One book I read recently, which didn’t ahem make the right rail here, was “The Last Days of Dead Celebrities,” by Mitchell Fink. I needn’t have been ashamed; it’s an entirely respectable work of journalism, and if you squint your eyes a bit, it even works as a collection of cautionary tales about how to deal with the end of your life, whether you see it coming or not. I got it from the library because I wanted to read the chapter on Warren Zevon, but I found others more interesting, especially that of Ted Williams, the baseball player.

I lost the thread of the family wrangle over Teddy Ballgame’s remains — as I recall, Bob Greene wrote a really stupid column about it that queered me on the whole story — but it turns out the forces of evil triumphed, and somewhere in California or Florida Williams’ disembodied head rests in a cryogenic suspension, waiting for science to make a whole hell of a lot of advances, so that one day it can…do something. Not sure.

Anyway, it was yet another reminder, if any of us needed it, that families are fractious things. Today comes another: Billy Graham’s sons are fighting over where to bury the old man. The fact he isn’t, technically, dead yet is only one interesting angle of this story. One son wants him buried at the still-under-construction memorial library in Charlotte, which is built to look like a barn and silo, and features a cross-shaped entry and a mechanical talking cow. The other wants what his mother wants — a more dignified and private final resting place in the Carolina mountains. The fact that the sons are even capable of disagreeing over this astonishes me, but probably shouldn’t. We’re all human.

I watched a Billy Graham crusade on TV when I was about Kate’s age. My attention span hadn’t been shredded by the internet, remote-control channel-changing and the like, but I still think it’s remarkable that my attention was captured and held for some time. At the altar call at the end, I stood up and wanted to walk down to Billy and make my commitment to Jesus. Only he was imprisoned in a small black-and-white television, and I remembered I was Catholic and had, technically, already made the commitment. So I sat back down and changed the channel. Still, the man could preach.

OK, subject change: One of the earliest and most lasting bonds between Lance Mannion’s wife, the Blonde, and me, back in the day, was our shared devotion to the comics page. I still credit the Blonde with handing me one of my most satisfying columns, the great Journal Gazette Doonesbury/Spiderman “Sucks” Flip-Flop, which I’ve shared here before, so I won’t bore you. When Alan became features editor, I was elevated to a post of rare power vis-a-vis the comics page; I had the ear of the Decider. Still, it never came to much, because by the time that happened a new world order was ruling newspapers and especially comics, and it was: Less space, more crap.

The crap mostly came because of, who else, fretful editors, who thought they could hang on to readers by introducing, say, a comic strip featuring a young black couple. The funnies should look like America! And so on.

Of course comics are over. A few stalwarts hang on — Doonesbury is still worth your time, and we always have hope for another Calvin & Hobbes — but in the age of Photoshop funnies and Get Your War On, what more can be said in three panels?

Well, there’s this: “Mary Worth” comics in digital video, including the original camera angles. Enjoy, the Blonde! P.S. You’ll need QuickTime.

A holiday party invitation that recently arrived at NN.C Central promised “piping hot chili.” While I’m pleased that we won’t be having somewhat hot chili, I had one of those moments you sometimes get when you look at a word too long. That is: What the hell does “piping” mean, anyway?

Piping is what pipers do. It’s what plumbers install in your house. It’s the little row of cord or decorative seam that runs along your sofa cushions, or down the leg of an usher’s trousers. Hmm, what else? Adjectives — The child spoke in a piping voice. That is, he piped up. OK, like a flute. But how does something very hot become piping? (Richard Dawson voice.) Dictionary SAYS?! “Because of the whistling sound made by very hot liquid or food.” Huh. In a teakettle, maybe. I’ve had casseroles that sizzled a bit. But nothing that could be confused with actual piping.

Resolved: Never say “piping hot” again. And so, little by little, we banish clichés from our beloved language.

Further resolved: No more “deeply religious” or “badly decomposed” again, either. If you catch me at it, say something.

Gah. A kwazy-busy week stretches before me. I only volunteer for a few school activities a year, and yet they always seem to arrive in the middle of a deadline week. Fortunately, to leaven the seven-grain dough of this week (huh?) I have the rich stew of humanity all around me, which calls itself…Detroit.

Really. It’s weeks like this that I pity those of you living in places like Salt Lake City or Indianapolis. You should hear the morning traffic reports: “And we have a backup on the Lodge Freeway, apparently due to an engine block sitting in the left-hand lane…A pothole on the Chalmers exit ramp from eastbound I-94 has flattened the tires of at least two dozen cars, and they’ve run out of room to pull over, so expect delays there…” (Note: Paraphrasing of actual traffic reports, with very little exaggeration. The pothole actually had only 12 cars disabled and pulled over, and the engine block? Word. A couple weeks ago it was a driveshaft in the road. Ah, Detroit iron!)

And today? A man fleeing police this morning made his getaway by jumping into the Detroit River. Since the likelihood that this was either Mark Spitz or a battle-hardened Channel swimmer is pretty slim, it’s safe to say this tactic constituted suicide and not an unorthodox bid for asylum in Canada. The other day we drove downtown on surface streets instead of the freeway, and Alan pointed out the latest wrinkle in urban life — razor wire around industrial and commercial buildings’ rooflines, to keep thieves from stealing the rooftop air conditioners. And yet, the town refuses to die. You gotta love it. It’s Miami with snow.

A little bloggage today, for your amusement:

Do not, whatever you do, go to the Generator Blog. I mean, if you have work to do. Because you will not be coming back soon:

The NYT has a story today on gay evangelical Christians. You can tell the gay gene is a little weak in these guys because they have a really ugly coffee table. (Regrettably, the online version crops most of it out, but take my word for it — it’s plate glass on top of two ceramic elephants, Pier One c. 1980-something.)

Off to beat my head against the wall of a corporate PR machine make some phone calls. Make merry in the comments.

So yesterday we — OK, I — were/was discussing the miracle of the modern internets, and ho ho, here it comes again.

Britney Spears, put on some damn panties!

I confess: I’m an occasional — OK, daily — reader of Wesmirch, the only gossip blog aggregator you’ll ever need. I don’t do it because I give a fig about such things, but because it’s so easy for a person like me, aging and working alone in the house all day in an unhip neighborhood, to wake up one day and feel entirely out of it. I still do, even with daily gossip intake. Half the faces in People magazine are strangers to me. Who the hell is Tara Reid? Have you ever heard a song by Babyshambles? Justin Timberlake, how’s your uncle Mark, with whom I went to school for a while? Is he still the Bambi-eyed, pudgy boy I remember? And which one of you is Justin, anyway?

The celebrities whose paparazzi-chronicled activities I used to pay attention to — Jack Nicholson, Sean Penn — all look like escapees from a nursing home and/or wino flop. If they go out after dark at all, I’m sure it’s only because they’re rich enough that they don’t need the early-bird special to make ends meet. But I’m sure they’re all snoring by 11 p.m., too.

Anyway, back to Britney. In the last week, a mere seven days, she’s become best friends forever with Paris Hilton and a messy old sot who goes out at night in short skirts, sans undies. Once you can forgive — every girl needs to throw down after a divorce filing — but twice? And then three times? That’s when the wire services start noticing. That’s when all the goodwill that you got by dumping your parasitical husband starts to ebb away. People start to ask questions: Did she flee the house without so much as a suitcase? Is this some sort of newfangled therapy for herpes?

Because, as I say so often around these parts, I don’t get it. Never once have I “forgotten” my panties when I was wearing anything other than sweatpants around the house on a Saturday morning. I can certainly understand how no-panties would feel more comfortable than a thong, but am I the only girl in the world who knows the secret of Jockey for Her? They’re perfectly comfortable, they come in breathable cotton, many attractive colors and cuts. I think I’m going to buy a three-pack of the bikinis and send them to this girl. Clearly she needs an underwear intervention.

Actually, many young actresses do. For all the money spent on La Perla and various other high-end lingerie brands by Hollywood celebrities, too much of it stays at home in the drawer. I will say this: It’s certainly entertaining to see the new slang that has grown up around our most slang-worthy body parts. When Lindsay Lohan got caught in a similar fix, one blogger referred to her “shredded pastrami.” Snicker.

If you’re wondering why the blog looks the way it does, I have no idea. We seem to be having some problems down in Atlanta, but my main blog guy is in Lansing, nursing sick in-laws. I’m trying to keep everything in perspective. Sick old people are more important than my blog theme.

If you haven’t heard, Jesus Camp voluntarily shut itself down yesterday. I guess, in the climate of anti-Christianity swept in by Tuesday’s elections, they no longer felt safe. Whatever. Haven’t seen the movie — except for that righteous clip of Ted Haggard, tee hee — and now I don’t have to, although I probably wouldn’t have, anyway. I lived in Jesus Camp for 20 years; I am no stranger to this demographic. I wish them no ill. I can only hope they feel the same way about me.

But in meandering through a thread on the subject over at Metafilter, I came across this hilarious account of standing in opposition to a prevailing Jesus subculture at one person’s North Dakota high school. It reminded me of the various Jesus subcultures at my own, which were in evidence even during the Ford administration.

One was The Way International. Most observers identify it as a cult, and from some of their activities, I wouldn’t be surprised. At one point they were instructing their management layer in marksmanship and weapons-handling, and calling it “hunter safety courses.” The kids who were into The Way did something that was mystifying to a girl raised Catholic and living among mainline Protestants: They spoke in tongues. They were “taken by the spirit” at prayer, opened their mouths and supposedly ancient languages poured forth, praising God.

A few of my friends were into this, but not for long; by the time we grew close, they’d fallen out with The Way (out of The Way?) and heavily into ridiculing it. One liked to get so wasted he started slurring his words, at which point he opened his eyes wide and said, “Hey! Tongues!” Another pointed out that when one still-faithful member spoke in tongues, if you listened closely you always heard the phrase “Yoko Ono,” proof he was faking it. (Although, when you think about it, it may have been an early sign that John Lennon was a divine being, not so hard for some people to believe.)

Although our community was WASPy and generally not into this sort of thing — I’m still uncomfortable in any church where people lift their hands above the level of their shoulders while praying — they were respectful. Also, drugs were spreading through the schools like the Norwalk virus, and anything that kept kids away from that was seen as worth a try. In junior high we were all released one afternoon to attend an assembly, and when we arrived were treated to a half-hour concert by a rock band called the Free Fair. There was no obvious point to the show, although we were all invited back for a longer one that evening at the high school. I should have known something was up, as normally our principal didn’t opt for midday rock’n’roll breaks, but my friends were going to the show that night, so I did too. And sure enough, after the music came the Testimony: Drugs ruined my life blah blah but Jesus Christ saved it blah blah. The lead singer said he’d once been so strung out, he’d sold his winter coat for marijuana.

I was no expert on drugs, but even in eighth grade this sounded like crap. Marijuana, all the magazines said, was non-addictive and a fairly mild high, and this guy sold his coat for some? Maybe if he’d recently moved to Florida, maybe if it was already April, but otherwise even I — who had never been high in my 13 years — knew that marijuana would be no match for the misery of being outside without a coat in winter.

I left and went outside, where a few of my friends were in the baseball dugouts, smoking cigarettes with one of the Free Fair’s roadies. He had his arm around my friend Ann’s shoulders. She said he kissed her, stuck his tongue in her mouth and copped a feel. This was my very first experience with this sort of youth-culture Jesus-freakery evangelism, and you might say it left a mark. Lies on stage, jailbait groping outside — I had these folks’ number early. There were many parents who had good reason to worry about the various religious movements taking their children away — Hare Krishna, the Children of God, the Moonies — but mine never did. The Free Fair was my immunization.

Thank you, Jesus. The Lord truly does work in mysterious ways.

A former colleague of mine died unexpectedly last week in Fort Wayne. He was a great guy and I remember him fondly. If I were still in Indiana, of course I would have attended his funeral and most likely a newspaper wake, where we would gather at a bar somewhere and tell stories about him.

But I wasn’t, so I made do with reading the online guestbook at Legacy.com linked to his obit on the paper’s website.

I considered leaving an entry and decided not to, but in poking around, I came across this disclaimer near the “sign this guest book” button: Entries are free and are posted after being reviewed for appropriate content.

My first thought was, spambots have probably infested Legacy, but the NYT informs me no, it’s worse than that:

Dissing the dead, as these screeners call it, has become a costly and complicated problem for Legacy and other Web sites where people gather to mourn online. Legacy, which is now eight years old, carries a death notice or obituary for virtually all the roughly 2.4 million people who die each year, but few foresaw how nasty some of the postings to its guest books would be.

“Reading the obit, he sounds like he was a great father,�? says another, which is signed, “His son Peter.�?

The company employs 45 screeners to read the entries before they’re posted to the online guest books.

Amazing. A great Sunday read.

By the way, in e-mailing the news about my ex-colleague, Joe Sheibley, some people shared their own stories. Here’s one of the best:

I remember the time Ed Treon set his desk on fire with his loose match habits while lighting up his pipe. Joe calmly looked up from blue-penciling copy to say: “Ed, your desk is on fire” and then went back to editing.

You see why he was management material.

The phone rang in the middle of this morning’s pumpkin-carving, and you know what that means — run to sink and rinse hands, quickly dry them, pick up the phone, and…

Good day. Did you know congressional Democrats have dangerously blah blah blah illegal immigration blah blah blah open the borders blah blah blah–

“Are you a real person?” I asked.

“Yes,” said a young man who seriously seemed to be cursing the day he answered an ad that promised good money working at home.

“So who are you working for?” I asked, as in the middle of the blah blah I hadn’t heard a candidate’s name.

“The National Republican Congressional Committee,” he said.

“My congresswoman is a Democrat, and is so confident of victory she hasn’t bought so much as a billboard in my neighborhood,” I said. “Why don’t you spend your time calling someone in a district where you have a chance?”

No reply.

“Thanks for calling,” I said, and hung up.

This election cannot be over fast enough for me.

OK, then. Halloween! Little Red Riding Hood is bouncing off the walls; we don’t leave for The Most Worthless Day of School for another 20 minutes. No school in the morning, a Halloween parade at noon, followed by a party and God knows what else in the afternoon. Then trick-or-treating tonight. Why don’t I just puree some Snickers and hang an IV drip? Tomorrow the squirrels are free to destroy our jack-o-lanterns and everyone will be full of junk food. Here’s another day I’m happy to see in the rear-view mirror.

Bloggage:

I love Ann Arbor, but sometimes I’m glad I don’t live there anymore. From the Ann Arbor News:

Many families love trick-or-treating, but agonize over what to with all the excess candy. The key is to set limits and stick to them. Decide, as parents or as a family, what your rules will be. Explain your reasons clearly, whether they are dietary, dental or philosophical. Each family has its own comfort level and needs. My family eats three pieces of candy apiece on Halloween, two pieces the next day and one piece the third day. We all brush our teeth promptly and vigorously afterward.

My friend’s family fills a large orange candy bowl communally with everyone’s choicest candies. They can all help themselves whenever they wish, but when it’s gone, it’s gone. A family with food allergies keeps only the dairy-free, dye-free candies. Another family boycotted all Nestle products to protest the company’s infant formula sales tactics in developing countries. We have all made different decisions based on our family values. If your children express a desire to have as much candy as their friends, “different families do things differently” is a fair response. Understanding this concept will help your children cope with peer pressure and cultural differences they encounter in all aspects of their lives.

(HT: AAiO)

I weary of John Mellencamp. Really. For 20 years, I had to live with that poet-laureate-of-the-heartland crap. I lived in the same state as Mr. Laureate, but you’d never know it; a wise man once noted that southern Indiana has more in common with southern Ohio and southern Illinois than northern Indiana, and he’s right. I never saw him once, although the radio stations loyally supported his increasingly dreary, mopey music. After all, he was a Hoosier, and Hoosiers look out for their own.

Based on the evidence of his music, Mr. Mellencamp spent most of the ’90s depressed. I certainly understand how rich and famous people can get depressed — their self-imposed isolation from the regular world takes its toll — but jeez, when they are? I wish they’d just shut up about it. It’s like complaining about how heavy your wallet is. As insufferable as people like David Lee Roth and Jimmy Buffett can be, at least you can say they seem to be enjoying the trip, while Mr. Sourpuss sits down in Brown County fretting over the fate of the family farm and the regular joe.

Well, now Mr. Sourpuss has a new record out, and rather than cut through the clutter of modern radio formats, he’s elected to do it the new-fashioned way — selling the first single as an extended jingle for Chevy trucks. If you’re watching the baseball postseason, and everyone in Detroit is, you cannot escape that “This is Our Country” spot, in which we are asked to connect Silverado trucks with Mellencamp’s jangly guitar, stillborn lyrics (“I can stand beside/Things I think are right/And I can stand beside/The idea of stand and fight”) and an arresting visual montage that links ’50s super-8 home movies, the war in Vietnam, Rosa Parks and images of flooded, destroyed New Orleans neighborhoods. Because, you know, this is our country.

For the reaction in New Orleans, let’s go to our correspondent on the ground, Prof. Ashley Morris:

Does that new Chevrolet commercial piss anyone else off as much as it does me? WTF are they doing showing flooded New Orleans to try to sell a fucking Chevy truck? And Johnny Cougar now gets to keep his name Johnny Cougar. Mellencamp is a name for people with a modicum of scruples. Fuckmook.

Feh.

Others are no kinder:

It’s not OK to use images of Rosa Parks, MLK, the Vietnam War, the Katrina disaster, and 9/11 to sell pickup trucks. It’s wrong. These images demand a little reverence and quiet contemplation. They are not meant to be backed with a crappy music track and then mushed together in a glib swirl of emotion tied to a product launch. Please, Chevy, have a modicum of shame next time.

Yes, please, Chevy. You too, Johnny Cougar. I’m taking Ash’s suggestion and calling you Johnny Cougar from now on. The jury is still out on “fuckmook,” but you’ve been warned. This is my country, too.

The Tigers are on deck to lose it all, so how about some angry, bitter bloggage:

The only people who can make ignorant-ass statements about Parkinson’s Disease are the ones who’ve never seen it up close and personal. TPM Cafe blogger Joseph Hughes states the obvious.

Nikki’s mother called a while ago with bad news: The sleepover birthday party set for tonight is cancelled. Which means two things.

1) I will probably have to wait for “The Departed” to appear on DVD, like all the other parents in the world, and

2) I can find out what happened to the Whiskers as soon as everyone else does.

Yes, we’re watching “Meerkat Manor.” If you’re not watching this Friday-night Animal Planet serial, you don’t know what you’re missing. One 30-minute episode tracking the antics of extended meerkat clans in the Kalahari Desert routinely features family, fellowship, squabbling, grooming, sex and fleas. “Desperate Housewives” does not have fleas. Added value.

I’ve loved meerkats since I saw a mob of them at the Toledo Zoo, and they seemed to be the only animals there that didn’t know they were in captivity and didn’t care anyway. They live in extended families in complex relationships with one another, which is why their lives make such interesting television. The narration comes close to, but does not cross, the line of anthropomorphism, which makes it feel like science. But it’s as gripping as any old soap opera.

The Whiskers are the central family group. They’re led by a tough female, Flower, who reserves all breeding privileges for herself and doesn’t hesitate to kick the crap out of any female who defies her, including her own daughters. The Lazuli are their close-by rivals, and a third group appeared this season — the Commandos. Their leader is Hannibal, a male who appears to be missing an eye. Every week we are reminded that meerkats are adorable little weasels of menace, no matter how much time they spend grooming one another and looking out for the clan’s babies. Last week a Commando war party found a lightly protected Lazuli den holding two pups, Bubble and Squeak. The Commandos streamed down the hole and killed Bubble. On camera! It was tough to watch.

Last week, the episode ended with Flower and a small band of adults desperately trying to hold off another Commando raiding party. The Whiskers were outnumbered by the Commandos, and had pups with them, too. I know enough about television to know the chances of the producers allowing the central band to be taken apart midseason are pretty slim, but you never know. I keep thinking of Flower, whom I have loved and hated throughout the summer — yes, I willingly allow myself to be manipulated by producers and editors — trying to do her duty, and I just…I just…

Well, I just would have happily DVR’d it if I’d been able to see “The Departed” tonight, but now I’m sort of glad I don’t have to.

And if you hear me making references to war dancing and scent-marking, this is where they come from.

Bloggage:

There’s shameless, and then there’s shameless. Vote GOP or share responsibility for the next terror attack. I spit on these people.

I’m pretty plugged in to the daily news cycle, but missed the Great Stadium Threat yesterday. Dirty bombs in trucks? Huh. A few years ago, in a private conversation, a police official sketched out a scenario for attacking stadiums that was far easier, more plausible and likely deadlier than the hoax under investigation yesterday. I have a friend, a sportswriter, who believes that if al-Qaeda knew us better, they would have attacked us not on September 11 but on September 9, flying their planes into four NFL football stadiums scattered around the country. The casualties would have been higher, the shock more profound, the blow to the economy graver, he believes. “If you want to rattle Americans, get them at play,” he said. So it’s not a stupid idea. But I wish dumbass armchair warriors conducting “writing duels” would do it in private e-mails, not on websites.

My local weekly wins the headline of the month award. No link (paid subscribers only), but it’s short, and so:

Arrested with meat in pants

Oh, baby. Have a great weekend.

…Deadline! However, I’ll leave you with a bonbon, turned up in my searching the other night. (One of my search terms is “drug.”) It falls under the heading of Our Wonderful Democracy. Ahem:

A candidate against longtime Aspen-area Sheriff Bob Braudis, a drinking buddy of the late author Hunter S. Thompson, says a film he made of himself masturbating should not disqualify him from being sheriff.

He said it is a healthy example of performance art.

He goes on to call it “G-rated” and “less explicit than a beer commercial.”

I watched the last gubernatorial debate for my own civic duty last night. Performance art it wasn’t, and my agony was compounded by the B-movie weirdness of it all. Jennifer Granholm looked like a graduate of the Toastmasters Community College, where she earned a Certificate of Attendance and majored in Hand Gestures. Dick DeVos required me to explain to Kate just what “smarmy” means. At one point, he told a woman in the audience that “I grew up in a family business, too,” as though Amway = a plumbing supplier. Both came across as cheap, insincere hustlers, and I have to pull the lever for one of them in just a few weeks.

Then it rained all night and now it’s gray and gloomy. Matches the mood of pretty much everything.

Alan took advantage of some fine weather and a 40-percent-off sale at the nursery, and replaced some browning shrubs in front of the house Sunday. Years ago, while preparing the bed for what became our vegetable patch in Fort Wayne, he turned up a Model T wrench, part of a horseshoe and an Indian-head penny. On Sunday, he found the statue pictured above. My saint knowledge is pretty spotty, but even I know that’s St. Joseph; the carpentry tool at his feet gives him away. However, only in the last couple of years did I learn why he’s the saint most likely to be buried in the front yard of a recently sold house.

We turn again to Snopes. Ahem: Those trying to sell a home often feel in need of a miracle when a quick sale fails to materialize. Folklore purports to have the remedy: Bury a plastic statue of St. Joseph in the yard, and a successful closing won’t be long in the offing. Realtors across the nation swear by this.

I don’t know who buried it, or how many changes of ownership back it dates from, but I’d be willing to bet it’s from the most recent sale, the one to us. No, I don’t know if it came from a kit, available for $9.95, including the statue, the prayer, “instructional materials” and a free real-estate listing.

Nothing is more boring than another person’s religious views and I’ll spare you mine, but I think I turned another corner in my journey away from the church of my upbringing when Kate asked what the deal was with this ritual. I thought for a moment and said it was a superstition. God is a vast mystery, but if there’s one thing I think I know about whatever God is, it’s this: God doesn’t give a fat rat’s ass about the real-estate market.

Nor baseball games, although for all the signs of the cross and eyes raised to heaven on Saturday, it was still nice to win. I watched most of the game and found the waiting was getting on my nerves — c’mon, win already — so I took the dog for a walk in the ninth inning. As we came home up our block, I heard shrieking from half a dozen houses within earshot. By the time I got home, I was able to watch the game-winning homer from several different angles. According to the superstitions of many baseball fans, I actually brought on that homer by taking the dog for a walk.

Spriggy and I will be doing our best for the Tigers in the series. Anything to keep our real-estate values stable.