Yes­ter­day was one of those days read­ing Face­book made me feel stu­pider. A num­ber of Friends of the NN.C Empire noted that George Stein­bren­ner man­aged to die dur­ing the Year of No Estate Tax, sav­ing his heirs mil­lions. And one of their friends — because I hope I don’t have friends this dumb — won­dered if we might see a rash of rich-old-people sui­cides, as the year draws to a close.

And then, with a soft click and faint buzz, a com­pact flu­o­res­cent bulb went on over my head. Ele­va­tor pitch!

After enjoy­ing a holy and prayer­ful Christ­mas with his fam­ily, a rich man con­sid­ers sui­cide on New Year’s Eve, to avoid the fear­some Death Tax. He stands on a bridge built with stim­u­lus money, ready to take the leap, when he’s approached by the angel ghost of Ronald Rea­gan, who con­vinces him to wait. The two visit a world where the man’s grand­chil­dren nod on heroin binges with Kennedy off­spring, hav­ing been relieved of the bur­den of earn­ing a liv­ing. The man won­ders what hap­pened to his old hero when the ghost tells him this isn’t the result of con­fis­ca­tory death taxes but the relax­ation of social norms in place for gen­er­a­tions. They go back in time and kill the inven­tor of birth con­trol, sev­eral labor lead­ers, and all the filthy hip­pies they can find, for God. They return to the present, and there is no Pres­i­dent Obama, just a thousand-year GOP reich, er, demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected gov­ern­ment, which is lean and funded by a 3 per­cent flat tax on income.

“How can I get out of pay­ing this 3 per­cent?” the man asks, as Rea­gan pre­pares to depart. The Gip­per ghost winks and says, “That’s for the sequel” and dis­ap­pears to the sound of ring­ing bells across the land.

So, it needs a lit­tle work. But I think it has promise for one of those right-wing movie-making projects. Mel Gib­son can play the lead. I’m pretty sure he’ll be avail­able.

Actu­ally, I didn’t have much time for Face­book yes­ter­day. It was crazy busy, inter­rupted by a trip down­town to check an elec­tion fil­ing that wasn’t down­town, I learned, but in Lans­ing, and on the web to boot. OK. But a trip down­town is never wasted, espe­cially when you can visit the Cole­man A. Young Munic­i­pal Cen­ter. And find a street park­ing spot. I drove home along Jef­fer­son, just for the hell of it — free­ways are fine for get­ting where you need to go in a hurry, but the scenery’s bet­ter at street level. The town’s not look­ing any bet­ter than it did the last time I took the long way home, but it’s not look­ing worse. In this econ­omy, that counts as rede­vel­op­ment. Hang in there, crazy­town.

So, the I Write Like meme was sweepin’ the inter­nets yes­ter­day, and I paused long enough to plug a few para­graphs in the ana­lyzer, to see which famous writer I write like:

I write like
Leo Tol­stoy

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac jour­nal soft­ware. Ana­lyze your writ­ing!

Oh, I do not. Let’s try again:

I write like
William Gib­son

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac jour­nal soft­ware. Ana­lyze your writ­ing!

Hmm. One more time:

I write like
David Fos­ter Wal­lace

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac jour­nal soft­ware. Ana­lyze your writ­ing!

I’m think­ing this is ran­dom­iz­ing crap. But enter­tain­ing.

Why it sucks to look for work in the dig­i­tal age.

Finally, a funny from Sara Ben­in­casa. She sounds just like her.

And away we go.

Any­body who’s been to the movies with me knows how much I love a good mon­tage scene. A bad one — and there are so many — not so much, but a good one? Glo­ri­ous. Noth­ing like a lot of quick scenes accom­pa­nied by music to get a lot of sto­ry­telling water car­ried in a short time. They’re easy to screw up, but when they work, noth­ing feels more cin­e­matic to me. You can’t do a mon­tage on the stage, nor on the page.

What does a mon­tage do? It col­lapses time. How did Rocky man­age to fly up those museum steps so eas­ily? It was all that train­ing. How do we get the cou­ple from first date to the night of the pro­posal? A fall-in-love sequence. They’re made to order for any movie or show with lots of char­ac­ters, because it allows you to put an epi­logue on the whole sea­son, or even series, with­out hav­ing to do too much pon­der­ous, expos­i­tory writ­ing. The rest of the crew will work harder than ever. A good mon­tage is no small trick.

I was hop­ing to post a clip from one of the most famous, and maybe my favorite of all — the bap­tism scene from “The God­fa­ther,” but it looks like the copy­right police have been out on YouTube lately, and I can’t find an unadul­ter­ated cut. But what the hell, you’ve seen it, we’ve all seen it. I remem­ber read­ing some­where that the scene was the result of a lot of bad footage from the church scenes. It was too dark except for just a few shots, and Coppola’s edi­tor said, “Hang on, I think we can still save this.” That might be urban leg­end, but I like it. Some­times art is an acci­dent.

There’s no doubt David Chase’s second-season ender on “The Sopra­nos” was an homage to Coppola’s, but a lit­tle cheeky, too — his way of say­ing this Mafia fam­ily is as impor­tant as the Cor­leones. But the struc­ture and mate­r­ial is the same — the boss’ fam­i­lies, blood and crim­i­nal, con­trasted with his crim­i­nal activ­i­ties, which was the engine of the whole series. What makes this spe­cial, I think, is the unusual music choice — “Thru and Thru,” a track from the Rolling Stones’ “Voodoo Lounge,” released well into their irrel­e­vant years and one that would have been for­got­ten along with the rest of the album if not for its bluesy coun­ter­point to the cel­e­bra­tions of this scene:

As good as that one is, I like “The Wire” mon­tages bet­ter. Each sea­son ended with one, because with a Russ­ian novel of a cast, it really is the only way to wrap up everyone’s loose ends. It also under­lines that show’s the­matic mate­r­ial — the gods will not save us, the war on drugs is a fool’s errand, we do our work and our work does us, etc. And for all of David Simon’s deep, deep music choices in these season-enders, I still like this one best, Jesse Winchester’s “Step by Step,” fin­ish­ing out sea­son one:

But what brought this on was what hap­pened the other night, channel-surfing. I landed on “Casino,” exactly as this scene was start­ing:

I’ve seen this a dozen or more times by now, and I always notice some­thing new in it. This time it was the lit­tle one-line per­for­mances by Nicki’s tip­sters. Mar­tin Scors­ese is one of the best direc­tors of actors work­ing, but I mar­vel at how he got just the right note out of each one in this seven-minute sequence, which required about a mil­lion setups and actors deliv­er­ing one line, but per­fectly. I like the way the sec­re­tary says, “Mint-condition coins.”

Warn­ing that may be too late: Most of these clips con­tain major pro­fan­ity, the lat­ter a great deal of it. (Shrug.) Joe Pesci. What are you gonna do?

Sorry I’m late today, but an early phone call and errand sort of upended my sched­ule. Since I’m late and behind and all the rest of it, no blog­gage today. Sug­gest your own, or recall your ab-fave movie mon­tages. Because I gotta go.

Happy Blooms­day.

If I were a clever blog­ger, I’d write this entry in the style of “Ulysses,” but sorry — I haven’t read it. (Lance Man­nion, take it away!) Always wanted to. Hope to, some­day. But on numer­ous tries, I’ve failed to get much past stately, plump Buck Mul­li­gan, and you know where he shows up.

Once, in a news­room far, far away, I admit­ted to never read­ing “Ulysses.”

“Really?” asked one of my col­leagues archly. “You haven’t?” Like this was unusual.

“Really. Have you?”

“Oh, sure,” she said. I asked when.

“Oh, you know…” She flut­tered her hand a bit. “High school.”

The smoke alarms trem­bled as the fumes of her burn­ing pants wafted through the room. She knew enough about “Ulysses” to know she’d made a grave mis­take. No one reads “Ulysses” in high school, even a great one. An ambi­tious teacher might do a side unit on the book for hon­ors stu­dents with a few excerpts, but face it — the book is the Mt. Ever­est of lit­er­a­ture for a rea­son.

The Colum­bus Dis­patch book critic once announced he was going to read it, and just to make sure he fin­ished, he was going to read it in pub­lic, a chap­ter a week, dis­cussing it in a weekly col­umn he called Night­town Jour­nal. He got through, I believe, chap­ter three, maybe four. Then Night­town Jour­nal qui­etly dis­ap­peared. I e-mailed him once, ask­ing if he ever fin­ished it. His reply was sheep­ish. You know what he said.

On Blooms­day — June 16, the day upon which the events of the novel occur, for you non-English majors — cel­e­bra­tions are held through­out Dublin, includ­ing pub­lic read­ings at places men­tioned in the text. Our own John C, who lived in Detroit until recently, sug­gested we do some­thing sim­i­lar in Octo­ber, on Elmore Leonard’s birth­day. Call it Dutch Day, and lead a group on an odyssey through the city, stop­ping at places men­tioned in his books to read aloud. I think this is a tremen­dous idea. For one thing, I’ve actu­ally read all the books involved.

Yes­ter­day I had a bit of busi­ness to do at a shop­ping cen­ter right around lunchtime, and found myself pass­ing under the exhaust vents at a well-known Chi­nese chain restau­rant dis­tin­guished by twin horses at the front door. It didn’t smell greasy, it smelled grill-y and deli­cious. Friends, I may be the last Amer­i­can extant to have never eaten there, so it was time to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion. We have ter­ri­ble Chi­nese food choices in the Pointes, and I’ve been jonesin’ for some chicken fried rice for­ever. So I went in and ordered the very same.

Twelve min­utes later, the wait­ress deposited a five-gallon bucket of it under my nose.

It’s been a long time since I had my first portion-size shock, at a Mex­i­can chain place. To be sure, it was mostly let­tuce. Then came Bucca di Beppo, but they at least say up front that the dishes are meant to be shared. But it doesn’t take a genius to make a few con­nec­tions, and one is: Restau­rant meals in gen­eral have many more calo­ries than their home­made equiv­a­lents. Peo­ple eat more restau­rant meals every year, for a vari­ety of rea­sons. Put them together and you get a rea­son­able answer to the ques­tion posed by Richard Sim­mons’ van­ity license plate: YRUFAT?

I try to be a lib­er­tar­ian about some things, but I have my lim­its. If they’re going to serve this much in one por­tion, then I want to see a calo­rie count on the menu. (Best online esti­mate: 960.) Sorry, folks, but you’re part of the prob­lem. And don’t give me that “our cus­tomers want it” crap. Por­tion size is deter­mined by economies of scale. Rice is cheap, and it’s easy to cover it with fla­vor­ful fat, serve it by the truck­load and charge $7.50 a plate for a food cost of prob­a­bly less than a buck.

I ate less than half. The rest is in my refrig­er­a­tor. And I’m not going back. I resent being slopped like a hawg.

Blog­gage: Every­body knows the Michi­gan tax incen­tive is lead­ing to lots of film pro­duc­tion here, but it wasn’t until yes­ter­day I learned that scripts are now being vet­ted for con­tent, and — sorry — but can­ni­bal­ism is now out:

“This film is unlikely to pro­mote tourism in Michi­gan or to present or reflect Michi­gan in a pos­i­tive light,” wrote Janet Lock­wood, Michigan’s film com­mis­sioner. Ms. Lock­wood par­tic­u­larly objected to “this extreme hor­ror film’s sub­ject mat­ter, namely real­is­tic can­ni­bal­ism; the grue­some and graph­i­cally vio­lent depic­tions described in the screen­play; and the explicit nature of the script.”

Yes, no one will come to Michi­gan if they think we’re lousy with can­ni­bals, but have you seen the calo­rie counts at that Chi­nese joint lately? Whew, through the roof. Rus­tic man-pig is far more slim­ming. Any­way, the NYT City­room blog asks where cin­ema would be if New York had such picky stan­dards:

King Kong (1933)

After arriv­ing in New York via lux­ury steamer, the giant simian genially poses for pho­tographs while held in mock chains at his Broad­way unveil­ing. At a sub­se­quent cock­tail party in his honor, Kong briefly dons a waiter’s white jacket (it didn’t quite fit, to say the least!) and hands out canapes to star­tled and then amused guests. Later he takes a stroll through the city and dis­cov­ers that the ele­vated trains are expe­ri­enc­ing a bot­tle­neck near 30th Street. Using hand sig­nals, he helps clear it up, receiv­ing a jaunty wave from a thank­ful con­duc­tor in response. Finally, he scales the Empire State Build­ing to take in the view, clean­ing a few win­dows and reach­ing into one woman’s apart­ment to help her arrange her fur­ni­ture, before arriv­ing at the top, where he is joined by Ann Dar­row. The two take in the dawn while dis­cussing their hopes and dreams for the future.

Ha. Off to the salt mines. God knows who wants to take a bite out of me today.

The cater­ing gig was a mixed bag. I mis­cal­cu­lated for lunch, and came up short by about three peo­ple. Of course it’s embar­rass­ing and unfair; the peo­ple who come to lunch last are fre­quently the hardest-working of the crew, and you feel bad that they have to set­tle for peanut but­ter. But I mis­cal­cu­lated on two fronts — the weather (freez­ing) and the fact this is a war movie, and young men pos­sess the sorts of appetites that make moth­ers all over the world put off buy­ing new clothes, for fear of run­ning short for the gro­ceries. Should have dou­bled the chili.

But we did OK at din­ner (lasagna), and I felt some­what redeemed. When peo­ple are work­ing for noth­ing — and with every one of these things we do, we get more peo­ple, and they work harder — the least you can do is feed them.

I men­tioned the weather. Boy, did it suck. A front blew through Fri­day night with tor­nado watches and vio­lent thun­der­storms, fol­lowed by tem­per­a­tures that didn’t touch 50 degrees all day, with a steady 25-30 mile per hour wind, many stronger gusts. In other words: Suck­i­tude. And I was inside all day. A memo ahead of time men­tioned the need to keep lots of water on set, as some of the actors would be wear­ing rub­ber­ized cos­tumes and would need to hydrate fre­quently. Ha ha. They were the lucky ones.

But that’s water gone by, and now we look for­ward. I had lots of down time between meals, and spent it catch­ing up on my web-surfing. As Mon­day is my busiest day, I offer you plenty of blog­gage:

Beau­ti­ful Lena Horne, gone at 92. I saw her a few months back in “Cabin in the Sky,” which TMC was show­ing dur­ing Oscar month. Fun fact from her NYT obit:

One num­ber she shot for that film, “Ain’t It the Truth,” which she sang while tak­ing a bub­ble bath, was deleted before the film was released — not for racial rea­sons, as her stand-alone per­for­mances in other MGM musi­cals some­times were, but because it was con­sid­ered too risqué.

She had the va-va, and cer­tainly the voom.

Why Two-Newspaper Towns are Good, this chuckle from the Detroit News. Short ver­sion: New pedes­trian bridge opens in Detroit, is instantly hit by tag­gers. Sur­veil­lance cam­eras clearly show one of the tag­gers is a Free Press copy edi­tor and blog­ger, whose blog fre­quently mourns the col­lapse in civil­ity and good cit­i­zen­ship. Here’s the pas­sage that caught my eye, from her spec­tac­u­larly lame mea culpa:

I was excited when I saw the bench and that peo­ple had writ­ten on it and wanted to add my tag to it. That’s what we did in New York City when I was young: We put our tags on the park benches.

Social sci­en­tists speak fre­quently of “new norms.” There’s one, right there.

Dead­spin has a remark­able doc­u­ment, a let­ter of cas­ti­ga­tion by the owner of a party lodge where the Miami Uni­ver­sity chap­ter of the Pi Beta Phi soror­ity had their spring for­mal. Short ver­sion: They arrived drunk, got drunker, puked every­where, peed in the sinks, pooped in the bushes. Miami Uni­ver­sity had a rep­u­ta­tion, when I was grow­ing up in Ohio, as aca­d­e­m­i­cally rig­or­ous, preppy, snotty and very Greek. The Pi Phis at Miami would be 10 times worse, on all mea­sures, than those at Ohio Uni­ver­sity, where I went to school. I guess that’s …changed.

Via Lance, Digby on the Kent State shoot­ings. She quotes Rick Perlstein’s “Nixon­land” on the reac­tion to the tragedy:

When it was estab­lished that none of the four vic­tims were guards­men, cit­i­zens greeted each other by flash­ing four fin­gers in the air (“The score is four / And next time more”). The Kent paper printed pages of let­ters for weeks, a com­mu­nity pur­ga­tion: “Hur­ray! I shout for God and Coun­try, recourse to jus­tice under law, fifes, drums, mar­shal music, parades, ice cream cones – Amer­ica – sup­port it or leave it.” “Why do they allow these so-called edu­cated punks, who appar­ently know only how to spell four-lettered words, to run loose on our cam­puses tear­ing down and destroy­ing that which good men spent years build­ing up? …”

…A rumor spread in Kent that Jeff Miller, whose head was blown off, was such a dirty hip­pie that they had to keep the ambu­lance door open on the way to the hos­pi­tal for the smell. Another rumor was that five hun­dred Black Pan­thers were on their way from else­where in Ohio to lead a real riot; and that Alli­son Krause was “the cam­pus whore” and found with hand grenades on her.

As Digby, and Lance, point out: Ann Coul­ter et al is noth­ing new in this coun­try.

Hank Stuever on Betty White in the Wash­Post, and on his own blog, the SNL Homowatch. From the blog, after the Scared Straight sketch:

I would need sev­eral thou­sand words to dis­sect why Amer­ica has always thought prison rape is so hilar­i­ous. (Not only hilar­i­ous, but accept­able. We are a cul­ture that believes strongly in “don’t drop the soap” jokes as a nor­mal way to taunt crim­i­nals; indeed, we seem to hope that our most offen­sive male crim­i­nals will in fact be repeat­edly raped by other men in prison; “mak­ing” some­one your “bitch” is recess play­ground ver­nac­u­lar now.)

And because I’m late get­ting to this, Hank, again, on why writ­ers should tackle the sub­jects that scare them. Wise words, those. And now, I’m off.

Maybe it’s because of my recent expe­ri­ence in film­mak­ing, but these days, I find dif­fer­ent things catch my atten­tion when I watch a movie. So it was with “You Don’t Know Jack,” the HBO film about Jack Kevorkian; I kept notic­ing the pro­duc­tion design. For you civil­ians, that’s a term of art that describes the gen­eral visual look of a film — every­thing from the cos­tumes to the sets to the way the actors’ hair is styled. Many peo­ple have a hand in cre­at­ing this, but it’s the pro­duc­tion designer who over­sees it all.

The design of “You Don’t Know Jack” is… I guess you’d say it’s fit­ting. It’s blue and damp and chilly and depress­ing, all of which suit a story about a man who helped dozens of peo­ple, in debat­able degrees of ill­ness or dis­abil­ity, end their lives with a num­ber of con­trap­tions he assem­bled from spare parts, from his “Mer­citron,” which used saline and potas­sium chlo­ride, to var­i­ous gas arrange­ments. No one looks good. Every­one lives in a crummy apart­ment and dri­ves a beater. The actors who aren’t cadav­er­ous are Michigan-fat, or are buried under heaps of unflat­ter­ing wardrobe — you can prac­ti­cally see the pills on the cheap acrylic sweaters, and you just know every sleeve has a snotty Kleenex shoved under the cuff. Only the lawyers look good.

Kevorkian gets a 360-degree por­trayal from both the script and Al Pacino, who nails the look and man­ner and muffs the Detroit accent. (No shame, Al — it has con­founded many oth­ers.) As the story unwound, and Kevorkian and his lawyer, Geof­frey Fieger, make fools of the Oak­land County pros­e­cu­tor time after time, the design becomes key, because you see what made Kevorkian so dan­ger­ous to the sta­tus quo; he had noth­ing to lose. He didn’t care about any­thing but his pas­sion­ately held beliefs and his odd hob­bies (his macabre paint­ings in which he used his own blood as pig­ment, most notably). Take his med­ical license away? Lock him up? His lodg­ings behind bars weren’t much of a step down from his place in Royal Oak, or wher­ever he was liv­ing at the time.

The state finally had to write a law specif­i­cally aimed at him, which he defied just like he said he would, before they could finally lock him up for longer than a few days. And he did the time like a pro, I have to say, get­ting out last year and head­ing back to another crummy apart­ment. He’s not assist­ing sui­cides any­more, but he’s out and about. One of my Face­book friends spot­ted him in the Royal Oak library last week­end, got a pic­ture taken with him and posted it. Local celebrity. The pros­e­cu­tor who for­feited his public-service career — he was turned out of office by an exas­per­ated pub­lic tired of financ­ing his Ahab-like pur­suit of Dr. K — wound up at the Thomas More Law Cen­ter, i.e. Tom Monahan’s Catholic War­riors, who in their high-profile cases aren’t doing much bet­ter.

(pause)

I wasn’t going to post this today; we’ve had so much dis­cus­sion of death in this space of late, and some of us are hav­ing some uncom­fort­able brushes with it of late our­selves. But as if to mock my recent men­tion of a tax refund, last night our power went out. When I was check­ing the break­ers, I flipped the main one, and couldn’t flip it back. Nei­ther could Alan. Which means I have to call an elec­tri­cian this morn­ing and, assum­ing the worst, pay a huge bill. My lap­top bat­tery is down to 6 per­cent, so I’m hit­ting Pub­lish and then going offline until I have juice again. Argh.

The AP car­ries an inter­est­ing story today about huit­la­coche, known as corn smut to you Hoosiers and oth­ers with a more English-speaking con­nec­tion to the land. The black, slimy plague upon the ears is actu­ally pretty good for you:

…test results just pub­lished in the jour­nal Food Chem­istry reveal that an infec­tion that U.S. farm­ers and crop sci­en­tists have spent mil­lions try­ing to erad­i­cate, is packed with unique pro­teins, min­er­als and other nutri­tional good­ies.

Corn smut has a Span­ish name because — this is no sur­prise for you food­ies — it’s con­sid­ered a del­i­cacy in Mex­i­can cui­sine. (“Con­sid­ered a del­i­cacy in” is the grown-up ver­sion of belch­ing at the din­ner table, which, every 13-year-old who does it will tell you, is actu­ally con­sid­ered a com­pli­ment to the cook in some cul­tures.) You can find huit­la­coche recipes in Rick Bay­less’ excel­lent Mex­i­can cook­book, but I’ve never made it myself. My for­mer col­league Carol Tan­nehill made some in the news­room once, for a story on strange ingre­di­ents, if I recall cor­rectly. The corn smut had to be spe­cially ordered and arrived frozen, but it thawed into some­thing that very closely resem­bled drain-clog slime — black and gooey and entirely gross.

Carol pre­pared it in a sim­ple tortilla-wrap recipe, sliced it up and passed it around. And read­ers? It was deli­cious. It tasted like dirt, but in a good way, the way the best mush­rooms do. If there was gourmet dirt, that’s what huit­la­coche tastes like. I didn’t expect to like it, and only sam­pled it because I’ve always been a human garbage dis­posal and can choke down almost any­thing in the name of sci­ence or a blind taste test. And I had sec­onds.

I don’t have much for you today because I spent my morn­ing catch­ing up on some long-neglected friends, includ­ing Hank, and read his rave review of Kim Severson’s new book, which I didn’t even know existed. Sev­er­son is one of my favorite food writ­ers, and prob­a­bly my sin­gle fave among news­pa­per food writ­ers, and this news is wel­come, indeed. I bet Kim has eaten huit­la­coche, and please, save the les­bian jokes.

I was happy to read this because I finally caught “Julie and Julia” on DVD, and have this review: Cute. It’s a cute movie with moments of shin­ing grace. Once again, Meryl Streep didn’t so much act as dis­ap­pear into her char­ac­ter, and I appre­ci­ated the movie trick­ery involved in get­ting her to stand head-and-shoulders over every­one around her (step stools, I imag­ine). The best lines I’ve read before, as they’re mostly Nora Ephron’s, not Julie’s or Julia. The line about the pre­dictabil­ity of cook­ing in an uncer­tain world — that’s Nora’s, as is the stuff about not crowd­ing the mush­rooms. As a coming-of-age movie for women that doesn’t overem­pha­size sex (the big theme in all male coming-of-age movies) but makes it part of the nar­ra­tive just the same, it worked beau­ti­fully. It’s Ephron’s best work to date, and that’s some­thing, IMO.

And now on to the blog­gage on this sleep-deprived morn­ing. Just one piece, but it’s a good’un:

So, what do we think of the Jew­ish joke Obama’s National Secu­rity Advi­sor told yes­ter­day? I note the reac­tion of the crowd, at a pro-Israel think tank, pre­sum­ably full of Jews: Laugh­ter. Good enough for me. Jews are famous for their col­lec­tive sense of humor, so I’ll take my cue from them, but Roy ven­tures into the world of the right­blog­gers, a very humor­less place.

Phoned-in this may be, but I have a busy day ahead, and so: Farewell.

I regret to say that the week­end mail did not con­tain my invi­ta­tion to the Obama family’s White House seder. As the weekend’s NYT story points out, you don’t have to be Jew­ish to love the spring­time tra­di­tion of a long rit­ual din­ner fea­tur­ing mat­zoh, horse­rad­ish, charoset and four cups of wine — but it takes real guts to host one if you’re not, and I admire the first fam­ily for doing so.

I under­stand some Chris­tians hold seders at Passover, as a way of hon­or­ing the first of the Big Three of Monothe­ism, but I don’t know if I could do that. You know how peo­ple resent con­verts to any reli­gion, the way they take the plunge into what­ever your par­tic­u­lar bap­tismal font might be, and then sur­face telling every­one what they’re doing wrong? That’s what it would feel like. You need a real Jew at the head of the table. I sup­pose if any­one could pull that off, though, it would be our multi-racial, multi-cultural pres­i­dent.

One detail from that story sticks with me:

Then came what is now remem­bered as the Mac­a­roon Secu­rity Stand­off. At 6:30, with the Seder about to start, Neil Cohen, the hus­band of Michelle Obama’s friend and adviser Susan Sher, was stuck at the gate bear­ing flour­less cook­ies he had brought from Chicago. They were kosher for Passover, but not kosher with the Secret Ser­vice, which does not allow food into the build­ing.

Offer­ing to help, the pres­i­dent walked to the North Por­tico and peered out the door, star­tling tourists. He vol­un­teered to go all the way to the gates, but advis­ers stopped him, fear­ing that would cause a ruckus. Every­one seemed momen­tar­ily befud­dled. Could the com­man­der in chief not sum­mon a plate of cook­ies to his table? Finally, Mr. Love ran out­side to clear them.

Mr. Love is Reg­gie Love, whom the NYT calls Obama’s “per­sonal aide.” The job is infor­mally known as “body man.” A politician’s body man — Hillary Clin­ton has a body woman — is a com­bi­na­tion dop­pel­ganger, stand-in and walk­ing purse. The body man car­ries your cell phone and hand san­i­tizer, gen­tly takes your elbow when you need to be freed from a too-clingy sup­porter and opens the door for you. The body man frees a big part of your brain for other things.

Remem­ber when George W. Bush, in China, spoiled his exit by try­ing to open a door that was locked? He should have paid atten­tion to his body man, who was stand­ing by the cor­rect exit.

It goes with­out say­ing that the body man has the best seat in the house for watch­ing pres­i­den­tial his­tory in the mak­ing, but it takes the right kind of per­son. If you think you’re too good to fetch a plate of mac­a­roons, it’s not the job for you. On the other hand, note Love’s posi­tion in this photo and ask your­self: Would I be will­ing to carry the Kleenex for this sort of fringe ben­e­fit? I would.

It’s a rel­a­tively new posi­tion in Amer­i­can pol­i­tics, and I don’t think any have writ­ten their mem­oirs yet. I expect the best ones never will.

Love will be at this year’s seder. Just in case any­one tries to bring unap­proved cook­ies.

So, as long as we’re a lit­tle light and gos­sipy today, some­one tell me, maybe some­one who fol­lows the gos­sip columns a lit­tle more closely than I do: Is Jen­nifer Lopez still a diva?* Still buy­ing Creme de la Mer for her ass, still insist­ing that she be sur­rounded by her spe­cial grapefruit-scented can­dles at all times? Does she still keep her eye­brow shaper on retainer? Travel with a beauty entourage?

I have to won­der. Not that Lopez is some sort of hagatha at 40, but at some point you have to get over your­self, and if you keep mak­ing movies like “The Back-up Plan,” it’s going to come sooner rather than later. Just the trailer — the fun­ni­est, most mar­ketable moments of the movie — makes you want to stick your head in the oven. The woman’s capa­ble of doing good work. She did it once (“Selena”) and did it again (“Out of Sight”) so I guess she has it in her. But lord spare us from more rom-coms where the audi­ence is sup­posed to iden­tify with her in her million-dollar shoes.

Tina Fey — now there’s an every­woman. If she weren’t so busy mak­ing tele­vi­sion, she could turn out three of these a year and still keep it fresh. I have to watch “30 Rock” on demand, so I can re-run it and catch all the funny lines that slipped past when I was laugh­ing at the last one. This week’s con­tender was Jack Donaghy’s: “(Irish Catholics) mate for life. Like swans. Like drunken, angry swans.”

“Date Night” — now there’s a roman­tic com­edy. That one I’ll see. Even­tu­ally. Maybe I should write one. What do you think of “Body Man” as a title?

Any good blog­gage? No. It’s all depress­ing. Sui­cide bombers in Moscow, lunatics in the Michi­gan woods — it’s just not a good day.

So try to have a good one, and I will as well.

* I know I had some com­ments a few days back about overuse of this word, but I think J-Lo qual­i­fies.

How well I recall those hal­cyon days when news­pa­pers had space and occa­sion­ally put some­thing in it. The wires were like our own pri­vate inter­net, bring­ing the won­ders of the world to our desks. One day, it brought a lengthy Sun­day piece over the tran­som, an excerpt from a new book, “The Baby Boon: How Family-Friendly Amer­ica Cheats the Child­less.”

It was set up as a day in the life of a child­less woman, let’s call her Betty Bar­ren, as she nav­i­gates her hos­tile world. Ter­ri­ble things hap­pen to her. She has to cover for a co-worker who left early to watch her kid’s soc­cer game. Another one is out on mater­nity leave and it was recently announced that when she returns, she’ll be work­ing reduced hours, which equals more work for Betty. Betty finally is able to get away from this hor­ri­ble place — nearly suf­fo­cated by all the feath­erbeds lying around — and stops at a drug­store for headache relief. She pulls into a space, only to see the sign: Reserved for expec­tant moth­ers. Not that she has much money to spend on Tylenol, any­way, the par­ents hav­ing sucked up all the tax cred­its.

It went on at some length like this. Poor Betty! Is she the unluck­i­est child­less woman in the world? No, just typ­i­cal.

As an intro­duc­tion to the nascent social move­ment some­times known as the Child-Free, it was an eye-opener. I did a lit­tle inter­net research, the inter­net being where a lot of them hung out, bitch­ing on Usenet boards about all those things Betty endured, and about a mil­lion more. They had their own vocab­u­lary. Chil­dren were spawn, sprogs or crotch­fruit. Par­ents are breed­ers, of course. There were long, long threads on whether this or that celebrity or super­model had lost hot­ness since she sprogged. (The con­sen­sus, inevitably, was that she had.) There were self-righteous rants about not tax­ing the frag­ile earth with more destruc­tive humans, inter­spersed with whin­ing about why they can’t stay home from work when their pets are sick. (They all had pets. They called them “fur chil­dren.”) There were even a few beefs I could absolutely get with, about mis­be­hav­ing tod­dlers at sym­phony orches­tras and the like. But the over­whelm­ing impres­sion was of a group of peo­ple car­ry­ing a dou­ble load of resent­ment and free time. Yes, even with all those unpaid extra hours at work, cov­er­ing for the par­ents.

“The Baby Boon” excerpt was of a piece with this, with the same tone of hec­tor­ing indig­na­tion.

(I should pause at this point and say that I don’t want to make this a debate over the choice of whether or not to have a child, which is about as per­sonal as it gets and, ulti­mately, not very inter­est­ing. There are rewards and costs for both choices. I enjoy many friends and acquain­tances in both camps, and love them all. And in case you’re won­der­ing, every anec­dote about Betty Bar­ren can be matched with one from the other side, about Patty Party and her ten­dency to show up for work late after a night on the town, etc. The tax pol­icy, etc. I’ll leave for another day, although the late jour­nal­ist Mar­jorie Williams took the book apart rather ably here.)

Any­way, after read­ing Betty’s sad story and a gloss over the ter­ri­bly unfair cul­ture and gov­ern­ment poli­cies that sup­port this state of affairs, I scrolled back up to see who had writ­ten this screed. Eli­nor Bur­kett. The name stayed with me.

So when the lady in pur­ple hip-checked her part­ner away from the micro­phone last night at the Oscars, surely the rud­est dis­play in some time, I knew there was a rea­son her name sounded famil­iar. Her speech was mush, by the way, but I love the look on his face. You will not be sur­prised to learn they’re not speak­ing. Salon has a back­grounder.

And if you’re still inter­ested, John Scalzi’s “Trolling the Child­free” is sort of mag­nif­i­cent. Oh, and I always park in those “reserved for expec­tant moth­ers” spaces. They’re not enforced by law, and my sore knee fre­quently both­ers me more than a late-term preg­nancy ever did. If any­one ever chal­lenges me, I plan to say, “The doc­tor just called. It’s twins! I’m so happy!”

So how was your week­end? Mine was OK, except for get­ting sick with some sort of chesty/bronchial thing. I swing between 100-degree fevers and soak­ing sweats, which isn’t pleas­ant. But I’ll sur­vive.

I think.

Nathan Gotsch, one of those young squeaky-clean Fort Wayne guys for whom the phrase “you went to Con­cor­dia, didn’t you?” was coined, is try­ing to pro­duce a TV pilot far away from the Man, man. It’s an expan­sion of his Josh Jen­nings for Con­gress spoof of 2006 — he pro­duced a cam­paign com­mer­cial for a fic­tional char­ac­ter who decided a job in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives would be way bet­ter than one at Sub­way. He got a lit­tle atten­tion, if “being men­tioned on Tucker Carlson’s show” counts as “a lit­tle atten­tion,” and I think it does.

Any­way, Nathan got some atten­tion from the Man, and after con­sid­er­ing what going the tra­di­tional route would entail, decided to blaze an indie trail. He’s put together a bud­get for a $25,000 pilot pro­duc­tion, and is try­ing to raise the dough via Kick­starter. Here’s his fundrais­ing page.

I read the script and it’s pretty funny. (Fun­nier than “Reno 911,” any­way.) If you’d like to help Nathan, go to his Kick­starter page, watch the video, mar­vel at how much he resem­bles the absolute essence of a Con­cor­dia grad­u­ate, and, if you’re so inclined, kick him a few bucks. He has a week to raise about $15K. Goad to my fel­low Hoosiers, past and present — although the pilot script never explic­itly says so, the story’s set in Fort Wayne, and I can assume this would come up in sub­se­quent episodes. How­ever, if it gets picked up, I think we can expect to see Nathan’s crew in Michi­gan for exte­ri­ors shoot­ing, because we have the fat tax incen­tives. (For now.) So win-win all around for my Mid­west playas.

No pres­sure, just a chance to use a Web 2.0 idea for good, for a change. (You know how Kick­starter works, right? Nathan only gets the money if he reaches his goal. If not, you’re not billed. That way you aren’t giv­ing him cash to drink away his sor­rows because he didn’t get enough to make his pilot.)

Given the bum­mer tone of recent days, let’s make this Twin­kle Thurs­day, and strive for opti­mism in all things. It’s what Josh would do.

While this isn’t exactly a happy-news sort of thing, I’m call­ing it out because it makes me feel opti­mistic about the future — of jour­nal­ism, any­way. One of our read­ers, Kim, left it low in the com­ments of yesterday’s post, but let’s drag it out into the light of day:

Bob (not Greene) and all the other journos out there who have been accused of mak­ing it up: Here’s the story we used from a stu­dent jour­nal­ist who was at the bor­ing press con­fer­ence but pay­ing close atten­tion (and record­ing it) because she didn’t want to get it wrong. Note the link to actu­ally lis­ten to the state del­e­gate say­ing the words he now says were “poorly cho­sen” and mis­in­ter­preted. As you might expect, there’s been a fecal avalanche as a result. Rachel M., Huff­Post, Sally Quinn – everybody’s weigh­ing in. There’s a move­ment to skewer the stu­dent reporter because she is a stu­dent and because much larger, “actual” papers were present and totally missed it. Why’d they miss it? My guess is they were just mak­ing the dough­nuts, going to a con­ser­v­a­tive legislator’s press con­fer­ence about de-funding Planned Par­ent­hood and fil­ing that Sat­ur­day feed-the-beast story. Sim­i­lar to the rea­son a local del­e­gate who was present as a sup­porter of de-funding PP did not hear it – she admit­ted to not pay­ing atten­tion because she was talk­ing to another del­e­gate. Quite a les­son for the stu­dent. I’d say for pub­lic offi­cials every­where, too, but that would make me seem much younger than I am.

The story, if you’re not inclined to click through, quotes a state delegate’s inter­est­ing opin­ion about why there are so many dis­abled chil­dren in the world:

“The num­ber of chil­dren who are born sub­se­quent to a first abor­tion with hand­i­caps has increased dra­mat­i­cally. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the sub­se­quent chil­dren,” said Mar­shall, a Repub­li­can.

That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? Mar­shall, well, he now says he didn’t exactly say that:

“No one who knows me or my record would imag­ine that I believe or intended to com­mu­ni­cate such an offen­sive notion. I have devoted a gen­er­a­tion of work to defend­ing dis­abled and unwanted chil­dren, and have always main­tained that they are spe­cial bless­ings to their par­ents.”

In other words: Shit. And you were record­ing? Dou­ble shit.

I love it when Roger damns with faint praise. In this case, review­ing “The Cra­zies.”

“The Cra­zies” is a per­fectly com­pe­tent genre film in a genre that has exhausted its inter­est for me, the Zom­bie Film. It pro­vides such a con­ve­nient sto­ry­telling device: Large num­bers of mind­less zom­bies lurch toward the cam­era as the hero wreaks sav­age destruc­tion; they can be quickly blown away, although not with­out risk and occa­sional loss of life. When suf­fi­cient zom­bies have been run through, it’s time for a new dawn.

“The Cra­zies” stars NN.C crush object Tim­o­thy Olyphant and Radha Mitchell, two actors who class up the joint, although I watched the trailer and it uses the old “no sig­nal” cell-phone trope. As they say in that other zom­bie movie: One more for the bon­fire. (That link doesn’t go to an imdB page, by the way, but to a great “no sig­nal” mon­tage, via John August, which he cred­its to Four­Four. Has all due credit been passed around? I hope so.)

It’s 9:47, which means my Flex Appeal class starts in 13 min­utes and I must away. The sun is up, the sky is blue, it’s beau­ti­ful, and so are you, dear read­ers. So I’m going out to play.

From the num­ber of times this story turned up in my Face­book feed yes­ter­day I have to assume everyone’s seen it by now, but not all of you stay online all day, so what the hell. It’s about Roger Ebert, and what his life is like now that he’s lost the abil­ity to speak, eat and drink. (He lost his jaw to can­cer four years ago, and recon­struc­tive surgery has been one fail­ure after another.)

Ebert posed for a pic­ture; with his imper­fectly fixed face, that requires no small amount of courage in and of itself. I’m glad he did, not just because it’s bet­ter to show one’s bro­ken face than to hide it, but because even a face that’s half-gone can still show the man within. Look at the eyes, squinched a lit­tle in what looks like mer­ri­ment, although you can’t say for sure at first glance — the mouth has been shaped by sur­geons into a sim­u­lacrum of a smile, and maybe that’s what leads your impres­sion. But once you read the story, you know: This is a man who smiles, who still smiles, who in fact seems to be smil­ing much of the time. He’s angered not by the fate of his phys­i­cal body, but by the same things he was angered by before, that anger us all — petty bull­shit, money-grubbing, spotty inter­net ser­vice.

There is no need to pity me, he writes on a scrap of paper one after­noon after some­one part­ing looks at him a lit­tle sadly. Look how happy I am.

I came late to my appre­ci­a­tion of Ebert. I was a Siskel par­ti­san, once upon a time. Siskel was like me — snooty, irri­ta­ble, a fan of Art. Ebert, the tabloid critic, was more of the hoi pol­loi, giv­ing three and a half stars to action movies, space epics and other crap. It was a while before I real­ized he was as dif­fi­cult to please as any dis­cern­ing arbiter, but he knew enough about movies and why peo­ple see them to judge them as indi­vid­u­als. “Con Air” is not “Cit­i­zen Kane,” but he didn’t see any rea­son to rub anyone’s nose in it if they pre­ferred action to Orson Welles. Mostly, I was in awe of his pro­duc­tiv­ity. It’s pretty com­mon — or was — for large news­pa­pers to have an A critic and a B critic, the lat­ter of whom was some­times a free­lancer. The A critic does the big-movie reviews and most of the related sto­ries, roundups and the like, while the B critic sweeps up behind him or her, or just light­ens the load. It’s not unusual for half a dozen movies to open on a sum­mer week­end, rang­ing from block­busters to art-house fare, and that’s a lot of stuff to see, con­sider and review in a week. Five years ago, I changed planes in Chicago on a Fri­day and picked up a Sun-Times. Ebert had bylines on six reviews, and I believe they cov­ered that range of ambi­tion. His take on the barrel-bottom straight-to-video entry was as con­sid­ered, and as respect­ful, as his thoughts on the $200 mil­lion tent­pole play­ing in all the mul­ti­plexes.

Respect­ful doesn’t mean boot-licking, by the way. Like my old screen­writ­ing teacher Terry, who was also a critic, he walks into every film expect­ing to enjoy him­self. (That’s what the audi­ence does, after all; why would you pay eight bucks to be pun­ished?) To the extent that the film ful­fills or dis­ap­points that expec­ta­tion is what he bases his reviews on. It seems like a small thing. It isn’t. You might think you’re a movie fan, but imag­ine what it would be like to be required to see every­thing, and then write about it after­ward, to have to form an opin­ion, sup­port the opin­ion, and then present it to a gen­eral audi­ence in a more styl­ish way than merely say­ing whether it was awe­some or sucked.

Now imag­ine doing it for 40 years or so, never los­ing your enthu­si­asm, and in fact adding to your work­load with extra assign­ments like his Great Movies series (which began as a Sun­day col­umn, swapped off every other week with the music critic, who wrote about the Great Albums), and the TV show, and the teach­ing gigs, and the film-festival work, and all the rest of it.

Now add can­cer and facial muti­la­tion, the lit­eral loss of your voice. Tell me how you feel about it then.

The fact Ebert is still at work in any capac­ity, much less at full speed, is noth­ing short of a mir­a­cle. His last extended leave, when he nearly died, he missed months of movies. When he came back, he resumed his old blis­ter­ing pace, and then watched the movies he’d missed, a few at a time, writ­ing reviews of them, so that the record would be com­plete. I think he knows what his opin­ion means to the moviego­ing pub­lic. I don’t see a lot of movies in the­aters, but I try to catch up with the bigs even­tu­ally, and I never feel like I’ve watched it all the way until I’ve opened the lap­top after­ward to see what Roger thought of it.

Lord knows he’s not per­fect. I dis­agree with him on many films, and his fond­ness for Spike Lee will always come between us. But in every other way — exper­tise, atti­tude, prac­tice — he is noth­ing short of a hero.

Ebert is dying in incre­ments, and he is aware of it.

I know it is com­ing, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is noth­ing on the other side of death to fear, he writes in a jour­nal entry titled “Go Gen­tly into That Good Night.” I hope to be spared as much pain as pos­si­ble on the approach path. I was per­fectly con­tent before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. What I am grate­ful for is the gift of intel­li­gence, and for life, love, won­der, and laugh­ter. You can’t say it wasn’t inter­est­ing. My lifetime’s mem­o­ries are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eter­nity no more than that lit­tle sou­venir of the Eif­fel Tower I brought home from Paris.

Years ago, I was watch­ing the cul­tural ker­fuf­fle over “The Pas­sion of the Christ,” prob­a­bly on Amy Welborn’s blog, because that was the sort of thing she wrote about a lot, back then. Ebert gave the film four stars, but the review is hardly wor­ship­ful, and he states out­right that “it is the most vio­lent movie I have ever seen.” I men­tioned this review some­where in her com­ments sec­tions, and some­one else retorted, Roger Ebert is an old man and he’s dying. His opin­ion no longer mat­ters, or words to that effect. This was before his ill­ness had taken its most seri­ous tolls (he’s fought it for years), but I was amazed by not only the cru­elty of that remark, but its utter igno­rance. Roger Ebert’s opin­ion not only still mat­ters, it will mat­ter for a long time after he’s gone. If that isn’t the best epi­taph a writer can hope for, I don’t know what is.