Well, you could have this weekend and return it to the manufacturer, eh? The giant snowstorm was followed by a big freeze — this is not news to a large number of you, I know — and everywhere was suffering. The dog is irritable, torn between his instinctual need to visit the outdoors regularly and its utter suckitude. My poor car looks like it has leprosy, but it’s too cold to wash it and besides, it’s only going to snow again tomorrow and probably the next day, too. I deprived a local mall of my business and went to one farther away, because the former is one of those Potemkin Village lifestyle-center malls, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to do on a day with single-digit temperatures and a howling wind, it’s walk outdoors between stores.

I went to Somerset instead. Every luxury store under the sun, plus a few you haven’t heard of. None had anything I wanted. Everything seemed cheap and stupid. The upside: Cheap and stupid is now 30 percent off. Even Barney’s was having a sale. You could buy a pair of ugly shoes for $325, marked down from $545. I really can’t wait for Christmas to be over. Nothing like double-digit unemployment (barely; Michigan’s now at 9.4 percent, but expected to go much higher, and I suspect that makes us No. 1) and the promise of an even worse future to extract all the fun out of spending your money.

But enough about me.

Some good bloggage today: Every so often I go Googling for Tim Goeglein (who really should work for Google, don’t you think? He could answer his phone, “Google, Goeglein.”), to see if he’s left a breadcrumb trail. The new Washington will be a hostile place for conservatives other than Rick Warren, but you should never underestimate the ability of people to land on their feet, change and/or find a seat somewhere on the Wingnut Welfare gravy train. So far, nothing’s turned up, until this, a WashPost story from earlier this month, about a lunchtime gathering at a D.C. Buca di Beppo. Deal Hudson, founder and former publisher of Crisis magazine, was host of a big table in the Pope Room, and the idea was to read Christmas poetry aloud to the group. That’s it. Sort of charming when you think about it.

Tim’s not in the story, only in the photo (and only the top of his head, at that). But just to show you what a big tent the right wing is and remains, note that lineup in the picture: born-again virgin Dawn Eden; nice Lutheran Tim (hands folded prayerfully?); and Hudson, the host. (The other two guys are Googleable, but ciphers — to me, anyway.) Eden is known for having rejected what she calls a “‘Sex and the City’ lifestyle” for orthodox Catholicism, celibacy, anti-abortion activism and a book contract (“The Thrill of the Chaste”). Hudson became ex-publisher of Crisis after a story surfaced about a drunken sexual encounter with a teenage college student that led to harassment charges against him, i.e., unchaste behavior. And among the magazines Goeglein plundered in his strange career as a writer was Crisis.

We are all sinners, and the balm of literature is soothing to all. Remember that.

Thinking of the Wingnut propaganda chorus reminds me that Alicublog is still on the job keeping tabs on them all, and has a fine roundup post on Christmas Week at the National Review. Sample:

“Why does an obsessive Nazi-hunter like Simon Wiesenthal get positive press,” (Mark Goldblatt) asks, “while an obssessive Communist-hunter like Joe McCarthy is vilified?” Maybe because Wiesenthal hunted actual Nazis, while McCarthy was happy to tar citizens ranging from Owen Lattimore to Adlai Stevenson.

Finally, although it isn’t technically Holiday Photos Week yet, I’m kicking things off with a couple of contributions from our webmaster, J.C. Burns, who is way ahead of me on the digitizing-old-photos chore. He sent two along, pegged to my comment about Tri-X film, but since one includes me and another features a famous mystery guest, let’s get it started. First, here are three of J.C.’s women friends, c. 1979-80ish, in the courtyard of his salad-days garden apartment in Atlanta. The woman on the left is Verneda I-forget-her-last-name, the one on the right is Deb Warlaumont-now-Mulvey, my BFF then and now (posts here as deb, always lower-case), and in the middle is a woman who really should have rethought that scarf. And her hair. And the shoes (Dr. Scholl’s!). And certainly the glasses, although that was the fashion at the time.

It looks like I was consulting my checkbook while about to descend concrete stairs in wooden sandals. Which explains why I frequently sported bruises in those days.

The other is today’s Comment Thread Mystery, and if I had something to give as a prize I would, but alas. Below is another picture of Deb, along with a college classmate of ours. Same general era. He is, today, a journalist of national reputation (his official bio calls him “renowned,” but I think that’s pushing it), who makes frequent appearances on TV. This puzzle may favor the men in our audience, but that’s the only clue I’m giving you. Once his identity is correctly identified, I’ll post a contemporary photo in an update, so we can all laugh over the difference. Who is our mystery man? (And please: Those who knew him then, or know because they read all the comments here, sit this one out, please? This means you, MarkH. The underlying joke of this photo is the physical change.)

Everyone have a great start to a short week. And try to stay warm.

UPDATE: Jeff TMMO wins, but I think he had help. I just don’t see how you could recognize “renowned NFL reporter Peter King” based on the jaw alone. Not when the hair is such a distraction, anyway. (It looks like a wig, doesn’t it?) I guess it’s all that practice at looking at the soul within, because this is what he extrapolated from:

Whew. Congratulations.

Sorry so late updating today. As others have noted, we’ve had a complication hereabouts. The school cancellation came by robo-call at 5:45 a.m., which rather ticked off the house’s phone-answerer, because we’ve known this storm was coming for days, you could see its vast pink-and-white mass bearing down on us from the west, and most schools cancelled last night. At least there wasn’t the 6 a.m. answering chorus of snowblowers, mainly because it was still coming down so hard we were in what’s-the-point territory. I was able to go back to sleep and make it clear until 8:30 a.m. — pure luxury.

Anyway, I’m going out in a bit with the video camera. So maybe we’ll have something to add for the weekend.

In the spirit of the already wack-a-doo schedule, then, let’s make this a leftover stew today. First, an announcement:

Last year’s NN.C commenters’ holiday photo submissions were so nice, let’s us all do it again, shall we? For the week between Christmas and New Year’s, let’s see if we can assign a face to some of the names in our community. I know a lot of you have blogs and already put up pictures there; if so, give us a link. It’s just that this is such a close-knit little group already, it’d be nice to put a face with a name. You know where to send things — my first name at nancynall.com. If you’re shy, send a picture of Christmas out your way. Because God knows, there’s not a lot to talk about that week. Historically, anyway. Knock wood.

A little bloggage:

Maybe we are reaching the blogging/fair use/who’s-zooming-who tipping point sooner rather than later. The Chicago Reader has problems with the Huffington Post’s sticky-fingered blogging style. Good posts on it here and here. The latter post sums it up nicely:

I’m sure that someone is thinking, “hey, you get lots of inbound links from a popular site, and they link to you directly from their local homepage, which helps your SEO.” Whatever–they’re still taking other people’s content, in my non-expert but reasonably well-informed opinion well outside the bounds of fair use–so that they can get more pageviews and SEO advantages for themselves by taking the entirety of other people’s work. They’re taking all of it. Real people–my colleagues–wrote those. You can give us the inbound links, which helps you, us, and everyone, without taking entire pieces of work.

Preach, my bruthuh.

Maybe I’m showing my age here, but I came of age in newspapers when the prime visual element in them wasn’t the USA Today dumbass graphic, the “charticle” or any of the other graphics so common today, but a big-ass, black-and-white photo. Tri-X Kodak film, ASA 400 pushed to 1600, baseball-size grain heavily burned and dodged in the darkroom. Pictures like this. And this. I like video fine, but there’s nothing like a still to say “news” — at least to me. All this by way of setting up a link to this 2008 Year in Photos collection, with many jaw-dropping images. (All in color, however. RIP, Tri-X.) Warning to dial-up users: These are big, high-res images that will take a while to load even on fast connections. Be patient.

Finally, an idea so silly it could only come out of Detroit, but at the same time crazy enough that it just might work. I’d drive one, anyway: A Cadillac Volt. Shut UP. Too expensive for me, but I’d love to drive one to, say, a Whole Foods parking lot in Santa Monica. I’d be Chili Palmer, only greener.

The problem with cold-weather outdoor art is, some people always have to overachieve. Note the fish.

With that, I think the battery is charged and I’m ready to go out again. Bon voyage, Danny, you bastard, heading off to Hawaii. The rest of us will be down here, reeking of two-stroke engine enhaust (from the snowblowers). Spare a kind thought.

There’s a church here. You probably have a church. If you’re like most Americans, somewhere in your church you hear the phrase “Father, son and Holy Spirit.” In church here, they say, “Organic, humane and sustainable.”

It’s sort of annoying; I think food should nourish, not polish your ego. But it makes for some tasty lunches. Yesterday: Cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, bread from the Acme Bread Company, sausage from some place next door, wine ditto, chocolate ditto. We ate it on the observation deck overlooking the bay, outside the Ferry Building:

(There was supposed to be a photo here, but like I said: Our internet connection is spotty and imperfect. Couldn’t upload to Flickr.)

I don’t mean to clog up your time with these updates, which aren’t that interesting. But I needed an entry to hang this bit of bloggage on, which is worth clicking through just to see the picture: Internet sting nets ‘World’s Greatest Dad’.

Off to Monterey today.

Just a quick pop-in to say hi. We’re having ourselves a fine time. We have (spotty, imperfect) internet access. We have not gone native. We are tourists, out ‘n’ proud:

This trip — rent a bike, cross the bridge, lunch in Sausalito, ferry home — is highly, highly recommended, especially on a day that starts cloudy and ends in blazing sun. Even though I was faked out by the heavy morning overcast, failed to apply sunscreen and got my first burn in years. Even though riding the bridge means navigating with the squadrons of hard-charging native cyclists, none of whom are amused by our slow-moving, head-swiveling, camera-toting presence. I call all these people, male or female, “Danny.” I never got an open sneer from a Danny, but I did cross against the light in front of one, forcing him to slow and probably making the microscopic difference in his lung capacity that will tank his time in his upcoming triathalon.

Sorry, Danny. Shit happens.

Yesterday was Golden Gate Park, the seashore, a little shopping. Today, lunch at Ferry Marketplace:

Ah, I have found my people.

(Actually, that’s a complicated question. For every happy surprise — walk into an ordinary-looking pizza joint and find it stocked with tradesmen enjoying pizza with [angel choirs] fresh tomatoes and diced fresh basil on top — there’s more than a hint of foodier-than-thou, which can get real tired, real fast. However, it still tastes very very good, and my palate is enjoying this trip very, very much.)

Breakfast, then lunch awaits. Gotta run.

I once wrote a story about a man who’d staggered, drunk, out of a bar one night and apparently vanished. No one had heard from him, no one had seen his car in any ditches between the bar and his house, he just, poof, disappeared.

Well, of course he only disappeared in the sense that no one could see him. A week or so after my story ran, the police fished his car, and his body, out of a farm pond on his route home. He’d driven off the road and into eternity, another of the less-celebrated residents of Davy Jones’ locker. (Maybe, in this case, it should be Farmer Jones’ locker.)

His was an easy case for the crack missing-persons team in that jurisdiction, and it’s what I thought of when I read (HT: FWOb) about how divers went into some retention ponds on Indianapolis’ north side after a report that a car had been dumped there, and found…five. Most had been there “for a long time,” the Indy Star reported.

I don’t get it. When our plane passed over Pearl Harbor en route to landing in Hawaii a few years back, the pilot told us to look down at the wreck of the USS Arizona, still leaking a streak of diesel fuel half a century after Dec. 7, 1941. Granted a car isn’t a battleship, but wouldn’t you expect there’d be some surface evidence of a dumped car in a retention pond? And if not, if they keep their secrets that well, I wonder why Hollywood always shows us the killer digging the shallow grave by lantern light, when it would be so much easier to wire a couple cement blocks to the corpse and roll it out past the drop-off? Note to self: Never wonder again what the bluegill might be feeding on in those things.

Friends, that should give you an idea of the sort of conversation-starters I have today. Maybe you guys can carry the weight. Here’s a picture by Brian Stouder, snapped in the wild night before last:

And here’s little Brianette Jr., which only serves to remind me that in Michigan, the Easter egg hunt is likely to be cancelled for snow:

And here’s some bloggage:

There simply has to be more to this story than we’re getting:

It was incorrectly reported in Tuesday’s Tribune Chronicle that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton answered questions from voters in a local congressman’s office.

Reporter John Goodall, who was assigned to the story, spoke by telephone with Hillary Wicai Viers, who is a communications director in U.S. Rep. Charlie Wilson’s staff. According to the reporter, when Viers answered the phone with ‘‘This is Hillary,’’ he believed he was speaking with the Democratic presidential candidate, who had made several previous visits to the Mahoning Valley.

Goodall’s next assignment: Interview Santa Claus.

A new MacBook Air costs $1,800. It’s nice to know Charlie Rose can think fast. And has his priorities straight.

What if they gave haircuts at Hooters? Why, then it would be Lady Jane’s Haircuts for Men. They advertise heavily on local TV, and I gotta admit — the ads are pretty funny.

Finally, I try to keep the aw-isn’t-my-kid-cute stories to a bare minimum here, but indulge me this one: Last night at dinner, Kate plucked an onion ring out of the pile, a very small one. She slipped it over her index finger, held it up and said, “Look, a literal onion ring.” Then she ate it. Please remember this 11-year-old the next time you’re watching your local news and a highly paid, college-educated TV reporter says, “The work is literally back-breaking.” If my 11-year-old can grasp the meaning of the word, so can, and should, he.

Now I’m thinking about onion rings, with the start of spring already upon us. Ah, well, it won’t be bathing-suit season for a good long time here, will it?

Off for my 60,000-mile service. The car, not me. I have way more miles.

Because the true lesson of middle age is to never say, “Things couldn’t get any worse” — because there’s always a way for anything to get worse — a warning that my presence may be scarce around here the next couple days. We’re preoccupied with a family situation. Nothing for you folks to worry about; we’re all healthy and safe. But others aren’t, and we’ll be traveling today, and out of touch.

But that’s OK, because we have a truly fabulous photo from Julie Robinson, who writes: For the holdiays at the Robinson household, we like to encourage our children to engage in cross-dressing. This is our son in his Madrigals tunic and tights. He doesn’t understand how girls can wear such short skirts. Carefully, said Mom, very carefully.

She doesn’t tell us the young man’s name. Let’s call him…Ashley.

On day one of Kwanzaa, I wish you all umoja. Let’s try this again tomorrow.

…for the Stouder kids, standing in front of the city’s best-known holiday decoration, the Wolf & Dessauer Santa. It once adorned the side of the city’s largest and best-loved downtown department store. It was where kids from the whole region came to sit on Santa’s lap while their parents did their holiday shopping. It closed decades ago, but the sign was rescued from storage and restored by volunteers, a story that’s retold about every five minutes by one media outlet or another — look, here’s one now. Anyway, it’s a charming display. Here’s a wider shot.

The chilluns belong to Brian Stouder, one of our most loyal readers and commenters. From left, Grant (named for the Civil War hero, not the drunken president), Chloe and Shelby. Merry Christmas!

One last Halloween picture, with your indulgence:

A true pumpkin artist merely removes the parts of the pumpkin that don’t belong. Note: I am not a pumpkin artist. But when I saw the scar on this one, I knew it belonged in front. My thought was to incorporate it in a tribute to Michael K. Williams, everybody’s favorite “Wire” villain, but…well, I’m no pumpkin artist.

Just got back from the costume parade at Kate’s school. Your correspondent’s eyewitness report: No obvious baby-tart costumes, one borderline, no big deal. Overwhelmingly, it was cute kids having a cute time on a nice day. Among the highlights, Nancy Drew:

Ever-popular in Detroit, sports and rock ‘n’ roll:

A whoopie cushion:

One of the better baby costumes I’ve seen — li’l rock lobster:

Happy Halloween!

Inspired by the Encyclopedia of Immaturity, Kate wanted to carve a barfkin this year. Of course I said yes.

The costume? She’s a hippie.