A ques­tion for you fre­quent fliers: Do you ever fly first class?

I don’t travel often, but I fly at least once or twice a year, and in all that time, I’ve been seated in first class only once. It was when the pud­dle jumper from Key West to Miami broke down on the run­way. (Add “do you smell jet fuel?” to the list of things you don’t want to hear two stew­ardesses mur­mur­ing to one another back by the gal­ley.) I missed my con­nec­tion, and I was rebooked back to Colum­bus in first. With­out going into too much detail about what hap­pened on my last night in Key West, let me just say that a first-class seat going home felt like a gift from… well, not from God. God would never have rewarded bad behav­ior that way.

But it was won­der­ful. The wide seat, the halfway-decent food, and espe­cially the Bloody Marys, which started on the ground and con­tin­ued with­out so much as a raised eye­brow until I drifted off into a lovely nap some­where over Ten­nessee — it all felt pos­i­tively lux­u­ri­ous, at least as com­pared to the con­di­tions in steer­age. (And this was 1980. Con­di­tions in steer­age weren’t all that bad.)

I had a friend at the time who trav­eled often for busi­ness, and always flew first-class. It was com­pany pol­icy that the con­sult­ing work they did had to include the expen­sive ticket, and she always said that if I ever needed to travel as much as she did, I’d under­stand why. Oh, I under­stand.

Over the years, I’ve known many peo­ple who brag of their abil­ity to get upgraded to first, either through strate­gic deploy­ment of frequent-flier miles, shame­less flat­tery of gate agents, or equally shame­less lying about bad knees and hips and pound­ing migraines. One guy just had the gift, he said; he had mas­tered the com­bi­na­tion of grovel and assertive con­fi­dence that made the per­son with the power help­less before the request, and would unhook the vel­vet rope to the front of the air­craft.

I ask because there’s always a pause dur­ing board­ing when you have to stand in the aisle right inside the door, and you can exam­ine the lucky 16 or 20 or how­ever many who have the good ticket, and while there are always the obvi­ous can­di­dates — the women with expen­sive jew­elry, the guys whose innate impe­ri­ous­ness screams CEO, Sarah Palin — there are always a few wild cards, too. The ratty-looking guy with the enor­mous stom­ach — does he absorb the extra cost as a com­fort mea­sure? Because I wouldn’t want to pack that bas­ket­ball into coach, either. The kid star­ing out the win­dow with no evi­dent par­ent — an unac­com­pa­nied minor? Some­one tell her it’s not like this, and not to get used to it, she’s just get­ting the parental-guilt upgrade.

David Sedaris once wrote amus­ingly about fly­ing first-class transat­lantic on Air France — I guess when you sell books like that guy, your pub­lisher doesn’t mind pay­ing — and being asked if he’d mind if the crew seated some­one next to him, some­one who spent the entire flight sob­bing. Hav­ing flown transat­lantic in coach, I can say that if that kind of mid­flight upgrade doesn’t cheer you up, you’re prob­a­bly sui­ci­dal. My transat­lantic flight nearly fea­tured a mutiny; a big­ger seat would have made it that much eas­ier to bear. (Con­fi­den­tially, I’ve always wanted to make that cross­ing on a no-name freighter, maybe in an unused crew cabin. I could get some read­ing done and stroll on the deck twice a day.)

But the best com­ment on the sub­ject was, of course, “The Air­port,” one of the best “Sein­feld” episodes ever. I’d like one of those ice cream sun­daes.

Bleh day, bleh me, bleh blog­gage:

Said it before, say­ing it again: You should add Planet Money to your book­marks. Espe­cially if you’re not much of a money per­son.

“Deliv­er­ance,” the novel, recon­sid­ered. I missed this last week, but the novel’s been out for decades — the recon­sid­er­a­tion didn’t get stale in seven days.

Tonight marks the offi­cial announce­ment of the end of the war in Iraq. Years ago, when my crappy news­pa­per planned a spe­cial Vic­tory in Iraq issue, my hus­band spoke up at the meet­ing and said it was a ridicu­lous idea, and that we’d be there for years. It got him scowled at, but it’s good to know he was right.

And here comes another hur­ri­cane. Time to get to work.

It’s good to get away from time to time — visit your bud­dies, observe the strange ugli­ness of the Bronze Fonz, swing over to Madi­son for pitch­ers on the ter­race at the Wis­con­sin Union. Planned cor­rectly, and with a lot of dri­ving, a good week­end can be as much fun as a week­long vaca­tion. I’m grate­ful to all who hosted, cooked, drove and oth­er­wise extended Dairy­land hos­pi­tal­ity.

The sou­venir of the week­end — besides a mild hang­over — was one of these, a Himalayan salt plate. I didn’t spend $60 for the big chunk, but I fig­ured for $18, I could take a chance that my disk of pink rock salt might be an inter­est­ing addi­tion to my bat­terie de cui­sine. It cer­tainly was an inter­est­ing addi­tion to the TSA work­ers’ Sun­day, as it got my bag yanked and hand-searched:

“Do you have ashes in here?” the guard asked.

“No, but I have a disk of Himalayan rock salt,” I said. “It prob­a­bly has lots of min­er­als in there, too. Should I unwrap it?” He said I didn’t have to go that far, but he got a chuckle that any­one would buy a chunk of salt to serve food on. Obvi­ously some­one who doesn’t watch the Food Net­work.

Here it is, in case you’re won­der­ing:

Impulse pur­chases — they’re what make our econ­omy strong.

I’ll be get­ting away a lit­tle later this week, too, tak­ing Kate and three friends for a two-day Cedar Point adven­ture. We chose this late date on the advice of fel­low Michi­gan­ders, who swear by the secret week before Labor Day, when Ohio and Indi­ana kids are back in school and the Mit­ten rules the penin­sula. Short lines for roller coast­ers, etc. We shall see. I think the only thing we can rea­son­ably hope for is good weather. Fin­gers crossed.

For the moment, how­ever, it remains sti­fling. The last few days started won­der­fully, with bright blue skies, low humid­ity and rea­son­able tem­per­a­tures, but once again, some­thing hap­pened and the heat set­tled in on Sat­ur­day. I am ready to wear some­thing that doesn’t need to be white and absorbent. I guess I’ll have to wait a while for that.

Can’t have too much sum­mer, I guess. So let’s skip to blog­gage:

Because I don’t expect the rel­a­tives of excep­tional peo­ple to be excep­tional as a default, I am not sur­prised to learn that Mar­tin Luther King’s extended fam­ily is a lit­tle, how you say, daft. But I found this story on Alveda King, Glenn Beck’s new BFF, to be instruc­tive:

Alveda is dis­mis­sive of (Coretta Scott King), who died in 2006, say­ing, “I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t, she didn’t … There­fore I know some­thing about him. I’m made out of the same stuff.”

Oh.

(And may I just say, it was won­der­ful to be [mostly] away from the inter­net for two days, and thus be spared Beck­a­palooza? I may throw my lap­top away.)

Things you shouldn’t do when you’ve been drink­ing: Try to climb out on a win­dow ledge on the 22nd floor to take a pic­ture.

Finally, some­thing that frosted my cook­ies last night and con­tin­ues to do so: The egg indus­try says it’s time to say farewell to poached and sunny side up. Because how can they pos­si­bly keep 50 mil­lion damn chick­ens healthy? I’m now pay­ing $2.50 a dozen at the farmer’s mar­ket I guess, what? Per­ma­nently.

Must run — manic Mon­day.

Sorry I’m late today. School reg­is­tra­tion this morn­ing, fol­lowed by school-supply buy­ing, fol­lowed by FIX THE PRINTER NOW SO I CAN PRINT LIZ’S BIRTHDAY CARD fol­lowed by this.

I’ll be late tomor­row, too. Actu­ally, I’ll be gone tomor­row. Doing a lit­tle trav­el­ing this week­end, off to see the Trowel Tart in Wis­con­sin. I’m fly­ing. In case you were won­der­ing what it costs for a 75-minute flight from Detroit to Mil­wau­kee, the answer is: Too damn much. Northwest’s hereto­fore rea­son­able fares between its Mid­west­ern cities went pfft when it was swal­lowed by Delta. Still, it offers mul­ti­ple flights daily and the only non-stops, although I love to see what Travelocity’s bots can cob­ble together for me — sure, I’d love to go from Detroit to Mil­wau­kee via Atlanta and Hous­ton with a fly­ing time of 11 hours; and I’d save $20? Sign me up.

But never mind the cost — how often do you get to visit your best friend? Never often enough. Plus, a side trip to Madi­son is on tap, and that includes our other great pal, Dr. Frank. Who is now, a quick Google tells us, is on YouTube. Look at that mop of Irish hair. You’d never know his mother was Eye-talian.

So, with that, I make this a lame-ass fly-by. Let’s go right to some blog­gage:

Sto­ries you can’t make up, from the pharma beat: There’s a new drug to treat impo­tence. It’s made by a South Korean firm called Dong-A Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

As of late yes­ter­day after­noon, this guy was on track to be the next Susan Boyle, but what the hell, maybe you haven’t seen it yet. Most excru­ci­at­ing can­di­date inter­view ever.

While we’re on the topic of amus­ing videos, via Hank and Kim Sev­er­son, a fine col­lec­tion of Wendy’s train­ing videos from the ’80s. Go ahead and make fun, but remem­ber — that’s when Wendy’s had its mojo work­ing. Now? Well, Dave is surely spin­ning like a lathe.

Did you know the case that led to this week’s stem-cell rul­ing started with a com­plaint filed by the peo­ple behind the “snowflake babies” pub­lic­ity stunt? I’m sure that had noth­ing at all to do with it land­ing on the docket of a right-wing judge. No, not at all.

OK, I’m off to pack and groom. Have a great week­end, all.

A few peo­ple for­warded me this list today, about the worst bed­bug infes­ta­tions in the coun­try. To my amaze­ment, Cincin­nati tops the list. Colum­bus — such a clean city! — is right behind. Detroit is No. 5, Day­ton No. 9, and Bal­ti­more — hey, Lipp­man! Feel­ing itchy? — is No. 10.

For the record, I have never seen a bed­bug, or felt one’s bite. I know they’re a prob­lem in New York (No. 7), but until I read this, I never dreamed they were mov­ing west. I blame washed-out Brook­lyn hip­sters leav­ing Williams­burg to move back in with mom and dad in Wor­thing­ton. Along with all their lit­tle friends!!!!!

The first per­son I knew who picked up sca­bies was gay. It was the ’70s, and we all know what that meant. He got sca­bies, then crabs, then hepati­tis, then AIDS, and that was that. But it was the sca­bies that freaked me out. I knew the chances of me ever hav­ing unpro­tected anal sex with a stranger were pretty damn slim, but you could get sca­bies — he told me, scratch­ing his arm — from sit­ting on the wrong couch. Yikes.

Alan had a friend who got the same thing in a Motel 6 (he swears), and for years on our many trav­els by car, he refused to even con­sider stop­ping there. (The prices for more respectable lodg­ings in Santa Fe changed his mind, and we found the Motel 6 there to be nicer than many Hol­i­day Inns.)

Every night I troll the nation’s news­pa­pers and wire ser­vices for health news, and I am here to tell you: From micro­scopic to smashable-with-one’s-foot, them bugs is gonna get us all. What doesn’t kill them only makes them stronger, and you can never kill them all. That said, I am never buy­ing another piece of uphol­stered fur­ni­ture used, and any­one who comes into my house is going to have to stand on the back steps for skin inspec­tion and fumi­ga­tion.

Which just dis­lodged a mem­ory from “Gone With the Wind” (the novel): As the sol­diers begin walk­ing home after the war’s end, Mammy polices hygiene at Tara, requir­ing all to strip naked and sub­mit to hav­ing their clothes go into “the b’iling pot,” while simul­ta­ne­ously scrub­bing down with lye soap, fol­lowed by a home-brewed dysen­tery rem­edy: “…one and all, they drank her doses meekly and with wry faces, remem­ber­ing, per­haps, other stern black faces in far-off places and other inex­orable black hands hold­ing med­i­cine spoons.” Such happy slaves. Such a fas­ci­nat­ing book.

When­ever I men­tion it, I teeter on the brink of a doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion. I’ll spare you and skip right to the blog­gage:

Why does every­one assume Mrs. Tiger Woods learned about his cat­tin’ ways via a super­mar­ket tabloid? I’ve sus­pected from the begin­ning the rev­e­la­tion came at her gynecologist’s office, deliv­ered with averted eyes and maybe involv­ing, yes, crabs. Not that she will tell you.

Rich peo­ple of means, please learn to grow old grace­fully. Plas­tic surgery might fool some peo­ple in your 40s, but down the road, it will only make you look like a mon­ster. Your wife, too.

With the retire­ment of the Crown Vic Police Inter­cep­tor, com­peti­tors are rush­ing to fill the mar­ket for police cars. The Freep show­cases the con­tenders, includ­ing one from an Indi­ana startup called Car­bon Motors. One of the police sta­tions around here has a tricked-out Mus­tang, and no, I don’t know why, either, except that they had the money and felt like spend­ing it.

Mean­while, the News looks at 75 years of the Chevy Sub­ur­ban. You have to really love cars to live in this town. Tol­er­ate ‘em, at least.

Thank God I have Tom and Lorenzo to tell me Isabel Toledo now has a line of shoes at Pay­less. And they include a fetch­ing fake-fur boot, just in case I need to make some extra coin on Wood­ward some grim win­ter.

Have a great hump day. I’ll be humpin’ copy, as usual.

Last week the roof project finally con­cluded with a lit­tle mop-up: A guy came out to rehang the back-side gut­ters and install a cou­ple more down­spouts. Now our brand-new roof will shed water effi­ciently. I pause to stick my fin­ger in my cheek for a weak pop, and then I wave it in the air and say woo. Big effin’ deal.

This is new for me. In the past, I had pride of own­er­ship in almost every repair we made, to this house and to our last house. There’s some­thing about car­ing well for one’s house that’s always res­onated with me, but not so much any­more. It’s true that a new roof doesn’t sat­isfy like a new kitchen, but it still felt vir­tu­ous, because you were adding to your home’s resale value and main­tain­ing the prop­erty, which reflected on the neigh­bor­hood and made every­one rest a lit­tle eas­ier at night.

But our real estate mar­ket can be explained in a head­line which I swear I’ve read 400 times in the last five years in the local weekly: Has the mar­ket hit bot­tom? The answer is always the same: Maybe. The answer is always wrong, because the cor­rect answer is: No. So putting a roof on my house, which used to feel like for­go­ing a new dress to put the money in the bank, now feels more like tear­ing up hundred-dollar bills and throw­ing them into a flush­ing toi­let. And as long as we’re read­ing the Obvi­ous News, it seems I have lots of com­pany.

When this reces­sion is over — if it ever is — and the his­to­ri­ans start to sort it out, I don’t think any­thing will be as impor­tant, in the long run, as what it did to real estate. It’s still my main dis­ap­point­ment with Barack Obama, that he didn’t launch a big show trial on Jan. 21, 2009 that would have marched the Wall Street shit­heads who wrecked the hous­ing mar­ket before a tri­bunal of fore­closed and washed-out home­own­ers and a judge that was a com­bi­na­tion of, ohhhh, Al Sharp­ton and Judge Judy, say. His gavel would be over­sized, and he’d be wel­come to use it on both his bench and the defen­dants’ heads. A guil­lo­tine would be right out­side the court­room, and we’d use it until the rope broke and the blade dulled.

That, at least, would show we take the dam­age these peo­ple did seri­ously. Peo­ple who don’t own houses or apart­ments get a lit­tle impa­tient with this, and I guess I don’t blame them, but trust me: This crash hurts every­one, owner or not. For those of us who don’t live in the places where the mid­dle class are shut out of own­ing real estate — which is to say, most of the coun­try out­side of New York City, San Fran­cisco and much (but not all) of Los Ange­les — our houses are the most expen­sive thing we own, and are far more than a place to lay our weary heads and store our record col­lec­tions. The sale of my par­ents’ house pro­vided half their retire­ment stake. They were of the gen­er­a­tion that saved up for a down pay­ment, shopped care­fully, bought and stayed put. No flip­ping or trad­ing up for them. Three bed­rooms, 1.5 baths, bought in 1962 and sold in 1995, paid off and worth seven times what they paid for it.

My gen­er­a­tion was dif­fer­ent, but not Alan and me, so much. This is our sec­ond house, in our sec­ond city. I pay extra prin­ci­pal on our house every month, although God knows why. Opti­misti­cally, it’s worth half what we paid for it. Recov­ery of our pur­chase price might be 20 years off. The Detroit Metro has spe­cial prob­lems, to be sure, but the whole coun­try is sweep­ing up this wreck­age, and I will never for­get who caused it. (Hint: It wasn’t Bar­ney Frank.)

For years, for prac­ti­cally ever, real estate was the safest invest­ment you could make. My mom started bug­ging me to buy a condo as soon as I had a full-time job. You couldn’t lose. Every­body pays some­thing for hous­ing, after all, and you might as well pay your­self, plus the mort­gage inter­est is tax-deductible. And hous­ing always went up. It didn’t rise at the redonku­lous rates of recent years, but a steady 1 to 3 per­cent was a given.

And while I may be over­stat­ing the virtues of own­er­ship, I still firmly believe that a neigh­bor­hood of own­ers is, in the broad­est terms, bet­ter than one of renters. When you have a finan­cial stake in some­thing, you pay more atten­tion to it. You care if the local schools are good, even if you don’t have chil­dren in them. You don’t like it when your neigh­bors let their lawn go to prairie (unless every­one else’s is prairie, too). You keep the walks swept. It’s the broken-window the­ory on a less dra­matic scale, and for gen­er­a­tions, it worked.

But that’s only part of it. Local gov­ern­ments rely on property-tax rev­enues to pro­vide ser­vices. When prop­erty val­ues slide, so do tax receipts. We’re only begin­ning to see these prob­lems, cities let­ting streets go or not replac­ing light­ing or lay­ing off fire­fight­ers. And how long did I say it might be before recov­ery?

When you think about it, pretty much every­thing in our econ­omy is pred­i­cated on the idea that we’ll always be grow­ing. (Cer­tainly our health-care costs have done that.) A few flat years we can han­dle. But a full-on retreat, a crash? This is new for me. Last week our bor­ing old city coun­cil got a lit­tle testy over some penny-ante travel for the city clerk, noth­ing big, but one of the mem­bers grumped that they were look­ing at another enor­mous short­fall the fol­low­ing year, and nick­els and dimes add up. I can’t imag­ine what they’ll be fight­ing over in three years. Prob­a­bly which one gets to quit first.

My house, my mill­stone. But with a nice new roof.

So, a lit­tle blog­gage? Sure. Scott Rosen­berg at Salon looks at a phe­nom­e­non I’ve been see­ing in my news search­ing for a while now: The con­tent farms have gamed Google. Don’t be evil!

“I think his dad’s bought them off, some­times. He’s prac­ti­cally sell­ing dope out of the trunk of his car. I have to give him one thing, though. Watch­ing his per­son­al­ity dis­in­te­grate made me give up pot for good. Well, that and the fact the shit makes you so fuck­ing retarded these days. The last time I smoked was spring last year. I was so para­noid I walked out of the house and hid in that big wall of shrubs by the soror­ity house. And the girls started that god­damn singing. ‘Together for­ever. Together for­ever.’ Do you have any idea how much that sounds like you’re eaves­drop­ping on some kind of blood sac­ri­fice?” — why I added Coozledad’s blog to my RSS feed. I was miss­ing too many of these, or dis­cov­er­ing them days later.

Another great Tom-and-Lorenzo Mad Style entry, this one on Francine Han­son, played by the sub­lime Anne Dudek.

I’ve taken a casual inter­est in Stephanie Sey­mour ever since Alan and I dis­cov­ered the “Novem­ber Rain” video on MTV. One of us would always say to the other, “She dies in the end.” Today, the NYT did a silly-season Sun­day Styles front on the dis­in­te­gra­tion of her mar­riage to Peter Brant, described as “a taller, more dash­ing ver­sion of Buddy Hack­ett.” Her “Novem­ber Rain” role was described thusly: “she por­trayed a bride who dies.” Every­one remem­bers her!

So have a great Mon­day, all. Mine will, as usual, be busy.

The bike ride yes­ter­day dis­ap­pointed, but only a lit­tle. No Fab­u­lous Hol­ly­wood Stars were in evi­dence down at South High, but appar­ently they have been; Miley Cyrus spot­tings are mak­ing my “grosse pointe” RSS feed fill like a bucket. Yes­ter­day it was basi­cally your aver­age film set, as seen from beyond the secu­rity line, which is to say, a bunch of trail­ers. You could get a sim­i­lar thrill at your local KOA camp­ground.

Well, I hope she’s enjoy­ing her­self. The Free Press had a story that said she asked some fans at the local CVS to back off and let her buy her chips in peace. I don’t believe this story for a minute. Nobody that thin and pretty eats chips of any sort, and if they do, they have lack­eys buy them.

Of course I didn’t see her. I never see the famous per­son. I have writ­ten about this before. I’d link, but I couldn’t find it in two Googles, so pfft. I am the anti-LA Mary. By the time I arrive at the party, it’s over. After I leave, it starts. My friends were wan­der­ing through the Ohio State Fair one after­noon and ducked into the Warner Cable tent. Guess who else had ducked in to play an impromptu set, just because he liked the inter­ac­tive QUBE sys­tem? Todd Rund­gren! I was not there. I sat in the bar when Elvis Costello traded blows, phys­i­cal ones, with Bon­nie Bram­lett in the bar across the street. Where I wasn’t. Another night, at another bar, I left early because I had to work the next day. An hour after I went home, Prince showed up. Played a few num­bers. Argh.

Once I was at the video post-production house wait­ing on my friend Mark to get off work. While I stood read­ing a bul­letin board, David Lee Roth squeezed past, behind me. Brushed up against me and every­thing. Didn’t feel it, didn’t know about it until some­one pointed it out later. That must have been some bul­letin board.

Last sum­mer, the local papers con­tained a funny story, about a Grosse Pointe woman who was sit­ting in a restau­rant, look­ing at the man across the way. She’s one of those women who knows every­one, and she knew she knew this man, but she couldn’t think of his name. Oh, well, time to get reac­quainted. She walked across the room, stuck out her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Muffy McPrep­ster.” He shook her hand and said, “Hi, I’m Robert DeNiro.”

Need­less to say, I was not there. (DeNiro was shoot­ing “Stone,” com­ing soon to a the­ater near you.)

I won’t ride my bike down that way today. I expect Miley and Demi will be work­ing the rope line.

We’ve been a shal­low pud­dle of late, eh? Sorry, but it’s been hot and mis­er­able, and I’ve been catch­ing up on this and that. I’m teach­ing again this fall, for reals and for money and every­thing, and I need to get my affairs in order, which means learn­ing Black­board, the sys­tem every­body uses and expects me to use, too. I’m baf­fled by lit­tle on the inter­net, and I thought Black­board was clip­ping right along the last time I tried to use it, but nobody could see my posts and my e-mail wasn’t get­ting through, and grr. One of my col­leagues sug­gested that I may well have been doing every­thing right, and that “it wasn’t appear­ing on Black­board” is the “dog ate my home­work” of the 21st cen­tury. Well, this time I will attain mas­tery. This time that one won’t work with me.

So let’s skip to the blog­gage:

In the Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From the Dumb Tree Depart­ment, meet Ben Quayle. He is not Brock Lan­ders, dammit, but you know what? I think the dog ate that man’s home­work.

Dear Ms. Sch­lessinger (sorry, AP style for­bids me from using the “Dr.” hon­orific for a PhD), per­haps you are baf­fled this morn­ing (although I doubt it), with­er­ing under the angry glare of those who would call you racist just because you used the word “nig­ger” 11 times on your stu­pid radio show the other day, all while in the course of telling a black woman she was overly sen­si­tive for object­ing to the use of the word by her husband’s white friends, because some come­di­ans on HBO use it all the time, and so obvi­ously that lady just lacks the sense of humor required for an inter­ra­cial rela­tion­ship. Or per­haps you aren’t. I sus­pect you’re read­ing your heaps of fan mail, and are sim­ply grate­ful that some­one, any­one is pay­ing atten­tion to you, how­ever briefly. (Here in Detroit, your show plays in the cov­eted middle-of-the-night time slot.) Watch­ing this brief video clip may help explain things to you. Although I doubt it.

Ayn Rand on the play­ground. Funny.

And I’m off to take the last, seriously-this-is-it, really-I-mean-it bite of my horse-eating project. Seri­ously. LAST BITE. Here comes the air­plane, open the hangar doors.

It didn’t take Vladimir Putin to res­ur­rect the Soviet cul­tural expe­ri­ence. We have it right here in the Metro:

Just another day at the Com­cast ser­vice cen­ter. We were pick­ing up some boxes that would enable our sec­ondary TVs can get more than four chan­nels. Or some­thing. On the Indi­ana BMV Scale of Exis­ten­tial Mis­ery, it didn’t rate very high — there was a Tigers game on for the line’s view­ing plea­sure, and I had my phone. And even with­out it, I’m not a ter­ri­ble waiter. Those who can­not spend an idle 30 min­utes with­out climb­ing the walls lack inner resources. I have inner resources in spades (it’s why my butt is so big).

I felt worse for the work­ers, who toiled inside a bul­let­proof fortress wor­thy of a Detroit liquor store. I under­stand peo­ple hate their cable com­pany, and I under­stand the equip­ment has some value, but it seemed like overkill for War­ren. Note, also, the char­treuse walls of the inner sanc­tum. Mul­ti­ply by 40 hours a week. I’d be deploy­ing the escape chute by Tues­day.

After­ward, it seemed time for lunch, and Alan had a sug­ges­tion: Lazy­bones Smoke­house, the best bar­be­cue shack you never heard of. Plunked in a depress­ing stretch of an ugly road in Roseville, sur­rounded by machine shops and other places filled with men who think “cilantro” is the dance that took Pam Ander­son out of “Danc­ing With the Stars,” it has the dis­tinc­tion, Alan says, of being “a restau­rant where I’ve never seen a woman cus­tomer.” OK, happy to be a rar­ity, then. The build­ing stands out from the gray land­scape with a mural fea­tur­ing pigs pitch­ing horse­shoes while cows and chick­ens watch. It features…where do I start? Every meat you can think of, seven kinds of sauce, com­bos that either make you smile (“The Hog Trough,” your choice of four meats atop a moun­tain of fries) or wince (“The Smoke­stack Light­ing,” chopped burnt ends, apple­wood bacon, cajun sausage, caramelized onions and ched­dar on a hoagie bun), but essen­tially every­thing that’s worth bar­be­cu­ing.

We both ordered pulled-pork sam­miches with slaw served Memphis-style, Texas spit­fire sauce, then sat down to wait. There are two large tables, where you eat family-style. True to form, the only other eat-in cus­tomers were men. Young men. Two were dis­cussing dat­ing. One had a night out planned with a young woman, but he wasn’t hope­ful, because she didn’t give good text. I think this was an inter­net or some other sort of blind fixup, and he was, to my mind, unrea­son­ably fix­ated on the fact she couldn’t sum­mon up witty repar­tee in 140 char­ac­ters or so. I weep to think I brought a young woman into this world, who will have to shop for a hus­band among these scratch-and-dent spe­cials. One arm was heav­ily tat­tooed, although the rest of his out­fit sug­gested an office job, one that requires a plas­tic ID tag in plain sight (i.e., all of them, these days). Again: I weep.

And that’s the sort of day you have when it’s a mil­lion degrees out­side and even more humid.

I looked at the Rush Lim­baugh wed­ding album y’all were dis­cussing yes­ter­day. Two take­aways: Mrs. Lim­baugh the Fourth has an excel­lent hair­dresser, and an even bet­ter plas­tic sur­geon. We see so many bad boob jobs, we for­get what a good one looks like, and unless I miss my guess, when that lady goes back to the earth she will leave a pair of sil­i­con bags behind. (See no. 16 in this Gawker photo array). Also, ex-squeeze me? He got a mil­i­tary color guard? Does every 4-F Vietnam-era pussy get that? I guess if the check you write is big enough, but I am appalled. I know, I know: Appalling man is appalling. Still.

Speak­ing of bad boob jobs, Renee, what were you think­ing?

I’ve never been a fan of the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Their stead­fast advance­ment of quack­ery is a big rea­son.

Writ­ers have ele­vated pro­cras­ti­na­tion to a high art. As seen here.

Ha ha ha.

And now I’m gone. Gonna go for a bike ride, damn the humid­ity. The Miley Cyrus tweet­ing around here has become deaf­en­ing, and I want to see if she’s drawn a crowd to her set down in the Farms. Wish me luck. I’m tak­ing a cam­era.

I feel like I spent half the week­end in the kitchen, but lately the week­end is when I get the chance to do it. There was a birth­day party Sun­day after­noon, and the host won­dered if I’d bring some­thing for dessert. (I’m get­ting a pie rep with this bunch.) The tra­di­tional birth­day dessert is cake, how­ever, so, the chal­lenge: Make a birth­day cake in high summer-fruit sea­son. This is what I came up with. Behold, Suzanne’s Sum­mer Birth­day Cake:

Noth­ing spe­cial: White lay­ers, whipped-cream frost­ing, fruit atop, fruit between. As I told Alan last week, you really don’t have to be much of a cook at this time of year. You just have to be a good shop­per and assem­bler.

When I fin­ished I boxed up the cake and arrived at the party an hour early. No one was there yet, includ­ing the host, although he had thought­fully left a cooler of beer on ice in the back yard. So I opened one and got in the pool. Week­ends are brief enough around here.

When I bought the whip­ping cream, the bag­ger at the gro­cery held up the car­ton and said, “Is this whipped cream?” I said, “Not yet. But when you pour it into a bowl and get your mixer involved, it will be.” He looked astounded. Poor kid; no doubt the prod­uct of a Cool-Whip house­hold. I’m not one of those food­ies who sneers at Cool-Whip. It has its place in many deli­cious things, includ­ing my Thanks­giv­ing Wal­dorf salad. But I’ve had many such encoun­ters in gro­cery lines, and I always feel sad for kids who can’t tell onions from gar­lic, let alone the tricky stuff like shal­lots or fen­nel. (I once wrote about this in my col­umn, and got a hell-yeah phone call from a man who raved that he’d asked a gro­cery clerk for a No. 5 can of some­thing, and the clerk didn’t know what he was talk­ing about! Can you believe?! I con­fessed that actu­ally, I didn’t know the can num­ber­ing sys­tem, either, and he hung up in dis­gust, his what-is-the-world-coming-to quota filled for the day. It’s always some­thing, but nowa­days we have Google, which explains all.)

It occurred to me on the way to the car — esprit d’escalier, gro­cery store-style — that I’d missed the oppor­tu­nity to really blow the kid’s mind by telling him that if you left the mixer run­ning for a while and skipped the sugar, you’d end up with but­ter. Oh, amaz­ing heavy cream. A sauce base, a cake frost­ing, a corn-on-the-cob dress­ing, ass fat — is there any­thing you can­not be?

Since my weekend’s expe­ri­ences amounted to so lit­tle, let’s skip right to the blog­gage, eh?

Rea­son to be glad you’re not Mus­lim: Ramadan starts amid yet another week of bru­tal heat and humid­ity.

The pres­i­dent shoots hoops with NBA stars, prompt­ing the usual right-wing skrees. I can’t believe he’d step on a court with LeBron James. I won­der if the pros let him win.

Speak­ing of which, Glenn Beck is now com­par­ing the Obama admin­is­tra­tion with “Planet of the Apes.” How…innnnteresting.

And one bit of seri­ous­ness — how the reces­sion is fil­ter­ing down to the local-government level. We’ve been very lucky so far in Suburb-land, although I know the last few bud­get years have been hair-pullers for city man­agers and coun­cils. At this point the dis­cus­sions of con­sol­i­da­tion of ser­vices among the Pointes is just get­ting started, baby stuff com­pared to the dras­tic mea­sures in the arti­cle, about shut-off street­lights and shut-down bud­gets. Any­thing hap­pen­ing in your town?

As for me, I have 10 mil­lion things to do before 3 p.m. See ya.

* Another inside Colum­bus joke.

And with one breezy-hot day and a few widely scat­tereds, the heat is ban­ished just­likethat. At least for the next cou­ple of days, we should be able to turn off the A/C and instead lis­ten to the neigh­bors’ annoy­ing lawn ser­vice vis­its. Fine with me. The first week of August marks the tra­di­tional Notic­ing of the Chang­ing Light for me, which means I’m going to grab at least one fat fash­ion mag­a­zine off a news­stand and start plan­ning my umpteenth fan­tasy closet.

Fan­tasy closet is like fan­tasy foot­ball, in which women start with the blank slate of a well-designed empty closet — with lots of attrac­tive, Con­tainer Store stor­age options — and fill it with non-existent clothes we can’t afford but pre­tend we can. Then we wear them in fantasy-closet dress-up games, per­haps while watch­ing “Project Run­way,” in which we are pre­sented with fun out­fit ideas like this. (I’m think­ing of the top­most one.) “Project Run­way” is a genius show, entic­ing mil­lions of normal-size women to watch novice design­ers of wildly uneven tal­ent turn out one out­fit after another that barely cov­ers one’s ass and, in this case, com­pletely uncov­ers one’s back. It’s a great fantasy-closet shop­ping spot, “Project Run­way,” because only in fan­tasies are most women freed of such con­stric­tions as bras and the need to sit down from time to time.

I had about three min­utes in my entire life when I could have worn a top like that, which threat­ens with every step to slip and reveal one’s breasts from either a front or side angle. I was 11 years old.

But, as we’re fre­quently reminded, run­ways looks are like con­cept cars — just an idea. By the time that look finds its way to a store rack, the skirt will be nine inches longer and the top closed on the sides and back, and… it’ll pretty much be an entirely dif­fer­ent dress. But that’s OK! Because my fantasy-closet body can totally wear any­thing at all.

In recent years, I’ve done a lot of my fantasy-closet shop­ping online or in cat­a­logs. Which is why I’m so thor­oughly amused by the web­site Jezebel, which deserves some sort of fash­ion Pulitzer for the work they’ve done bring­ing pre­pos­ter­ous photo retouch­ing by fash­ion retail­ers to the public’s atten­tion. They made a big splash a few years back with their Red­book cover rev­e­la­tion, but have stayed on the job — along with many oth­ers, includ­ing the always-amusing Pho­to­shop Dis­as­ters.

The cur­rent Ann Tay­lor busi­ness is par­tic­u­larly wound­ing, as Ann is one place that, in gen­eral, sells afford­able, wear­able clothes for a wide range of age and body types. I wore a lot more Ann Tay­lor when I worked in offices, but I remem­ber it fondly, so know­ing they’re play­ing silly games with extreme photo retouch­ing — remov­ing mod­els’ ribcages seems to be a favorite — really chaps my ass. This isn’t “Project Run­way.” I pay real, non-fantasy money for clothes from places like that, and I’d appre­ci­ate it if they’d cut that shit out.

I once watched Alan get fit­ted for a suit, and I was struck by the con­trast with shop­ping for my own clothes. Like nearly every­one, Alan’s body dif­fers from the ideal, and this was treated by the tai­lor as a sim­ple and utterly unre­mark­able fact. Take it in here, let it out there, hem it thus, adjust, nip, change, presto, a suit. Whereas women are taught from an early age that their bod­ies are a col­lec­tion of “flaws” that must be cov­ered, cam­ou­flaged, squeezed in and shaped to fit what­ever some­one else has decided is this year’s model.

Sooner or later you grow out of this shit, to be sure, but I can’t help but think they’d sell more clothes if they cut it out.

My fan­tasy closet is shap­ing up nicely. I bought some fan­tasy boots, and I’m exper­i­ment­ing with cargo pants and jack­ets to wear with my non-fantasy scarves. I now own five Her­mes scarves; how did that hap­pen? Time to roll out the Joan Hol­loway all-stars, I think.

So, a lovely week­end awaits. Any blog­gage? Not much:

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, I can­not read the entire inter­net every day, and in gen­eral I avoid its small sto­ries, for two rea­sons: a) they’re small; and b) the peo­ple who write them have a way of mak­ing them seem like Water­gate crossed with the Hin­den­burg explo­sion (“we can now exclu­sively reveal…”). But this one, about some clown who’s been writ­ing for Andrew Bre­it­bart on the Shirley Sher­rod story, caught my eye, mainly because the clown in ques­tion is a Wayne State grad­u­ate, although who knows? That could be another part of his inflated resume, along with this amuse-bouche:

A gov­ern­ment offi­cial once claimed that Dr. Pezzi achieved the high­est score ever attained on an IQ test admin­is­tered nation­wide, although Pezzi dis­misses this as disin­gen­u­ous pan­der­ing.

Any­way, it appears this genius is prac­tic­ing med­i­cine some­where in north­ern Michi­gan. Beware, tourists!

Any­thing else? I got nothin’. Week­end, sweep me into your arms. I’m ready.

Per­haps you won­der what the glam­orous life of a blog­ger is like. Per­haps you won­der how I come up with the many fas­ci­nat­ing top­ics I poke at like a dis­sected frog five days a week in this space. Per­haps you think, “I could do that, and get a few hun­dred unique vis­i­tors at a blog about noth­ing.”

Reader, you could. You want a shot at guest-blogging here? Maybe lead­ing to a per­ma­nent spot? It could be arranged. God knows I could use a longer week­end.

Seri­ously, though, it’s one of those morn­ings where I won­der if J.C. will write me a pro­gram that keeps track…not just of posts, but maybe of total words pub­lished here. I’m think­ing it has to aver­age out to 3,000 a week, times 52… 156,000 words, or roughly two books’ worth a year. All over my morn­ing cof­fee. This is either mad­ness or grapho­ma­nia, and maybe the same thing.

Last sum­mer one of my blog fans said, “Surely there’s a book in this.” I said, “Yes, I’m sure peo­ple will buy a highly per­ish­able prod­uct between hard cov­ers that was pre­vi­ously — and still is — avail­able free in 700-word chunks online.” But colum­nists still pub­lish antholo­gies, don’t they? True, but I never buy those. Or rather, I buy them when they’re pub­lished by friends. And my favorites have been the ones vanity-published by friends, or on presses so small they might as well have been. Occa­sion­ally I still pick up those pro­duced by Mike Harden, for my money still the best news­pa­per colum­nist you never heard of, a gen­er­al­ist out of the Jim Bishop mold, still writ­ing in the Colum­bus Dis­patch from retire­ment. I used to read his col­lected works when I was out of ideas myself, and over time got to where I can even recite chunks from mem­ory. He once won­dered what would hap­pen if the great poets had labored on Madi­son Avenue. Like, for instance, James Whit­comb Riley:

When de frost is in de fuel line
And de DieHard’s kind o’ dead
And you 50 miles from nowhere
With ici­cles on yo’ head
You’ll be wishin’ an’a hopin’
As yo’ shoes fill up with snow
Dat you’d bought it at Sohio,
And let dem pay de tow.

That’s a joke only middle-aged Buck­eyes would get. Sohio’s gaso­line offered Ice-Guard ™ pro­tec­tion. No fuel-line freeze-up, or Sohio pays your tow. They spon­sored the weather report on every radio sta­tion in town, always with that promise. Only once in my life did my car stop run­ning in a cold snap, and I won­dered, briefly, if I might have fuel-line freeze-up. How, exactly, would I go about col­lect­ing my reim­burse­ment from Sohio? Would I have to prove that was Sohio gas in the tank? I paid cash for gas; surely they’d fight me. And then I’d have to pro­vide tes­ti­mony by a cer­ti­fied mechanic that yes, it was fuel-line freeze-up that had caused my car to stop on U.S. 33 between Lan­caster and Athens, prob­a­bly in some sort of legal depo­si­tion, and by the time it was all over, I’d get a few lousy bucks to cover just the tow­ing charge. What a ripoff, and…

I twisted the key again. Car started right up. Reverie over.

No, one foot­note: Sohio became Amoco. Amoco became? Yes: BP. Sohio was swal­lowed by BP. I will always miss their logo:

That cup was given to me by a fel­low Buck­eye, and I gave it to J.C., another fel­low Buck­eye.

And now I have bored the pants clean off you, and it’s time to get to the blog­gage:

Jack Rus­sell Ter­ri­ers — lit­tle bas­tards. That story is equal parts hilar­i­ous and tragic, but at the end it’s about how a Jack Rus­sell can chew off his owner’s god­damn toe, and still end up the hero.

Wife sus­pects something’s going on, finds out her hus­band has another wife and fam­ily. How? How else? Via Face­book.

Speak­ing of which, if you’re not read­ing the Wall Street Journal’s series on inter­net pri­vacy — rather, the lack thereof — you’re miss­ing a chance to get simul­ta­ne­ously ter­ri­fied and infu­ri­ated. Par­tic­u­larly today.

And now, I should go do some real work. Maybe write a book.