BREAKING NEWS! Proof was shot to death overnight here in the D. At a club on 8 Mile, no less. Needless to say, Proof is a hip-hop artist, because otherwise he’d have a name like Bob Smith. He was DOA at the hospital, so I guess it’s safe to assume he wasn’t shot in the fleshy part of the thigh, which was last week’s comic relief on “The Sopranos.”

I recommend that link, which at this moment has the rushed, get-me-rewrite tone of a reporter breathlessly dictating a hot scoop from the cop shop. And there are priceless details: Proof was Eminem’s best man at his cursed January wedding, already defunct. He served as Em’s “on-stage hype man,” whatever that is. And this is the second Eminem posse shooting in recent months; Obie Trice was shot while driving on the Lodge freeway on New Year’s Eve.

Amazing: Proof’s Wikipedia entry already has his date of death on it. By my estimation, he’s been dead barely five hours. The amazing internet.

Please don’t take my somewhat sardonic tone for a lack of appreciation for the finality of death. Every man’s violent death diminishes me, etc. But when you participate in a culture that lionizes violence and gun-toting and all the rest of it, a certain amount of this is, how you say? Inevitable. This is one reason part of me roots for Eminem, who seems to be trying to be a grown-up. I doubt he was in that club, but what do I know?

IMMEDIATE UPDATE: Some sources claim we’re having a rap war. Oh, joy.

Ah, me. Eminem filed for divorce today. Was it just yesterday that my hairdresser and I were marveling at the quiet tastefulness of Kim’s wedding turnout, remarking that once you set aside the idea of a woman with two children marrying her baby daddy (the first one) for the second time IN WHITE, she really looked nice as a brunette? No, but it wasn’t much earlier than that. They didn’t even make the 90-day mark.

I’m disappointed. The second wedding seemed like the ultimate triumph of hope over experience. Older, wiser, sadder, but more mature — so much water under the bridge, much of it laced with cocaine residue and the usual celebrity-life detritus. Em remarried Kim even though, during their long estrangement, she’d gotten all strung out and had a baby with another guy. (He adopted the child.) Their own daughter was in the wedding. She was four years old when they married the first time. Maybe she was in that one, too.

Here’s something I learned a long time ago, and still have to relearn, occasionally: No one — no one — is qualified to judge the quality of a marriage except for the people in it. We are certainly free to have colorful opinions about it, particularly if the people involved were given to public pronouncements about what marriage is, ought to be, or should be shaped by the law to resemble, but the truth? We just don’t know. As a wise man — I believe it was Charlie Rich — said way back in 1970-something, “No one know what goes on behind closed doors. Behiiiind cloooosed do-orrrrs.”

I keep hoping to see Eminem in the wild. This is the first time I’ve lived in a city large enough to sustain a working population of famous people, and you know, it would be amusing to see Em oh, squeezing grapefruits at the Eastern Market, or somethin’. I found a discussion board online devoted to such topics, and the best anyone was able to do was say they saw him filling a sports car with gas at a station somewhere in Sterling Heights. One of my friends here knows someone who was in a bar in the city one night near Christmas, and overheard some woman sitting at the bar, singing along with the carols on the sound system. “She’s pretty good,” he told the bartender. “Do you know her?”

“Sure I know her,” said the bartender, whose name was Reeves. “That’s my sister, Martha.”

That never happens to me. I mean, not ever.

The not-so-gory details, in PDF.

Bloggage: Couric will become the first solo female anchor on an evening newscast, which in 2006 is a little like saying she’s been given her own channel on CB radio. My thoughts exactly, Tim Goodman.

Busy day today, which means maximum procrastination. Away with it.

A few reasons I wouldn’t mind being a wire editor: You boost your chances of running the “current affairs” category on “Jeopardy!” You learn fascinating facts about Burkina Faso. And, occasionally, the job is grimly hilarious:

A man became so hooked on the “dance drug” ecstasy that he took 25 pills every day for more than four years, doctors revealed yesterday. Throughout his 20s, he was estimated to have taken more than 40,000 ecstasy tablets, the highest-ever recorded intake.

Dr Fabrizio Schifano, one of the doctors who assessed the man, known as Mr A, at St George’s Medical School, London, said: “He repeated himself all the time, couldn’t keep appointments and found it difficult to go the supermarket because he couldn’t remember what he had already put in his trolley.” Dr Schifano, one of the doctors who wrote about Mr A in the journal Psychosomatics, said yesterday: “He was addicted and his life revolved around the drug.”

This explains trance music, too.

A day-early April Fool’s Day joke that really rises above the fray: Chinese Democracy is finally finished:

Rose has also retained his pathological distaste for the media, lyrically attacking the editors of Vanity Fair, MTV personality Sway, numerous teenage bloggers, and the city hall reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer (who, curiously, has never written about pop music).

See, it’s funny because it’s true. Or could be.

Bike-riding season is officially open. It’s been open for a while, but today is the first I managed to kick it off right — with a few downloads from the iTunes Music Store.

I hadn’t been there — to iTunes — for weeks and weeks, and I see that in my absence Steve Jobs has only redoubled his efforts to part me from all my money, 99 cents at a time. They’ve been adding to the iTunes Exclusives library, virtual albums built around a theme. I only needed to see they have a whole series devoted to the ’70s to start drooling.

Some people maintain the 1970s were an unrelenting sump of suckishness. They couldn’t be more wrong, especially when it comes to pop music, most of which was at least listenable and some of which was simply great. I’ll put ’70s funk up against Motown any day.

And there’s always another song to buy. I chose the Isley Brothers’ “Fight the Power.” Every song from one’s youth has a memory attached, and this is mine: Watching a bunch of gay men dance to “Fight the Power” at the Kismet, one of Columbus’ oldest gay bars, maybe the oldest. (It still is, but now it’s called the Eagle.) Every girl who knows gay men has danced with them; it’s part of their job in straight society — dance with women whose husbands refuse. At school dances, girls dance with one another, but boys can’t, lest the closet cases on the football team decide to hold their heads in the toilet over it. And as you get older, girl-girl dancing gives way to girl-gay boy dancing. It’s a perfect expression of teenage misery, one reason the “World Happiness Dance” episode of “My So-Called Life” reached the level of absolute brilliance.

If it continues into adulthood, one venue for it is gay bars, where single women go with their gay male friends for a little frisson of transgression, among other things. So it was with me at the Kismet, where we danced and danced and danced, and then “Fight the Power” came on, and everyone started doing a line dance called the Bus Stop. I didn’t know it, and I needed a break, so I stepped off and watched for a while, all those muscles and tight T-shirts and perfectly faded jeans moving together in the line. And then it came to me: They’d really rather be dancing with each other. All that dancing-with-girls stuff — they’re just humoring us.

When you have an epiphany, you remember what was on the soundtrack at the time.

I also got Gary Wright’s “Love is Alive,” which will bring no end of abuse from Alan, who considers him Lame. He’s right — Gary Wright is lame. But again, there’s a memory attached. Wright came to Ohio University to open for Peter Frampton in 1976 or so. I think Frampton was touring to support “Frampton Comes Alive,” which meant he was doing a live show of a live album. Of course, “Frampton Comes Alive” was turgid, horrible crap, but there was a certain lemming-like appeal to seeing what was all over the radio being acted out on stage. I bought tickets.

So Gary Wright comes out to play, and no one had heard of him. He opened with “Love is Alive,” and it was fabulous, this sort of jazzy organ groove pop thing. He had three sylph-like chick singers, each one a sexy goddess, doing backup. He was in and out in about eight songs, ending with “Dream Weaver,” which we also hadn’t heard, and oh my but it was one of those opening acts you remember, so fresh and new and what about those backup singers.

And then Frampton comes out, and all our hearts sank. He isn’t really going to sing that Doooo you, you! Feeeel like I doooooo thing, is he? Oh god, it sounds just like the album. Aren’t live shows supposed to sound different from the album, even live shows about live albums? We stayed to the end, but left thinking about Gary Wright.

Gary went on to have a very very good year, and he came back to OU almost a year later, and he was headlining this time. And guess who opened for him? The J. Geils Band.

Well, you know how that went. J. Geils comes out and blows the freakin’ roof off the place. I mean, it actually levitated. It was in a smaller venue this time, and they did the same opening-act thing — concise, tight, loud. Also, with lots of harmonica solos. Ain’t nothin’ but a house party!…First I look at the purse! It was outstanding. And then they went off, and out came Gary Wright, after a hard year of touring, which in the ’70s wasn’t about yoga and fresh-made carrot juice, if you catch my drift.

There was a new set of chick singers, just as sylphlike, but not the same ones as the first go-round. And he didn’t open with “Love is Alive,” but with “Dream Weaver,” his big ginormous hit. And get this — there was a slide show.

Sure. He sang, “I just closed my eyes again…” and behind him flashed a big picture of Gary Wright with his eyes closed. “Climbed aboard the dream weaver train…” And there was a train in soft focus on the screen. And so on.

Oh my, did it suck. I mean, we’d just heard “Whammer Jammer.” We didn’t want to hear this lame-ass crap. Not even.

I’m not sure if this story has a moral, but I always think of it when I hear Gary Wright, and maybe, if I had to write it down, it’s this: Stay nimble, keep your material fresh, don’t be too literal and choose your opening act carefully.

I went looking for something today and turned up something else. Since we’ve been chatting about paternity and such, it seems appropriate. Ladies and gentlemen…I give you…a selection from the great…Loretta Lynn’s…“The Pill”:

All these years I’ve stayed at home
While you had all your fun
And every year that’s gone by
Another baby’s come
There’s a gonna be some changes made
Right here on nursery hill
You’ve set this chicken your last time
‘Cause now I’ve got the pill

I’m tired of all your crowin’
How you and your hens play
While holdin’ a couple in my arms
Another’s on the way
This chicken’s done tore up her nest
And I’m ready to make a deal
And ya can’t afford to turn it down
‘Cause you know I’ve got the pill

Let’s get the party started with a little mixed grill of tasty bloggage, shall we?

I gotta tell ya, whenever those VH1 compilation shows comes on — “The 100 Most Shocking TV Moments,” whatever — they always fall short. None ever mentions what I consider the most jaw-dropping shows on television. Which are, of course, the paternity-test shows on “Maury.”

You think: It cannot get any lower than this. You think: These people must be actors. You think: No sane human being would make such a spectacle of himself. Or herself. And what about the baby?

But no.

Small wonder, then, that Maury’s paternity-test shows are audience favorites, that they have, god help me, returning characters:

Guests are encouraged to be forthright, and Sanquenetta is. “I’m not 100, I’m not 1,000, I’m a million percent sure he’s the father of my baby,” she says. “Maury, this is the first and last time you’re gonna see me on your show.”

“During her taped piece, we showed a retrospective of all of her appearances on the show,” Faulhaber says. “And she came out the first time and said, ‘Maury, I’m 110 percent sure.’ And the next time she goes, ‘I’m 130 percent.’ . . . ‘I’m 155 percent.’ ‘I’m 200 percent.’ ‘I am 1 billion percent.’ . . . And each time it’s amazing, because she sits there and she says, ‘I know it this time.’ “

You really have to read it all.

Meanwhile, I’m 1 billion percent sure you’ll be bummed out to learn that southeast Michigan seems to have a homicidal animal killer on the loose. I suspect it’s the usual story — a badly damaged person in a spiral of sorts:

Since January, authorities have found nearly 40 dead domestic and wild animals — some decapitated, some skinned — within a 3-mile radius of Superior Township, including coyotes, foxes and deer. On March 16, they started finding dogs. The most recent find, on Sunday, included the tied-up pit bull puppy and a cocker spaniel that had been shot in the back of the head.

However, as someone points out in the story, Jeffrey Dahmer got his start this way. Keep your cats close and your dogs closer, if you live nearby.

Finally, we come to the much-commented-upon Westboro Baptist Church, which has grabbed the spotlight in recent weeks by bringing their God Hates Fags act to the funerals of soldiers killed overseas:

The three protesters stood by the sidewalk, holding signs and chanting antimilitary slogans outside the funeral of Army Cpl. Nyle Yates III, who died in Iraq. “Cpl. Yates is in hell!” they screamed Monday morning, dragging the U.S. flag on the ground. “Cpl. Yates is in hell!”

Lately, in Michigan anyway, their activities have been somewhat mitigated by another group, who stand between the Westboro-ites and the bereaved family and basically outshout them. I suppose, given the choice between hearing that your dead soldier is in hell or hearing a less-cruel chant, I’d go for option B. Still.

Here’s what bugs me about this story. Two things, really — first is the language used. The Westboro Baptist Church consists of “the Rev.” Fred Phelps and a bunch of his relatives, and that’s pretty much it. And yet they have a name that makes them sound like a real church, and a website, and so instead of being called, more correctly, “a clan of crazy people from Kansas,” they get a certain gravitas just by being identified as a church congregation. Not much, maybe, but some.

This is one case where the need for journalistic “objectivity,” and the need to file people into certain easy-to-understand slots — “activist,” “protester,” etc. — really stands in the way of the first job reporters have, which is telling the truth. In this case, you have to read between the lines, add up the euphemisms and weigh them against the facts, to figure out what’s really going on.

But that’s nothing compared to the second thing, which is: They have been doing this for years and years and years. The Phelps folk, I remind you, were the ones who showed up at Matthew Shepard’s funeral waving signs reading God Hates Fags, and that was eight years ago. Since then, they’ve protested at funerals of other gay people and AIDS victims, and while I won’t say they’ve been doing it with the approval of the rest of the country, certainly far fewer people were clutching their chests and squealing the horror the horror, mmm?

In fact, about a year ago, Phelps came to Fort Wayne for a “debate,” a “forum” or whatever — some sort of public discussion. And while the closest I can come to contemporaneous coverage is this incomplete excerpt from one of the newspapers, I distinctly recall that some phrases simply weren’t attributed to Phelps — “God hates fags,” for one. In fact, Phelps was politely identified, by most media outlets, as an “anti-gay activist,” which is a little like calling a Holocaust denier a “World War II historian.”

Anyway, while it’s good to know that decent people have a breaking point, it’s less good to know it lies somewhere between screaming “God hates fags!” at the funeral of an AIDS victim and screaming “God hates fags!” at the funeral of an American soldier. Still, I guess we’ll take progress where we can get it.

First words out of the radio this morning:

“…and we’ll reach a high of 36 on this first day of spring.”

You want to know the roots of true moral decay in this country? It has nothing to do with thong underwear or church attendance or any of the rest of it. It’s the mass migration to the Sunbelt, where you’re far less likely to hear news like this before you’ve even had your coffee. Eh? Am I right? Buck up, Arizonans.

Actually, I visited Arizona, southern Arizona, a few years ago. In fact, I was there on the first day of summer. And the forecast was for a high of 100 degrees. And never mind that dry heat crap; 100 degrees is its own kind of character-builder. Weighing the two, I prefer 36 on the vernal equinox.

OK, then.

The tax project is unfinished. I didn’t have all my records assembled. Of course, who ever has all their records assembled, intact, on the first try? I’m a person of sometimes-casual organization but above-average intelligence, and every year I come through tax season thinking I just barely made it. Why in god’s name does it have to be so complicated?

When cleaning out my parents’ house a few years ago, I ran across their tax returns. Of course they’d saved them going back to the dawn of time. The earliest one I could find was nineteen-fortysomething, I believe. One page. You could have filled it out in 20 minutes, once you had all your records assembled. Today it’s like trying to choose one of those Part D prescription drug plans. The accountants and professional tax preparers of the world thank you, Washington.

Ah, enough bitching. Let’s move on. I was struck by this Richard Cohen column — which must have run in the WashPost, but I don’t know when — about drinking. No, about drunkenness:

Curses on William Ryan. Back in 1976, he published a book called “Blaming the Victim,” coining a valuable phrase and making it virtually impossible to do what his title suggested. Ryan was on to something, but he has nonetheless made it a lot harder to say, as I am about to, that some of the people we have made into victims had a hand in their own fate. Specifically, they were drunk.

On the Mediterranean last year, George Smith vanished from his cruise ship, Brilliance of the Seas. (This was another “justice” show staple.) Smith was on his honeymoon and both he and his bride Jennifer had been doing some hard partying. She was in fact so drunk that she remembered nothing of the night her husband disappeared. Did George Smith fall overboard? Was he pushed? She’s a victim, he’s a victim, no doubt about it. But, in truth, they both might be back in Greenwich, Conn., had they been a bit more sober.

He goes on. I’ve written about this myself. It’s a pot-kettle thing, because I drink myself. Although my seeing-double days are over, I will be the first to admit I have No Room To Talk. But really. Really.

The current culture of campus drunkenness was just getting revved up when I was there — the drink ‘n’ drown nights, which I recall fondly not because they were a license to get hammered, but because the pay-$5-and-drink-all-night pricing was good for a college kid on a budget. Later came the Wacky Shots model, which I always associated with frat boys, where they put you in a dentist’s chair, tipped you back and poured tequila and other noxious liqueurs directly into your mouth, which you opened like a boated bass.

I remember that once the novelty of getting wasted wore off, which it did quickly, I mainly liked alcohol as a social lubricant. I liked the way it loosened tongues and got everyone relaxed and chatty. I like sitting with friends in a bar and talking talking talking; my confession is that I always preferred talk and a jukebox to live music and the necessary loss of conversation.

Getting hammered is counter to good conversation. Getting really hammered, as Cohen points out, is counter to good sense, to self-preservation, even. I’ve ignored the Natalee Holloway case as much as it’s possible to ignore, but I’ve read a story or two, and they all left me thinking: What the hell sort of parent lets an 18-year-old girl go to Aruba with a giant group of kids to celebrate high-school graduation? I don’t care how smart and mature she was; we’re talking Devil’s Workshop stuff here. Wasn’t her mother ever young herself?

Probably she was, and probably she went on a trip or two like this herself, and survived, and figured oh well, a little puking won’t kill anyone. I used to wonder how I’d handle situations like this, and now I know: Tell yourself, your job has changed, it’s different now, and it’s time to do your job.

Every job has its perks, and the big one traditionally enjoyed by newspaperfolk — a really nice obituary, well-played — is entirely in keeping with the job’s other rewards. That is, fairly useless. However, I think I’ve found another: Alan brought home a DVD, cadged off the TV writer, of the first five episodes of “Big Love,” HBO’s new dramedy about polygamy.

We watched three over the weekend. So far, it’s safe to say that while it’s not “The Sopranos,” it’s far better than I thought it would be, and like everything on HBO, I’m willing to give it a chance. These series tend to ripen very well, and if they have to hook you with the bizarre — a mob boss who sees a shrink! a funeral home with talking corpses! a cop show that bears a resemblance to reality! — that’s just the way these shows get it done. I think Daphne Merkin is a little tough on it here; I could see seeds of thoughtfulness planted throughout the first three episodes, and I think they’ll be bearing soon enough.

It’s interesting to see the contrast between Bill’s suburban home and the crazy backcountry polygamist compound he evidently was cast out of at 14 (as these compounds are wont to do — can’t have yearling studs competing with the ones with gray muzzles). And it’s interesting to see that the crazy place didn’t sour him on the concept of polygamy, just gave him a desire to do it better, which means a lot less dust, better furniture and a teenage son who’s still treasured. (Although it’s pretty obvious some sort of hookup between sonny boy and one of dad’s juicier sister wives is inevitable.)

Fingers crossed.

*Tom Shales used this obvious wordplay in his Saturday preview of “Big Love,” but I feel free to use it because I thought of it first. Really!

I think I finally have the answer to the eternal question: “Oldies radio — threat or menace?”

Menace.

I just watched the little kid on “American Idol” — the Poindexter teen rockin’ the eyebrows and glasses — and I feel like Simon. You can’t take a baby-faced teenager and have him sing “I Heard it Through the Grapevine” without having it come off like Bette Davis in “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,” the scene where she reprises her childhood act for the chubby pianist guy.

I mean, he’s 16 years old. He can’t sell a song about a cheating girlfriend. He hasn’t had one yet.

He had the same problem the girl last week did, the one who did “Because the Night” as though it were an anthem to her cuteness and not a rave-up about tragic young love. Did you listen to the words, hon? If Patti Smith had a grave, she’d be rolling in it. As it is, she probably gnawed her braid off.

That’s the problem with oldies radio. You’ve got kids who know every single note, who’ve heard it since they were in diapers, to whom the songs have become audio wallpaper, not cultural touchstones. It’s how great songs like “Respect” and “I Got You” got ruined. There’s a reason you don’t eat roast beef every night, you know?