Interesting story in the WashPost yesterday: Insurers are washing their hands of high-risk areas. With 2006’s hurricane season predicted to be as bad as 2005’s, your friendly Allstate man is saying, “You know, I never liked Florida.” You’re on your own, guys. No more homeowners’ insurance for you. Or rather, you can have a little bit, and let’s see if we can’t get your uncle to pick up the rest.

I don’t know what to think of all this. When I was in college, Los Angeles suffered a series of those apocalyptic winter storms that sends houses plunging down hillsides. Of course, to own a house on a hillside in the first place you had to be rich, and so I was confronted with the puzzling cognitive dissonance: Now you must feel sorry for Linda Rondstadt and Marvin Mitchelson. Poor babies, they’re homeless. My L.A. boyfriend at the time explained it all to me: “They build in unsafe places, enjoy the amazing views for however long it lasts. Then the house falls down, the government declares the neighborhood a disaster area and they get money to rebuild at 3 percent. And they make their next house on the hillside twice as big and wait for it to fall down in a few more years.”

I have no idea if this cynical take on things is true, but I think it’s probably true at the heart — well-to-do people can always game the system.

This is interesting: As companies raise premiums, shed customers and battle homeowner claims in hurricane-damaged states, an overhaul of the industry is being promoted by an unusual coalition. It includes Allstate and State Farm Fire and Casualty Co. as well as a bipartisan group of state regulators, academic experts and former homeland security officials. They propose establishing a greater role for the federal government in backing up new state catastrophe funds or private insurance firms when losses exceed a certain level, toughening state and local building codes and increasing premiums to accurately price risks. Some also want to potentially pool the high costs of covering perils such as earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and even floods into regional or national groups to ease consumer cost, and to use some money to help improve first responders and local preparedness.

A greater role for the federal government. I wonder how many of those waterfront property owners vote Republican.

OK, then.

So how was your weekend? Mine was fine. Didn’t see “Akeelah and the Bee” — I was put off by a tepid review, but will probably see it if the next opportunity coincides with a rainy day. We spent much of a fine weekend outdoors, and I have the Rudolphian nose to prove it. Every year I tell myself to be more on the ball, sunscreen-wise, but in April the sun still feels like a gift, something to turn your face up to happily, rather than something to hide from, chemically or otherwise. Kate has joined a soccer league, so I spent much of the weekend watching her play. I guess that makes me a soccer mom. Minus the minivan. So be it.

Didn’t see “Brokeback Mountain,” either. For the fourth straight weekend, the B’buster was fresh out. Who knew there was such an audience for this chick flick? We compensated with “The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio” and ‘A History of Violence.” The former wasn’t as good as I hoped, but Julianne Moore was, as expected, wonderful. And it was nice to see a toxic, dysfunctional family situation presented honestly, even when it existed in that golden time when no families were toxic or dysfunctional — the 1950s. There’s a scene with the family’s priest, who comes over to offer marital counseling after a physical argument in this impoverished, alcoholic household, that reminded me, again, of my old L.A. boyfriend. He use to take me to Ohio University’s Hillel on Sunday mornings, where we had a fine all-you-can-eat lox-and-bagels brunch for some criminally low price. The rabbi would table-hop, and after one excruciating conversation I expressed wonder that a man entrusted with leading a flock would be so uncharismatic. “They don’t send the A-team to Athens, Ohio,” he said. When the priest regards this shabby household, and his response is to tell the single person holding it together that she needs “to make a better home,” it occurred to me that the Catholic church probably doesn’t send its A-team to Defiance, either.

“A History of Violence” was fine, too. Why doesn’t Viggo call? It’s not like he can’t find me.

I won’t be seeing “United 93” in the theaters, but not for the reasons being discussed in the public square at the moment. Like most parents with younger children, I rarely see anything with a rating stronger than PG in the theaters. (My plan for this weekend: “Brokeback Mountain,” finally. I suspect the next movie we’ll be seeing in the dark with strangers will be “Akeelah and the Bee,” but never mind that.) I’m paying attention to the discussion of “United 93,” and as usual, I’m wondering why it seems only Ron Rosenbaum is paying attention:

Why is this the third film made about Flight 93? I’ve watched them all: There was last year’s Discovery Channel docudrama “The Flight That Fought Back.” Then there was this year’s A&E cable re-enactment, “Flight 93,” directed by one of George W. Bush’s college classmates (coincidence?). And now the major new Hollywood feature United 93, directed by Paul Greengrass. When the controversy over the trailer for the new film erupted recently, the question was, “Is it too soon?” I wonder if the question should be, “Are there too many?”

Yes, exactly. In fact, I watched the hijacking portion of “Flight 93” in, of all the grotesque places, the kitchen of a big fancy Grosse Pointe house, during an estate sale. Shoppers picked over the china and glassware while screams of panic erupted from the little TV on the counter. It was, how you say, a bit unsettling, especially since it appeared no one was paying attention to the show but me. (It’s hard for me to tune out TV; one of our household’s strictest rules is, if you’re not watching the TV, turn it off. I once interviewed a couple who’d recently won $9 million in the lottery. They seated me next to their ginormous new TV, which was left on throughout the interview, at considerable volume.)

Anyway, Rosenbaum is right. What’s all this “too soon” stuff? Doesn’t anyone pay attention to TV Guide anymore? Of course you can see why this is the latest, but most likely not the last — this story is as compelling, and as dreadful (as in “filled with dread”) as any in our history, and I suspect we’ll be chewing over it for generations.

I might watch when it comes around on cable, but based on the trailer, it might be a while before I can stomach even that. I still can’t look at 9/11 photos without feeling a lurch, and video of the second plane making impact still drops my jaw.

Actually, I don’t know how much I want to relive 9/11 and the aftermath. Writing this, I was just reminded of a column I read in the three-days-post time frame; I think it was by Mona Charen or Maggie Gallagher or one of those right-wing antifeminist lady scolds. The angle was, “Let’s hear it for men, because men aboard United 93 saved the Capitol,” and I think it went on to tie this all together with why women shouldn’t be in combat and blah blah blah. It even made a point of mentioning the detail about the stewardesses onboard Flight 93, who were said to be boiling water in the coffeepots to use as a weapon, and then dismissing it with a flip of the hand — well, that’s all very nice, but wouldn’t you rather be defended by a big strong man? I was a columnist and I remember 9/11, and I’m willing to forgive an awful lot of the crap that was said and written in the aftermath. We all went a little crazy. But I thought then, and I think now, that if you’re willing to climb to the top of a pile of 3,000 of your countrymen’s corpses to advance your stupid social agenda, you are beneath contempt.

For the record: I think a potful of boiling water to the face makes a fine weapon. It’s not like they were planning to hit the hijackers with their handbags, for god’s sake.

Anyway, the whole thing gets my stomach upset. So no “United 93” for me, not yet. Maybe later.

If all movies could be viewed on DVD from one’s couch, well, a lot of things would happen. Film critics would be mostly out of work. The $5 “small” popcorn would be rightly seen as some sort of sick joke. And we’d all enjoy the movies more.

Case in point, this weekend: “Lord of War,” a $3.99 pay-per-view choice that I could see was flawed, probably correctly reviewed at three stars rather than four (and those were the generous ones), and yet I enjoyed it just the same. Take away the hassle, cost and unpleasantness of the theater experience and I like a lot more movies.

And I’m a sucker for movies like this; am I the only one out there who likes voiceover narration? Talky, bleakly funny, with a point of view but smart enough to know it has to be entertaining first — none of this bothers me. The movie’s about an international arms dealer who sometimes questions the morality of his work, but not very often. It points out one of those stories that lots of people know about, but not enough of them, how the breakup of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War dumped billions of dollars of weaponry on the black and gray markets, where they were snapped up by two-bit despots all over the globe. There’s a brief ode to the AK-47, the Volkswagen Beetle of death:

Of all the weapons in the vast soviet arsenal, nothing was more profitable than Avtomat Kalashnikova model of 1947. More commonly known as the AK-47, or Kalashnikov. It’s the world’s most popular assault rifle. A weapon all fighters love. An elegantly simple 9 pound algamation of forged steel and plywood. It doesn’t break, jam, or overheat. It’ll shoot whether it’s covered in mud or filled with sand. It’s so easy, even a child can use it; and they do. The Soviets put the gun on a coin. Mozambique put it on their flag. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kalashnikov has become the Russian people’s greatest export. After that comes vodka, caviar, suicidal novelists. One thing is for sure, no one was lining up to buy their cars.

It so happens I learned all this on my own a year or so ago, when I was editing an underreported story in which the AK-47 played a central role. I did some web-surfing and found this rifle has a devoted following. Mikhail Kalashnikov is still living, apparently, and all his biographers manage to credit him with a great invention without pointing out the obvious — that his work has led to oceans of blood spilled and millions of deaths. Oh, well; if not him, someone else. History’s eternal lament.

OK, then. The bloggage:

Is there no angle the Indiana time-change story cannot produce? Apparently not: “It’s going to put a damper on the Jewish partying scene,” said Rabbi Arnold Bienstock, of the Congregation Shaarey Tefilla, a conservative Northside synagogue. Bienstock said Saturday nights are popular times for Jewish weddings and bar mitzvahs. But those will be pushed later into the evening for his congregation because they must wait until the Sabbath has concluded.

Ha. It so happens my friend Cindy had a Saturday-night Jewish wedding, and in June, no less, in a DST-observing state. Put a damper on things? The wedding started — started — with a two-hour cocktail party, after which, Sabbath ended, the couple was properly married, smashed the glass and then kicked off a late supper and dance party. Tell the rabbi he just needs to redefine what he considers the “Jewish partying scene.”

Someone I met recently said she’d just seen “Hustle & Flow,” that she’d liked it a lot, but that it needed subtitles. I saw it last night, liked it a lot less, but didn’t think it needed subtitles. Once I got accustomed to the hustle and flow of the accent — which I understand is authentic Memphis African-American English — it was relatively easy to follow, and of course there’s no mistaking those m-f-bombs, no matter what the accent. It (the accent) was one thing I liked about it, one of a nice scattering of journalistic touches that tells you the writer knows his stuff.

Terrence Howard was another thing to like about it. Isn’t it thrilling to see an actor having a great year? You look at that face, and think: That’s a movie-star face. Why hasn’t anyone noticed until now? Maybe he had to grow into it.

The music? Was ludicrous. I like hip-hop as much as the next middle-aged white girl, but come on. How do recording engineers not burst out laughing when they hear some of this stuff? The central song we see produced in the movie, “It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp,” is nominated for an Academy Award. It’ll most likely win, too. I can’t wait to see the audience-reaction shots when that one rolls out. Maybe Reese Witherspoon will bob her head along.

And that’s about all I have to say about the Oscars. Every year since Kate was born, I think, “Next year I’ll see all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars are awarded” and every year I fail. When you add the baby-sitter surcharge, I just don’t care enough; there’s always one stinker. This year, for me, and your mileage may vary, it’s “Munich.” My severe Steven Spielberg allergy makes my head swell whenever I get near a theater showing one of his films. I regret missing “Capote,” though, and of course “Brokeback Mountain,” but I’ll get around to them.

Washed the dog today. He hated it, as all dogs are required to do. He fussed and objected and glared at me when it was all over. And an hour later? He loved me again. Ask yourself: What if someone dragged me through a very uncomfortable physical experience that left me smelling all wrong and my skin itchy? How soon would I feel like being nice to that person again? Inside of an hour? Not bloody likely. Dogs really are man’s best friend.

Later: OK, that gay-Western montage was funny. Settling in for the rest of it now. Feel free to turn the comments into your playground.

It was his fault I shot him. Next: The bitch was just askin’ for it, y’know?

Also, Hank Stuever finds the real romantic archetype for our age: Lloyd Dobler.

Pity the drama of the invisible suburban mom, running errands all alone on a Monday morning. Where is she going? Dry cleaner (husband’s shirts), Blockbuster (return “The Aristocrats” and “The 40-Year-Old Virgin”), Target (she needs sunglasses).

At Target, she selects a pair of sunglasses. Nine ninety-five. The cheaper ones don’t fit, the more expensive ones seem so, oh, extravagant. She’s so practical she disgusts herself.

So she stops in the music section. Buys “Back in Black” on a special CD/DVD double disk. Why? Because. She didn’t buy that record when it was new, because she was into New Wave then and AC/DC produced the anthems of the enemy, preferred by all those mouth-breathing radio program directors who thought the B-52s were for faggots. We were fighting a culture war, dammit! But that Nike commercial reminded me they weren’t totally worthless, so Angus? All is forgiven.

I checked the copyright on the album. 1980. Sweet Jay-zus, that was a long time ago.

Are we back to the first person, then? OK. I was feeling a little like a really bad memoirist, there.

For the record, I liked both those movies. They were both dirty, but very different. The John Roberts Story “The 40-Year-Old Virgin” was the biggest revelation, as I expected it to be half-crap and it was wholly entertaining.

I needed some light entertainment today, to keep me from thinking about rioting religious lunatics freaking over a bunch of cartoons, and the AC/DC to remind me that whenever you rock out, Allah kills a kitten.

When I first saw “Top Gun,” I came out — of the theater — and said, “Jeez, what an incredibly gay movie.”

But when you say that to two friends outside a movie theater in Fort Wayne, Indiana, no one listens. You have to be Quentin Tarantino, and then everyone hails your genius.

Still, it’s good to know I was right all along. The site seems to be getting slammed with bandwidth issues, so you may have to check back. (UPDATE: People report they’re getting through fine. It may be a Mac-based Windows Media Player thing. I finally got to see the whole thing, but it took a couple reloads.)

My earliest lessons in how tetchy newspaper ad managers could be were learned at, well, my earliest newspaper job, at the Columbus Dispatch. They were always monkeying with ads that tried to push the boundaries a little. And it was a tough job, considering the paper ran ads for strip clubs, adult movie theaters, escort services and the like.

Things crept in, anyway, and it was always funny to compare before-and-after changes. The adult-movie ads, for instance, had to be business-card size, no pictures, and titles and screening times only. But after a time they started allowing limited review quotes. And so, between editions, “Full er*ction — Hustler’s highest rating!” would become “Hustler’s highest rating!”

My all-time fave was for a stunt performer at Columbus Motor Speedway, the city’s stock-car track: “Bennie Koske, ‘the human bomb,’ will blow himself and a car up Sunday night!” Oops. In the second edition, he would “blow up a car and himself.” Which, really, is much better grammar.

But one ad in particular was a problem, and it was for one of the James Bond movies. This one. The art was of Roger Moore, framed between the legs of a babe with a bodacious can. Braver papers ran the picture whole; the Dispatch (and many others) cropped her at mid-thigh.

I thought of this when I started noticing internet ads on newspaper sites for “Imagine Me and You,” which looks like we should call it “Lipstick Mountain.” From the trailer, it seems to be about a woman whose lesbian affair interferes with her upcoming wedding. But I noticed two versions of the ad. This one:

And this one:

Only problem is, I noticed both ads on the same newspaper websites. Damn. Seems to be a vertical-horizontal question.

And a pretty crummy movie, if its January release is any indication. That’s Piper Perabo in the lead — went to Ohio University, starred in “Coyote Ugly” with assorted supermodels and, well, isn’t an Oscar contender.

Finally, maybe my all-time favorite ad at the Dispatch came after I left, a line of 6-point type buried deep in the classifieds. It was for a piece of buildable land, close to a middle school. “Buz Lukens special!” it crowed. Evidently the classified-ad takers don’t read the rest of the paper.

Jeezus on a damn cracker, this can’t be true: Medved is doing it again?! Yes, according to James Wolcott:

Unable to impugn (“Brokeback Mountain”) on the caliber of its acting, directing, etc, he’s reduced to whining that the film hasn’t been “honestly advertised,” as if he were some consumer advocate. Medved must think moviegoers are bigger idiots than he is. He couldn’t be more wrong. Nobody’s a bigger idiot than he is. …There are no recorded incidents of someone being lured into the cineplex under false pretenses and coming out Gay.

The “false advertising” crapola was what worked for Medved in the “Million Dollar Baby” flap last year, and I guess he figures that pony has a few more miles in him. Do these conservative culture warriors assume their supporters are dumb enough to beliee this, or are they just so cynical they know that of course they don’t, that of course the problem is with those FAGGOTS, but there are certain things you can’t say in public anymore (dammit!), even on the Factor.

I mean, I just can’t keep up.

OK, then.

Got my eyes checked today, just doing my best to keep the world’s “eyewear designers” in business. Seventy million frames in the store, and they all look the same. I considered some Buddy Holly Specials, but decided against embarrassing my friends and family and opted for the Usual — small horizontal frames that identify me as a pain-in-the-ass yuppie twit.

I should have gone for the Buddy Hollys. What ever happened to those frames so big you could spell your name out in little letters down the side?

The doctor said, “Have you considered Lasik?” I nearly fell on the floor. My old optometrist shared my feelings about Lasik: No. I know it’s worked for many, many people, but for me the calculus has always been, expense + lasers in your eyeballs + risk of losing your night vision + still having to wear reading glasses anyway vs. making peace with glasses. I vote for the latter. Wearing glasses is like smoking in that it gives you something to do with your hands, a way to procrastinate when someone asks you a difficult question — you can take them off, twirl them around, polish the lenses, resettle them on your nose…and then answer.

And yeah, sure, sometimes you lose them, knock them off the nightstand and later step on them. I’d still rather wear glasses than have back pain.

And I’d rather you have a good weekend than a bad one.

Forget that stuff I said last week about foreseeing my death on a bicycle. I saw it for real today — the Grim Reaper will be at the wheel of a late-model SUV, talking on a cell phone.

Two close-ish calls yesterday — at freeway speeds! aiiieeeee!!! — and another today, although today’s would have been merely a fender-bender, caused by a guy coming up in my rear-view mirror who was both talking on the phone and READING SOMETHING he had spread across the steering wheel. He looked up just in time, chirped his tires a little in stopping, then cut across three lanes of traffic to make a U-turn.

So much for evolution.

And just for a jarring transition, how’s this: Yesterday we went rug-shopping. Didn’t buy anything — it was strictly reconnaissance for a down-the-road purchase. But we wandered into one place, and I immediately saw the rug of my dreams. One look told me I couldn’t afford it, but I could certainly appreciate it in the store. Its lines were so delicate they seemed to have been drawn with a Rapidograph, and one pass of the hand over its surface gave the telltale feel of ahhh, silk.

That is one beautiful rug, I thought, drinking in its detail and explaining its excellence to Kate (who couldn’t have been more bored). Time to check the price tag. I was guessing somewhere in the $12,000 range.

No. Thirty-nine thousand dollars.

Now, I know there are many rich people in the world, for whom $39,000 is the equivalent, in our household, of maybe $500. And I know that a $39,000 silk Persian rug costs that much in part because it’s durable, and woven to be an heirloom for generations. But even if I had their money, I still would spend my days fretting. “I hope the dog isn’t throwing up on my $39,000 rug,” I’d think. (Hell, he’d better not even walk on it.) I’d ban shoes and offer foot-washing supplies at my front door. I’d stop serving red wine. I’d put down those little plastic runners beloved by ethnic grandmas all over the U.S. This magnificent piece of art could actually make my house look worse. It would call attention to itself in all the worst ways.

That’s the test, then — not whether you can afford it, but whether you can afford to use it. I happily — relievedly — fall short.

Bloggage:

It’s a tough town: DETROIT — School safety worries resurfaced dramatically Thursday when two students were stabbed in the chest during a fight with another student’s mother outside one of the district’s most prestigious schools, school officials said. I’m sure she had her reasons.

Shelley Winters, a woman after my own heart:

Tough-talking and oozing sex appeal, Ms. Winters was blowzy, vulgar and often pathetically vulnerable in her early films. … Even when she became the dominating force in many of her later movies, Ms. Winters often played vulnerable monsters. …Shrieking, shrewish, slutty or silly, Ms. Winters always seemed larger than life on screen. …Off screen Ms. Winters lived with an equal gusto… With a hearty appetite for food and men, she was not hesitant about naming the actors with whom she had shared a bed…

All the good ones are dying, eh?