If I didn’t get my fill of movies-in-the-theater during the holidays, I came pretty close. For all my posturing as a cineaste, the plain fact is most of my viewing is via DVD, so much so that I’ve started noticing how much I’m coming to resemble Kate at her first in-theater movie (“Elmo in Grouchland,” in the year Three): Sitting on Alan’s lap, happily scarfing popcorn, the movie started and she froze. Her hand didn’t move from the popcorn bag, and neither did she, for many long moments. That wide screen was pretty overwhelming.

Nowadays, when I see a movie in a real theater, I need to ask myself, “Was the cinematography in ‘True Grit’ that good, or did it just look good to someone who’s seen the last two Coen brothers’ movies on a not-even-16:9-TV?” Answer: Yes. It’s that good. And after “The King’s Speech,” I had to marvel at Colin Firth, who played two-thirds of his performance with the camera about three inches from his nose. Or maybe they set it back a few feet and used a long lens, but he still filled the screen. And when you fill the screen, you better know what every muscle in your face is doing, and to the extent he seemed to have control over all of them, well, it’s Oscar-nomination time for Colin.

The last of the three was “The Fighter,” and I think I enjoyed that one best of all, and I’m not sure why, although let’s check off its pleasures: The fabulous Melissa Leo, Christian Bale playing a crackhead dancing right up to the edge of chewed scenery but not stepping over, the fabulous Amy Adams, a perfectly fine Mark Wahlberg, and boxing. I’ve come to appreciate boxing late in life; too many Saturday nights spent on the couch watching HBO bouts has finally paid off, and I can see the sport of it now. It’s not just two guys pounding each other, it’s scoring and strategy and plans of attack. The film is based on a true story, and I was glad not to be a lifelong fight fan, because I didn’t want to know the ending. Alan said afterward he could see it coming like a punch in slo-mo, but not me.

But it raised the question about things like that. I don’t think I’m being spoiler-y here about “The King’s Speech” when I tell you the story — about how King George VI learned to master his lifelong stammer — all leads to a climactic address before the entire British Empire, via radio, and that he manages to pull it off. There wouldn’t be much of a movie if he had stood in front of the microphone and gaped like a landed fish, after all. And yet, you watch it unfold with your heart in your throat. The director, Tom Hooper, keeps the suspense high by showing Britons gathered around radios around the world, all gnawing their fingernails to the quick, waiting for their king to buh-buh-blow it. You empathize, the great miracle of storytelling.

The other wonderful thing about “The Fighter” was its several scenes of lively arguments between large groups of people, everyone talking at once, that reminded me how hard it is to capture these things. I guess it’s a credit to the director. When you watch your share of amateur-made short films, that’s the first thing you notice. One person talks. Then another person talks. Then the first person replies. And so on. It’s just not the way life unspools, especially when you’re arguing. I’d love to watch David O. Russell at work. He directed my all-time favorite rom-com, “Flirting With Disaster,” which contains a dinner-party scene just like that — audio chaos, everyone yap-yap-yapping over everyone else. Just sublime.

Anyway, I recommend all three. “The King’s Speech” isn’t a big vitamin sandwich on whole-wheat bread, either. It features Eve Best as Wallis Simpson — how wonderful is that?

Pretty wonderful. As is our first bit of bloggage today, from our own Coozledad. He always wanted to live with a sexual athlete. But he might have arranged the furniture more wisely.

Last night was a slow news night. Some people were late for church, and it made the main page of the New York Times.

Do not take health-care advice from celebrities. A new year’s resolution that’s easy to keep.

Finally, a sad story from a former Freep reporter: Farewell, Detroit. It broke his heart.

As for me, I’m just freezing. The long dark slog toward the light begins with the disassembly of the holiday displays. And it’s Monday. Urg.

Just to be festive, and just because one item had stubbornly eluded all my shop-local efforts, and just because it was on the way to the movie theater where we were seeing “True Grit” Friday afternoon, we stopped at Best Buy on Christmas Eve. The computer said they had nine copies of Crystal Bowersox’s “Farmer’s Daughter,” but the best efforts of the three of us and the nice salesgirl couldn’t turn up one.

“I could check in the back,” she offered, not very enthusiastically. Yes, The Back, the famous Back, always your last-ditch hope in stalking the elusive whatever-it-is. I took a look at the line, which stretched from the registers through a side aisle, almost to the back of this very big big box. It was a line worthy of a new Apple product, a Springsteen concert where tickets were only available at the door, or the Soviet Union. My resolve cracked. Screw it, Amazon’s handling this one. We’ll have it shipped directly to my sister-in-law’s house. Let’s go to the movies.

And with that, the holiday really began. It was a nice one. Kate got a guitar and a USB mic. She was upstairs within a couple of hours, laying down tracks in Garage Band. I got new kitchen stuff and a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. Alan got a framed photo he’d admired in a small show last summer. It’s a street scene in contemporary Havana, because we are of course communists. I still recall 1993, when Alan and I were planning our wedding, and the evil empire was collapsing and surely Fidel would fall in a matter of weeks. “Let’s go to Cuba for our honeymoon,” I said. “I want to see it before Hilton and Marriott and all the rest of them get their mitts on it.” Ha ha ha. (We ended up honeymooning in San Francisco — same politics, colder climate. Ha ha.)

I’d still like to go. Although the photographers had some cautions: “Bring food,” they said. “We went to bed hungry a few nights. You can have all the money in the world, but there’s still nothing to buy.” Vacation paradise.

I also got a Keurig, and if you don’t know what one is yet, you will soon — it’s the single-cup coffeemaker that’s sweepin’ the nation. Now that I have reached the age of galloping decrepitude and near-constant exhaustion, I find myself wanting a single cup of coffee from time to time. But I’m too bourgeois to make a pot, because I know I would throw most of it out, etc. Enter the Keurig, which follows the disposable razor/inkjet printer model of economic extortion — cheap machine, dear supplies. I don’t care if the little K-cups are pricey. I don’t spend much money on alcohol anymore, so I’ll just shift the funds over to caffeine. And it makes a sublime cup of coffee, in about 60 seconds. I’m an American, and trash production is my birthright.

How was “True Grit,” you ask? Pretty good. Not perfect, but very entertaining. Where do the Coen brothers find these fantastic character actors to play the little parts? The voice of the lawyer who cross-examines Rooster Cogburn in the opening scenes will ring in my ears for days; it belongs to Joe Stevens. And Roger Deakins’ camera work was glorious, as usual. I don’t think Kate liked it very much, however; she said she couldn’t understand Jeff Bridges. And there was a big continuity error, after Maddie swims the river with her horse and faces Rooster and LaBoeuf on the other side, completely dry. I guess they had a reason for it, but it bugged me, too.

How was your holiday? Are you off this week? I wish I was, but alas, I am not. And so I’m outta here.

A little bloggage:

When the roll is called up yonder, Jimmy Carter will be there. A true Christian (despised by many other alleged Christians).

Jon Stewart, an heir to Edward R. Murrow? Maybe.

Roy does the dirty work of reading the right-wing blogs so you don’t have to, and has compiled his year-end top 10. You have to read some of these to believe them.

And now I’m off. Good Monday, all.

Warning: The following contains spoilers for an 18-year-old movie. If you haven’t seen “The Crying Game” and still would like to, best head for Gawker.

You can only watch “The Crying Game” once. It’s a surprise package (heh heh), and you get one shot at the surprise. Unlike other films with a fourth-quarter twist — “The Sixth Sense,” “The Usual Suspects” — it can’t be enjoyed a second time. I watch the latter two films for a few minutes when I surf past them on cable, just to see if they cheated, even a little bit. So far in my frame-by-frame examination: Don’t think so. “The Sixth Sense,” in particular, was very very clever in how it built to its climax, and you can go back through every significant scene and, nope, didn’t cheat there, nope, not there, etc. “The Usual Suspects” is more of a final-moments joke, but it’s an enjoyable one, and any rewatching includes Pete Postlethwaite, so, y’know, WIN. The only thing I don’t like about Pete Postlethwaite is spelling his name, and the way he says, “I work for Keyser Soze” cancels that out.

But back to “The Crying Game,” which I just can’t enjoy anymore. Loved it the first time, still think it’s a wonderful movie, but once you know the big honkin’ hairy secret, not so much. I keep yelling at the screen: Aren’t you wondering why this girl’s hands are so big? Aren’t her hips just a little too slim? And is she really that beautiful, or just…hello, Stephen Rea! Wake up and smell the coffee!

My pal Lance Mannion, who has a background in theater, says it’s an old stage trick, just a simple bit of conjuring. We know Forrest Whitaker was in love with this girl. Rea falls in love with her picture. Because he loves her, and we identify with him, we love her, too. I’m not the smartest moviegoer in the world, but I didn’t fall off the truck yesterday, and the big reveal totally surprised me. The whole theater gasped. And now the illusion is so well and truly shattered, all I can think on subsequent viewings is that Stephen Rea plays an Irishman who’s been brain-damaged by drinking, or is perhaps half-blind.

Poor me.

I’m talking about movies today because I’m thinking about movies, because this year’s holidays fall on weekends, and I intend to lap a few up, the first with Kate (“True Grit,” “The King’s Speech”) and I hope at least one with Alan (“The FIghter,” maybe “Blue Valentine”). And I’m looking at end-of-year lists, particularly David Edelstein’s Best Performances wrapup, which revealed one I hadn’t even heard of until now — “Mother and Child.” (Where are all these films playing? I live in a big city, and a significant percentage fly straight over my head.) I also enjoyed the 14 most thankless female roles of 2010, as at least one of these was inflicted upon me this year — “The Killer Inside Me,” which you should avoid like a cesspool.

And now I’m off like a prom dress, to do last-minute shopping of this, that and the other thing. I might also take my Mont Blanc pen in for a cleaning and degunking, which they will charge me for. I haven’t paid a repair bill on an Apple computer ever, but this pen is one headache after another. Good thing I do most of my writing on this thing.

Bloggage:

Don’t ask don’t tell — repealed.

Census — not surprising. Michigan stands alone as the only state to lose population in the last decade. Foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they ain’t coming back to your hometown…

Finally, a Christmas movie you couldn’t pay me enough to see: Little Fockers. I wonder what they paid DeNiro for this thing. I hope it was a lot.

Off to buy REDACTED and REDACTED for REDACTED and REDACTED.

Not exactly a desultory morning, this — I have plenty of work to do. But I’m having a hard time getting started. Reading about Julian Assange, wondering why someone thought this lame-ass blog about Aretha Franklin needed to be Facebooked, thinking about making scrambled eggs, waiting for the coffee to brew. Unfocused. Sapped of energy. And then…

This.

Whoa, that’ll wake you up. I think I actually yeeped a little when I saw it. The third Mrs. G is a strict Catholic, who screwed another woman’s husband for six years — her prime childbearing years, during which I’m sure she used only natural family planning for birth control, along with her paramour’s favorite sex act — before the jig was finally up and he made an honest woman of her. (Don’t worry; I’m sure she’s gone to Confession.) She urged him to convert, and he surfaced from the baptismal waters with the zeal typical of the breed, criticizing Notre Dame for giving an honorary degree to Barack Obama. Among many other things.

She’s only 44. Sometimes a person’s soul shows right in their face, ain’a?

Shudder.

Oh, who am I to judge? We all got to this moment in time via a different road, and my soul-face has many dings and dents. I guess I’ll always reserve a special contempt for women who Do That, although I’ve known a few who Did That, and they’re not bad at all. (Confession: I was always on Team Camilla.) Maybe it’s because Elizabeth Edwards, poor Elizabeth, is in her homestretch right now, and all I can think about is her children, 11 and 13, about to lose their mother. I can only assume that she has taken pains, in recent years, to erect every possible wall between them and their putative stepmother. Or perhaps she’s reached the place where it no longer matters, when you know for sure that life goes on without you, and you can only extend your influence on it for a short time after your death, if at all.

But I sure hope she built those walls. Because as vile as Mrs. G the Third is, Rielle Hunter is worse, worse by far. I wouldn’t want her anywhere near my kids.

Change of subject. The coffee has kicked in.

Alan set up our bird feeders over the weekend, moved the birdbath closer to the house and installed a heater. Did you know birds have a harder time finding water in winter than food? True. Anyway, our deck is now Bird Central, and I’ve been enjoying watching them navigate the main feeder, the Hylarious. I can’t find a website for it, so maybe I’m hallucinating that name, but I distinctly remember it, and that spelling, from when we bought it years ago. It has a spring-loaded landing platform in front of the food, which will support birds and allow them to eat, but not a squirrel — the platform dips and a door closes over the food. (If I were president of the company, I’d add a WAH-wah sound effect.) That doesn’t stop them from trying, and at least once an hour I look out to find some fat bastard trying desperately to get into the thing. And every so often one too many birds will land, and the door will close on one’d head. The trapped bird flings its wings out in alarm, everyone flies away, the platform rises, and the bird is freed. It is truly hylarious to watch, if you have nothing else to amuse you at the moment, like a photo of Mrs. Gingrich.

Bloggage: If you’re watching “Detroit 1-8-7” tonight, wave hello to local-guy Scott Norman, who plays a bit part in tonight’s episode:

He plays the cop who leads the detectives to the bomb shelter. Yay, Scott. He starred in our last short, trailer seen here:

Dig that CGI! Zeppelins! Poison gas! Tanks!

Our governor-elect has made no secret of his dislike for the filmmaking tax incentives, so I expect this golden period in our cultural history will be coming to an end soon, and we can go back to cop shows set in New York and Los Angeles. Maybe Mrs. Governor-elect has a soft spot for some movie star, who can be prevailed upon to pay a call and kiss her hand. Release the Clooney!

An odd bit of bloggage I haven’t gotten through yet: New York magazine asks five novelists, one of them Glenn Beck (!!), to imagine the last decade if Bush v. Gore had gone the other way. Part one, by Kurt Andersen, starts here, which the link to each new chapter at the bottom. So far: Semi-amusing, mostly baffling.

As for me, it’s time to get to work. Release me, why doncha?

I say this with all the affection and love in my heart for you guys, but it sure is good to get away from this place for a while. I thought it would be Blog City over the weekend, and to be sure, we had all the necessary materials:

The aging folks catch up with one another while the Millennial considers analog space.

I count four laptops in that photo (one closed and hiding), plus an iPad. But it’s deceiving. John was working on getting our stupid printer on our wifi network, which is one reason we’re so glad they stop by a couple times a year.

The stupid printer now works. And we didn’t spend the entire weekend laptopping separately. We made several big meals, shopped at Eastern Market, toured the DIA, ate at Good Girls Go To Paris and got up off of our thangs, except when felled by wine. I got four DVDs from the library, in case we felt like a movie, and discovered “Bottle Shock” is worth your time, but “Synecdoche New York” is not. In fact, it’s self-indulgent nonsense, the result of what happens when a quirky, neurotic screenwriter produces several great, memorable scripts (“Being John Malkovich,” “Adaptation,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”) and then says, “But what I’d really like to do is direct.”

I dunno, maybe you liked it. I didn’t. (Shrug.)

What I did like was this amazing story, which I read all the way through even with guests in the house, a cautionary tale for everyone who is convinced the internet always offers a better shopping experience. Short version: Shopper goes online in search of cheap eyeglass frames, wanders into Crazytown. Somewhat longer version: Bad internet actor finds way to game Google’s allegedly genius algorithm. As I read this more than 24 hours ago, I’m now mainly immersed in the reaction, which ranges from “well, it’s her fault for not Googling more deeply” to overly technical discussions under Google’s hood. Combined with this story today, about not a brain drain, but maybe a brain trickle away from the company, you could get the impression that Google has moved into the next phase of its existence, i.e. crusty old fart-ism. The 21st century, it is so full of wonders: A company goes from shining light of innovation to General Motors in 12 short years.

This pleases me, and has ever since I tried to reach Google with a problem a while back, and discovered it’s as easy as placing a person-to-person phone call to the moon. Everything’s automated, no one has a phone number or even an e-mail address, and if you have a problem with that, screw you and welcome to Dodge City.

And now it is Monday, and guess what? My next-door neighbor has a tree-trimming crew here today. The lead chainsawer is one of those guys who can’t just turn the goddamn thing on and cut a limb. He’s like one of those guys at a red light on a hot motorcycle, who has to go rev-rev-rev-REV and rev-rev-rev-REV every few seconds until you go insane. That’s what I’m hearing now, and so it’s either earplugs or get the hell out and start manic Monday.

Better do the latter. I had a great birthday, and thanks to all who wished me one.

How far will you go to win an argument with your spouse? Below, behold the old plastic wrap, and the new plastic wrap. Alan does not believe what I told him Saturday, that the original two-pack of 750-square-foot wrap was purchased at Costco in 2005, and therefore we have gone five years between plastic-wrap purchases. He doesn’t see how this is possible, even allowing that I am not given to Marabel Morgan-type stunts with the stuff. We agreed to write “November 2010” on the ends of both boxes of the new stuff, and see if it lasts until Kate’s freshman year in college.

Who is Marabel Morgan? some of you are wondering. Boy, am I dating myself. OK, for you young’uns: Morgan was an early squall in the culture wars, a retrograde Anita Bryant type who peddled a series of extremely successful books for women, advising them how to put the zip back in their marriages, “zip” being defined as sex, mainly, although she did write a cookbook along the way, too. Probably her most famous advice was for wives to wrap themselves in nothing but Saran Wrap and greet their husbands at the door with an icy martini. I guess the martini was a consolation prize for seeing his wife’s sweaty, mashed privates encased in plastic, but whatever blows your hair back. Morgan followed the Biblical formula of wives submitting to their husbands. What’s the flip side of that one, Bible people? I guess the Promise Keepers model, which also requires submission from our side of the aisle, alas. I’m not much of a submitter, all things considered. I guess that’s why I didn’t get married until I was 35. I guess that’s why I fight with my husband over plastic wrap instead of dressing in it.

One final note: Martin Cruz Smith’s new novel features a torture-execution featuring plastic wrap. I’ll spare you the details.

So how was everyone’s weekend? I went to Costco. Got some plastic wrap. I also went to the opera — “La Boheme” — and saw “The Kids Are All Right.” Enjoyed both very much, but it was the film that left me grinning. I love movies where you can luxuriate in the writing, and this was one of them. The story of a lesbian couple and family under stress when their sperm donor enters the picture gets so much right, I don’t care about the little things it gets wrong, and now that I think about it, I can’t really recall any. Highly recommended for Thanksgiving weekend DVDing, as long as there are no kiddies in the room. (There are several brief-but-explicit scenes of boinkage.)

Busy Monday, as always. So let’s get to the bloggage:

I know that sometimes I beat up on the Free Press, but they actually do have a few writers worth their generous paychecks, and one of them is columnist Brian Dickerson, who shares my curiosity about that line in all the Cialis, Viagra and related ED medicine ads: See your doctor if you have an erection lasting more than four hours. I always chuckle over that, and frequently remark to my long-suffering husband, “Someday I’d like to see a scene in a movie where a guy walks into an ER and announces he’s had an erection for four hours.” (He never laughs. I think we’re headed for divorce court.) Anyway, here’s Dickerson’s excellent Sunday offering: It’s been four hours. Now what? It answers the question everybody wants to know: Why four hours? And what happens afterward:

Q: So it’s like a heart attack in your penis?

A: Yes, I guess it would be sort of like that.

Now that’s service journalism.

Have you ever seen an Oprah’s Favorite Things show? I have, once. I found it equal parts compelling and repulsive. For those who haven’t, this is the giveaway show the big O does around the holidays, in which an unsuspecting lucky audience — it’s never revealed until it’s in progress — finds themselves gifted with a truckload, literally, of free stuff, thanks to Oprah. (Along with, I’m compelled to add, a huge tax receipt for the IRS.) You can’t imagine the audience reaction when they learn they’re the lucky ones. Really. It has to be seen to be believed.

Kenneth Jay Lane is selling knockoffs of Kate Middleton’s engagement ring. How did the company turn them around so fast? I’ll tell you how: They’re leftovers from the Diana-ring knockoffs. That’s one advantage to being old enough to remember Marabel Morgan. You remember other stuff, too.

Paul Krugman says: There will be blood. Oh, I don’t doubt it.

Off to the police stations. Let’s see what fresh hell our leafy Edens endured over the past week. My guess is: Not very much.

You know how being sick with a subclinical malaise is — you feel fine until, all of a sudden, you feel awful. That’s me today. Let’s see how far fine can take me this morning.

As for my comments about “Winter’s Bone,” I keep coming back to a minor thread of the story — the main character, a 17-year-old girl, and her intention to join the army. The film is the story of this girl, Ree Dolly, and her quest to find her father, dead or alive. Charged with cooking meth, he bailed himself out by putting their house up for part of his bond. Now missing and presumed a fugitive, the family is days away from losing everything. And they don’t have much to lose. The Dolly family — Ree, her mentally ill, nearly catatonic mother and two young siblings — lives at the edge of the edge, in the Missouri Ozarks, in the sort of grinding, rural poverty where a neighbor stopping by with some venison and a few potatoes is the difference between being hungry that night or not. Career options seem to be limited to cooking meth or touring beautiful Fallujah. Ree’s inclination toward the service is covered in only a few lines, but it stuck with me.

She’s certainly qualified, with an interior toughness that you get only after years of the sort of things we see in the movie – poverty, criminal activity, an insular rural culture where women bond with men for the same protection it afforded Neanderthals, then learn to never, ever open their mouths. About anything. I’d hire her to be an army of one. And while I know that the armed service has always been a step into a sort of stability for exactly this level of society, it’s impossible not to think about our current military adventures overseas and think Ree might be no worse off dealing crank.

I was strongly reminded of Annie Proulx’s short story, ‘Tits-up in a Ditch,” two years old but surely in an anthology somewhere by now (and, for you New Yorker subscribers, in the digital edition), another story of just how hard hardscrabble can be.

Anyway, I had a late dissenter in Monday’s thread, calling “Winter’s Bone” a whole lot of wannabe Cormac McCarthy. I see the criticism, but I disagree, or rather, I don’t find wannabe-McCarthy enough of a charge to make it not worth your time. The story is smart about so much, and, like “Frozen River,” has the sense to show far more than it tells, and trust its audience to figure it out. There are some wonderful supporting performances, especially by John Hawkes and Dale Dickey, both of whom could have been cast on bone structure alone, but follow it up by actually climbing inside the skins of their characters. A truly haunting film.

And now I am racked with a coughing spasm. Looks like awful is just around the corner, so let’s get some bloggage out of the way, shall we?

Sarah Palin’s career as an economic policy critic, cut tragically short. Not that anyone would dare to tell her so.

Speaking of Alaska, Anne Applebaum makes a few points:

For whatever the reason, the hypocrisy at the heart of the (Republican) party – and at the heart of American politics – is at its starkest in Alaska. For decades, Alaskans have lived off federal welfare. Taxpayers’ money subsidizes everything from Alaska’s roads and bridges to its myriad programs for Native Americans. Federal funding accounts for one-third of Alaskan jobs. Nevertheless, Alaskans love to think of themselves as the last frontiersmen, the inhabitants of a land “beyond the horizon of urban clutter,” a state with no use for Washington and its wicked ways.

Duh.

And speaking of monetary policy, as someone who used to host a radio show where I heard from insane Fed-bashers on a regular basis, I was interested to read Bethany McLean’s explainer on how Fed-bashing has gone mainstream, in Slate.

Irresistible headline, funny column: For black men who have considered homicide after watching another Tyler Perry movie. Via Hank.

And because monetary policy isn’t all we’re about here, some pop-cult — JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, via Roy. I see strong correlations with Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, i.e., a retro soul band with four white hipsters in the back row, playing in their stingy-brim fedoras, etc., with an ol’ skool African American vocalist out front. If anyone can name a third, I’m calling trendsies. Nevertheless, “Baltimore is the New Brooklyn” is quite the toe-tapper:

Finally, for those who weren’t paying attention in the comments yesterday, a note from MMJeff:

You’ve said it before, but your readers are truly awesome people; yesterday I learned from our LCCH staff that they wanted to know what “Nancy Nall” was or who she was, because through the link on the website we’d gotten a couple of donations that noted your name as the reason for the giving, and also a “Jeff.” A third is inexplicable and distant-ish (New Jersey) and may well fit with the other two.

Anyhow, I told them, and told them I’d thank you “personally” for the venue and the opportunity; I also took the liberty of posting a news story at the thread yesterday with general thanks. Your kind words a few days ago have spurred some help our way, and direct donations are very appreciated by our service coordinators because that big hunk o’ HUD money comes with a million strings on it — we love it, and would close (many of our units, anyhow) without it, but there’s no room for creative problem solving and social worker skills. You fill out the forms, you work the process, you turn the crank and out comes the sausage.

The $35,000 we raise is small next to our $1.2 million total annual budget, but it represents so much more than that, to the staff and those they can do useful, interesting, and cool things for. A few weeks ago, they bought some nice shoes for a woman who got a good outfit for a job interview, and the service coordinator decided her self-confidence needed some rocking heels with the donated clothes. Federal dollars cannot be used to buy rocking heels, apparently; “local” fundraising can.

Again, thanks! I come for the recipes, not the fundraising (and a little provocation, occasionally), but this was just so unexpected, and so timely. And you may have picked up a few more readers from the Newark OH area in our offices at the Coalition.

This has happened before, with other worthy causes. You guys? You are the best. Srsly.

OK, off to shower and Wayne State, there to spread my germs around campus. Which may well be where they originated, for all I know.

The news would be easier to keep up with if it would just stay put. The missing banker I keep referring to? He’s a local resident who disappeared from his office in Macomb County a month ago, an office found “in disarray,” one of those cop/journalist words no actual human being ever says. It was a Sunday night, too, so he was alone there, just another CEO banker burning the midnight oil at his flatlining bank. This, the bank’s precarious status, was seen as interesting, as were rumors of a gambling problem (denied by family). The usual barstool detectives weighed in. In my mind, the possibilities boiled down to two obvious ones — he drained the accounts and fled for a country with no extradition treaty, or else flung himself off a bridge.

When his corpse was found by duck hunters a few days ago, floating in the lake not far from his office, the bridge theory gained credence. The autopsy revealed …something. No blunt-force trauma, probably drowning. It’s hard to find evidence on a body that’s been in the water for a month. I know it’s his job, but the medical examiner had my sympathies.

The family said they wanted a second autopsy, their legal right if they were willing to pay, and they were — they have the means. So the body is turned over to the m.e. in Oakland County, and what’s this? Why, it’s a bullet hole in the base of the skull. Back into the water the sheriff’s department goes, and what’s this? Why, it’s a .38-caliber handgun belonging to the deceased, not six feet from where the body was found.

This story has officially outpaced the efforts of a small hyperlocal website to keep up with it, just when it becomes really interesting. This is why we still need newspapers, folks.

I don’t expect it will do much for Oakland-Macomb relations, either. The wound was detected, the sheriff said, using a “sophisticated X-ray machine” that spotted the bullet fragments, a machine the Macomb m.e. did not have. Way to rub it in, richer county. Also, the sheriff is running for county executive, and this is an October surprise he doesn’t need. Finally, it raises the obvious question: Who killed the banker? He or she has had a month head start on the forces of justice. I expect all of this is being discussed in newsroom meetings all over the metro. Well, as I said, we just don’t have the boots.

Fortunately for bloggers, however, today is rich in material. Bob Guccione died, I see. In Plano, Texas. What the hell was he doing down there? Seeking out the sun like a lizard, maybe? Or just looking for cheaper housing:

The dissolution of the Guccione empire took years. A $200 million Penthouse casino in Atlantic City never materialized, and he lost much of his investment. A $17.5 million movie containing hard-core sex scenes and graphic violence, “Caligula,” was shunned by distributors, and Mr. Guccione lost heavily. He once hired 82 scientists to develop a small nuclear reactor as a low-cost energy source, but it came to nothing and cost $17 million.

The government took chunks of his fortune. In 1985, the Internal Revenue Service demanded $45 million in back taxes. In 1992, he had to borrow $80 million for another tax bill. In 1986, after a scathing federal antipornography report, Penthouse was withdrawn from many newsstands and circulation revenues — a major source of income — fell sharply.

The trend accelerated in the 1990s as Internet pornography grew increasingly available. Mr. Guccione responded with more explicit sexual content that drove advertisers and vendors away, limiting many sales to pornographic bookstores.

…Mr. Guccione, who developed throat cancer in 1998, sold artworks, media properties and his Staatsburg estate as revenues dwindled and debts soared. Penthouse posted a $10 million loss in 2001, General Media filed for bankruptcy in 2003, and he resigned as chairman and chief executive of Penthouse International. Creditors foreclosed on the Guccione mansion, and he moved out in 2006.

I saw the skeleton of the Atlantic City casino when I was there to cover the Miss America pageant one year. It was stalled at the ironwork stage, and every beam was branded with the Penthouse key logo. It loomed over and beside and around a tiny, shabby little house, one of those infamous old cusses who simply will not sell at any price.

The story went that construction stalled when a libel judgment Guccione won against Larry Flynt — something like $75 million, the highest ever awarded at the time — was appealed and knocked down to something closer to $1.98. Now there was a story, unfolding in a Columbus courtroom in 1979. The paper still didn’t have its act together, and it was covered by the usual courthouse reporter with no great fanfare. Hunter Thompson could have gotten a book out of it. I remember going over to J.C. Burns’ mom’s apartment (she lived three doors down from my parents) to visit one night, and she was laughing over it so hard she had tears running down her face. Her comedic sense was obviously more developed than the metro editors at the Dispatch, and could see there was something hysterically funny about one pornographer suing another pornographer for damaging his reputation. At one point Guccione took the stand and wept over the offense done to “the woman I love,” Kathy Keeton, his life and business partner, who sat at the plaintiff’s table knitting throughout the trial.

I forget what the insult was. Probably one of Flynt’s aggressively stupid humor pieces, like the one about Jerry Falwell, memorialized in “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” God knows what the jury was thinking, but the story went that the Gooch, flush with the anticipation of all that cash, decided to get in on the Atlantic City gambling boom when it was still young. Alas, it didn’t work out. Lots of stuff didn’t work out. Funny how rich men go crazy — a nuclear reactor? Eighty-two scientists? Imagine getting that job, telling your family: “We’re moving to New York to build a small reactor for a guy who publishes a skin magazine, family! Let’s get packing!”

And then there was “Caligula,” proof Guccione, like all pornographers, also sought the holy grail of respectability — a dirty movie that would keep ’em in their seats after they got what they came for. (Or came what they got for. Whatever.) It didn’t turn out that way, and is generally acknowledged as one of the world’s most expensive all-time stinkers. A few of us saw it one night, in some down-at-the-heels art-movie house in Columbus. There’s a scene where a female character masturbates by pedaling some sort of exercise bicycle that propelled a wheel of feathers that hit her in the happy place. It raised some question in my mind about the technology available in ancient Rome for such a thing, but oh well. I really can’t do better than this archival Time magazine piece on the fiasco, which contains gem after gem after gem:

Where (original screenwriter Gore) Vidal was liberal with sex scenes, Brass has been profligate: there are enough orgies to satisfy even Guccione, and phalluses in all sizes decorate walls, dinner plates and nearly everything else—with naked girls taking up the spaces in between. “To the Romans,” notes (star Malcolm) McDowell, “sex was like driving a car.”

Poor Malcolm McDowell. He later said the movie served as a lesson in the career dangers of doing nudity early in one’s career; you become the guy who can always be counted on to “take his kit off.”

Well, then. There’s so much good bloggage today, all of it from the NYT, which is sort of a carnival of Grim today:

In Indiana, Baron Hill could well be going down for daring to state heresy: Climate change is real:

A rain of boos showered Mr. Hill, including a hearty growl from Norman Dennison, a 50-year-old electrician and founder of the Corydon Tea Party.

“It’s a flat-out lie,” Mr. Dennison said in an interview after the debate, adding that he had based his view on the preaching of Rush Limbaugh and the teaching of Scripture. “I read my Bible,” Mr. Dennison said. “He made this earth for us to utilize.”

Blackwater will likely get away with it. With everything.

Does your kid play football? Check his helmet to see if it’s “certified” by a group consisting of helmet manufacturers. Yes, your kid can get a concussion from the Invisible Hand.

Well, I’m thoroughly propagandized. Off to Wayne State.

The weekend was pretty much perfect. Temperatures nudging 80, cerulean skies, the sort of string of lovely days that you always get in the fall, but not always on a weekend. So, as the previous entry should suggest, it seemed fitting to blow off a lot of chore-type stuff and enjoy it while we could. Sailing was Saturday. Yesterday was the housewarming party at the Frank Lloyd Wright house mentioned here a couple weeks back — it’s finally 99 percent done. I’m a friend of a friend of the owners, and came as his plus-one. No photos, at the hosts’ request, but you can still look at the ones at the Hour Detroit link (although the captions don’t always match the photos). It’s as lovely in person as in the pictures; I expect if they haven’t heard from a location scout already, they will soon — the place was born to be a movie set.

We walked over from my friend’s house in Palmer Woods, the grandest of the grand old neighborhoods in Detroit. Walking back alone — had to leave early — I was struck, for the millionth time, by how much money there was in this town, once upon a time. These Tudor-revival and Mission-style and midcentury-modern houses are now owned by buppies and gay men and others unafraid of urban-pioneer living, and there was much discussion of $1,400 monthly winter heating bills and other drawbacks to living in an 8,000-square-foot architectural masterpiece with leaky windows. But without them, that Wright house would still be sitting empty and falling to pieces. So a salute to all.

On the way back I passed a masterful pile identified as the Bishop’s House. The marker was unclear on whether it still is*, but did mention the many religious details of the construction, including a rooftop sculpture of the Archangel Michael battling Satan. Couldn’t see it.

* A quick Google reveals it is not. Whew. Houses like that are hard to justify, even for the One True, these days.

What else? Watched “Howl,” available On Demand. Liked it very much, which I gather from the reviews is not the default position. The story of Allen Ginsberg’s magnum opus (although I hold “Kaddish” in almost equally high esteem) is told in three threads — the trial of Lawrence Ferlinghetti on obscenity charges for publishing it, an interview with Ginsberg by an unseen interlocutor, and the first reading of the poem itself in 1955. It’s a long poem, and long stretches of it are illustrated with animations, and that seems to be everyone’s problem. They’re too literal, they’re not beautiful enough, whatever. I didn’t care. I found myself paying little attention to them; they might as well have been the iTunes visualizer, or the oscilloscope potheads rigged to their stereos back in my wild youth. I was thoroughly taken with the words, the music of which is strong enough to carry the sequences. I guess the filmmakers thought a black screen or the iTunes visualizer would be too much.

James Franco plays Ginsberg as a young man, and together with Kerouac and Cassady tiptoe up to the edge of Abercrombie & Fitch styling, but don’t quite cross over. For $6.99 on the cable bill, I can think of worse ways to spend a Saturday night.

One of the duties I neglected this weekend was crafting something for this space that makes sense, or reads well, or has a point. Obviously. So let’s skip to the bloggage:

Living in Detroit, I guess I should know more about the Insane Clown Posse than I do, but honestly, that is one local act whose orbit simply does not intersect with mine in any way, shape or form. Which is good, because they’re pretty disgusting, the sort of rappers who make Eminem look like Leonard Bernstein. Still, it was simultaneously entertaining, appalling and amusing to read this piece in the Guardian about their true purpose in life:

All of which makes Violent J’s recent announcement really quite astonishing: Insane Clown Posse have this entire time secretly been evangelical Christians. They’ve only been pretending to be brutal and sadistic to trick their fans into believing in God. They released a song, Thy Unveiling, that spelt out the revelation beyond all doubt.

Oh, but it gets better! Check out the lyrics:

ICP have just released their most audacious Christian song to date: Miracles. In it, they list God’s wonders that delight them each day:

Hot lava, snow, rain and fog,
Long neck giraffes, and pet cats and dogs
Fuckin’ rainbows after it rains
There’s enough miracles here to
blow your brains.

The song climaxes with them railing against the very concept of science:

Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work?
And I don’t wanna talk to a scientist
Y’all motherfuckers lying and
getting me pissed.

Fuckin’ magnets, how do they work? Yeah!

The internet moves so fast these days you probably already know about the Ohio House candidate revealed over the weekend as having once been a Nazi re-enactor. (Yes, a Republican. I was as astonished as you were.) What you may not know is that in the Six Degrees of Separation Department, I once spent a weekend at this man’s ancestral summer home. His sister was friends with a friend of mine, and she impulsively invited us all up to their place on Devil’s Lake one Friday. It was a pretty gauzy weekend, but I remember enough to report that there were no, repeat no, Waffen SS uniforms in plain view. I do know they were pretty darn rich, which enables a lot of bad behavior and, far more important, an ability to wall yourself off in a world of people just like you, where no one says, “You know, maybe we shouldn’t be doing this, and if we do, maybe we shouldn’t take pictures of ourselves wearing these uniforms.” Actually, this characteristic is not confined to the rich. Which is why I will never run for elected office.

Which is just a short sidestep to bigotry in general, in particular Carl Paladino’s, who doesn’t want his children “brainwashed” into thinking it’s OK to be gay. Hmm. All I have to say is, “Rabbi? Is it too much to ask you to take your Bluetooth receiver out of your ear when meeting a gubernatorial candidate?”

Finally, via MMJeff, a Daily Howler worth considering:

For decades, your public discourse has been scripted by skillful players—and by their skilled, clownish messaging. We have drowned in ludicrous statements on policy matters; we have drowned in ludicrous statements about targeted public officials. (If we lower the tax rates, we get higher revenues! The Clintons are serial murderers!) And no matter how stupid these messages got, the “press corps” agreed not to notice. Endlessly, Limbaugh got a pass. So did Chris Matthews, during the many years when he worked for plutocrat masters. (No one did more to send Bush to the White House. But for years after that, Joan Walsh had to keep kissing his keister, the better to get on TV!)

Better get moving. Manic Monday now segues into Terrible Tuesday. I want to work less, or at the very least, be paid more. Is that so much to ask?

Last night was the world premiere advance screening of “The Wars of Other Men,” a short film I worked on this past spring. It had to be downgraded from a world premiere to an advance screening because the film wasn’t, what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, right: Done.

The audience was kind and forgiving, however. The whole purpose of this project was to show we could do a credible short with significant CGI sequences on a micro-tiny budget, and those suckers take time, as James Cameron could tell you. So we were missing a few, but the ones that were in there were great. This is a sci-fi war movie, set in an alternate-history early 20th century, about a small rifle squad on a mission to destroy a weapons plant. When the first threat causes them to run for cover, and they look up to see a zeppelin passing by overhead, flashing signals on a primitive mechanical sign, everybody cheered. The miracle had happened.

The narrative may have been a little confusing for total newbies, as it was missing the climactic explosion. The image is still rendering somewhere in Livonia, I guess.

We shot most of it at the Packard Plant, which lends that certain siege-of-Stalingrad look, as the makers of “Transformers 3” could tell you; they’re over there right now. A friend drove by and said they’ve constructed a passenger-train car, sticking out of a second-floor window. Yeah, well — we were there first. And all our crew had to do was cover up a few zillion square feet of graffiti tags.

This wasn’t my story or script, but I worked on it, and one of the things we hashed over was how much antique language to include. There’s something about the 21st-century American tongue that can’t quite sell a phrase like “have a care with that,” at least not to my ear. All I can say is, there’s a reason so many period pieces about ancient Rome, or wherever, take the easy way out and make everyone British. It just sounds better. And that’s no rap against our actors — I thought Brad Pitt sounded ridiculous in “Troy,” too. But all in all, the biggest incongruity to me was when one of the female soldiers (alternate history, remember) smiled, and showed a distinctly modern set of incisors. Oh, well. No money in a micro-budget for dental prostheses.

Finally, a note about the theater. It was in the Redford, on the west side of Detroit, a grand old movie house lovingly restored:

There are stars in the ceiling — you can see one in the picture. They twinkle.

And, as always, it was very cool to make the turn off West Grand River and see this:

(When Alan sees this, he’s going to say, “Three Stooges festival? Awesome!”)

So, some quick bloggage before I run:

Speaking of movies, everyone is asking me is I’m going to see “Waiting for Superman,” and the answer is: Eventually, I guess. I know enough about the film to know I disagree with its central premise — that bad schools are the fault of bad teachers, and charter schools are The Answer. Charters are a Hail Mary pass for a problem that is far, far more complicated. One of our local school-board candidates, a former teacher himself, seems to understand this. He’s running for re-election, and posted this on his campaign blog. Briefly stated, but worth reading, I think.

Today is Jolene’s birthday. Happy birthday, Jolene.

The hits just keep on coming in the housing meltdown. Look for this to blow up big — I don’t see how it can’t.

As for me, I’m outta here. Have a great weekend, all.