Ninety degrees both days of the weekend. It might as well be 12 below, but I forced myself out in it just the same. As my recovery from Inflated Head Syndrome seems to have stalled — yes, mom, still taking the antibiotic, and hoping for a miracle — I thought a slow bike ride might be in order. Very strange, riding a bicycle with one’s head hovering about 10 feet above the action, but there you are. It felt like a balloon on a very long string. And so, when I turned, the bike would go a few feet before YANK the string would correct the course of the balloon, and the balloon would bob along until YANK the next turn and is it really this hot? Because if 2012 is going to be another summer of 2011, it will be a long one.

BOB.YANK.

But I got my banking done. So there’s that.

Also saw “Prometheus” with the fam, in 3D ‘n’ ev’rythang. It was a sprawling, beautiful hunk o’ disappointment. Very nice to look at, with a story that made no sense. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything here, because I’m only going with the first-act material: Cave paintings from around the ancient world all seem to suggest an alien visitation, so off our brave explorers go in their entertaining mix of ethnicities and attitudes in the year 2093, to find this extraterrestrial culture. They’re aided by a robot played by Michael Fassbender, who was the greatest thing about the movie, because, duh, Michael Fassbender.

This is tied to the original “Alien,” of course, and if you’re wondering where you saw these scenes before, of an entertainingly mixed crew waking from cryo-sleep and eating a grumpy breakfast together, well, that’s where. It just seemed so much…better the first time around. “Alien” was the first movie that made me consider what a deep-space work vessel would look like, and what sort of crew such a space truck might have. Of course, “Alien” is 30 years old now, and millions of young moviegoers haven’t seen it.

And I don’t care what anyone says. The big gross-out scene in “Prometheus” isn’t fit to touch the hem of John Hurt’s garment in the original chest-burster scene from “Alien.” I think they actually had to peel me off the ceiling of the theater after that one.

That, in the end, might be the biggest single flaw with “Prometheus” — everything’s an homage, a callback, and update of and to something that was truly original. Which made it disappointing.

(Was “Alien” really original? Film critics always point out it’s not a sci-fi movie, it’s a haunted-house movie. Granted. But it was an original sci-fi/haunted-house mashup, at least.)

So, bloggage? Sure:

Some of you may have noticed Cooze has been a bit testy of late. He has an excuse — Balto’s been missing. But the story has a happy ending, told as only he can. (Why does Verlyn Klinkenborg bore the shit out of us in the pages of the New York Times with his dispatches from yonder, while Cooze has only a blog? I ASK YOU.)

Here’s something very strange — a near-novella-length post by a gay Mormon, coming out of the closet on the occasion of his 10-year wedding anniversary, and yes, he’s married to a woman. He calls himself a unicorn. I refer to one of Nance’s Truths, i.e., there is no mystery in life deeper and more inexplicable than the human heart. I’m sure this will be jumped on by the anti-gay marriage crowd. I don’t really care what they do. I hope his wife is content, and she certainly states that she is, multiple times. (The violent smiles in the photos have an air of creepiness to them, I have to say.) Just something to read.

And so the week begins. Fingers crossed for full health by its end.

Somehow it became known that our little Kate had never seen “Titanic,” and I told her it was time, and so we paid our money, unpacked our 3D glasses, and settled in for “Titanic 3D: The Sinkening.” Like Edelstein, I liked it better this time, and I can’t say why.

No, I can: I liked it better because I’m 15 years older and no longer think it’s worth wasting energy disliking it. And having endured the Ballad of Jack and Rose part once, I’m free to waste my mind’s back channels wondering what I would do in a similar situation. Don’t we all hope we’d be heroes? That we’d make sure the right people got into the boats, and we wouldn’t be horrible, and we might even go down with the ship (and a brandy in hand, like Benjamin Guggenheim)? With one’s mind so engaged, I was less bothered by Billy Zane’s character calling Rose’s Monet canvases “finger paintings.”

The film does have one indelible image, for me — the debris field of corpses, floating in their life preservers, their cries gradually going out, like candles.

Friends, I am crushed on my other fronts, and will be for another week. After that? Smooooth sailing. (I hope.) Can you forgive a few more days of lameness? Because I don’t have much more. There’ll be dibs and dabs, but for now, for me, it’ll be work and iPad solitaire until I fall into a heap.

May Day, we’ll have a parade.

Yeesh, what a cold, miserable day. Please, never mind that I didn’t wear a coat. It’s mid-April, and I’m done with coats. A sweater was it, then, which underlined the misery, but I didn’t have to be outdoors long, and ah well — you have to go through a few of these days every spring, and Tuesday was one of them.

Tomorrow will be warmer. Winter is going.

Which seems a nice transition into the new season of “Game of Thrones.” I’m watching, yes, although this is the beginning of the long slog of the middle of “A Song of Ice and Fire.” I petered out somewhere toward the end of “A Storm of Swords,” and there’s still another doorstop of a volume before “A Dance of Dragons,” and guess what? Winter has not yet come, although it’s autumn, and the book after that one is, I believe, “The Winds of Winter,” and there’s another book beyond that, and yikes, I just don’t have time. Catching up via HBO seems the most prudent course of action. If anything, the visuals are even more arresting than last season — the budget must have gotten a boost — but I remember this passage of the story as mostly about rain and blood soaking into the mud of Westeros, along with the usual dragons and ice-zombies and the like.

And speaking of dragons, we saw “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo” over the weekend, which settled any question I might have had about that series — ick. It was competently done, even beautiful in that David Fincher-esque way, but I’ve had it with perverts, rapists and fucking Sweden. Also girls on motorcycles, coffee, mysteries outlined via charts on walls and Rooney Mara. Where are the romantic comedies of yore, I ask you. I just scanned the trailers of coming attractions on the Apple movie-trailers site, and didn’t see a single thing that looked like much, and quite a bit that looked like dreck. “That’s My Boy,” in fact, might be the worst of the lot.

Back to novels for the summer, I fear.

So. Sayonara, Ricky Santorum. It’s a sign of this crazy year that he lasted this long, but there are many others. Here’s a column from the Indianapolis Star about Richard Mourdock, who is challenging Richard Lugar in the primary and just might win:

In politics, there are partisans who truly believe in and fight for their principles and policy ideas as they seek to craft solutions to big problems. And then there are people like Mourdock — unbending ideologues who believe the only acceptable outcome to any argument is a complete victory by their side. In a diverse nation, such victories are largely impossible. And, so, under this type of thinking nothing gets done.

That’s your choice, Hoosiers.

Hell, let’s look at the wind map instead. Very soothing.

Happy Wednesday. Think I might take Kate to see “Titanic 3D,” if she’s up for it. Our hearts will go on.

Monday, Monday (da dahh, da da dah dah). So much to do (da dahh, da da dah dah). Instead have some links, while I go take a shower so I can leave at 6:30 a.m. for Lansing, and here my singalong collapses somewhat. Fortunately, the links aren’t terrible:

Laura Miller at Salon stretches a bit to link Thomas Kinkade to George W. Bush, but not too-too far — they both peddled kitsch, after all. I didn’t know — or rather, I knew and then forgot — that the painter of light showed evidence of a serious drinking problem, and his premature death may well have been a result of same. His empire of kitsch seemed to be in financial trouble, but that’s nothing new; as a feisty interior decorator back in FW told me years ago, “Once he started whoring himself out on QVC, it was all over.” The story contains a link to a 2001 Susan Orlean profile of Kinkade. She visited the Knight Wallace Fellows my year, and revealed she’d made a bet with him, that “a major American museum” would have a show of his work “in (Kinkade’s) lifetime.” It was for a million dollars, too. I guess this means Orlean wins, but I don’t know how she’d collect. Anyway, it sounds like there’s not much left in the kitty.

People have known it’s possible to hack those flashing highway signs for some time. Someone hacked one on I-94 night before last to read, “Trayvon (is) a (big racial slur that sometimes trips internet filters).” What a world.

How my colleague Ron French almost killed Mike Wallace (sort of). A good one.

Finally, a supercut of various famous actors’ first screen appearances. Because why not.

By the time you read this, I’ll be sleepin’. Or drivin’. Happy Tuesday to all, and let’s hope it goes fast.

Today, a question for the room: Have you ever eaten a spear of asparagus right out of the ground? Snapped it off and ate it as you wandered through the rows? You should try it sometime, if you ever get a chance; it’s like a whole different vegetable, as tender at the base as it is at the tip. No bitterness, no stringiness. I’m thinking these rabbits are onto something. Maybe we should all get on all fours and graze a bit.

No, I haven’t been smoking weed or anything. John and Sam, aka J.C. and Sam, have been in Lansing for the last few weeks, helping Sammy’s father start his journey down the ghost road. That journey having commenced over the weekend, I stopped by on my way out of town yesterday and beheld his legendary garden — he was a botanist — which will be on its own this season, although I’m sure the neighbors will enjoy the strawberries and raspberries and other perennials. We enjoyed the raw asparagus. Man, what a revelation.

And if you had spent most of the day in Excel training, that’s what you’d remember about the day, too.

Excel: I know it’s a titan of software. I know it makes data analysis possible in ways undreamed of by data nerds in times gone by, but when the most common thing you hear in several hours of training is, “Excel will trip you up,” maybe there’s a little feature-not-bug thing going on. I use Numbers, m’self. It does everything Excel does — except for something called “pivot tables,” and may I never learn what those are — and looks prettier.

And other than that, it was a lot of driving. But a beautiful day.

Bloggage?

Sure: Lots of women get abortions at 24 weeks, because they “had to have a career.” A dispatch from the right-wing propaganda war, “October Baby.”

It’s simply appalling how long it’s taken Detroit’s city council to come to terms with reality, but it finally did. I’ve started making screen captures of Charles Pugh’s glasses — he wears a different pair every day. I’m thinking it’s a metaphor.

And now I’m off to my warm, soft bed. Downside of the week, y’all.

I liked “The Hunger Games” more than I thought I would. Normally I don’t go to franchise movies based on young-adult fiction empires; I still haven’t seen more than a couple minutes of any Harry Potter flick, and the first “Twilight” bored both Kate and me so much we never went back for the rest. (For a girl in love, Bella Swan wears a look on her face throughout that suggests nothing so much as constipation.)

But honestly, after “Winter’s Bone,” I’d follow that nice Jenny Lawrence pretty much anywhere, and what I knew of the story made it sound like an action-movie version of that indie darling. A tough girl from a poor neighborhood kicks ass by way of saving her little sister from doom? Same log line!

So I went in more or less unspoiled, having not read the books or the pregame chat or the fan fiction. And even though I think young adults need to read about fewer dystopian worlds where all the grownups are cruel fops, I give Suzanne Collins, the author of this particular one, a lot of credit. She did what all these great bestselling authors do, i.e., take something familiar and make it unfamiliar enough we still want to read about it. The dystopian nation of Panem is a cartoon of cruelty and foppery, almost preposterously so, but it’s an entertaining one. Stanley Tucci lives there; how bad can it be?

Ultimately, though, I have to agree with David Edelstein: The film’s major flaw is that it didn’t go far enough. Of course, the violence is toned down for the PG-13 rating, but what I wanted more of were the creepy parts that reminded me of my own dystopian world — more of the reality show (hosted by Tucci) that broadcasts the games to the rest of the nation, mostly. The event where the girls and boys are chosen from the nation’s 12 impoverished districts to be warriors is kicked off with a short film telling everyone why this is happening, and it’s such a perfect piece of propaganda, it could have been made by Roger Ailes. The thuggish soldiers who enforce the grinding bootheel of oppression are referred to as “peacekeepers.” A brief riot back home is shot almost entirely in shakycam closeup and medium shots, so you don’t get a sense of the odds everyone is facing.

I wanted to know more about the districts, and I understand that may come in the sequel. I hope it’s not downplayed in favor of the Young Love storyline, which drove me nuts. The main character has a boyfriend back home who pouts because she’s playacting attraction for another player in the arena; doesn’t he know she’s fighting for her life here?

Well, that’s what the script called for.

But, all things considered, not a bad action flick for the whole family. As long as you don’t mind 23 kids dying along the way. But you get Stanley Tucci, so it evens out.

For a much funnier movie review, here’s Lindy West on the new, 3D-ified “Titanic.”

And to make this an all-movie blog post, I spent this evening at the Mitten Movie Project. One of the shorts was about this place, the Goat Yard, a famous riverside boat club here in Detroit. I’m not sure if this was an extended cut from a larger feature or not, but it was the story of the goat that gave the place its name. He was a large billy named Nemo, and there was a story about him jumping up and down on a Porsche.

I want a goat.

And I want a happy Wednesday for you.

Before I forget, a movie recommendation we caught last weekend on On Demand cable. (It sounds strange to write “on On Demand,” but stranger to write, “a movie we demanded to watch last weekend.” How about “a movie we watched via On Demand.” Does that work for everyone?)

Anyway: “The Other F Word,” which I thought we could enjoy as a fam, seeing as how it had cross-generational appeal — a documentary about some of the most notorious punk rockers of the ’80s, now responsible fathers. It was an amusing little trifle, and if it boiled down to, essentially, “one day you’ll have children, and you’ll understand,” it didn’t make it any less charming.

The central through-line was the story of Jim Lindberg, lead singer in Pennywise (I’ve never heard of them, either, although I’m told they were big. Or maybe the pictures got small.). He has one of those double-edged swords — a band that has enough success after a couple of decades to provide him and his quartet of blondes (wife, three adorable daughters) with a comfortable California living, but only if he’s willing to spend three-quarters of every year on the road, screaming into microphones. It’s not exactly a hard-knock life, except it is. He’s a funny guy, and at one point, pausing near the bunk area on the band’s tour bus, notes that the smell is “a mix of farts, ass, feet…and a hint of balls.” I’m sure it sounded like heaven when he was 25, less so today. But what do fathers do? Take care of their families. And so he soldiers on, worrying about father-daughter dances and recitals.

Around him, his fellow punkers do the same, with varying degrees of success. The women are all but invisible, not all the stories charming — it’s depressing to hear how many of these angry men started as angry boys, abandoned by their fathers. But you have to salute their onward-and-upward response of trying to do better by their own children.

Was it worth a night out in the theater? No. Was it worth $5 and a bowl of homemade popcorn on the couch? Sure. Warning: If you choose to do the same, know that the R rating is due to profanity so thick it turns the air blue, but unfortunately isn’t deployed very imaginatively. Lee Ermey, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you. Woo woo woo.

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

Only in Ann Arbor:

A 34-year-old Ann Arbor man was sent to the hospital with a head injury after another man punched him on Saturday during a literary argument, according to police.

Things missing from this story: WHAT THEY WERE ARGUING ABOUT, although there is mention of a condescending remark that led to the fracas.

(A word we should all use more: Fracas.)

I think Prospero/Malvolio could probably riff on that one for a while. Me, I’m off to bed.

“Game Change,” the Sarah Palin horror flick produced by HBO, was both better and worse than I expected. Better: Julianne Moore’s performance, which was great. Worse: Her accent, which was terrible. Better: It really did humanize the woman we’ve been calling She-Who for so long, something I didn’t think possible. It illustrated — vividly — just how overwhelmed Palin was by the tsunami that hit her, how blithely she walked into it, trusting in “God’s will.”

Worse: It brought it all back. God, what a visceral dislike I had for that woman. It was the equal and opposite effect she had on all those folks on the rope line, that jus’-folks stuff she worked so well. (Amply portrayed in the film, by the way.) It started with her nomination speech, that triumph of self-flattery and sarcasm. I’m all for self-esteem, but that was ridiculous. Even considering the undercard in a national campaign isn’t required to do much during a run but play dirty if asked to and tour the B circuit without complaint, she was appallingly without substance. And so happy and proud to be so! That’s what was so galling: Hi, I’m real America! And I’m ignorant! But I’m doing the work of God!

But “Game Change,” though nominally Palin/Moore’s movie, is really Woody Harrelson’s story, playing Steve Schmidt, who opened the bottle and watched the genie quickly grant his wishes — changed the game, overshadowed Obama, rallied the base — and then flew free, with no intention of ever going back in. The game was changed so profoundly, in fact, that the maverick’s main man was left to do the final smackdown, during preparations for John McCain’s concession speech, when he had to all but wrestle Palin to the ground to get her to give up her idea of giving her own speech.

But here’s the thing: This isn’t the great She-Who movie. That won’t be made for quite a few more years. This was basically just a rehash, with the added titillation of watching what we all suspected was going on backstage at the time — mainly Palin prepping for debates by learning the difference between the British prime minister’s and Queen Elizabeth’s roles, or that Korea really is two countries, or why we’re in Iraq. Is it possible she really was that ignorant? Really? I’m worried about Real America.

The great Palin movie will come after enough time has passed that we can see not just Palin, but ourselves, with a little more perspective. It isn’t just that Palin happened. It’s that a lot of other things happened at the same time. We all went crazy, and we haven’t recovered.

In other movie news, I also watched “Hanna,” on my iPad, while cleaning closets and drawers. It was far better than I expected, in large part due to a great score by the Chemical Brothers. I’m not a score-noticer, and this is the second straight year I’ve done so. Is all the music in our house finally rubbing off on me, or is it the unexpected revelation of this decade?

Other than that, I took a semi-internet sabbath, so no links to share at the moment. Anyone have any to suggest?

Meanwhile, happy Monday. Enjoy the week, all.

It seems too much to hope that the copy for Jennifer Lopez’ and Cameron Diaz’ presentation speech at the Oscars was written with the former’s ghastly outfit in mind, isn’t it? But how delicious to see J-Lo, with her nipples nearly exposed, reading the line about how Edith Head believed a dress should be tight enough to show you’re a woman, but loose enough to show you’re a lady.

I know, I know, they’re lovely breasts and she’s a lovely woman. But she has two kids now, and criminy — put ’em away once in a while. Long enough for us to miss them.

Nice to see T-Lo agree with me.

I actually fell asleep for a large chunk of the broadcast. I’m sure millions of others did, too.

But I was awake for Meryl Streep. I knew she was going to win when I saw her show up in that gold dress. Match the statue, girl. You know what I find so amazing about her? She was crazy in love with John Cazale back in the day, and was going to marry him, but he died tragically young. She picked herself up, dusted herself off, married a nice sculptor six months later (yes, six months — the unimpeachable Wikipedia says so) and has stayed married to him to this day — thirty-some years. Impressive, for two artists.

And “The Artist” it is. Haven’t seen it.

With that, award season is officially wrapped and we can assume films released after today won’t suck outright. We watched “Exporting Raymond” on HBO over the weekend, a film made for on-demand cable, in the sense that it was slight enough you’d have been pissed to pay $8 to see it in a theater, but still worth watching, especially for a Russophile like me. It’s about the development of the Russian version of “Everybody Loves Raymond,” retitled “Everybody Loves Kostya,” but mostly about the ways Phil Rosenthal, the show’s creator, can’t communicate with Russians, even with the best translators at his disposal.

And God help me, but I think I want to see “Goon,” too. It looks like 90 percent of its humor comes from Canadian accents. Which are funny.

OK, so: Campaign season in Michigan, let’s see what the boys are up to. Rick Santorum “presses culture-war attack,” the WashPost says. Oh he does, does he? Ahem:

Campaigning here Saturday, Santorum said Obama’s focus on higher education constitutes “indoctrination” into the president’s way of thinking.

“President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” said the former senator from Pennsylvania. “There are good, decent men and women who go out and work hard every day and put their skills to test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor to try to indoctrinate them. Oh, I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.”

…Asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” how his faith fits in with his ideas about governing, Santorum said he disagreed with the “absolute separation” between church and state outlined by Kennedy in a 1960 speech.

Santorum said reading the speech made him want to “throw up.”

(Dryly rubbing hands together.) Excellent.

And how was your weekend?

So this is it, then? Winter solstice? It doesn’t exactly feel like it — too warm — but given that it’s 8 a.m. and barely light, and that it’s raining and looks like it will be doing so for a while, then I guess this must be the place. Today the corner is turned. (Technically, not until 12:30 a.m. tomorrow, in my time zone, anyway.) Enjoy it, Argentina. Because we’re coming for that light. Starts now.

That last link is a sound clip, and somewhat NSFW, depending on your office. From one of my favorite movies-nobody-else-saw: “The Limey.” Roger Ebert gave it three stars, or a half-star less than what he gave “Horrible Bosses,” which was so bad I couldn’t even last through the DVD, and that’s saying something. It was amazingly crude, and do you know what it takes for me to say that? I, who once worked in newsrooms? How did we get to this point? One minute you’re laughing at the semen-as-hair-gel gag in “There’s Something About Mary,” the next a character in a Judd Apatow movie is dressing down another for shaving his balls in the bathroom and leaving the hair in the toilet, so that “my shit looked like a stuffed animal.” This was in “Knocked Up,” which later took a tonal shift to suggest the main character is positively changed by the presence of a child in his life. In other words, they girlied it up to make it suitable date-night fare, which suggests there are women out there who sat through the turd conversation en route to the baby-picture montage over the closing credits, and were pleased. What a world.

Although I hope “Bad Santa” comes around on one of the cable channels in the next few days. Because that was one that did crudity right. More or less.

Excuse me, we have a correction: Technically the winter solstice is at 12:30 a.m. tomorrow, I’m told. In my time zone anyway.

I’m still waiting for the coffee to kick in, so how about a picture I stole from a total stranger’s Facebook?

That’s our own MMJeff on the left. I guess he brought the gold to the infant Jesus, although think, Jeff: If you were traveling by donkey, preparing for the flight into Egypt, would a ginormous candlestick be a practical gift? Still, nice that you played your part in the living Nativity — you really are a Boy Scout, aren’t you? There was one last weekend at the church next to my Kroger store. The camel-wrangler wore the traditional burnoose over jeans and sneakers, and took a few calls on his cell phone while children petted his dromedary. If the wise men lived at this latitude, they would most definitely wear sweatshirts beneath their kingly finery.

Shoes are always the Achilles heel of the period costume. At how many renaissance faires have I watched knights and ladies touring the grounds in Tevas? The Johnny Appleseed Festival in Fort Wayne featured electricity-free carnival rides — I always liked the wind-up spinning thing — run by people wearing Nikes. The true non-farb Civil War re-enactor pays through the nose for a pair of true Civil War-era reproduction boots, which did not come in left-right configurations until afterward.

So, speaking of movies: Alan and I have finally accepted the inevitable, and are doing the years-overdue adult chore of writing our wills. We had the signing at the lawyer’s office yesterday. Without going into too much none-of-anyone’s-business detail, I was delighted to learn that the living trust we’ve set up features a “stuff” section, designed to dispose of particular valuables and/or personal possessions, should that be important to us. We can hand-write our wishes there, amend and cross them out, which strikes me as a very cinematic thing to have in one’s safe-deposit box. The first person I knew in life who had a significant relative die came back from the funeral with the disappointing news that wills aren’t all they’re cracked up to be in the movies. There was no dramatic reading in a lawyer’s office with the women all dressed in black, clutching hankies in their grief. There was no itemized list of goodies, with flowery legal instructions about their disposition, just some version of “I leave all my stuff to X, Y and Z,” and they can sort things out.”

I may, just for laffs, fill out this section with a list of identical distributions, all but the last one crossed out, to suggest a mercurial temperament I simply don’t have.

OK, so, bloggage:

The tea party takes the reins of power: The queer-bashin’ Troy mayor’s path through public service continues to be rocky, and this time it has nothing to do with her I-heart-NY tote bag. She and her confederates defeated a long-planned transit hub in that city earlier this week, by a 4-3 vote, bucking the wishes of the business community, which turned on her with a vengeance this week. The project came with $8 million in federal aid, but they reasoned that with the government drowning in debt, they must do their part, and said no thanks. The Chamber of Commerce was furious — do you know how hard it is for a suburban mayor in Oakland County to piss off a chamber of commerce? — and yesterday a remarkable letter leaked from a government-affairs manager from a major automotive supplier, saying he would put the word out in the business community that they “no longer consider the City of Troy for future site considerations, expansions or new job creation.” Wow.

The mayor, for her part, claims she’s heard “nothing but congratulations and accolades.”

Cathy Cambridge falls out in a black evening dress, looks smashing. I kind of wish she’d put her hair up for events like this, however, if only so we can ogle the rocks.

Perhaps some of you followed the link to the latest story about embarrassing College Republicans yesterday; I think Cooz posted something in comments. A roundup here, at Romenesko’s site. A student tweeted something offensive about the president: My president is black, he snorts a lot of crack. Holla. #2012 #Obama. You know what bugs me most about that? That stupid holla. Y’know: I’m a racist, but I still want to use hip-hop slang.

OK, the Great Christmas Cleaning Project begins. Holla!