Go ahead — have a Jimmy Hoffa cupcake.

…then by all means, don’t go to this helpful site, which, though in Spanish, contains links to about a gazillion ’80s-era music videos.

Because you’ll get sucked in, you will.

On the bright side, though, they have Rapper’s Delight. Oh, kill me now and clear the calendars.

I was going to link to a story in the Freep today that illustrates and reinforces many of my personal prejudices — my loathing of small towns, high-school sports, most coaches and, especially, jocks under the age of 35. Unfortunately, someone seems to have poured maple syrup into their servers (I suspect jocks and coaches). Check back later.

And now I really do have videos to watch work to do.

UPDATE: OK, the Freep site, while loading slowly, seems to be working. Here’s the story, about a small-town Michigan high-school track coach who held parties for his athletes at his house, featuring alcohol, pornography and (but of course) sexual assault. (Links to related sidebars within the main story.) This went on for several years before it all fell apart. Now he’s going to jail.

I don’t know if there’s more of this sort of thing nowadays or we just hear about it more. I don’t know if it’s a function of young teachers wanting to stay young forever and refusing to grow up. Maybe it’s just criminal stupidity. In this case, I suspect you can add a healthy dollop of deeply suppressed homosexuality to the mix (a side of the coach that he’ll be getting in better touch with behind bars, most likely).

I do know this: When a grown man encourages teenagers to call him “the Dizzle,” the best course of action for the latter party is to run in the opposite direction.

A fine, disgusting read. Enjoy!

You know, I’d get a lot more done if some people, and yes I’m talking about you, Eric Zorn, would stop posting links to the Ten Worst Album Covers of All Time.

Anyway, it’s a crap list, because it leaves off Mom’s Apple Pie, which I should probably warn you is sorta NSFW. The cover was stupid and juvenile and the music, horrendous.

This week’s edition of the Grosse Pointe News carries this headline, in 72-point type at the top of Page One:

Nobel laureates opine

I’m sorry I can’t tell you much about the story — I let my subscription lapse, and wouldn’t you know the first missed copy would be one with “opine” out front — but I assume they’re referring to the gathering Jack Lessenberry talks about in this column. He mentions his disgust that neither of the Detroit dailies saw fit to cover this event, although I guess only the most foolish optimist would point out, “But if they had, they wouldn’t have used ‘opine’ in the headline.”

So I won’t.

I used to work with an opiner, that is, a woman who used “opine” instead of “said” in her copy. She was also fond of “averred,” “demurred” and, on one memorable occasion, “ejaculated.” (All over her copy!) I think I’ve talked about her here before, so I’ll spare you my personal opining on the practice. There are editors who claim no word other than “said” will do, and I agree that 99 percent of the time it’s the only choice, although I reserve the right to use “asked” and “added” where it seems appropriate. Like “said,” both are pretty invisible in copy, and in some cases even more so; I’m picky enough to be bothered by reading, “‘At what cost are we willing to continue this war?’ she said.”

At least, that’s my opine-ion. As I am known to aver.

This weekend was one for computer maintenance. I did a big backup to the big LaCie, then beefed up the blogroll here at NN.C, a chore I’ve been putting off forever. I started putting in all my bookmarks, then realized I only visit about one-third of them on a regular basis. So I made that the new criteria for the blogroll — I have to visit regularly. Some I visit less regularly — Laura Lippman’s main site is only updated monthly, but it’s always worth visiting, particularly this month’s update, “Waiting for Lippman.” Ashley Morris, regular commenter here, is getting a lot of traffic as he emerges as the Rudepundit of post-Katrina New Orleans. But the ones I’m visiting are the ones I include. Suggestions for new ones welcome. And read nothing into the order; the server randomly scrambles them with each page reload.

Another housekeeping detail: If something important happens on “The Sopranos” this week, I don’t want to hear about it. We’re having a new floor installed in our family/TV room, and we’ll be getting only non-premium, non-digital cable on our primitive 13-inch bedroom TV, so not a word. I’ll catch up via On Demand later and we can all have a nice chat, but this week? Mum’s the word.

I guess I should add, if blogging gets intermittent in the following week, don’t call 911. I’ll have my hands full keeping the house from falling into full disaster-area status, and the dog out of the polyurethane.

On to the bloggage:

Everyone who goes to Paris remarks on the dogs in restaurants; every establishment seems to have a house pooch, who loafs around the joint while customers fail to freak out over the germs. My sole objection to having dogs in restaurants here is that they’d be American dogs — some overbred, others undertrained, still others wearing Burberry raincoats. Having watched the incredible bad karma spread by a single shithead who decided to bring his macho pit bull onto the playground at Foster Park in Fort Wayne one afternoon — and then put the dog down the slide, wheee, and no I’m not kidding — I kind of lost my trust in my fellow dog owner. (If I’d had a gun, I would have confronted him. If I’d had a cell phone, I would have called the police. Since I had neither, but did have a three-year-old, I opted instead to just leave.)

But even if dogs were allowed in restaurants here, I’d hate for it to be because of these people, examined in the Sunday NYT:

Health care professionals have recommended animals for psychological or emotional support for more than two decades, based on research showing many benefits, including longer lives and less stress for pet owners.

“I had never heard of emotional support animals before,” said Steve Hanson, an owner of 12 restaurants including Blue Fin and Blue Water Grill in Manhattan. “And now all of a sudden in the last several months, we’re hearing this.”

Oh, I only wish it were April Fool’s Day:

One 30-year-old woman, a resident of Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y., said she does not see a psychotherapist but suffers from anxiety and abandonment issues and learned about emotional-needs dogs from a television show. She ordered a dog vest over the Internet with the words “service dog in training” for one of the several dogs she lives with, even though none are trained as service animals. “Having my dogs with me makes me feel less hostile,” said the woman, who refused to give her name.

“I can fine people or have them put in jail if they don’t let me in a restaurant with my dogs, because they are violating my rights,” she insisted.

It’s a good thing she wasn’t identified, because otherwise she’d be risking about a million pieces of hate mail pointing out exactly why she has abandonment issues. Would you trust this woman to bring a well-trained, well-behaved dog into a restaurant? You think Foofie would like quietly at the feet of her mistress and wait until it was time to go? I don’t. If Foofie starts coming into restaurants, I’m going to start carrying mace.

For Foofie if he comes near my entree. And then, for Foofie’s owner. Put this in your emotional support pipe and smoke it, babe.

Harry asks in the comments below why I haven’t said anything about Richard Cohen’s incredibly stupid column earlier this week:

and nancy, your silence on richard cohen’s snit about colbert fills the room. you’ve run some of cohen’s columns when he made some sense, but not to call him out for that one seems like you’re covering for him when you shouldn’t.

Covering for him? Uh, no. I just thought the column wasn’t worthy of much other than the Randy Jackson take: “Dawg, not your best performance. You were pitchy and all over the place, and you never really got it together.” Also, I’m sick of this story. Very few people seemed to say what finally occured to me, reading about it: That Colbert’s audience was ostensibly the people in the room, but his real audience was the people watching clips on the web and e-mailing the best lines to all their friends. All this talk about whether he was rude to this or that constituency sitting in the room with him overlooks this, because he knew he was really talking to the folks at home. It’s the reason the press covers commencement speeches and others that, on paper, don’t seem all that important.

If Colbert had done what the Cohens of the world said he should have done — told some stupid jokes at his own expense, been polite and respectful to the leader of the free world, etc. — he’d still be a guy with a relatively low national profile and a show on Comedy Central. Now? He’s New York Times boy. Not a bad night’s work.

(And thanks to The Poor Man for unearthing a Mel Brooks quote I hadn’t heard before: Tragedy is when I cut my finger. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die. I will consider this when I’m enduring Kate’s new preferred dinner-hour television. Last year it was “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy!,” this year it’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos,” the comedy stylings of which consist of some poor slob either cartwheeling over some handlebars to fall on his head, or else slipping off a narrow rail/rope to rack up the family jewels big-time.)

Actually, today I’m wondering what it must be like to be one of Earl Woods’ other three children. I understand that they had the famous half-brother, and I really don’t know what his relationship with them was, after he left his first family behind and made a second stab at things, but when you find yourself lumped in as a last-graf afterthought, man, that’s gotta hurt.

Watch Nance Grow Old in Real Time, Chapter XXXIX: A couple weeks ago the NYT magazine featured a profile of Dov Charney, the alleged genius behind American Apparel, evidently some sort of cotton-jersey version of The Gap. You can find any number of these stories out there, all of which do some version of a tap dance around the fact Charney is, um, fond of his dick. Evidently he likes to handle the merchandise in front of reporters. (As a reporter myself I’ve seen this happen on a metaphorical level many times. In the literal flesh, though, no.)

But that’s not the story here. If a guy sells good T-shirts, I’ll forgive him anything, even that. I’m a T-shirt gal, and as summer lines up behind spring, of course I’m in the market. So when yesterday’s errands had me in Royal Oak, and I passed the distinctive Helvetica sign of an American Apparel shop, I swerved to the side to check it out. I was looking to fact-check the veracity of this claim in the NYT article:

He began a fixation that continues to this day on what he calls American commodity manufacturing: clothing items and other goods that defy fashion and stand outside of seasonal requirements, things that are simple, well made and possessed of such innate organic style that they become iconic: Levi’s 501’s, Sperry Top-Sider deck shoes, Russell Athletic heather-gray T-shirts.

Well. I own two of the three items on that list, and let me just say, American Apparel, you’re no Levi’s 501s. The line at center stage at the moment is something called “sheer cotton,” which is another word for “cheap” where I come from. I owned a sheer cotton T-shirt a few years ago; I bought it mail-order from Eddie Bauer, and it marked my final estrangement from that once-worthy brand. It was so sheer I couldn’t wear it to work without a jacket, and inspired my new rule about white T-shirts: I pull the fabric over my wrist, and if I can read my watch through it, it goes back on the rack.

Some of the styles were OK, but please — a few of the T-shirts had necklines with a raw edge. Raw, like you’d cut the finished one off with scissors, like in “Flashdance.” No, thanks.

I realize, being approximately two decades past A.A.’s target market, this will not cause anyone to lose sleep at night. I just hate to see young people, who have fewer disposable dollars than anyone, paying $18 for a shirt they can read their watches through.

I liked the amateur-porny-type photos on the wall, though. I’m not that old.

After I left I was lured, by the nose, into the place next door, billing itself as an “eco-luxury” store — organic cotton this, all-natural that. They were going out of business, selling down to the walls, and if there’s one thing that can get me through the door it’s a giant sign reading 50-70 PERCENT OFF. The pleasantly scented botanical skin products were only the hook.

I swiftly discovered that a $100 shower curtain marked down by half is still a $50 shower curtain, and honestly, I don’t care if it’s woven of natural hemp. But there was a nice chair there, lightly used, that looked close to what we want for our family room. A price tag dangled sadly from its back. Won’t Alan be pleased when I tell him I found our chair in an upscale-hippie den of hemp! I reached for it with trembling fingers. Twenty-two HUNDRED dollars. For a chair.

Not only am I too old for the world, I’m too poor.

I’m not a White House correspondent, but I sometimes play one, watching television. And so I checked out Stephen Colbert’s performance at the correspondents’ dinner via the thousands of web-streaming sites hosting it these last few days, and guess what? I thought it was pretty funny. Not stop-stop-my-sides-are-hurting funny, but you know — chuckle-worthy. Now I’m checking out Act II — the reaction. Which is pretty typical. It wasn’t complete, however, until someone wrote the inevitable “I didn’t laugh because I was offended, I didn’t laugh because it wasn’t funny” piece:

Safely delivered all in the stentorian, arrogant voice of Mr. Colbert’s late-night Bill O’Reilly knockoff persona, the material came off as shrill and airless, with little time or space left for jokes to sink in and seduce the listener before the next round of hectoring began.

Who knew White House correspondents were such practiced critics of comedy? “Shrill and airless.” I’ll have to keep that one in my pocket.

Good column in the Freep yesterday, about the contemporary phenomenon of the urban funeral:

Two weeks ago, my son and I were caught in a mile-long traffic jam in Detroit. Young people were hanging out of Cadillac Escalade windows cheering wildly, speakers blaring. Was it a parade? A spring celebration in Palmer Park? No, it wasn’t a party or a picnic. It was the funeral procession of rapper Proof, born Deshaun Holton. …”Young people just don’t have the respect for death that their elders had,” (a funeral director) said. “I’ve even heard of there being shootings at funerals — they shoot up the casket, too.”

One more reason the police beat is the best one at the paper.

Oops, almost forgot to add this: Go ahead, lick that doorknob, or everything you wanted to know about germs. Thanks, Reuters!

I won’t be seeing “United 93” in the theaters, but not for the reasons being discussed in the public square at the moment. Like most parents with younger children, I rarely see anything with a rating stronger than PG in the theaters. (My plan for this weekend: “Brokeback Mountain,” finally. I suspect the next movie we’ll be seeing in the dark with strangers will be “Akeelah and the Bee,” but never mind that.) I’m paying attention to the discussion of “United 93,” and as usual, I’m wondering why it seems only Ron Rosenbaum is paying attention:

Why is this the third film made about Flight 93? I’ve watched them all: There was last year’s Discovery Channel docudrama “The Flight That Fought Back.” Then there was this year’s A&E cable re-enactment, “Flight 93,” directed by one of George W. Bush’s college classmates (coincidence?). And now the major new Hollywood feature United 93, directed by Paul Greengrass. When the controversy over the trailer for the new film erupted recently, the question was, “Is it too soon?” I wonder if the question should be, “Are there too many?”

Yes, exactly. In fact, I watched the hijacking portion of “Flight 93” in, of all the grotesque places, the kitchen of a big fancy Grosse Pointe house, during an estate sale. Shoppers picked over the china and glassware while screams of panic erupted from the little TV on the counter. It was, how you say, a bit unsettling, especially since it appeared no one was paying attention to the show but me. (It’s hard for me to tune out TV; one of our household’s strictest rules is, if you’re not watching the TV, turn it off. I once interviewed a couple who’d recently won $9 million in the lottery. They seated me next to their ginormous new TV, which was left on throughout the interview, at considerable volume.)

Anyway, Rosenbaum is right. What’s all this “too soon” stuff? Doesn’t anyone pay attention to TV Guide anymore? Of course you can see why this is the latest, but most likely not the last — this story is as compelling, and as dreadful (as in “filled with dread”) as any in our history, and I suspect we’ll be chewing over it for generations.

I might watch when it comes around on cable, but based on the trailer, it might be a while before I can stomach even that. I still can’t look at 9/11 photos without feeling a lurch, and video of the second plane making impact still drops my jaw.

Actually, I don’t know how much I want to relive 9/11 and the aftermath. Writing this, I was just reminded of a column I read in the three-days-post time frame; I think it was by Mona Charen or Maggie Gallagher or one of those right-wing antifeminist lady scolds. The angle was, “Let’s hear it for men, because men aboard United 93 saved the Capitol,” and I think it went on to tie this all together with why women shouldn’t be in combat and blah blah blah. It even made a point of mentioning the detail about the stewardesses onboard Flight 93, who were said to be boiling water in the coffeepots to use as a weapon, and then dismissing it with a flip of the hand — well, that’s all very nice, but wouldn’t you rather be defended by a big strong man? I was a columnist and I remember 9/11, and I’m willing to forgive an awful lot of the crap that was said and written in the aftermath. We all went a little crazy. But I thought then, and I think now, that if you’re willing to climb to the top of a pile of 3,000 of your countrymen’s corpses to advance your stupid social agenda, you are beneath contempt.

For the record: I think a potful of boiling water to the face makes a fine weapon. It’s not like they were planning to hit the hijackers with their handbags, for god’s sake.

Anyway, the whole thing gets my stomach upset. So no “United 93” for me, not yet. Maybe later.

Just one “American Idol” pop-culture note before we get to the meaty stuff: Kellie Pickler has passed her sell-by date, and in fact did so several weeks ago. She is starting to stink up the room. Also, as though I needed even more evidence that I am 12,000 years old, Elliott Yamin referred to “A Song for You” as a Donny Hathaway song, and no one corrected him. That’s because only six graybeards in the audience watching at home could say, with authority, that it’s a Leon Russell song.

Reader, I have the album. Recorded in 1969, when I was just starting to pay attention to such things. (I bought it for “Roll Away the Stone,” which I distinctly recall hearing first on prog-rock radio, more proof that I’m older than Lazarus. Radio playing obscure Leon Russell? That’s crazy talk!)

I wonder if Leon watches “American Idol.” I wonder what he thought when he heard one of his best songs assigned to a performer, not a songwriter. And what’s Leon up to these days? Of course Professor Google knows. Speaking of graybeards…

Oh, but I have to stop talking about the music of my youth. It’s just a straight shot from here to the iTunes Music Store, to spend away Kate’s college fund. I’m way too suggestible about these things. Do you know that after a Sopranos episode wrapped up with a Pink Floyd song a few weeks ago, I immediately ran over there and downloaded it? I did — “One of These Days.” Which isn’t a terrible song, but I sort of have a wall up between myself and Pink Floyd, which has been there since I gave away my copy of “Dark Side of the Moon” and vowed that if I never heard it again for all eternity, I still would have heard it once too often. “One of These Days” is from “Meddle,” but still. I was never much of a Pink Floyd fan; the band always seemed to be solid evidence that marijuana really was a dangerous drug. A gateway drug, in fact — it led to Pink Floyd records.

Did I say meaty stuff was following? Well, I lied. Bloggage is following:

Who has the best corrections in the newspaper business? I’d nominate The Guardian: We said that the vertical drop of the Stealth ride at Thorpe Park was the fourth steepest in the world (Crowds force closure of theme park, page 11, April 17). Nothing can be steeper than vertical. What was meant was that the launch acceleration – 0-80mph in 2.3 seconds – was the fourth fastest.

What do firefighters do when they’re not fighting fires? Sometimes they pull naked guys out of chimneys. Jon Carroll explains.

Some weeks back, after Rosa Parks was laid to rest, there was some disapproving talk about how the niches nearby in her Detroit mausoleum were suddenly carrying much larger price tags; apparently the rule of “location, location, location” applies after death, too. Well, time has wielded its scythe and Mrs. Parks has a new neighbor. And as they say, there goes the neighborhood.

More later. Discuss.

A nice moment today, as I was finishing a piece I’d promised to an editor by noon. Looked at the clock: 11:57 a.m. Looked at my buddy list; was he online, with his chat program open? He was. Was he at his desk? Sent him a shout-out. He was. Dragged my Word file over to his name on the buddy list, which sent him an automatic message saying a file was coming his way, and would he accept? He did. The file transferred in a few seconds. Glanced at the clock: 11:58. I beat deadline by two minutes. I rule.

All the world’s a newsroom when everybody has a Mac.

Magazine deadlines are more elastic than newspaper ones, but deadline is a drug, and freelancers don’t get enough of it. Oh, we have deadlines, but we don’t get the deadline energy that comes from a newsroom, when everyone’s clattering away, focused on beating the clock. It helps you work. When you’re alone in your home office trying to meet a deadline, it’s just you and your flop sweat.

So, then.

Another deadline slain, and a little time to breathe. Detroit buried Proof today. (The other guy shot in this incident died earlier this week.) I recommend the photo gallery, which revealed the details of the $48,000, 24-karat gold-plated casket, the wide range of outfits and, of course, the funeral “family” credential. And what funeral would be complete without bomb-sniffing dogs? The world is a remarkable place sometimes.

If half the city was at Proof’s funeral yesterday, the other half was at the zoo, which is where we were. The crowd was so dense we were directed to park on the sidewalk. Since we are, I have been informed daily this week, the only family in the whole school that didn’t go out of town for spring break, I was surprised to find so much company; I figured we’d have the place to ourselves. (When pressed, Kate will acknowledge that one or two of her classmates are not vacationing in Florida this week, and surprise, we saw them both at the zoo.) My favorite feature this visit: The Japanese snow monkeys, who were sitting in the sunshine on this fine day, grooming one another. The body language is so close to that used by my hairdresser when she touches up my roots that I couldn’t help but smile.

And back to the bloggage: John Scalzi mentioned the “Purity Ball” earlier this week, the strange ritual in some evangelical cultures in which fathers escort their daughters to a dance and then publicly sign this pledge:

I, (daughter’s name)’s father, choose before God to cover my daughter as her authority and protection in the area of purity. I will be pure in my own life as a man, husband and father. I will be a man of integrity and accountability as I lead, guide and pray over my daughter and as the high priest in my home. This covering will be used by God to influence generations to come.

It’s all about virginity, obviously. (And just to ratchet up the creep factor for those fo you who haven’t spent much time in livestock breeding, “cover” is the verb that describes what the stallion does to the mare. What it means here? Up to you.) The very thought of any father taking this much interest in his daughter’s sexuality, and at such a young age — here’s a Focus on the Family story that says some of the girls escorted to this shindig were as young as 4 — would send me running for the hills, but then, I’m not of this world. Show me a culture where female virginity is prized to this extent and I’ll show you one that has a real problem with women.

Anyway, here are some Purity Ball photos from the 2005 affair Van Wert — presumably Ohio. Draw your own conclusions. Me, I’m grossed out.

And ye shall be remembered, with, I dunno, some teddy bears ‘n’ stuff, and a big card, and a poster, all destined to be turned to mush the first time it rains, which was last night. I am moved to say what I always say at times like these:

Makeshift Memorial would be a really cool name for a band.

Random bloggage: An eye-popping anecdote at the end of Jack Lessenberry’s column in Detroit’s Metro Times this week:

Anyone who knows any history can see that we are making the same mistakes in Iraq as we did in Vietnam, or worse … except that so few of us know any history. Once recently, I asked some swaggering “we’re-gonna-win-in-Eyerak” guy why he thought it was different from Vietnam.

“What we did in Vietnam was run away before we were there long enough for our military to have a chance to win,” he said.

He doesn’t mention how old this person is. I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume…oh, 16 or so. Too young to know our involvement in Vietnam spanned, what? Twelve years? Yes. Three times the length of our WWII campaigns. Amazing. If I were a taxpayer in his school system, I’d want my money back.