For the making-of featurette* included with our student-film project, I shot a little video with my Flip:

I call your attention to our awesome camera dolly, a DIY project made from PVC pipe and skateboard wheels. Our director is friends with the folks at InZer0, a local sci-fi series/maybe-a-movie production, and borrowed it from them. It knocks together with a rubber mallet (or your shoes), and the stand slides noiselessly. With it, we were able to do a cool little tracking shot of our talent, Teresa, walking down a hallway, checking doors on either side, with nary a bobble.

As a compromise with the Hollywood version, it’s pretty adequate to our uses.

I have a memory of one of my showbiz-nerd friends telling me the first Steadicam rigs cost $100,000, so I went online in search of other cheap compromises for low-budget filmmakers. Not surprisingly, there are zillions. I think I know what the universe is trying to tell me: It’s time to indulge my long-held dream of producing pornography with real scripts, and a real story. Something to keep ’em in the seats after, you know.

See the dolly shots and the dolly track — in Genesis’ “Invisible Touch” video. Not made from PVC, because it’s Genesis.

(*Note: There is no making-of featurette.)

Bloggage: Just the other day I asked Kate if she’d like to play hockey. Now, I’m thinking she might be better off playing, oh, chess. Oh, and in re: our earlier discussion about the relativity of luck? Check this out — a guy gets hit in the neck with a skate in a freakish accident, severs his carotid artery, leaves a red smear across the ice to remind everyone in the arena of their own mortality, and guess what his doctors say? This:

Vascular surgeon Richard Curl, who assisted Noor, said the cut was about an inch-and-a-half deep and also as wide. Doctors were astonished the skate blade did not hit any other arteries or veins or cause any further damage.

“Luck,” was a factor, according to Noor.

Thought for the day: Everything is relative.

Eric Zorn interviews his old college buddy Gerry Prokopowicz about the latter’s new book, “Did Lincoln Own Slaves?” A sample:

Q: Given that the Q&A format is often recognized by discerning readers as evidence of a lazy writer who doesn’t want to struggle with transitions, why did you choose that format for your book?

A: I got it from your columns.

You know how Michael Moore is, like, fat and evil and a propagandist and not interested in the truth at all? You know? I’m sure his ideological opponents will show the proper way to do things when “Expelled,” their documentary on intelligent design, debuts later this year. They sure got off to a good start with PZ Myers. What’s the ninth commandment again? I always forget.

Finally, Wireblogging continues over at The New Package. Come join the discussion.

More coffee, shower and work, in that order. Be still, heart.

This isn’t a lesson you have to be a writer to learn, but just in case you haven’t, let me lay it out for you:

One person’s poetry is another’s profanity. Context is everything. It’s stupid to argue why black people can call one another nigga and white people can’t. The language you use at the bar, at the frat house, at your grandmother’s dinner table, at church, at the office is likely going to vary widely.

So get over whether or not David Shuster got a raw deal from his employer over using the phrase “pimped out” to describe what Chelsea Clinton’s parents may or may not be doing in re: their daughter. He perhaps thought he was being hip and young and with-in and down with the kids, and Hillary Clinton objected. This cannot possibly come as a surprise to anyone with half a brain. You say tomato, I hear to-mah-to. Let’s chalk the whole thing up to experience.

To be sure, popular discourse has become much more, er, popular in the last 20 years. Again, you don’t need me to tell you this. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. There are situations where, “boy, is that guy a brainless schmuck” is far more eloquent and to-the-point than “Mr. Shuster displays a shocking lack of couth,” but while “schmuck” is a wonderful word, it means “penis” in Yiddish, and if you start throwing it around like confetti, sooner or later you’re going to meet someone who’s offended by it.

As a woman of five decades, I’ve never been entirely comfortable with the casual use of the word “pimp,” if only because it’s the first syllable in “pimple,” and the fewer of those in the world, the better. But really, what a repulsive image to aspire to, that of a badly dressed man who sexually exploits women for profit. I’ll accept the word as a synonym for cheap flashiness, as well as a crude synonym for “to aggressively market for money,” but otherwise, it’s just sort of gross. And again: Context is everything. “The Daily Show” can do a story on FLIFs and no one bats an eye, but if you’re supposedly a legitimate cable-news talent, you’d better not go there. Or maybe you can go there in 2009, but not 2008. Or on Tuesday, but not on Monday. I imagine I’ll live to see the day Anderson Cooper can call the president a douchebag on the air, but it hasn’t arrived yet. (Not that Anderson would say such a thing; he’s too well-bred.)

So let’s retire the discussion before it gets tiresome. Oops: Too late.

Final note: Guess who said, in 1998, “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.” Answer: You’re soaking in it!

OK. I’m writing this on Sunday. At this very moment, I’m supposed to be on Belle Isle, shooting the final scene for our video class project, but we cancelled. The temperature is 7 degrees and the wind is blowing at, no kidding, 45 miles per hour. It seemed cruel to make two nice actors, not to mention everyone else in the class/crew, torture themselves in such conditions, particularly given the compensation everyone’s getting, which is: Nothing, plus a sandwich. So we’re shooting the indoor scenes later in the afternoon and will pick up Belle Isle when nature stops being such a cruel mistress. That’s showbiz.

But this leaves me more than the usual bit of time to scrape up some bloggage for you pimps, and here you are:

If that damn German polar bear gets any cuter, I’m moving there.

Great idea to spice up your social life: Detroit’s Guerilla Queer Bar, a movable feast that, once a month, descends unannounced on a different nightspot. In January, they chose Carl’s Chop House, one of those ol’-skool downtown steakhouses that’s been dying since forever. Earlier in the month, the owner went before city council and asked to take the place topless. From this week’s Metro Times:

The bar area is packed, with the customers laughing and bartenders hopping, filling drink orders and collecting tips. The piano player is in full swing, making the trip from Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” to Matchbox Twenty and back again, with a brief stop at Billy Ocean’s “Caribbean Queen.” Carl’s ambience is so varnished-wood-and-carpet, it’s kitsch. If you haven’t been, it’s worth a trip. Except for the addition of a dance floor in the main dining room, the place hasn’t changed much since the days when Jimmy Hoffa would cut deals in the conference room upstairs.

What a great idea. What will those creative queens think of next? Quick, buy modern furniture.

You know how your mom told you to always wear clean underwear, so the people in the emergency room wouldn’t think you were trashy? She didn’t know the half of it. Bonus giggle: The name of the club.

Groan: Work. And so the week commences.

I found the following via a three-word Metafilter post: Bob Greene returns. I don’t think it’s precisely true — as we’ve noted here a time or two, Greene has been making quiet inroads back into respectable circles for a while now. At the same time, I think it’s important that we keep stepping on this bug every time it waves a leg in the air, because it’s plain he hasn’t learned a goddamn thing.

This one worries me, though. For starters, it seems to have a standing head (“Bob Greene across America”), which suggests it’s not a one-off pity gig thrown his way by an old colleague, but an ongoing pity gig, in which case, gloves off. For any new readers here, let me say it up front again: Bob Greene should have kept his hands off the college girls, interns and other young women he hit on, pawed over and otherwise defiled. But that’s not why he should stay out of journalism. This is: He’s a big ol’ hack.

The latest is vintage. This man couldn’t change if he tried.

It starts with a windy description of, what else, something he saw in the hotel. A woman gets onto an elevator with two strangers, one of them Bob, carrying on a private conversation via her Bluetooth headset. Garden-variety rudeness, but not so small that Bob can’t draw some grand conclusions:

My traveling companions on CNN’s newsroom-on-wheels and I had stopped for the night at this Hollywood hotel in the days before the presidential primary election in California (and throughout the nation). If people are surprised by the depth and fervency of the passions being displayed by citizens, regardless of ideology, during this year’s race for the presidency, perhaps part of that surprise is because the emotions being shown for certain candidates put to the lie something that we have recently taken for granted — something emblemized, in its own small way, by the woman in the elevator.

He goes on to make his case:

There used to be a phrase utilized to sum up the insularity of presidential campaigns: “inside the cocoon.” It referred to life within the confines of the campaign jets, or the campaign press buses — it meant that those who traveled with a candidate were in peril of developing a skewed view of the outer world, because their sole points of reference were the events, and players, involved in the campaign itself.

The cocoon theory, rather than diminish, has expanded: living in a cocoon has in large measure become the American way of life. The sidewalks are filled with people looking down at tiny screens nestled in their palms, checking for messages, searching for flashing signals from people miles away, not wanting or needing to make eye contact with the living human beings in their immediate proximity. Friendship is a strictly defined commodity granted with the tap of a key: an electronic transaction on ultimately-for-profit computer sites. The cocoon, as a bedrock principle for living, offers the illusion of safety — by shutting out all that is unknown, the cocoon promises: these high walls around you are good for you.

Keep in mind this is a man who once wrote a knee-slapper about not having e-mail — he just couldn’t get into that crazy stuff — and was then told by the Chicago Tribune IT guys that of course he had e-mail, here’s how to access it, and he did, and whaddaya know there were something like 3,000 unread messages in his in-box. So excuse me for thinking he doesn’t know shit about this. So, Bob, while I’m not a text demon, let me suggest this gently: When a pretty girl on Michigan Avenue refuses to meet your gaze, it’s not necessarily because she’s lost in a cultural moment. She’s probably texting her BFF: OMG U SHD C THS D00DS RUG!!!!! 😮

So what’s emblemized, in its own small way, by the woman in the elevator? This:

So this year’s unusual campaign for the presidency — regardless of who you may or may not be supporting — is an unanticipated step in the other direction. It takes quite a leap of faith to proclaim your belief, and trust, in someone, and something, unknown. To acknowledge that you are ready for something, and someone, different is to admit that the things with which you are familiar may not, after all, be the things on which your future is best based.

I dunno, but if you asked me why the campaign has been impassioned so far, I’d think it had something to do with the public’s eagerness to get the current presidency over with. But don’t believe me. Believe the Voice of His Generation, who thinks it’s all about “proclaiming your belief, and trust, in someone, and something, unknown”? (Note how he pads almost unconsciously; belief and trust, something and someone.) Because there’s no incumbent? That happens every eight years. Who’s unknown? Obama comes as close as anyone, but he’s hardly hiding behind a cape and mask. If this is the linchpin of his connection between Rude Lady and Election 2008, I’d say it’s a stretch that would challenge Elastagirl.

This all has to do with looking up from those screens in your palms; it has to do with gazing around you and acknowledging: maybe it’s time to let the outside in. It has nothing to do with the Republican Party or the Democratic Party; the candidates in each are trumpeting the concept of change, but maybe the change the nation is beginning to hunger for has little to do with politicians or policies, and everything to do with ourselves. Maybe the change we apparently so thirst for goes well beyond matters electoral.

Ha. Note how he innoculates himself: It has nothing to do with the Republican Party or Democratic Party. Because Bob is above such things. He is a keen observer of the human condition, not a political hack. More pure and unadulterated b.s. But even he knows this. Because guess what the very next sentence is?

Or maybe not.

I wish I were kidding.

Bob Greene made a lot of friends in high places during his career, and I expect it’s paying off for him now. But please, if anyone in a position to hire for these gigs is listening: If what you want is some sort of Heartland Voice, a cultural commentator who lives far from the coasts, out of the MSM usual suspects, I can suggest a long list of writers a thousand times more observant, sharper-eyed, and keener with a pen than this washed-up hack. They would also leave the hotel once in a while. It would come with the thanks of a grateful nation.

Sigh.

So how was your weekend? Mine was fine. In honor of the Super Bowl, I bought a bag of Tostitos and a jar of queso dip, which had the consistency and color of sinus-infection snot, but I always insist on authenticity with my Super snax. Quite the game, though. My brother called at halftime to tell me he had the Patriots and 13 points, so I think it’s fair to say there won’t be any Christmas presents from him this year. Giselle will probably be dumping Tom Brady soon, too. Poor baby. Maybe he can hang out with Bob.

Big day ahead, so play nice. I’ll be back later.

Who was it who said, when John Lennon was shot, “It’s always the John Lennons, never the Paul McCartneys.” Can’t recall. But it was only yesterday I read a piece about the Associated Press explaining its practice of keeping prewritten obituaries on file, particularly for “troubled” young celebrities like Britney Spears.

And yet, it’s always the Heath Ledgers, never the Britney Spearses, isn’t it? [Rages; shakes fist at the sky.]

Truth to tell, the fact Ledger left the stage so early isn’t as interesting as the headline on the AP piece: Debate rages over prewritten obituaries for young, living stars. I know from the work I do at night that wire stories on newspaper websites are usually imported from the wire datastream whole, with little editing and, needless to say, no rewriting of the headline. (A little Googling demonstrates the trick for you civilians.) And yet, reading the story, I can find no debate and certainly no raging — who gives a shit whether the AP prewrites obits? Raging debates are one of those things you only find in blog comment sections and in the fantasies of AP copy editors.

Canned obits, as the lead of the story points out, are nothing new and nothing more than a smart use of resources. I took a tour of the New York Times in the way-early ’80s, and that was a big hit with the folks in my group — learning that Princess Grace’s life had already been summed up in 1,500 words and half a dozen pictures before she missed that switchback on the mountain road. How macabre, was the general feeling. How unremarkable was mine.

We had a big obit-updating project in Columbus while I was there, the pet project of some assistant city editor who took it very seriously. Every reporter on the desk was given half a dozen to work on in their spare time, and we were encouraged to pull out the stops, to interview the still-living subjects for fresh quotes. But — and this struck me as fairly stupid — we were told not to reveal what we were working on unless it was absolutely necessary. The memo offered a suggested code phrase: “I’d like to interview you for a general biographical piece to run on an undetermined date in the future.” This fan dance was necessary for fear that some subjects may not have accepted the idea that one day they’d go the way of all flesh, and might refuse out of fear or superstition. Oh, please. Most people figured it out immediately, and I don’t think one got cold chills over it. I don’t even remember who my subjects were, but my friend Ted drew Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Air Force officer who never met a landscape he’d mind bombing back to the Stone Age (as he famously said of North Vietnam). Ted asked him about that quote; as I recall, he suggested it had been taken out of context.

I subsequently learned that the character of Buck Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove” was based on LeMay. I wonder if that made the obit.

Ledger is a loss, no doubt; I thought his performance in “Brokeback Mountain” was a thing of beauty, particularly how he inhabited the character physically. With his long legs and lean frame, he looked born to spend his life in a saddle. He carried the tension of his forbidden feelings in his shoulders, and you could see every striation on the knotted muscles there.

However, as someone said to me yesterday, someone who was having their 30th birthday yesterday, in fact: “I knew I was 30 when I was more concerned about the Federal Reserve than Heath Ledger.” Amen.

So, bloggage:

Farewell, Fred Thompson. Don’t feel bad: “Law & Order” residuals pay better, and you get a nice trailer to relax in between takes. Slate’s John Dickerson points out the obvious:

…(F)rom the start, Thompson seemed to be stuck in a state of repose. His announcement in Iowa, held before an imposing set of columns and faux stone that looked like the facade of a small bank, stirred little more excitement than if he’d been offering free checking. More lounge-worthy moments followed. At Florida’s state GOP convention, where candidates had to pay for time before the crowd of 4,000, Thompson’s rivals gave passionate speeches. Thompson spoke for a lean and uninspiring five minutes. The press copies of his daily schedule always looked like they’d been handed out with a couple of the pages missing.

On trial for killing your 7-year-old daughter? Go ahead, introduce that “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee mug into evidence. I’m sure the jury will be swayed.

Off to the shower. Someone stop by and scrub my back.

I’ve got a jam-packed morning, leading into a less-packed afternoon, and then a jam-packed evening. So I’m leaving you, my chatty friends, with an open thread to keep you all amused. I don’t have much in the way of conversation-starters, but how about this? For the first time in a very long time — it feels like…four years — I’m spending more time watching cable TV news than I usually do, by a factor of Quite a Lot.

And you know what? Every year, it gets worse. It’s like there’s no bottom.

Jack Shafer notes the peculiar ubiquity of CNN’s lame-ass slogan. Start there, and discuss.

And now, off to Wayne State, where for some reason, a class of journalism students wants to hear what I have to say. I’ll school ’em, by God.

The older I get, the less crap I need to do my job in the kitchen. But I also appreciate a fancy gadget, too — I use a plain old chef’s knife for most of the things a food processor is supposed to do, but when I need that food processor (potato pancakes, pesto and hummus, mainly), I really am glad to have it.

Some years ago, our friends John and Sam gave us a corkscrew that cost $100. The lever-action Screwpull was the first of its kind I’d used, and although there are many knockoffs on the market today, like the song says: The original is still the greatest. I’ve amazed many guests with its ease of use. Every time I open a bottle of wine, I think, what a miraculous gadget. If it fell to pieces tomorrow, I’d happily spend another $100 to replace it.

Which brings us to our $129 trash can.

Earlier this year I looked at Simplehuman trash cans with my sister, who has owned one for years. I thought they were nice, but like any sane person, that $129 was a bit steep for a trash can. It gave her the idea, though, and she gave us one for Christmas. There’s something both horrible and wonderful about a $129 trash can — the expense seems preposterous, but it’s … the iPod of trash cans. It’s beautiful. It has a small footprint, and a lid hinge that allows it to sit flush against the wall. The lid closes silently. It has an inner liner that eliminates unsightly bag overhang. And it’s dog-proof, important in that Spriggy, in his senility, seems to have forgotten his training in that little area. We’ve only had it since Christmas, and already I can’t imagine my kitchen with the old, primitive, $15 trash can.

Alan, our household’s leading appreciator of good design, flipped for it. (Although he calls it the Humanwaste.) He went out today and bought its baby brother for the bathroom. (Spriggy has also developed a taste for snotty Kleenex. No wonder his breath is so bad.) It was only $21. The first time he threw a tissue into it he was alarmed that the lid slammed “in an annoyingly loud fashion,” as he put it. Off to the website, where we learned with dismay that the bathroom model didn’t have “patented lid shox technology.”

See, this is the problem with a $129 trash can. Pretty soon you’re disappointed you didn’t get lid shox technology. No wonder people say, Die, yuppie scum.

How was your weekend? Mine was uneventful, except for my small encounter with the Westboro loons. They were protesting outside one of the most beautiful churches in the area, a Gothic gem run by the Presbyterians, adjacent to a public facility called the Grosse Pointe War Memorial. The presence of these knuckle-dragging goobers outside was a bit jarring, but what the hell, the First Amendment protects Larry Flynt and Fred Phelps, too.

Short entry today, because land sakes, it’s 55 degrees out there! In January! Headed higher! I’m taking a bike ride. So, bloggage:

The New Package, of course, for all you Wireheads. Join the discussion and make it jump. Now it can be told: This year’s heroin brand? “Got that Greenhouse Gas! It’s hot! Gas up!”

A fabulous story about the rest of the story of the attempted assassination of Gerald Ford by the loony Sara Jane Moore. The man who grabbed her arm, spoiling her aim and saving Ford’s life, was hailed as a hero until it was revealed he was gay, which led to the usual complications these things led to, back then. Also, the man hit by the richochet didn’t have a great rest of his life, either. It’s one Paul Harvey won’t be doing, I guess.

The publisher of Parade says the press run of yesterday’s edition was over when Benazir Bhutto was assassinated, but the cover-story interview was “too important” to spike the whole run. Uh-huh.

Off to sync the iPod and enjoy an exceptional heat wave. Have a good one, y’selves.

One of the things that interests me about the internet is its community-building potential. Overwhelmingly, this is a good thing, at least for me — I’ve “met” people online that I’ve later met in person, widened my correspondence considerably and generally find life far more interesting with e-mail than without it. It goes without saying that if you’re a parent of a child with a rare disease, or a dog-fur knitter, or a body-modification enthusiast living in a small Indiana town, you no longer need to feel you’re the only one in the world carrying your burden. Surely there’s a Usenet group for you, or a blog, or whatever.

No matter how small the pond, the internet supplies a map.

One of the more interesting/amusing communities to start talking amongst themselves has been the…well, I’m not sure what they call themselves. New Urbanists, Crunchy Conservatives, New Traditionalists, who the hell knows? I don’t think they do, either. The face they present to the world is of politically conservative Christians who reject the go-go market forces beloved by the rest of their confederates, and in some lifestyle matters verge dangerously close to filthy-hippiedom. Rod Dreher, the self-designated crunchy con, is probably the archetype. He eats organic vegetables (and can go on at great, boring length about it), lives in a Craftsman bungalow, likes urban neighborhoods over suburbs, etc.

Here’s a prototypical post from a Fort Wayne blog called The Good City. The author grew up in the Fort, moved away to New York City, married and had a few kids, and decided to come back to a place where a family of five didn’t have to share 700 square feet. It starts like this:

Tonight I’m sitting out on the front porch of our 100-year old rental house in a paleo-urbanistic neighborhood, and I’m quite enjoying myself. The porch light is on, my pipe is lighted, my legs are propped up on the balustrade, and a slight chill is in the air. Though dark outside, the old-fashioned street lamps allow me to see clearly up and down the street and notice the wonderful rhythm of other houses with similar front porches. Quickly, however, the charming atmosphere so much promoted by New Urbanists begins to fade as I notice that I’m the only one actually outside on my front porch. Well, you say, maybe it’s because this is the coldest night so far this fall. Not true, however. This has pretty much been the same as every other night: for all practical purposes, no one is ever out on their front porch!

Where are they?! Don’t these people know this man returned from NYC to sit on this porch? Why aren’t they populating his fantasy of front-porch America?

Well, it didn’t take me more than a couple times walking up and down the block to realize the problem: instead of sitting out on the front porch, everyone is inside watching TV!

How dare they.

This makes me chuckle because I’m mostly in agreement with him — I, too, love old houses and front porches and wish others did, too, so we could stop building horrible subdivisions and the like. And I’ve written about it. I guess I didn’t realize what a scold I must have sounded like. (Just one tip for the blogger: In Indiana, they call a balustrade a porch railing.)

But not even in my scoldiest moments could I have written something like this, by Patrick Deneen: “It’s a Destructive Life,” all about how George Bailey destroys Bedford Falls:

George Bailey hates this town. Even as a child, he wants to escape its limiting clutches, ideally to visit the distant and exotic locales vividly pictured in National Geographic. As he grows, his ambitions change in a significant direction: he craves “to build things, design new buildings, plan modern cities.” The modern city of his dreams is imagined in direct contrast to the enclosure of Bedford Falls: it is to be open, fast, glittering, kaleidoscopic. He craves “to shake off the dust of this crummy little town” to build “airfields, skyscrapers one hundred stories tall, bridges a mile long….” George represents the vision of post-war America: the ambition to alter the landscape so to accommodate modern life, to uproot nature and replace it with monuments of human accomplishment, to re-engineer life for mobility and swiftness, one unencumbered by permanence, one no longer limited to a moderate and comprehensible human scale.

You know, it occurs to me he might be kidding. But he might just as well be not. The Crunchy Cons blog, which ran at National Review Online when the book was published, swiftly descended into blanket pronouncements that anyone who moves away from the (small) town of their birth is, prima facie, a bad parent and a selfish whelp. I liked it better when we said things like, “It takes all kinds” and left it at that.

OK, some new year housekeeping notes: Along with the sexy and curvaceous Ashley Morris and four others, I’ll be participating in a group blog on season five of “The Wire,” which all fans know starts this coming Sunday. The first episode is available On Demand now, and I’ve watched it twice, but I’m not posting anything until Sunday. Very old-media of me, I know, but sometimes a little stewing time is better than nyah-nyah-I-got-here-first speed. The site’s up now, and called — what else? — The New Package.

(Not-even-a-spoiler: One of the many small jokes in this multilayered series is the background noise of the corner touts calling out their wares, the brand names of which change periodically and reflect the times we live in; in past seasons we’ve heard them pushing heroin called WMD and Pandemic. There’s a new one this year. We should start a pool on what it will be.)

Bloggage:

Hank tells us what’s in and out for 2008. You know he’s right.

No, it’s not just you: Network news sucks out loud. John Hockenberry has some thoughts.

On the second day of the New Year, I resolve to bring some order back to my chaotic office. Better get started.

I swear to God, if I’m stupid enough to pay $37 for another year of the Grosse Pointe News, please shoot me in the head. The paper, craptastic to begin with, changed hands earlier in the year and, if anything, has gotten worse. The editorial page now belongs to canned op-eds, the government coverage is phoned in and even the man-on-the-street interviews are ridiculous. (Before Christmas, a polar bear said he really wanted Santa to bring an end to global warming.)

And now this:

I’m a writer and editor; I know typos happen. But when they happen in 96-point type, it calls for public horsewhipping. I wonder if anyone has actually noticed yet.

Such a strange artifact I found today: A letter from an old lawyer to a new one. Published in the American Lawyer, found via New York magazine’s website, getta loada this:

Dear Sarah,

Your father tells me you started a job at Cravath, Swaine & Moore earlier this fall. Perhaps you are aware that I spent some of my formative years at that firm.

I’m sure you will learn a lot at present-day Cravath. I, certainly, learned a lot when I went to work at the firm in the fall of 1952, just after graduating from law school. The firm was then located at 15 Broad St., directly opposite the New York Stock Exchange, the facade of which, outside my window, was not yet covered by a gigantic American flag.

Actually, the window was the province of E. Gabriel Perle, a more senior associate who got the desk nearest the window in the office we shared. “Gabby” took me out to lunch and dinner and introduced me to the many stanzas of “The Partners’ John,” a song telling the story of the rise of a young associate to the long-anticipated moment when he receives a key to the partners’ john.

I use the pronoun “he” because there were only men at the Cravath of 1952. No women lawyers, no women secretaries or stenographers, no women in any capacity at all were allowed in the hallways of Cravath, Swaine & Moore. “We are a place of business,” it was explained to me. Ladies would be a “distraction.” Even the messengers, who carried documents from one office to another and sharpened our stacks of pencils every morning, were elderly men in gray office jackets, reputedly recruited from among the ranks of retired runners at the exchange. If I needed to dictate, a buzz quickly brought a male “steno” who was older than I was. There was a special midnight shift of stenos who would have any late-night work freshly typed and ready on a partner’s desk first thing in the morning. “Women wouldn’t be safe in downtown New York during these night hours,” it was explained.

It could be difficult to tell a male secretary or steno from an associate, but clothes made the difference. Lawyers wore suits from Brooks Brothers. Stenos did not. Moreover, lawyers wore hats, something I completely failed to understand, despite frequent admonitions to “take your hat and come to lunch.” I never acquired a hat, nor, as you can imagine, did I ever see the inside of the partners’ john.

Every few days I get something in the e-mail about Hillary Clinton — what a bitch she is, what a ball-breaker, needless to say a dyke, an asshole, you can take your pick. And then I think about an interview I did last year, with a woman lawyer of Hillary’s age. Here’s the entry from my notes: When I decided to apply (to law school), was accepted and spoke to the dean of admissions. “Will I be employable?” Dean said, “Of course you will be, we need women to take low-paying legal work that men won’t take.” Representing juveniles, etc.

This was at the University of Michigan, by the way, not exactly Bob’s College of Law and Bartending. Then, as now, a tough nut to crack. And this was the dean of admissions talking, no doubt already pissed that he had to give one of his 450 precious seats to someone destined to work in juvie legal aid. (Two word coda to her story: She didn’t.)

Obviously, things have changed. But if, in 1952, women were considered so toxic to the legal mind that they couldn’t even be seen in the background of the office landscape at this particular white-shoe firm, that was still recent history in 1972, when Hillary graduated. I’m not going to belabor this point; I can’t imagine what I would bring to the discussion that hasn’t already been said. Just: Follow that link up there to the whole piece. It’s fascinating reading. And then think about it a while. That’s all.

You are also allowed a snicker or three at the homoerotic overtones of it all. I mean — all those jokes about the partners’ john. Please. A large infusion of estrogen must have been a downer in more ways than one. At least for some of them.

Bloggage:

This arrived a little late to do any good — it’s the entry for a YouTube/Home Depot contest to win a major cash infusion for renovating your home, and entries are closed. But you Hoosiers in particular are urged to watch. It’s funny, and it’s about a town in your orbit (Huntington). What did old buildings do before gay men were invented? Wait for the inevitable blow from the wrecking ball, I guess.

Also: This project has a blog. I really hope they win.

The Free Press, like all newspapers, is series-heavy this time of year; gotta get ’em published before year’s end, to qualify for awards. Columnist Bill McGraw’s assignment — drive every street in Detroit, then write about it — started strong on Sunday, faltered a bit Monday, and is back today with an entertaining piece about art, guerilla and otherwise, in the city.

Off to drive around the city in a panic finish my shopping. Strength and honor!

Not much today, friends, but you’re free to play like kittens in the comments. Just to get you started…

Sometimes I wonder what it’s like to be Mitch Albom, to get up every morning, look in the mirror and say, “I am worth every penny.” Think he does that? Or does he, like so many other successful people, secretly believe he has pulled off an illusion worthy of Ricky Jay, and tremble inwardly at what will happen when the audience finds out? I dunno. All I know is, I have never been a sportswriter and everything I know about baseball could fit in a shoebox, and I could have written a better column about the Mitchell Report than this. In fact, if you’d given me the Mitchell Report as a challenge, and asked me to write something about it, something suitable for a daily newspaper, I would have turned in something very much like Albom’s column. Watch me as I reveal the mysteries of punditry:

First, state facts already in evidence:

… the report was not earth-shattering, only because we already have suspected much of what it contained. Sure, many more names were thrown on the bonfire, including All-Stars such as Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada, and as you read this, analysts and fans are screaming over how to view their careers.

Then, ask a lot of rhetorical questions:

So now what? … And if they had nothing to hide, why didn’t any of them talk? …Or will the net result be, as many suspect, a big fat nothing?

Sign off with that time-tested waffler:

Where we go next is anyone’s guess.

Cash check.

Michael Rosenberg, the other Freep sports columnist, does a better job. Not hugely better, but better. Writing a first-day column about a big event expected to have wide repercussions someday, but not today, is always an exercise in thumb-twiddling. But some twiddle better than others. For instruction on how to do it well, I recommend Thomas Boswell and Harvey Araton.

For the scores of you keeping track at home, let me report the dog’s health has taken a dramatic turn for the better on his new food. Within 24 hours, his energy improved, his tucked-in skinny flanks began to fill out and he stopped looking like a sick dog, and more like a very healthy one. There was a trip to the groomer in there for a bath and haircut, which helped, but you can’t fake weight gain. He goes back next week for another blood test, and unless my eyes deceive me, the results will be good.

Something to think about for later this month. Last year we spent that down week between the holidays posting pictures submitted by you folks. Because we have so many regular commenters here, it’s nice to get a closer look at one another when there’s not much else going on. So send in some holiday pictures, and we’ll fill the waning days of the year sharing them here.

So have a great weekend. Mine will be exhausting. Hope yours isn’t.