I just looked at my calendar for this week and groaned, although not entirely with misery. Any week with a to-do list including “build props for zombie movie” and “escort French journalists through bad neighborhoods” can be many things, but not boring. One of the things I wanted when I left Indiana was a more interesting life, and it looks as though I got it, at least this week.

On the other hand, I’m glad I stocked up on coffee last week.

My perambulations this week took me far from my east-side nest, which is always interesting. In any city that sprawls the way this one does, people tend to get a little dug in. Yesterday I went to Warren. Among the bumper-sticker descriptions of Warren: Second-most corrupt city in Michigan and Hometown of Eminem. I found myself in a dollar store, when three or four Eminem clones walked in: Elaborately carved but badly maintained facial hair (those multi-prong goatees), tattoos that climb up the neck, cocked ball caps, baggy everything.

One had a girl with him, who was apparently leading the shopping expedition. She wasn’t in a good mood, and it was easy to see why: Her boyfriend, one of the Em-ulators, liked to swat her with random objects. Not like he was seriously trying to hurt her, but not friendly, either. He’d pick up, say, a roll of wrapping paper and slap at her legs with it. “Whaddaya think of this? (slap) Huh? (slap) Huh?” She’s ignoring this, but with the pressed lips employed by parents trying to remember the baby-book advice on how to deal with toddler temper tantrums. I’m watching this, thinking, I don’t care what kind of union job that guy has, I don’t care what he does in bed, I don’t care if he has a nice car. You can do better.

What happened to young men? It’s like women got a little autonomy and they fell to pieces. I’m reminded of George Clinton’s comments, which I quoted here before but bear repeating:

Though he’s popular with rappers, Clinton says he doesn’t completely understand the hip-hop culture. “I can’t get used to [rappers] saying the things they say to girls and then expecting them to make love to that,” he laughs. “One guy was cursing this one girl out and I said, ‘Man, don’t talk like that to that girl,’ and she said, ‘Oh, here comes Captain Save-a-Ho.’”

Anyway, that was Warren. Dollar-store Warren, granted, but still.

Just got an e-mail from a reader:

Looks like the Chicago Tribune has redesigned its way into irrelevancy as unveiled today by Publisher Tony Hunter and Editor Gerould Kern. We’ve seen it all before: So many over-sized graphic elements that there is no room for the news, bullet points, “consumer” stories, Hollywood gossip, stories reduced to charts, graphs and other elements (except, of course, copy), etc. etc.

The “new” Trib’s take on one of the biggest stories of the decade, the bail-out plan hammered out by Congress? Well, you won’t find it on the front page (no space, what with the top half of Page 1 taken up by the two-line name plate, reefers and giant photo). No–this major story only merits Page 4. And after discounting the big photo, breakout box of bullet points, head and tagline (“News Focus”) you get — not much information, that’s for sure. The story is paired with a piece by the paper’s “On Money” columnist opining on how the Wall Street debacle will impact the nest eggs of soon-to-be-retirees. So much for actually informing the public.

It’s the second paragraph I want to discuss. I’ve had it up to here with redesigns, and did long before this. Every top management change I’ve witnessed seems to be accompanied by a sweeping redesign of the paper, and it took me years to figure out why: Because it’s easy. It’s easy for the people who order them, anyway. (It’s hell on the people who actually have to do the work and live with the result.) For the first year of the new team’s tenure, they get to spend large chunks of time doing what they like best: Going to meetings and marking up page proofs. It’s not that expensive, and then they get to write a big Page One column talking about how wonderful and reader-friendly the new design is, before collecting their MBO bonus.

I count graphic designers among my best friends, but many are not journalists, and someone needs to ride them with a curb bit, lest they claim one-third of the front page with a great sprawling promo for “Spider-Man 3,” and yes I’ve seen it.

Anyway, it’s the part about the bailout package being buried inside that interests me. It seems newspapers are truly in a no-win situation with some of this stuff. At my old paper, we used to make fun of our competition, which was edited as though every reader had one source for news — the competition. When the first space shuttle exploded, it happened at 11:30 a.m. Our little afternoon daily was able to get something in the home edition, but it was badly outdated by 5 p.m., when not only did everyone know, but had been watching saturation coverage of the tragedy on TV all afternoon. The coverage continued all night, too If ever a story called for a second-day headline on a morning daily, it was that one. And yet, their head was? Yes: Space shuttle explodes. Duh.

Today it’s a whole new ballgame, and not only are readers looking for immediacy, they’re looking for expertise. I haven’t even glanced at the bailout stories in today’s Detroit News, because I’m reading the NYT and WSJ for my primary source. If there’s a terrorist bombing in London, I’m not relying on the AP to keep me posted — I’m going to the London dailies. And so on.

Granted, I’m an early adopter, and probably one of the savvier readers in the circulation base for a local daily. I have fast web access, and time to spend reading it. Others don’t, and what they read in the Detroit News or Chicago Tribune will be the bulk of what they know about the situation. The challenge for editors planning a news budget for today is, how do you edit for both groups? This has always been the challenge, but it’s much more profound now.

There are also staff-development issues. Ambitious business reporters dream of landing at the Journal or at the business desk of a national daily, but those jobs are scarce. Some very good ones are at large metros or regional dailies, doing a very good job, and think this is a story they should be covering. For all this talk you hear at journalism conferences — we stopped covering earthquakes in Tokyo, and now print all soccer team pictures submitted by readers, and it’s a huge success! — you have to ask what sort of reporter wants to spend their career writing cutlines for soccer team pictures. Answer: Not bloody many.

So I’m not so bugged by the bailout being inside — as long as a movie promo isn’t outside — but I’d be interested in seeing how good the story is. And I want to know what others think.

Meanwhile, I have to get to work. Perhaps you’re asking yourself: But Nance! Did you make a pie this weekend? Why yes, yes I did:

That’s apple, with a crumb topping. Dee-lish.

Armchair media critics welcome. Get crackin’.

I’m behind on my e-mail. Funny how that happens. You get caught up, spend a day slacking and then, boom. At times I like this I remember the stories I’ve read about e-mail amnesty declarations, in which one purges the in-box and washes one’s hands. I also think of the early days of the fax machine, when the librarians (which is where our newsroom kept its main fax) would hand-deliver faxes to your desk the moment they arrived. Within six months they had installed a mailbox setup, and you picked up your own. And six months after that, the boxes were clogged with restaurant takeout menus and entries for some guy in the sports department’s NCAA pool.

E-mail’s getting like that. Now everyone wants to send you text messages, at 20 cents per. Wonderful. Something you have to type with your thumbs, can’t be much more than a few phrases and costs half as much as a letter sent via U.S. Mail. We’re always figuring out a way to do things better, aren’t we?

On the other hand, I’m always amazed, whenever a new communication technology emerges, how swiftly we figure out what it’s good for, which niche it fills. A text is perfect for a certain sort of message, e-mail for another. We even agree, sort of, on the etiquette of when one has violated the code somehow, how breaking up with someone via text or voice mail is tacky (and how sending takeout menus via fax should be).

However, the e-mail I have to return is from my BFF, with whom I’ve had a years-long correspondence, and deserves better than Im awesome!!!! on her phone.

So hang on, Deb, all will be revealed, eventually.

I’m trying very hard not to be upset by the news lately, but then I wonder: Isn’t denial of this sort a one-way ticket to the Stress-Related Ailments ward? Isn’t [Samuel Jackson voice] great vengeance and furious anger [ / Samuel Jackson voice] the logical, normal reaction to recent events? I thought I had it tamped down, and then Gretchen Morgenson, the NYT business reporter/columnist, was on “Fresh Air” yesterday — stream it here — and it came roaring back. “Why should I believe people who were lying to me five minutes ago?” she asked, quite reasonably, and it was all I could do not to load all the garden implements into the back of the car and set a course for Washington. Instead, I took a shower and wondered if I have the privilege of witnessing the end of the American era. I think so. It’s pretty clear the future belongs to our Chinese brothers, and our next part is to be the Fading Empire Rife with Corruption, Clinging to Outdated Ritual.

I just hope I can get a job. I hope the fading empire needs a few writers.

Which, before I set to work catching up on e-mail, seems as good a place as any to transition to the bloggage:

LGM’s Paul Campos in the Rocky Mountain News, on what Wall Street and the Detroit Lions have in common. Relax, it’s semi-amusing and not angry at all. (BTW, Fox Sports is reporting Matt Millen’s been fired.)

Suzanne Vega tells a few of the many stories behind “Tom’s Diner,” an a capella pop oddity that was influential far beyond its do-do-do-dos.

Hey, Detroiters, look what Matty Moroun’s up to now. Go down to Riverside Park and take some pictures. (Amusingly, when we did our film challenge last summer, this was the park where most of the teams got their obligatory Ambassador Bridge shots. Bastard.)

Off to work I go.

Yesterday’s bike ride took me down Mack Avenue, past the Dodge dealership. Hey, gang! The 2009 Challengers are here. Try to contain your excitement:

My taste is famously out of step with the mainstream, so we’ll see whether it moves metal, as they say in Detroit. Fun fact: Guess how much those fancy wheels and low-profile tires add to the bottom line. Any brave souls? No? OK, I’ll tell you: $4,000. My first car didn’t cost much more than that.

In my entire stupid life, I have never been impressed by the tires and wheels of another’s car, although admittedly, I’m not in the target demographic. We caught most of “Tales of the Rat Fink” on Sundance the other evening, a fun documentary about Ed Roth, the original car customizer. I was interested in it mostly as a doc that breaks all the way free of the Ken Burns Bigfoot style — the story is moved along by several talking cars, their words indicated by flashing headlights, and no, I’m not kidding — but it left me thinking about Detroit, too.

The auto industry and Big Daddy Roth were yin and yang to one another, especially as Roth grew older and crazier in his designs. Roth imagined a world where everyone’s car would be unique in the truest sense of the word, thanks to customizing and easily moldable fiberglas. In this sense he was like a couture fashion designer, who imagines the entire world wants to express itself through clothing, when in truth most people just want their bodies appropriately shielded from eyes and weather. But the extremes feed the middle, and when it works we live in a world where a car is more than a rolling transpo-box and a jacket is a statement. My favorite part of “Tales of the Rat Fink” was the end, where the filmmakers draw literal lines between Roth’s innovations and things we take for granted today. (Did you know Roth was the first to paint designs on plain T-shirts? Now you do.)

I still think wheels like that are a waste of $4,000, however.

Quick bloggage, as I’ve got a full plate today:

Kwame Kilpatrick left office and the official mayoral residence today. Detroit is one of only a handful of cities to have a designated mayoral mansion, and today Freep.com ran a photo gallery of the Manoogian Mansion through the years. This was my favorite; how often do you see a one-lane bowling alley? Even Daniel Plainview had three or four.

You’ve all seen the Sarah Palin e-mail hack by now, no doubt. The most important takeaway lesson? If you’re running for vice-president, the whole world will know the answer to all your security questions. So tie up that loose end beforehand, ‘kthanksbai.

Sentences that do not inspire confidence: The financial crisis that began 13 months ago entered a new, far more serious phase as hopes that the damage could be contained have evaporated. Thanks, Wall Street Journal! Suggestion for comments discussion: In a collapsed world economy based on barter, what do you have to trade? I’m figuring a 10-second peek at my tits in a nice bra ought to be worth a few slices of bread to someone, but maybe not. What’ve you got?

Back later.

I talked to JohnC yesterday, who also lives in the Pointes, and he said he was about to send me an e-mail passing along the latest civic rumor: That soon-to-be-ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick had closed on a house in Grosse Pointe Shores, at a two-digit number — i.e., close to the lake — on Oxford Road. John’s a reporter too, and we batted around the possibility this was true before deciding it probably wasn’t. He doesn’t have that kind of money (the house is $1.5 million), no one would lend him that kind of money, leaving the city of Detroit would send the wrong message to the constituency he hopes to lead again one day and, finally, it just didn’t pass the smell test. It dovetails a little too neatly with some Pointers’ need to believe everyone wants to live in the 48236, and of course it rings the lizard-brain bell about the Threatening Negro come to disrupt the peace in Whiteville.

The Pointes haven’t been all-white for a couple of generations, but they’re pretty white. There are affluent African Americans here and there, but not in any kind of significant numbers. A black family of the Kilpatricks’ demographic and education wouldn’t raise eyebrows, but Kilpatrick himself would raise them, believe me. It’s hard to describe how spittle-flecked the loathing of him is in the suburbs, which always seemed a waste of energy to me. While it’s true his administration has been a disaster, a virtual carnival of pocket-lining and perjury, the specific objection to him suggests things would be different, and better, with a new mayor, and that I’m not sure of. What’s going on in Detroit, what was going on before Kilpatrick and will continue later, isn’t administration as much as it’s looting. It’s a brutal comparison, but to me you could change the name Kilpatrick to Duvalier, and get a pretty rough parallel.

Anyway, the media checked out the rumor and confirmed our suspicion: No sale.

Let’s deal further in ethnic stereotypes, shall we? I was struck by this photo from the New York Times today. This man is evacuating ahead of Hurricane Ike:

Story here. His name is Juan Rodriguez, which I assume in a Texas Gulf Coast resident suggests Mexican heritage, and he owns a chihuahua. Does your dog share your ethnic heritage? Do dogs share any part of their human equivalent’s ethnic stereotype? It’s hard not to see Deutschland’s personality in its German shepherds and Rottweilers, but what France has to do with French bulldogs remains a mystery to me — although, now that I think about it, a French bulldog is generally more fashionable than its English equivalent.

Ah, Friday. Time to clean the house. Any bloggage? Not much, but this:

Roger Ebert, my hero. Are all New York Post writers thugs? Or is this just indicative of the mood at overstuffed, overhyped film festivals?

Have a good weekend, all.

UPDATE: Speaking of chihuahuas, I need to add a link to this, one of my favorite commercials ever. (Embedding is disabled, alas.) It’s from the short-lived Viva Gorditas campaign, and I loved it because, in the late 1990s, it referenced a whole lot of things that were already far out of date and way over the heads of the target Taco Bell demographic, i.e., teenage boys. The classic banana-republic, ruler-who-speaks-from-a-balcony tropes — the red banners, the cheering crowds, the tinny speakers mounted on a pole, the old-fashioned microphone, Che’s beret — just cracked me up. I notice this version is 22 seconds, an odd length, and I recall one that ended with an image right out of a Soviet May Day poster, with the dog leading the cheering crowd down a dike or embankment, with farm fields spreading out to the side, while three jets pass in formation overhead. How on earth did they sell that one to corporate?

When we were in Argentina, and were taken through Evita’s Casa Roja, I longed to step out on the balcony, cup my hand in a wave, and call out, “Viva Gorditas.” Because that’s just the sort of ugly American I am.

Maybe you’ve heard: Detroit is a big sports town. An economic-development expert with the city once told me that’s both a blessing and curse, mostly in the favor of fans. People who like to watch sports have their favorites, but to some hard-to-quantify extent a major-league franchise lifts all boats. You can see this in my hometown of Columbus, which for years has tracked a steady course of economic growth and prosperity to eclipse Cleveland and Cincinnati, but sports-wise, was stuck with Ohio State University. When they finally got a team, it was hockey, and an expansion team with the dumbest name in the league (the Blue Jackets? Huh?) but no matter — corporations finally had a place to buy luxury boxes, there was suddenly an Arena District to fill with yuppie bars, and the city was able to claim a little bit of big-league glory for itself.

Detroit, meanwhile, is a dying city with terrible prospects, but still manages to support four major-league sports, and not only that, they’re usually competitive in three of them. Fans here are spoiled enough that some don’t even start paying attention until the Wings, Pistons or Tigers are contending for a championship.

And then there’s the Lions. The worst team in pro football.

They have a beautiful new stadium downtown, legions of fans who buy tickets and suffer with them year after year. Their Thanksgiving Day home game is a centerpiece of the local celebration. And yet, their insistence on reaching and staying at the very bottom of the league appears unmatched. Take the season opener this past Sunday in Atlanta, previously thought to be the worst team in the league. There’s nothing like the facts to punch up a good sports column, I always say:

Atlanta started a rookie quarterback, Matt Ryan, in the opener Sunday, and all he did was complete a 62-yard touchdown pass on his first throw. From there, it actually got worse for the Lions, if you can believe that. …Besides a new quarterback, the Falcons had a new coach and a tough new runner, Michael Turner. All Turner did was run 66 yards for a touchdown on the game’s second possession. He finished with 220 yards, a team record. The Falcons finished with 318 yards rushing, a team record.

Hey, don’t ever suggest the Lions aren’t capable of making history.

That’s Bob Wojnowski of the News. Here’s Michael Rosenberg in the Freep:

What is it like to be Rod Marinelli these days? Imagine putting a group of engineers together to build an airplane. You tell them it might not be the best airplane in the world. It doesn’t have to be as big as a 747 or as fast as the Concorde, but it will run on time and use fuel efficiently and get you where you want to go. Then, on the day of its first flight, you go out on the tarmac and find … a unicycle.

A day after his team lost, 34-21, to the lowly Atlanta Falcons, Marinelli stood by his team. Someday soon, he said, that unicycle will fly.

Mitch Albom just stomped his little foot on the ground like Rumpelstiltskin.

There’s a feisty movement around here called Fire Millen, aimed at guess-what for the team’s president, Matt Millen. Mainly they spread digital graffiti; when they’re in full cry, every story on the Freep website, no matter what it’s about, has at least one “Fire Millen!” in the comments. Why he hasn’t been fired, particularly after weeks like this, remains a mystery. JohnC, who follows sports, says it’s because old Mr. Ford (William Clay, Jr.), who owns the team, doesn’t really care about it. Possible. Rich folk love to throw their money away on losing causes, but at some point you’d think they were capable of being embarrassed, but maybe not.

Meanwhile, Kate has learned the truth, and every time we drive down I-75 past Ford Field, she says, “Home of the losers!”

Maybe we can get Thanksgiving tickets this year.

Bloggage:

Via Metafilter, a guy who makes a list of 50 things he always wanted to do, quits his job and vows he can’t go home until he completes the list. He’s at 44 after more than a year. Someone help this guy ride a horse through a covered bridge so he can get to 45, ‘k?

It’s been a while since I’ve visited Lifehacker, the site that teaches you a few neat tricks (not, I regret to say, how to ride a horse through a covered bridge). Today: How to fold a napkin around a wine bottle so you don’t drip on the tablecloth, and the legitimate — i.e., non-porn — uses for the Incognito mode in Google Chrome.

Time for the gym. Talk Fight amongst yourselves.

Cabbage as big as yo’ head.

Give Detroit this, people: It has manly testicles, oozing spleen and can’t get out of the bathroom before it needs another shave. Only here can a mayor, indicted on no fewer than 10 felonies, lurching through a nearly year-long scandal, seemingly needing a pry bar to remove himself from office — only this man, on the day he strikes a deal that calls for resignation and a seven-figure restitution and surrender of his law license and jail time and a five-year probation/moratorium on running for public office, can say, upon his exit:

“Detroit, you done set me up for a comeback.”

I mean, it’s hilarious. Isn’t it? How can it not be? It’s true. If this were a slasher movie, this would only be the first time the killer is thought to be dead. He’s got six or seven reanimations left in him, and when he comes out of jail, with his redemption narrative, he’ll start rebuilding his base. By the time the clock runs out on the five years, well, “tanned, rested and ready” doesn’t really describe it.

I love this town. It’s never boring. You know what else? People don’t posture (so much). You get the boilerplate shout-outs to God’s will and all, but for the most part people don’t pretend to be Moses here. Politics is bare-knuckled, the race card is played so often its corners are cracked and curled, but I like to think at the end of the day everyone can sit down and have a drink. Maybe that’s naive, or just wrong — there was a shoving match in a Detroit breakfast place during the primary season, between members of opposing candidates’ camps — and maybe it’s projection. Detroit politics, with its pander bears and open-handed thievery, seems positively angelic in comparison to recent days. Anyway, I’m looking forward to seeing “Milk” this fall, the other political movie featuring Josh Brolin.

Folks, I be exhausted. I’m steeling myself for a bike ride and the wind is blowing about 25 knots — my least-favorite fair-weather conditions, but it must be done. So let’s skip to the bloggage and start the weekend early, eh?

Why do people even attempt fiction, when real life is so much more interesting? The fascinating tale of the Aquatots.

Be still, my heart: I love the way my new boyfriend Javier says “John Travolta.” (Video link.)

The tourism-ization of the shoulder season: Halloween becomes a reason to vacation.

I can never write a zombie movie like this one, in which the z-virus is spread through…conversation. Now that’s imaginative.

Off to reignite my own.

* That’s elitist for, “How uppity.”

While the rest of you were watching the former mayor of New York, squiring his third wife, mocking the Democratic nominee for president as “cosmopolitan,” Detroiters were waiting to see if their mayor was going to jail now or later. Kwame Kilpatrick’s plea deal, being crafted in the wake of a quasi-impeachment hearing yesterday, was on, then off, then on, and then it rained and everybody went home. Today it’s most likely on; no one expects K2 to be mayor at the end of the day. Every picture of him taken recently shows him in another of his fine suits, steepling his hands against his mouth and scowling.

The sticking point is jail time. He’s facing 10 felony counts, and the prosecutor wants him to do at least a few months behind bars. The people of Detroit, meanwhile, prove eminently quotable: “The mayor shouldn’t go out like a punk.” “He’s an empty suit and the next suit he’s going to wear is a pinstripe suit.” “The man spent his whole life trying to be famous. Now the best he can do is be infamous.” (May I just say? It’s nice to see the owner of a barber shop knows the difference between fame and infamy. Gives me hope for the language.)

UPDATE: That’s all, folks.

Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan got caught telling the truth — see approximately nine million other sites for audio and transcripts, or click the following link — but Scott Rosenberg brings up the greater point: Where was all this honesty in Noonan’s column?

Now, if Peggy Noonan wrote a column every week that was as honest with her readers as she is here, with her colleagues, when she thinks the microphone is off, I would read it religiously. She’s part of a world that I don’t inhabit. But now I have a bright picture of the fact that she’s not writing what she knows and believes.

Exactly right. Exactly. And if there’s one thing that makes reading the best blogs so refreshing and reading most newspaper commentary a little like being stuck in an airless room, it’s this. Of course Noonan is a GOP operative with a high-paid sinecure on a right-wing editorial page, and she’s expected to represent for their side. She’s a columnist now, but could be a speechwriter in a Republican administration by this time next year. Nevertheless, it’s true: Too many writers simply aren’t honest with their readers, and even if you can’t put your finger on it precisely, it’s obvious when it’s happening. It’s why Mitch Albom is so grating, a guy who made millions writing a book advising others to slow down, savor, smell the roses — and uses it to catapult himself into a stratosphere of hyperactive multi-platform media personality-fying that ensures all of his work gets half his attention. People know he’s a fraud, even if they can’t quite say why.

The reason so many people writing for newspapers hedge and qualify and cavil is, they have more to lose. Jim Harrison uses a line every so often, something about consecrating every day and writing like your hair’s on fire. That’s it.

Bloggage: Moving van arrives at Detroit’s mayoral mansion, then leaves. If it’s someone’s idea of a joke, it’s a pretty good one.

Many are writing about Sarah Palin’s speech last night, but Roy’s one-liner won’t be beaten: Governor Palin’s address tonight was basically Reba McEntire doing a one-woman show on the life of Phyllis Schlafly.

Finally, anyone want to babysit Friday night? Alan and I are going to see the Dirtbombs:

(Hell, maybe she’s old enough to come along, too.)

I’m not from a union family. My mother reluctantly paid dues to the Communication Workers of America out of a sense of obligation — “they get me my raises” — but never joined. My dad was a salesman. Labor Day was just a long weekend with a cookout.

My first real contact with organized labor was the printers’ union at The Columbus Dispatch, which even then was defanged, the linotype machines having been set aside some years earlier for electronic typesetters. I recall being baffled by their rules (non-union members were not to touch the columns of type being spit from the computer), their pecking order (shop steward? is this a shop?) and their rituals (the coffee-pot thing; some sort of Friday lucky-number drawing), and a little touched by their dignity. Even I, stupid as I was then, could tell that these guys’ time was over, that all their tetchiness about rules was a version of some dotty old lady putting on her white gloves for tea when the only one stopping by is her imaginary friend. Little by little they retired or moved to other jobs, and I imagine that entire shop doesn’t even exist anymore.

Organized labor has been in eclipse for some time now, and the forces of management have done an excellent job briefing the general public on all their sins — the featherbedding, the abuses, the corruption by organized crime, etc. More to the point, in a global market, it’s easy to find others willing to do a job for far less than your contract stipulates, and to find some apologist who will explain, “But $5 a day is good money in (fill in name of Third World country).”

Last year one of the TV stations sent its handsome anchor to China, to show the dinosaurs back home how they do it in the ascendant world power. To anyone with a lick of sense, it looked like a horror show: Workers who leave their homes and families for months at a time to relocate to their factories, where they’re housed in dorms and work the sort of hours that would appall even the cruelest robber baron. This was all reported enthusiastically, enough so that the handsome anchor’s pretty partner, in making chit-chat after the segment, had this to say of the American worker: “I don’t want to say lazy, but…”

I was taking a writing workshop a few months after this, and one of the other participants was a graduating law student preparing for the bar and a career in labor law. He said he and his friends were planning an expedition to a concert where the handsome anchor (he’s a musician, too) was performing, “to call him out.” That’s Detroit for ya. I don’t know if they ever did, but at Labor Day, it’s something to think about: That corrupt, lazy, featherbedding union force had its time in the sun, and that was in improving factory conditions, raising the hourly wage and generally making this country a place where you don’t have to live in a dormitory next to the factory to make a living. This is a good thing. Let’s not forget it.

We went to the Detroit Labor Day parade yesterday, hoping to catch a glimpse of Obama. That was a long-odds hope and it was borne out when we arrived to find Hart Plaza full and the crowd spilling out in three directions. But we got near a Jumbotron, only to discover there was no sound, and by then it felt like it was 99 degrees, so we booked. Turned out Obama declined to campaign and instead sang a few bars of “Chain of Fools” anyway, so there you are. My own video notebook is here, and shitty enough I decline to embed it.

I did get a T-shirt, though.

Bloggage:

I took Richard Cohen off my bookmarks months ago, but every so often his broken clock tells the correct time. Like today.

I didn’t go to Slow Food Nation. Sounds like I missed some good meals, but some fairly awful public events.

Finally, I really don’t want this blog to become a gossip site regarding the GOP’s vice-presidential nominee. For one thing, everything we post here becomes stale in, like, 25 seconds; I fully expect the next bombshell to come out of St. Paul will be that some member of her family is running a medical-marijuana grow house during the 20-hour days, and further, that this is evidence of her strong family values. For another, to me, the only thing we really have a right to discuss as voters and decent people is the so-called vetting issue. How McCain managed to pick this crazy lady, with her possible background as a secessionist, never mind her colorful family, is the real issue here. All the rest is noise. I’m not going to police comments on this, but why don’t you read John Scalzi’s take on things, which basically tracks mine about 99.9 percent.

‘kay? ‘Kay. Have a good day.

I missed this in yesterday’s papers, until it came up in my evening searches for health-care news: Cisco executive slain in Detroit is remembered as gifted techie, dedicated family man. Well, shit, one thinks. Another black eye for the city. I’m wondering why didn’t I see this in the local dailies, and start to read:

Ben Goldman updated his Facebook page that Monday night, writing that he was having a great time in downtown Detroit … yes, that was Ben, his family said, always able to squeeze joy from everything he did, even a 24-hour business trip to the gritty Midwest metropolis. And then the 42-year-old Los Gatos family man and up-and-coming Silicon Valley executive just disappeared.

Detroit police found his body the next day, Aug. 19. He had been shot to death, left in a vacant lot after apparently spending time at the Penthouse Club. It took them a few days to identify him. He had no wallet, no photographs of his wife and two young daughters, no Cisco ID badge, nothing to connect him to Silicon Valley. Benjamin Goldman, 42, was the victim of an unsolved homicide in a high-crime area known there as 8 Mile.

Eight Mile is, of course, 8 Mile Road, approximately 7.5 miles from tourist-friendly downtown Detroit. The Penthouse Club, as you might imagine, is not a place a nice family man posts to his Facebook page about visiting, although it’s a venue many men might find worthy of squeezing joy from. So to speak. While in no way blaming Goldman for any part of what happened to him, a commenter on the Freep story put it succinctly:

A nice Jewish boy from California running around Eight Mile in a tie looking for a little action. I would rather be in the mountains of Afghanistan. There can’t be any more dangerous place on earth.

Yup. And considering Detroit’s after-dark criminal culture is no secret, even in California, you wonder what might have gone wrong. The Penthouse Club is a brand-name titty bar, and I have to assume it has at least some parking-lot security, although there are plenty of places nearby that don’t. Rest in peace, Ben Goldman. I’ll think of you as I struggle with an issue every urban parent must face: How to teach street smarts.

It’s a balancing act, to be sure. I firmly believe that overprotection — of yourself or your kids — isn’t a good idea. When Lenore Skenazy allowed her 9-year-old to make his own way home on the New York City subway system, she was both vilified and praised — the story received national attention — but I was in the latter camp. Learning when to be careful starts with not being afraid all the time, and confidence, the most important invisible armor you carry, comes with accomplishment. Most people on the street, even on 8 Mile Road, aren’t out to kill you, hurt you or even rob you. But some are. Knowing how to tell the difference, and when to be extra-careful, isn’t easy. I go places in Detroit lots of people won’t, and someday I might pay the price for it, but at least no one can say I didn’t drink deeply from the stream along the way. I have the advantage of not having a penis, that unreliable point man that leads so many men to their doom, but I also have an appetite, and I sometimes wonder if I’ll end up dumped in a vacant lot because I went looking for the wrong authentic gumbo or pizza or whatever.

Still. Life is most interesting when you leave the strip-mall districts behind. I try to teach this to my child. Fortunately, she doesn’t have a penis, either.

I heard an interview with David Simon during the publicity tsunami for “The Wire,” and he talked a little bit about safety in the city. “This isn’t Beirut,” he said of Baltimore, by way of explaining his decision to travel even its worst neighborhoods armed only with a notebook. Of course you have to be smart about where you go and when you get out of the car. But you can’t be afraid all the time, either.

You people who live in large urban areas — how do you teach your kids to be smart on the street?