Today in Embar­rass­ing Pic­tures, we again refuse to embar­rass the pro­pri­etress, instead throw­ing her hus­band into the line of fire:

“These two boys are hav­ing fun demon­strat­ing proper tooth brush­ing” dur­ing National Children’s Den­tal Health Week. “Albert Ramirez, son of Mr. and Mrs. Genaro Ramirez, 810 Nicholas St., looks on from the left while Alan Der­ringer, son of Mr. and Mrs. Roger Der­ringer, 405 North­field Ave., does the brushing.”

Among the odd­i­ties of this pic­ture, which I can’t pre­cisely date, other than to say, “Man, when was the last time you saw a kid wear­ing a wrist­watch like that, eh?” Both kids come from intact, Mr. and Mrs. homes. No one objected to hav­ing their exact address printed in the news­pa­per. And when Alan’s mom died, she still lived at 405 North­field and still had her phone listed under Roger Derringer.

Also note the long-standing His­panic pres­ence in north­west Ohio (this was in Defi­ance). I won­der how Mark Kriko­rian would pro­nounce Ramirez?

I like the way Albert is “look­ing on.” Some­one is always look­ing on in old news­pa­per pho­tos. For news­pa­per jour­nal­ists of a cer­tain age, we lived for the day we wouldn’t have to take pic­tures like this or write their wit­less cap­tions, and if you were any good at all, sooner or later you beamed up to a big­ger paper, which as a rule didn’t run this stuff. And now, here we are decades later, and the buzz is in hyper­local jour­nal­ism web­sites that wel­come and solicit pic­tures like this, and guess who’s writ­ing the cap­tions? Full circle.

My pledge: No one will ever look on in my cut­lines. Unless it’s in an ironic, retro way. Because oth­er­wise I will have to start drink­ing a lot more.

Because it’s Fri­day, another no-cal bon­bon. Thanks, Char, for send­ing this “hastily made Cleve­land tourism video.” As for the punch­line, well, yes they are. They just don’t know it yet:

I have to go to a meet­ing, edit a pile of copy and do some seri­ous writin’ today. You folks take it from here.

Hey, are you guys work­ing today? The day before a three-day week­end? Silly wab­bits — hardly any­one else is. So today seems as good a day as ever to kick off a new Fri­day fea­ture, which I’m call­ing Embar­rass­ing Pic­tures, because, well, you’ll see.

Long-time read­ers will rec­og­nize this one, which I’ve used before, but not for a few years, so it’s fresh to most of you:

Just another self-portrait before a Sat­ur­day night out, c. 1981 – 82, around in there. Colum­bus, Ohio. I’m not in this one, but let me intro­duce you to the group. At left, some girl named Jea­nine, who was friends with the other two girls in the pic­ture — Lynne (with the cham­pagne bot­tle) and Janet, known as Tall Janet for obvi­ous rea­sons. The guys, in the back row, Jeff, Paul, Craig. Jeff and Craig were broth­ers. In front, Dan, known to all by his nick­name, Futz. And at far right, in the Way­far­ers, our very own Jeff Bor­den. I like this pic­ture because it’s entirely a happy acci­dent — Bor­den put the cam­era on a a tri­pod and used the self-timer, bounced the flash off the ceil­ing, and every­one just sort of assem­bled them­selves. No one directed the pose or styled the outfits.

Details: Both Jeff and Craig were gay, lend­ing sup­port to the genet­ics argu­ment, but both were nat­ural per­form­ers, and I love the way Jeff is look­ing at Jea­nine, like he’s about to throw her on the floor and rav­age her, when in truth he couldn’t have been less inter­ested. I love the way the ash on Jeanine’s cig­a­rette is this­close to falling. Futz and Paul are wear­ing but­tons — but­tons were big, back then. I still have my favorite from the era in my jew­elry box. It reads VICTIM OF THE PRESS. I picked it up from a LaRouchie at one of their air­port tables. I don’t know what was going on with Lynn’s sparkly disco vest, but she rocks it, I think. Borden’s wear­ing a hat because even then, barely 30 years old, he was stalked by the curse of a reced­ing hairline.

Also, this: Jeff, Craig and Paul are all dead. AIDS. As I men­tioned, Jeff and Craig were broth­ers. In the years imme­di­ately after they died, I thought a lot about them. Since Kate was born, I think mainly of their mother. Imag­ine los­ing two of your chil­dren, in sub­se­quent years, to that disease.

Any­way, even though I wasn’t there, I was there. I think of this pic­ture as exhibit A in the life I led at the time, when Bor­den and I lived across the hall from one another, left the doors open all the time, ran speak­ers from one apart­ment to the other, and had some great parties.

Good times.

That’s it for me, I think. Long week­end ahead, and I won’t be back until Tues­day. Dis­cuss what you like in the com­ments and enjoy summer’s kick­off. Let’s hope it’s a long one.

Chick­ens, how to put this? There are days when I open my lit­tle lap­top and launch my wee browser and call up my NN.C Word­Press dash­board page, and a sin­gle thought fills my skull:

I hate you.

Some­times it goes into greater detail:

I hate you I hate me I hate every­body I don’t want to do this How did I get myself roped into this Why am I not writ­ing a book Why am I wast­ing my time on this crap.

Usu­ally it passes. I think of this page as bat­ting prac­tice, and these protests are, 99 days out of 100, just the creak­ing of the old mus­cles before they warm up and loosen up and start con­nect­ing with the ball. On the 100th day, it’s not, and that’s why I’m glad for you folks, because you’re all fab­u­lous and many of you are bet­ter writ­ers than I am, and some­times you send pho­tos. So let’s let our cor­re­spon­dent MichaelG, occa­sion­ally fur­loughed Cal­i­for­nia state worker, carry the ball today. He left this in com­ments over the week­end, but he sent me some pix to go with it. He went to the AMGEN 2009 Tour of Cal­i­for­nia when it rolled through his town:

The Amgen Tour of Cal­i­for­nia kicked off today in Sacra­mento. Those who count such things tell us more than 100,000 peo­ple showed up to watch the race between the bicy­cle peo­ple and the impend­ing storm. The bicy­cle peo­ple and the rest of us won. The race was a pro­logue. 136 rid­ers started at one minute inter­vals to race the clock over a 2.4 mile course around the State Capi­tol. There were some fast cyclists in the first 118 rid­ers and 118 min­utes (notably the Marks Ren­shaw and Cavendish) but the last 18 min­utes and rid­ers were the cream. Zir­bel, Hushovd, Kirchen, Boo­nen, Hin­cape, Tyler, Zabriskie, Arm­strong, Van­de­velde, Can­cel­lara, Basso, Rogers, Lan­dis, Leipheimer. This was where the rac­ing and the times got seri­ous. The sus­pense all day, the wait­ing for the arrival of the storm and the elite rid­ers had the crowd greet­ing the late rid­ers and the per­sis­tent good weather with cheers of appro­ba­tion and relief. The cheers grew louder and louder as rider after rider low­ered best time only to be shunted aside by a suc­ceed­ing rider. It was a great day to stand on a curb in Sacramento.

A most enjoy­able day. After­wards, I fell into a pub down the street with a friend for a pint of Anchor Steam. It was deli­cious. Details and pix avail­able on dozens of web sites. KCRA, SACBEE and VS (all dot com) are three good places to start. The rerun on VS starts in about 10 min­utes. I can’t wait. Live cov­er­age and reruns will be on VS for the next 10 days or so. Davis to Santa Rosa tomor­row. It’s as good as the Tour de France. Same cast on the road and on the TV includ­ing Liggett, Sher­wen and Roll. Don’t miss it.

Michael gives the photo ID on this as: Arnold, Cavendish, The Fabe, Levi and Lance. It’s remark­able mainly for the unnat­ural hue of the governor’s hair. And finally, what’s a vol­un­teer shift worth if you can’t grab a few pho­tos of your­self for the scrap­book? Ladies and gen­tle­men, your correspondent:

Thanks, Michael. I’m tak­ing the rest of the day off.

Every so often Lance Man­nion mines his old note­books for blog entries. Well, I don’t have old note­books, but I do have NN.C. I started this site in part because it would require me to write some­thing every day, to keep a jour­nal of sorts, to keep a note­book in one form or another. So here’s some­thing I turned up in my search for the Dex­ter col­umn yes­ter­day. Be glad you don’t know me in real life, for I am, appar­ently, insufferable.

This is from Feb­ru­ary 7, 2002:

Yes­ter­day one of our neighbor’s kids stopped by. Middle-schooler, col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion for a school paper on pere­grine falcons.

“There’s been a pere­grine fal­con in our neigh­bor­hood,” he said.

“No way,” I told him. “Not around here. You’re almost cer­tainly con­fus­ing it with a hawk. Red-tailed, Cooper’s, one of those. They’re big, they look like falcons.”

He insisted it was a pere­grine. I insisted it couldn’t be. We had a short argu­ment over whether they roost in trees in pop­u­lated areas. I sus­pected I was putting him off, so I told him he ought to check out the Rap­tor Chap­ter, a non-profit that does reha­bil­i­ta­tion on injured birds of prey. “Do you have the num­ber?” he asked. I invited him in while I fetched the phone book. Alan walked in at this point. “Con­nor here thinks he’s seen a pere­grine fal­con in the neigh­bor­hood,” I said. “No way,” he said. Etc., etc. “Besides, they’re migra­tory,” I said. “They’re on the coasts at this time of year.” Con­nor said they weren’t. “I think you’d bet­ter check your research,” I told him.

Alan won­dered what I was doing with the phone book. “I’m look­ing up the Rap­tor Chap­ter num­ber for him.”

“The Rap­tor Chap­ter? They didn’t have the per­mits! The duck dicks shut her down,” Alan said.

“Shut her down? Janie? When?” I said.

“While back,” he said. “Of course we ran a cou­ple para­graphs inside, after all that stuff we’ve been writ­ing about her all these years.”

At this point I looked at Con­nor, who appeared some­what dazed, no doubt think­ing, Why the hell did I ring the door­bell of these lunatics? “I have a field guide, if you’d like to check it,” I said, gen­tly. “Or you could call the Indi­ana DNR. They have lots of infor­ma­tion. Guy name of John Cas­trale runs the pere­grine rein­tro­duc­tion program.”

Finally, the thought occurred to me: “Why did you stop by, Connor?”

“I wanted to ask if you’d seen the fal­con,” he said.

“Uh, no,” I said. And with that, he left. If I could have that five min­utes to live over, I’d do it differently.

Blog­gage:

I have a friend who works in TV news here, and when­ever I bitch about the pathetic jour­nal­ism — and fourth-rate star power — of local anchors, he rolls his eyes and give me a jaded, what-can-you-do look. How­ever, I think even he would be appalled by news of a Detroit news anchor par­tic­i­pat­ing in a crooked deal between a sludge treat­ment com­pany and the city coun­cil, and I hope on behalf of jour­nal­ists every­where, this para­graph made his eyes pop out:

Stinger, who joined Fox 2 as an inves­tiga­tive reporter in 1997 and became an anchor in 2004, was paid about $325,000 a year by Fox 2 Detroit in 2005, accord­ing to divorce records.

Actu­ally, as TV-news anchors are paid — she anchored the morn­ing news show — this is pocket change. All to look pretty. No won­der every Miss Amer­ica con­tes­tant wants that gig.

Kids these days. Adults these days. Sheesh.

Early exit this morn­ing — it’s back to the gym for mommy.

Photo by Andrea Bossy, with Andrea’s camera.

This was what it boiled down to, after (mum­ble) bot­tles of wine and blueberry-vodka shoot­ers — see the young minx with glasses in the front row? in front of the super­model with glasses? they were her idea — and lo, it was fun. Sud­denly it was after mid­night and I had to pack my half-eaten tiramisu and go home, and it’s just as well, because after I left, some­one went out for White Cas­tles. White Cas­tles, on top of a blueberry-vodka shooter, would have been lethal. And then I would have missed the very pic­turesque car fire I saw from the free­way, yet another area of urban excel­lence in which Detroit leads the nation. Good thing it was hap­pen­ing near a tricky inter­change, or I might have stopped for a photo.

The com­pany was great, and I’ll be adding links to the b’roll as soon as I sort them all out. The face to my left, Michelle, said she wanted to fig­ure out a way she could spend all her time sewing. She said she made quilts. I’m think­ing, OK, very nice, quilts, sewing, yes yes yes. And then I saw some of her quilts, and thought, I sat next to an artist all night long and didn’t know it.

Any­hoo, all thanks to Andrea, our host­ess (first face to Bossy’s right), and just because food this good should be spread around, here’s her recipe for…

Fab­u­lous Salmon Spread
(recipe comes from the Com­plete Book of Hors d’oeuvre, which is out of print)

1 T. but­ter to grease pan
4 oz. sesame crack­ers
one stick (1/2 cup) of but­ter, less what­ever you used to grease pan, melted
2.5 pounds cream cheese, at room tem­per­a­ture
4 eggs
1/2 pound smoked salmon (not lox but the smoked fil­lets that come vac­uum sealed)
1/2 cup finely chopped scal­lions (includ­ing some green)
1/4 cup minced fresh dill

Pre­heat oven to 350 degrees. Use approx­i­mately 1 T. of but­ter to thor­oughly coat the bot­tom and sides of a 9″ spring­form pan. Crush crack­ers and dust some up the sides of the pan. Then mix the rest of the crack­ers with the melted but­ter, and press into bot­tom of the pan.

Using an elec­tric mixer, beat cream cheese and eggs thor­oughly until com­pletely mixed and smooth. (It’s okay if there are a few tiny bumps here and there.) Crum­ble salmon (with­out skin) into the cheese mix­ture, and add scal­lions and dill. Beat again until mix­ture becomes lighter and fluffy. Pour into pan, spread­ing and smooth­ing with a spatula.

Bake 5 min­utes at 350, then reduce heat to 325 and bake 50 min­utes more. If you don’t trust your oven, check for done­ness: cake should be just set in the mid­dle. If you’ve opened the oven to check, give it a cou­ple of min­utes to heat back up to tem­per­a­ture again, and then turn it off. Do NOT open door. Allow salmon fab­u­los­ity to cool com­pletely in oven with door closed. This will take sev­eral hours.

If serv­ing the same day, do not refrig­er­ate, as this tastes much bet­ter at room tem­per­a­ture. It tastes even bet­ter the next day, how­ever, and keeps well for sev­eral days, so feel free to make ahead and refrig­er­ate once it’s cooled. (Cover tightly with plas­tic wrap first.) Just bring up to room temp before serv­ing. Serve with lots of crusty bread for spreading.

This makes a large quan­tity, suit­able for a party. On a buf­fet table with lots of other foods, this quan­tity would safely cover 30 peo­ple. It’s quite rich and goes fur­ther than you’d think.

Also, thanks, Sat­urn, for being Bossy’s cor­po­rate sponsor.

Source: Lis­aPal

Is it pos­si­ble to be friends with some­one you’ve never met? If you wanted to argue in the affir­ma­tive, I could bun­dle up my 12, 13, 14-ish years of cor­re­spon­dence with Ash­ley Mor­ris, for research pur­poses. You’d see how we “met,” back in the early days of the web, when I typed “war­ren zevon” into this mar­velous thing I’d just dis­cov­ered, some­thing called a “search engine,” and stum­bled across Ashley’s unof­fi­cial War­ren Zevon page. I wrote him a note. He wrote back. It went on from there.

Ashley’s WZ page had Easter eggs in it, one of which was a hyper­linked period at the end of a sen­tence. It took you to a photo of a crazy-eyed top­less woman doing the splits. He said it had been sent to him by another girl who’d started out a friendly cor­re­spon­dent and ended with abrupt ques­tions about his penis size and an unso­licited top­less pic­ture. So you can see, per­haps, why Ash­ley responded to out-of-the-blue notes from strange women — you never knew when you’d get another naked pic­ture in the e-mails.

That’s not how it went with us, of course. Instead, we wrote back and forth about every­thing and noth­ing. I guess it started when Ash­ley was fin­ish­ing his doc­tor­ate in com­puter sci­ence at Tulane, after which he moved to Idaho for a spell, then to Chicago, then back to his beloved New Orleans (while keep­ing the job in Chicago — he had a long com­mute). Along the way we cov­ered every­thing from his Audi Quat­tro (essen­tial for Idaho win­ter dri­ving) to his fond­ness for Cuban cig­ars (which may have been a plank in the foun­da­tion of his rad­i­cal left­ism — he must have thought any­one who could turn out cig­ars like those couldn’t be all bad) to his agony over the fate of New Orleans. Along the way, he went off to the Czech Repub­lic to teach at a con­fer­ence and came home with a fianceé, who stood over six feet tall. Did I have any sug­ges­tions on where she might find clothes to fit?, he wrote once. I told him you could find any­thing in Chicago, but for best results, ask a drag queen.

He was raised by his grand­par­ents, whom he thought were his par­ents, with a shift­less older sis­ter that he learned late in life was actu­ally his mother. She died a few months ago, of an over­dose. Ash­ley opened up her apart­ment to start putting her affairs in order and found a fresh two-gram pack­age of heroin on the kitchen counter. It’s a reflec­tion of the kind of guy he was that he man­aged to find the humor in such a discovery:

I called the cops who found the body, and asked them what to do with the heroin. They said I could bring it in to the station.

yeah, right.

That would be the time I get pulled over for speed­ing. “Yes, ossifer, I was bring­ing this brown tar to the sta­tion! Hon­est!”. Or maybe, I could just announce when I got there: “HI, I BROUGHT THE HEROIN!”.

When, late in his PhD pro­gram, he was diag­nosed with adult ADD and pre­scribed Ritalin, a turn of events that saved his doc­tor­ate from obliv­ion — he said he could never have fin­ished his dis­ser­ta­tion with­out it — he told this same mother/sister about it. She said, “Oh, they told us that when you were a lit­tle kid, but I just fig­ured it was bull­shit.” He said he wanted to stran­gle her.

He didn’t have an easy or long life, but it was action-packed. He lived in Los Ange­les for a spell, rode a motor­cy­cle he was nearly killed on, made music, cut a demo. The demo never amounted to much, but it did turn up in the sound­track of a porno movie, a turn of events Ash­ley him­self dis­cussed here (first com­ment). He had a huge heart. This you could tell from the get-go, and if it wasn’t clear imme­di­ately, it surely was evi­dent in “Fuck you, you fuck­ing fucks,” his cri de coeur from New Orleans in late 2005, which proved pro­fan­ity can be poetry in the right hands:

What about you fucks that don’t want to rebuild NOLA because we’re below sea level. Well, fuck­heads, then we shouldn’t have rebuilt that cesspool Chicago after the fire, that Sodom San Fran­cisco after the earth­quakes, Miami after end­less hur­ri­canes, or New York because it’s a mag­net for terrorists.

And fuck Kansas, Iowa, and your fuck­ing tornados.

Fuck you, San Anto­nio. You aren’t get­ting our Saints. When I get to the Alamo, I’m tak­ing a piss on it. You prob­a­bly go to funer­als and hit on the widow. Class­less fucks.

And so on. He hated all the bull­shit spewed into the air after Kat­rina, and wanted one thing and one thing only — for New Orleans to get its due. OK, he wanted other things, too. He wanted another beer and some great NOLA street food and a big cigar. Check out that pic­ture up there, that’s Ash­ley in his ele­ment — sweaty, cigar in his pocket, and some din­ner. You know the fun­ni­est thing about that pic­ture? The two lit­tle pieces of broc­coli. When War­ren Zevon said, “Enjoy every sand­wich,” Ash­ley always said, “Make mine a muffaletta.”

He leaves behind his wife, Hana, and three young chil­dren, along with dozens of friends, fans and fel­low travelers.

One last thing: A few years back, I went to Chicago with Alan and Kate, and had vague plans to meet Ash for a beer. This was in Feb­ru­ary, and it was cold and windy, and we’d just frozen our butts off all day, and at the end of it, I begged off. Stu­pid, stu­pid, stu­pid. I thought we’d have another chance, and had vaguely planned for this June in Chicago, but that had recently been tor­pe­doed, too. I thought I’d take Kate down to New Orleans later this year and show her what still had to be done there. I fig­ured Ash would give us the tour, and then we’d have a muf­faletta. Well, that didn’t work out. Maybe I should try for the funeral. I’m sure he’ll have a hell of a sec­ond line, it will rock the llama’s ass, and know­ing Ash­ley, there won’t be a fuck­mook in sight.

Last night brought the sad and sur­pris­ing news that our very own Ash­ley Mor­ris died yes­ter­day in Florida. I don’t know any­thing more than what his wife, Hana, posted last night; if I find out any­thing more, I’ll pass it along.

In the mean­time, keep good thoughts, prayers, what­ever your incli­na­tion is. He will be missed.

I always liked my old radio co-host Mark GiaQuinta. He’s a funny guy, but unlike a lot of funny guys, he’s funny even when he’s being inter­viewed after call­ing the police who called the bomb squad who sent their lit­tle robot out to dis­arm a funny pack­age sent to his office, and, and…I’m get­ting ahead of myself.

Read the story here.

I’m so proud of my lit­tle quote machine:

GiaQuinta said he didn’t think there was a bomb in the box, but when police asked him if he was 100 per­cent sure there was noth­ing dan­ger­ous inside, he said no.

“I thought he prob­a­bly wrapped up some dog crap,” GiaQuinta said.

It wasn’t dog crap. It was a turnip. Funny story.

FWOb has pic­tures.

We got some more snow over the week­end, well within nor­mal for March in Michi­gan — maybe three new inches. But Colum­bus, which by March is usu­ally well into the mud/freezing rain/defrosting dog poo stage of win­ter, got a foot and a half, maybe more. My brother said it was so bad, he closed his bar. Then he called one of the TV sta­tions, to get it added to the ever-lengthening clos­ings list.

“Um,” she said. “Is this.…an institution?”

“Hell yes it’s an insti­tu­tion,” he replied. “It’s a bar in Obetz! That’s like a church!”

“Sir,” she said. “I don’t think you’re being seri­ous with me.”

Well, in a bliz­zard, all the seri­ous is being hogged by peo­ple try­ing to drive.

I said last fall that I wanted lots of snow this win­ter, and I guess I got my wish. (As for our boat­ing for­tunes this year, in the god-I-hope-our-slip-isn’t-dry sense of things, I go for cau­tiously opti­mistic.) I’m still not really tired of win­ter yet. I miss my bicy­cle and the color green, but so much of cop­ing with cold weather comes down to hav­ing the sense to wear a decent coat and boots. Still, there was a moment Sat­ur­day when I turned a cor­ner and was hit in the face by a blast of wind, and thought: OK, enough. By week’s end the tem­per­a­ture should be nudg­ing 50. That’ll do.

The stu­dent film is done. I left at the DVD-burning point, which was four hours into our last edit­ing ses­sion. I’d rec­om­mend a class like this to any­one who likes movies, just so you can see what it takes to make even a very very small one. You’ll learn why “cre­ative dif­fer­ences” are such a big fac­tor in Hol­ly­wood. We spent an hour tweak­ing audio fil­ters to get the right sound on a 30-second phone con­ver­sa­tion, so that when we cut to one char­ac­ter while the other one was still talk­ing, the voice would sound like it was com­ing through a tele­phone. There’s a strong ten­dency, at every step of the game, to say, “Screw it. This is good enough.” You need a few per­fec­tion­ists in the room.

But here’s the best thing: This really is a cre­ative out­let that is truly col­lab­o­ra­tive, and if you have the right col­lab­o­ra­tion, it becomes more than the sum of its parts. I’ll trea­sure the won­der I felt at every step of the process as our three-minute story came together. I also learned a thing or two about cheats for no-budget sto­ry­telling; one scene was lit by two hand-held flash­lights. It was great fun, and I can’t wait to take the next class. And yes, I’ll post the video even­tu­ally, but please be gentle.

So, Monday-morning blog­gage for you folks to fight about:

The qual­i­fier, now an ongo­ing series: Mitch Albom spends 60 per­cent of his Sun­day metro col­umn out­lin­ing two cases of bad behav­ior caught on video and seen widely on the inter­net (the puppy-throwing sol­diers and car-wash mom, for those of you who keep up with such things). Then…wait for it…the qualifier:

Now, I am not con­don­ing either act — not the dog fling, not the hos­ing. Nei­ther was smart or nec­es­sary. Both seem cold, cruel, even deplorable. But I won­der where we are going when every moment of every life is filmed.

The only thing that could make that pas­sage bet­ter would be a “dare I say” inserted between “cruel” and “even deplorable.”

Another shoe drops in the Detroit text-message scan­dal. We are shocked, shocked to find it’s about more than sex. In fact, it’s about sweet­heart deals and other glo­ries of life in a cor­rupt city. By 2002, I was cer­tainly aware that it was per­fectly legal for my bosses to look at my com­pany e-mail. (In fact, I often won­dered if they were, and was sure to give them lots of juicy read­ing mate­r­ial.) What sort of moron sends stuff like this over a pub­lic (trans­la­tion: where bosses = every­one) network?

In a mes­sage on Oct. 30, 2002, (may­oral chief of staff Chris­tine) Beatty asked him how much she owed (may­oral friend and favored con­trac­tor) Bobby Fer­gu­son for the dri­ve­way he poured at her Detroit home.

“Ya know ya my sis­ter,” he replied. “Fam­ily don’t worry about shit like money.”

Finally, Laura Lippman’s new book, “Another Thing to Fall,” hits stores tomor­row. Run out and buy it and make the Lippman-Simon Co-Prosperity Sphere’s March 2008 one to remem­ber. Plot syn­op­sis: Lippman’s P.I., Tess Mon­aghan, inves­ti­gates shenani­gans on the set of a TV series filmed in Bal­ti­more. No, not that one. (Which reminds me: Wire-blogging reaches its crescendo over at The New Pack­age. Dis­tracted as I was last week by my other life, your cor­re­spon­dent will check in…eventually. The new slackage!

OK, that’s it for me. I have a story to write, and have to read­just my head into money-making mode.

Quite an evoca­tive story from yesterday’s Det­News, in Neal Rubin’s col­umn. I can’t decide if it’s a story about pluck, stub­born­ness or stu­pid­ity: A Detroit teacher has had 15 vehi­cles stolen in four years. Four­teen, actu­ally — 13 Town & Coun­try mini­vans and one Durango, twice. I’ll give her this much — this is one nice white lady who is not intim­i­dated by the rough, tough city:

Another time, she found her Town & Coun­try in some delinquent’s dri­ve­way near Vetal. When the police didn’t show any great inter­est in help­ing her get it back, she dialed her cell phone, which she had left in the con­sole. The thief picked up. “I hope you like orange,” Ful­ton said, “because you’re going to be wear­ing an orange jump­suit.” The kid jumped back into the van, drove it to Grand River Avenue and McNi­chols Road and crashed it into a tree. So maybe that wasn’t the best idea on her part, but at least she felt bet­ter for a lit­tle while.

The story goes on to point out that Chrysler lags other domes­tic car­mak­ers in anti-theft pro­tec­tion. They do, how­ever, offer lots of help­ful advice:

After the most recent theft, she e-mailed Chrysler to ask why it didn’t do a bet­ter job stop­ping thieves. After 15 vehi­cles, she said, she was run­ning out of patience. Some­one named Jenny e-mailed her back. Among Jenny’s sug­ges­tions was to park in “lighted areas, garages or neigh­bor­hoods with­out a his­tory of stolen vehi­cles activ­ity, when­ever pos­si­ble.” “Great,” Ful­ton fired back. “Are you going to drive me to work?”

If the city sur­vives, it’ll be because of women like this — always will­ing to buy Amer­i­can one more time. When Alan finally got his shot­gun out of lay­away, the gun shop owner was exam­in­ing a new item of inven­tory, a .38-caliber Smith & Wes­son Chiefs Spe­cial, the standard-issue police ser­vice revolver for gen­er­a­tions (at least until they started car­ry­ing semi­au­to­mat­ics, to keep up with the bad guys). It had “Detroit P.D.” stamped on the bar­rel, and he said, “I could put this up for sale and get a $300 pre­mium from some­body in Los Ange­les who wants to own a gun from the mur­der cap­i­tal of the United States. But I won’t.” You said it, mis­ter. Keep Detroit armed and strong.

Folks, as should be obvi­ous by now, I got nut­tin’ today. I see some of you are dis­cussing the wind on the east coast in pre­vi­ous post com­ments. Well, before you had that wind, we had it, two nights ago. Let’s all offer good thoughts and sup­port for NN.C’s neigh­bor and com­menter JohnC, who’s prob­a­bly wish­ing he’d cleaned out the garage and put the Cadil­lac away that night:

They were out of town at the time. I won­der if the car alarm con­tin­ued for hours and hours.

Off to write words for money. Later.