Gawker.tv clips in an attempt to regain my sense of humor, and it seems to be working. I laughed, anyway.

The movie in that clip — “The Craigslist Killer” — was advertised at one of the movies I saw over the holidays. That’s the movies nowadays: Arrive early, and you not only get previews (which always start late), but a pre-show, as well, featuring commercial after commercial. One was for “The Craigslist Killer,” another for Axe body wash, a fragrance I would happily work a shift running a honeywagon to avoid. Have you seen these? There’s a whole series of them, all about washing balls, washing back doors, washing ball sacks. You’ll feel like you’ve been locked in a room with a 14-year-old boy. Old Spice did it miles, miles better, and it probably smells better, too.

What is it with young men and their fragrances? When my nephew was a teenager, he and his friends went around in clouds of stinkum, more than I ever recall wearing as a girl. I guess they’re self-conscious about their rapidly changing, suddenly mystifying bodies. I don’t mind a nice-smelling man, but my definition is perhaps a little different: A man should smell like clean skin and soap. Even a little hint of b.o. doesn’t bother me; it just means he’s working hard. Whereas I take one whiff of Axe and think: Jersey Shore.

So, let’s skip to the bloggage, shall we?

Two video bits kick us off today. First, for fans of “Boardwalk Empire” or just digital magic in general, a quick walkthrough of the major visual effects used on the show. Yes, yes, they built that huge boardwalk stage in Brooklyn, but they built a lot more on a hard drive. My favorite was the boat, and the maiming of poor, haunted Richard Harrow:

And our own J.C. Burns was BoingBoing’d yesterday, when someone stumbled across his signoff video from WOUB-TV in Athens, Ohio, c. 1977. Groove on the cool ’70s hair and swingin’ fashions, all:

I knew a few of these people. I see Bill Dickhaut makes an early appearance. You pronounced his name “Dickout,” and you can imagine the jokes. You think you’re so funny when you’re 19. Here’s to all the people with funny names, who suffer for it. I like to think it’s not such a cruel world anymore; far more funny names in the world. One of my professors from that time was Korean. Sung Ho Kim. He said he went through grad school in the U.S. being called Wong Hung Lo by his classmates, and it was months before he realized what was going on, at which point he demanded to be called Wong Hung Up.

This story, about the state budget crisis in would-you-believe?-Texas! is weird — it seems to cut off after the lead. I wanted to know a lot more. But the figures are jaw-dropping, even with the weasel word “potentially:”

This month the state’s part-time legislature goes back into session, and the state is starting at potentially a $25 billion deficit on a two-year budget of around $95 billion. That’s enormous. And there’s not much fat to cut. The whole budget is basically education and healthcare spending. Cutting everything else wouldn’t do the trick. And though raising this kind of money would be easy on an economy of $1.2 trillion, the new GOP mega-majority in Congress is firmly against raising any revenue.

Which sent me googling for comparison; Michigan’s shortfall is $1.9 billion, which is regarded around here as apocalyptic. And look here at this photo of the new governor at his first staff meeting, which included his chief of staff — Dennis Muchmore. (See above.)

One final thing: Please stop sending me the incredibly sad pictures taken by the latest French duo to go through town, set up their tripods, and take pictures of Detroit’s very picturesque ruins. I haven’t been so moved since …the last batch, which were probably also taken by Frenchmen. There are so many French journalists wandering through town the hotels have probably renamed the continental breakfast for them, the way the hotels in Honolulu had miso soup and fish on the breakfast buffet in the ’80s. Yes, they’re lovely photos, but I’ve seen versions of every one for years now, and the accompanying stories are always wrong in some fundamental way, and I’m just tired of reading them. They’re perfect examples of how you can get every fact right and still miss the truth.

Off to get some work done. And catch my rabbit.

An unexpected night off last night, or a partial one. I was two hours into a seven-hour shift, typical Sunday night, the world of business slowly coming back from the weekend as Monday’s sun moved around the globe. There was a flurry in Australia, not much out of India, Europe ditto and then the equivalent of a five-bell bulletin for the pharmaceuticals industry — the CEO of Pfizer was throwing in the towel, unexpectedly. He said he was tired (which put Madeline Kahn in my head for the rest of the night, singing “…tired of playing the game…”). I got the first few of what surely would be an avalanche of stories into the queue and then my internet went out.

Restarted the laptop. Nothing. Restarted laptop and router. Nothing. Restarted laptop, router and cable modem, ditto. Repeated everything. Nothing. Tried to call Comcast, and the service line was busy. Hmm, a clue. Went on Twitter via my phone, searched “comcast” and got page after page of tweets from “one minute ago” from people using words like SUX and FAIL. Obviously, this wasn’t just our house. So I called the main office in Ann Arbor and got the payroll person/office manager, or rather she would be the office manager if we had an office. She said she thought the überboss was awake, but he was in California. Lucky I have his cell number. Called him, and he covered while I went off to Caribou Coffee and got on their network.

This all took about half an hour.

But Caribou was closing at 10, so the office manager roused the guy who would replace me at 1 a.m., and he agreed to come on three hours early. Meanwhile, we had the Pfizer story dripping into our client’s breaking-news queue right on schedule. My relief IM’d me at 9:55 and took the helm, and I left as Caribou was getting ready to lock up.

Went home, internet still out. But the cable worked, so I watched “Boardwalk Empire” and treated myself to a pre-midnight bedtime. This morning, on Facebook, I saw the guy who replaced me last night, tagged in a photo. It was the first time I’d ever seen his face. (He lives in Texas.)

And I’m telling you all this why? Because it occurred to me during all this what a very modern workplace this is, how very much of the modern world it is. One of our editors is famous for taking a multi-week tour of Europe a few years back, and never missing a shift. He did his research carefully, and made sure he was always near a good wifi hotspot, did his job, and let his bank account reliably refill every payday. He lives across town, in Detroit. Never met him, either, although my friend Michael has, at a party.

“I met your colleague Zack,” he e-mailed.

“Really?” I replied. “What does he look like?”

I know some of you are baffled by all this. (And I know I lost some of you back when I used the phrase “five-bell bulletin.”) I have a part-time job. Title: Editor. I call myself a news farmer. We track news of interest to our corporate clients. We’re entirely virtual, we’re all contractors, and we’re scattered from sea to shining sea. Advantage: Work at home, on your couch, in your jammies and slippers. Disadvantage: Work at home, see no one, communicate with colleagues entirely via IM and e-mail. And so when someone invites you to a party, with actual living flesh-and-blood guests, you’re pathetically grateful, which is how I found myself at a gorgeous Palmer Woods mansion — the Van Dusen, if you’re interested — on Saturday night.

This was part of the Palmer Woods holiday home tour, Palmer Woods being the grandest of Detroit’s grand old neighborhoods, every house a showplace, with a truly diverse population of well-to-do buppies and yuppies and flamboyantly creative and artistic gentlemen. Two of the latter were the official hosts of the afterglow, with their spectacular flower arrangements everywhere and samovars of Pama martinis. And I looked up, and who was leaning against the piano but James McDaniel, whom most of you remember as Lt. Fancy on “NYPD Blue,” but is known around here as Sgt. Longford on “Detroit 1-8-7.”

No, I didn’t talk to him. I think the absolute worst thing about being an actor would be having people flock around you like toadies, telling you how much they like your work. Although Michael did, and said he was a really nice guy.

All in all, not a bad weekend. How was yours?

I’ll tell you what, parties and “Boardwalk Empire” sure beat the news this weekend, which takes us to the bloggage:

Krugman on Bush tax cuts: Just say no:

So Mr. Obama should draw a line in the sand, right here, right now. If Republicans hold out, and taxes go up, he should tell the nation the truth, and denounce the blackmail attempt for what it is.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Why is this so hard?

Alex says that if I make this column the lead in today’s entry, the headline should be Blow: Me. Whaddaya think? I think the column is stupid, personally.

No, I will not be changing my Facebook profile picture to a cartoon today. As LGM puts it:

It’s an under-publicized historical fact that A. Lincoln was persuaded to issue the Emancipation Proclamation after millions of union supporters changed their Facechapbook avatars to dageuerreotypes of famous abolitionists.

Monday, Monday. Gotta get to it.

It’s cabbage-as-flowers, now that the flower-flowers are dead.

This swill known as Four Loko is the latest thing that will destroy the youth of America. An “energy drink” spiked with alcohol, my very own state was the first in the country to ban it outright, and was swiftly followed by others. This USA Today story is typical of the journalism surrounding the drink:

Mixing a stimulant like caffeine with a depressant like alcohol can be a deadly combination.

People who combine the two may mistakenly believe they are more in control, as caffeine can diminish only the perception of being drunk, not the actual impairment. This sober feeling can also lead to binge drinking.

“People have multiples in one night and now they’re wired and wasted,” Tabatha Haskins says while walking on the Rutgers-Camden campus. “It’s kind of scary.”

Yes, it is kind of scary. It’s exactly the feeling I get after three Irish coffees.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Red Bull and vodka the sub-25 cocktail of choice? Isn’t this the same thing? And if Mitch Albom thinks it’s wrong — and he does — isn’t that prima facie evidence that this is the latest thing for adults to fret over and lecture about? Let’s see just what Mitch has to say:

A yellow or purple can with kiwi or grape flavoring that also promises to — and this is critical — keep you awake is a dangerously tempting product.

That settles it. If Mitch calls it dangerously tempting, I’m in.

I’m so old — how old are you? — I’m so old that I remember a time when, if a caffeinated alcoholic drink were all the rage, a city editor would look out over his bullpen and choose a young, dumb rookie, maybe an intern, peel a double sawbuck off the wad in his pocket, and send the kid out with a photographer to score a couple of these things, consume them, and then write a story about it.

“Crack this miracle and bring me back the pieces,” he might say, at least if James Thurber were writing the dialogue for this scene. (As always when I use that line — from Thurber’s essay on his first city editor, Gus Kuehner — I Google it to see if the essay it came from, long out of print, is available online anywhere. It isn’t. In fact, every citation of “crack this miracle and bring me back the pieces” takes you to this blog. Which makes me wonder if I’m remembering it correctly.)

Fortunately, all the decent editors aren’t dead. One works for the New York Observer, who commissioned a Four Loko piece that actually requires boots on the ground, not just a baby boomer with an opinion and a bad memory. Story’s here. My favorite passage:

“Get our Loko on!” said one man near the doorway. “Let’s fuck shit up! I’m ready to ride a mechanical bull motherfucker!”

I see a marketing campaign: Four Loko — the best friend the mechanical bull ever had.

By the way, have you ever had an energy drink? I consumed half a Monster once. That’s how worried I was about this alleged rocket fuel — I only drank half. Verdict: Tasted awful, and the promised energy did not arrive. I’ll stick to treble espressos. In fact, I ordered one last night. The clerk in Caribou actually tsked me.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Do I have a big, stupid face? Is there something about it that tells people I am incapable of making decisions for myself? (Don’t answer that.) The second time this week I’ve been disrespected by a service worker. I could feel the glower building like a headache.

“No, on second thought, make it quadruple.” And I drank it down, and it barely kept me up until midnight. It could have used a shot of something.

OK, then. Any bloggage? Some, I guess:

Get ready for 2012: How the tea party is gaming “Dancing With the Stars.” I wouldn’t watch this show for $50 an hour, but the clips I’ve seen online reveal that young Miss Palin dances about as well as I do, and furthermore, is taking out her frustration at the judges by eating all the red velvet cupcakes in the green room. (Size isn’t a valid basis for judging any dancer — Jackie Gleason was famously light on his feet — but in a dance competition featuring hours of practice a day, you expect contestants to lose weight over the course of a season, and she’s definitely going in the opposite direction.)

Brown is the new black, orange is the new brown and pie is the new cupcake. Allegedly. I personally believe black will always be black, and for a damn good reason.

One of my favorite things about living in Detroit: Concept cars. Equal parts busywork for designers and fanciful flights to ensure the companies have something to reveal at car shows, every so often something amusing turns up. Today, the Cadillac subcompact.

Off to the shower. Have a good day, all.

I was out and about yesterday, and wandered into a mall bookstore — Borders Express. Like the regular Borders, only with more books by celebrities. Man, Barack Obama is the best thing to ever happen to any talk-show host looking for vertical integration. But what have we here? It’s Nora Ephron’s new collection of essays, “I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections,” sure to be a best-seller.

I plucked it from the shelf, expecting something slight and breezy. I was not disappointed. Many magazines are thicker, and no, I’m not kidding. A September issue of Vogue — in a recession, even — is the OED compared to this book. I sat down with it on a step stool, to see how many I might have already read in the New Yorker, her periodical publisher of choice. At least one. Then I opened it at the halfway point and started reading. One essay was a list. A clever list, to be sure, but a list. The last two essays are lists, too. The margins are wide, the type is large, and while Ephron is, as always, a funny and engaging writer, it all served to remind me that this is “I Feel Bad About My Neck,” part 2, and “I Feel Bad About My Neck” was a book I felt very smart to have gotten from the library, because I read it in about 90 minutes and saved myself $21.95. I read about half of “I Remember Nothing” in 20 minutes. It costs $22.95.

This mostly hurts because Ephron used to be big, could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any of the big swingin’ ones at Esquire back in the day, as smart about pop culture as anyone, and a lot funnier. She filed memorable essays on feminism, the Pillsbury Bake-Off, Rod McKuen and my personal favorite, an account of the birth of the feminine hygiene spray. My BFF Deb and I were twin Nora groupies, and we both went to see her on her “Heartburn” book tour, another slender volume but with a power-to-weight ratio worthy of a Mexican boxer. Deb saw her in South Bend, and wrote me a very entertaining letter about Nora’s dismantling, from the podium, of a Notre Dame brat who phrased an accusation in the form of a question, essentially charging Ephron with the single-handed destruction of her two marriages. At the appearance I saw, she said that the bread pudding recipe had omitted six beaten eggs, and I went home and made the notation in my copy, next to the passage where it’s woven into the narrative. Of course I could find it in a minute because I’d already read the book about three times and knew right where it was.

It’s not that these essays lack weight. It’s that they lack editing. The piece about egg-white omelettes, a food rant lite, could have gone, but then the book would have been 155 pages instead of 160. So could those lists (152 pages and falling…). And so on. But I guess maybe that’s the point, as the theme of this book, and the last, is aging and how it diminishes you. I really don’t think Ephron’s writing is so diminished, it’s that so much less is expected of her. And her publisher seems to expect very little of us, certainly. I guess we’ll pay $22.95 for anything.

Ephron is older than me, but I’m feeling older these days, too. Friday night I took Kate and a bunch of her friends to a concert — five bands, co-headlined by Anarbor and VersaEmerge, but Anarbor is all they were interested in. My job at these things is to drive, pay for things, hold coats, say as little as possible and stand in the background, a combination human ATM/factotum. I dressed accordingly — jeans, black sweater, black jacket and because I knew we’d be standing in line in the outside chill followed by the usual overheated club, one of my nice silk scarves around my neck. You know, for that little pop of color.

One of the girls lacked a ticket. I left them in line and walked inside to buy one. This is at the Majestic Theater complex on Woodward in Detroit, cornerstone of the Detroit music scene. Three venues, two restaurants and a bowling alley. White Stripes, Von Bondies, Electric Six, Was (Not Was) — you get the idea. A security guard directed me to the bowling alley, where I found a thirtysomething hipster spraying disinfectant into bowling shoes.

“Hi, I need one ticket for the show upstairs tonight,” I said.

He looked me over for 1.5 seconds and said, “The doors will be opening soon, ma’am, and your son or daughter can get a ticket at the top of the stairs then.”

Oh rly?

I looked him over for 1.5 seconds and said, “How do you know I’m buying for my son or daughter? How do you know it’s not for me?”

He said, “Your ascot?”

I felt bad about my neck. But not for long. Because soon we were upstairs, ticketed, the girls bolting for the stage so as to stand within sweat-spraying distance and me? I went to the bar. There were several other people of roughly my age there. All parents. No ascots, but some remarkable stories — one had driven his daughter all the way from Buffalo, another from Youngstown. To see VersaEmerge, with a female lead singer who reminded me of Natalie Merchant, if Natalie Merchant sang like a cat being strangled. The Buffalo father told me about how much he loves traveling with his daughter and how cool she is and how many shows they see together. When he started buying Crown Royal shots for the bartenders, I excused myself and wandered around taking low-light pictures.

Mostly bad ones, which usually happens when I try to duplicate the Tri-X photography of my early colleagues:

Alan and I disagreed on whether the Magic Stick is a pool hall. I insisted it was, he said it wasn’t. I win, although during shows, the pool tables become the roadies’ area:

And the neon backs me up.

Sorry, Alan.

So, let’s skip to the bloggage:

As Thanksgiving drew nearer, Mr. and Mrs. Albom were discouraged by how many of their lovely invitations to spend the holiday in their gracious Bloomfield Hills home were returned with regrets. It was such a small request — spend five days in the bosom of one of America’s most beloved writers, providing him with column fodder, uncompensated by anything more than turkey. What is wrong with people these days, anyway?

It could be worse. You could be reminiscin’ with Bob Greene.

The crime that dare not speak its name: Term papers for hire — the perp’s side of the story. Seriously, worth a read.

Finally, we had some remarkable weather here this weekend — dense, pea-soup fog that lingered most of the day Friday and returned Saturday. Here’s the view of the water from the median strip on Lake Shore.

Best part? The foghorns.

Have a great Monday.

We’re stuck between over the river and through the woods and chestnuts roasting on an open fire.

Halloween was forecast to be chillier this year than in years past, and I overbought candy. I forget how many bags, but it was two heavy sacks from Target, at least $50 worth. I had way, way too much, so I opened one bag and had three miniature Snickers. Kate had about that many miniature Reese’s. We both nibbled on the Starburst, for a grand total loss of maybe 2 percent in gross payload, maybe less.

Then I turned on the porch light at 5:30 p.m. Buzz Lightyear arrived at 5:40, and by 7:10 I was completely cleaned out. Every year, I forget how crazy it is. Hundreds of kids, easily. I enforced the one-to-a-customer rule almost unilaterally, with a few exceptions for exceptionally cute costumes. Didn’t put Screamin’ Jay Hawkins on the iPod speakers, as I had to start work at 6, so I sat on the porch in my lawn chair, laptop open, farming pharma-news, passing out candy. Because that’s how you gotta roll when you’re a work-at-home editor whose family deserted her on the one night of the year the doorbell will ring 200 times.

A few notes to consult for next year:

1) Buy more candy. There is no such thing as too much.
2) Snickers are totally over. One kid in 10 prefers them over Reese’s Cups. It’s time to admit to yourself why you buy them, you pig.
3) The two-bowl system — chocolate and fruit groups — is a winner.
4) It’s just not Halloween without Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.

A majority of our trick-or-treaters are “non-residents,” as polite people say in Grosse Pointe. There are more African Americans living here than there have been in the past, but not as many as we see on Halloween, and the circling cars dropping off and picking up kids sort of underline it. This happened in Fort Wayne, too, and it used to bug me. It doesn’t anymore. If your own neighborhood offers a paucity of candy, come on down to mine. All are welcome on my porch.

The stupidest story to turn up on the world’s Health pages last night: Avoid Halloween candy hazards, from the Los Angeles Times Online. No, it’s not about poison and razor blades; even the most dull-witted editors have stopped beating that dead horse. No, it’s about the hazards of “digestive upset,” “choking hazards” and “damage to orthodontia.” It contains some helpful tips you have probably never considered: “Feed them a healthy dinner before they go out so they’re not as tempted to snack,” and “Limit kids to about two pieces a day from their stash of goodies, or have them trade in their candy for a toy, book or family outing.”

As my husband often says, “Where would we be without newspapers to remind us to wear sunscreen?” The author of this groundbreaking piece, Alison Johnson, seems to specialize in this sort of thing. When I googled her name and home newspaper, the Hampton Roads Daily Press, I got another tips piece, on how to get through your child’s first haircut. Tip: Take a comfort item. (” If kids are nervous, let them hold a favorite stuffed animal, toy or blanket.” Forehead smack. I never would have thought of that!) Don’t miss the classic “how to eat to stay cooler,” either. Tip No. 1: Eat smaller, lighter meals.

Eh. On to the bloggage, it’s manic Monday:

The NYT explains Theatre Bizarre. Yes, the words “outré” and “leitmotif” appear.

Elizabeth Warren, Obama’s best hope to win back the masses. At least, NYMag seems to think so.

P.S. The auto bailout worked. Why doesn’t anyone know this?

Finally, the Washington Post looks into the crystal ball, post marijuana legalization. Worth your time.

Me, I must run.

Moe et al, take note: The New York Times has parachutes on the ground in Defiance, Ohio. I always wanted to see this, maybe in a movie: A gathering on the village green…the sound of a low-flying aircraft, all eyes look up and see THREE SKYDIVERS descending, and soon they land — a WRITER, a PHOTOGRAPHER and a MULTI-PLATFORM NEW MEDIA GRAPHIC ARTIST. As the trio gather their PARACHUTES, the townspeople approach. The WRITER steps forward and extends a hand.

Anyway, the Times is, was, in my husband’s hometown. I read him the headline, Democratic Ohio Town Loosens Its Party Ties and we both sort of scratched our heads. Defiance is Democratic? Maybe in the ’60s. Maybe when the UAW still had something to swing. But as far as I can tell, the little D is the textbook example of the Reagan-era strategy of the GOP — get working- and middle-class blue-collar types to vote against their own economic interests through strategic dog-whistle “values” issues. Despite a move toward blue in 2008, it’s still in no danger of holding a gay pride parade anytime soon. However, don’t let that get in the way of the temperature-taking:

Will Parker, 24, finished college in 2009 with a degree in marketing and communications. In six months of looking, he found no work here in his hometown and had to take a Web-page job in Columbus, 115 miles to the southeast, that he feels is a dead end. Mr. Parker voted for Mr. Obama and said he now felt “voter’s remorse” because “it feels like we’re creating a welfare state.”

OK, first: Will? If you’re looking for work in marketing and communication, you’re looking in the wrong place. Generally speaking, towns of fewer than 20,000 souls don’t support much work in that field, even less so in recent years. Even Fort Wayne saw the loss of small ad shops and related jobs in the post-internet crash, as business consolidated in places like Chicago. If you desire that small-city lifestyle, Will, you should have picked a different major, and if you feel you’re in a dead end at 24, you lack imagination. Among many other things.

The rest of the story has that cognitive dissonance I hear so often these days, people who think that stimulus-funded bridge being built down the street is a great idea, but OMG health care! “Rammed down our throats,” was the phrase employed by, get this, an insurance agent. Yes, a woman who sells insurance frets about a bill that requires Americans to buy insurance. She’s probably worried about the death panels. They also dislike the bank bailout, but that of General Motors, which provides the highest-paying jobs in town? Mumble, mumble.

And this?

Local suspicion of government has also been fueled, (Mayor) Armstrong said, by a costly federal mandate to build a sewage system to protect the Great Lakes, requiring huge increases in local water rates.

Good lord, they were talking about that in Fort Wayne — upriver on the same waterway that flows through Defiance — when the first George Bush was president. This is the separation of storm and sanitary sewer lines, an expensive but necessary process brought to a crisis in many Midwestern cities by booming housing development through the ’80s and ’90s, all these new subdivisions flushing their toilets into inadequate, outdated systems that sent excrement into the rivers every time it rained. Let my husband offer an eyewitness report:

“We used to fish for carp off the bridge by my mom’s house and watch turds, rubbers and tampons float by.” This is when he was a boy. Damn President Obama for making us stop doing that!

Anyway, as this liberal-media report clearly indicates, the people of our nation’s heartland have turned against our president:

Karl Kissner, the restaurant’s owner, may represent a more vocal and influential attitude in Defiance. He calls himself a Democrat but says he did not vote for Mr. Obama, and his opposition to the administration has deepened.

A Democrat who didn’t vote Democratic in 2008? ‘Round these parts, we call those folks Republicans. But then, I don’t work for the New York Times.

Discuss. There’s a pretty good Metafilter thread about the same story, here.

Bloggage? Sure. Jim Griffioen at Sweet Juniper, along with his wife, have a knack for making the cutest Halloween costumes for their kids. But this one is extra-cute in situ: Ladies and gentlemen, Robocop.

And let’s leave it at that. I’ve reached the point of mega-saturation with politics at the moment, and would rather think of cute kids in Halloween costumes. Have a great day — I’m off to Wayne State.

It seems a week doesn’t go by without the New York Times doing a story on Detroit. I don’t think it’s ever been something I didn’t know about already, but that’s the Times’ job — to be the gatekeeper and curator of Our Vast Interesting Nation for its readers. To the extent that they’re trying to dispel the image of Detroit in the right-wing media, i.e., Detroit is a place where women have sex with pit bulls in dank drug houses (thanks, Weekly Standard!), I approve.

Anyway, everyone who lives here and pays even minimal attention knows the Slows Barbecue story. I see the piece also dug up that obscure, underexposed source, Toby Barlow. But it’s nice to see Supino’s Pizza getting some love — I like to stop here on Saturdays from time to time, but since I’m almost always alone, I have yet to try their signature pie, the Bismarck, which features an egg cracked over the top just before it goes into the oven. They don’t sell that one by the slice. One of these days.

Next stop for the NYT will doubtless be Saturday’s Halloween party at Theater Bizarre; fingers crossed they overcome the downside of success before that. Which is? What else?

Organizers say the city is demanding they get a temporary liquor license to give away beer to patrons — and fear inspectors will issue more requirements in days leading to Saturday’s affair.

Alan and I went to one of their summer events a couple years ago, and I was delighted to see Detroit police officers mingling through the crowd, which was peaceful and fun-loving. This Saturday-night party is truly one of a kind, and it would be a tragedy to see it shut down over this. (Hear that, Republican readers? I am coming out against regulation.) Watch the video at that link. That gives you a good sense of the place.

What else is going on this weekend? Elsewhere in the same story:

On Tuesday, the City Council denied a permit for a Highland Park company that has operated a “haunted bus tour” for a month through East Robinwood near Woodward. Organizers from Creative Images and Things acknowledged the desolate, burned-out street made a perfect stage for the 15-minute tours that include fake zombie attacks. But council members worried about a lack of streetlights — and the city’s image.

“I just think it sends the wrong message at this time,” council President Charles Pugh said.

For the record, I disapprove; most of the houses on this street are abandoned, but not all of them, and the poor souls who are stuck here deserve better than to have a bunch of suburban d-bags rolling through in buses, not to mention the fake zombies. (This is the street, by the way; Jim at Sweet Juniper put together a panorama that gives you an idea.) However, Charles Pugh’s silly comment almost makes me want to take the opposite view.

This has been a long, exhausting week. I know I say that every week, but this week is super-duper long and extra-schmextra exhausting. Productive, though — that always mitigates things. But I’m ready for the weekend. Let’s see what sort of bloggage we can dig up:

Scott Lemieux on Juan Williams. Key passage:

For the role of being a Washington Generals Potemkin “liberal” on Fox News, his former NPR affiliation, lazy sub-mediocrity and uncritical immersion in shallow center-right conventional wisdom are major assets.

Exactly right, and this is why, while I disapprove of the current practice of booting pundits for not being perfect, I can’t get upset about this one. Williams never dispensed a single comment, anywhere, that I found insightful or even interesting. Booting Dave Weigel from the WashPost was a loss. This? Not so much.

CDC finds regional disparities in teen-pregnancy rate. Bottom line:

Whatever the reason, the regional disparities are stark. In Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, for instance, 2008 birth rates were less than 25 per 1,000 teens aged 15 to 19, CDC found. In the same year, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas all had rates topping 60 per 1,000 teens.

Mississippi had the country’s highest rate (65.7), CDC says, while New Hampshire had the lowest (19.8).

Leslie Kantor, national education director of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the report “makes it crystal clear that the teen birthrate is lower in states that provide students with comprehensive, evidence-based sex education.”

I think there’s more to it than that, but it’s interesting just the same.

Clarence Thomas’ old girlfriend says he loved the porno. Shocked, shocked, etc.

The weekend awaits, eventually. Hope yours is great.

Someone else liked that line from “There Will Be Blood,” too.