I didn’t get to the sports section of the NYT until later in the day yesterday, and am late in blogging this, but I doubt many others beat me to it. I don’t normally spend much time with that section, so it was a joy to see this handsome face dominating the page. (In the NYT, the Daytona 500 goes below the fold.)

It’s Greg Louganis, looking cuter than ever with salt-and-pepper hair and matching goatee. I didn’t know he’d been MIA from American diving since retiring in the late ’80s, and the story was pegged to his low-profile return to coaching “athletes with wide-ranging ages and abilities,” the story notes, adding:

To watch him dissecting a beginner’s front dive tuck during a practice last month was like observing Meryl Streep teaching an introductory acting class.

It goes on to note that he’s spent the past 23 years stabilizing his health (he has AIDS), practicing yoga, exorcising the standard array of personal demons and training dogs for agility trials, of all things. It almost sounded like he was hiding from the world, but then I thought back on what the world was like when he was a magazine-cover face, and thought, can’t blame him.

We’ve come a long, long way since 1988, when gay celebrities like Louganis were in an impossible position — unable to come out, but entirely unwilling to hide. I believe it was Jeff Borden who came back from the Los Angeles TV writers’ tour in 1984 and reported he’d heard from a Sports Illustrated writer that Carl Lewis was going to win every track-and-field event he entered, and then, at the height of his popularity, at his Mark Spitz Wheaties-box peak, come out of the closet. He was going to force America to admit that someone they loved was something they hated, and make them realize their position was unsupportable.

The Olympics came and went, and no Carl Lewis coming out. At the games, he came across as cocky and arrogant, making his value as an celebrity endorser less than golden. I guess he went for the money, because to this day, you can still find stories like this, from 2007:

One of the unspoken subtexts of all this, the shortfall in the public’s affection, the aloofness, the Michael Jackson comparison, even the red stilettos, was the question of Lewis’s sexuality. Some fellow athletes spread the story that Lewis was gay. He denied the rumour, but, whether by coincidence or not, Coca-Cola withdrew an advertising deal and Nike stopped using him in the States after the LA Olympics. One Nike executive was quoted as saying: ‘If you’re a male athlete, I think the American public wants you to look macho.’ The high jumper Dwight Stone perhaps hit the mark when he said: ‘It doesn’t matter what Carl Lewis’s sexuality is, Madison Avenue perceives him as homosexual.’ Lewis himself later said: ‘They started looking for ways to get rid of me. Everyone was so scared and cynical, they didn’t know what to do.’

Oh, well. The crisis for Louganis came when he admitted his HIV status some years after after the Games, and the media seized on the moment in 1988 when he’d hit his head on the diving board during competition, and allowed a doctor to treat the bloody wound without gloves. No matter that the country’s leading AIDS expert said the chances of a successful transmission under those circumstances were steep indeed. No matter he personally apologized. No matter the doctor tested negative. Every columnist needing to feed the beast weighed in — this number very well may have included me — and many of them disapproved. To them, Louganis’ Carl Lewis moment should have come on worldwide television, poolside, when the team doctor was bearing down on him to treat his bleeding head. Louganis proved not that strong. No harm, no foul, but lots of finger-shaking along the way. There was even a contingent who fretted about the other divers who entered the pool after Louganis; what about them, Mr. Olympics? Did you think about them in your selfish need to keep your condition private?

By the mid’90s (when Louganis revealed his HIV status), the first drugs that would make AIDS a chronic, rather than swiftly fatal disease were coming into wider use. But in the 1980s, the atmosphere was quite different. We knew by 1988 how one was infected with HIV, that you had to work pretty hard to get it, but it had served to make spilled blood into a metaphor for menace, not just for the person it was spilling from, but everyone who might come in contact with it. Hospital dramas on TV all featured a plot line where some nice nurse was accidentally stuck by a junkie’s needle. An ACT-UP demonstration was rousted by cops wearing thick yellow rubber gloves. Think back on all the people who used to work with bare hands and don’t anymore, from boxing referees to the ladies at the Red Cross. Christians speak of being washed in the blood of the Lamb, i.e., Jesus. Good thing this single guy who hung out with 12 other guys lived before retroviruses, or otherwise, ick.

I pity anyone with HIV who had to live through that era, but I’m very glad Louganis came out the other side with a satisfying life. I’m not a bit surprised he preferred to work with dogs. They don’t talk, and know the proper use for most newspapers.

Another fun thing I read in the same section yesterday: The Washington Nationals held open auditions for their mascots — giant presidents — last week:

For those who survived the physical test, auditions also consisted of an individual interview with members of the entertainment staff — which included questions like “What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” and answers like “pass gas in church.” Some candidates were ready to be spontaneous.

“I think my whole life has been leading up to this,” said Eileen, a 31-year-old schoolteacher from Alexandria, Va. “I walked around my college campus as a crash test dummy telling people not to drink and drive; I’ve been the Chick-fil-A cow and my school’s panther mascot. As the cow, I got my tail pulled a lot but knew exactly how to deal with it. I’m so ready for this.”

Fun fact: The Thomas Jefferson mascot is known as T.J.

I should read sports more often.

So, anything else going on? Pot calls kettle black, downs oxycontin milk shake. Indiana restaurant shows rare sense of humor, immediately apologizes. You can tell Foxy Brown was drunk in this photo, because only drunk chicks (and drag queens) think celery-green eye shadow is a good idea. Still, she kinda rocks it, don’t you think?

No, nothing else going on. Have a great Tuesday.

My first serious boyfriend in college was long-legged and lanky, and when he was trying to get someplace fast, I practically had to scamper to keep up with him. Scampering is a decidedly humiliating way to travel, so as a defense, I changed my walking stride. You think you know how to walk until you have to walk with a long-legged person, and then you learn.

The secret is to get your hips into the game. Most casual walkers walk from the knees down, but if you engage your iliac region, you can easily get a few extra inches out of a stride. When I started to ride, I would later learn to recognize this in horses; horsemen use the term “good mover” to describe an animal that covers ground easily without appearing to work too hard at it. A “daisy cutter” is a classic hunter, one whose gaits are easy and long, without much knee action; put him in a field of daisies and his hooves will lop the blossoms off as they brush over the tops. Knee action is wasted motion, and should be saved for fancy carriage horses, where that sort of high stepping is prized.

I would never call myself a daisy cutter — my legs are too short. But I like to get where I’m going without too much shilly-shallying, and why are you walking so slow in the middle of the goddamn sidewalk? Don’t you know anything?

The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating story today about researchers studying the roots of anger. You’ll never guess what their laboratory is:

Researchers say the concept of “sidewalk rage” is real. One scientist has even developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to map out how people express their fury. At its most extreme, sidewalk rage can signal a psychiatric condition known as “intermittent explosive disorder,” researchers say. On Facebook, there’s a group called “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head” that boasts nearly 15,000 members.

I don’t want to punch slow walkers, but I will never understand people who don’t follow simple rules of the pedestrian road. I thought everyone knew them; they’re essentially the same as the one for cars: Slow traffic to the right. Don’t stand in the middle of the sidewalk. And — very big on college campuses — there is a time and place to hold hands with another adult, but it’s not on a university walkway between classes. You idiot.

I think I should volunteer for this study.

I live in a car-mad city now, but I still like to walk when I can, and most of the time I have sidewalks entirely to myself. I don’t think it’s making me any more patient, and I wonder how I’d do in someplace like New York, which I haven’t visited since the beginning of the smart-phone era. I don’t know how I’d handle the amblers, the slow-walkers, the distracted millions who will not look up from their little screens, not even when someone is coming up behind them, fast. The police at Wayne State have a boilerplate memo they offer to anyone interested in staying safe on an urban campus in a dangerous city, and high on the list? Ignore your phone. Your call will wait. It is the gimpy leg that the urban predator looks for, because it means you’re not paying attention to anything other than some stupid text message.

As I read on in the story, I realized I’m not a classic sidewalk rager. I don’t bump into people if it can be avoided, and for the most part I will go around slower ones without glares or (much) muttering. Having been a stroller- and wheelchair-pusher myself, I understand the special problems posed by small children and elderly parents. Needless to say, I don’t hip-check anyone. But I fully admit to being driven nuts by people who will fan out in a group, usually women, frequently four abreast so they can be just like the “Sex and the City” girls, and not be aware that they have chosen to become a blood clot in the artery of a busy city. I try to go around, but sometimes they’ll stop — so the camera can zoom in on them while they make some witty remark — and I have no recourse but to go through the middle. They act surprised, like I’m invading their space. Who let this interloper into my movie set? Hey, girlie. Learn to walk.

OK, some bloggage:

Speaking of idiots, the Republicans aren’t serious about zeroing out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, are they? This has to be a bargaining-chip sort of deal. They aren’t really that stupid? No one’s that stupid. Oh, wait. So off I go to my elected representatives’ websites, there to register my objection. They’re all Democrats, so I believe it’s probably unnecessary, but you never know.

A milestone we all missed: Yesterday was Coozledad’s 50th birthday. Happy birthday, you delightful one.

This is red-carpet season, and Tom & Lorenzo are on the case, as usual. No red carpet is as tacky as the ones trod by the music industry, and their Grammy wrapup is hilarious. Just go to the main page, find part one and go from there. Never have I seen such awful formalwear, and I went to high school in the ’70s. Ignore the fact you won’t know three-quarters of the “stars,” and concentrate on the prose:

HELLO, GRAMMA FUNK! We don’t know who you are, but we feel like we know every inch of your body like an old lover. The curtain is rising on your vagina and your tits are screaming like two colicky babies.

Me, I’m off to work. Have a swell Tuesday, all.

I guess everybody wants to talk about last night’s Chrysler ad. OK. Let’s all watch it first; this looks like a nice HD version:

Wow. This is probably the seventh or eighth time I’ve watched it, and it keeps getting better. The opening shots are of the Rouge complex, the vast field of ominous smokestacks on the south side that you see from I-75 as you enter the metro area. It is not a pretty sight. It’s the sort of thing that if you were, say, a middle-aged woman coming to town on a house-hunting trip with your husband and little girl, preparing at midlife to pull up stakes and start over in a new city, and the day was gray and cold anyway, and suddenly the freeway starts to rise and you’re looking down at a place that looks like a set for a dystopian sci-fi flick featuring killer robots and toxic-avenger zombies — if you were that person, you might wonder what you’d gotten yourself into. (Not that I would know anything about that.)

Not only that, but the scene was shot in winter. No Pebble Beach ocean vistas or green mountain switchbacks or Bonneville salt flats with picturesque dust clouds, just bare trees, leaden skies and those clouds that roll in at Thanksgiving and don’t roll out until Easter except for once in a while in winter, when they are replaced by single-digit temperatures. Yep, this is the industrial Midwest, all right. The people we see on the street — Door Man and Dapper Man in Crosswalk — are African-American, as is the Fist. But not everybody. Look, a pretty skater. Are those real Lions doing roadwork? Can’t say. But it’s snowing, it’s cold, the manhole covers can’t contain the steam that rises up from below.

Is this hell? No, it’s Detroit. (And it’s a lot cooler.)

Now we see more of the car, because of course this is a car ad. If you’re an Eminem fan, or even know his face, you’ve already figured out who’s driving. After all, that’s his music on the soundtrack, along with…is that a gospel choir? Oh, man, they are going to go right up to the edge, aren’t they? And then here we are at the Fox — great marquee message, just fabulous — and yes, that is a gospel choir. Careful, Marshall, gospel choirs have been the ruin of many pop artists; they must be handled like plutonium, careful careful…

“This is the Motor City. And this is what we do.”

Perfect. In another venue, it would have played as bombast, but this is the Super Bowl. It’s where bombast goes to recharge itself, after it’s tired from visiting with Rush Limbaugh and Emerson, Lake and Palmer. This is where Apple dared to compare itself to George Orwell, where the Budweiser Clydesdales honored 9/11 victims, where a former presidential candidate made a joke about getting a boner for Britney Spears. You can’t go too far here, or if you can, no one has done it yet. And you came a little close, but not really. And you did it with such style. Ten out of 10. I hope the car’s half as good. You’re certainly going to sell a shitload of them here.

I hope this doesn’t signal the moment when Detroit Chic suddenly goes mainstream. If it does, I hope I can sell my screenplay first.

Elsewhere on the ad front, I can’t really speak with authority, as I only had the game on for background noise and didn’t watch all that closely. But, in general:

Darth Vader/Passat — very cute. However, I really wish I hadn’t read this obnoxious blog post about it first.

Groupon — ooh, edgy! I feel provoked! It’s so provocative! Actually, I’m not sure I trust Groupon anyway. I’ve used them once, for an opera ticket last fall, and felt I got what I paid for, i.e., a terrible seat for half price. But the half off stuff just seems wrong. From what I’ve heard, you offer at least a 50 percent discount, and then split the rest with Groupon, which means your discount is now 75 percent. I suppose the idea is to bring in new business, but I suspect it also brings in chintzy customers who tip for shit. Someone else, enlighten me.

The rest are a blur. No, I remember the Kia Optima, the epic journey. That was worth the time.

So. Another Monday, under a Monday-in-Detroit kind of sky. It’s been snowing on and off for three days, and finally, I feel like we have enough. I’ll feel differently in another month, but for now, the blanket seems just about right.

And now I have to get to work. Not in a Diego Rivera-mural sort of way, but in my own fashion. I risk repetitive strain injury! My collar is…well, at the moment it’s a turtleneck. Have a good day, all.

While the rest of you were discussing Mrs. Obama’s closet yesterday, I should have mentioned a couple of resources I depend on for all my Michelle Obama closet criticism needs.

There’s Tom & Lorenzo, of course, about whom I’d like to know more (even more than their about us link), if only to know how they seemingly are able to look at and absorb every single dress made by every single designer in the world, so that when Shelley O, as they call her, wears a Rachel Roy dress to the State of the Union speech, they have a post up within hours with multiple views of the dress — runway and in the wild — and something to say about it that’s actually worth reading. Because of their exhaustive coverage, I’ve learned that Shelley frequently has her pieces altered to show off her best features, changing a neckline or sleeve or hemline. I wonder who does that for her, and where she finds the time for all those fittings.

And lest you think they’re in the bought-and-paid-for left-wing media cabal of bum-smoochers, they don’t pull their punches when they don’t like something. Which gives them credibility, in my book. Besides the First Lady, they also offer the same bitchery/air kissery for red carpet looks of all occasions. Unlike the magazines, they ignore the paparazzi shots of starlets schlepping Starbucks cups between yoga classes, confining their criticism to those occasions when people who are paid to look good are on the job, which I think is very fair. Anyway, a daily stop for me.

Another is the Michelle Obama Look Book, from New York magazine’s website, which needs some housekeeping — it’s still labeled 2010. They have no criticism, just photos, but they do include those chopper-to-residence walk photos that are simply part of the presidential portfolio. If you want to see how a well-dressed woman looks when she’s not dressed up, it’s useful.

Mary Elizabeth Williams took a stab at saying the obvious — she can’t please everyone — this week in Salon, which featured another slideshow, every one of which I’d seen, but included a picture of Sasha and Malia, prompting a my-how-they’ve-grown from me. (Malia is now almost as tall as her mother.) It also contains a huge error that I can’t believe no one has fixed by now; Azzedine Alaia did not design Elizabeth Hurley’s safety-pin dress. Apparently the huge Versace buttons and Versace credit on their very own link eluded the copy editors.

And if you Google around a bit, you can find dozens of sites that do the same thing, including Mrs. O, as well as reams and reams of commentary like this.

To which I just added 443 words. Talk about unnecessary.

However, that will have to be my 443 words today. Not one but two early meetings, followed by another trip to the Subaru dealer in Ferndale for the endless soap opera of Alan’s Catalytic Converter Follies. You don’t want to know. So I have to fly early today. Have a great weekend, and maybe, if it’s not too brutally cold, I might find time for some Saturday morning marketing around here.

A good cup of coffee should be simple to make. Two ingredients, one of them water. And yet, it’s so easy to screw it up. Lately I’ve been following the advice of Spec. John Grimes in “Black Hawk Down,” who believed it was all in the grind — can’t be too fine, can’t be too coarse. Today, I got it right. Today, I am well-coffee’d.

I wish I’d written down the precise number of seconds I whirled those beans in the grinder. But then the perfect would be too attainable. Live in the now, Garth.

OK, so what’s going on in Cairo? Live feeds on CNN and MSNBC, the usual yapping blondes on Fox. I’ve given up trying to watch Al-Jazeera online; when I can connect, the plug-in crashes, but I usually can’t connect. The people I know who have a keen interest in overseas news all keep a second satellite dish aimed at their bird of choice. Fortunately, we have this thing called the written word, which I’ve always preferred to grainy satellite images, anyway. A former colleague of mine, Ash Khalil, is reporting from Cairo:

The first sign that things were about to tip badly into darkness came shortly after the Internet returned. I was in a taxi with a group of journalists heading to opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei’s home on the outskirts of Cairo to attempt an interview. From the other direction came what looked like a 1,000-person march of pro-Mubarak supporters chanting slogans like “We love the president” and “He’s not going.” Many of the protesters were riding horses and camels — from the looks of them, many appeared to be tourist touts coming from the stables clustered around the Pyramids on the outskirts of Cairo. At the time, my colleagues and I thought it made for a great journalistic visual; we snapped a few pictures and furiously started scribbling in our notebooks. Within hours, those horses and camels had been used in a bizarre, medieval mounted charge into the unarmed civilians occupying Tahrir.

Attack camels. Now that would be something to see.

Actually, the entire Foreign Policy website is useful for Egypt news, with some nice photography, as well. I recommend this photo essay. Diplomacy is such a tricky art.

The NYT hasn’t slacked in its coverage, either:

The battle was waged by Mohammed Gamil, a dentist in a blue tie who ran toward the barricades of Tahrir Square. It was joined by Fayeqa Hussein, a veiled mother of seven who filled a Styrofoam container with rocks. Magdi Abdel-Rahman, a 60-year-old grandfather, kissed the ground before throwing himself against crowds mobilized by a state bent on driving them from the square. And the charge was led by Yasser Hamdi, who said his 2-year-old daughter would live a life better than the one he endured.

“Aren’t you men?” he shouted. “Let’s go!”

Whenever I read things like this, I wonder where I’d be if this were happening in my city. On the one hand, it’s easy to climb the cannon and shout charge! That great military mind, Ashley Wilkes, told Scarlett, “Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes.” On the other hand, once the charge is under way, I guess you discover what you’re made of.

So. Severe clear here today, a day for mirrored sunglasses and the down parka. As difficult as it is to realize at the moment (11 degrees F), the earth is turning back toward the sun, and the signs are everywhere. I dropped Kate off for jazz-band practice this morning in daylight, if not quite the broad kind. Groundhog Day. And tomorrow is the first parent informational meeting for high-school registration. Mercy. How did that happen?

I’m off to Costco, dodging no impediment fiercer than the weather and Michigan potholes. In the meantime, much good bloggage:

Jim at Sweet Juniper found some ghost signs uncovered in a demolition, dug deeper, and turned up an interesting story about one of the companies:

In looking into the history of this company, I was surprised to learn of a controversy from a hundred years ago that largely mirrors many of the current concerns with the garment manufacturing industry and third-world sweatshops. It appears that many companies manufacturing clothes after the turn of the century—mainly those making clothes for sale through large catalog retailers or national chains—used deeply-discounted prison labor as part of their manufacturing processes.

Seventy-year-old Michigan farmer foils theft of anhydrous ammonia in the middle of the blizzard.

Forgot this yesterday, but Mark Bittman filed his first non-recipe column this week, and it’s a food manifesto for the future. He’s got a way with words:

Nearly everything labeled “healthy” or “natural” is not. It’s probably too much to ask that “vitamin water” be called “sugar water with vitamins,” but that’s precisely what real truth in labeling would mean.

Finally, one more reason to love “Mad Men.” You know how all the women look so great, and you ask yourself, “Why can’t I find a dress like Betty Draper’s?” Well, now you can.

Time for new contacts and the aforementioned sunglasses. I’m heading out.

Jeff TMMO has asked me to address the big news from last night, although it was really the big news from Monday: Mark Bittman is dropping his Minimalist column from the NYT, but starting an op-ed and magazine gig with the same paper, moving on from recipes to ruminations and analyses of U.S. food policy.

Jeff seems to mourn the loss for the food pages. I’m thrilled for the other sections’ gain.

I guess I should have mentioned it sooner, but as owners of the two Bittman cornerstones — “How to Cook Everything” and “How to Cook Everything Vegetarian” — I have paid less attention to his column, save for those “101” blowouts he does from time to time, the 101 salads piece, or the make-ahead Thanksgiving dishes, or whatever. I learned what I needed to learn about cooking from Bittman a while ago, and I think he’s going to be a wonderful voice on the opinion pages.

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and predict that within five years, Bittman will win a Pulitzer Prize for commentary. He’s that good, and besides, the ranks of commentators in the dailies has grown so thin, the juries will be desperate to hand one to a fresh new voice. When Kathleen Parker and Leonard Pitts win the Big P, you know it’s time.

And judging from the lively discussions we have in this space about food, food policy, eating and all the rest of it, he’ll have no shortage of thought-provoking material. I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, what about the other news last night? I’m talking about Chris Matthews yelling at some Tea Party d’bag over their shameless use of Michele Bachmann to deliver their propaganda last night. While I congratulate Matthews for being one of the few journalists (on TV, anyway) who actually tells people they’re not answering the question he asked, all his spluttering isn’t going to change anything or anybody, so maybe the answer is to not pay attention to Michele Bachmann. Works for me.

And the Oscars! Nothing really really surprising there, was there? Brian took umbrage over Hailee Steinfeld being nominated for best-supporting when she was clearly in a lead role, but that’s the way Oscar rolls. Promising ingenues who hit one out of the park in their first role are almost always supporters, especially if they’re minors. It’s the Rookie of the Year prize, and all you have to do is think of all the people who have won it who never did work of the same caliber again. There was Haing Ngor (“The Killing Fields”), who wasn’t even an actor; Marlee Matlin (“Children of a Lesser God”), who still acts, but whose work is strictly at the TV-drama skill level, and, of course, Mo’Nique. I just hope the Oscars aren’t a total walkover for “The King’s Speech” this year. A very fine film, but there were many others, and those big consensus winners don’t age well. When was the last time you saw “Gandhi” on cable and stopped to watch even a minute of it? Or “Out of Africa,” for that matter? (Actually, I will watch “Out of Africa,” but only for Meryl Streep. Robert Redford is laughable.)

A quick pass by the bloggage before our mortgage man stops by. We’re refinancing our house, and I need to limber up for signing my name 400 times.

Via Lawyers, Guns and Money, a site you can waste a minute or an hour on: Better Book Titles.

I’ve been giving Tom & Lorenzo a lotta love of late, but what the hell, they’re on a hot streak, like today’s Dress Libs with Zooey Deschanel.

Someone should do this with “It’s the End of the World as We Know It:” A visual map of “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Actually, someone should do a master’s thesis on the pop-culture afterlife of songs like this. Exhibit A, of course: the Rickroll.

Finally, today is my state’s 174th birthday, or so one of my tweeps tells me. Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circumspice. Happy birthday to the pleasant peninsula.

Off to flex my fingers. Good day to all.

I hope it’s a testament to the spirit of this blog that I made a big fuss over its ninth anniversary, in 2009 2010, and completely forgot its 10th, which happened last Friday. The traditional tenth anniversary gift is tin. I’ll take mine in the shape of a horn. A tinhorn, my dictionary tells me, is a petty braggart who puts on airs and pretends to be richer and more important than s/he is. That’s pretty much the definition of this blog, ain’a?

Anyway, I don’t mention this to set off a round of congratulations, but because I stumbled across this Crain’s Chicago Business story about the phenomenon of blog disillusionment, people who started with great enthusiasm and soon found themselves running out of things to say. This guy, for instance, thought he could get a book deal:

He founded Modern Craft in 2007 and spent seven to 10 hours a week on the blog. It received 800 to 1,500 views per post, a respectable number for an independent blog. But it launched the career not of Mr. Harbison, but of the artists he featured. While they signed deals with Target, Urban Outfitters and Chronicle Books, he got virtually nothing, save for a spread featuring him and his mid-century Evanston home in ReadyMade magazine.

“I could see it happening, but it wasn’t happening for me,” Mr. Harbison says.

Sorry, dude. Harbison went back to work at what he does best — designing his own line of textiles and canvas bags. Others featured in the story did the same, jumping in with great enthusiasm, keeping things at a high boil for a few weeks or months, and then petering out. They’d run out of things to say, it was harder than it looked, they’d grown in a different direction. And one more ghost ship is abandoned to drift along the currents of the internet, its comment section filling with spam, until one day the URL isn’t renewed and it becomes an Estonian porn site. (Don’t laugh — this happened to one of the most obnoxious radio talk-show hosts in Fort Wayne, one of Brian Stouder’s lip-flappers. One day it’s pictures of his daughters and recipes for mashed potatoes made with cream cheese, the next it’s sluts in blue eyeshadow putting something other than mashed potatoes in their mouths. It has since gone back to a placeholder, but for a while there — woo.)

Back to the story:

The feeling that nobody’s reading can cause bloggers to quit. “It’s discouraging, if that’s the reason you’re blogging,” says Liz Strauss, a Chicago-based professional blogger, web strategist and founder of SOBCon, an online business conference.

Ms. Strauss, who maintains three blogs, began in 2005, when she was one of 12 million. Now, to stand out in a sea of 31 million, “it’s no longer OK to be a mommy or daddy or business blogger,” she says. “The more narrowly you define your niche, the more visible you become.”

I’ve heard this before. I think it’s crap. How much more narrowly defined could this blog be? “One writer’s daily download,” is how I describe it when asked, and yet still, is Amy Adams playing me at the cineplex?

The only reason to blog is if you have something to say. Your readers will find you, or they won’t. And you’ll probably make more money making textiles and canvas bags.

I read and liked — and blogged about — the NYT op-ed that most likely prompted this book contract, so I guess I’d better read the book, too. Paul Clemens’ “Punching Out: One Year in a Closing Auto Plant” sounds worth the time, even though, as the critic points out, it’s not so much about a closing auto plant as a closed one, being disassembled by specialized crews and shipped, piece by piece, to countries where the labor doesn’t expect quite the wages they do here.

I was struck by the numbers; at one point he notes that this plant, Budd Detroit Automotive Plant, Stamping and Framing Division, employed 10,000. That was the figure that the International Harvester factory in Fort Wayne once employed, back when it was the biggest employer in town. It closed in 1980, an event that seared the city’s consciousness the way World War II did my parents’ generation. One-quarter of the city fell into a slide it never recovered from, a disaster that affected uncounted businesses and families. Detroit is a much larger city, of course, and Budd was only one player, and nowhere near the largest. All over the city are plants like it, and many more that are considerably smaller, the mom-and-pop tool-and-die shops, the widget factories, whatever. Many are being disassembled the same way this one is. We live in interesting times.

Oh, but let’s close on a high note, shall we?

Bloggage:

What Roger Ebert will miss about Regis Philbin, a YouTube bouquet. Philbin really has the gift of not taking himself too seriously. He could teach his co-hosts a thing or three.

Gene Weingarten made reference to this yesterday: Kate Winslet admits to wearing a merkin for a brief scene in “The Reader.” An old story, but when it comes to merkins, you can never be overinformed.

I was more struck by the question that prompted it, from a reader:

I saw the show “Hair” at the Kennedy Center some weeks ago, and while I liked it more than disliked it, one thing in particular bothered me.

Directors, costumers, set design etc. try so hard to put an authentic feel to a show, and yet this show, about free love, about community, about the Vietnam war, and famously about full frontal nudity…didn’t show one follicle of pubic hair. Really? Was it too much to ask the actors to let it grow out for the run of the show? So anachronistic, it took me out of the moment.

Man, it would me, too. Really? That’s bad direction, if you ask me.

And now the coffee has fully engaged, so it’s time to get dressed, get showered, and get to work. Not in that order.

One of the things Saturday afternoon’s grim news did was shove out of the way Saturday morning’s grim news, i.e., this trollbait in the Wall Street Journal, which I dearly hope you can read, as, well, hoo-boy. Modestly titled, “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,” it kicks off:

A lot of people wonder how Chinese parents raise such stereotypically successful kids. They wonder what these parents do to produce so many math whizzes and music prodigies, what it’s like inside the family, and whether they could do it too. Well, I can tell them, because I’ve done it. Here are some things my daughters, Sophia and Louisa, were never allowed to do:

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

It goes on from there at great length, detailing how the author, Amy Chua, put her children on the road to success by laying a whip on their backs, hard and often. Never mind the Meanie Mom ooga-booga lead — the real fun comes later on, which Chua casually describes her beliefs about parent-child relations, i.e. that children “owe everything” to their parents, and hence must do precisely as they’re told, all the time, and tolerate casual insults (“fatty,” “garbage”), which Chua sees as evidence of bracing honesty and tough love. Actually not even tough love, as the word “love” doesn’t appear anywhere in the story. We wouldn’t want to get the idea she’s a softie, after all, not that we would after we hear the account of how she got her 7-year-old to learn “The Little White Donkey,” a piano piece:

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu’s dollhouse to the car and told her I’d donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn’t have “The Little White Donkey” perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, “I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?” I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn’t do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

A Western parent would have given up long ago, but not this superior mother:

…I rolled up my sleeves and went back to Lulu. I used every weapon and tactic I could think of. We worked right through dinner into the night, and I wouldn’t let Lulu get up, not for water, not even to go to the bathroom. The house became a war zone, and I lost my voice yelling, but still there seemed to be only negative progress, and even I began to have doubts.

You know this story has a happy ending, right? Yes, Lulu learned to play “The Little White Donkey,” and her mother glows with self-approval.

Well, like I said: I know when I’m being trolled. At over 2,000 comments, it’s all building to the crescendo of an online chat with the superior mother on Thursday. But that’s not what I want to discuss, but rather something Mother Superior drops casually:

I’ve noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children’s self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children’s psyches. Chinese parents aren’t. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

I’ve noticed that I read this truism frequently. I’ve also noticed that it isn’t borne out in my experience. To read some commentators, “self-esteem” is a subject you can major in in American public schools. Children are constantly being petted and affirmed and bolstered with praise, I’m told. And yet, I look around, and I don’t see much attention being paid to it, if any. Oh, you hear a reference here and there to something building self-esteem, but it’s not something that gets special emphasis. In fact, now that I think about it, the parents I know also assume “strength, not fragility” in their kids. They’re just not quite so…what’s the word…psychotic about it, as Chua.

Of those hundreds of commentators, most say Chua is a lunatic, but a fair number fall into the “well, I wouldn’t go that far, but she’s on the right track with rejecting all that self-esteem nonsense.”

Troll. Bait.

Bloggage? Sure:

You’ll never smear honey on your toast again. At least not supermarket honey. I didn’t even know you could give antibiotics to bees.

One minute they’re bumping chests, the next minute, tumbling down the shoulder of I-75 — yet another death worth of a “Six Feet Under” open.

Po’ Sawah Pawin. That is all.

I simply refuse to pay close attention to wonk-circle chitchat during a holiday week, but I gather this piece on the current fashion for libertarianism was the subject at hand yesterday.

I read it. It made sense. It seemed fair. Of course, libertarians hated it. I gather they thought it got mean toward the end. I’m taking that as a sign it was pretty good. This passage got to the gist pretty well:

There are reasons our current society evolved out of a libertarian document like the Constitution. The Federal Reserve was created after the panic of 1907 to help the government reduce economic uncertainty. The Civil Rights Act was necessary because “states’ rights” had become a cover for unconstitutional practices. The welfare system evolved because private charity didn’t suffice. Challenges to the libertopian vision yield two responses: One is that an economy free from regulation will grow so quickly that it will lift everyone out of poverty. The second is that if somehow a poor person is still poor, charity will take care of them. If there is not enough charity, their families will take care of them. If they have no families to take care of them—well, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.

Of course, we’ll never get there. And that’s the point. Libertarians can espouse minarchy all they want, since they’ll never have to prove it works.

I like that because it restates what I’ve been saying for years: Being a libertarian means never having to say, “So help me God” on swearing-in day. Today we have a few exceptions, but not enough to change libertarianism from a philosophy to a party. All you need to know is that Ron Paul is pro-life to know what a joke it is. Sorry, ladies — your liberty stops when you get knocked up.

And also, this:

It’s no coincidence that most libertarians discover the philosophy as teenagers. At best, libertarianism means pursuing your own self-interest, as long as you don’t hurt anyone else. At worst, as in Ayn Rand’s teachings, it’s an explicit celebration of narcissism. “Man’s first duty is to himself,” says the young architect Howard Roark in his climactic speech in The Fountainhead. “His moral obligation is to do what he wishes.” Roark utters these words after dynamiting his own project, since his vision for the structure had been altered without his permission. The message: Never compromise. If you don’t get your way, blow things up. And there’s the problem. If everyone refused to compromise his vision, there would be no cooperation. There would be no collective responsibility. The result wouldn’t be a city on a hill. It would be a port town in Somalia. In a world of scarce resources, everyone pursuing their own self-interest would yield not Atlas Shrugged but Lord of the Flies. And even if you did somehow achieve Libertopia, you’d be surrounded by assholes.

(I think someone saw that video.)

OK, then. I have to say, with all my complaining yesterday, I do love the pace of this week. Fifty percent of the world is on vacation. No one calls. I can sleep late. Why yesterday, I even took time for a luncheon graze through Costco — they had all the party dips and spreads out for sample. I bought a bottle of champagne just to be a good customer. And then reflected that my life is pathetic, and all I need is a Christmas sweater to tip all the way over into total nerd-dom.

A quick skip to the bloggage? Sure:

Lesbians — they’re just like us! They go on vacation, wear silly hats, and shop at Hermes.

Of all the things that would upset the right about $P, it took…s’mores? We live in Crazytown.

Take that disembodied hand off my knee, or the best of the year’s worst Photoshops.

Think I’ll go do some more pretend work.

I generally have the chance to attend a big, splashy, over-the-top Broadway musical — i.e., the ones where tickets start at $100 and climb swiftly upward — about once a lifetime, if that. I find ticket prices like that a little hostile. In fact, now that I think about it, the only show like that I’ve seen, if you rule out a few also-rans, is probably “Miss Saigon,” which I didn’t even like. I thought the helicopter stunt was showoffy, and, well. Give me a night of Eugene O’Neill and I’m happy. I think theater should be all about talking and minimally dressed stages, but your mileage may vary. No judgment. Life is a cabaret, old chum.

So it may be that I’m looking at the ongoing train wreck of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” with unsympathetic eyes. You tell me:

An actor performing in the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” was injured during a performance Monday night, according to the police and several witnesses.

Theatergoers who attended Monday’s performance of “Spider-Man,” a $65 million musical featuring complicated aerial stunts, said that they saw a performer playing the title hero fall about 8 to 10 feet into a pit during the closing minutes of the show, and that some equipment fell into the audience when this occurred. A video of the performance showed a line holding the performer apparently snap.

The story goes on to reveal some remarkable facts. I caught the tail end of a public-radio segment about the problems the show is having getting up to speed, but it sounded far more routine than this — the accident described above is only the latest and most serious in a string of mishaps that have included concussions and some sort of injury suffered by actors in “a sling-shot technique meant to propel them across the stage.” Oh.

The show’s budget is at $65 million. I wonder what they’re paying for insurance.

I know this production — it seems wrong to call it a “play,” somehow — is directed by Julie Taymor, the MacArthur-branded genius of the Disney musicals. Since her branding, her work has been a tetch uneven, at least if you accept the critical consensus that “Across the Universe” was a disorienting p.o.s. Roger Ebert gave it four stars, but just one paragraph of his review gave me a headache:

Julie Taymor, famous as the director of “The Lion King” on Broadway, is a generously inventive choreographer, such as in a basic-training scene where all the drill sergeants look like G.I. Joe; a sequence where inductees in Jockey shorts carry the Statue of Liberty through a Vietnam field, and cross-cutting between dancing to Beatles clone bands at an American high school prom and in a Liverpool dive bar. There are underwater sequences which approach ballet, a stage performance that turns into musical warfare, strawberries that bleed, rooftop concerts and a montage combining crashing waves with the Detroit riots.

A swift recovery to the fallen actor, whose injuries we don’t even know the extent of, yet. Best of luck to this production; the world needs all the art it can take. I’d say “break a leg,” but somehow I think that would be in bad taste.

Tuesday of Christmas week — time to check the list a third time and run around buying last-minute stuff I should have gotten weeks ago. Also, groceries. Apparently there are two other people living in this house, and they expect to be fed from time to time. So I’d best be doing that soon. Any bloggage? Sure.

Via 4dbirds, PolitiFact takes on a meme circulating through the right/left/crazy blogosphere: No, Virginia, the government does not want to regulate your backyard garden. These people will believe anything.

Stop laughing. This isn’t funny. It’s NOT funny when someone shoots himself in his sleep. In a car. On the Ohio Turnpike. Well, the guy is from Detroit; he had his reasons.

MMJeff wanted to draw attention to this story, so consider it drawn. A plan to make homelessness history? Good luck with that. How to address the voluntary homeless, the street kids and other spare-changers who make street navigation in places like San Francisco and Seattle so irritating? Not much mention made of those. The plan is ambitious, however, and I wish its executors well. Like the producers of “Spider-Man.” But we shall see.