It looks as though I won’t be seeing “The Hangover, Part II.” Sequels are my least-favorite genre; too often they’re naught but a well-paid, no-sweat victory lap for filmmakers too shameless to do anything more than rehash the original. It sounds like this one is particularly shame-free, basically a scene-by-scene remake with new locations:

To follow up his hit 2009 film “The Hangover,” which earned $467.5 million worldwide and became the top-grossing R-rated comedy of all time, writer-director Todd Phillips worked with co-writers Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong to produce a sequel script that used the original film as a literal template. As a result, both films revolve around three friends (played by Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis) who find themselves tracking down a missing acquaintance the morning after a wild, drug-fueled night none of them can remember. (Even the two films’ trailers are identical.)

Mazin says he, Armstrong and Phillips first met to brainstorm ideas for the sequel last January at Phillips’ house in Malibu. “We talked about everything — even if we should start the movie with the same fateful phone call [the main characters receive in the first film],” says Mazin, who says the new film’s Bangkok setting was determined by Phillips. “The more we thought about it, we realized that people weren’t going to come to ‘The Hangover Part II’ because they were looking for a reinvention of the comedy plot. They were interested in how these characters would react, but to a worse situation.”

Yeah, that’s what I’m interested in, fershure. Just one question: Is the monkey the tiger, or the baby?

In other movie news, this is one of those days when I wish all of us lived in the same town, so we could have a big field trip to the Sarah Palin movie, and yeah, we’d go to the unrated screenings with all the potty-mouthin’. I know you all batted around the title thing yesterday, but until last night I hadn’t read all the details about this thing. Like this:

(Director Stephen K.) Bannon dramatizes the theme of Palin’s persecution at the hands of her enemies in the media and both political parties, a notion the former governor has long embraced. Images of lions killing a zebra and a dead medieval soldier with an arrow sticking in his back dramatize the ethics complaints filed by obscure Alaskan citizens, which Palin has cited as the primary reason for her sudden resignation in July of 2009.

I hope the zebra is a really pretty one, with great hair. Oh, what I’d pay to watch this in a dark theater with Coozledad at my elbow.

In keeping with the spirit of an exhausted morning, some all-showbiz bloggage:

Back of Town, the “Treme” blog, discusses Sunday’s episode, with a great photo including our very own Ashley Morris. Playing his drum.

Women falling down in romantic comedies:

Finally, auxiliary showbiz: Diplomacy is hard, but at least you get to dress up pretty often. This makes back-to-back bowtie dinners for the Obamas in England, and Michelle looks pretty damn good, once again. I hope no one muffed the toast this time.

Your blogmistress had a ridiculous weekend. See here and here.

This wasn’t an investigation like my tougher colleagues love to do, where they dig dirt for weeks or months and then deliver a giant dirt sculpture in the shape of a pointing finger — j’accuse! — on a few hundred thousand doorsteps on Sunday morning, about a crooked mayor or an asleep-at-the-switch commission. Here, a guy got caught doing something bad and got fired, a story that was going to break sooner or later, but broke sooner. But it was a story with much dirt involved, and it went off like a grenade. Wreckage is still falling. I will be distracted for a while.

In between, I went for a bike ride and then to the movies. This was a beautiful, sunny, warm weekend, and the yard sales were as plentiful as dandelions. One in particular featured a whole table of NWT items — new with tags, for those of you who don’t eBay enough to know the lingo. Three wallets, still with Marshall’s price tags on them. Candleholders, ditto. And so on. Some people can never resist a bargain, who figure you never know when a gift will be required — a last-minute birthday invitation, an extra guest on Christmas morning with nothing to open. Some people are compulsive shoppers. Some people are bad at returning things they discovered they didn’t need. I considered two hurricane-style candle holders in cobalt blue, then, in the spirit of the day, decided I didn’t need them. And so I rode home, showered and headed to Royal Oak to meet a couple friends and see “Everything Must Go.”

Coincidentally, it’s about a yard sale. It’s, y’know, a metaphor, but it works. Will Ferrell plays a guy forcibly evicted from his house by his wife, who has changed the locks and temporarily left the premises. So he sets up housekeeping on the front lawn, with all the stuff she threw out. Based on a Raymond Carver story, so it involves alcohol, and it takes place in a world you and I would recognize, where people do stupid and self-destructive things for no good reason, and where when people change, they change from A to B rather than A to Z. Your average low-budget indie drama.

Or dramedy, I should say — it’s actually very funny in a don’t-laugh-out-loud sort of way, a wry comedy of human failing, and to me, the revelation was Ferrell, because I am not a fan. Not even a little bit of one. But that was a very fine performance. There’s a moment where Ferrell sells a fishing rig he bought but never used. NWoT, if you will, and it reminded me of how much crap we buy and never use, or hardly use, and how it weighs us down. Also, that I need to have a garage sale.

So, some bloggage:

The exit of Mitch Daniels, and the entrance of Mr. Excitement, Tim Pawlenty, from and to the GOP presidential race is bringing new attention to $P, who went on a Fox show called “Justice With Judge Jeannine” and ran her mouth for a while. She called Barack Obama our “temporary president,” whatever that means. I clicked the YouTube link hoping for a 30-second highlight reel, noticed it was the whole 14-minute segment, and immediately clicked away, but not before I heard the introduction, and saw She-Who reply to the welcome blather with, “As always, thank you, Judge.” Two things: One, when you’re making news for your appearance on shows with names like “Justice With Judge Jeannine Pirro,” it’s only a matter of time before you’re putting on an apron and making eggs with some Regis Philbin equivalent; and two, my very first direct observation of class difference in America, as a child, was by watching courtroom re-enactment shows on Channel 10 in Columbus, and noting that the better-spoken parties referred to the judge as “your honor” while the rednecks called him “judge.” I stand by my 8-year-old self’s observation.

You won’t have Mitch Daniels to kick around in 2012. And, are Republicans losing their grip on reality? Finally, Roger Ailes and the monster he created. (Fox News, Not $P.) Discuss.

And finally, I close with movie bloggage:

It’s been 20 years since the release of “Thelma & Louise.” My, my. I have to say, I liked that movie pretty well, and young Brad Pitt — yummy.

Maybe you read John Wallace’s comment yesterday about his awful neighbors finally moving out. He and his wife sat on the porch for the load-out, listening to a custom mix of farewell music. He didn’t tell you he also took pictures:

Ha ha. The girl is 17 and pregnant. Pray for her baby.

We’ve all lived in places like this, haven’t we? Or rather, we’ve all had neighbors like this. It’s part of the motivating force that gets you to finally stop screwing around, pull up your socks, dress for success and move the hell out of these places. Alternate strategy: Start a campaign of merciless pressure to get them to move out. Whatever works.

I had a guy who lived behind me in Fort Wayne, on the Dayton Avenue side. David Hall. His sole claim to fame was that he ran for city council one year, put up to the job by some prankster pissed off at the incumbent, whose name was Dede Hall. He — the prankster, I have to think — paid for a few signs in the same colors as Dede’s, and posted them here and there. Dede had nothing to worry about, but as usual, he got a few votes from those who left their reading glasses in the car. Those people, I can assure you, didn’t live nearby.

Here’s the difference between those people and you: They fight outdoors. When Kate was a toddler, I was putting her into her car seat when David’s baby mama stormed out the front door, child in her arms, pursued by David, and they proceeded to have a shoving match on the lawn. One night a few people got in an argument in the same spot. I know we drop occasional F-bombs here, but I also know some of you read this on filtered computers that can be tripped by too many of them. So for the fine Anglo-Saxon no-no word, we’ll substitute “fork.” This is how it went:

Fork you.

Fork you.

And so on. One morning I came out for a bike ride and found a young man parked in front of my garage, blocking it. He was sound asleep, a drink in his hand, his other nestled in his pants for warmth. I knocked a few times, trying to wake him up, but all he did was shift a bit in his seat and turn his face the other way. I gave up and called the police, and when I returned from my ride, the car was being hitched to a tow truck and he was on his way to the lockup. It wasn’t David, but it was probably one of his pals.

He moved out, leaving his long-suffering mother behind. She was a nice woman. Things improved immediately.

Which seems as good a time as any to link to this mugshot I keep forgetting about: Kelly Gene Gibson of Fort Wayne, after his 48th arrest for huffing paint. I don’t know where he lives, but if it’s on Dayton Avenue, my former neighbors have my sympathies. Alan dug up this story on the city’s frequent flyers at the jail, and he was in there, too.

So, some bloggage:

Hank Stuever watches “Becoming Chaz,” the documentary about Cher’s daughter’s sex-reassignment surgery, and gets right to the good parts:

Cher looms distantly and mostly unseen, providing still more fertile OWN fodder — when mother-daughter issues become mother-son issues. When she at last makes herself available for a single, awkward interview, we are treated to the galling spectacle of a 66-year-old woman with that much cosmetic surgery describing her bewilderment at her son’s fixation on image, body and identity.

It’s weird when you see an obviously professional photographer shooting pictures on Saturday, and then see the piece he was shooting for — and one of the pictures — a few days later. And then I read the story, and find the mother of one of Kate’s friends quoted therein. No great shakes on the story, just one of those things.

She-who and He-who — it’s complicated.

A soft-spoken member of our community with a single link to the Gingrich clan says he values that relationship and doesn’t want to endanger it by saying anything publicly, but this line from his email yesterday is too good not to share:

When I read about him, I want to kill people, break things, blow up large animals, eat small ones alive, build meth labs, drink rotgut whiskey and smoke crack while Guns N’ Roses’ “Appetite for Destruction” plays at 11 in the background.

And the fact that U.S. news media do not respond in exactly the same way I do shows just how incredibly sick and fucked up this country is.

A quote like that is too good to go to waste. Happy Wednesday, all.

Mitch Albom has a new play opening this week. The Free Press assigned a reporter, and another reporter, but of course no Albom media event would be complete without a contribution from the man himself.

He modestly says “Ernie” is a wonderful play. Srsly. He really does say that:

You start with stories. His humble roots. His speech impediment. The time he got Babe Ruth to sign his shoe. You move through his World War II service, his early career, his relationship with JackieRobinson, Willie Mays, then on to Detroit, the 1968 champions, the Jose Feliciano brouhaha, the 1984 World Series. You explore his firing from the Tigers, his fondness for Tiger Stadium. And you layer the whole thing with one of the great love stories in baseball, Ernie and Lulu.

And you find there is a beautiful play there, a man about to make his farewell speech at a ballpark, wondering how he could be worth such a fuss.

As usual, this is all played in the key of aw-shucks, all I did was write it all down:

The show runs until June, but already in preview performances, it is amazing how people gasp a little when they hear Will speak like Ernie, how they laugh, nod and even cry at familiar stories, and how, when Ernie talks of his lifetime honeymoon with his wife, they all sigh at the same time.

The first time I read about “Ernie,” I declared that I’d rather be locked in for the overnight shift in a daycare center full of crack babies and poisonous snakes than see this. Add “and 14 little dogs that do nothing but bark-bark-bark,” and you’ve got it about right.

The theater where this sapfest is booked is across Woodward Avenue from Comerica Park, and showtimes are scheduled to coordinate with home game starting times. So you can catch “Ernie,” and then, face still wet with tears, cross the street, pass the statue of Ernie near the main gate, and catch a game.

If Ernie Harwell was really half as humble and self-effacing as Albom and others make him out to be, he is rolling in his grave. As one of my Facebook friends commented, Albom has made more money off dead guys than Yoko Ono.

Next on the agenda: Bread, water and a healthy bowl of high-fiber gruel — a Michigan legislator gets into the spirit of the age with proposed legislation that the state’s foster children should be clothed solely in the castoffs of others:

(State Sen. Bruce) Caswell says he wants to make sure that state money set aside to buy clothes for foster children and kids of the working poor is actually used for that purpose.

He says they should get “gift cards” to be used only at Salvation Army, Goodwill or other thrift stores.

“I never had anything new,” Caswell says. “I got all the hand-me-downs. And my dad, he did a lot of shopping at the Salvation Army, and his comment was — and quite frankly it’s true — once you’re out of the store and you walk down the street, nobody knows where you bought your clothes.”

Caswell is 61. He “never” had anything new. So why should anyone else? Look what it did for him: He graduated from Michigan State! Actually, his Wikipedia bio is intriguing. Graduated high school in 1967 and went to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, leaving after two years to finish undergrad at MSU, before re-enrolling and finishing with a master’s in 1976. Nowhere in there do I see the name of a certain southeast Asian country that begins with the letter V. Hmm.

So, it was a weekend for entertainment catch-up. Watched “Game of Thrones,” part 1. This one’s going to be difficult, I can see — I’m already sorting characters by hair color. You can tell the producers had the same idea, giving one brother-sister pair identical shades of peroxide-white, and another familial unit a uniform strawberry blonde. Thank heaven, as I’m certainly not going to catch their names as they fly by, each one ending in -ian or -aeus. What is the appeal of fantasy, I ask you fans out there. Escapism? Must be, although each novel I’ve picked up loses me in endless tangles of family trees, and I always have to check the map on the endpapers to orient me in space. “Game of Thrones” helpfully does this in the credits; although after one episode all I really know is: Winterfell is in “the north” and north of Winterfell is “the Wall,” behind which are monsters and dire wolves. I wonder how many fantasy readers know the dire wolf was a real species of the Pleistocene era. Lived in these parts, even. A 250-pound wolf. Now that would have been a sight to see.

OK, it’s Easter Monday, which means it’s still a quasi-holiday here in holiday-mad Michigan, but I have work to do just the same. Happy week to all, although with rain in the forecast nearly every day, we’ll have to see about that.

If you live to the east of me, and the weather we had last night is headed your way, let me just say this: I hope you enjoy rain. It looks as though most of it is off to the south now, the dregs of the system. Maybe a little over central Pennsylvania and… what do they call that big westerly chunk of New York state? The Something Tier, as I recall. You folks there? Bring an umbrella.

It arrived last night after midnight, loud enough that I relocated far from the skylight I normally work under, as the sound effects were like being parked next to a jackhammer. Another tip: If you’re ever tempted to buy a house with a skylight in the bedroom? Don’t do that. There’s a place for skylights, and I love mine, but it’s not over your bed, and not because of leaks. Maybe if you’re an alcoholic, and every night’s rest is aided by bourbon, you can sleep through even an average rain shower pounding on glass five feet above your head. But everybody else should leave skylights for the rooms where you’re not trying to rest.

That said, how was everybody’s Tuesday? Once again, I’m impressed by how well you guys can carry the ball when I’m unable. I was unable yesterday because this is spring break, and I’m celebrating by catching an extra 45 minutes of sleep or so, which cuts into my blogging time on days when I have to get down to campus by 10 a.m. When I saw how late spring break was going to be this year — it’s always wrapped around Easter in our district — I dropped any thought of travel. A mid-April spring break would surely mean a string of days in the 70s here, while the Florida people would swelter in the already unbearable heat of a fast-approaching summer.

No such luck. I guess. That’s what feeding your envy will get you.

So, today, instead — let’s graze a bit. First, a tip for those of you browsing the video selections: “Night Catches Us,” a lovely little film I caught early last evening after finding it at the library. “Criminally overlooked,” says Slate, and I’d say that’s about right. I’m interested in low-budget films that tell urban stories for my own selfish reasons, and this one was such a pleasant surprise. Set in the summer of 1976, it’s the story of an ex-Black Panther home for his father’s funeral, and the way the events of the past won’t let go of the present. Those particular events — the brief flowering of the black power movement before it collapsed into lawlessness — are public record, although like so many of these things, certain people prefer very particular sets of facts about them. What’s wonderful about Tanya Hamilton’s script is that it doesn’t shrink from the pain, while still acknowledging the things about the Panthers that were good and hopeful, even if they didn’t last. And what’s wonderful about her direction is how she makes all this work tonally, how she plays everything restrained and sad while still maintaining the energy. For once, a movie where people talk and act approximately the same way they talk and act in the real world.

Which might be why it was criminally overlooked, but hey, I’m doing my part. Word of mouth, word of blog, whatever. Oh, and a tip of the hat to the great soundtrack, by maybe the only band that can evoke both ’60s soul and contemporary hip-hop with equal command — the Roots.

A few weeks ago I mentioned the prescription-drug problem, only now starting to be acknowledged by those outside the regions it has most damaged — Appalachia and Florida and points between. How’s this for a statistic?

Nearly 1 in 10 babies born last year in this Appalachian county tested positive for drugs. …In Ohio, fatal overdoses more than quadrupled in the last decade, and by 2007 had surpassed car crashes as the leading cause of accidental death, according to the Department of Health.

That’s from a NYT piece datelined Portsmouth, Ohio, and no, it’s not a pretty picture, but that’s life in Appalachia. It’s never been easy there, but it’s been better than it is now, when there were still jobs in mining and light industry. No more of that. Might as well get high.

The other night I surfed briefly past a Barbara Walters special on the royal wedding that was so stupid it made my brain hurt. It reminded me how careful you have to be about your royal-wedding news. I trust Christopher Hitchens won’t let me down.

Finally, I just registered with Byliner, the latest savior of long-form journalism, to read Jon Krakauer’s piece on the “Three Cups of Tea” guy. I’ll let you know how it turns out. For now, gotta run.

This, friends, is the definition of what is colloquially known as “some bullshit.”

It won’t last. Doesn’t matter. Last night I took Kate to a concert, a freakin’ long one, and we drove home under a bright full moon. Eighteen hours of high, freezing winds had finally abated, and I thought, OK, that’s over. Evidently, it’s not over. This is what the winds were bringing us. Should have known.

The concert was Anarbor, the same band we saw last November. Actually, it was five bands, with Anarbor in the middle, although we had to stay until nearly the bitter end. This week is spring break, so getting home at a decent hour wasn’t a big concern, but the headliners played for a Springsteen-like interval and they were getting on my nerves. So I discovered one use for text messaging, i.e., contacting your daughter on the other side of the club:

Let’s go. This band sux.

We’re waiting for Mike.

Mike being the Anarbor guitarist. All the other members had been out to pose for photos and sign merch, but Mike was the last holdout. I guess you have to stagger these things to maximize merch purchases, an important revenue stream for a young touring band. On the other hand, one more song by A Rocket to the Moon seemed like cruel and unusual punishment. So I walked up to the secured lounge area where I’d seen some of the other acts coming and going, and caught one going.

“Mike in there?”

“Yeah.”

“Send him out.”

Let me tell you, folks, one of the very few advantages to being an old bag is, if you look like someone’s mother, a well-raised young man will frequently obey a direct order. Thirty seconds later: Mike.

“Hey, Mike, thanks for coming out. My daughter wants to get her poster signed. Hang on while I text her.”

“That’s great you’re down with the texting, got the iPhone and everything. I wish my mom was.”

Text: I’ve got Mike at the top of the stairs. On the double.

So Mike and I chatted about this and that, the weather and Phoenix (where they live) and Po, Kate’s band. The look on Kate’s face when she rounded the corner on the staircase with her friends and saw her mother having a conversation with her guitar hero was something to see. Mike signed the poster: “Rock and roll, Mike” and posed for pictures.

Mike is a very nice guy. I only wish he would cool it with the marijuana boosterism.

Mike is 21 years old. In some parts of Detroit, I’m old enough to be his grandmother.

It’s spring break, but I’m still working. So let’s get Monday under way.

Roy Edroso saw “Atlas Shrugged” so you don’t have to:

(As) much fun as it is to slag rotten movies, it is much better to be surprised by a good one, especially when you’ve reached the stage in life where two hours in front of a stinker sets you dreaming of the warm couch and leftover sesame chicken that you left back home. But it is my great regret to inform you that Atlas Shrugged: Part I is neither good nor good-bad, but bad-bad-bad-bad. I dreamed, not of sesame chicken, but of my own swift and merciful death, and that of the director, not necessarily in that order. It is not a pleasurable surprise, not a hoot, nor an outrage; it is Rand’s granite crushed, reconstituted, and spread across the screen with steamrollers.

You’ll hear a certain amount of handwringing over this story — computer out-writes human sports reporter — but I honestly believe it has more to do with sportswriting than journalism in general. Still, amusing, as well as proof that if we could harness the power of pissed-off readers, we could light Los Angeles for a month. (This whole project was touched off by a college-age reporter whose story of a perfect game neglected to mention that little detail until the penultimate graf. Kirk, stop pounding your forehead on the desk. You’ll leave a mark.)

You’ve probably seen this, but let’s give it a little more exposure: Racist Orange County Republicans keep outdoing themselves. Amazing. No, not amazing.

OK, up and at ’em. Let’s hope for a swift melt.

My Russian teacher cancelled next week’s lesson. She’s Jewish, and it’s Passover. Which must mean that the ABC network broadcast of “The Ten Commandments” is right around the corner. It’s April 23 this year. Woot! I hope Alan doesn’t have anything planned, because it’s going to be wine time in front of the ol’ tube. I’ve missed it several years running, and I’m feeling it, kittens:

When I was researching the book I wrote last year for the Detroit Economic Club, one of the more interesting files was that of Cecil B. DeMille, who addressed them in 1948 on the topic of right-to-work legislation:

In 1936, DeMille was hired to host the Lux Radio Theater, a long-running anthology series featuring the top stars of the day. He held the position for nearly a decade, until 1945, when he balked at the deduction of $1 for political activities by the American Federation of Radio Artists, of which he was a member. The union was fighting a ballot initiative to make California a right-to-work state. DeMille not only refused to pay the fee himself, he also refused to let anyone else pay it for him. The incident ended with DeMille suspended by the union and out of his $100,000-per-year job as host.

DeMille made right-to-work advocacy a pet cause for years afterward.

The DeMille Foundation for Political Freedom existed for decades, and yet, only a few know it existed at all. But everyone’s watched “The Ten Commandments,” at least part of it. Art endures. Politics is just a luncheon address to some bigwigs in Detroit.

Actually, I found another speech in the club’s archives by a Hollywood type — David Wolper, who came in the mid-60s and gave a talk he titled “The Hills are Alive With the Sound of Money.” He was promoting a film he’d produced called “The Devil’s Brigade.” It was about a little-known special forces unit in World War II comprised of — quoting IMDB here — “Canadian troops and a ragtag group of American misfits.” (Misfits are always ragtag, I’ve noticed.) Anyway, the event seemed to have been coordinated with the opening of the film uppermost in mind, and Detroit chosen because of its proximity to Windsor, given the transnational aspect of the Devil’s Brigade. And yet, when was the last time you saw that one? Sometimes art doesn’t endure, either. It helps if the art is memorable.

I might have to dig up this one, however. Any flick with characters named Rockwell “Rocky” Rockman and Billy “Bronc” Guthrie can’t be all bad. And imagine William Holden delivering a line like this:

Lt. Col. Robert T. Frederick: [to Major Bricker] You’ve been in-and-out of nine different camps because you’re the biggest chiseler, hustler, and scrounger in the whole Army. Well, in two weeks our first recruits arrive, and whatever they need, and whatever this camp needs, you’re going to supply. How you do it is your own business. So start hustling.

Start hustling! OK, then.

It’s almost tax-filing deadline. I’m done and filed, and am expecting a small refund, which I’ve already decided to put toward an iPad, because I can think of a million ways to use it for work, which would make it a business expense on next year’s taxes, right? Anyway, our webmaster J.C. Burns — who celebrated his birthday yesterday, by the way — put together one of his occasional (and invaluable) knowledge dumps for new iPad owners. It’s a little technical for the novice, but still full of many tips, suggestions and whatnot if you’re in the same situation. So read, eh?

Until he sent it to me, I didn’t even know he had a Tumblr. Sigh. Another bookmark.

Via BuzzFeed, 52 Things You’ll Only See in America. Unfair, cruel, probably with a good deal of Photoshopping, and yet I still laughed out loud several times. Bad Boys Bail Bonds is real, anyway. Slogan: “Because your mama wants you home.”

People accuse Yanks of being silly about royal weddings, but don’t count the English out. I stumbled across the Daily Telegraph’s special web section the other day, and it’s exhaustive. Best single feature, however: Royal weddings in history, containing a click-through slide show of every one since Victoria and Albert. Bummer: Prince Albert is wearing tight riding pants, but is seen only in profile, so we can’t check for his Prince Albert.

Off to work I go. A good Tuesday to all.

The day we’ve all been waiting for has arrived: “Sex and the City 2” is now on HBO, and lo, I watched it the other night. I wanted it to be so-bad-it-was-good, but alas. It was merely so-bad-it-was-excruciating. The only good to come out of it may be that it finishes off the series for good, although you never know. The entire production cost looks to have been covered with ham-fisted product placement — did you get a shot of that Rolex? can we get the tech specs for the Maybach in the script somewhere? — and for all I know, it may well have been a big hit among the sort of women who are not you.

I’m thinking of it today because one of my students came by to visit for a while yesterday, a Muslim woman. If you haven’t heard, the main part of the action takes place in Abu Dhabi, to which the quartet jets off as part of a deal Samantha makes with an Arab movie producer. (Samantha’s one-woman PR firm now occupies a glass-fronted office overlooking Times Square, at a fairly low level, too, like the studios for Nickelodeon. I figured this is so she can occasionally get up and press her bare breasts to the window for the tourists, but no, instead we see her sitting at her desk, panties around her knees, applying the various hormonal creams she needs to hold menopause at bay. WIth her back to the window! This makes no sense.)

Anyway, once the gals are in the UAE, a certain number of script pages are devoted to their discussions about Islamic standards of modesty, of which they disapprove. It all comes to a head in one truly appalling scene where hot-flashin’ Samantha (they confiscated her hormones at the airport so they could set this all up) is surrounded by Arab men in a public market who disapprove of her outfit. I wondered why they waited until this one to object, as I’d nearly gouged my eyes out over several others, one of which could literally do the job (No. 2). She responds by pelting them with condoms, until the girls are saved by some veiled and covered women, who drag them into a safe room, strip off their black abayas and reveal outfits every bit as awful as our heroines’.

Then — then! — there is a question of how our girls will escape from the market, still in an uproar over Samantha’s condoms. They actually say this: But how will we get out? I actually said, “Three, two, one,” and as I got to “one” the shot changed:

EXT: THE MARKET, DAY.

A female head emerges from a doorway, covered in BLACK SCARF and VEIL. She turns to look toward the camera, and we see BLUE EYES. She is joined by three others as they look up and down the street. The coast is clear, and they cautiously emerge.

It’s never explained how the Arabic women they borrowed the abayas from got home that day. Perhaps they were stoned to death for those outfits. I was certainly tempted.

And you know what? This wasn’t even the worst scene in the movie. Not by a long shot. I’d nominate the nightclub scene, where the girls sing, “I am Woman” while the Arabic belly-dancers look on with pride and approval, a scene that made me bury my face in a pillow.

The title of the post today is a tribute to my brother-in-law, who christened the series “the ‘ho show” when it was still on HBO, and still somewhat watchable. He also calls Sarah Jessica Parker “Miss Nelsonville” for her family’s brief residency in that Appalachian Ohio town, on their way to Broadway and SJP’s fateful part in “Annie.” You have to have driven through Nelsonville to fully get it, but there’s one scene where we see Carrie putting on her makeup in closeup, and that’s all I could think: She really is Miss Nelsonville.

I can’t believe Salman Rushdie got fatwa’d for “The Satanic Verses,” and every single person who enabled this thing walks free today, with no apparent fear of car bombs and scimitar attacks.

With that bad taste in our mouths, let’s skip to the bloggage:

Paul Ryan’s budget proposal: Splutter, splutter.

Someone needs a heapin’ helpin’ of GET OVER YOURSELF.

Coozledad’s next project: Teach Llewd to jump like Lola Luna. I’m pleased to offer this link in keeping with our theme today (it’s from Al Jazeera):

I’m out. A great hump day to all. And no, don’t do it like Samantha.

My goal this morning is to get the blog updated and a story written about the budget meeting at my local city council in the next 75 minutes. Hang on, folks — we’re going to see just how fast mommy can screw things up this morning.

Fortunately, I have supplemented last night’s 5.5 hours of sleep with three cups of coffee.

And I already edited and posted one story from my intern. Because that’s how hyperlocal online news runs these days — all the meetings happen early in the week. That makes for a miserable Monday and Tuesday, but by Thursday, the air smells like Weekend.

My intern’s story was on the first budget meeting of the year for the school board, which is facing the possibility of seeing $5.8 million in cuts if the governor’s budget goes through as proposed, a pretty hard swallow for a 8,500-pupil district. That means larger class sizes at a bare minimum and the usual no-more-this, can’t-have-that elsewhere in the district. I used to marvel sometimes that pretty much the last decade of my newspaper career — and, really, many years before that — were spent in a fiscal environment where all you knew for certain was that next year would suck more than this year. Now, the whole country lives like this. (Well, except for Goldman Sachs. And General Electric. Et cetera.) I always knew I’d find my true calling as a canary in a coal mine.

Speaking of sucking and newspapers, my alma mater — which I have taken to describing as the paper I might have worked at, had I not been in that tragic, 20-year coma from 1984-2004 — is in a minor ethical kerfuffle, thanks to its sports editor’s tweeting. I hope you all understand how hard it is for a person of a certain age to think of tweeting as serious communication worthy of sustained attention, but that’s what you get in a world where Sarah Palin is looked up to. Anyway, evidently the sports editor advised a recent Indiana University basketball recruit to play for Butler instead, his alma mater. In a tweet. Which ended with the phrase, “Go ‘Dawgs!”

I guess this is a problem. I guess some people consider this recruiting, and it’s a blow to the hard work of many who have tried to give sports departments more respect. I see their point, although every sports department I’ve ever worked near has fanboys galore. Still, journalism is journalism, and you’re supposed to keep this stuff to yourself.

But not if you work for Fox! Ahem:

Bill Sammon, who’s responsible for the network’s Washington coverage, linked Obama to socialism many times during the 2008 campaign, but didn’t believe the allegation, he acknowledged. In the final stretch of the 2008 campaign, a Fox News executive repeatedly questioned on the air whether Barack Obama believed in socialism.

Now it turns out he didn’t really believe what he was saying.

Bill Sammon, now the network’s vice president and Washington managing editor, acknowledged the following year that he was just engaging in “mischievous speculation” in raising the charge. In fact, Sammon said he “privately” believed that the socialism allegation was “rather far-fetched.”

OK. Now, to me, this is a scandal at the very, very least on a par with the recent NPR affair. This guy isn’t a fundraiser on contract, but a bureau chief in the nation’s capital, i.e., the very person in charge of directing and shaping the network’s coverage of Washington, D.C. And he was being “mischievous” with repeatedly making a charge that the Democratic candidate was a socialist, something a vast segment of his readership viewership takes as an article of faith.

I can’t fucking stand it. I just can’t.

The audio of that speech is nauseating — the amount of back-scratching, log-rolling and ass-kissing in the first two minutes alone is just vile. “My good friend James Carville,” “his lovely wife Mary Matalin,” “my old friends from Hillsdale.” Urgh.

But then, what is GOP politics at this point but a giant vaudeville act. Donald Trump, born-again birther, wants the governor of Hawaii “investigated,” he tells Fox ‘n’ Friends. What is this, a performance art piece? No other explanation makes any sense. Also:

“Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate?” Trump asked. “I wish he would, because I think it’s a terrible pale that’s hanging over him.”

What is “a terrible pale?” Can someone explain?

OK, well. I have a budget story to write in the next…42 minutes. So I best go. Let the above be your bloggage, although I close on yet another journalism-related nugget. Alan and I saw “Kill the Irishman” last weekend, a film about a Cleveland gangster named Danny Greene, whose compelling story and Belfastian death would make a pretty good movie someday. Alas, “Kill the Irishman” isn’t it. But a guy I know had a small part in it, and Ray Stevenson, aka Titus Pullo in “Rome” a few years back, played the lead, so it seemed worth the time.

There are two shots in the movie where we look over a character’s shoulder at the front page of the Plain Dealer, Cleveland’s muscular, dominant newspaper and at the time the film covers, the best daily in Ohio. I always look at the other stories on prop pages like this, because I know that’s where the art department’s inside jokes go. I was able to read two. One was:

High school
gets new
lockers

and the other was:

Attorney
opens
practice

Somewhere, an editor is weeping.

Gotta run!

Somewhere in the firehose of information that blew past me yesterday — just another day at the office — someone said that Elizabeth Taylor, like Frank Sinatra, was a generational artist. You had to catch her early to consider her an artist at all, because at some point she stopped being an artist, pretty much stopped working at all, and was content to simply be Elizabeth Taylor ™, the brand.

That’s probably right, and I’d put people my age on the dividing line. I was about 10 when I discovered my grandmother’s stash of Hollywood fan magazines and learned of the latter. Every so often the hot couple of the moment comes along — Brangelina, Bennifer (remember that one?) — and tries to blot out the sun, but they are mere satellites to the original, Liz and Dick, whom we should be grateful came along before the mushed-names thing, because no one would have gone for a couple nicknamed Lick. Or Diz.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were the alpha and omega of celebrity couples, and much in between. They were together, apart, together, apart. After the breakups, he wooed her with ever-more-lavish gifts of jewelry, which she’d wear dangling from her ears or nestling in her famous bosom. They fought in public (booze), snuggled in public (ditto). Like Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, she gave him glamour, he gave her prestige. They gave each other fits.

I’ve never understood relationships like this, but then, I’m not a movie star. I guess they enjoyed makeup sex. They certainly enjoyed drinking, which fuels the breakup/makeup cycle.

About that jewelry. I was by no means a feminist at the age of 10 or so, but even as a kid, there was something about Taylor’s romantic life that bugged me. Never mind the marriages, Mrs. Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky — what sort of woman comes back to a man after he gives her a pair of diamond earrings? Major ick factor. At the same time, she was gimlet-eyed enough to know that a girl ought to get something out of a relationship like the one with Burton, and I guess she cashed in.

In the end, if you were younger than 50 or so, you remember Taylor more for this:

…than this:

And that’s a shame. But she had a good time along the way. Women like her don’t have the Clint Eastwood Option for later-in-life work, particularly if you’ve been known as a great beauty. I think Manohla Dargis put her finger on it:

Living large proved a brilliant survival strategy as well as something of a rebuke to the limits of the studio system, both its formulas and false morality, which was all but gone by the time she appeared in “Virginia Woolf” in 1966. Her weight went up and down and the accolades kept coming. She cheated on one husband and then another at a time when adultery was still shocking, and her career kept going. She was a lovely actress and a better star. She embodied the excesses of Hollywood and she transcended them. In the end, the genius of her career was that she gave the world everything it wanted from a glamorous star, the excitement and drama, the diamonds and gossip, and she did it by refusing to become fame’s martyr.

So, bloggage? Sure:

I’m so glad Kate has grown out of “American Idol,” so we don’t have to watch stuff like this. (I’m talking about J-Lo, not the singer. Although he’s got at least as much diva Diana as mellow Marvin in him, unless I miss my guess.) You’d think, by this point in the competition, the stylists would have gotten the performers clothes that fit.

This is why people choose careers in journalism: To answer ads like this.

In Britain, he’s been stripped of his medical license. In the U.S., he’s free to keep spreading his special brand of quackery, and to a poor, minority population, no less.

Happy birthday to our regular commenter, 4dbirds, who turns 29 again today.

Sunny today! But still in the 20s. Dammit. I’m outta here, and have a great Thursday.