The film challenge came right on time, and was pretty simple: The end of the world. Free-choice genre, no prop or dialogue, only a story about the end of the world. You can see why this would make a Detroit crew feel they were halfway there:

Yes, it’s our old friend the Packard plant. But how can you not use it? If you needed a vast, already-dressed set suitable for the end of the world, duh. So we went there for a few shots.

Our main character is a teenage girl reduced to scavenging the ruined, depopulated city. She lives in a hovel. Our art department constructed one in the basement of another building, a former printing plant converted to lofts and performance spaces. Fortunately, the basement retains that “Silence of the Lambs” feel. I went down there as they were building her pallet:

God, these people are good. (The art department.) It was simultaneously post-apocalyptic and human. That light over the pallet felt precisely like weak winter sun coming through a skylight. It’s such a pleasure to work with people who are good at what they do. Like our makeup guy, Dan Phillips:

Dan used to be an autoworker. Took the buyout, went to makeup school, and is now working pretty often on the many productions going on here. He has some good stories. That’s Robert Young III, in his cameo role as Vacant Lot Corpse, showing off Dan’s handiwork. Photo by Connie Mangilin, another producer.

The film? Haven’t seen the final cut yet. I’ll keep you posted. This is the point in the process where I get crabby and it’s best that I keep my distance. Otherwise I might be striding around the office like a tyrant, channeling my inner newspaper cuss. One of our news editors in Fort Wayne would, when the desk fell behind, call out in his rich southern accent, “People! We ain’t puttin’ up a shuttle here!” I don’t think that would be helpful.

I’m not helping out much here, either. I commend to you today some words by our own J.C. Burns, who has beheld one too many grovels by broken-down, dispirited news executives, and has something to say to both the executives and the bored-bored-bored news consumers they allegedly serve.

I’m off to encounter Busy Monday.

Our theme: “the end of the world.” Suzanne dresses a set.

I had an errand downtown Saturday, but alas, the block I was trying to reach was closed off. Parked police cars with lights flashing sat at either end, and in between were what appeared to be either soldiers or the baddest-ass SWAT unit in the tri-state area. Bomb scare? I thought, but only for a few seconds. Because lo, we are in Michigan, and Michigan is Hollywood’s sugar daddy (for the time being).

At first I thought it was more “Red Dawn,” which is seemingly everywhere these days. The “police station” is still wearing its wardrobe:

The red star with the whatever-it-is Chinese character is a logo throughout the film. If anyone speaks the language, I’d be interested in knowing what it means. Probably “tax incentives.”

Ah, but this is the conquered America of Barack Hussein Quisling Bow-down Obama, so this police station is well-fortified against the people it protects and serves. Street level:

And just in case you wanted to know what city our fair one is standing in for, the front door:

I tried to take a shot of the set that was working Saturday, but alas, the iPhone has no telephoto function. And I don’t think it was “Red Dawn.” The Guardian building is where they’ve been shooting this Wesley Snipes actioner, “Game of Death.” Imdb synopsis:

After a botched assassination attempt on a Diplomat, everyone from the Diplomat and his bodyguards to the group of assassins behind the attempt ends up at the same hospital where they fight it out.

Someone I know is working on this production. She calls it, “‘Die Hard’ in a hospital,” which is either the ten-thousandth or ten-thousand-and-first “Die Hard”-in-a-(fill in the blank) thumbnail. Did the people who made “Die Hard” v.1 know what they were doing? Maybe. I still stop to watch it, and all of its sequels, when I surf past them on cable, if only for a few minutes. Wouldn’t be the movie it was without Bruce Willis, of course, but he was well-served by the various British straight men they threw up against him, particularly Jeremy Irons. When Alan Rickman quotes Plutarch to the Japanese industrialist before busting a cap in his ass, well, that’s a moment that sticks with you, too.

But the genius of it was to simply ask the question everybody with half a brain asks when suffering through most action movies: Wouldn’t it hurt to pound someone in the skull with your bare fist like that? Bruce Willis stops from time to time to say “ouch” — that’s the ground broken by “Die Hard.” So simple. So successful.

That’s about the end of the verisimilitude*, however, and “Die Hard” was the beginning of action-movie loot hyperinflation. The first installment was about the theft of $600 million in bearer bonds, whatever those are. (Bearer bonds were very big in ’80s/’90s action movies, and that link explains why — they’re popular for money laundering — but I think their popularity is also tied to the alliteration of their name, as everyone from Alan Rickman to 50 Cent can sound cool saying “bearer bonds.”) By the third “Die Hard,” Jeremy Irons was plotting to steal all the money in the world, or at least all the gold held by the Federal Reserve in lower Manhattan; he had to carry it away in a convoy of dump trucks. This raises so many questions in the mind of even a half-bright moviegoer — how does one launder a dump truck full of gold? (Bearer bonds!) Hell, how does one even get it out of North America? — you could even forget that this is a summer movie and you’re not supposed to think about it.

But it was too difficult to top, and by the last “Die Hard” I don’t even remember what the bad guys were after, only that Bruce brought down a helicopter with a fire hydrant, and it was awesome.

* My personal quibble with action-movie reality: The noise factor. People are always firing machine guns or having explosions happen five feet away, and no one ever stops to say, “I can’t hear you! My ears are ringing from that explosion!” I spent one measly hour on a firing range Friday, wearing foam earplugs and earmuff protection, and every round above .38 caliber still made me just about jump out of my skin.

Oh, well. Monday bloggage? Sure.

Lots of blogs are reading “Going Rogue” so you don’t have to, but few are striking the perfect tone that Lawyers, Guns and Money is. They’re up to Chapter 4 now, but it’s all on the main page, still, so just scroll down and work your way up. I was interested to read this note about Chapter 3, which calls out the She-Who/Lynn Vincent casualness with her chapter epigraphs:

So far as bungled epigraphs go, the third chapter is arguably the winner so far, attributing this nugget of wisdom to the renowned former UCLA basketball coach John Wooden:

Our land is everything to us…. I will tell you one of the things we remember on our land. We remember than our grandfathers paid for it — with their lives.

Now, if that’s not the sort of thing you’d expect a hall of fame basketball coach to say, that’s because, of course, he didn’t. Students of American Indian history might recognize that passage as belonging instead to John Wooden Legs, the post-WWII Northern Cheyenne tribal leader who — though a contemporary of John Wooden’s — was not the same guy.

Yes, yes — it’s absurd to expect much from Sarah Palin, but imagine if these sorts of gaffes had appeared in books by Hillary Clinton or Obama himself.

Exactly. Confusing John Wooden, the basketball coach, with John Wooden Legs, the Indian? That’s funny.

Ah, Monday. Police rounds, Russian lesson, followed by abs/glutes class in the evening. My life is sometimes indistinguishable from Paris Hilton’s.

Which reminds me of a story I forgot to blog, about a team of teenage burglars in Hollywood, who broke into various stars’ homes when they knew they’d be out partying. Among the victims was Paris Hilton, hit on multiple occasions, aided by this killer detail: She keeps her house key under the mat. No kidding.

Later!

Turnipalooza! Also, vegetarianism beckons when the holiday main course is still breathing.

I favors a .45.

Late edit explanation: Alan said, “Brother Mouzone favors a Walther PPK380. Omar was the one carrying the .45. He said the Walther tends to jump in the hand.” Whatever. But I admit the error.

Last summer I wrote about going to the 48 Hour Film Challenge awards, held in a loft overlooking the Packard-plant ruin, and how the arsonists trashing the place thoughtfully put on a fire for us. I think I also mentioned the truck sticking out the window:

Turns out the truck exit was an ongoing project. In September, someone finally got it all the way out. Was it captured on video? Do you even need to ask? The whole package, from the Wall Street Journal, ran last week.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, urban exploration — which is the highfaluting name for people who trespass in abandoned buildings without malice; the rest we just call thieves and vandals — lends a certain energy to the city, and draw more eyes to the beauty of what’s left behind and standing open to the elements. I’m consistently amazed by the things you can find here, from the guy who turned up Marvin Gaye’s checkbook and fur-storage bill in the old Motown office building to the darker, more heartbreaking archaeology undertaken by Jim Griffioen in the abandoned schools. There’s an immature part of me that looks at a crew of guys pushing a truck out a fourth-floor window and says, “There’s something you wouldn’t see in Fort Wayne, ain’a?”

But the adult thinks something else, and finds this the most interesting line in the story:

Its current owner, Romel Casab, did not return calls seeking comment.

The fact the Packard plant even has an owner astonished me; I thought the place had been lost to unpaid taxes eons ago. Casab is a well-known real-estate speculator, and I’m sure he’s hidden himself behind layers of corporate structure, for whenever the inevitable happens; someone is going to die in this building if they haven’t already, and given the legal precedents on attractive nuisances, I’d like to know how he’s insulated.

What am I talking about? No one came after Matty Moroun when the homeless guy got frozen into that warehouse hockey rink last year. The insulation is: No one really cares.

Anyway, I think the anonymous explorer/vandal in the story said it best: “If you decide you want to push a dump truck out of a window, this is the place to do it.”

So. How’s your week going? My sojourn at Wayne State went well. I’m always struck, when I visit, of the difference between it and other college campuses I’ve spent time on. It really is the United Nations of higher ed, so much more diverse in its student body than, say, the University of Michigan, which was hardly White State itself. As usual, there were plenty of girls in Islamic head scarves, dressed otherwise exactly the same as their fellow students, except for the long-sleeves-and-pants thing, which doesn’t look out of place in November. I don’t know if it’s intentional or what, but it underlines that you can cover up a lot of a woman’s body and still have a girl who can turn heads, a fact that probably drives their fathers insane.

Afterward, a Habana wrap at the Russell Street Deli — black beans, roasted corn, tomatoes, onions, peppers, lime vinaigrette, a sprinkling of that light, crumbly cheese. Never has vegetarianism tasted so good.

Which brings us to the bloggage:

Speaking of Jim at Sweet Juniper, you have never seen kids’ Halloween costumes as cute as his kids’, and they’re all handmade.

And now I must hie myself to yon gym. The trainer says he’s going to put us on the ergometers, i.e, rowing machines, i.e. TORTURE IN MECHANICAL FORM, for the remainder of the month. It would be so, so easy to skip. But I must not.

Halloween went swimmingly. The air was nippy but not too, the leaves crunchy and abundant, and once again, I overbought. I used to buy 10 bags of candy. This year, I bought…I forget how many, but it was way more than 10. I blanched a moment when the total came up on the register, more than $50, but promptly rationalized that money spent making children happy on a candy-centered holiday is worth double karma points.

Many tourists this year. I don’t care at all, not even a little. We’ve now settled into a groove — lawn chair on the porch, Screamin’ Jay Hawkins on the box, wineglass in the hand, magnanimity in the heart. I missed Spriggy this year; he was always my companion on Halloween, watching from the other side of the storm door, barking less as the years went by. I imagine this stabbing in the heart will lessen as the gulf between us widens, but never go away entirely.

I want another dog. But now I have a rabbit. No dogs yet.

(I wonder about the compatibility of cats and bunnies. The one story I heard about them was told to me by one of those guys you meet from time to time; he either sells you pot or fixes your appliances or is your friend’s cousin. Lives out in the country, has a mullet and keeps strange animals as pets — ferrets and snakes and exotic lizards, and somehow they all get along. This guy had a rabbit and a cat, and said they fought exactly once: “That rabbit grabbed that cat with his front feet, and started poundin’ on him with ’em big thumpers in back, man.” The cat left the bunny alone after that.)

The Obamas had a Halloween party, we’re told. I learned this from Google Trends, which had “michelle obama catwoman” high in the mix. She did? Get OUT, I thought, and raced for photos, but she was no sexy kitten, more like a hip suburban mom taking the opportunity to give herself a smoky eye. Well, you could hardly expect her to put on the black rubber suit (links thanks to Jolene) on the steps of the White House, but it does sound as though they made an effort to put on a pretty good Halloween party for the local kiddies. I’m sure the press releases are going out to the perpetual opposition — blah blah wasteful blah blah demonic blah blah recession, etc. I say, hey, Halloween! I’m for it.

Another week begins, and I can hardly get excited about it, except for E-Day, of course. The race known as NY-23 sailed under my radar until only recently, and that’s one to watch. Sarah Palin’s been a player in that one, probably because she believes so strongly in the people’s right to choose their representatives free of outside influence — in fact, a representative free of inside encumbrances, like residency in the district he allegedly represents.

We’ll see how that one turns out; I’m genuinely interested. It won’t be the embarrassment of Alan “What state am I in?” Keyes in Illinois — in fact, would-be Rep. Carpetbagger is polling pretty far out front — but it’ll make election night worth tuning in for.

Around here, it’s all about municipal races, and I am in a foul mood. I am in a slate-wiping mood. I am in a What Michigan Needs is Not YOU mood. Unfortunately, I can’t vote in any of those races. But the one to watch will be Proposal D in Detroit, which is a grassroots effort to make the city council actually representative of the city by changing it from an all-at large body to one elected by district. Instead of the usual crew of idiots, it will be a different crew of perhaps-less-idiotic idiots. That’s about the best the D can hope for, but who knows? Maybe a new crew of idiots will help. All I know is, the line on the campaign mailer that means the least to me right now is the one detailing how many decades of residence one has. Roots are fine, but the grand old traditions — of business, of politics — are part of what got us into this mess. New thinking, stat.

So, some bloggage? Sure.

Hank Stuever had a good weekend, with lots of good pub for “Tinsel.” The best place for an all-links roundup is his own blog, Tonsil. Bonus: His piece on Bravo, the morality-reality channel, in the WashPost this weekend.

Speaking of Sarah, wouldn’t you love to get a robocall from her, urging you to “vote for Sarah’s values?” Which ones would those be, Sarah?

And now it’s time to hop to it, quick like a bunny. Who is probably chewing something as we speak.

Detroit! Never boring, this city, and I mean never. The Wayne County prosecutor dragged the former mayor — the disgraced felon, that is — back from Texas, where he now lives, for a probation hearing, to answer questions about his finances, to wit: Why is he claiming poverty when it comes to paying his restitution to the city, while at the same time living in a mansion in the Dallas suburbs? He gets on the stand and drops the bomb: He was the recipient of a quarter-mil or so in “loans” from some of the city’s most respected businessmen, i.e. Roger Penske, Pete Karmanos, et al. The businessmen say the money was grease intended to slide the stubborn bastard out of office so the city could “heal,” etc. All released statements saying the balance owed “remains outstanding.”

But it gets better: Matty Moroun, the billionaire who owns the Ambassador Bridge, was even more generous, making his cash payment an outright gift. The Moroun prose style, revealed in the letter that accompanied the check, is a metaphor-mixin’ thing of beauty:

“My heart strings are tugged when I think of the storm your family has weathered, and my heart is heavy that you and your children have been harmed while doing everything possible to strengthen your family… Enclosed, please find a token of my affection for the Kilpatrick family.”

The letter goes on to state Moroun “thought long and hard” about “what I could do that would be an encouragement and help as you persevere and rebuild your family.” I can imagine that thought process: Fruit basket? Jelly of the Month Club? A subscription to Reader’s Digest? A free ticket to a motivational seminar? No, I know: Money.

Even better is the following paragraph in the News story:

Moroun’s spokesman on Thursday insisted that while Moroun is trying to win federal approval of a second span beside his bridge to Canada, the personal largess lavished on Kilpatrick’s wife and children wasn’t aimed at influencing Kilpatrick’s mother, U.S. Rep. Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick.

No. No, I’m sure that had nothing to do with it.

Of course, 50 grand is a drop in the bucket for a family like the Kilpatricks:

Kilpatrick and his wife deposited nearly $1.2 million into their bank accounts after Kilpatrick was sent to jail on Oct. 28, 2008 — and have spent nearly all of it — according to a prosecutors’ analysis.

The analysis was contained in a two-page document which was entered into evidence. It says the Kilpatricks had no money in their joint account and in Carlita Kilpatrick’s account on Oct. 15, 2008.

By Oct. 13 of this year, they had deposited $1,160,374 and written checks or withdrawn $1,150,498, leaving a balance of $21,761.

Karmanos is already bruised for having given Kilpatrick a cushy sales job with his software company when he got out of prison, defending it on the grounds that the guy was worth it. I wonder if the family’s big-spending lifestyle is a rebuke of sorts to his benefactors, a certain “don’t expect to see your money again, suckers.” I guess that’s between the Kilpatricks, their lenders, and the consciences of all involved.

P.S. Kilpatrick took the fifth when asked about his tax returns.

I suspect Moroun doesn’t care about his reputation, but the rest — patrons of the arts, titans of the charity-ball circuit — surely do. It’s a pity the term has picked up racist connotations, because in the strictest possible sense, Kilpatrick is the embodiment of the character from the folk tale: The tar baby. Everyone who touches him becomes ensnared in his stickiness. I bet the brier patch sounds like a dip in a cool lake to those guys, right about now.

The ex-mayor is still a sharp dresser, however: That four-button suit is a thing of beauty, even on a big man.

So, then: I should pause a moment and thank all of you who’ve been shopping Amazon via my store. While not a cash bonanza accompanied by treacly notes from billionaires, the income generated makes Google Ads look like the crap they are. It’ll help with my Christmas shopping, much of which I’ll be doing through Amazon, so hey — it’s a loop of love.

Only the shopping I can’t do locally, that is. Now more than ever, Michigan needs every dollar, every sales tax penny, every warm body walking through the malls. But for some things, eh, I’m happy to support the big A. I’m a one-woman stimulus package.

And if that isn’t the title of a dirty movie yet, it should be: “The Stimulus Package.”

And now it’s 9 a.m. and time for me to do a few million chores I’ve been putting off. Hoping to get Kate her H1N1 vaccine today, if the doctor’s office has any left. I’m wondering if she may have already had it — her “chest cold” week before last was accompanied by a day of 102-degree fever, and for those who have been lucky enough to get the mild version of the virus, it sounds familiar. Probably too late to test for it, but if that’s what it was and that’s all it was, I’m grateful.

Have a great weekend, all.

There was a raid in Detroit and Dearborn yesterday. The FBI went after a radical mosque catering mainly to African-American converts. The leader, who was killed in a shootout with the G-folks, appears in an Olan Mills-ish portrait looking like a character from bad community theater. From what I can tell from reading the story, this crowd looks like a lot of yak, but little jihad shack, if that makes sense. They talked a good game — strapping on bombs and the like — but were mainly criminals operating under an overlay of Islam.

At least that’s the way it looks. It’s hard to be a bad-ass Muslim convert in this country, when the indictments are handed down giving your new name followed by the a.k.a.:

A federal complaint filed Wednesday identified Abdullah, 53, also known as Christopher Thomas, as “a highly placed leader of a nationwide radical fundamentalist Sunni group.” His black Muslim group calls itself “Ummah,” or the brotherhood, and wants to establish a separate state within the United States governed by Sharia law, Interim U.S. Attorney Terrence Berg and Andrew Arena, FBI special agent in charge in Detroit, said in a joint statement.

“He regularly preaches anti-government and anti-law enforcement rhetoric,” an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. “Abdullah and his followers have trained regularly in the use of firearms, and continue to train in martial arts and sword fighting.”

The Ummah is headed nationally by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a state sentence for the murder of two police officers in Georgia.

H. Rap Brown is still alive? That was my takeaway. Not that these folks aren’t dangerous; I guess I wouldn’t want to meet one in a sword fight. But when I hear of groups that want to establish separate states within the U.S. where they can practice white supremacy or Sharia law or whatever, I mostly think you folks just don’t understand this country, do you? If Christopher Thomas/Luqman Ameen Abdullah wants to live under Sharia law, he can always move to Afghanistan. But that would require learning a new language, and that’s, you know, hard.

Say what you want about Jim Jones, but at least he understood that if you really want to separate from the United States, you have to actually leave the United States.

The feds shot Thomas/Abdullah after he shot one of their dogs. Both died. If anyone shot my dog, I’d have thrown in a pistol-whipping, too.

I gotta get outta here early today — I have a buttload of work to do for my other non-paying job, but that’s good news. It’s election season, and that should be your busy time. We have a very capable bunch of student interns this term, and they’re giving me copy like nobody’s business, but that requires me to edit and offer mentor-ish advice. I yearn for the succinct style of James Thurber’s editor at the Columbus Dispatch, Gus Kienan, who once told him, “Crack this miracle and bring me back the pieces,” but alas. It seems I’m incapable of writing simple notes on student copy. Everything has to be a damn treatise, and most of these folks will never write a single news story for pay in their lives. Oh, well. If they carry away no message other than, “when you write something, people will read it,” that’s good enough for me.

One bit of bloggage: For once in my life, I’m in full agreement with Sarah Palin. I’m taking this as a cautionary tale about paying attention to who your kids are keeping company with. Sometimes these yahoos stay in your life forever.

Our own Moe99 starts chemotherapy today. Hang in there, Moe.

Another quiet morning with Ruby. (Hop. Hop. Hop. Scratch-scratch-scratch. STOP CHEWING THAT! It’s a loop.) A mild day. Rain seems to be gone for a while. It brought down a fresh load of leaves, so the work I did over the weekend, raking and piling, looks completely undone. Ah, well. As soon as the coffee kicks in I’m going to get to work for reals.

Don’t I sound stupid, writing that? “For reals?” Just like the kids say. I look at Kate’s Facebook postings, and I want to faint: “hangin wit my besties CALL TEXT ME PLEEEEZE.”

“I know you know how to spell ‘please.’ Tell me you do,” I say.

“I write the way I talk,” she replies. In other words: Bug off, geezer.

The other day I retrieved one of her short writing assignments off the printer tray. With the exception of one exclamation point, I wouldn’t change a keystroke. I guess she’s mastered the art of being one thing for the adults in your life, another for your pals. A key adolescent coping skill.

Well, she’ll never take writing advice from her mother, at least not for a couple more decades. I just sent an e-mail to our Wayne State student interns at GrossePointeToday.com, recommending yet another Detroitblog gem. You can learn a lot from breaking down a piece like this to see how it sings:

Helen Turner has a mean scowl on her face. Always. It’s the look she gives customers at the diner where she works.

“I don’t take no shit off of nobody,” she spits in an Appalachian accent.

She’s behind the counter at White Grove Restaurant, a tiny, genuinely retro diner on Second Avenue near Charlotte, in Detroit’s skid row. Her customers are the city’s underclass — addicts, prostitutes, the homeless and the insane. They spend their days aimlessly roaming their neighborhood here like zombies, slowly killing time and themselves, waiting for the next handout or the next quick score.

And nearly all of them come into the diner at some point, trying to pull a fast one.

It was a pleasure to read, start to finish. It’s hard to paint a portrait like that without lapsing into cliché and stereotype. I was left wondering how the place even keeps the lights on, if Turner and her colleague, a man with whom she’s guarded the counter “for decades,” spend virtually their entire working day yelling at their customers. I guess they’ve figured out a way to make it work. It helps when Mrs. Take-no-shit guards the register; the place has only been robbed once in recent memory, and the thief escaped with his loot only because the manager didn’t have it in him to pull his own gun on a 16-year-old boy.

So let’s get to the bloggage, then:

Vanity Fair has a piece by a former member of the Letterman staff. A woman. She gets to the heart of the flaw in the it’s-only-consenting-adults argument, right here, with the extra emphasis mine:

Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let’s address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

Boss/underling relationships will be with us forever. That doesn’t mean we should stop saying it’s wrong.

Shower, work, more coffee, crossword.