Fun fact to know and tell: If bottom slime isn’t washed off with a hose when the boat is still wet, you’ll be removing it inch by inch with a chisel all winter. Note: This is not our boat. It’s a big gaudy fishing rocket with triple 300 hp outboards. Shudder.

Ah, the melancholy of a boatyard in autumn: Carhartt padded jackets have replaced shorts. The waterfront restaurant is closed for the season. There’s not a girl in a bathing suit, or a girl, period, in sight. (Except me. And as a female long past my sell-by date, it’s a scientific fact that I am, in fact, invisible.) Instead of boats passing up and down the channels, it’s forklifts and jeeps with winches and the shrink-wrapping crews everywhere. And us. Another fall, another day spent watching Alan yank repeatedly on an outboard starting rope. If I had a dollar for every yank I’ve seen the course of our relationship, I’d be blogging from my luxury houseboat tied up at Pier 66, Barbados.

The details are boring — hell, the whole day was boring, or would be to you guys. As for me, I did my part, and once we got the motor running again, the day went smoothly. I’ve learned, during these routine mechanical failures, to remain implacable while Alan howls obscenities at the sky. (If I had a dollar for every one of those, I wouldn’t be blogging at all. I’d have my houseboys taking dictation.) I think before I make a stupid suggestion (“Are you sure there’s enough gas?”). And I appreciate my surroundings.

There was less to appreciate this year. Sorry, Gov. Richardson, but not only can you not have any Great Lakes water because we don’t want to give you any, there’s not much left. Lush Life was sitting on the bottom when we left our slip for the year, and though a strong push freed her — thank God; I can only imagine the obscenities that little development would have required — that’s what you call a pretty low ebb. Granted, the water’s always down in fall, and Lake St. Clair is shallow enough that a stiff west wind can drop the water on the American side by a few inches, this is close to unprecedented. I hope we get shitloads of rain and snow this winter, because I don’t fancy poling.

In other decline-of-the-American-empire news, we’re also running out of gas. The price jumped by 30 cents a gallon mid-week, pushing us over the $3 mark. The local Fox affiliate did a story. I’ve mentioned before that I prefer Fox’s local news because it’s so unabashedly interested in the knuckle-dragger market that, perversely, it makes it easier to endure. The Fox story consisted of interviewing drivers as they gassed up at $3.25 prices, and adding another voice of the common man to the anvil chorus, doncha know. Why did they suppose prices were so high? As one, they answered: “The economy.”

No one mentioned the price of crude, the drop in interest rates, inflation. Not that you’d expect people interviewed at a Detroit gas station to be Alan Greenspan, but even the distant ringing of a clue would have been refreshing. But they all said “the economy,” and they all said it exactly the same way: “It’s the economy,” suggesting someone was asking a leading question, or maybe they were just that dumb. Anyway, the story wasn’t on for very long — nothing is, because the audience has the attention span of toddlers at a birthday party. And then it was on to a shocking armed robbery of a convenience store caught on tape. In Dallas.

Sometimes it’s fun to be a misanthrope. Sometimes sucking the gall-soaked rag of bitterness tastes pretty good.

Or maybe I just need some more coffee. And a shower. And a million phone calls, and some office-straightening. So, on to the bloggage:

This may be of interest only to journalists and media nerds, and its backward-running narrative makes it hard to follow, but if you have the time, it’s a wry giggle. Short version: Wall Street Journal runs an editorial that insinuates union officials live high on the hog and need more congressional oversight. As part of the argument, they toss off an astonishing figure: That one “Jimmy Warren,” treasurer for the United Steelworkers and AFL-CIO, earns a salary totaling $825,262. Wow. Having recently learned that Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, knocks down around $150,000, this seemed, well, high. It also seemed high to the steelworkers’ media-relations people, who’d never heard of him. Turns out Jimmy Warren is a treasurer in a local in Alabama, and makes $8,252 and…anyone? Yes, and 62 cents, making the fat salary quoted by America’s leading financial newspaper a rather comical and gruesome error of misplaced decimal points. What’s more, the wrong-o figure came from a Human Events website on the “highest-paid union bosses,” which includes officials from such proletarian, blue-collar labor outfits as the players’ organizations for the NBA, MLB and NFL, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild, etc. And Jimmy Warren is still on the list. Oh, well. Mistakes happen. Picky, picky.

Paul Tibbets is dead. I predict a Bob Greene column in the next few days, remarking on how reclusive the man was, and how rarely he gave interviews (except to BOB). Note: I’ve read at least half a dozen of these rare Tibbets interviews over the years. And I haven’t even been looking for them.

OK, outta here. Have a great weekend.

It’s pretty clear our wonderful little dog is losing his hearing. He responds to sharp hand claps or stomps on the floor, but not much else. I’ve considered he might be indulging in the traditional right of the elderly — selective hearing — but increasingly it seems he just doesn’t. The other day I took him for a quick walk when we were traveling, and as we circled around back to the car, the sight of Alan made him put his ears up, in a “that shape looks familiar, but I just can’t place it” sort of way, so I suppose he doesn’t see too well, either. Ah, the depredations of age. On the other hand, he still has a lust for life, and an interest in his environment, only now he relies on his sense of taste; if I let him, he’ll lick my hand for 20 minutes straight. I’m grateful shorts season is over, because for a while this summer, he was fond of tasting all our guests as they stood in the foyer, and let me tell you, it takes a serious dog person to put up with that for very long.

Needless to say, I won’t be taking him to Partridge Creek, the latest open-air mall to open in the neighborhood, which advertises itself as dog-friendly. (The billboards feature a dog with its head out the window of a car, with the legend, “Are we there yet?”) I was there today, and wondered about the wisdom of both the policy and the sorts of people who think it’s a good idea to take a giant Labrador retriever to a packed pedestrian space for no good reason other than that you can. I suppose the idea was conceived as a way to attract the Paris Hilton purse-dog contingent, but yesterday there were at least a dozen enormous breeds on display, including a few excitable specimens that really should have been somewhere else. I suppose it’s possible the owners were training their dogs to be around big crowds, but when I see an 80-pound Lab barely controlled by a 150-pound man — man in a semi-crouch, holding the leash with both hands, spluttering impotently at the pooch — I’m not reassured. Either get a collar that works, a trainer with a clue, or leave the beast at home.

Not much of a weekend, otherwise. Wrangled the last of Kate’s Halloween costume, took a couple long naps, sat poolside during a kid’s birthday party — the usual. Rented “Knocked Up” on Friday with great anticipation of yet another Apatow sweet-raunchfest, and came away disappointed. It was too long by many minutes and lurched jarringly from comedy to not-comedy. I found myself snapping my fingers for a cut, but then, am I a genius director? No, I’m just the person who has to sit through a two-hour-and-14-minute sex comedy that had not enough of either. I hope “Superbad” is better.

One of our stops Saturday was the American Apparel store, where I offered my child as a model. Ha ha kidding — I was really on my never-ending quest for a simple, well-cut, white T-shirt made of fabric thick enough you can’t read your watch through it. The verdict: The search goes on. But hey, I found a scoop-neck, cap-sleeve specimen seemingly spun by anorexic spiders for the low low price of $30. Forget reading your watch through it; you could have read the box scores from the agate page through it, which I suppose is the point, but jeez, it’s a damn T-shirt. HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THIS ITEM CORRECT? It’s like a cup of coffee. Two ingredients, an infinite number of ways to screw it up. This should be a Project Runway assignment. A grateful nation would make the winner rich.

Bloggage:

I was thinking if I were Mitch Albom’s editor, how easy my work would be. Take today’s. It begins:

When did adults start dressing for Halloween?

I’d write, “About 30 years ago, by my reckoning. Thanks for noticing, but see if you can’t do better by deadline. — Ed.” Then a big red X through the next 600 words, and careful placement in the middle of his desk.

Only it doesn’t work that way, not anymore. I doubt Albom has a desk in the newsroom, and anyway, no editor bosses him around, and anyway, he has an excuse — his other Sunday column, the one in Sports, lets everyone know just who has the biggest d–, er, book sales in the newsroom, who’s been on Oprah, and who better look the other way when three out of four nine out of ten nearly all the Sunday Metro columns are lame-ass. (Cf: iPods: What’s up with that? or School shootings: What’s up with that?)

Ah, well. I’m not one to talk, am I?

Here’s a somewhat meatier story, an oldie but goodie: Mark Jacobson’s 2000 profile of Frank Lucas, currently being played by Denzel Washington in “American Gangster.” Many choice passages, much rich detail, lots of heroin.

Finally, Fox Business anchor or porn star? I only got 50 percent right on this quiz. It’s that difficult.

Today’s Moment of Poignance, Old Newshound Division: Thousands of Michigan schoolchildren, perhaps including my own, will have to retake part of the MEAP, our state test to make sure no child is left behind (God FORBID), because of a security breach.

Which was? A newspaper doing a story on the testing revealed essay topics before all students in the state had been tested. The fear, evidently, is that perhaps an untested child in the Upper Peninsula read the website of the Jackson Citizen-Patriot, and might have gotten an early warning on the test topic. Yes, really.

And the moment of poignance? Ahem:

“It’s not like we were going to find out the answers,” Brooke Nemens, 10, a sixth-grader at L’Anse Creuse Middle School — North, said after she heard the news. “I don’t even read the newspaper.”

Well, Brooke, you should. God knows what you could have learned.

The offending newspaper in Jackson (motto: “Home of the Largest Maximum-Security Prison in Michigan, and also the Jackson Cascades“) is making the usual mea-culpa sounds, although this blog entry, by an “opinion columnist,” is sort of weird — “testicles on a pitchfork”? How times have changed. (I don’t generally talk about my last, strange months in the newspaper business, but in the interest of making wicked fun, I’ll reveal this: Upon my return to the paper post-fellowship, the editor felt compelled to propose a blogging policy. Among the proposed rules: All blogs must adhere to newspaper standards of content and propriety, which at that time included a blanket ban on the word “butt” as a description of the fleshy pads we all sit on. And now, barely three years later, a paper in a city just as conservative as Fort Wayne, arguably more so, is allowing pitchforked testicles under its online brand. Ha. Ha. Ha.)

So what do we think of Al Gore’s Nobel? Lost Bush v. Gore, but got a couple of nice consolation prizes — an Oscar and now this one, which also includes dinner with the King of Sweden. I’ll start: I’ll enjoy this if only for the apoplexy it will induce in the needs-more-evidence community.

Had a good interview yesterday, and now must go over notes to make sure I didn’t forget anything, because the subject leaves for two weeks in Fiji in about 12 hours. How’s that for a ducking-out-early excuse?

Later, maybe. If not, have a good weekend.

For those of you who have received Facebook SuperPokes from me in the last few days, I apologize. I’m still figuring out why I need this thing, although I’ve been assured by Those Who Know that all will become clear eventually. Whatever. I spent most of yesterday at a conference, and one of the sessions featured a very energetic woman telling a room full of baffled small businesspeople that they need to be on Twitter, a site that seems to exist for the sole purpose of letting the whole world honk like a goose.*

(* Many years ago, Alan had an interview with an ornithologist. Before he left, I said, “Ask him what geese are saying when they honk at one another when they’re flying.” He returned and reported the answer: A puzzled look, and “Here I am.”)

On the other hand, if I’d been sent a Twitter text message telling me my buds John and Sammy were not in Atlanta yesterday at 8:48 a.m. EDT, but at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, I would not have awakened John at 5:48 a.m. PDT to ask what sort of DV camera I should buy. I know that’s the sort of day-brightener I always appreciate.

The conference wasn’t a total waste of time. It was a research trip, and I got lots of ideas, even though the temperature indoors seemed to be turned down to stun. I spent the first part of the week worrying that the nape of my neck would never feel cool and dry again and by Wednesday — not even the end of the week — I’m blowing on my fingers in hopes of feeling sensation in them. During a break in the action, I wandered out to the lobby to discover the UAW had struck Chrysler. By the time I got home, the strike was over. Six hours — not even a whole shift — and yet it was enough to send yet another sheaf of solidarity-forever photos out into the world. Tom Walsh at the Freep points out the stakes:

(UAW President) Ron Gettelfinger is on the verge of doing something so historic, forging the most important UAW contracts since the GM sit-down strikes of 1936-37, that he felt compelled to deploy the biggest weapon in his arsenal, the strike, to make it happen. He called strikes to squeeze every last penny and every possible promise of a job from the companies, in return for the UAW agreeing to major cost-saving measures, most importantly, a union-run trust fund to handle future health care costs for retirees.

And he called strikes to show the hourly rank-and-file workers that he has their back, that he’s doing everything he can to get the most he can for his people. If UAW members don’t trust their leader to do that, they won’t ratify these contracts. The heavy lifting is not done. Gettelfinger, UAW Vice President Bob King and their bargaining team must now hunker down with Ford Motor Co., arguably the weakest of Detroit’s automakers, to negotiate one more contract.

I point this out not to bore the crap out of you, only to pause for a moment and reflect that a smart beat reporter-turned-columnist can be a real service to readers. That is all.

One of the sessions I attended was on innovation. After I adjusted my brain to the idea — having spent my career in an industry that could have hung out a sign reading, PROUDLY INNOVATION-FREE SINCE THE CIVIL WAR — I started to wonder if newspapers might not have had to travel this rocky path, if they’d had the sense to see the future coming down the road at them. Impossible question to answer, I know, but I do know what kept them from seeing it: Fear. Newspapers have been managed from a position of nail-biting fear for so long they don’t know any other way to do it. Kind of like the UAW. Too bad.

When I snapped back to attention the speaker was talking about how the parking decks at Metro Airport were innovated to within an inch of their lives, and the next step will likely be a Star Trek transporter between your home and your departure gate, cutting the car and the parking out of the equation completely. Kind of like the internet and newspapers. Too bad.

Friends, I’m beat, and I told myself I’d get this chore out of the way early, so I can shower and eat and adjust my caffeine balance. I don’t have much bloggage, but I advise you to find your own at Comics Curmudgeon, where daily the proprietor points out the utter laziness and fear-based management that rules the funny pages. Psst: He’s just devastating on Ziggy today. Or Doghouse Riley, who is having Hoosier-style water problems, something I recall from my Hoosier days.

And if you’d like to be sucked into a Flash vortex and not get any work done for the rest of the day, go ahead and try to spot the difference. Make sure the monitor faces the wall and no one can see what you’re really doing.

Also, where’s Danny been these days? The halls feel empty and echo-y without him.

Unseasonable warmth here of late; today’s high is predicted to be in the mid-80s. Of course journalistic objectivity requires me to insert the phrase “so-called” in front of “global warming,” so I’ll refrain from bringing it up.* I’ll only say it makes for some strange mornings.

Summer flip-flops, for instance, are not made for my driveway these days, littered so heavily with acorns it’s like walking through a landscape of marbles and broken glass. The birds are quieter as the sky lightens, so the earliest sounds of the awakening city come from the freeway, half a mile as the (less talkative these days) crow files. Zoom. Zoom. The rumble of a truck. The blat of a motorcycle. I lie there and think: I went to bed 4.5 hours ago. Why am I awake? Answer: Because the universe hates you and wants you to suffer. The leaves are changing right on schedule, the mums replaced the coleus and impatiens on the front porch two weeks ago, but they have to be watered just as often, because the fall rains aren’t coming. Also, 85-degree temperatures take it out of even hardy mums.

Meanwhile, Charlotte died. She was a spider that spun her web in a corner of our back doorway. I watched her the other evening, catching her just as the spokes were complete and she started on the orbital sections. She didn’t look quite like E.B. White’s description of her namesake — she was a pale beige, not gray, and smaller than a gumdrop. When she finished, she took her place at the center of the web to wait. The next morning, the web had a few torn spots in it — left by the ensnared bugs, I expect — and Charlotte was gone. The following night, the web was unrepaired and Charlotte was back, but she wasn’t moving. I touched the web, and she raised one leg, rather weakly, it seemed. The next day, the web was in tatters, Charlotte was gone, and that evening, she didn’t show up at all.

I dunno. Maybe she moved.

Thus concludes the Annie Dillard wannabe portion of today’s post. As I occasionally point out, at least 50 percent of the reason I started this blog was to force myself to keep a daily journal of some sort, and sometime in the future, I’ll be glad I wrote all this down. Also, low-rent woolgathering about the weather keeps me from thinking about the Grosse Pointe News, my local weekly. Motto: One of America’s many lousy newspapers..

Just to show you where I’m coming from: The state of Michigan narrowly avoided a government shutdown early this week. Unemployment is up, revenues are down, deficits are huge. The state needs more money, but opposing taxes, any taxes, is now an actual religion among Republicans. The no-new-taxes crowd said the deficit could be made up by cutting services, but when pressed to be specific, couldn’t be. The stalemate dragged on for months. At the very last minute, quite literally the last minute, the legislature passed a sales tax on services and an income-tax increase, crisis averted.

The Pointes’ representative voted for the tax increase. His name is Ed Gaffney. Page One headline in this week’s edition: Gaffney defends tax gaff. See, it’s a play on words! And, oh yeah, “gaffe” is misspelled, but what the hell. And the headline is outright editorializing. Never mind that. He had his reasons for voting for the increase, which he explains in the story. He doesn’t say that he’s a lame duck thanks to term limits, and the story doesn’t mention it. An editorial does, but that’s on another page. (It also speaks of his “gaff.” I’m wondering if I missed a photo of my representative running around Lansing brandishing a long pole with a hook on the end.)

The editorial makes a big deal out of noting how fiscally conservative the community is. On the facing page, a man-on-the-street interview asks locals how they thought the crisis should be solved. Of six people interviewed, three were Pointers. Of the three, two answered: With new taxes. Ha.

One more amusing detail: At the end of the angry editorial, there’s a subhead. Late breaking news. (Yes, no hyphen, my copy-editing friends. Argh.) Under it: While going to press we heard that Mr. Gaffney, in budget negotiations, was able to get an additional $800,000 to $1.2 million for the Grosse Pointe and Harper Woods school districts. Oh.

It’s like no one edits this paper at all. It’s like it just assembles itself. The Weekly Miracle, indeed.

Are you ready for some bloggage?

Snort:

LOS ANGELES—A Malawi couple has completed adoption paperwork for Sean Preston Federline, 2, and Jayden James Federline, 1, after their mother, Britney Spears, lost custody of the children Monday.

It was Ms. Spears’ inability to provide car seats that initially brought the plight of her children to the attention of the Malawi couple, who wish to remain anonymous, and who will be referred to here as Mr. and Mrs. M. But it was the widely circulated photograph of Ms. Spears’ vagina that really drew their concern. “In our country, a good mother does not show her business to the press,” Mrs. M said. “It is very bad luck.” After Spears’ “performance” at MTV’s Video Music Awards, the adoptive couple knew they had to do something. “We could not allow innocent children to live under such horrific conditions anymore,” they explained. “The Third World can no longer turn a blind eye to the tragedy affecting so many U.S. celebrity children.”

Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker is coming to Detroit Saturday:

On Saturday night, Crocker is scheduled to appear at Ice in Hamtramck, which bills itself as Detroit’s premier gay nightclub. What will he be doing there, other than being his fabulous self? “It’s a surprise,” said Crocker, who uses a pseudonym. “It’s going to be worth it, for sure.”

If you get on the road now, you can still make it. I’ll change the sheets in the guest room.

Oh, and finally, the Freep takes a look at how Islam is lived on the majority-Muslim football team at Fordson High School in Dearborn, sneeringly referred to as “Dearbornistan” by people who have never been there. Join us as we see how the high-school athlete copes when Ramadan falls during football season:

Last season, Fordson High’s football team, which is about 95% Muslim, started 4-0.

Then Ramadan came.

The team lost its next four games, all held during the holy month. After Ramadan, the team won its last regular game of the year, squeaking into the playoffs.

Did the fasting affect their performance? Maybe.

But this season, new head coach Fouad Zaban isn’t making it an issue.

“It became an excuse, whether legitimate or not,” said Zaban, a former star running back at Fordson. “It became a distraction, something we had to deal with the last four to five years. …But our motto this year is: ‘No excuses.’ We will not bring the issue up, and we haven’t.”

Zaban is a devout Muslim and fasts. But he’s leaving the choice up to his players: There’s water on the sidelines if they want to drink during workouts. During a practice last Thursday, though, the players chose to sweat it out.

Really interesting story.

Have a great weekend.

* Of course I am kidding. We are currently experiencing climate change that is almost certainly man-made and will be catastrophic, and not just to the bottom of our boat when we try to get it out of the harbor this fall, now that the water has dropped precipitously. Sorry for any misunderstanding. That is all.

I’ll give up my HBO when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers, but so far the cable channel’s executives have already pushed back seven or eight digits, and I don’t know how much longer I can hang on. When “The Wire” wraps next year, there had better be a new David Simon project in the pipeline, or I am so gone.

Never mind the hugely disappointing “John From Cincinnati,” which flopped in a season, but not before it took raunchy dialogue to a new level, and no, I’m not talking about f-bombs, or even the quasi-Victorian chop-chop salad of “Deadwood” profanity. I have never heard bowel movements (“dumping out”) discussed with such frequency, and I am a woman who has toilet-trained a child. It’s “Tell Me You Love Me” that I come to bury today, although I may not have the energy. This show, about the intimate travails of four different couples, takes it out of me.

Every so often you’ll hear water-cooler criticism of this or that popular entertainment, and someone will complain, “it’s just that there are no likable characters,” as though without a rooting interest, we have no reason to watch. I disagree. Is there a single character on “The Sopranos” that any person here would like to live next door to? (And don’t say Tony; for all the thrills he gives his square neighbors by his very presence, they think he’s guinea white trash. And they’re right.) Likable is what kills TV shows, as bored writers cave in to the demands of fan websites and network executives. All a good continuing character has to be is interesting. That’s the problem with “Tell Me You Love Me” — the characters are so boring they kill houseplants with their very presence.

HBO must know this. That’s why the show’s pre-premiere buzz was all about the sex, which is explicit but not plentiful enough to hold your interest, although my e-mail is funny enough: “Were my eyes playing tricks on me, or was that some guy’s ball sack on HBO last night?” Yes, yes it was. For the record, there were also erect wangers and one money shot, although it was done with egg whites and prosthetics. And you know how people say porn is, ultimately, boring? This is worse. At least in porn the actors say oh yeah oh yeah do me baby that’s so hot; these folks barely even breathe hard.

But that’s the point! the four or so fans of this show are saying. The sex is bad, because the couples are having problems! No, the sex is bad because the people are horrible. Also, incredibly dull. Actual line of dialogue, during a fight between the engaged couple: “This was like in Austin, when you bought a beer and you didn’t even ask if I wanted one, and then you flirted with that girl with the long arms!” This is what you hear when your neighbors are fighting. I remember once when my nursery monitor began picking up a cordless-phone conversation somewhere in the neighborhood. I leaned close, prepared to hear news of an upcoming drug deal, or maybe some phone sex. But no: “Are you getting the oil changed today?” “I don’t care; what do you want for dinner?”

The things that make people interesting — their enthusiasms, their secret fears, their sense of humor, how they choose to spend an idle Saturday — have been stripped away. I read an interview with the show’s creator, where she said this was deliberate, that she kept taking furniture and props off the sets until they were the upscale waiting-for-Godot moonscapes they are now, so that we’d concentrate on the actors, and their issues. But this isn’t theater, and the ShakyCam photography is telling us “documentary.” So, where are the unguarded moments? Does anyone ever tell a joke, bitch about a boss, fart while cuddling on the couch, study a box score? No.

Although I will confess this: Even in these minimalist settings, I couldn’t help but notice the therapist has a Noguchi table in her office. You know what I’d like to hear? Someone say, “Is that a Noguchi table?” I read an introductory text on playwrighting where authors were advised not to write “I’m so tired” if they could write “Has anyone seen my magazine?” and let the actor say it in a tired voice. What volumes could be spoken in a lively discussion of mid-century furniture.

Meanwhile, the sex is dwindling. There was only one boning scene this week, and it was done standing up in a restaurant kitchen, and needless it say, it wasn’t the chicken being boned, but the semi-nympho twentysomething character, Jaime. On the prep table! Which no one wiped down afterward! Check your salad carefully before you tuck in. I tell you this as a friend.

What was HBO thinking? They let Matthew Weiner go to AMC, where “Mad Men” is mopping the floor with them on basic cable, with commercials. While the people who are paying $10 a month get scrotums, and Showtime subscribers have “Weeds” and “Dexter.” Where is the next “Six Feet Under?” How soon can we get another season of “Big Love” on the air? “Entourage,” my friends, is not enough.

Bloggage:

Funky Winkerbean deathwatch: Don’t fear the reaper! Or is that the phantom of the opera? UPDATE: The Comics Curmudgeon takes note of Lisa’s imminent passing, as well as that of one of Lynn Johnston’s characters. What is it, seasonal depression week in the funnies?

I haven’t written much lately about Britney Spears, because…well, “I haven’t written much about Britney Spears” just says it all, doesn’t it? It seems fashionable now to say one isn’t writing about Britney because she’s obviously a young woman in great pain, and blah blah blah, wish her well, blah blah blah rehab blah counseling blah to the blah. If I’m taking a keener interest in her this week, it’s because of this: She’s lost her kids, and she seemingly doesn’t care. The judge says turn them over by Wednesday, and she turns them over on Monday, then goes tanning, then gets a big hotel suite. Yee-haw, freedom! We all know, intellectually, there are mothers like this in the world, but it’s still sort of shocking to see one up close. I wonder if the hotel suite was a “Leaving Las Vegas” kind of deal.

Newsday’s Pulitzer prizes are sold at auction, but no one knows how they got there. Psst, whoever bought them: Melting them down in the only possible ending to this story.

So I guess a new Mr. Olympia was crowned over the weekend. LA Mary sent me a picture, impishly noting that her governor is a former title-holder. I don’t know this guy’s name; it might be Jay Cutler, the 2007 winner, but the official website hasn’t been updated yet, and I’m too lazy to do a full Google. Anyway, here’s a 2007 contestant:

His head looks Photoshopped, doesn’t it? And yet, if you were going to digitally manipulate any part of that picture, wouldn’t it be the guy’s basket? Have you ever seen anything more pathetic? Oh, well — life is a series of choices, and I’d say he gave up one thing in return for another. Nice lats.

As things do so often these days, it send me into a [swimmy screen effects and harp glissandos] reverie of my salad days. I covered a Mr. Olympia contest once; for many years it was held in Columbus, Ohio. From Wikipedia’s table of results, I guess that would have been 1979. Sounds about right. Although nowadays the contest is held in, where else, Vegas, at the time bodybuilding was still pretty obscure, and having it in Columbus was solely the doing of one man, who worked at Nationwide Insurance, and his good friend, Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was as green as a greenhorn could be, working in what was then still called the Columbus Dispatch women’s department. How did the department that handled weddings, engagements, ladies’ club news and “society” end up with Mr. Olympia? Through a time-honored practice at American newspapers — dumping an undesirable assignment on another department.

It was Sports, of course, that did the dumping. Sports departments are famous for jettisoning coverage of any non-traditional sport, of which sports editors are deeply suspicious. They’re the most conservative journalists in any newsroom, believing anything not played with a ball or puck isn’t really a sport at all. They only cover the Olympics because it involves international travel and pictures of women’s beach volleyball victory celebrations. I exaggerate, but not much.

Anyway, they shopped the Mr. Olympia assignment around until they found a sap (my editor), who found her own sap (me). Because this was the women’s department, and because my editor had no imagination at all, the original assignment was to write about defending champion Frank Zane’s wife, who was advocating the then-shocking idea that women should work out with weights, too. I went to their suite at the Sheraton for the interview. Frank popped a bicep for me to squeeze; it was, quite literally, like a rock. But they weren’t the story, not the whole story. The story was that my hometown was hosting an event that brought in dozens of competitors and thousands of spectators from all over the world, truly an international event, and it was doing so with virtually no local media attention, except my little inside-page women’s-department lameness.

After the story ran, I went to the competition. I was young and fairly naive at the time, but at the first posedown, it became clear why Sports didn’t want it and Metro was just embarrassed by it and only a sap like me would even think of wandering into Vet’s Memorial to watch: The body builders stood and flexed, and thousands of muscle queens howled with approval. I mean: Howled. I don’t know what I was expecting — maybe enthusiastic applause with a few woo-hoos thrown in. But this was like being stuck in the bonobo exhibit. If strip clubs tend to be dour, downbeat places, all those men sitting quietly at their tables for one, nursing Cokes and distributing their salaries in $1 and $5 denominations, this was its polar opposite — raw man-lust, foot-stomping, seat-pounding gimme-gimme-some-o’-that carrying on. It turned out that the Village People didn’t have all the gay erotic archetypes covered.

It occurred to me that now would be a good time to interview Frank Zane’s wife, but she was somewhere else.

The next day, the photo editor approached me in a panic; the AP was desperate for a picture, any picture; clients around the world were clamoring and the paper had nothin’. I turned over a roll of film I’d shot with my own camera, and suddenly we had somethin’, my first and only photo contribution to the Associated Press.

This was the very dawning of the fitness boom; “Pumping Iron” was still a cult documentary. Within a few years, “Conan the Barbarian” and “Terminator” would make the future governor of California a star, and the roots of Mr. Olympia in Columbus would become the Arnold Sports Festival — my goodness, but that man has had some work done, and not on his biceps, no? — and it gets a great deal of respectful media coverage.

I bet not by the Sports department, though.

Before we leave bodybuilding entirely, however, here is a terrifying picture. What’s in his wallet?

Okily-dokily, bloggage:

Ever since Lynn Johnston started letting daily life — the funny and unfunny — affect her comic strip, “For Better or For Worse,” everyone is getting in the game. If Johnston was an original, Tom Batiuk and “Funky Winkerbean” is an imitator. He tries pretty hard, though, and I was willing to forgive him as long as he didn’t get too…unfunny.

That lasted until this morning, when Lisa, dying of breast cancer, apparently went blind. Jeez, what’s next? Coughing up blood? Her death is timed to coincide with Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but this is too much.

The MGM Grand invested $800 million in their new Motown casino, opening today. For some reason, no one likes my slogan: “What happens in Detroit, stays in Detroit.” I think it brings a note of menace the wussy Vegas original doesn’t have, but what do I know?

Have a great day. I’ll be workin’.

Perhaps because the industry is in such a profound slump, I find myself a sucker for newspaper nostalgia — not the “Deadline USA” artifacts of glue pots and fedoras, but the era I was only able to glimpse the tail end of in my earliest days in the biz, that is, the one portrayed in “Zodiac,” a murder mystery in which the San Francisco Chronicle plays a major role.

I’m not a fan of David Fincher — hated “Fight Club,” sorry kids, and thought “Seven” was just tiresome — but with “Zodiac,” I’m softening. It presented a picture of crime I recognize from my newspaper days, and one that stands in opposition to “Seven.” Serial killers tend not to be mad geniuses recreating crime scenes based on Renaissance paintings of the sacrifice of Isaac, say, but just nasty assholes with guns. Crimes are solved, when they are, based on either dumb mistakes made by killers (who tend to be pretty dumb themselves) or lots of not-particularly-cinematic legwork by police. Frequently they’re not solved at all, technically; cases remain open even though cops tell you confidentially that they know who did it, they just don’t have enough evidence to convict. That’s the case of the Zodiac killer, where the circumstantial evidence pointed overwhelmingly to one man, although (we learn in an ending-title sequence) later DNA evidence was inconclusive. That’s how much real crime is — inconclusive, but not.

Like “Mad Men,” “Zodiac” is a painstaking period piece, and it’s possible to get lost in the scrupulousness of its detail — hey, I remember those two-tone mailboxes! Blue IBM selectrics! Corvairs! — and forget what’s going on. But that’s just as well, because what’s going on is a more true-to-life police procedural than most, in the sense that we see not cutting-edge forensics or amazing-coincidence investigations, but turf battles, bureaucratic meddling, reportorial screwups, tough breaks — the usual. A review I read at the time said it “feels long and is meant to feel long.” Titles flash by every couple of minutes: “Two and a half weeks later,” “Four months later,” “Four years later.” The case, like the movie, drags on. Sixties set design gives way to seventies, and then to ’80s. (The main character, as if to underline his obsession-to-the-point-of-lunacy, continues to drive an orange Rabbit through most of these years.)

As this is a true story, I’m not spoiling it to say the conclusion is ambiguous. The star reporter gives in to egomania, then dies of emphysema. (Yes, the smoke-filled newsroom is like a character in and of itself.) The cartoonist loses his job, apparently because of his obsession with the Zodiac case, but we know he would have been dead meat long before this — cartoonists? Like the budget has money for that. But the scene that really got me was one where Jake Gyllenhaal, playing the straight-arrow cartoonist, passes by the bar where Robert Downey, the wastrel reporter, is washing off the day with 80 proof whiskey, along with what looks like half the staff, and they are having a high old time. That’s what I want to remember about newspapers. Not the booze, which took down its share of good people and bad, but the fun. The table in the nearby bar, with the stories you couldn’t get in the paper.

Jon Carroll remembers:

And the movie version of the Chronicle city room was nowhere near as grungy and disorderly as the actual city room. There must have been photographs of the 1969 version around; maybe the moviemakers thought the real thing would be too distracting. (“The truth? You can’t handle the truth.”) The place was awash in paper. The desks were stained and dented. The pillars, shown in the movie as pristine, were covered with old front pages, amusing memos, girlie pictures — was it a hostile environment for women? You bet, but then, so was everywhere else.

The movie shows a little drug use on the premises, which is accurate, more than accurate. There was one reporter who made more or less a full-time living dealing dope. And there was a lot of on-the-job drinking, some of it, like wine-soaked birthday celebrations, entirely sanctioned. And a bar called Hanno’s was virtually an extension of The Chronicle — its telephone number was even printed in the interoffice directory.

The 1969 Chronicle was closer, in both time and ambience, to the Ben Hecht-“His Girl Friday” city rooms of the late ’30s than to the heavily cubicled, almost-tidy room of today.

Sigh.

Bloggage:

Dogfighting in Detroit. Everything you probably didn’t want to know. The accompanying video is excellent, more proof that sometimes print people do TV better than TV people. Usage note: The story at that link contains the phrase “gnashes its teeth” in the lead. May I see the hands of those who know precisely what teeth-gnashing is, and think that is, indeed, what the dog was doing? Thought so. My dictionary says, “to grind one’s teeth together, typically in a sign of anger.” Just a nitpick. What-evuh.

Another usage note: Who can tell me what “angst” means? It’s a German word for…? Anyone? Yes, anxiety. That is, fear. Nowadays it’s a catch-all term for anything that means “not happy.” I’ve given up on this one.

Back later. Have at it.

An intellectual exercise to start things off today: Anyone care to guess what NN.C community member and DePaul University professor Ashley Morris’ homeowners’ insurance bill is this year? Take a moment before you peek, and really think about it. Ashley lives in New Orleans, sure, although if I recall correctly, I don’t think his house was flooded post-K. (Yes, it’s true — the entire city is not below sea level, as NOLA-hatas like to say.) I’m guessing even your highest guess will be dwarfed by reality, so go ahead and look.

Amazing, isn’t it?

For the record, I think the last check I wrote to State Farm for the usual coverage was for around $575. And my agent apologized because I had to carry more liability than those in adjacent counties, because Wayne County jurors have a history of stickin’ it to the man in civil cases.

As for Ashley, and New Orleans, this is how a city dies. Not in one fell swoop, but from a lot of little players each doing their part to make life there impossible. The rest of you who live in high-potential-disaster areas — California, coastal Florida — what do you pay?

Sigh.

Alan went to the lake Sunday to solve our Shrub Problem*, and discovered we have a Groundhog Problem. Our tiny homemade cottage sits not on a slab but on smaller supports, and over time we’ve had a variety of animals trying to make our floor their roof. Most of these can be banished with rude treatment and some chicken wire, but evidently Mr. G. has already done some major excavation. This will call for, at very least, a trap, and potentially firearms. The plan of attack was outlined for me today: First the humane trap, followed by a release “a minimum of five miles away,” and then, if that doesn’t work, Alan’s dad’s .22 rifle.

“Do you even know how to fire it?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, sheepishly. “But I had to look up some instructions to figure out how to load it.” And with this ol’ Dead Eye Derringer is going to kill a groundhog. I’m further advised this weapon is “from the ’30s, I think,” a “really nice rifle” and “has one of those cowboy lever-action things.” I can’t wait.

Let’s hope the trap works. I’m reminded of our old neighbor Patrick, who had a raccoon living in his attic. He trapped it, and took it to the park at the end of our street to release it. He then re-set the trap, just in case there were two. The following night, the same raccoon (raccoon with identical scars, anyway) turned up in it again. This time he took it several miles away to a rural area. It took the animal three days to find his home base again. The third time he took it to an adjacent county, and it finally stayed away. I suspect it was run over by a car on its journey home.

True to form, Alan has exhaustively researched groundhog bait preferences. I was told today to shop for cantaloupe, which we will then drench in vanilla extract. Then we made groundhog faces at one another. This will be fun.

*The Shrub Problem: When Kate was a baby, Alan planted a row of boxwood bushes in front of the cottage. They were about shin-high. Now, years later, they’ve been so thoroughly gnawed on by deer they’re now ankle-high, and I’m not kidding. Actually they’re now on their way to a compost heap, because they’ve been replaced by a row of hardy Canadian rosebushes, with lots of thorns. We shall see.

Perhaps because I have not fired a gun at a living thing in my lifetime, a loving God has smiled on me today, and given us all a new Tim Goeglein column to laugh and point at:

This has been a landmark summer in our family. My parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Another aunt and uncle celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. Two other aunts and uncles celebrated their 60th wedding anniversaries. One of my aunts celebrated her 75th birthday. They all live in Allen County; they were, with one exception, all born in Allen County; they were all married in Allen County. Landmarks like these make cities and counties thrive.

The juxtaposition of fading summer against the permanence of those landmarks is remarkable to ponder. Some of my favorite quotes about summertime point up the contrast luminously.

Wow. Most people get over this sort of pondering when they finally set aside their bongs: You mean, in my fingernail, there could be, like, a whole universe? And our whole universe could be, like, in the fingernail of something even bigger? Actually, I’m disappointed in Tim today. He goes to his parents’ anniversary party, mines Bartlett’s, and phones it all in:

It did not hurt things to know that the beauty of the weather combined to make it a special day. “What a beautiful, sunny morning,” wrote Takayuki Ikkaku. “It makes you happy to be alive, doesn’t it? We can’t let the sun outshine us. We have to beam, too!” It was a glory to see my parents so radiant on that day, surrounded by their children, grandchildren, siblings and friends of long standing. “The summer,” wrote the poet Wallace Stevens, “is like a perfection of thought.” All of us kept thinking what a remarkable occasion it all was across four generations and every part of the United States.

Yes, you should not be surprised to learn that the Lord sent his finest weather for Tim’s parents’ party. Nor should you have any doubt that the party was simply wonderful, and went off without a hitch:

I keep thinking about those five hours of my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party when all the people they love so deeply gathered to eat, drink, dance, talk, laugh and catch up. Henry James wrote: “Summer afternoon . . . the two most beautiful words in the English language.” How right he was. That afternoon gathering could have gone on for hours; it was a pastiche of civility and kindness; of old memories and old friendships; and, most important, of the tenderness that humans have for one another on golden anniversaries.

The tenderness of golden anniversaries? Yes, as opposed to the brutality they show one another on the silver ones, I suppose.

Oh, you can wade through the muck yourselves, if you want.

But I wouldn’t waste your time. It’s a lovely day, and I’m headed out to enjoy it.

Big big news in Michigan today: The pets are having an uprising.

I don’t mean to be flip. Three people are dead in two separate dog-maulings. I mentioned one yesterday — a four-month-old baby killed by a Rottweiler. Worse was one that followed, in which two adults were killed by the same pack of roaming curs in an adjacent rural county rapidly going exurban.

Here’s the story; note the photo. I wonder what that sign means, the “if you don’t like it, go away” part. Clashes between long-established rural concerns and newly arrived suburbanites have been going on for years, but it usually involves issues like hog-farm smells or slow-moving combines on rural section roads. Even country people would consider the maintenance of a free-roaming pack of killer dogs to be a bit un-neighborly, but you never know. There’s a strong streak of antisocial libertarianism that runs through rural Michigan, of the fuck-you-it’s-a-free-country variety. Remember, Tim McVeigh spent a spell here, along with his close pal, Thumb native Terry Nichols.

That said, I know nothing gets a posse of farmers to take their rifles from the wall faster than a wild dog pack. Freedom’s one thing, but livestock-killin’s taking money out of pockets. I guess the question to raise is whether two people constitute livestock.

Man, I’m under-caffeinated today. The thing about sleep deprivation is, it builds up. I once heard Bob Edwards interview an expert in these things, who studied people who had jobs that put them out of sync with normal circadian rhythms. It was really more of a conversation, as Edwards was one of those people whose alarm is set for 1 a.m. By Thursday, he said, he was snapping at people for the crime of having squeaky shoes. Dr. Frank once observed that he’d gotten three voice mails overnight from a cardiologist friend doing the all-night on-call shift, an action-packed one in artery-clogged Indiana. The 1 a.m. call was merely terse and grouchy, the 3 a.m. message clouded with increasing shittiness, and by 5 a.m. the voice was screechy and enraged — and these two were fast friends.

I get bitchy, too, but more often I just get tired. If I were that cardiologist, I’d be trying to insert an angio balloon into the patient’s appendix.

So let’s call this a draw and skip right to the bloggage. New chick-blog for bookmarking: I Am Bossy, which I only discovered this week, after Weingarten linked to her ever-so-helpful tampon test (note: safe for fainthearted males; all fluids are a color other than red). Just earlier that day I had been admiring the Simply Vera by Vera Wang ad insert in my morning newspaper, thinking maybe I’d mosey over to Kohl’s and see if anything caught my eye, and then Bossy just…destroyed it. In a highly amusing fashion. I wonder how I’d look in that Liberty Bell cozy.

Fidel Castro writes a newspaper column, and fellow columnist Eric Zorn has a few questions. No. 4: Is he able to take one of life’s minor indignities or insults — a crooked crease the dry cleaner left in the pants of his camouflage suit, say — and spin it into a 700-word tirade on the overall decline of society? I can!

Finally, if you missed it in the comments of the previous post, our own Brian Stouder vexes the help in Logansport, Ind., via that community’s splendidly named Pharos-Tribune.

I’m awake now. Just in time for lunch.