Who said I’d not like “Thirteen Moons?” Was that you, Jeff? I think so. Well, you’re wrong. Not that you don’t have company:

How, then, to explain the much more frequent patches of bad — really bad — writing in “Thirteen Moons”? This starts with the book’s very first sentences, which are so awful that they beg to be read aloud: “There is no scatheless rapture. Love and time put me in this condition. I am leaving soon for the Nightland, where all the ghosts of men and animals yearn to travel.” To be sure, there were plenty of passages like this in “Cold Mountain” — of prose that somehow managed to be simultaneously portentous, folksy and cloying, like banjo music on the soundtrack of a Ken Burns documentary. But the volume in “Thirteen Moons” has been cranked up considerably.

It seems to me I’m too middlebrow for the New York Times Book Review, because nothing about that passage clangs awful to me. It’s not that I have no discernment; I can find stink-o prose all day, but then, a good chunk of my daily reading comes from newspapers, where the soil is particularly rich. In fiction, my tastes have obviously been destroyed by reading too many pulpy mysteries. Somewhere I have a Mickey Spillane paperback where Mike Hammer shoots the gun out of the bad guy’s hand in their climactic faceoff. I always thought that should be the 1,000-point bullseye on a target — hit the gun in the guy’s hand but leave his fingers intact.

Anyway, back to “Thirteen Moons” — I’m enjoying it because it illuminates a part of history that’s a black hole in my knowledge, the pre-Civil War 19th century. Life was a little keener then. A historian once described to me what must have happened in a famous battle on the riverbanks in Fort Wayne: The initial volley by the soldiers using their muzzle-loaders, the fumble to reload, the rush by the Indians and the remainder of the fighting carried out hand-to-hand, using bayonets and hatchets and war clubs. The overwhelming smell on the battlefield would have to be excrement; I don’t see how the average man, red or white, could avoid shitting himself in fright under such conditions. The Indians won this skirmish, and described it in their stories as the Battle of the Pumpkin Fields, because of the way the dead looked on the crisp October morning, their newly bared skulls steaming and pink after the Indians collected their trophies.

I’m only halfway through, however. Things could change.

So here it is, Wednesday, and while I thought for a while yesterday I had turned the corner with this cold, it appears today that was a false dawn. Good thing, because the temperature is dropping, the wind is howling and I’m not going outside unless someone pays me.

Fortunately, there’s supplemental reading.

Bernie Madoff still has a trick up his sleeve, I just know it. You wait — the judge will sentence him to jail, there’ll be a poof, and he’ll simply disappear and rematerialize on a beach in the South Pacific.

It’s been a few days since I checked in at Coozledad’s retirement home for unwanted and amusingly named animals. Of course I missed a lot.

Amusing fact gleaned from Jack Lessenberry: Rep. John Conyers’ staff has a code word for his wife — “Ghetto.”

Back to bed. With “Thirteen Moons.” Work can wait another hour.

We haven’t had a food post for a while, have we? Here it is, Fat Tuesday, so let’s have one. What’s For Dinner used to be a common topic here at NN.C, as you old-timers can attest. Occasionally I get an e-mail: Nance, what’s for dinner lately? I’m out of ideas. Well, I am, too. My cooking took a turn when we moved here, and a) we could no longer count on Alan’s presence at the dinner table, given the vicissitudes of morning newspaper production schedules; and b) Kate stubbornly refused to grow out of her toddler tastes, and continued to eat maybe seven foods. I decided life was too short to worry too much about this nonsense, and made a sandwich. FTW.

I think maybe I just needed to walk in the wilderness for a while, because lately I’ve been making my way back. It occurs to me that unless I want to put on five pounds a year indefinitely, ultimately ending up on one of those electric scooters at the grocery store, I should change my ways. The Mark Bittman book is illuminating a new path. I’m trying to simplify, un-process, give meat a detour more often than not and cook a bit healthier, but at the end of the day I want a little reward for all those whole grains and fresh fruit during the day.

So last night I decided butter is proof of God’s love, and decided to show the proper gratitude. I made a spinach soufflé and some oven-roasted potatoes with rosemary from our own bush, struggling through winter in the sunny window. And you know what? It was goooood:

Husband, in background, finds Field & Stream more interesting.

People are terrified of soufflés, and for no good reason. They’re much easier than you think, not nearly as tricky as you’ve been led to believe. If you can beat egg whites and fold them, you too can have a lovely entree consisting mainly of air. Truth be told, I prefer my soufflés of chocolate and for dessert, but for a light supper, it’s hard to beat ’em. Maybe with a little mushroom sauce over the top. Next time.

And while we’re on the subject of pleasures and indulgences, let me recommend the second book on the nightstand at the moment, Laura Lippman’s “Hardly Knew Her.” I know Ms. L has written short fiction before, but this is the first I’ve read of it, and I have to say, I’m impressed. These stories are wry and noir-y, concerned with a corner of crime fiction that rarely gets its full measure of attention — troublesome women. And not just the femme fatale in the fitted suit and veiled hat, either, but far more interesting ones, soulless party girls and over-the-hill sexpots and gold-diggers deprived of their full measure of gold. Oh, and the suburban prostitute-masquerading-as-a-lobbyist, and also the one who screws her contractor to get the little extras out of a home reno, and…you get the idea. Read and enjoy.

Pals, I have a whole list of supplemental readings I was going to post for comment, most on the decline of newspapers and some suggestions for saving them (or their newsrooms), but as I started to do so I realized I have utterly lost my enthusiasm for the discussion. Maybe it’s just today, on this fine, sunny, cold morning that still holds the promise of spring. Or maybe I’ve reached my limit. Anyway, not today. Today is a day for Mardi Gras beads and jelly doughnuts and last splurges before 40 days of Lent. (An agnostic though I may be, I retain the cultural patterns of my Catholic upbringing.) Can we muster some bloggage? Perhaps:

You couldn’t go to the Oscar parties, but Hank and his colleague Amy could, and bring you a full report. It doesn’t sound like that much fun:

Barward, we are thrust against the hardened chest of Gerard Butler (King Leonidas from “300”). Thrust again. Thrust once more. We can’t help it, buddy — we are being pushed from behind by . . . Oliver Stone and his Just for Men eyebrows. It’s a manwich. For some reason, Butler decides to go find his grog someplace else.

One minute these guys are all bluster and go-ahead-knock-it-off, the next they turn into pants-wetting, weak-kneed pansies: Rick Santelli vs. his imagination.

Sean Penn doesn’t need screenwriters — he comes up with his own killer lines, and at parties, no less.

And with that, I’m off. Go make yourself a soufflé.

I’ve always thought Richard Florida was one pound of good ideas in a five pound bag, able to provide fodder for a lively civic discussion but mostly a lot of empty space. The whole Cool Cities thing, which Florida milked like it was the last cow on earth, only the cow actually dispensed liquid gold, and it sort of did — got a lot of people talking (a good thing), but otherwise meh.

So it was with a less than enthusiastic attitude that I read his thoughts in the Atlantic Monthly on “How the Crash Will Reshape America,” and found he’s still not impressing me all that much. And then I got to this passage:

So how do we move past the bubble, the crash, and an aging, obsolescent model of economic life? What’s the right spatial fix for the economy today, and how do we achieve it? The solution begins with the removal of homeownership from its long-privileged place at the center of the U.S. economy. Substantial incentives for homeownership (from tax breaks to artificially low mortgage-interest rates) distort demand, encouraging people to buy bigger houses than they otherwise would. That means less spending on medical technology, or software, or alternative energy—the sectors and products that could drive U.S. growth and exports in the coming years. Artificial demand for bigger houses also skews residential patterns, leading to excessive low-density suburban growth. The measures that prop up this demand should be eliminated.

If anything, our government policies should encourage renting, not buying. Homeownership occupies a central place in the American Dream primarily because decades of policy have put it there. A recent study by Grace Wong, an economist at the Wharton School of Business, shows that, controlling for income and demographics, homeowners are no happier than renters, nor do they report lower levels of stress or higher levels of self-esteem.

And while homeownership has some social benefits—a higher level of civic engagement is one—it is costly to the economy. … Too often, it ties people to declining or blighted locations, and forces them into work—if they can find it—that is a poor match for their interests and abilities.

As homeownership rates have risen, our society has become less nimble: in the 1950s and 1960s, Americans were nearly twice as likely to move in a given year as they are today. Last year fewer Americans moved, as a percentage of the population, than in any year since the Census Bureau started tracking address changes, in the late 1940s. This sort of creeping rigidity in the labor market is a bad sign for the economy, particularly in a time when businesses, industries, and regions are rising and falling quickly.

I’ve been reading this more and more of late, usually written by someone who resides in New York, San Francisco or some other area where real estate is vastly expensive and it’s not at all uncommon for people, even those with upper-middle-class incomes, to rent their whole lives. Sometimes it’s accompanied by a crack about George Bailey, the sap, and quotes from his lecture to Mr. Potter: Do you know how long it takes a working man to save five thousand dollars? Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you’re talking about… they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn’t think so…

Since nobody else seems to be saying it, let me be a voice in the wilderness and say it now: While homeownership is not an unalloyed good across the board, it is by far something that’s more good than bad, and I’ve lived in the neighborhoods that prove it. Richard Florida teaches at George Mason University now, but he used to be at Carnegie Mellon, in Pittsburgh, and you’d think he’d know better. It’s hard to know how much of Florida’s shtick is bomb-throwing, but you suspect he’s being deliberately provocative when he spews some of this crap — that the government should encourage renting, not owning, and that an unanchored labor force is better for the economy than a homeowning, lawn-mowing one. (That part about happiness and self-esteem is simply solid-gold bullshit, so I have to think he knows what he’s doing.)

Take it from a resident of some fairly crappy neighborhoods: When, as a homeowner, you hear that the place across the street, having failed to sell after 18 months on the market, is now going to be rented, you do not say to yourself, “Oh, good — some nimble knowledge workers of the new economy are coming to the neighborhood!” You say, “Swell. Another bunch of people who will park their cars on the lawn, fail to tuck the curtain inside the tub during their showers and never be home on trick-or-treat night.”

Why is this even being debated? Homeowners have a stake in the local schools, raise hell about local crime, start neighborhood watch patrols and care intensely about their neighbors, even if it is only because it affects their own property values. It hardly counts against them. They’re also more likely to do that other economy-goosing activity: Have children. Frankly, an economy that requires me to uproot my family every three years for another rented townhouse doesn’t sound like an improvement, even over the current unpleasantness.

The problems attached to the current housing market came about because lending standards fell so far that the policy no longer encouraged responsibility, but irresponsibility. For most of the decades since the government started encouraging home-buying, through tax policy mainly, it has worked splendidly to improve communities and build wealth. Can we stop having this discussion?

Maybe some of you are wondering about today’s headline. Good thing you stuck this far:

I was in Fort Wayne this weekend, so Kate could see her buddies and I could do likewise. Friday I met Alex at Henry’s, my old local, after work. Alex drinks Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, and I was reminded of one of his odd habits — he folds the cocktail straw into a triangle and saves them:

And then what does he do? He has a storage system:

When it’s full, he can trade them in for a new liver.

And so we greet Monday, and a new week. Let an old post from Coozledad guide your actions this week: How to catch a bull.

Who’s interested in seeing the childhood home of NN.C? Sure you are:

I know: the picture sucks. My parents were talking about taking out those ugly spruce trees when they lived there, and they moved out 13 years ago. But that’s unmistakably the House of my Yout’, and praise be to Google for letting me visit it again.

That’s 1832 Barrington Rd., Columbus, Ohio. At the first meeting of our college newspaper staff, we passed around a sign-up sheet to write down our summer addresses. It came to me, and as I started to write, I saw, a couple lines above mine, “1860 Barrington Rd., Cols.,” which you can see here:

This is an apartment building on the corner of my street, which at the time was rather run-down, but that was before people realized you were supposed to highly prize places with built-in bookcases, wide baseboards and Tudor detailing, and it got fixed up. The unit was rented by a Mrs. Jeanne Burns, a divorcee with three children, the eldest of whom was our own J.C. Funny, huh?

After I graduated from college I lived at home for about a year, until I felt ready to launch from the parental nest. I couldn’t afford German Village, the trendy singles neighborhood for people like me, but I found a very nice apartment about a mile away, a four-flat in a strip of Columbus that ran between Grandview and Upper Arlington. We called it Almost Arlington:

That’s it on the right. Grr. More spruce trees. If you lived on the bottom floor, you got a bay window. Upstairs, you got a high, curved ceiling. I lived up, which was good, because there was a serial rapist who stalked this neighborhood, and he loved first-floor apartments with unlocked windows on hot summer nights. He never hit our little house of fun, however; I say “our” because across the hall lived none other than Jeff Borden. We called our place the Westwood Country Club, had a lot of parties, seen here:

Then I moved to a little duplex where I lived not even a year, and then came the big move, to Indiana. I rented a house:

It’s the beige one. This was the first time I lived by myself in a house, not an apartment, and it felt like pure luxury (although I missed Borden). I bet that place was maybe 1,300 square feet, and had a bathroom where the toilet was mounted at an angle, so you could sit on it without shattering your kneecaps on the sink. If that doesn’t look like the home of a newspaper columnist, well, you don’t know much about newspaper wages. (And I was among the better-paid people on the staff.) But Jeffersonian movin’-on-up was yet to come, seven years later, when Alan and I bought our castle:

Ours was the one on the right. The stone place on the left was more typical of the neighborhood, which was full of arts-and-crafts wonders like this that you could pick up for pocket change. You still can; I bet the better places on this block still don’t go for much more than $100K. If you turned west and clicked two more blocks’ worth, you’d find Foster Park, my old bike-riding haunt:

This picture doesn’t do it justice. And then fast-forward a few years, and another move, but alas, my current neighborhood isn’t Google Street View’d yet, and please put that in the directory of “sentences that wouldn’t have made a bit of sense to me 10 years ago.” (I used another one the other day: “So I was at Trader Joe’s, and I heard this Linda Ronstadt song on the speakers, but I couldn’t remember what it was. So I got out my iPhone and Shazam’d it.”)

I’m not leading you on this tour to bore you to death with pictures of midwestern real estate under gray skies, but to speculate on what form our memories will take in the future. That Linda Ronstadt song, and the method by which I retrieved it from the ether — Shazam, an iPhone app, sampled 10 seconds of it when I held the phone under a speaker, then went out on the internet and compared its digital fingerprint to all the others in its database, and came back with the answer — strikes me as nothing short of miraculous. (It was “I Can’t Let Go” from her “Mad Love” album, a very Trader Joe’s selection.) As does the idea of punching 1832 Barrington Road into Google and seeing a fairly recent photo of the place.

I remember my Fort Wayne rental house as a cool little gathering place for my friends. Now I see it’s really a crack house waiting to happen.

Our own perspective has a way of editing itself. Google is crueler.

Some bloggage today? A bit:

For your next man-who-has-everything gift conundrum, how about this two-DVD set from the British Film Institute? “The Joy of Sex Education” spans quite a range:

Filmed during the First World War, the silent footage features a young Canadian soldier called Dick – a name that seemingly had no unfortunate connotations back then – who is on leave in London where nicely dressed young women approach him, one after another. Dick, the caption says, is “tempted”, but luckily, as he is about to meet his doom, a Canadian officer taps him on the arm. “Do you realise, young man, the risks you run in association with that woman?” he asks, silently. Cut away to a seedy hotel room where another Canadian soldier has not been so well advised. Though he and the fallen woman he has met are fully dressed, a ruffled bed is evidence of the risk to which he has exposed himself. While his back is turned, the shameless woman goes through his wallet and stuffs a wedge of notes into her bra.

Back to Dick, now on a guided tour of a hospital ward where men are being treated for venereal disease, where he is shown horribly swollen legs and claw-like hands. “Rotted legs and hands”, the caption reads. The message is very clear: there is no such thing as safe sex for a soldier overseas so, laddie, keep your mind on your pure young girlfriend at home and say no.

I haven’t had a chance to read Roger Ebert’s reflection on his long relationship with Gene Siskel, but I’m betting it’s worth my time.

Dear Time magazine, Why send a reporter to Detroit for a few hours when you could hire his guide and get a much better story? Just wondering.

Off to work.

UPDATE: Ooh, almost missed this. Read, then watch.

You’d think, with the heaps of frozen water in the yard, that moisture wouldn’t be a problem for a Michigan family on a day like today, but you’d think wrong. Winter is perverse that way. I’ve identified a large part of my physical misery as a lack of moisture, and am working to rectify it. If you’ve never awakened at 5 a.m. with parched nasal passages swollen shut and a mouth that feels like a cat peed in it, well, you’ve never lived in your average heated house in winter. There’s no furnace-linked humidifier in the world that can keep up with it, so you have to supplement — with vaporizers, saline nasal spray, industrial-grade moisturizers and other foofraw, trying to find some sort of equilibrium. It sucks. What sucks even more is knowing that by July, I’ll be bitching about the humidity along with everyone else.

Is there a place on earth where naked primates can live in comfort year-round? I read somewhere that some Caribbean island suspended daily weather forecasting because it was the same every single day except when a hurricane was in the neighborhood — highs in the low 70s, winds steady out of the west at 10-15 knots, slight chance of late-afternoon showers. Maybe that’s the place.

You want to see what winter can do to a girl? Watch the trailer for New in Town. Cold weather appears to have frozen Renee Zellweger’s face to the point she can only move her mean little mouth! (And it’s her skin that looks worst of all, at least in the trailer. When a movie can’t make Renee Zellweger look pretty, it’s time to investigate the straight-to-video option.)

OK, enough. It’s not so bad out there. We’re predicted to break the 20-degree mark today, woohoo. And a white winter is always a better than a brown one, so I’ll take it.

For the sake of relativity, Jeff TMMO posted a link in comments to the webcam at the South Pole. It’s -19 in what is, after all, high summer down there. No one will be joining the 300 Club today.

OK, then. Let’s talk fresh starts. Does anyone else find it ironic that Detroit’s ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, convicted felon, local disgrace and all-around shitheel, apparently has a job prospect after he’s sprung from the slam in a few days? With actual law-abiding working people falling like dead soldiers every day, you’d think the guy might have to spend some time swearing at Craigslist with all the rest of us, but no. The good news: It’s in Texas. A few more immigrants like him, and the Lone Star state will be the new Florida.

A little bit of bloggage today:

Watch the first clip. Are all pageant dads nancyboys? Is there some way to grow girl babies in wombtanks rather than make innocent women marry these guys?

You thought this blog had the stupidest comment about John Updike yesterday? Not even close.

Not much for you today, I know, and I apologize. But it’s off to Costco for me — we’re out of beer and wine. That’s a must-rectify situation in our house. So maybe later, eh?

I don’t have anything else on my mind today, so I call your attention to two recent NYT stories with one thing in common — very cold water.

The first is about winter surfers on Lake Superior, people who greet the season with the infamous gales of November and spend the rest of the winter in dry suits and petroleum jelly, waiting for the Minnesota surf to come up and a singular experience to unfold:

By noon, a foot of snow was on the road, flakes blowing sideways in winds gusting up to 45 miles an hour. But a dozen surfers were suited up and in the water, paddling out with their heads down, over waves and into a whiteout, disappearing into an abyss.

The other story is about the scene at the Russian Orthodox Epiphany, when its members mark the end of the Christmas season by cutting cross-shaped holes in the ice of local rivers and ponds and then plunging in for a little new year’s baptism, described as:

…the trance-like preparation, the electric shock of the water and the 20- or 30-second wait for a feeling he described as “nirvana.”

In more proletarian parts of the country, this is sometimes called a polar-bear swim. I did it one year. Fort Wayne holds its official dunking in one of the filthy rivers, but my friend Mark the Shark started his own tradition at his lake house two counties away, and the idea of plunging into cleaner water finally convinced me to give it a try.

MtS is a somewhat disorganized person. The first year, he sent a notice to the local newspaper about the upcoming event, then forgot about it until New Year’s Day, when his wife looked out the window and said, “There are a whole bunch of cars pulling into the driveway. Do you know anything about that?” The first year’s swim attracted about five plungers, including Mark and his son, and many more spectators.

The following year was more organized, and the weather more dramatic — an early cold snap iced up the lake and laid several inches of snow everywhere. I called in the morning and asked what the plans were for making the hole. “Oh, I thought I might call the fire department, see if they could send over somebody with a chain saw,” Mark said. (This was two hours before the announced plunge.) Alan rolled his eyes and retrieved our Kubota from the basement, and he handled the chore. We learned how you cut a hole in ice big enough for a bunch of people to stand around while a bunch more people jump in — you saw grave-size pieces, then push them under the ice sheet with a pole. It made the fringe nice and stable. At one point Alan looked down and saw a very sleepy frog swimming near the surface; perhaps the noise of the saw awakened him from hibernation. A bunch of Amish people showed up to gape, and afterward we had mini quiches and mulled wine in the warm living room.

The following year was the one I finally got wet. It wasn’t as cold — the water was open — and I simply resolved not to think about it. Came to water’s edge wrapped in a towel, dropped it, thought BANZAI and dunked. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. I once went into northern Lake Huron in October, and that was worse — I remember my limbs twitching as all the blood made a speedy exit for the core, a freaky feeling. But the New Year’s plunge was almost pleasant, and had that baptismal effect that leads to the nirvana the Russian guy was after. You emerge feeling not half-dead, but alive and awake in a whole new way. I didn’t even take the warm shower afterward, because I already felt as clean as virgin bride.

I sometimes wonder, as the population moves south, if our fear of cold doesn’t increase by the year. People who think nothing of driving 85 miles an hour on the freeway quiver at the thought of a “dangerous” Minnesota winter. We’re in the midst of a tough one here, and I have done my share of bitching about it. But I’ve also noticed I do most of my bitching from inside the warm house, and once I’ve resolved to do whatever task is out there, and dressed appropriately, and actually walked outside into the great frozen maw, it’s not so bad at all. Sometimes I even get sweaty.

Today’s high: 39 degrees. Tomorrow’s high: 15.

Back to the mangle. And the bloggage:

Roger Ebert writes about Steak & Shake with the glee of a (formerly) fat man:

My Steak ‘n Shake fetish is not unique. On an early visit to the Letterman Show, during a commercial break, I said to David:

“I hear you’re from Indianapolis, home of the head office of Steak ‘n Shake.”

“In Sight, It Must be Right,” he said. Our eyes locked in unspoken communion.

“Four Ways to Enjoy,” I said.

“Car, table, counter, or TakHomaSak,” he replied.

“Specializing in Selected Foods…”

“…with a Desire to Please the Most Discriminating.”

“Thanks for Your Liberal Patronage…”

David didn’t blink an eye or miss a beat. We had both obviously memorized the original menu. “…signed, A. H. (Gus) Belt, founder,” he said, and we shared a nod of great satisfaction.

I love S&S, too. I allow myself about one milkshake a year, and I never regret it.

The Prayer of the Mac User is basically the text of this story.

Science pokes its head out into the sunlight.

And I must edit a big wad of copy. So have a great day, and stay warm.

I was at Costco the other day, picking up a few items that, for our household, it always pays to buy in bulk — butter, beer and coffee. I couldn’t figure out why I kept saying “butter and beer” over and over in my head, and then I remembered:

For years, WBNS, the CBS station in Columbus, ran a public-affairs show in the after-dinner, before-prime time slot that existed before “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy.” This was back when the FCC required a certain amount of public-affairs programming, and WBNS filled its obligation in part with this show — “Juvenile Court,” later renamed “The Judge.” In a half hour, two juvie cases were dramatized, with actors from local community theaters. It was spectacularly minimalist staging, sort of a “Waiting for Godot” of justice. (I like to think they kept the scenery light to keep the actors from chewing it.) The scene was always the final disposition of a particular case, which meant the facts could be rattled off in a simple status report, and then the judge would speak to all the concerned parties before making a final ruling. Lessons would be learned about neglectful parents, straying children and the wages of divorce and other social problems.

Everybody watched it, and it taught me a lot. What “incorrigible” means. How an Appalachian accent is a predictor of bad behavior. How lower-class defendants address the court as “judge” while wealthier ones say, “your honor.” I still remember many of the cases, which became comedy material for my friends in our smartass teen years, in one smoky basement or another. One of its key phrases remained with us for years: “What’s the home investigation?”

This was the fulcrum on which the case turned, the signal that we had now reached the good part. I said before that all the parts were played by actors? All but one — the social workers, who always played themselves. I don’t know why: maybe it was a union thing. It gave the series some continuity, with the same half-dozen social workers appearing again and again. And they brought a certain verisimilitude to the proceedings. It would be hard for even Meryl Streep to duplicate that bureaucratic pinch-faced delivery, the monotonal reading of facts gathered in the home investigation, which apparently required all concerned to open their doors and let this dowdy woman with a clipboard come in and poke around.

There was one couple whose children were ruled incorrigible, and it came out in the hearing that they raised dogs, which they obviously preferred over their own offspring. We learned this because the home investigation showed that there was nothing in the refrigerator (they always looked in the refrigerator, always) but butter and beer, although there was plenty of dog food. The judge demanded an explanation. “Judge, them dawgs gotta eat,” the father said in his southern Ohio twang.

(Later in life I knew a woman raised in a home very much like this one, and I regretted all the jokes I’d had over that case. Evidently it’s no fun to watch the household budget go for puppy chow while you and your teenage brother split a single pork chop.)

Mostly the proceedings were amazingly true to life, i.e., pretty wooden and boring, although some directors tried to light things up a little. There was one case which required the teen girl at its center to break down halfway through and shriek, “I’m going to have a baby!” She got the line off at top volume, then bent over and buried her face in her knees. She had to do this because it was clear she was hysterical with laughter and couldn’t keep it together. She played the rest of the scene that way, clutching her knees, rocking back and forth, answering all further questions with nods or shakes of the head. No time to reshoot the scene, this was local TV.

Anyway, if any of this is starting to sound familiar, here’s why: Years after the series went off the air, it was revived to catch the wave of syndicated court shows. The single courtroom set was gone, and the show opened up to shoot scenes in the judge’s chambers and in various courthouse anterooms. The social workers were history, and while I’m sure the new actors were professionals, they didn’t do a much better job than the original amateurs. (Although, given the material? It’s a wash.) But “Judge Robert Franklin,” surely named for the county of his incarnation, was the same. I think he was on the take, because this humble public servant lived in a veritable plantation (note the uniformed servant in the doorway as he leaves for work):

Anyway. Aren’t you glad you followed this thread with me? Isn’t it just like being in a nursing home?

So, a little bloggage?

I suspect the home investigation in this case would turn up some real gems. How often do 6-year-olds miss the bus and decide to drive to school?

Reading the business pages these days is like reading the obituaries. Is life without luxury goods that unbearable?

Everybody has something to say about the dangling skier, but my contribution is this: digital cameras produce amazingly clear images these days.

Off to work. A good day to all.

Are you guys still waiting around for a post today? Sorry. I got distracted. The basement floor drain is glugging, but fortunately, I speak fluent Floor Drain. It is saying: Don’t you dare do any laundry today. Also, I’m investigating the Amazon Associates program site again, trying to figure out a non-obnoxious, non-intrusive way to mildly monetize NN.C. I’m sending out seven million e-mails relating to my other site, which is no longer entirely mine and is going to need some major attention if our plans for its relaunch are to come to anything other than a spinning buttfall. There’s a film festival we’d like to enter “The Cemetery Precincts” in, which requires attention and more e-mails. And there’s the fact it’s Friday, Jan. 2, which feels like something other than a weekday but not quite a weekend, so I’m discombobulated.

Also, I overslept, if oversleeping means clear ’til 8:20 a.m. after retiring at 1:20 a.m.

How about a little hors d’oeuvre tray of bloggage, then:

Republicans flee D.C. on the eve of the Obama inaugurations. Stay gone an extra week, folks.

I agree with TBogg, who said that whenever he’s asked what three historical figures he’d like to have dinner with, he replies, “I’d rather have three dinners with Kathy Griffin.”

Finally, I took Kate to see “Gran Torino” on New Year’s Eve, on the grounds it was shot in and around our new hometown, including the Grosse Pointe Shores home of one of her friend’s cousins. I subjected my tender baby’s ears to a virtual barrage of profanity and racial slurs in the hope she might get a valuable takeaway message from it, and this is what she took away: “Where are the black people? I thought this movie was about Detroit.” Anyway, a big disappointment. If you’re torn between, say, Manohla Dargis’ review in the NYT or David Edelstein’s in New York magazine, take it from me: Edelstein speaks the truth. Alas.

Have a good weekend.

Greetings to all on 1/1/09. My resolution is the same one every year — Get your shit together — and I suspect I’ll have the same success I had last year. My shit remains scattered all over the place. Why do I do this to myself? I only wish I knew.

But since January 1 is always associated with fresh starts, clean closets and deep cleansing breaths, I thought I might start with the four or five draft entries to NN.C that linger in my WordPress drafts folder. These are abandoned entries, things I started but never finished, or at least never published. A couple of them are obvious; it was plain, once I set it down in prose, that the old Morrises joke that went around my social circle one summer (remember, Borden?) wasn’t funny at all, and really required alcohol to sell, but I never trashed the draft. It might be the only existing account of the Morrises joke! I’ll use it somewhere. Others I’ve already thrown away, because the world already knows how I feel about Mitch Albom, and underlining it isn’t necessary.

But here’s something I’m going to go ahead and copy/paste here. From the embedded link within, it looks like it dates from 2006. It’s about one of my favorite things about newspapers — the little inside jokes that somehow make it into every issue — and since 2009 will probably be the year at least one major U.S. city loses its daily, now’s the time.

So best of luck to all in this new year. (And please, will someone sit down with Dick Clark and have a heart-to-heart with him, before another year passes?) Below, something from the notebook:

When I returned to work following my fancy-schmancy journalism fellowship, only to discover my new assignment would be the 5 a.m. shift on the copy desk, I wasn’t exactly pleased. But — this part is complicated and not interesting to anyone but me — it would do. And honestly? Once I got back to work, to my enormous relief and equally enormous shock, I found I still cared.

I still wanted to do a good job, that is. I still cared that the stories I handled were as good as I could make them. Reporters who wouldn’t check simple facts still bugged me, as did editors who let sloppy prose pass by unmolested. And to some extent I fell victim to Copy Editor’s Disease, in which I became enormously nit-picky.

For example: I edited the movie grid, and for several weeks running, it included “Around the World in 80 Days.” Each title had a one-line description, and its was “A man travels around the world in 80 days.” This drove me insane. I always changed it to, “An adaptation of Jules Verne’s novel.” That there was probably not a single reader who would appreciate or even know about this change bothered me not in the least. It just seemed important, and if you can’t see why, well, you’re not my colleague, buddy.

So, then, you can maybe see why I was so tickled by this Jack Shafer piece in Slate, about the folks at the New York Times who write the one-line descriptions of movies that run in the TV listings. Only they do more than just describe; they’re a micro-mini review, too:

The capsules spend 20 words—and usually fewer—to pass informed judgment on movies. Even if you never intend to watch any of the films, the capsules make for good morning reading. Consider this taut kiss-off of The Matrix Revolutions: “Ferocious machine assault on a battered Zion. Stop frowning, Neo; it’s finally over.” Appreciate, if you will, the efficient setup and slam of the 2 Fast 2 Furious capsule: “Ex-cop and ex-con help sexy customs agent indict money launderer. Two fine performances, both by cars.” And for compression, it’s hard to better the clip for the Julie Davis feature Amy’s Orgasm. It warns potential viewers away with just four syllables: “Change the station.”

Good newspapers are full of stuff like this, little gems inserted by smart people who are frequently working in below-the-radar jobs that the folks who run the place don’t even think about. The Columbus Dispatch’s College Preview column ran in agate and was supposed to be a pretty dull agate-type spacefiller on what the Saturday football schedule had in store, until they turned it over to someone who didn’t do dull agate well. (Actually, several people.) Instead, they gave them art in very small type. Here’s a sample, previewing a Florida-Tennessee matchup:

Jocks in Socks: A tongue twister by Dr. Seussaphone. Jocks. Socks. Blocks. Knoxville. Jocks in socks knock blocks in Knoxville. Which jocks knock whose blocks in Knoxville? Why the Gators of Steve the Fox, sir. Chicks built like bricks come. Hicks in stick shifts come. Chicks come. Hicks come. Chicks and hicks from the sticks come. Vols take licks like sick hicks from sticks. Please, sir, Vols don’t like taking licks in Knoxville. I’m so sorry, says Steve the Fox, but you Vols I vow to knock. Here’s an easy game to play. Here’s an easy win today. Who beats whose butt? Steve beats Vols’ butts. Steve beats Vols and Fulmer’s full butt. Beats Phil’s full butt? To a pulp, sir.

By the time the suits caught on, it had developed a readership.

Content always wins.

Here’s a novel resolution some of you might be interested in. I know I am. And it is:

Use fewer words.

Ha ha, said Little Miss Logorrhea, knowing this would be one of those resolutions that would fall to the wayside by noon on New Year’s Day. Still, I think it’s important to take a stand. What made me think of it was this quote from Kwame Kilpatrick in the Freep today, a reconstruction of how their own reporting reverberated in the mayor’s inner circle last year:

“I’m going to need you to step up,” Kilpatrick said.

A generation ago, he’d have said, “I need you to step up,” or “I need your help,” but the “I’m going to” is the mark of our age of blah blah. It so happens I watched “Office Space” over the weekend, and this is how the evil boss talks: “Yeah, Peter, I’m going to need you to go ahead and come in on Saturday…” All those filler words thrown in there, like packing peanuts, the mark of the passive-aggressive personality. Not: “You have to work Saturday,” but “I’m going to need you” and “go ahead” and “come in,” etc.

The other day I saw a sign in the salon where I was fighting another skirmish against the gray:

“Start the new year right! Swap out your old cosmetics and get a 20 percent discount.” When did “out” hook up with “swap,” anyway? No one just says “swap” by itself anymore, and now we have two words doing the work that used to be done by one: “Exchange.”

“Change up” — that’s another one. I first noticed it on “The Wire,” and I always assumed it was ghetto usage, until it started spreading like an ink stain: “And then he changed up, and it was all over.” Or else he changed up and swapped out, which I swear I saw somewhere living in the same sentence, but I forgot to clip it.

Everybody talks and writes these days like they’re being interviewed by Charlie Rose, and no one wants to sound stupid by not giving a full answer. And so we change up and swap out, and we’re going to need you to go ahead and come in this Saturday, mmm-kay?

Use fewer words. Cultivate that tight-lipped air of mystery.

That doesn’t mean fewer letters, however. Somehow I got on a Star-Tribune mailing list and thought I’d immediately unsubscribe, until I was sucked in by this amusing urban-trend story, about a man who shot a 15-point buck — and friends, that’s a trophy anywhere in the world — with a crossbow on the shoulder of a busy Minneapolis freeway. How often do you get to read a sentence like this?

The buck jumped back over the fence and died in a nearby parking lot.

“Bed, Bath & Beyond, I bet,” said Alan. Discussing what constitutes a “point,” however, reminded us of a story last month in the Free Press, about a teenage girl who hunts with her dad, and bagged a “three-oint buck” her first time out. We thought it was a typo, but it was repeated later in the story: a three-oint buck. Cutbacks on the copy desk, I guess, or maybe a novel way to save ink.

Today’s holiday photo wasn’t submitted as such, but I like it and I’m stealing it. Readers, our own Coozledad, taking his new toys out for a spin down on Vegetarian Farm, or whatever he calls his acreage:

I’ve said before that little makes me happier than seeing animals doing the work they were bred to do, and something about the expression on Andy and Barney’s faces as they bend to the task at hand — hauling firewood — makes me smile. Plus, I like equines in furry winter coats (until they roll in the mud, and you have to spend an hour currying it off of them).

See you in the new year, then. Safe celebrations, all.