Amy Welborn found the Bratz Advent calendar last week, and I thought nothing could top it. I was wrong. Warning: Boobs. (But very perky ones!) Via one of Roy’s commenters.

A few years ago, I had to do a phone interview with two Israelis, living in Jerusalem. Because of the time difference, and the ridiculous hoop-jumping one had to do in our office to make an international call, I opted to call them from home, first thing in the morning, and expense the bill later. Two calls to Israel, 70 minutes total = $240 on my phone bill.

I should have just passed the pain along to my ungrateful employer, but the sum was so insulting I called to see if it could be negotiated. It could. For signing up retroactively for an international calling plan, and understanding that it could be cancelled in five more days, they gave me the international-plan price: $17.

I took Econ 101 AND 102, but when prices can vary that much, it makes me realize I wasn’t cut out for life in the business world (or running a hospital). Today I got another lesson: The 4-pin to 6-pin Firewire cord.

At the Apple store: $30.
At Best Buy: $40 (I should note this specimen was 17 feet long).
Via the internet, a 3-foot version: $4.

Ah, well. If you want to talk about ridiculous prices, yesterday I paid more than $4 for a sugar-free triple-shot vanilla latte at Starbucks Fourbucks. I had a caffeine-deprivation headache at the time, however, which made it more like buying aspirin. The headache went away while my stylist painted blondeness into my hair.

“If only I were a man, I could enjoy having your boobs two inches from my cheek,” I said, all at once realizing that said boobs were significantly larger than they were the last time I got my hair cut. “Why, you’re pregnant.” Six months, in fact, which means I didn’t notice last time, when she was 4.5 months along. Well, no one ever said I was a good trained observer. Besides, haircuts are the only time I can bury my nose, guilt-free, in In Style magazine; I’m not really looking around to see who’s packing a fetus under their apron.

The highlights came out well. Decrepitude is held at bay for another few weeks. I asked the stylist if she’d consider a few platinum streaks in front a good idea, and she said that not only was her answer no, “if you asked, I wouldn’t do them.” Well, excuse me. See how you feel in 20 more years when your gutters guy, the one with the freshly healed bullet wound and the Chris Farley physique, says you remind him of someone famous. Vintage Brigitte Bardot? Mid-period Susan Sarandon? Bette Midler, for cryin’ out loud?

“Carol Burnett,” he said. I wanted to dye my whole head green.

Ah, well. Enough of my mid-century angst. On to the bloggage!

“My chicken is in political exile” — only in Ann Arbor.

My birthday appears 647,751 digits into pi. How about you?

Via David Mills, three short web “prequels” for “The Wire,” a few scraps as we count the days until the best show EVAR starts its final season. He likes When Bunk Met McNulty, and it’s OK, but my heart belongs to Young Omar. Also: Young Proposition Joe.

Assholes With Guns, chapter 7 million: Seven-year-old girl shot six times trying to protect her mother.and it’s still going on. Via Roy.

To the gym. Have a swell day, all.

Saw “No Country for Old Men” this weekend. I don’t think I can discuss much without the tiresome “spoiler alert,” but I’ll try. If you’ve seen it, or aren’t bothered by spoilers (which aren’t as spoiler-y as usual — this movie is pretty high-concept in the plot department), go to Roy’s place, and check out his original post, as well as the comments, and the boot to Glenn Kenny’s.

I’m more easily pleased. I loved the thing pretty much beginning to end, although I understand the objection to the last 25 percent, as well as the ending, which was greeted by a few stunned Huhs in the multiplex where we saw it. Didn’t bother me. This is a film made to be watched again and again, after which the ending will become more coherent, I think. Besides, even if you take the position that the denouement is a disaster, who the hell cares? Jack Nicholson was the weakest thing about “The Departed,” but I’ll watch at least a few minutes of it every kind it comes around on cable, because Leonardo DiCaprio is fantastic. If you can’t be thrilled by all that’s great about this movie, from the painterly composition of every shot to the note-perfect performances, well, you should probably go ahead and buy a ticket to “I am Legend.”

A few words about that composition: The Coen brothers are famous for storyboarding their movies from first shot to last. When you see their attention to detail — the bloodstained quarter in Javier Bardem’s palm, a dog’s leap for the throat that sends you an inch off your seat — you can appreciate movies in a whole new way.

As for Bardem, I think Roy nails it:

And if Javier Bardem had not made his monster Karloff-scale believable we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. This is the greatest kind of acting — the kind that suggests its own backstory. I can see him as a hollow-eyed, beaten boy, silently absorbing evil and taking all his lessons from it, growing into a creature that cannot be stopped or swayed, but still must have his little games to prove, in the face of uncomprehending fear (his or theirs?), that he has been right all along. Bardem’s performance is eternal in a movie that could have been.

Since we were in a mood for grim violence, but mostly because it was snowing like “Dr. Zhivago,” we opted for the verboten La Shish, our local Middle Eastern chain, for dinner before the show. Bad reputation, that place, but I justified our visit thusly:

1) The profit is probably all going to the IRS these days, not Hezbollah; and
2) It was snowing really, really hard, and it was either that or McDonald’s.

And even though the whole chain is in danger of folding like a cheap tent, the food was…heavenly. The best pita bread I’ve had in my whole damn life. A vegetable melange that tasted fresh, light, and perfectly spicy. Hummus to die for. The bread came with some sort of garlic paste I wanted to dab behind my ears, it was so good. The whole east side of Detroit is pretty slim pickins, restaurant-wise, but after one bite my only regret was that I didn’t support Hezbollah’s booster sooner. Anyone who can cook like that can’t be all bad.

Just a bit of bloggage today, via Metafilter: An 1898 letter to professional baseball players, outlining the new bad-language policy. Worth a read, if only for the chuckles. Go fuck yourself! So Al Swerengen.

Found this on YouTube the other day. The sound’s lousy, but it’s an action-based scene. You only have to watch the first 20 seconds:

I think Leo speaks for all of us who have ever been asked that question.

Slate had a piece earlier this week on the amateur street-fighting genre on YouTube. I clicked a few links, but found reading about them more enjoyable than watching them. Real violence, even captured in ShakyCam with Extra Graininess, packs a wallop that even Scorsese can’t touch. John D. MacDonald had a nice passage in one of his Travis McGee books about fistfights — that 99 percent of them end after one punch, with both guys astonished by the pain, one in his nose and the other in his hand. I don’t think I’ve ever thrown a punch at anyone. Once I swung a clipboard at Name Redacted in my college newspaper newsroom, and didn’t connect, although he richly deserved it. It was also the first time I’ve ever vaulted a table in one leap — I jumped from my seat in the copy-desk slot and cleared the desk like Bruce Willis. I wish I had a video. The fight ended with Redacted holding me at arm’s length while I waved my clipboard impotently. The tension was defused when everyone started laughing. All was forgiven, and he remains a friend. His wife is even one of our commenters here. And I think if I had hit him, and I could fill the jury box with other slot men, they wouldn’t even bother ordering lunch before they acquitted me.

Remember Danny DeVito’s line in “The War of the Roses?” Oliver, my father used to say that a man can never outdo a woman when it comes to love and revenge. Women retain a capacity for viciousness that probably goes back to the cave — it’s our genetic mandate to protect the kiddies, after all — and all I can say is: I’d really like to have a couple of those breakaway beer glasses like the one Leo uses so well.

Not much for you today, folks. I’m off to Christmas-shop, lunch, work, run errands and hunt down a 4-pin to 6-pin FireWire cable. But first, a shower. Make merry in the comments, if you like.

I’ve been looking for an unadulterated version of this short film for years, and this is the closest I’ve come — Motown must keep their vaults pretty well. I think it might be from “Standing in the Shadows of Motown,” but having never seen it all the way through, I’m not sure. I think of this clip whenever I see a hip-hop video shot in some Fabulous Ruin around here. That’s now, but this was then:

Many many many many years ago, I wrote a column for my ex-employer about makeshift memorials. If it wasn’t the hot new trend that was sweepin’ the nation, it was the first I noticed it. There was a little cross that stood along the bike path I used, periodically refreshed by its tender; it marked the place where a jogger had been killed by a teenage motorist. The dead man’s wife said she felt closer to her late husband there, where he died, than in the cemetery where his body lies, the conventional place for mourning.

At the time, “makeshift memorial” hadn’t entered the lexicon. With the exception of crosses like this, and the elaborate ghetto murals/shrines to fallen gangbangers (which earnest grad students told us were rooted in various ethnic heritage rituals), they were only starting to pop up in the wider culture. But when they did, it didn’t take long. Two kids die when their car fails to beat a train at the crossing? Their friends flock to the spot and leave beer bottles, cigarettes and teddy bears.

Some memorials had a little higher profile. Some, higher still.

As a square ol’ suburban American who religious training was traditional and conventional, I fall in The Onion camp:

To cope with this incalculable loss of life, within hours of the accident, the citizens of Mound City responded with a spontaneous outpouring of crappy mementos. Despite the presence of such disturbing reminders of the crash as tire marks, headlight shards, and blood-stained pavement, Mound City residents have come here day after day, adding more tacky shit to the steadily growing pile.

But I’m open-minded about it. There is no correct way to grieve. Young people in particular are always astonished by their first brush with unexpected death, and as traditional religious rituals fall by the wayside, so too do the long-established ways of mourning. They want to stand in front of a pile of crap with a candle in a paper cup, hold hands and cry. As I recall, Ashley wrote me a nice note after Dale Earnhardt died, explaining rather succinctly why people do these things, and why there’s nothing to sneer at there. My position stands on two legs: a) I think it’s wise that there be a statute of limitations on how long a memorial can be maintained, especially if it’s on public land; and b) you won’t catch me dead at one, especially for a professional athlete. But if it helps you get over it, fine.

Remember the gas-station owner shot to death last week? He has one. But note, also, this detail:

It’s been six months since a pregnant woman and her three young children died in an accidental fire at their home in the 3400 block of Lane in southwest Detroit. But the cards, Mylar balloons and stuffed animals remain.

Most of the toys are now a ghastly gray, from months of exposure. The 3-foot-high Spider-Man is still visible, as is the Winnie the Pooh. The single-family home has never been boarded up, and its front door is missing. “I want this gone. I really do,” said Robert Santos, who lives down the street and knew the family who died in the blaze sparked by a back porch grill.

It’s not the vacant, derelict house he wants gone — Santos said he’s used to those in the city — but rather the toys left in tribute.

“Every time I go by, I’m reminded of how those children died. There should be some limit on how long this can go on,” Santos said. “I want my wound to close.”

Cemeteries exist for a reason other than protection of public health. Compartmentalization isn’t always a bad thing.

A personal note: Let’s all hold hands and think positive thoughts about Alan’s car, which of late has expectorated — with great, rifle-shot sound effects — two spark plugs (from the same cylinder). We’re hoping the repair on this 12-year-old Subaru will be of the cheap variety and not the $1,800 new cylinder head, because even though we’ve pretty much planned on a new car purchase sometime in 2008, it’s still 2007 and would be a major pain in the ass to swing at the moment. These old Japanese pluggers just keep rolling along; let’s hope this one will roll a few more months.

Speaking of ridiculous expense, my husband has also informed me he wishes to take up sport shooting in the new year, and wants to buy a shotgun. A cool pump-action model like the one on the cop shows, that I can conceal in the folds of my overcoat and use to rob liquor stores? I asked eagerly. No. Some boring over-under Browning from the used market that, properly maintained, will hold its value for many years. Damn. I’ve wanted one of those Remingtons ever since our next-door neighbor in Fort Wayne used his to scare off someone trying to jimmy his front door at 2 a.m. one summer night. “That sound the slide makes when you rack it, it’s like no other,” he said, smiling at the memory of footsteps fading away at high speed.

Well, if nothing else, I want The Back-Up. Ah, not with children in the house. Probably a gun safe and multiple trigger locks.

Bloggage:

Roy rounds up the Hillary’s-a-dyke innuendo — this week’s, anyway.

Why are you so awesome, Rudy? Giuliani has a superfan, too.

Sometimes I write the copy for my sister’s eBay auctions, but I can’t touch how people sell shit on Craigslist: For an electric wine-bottle opener (yes, they exist), opens a bottle in seconds, allowing you to spend more time with your guests. Because that’s really a problem at most social gatherings, isn’t it?

Back later, peeps. Still on deadline.

Anybody wanna play Random 10? Set your iPod to shuffle, on the widest possible focus (that is, on “songs,” not a particular playlist) and then tell the truth. No skipping to emphasize your coolness. I’ll start:

“The Loco-motion,” Little Eva
“Motor City Baby,” The Dirtbombs
“May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose,” Little Jimmy Dickens
“Fourth of July,” X
“Things You Left Behind,” The Nails
“Don’t Tell Me,” Madonna
“Feeling Gravity’s Pull,” REM
“Red Hot,” Robert Gordon
“Hot Rod Lincoln,” Commander Cody
“Groove is in the Heart,” Deee-Lite

Well, that wasn’t too embarrassing. Some of you may be wondering what Little Jimmy Dickens is doing in my iPod. Keeping alive the thread of country music the way it was meant to be — made by hillbillies. I still laugh when he gets to the second verse:

My laundry man is really on his toes
Found a hundred-dollar bill among my clothes
When he called me I came runnin’
Gave him back his dime for phonin’
And I heard him sayin’ as I turned to go…

I also have “Take an Old Cold Tater (and Wait)”, if you’re interested.

My search for a DV camera is slowly driving me insane. Thanks to Basset for his tips in the comments a few posts ago, but I fear they’re of no help. You see, I want a camera that will handle not just home movies but amateur journalism — among my many hopes for 2008 here at NN.C, as we enter our EIGHTH DAMN YEAR of web-based mediocrity, is to bring an occasional video to the mix. And the problem is, I know just enough about video to know that nothing will do.

I want something in the upper end of the prosumer range, with lots of features but not too expensive. I make a list of no-negotiation features, then find a model that has everything I want except for one. Or it has everything, but costs $1,200. Or is too big. Or has a user’s review calling it a p.o.s. that underlays every clip with the high-pitched weeeeee of camera noise. John says get Mini-DV for quality, but the users say the format is entering its obsolescence. Hold out for 3CCD? An accessory shoe? Manual shutter control? High-def? AN EXTERNAL MIC JACK? THE ROOM, IT IS SPINNING.

What usually happens is, I read and shop online for 45 minutes, then throw up my hands in despair and go eat a cookie. And then I see something like this, and redouble my efforts. It’s a vicious circle.

This, by the way, is New York magazine’s roundup of the best of online video. I’m working my way through them all, but so far the one I want to recommend is The Jeannie Tate Show, a talk show in a minivan. Yes, really. It’s hilarious.

That was a quick jump to the bloggage today, wasn’t it? Well, yes, but it’s pretty good bloggage, and yesterday was tops in boring. I’m off to the gym. OK, one more:

Once it was scandalous to show too much of your bosom. Now it’s apparently de rigueur to show the world your nether cleft, and not the one in back. (Although I’ve always liked Sharon Stone, that crazy old bat, so I’m giving her a pass, just this once.)

More later.

A wise man once described the calculus he made on the subject of baldness. On the one hand, the expense and daily battle of Rogaine, toupees, glue, hair plugs, not to mention the social anxiety of wondering whether people are noticing, whether one has become a figure of fun like Jim Traficant or, for you Hoosiers, Pat Bauer.

On the other hand, “making peace with baldness.” It seemed an easy choice. I agree.

So I guess we should be grateful, if that’s the word, that Christopher Hitchens did what many men are doing these days — working on their appearance the way women do — and wrote about it.
I guess you could call it a public service. Fixing the teeth, negating his classic smoking-Brit smile, was probably a good idea. As for the “sack, back and crack” man-waxing, I’m reminded of my aforementioned wise man. I’ve had body waxing and found the pain worse in anticipation than practice, but I only waxed regular skin. A man’s scrotum is a different kind of skin, and, well…

I had no idea it would be so excruciating. The combined effect was like being tortured for information that you do not possess, with intervals for a (incidentally very costly) sandpaper handjob. The thing is that, in order to rip, you have to grip. A point of leverage is required; a place that can be firmly gripped and pulled while the skin is tautened.

The impression of being a huge baby was enhanced by the blizzards of talcum powder that followed each searing application. I swear that several times [J Sister waxer Janea Padilha] soothingly said that I was being a brave little boy… Meanwhile, everything in the general area was fighting to retract itself into my body…

All this to remove hair from one’s balls? Is this now a baseline grooming requirement? I’ve changed diapers on both genders, and confronted with a denuded landscape down there — not to mention the smell of talcum powder — I’d probably start wondering if I had another David Vitter on my hands. A real woman (or man, if that’s the way you swing) doesn’t shrink from a few hairs, or even a lot of them. Bring back the natural look.

It’s times like these I think, “Thank GOD I’m married.” I just cannot imagine dating in this environment.

Have we lowered the tone enough? Have we started Friday out on the right foot? Have I implanted images in your brain that you would happily inject acid into your skull to remove? No? Then you need to check out the slide show. Not to worry — it’s safe. If you have time for only one picture, try this one.

“Sandpaper handjob” — that’s a great name for a band.

Bloggage:

Howie sent me an AP version of the falling-cow story — thanks, Howie — but I have a better one. The couple are locals, and one is a quote machine: “It’s raining cows out here, man.”

Let’s finish out YouTube week with yet another testimony to the strangeness of Japanese TV: Dogs jumping rope.

Have a great weekend, whether you jump rope or not.

A letter from the Department of Silver Linings:

RENO, Nev., Nov. 5 — As his wedding day approached last spring, Marshall Whittey found that his money could not keep pace with the grandiosity of his plans. But rather than scale back, he chose instead, like millions of homeowners across the country, to borrow against the soaring value of his home.

He and his bride, Holly Whittey, exchanged vows on the grounds of a sumptuous private estate in the Napa Valley. They spent their honeymoon at a resort in Tahiti.

But now, in an ominous portent for the national economy, Mr. Whittey has grown tight with his money. His home is worth far less than it was a year ago, and his equity has evaporated. And like many other involuntary adopters of a newly economical lifestyle, he can borrow no more.

I’ve become accustomed to reading bullshit like this about hedge fund zillionaires, money managers and other solid-gold-toilet vulgarians, but anyone want to guess what Mr. Whittey does for a living? He’s a sales manager at a flooring and tile company. In an area with a building boom at full steam, I’d imagine he knocks down a good buck, but not enough to afford his pimptastic wedding without tapping the home-equity ATM. In his attitude toward money, I expect he’s like a lot of people in that part of the country, where benjamins are like buses — there’s always another one coming along. And I hesitate to say he deserves what he’s getting, since all he’s getting at this point is a rather easy lesson in how to economize, far easier than many of us have gotten over the years. May I see the hands of everyone who’s had to economize in order to eat at some point in their careers? Yes, I thought so. This bozo — and many other bozos like him — are only living without restaurants.

And yes, I know that even Mr. Whittey’s pain is real to him, and the decline in his fortunes is shared by everyone, and that money he spends so foolishly every day supports real, non-foolish people in his chain of connections. Still: Cry me a bloody river.

Girlfriend is surly today, isn’t she? Not really. Just under-caffeinated and under-showered. So let’s make this quick, since it’s a bloggage-rich day:

I was having a major walking-into-walls day yesterday, so the news of the Robertson/Giuliani alliance circled my head for a while before coming in for a landing. My reaction was to quote well-known Hoosier sage John Mellencamp: Nothing matters and what if it did? As usual, Roy puts it better.

Fred W. McDarrah died Tuesday. If the name means nothing to you, it’s because you weren’t reading the Village Voice in its glory years, when McDarrah was a staff photographer. I was a subscriber, but I’d never heard this story:

As Mr. McDarrah’s renown as a Beat chronicler grew, his second, inadvertent career took shape. One day in the late 1950s, according to several news accounts of the period, a breathless Scarsdale matron phoned him at his office. Did Mr. McDarrah know where she might rent a real live Beatnik, not too dirty, to read poetry at a party she was giving?

Mr. McDarrah, who by this time knew hundreds of Beatniks (a few scrubbed and all needing cash), happily complied, and a going concern was born. Shortly afterward, he placed the following advertisement in The Voice:

add zest to your tuxedo park party … rent a beatnik. completely equipped: beard, eye shades, old army jacket, levis, frayed shirts, sneakers or sandals (optional). deductions allowed for no beard, baths, shoes, or haircuts. lady beatniks also available, usual garb: all black.

Calls flooded in. For $15, The New York Mirror reported in 1960, the client got one Beat and a half-hour of poetry. Two hundred dollars bought three Beats, who read poetry, answered questions, played the guitar and, of course, the bongos. Mr. McDarrah, who took a small commission and let the artists keep the rest, supplied Beats for school groups, photo shoots, meetings and catered affairs in and around New York for about two years, till the early 1960s.

As an agent, Mr. McDarrah was careful to protect the talent from the clientele. He would not procure lady Beats for bachelor parties. Nor would he rent a Beat of any kind to a children’s party. He once turned down a request from a scoutmaster looking to hire, for a speaking engagement, any Beatnik who was a former Eagle scout. (Mr. McDarrah’s refusal in this case may have owed simply to the sheer impossibility of filling the order.)

Necessity is the mother of invention: The anti-rape device. Ouch! Women seem to be showing their teeth all over lately, most notably in Seattle, where a woman bit off her ex-boyfriend’s lip while they were kissing, then spit it on the floor, where it was found covered in cat hair. And in Fort Wayne, a gal named Constance got right to the point:

An argument between a man and his girlfriend of nine months turned so heated Wednesday morning that the 49-year-old woman is accused of biting the man’s groin area and refusing to let go, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Constance Marie Manning, of the 7200 block of Hickory Creek Drive, is also accused of striking her boyfriend with a dog figurine – causing it to break – and chasing him with a kitchen knife.

You know what makes that story funny? It’s not Connie McToothy, but the reporter who thought to include that detail about the dog figurine’s fate, and set it off with em dashes. Our local weekly’s reporters are constitutionally incapable of translating police-report language into English, and so every drunk-driving arrest is reported thusly: “The officer noted a strong odor of intoxicants coming from the driver’s facial area.” We look for this priceless phrase every week, and we’re rarely disappointed.

And finally, two more YouTube links I forgot yesterday:

Via Ashley, the New Orleans story, in 65 seconds, performed by smart kids.

Ken, I’ve contracted something: Barbie breaks the bad news.