Beb said in comments yesterday that the Michigan State Fair felt “hollowed-out,” and that’s it in a nutshell. In this, our fifth fair together, Kate and I have an arrangement: We get there before noon, and I buy her a wristband that will allow her to ride all the rides she wants. When she’s done, we eat something and commence mommy’s fair, which is animals animals animals and whatever else looks interesting. This takes us through until late afternoon, mostly.

It didn’t this year. The horse barn was empty but for a couple teams of draft breeds. The sheep are bunking with the dairy cattle, the goats are in a tent, most of the rabbits had already hopped home. (There were plenty o’ pigeons, however, a hobby that has always interested me, kinda sorta — I guess I should leave some crackbrain pursuits for my golden years.) No freak shows. I turned on my heel and left the commercial building when I saw the right-to-lifers had set up a pamphlet display complete with color photos.

The Miracle of Life tent, while not as rockin’ as last year, was the brightest spot. Baby chicks, baby ducks, baby calfs, baby lambies and my favorite, baby pigs — what’s not to love? (Baby pigs are my favorite because Spriggy could look, from some angles, like a little Babe-type feeder pig.) Nothing was laboring, though, and except for the hatcheries, the miracles were not in progress.

We left by 4:30. Our last fair.

I did spend some time in conversation with a dairyman. For your information, Holsteins give the most milk, Jerseys give the richest, Guernseys are somewhere in between, as are Brown Swiss. I already knew that. But I figure you have to make small talk over a bottomless glass of chocolate milk (50 cents), and a man likes to talk about his work.

But even though there were numerous petitions scattered around, pleading with the governor to save the fair, I have no doubt they’re for nought — the longest-running state air in the country, pfft. I wonder what they’ll do with the buildings, many of which have that 19th-century Grange hall feel. My favorite is the poultry/rabbits/pigeon building, which has a wide central staircase between floors, all wood, painted so often the edges have taken on that rounded look you find in old hole-in-the-wall apartments. There’s a central courtyard with a pond, where the waterfowl hang out. A century of city children looked out over that courtyard and marveled at the sight of exotic Asian species of geese. No more. It’s like the end of “Charlotte’s Web.”

The TV reports were all from the Midway, of course. What a bunch of barking morons.

And you know I wrote that last sentence so I could use it as a transition, don’t you?

Barking morons I.

Barking morons II. A local angle (Fort Wayne): “I’m afraid there’s going to be some attempts at brainwashing,” said Amy Riecken, 31, whose two sons attend Imagine MASTer Academy, a charter school on Wells Street. “I’m very conservative, and what I’m hearing is this is going to be what can you do for President Obama. It feels like Hitler’s Germany to me or like we’re living in Cuba.” Arf! Arf!

Barking morons III. Singing morons, maybe.

Why do I keep agreeing to 9:30 a.m. meetings? I’m outta here. Have a great Labor Day weekend.

I’m doing a big hardware/software upgrade over the weekend. (Isn’t that thrilling? Doesn’t that make you want to read the next sentence?) Long story short: Snow Leopard, plus a commodious new hard drive that will make my laptop a yawning maw of data. I’m taking advantage of some bundling/upgrade deals, blah blah blah, and am converting all my basic programs to Mac-proprietary. Which is to say, I’m switching to Pages and not reinstalling Microsoft Word. At least not immediately.

I’m one of those Mac people with strong feelings about my computer, but not yours. It’s a tool, not a religion; use any operating system you want, and we will sit down together at the table of brotherhood. But Word has always been a problem for me, starting with the early days, when you installed it with multiple floppies and every version got bigger and flabbier. Hard drive space was at a premium back then. My first computer had but 160 megabytes of capacity, and it offended me that Word needed 10 percent of it just so I could write a few letters. It was like buying a typewriter that required its own room.

“What the hell?” I spluttered to J.C. “What are they putting on here?”

“Lunch recipes,” he replied. I’m still not sure why it’s so big, except maybe for all the “help” that I spend my first few sessions trying to turn off. Sentence fragments. I use them. And sometimes I start a sentence with a conjunction. I don’t need Bill Gates’ weenie grammar police tapping me on the shoulder, underlining all my personal flair, asking, “Is that the word you want? Strunk and White have very strong feelings about this.” My dream version of MS Word would have two dozen fonts, plain-vanilla formatting, a decent dictionary and a word-count tool. It would cost $19.99.

In other words, it would be Google Docs, which I’ve made my default word processor.

My Snow Leopard order from Amazon triggered a bunch of e-mail pitches. Would I like to buy MS Office 2008 for Mac? My upgrading lapsed years ago, so I suppose I’d have to buy the from-scratch version, a mere four hundred bucks. “Home and student” edition (fewer lunch recipes, I guess), $110. No, nyet, nein, non. Although I will miss the clip art, which I found useful in making mix-tape covers.

What’s your can’t-live-without software? (Besides your web browser, of course.) Mine would be…iTunes, I guess. Final Draft for my little dress-up games. Still editing video with iMovie, although that will change soon; my next resume upgrade will advertise basic Final Cut competence, and it will be true, dammit. And come the start of school, I’ll be using Freedom a lot.

Oh, and speaking of Amazon, thanks and more thanks to all of you who have been buying your Amazon gear through my store. I know it’s not exactly easy, but it has provided a welcome revenue stream (which is to say, more than Google Ads, although loose-changing on street corners would yield more than that) for me. I appreciate every penny.

From the Good Luck in 2012 file: President urges American schoolchildren to work hard and study, GOP freaks out. Remember when it was lefties and their nuclear-free zones that were this silly? Ah, memories.

Sorry for short shrift today, but I’m off to donate blood and refill my stream with grease at the state fair. Be nice while I’m gone.

NN.C community member Basset sent along this artifact of southern culture (he lives in Nashville) with a brief note: “Saw the attached flag yesterday for sale at a flea market outside Lebanon, Tennessee, about half an hour east of Nashville. Don’t know who they think might buy one.” The flag in question:

Maybe those of you in Dixie can explain this, but my Spidey sense? Tells me it’s not good.

So, welcome to September. We’re scheduled for a week of gloriousness, high pressure with steadily rising temperatures peaking at 80 or so. In other words, perfect summer weather, with the autumn equinox bearing down on us. We’re spending one day at the Michigan State Fair. The last Michigan State Fair, I should add; it’s set to fall to the budgetary ax this year. I suppose it’s possible it might be reconstituted elsewhere down the road. It was always a strange beast, having the formal nod to agrarian Michigan take place in the heart of urban Michigan, but that’s the way most state fairs are, aren’t they? A chance for the kids from the farm to see the city, and vice versa. (I’d be happy to go see them, but they lack the hotel space.)

Still, this is sort of a tragedy. The fate of the fairgrounds is uncertain, but my guess is, it’ll stand empty until it succumbs to the inevitable — scrappers, then weeds, then rot, then collapse. Anyone interested in a fishing pond shaped like the state of Michigan?

This would never happen in Ohio. At least I hope not. Times are tough there, too, but the Ohio State Fair is such an institution. So many memories there, for a Columbus kid, but my favorite was the last one I collected as an adult resident of the state and a journalist covering the fair beat, when there was a protest in the cattle judging — one loser claimed the grand champion beef steer had been altered, if not surgically then…somehow. The veterinary inspection and tox screen came back negative, and the girl collected a fat five-figure check for her winner at auction. (The lede on my story: “In the end, Thumper was no bum steer.” Come on, people, gimme some love!)

But it was a bit of distant thunder, it turned out, because a couple years later, the winners really had been cheating, a bit of business that came to light when the champion was slaughtered and stripped of its hide, and globs of silicone fell out. Oops. It’s not every day you get to cover a cheating scandal at the state fair, and I regret that I missed it. By then I’d moved on to the Indiana state fair, where my sole bit of fair-related journalism was on Chief, the “world’s largest hog.” I called around, and discovered that Chief, while enormous, was not even close to a world record, or even a national one. (That belonged to a competitor from, where else, Iowa.) I pinned the p.r. rep down with the sword of truth and got her to admit that the quote marks — yes, it was Chief, “world’s largest hog” — were there for a reason. I then declared myself “world’s greatest columnist” and later collected an award for the piece from the Hoosier State Press Association. Yes, that story is as pathetic as it sounds.

I don’t care what anyone says; I’m proud of the work I did as a state fair journalist. Even if I never did track down the Tom Thumb Donut machine. (This was before the miracle of Google, needless to say. They may be my single-most-favorite state fair food.)

Bloggage? I has some:

When we were in Ann Arbor and watched a slide show by a UM professor who was a “computational cosmologist,” Alan was struck by how organic his computer models of the universe were. Dark matter resembled orange peels, etc. Now the Brits say they’ve successfully imaged a single molecule, and guess what, it looks like a honeycomb.

For the record, I am not offended by the People of Wal-Mart site, and I look forward to seeing its answer site, People of Whole Foods. (Great idea, Brian, but Trader Joe’s isn’t upscale enough.) Someone get on it.

Another reason to despise Michael Pollan: He has put me in agreement with Charlotte Allen. Sigh.

Yikes! I’m getting my roots done in 13 minutes! Must run.

Jeez, it’s cold. August 28th, it’s just above 60 degrees outside and we’re looking at a day of rain. The acorns are falling on the roof with such violence it sounds like we’re under sniper fire. The squirrels come down and eat them on the deck, leaving the shells to embed themselves in your sandals (which it’s almost too cold to wear) so you track them through the house, and find them later, shrieking, “Is that BUNNY POO?”

But it’s not. In fact, Ruby seems more or less trained to go in her cage, although that hasn’t really been tested. All I know is a) she hasn’t gone outside the cage, and b) when I put her in her cage, she goes. She hasn’t hopped to her cage to eliminate when the urge hits, which is the gold standard for me. This will do for now. Her explorations are a little nerve-wracking, as she doesn’t come when called or make any noise, so tracking her down for caging before an extended absence from the house can be an exercise in frustration — there’s a reason the captain warns Luke of gettin’ the rabbit in him, and I don’t need to explain that reference, do I?

What a great movie.

I’m not complaining about the weather, exactly. I’m just whining a little bit. The weekends of warmth are dwindling, and we haven’t really had too much of it. Still, this beats January with a stick. And the lake’s nice and full again. I’ll take it.

I can’t stop thinking about this poor woman in California, the one abducted at 11 and kept as some creepazoid’s slave for 20 years. The latest is, he’s given at least one interview from jail, and oh I can’t wait for the next six weeks of Nancy Grace now:

Mr. Garrido gave a telephone interview from jail to station KCRA in Sacramento, saying, “In the end, this is going to be a powerful, heartwarming story.”

“My life has been straightened out” in recent years, he said. “Wait till you hear the story of what took place at this house. You’re going to be absolutely impressed. It’s a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around.”

The story goes on to note postings from a blog, in which he writes, “I have produced a set of voices by effectively controlling the sound to pronounce words through my own mental powers.” Great. Another untreated schizophrenic sex offender left to wander the world for most of his life. I suppose the shitstorm will fall upon the parole officers or other corrections personnel who failed to notice he had a “compound” in his back yard with three prisoners. I’m sure MichaelG can tell us more about the caseload a California parole officer carries in a slow week, much less one in a state with no money. (And I believe this municipality is Michael’s, or was, as well.)

The interview is really a trip, combining Garrido’s insanity with a certain TV preacher delivery. And now this girl, this woman, gets to live the rest of her life. Remember, God loves us all very very much!

I should dig up some bloggage, but I’m too lazy right now. I just ordered Snow Leopard and am about to order a new, ginormous hard drive for my laptop, so now I’m going to plan all the new software I’m going to install, and how carefully I’m going to store my data, and how everything is going to be tagged and filed and where I can find it when I need it, including pictures and music and video. No more digital slovenliness for me, no sir.

OK, no bloggage, but this anecdote from one of Alan’s co-workers, who stopped at a Detroit IHOP for a very late dinner a couple Fridays ago, and was met at the door by a security guard, who first asked if he was carrying any weapons and then subjected him to a pat-down search before allowing him into the inner sanctum of pancakes. God, I love this town.

Have a good weekend, all. See you Monday.

My schedule’s been all bollixed up these days, and I keep missing my 10 a.m. exercise class, Pumping Iron for Cougars and a Few Fat Girls Like Me. So last night I went to Pilates for the first time. Mat Pilates, aka the kind you do in a class, as opposed to the one you do on the special machine, which is called a Reformer.

“Despite the somewhat medieval name,” begins the About.com article about the Pilates Reformer, and that phrase says it all. Isn’t every exercise program an attempt at reform, as it was practiced in the medieval age? Pilates, I found, will reform you fast. Whether you will be aware of your reformation is another matter, however. It depends on whether you can see through the film of sweat pouring into your eyes as you observe your teacher holding herself in the shape of a V, balancing as lightly on her butt as a bird balances on a wire. “Hold it for a moment,” she purrs, holding it for several moments.

The teacher had a lilting accent that I suspect was Brazilian. Those Brazilian babes invented the naked bathing suit, and I guess this is how they stay in shape for it. All I know is, my ass was thoroughly kicked, and today I’m swallowing ibuprofen.

Yoga is like this, too. I used to think of yoga as a gussied-up form of stretching. Due to my freakish anatomy — I’m all torso, with an inseam of about 18 inches, a human basset hound — I can easily get into plow position, even without a warmup. About 10 minutes into my first yoga class, struggling to balance on one leg, a sheen of perspiration popping out all over my face, I thought, goddamn, so much for relaxation. I also lack the ability to do the things yoga teachers are always crooning about: Find your center and empty your mind. The only place I ever successfully emptied my mind while using my body was on horseback, and the feeling was so wonderful, and fleeting, that I’m still suspicious of it. (Nothing like jumping eight fences at a good clip and then having no memory of it to flip you out.) Find me a person who can empty their mind at will, in a darkened room with yoga music playing in the background, and I’ll show you a person who needs some more to think about.

Bloggage? Sure.

The reaction to Ted Kennedy’s passing was about what you’d expect — and yes, Roy did the roundup — but for sheer amusement, yesterday was a good day to see why I keep Rod Dreher in the folder called Idiots.

At 7:14 a.m.: The tragic life of Ted Kennedy: All the potential for greatness he possessed he squandered because of his inability to transcend his own all too human weaknesses. Chappaquiddick was only the worst of it. He did, of course, achieve a kind of greatness, and one shouldn’t try to take that away from him. But it’s hard to think of him this morning without thinking about what might have been had he been able to bear the burden of history and his slain brothers’ legacies. He could have done so much more with what he had been given.

Commenters pile on, say, essentially, WTF? At 2:51 p.m., When Ted Kennedy redeemed himself: You never really know about people, do you? …I’m glad it’s up to God to judge the eternal fate of human souls, because only He can know the whole story.

At 6:28 p.m., Ted Kennedy as Don Draper. It’s the best of the lot: But given how accomplished Kennedy was as a legislator, I do wonder how much we have lost because a Ted Kennedy is not really possible today — meaning how many talented but deeply flawed men never go into public life because they couldn’t survive the moral judgment of the public regarding their personal sins and failings, and no longer have the protective veil of social hypocrisy to shield themselves.

Hours later, still more: On abortion, a once-Catholic Ted Kennedy. He used to oppose abortion, then “grew in office.” I guess he was right the first time then, eh?

For a much better take, I prefer Lance Mannion’s Ted and me. I excerpt, but just go read.

Off to cougar class. If I can still move.

A note to my right-of-center readers: I kept my mouth shut about Ronald Reagan. (I did not keep my mouth shut about daughter Patti’s fairly repulsive essay for People magazine, but a girl has her limits.) I understand he was important to many people, who found him to be an inspirational leader. I don’t believe that the dead should never be spoken ill of, but I thought I could extend Reagan a decent interval of silence.

I don’t expect that much courtesy from the other side in the matter of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy. The corpse isn’t even cold, and I’ve already read my first Mary Jo Kopechne crack. But I’m willing to let them surprise me, and if they don’t, I’m sure Roy will have the roundup.

In the meantime, I recommend the NYT obit, here. Nicely done.

Text and audio of his eulogy for brother Bobby is here. It’s the only one I could find that was untainted by some YouTube impresario’s addition of sappy music. When will people learn? When the facts — or the text — are powerful, let it speak for itself.

Short one today, dawgs. Today was school registration, which bit into my blogging time, and I still have buttloads of work to do today. Besides, I want to introduce you to someone. This is Ruby:

She’s the newest member of our household. Kate has clamored for a bunny for a while now, but I told her it was out of the question with a terrier in the house, even a very old one. When I stopped at the vet to pick up Spriggy’s ashes, I saw a flyer on the board seeking a new home for Ruby. I’m a big believer in fate in animal/human relationships, and this one seemed to fit the bill. I was a little taken aback by the home Ruby was leaving, a gracious mansion on the lake and loving owners whose lives can no longer accommodate her. I told Ruby, “You are moving to a more proletarian neighborhood,” and the owner had the good manners to laugh (and throw in the cage and all supplies free). But hell — Ruby’s a damn rabbit. She no longer has a water view, but she will find a new family of human suckers willing to peel her carrots for her. So far, she’s mainly been preoccupied with hopping, sniffing and exploring. (I’m thinking of spraying her with Endust and letting her take care of the nooks and crannies under the furniture.)

Her name, of course, comes from the Max and Ruby books, which we all loved when Kate was little. I briefly considered Coozledad’s rabbit-naming system, adopted after he took in some rescue rabbits and was informed, by the shelter administrator, that rabbits were “vermin.” The bunnies were named Ethel Merman Vermin and William Tecumseh Sherman Vermin. But I didn’t think Kate would get the joke.

So Ruby it is.

Not much bloggage today, but what I have is good: My name is Roger, and I’m an alcoholic. Ebert does A.A.

And I do work.

A few vacation snaps, because isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?

Everybody knows Sue, the T. rex at the Field Museum in Chicago. I tell Kate, “When I was a kid, T. rex were always depicted standing up on their back legs, like Godzilla. This is considered a far more accurate pose, based on analysis of the skeleton. More birdlike.”

Kate says, “Uh-huh,” as though nothing in the world could be more boring. Just once I want a kid who acts like she went to a private school, one of those little success robots with the firm handshake for adults and a reply that lets you know they’re paying attention to everything you just said.

Anyway, here’s Sue:

Alan notices something else about her. Her armature:

“They could have used some crappy clamps, but this is sculptural. Look at the detail.” Each one of the vertebrae has a different attachment to the spine support. It’s simultaneously Victorian and modern, very cool.

Of course, that’s the Field, too — a place that honors the natural world by putting on display hundreds of dead animals. Signs here and there remind us it was a different world once upon a time, before television and hidden-camera technology. Seeing a stuffed wildebeest at the Field was the only way lots of people got to see a wildebeest at all. I think it’s a testament to the work they do that people still see wildebeests there.

I like the Lions of Tsavo myself. Those were some bad-ass lions.

Then it was up the Michigan coast for some beach time. True fun fact: Earlier this year I wrote a story on the tax incentives for making films in Michigan. A guy from the office that handles liaison work with Hollywood swears he has answered this question from California more than once: “Can’t you see Wisconsin from your side of Lake Michigan?” Um, no:

That was a pretty windy day. Lousy for kayaking. Alan, being a resident of the Auto Theft Capital of North America, knows how to protect his property:

Sometimes people say, “Couldn’t a skinny person slide under the Club and paddle away?” I suppose so. But they couldn’t remove it without destroying the cockpit coaming. It’s all about making your stuff more complicated to steal than the next person’s.

Vacation, she is over. I tried very very hard not to pay any attention to the news beyond the important stuff. I ducked in and out of Facebook, just to make sure August is still the month where we care about what the First Lady wears to the Grand Canyon. I also tried not to write too much, just read and think. What I thought was…I should do some more writing. DIfferent writing, anyway. I say this every year. This year I should do it.

When we were in Chicago, we encountered European tourists, at least assuming that a knot of German-speaking people rolling their bags around hotel lobbies are tourists. On my sole trip to Paris in the ’80s I saw a poster in a travel agency, with the usual national icons touting trips around the world — the pyramids for Egypt, Great Wall for China, etc. For the United States, a cowboy rode a bucking bronco, surely a long shot for three days in Chicago, and certainly for a leaf tour through Vermont. What a big country this is; I never get tired of exploring it. I just run out of money.

So, what did I miss? More health-care debate? Meh. I kept up with that via my editing job, which continued through the week. (Long story.) And I thought about it a lot on Friday, when Kate’s mild earache turned into real pain, and we made a detour through an urgent-care center to learn what I already knew: She had an ear infection, and she needed antibiotics. As these things go, it wasn’t so bad — she saw a physician’s assistant, stayed out of the E.R., etc.; we must observe cost-control efficiencies — but once again, it semi-infuriated me. I still think it’s a very real possibility that our little family will be without health insurance within the next few years, because pals? Even with two college degrees, we cannot afford a $1,500 a month nut for health care. No matter what we cut, no matter what we sell. It can’t be done. That’s my personal bottom line.

So now it’s onward into the week, which, as is usual for post-vacation, too much sorting of mail and too little reflection on memories. Except here, maybe. So there’s that.

Bloggage? Sure: Roy on the National Review’s sudden fondness for long-distance psychoanalysis. Funny.

I did a little reading on this model-catfight-blog business, and I still think the most amazing detail is that someone managed to speak to an actual human being at Google, much less get them to reveal an anonymous blogger. They cancelled my AdSense contract, and I still have no idea why; I contacted them about a copyright theft and had to do the entire business through filling out forms. I’m not sure they even actually exist in corporeal form — I think the whole business is a hologram.

Oh, and the new season of “Mad Men” got under way in my absence. What do we think so far?

I think it’s time for breakfast.

For a Friday when I’m racing to complete a long to-do list ahead of leaving on a much-needed vacation, just some bloggage today. I’ll be in and out of here next week as the spirit moves me; it may move me a lot, or not at all, but I’ll be connected via e-mail and cell, and I’m sure you folks will think of something to talk about in my absence. Note to Chicagolanders — and yes, Peter, I’m looking at you — we’ll have a table Saturday evening at a tapas place in Lincoln Park, so if you want to come, e-mail me for the deets.

So, let’s get to it:

I’m not a fan of Caitlin Flanagan, but there were a few snickers in this piece, ostensibly looking at a new biography of Helen Gurley Brown. It takes a turn into more contemporary figures toward the end, but I don’t want to spoil the surprise.

A friend sent me this YouTube clip a few months ago; it’s part of a longer piece for Current TV (don’t do any work for them near the North Korean border), in which Ira Glass talks about storytelling, but as usual, it’s about something more — about soldiering on when you don’t feel like it — and you should invest five minutes of your time in it.

A friend of mine makes this sound effect when things don’t go well — MWAH-mwahhh. If he could read this story, he’d make it now. Just to entice you to click:

LOCKPORT, N.Y. (AP) – Police say a Buffalo-area tow truck driver was juggling two cell phones – texting on one and talking on another – when he slammed into a car and crashed into a swimming pool.

HT: Rob Kantner, FB friend.

Off to the bank, on the bike. Errands + exercise = multitasking.

I have an early interview, followed by my Russian lesson, and as sometimes happens, I find myself with nothing prepared. Well, there’s this — an iPhone picture I took last night on my bike ride:

Isn’t that pretty? If only I’d had my better camera.

So, any bloggage from the night’s web-crawling? Not a lot:

Ben Stein, please shut up.

Yet another 1969 anniversary rolling around: The Manson family murders. Jezebel checks in on the ladies, sees what they’re up to.

Back in the afternoon, but I don’t know when. Behave yourselves.

The 48 Hour Film Project awards were this weekend. The event was held in a loft with the sort of sci-fi-apocalypse-hello-America-this-is-your-future view Detroiters take for granted:

That’s the Packard plant, beloved of lazy photojournalists looking for a tragic symbol of Detroit’s industrial decline; Jim at Sweet Juniper (and many others) reminds us frequently that the plant’s been closed more than half a century, but don’t let that bother you, Mr. Parachuted-in Freelancer. Its history is long and complicated and — standard for around here — tragic, but the bottom line is, it’s been abandoned for decades, fell into receivership years ago and presumably belongs to the city. Yes, it should be torn down, but a conservative estimate on what it would take to demolish and haul away more than 3 million square feet of Albert Kahn-designed factory is in the eight figures, and the city doesn’t have that kind of money. A search on Flickr demonstrates the site is a favorite of urban explorers; it stands open to the world now, but even they’re getting bored with it, and it now belongs to the scrappers, who are busily trying to take it apart from the inside, with some success and occasional self-injury — here’s a pretty good Bill McGraw column on the state of things.

The latest craze is arson, and as we stood on the deck drinking and socializing, we could hear the sound of glass breaking, as restless vandals and scrappers worked out their excess testosterone on the few remaining windows. There’s a stripped car sticking halfway out one of the windows two or three floors up; for a while I thought the project was to push it out, but no, they were firebugs, too:

It wasn’t much of a blaze, and it didn’t last long. According to McGraw, the city fire department doesn’t even bother responding to many alarms there, and never at night — it’s just too dangerous. But 3 million square feet holds a lot of puzzlement, and some of it will burn:

Kirschner said Engine 23 and other fire companies responded to a fire recently during the day and discovered about 25,000 square feet of shoes burning. The smoke, partially from the shoes’ rubber and glue, was dangerous for the firefighters and anyone in the neighborhood who might have breathed it.

Hazardous-materials crews monitored the air Monday night and found no need for evacuations. The cause of the fire was not known, but firefighters were certain it was set. They called for an arson car, but none was available.

(I hope you get a sense of the weirdness life in and around this city is, on almost a daily basis. Twenty-five thousand square feet of burning shoes? Shrug.)

The fire was only the appetizer. The main course was the awards, and how did we do? Reader, we won:

(The award says Best Film, but I’m calling it Best Picture until someone tells me to stop.) This puts us in the running for the nationals, and enters us automatically in Filmapalooza, held next year at the National Association of Broadcasters meeting in Las Vegas. I have very few illusions about our chances up against the fearsome teams of Los Angeles and New York, but on the other hand, I’ve never been to Vegas, and don’t you think I should go before I die? The NAB meets in early April, a little late for spring break, but what the hell.

Yes, I’ve never been to Vegas. Atlantic City, yes, but once you’ve seen “Casino,” do you even need to go to Las Vegas? I don’t think so.

We were lucky. Ideally, when you make a film, you start with a story and add your elements. In a challenge, you start with your elements (genre, prop, character, line of dialogue) and craft the story around them. The time constraints and guerrilla element means you have to work with what you have, and this lends a certain Mickey-and-Judy air of homemade chaos. Stories get shoehorned into places where someone had a friend who would let them shoot — a haunted house, a tattoo parlor or, in our case, the Theatre Bizarre, which was easy to work into our thriller/suspense genre draw. One team drew Musical and put on a fun show called “Love Between the Lanes” at the Ypsi-Arbor Bowl (which has one of the great names, and great signs, in Michigan business). Another, faced with a dud genre (fantasy), threw up their hands and did a “Princess Bride” takeoff that was pretty funny. But there was a lot of crap, too; I haven’t heard so much expository dialogue since, well, the last 48-hour challenge.

(Expository dialogue: “Hello, Bob, let me introduce my sister Sally Mae. You may recall her from last August, when she fell into the punchbowl at our other sister Julie’s barbecue, which required her to take an immediate shower. While she was rubbing the stains from her shirt, the door opened and our brother-in-law Simon came in. He was drunk. Sally, why don’t you tell Bob what happened next?” And so on.)

Watching the screenings, I was reminded of my pal Lance Mannion’s observation about the terrible dialogue in “The Deep”: No one gets out of here when they can get the hell out of here. One film had that intensifier in, seemingly, every other line: What the hell are you doing? Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? Where the hell are we? And so on. I vowed to never, ever write that again. And then watched our film, where a character tells another, “Lady, you need to get the hell out of here.” Wince. Live and learn.

So, then, any bloggage to start the week? Not very much, but some:

Hank liked “Julie & Julia.” So did everyone else I know who saw it this weekend.

Overheard in the Newsroom, one in a series of Overheard blogs. Makes me miss the crazy places:

Intern: “I know what happens when I assume.”
Editor: “Yep. You run a correction.”

We had one crashing thunderstorm a few hours ago, with another one expected around dawn. Best sleep while I can.