The Monty Python killer rabbit scene from the Holy Grail film is funny in and of itself, but it achieves a whole new level of humor when you actually keep a pet bunny, or “house rabbit,” as the English say. It’s funny because it’s true. I can’t tell you how many times our own killer has launched herself at one or another of us, furious because we’ve done …something. Her latest trick is to lurk under the dining room table, then aggressively confront anyone who walks through the room. Thankfully, she does not nip in these situations, only threaten.

This is the point at which many pet owners would be dialing the Rabbit Rescue — or boiling water on the stove — but I cannot be distressed by this. In fact, I’m amused. It gives me an opportunity to say, “Behold the cave of Caerbannog!” in a Scottish accent. And I cannot help but respect an animal that doesn’t weigh two pounds but is willing to fight the giants she finds herself living among. And she’s not always bad-tempered. Just now, she jumped up on the couch, accepted some petting and gave me a few licks on the forehead. Rabbits don’t lick for salt, so the book says, so that can be interpreted as a gesture of affection. Like all victims, I choose to see it that way.

Aw, she just rolled over on her back. So cute. Bought herself another week of indulgence.

(Perhaps you’re wondering: Is Nance one of those people who talks to her rabbit as though it were a person, and depicts the rabbit talking back in a funny voice? You know me too well.)

I went over to my local Target to buy wrapping paper yesterday. I know the time to do that is the day after Christmas, but I cannot face another present-wrapping session with the stuff I’ve been trying to use up for a decade now. The mall the Target is part of has fallen on hard times. It has its anchors — Sears, Macy’s, the big bull’s-eye — but the rest of it is all game-over, stores that might as well rename themselves House of Russian Prostitute Style. And there was a shooting there Thanksgiving weekend, so that pretty much iced the cake for the holidays. For more than a year, I’ll occasionally get an e-mail with 16 forwards on it from someone claiming there’s a FORCIBLE RAPE IN THE PARKING LOT EVERY SINGLE DAY, AND THE POLICE ARE COVERING IT ALL UP. I ignore this stuff and shop there anyway, but yesterday, as I made my way in via the rutted back road that I usually take, I had a glimpse of spring. And it nearly broke my axle.

Last week’s snowstorm started in very warm temperatures, and it rain/snowed all day before the temperature plunged 25 degrees overnight, which made all that standing water and slush freeze solid, which means the badly maintained parts of the parking lot are already nursing embryonic potholes the size of graves, and I’m sure the streets in our destitute communities are going to be just as bad. I’m wondering if maybe Coozledad will be willing to share a mule come spring.

Oh, hell. Let’s change the tone. Bloggage awaits:

I know Gwyneth Paltrow is beautiful and fit and perfect and a much better person than me. I also feel a dress like this is a hostile gesture that underlines all of the above, and drives it home with a big F.U. I’m going to assume that after two pregnancies, she’s benefitting from some sort of hidden boob support built into the bodice, but what about the bottom? I guess she has to entirely denude her lady garden to avoid tacky bush assertion, and what if her period arrived unexpectedly? Ew. Just ew. This dress came from the luxury department in the House of Russian Prostitute Style.

What browser do you use? Did you know what you’re charged for goods and services online can depend on this? I wish I were kidding. And I have already found a use for Chrome.

Interesting piece on a Canadian company that has found its market niche as the Comment Police. They cleaned up NPR and saved its comments sections in the bargain. A nice reminder that not everyone’s comments are as fabulous as ours.

The always-interesting Laura Miller on why readers love bad writing. Via Hank.

Jim at Sweet Juniper has found something for his dog Wendell to pull this winter.

Finally, a little “Silent Night” for you, excerpts from the Facebook posting of a friend of a friend, who lived through last week’s blizzard in northwest Indiana:

What an incredible weekend. Wound up stranded because of the blizzard, but we made it to the fire station in Wanatah where about 30 other stranded motorists spend the night. Met some very interesting people and we turned it into a party. Many thanks to the firefighters and Wanatah officials for their hospitality. …It really was an incredible experience. First, space was set aside for the four Muslims stranded so they could spread their prayer rugs to pray. Then there was the family from Romania on their way to Chicago. Their 11-year-old son serenaded us with a violin solo of Christmas carols at 3 a.m. Everyone was still up and talking and the young man received a standing ovation. Never experienced anything like it.

When we want to be, we can be pretty good.

Here’s one reason I don’t listen to media conspiracy theories. Our case in point:

Here’s a locally bylined story in my morning newspaper. Both of them, actually. Headline: Group seeks ban on new Detroit fast-food eateries; City’s high rate of heart disease triggers request

The lead:

If nutritionists have it their way, Detroit fast-food restaurants would do more than hold the pickles and the lettuce.

Most people will read no further. As my fingers peck out these words, someone, somewhere in this place of two million souls is saying, “Jesus Christ, like this shithole doesn’t have enough problems” — we talk salty here — “now they want to ban fast food.”

The mysterious “they” always plays a big role in these conversations. “They” always want to “ban” something. Most people have only a dim idea of how the world works, and their understanding hasn’t advanced much since middle school. And most of us only listen to the news with half our attention. Who has time?

Back to our story:

The Washington, D.C.-based Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine on Tuesday called for Mayor Dave Bing to impose a moratorium on new fast food restaurants. The group said Detroit needs a diet because it has the fourth-highest heart disease rate in the nation, killing 3,400 city residents each year.

“We decided to take on fast food in general because the quality of most menu items is rather poor,” said Susan Levin, the group’s director of nutrition. “The whole country is suffering from these kinds of statistics.”

Oh, OK. Those guys. The noble-sounding Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, aka the Vegan Doctors Group, likes to advocate all sorts of crazy stuff, including ending the use of all animals in medical research, which you don’t have to be a vegan to realize puts them in some pretty fringe-y territory, vis-a-vis the medical community. We had a vegetarian news editor in Fort Wayne who liked to put their “news” in our pages, including one memorable Thanksgiving, when the fattest paper of the year landed on 60,000 front steps with a banner story above the flag detailing just how toxic today’s holiday meal would be.

But the PCRM knows how to play the game in a crowded media marketplace. First, assume a sober, serious-sounding name. Second, focus your press releases narrowly; notice the group isn’t advocating a moratorium on fast-food restaurants everywhere (at least not in this case), but in one city. (Local media outlets are easier to penetrate than the New York Times.) Third, call for a ridiculously empty gesture that has no chance of passing, but can be easily summarized by a pretty reporter doing a stand-up outside a McDonald’s: A doctors’ group is asking the city of Detroit to adopt a moratorium on new fast-food restaurants. I’ll have more at 6.

And then wait for the magic to happen.

You have to wait until the fifth paragraph to get to the point:

Some cities have taken on burger joints, but that doesn’t appear to be on Bing’s menu. Mayoral spokeswoman Karen Dumas said the Health Department is educating residents “so they can make informed decisions.”

In other words, the mayor is not only ignoring the request, he won’t even waste a quote on them. But it doesn’t matter; for a group that counts a total membership of 120,000, fewer than 10 percent of them actual doctors, this story is WIN all around. They’re in both papers. They’re on the local Fox affiliate. In fact, Fox even found a city councilman who agrees; anyone want to guess which one? (If you said, “Charles Pugh, the dumbest man in journalism and city government,” you win.) The system was gamed, the newsroom hacked. As they say around here, their name rang out. And that’s how you do it, folks. Easy-peasey.

Fun facts to know and tell: Guess who the PCRM’s director of public affairs is? One-time FLILF Elizabeth Kucinich. Detroit already has 73 fast-food restaurants, no citation given. That seems shockingly low for a city of 800,000. Grosse Pointe has one (a Wendy’s). The last time I was jonesin’ for a Taco Bell bean burrito, I had to go to Harper Avenue in Detroit, appropriately so, as that’s where the former Mrs. Eminem went to buy her drugs, once upon a time. The drive-through window was a marvel of bulletproof technology; I don’t think people who check weapons in a prison have seen such a contraption.

I don’t eat much fast food. But when I do, I find a crispy-chicken snack wrap at McDonald’s, plus one of their fruit smoothies, fits the bill nicely.

A little bloggage on yet another clear, cold morning? Why not:

In a nightmare blizzard scenario you probably didn’t hear much about outside of Michigan and western Ontario, hundreds of motorists were stranded on a 60-mile stretch of Canadian highway between Sarnia and London, blinded by whiteout conditions caused by 50 mph winds blowing over southern Lake Huron, creating — anyone? — yes, massive lake-effect snow. Maybe because it’s Canada, with their very own accent and Mountie-like diction, but I love police quotes like this:

“We have rescued everyone that was stranded; 237 souls brought to safety,” said Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. David Rektor.

Two hundred thirty-seven souls. We always get our man, down to the last one.

How Gawker, et al was hacked, and how they handled it. (Badly.)

I heard some political gossip a while back that said outgoing Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm was looking to leave the state come New Year’s Day. I also heard California. No, probably Washington.

A good day to all.

I can’t tell you how many times I was reminded yesterday that it was the 69th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and I expect to be reminded at least that many times that today is the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon. As someone who has always disliked anniversary journalism — the lazy morning-show producer’s friend, as s/he fills hour after hour with salutes to marshmallow fluff (celebrating its 50th, all this year!) and looks back at the O.J. Simpson case, now 16 years past — well, I disapprove.

I guess I do, anyway. When I’m bored, sometimes I look to Google for amusement. Today’s search: “today is the” + “anniversary of” and the results, while Pearl Harbor- and Lennon-specific today, reveal just how far we will go for a news peg:

March 15, 2010 — Today is the 25th anniversary of the first .com URL.

July 21, 2010 — Today is the anniversary of the Diana Ross downpour concert in Central Park.

November 28, 2010 — Today is the 115th anniversary of the first car race.

September 8, 2010 — Today is the 26th anniversary of Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon.

And so on. Anniversary journalism is cheap, easy and makes everyone feel good, even on bad-news anniversaries. People who weren’t alive when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor can post “I remember” on their Facebook pages and maybe change their profile picture to a flag. So patriotic! So easy!

I’ll grant you John Lennon, today. Anniversaries that end with a zero or 5 get dispensation. But cool it for 31, please.

I can’t believe I once followed Ted Turner around CNN on the day of its birth and watched as he was asked, over and over, “But how will you fill 24 hours with all-news programming?” The answer: With people yelling at one another. And with anniversary pieces.

A late update today. I apologize. I’ve been reading a bit about Elizabeth Edwards, and hoping I die forgotten and obscure, so as to not scare up the squadrons of drive-by biographers Edwards did. She’s a saint, she’s a bitch, she’s a devoted mother, she’s a selfish mother, she’s this, that and the other thing. Of course she is — was — all these things, which the better obits captured. My favorite was the Washington Post’s, which contains this gem:

(Screeching right-wing harpy Ann) Coulter verbally attacked her husband and said she wished “he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.” Ms. Edwards, spotting Coulter on the MSNBC talk show “Hardball,” called in and on the air insisted politely but firmly that she refrain from personal attacks. Coulter refused to apologize and attacked the Edwards campaign for raising money by using her words. But the confrontation appeared to be a tipping point, costing Coulter advertisers and clients for her opinion column.

That right there is worth a free pass to heaven in my book, or at least a millennium of time off in purgatory. I know Ann has fallen on leaner times of late, but I didn’t know the dustup with Edwards was the instigator.

And then there’s Christine O’Donnell’s take. Why is this woman still in my newspaper? Don’t losers know enough to go away anymore?

She’s going to report him to President Obama? Is Helen Thomas old, confused or just a little spluttery, as we all get from time to time?

And now to do some real work for a change.

Barely two years later, I’m still amazed by a few things about the financial crisis of 2008. It doesn’t help that it was a complicated mess, and we have propagandists using it for their own ends, and yeesh that midterm election, but they boil down to this:

1) Most Americans have no idea how close to the cliff we came, and
2) How much of the bailout money has been paid back, and
3) What life would be like in this country without it.

Every so often when I’m on Facebook, I drop in on my former Indiana congressman, who has discovered the joys of social networking. I don’t dare friend him — it’s not him, it’s his commenters — but he’s capable of insight here and there, and it was fascinating, earlier this week, to see him trying to school his talk radio-listenin’ former constituents on just how essential TARP was. This being a Facebook thread, it’s pretty incoherent taken a piece at a time, but it would seem Mark Souder, bless his wicked little heart, gets it:

One of his friends says: Who touted the $700 billion? Obama and his “the sky is falling” GOP whimp friends. Members of Congress have no idea of what things cost when they pass bills like this. Don’t revise history.

Souder replies: I’m sorry to be aggressive on this but we absolutely do know. For example, National City Bank (number one at the time in our area) was toast and would have taken down much of our area’s businesses. We were getting a call a day of businesses having their loans foreclosed. Instead of a bank run, the govt floated cash and forced a merger. …It was incredibly scary. I got phone calls and e-mails at all hours of the day. It was Its A Wonderful Life on all fronts. …Stop acting like everyone in Congress is stupid. Too many liberals but most knew exactly what we were doing. The Republican members kicked all staff, including leadership staff, out of the room and argued for four and one-half hours. Business majors were furious at all the lawyers – bluntly said – who were clueless. But, unfortunately, many who knew better just told you what you wanted to hear. EVERY SINGLE MEMBER of Congress knew that 700 billion was a credit card limit, not the actual spent. It was useful for political purposes to smear the Democrats by acting like 700 billion was spent – unless you wanted to have to defend yourself, like I did, to the Tea Party groups.

“It was useful for political purposes to smear the Democrats” — heh heh. Yes, it was, and it would have been nice to have heard a few more honest Republicans speak to this, but ah well.

If you’re not inclined to go spelunking on Facebook, try this NYT piece based on Fed documents, which gives you more information:

As financial markets shuddered and then nearly imploded in 2008, the Federal Reserve opened its vault to the world on a scope much wider and deeper than previously disclosed.

Citigroup, struggling to stay afloat, sought help from the Fed at least 174 times during one remarkable 13-month period. Barclays, the British bank, at one point owed nearly $48 billion to the Fed. Even better-off banks like Goldman Sachs took advantage of Fed loans offered at rock-bottom rates.

The Fed’s efforts to stave off a financial crisis reached far beyond Wall Street, touching manufacturers like General Electric, the Detroit automakers and Harley-Davidson, central banks from Britain to Japan and insurers and pension funds in Sweden and South Korea.

I remember listening to a “This American Life” piece from the time that spoke of what happened when, one scary fall day in 2008, the U.S. banking system “broke the buck,” i.e., had NO money to lend. I recommend it to anyone who thinks enormous multinational corporations should run their finances the way your grandma does — i.e., McDonald’s shouldn’t roll out cappuccino machines in all its stores until it has saved the money in that coffee can in the cupboard. Everybody likes the car metaphor when it comes to economies these days. When I think of economics at this level, I think of early cars, how you had to be a mechanic yourself to keep one running, how a purring engine was a matter of manually adjusting fuel and air and spark juuuust right, then readjusting, then readjusting again, and being prepared to start from scratch when need be.

Economics is complicated. There’s a reason people get doctorates in it, and why so much of its study involves theory, theories that frequently don’t pan out. I only wish we had someone willing to break this stuff down in ways average people can understand, and then explain it on prime time. Kind of like the way Glenn Beck wraps his racism up in nostalgia for the good ol’ days.

As it shakes out, the TARP program will end up costing closer to $25 billion, not $700 billion. As for these nitwits who think the economy would be better off “in the long run” if it had been allowed to go off the cliff, I have this to say: Fuck you. Even Mark Souder agrees with me on that:

Bankruptcy (of the automotive companies) was discussed in depth, many times. Chrysler is much more marginal than GM. But for car companies, it was not understood by most Members initially about the Pension Guarantee Fund that people pay into. If a company goes bankrupt, those on pensions only get half their pension amount (we have far more people on pensions in our area than employed at the big companies) and the govt pays the whole thing. It would have cost far, far, far more for the govt to cover the pensions. And that is just one small part (unemployment, medcaid, GM is the largest employer of people with disabilities in america – most who would have then become taxpayer dependent, and on and on).

OK, it’s getting late. A little bloggage?

Via MMJeff, a heartbreaker about a survivor of a terrible crash between a distracted tractor-trailer driver (cell phone) and several vehicles, including a van carrying a group of Amish people. The survivor is Amish; she forgave, didn’t sue and tried to recover. Alas, the rest of the world doesn’t work that way:

“English people told us not to worry about it, they would be paid,” Eicher said, using the term the Amish bestow on outsiders. “We assumed they were paid.”

Then, this fall, the same bills started up again. One letter seemed particularly menacing, printed on bright fuchsia paper.

Pay up, the letters said.

She owes $23,273 to the hospital and $2,360 to a radiology group. She can’t see her chiropractor anymore because the insurance company just rejected $6,624 billed since the crash.

Shudder.

New Yorkers, spill: Is Andrea Peyser really as crazy as Gawker regularly makes her out to be?

No one is saying what’s wrong with Aretha Franklin, but everybody’s praying for her.

If you ask me, blind items and the internet were a match made in heaven.

At Wayne. Gotta go. Have a swell one, all.

I say this with all the affection and love in my heart for you guys, but it sure is good to get away from this place for a while. I thought it would be Blog City over the weekend, and to be sure, we had all the necessary materials:

The aging folks catch up with one another while the Millennial considers analog space.

I count four laptops in that photo (one closed and hiding), plus an iPad. But it’s deceiving. John was working on getting our stupid printer on our wifi network, which is one reason we’re so glad they stop by a couple times a year.

The stupid printer now works. And we didn’t spend the entire weekend laptopping separately. We made several big meals, shopped at Eastern Market, toured the DIA, ate at Good Girls Go To Paris and got up off of our thangs, except when felled by wine. I got four DVDs from the library, in case we felt like a movie, and discovered “Bottle Shock” is worth your time, but “Synecdoche New York” is not. In fact, it’s self-indulgent nonsense, the result of what happens when a quirky, neurotic screenwriter produces several great, memorable scripts (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) and then says, “But what I’d really like to do is direct.”

I dunno, maybe you liked it. I didn’t. (Shrug.)

What I did like was this amazing story, which I read all the way through even with guests in the house, a cautionary tale for everyone who is convinced the internet always offers a better shopping experience. Short version: Shopper goes online in search of cheap eyeglass frames, wanders into Crazytown. Somewhat longer version: Bad internet actor finds way to game Google’s allegedly genius algorithm. As I read this more than 24 hours ago, I’m now mainly immersed in the reaction, which ranges from “well, it’s her fault for not Googling more deeply” to overly technical discussions under Google’s hood. Combined with this story today, about not a brain drain, but maybe a brain trickle away from the company, you could get the impression that Google has moved into the next phase of its existence, i.e. crusty old fart-ism. The 21st century, it is so full of wonders: A company goes from shining light of innovation to General Motors in 12 short years.

This pleases me, and has ever since I tried to reach Google with a problem a while back, and discovered it’s as easy as placing a person-to-person phone call to the moon. Everything’s automated, no one has a phone number or even an e-mail address, and if you have a problem with that, screw you and welcome to Dodge City.

And now it is Monday, and guess what? My next-door neighbor has a tree-trimming crew here today. The lead chainsawer is one of those guys who can’t just turn the goddamn thing on and cut a limb. He’s like one of those guys at a red light on a hot motorcycle, who has to go rev-rev-rev-REV and rev-rev-rev-REV every few seconds until you go insane. That’s what I’m hearing now, and so it’s either earplugs or get the hell out and start manic Monday.

Better do the latter. I had a great birthday, and thanks to all who wished me one.

Boy, the Hack Thirty is really presenting some heavy betting possibilities. If you’d have asked me to rank the lazybones of the punditocracy at the start of this project, I’d have had Jonah Goldberg and William Kristol at one-two, or certainly in the top five. But Kristol is on the board at No. 17 and Goldberg at 7, which makes me wonder who, possibly, could top them.

I figure they’re saving Tom Friedman for late in the rollout, but who else? James Lileks long ago slid into irrelevancy and graphomania; have you read his 40,000-word debrief on his fourth Disney vacation, or are you still plowing through his day-for-day, wave-for-wave, blow-by-blow of his National Review cruise? Mitch Albom doesn’t write about politics. Ann Coulter has been reduced to clowning for the gays — those boys loving a good tranny as they do — and only appearing in front of the Barbara Walters ™ SuperSoft camera lens. Kathleen Parker? Maybe, but there’s no way, as awful as she is, that she could punch her weight with Goldberg. This bears watching. Good call on Laura Ingraham, though — the poor gay man’s Coulter.

Truth be told, I think the problem is column-writing itself. Talk about a gig whose time has come passed. I’m glad I had my time in the game, but all I miss is the regular — not generous — paycheck. The best columnists, then and now, have to walk a very narrow line between reporter/observer and opinion monger, and that is hard enough to do in a normal city, virtually impossible in Washington, where everyone with skin in the game (which would be everyone, period) is whispering in your ear and buying you drinks and inviting you to their dinner parties and winking as they slap you on the shoulder. It’s all just a crazy game, isn’t it? Sooner or later even the sharpest minds and pens go dull. Usually sooner.

What do they say about opinions? And right now, the best ones are showing ’em for free on the internet. That’s not a business model, that’s a hobby.

No. 6 just went up. Marc Thiessen. Can’t quibble with that one. Keep it up, guys.

The holiday weekend is in progress, and this will be the last regular blog entry of the week, although with a house full of wired company, I expect we’ll do some mini-blogging here and there, so by all means, stop back. Also, tomorrow is my natal anniversary, and if there’s anything a girl deserves on her birthday, it’s a day off (and some cake). Thanks in advance for all your good wishes, and no, that’s not a nudge to leave any. I just know what good folks y’all are.

A li’l bloggage? Maybe:

Another great feature from Detroitblog: The people who live — legally — at the Packard Plant. A touch of country in the city:

Besides Hill’s dog, a shaggy rottweiler named Baby, they’ve got a couple of pet raccoons, and they feed lettuce and carrots to a family of rabbits who moved in during the winter. The pheasants that flock around here have provided food in the past. “We do a lot of hunting here,” says Lott, 47. “You ever ate city pheasant yet? Oh, it’s good eatin’. They’re homegrown.”

Rats run wild, kept in check only by the several cats Hill keeps or the sharpshooting skills of Lott and fellow tenant Greg Erving, 65. “We shoot rats in here all night,” Lott says. They use high-powered pellet guns. “It’s a real war going on. You can hear them fighting amongst themselves. Biggest rats in the city. They’ll come over and rob your food in a heartbeat. They’re bold.”

Thanks to Jezebel (I think) for teaching me about Dickflash. If only I could unlearn it now.

Happy Thanksgiving to all, and many happy leftovers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh rly?

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

He said, “Your ascot?”

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

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

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

And the neon backs me up.

Sorry, Alan.

So, let’s skip to the bloggage:

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

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

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

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

Best part? The foghorns.

Have a great Monday.

My old pal Mark the Shark — a lawyer, a Great White — once worked on a recount case. It’s pretty simple, he explained; basically, you recount the easy ones (submitted by machine) and then fight over the absentees one by one. It’s tedious, but it’s like moving a pile of rocks from one place to another. Keep at it, and it’ll get done.

I’m hoping, however, that the Alaska vote-counting takes a good long while. And it likely will, what with ballots arriving via snowshoe-wearing carrier pigeons from above the Brooks Range and all, and the little problem of Joe Miller and his own tea party sharks. Here’s a post from the Anchorage Daily News’ Alaska Politics blog. Scroll down to the bottom, where they’ve posted photographs of a few of the write-in ballots already being challenged by Miller’s sharks. They clearly say “Lisa Murkowski,” every one of them correctly spelled. The only possible problem I could see is perhaps a certain roundness to the lettering that makes a few letters rub up against one another. Also, Miller has imported one Floyd Brown to help him out, Brown being the warlock who conjured the Willie Horton ad for George Bush. Sayeth Brown:

“The stories of manipulation are just almost mind boggling,” Brown said at a press conference called this afternoon by the Miller campaign.

The only evidence that the Miller campaign would provide was an affidavit from a poll watcher in Fairbanks, Rocky MacDonald, who complained that the ballot box at the Tanana Valley Fairgrounds “was unsecured in that the electoral judges had access to the inside of the ballot box with a key.”

“The electoral judges opened the ballot box several times to clear jammed ballots and rearrange by hand the ballots in the box to make space for new ballots,” MacDonald wrote.

Mind-boggling, I’m sure you’ll agree.

The entire process will be tied up in the courts for a good long time, I’m sure. Slate has a pretty good outline of Miller’s arguments. Irony alert: This tea partyin’, states-rightsin’ renegade is relying pretty heavily on federal precedent, particularly Bush v. Gore:

Miller wants election officials to count only those ballots for Murkowski in which the oval is properly filled in and her name is properly spelled. How strong are his arguments? Whether the statute requires proper spelling is a difficult question of statutory interpretation. The reason that Alaska election officials said it did not, and instead adopted the looser standard of “voter intent,” which allows for misspellings, is the Alaska Supreme Court’s long-standing use of a rule of interpretation which reads ambiguous statutes in favor of the voters. (I’ve dubbed this rule the Democracy Canon.) In this case, throwing out minor misspellings would disenfranchise voters for a technicality. I’ve traced use of the voter intent standard in state courts back to 1885, and Alaska has a particularly strong version of it. The state’s courts say that election statutes must be read in favor of allowing votes to be counted unless the legislature has made it unmistakably clear not to read a law this way.

Yes, it’s clear Alaska wouldn’t want a man’s vote negated because he lacks letterin’ skills. But we’ll see what we can do.

So, anything else hopping this morning? Not much. We have pea-soup fog out there, and I’m headed out in a bit, driving closer to the lake. I’m hoping to hear some foghorns coming from the water. When conditions are right you can hear them all the way up to my unfashionable neighborhood, but they’re loud enough further east to awaken light sleepers. We’ll see.

Short shrift, I know, but I still feel like crap. So here’s something:

Not to keep coming back to Slate, but, well, Jack Shafer likes the Wall Street Journal’s series on internet privacy as much as I do:

And you thought the Web was “free.” You’re paying with your privacy.

If you don’t have the time, or the subscription, to wade through the WSJ series, he provides a nice summation.

A poem for fall, via Sweet Juniper.

And now I have to run. Have a great weekend, all.

So how did you spend your extra hour Sunday? I read two stories that might have eluded me otherwise, the one about how the USDA is pushing cheese down our throats at the same time it’s fighting obesity, and the one about Courtney Love.

I enjoyed the latter. I guess ol’ Court is trying for a…whatever act this is. It’s not going 100 percent well. This is her after telling a New York Times reporter to wait for her in her hotel room and she’d be along directly:

Shortly after 8 p.m., Ms. Love burst into the room with the Marchesa dress slung on one arm and the noted German Neo-Expressionist artist Anselm Kiefer on the other. She was entirely naked and leaning on Mr. Kiefer for support. She made one lap around the room, walking in front of a photographer, an assistant, a hairstylist and me. She pulled over her head a transparent lace dress that covered up nothing, and demanded my assistance — “Not you,” she said to Mr. Kiefer, who was bent over trying to help her — to stuff her feet into a pair of black Givenchy heels that were zipped up the back and tied with delicate laces in the front. Then she applied a slash of red lipstick in the vicinity of her mouth.

After failing in music and acting, Courtney is finding the fashion world is still interested in her, and with shenanigans like this, you can see why. If there’s one thing fashion demands from a woman, it’s total coolness with being naked in a room full of clothed people, and obviously she has that part nailed.

As for the cheese story, I am reminded of the observation of Elaine Benis, after confronting the stuffed-crust pizza: “Will we never run out of places to conceal cheese on a pizza?” Nope, don’t think so. Speaking of which, if there’s such a surplus of cheese, whatever happened to the old five-pound blocks, i.e., guvvamint cheese? Back when the cheese distributions were going on, I knew several people who came into some who weren’t, shall we say, poor enough to qualify. (Easy explanation: Elderly relative who simply can’t eat five pounds of cheese before it dries out, molds or otherwise becomes inedible.) They all said it was the best American cheese they ever ate, creamy and rich and nothing at all like Kraft Singles. Why not make some more of that stuff? Beats paying Domino’s to come up with a new iteration of Heart Attack Lovers’ pizza.

What I didn’t read about: Keith Olbermann. Don’t care. Suspend him, don’t suspend him, makes me no never-mind, as Keith and I have sort of broken up. Of course the whole idea of finding him guilty of, what? Subjectivity? Is totally absurd. This has less to do with journalism than a tuna sandwich. Which makes me think this is about something else entirely. Like getting him to reconsider a contract demand, or something.

And now? I was going to ruminate for a bit on “Winter’s Bone,” an amazing film we caught this weekend, as well as “The Drummond Will,” which was that black-and-white English film at the film festival Friday, but a press release just fluttered over the transom. Police have made an arrest in a year-old home invasion and assault in Grosse Pointe Park, a pretty scary crime for these parts. It only took 11 months to get DNA evidence from the state crime lab. ELEVEN MONTHS. Remember that the next time you watch “CSI” and Marg Helgenberger tells some clown she’ll put a rush on it. So now I have to write a story.

“Winter’s Bone” can wait a day, I guess. But if you get a chance to see it today, take it. It’s that good. Bye.

On today’s to-do list:

Write a little.
Make apple crisp.
Clean at least one bathroom.
See some English film, “the first black-and-white feature shot on the Red,” at a bar in Ferndale, part of the Ferndale Film Festival.

I guess things could be worse. I work a full day (night, really) on Sunday, so I guess I can start drinking on Friday at lunchtime.

What’s “the Red,” you’re maybe wondering. It’s a camera system, and I think the actual name is RED, all caps, but meh. It’s a light, small, low-cost digital alternative to professional film cameras, very big among the indies and, increasingly, the studios. The FAQ. Because you care, right? Anyway, while this sort of thing — fussing over cameras and such — is not my part of the game, it’s a) free, b) includes pizza and c) takes place in a bar. Win, win, win.

Actually, rounding up today’s conversation starters, I see the internet is a rich and fruitful place this morning. Let’s dispense with the small talk and get to cases, shall we?

Sparky Anderson died yesterday, which means it’s time to check in with none other than Detroit’s favorite grief counselor sports columnist, li’l Mitch Albom. Jesus flippin’ Christ, guess what his lead is?

I had a dream about Sparky Anderson a few days ago. He looked old and his hair was brown, and I called to him, but he didn’t recognize me. Only after I said my name did he smile.

And then it ended.

Any armchair Freudians want to take a crack at that? I mean, no wonder the guy is a monster. Even his subconscious tells him that his name brings smiles to the world. Although Mitch doesn’t quite get it:

I’d been wondering about that dream because Sparky doesn’t usually show up in my REM cycle. And why was his hair brown? Sparky? The original White Wizard? Then, Thursday afternoon, I heard the jarring news: At age 76, Anderson, one of the most colorful, charming, perfectly suited managers baseball ever produced, had died in California.

Now he’ll start thinking his dreams are telepathic. Although can even a dream get through to Mitch? Who, once again, finds the death of an old man “jarring.” I ask you. Although, given how close Anderson’s death was to Ernie Harwell’s, he really can’t resist a different angle:

It would be fitting to ask Ernie Harwell — he and Sparky walked together every morning on road trips — but we lost Ernie this year, too, and it seems like some heavenly roll call is taking place in our town.

The Two Baseball Legends You Meet in Heaven — I smell box-office boffo! (Actually, Albom is at work as we speak on a play about Harwell. Which is probably why Sparky’s obit clocked in at under a million words.)

Moving on, has everyone heard the Cooks Source story by now? After all, it’s nearly 24 hours old, a graybeard in internet time. Here’s the gist: Writer discovers a piece of hers, published some years back on the internet, now exists in ink-on-paper form, in a magazine called Cooks Source. She e-mails the editor and asks for a) an apology, and b) a small donation to the Columbia School of Journalism. She gets, in return, the back of the editor’s hand, in one of the stupidest reactions to a reasonable request I’ve yet heard in journalism, and friends, that is saying something. Anyway, the internet got angry. You don’t want the internet angry. Edward Champion has a good one-page summation. Who edits this rag? Tim Goeglein?

Every boy should have a mother like this.

Have you heard about the president’s trip to India? Have you perhaps heard that “34 warships” are steaming there even as we speak? I have. I read it on the dumber conservative blogs. Guess what? It’s not true. I know how shocking that is to some of you, but there you go.

And with that, I’m getting dressed for a brutal workout, followed by a shower, followed by that movie in Ferndale, followed by apple crisp. Because it’s the weekend, suckas. And weekends are for apple crisp.