Last week the roof project finally con­cluded with a lit­tle mop-up: A guy came out to rehang the back-side gut­ters and install a cou­ple more down­spouts. Now our brand-new roof will shed water effi­ciently. I pause to stick my fin­ger in my cheek for a weak pop, and then I wave it in the air and say woo. Big effin’ deal.

This is new for me. In the past, I had pride of own­er­ship in almost every repair we made, to this house and to our last house. There’s some­thing about car­ing well for one’s house that’s always res­onated with me, but not so much any­more. It’s true that a new roof doesn’t sat­isfy like a new kitchen, but it still felt vir­tu­ous, because you were adding to your home’s resale value and main­tain­ing the prop­erty, which reflected on the neigh­bor­hood and made every­one rest a lit­tle eas­ier at night.

But our real estate mar­ket can be explained in a head­line which I swear I’ve read 400 times in the last five years in the local weekly: Has the mar­ket hit bot­tom? The answer is always the same: Maybe. The answer is always wrong, because the cor­rect answer is: No. So putting a roof on my house, which used to feel like for­go­ing a new dress to put the money in the bank, now feels more like tear­ing up hundred-dollar bills and throw­ing them into a flush­ing toi­let. And as long as we’re read­ing the Obvi­ous News, it seems I have lots of com­pany.

When this reces­sion is over — if it ever is — and the his­to­ri­ans start to sort it out, I don’t think any­thing will be as impor­tant, in the long run, as what it did to real estate. It’s still my main dis­ap­point­ment with Barack Obama, that he didn’t launch a big show trial on Jan. 21, 2009 that would have marched the Wall Street shit­heads who wrecked the hous­ing mar­ket before a tri­bunal of fore­closed and washed-out home­own­ers and a judge that was a com­bi­na­tion of, ohhhh, Al Sharp­ton and Judge Judy, say. His gavel would be over­sized, and he’d be wel­come to use it on both his bench and the defen­dants’ heads. A guil­lo­tine would be right out­side the court­room, and we’d use it until the rope broke and the blade dulled.

That, at least, would show we take the dam­age these peo­ple did seri­ously. Peo­ple who don’t own houses or apart­ments get a lit­tle impa­tient with this, and I guess I don’t blame them, but trust me: This crash hurts every­one, owner or not. For those of us who don’t live in the places where the mid­dle class are shut out of own­ing real estate — which is to say, most of the coun­try out­side of New York City, San Fran­cisco and much (but not all) of Los Ange­les — our houses are the most expen­sive thing we own, and are far more than a place to lay our weary heads and store our record col­lec­tions. The sale of my par­ents’ house pro­vided half their retire­ment stake. They were of the gen­er­a­tion that saved up for a down pay­ment, shopped care­fully, bought and stayed put. No flip­ping or trad­ing up for them. Three bed­rooms, 1.5 baths, bought in 1962 and sold in 1995, paid off and worth seven times what they paid for it.

My gen­er­a­tion was dif­fer­ent, but not Alan and me, so much. This is our sec­ond house, in our sec­ond city. I pay extra prin­ci­pal on our house every month, although God knows why. Opti­misti­cally, it’s worth half what we paid for it. Recov­ery of our pur­chase price might be 20 years off. The Detroit Metro has spe­cial prob­lems, to be sure, but the whole coun­try is sweep­ing up this wreck­age, and I will never for­get who caused it. (Hint: It wasn’t Bar­ney Frank.)

For years, for prac­ti­cally ever, real estate was the safest invest­ment you could make. My mom started bug­ging me to buy a condo as soon as I had a full-time job. You couldn’t lose. Every­body pays some­thing for hous­ing, after all, and you might as well pay your­self, plus the mort­gage inter­est is tax-deductible. And hous­ing always went up. It didn’t rise at the redonku­lous rates of recent years, but a steady 1 to 3 per­cent was a given.

And while I may be over­stat­ing the virtues of own­er­ship, I still firmly believe that a neigh­bor­hood of own­ers is, in the broad­est terms, bet­ter than one of renters. When you have a finan­cial stake in some­thing, you pay more atten­tion to it. You care if the local schools are good, even if you don’t have chil­dren in them. You don’t like it when your neigh­bors let their lawn go to prairie (unless every­one else’s is prairie, too). You keep the walks swept. It’s the broken-window the­ory on a less dra­matic scale, and for gen­er­a­tions, it worked.

But that’s only part of it. Local gov­ern­ments rely on property-tax rev­enues to pro­vide ser­vices. When prop­erty val­ues slide, so do tax receipts. We’re only begin­ning to see these prob­lems, cities let­ting streets go or not replac­ing light­ing or lay­ing off fire­fight­ers. And how long did I say it might be before recov­ery?

When you think about it, pretty much every­thing in our econ­omy is pred­i­cated on the idea that we’ll always be grow­ing. (Cer­tainly our health-care costs have done that.) A few flat years we can han­dle. But a full-on retreat, a crash? This is new for me. Last week our bor­ing old city coun­cil got a lit­tle testy over some penny-ante travel for the city clerk, noth­ing big, but one of the mem­bers grumped that they were look­ing at another enor­mous short­fall the fol­low­ing year, and nick­els and dimes add up. I can’t imag­ine what they’ll be fight­ing over in three years. Prob­a­bly which one gets to quit first.

My house, my mill­stone. But with a nice new roof.

So, a lit­tle blog­gage? Sure. Scott Rosen­berg at Salon looks at a phe­nom­e­non I’ve been see­ing in my news search­ing for a while now: The con­tent farms have gamed Google. Don’t be evil!

“I think his dad’s bought them off, some­times. He’s prac­ti­cally sell­ing dope out of the trunk of his car. I have to give him one thing, though. Watch­ing his per­son­al­ity dis­in­te­grate made me give up pot for good. Well, that and the fact the shit makes you so fuck­ing retarded these days. The last time I smoked was spring last year. I was so para­noid I walked out of the house and hid in that big wall of shrubs by the soror­ity house. And the girls started that god­damn singing. ‘Together for­ever. Together for­ever.’ Do you have any idea how much that sounds like you’re eaves­drop­ping on some kind of blood sac­ri­fice?” — why I added Coozledad’s blog to my RSS feed. I was miss­ing too many of these, or dis­cov­er­ing them days later.

Another great Tom-and-Lorenzo Mad Style entry, this one on Francine Han­son, played by the sub­lime Anne Dudek.

I’ve taken a casual inter­est in Stephanie Sey­mour ever since Alan and I dis­cov­ered the “Novem­ber Rain” video on MTV. One of us would always say to the other, “She dies in the end.” Today, the NYT did a silly-season Sun­day Styles front on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of her mar­riage to Peter Brant, described as “a taller, more dash­ing ver­sion of Buddy Hack­ett.” Her “Novem­ber Rain” role was described thusly: “she por­trayed a bride who dies.” Every­one remem­bers her!

So have a great Mon­day, all. Mine will, as usual, be busy.

I try to engi­neer my week so that Fri­days belong to me and only me. I start work­ing on Sun­day after­noons, and I front-load my work week to the point that by Wednes­day, I am start­ing to get a lit­tle breath­ing room. Some­times it works, some­times it doesn’t, but if all goes as planned, by noon Fri­day, I’m cruis­ing.

Some­times it doesn’t go as planned. Last Fri­day, I got a call from one of my friends from my fel­low­ship year, an Israeli who’s now U.S. bureau chief for Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest daily (I think) in Tel Aviv. Could I put together some­thing quickly on the Flint Slasher? For actual money? Any­thing for you, Adi. (And any­thing for a lit­tle money. I spend so much time writ­ing for lit­tle or noth­ing, I’d for­got­ten what that’s like.) And so off I rolled around lunchtime, cruis­ing for Gene­see County instead.

And? A very sad place. Granted, I was on the po’ side of town. I remem­ber, after “Roger & Me” insulted con­ser­v­a­tives with the sug­ges­tion that per­haps cap­i­tal­ism isn’t win-win for every­one, read­ing some­thing spe­cific to Flint in one of their ide­o­log­i­cal house organs, which arrived by the truck­load at my paper’s edi­to­r­ial page. Yes, down­town Flint retail was dead, the writer said, but that’s because every­one was shop­ping at the brand-new mall, etc. etc. Per­haps. (That’s cer­tainly what hap­pened in Fort Wayne.) And surely a com­pre­hen­sive tour of the area with experts would have revealed a fuller pic­ture of the place. But I drove around a bit, and my over­whelm­ing impres­sion was Spring­steen­ian: Fore­man said these jobs are goin’, boys, and they ain’t comin’ back to your home­town. In Detroit, the ruin is Roman — you can see what was once a great city under the decay. In Flint, the dis­as­ter befell some­place far more ordi­nary. Which made it starker, and sad­der.

The term for these sorts of excur­sions is “para­chute jour­nal­ism.” I was happy to pack my chute and leave at the end of the day. And the result? Your basic fly-by visit by some empty suit.

Poor Adi. Dead­line was 2 p.m. Sat­ur­day, but that was for the final, fin­ished prod­uct. Trans­la­tion is a bear, espe­cially on dead­line.

And so the week begins. It’s a spe­cial one for one of our group: Laura Lippman’s lat­est, “I’d Know You Any­where,” drops tomor­row, and oh, how the praise has flowed. Ama­zon says it will be arriv­ing by tomor­row, but hasn’t shipped yet. “Three Sta­tions,” which I also pre-ordered and is pub­lished the same day, has shipped. So I’ll pay twice for ship­ping. But I’m happy to give my fave writer all-important “veloc­ity” in first-week sales.

A lit­tle blog­gage? Ohhh-kay:

An out­sider expe­ri­ences fair food, swoons. A nice wrap-up of what’s being deep-fried this year.

The Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Insti­tute of Arts, recon­sid­ered.

I noticed this when I was in Ann Arbor a few years back. It blew my mind then, and still does: Col­lege stu­dents who check in with their par­ents mul­ti­ple times a day. I called my mom once a week, and that was because we had free long dis­tance (Ohio Bell was our family’s coal mine).

And now, hav­ing flown by, I must fly. Ta ta.

It’s one of those morn­ings. Just a warn­ing.

These things hap­pen, late in the week. The accu­mu­lated lack of sleep piles up until Thurs­day, when I’m pos­i­tively dull-witted. Fri­day I get a sec­ond wind, but Thurs­days just suck. To quote a recent Kim Sev­er­son tweet: The bags under my eyes are so big Delta charged me $25 each. I should be used to work­ing late and get­ting up early, but friends, I am not. My boss told me once he hasn’t got­ten more than four hours sleep since he started his com­pany. I shud­der to think.

So, in honor of my lack of func­tion­ing brain cells, let’s lower the tone. Let’s talk about…oh, what’s in the file here… Got it! Boobs.

If you’re not online as much as I am, you’ve doubt­less missed the story of Debrahlee Loren­zana, who is appar­ently bring­ing suit against her for­mer employer, who fired her (she claims) because her smokin’ hot­ness. The story has been fol­lowed mostly by Gawker, and thanks to the mir­a­cle of tag­ging, I can link you to a sin­gle page of posts, where you are advised to start at the bot­tom and read up.

Debrahlee is, indeed, lovely, and it’s easy to see how a bunch of loutish bankers would find her dis­tract­ing when she strolled through the room. I used to work with a woman some­what like this — young, beau­ti­ful, and a very sharp dresser. It was the lat­ter that made her a head-turner, because most news­rooms are oceans of Dock­ers and polo shirts and other unfor­tu­nate sar­to­r­ial choices. She was also Asian, and had that almost impos­si­bly tiny frame Asian women fre­quently have. She was fond of wide, waist-cinching belts, and when­ever she walked by, I would think, Some­where, Scar­lett O’Hara is weep­ing.

Any­hoo, Debrahlee. (I’m going to start call­ing her “Deb­bie.” This ridicu­lous spelling is get­ting on my nerves.) Debbie’s case is very strange, because her lawyer appears to have tricked her out in a num­ber of plung­ing neck­lines and stiletto heels to…what end, exactly? Demon­strate how hot she is? Is this to bol­ster her case? Because if I were an office man­ager I’d prob­a­bly tell her to lay off the V-necks, too. Which reminds me of another one of my for­mer col­leagues, a sum­mer intern who once appeared for work in a sheer blouse and a hot-pink bra. You didn’t get the sense she was going for any sort of va-va-voom fac­tor, it was just, y’know, what was clean that morn­ing. The edi­tor who sent her home to change earned her check that week. It was widely believed at the time that she had “some sort of devel­op­men­tal delay,” as the health writer del­i­cately put it. Yes, friends, that was our news­room — the place that hired men­tally chal­lenged interns.

Back to Deb­bie. She keeps turn­ing up in the news, always with many, many pho­tographs, always with a vague mes­sage that seemed to boil down to I am sooo hot. At one point she said she couldn’t help the way she looked, her slen­der body and her full breasts were “genetic,” and shouldn’t she be able to hold a job like every­one else? She almost had me for a while; the Gorgeous-American com­mu­nity has rights, too.

Then, yes­ter­day, Gawker found the smok­ing video­tape — Deb­bie fea­tured in a plastic-surgery mar­ket­ing video shot some years back, ask­ing for “huge, double-D breasts” so she can look like “a Play­boy Play­mate.” So much for genet­ics, but you prob­a­bly already fig­ured that out.

Which brings us to the other boob story of the morn­ing: Did Sarah Palin buy her­self a pair? Please please please let this story be true. Please. (I’m dubi­ous, how­ever. She doesn’t look all that enhanced. On the other hand, there is no way those are the nat­ural breasts of a fortysome­thing vet­eran of five preg­nan­cies.) If it’s true, it would indi­cate des­per­a­tion has begun to nib­ble around the edges of her steely con­fi­dence. And that’s a good thing.

Boobs, male vari­ety: Don’t let the chil­dren of gay par­ents go to our Catholic school! They’ll prob­a­bly bring porn and dil­dos to show-and-tell. No fur­ther com­ment needed.

Belated atten­tion to Hank Stuever, who is not a boob, with some sug­ges­tions, and a cou­ple musts-to-avoid, for your sum­mer read­ing list. (There’s a boob-related anec­dote within.)

Via Bren­dan, a Brian Dick­er­son col­umn on how Michi­gan might emu­late Cal­i­for­nia, but in a good way. Boob fac­tor: The state leg­is­la­ture.

And with that, the caf­feine has kicked in and I’m outta here. Off to the gym. To work on my pec­torals.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’d for­got­ten about this until Gail Collins men­tioned it in her col­umn today. A lit­tle lagniappe for the week­end:

Memo­r­ial Col­i­seum, the big con­cert venue in Fort Wayne, main­tained a “par­ents’ room” for big nights, where guess-who could go for a lit­tle relief dur­ing the show. I wrote about it once, and although it was before I was a par­ent myself, all it took was 30 sec­onds in the house dur­ing an M.C. Ham­mer show to appre­ci­ate the sweet relief it offered to any­one not in the M.C. Ham­mer demo­graphic — good lord, that vol­ume was painful.

The con­trast couldn’t have been greater. Man­age­ment pro­vided free Pepsi and pret­zels, laid out decks of cards and rolled in a TV with VCR. Movie of the night: “Dri­ving Miss Daisy.” I only wish I was kid­ding. Moth­ers cro­cheted and fathers chat­ted while their futures unspooled on TV. They could only wish that the kids they’d so kindly taken to the show would be respon­si­ble enough, and wealthy enough, to hire a dri­ver for them in their dotage. But it was bless­edly free of can’t-touch-this, so you couldn’t com­plain.

It wasn’t my best col­umn, and I remem­ber it mainly for the tiff-ette I had with a young African Amer­i­can copy edi­tor, who thought I’d empha­sized the wrong con­trast in my scene-setting. It wasn’t about “Dri­ving Miss Daisy,” the movie about being old, play­ing while teenagers danced ecsta­t­i­cally down the hall, it was about Mor­gan Free­man being a forelock-tugging ser­vant while M.C. Ham­mer, young and strong and rich, gets it done on his own terms. Well. Who’s laugh­ing now? M.C. Ham­mer will be lucky to get a job as some old lady’s chauf­feur, as even the come­back tours will go away even­tu­ally, and maybe sooner.

But I digress. Detroit being a hip­per town, and the Fill­more a smaller venue, they had a dif­fer­ent place for the par­ents, what few there were who accom­pa­nied their chil­dren to the show last night.

“Would you like to sit in the bar? It’s just off the lobby,” the nice ticket-taker asked as I showed her my main-floor ticket on re-entry dur­ing the open­ing act’s set. The pain must have shown in my face. I hope the relief did, too. And while, being a respon­si­ble adult, I didn’t exactly get M.C. ham­mered, I did enjoy a tall Leinenkugel’s Sum­mer Shandy while watch­ing ulti­mate fight­ing on the bar TV. The beer was lemony, and the fight­ing was dis­gust­ing. Really. Blood smeared the mat while the fight­ers grap­pled in, frankly, rather homo­erotic style. One guy, the bleeder, was get­ting his ass kicked, but refused to sur­ren­der. They went down in another clinch, and the dom­i­na­tor leaned close to his ear. He appeared to be say­ing some­thing, and I hope it was, “Jesus Christ, your blood is spoil­ing my foot­ing. Tap out, you moron.” Finally, he did, and the direc­tor took the time for a dra­matic over­head shot of the carmine after­math.

This, friends, is what is killing box­ing, a sport I’ve finally come to appre­ci­ate dur­ing all my Miss Daisy stay-at-home Sat­ur­day nights, which is when they show the bouts on HBO. I like the strat­egy of it, the skill needed to score while pro­tect­ing your­self, the neces­sity of endur­ing a cer­tain amount of what must be crush­ing pain in pur­suit of vic­tory. I like the train­ers’ cor­ner talk, which, being HBO, is not cen­sored: “You’ve got to put this fucker down,” etc. (For the non-English speak­ers, they pro­vide trans­la­tion.) And I like watch­ing the cut men work their magic with icy enswells and petro­leum jelly. A good cut man knows as much or more about the blood ves­sels of the human head than a doc­tor.

At one point the ultimate-fighting bout was stopped so that a guy in latex gloves could exam­ine the bleeder. He wiped the fighter’s face with a towel. Some­where in a squared cir­cle in heaven, Cus D’amato wept.

I went back into the house for the last 10 min­utes of 3Oh!3′s set. I hear they’re tight with Ke$ha. The less you know about both, the bet­ter.

And now off for stock-up shop­ping for my week­end cater­ing gig, as well as boat-launching. Every year the lat­ter gets eas­ier, and I’m told I will not be required for much. Huz­zah. But I still need some heavy-duty foil pans, racks, maybe some sterno. Restaurant-supply store, here I come.

Some blog­gage:

Thanks to Michael G for find­ing this nice Ken Levine appre­ci­a­tion of Ernie Har­well. Crisp, sim­ple, to the point and worth your time. Mean­while, it appears yesterday’s treacle-fest by Albom was only the warmup. Today:

There is a sound to silence. We heard it around the world Wednes­day. It was the sound of tears, laugh­ter, noses snif­fling, voices quiv­er­ing, it was the sound of a mil­lion base­ball mem­o­ries echo­ing in the sud­den silence of the Voice of Sum­mer…

Get a grip, Mitch. The funeral is still a cou­ple days away. Today Har­well lies in repose at Com­er­ica Park, which was set­ting up for the event as we left the show last night. Lights on, no ball­game. Sad.

I don’t care what any­one says, and yes, I’m biased, but our guy is fun­nier at the White House Cor­re­spon­dents Din­ner than their guy ever was. Pres­i­dent Obama’s tim­ing is great, he strikes just the right tone and whoever’s writ­ing his mate­r­ial is pretty good. I loved his aside after the stuff about Michael Steele — he did the same Steele bit last year, but hey, it still works.

(Plus, he has a great smile. That’s No. 482 on the end­less list of things that drive Repub­li­cans crazy about him. George Bush smirked, Sarah Palin’s still looks like the pageant run­way and John McCain’s was some sort of numb ric­tus. But when Obama’s hav­ing fun, he looks like he’s hav­ing the most fun of all.)

Obama was in the Mit­ten ear­lier Sat­ur­day, speak­ing at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan com­mence­ment. Sell­out crowd. He told stu­dents to con­tribute to democ­racy and keep their minds open to oppos­ing view­points. (Out­side, pro­test­ers called him a social­ist. Ho-hum.) The uni­ver­sity gave him an hon­orary degree, his sec­ond as pres­i­dent. I won­der if there’s any­one at Ari­zona State, the first uni­ver­sity to snag him as a com­mence­ment speaker but the only one to deny him an hon­orary degree, still feel­ing sheep­ish about that spec­tac­u­larly bone­headed move.

Which makes now a good time to twist the knife with this Daily Show seg­ment. Let’s all line up and give Ari­zona a swift kick. Bone­heads.

Do any of you keep tabs on the Pho­to­shop Dis­as­ters blog? You should, as Pho­to­shop is one of the most per­ni­cious forces afoot in cul­ture today, unless I’m using it to remove a zit from a pic­ture of me, in which case it’s OK, really. I do get peev­ish when I see it used to make awful peo­ple like Kimora Lee Sim­mons into space aliens, but am amused when it reveals who really lost a foot in that “Mad Men” episode last year. (Miss­ing limbs are a recur­ring theme.) This is funny, too, con­sid­er­ing Toyota’s recent prob­lems. But per­haps no sin­gle per­son (other than Madonna) has been Pho­to­shopped more than the “Sex and the City” quar­tet of per­i­menopausal beau­ties who get stranger-looking with every new chap­ter.

The poster is bad enough. But this Harper’s Bizarre cover — mis­spelling CQ — is some­how worse. I think it has some­thing to do with the expres­sion on Sarah Jes­sica Parker’s face, which looks entirely assem­bled from parts. Some­times I won­der if the paparazzi would be so insa­tiable if celebri­ties didn’t hide behind this non­sense. Street pic­tures of SJP reveal about what you’d expect — a stew bird with veiny, sinewy Madonna arms. But I’d rather look at that than this.

A lit­tle blog­gage before the first cop shop bicy­cle tour of the year:

Sweet Juniper teaches eco-terrorism to the chil­dren of the inner city. Kid­ding. But there’s some­thing about “seed bomb” that sounds sin­is­ter. It’s not.

Dur­ing my year in Ann Arbor, one of my Turk­ish friends referred to Greeks as “lazy and stu­pid peo­ple” as casu­ally as you’d remark on the weather. I know the Greeks have given us a lot, but crim­iny, peo­ple, when your nation is upside-down in debt, PAY YOUR TAXES.

It seemed half my Face­book friends were send­ing me spam and other crap over the week­end. It was car­toon­ishly easy to spot, as I am a geezer and most of my friends are geezers, stick to con­ven­tional spellings of HAWT and eschew emoti­cons. This might have some­thing to do with it. In the mean­time, open no gifts.

A stretch, some more cof­fee, and then I’m off. Tomor­row: Treme so far.

Almost for­got: Good thoughts to the Bas­sets, flooded out in Nashville over the week­end.

Some of you may not be watch­ing “Amer­i­can Idol,” and who can blame you. I’m not, but Kate is, and every so often I wan­der through the room while she’s catch­ing up with the record­ings that are stacked like cord­wood in our DVR. (I sus­pect her inter­est is flag­ging, too.) So maybe you saw this clip and maybe you didn’t — it’s the Black Eyed Peas stink­ing up the room with a live per­for­mance of what­ever their new sin­gle is. Oh, right: “Rock That Body.” Wow. Orig­i­nal. What was the name of their last sin­gle? “Bod­ies That Rock?” Or was it “Rockin’ My Body?” I can never remem­ber.

It’s a pretty good exam­ple of what too much pop music has come to — bands selected by labels based on how good they look in videos, then bound over to pro­duc­ers who smush them through the best tech­nol­ogy and sup­port staff money can buy, until they emerge, glossy and sexy and auto­tuned to a fare-thee-well, to put on huge arena shows with lasers and explo­sions and backup dancers and lots and lots of cos­tume changes, all for $150, min­i­mum, for a floor seat, and it all works really well until it doesn’t, and you can see it in that clip. Is any­one in sync? Is any­one even remotely close to …I guess it’s not “notes,” exactly, or “music,” so let me put it this way: Is any­one yelling the part they’re sup­posed to yell with any degree of pre­ci­sion? I can’t see it. Lots of busy­work up there, with every­one march­ing around and wav­ing their hands in the air and demand­ing that every­one else wave their hands in the air and rock that body! come on come on rock that body! come on come on rock! that! body!

It so hap­pened that a cou­ple of days later, I was in the gym, and who­ever was in charge of the radio had tuned it to the urban-pop sta­tion, which is to say, it’s a lit­tle rougher than the sub-niche of pop that Tay­lor Swift rules, and there’s hip-hop in there but not the really hard-core stuff, just cut after cut after cut of Black Eyed Peas-style party music — that thumpy, looped club-style foun­da­tion, over which are pasted this or that auto­tuned singer, ask­ing us to rock our bod­ies, or shake them, or shake them while rock­ing, what­ever. After 15 min­utes of this, I was ready to kill some­one. After 25 I said to the gray head on the next machine, “I don’t care what any­body fuck­ing says, the music we lis­tened to when we were young was bet­ter than this. Not dif­fer­ent. Bet­ter. BETTER.” He said that’s why God made iPods, but seri­ously, if I worked in a store that played this bilge all day I’d seri­ously con­sider pour­ing acid into my ears.

You think this is just another rant of a baby boomer, and maybe it is. Get me some Dentu-Creme. But I think what pushed me into the red zone today was this story in the NYT, about the Live Nation/Ticketmaster takeover of vir­tu­ally the entire con­cert indus­try, and the new music-business model, which is to write off recorded-music sales in favor of a robust gouge at the ticket office, so that nine-figure “360-degree” deals with peo­ple like Madonna and Jay-Z can be financed.

Madonna played here on her last tour, a last-minute addi­tion in what calls itself her home­town. I’m told Ford Field’s seat­ing was dis­creetly draped, the bet­ter to mask all the unsold seats. (It’s tough to sell $200 tick­ets in a state with 17 per­cent unem­ploy­ment, Madge. You should know that.) The show was marked by top-notch pro­duc­tion val­ues — in that there were many props and cos­tume changes — and a robot-like per­for­mance by the star, who treated the con­cert stage as yet another two-hour car­dio work­out in a life­time full of them. Even Brit­ney Spears, that old train wreck, was get­ting $100 a head for her autotuna-palooza last year.

May I see the hands of any soul out there who thinks Brit­ney Spears is actu­ally singing dur­ing these shows? Or Madonna? You are spend­ing hun­dreds of dol­lars on tick­ets and t-shirts for the chance to watch the big star on a Jum­botron. After tak­ing Kate and her friend to the Miley Cyrus 3-D con­cert movie a cou­ple years ago, I reflected that there should be a lot more of these things, because $30 for the three of us (plus pop­corn) had saved us $75 a head to see her down at Cobo, and the seat was bet­ter, the park­ing was free and we got to go back­stage! Plus, one of the Jonas Broth­ers threw his drum­stick at the cam­era, and we all flinched! Cool.

There aren’t many days I go to the gym and think, thank God I’m an old bag, but friends, I saw Elton John blow the roof off of St. John Arena, and I was so close I could almost pluck those big sun­glasses off his face, and it cost me ten bucks. There were cyn­ics and money-grubbers in the busi­ness then, too, but we got out with the shirts on our back.

These days, I’m shop­ping for tick­ets to “Tosca,” which is play­ing at the Detroit Opera House the week­end of our anniver­sary. TIck­ets are steep — push­ing $100 for the main floor — but you’re pay­ing for a lot when you see an opera. What I don’t under­stand is the $9.75-per “con­ve­nience charge” tacked on by Tick­et­mas­ter. And guess what they’re charg­ing for me to print the ticket on my own printer? Two-fifty each. As Tosca her­self might say: Siediti e ruotare.

Some blog­gage:

Thanks, Sarah Palin, for all you do to make this coun­try a bet­ter place! States warn of ‘Oba­macare’ scams: In Illi­nois, a tele­mar­keter recently sold an elderly woman a fraud­u­lent health insur­ance plan that sup­pos­edly pro­tected her against “death pan­els,” the state insur­ance direc­tor says.

The things you find when you check your ping­backs: Coo­zledad, again.

And as I have too much to do tomor­row, it’s off to bed with me.

Some rather star­tling pho­tos from the funeral of Mal­colm McLaren in Lon­don yes­ter­day. The Sex Pis­tols’ man­ager was laid to rest in a cof­fin embla­zoned TOO FAST TO LIVE TOO YOUNG TO DIE. I sup­pose we’ll be see­ing a lot more of this sort of thing — the “fun” funeral, that is — as the generation-that-younger-people-wish-would-not-be-named starts heads down the Ghost Road in greater num­bers.

I feel the same way about this that I do about all the other rit­u­als my con­tem­po­raries found want­ing, when it came to be their turn: [Shrug.] Every so often I meet a hand-wringer who frets that, by throw­ing out (insert num­ber of years) of tra­di­tion, we have some­how ruined the wedding/funeral/christening/whatever. I reply that when a per­son has lived a full life and — in McLaren’s case, any­way — had at least a rea­son­able allot­ment of years, what’s the prob­lem with turn­ing their funeral into some­thing other than damp han­kies and hushed con­ver­sa­tions? And if the old model was so sat­is­fy­ing, why did it suck so bad? It’s one thing to be laid to rest by a cler­gy­man who knew you all your life. But I’ve been to many, many funer­als where the offi­ciant needed crib notes and all but mis­pro­nounced the decedent’s name. Bah. Throw it out.

When things started to turn bad in the news­pa­per busi­ness, I had a fan­tasy: I would take my buy­out money (ha!) and start a small busi­ness out of my bed­room, pro­vid­ing dig­i­tal slideshows with musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment for funer­als. These would play dur­ing vis­it­ing hours, and any­one who wanted one could buy the DVD. I even had a name: Kin­flicks. I still think it was a good idea, although it would have made a lousy busi­ness, because it’s so easy to do now that most funeral homes pre­pare them in-house, or else it’s punted to a nerd cousin who knows how to drag and drop. (My slideshows would have been dis­tin­guished by the qual­ity of music, I decided; none of that “My Way” stuff. Instead, maybe “Anar­chy in the U.K.”) At the time, the idea of hav­ing a slideshow play at a funeral, even at a vis­i­ta­tion, was sort of edgy. Now every Slum­ber Room has a flatscreen.

I don’t know what McLaren’s funeral was like, aside from the cas­ket, but if you haven’t seen it, Roger Ebert has a fab­u­lous remem­brance of his inter­sec­tion with the Sex Pis­tols, which includes a few scenes from a planned Sex Pis­tols film, to be directed by Russ Meyer. As always with Roger, it’s the details that sell it:

I’ve men­tioned before that, for Russ, typ­ing was syn­ony­mous with writ­ing. If he didn’t hear the type­writer, no writ­ing was being done. When I was writ­ing “Beneath the Val­ley of the Ultra Vix­ens” for him, he located me in his liv­ing room (all office fur­ni­ture) and lis­tened from his upstairs office. When my type­writer fell silent, he’d call down, “What’s the mat­ter?”

Which is as good a way as any to kick off the blog­gage:

While Rome burned, the SEC…watched porn?

Look out, world, Mon­ica Cony­ers is already plan­ning her next chap­ter. I’m sure MMJ­eff will be pleased to hear what it is: Divin­ity school.

I haven’t had any­thing to say about “Treme” yet, I know. I’d like to watch a cou­ple more episodes and let the vibe set in. But in the mean­time, a story that gives back­ground on one of the sub­plots — the dis­ap­pear­ance of LaDonna’s brother in the Orleans Parish Prison meltdown/flooding. What does one do with a prison full of inmates in ris­ing waters? Good ques­tion.

Can you give a dime, a dol­lar, or a pair of socks? Restore Stephen Bald­win!

So, what’s the tack­i­est funeral you’ve ever attended?

Ques­tion of the day for a cool-but-sunny Mon­day: When did bacon become a joke?

Bacon, says Alton Brown, is “meat candy.” It’s cer­tainly tasty, and has always been my favorite break­fast pro­tein — I can barely tol­er­ate those insipid Amer­i­can sausages — but only recently did I become aware that eat­ing it is some­thing of a com­edy act. Sites like This is Why You’re Fat and “recipes” like the Bacon Explo­sion have turned my not-particularly-guilty plea­sure into a sideshow.

What hap­pened to two eggs, two strips and out the door? Now we have the KFC Dou­ble Down, a bacon “sand­wich” between two “buns” of fried chicken breast. Nate Sil­ver at FiveThir­tyEight shows that even fast food can be number-crunched, and demon­strates that, while bad, the Dou­ble Down isn’t the worst thing you can order, all things con­sid­ered. Urp. I pre­fer Sam Sifton’s diges­tion of the sand­wich at the NYT; while I gen­er­ally am game for a taste of almost any­thing, this is one I’ll expe­ri­ence entirely vic­ar­i­ously, espe­cially when it gives me an excuse to read The Onion’s review:

Instead of the expected chicken fill­ing, the Dou­ble Down sticks two dif­fer­ent kinds of cheese—pepper jack and a mys­tery vari­ety cre­ated by the devil him­self to win souls and pun­ish human­ity by incit­ing a mas­sive wave of gluttony-induced heart attacks—bacon (yes, bacon), and some­thing called “The Colonel’s Sauce” between two fried, breaded chicken-breast pat­ties. (The Colonel’s Sauce, inci­den­tally, only sounds like a crude euphemism for ejac­u­late.)

Rule No. 1 of adven­tur­ous eat­ing: Beware of all secret sauces. You really don’t want to know the secret. Although the Big Mac’s is obvi­ous: Some sort of mayo/thousand-island-dressing mashup.

Any­way, back to bacon. I think the prob­lems started when glut­tons started adding it to cheese­burg­ers. You ask me, pro­teins can be com­bined in another medium — bouil­l­abaisse is fish stew, paella a big ol’ mess of fried rice — and some­times on a sand­wich (sub­ma­rine), but not on a cheese­burger. Make up your mind: Do you want a bacon sand­wich or a cheese­burger? You can’t have both. But that, I think, was the tip­ping point. Soon bacon became a joke ingre­di­ent, the magic un-PC add-on for every­thing from cook­ies to mar­ti­nis. You think I’m jok­ing. Go ahead, click.

The NYT link above explains that food has always tol­er­ated a cer­tain amount of silly show­man­ship, men­tion­ing the cus­tom of putting a nap­kin on one’s head while eat­ing an ortolan. (I’ve read about this. Sup­pos­edly it con­cen­trates the exquis­ite aroma of the endan­gered French song­bird. Also, it keeps God from see­ing you do such a vile thing.) We all know about tur­duck­ens, and even Julia Child has a recipe for a whole boned chicken stuffed with some­thing else, but God almighty, who goes to the trou­ble of bon­ing a chicken while leav­ing it intact? I bet that one came out of some deca­dent regal kitchen seek­ing to impress a bored monarch. Peas­ant cooks — the real gas­tro­nomic pio­neers — don’t have time for such silli­ness.

But this new bacon stunt work is just silly, the sort of thing you link and pass around Face­book, but never cook and never eat.

I stand cor­rected: John Scalzi ate a piece of Bacon Explo­sion. Some­one made it for him as a joke. This may be the sin­gle best descrip­tion of it I’ve ever read, and now I don’t even have to think about it any­more:

Oh, God, imag­ine there’s bacon on one side of my mouth and sausage on the other and they meet and have hot and angry make-up sex in the mid­dle while a salt lick cheers them on.

As for me, I’ll stick with bacon with pan­cakes, with eggs, sprin­kled on a salad, the occa­sional car­bonara and your late-summer BLTs with toma­toes straight out of the gar­den. You take your bacon cheese­burg­ers, your bacon explo­sions, and your Dou­ble Downs right back to hell, stunt eaters of the world. You are embar­rass­ing the pig. You should be ashamed.

So, blog­gage:

In keep­ing with today’s sodium-heavy theme, a story about Detroit’s salt mines, and rela­tions with the neigh­bors. (Not good.) I think Joe or some­one else men­tioned them a while back, so there you are.

On those annual get-to-know-the-freshman-class memos, the ones that col­lege in Wis­con­sin pre­pares every year to remind the fac­ulty that some of the kids in their classes have never even seen a type­writer, let alone used one, some­one should add: The 18-year-olds of today have never known respon­si­ble Repub­li­cans. I was IM-ing with a younger friend the other day, and real­ized he had no idea what a Rock­e­feller Repub­li­can was. Jacob Weis­berg asks who killed them, and fin­gers who else? Bill Kris­tol.

Oh, look: Com­cast is back­ing Right­Net­work, a new cable chan­nel focused on “enter­tain­ment with Pro-America, Pro-Business, Pro-Military sen­si­bil­i­ties.” Looks like Kelsey Gram­mer is involved. Funny how actors shouldn’t be involved in pol­i­tics when it’s lefty pol­i­tics, but on the right they get the Strange New Respect Award. Kelsey, once again, you can’t have it both ways. Although evi­dently you do.

Hello, manic Mon­day. Have a good one.