You guys are having such a good time in the comments I’m thinking I should just turn the wheel over to you. Surely you have more to say than I do. I just wrote eight paragraphs of an obituary of Edward Kennedy, then thought Jeez, let the man die first. Then I went back to bed for an hour. I need a very long bike ride and I plan to take it, but before I do so, let me fish this comment by mild-mannered Jeff out of the comments previous and hold it up to the light:

OK, i finally got around to reading the second page of the “purity ball” story and looking at the slide show. For the record, “ewwwww.”

Having typed that, i gotta type this — have y’all been to any Midwestern ceremonial of any of the following: Job’s Daughters, Rainbow Girls, DeMolay, Key Club, Eastern Star, Knights of Pythias, Civil Air Patrol (yes, especially their youth dept.), Grange youth auxiliary, or DAR? I’ve ended up sitting through all these and more doing the opening prayer or singing a solo at the request of the new officer installation or something. They’re all off-kilter rehearsals for weddings and even, in a dim sort of way, funerals, and they share elements of the kitschy and creepy all wound up in Enlightenment symbolism and patriotic fervor and a vague kind of practical mysticism that may use the name “Jesus” with some emphasis but isn’t worried about being Christian at all.

What i find most fascinating (as opposed to appalling) about this is how it’s another expression of the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon in American society — these are events that replace what used to be spread through a whole nine-month, Sept./May programmatic year of youth organizations that you joined and worked through the offices for . . . 12 officers for a group that had maybe 20 members at most meetings.

Those ongoing organizations are fading fast, and “events” are getting cobbled together to replace them, like . . . the Purity Ball. Concentrated kitsch and intense focus on a relationship that needs to play out over time, not find an artificial focus on one evening.

I still laugh at the horror-stricken look on my wife’s face when i pointed out to her, decades after, the Freudian aspect of the major service clubs in her high school for boys and girls — I kid you not, Key Club and Lockets. No points for guessing which was which!

I used to date a boy who was in DeMolay, if an eighth-grader carrying on a long-distance correspondence with a gawky geek in southern Ohio can be called “dating.” I met him when I was in Ironton visiting a friend, and he came to Columbus for a DeMolay convention. I kept saying, “DeMo-wha-?” and I’m still not sure what, exactly, it is, although it has something to do with the Masons. Fortunately, they have a website, which explains:

DeMolay is an organization dedicated to preparing young men to lead successful, happy, and productive lives. Basing its approach on timeless principles and practical, hands-on experience, DeMolay opens doors for young men aged 12 to 21 by developing the civic awareness, personal responsibility and leadership skills so vitally needed in society today. DeMolay combines this serious mission with a fun approach that builds important bonds of friendship among members in more than 1,000 chapters worldwide.

Jeff’s right. One thousand chapters or not, these outfits are dying dying dying. They don’t fit with modern life. Those ladies’ clubs where dowagers gathered in flowered hats to discuss gardening and good works? Going and gone. When I was a columnist, every so often I’d accept a speaking invitation from the Rotary or Lions or (my favorite) the Optimists, and it was like One Hour in Middle-Management Hell. I was frequently struck by the rituals — the group singing, the pledge of allegiance, the pledge of brotherhood, repeated loudly. (Roar lions, roar lions! Bite ’em bite ’em bite ’em!)

It didn’t work out with Mr. DeMolay. I hope he found a nice Rainbow Girl and settled into a nice southern Ohio life. I will always remember him fondly, though, because he took me to see “A Clockwork Orange.”

Since we’re letting others carry my load today, let’s toss it to Michael Musto:

There seem to be more publicists working the Sex and the City movie than hairdressers gathered around Burt Reynolds’ noggin trying to make his shit look real.

Man, I’ll say. Is there a photograph of the Fightin’ Four walking toward the camera in color-coordinated outfits that hasn’t been published yet? It’s like a downmarket version of “The Wire” blitz last winter. And the movie doesn’t open for another week! I may have to go on entertainment-section hiatus to get through it.

Bossy has fallen in love with Rachel Maddow. I haven’t, although I like her fine. She’s strangely compelling to watch, mainly because of the disconnect between her confidence in her ideas and expression, and her plain discomfort in her TV makeup and pearl-gray jacket. She looks like a man who wandered, jacketless, into a restaurant with a dress code, and has to wear one out of the lost-and-found box. I know she probably doesn’t normally spend a lot of time thinking about the semiotics of the smoky eye, and neither do I, so I’ll leave that to her makeup artist. But she was on “On the Media” talking about those jackets, and she said MSNBC finds them for her. MSNBC doesn’t need my financial support, so I won’t take up a collection, but I’d like to suggest they buy her another two or three of them, preferably in deeper colors that will flatter her fine skin. If I were dressing her I’d also put in a word for a necklace or two, maybe some very very subtle silver earrings, but that would probably burn her flesh the way the smoky eye seems to. Bossy has unearthed a picture of her in Buddy Holly frames, and she looks perfectly natural. That’s what she should wear on the air.

(When I was on TV, people were always giving me advice about my turnout. I said to myself, “Boy, I hope I never waste time picking apart TV-news outfits.” Shows what I knew.)

A few of you reader folks have been saying, in comments, that I’m a liberal/socialist for supporting Obama, and I’d like to correct that, although I wonder why I bother, because I suspect some of you would describe anyone to the left of Dick Cheney as such, but here goes: I’m not supporting the Democratic ticket, whatever it shapes up to be, for lots of specific policy reasons. I want us to start developing some sort of solution to the health-care mess, and to get out of Iraq, and to figure out what we’re going to do with the part of the country that has been cut out the American bargain in recent years. That’s a heavy load, and I don’t know if the Illinois senator can carry it all on those slender shoulders of his. But I do know this: No one running for president today can be worse at the job than the current occupant of the Oval Office. So all the talk about whether Obama’s ready or if he’s been tested or if he did something in Chicago that isn’t absolutely kosher good-government best-practices seems irrelevant at this point. All the candidates are imperfect, but for Republican in particular to say, “He’s not qualified,” after eight years of blood-drenched fiascos just seems, I dunno, galling. I’m not getting a tattoo. I’m not buying a T-shirt. But I’m pulling the lever with the sense that whoever wins will be an improvement, and some will represent more improvement than others.

That’s why John McCain is putting as much distance between himself and George W. Bush as is humanly possible, and that’s why, barring a disaster, Obama’s the favorite to win. Yes, it’s that bad. Get the hook.

Back tomorrow. More rested, I hope.

A p.s. to yesterday’s story of John and Sammy’s house: You can’t see it, but underneath that tree is their nearly new Prius, and I’m told it survived the crash with only a few cosmetic dents. The massive oak’s trunk fell directly on the reinforced passenger compartment, something to remember the next time your uncle says he wouldn’t be caught dead in one of those death traps.

And it was a big tree:

OK.

You hardly have to be a grizzled veteran of internet culture wars to know this story would be red meat for the blogs:

Marche Taylor’s prom night experience wasn’t what you would call “the norm.” That’s because instead of a night of dancing and hanging out with friends, the Madison High School senior ended up in a confrontation with school officials and escorted out in handcuffs. Officials said her dress was inappropriate for the prom.

I urge you to check out the video. “Inappropriate” doesn’t really describe it. The photo of Marche being rousted, taken as she passed under the hotel’s lit-up entrance, looks like nothing so much as a Vegas hooker bust.

This story got less attention:

Jasmine Donald calls herself an “over-the-top person,” so it’s fitting she rode to her prom last week in a chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce Phantom.

Donald, 18, wanted to make a bold statement. And for $6,000, she did, thanks to a gift from her grandmother.

The Belleville teen stepped from the $340,000 luxury car into a crowd of paparazzi snapping shots of her walking into the once-in-a-lifetime event.

At least for a night, Donald led the lifestyle of the rich and famous — complete with hired photographers.

Both are pretty depressing, for any number of reasons. The first girl obviously has no one in her life to tell her one doesn’t go to a high-school dance dressed like Li’l Kim, the second no one to say a $6,000 gift from one’s grandmother should be spent on college, not a goddamn posse of fake paparazzi taking your picture. Even a car would last longer. (Hint to others considering this insane idea: When buying an experience from a jar, ask yourself, “Will the actor/participants in this laugh at me behind their backs?” If the answer is yes, save your money. Also: When you spend a hefty four-figure sum to have something be “all about me,” you need to reexamine your priorities.)

I guess it’s to be expected that a couple of shallow teenagers — and many other shallow teenagers, whose stories don’t make the paper — see their high-school proms as some sort of low-rent Oscar night. (Aided and abetted, I might add, by newspaper reporters who helpfully describe them as “once-in-a-lifetime” events. At the moment I am having a once-in-a-lifetime Tuesday morning. You don’t see me booking photographers.) They’ve been seduced by the cult of celebrity, ever detail of which is a filthy lie. The New Yorker had a great piece last week on the fashion world’s undisputed master of Photoshop, Pascal Dangin. How great is he? This great:

For a charity auction a few years back, the photographer Patrick Demarchelier donated a private portrait session. The lot sold, for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, to the wife of a very rich man. It was her wish to pose on the couple’s yacht. “I call her, I say, ‘I come to your yacht at sunset, I take your picture,’ ” Demarchelier recalled not long ago. He took a dinghy to the larger boat, where he was greeted by the woman, who, to his surprise, was not wearing any clothes.

“I want a picture that will excite my husband,” she said.

Capturing such an image, by Demarchelier’s reckoning, proved to be difficult. “I cannot take good picture,” he said. “Short legs, so much done to her face it was flat.” Demarchelier finished the sitting and wondered what to do. Eventually, he picked up the phone: “I call Pascal. ‘Make her legs long!’ ”

Pascal Dangin can make your legs long. But you need to read The New Yorker to learn that. I doubt poor Marche Taylor does so.

And to think, just last week I was feeling sorry for Mischa Barton and her cottage-cheese ass. Screw her. At least she got a few gift bags out of being a celebrity.

So let’s make this a mostly I Hate Celebrities/No Photoshop bloggage roundup today:

Who had to sit behind Sarah Jessica Parker at the “Sex and the City” premiere in London yesterday? My sympathies. (Psst, SJP: That thing was meant for the horses outside.)

And, as usual, the Daily Mail is on the We Point It Out Because We CARE beat, re: SJP’s hands.

OK, a late start today, maybe some improvement later, but for now, I gotta get to work. Carry on.

You younger readers may want to sit down for this next part: Once upon a time, the only thing you needed for great sex was a can-do attitude and a filthy mind. All the other stuff that goes along for the ride — raw oysters, lingerie, a firm mattress, bourbon — is just frippery. Fun frippery, sure, but not necessary. How this universal human experience of joy came to be seen as wanting, I have no idea. Maybe someone thought plain old sex was too ’70s, too granola, too hairy-legged or something. When I learned young people were piercing their tongues for the express purpose of “improving” oral sex, I could only shake my head and recall the old joke, about what a man says after the worst bj of his life. (“That was great.”) I tell you this so you can know where I’m coming from when I tell you what I found in my Sunday newspaper ad insert, among the grocery ads. Yes, it’s a marquee position for KY’s latest concoction, a “couples lubricant” called Yours & Mine.

(And yes, let me pause for a moment to imagine the many geezers I toiled under in the newspaper business — the same ones who fretted over every too-high hemline in a fashion story and too-suggestive title in the movie listings — peeing their pants over this. Alas, they are no longer in a position to turn down advertising, even pre-print, and needless to say, if “Sexual Perversity in Chicago” were being made into a movie today, no one would have to change its title to “About Last Night” for fear of not being able to advertise it. It might help if they cast someone other than Demi Moore and Rob Lowe, however.)

At this point, I’d like to add a little musical accompaniment:

Now that I’m a geezer myself, of course I wondered why “he” needs a lubricant at all, unless Yours & Mine is just an elaborate cover for a gay thing, in which case I don’t think they’d be advertising with salad dressing and barbecue sauce.

But as you can see, the hook isn’t just that there are two flavors here. Hers is “thrilling,” his is “exciting,” and then there’s a strong hint that together, they’re greater than the sum of their parts — “one amazing reaction.” Are they referring to plain old friction, or is this like one of those tricks Brian Cranston pulls in “Breaking Bad”?

The ad is coy, the website, even more so. (Warning: Extreme Flash-heavy.) My guess is, there’s some sort of chemical reaction when they get together. What sort, I don’t know, but I can speculate. Perhaps the baking soda/vinegar kind, or maybe the Mentos/Diet Coke variety. I hope it’s not aluminum foil and toilet cleaner, as that would be very unsexy. But you never know. I think drilling a hole in your tongue isn’t exactly the height of erotica, and you’ve seen what I know.

Someone with a deeper background in advertising might like to weigh in and tell us about how difficult it is to sell sex products in traditional media. The old-line MSM may be dying, but they still wrangle millions of eyeballs on a daily basis, and successfully placing an ad like this — one that frankly sells the sex, not “feminine comfort” or some other euphemism — is no small accomplishment. Even if the pitch has to be made to, er, married couples. On the website, two mini-ads feature “Mr. and Mrs.” couples, and the tagline is “Couples that play together…stay together.”

In other words: Do it for the children!

Speaking of marital relations, Jenna Bush’s wedding went off without a hitch (that we know of), and the pictures (that we saw) were lovely. An old pro of the wedding racket told me once all brides either gain or lose weight going into the big day, and it seems Jenna was a loser — she really looks sensational in her dress. The party-girl beer fat is gone now that she’s grown up a bit. She’s taking hubs’ name, settling down in Baltimore and we won’t hear from her again until the baby or rehab. It’s NotJenna I’m a little worried about now:

I see her sister picked out a meh dress and made her put flowers in her hair — entirely within her rights as the bride — but there’s something about that smile that looks a little …off. And why is she doing that thing with her shoulder?

Recent rotator-cuff surgery? Mainlining “America’s Next Top Model” reruns? Or just whatever mom takes every morning to get through her days?

Not much bloggage today, but there’s this: Yet another first-the-earth-cooled explanation of the credit crisis, in simple enough language that a toddler could understand, via This American Life. It’s my firm belief that if Barack Obama started talking about Wall Street in language like this, John McCain would surrender by June 1 and, if we were really lucky, we might be able to rush Washington with pitchforks and torches. In the meantime, listen and simmer.

It’s been so busy this week I didn’t get to tell you about Tuesday night, when I took a day off work and went to Royal Oak for May’s Mitten Movie Project, a monthly screening of short films. Our DFC class project was in it, and it got a few chuckles where it was supposed to, so I was happy.

But the highlight (for me, anyway) was a short by Mike Eshaq, “MT* Crib*: Arab American Style,” which was hysterical. (I’m obscuring the name of the cable channel’s well-known show in the title, just in case they have robo-goons out there looking for copyright violators. In the Q-and-A, I asked Eshaq how he got permission to use their name and graphics and he said, “Um, I didn’t.” So let’s keep it our secret.)

Anyway, a trip to Ali’s crib to see “how they kick it in East Dearborn” followed the template down to every jerky push zoom and quick-cut edit. The actors were all friends, it was a low/no-budget production, but it worked. The first big inside-the-house laugh featured Ali’s mother yelling downstairs in Arabic to make sure no one is sitting on her living-room couches. Talk about comedy as a unifying force; is there a single ethnic group in America where women don’t protect the living room with their lives? In the Snoop Dogg episode of this very series, there was a sign outside the living room: THIS IS NOT A KICK-IT ROOM. (There were signs everywhere in Snoop’s house, in fact. NO EATING IN THE STUDIO and CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF. Sometimes having an entourage is like being a Cub Scout den mother, I guess.) It wasn’t clear plastic furniture covers, but it was close.

The featured attraction seemed to be this; we watched all three episodes. The filmmaker wasn’t there — he’s off in L.A. establishing his showbiz career — so the stars came to the Q-and-A. I didn’t really have any questions for them; mine were all for the filmmaker, and they boiled down to “how the hell did you find room in your budget for a freakin’ helicopter,” but that was answered by someone sitting near me, who replied, “His parents are really rich,” and that was that.

The director of our little student production was there, and asked if I’d be game for a weekend filmmaking challenge associated with the Detroit-Windsor film festival next month. Here’s how it works: You assemble a team, and on Friday you’re given four elements — a location, a genre, a line of dialogue and a prop. You have until Sunday to turn in a short film (OK, video) incorporating all four, which are then screened for the crowd and judged for fabulous prizes that usually boil down to a couple hundred bucks. It actually sounds kind of fun. A veteran of one of these described his most recent experience; I forget the location, but the rest were action/adventure, “I’ll have to get back to you later” and a hat or something. “Don’t plan on getting much sleep,” he said. Deadline is a drug, as we all know. We might have to do this.

If nothing else, the making-of featurette will be a great video for NN.C.

So, a little bloggage:

Mitch Albom, man of the people, whines that the Wings are doing really well in the Western Conference NHL finals, and yet still there are empty seats at the Joe. Bad fans, bad! At last count, a hundred or so commenters had reminded him that the state is in a recession, and major-league sports tickets might be considered a luxury under such circumstances.

The Poor Man is back with a while new comics series — The Amazing League of Pundits. And it’s hilarious.

Something I didn’t know was happening: A few thoughts about eBay’s decline.

The scary thing about this new movie, Noise? Is that I identify so strongly. If I had a rocket launcher, some son-of-a-bitch with a gas-powered blower would die…

That’s it, folks. I have a doctor’s appointment in an hour to discuss a flare-up of my plantar fasciitis, and I think I’ll impress him with my commitment to fitness by riding my bike there. At this point, it hurts too much to walk.

Some broad has a column about Indiana in the Washington Post. “What you need to know,” or something. It’s twinned with a piece by some guy writing the same thing about North Carolina. They both say their states are a mass of contradictions. Meh. I think they need to get better writers.

But this is it, Indiana — an extraordinary primary in this year of years, so drink it up. I was on the phone with Mark the Shark last week (I was on the phone with a few Hoosiers in the past week; see above), and he was reminiscing about the time he snuck out of lunch at Bishop Luers to see Robert Kennedy’s car drive past, the last time the Indiana primary mattered. Mark the Shark wears hearing aids now. The next time this happens, you could be dead. Drink. It. Up.

Then enjoy the familiar feeling of the day after, when your ardent lover of the past few weeks has moved on and now ignores your number on the caller ID. “Indiana who?” he or she will say, if you get through. “Oh yeah — one of those ‘I’ states.” Like …oh, Iowa.

During my chat with Paul Helmke, we talked about his famous Theory of Horizontal Stateitude, which I believe we’ve discussed here before. To wit: Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are three states divided the wrong way. The upper third of each has more in common with one another than the rest of their own territory, ditto the central and southernmost thirds. The north of each is blue-collar and ethnic (Cleveland, Gary, Chicago), the central a frontier of the Mid-Atlantic states (Columbus, Indianapolis, Springfield, the south a remnant of the Dixie/Appalachia that lies below. It’s an interesting theory, imperfect in parts, but sound as a whole. He reminded me of Indiana’s role in the 1920s-era KKK, which many people see as evidence of a deeply entrenched racism, but that’s too facile. The Klan’s big issue in the ’20s was anti-immigration and stamping out the menace of Popery. When they made a play to take over the state’s Republican party, it was the northern-third party members who put a stop to it.

He also reminded me of the influence of foreign policy on this insulated, heartland area. His family were all Democrats “until Woodrow Wilson invaded the Fatherland,” and all the good Germans turned Republican overnight. “And I’m hearing from a lot of Republicans who plan to vote Democratic in the fall,” he said, over disgust with the Iraq war. Goes to show you things change everywhere, even in Indiana.

So how are the rest of you on this fine spring day? Speaking of demographic and historical influences, I saw a bumper sticker the other day. It read: “Turkey: Take responsibility for the Armenian genocide,” which counts as a sentiment you don’t hear expressed much in other parts of the country. Yesterday, while poking around Sweet Juniper’s related sites, I ordered this from his photo store. It looks as thought it was taken in the Dequindre Cut pre-renovation, although I could be wrong. Title: “Feral dog, Albanian graffiti.” Yes, there’s an Albanian presence in Detroit. Yes, that’s the country where the fake war was in “Wag the Dog,” a place so reliably obscure the writers believed it could pass as “one of those ‘A’ countries,” and it did. Not here.

OK, enough half-assed sociology. On to the bloggage:

The 50 Greatest Commercial Parodies of all time might be funny, but I didn’t get beyond No. 50 — for Annuale, the once-a-year period. It seemed unfair to the other ad parodies to have to compare with that one. Love the pink ax.

A survey of newspaper editors around the world reveals they believe the newspaper of the future will be free (congratulations, folks, it already is); have more opinion and comment (groan, because of course they’re doing such a bang-up job competing with the internet on that one already); and that “some traditional editorial functions will be outsourced” (more errors). A limping industry falls into its future.

Celebrity “journalism” is great fun and all, but I miss the days when all we did was take Sean Penn’s picture when he was leaving a restaurant with Madonna. Poor Mischa Barton (a phrase I never thought I’d write).

For those of you who missed the Tom Cruise/Oprah interview last week, Bossy has a recap.

Off to the gym. Be good, now.

If you’ve thrown a trout at me lately, or challenged me to match wits in the there/their/they’re test, or compared taste in books and movies, you’ve probably not heard back. I’m getting acquainted with the Ignore button on Facebook. I’m thinking of ignoring Facebook entirely. Don’t take it personally.

I’ve just about decided I’m too old to fully understand the Face (as the kids are calling it), and for once, that’s not a bad thing. I’d rather read a book; pity the soul who’d choose to spend that time on Facebook. Before I joined, I asked people why I needed to, and they all boiled down to “because you can keep in touch with all your friends.” Well, I can keep in touch with them now, and I don’t have to give up my privacy. I was finally convinced by a fellow journalist, who said he used the Face to get a full news cycle jump on the competition for a breaking story. I’m all for that, sure. But once I joined, then I had to learn to use it. The next thing I knew I was adding applications, lobbing Wall posts back and forth and otherwise wasting time. Just what the internet needs: Another way to waste time.

Lately the apps writers have been more aggressive. Someone challenges you to a trivia test, you take it, and to get your results, you have to pass a page inviting your friends to take it, too. I generally unselect everybody and pass it by, but lately they’ve been requiring me to pick a minimum number. Screw that. So: Ignore. Ignore, ignore, ignore. (Like all resolutions, I have problems keeping this one. Added a friend this morning.)

If anyone knows a secret about the Face that I’m missing, I’m interested.

Linkishness:

Via Eric Zorn: A great This American Life piece on the Jerry Springer you don’t know. Even if you think you did know him — and many Ohioans do — there’s almost guaranteed to be something here you don’t. A wonderful listen. Click on “full episode” and listen in QT.

I missed this in yesterday’s Freep — an amazing tale of bureaucratic heavy-handedness, or why you should keep up with what the kids are drinking these days. Detroit authorities snatch a UM professor’s 7-year-old away to foster care because the kid was seen drinking a Mike’s Lemonade at a Tigers game. The father said he didn’t know it was alcoholic (and I believe him).

Short shrift today, but deal — it’s 34 degrees outside and I have work to do.

The New York Times, with its unerring knack for finding the stupidest people in any non-New York venue it chooses to cover, finds a few in Kokomo:

“We hold onto a lot of traditional values,” said Brian L. Thomas, 39, as he bought a cup of coffee along the courthouse square here on Wednesday. “Saying you’re ready to change is probably not the best or only thing you would want to say around these parts. Frankly, we want it to be like it used to be.”

Many of the two dozen voters interviewed in this central Indiana manufacturing city of 46,000 expressed queasiness over the notions of change that both Democratic candidates have proudly pledged elsewhere. Though residents bemoaned economic conditions that have taken away thousands of factory jobs and given the state the 11th-highest rate of foreclosures, they also said they worried about doing things — anything — very differently.

“What are we going to change to?” asked Ron O’Bryan, 58, a retired auto worker who said he was still trying to decide which Democrat to vote for in the May 6 primary. “You mean change to some other country’s system? What do you think they mean?”

Jeremy Lewis, a 28-year-old window washer, said simply, “Old-fashioned can be in a good way.”

“We want it like it used to be” — that’s Indiana in a nutshell. They could put that on the license plates. When Ron O’Bryan still had a job in the factory, I guarantee someone in town was mourning the good ol’ days when you made your living the good way, on a farm, and spent the evenings shellin’ peas and drinkin’ lemonade.

Other things Kokomo has found amusing: Old Ben, the world’s largest “preserved” steer (photos here; he doesn’t look that big), and, of course, the world’s largest sycamore stump. Perhaps if Obama presented himself as an attraction — world’s first black presidential candidate to be a serious contender, maybe.

I’ll tell you one thing, however: All three of these guys got the Obama e-mail, and believe every word. Maybe spending all your time in North Carolina is a better idea.

OK. All this talk of celebrity sightings yesterday reminded me of a thread on Metafilter Monday, about “Expelled,” the latest attempt by the religious right to condemn Michael Moore’s tactics by aping them. The argument bores me, but I was struck by a few comments about Ben Stein sightings in the wild:

I once saw Ben Stein in an airport, wearing a suit and some kind of hipster foot apparel. There weren’t very many people around, and as a journalist who has met my share of very famous people, I generally know how not to behave around them. But as I’d been amused by Ben Stein’s Money — the game show that turned anti-Semitism into a laff ryot — I gave him a little nod and smile when I walked past him. He whipped his head away with an absolutely exasperated look, as if I’d been a paparazzo from TMZ. Puh-leeze.

For a long time, the editorial department in Fort Wayne paid for a subscription to the American Spectator, and I used to read it with a mounting sense of wonder. (It’s where I learned the word “poofter,” in fact; R. Emmett Tyrell turned homophobia into a laff ryot.) One of my favorite features was Ben Stein’s Diary, which was always exactly the same from month to month. Ben would go about his life, much of which at that time involved acting in commercials and making personal appearances based on being that-guy-from-Ferris-Bueller. He always wrote of his life as an ongoing delight, how lucky he was to fly first class and be fed delicious food from craft services, how people would come up to him in airports and say “Bueller…Bueller” and it was just so wonderful to have these great fans. Who could possibly object to people in public telling you they’d seen you in a movie? It was just so, so great to be Ben Stein, etc. etc.

Glad to know there was no end to his lies, either.

Another recurring theme in Ben Stein’s diary was his overwhelming love for his little boy, Tommy, whom he and his wife adopted late in life. He called him “my little angel.” Tommy was terribly spoiled, but it pleased Ben to spoil him; he liked being rich and being able to fill Tommy’s life with gimcracks and geegaws, and so he did. When I first read about “Expelled” it occurred to me that Tommy should be a grown man by now, so I wondered where he might have ended up. Hmmm:

Ben Stein writes in the current November/December 2001 issue of The American Spectator that “Our son, God love him, has basically stopped going to school…he’s surly, and desperately unhelpful…He has gotten so self-obsessed and self-referential, so utterly unconcerned about anyone but himself, he’s a walking time-bomb for self-demolition. So, he’s going to have to go to boarding school.”

This distraught, clearly loving father writes that upon his return from a recent trip:

“Tommy is in his room sitting at his fancy computer…playing his goddamned Everquest, the worst thing that ever happened to him, a literal curse, a drug that eats away at every drop of energy and initiative. It’s a sort of online ‘Dungeons and Dragons,’ and he loves it beyond description. He can stay on forever…He is simply a demon at it. And we are the demon facilitators because we are so happy he’s not using marijuana, we keep letting him play his evil Everquest.”

That was around 2001. In a 2005 entry, it appears Tommy has gotten over Everquest and moved on to drag-racing on public streets with his dad:

Tommy wanted to race again. We did. Again, I peeled, and he didn’t. This time he got way ahead of me. Alas, moments later a police cruiser appeared behind him with its lights flashing. The car pulled Tommy over and I followed them. But the police, staring at me intently, motioned to me to stay in my car. They then went over to Tommy. Then they came to me. “We’re just giving him a warning, because we know who you are and we like you,” said a policeman. “But you should talk to your son. He refuses to admit he did anything wrong.”

Well, he learned from the best, Tommy did.

Trivia note: Ben Stein’s Diary was among the sources plundered by White House plagiarist Tim Goeglein. I’d love to know which part.

Oh, and by the way, a letter to the editor in Newsweek this week:

In your April 14 Periscope interview with Ben Stein (“You Say You Want an Evolution?”), one of Stein’s responses contained a serious error: He said, “There are a number of scientists and academics who’ve been fired, denied tenure, lost tenure or lost grants because they even suggested the possibility of intelligent design. The most egregious is Richard Sternberg at the Smithsonian, the editor of a magazine that published a peer reviewed paper about ID. He lost his job.” Sternberg has never been employed by the Smithsonian Institution. Since January 2004, he has been an unpaid research associate in the departments of invertebrate and vertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. Dr. Sternberg continues to enjoy full access to research facilities at the museum. Moreover, Stein’s assertion that Sternberg was removed from a Smithsonian publication is not true. The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington is an independent journal and is not affiliated with the Smithsonian.

Randall Kremer, Director of Public Affairs
National Museum of Natural History
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, D.C.

Bloggage? Oh, a little:

Village Voice gossip Michael Musto dug up a SFW nude photo of Charlton Heston. Not a bad one, either.

WDET, our local public-radio affiliate, had a fascinating story last night on this guy, Orville Hubbard, Dearborn’s racist mayor. Never lost an election in his life, never met a non-white person he wanted to live next door to. A truly vile man, a politician to the bone. They played some sound recordings of the guy, which included a gem where he called Irish Catholics “the worst,” because “they’re so prejudiced.” You can listen here.

The Comics Curmudgeon gets off quite a few zingers in any given week, but his one about the Family Circus is the best.

And with that, pals, I’m off to work, the gym, Trader Joe’s, Target… The list is endless, but most destinations will be reached by bicycle. Envy me, world — I’m preparing for peak oil.

You’ve heard me talk about the Ballad of the Big O here before. You surely thought I was mad. I’m not! (Slams open palm on table.) Here’s proof!

One man sleeps while the other man drives. A forgotten detail: The guy on top of the tanker, watching the juice pour in. Whoa! That’s enough! Now let’s get on the road!

Also, in honor of J.C., who went without sleep for years until this appeared on YouTube, the Corporate Logo Quiz. I got 19 out of 20.

One of Gene Weingarten’s chatters Tuesday says what I was thinking yesterday:

Billings, Mont.: Thought your Bell in the Metro story was good and all, but your Great Zucchini story from two years ago was the best thing you’ve ever written. Was that story submitted for a Pulitzer?

Pulitzer Prize-winner Gene Weingarten: It was. And I was only recently reliably informed that it got real consideration, but was ultimately rejected because it was perceived as not serious enough.

I’m not surprised; the Pulitzers are like that. It strikes me that of the journalists I’ve known who’ve served on Pulitzer juries, they tended to be at either best-or-worst ends of the spectrum, so it figures they get a few wrong. The Great Zucchini story was a work of storytelling art. I urge you to read it; it’s that good. And while the Joshua Bell story that earned Weingarten the big P was great, it was something you could stand at the beginning of and see all the way to the end. When I told Alan what the story was, I said, “They got this virtuoso violinist, Joshua Bell, to be a subway busker in D.C. and watched how people reacted.” He replied, “And they ignored him, right?” He didn’t know anything about the story; he just guessed that if you put a virtuoso playing a Stradivarius in a busy Metro station at rush hour, he’s not going to draw a crowd. The telling of the story is wonderful, but there’s no real surprise.

But the Great Zucchini had a huge surprise halfway through. You thought it was about one thing (a story about a children’s party entertainer), and then it turned out to be another thing (the common roots of fear and humor). Let’s see, what did win that year?

Jim Sheeler of Rocky Mountain News, Denver, Colo.
For his poignant story on a Marine major who helps the families of comrades killed in Iraq cope with their loss and honor their sacrifice.

See? Serious enough.

Oh, well. It may be like Paul Newman winning an Oscar for “The Color of Money” when he should have won for half a dozen better performances that preceded it, but it’s all good. (Bonus: I’ve linked to it before, but just in case you’re having a slow day at work and have some time to read it — Tears for Audrey, another Gene-sterpiece.)

Yesterday I mentioned writers who don’t get the web. I think Weingarten gets it. I don’t know another columnist who could pull off what he does every week with his live chat, and I think every single columnist should give it a try sometime. I’d love to know what the traffic is for that.

OK, then. Found this via Leo, and oh my, what was I saying about that word just a couple weeks ago?

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving (John) McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, “You’re getting a little thin up there.” McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, “At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Whoa! I know Mrs. McCain favors girly clothes and high heels. If that didn’t call for a shoe to be slipped off and applied, heel-first, to Mr. War Hero’s forehead, I don’t know what would.

You think this story is true? It’s getting a lot of blog attention, but then, we’re allowed to say “cunt” right out in the open, whereas a newspaper won’t even say “the c-word.” It’ll be “an insulting name related to her gender,” and most people will think, “Oh, well, once I told my wife to stop being such a little bitch during an argument; it could happen to anyone.”

I’m fortunate to live with a mellow soul. My dad was a grump, and he could curse, but he generally saved his profanity for inanimate objects, bad drivers, circumstances beyond his control and the like. I can’t imagine him using such a word on my mother, and to do so in front of witnesses? I like to think I’m as tolerant of human frailty as the next gal, but that one required an instant correction, as the dog trainers say. With a shoe.

This week has been seductively beautiful. I’ve been out and about on the bike every day; for once I’m caught up with my library accounts because hey, returning books is a good excuse to ride two miles. Next week, not so much, but oh well. I’m still looked on as something of an oddity around here, where driving half a block is not considered wasteful or slothful, only vigorous support of the local economy. One of my doctors is a cyclist, however, and at my last appointment we made small talk about the cost of being one in the Motor City. He’s been pulled over three times in the last year, he said; twice for running stop signs and once for resembling a person last seen stealing CDs from a car. While I teach Kate to obey stop signs on her bike, sooner or later she’s going to figure out that, for cyclists, a stop sign at a quiet intersection with no cars in sight can safely be ignored. You’re traveling slower, you have the advantage of eyes and ears, and you can’t hurt anyone but yourself. With all the piss-poor drivers I see on a daily basis, I guess it’s a credit to the low crime rate around here that police even bother to bug cyclists about such infractions. (And you should see my doctor, a white-haired soul in his late 50s who looks about as likely to break into cars as the Pope does. Please.)

OK, I’ve run dry. How about some bloggage making cruel fun of the pain of others? Here you go.

Ken Levine’s back with his “American Idol” recaps this season, and he correctly puts his finger on what was wrong with last night’s, which was nearly unwatchable:

While Syesha Mercado was screeching out some faux inspirational song that strung together every “I believe/Catch a shooting star/There’s time for every soul to fly/Reach within your heart/Strive to be the very best/Anything is Possible” bullshit cliché (and every one of those lyrics actually WAS in that song), Doug Davis, a young pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks took the mound and pitched the game of his life…knowing that in two days he will undergo surgery for thyroid cancer.

THAT’S inspirational. THAT’S real.

Disclaimer: I do not watch “American Idol” voluntarily. I watch it because my kid watches it, and while one day I will take her to see Iggy Pop, that day has not yet arrived.

This week’s theme was “songs of inspiration.” Every single one sucked, although the leadoff singer did have the advantage of menace:

Michael Johns sang “Dream On”. Most inspirational songs are not angrily shouted at you. Okay, okay, I’ll dream on. Don’t hurt me!

Three-day eventing isn’t for sissies. I watched an Olympic-caliber cross-country phase in Lexington a few years ago, and just being a spectator made my knees shake.

Someone actually makes a semi-amusing ad for special-event mass transit, and Catholics are outraged, so the ad is pulled. Someone make these pinheads direct traffic, then. The ad lives on, where else? On YouTube. Be subversive, and laugh at the Pope.

Me, I’m off for a bike ride.

Sorry for the unexpected day off yesterday. I’d written and crumpled about four posts when the phone rang. It was the school, telling me my daughter has officially inherited her father’s tendency toward headaches. They’d been creeping up for a while, but yesterday was the first appearance of the big-M variety, if my amateur diagnosis is correct. Severe headaches accompanied by vision changes and nausea automatically = migraine, don’t they? (Unless, Dr. Google tells me, it’s multiple sclerosis. Or, you know, a brain tumor.) Anyway, the big purge went a long way toward making things better, but she spent the rest of the day on the couch, and my own was pretty much off the rails.

So thanks to all of you who took the ball and ran with it. Nothing like discussing that old-time cussin’, is there?

One of my old neighbors had a theory that sounds a little New Age-y, but nevertheless has a ring of truth to it. He said every person has a consistent weak spot in their body’s defenses, a door the germs will find unlocked more often than not. His son’s was his nose, Kate’s was her throat, his own was his head, mine was…I guess it was my big mouth, which has no discernment whatsoever, and will say and eat pretty much anything. Although I’ve never had trench mouth, gum disease, or even many cavities. So I guess that theory falls apart.

Anyway, all is well today, if 30 degrees colder than yesterday. Ah, spring.

Between making therapeutic Jell-O and buying Tylenol, I finally got around to reading the Harvard virgin story from the NYT magazine over the weekend. I was looking for some indication that this no-sex club was different from other no-sex clubs, and it seems to boil down to: But this is Harvard. I guess they have Veritas stamped on their chastity belts, or something. And people wonder why the Ivy League still matters. (If nothing else, it’s given us women who’ll be quoted in the paper of record calling oral sex “disrespectful and disgusting.” For you, maybe.)

This meme is making its way around, I notice:

She began talking about oxytocin, the hormone released at birth, in breast-feeding and also during sex. True Love Revolution gives it the utmost significance, claiming on its Web site that the hormone’s “powerful bonding” effect can be “a cause of joy and marital harmony” but that outside of marriage it can create “serious problems.” Released arbitrarily, it can blur “the distinction between infatuation and lasting love,” the Web site cautions, making rational mating decisions difficult. Fredell said oxytocin could also bond people who didn’t necessarily want to be bound, and “you can bond yourself to the wrong guy in the wrong situation.”

This is, I believe, the “science” behind the tape exercise performed in some abstinence classes, where the teacher goes around pressing tape to students’ arms, then ripping it off and repasting it on other arms. This underlines the important lesson that you can get all kinds of diseases from others — because the tape gets kind of gross as it goes around sticking to arms — and also…well, something, I’m sure. If you stick your tape to someone else, not only does it hurt when you rip it off, you’re less sticky the next time around. And this is backed by science! You could look it up!

No wonder these folks can’t get any traction in the real world. Not only are they up against the unstoppable force of humanity, they use bad science and stupid teaching techniques. If people wonder why I pay taxes through the nose to send my kid to a halfway-decent public school, here’s one reason: Because the last time I looked at the health curriculum, it didn’t call for duct tape.

OK, a little lite nosh of bloggage, shall we?

Most people outside the city don’t know that the Detroit mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, rolls with a security posse to rival Suge Knight’s. Brian Dickerson pulls it apart, a little bit. He offers the priceless detail that the entourage, already preposterously large to begin with, has been increased in response to “threats” against Special KK, and then notes:

In 2003, after a diamond-studded L. Brooks Patterson memorably lampooned Kilpatrick’s gangsta style by striding into the Mackinac Policy Conference surrounded by aides sporting dark glasses and earpieces, the mayor’s security footprint grew noticeably smaller.

L. Brooks Patterson is the county executive in adjacent Oakland County, and has spent his entire career goading Detroit in one way or another. Guy has a sense of humor, too.

Baseball’s Opening Day is problematic in places other than Detroit. A cool time-lapse video from Cleveland shows how hard a grounds crew can work when snow is in the forecast.

OK, enough. It’s good to be back. Now I’m up to Kate’s room, which is getting a small makeover, to blow dust off the stuffed animals and make way for some storage pieces (or “solutions,” as they’re inevitably called). Back later.

On edit: Does the type size on this site these days look just enormous? It does to me — more so than usual. I have a call in to J.C., but as long as we’re here, let me know if you like it this big. Does it mark us as a nest of baby boomers too lazy to put on a pair of readers, or is it just easy on the eyes?)