I have an early interview today, followed by a date with some dust bunnies, so I may have to make this a bye day. (Although never underestimate my powers of procrastination, which truly are superhuman.) I realize I could write this paragraph from here to November and it wouldn’t make a difference, as the engine of this blog these days is in the comments, but I feel I have to make an appearance from time to time — open the front door, turn on the “open” sign, refill the bowls of nuts and pretzels.
I’ve taken on a few new obligations this fall, in an effort to inject a little oxygen in my sad little life, and they will take some time. One is reapplying my nose to the grindstone of learning Russian. Another is joining a great-books discussion group (like my hero, Tim Goeglein), which meets monthly but requires a bit more than my customary light reading of mysteries and the Wall Street Journal. This week we’re covering Tolstoy’s second epilogue to “War and Peace,” and I need to plow through the last 15 pages today.
Geez, I sound like a whiny sophomore, I realize. So let’s lighten the tone a bit with one of Anthony Lane’s great, meaty pans, a twin takedown of “Filth and Wisdom” and “RockandRolla,” the autumnal output of Mr. and Mrs. Guy Ritchie. I watched a trailer for the former online the other day, and thought, “That narrator sounds just like Borat.” I think my instincts are sound here.
Governed from the center, eh? Let’s see what the other side of the card says:
Whu-? Stem-cell research? Climate change? Bill Ayers for the proles, stem-cell research for the college-educated suburbs? Whatever works, I guess. My zip code is telling the world too much about me.
I turned off “Marketplace” last night when they got to the news of GM and Ford’s stock price ($4.76 and $2.08, respectively). There’s a downside to living in a company town, and this is it. I’m thinking I’m going to restrict myself to the digest items for a while, lest I fall down hyperventilating. I took the dog for a meander — “walk” doesn’t really describe our excursions these days — and thought about other scary times in history. I was Kate’s age in 1968, a year that must have seemed at least as perilous as this one, and I don’t recall my parents doing anything more than discussing current events calmly. I was driving with my mother one night in May 1970 when the radio broadcast was interrupted by an emergency bulletin directing all off-duty Columbus police officers to report to their local station house immediately. The student riots that followed the invasion of Cambodia had begun, and while Ohio saw blood spilled and lives lost by the end of it, all my mother said about the muster of police was, “It must be something on campus.”
So that’s the role model, right there: Calm acknowledgment, sans freak-out. I made a mental list of everything I could do to get through this, and came up with:
1) Make soup.
2) Exercise.
3) Drink lots of water.
4) Keep the house looking nice.
5) Take good notes.
So we had a curried butternut squash/apple soup — recipe in the Junior League cookbook, which gives the lie to the old myth about WASPs not appreciating non-salt-and-pepper flavors — and got our vitamin A.
It’s probably just as well I’m concentrating on soup, because I no longer understand the world of finance (if I ever did). Ford and GM have plants all over the world, production lines, product that’s still selling (badly, but still selling). I don’t understand how the market could value them at a fraction of what you could get even if you pulled the plug on the whole business and parted out each and every factory.
This is what a lack of liquidity does, I guess. Can’t get a loan, can’t get a car. Even Toyota sales are down by a third. How this shakes out remains to be seen — that’s a phrase they teach you on the first day of j-school — but I don’t imagine it’ll be pretty.
It’s hard to believe I’m going to spend the next two weekends making a no-budget zombie movie. On the other hand, why not make a zombie movie? What else should I do? Start cutting firewood for supplemental heating?
Speaking of which, my co-executive producer sent out the all-hands e-mail yesterday. Because we’re no-budget, we require the cast to wear their own clothes for costumes. With some caveats, of course:
Julie, business casual as well, but please wear clothes that you don’t have to wear again. A wooden stake is going into the front of your blouse and coming out the back.
As our makeup guy said, “Let the good times roll.” Have a good weekend.
We have a minor moose story unfolding in the U.P.: Authorities shot and killed a female of the species Monday. It had wandered into the bustling metropolis of Ishpeming, and after failing to drive it safely out of town, the DNR and local police said they had no choice. They also said their efforts were thwarted by gawkers who surrounded the animal, taking pictures and confusing it. The crowd was also, shall we say, highly critical of the execution. To get a sense of the mood in Ishpeming:
“People are yelling that we should be fired,” (DNR moose biologist Brian) Roell said, “but we had to make a tough, unfortunate decision.”
Police Chief Jim Bjorne said: “We would not have had to kill that cow moose if the public did not act like the paparazzi, chasing it around like it was some type of Hollywood movie star.”
Plenty of residents say the officials made an unconscionable decision. And their anger appears to be spreading.
Take Richard Tyynismaa, 64, a longtime resident. “The police are taking a lot of heat,” he said. “We would like them to explain the hows and whys of what happened. I find this totally offensive. There is absolutely no reason for putting that cow down. If she was acting erratic, it’s probably only because she was just trying to protect her calves.”
Yes, calves, plural. The cow had two spring calves at her side, which disappeared into the woods after the shooting. Moose customarily stay with their weaned young until the following spring, so their chances of surviving winter just went down a bit.
A lot of the criticism of the police and DNR was based on sheer ignorance. One writer couldn’t understand why the cops didn’t just lasso the moose and lead it away. I wish I could give that person a lasso, get him to within throwing range of a 1,000-pound, panicked moose and stand back to watch the fun.
People have been killed by moose cows that were protecting calves from what the moose viewed as potential predators. A moose’s hooves are big and sharp, and being kicked by one would be like being hit by a baseball bat swung by the Tigers’ Miguel Cabrera.
As for me, I think it’s pretty amazing when a town in the U.P. — a land where rifles surely outnumber people — can generate a) 100-200 mooseparazzi; b) enough people defying direct police order to reach critical mass; and c) animal lovers willing to speak up against the death of a large ungulate. Towns like Ishpeming are kept alive in large part by hunting, after all; one of the best stories I ever read in the Free Press was 20-some years ago, a magazine piece that sketched the weirdness of deer season Up North. (The party stores lay in extra supplies of Juggs and Hustler; entrepreneurs sell freshly killed bucks from pickup beds at bar-closing time, for hunters too loaded to be trusted with a weapon.) In three minutes or so, you can get the same sense from Da Yoopers:
But moose aren’t deer, and are a fairly recent phenomenon in the U.P. The stories mention the DNR’s reintroduction efforts with the species, importing them from Canada. I guess it has been going pretty well; twin calves are usually a sign of good health in the mother and a supportive environment. I guess the Case of the Executed Moose Cow can be chalked up to collateral damage.
A couple years ago, during the annual Brownie camping trip, one of our number was a military wife, who recalled giving birth in a remote Alaska clinic where her husband was stationed. A moose cow took up residence outside her window and proceeded to lick the window glass for hours on end, and no, I don’t know why, either, but she said this was very common in Alaska, that everyone’s windows were smeared with moose saliva. Huh. She also said moose delays were a fact of life, when one or two would wander into your yard and decide to stay a while, and if one was between you and your car, it was a perfectly acceptable reason to call in late to work, as it wasn’t safe to come too close to them.
I saw my first moose up close and personal on Isle Royale. Alan was off fishing and I was taking a little nature walk around our campsite when I came around a bend in the trail and there she was — about as close as my driveway to my neighbor’s, chewing her cud. We looked at one another for a long moment. I looked around for a calf and didn’t see one, and relaxed a bit. We looked at one another a little longer. She went back to ruminating. I turned around and went back. Later that week we passed one standing just off the trail, having a pee. It sounded like a bucket being poured out onto dead leaves. There was another one in Yellowstone Park when I was camping alone, and when I looked out the tent flap without my glasses and saw a large brown thing at the edge of the lake, I nearly had an unscheduled pee myself, but I got my specs on before I let loose and relaxed.
And that’s all the moose I have been privileged to know. There were many spotted from the car in Yellowstone, some of which had calves. There is nothing cuter than a baby moose, and here I am including puppies, kittens and bunnies. They have brown eyes the size of grapefruit and cute floppy ears and comical Bullwinkle noses. The idea of leaving not one but two without their mother is a crime against cuteness, and that can never be tolerated, not in this country.
Where am I going with this? To the bloggage, I hope:
You can keep the wraps on a straight man’s gay gene, but only for so long. Alan bought a chair this weekend, and spent most of Sunday rearranging furniture and rehanging pictures. (Maybe I need to rethink the significance of that leather jacket.) I’m hoping it’s not one of those things our biographer will take note of in hindsight — the chair-buying, that is:
“Tell me again why we’re buying furniture in the midst of an economic crisis.”
“Because that’s when it goes on sale.”
Can’t argue with that. And now, for the first time in my life, I have a recliner under my roof. When Alan and I bought our first house, his mother said, “I’d like to buy you two a chair.” I said, “Wow, great, thanks. No recliners, though.” Well. I might as well have slapped her face. There was the evidence, if she was looking for it, that her son had fallen in with one of those latte-sipping elitists. Recliners are as common in Defiance as televisions. Whereas I’m the daughter of a furniture salesman who wouldn’t have allowed one across the threshold at gunpoint.
I held firm, though. We ended up getting a very nice chair from Ethan Allen that didn’t recline but continues to serve us well and looks as good as the day it arrived. And now, almost 20 years later, designers have perfected the stealth recliner — no hideous overstuffed tuck-and-roll upholstery, no handle, nothing that screams La-Z-Boy. Just a little push and you’re reclining.
It’s a placeholder until my ship comes in and delivers an Eames lounge and ottoman. Or the sheriff’s deputy comes to evict us. Life is a coin toss; at least we’ll have a nice chair to sit on.
Now I have to go around vacuuming up little piles of plaster dust under the drill holes and wait for the coffee to sink in. In the meantime, a little light bloggage for a Monday:
David Pogue’s Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User, 90 percent of which you probably already know, but you’ll appreciate the 10 percent you don’t. I learned something, anyway.
Mark Bittman revisits the Easiest Bread in the World (which didn’t work for me, btw). Hope springs eternal; I’ll try it again.
For a good cry, call Gene, writing about old dogs:
I believe I know exactly when Harry became an old dog. He was about 9 years old. It happened at 10:15 on the evening of June 21, 2001, the day my family moved from the suburbs to the city. The move took longer than we’d anticipated. Inexcusably, Harry had been left alone in the vacated house — eerie, echoing, empty of furniture and of all belongings except Harry and his bed– for eight hours. When I arrived to pick him up, he was beyond frantic.
He met me at the door and embraced me around the waist in a way that is not immediately reconcilable with the musculature and skeleton of a dog’s front legs. I could not extricate myself from his grasp. We walked out of that house like a slow-dancing couple, and Harry did not let go until I opened the car door.
He wasn’t barking at me in reprimand, as he once might have done. He hadn’t fouled the house in spite. That night, Harry was simply scared and vulnerable, impossibly sweet and needy and grateful. He had lost something of himself, but he had gained something more touching and more valuable. He had entered old age.
And thanks to either Jolene or Moe, who found this story from the WashPost, which explains life in Michigan at this moment very well:
To understand why — and to understand Obama’s widening lead over McCain in a crucial state — is to see an American worker pushed to desperation. A Wall Street bailout for $700 billion dollars? After six years at Dollar General, Fleck earns $10.35 an hour and receives an annual raise of 25 cents. She gave up Fantastic Sams and now cuts her hair over the sink in the bathroom.
Michigan is in its eighth year of a ransacked economy that has lost 322,000 manufacturing jobs in this time. The state’s unemployment rate is 8.9 percent, the highest in the nation. The Pew Charitable Trust is predicting that one of every 36 homes in Michigan will fall under foreclosure by next year. The evidence is everywhere. Fleck’s son tells her that poachers are stripping metal and copper from abandoned houses. The family living next to her sister lost their home, leaving behind a deep freezer full of meat that began to rot and gas the neighborhood.
Finally, please don’t express another opinion about the Wall Street crisis until you’ve listened to “This American Life” this week. Podcast, stream, etc. here. This is Pulitzer-worthy journalism, only they don’t give Pulitzers for radio, so it’s Peabody-worthy, instead. This is a companion piece to “The Giant Pool of Money,” which explained the roots of the subprime meltdown better than anyone. Seriously: This is a required text.
I’m behind on my e-mail. Funny how that happens. You get caught up, spend a day slacking and then, boom. At times I like this I remember the stories I’ve read about e-mail amnesty declarations, in which one purges the in-box and washes one’s hands. I also think of the early days of the fax machine, when the librarians (which is where our newsroom kept its main fax) would hand-deliver faxes to your desk the moment they arrived. Within six months they had installed a mailbox setup, and you picked up your own. And six months after that, the boxes were clogged with restaurant takeout menus and entries for some guy in the sports department’s NCAA pool.
E-mail’s getting like that. Now everyone wants to send you text messages, at 20 cents per. Wonderful. Something you have to type with your thumbs, can’t be much more than a few phrases and costs half as much as a letter sent via U.S. Mail. We’re always figuring out a way to do things better, aren’t we?
On the other hand, I’m always amazed, whenever a new communication technology emerges, how swiftly we figure out what it’s good for, which niche it fills. A text is perfect for a certain sort of message, e-mail for another. We even agree, sort of, on the etiquette of when one has violated the code somehow, how breaking up with someone via text or voice mail is tacky (and how sending takeout menus via fax should be).
However, the e-mail I have to return is from my BFF, with whom I’ve had a years-long correspondence, and deserves better than Im awesome!!!! on her phone.
So hang on, Deb, all will be revealed, eventually.
I’m trying very hard not to be upset by the news lately, but then I wonder: Isn’t denial of this sort a one-way ticket to the Stress-Related Ailments ward? Isn’t [Samuel Jackson voice] great vengeance and furious anger [ / Samuel Jackson voice] the logical, normal reaction to recent events? I thought I had it tamped down, and then Gretchen Morgenson, the NYT business reporter/columnist, was on “Fresh Air” yesterday — stream it here — and it came roaring back. “Why should I believe people who were lying to me five minutes ago?” she asked, quite reasonably, and it was all I could do not to load all the garden implements into the back of the car and set a course for Washington. Instead, I took a shower and wondered if I have the privilege of witnessing the end of the American era. I think so. It’s pretty clear the future belongs to our Chinese brothers, and our next part is to be the Fading Empire Rife with Corruption, Clinging to Outdated Ritual.
I just hope I can get a job. I hope the fading empire needs a few writers.
Which, before I set to work catching up on e-mail, seems as good a place as any to transition to the bloggage:
Hey, Detroiters, look what Matty Moroun’s up to now. Go down to Riverside Park and take some pictures. (Amusingly, when we did our film challenge last summer, this was the park where most of the teams got their obligatory Ambassador Bridge shots. Bastard.)
When I was in St. Louis, I stayed with my friends Vahe and Cindy, whom I know through my journalism fellowship, back in the dark ages. Both work for the Post-Dispatch, and Vahe is recently returned from the Beijing Olympics. He said our fellow Fellow Adi Gold, who is Israeli, had sent him a story from a Tel Aviv newspaper after Michael Phelps won his second gold medal. That was the relay, if you recall, the squeaker won in its last leg by Jason Lezak. The headline, Adi said, translated to “Two Jews and a black man help Phelps to a gold medal.”
In the great tradition of sleep-deprived people everywhere, “two Jews and a black man” became the week’s punchline for a segment of the press room, Vahe said, culminating in the inevitable “two Jews and a black man walk into a bar.” (I don’t even know if it’s true. I’ll take their word on Lezak, but “Garrett Weber-Gale” doesn’t exactly sound like Abe Rosenberg. Whatever.) So let’s keep the dream alive, eh?
Two Jews and a black man would agree with me that the Wall Street bailout is a raw deal for taxpayers. I’m tired; I blame the midnight interruptions of two Jew and a black man, carousing under my bedroom window. Let’s try that new restaurant tonight, what’s it called? Oh yeah: Two Jews and a Black Man. It’s fusion cuisine.
Anyway. I really am tired this morning, and have no one to blame but myself, but I’m going to the gym come hell or high water, so not much from me this morning. You people seem to have a talent for carrying on with or without a bartender. Just a little bloggage:
You’ve probably seen the gossip stories about the “Brazilian supermodel” who had a fling with young John McCain on a steamy weekend in Rio 51 years ago. I call your attention to the photo of the paramour in her younger days, which today would be reason for any self-respecting modeling agency to throw her out on her padded ass. However, I’m reminded of a story about body image in Brazil that ran in the NYT a while back, which related the original lyrics to “The Girl from Ipanema.” There’s a verse in there about the roundness of her bottom, which translates to “more than a poem, the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.” I’m sure two Jews and a black man would agree.
School started today, and I’m a busy person these days, so not much from me. On today’s to-do list: Write treatment for short zombie film; track down Hollywood producer/director last seen in Michigan. I hasten to add these two jobs are unrelated. And to think I could have been a dental hygienist.
(The other day our director called to say, “I called Dan, just to pick his brain.” Ha ha ha.)
All I’m going to leave you with today is this:
Culture wars suck. It’s pointless, enervating and takes time and energy away from important matters. And yet, like gorging on potato chips and chocolate-covered peanuts, it’s hard to stay away. So when I broke my internet diet and dropped in on Rod Dreher, I wasn’t surprised to read this:
I’m listening to three young blogger-radio reporters from a lefty Canadian radio program (lots of “aboot” in the air) talk about their day. They’re on the other side of the blue curtain here, so I don’t know what they look like. One was just on the phone coordinating with “the Socialist World people.” A woman reporter from the site just joined the two guys. She’s been out reporting, and said she talked to an Evangelical about Bristol Palin’s pregnancy.
“She was really beautiful,” the woman said. “This pregnancy thing hasn’t turned them off. If anything, it’s rallying them to embrace her.” The reporter said this as if it well and truly was shocking. She wasn’t being condescending at all; she was really shocked. She spoke with the amazement of an anthropology grad student on her first dig.
Well, of course. Being foreigners, their knowledge of the United States isn’t as deep as ours, and so they assume that when people are willing to spend decades of their lives talking about teenage sluts who don’t deserve birth control and HPV vaccines (“the slut shot” — I’d never heard that charming turn of phrase before this week; thanks, Free Republic!), they might back it up when the chips are down. Stupid foreigners. Spend a little more time in this country, and you might learn a thing or two about the breathtaking hypocrisy of these folks. If Hillary Clinton really wanted to back Barack Obama, she’d cut a very simple 30-second spot right around now, laying out five random facts about Sarah Palin, and add, “Imagine what they’d be saying if I was the one who did these things.” Fade out.
I was working last night and couldn’t give my full attention to Hillary’s speech, but I had it on in the background, and 30 percent of my attention found it impressive. Anything less than full graciousness would have been …ungracious. So now it’s time for her to exit stage right and the remainder of the convention to go into full attack mode. Eugene Robinson said on MSNBC, “Someone needs to say ‘torture’ from the podium” and oh yes they do. Plus, as The Editors say, “People, these rats ain’t going to fuck themselves.”
I’m generally not a fan of smear politics, but it’s time to win this one, and that Corsi book is sitting on top of the bestseller list like Jabba the Hutt, and so it’s time to take note: They started it.
I like Brad at Sadly No’s idea: A 527 called Values Voters Against McCain, quivering with moral indignation all over the swing states. And screw the evangelicals, who aren’t going to vote for Obama anyway; they’re just flirting with him to make their boyfriend jealous. And this needs to be flapping over the main stage in the Pepsi Center:
A little bloggage? Just a little; I’m Costco-bound:
The NYT has been running recipes all summer on its Health pages, and they had me at the risotto with roasted beets and beet greens, which promises a magenta dish, and how often do you get to serve magenta food? But that one will have to be mine alone, as I live among beet haters. (“But the New York Times says they’re the new spinach!” I say. Like they care.) This is what I made for dinner Saturday — Pistou Manchego with Eggs, which is basically zucchini and tomatoes with a few eggs poached on top, plus a fancy name. Easy-peasy, good for yousy. Try it.
Like many of you, our house has lost significant value in the last three years — maybe as much as 20 percent. Unlike many of you, we didn’t live through the run-up of the prior years, and may have actually bought at the top of the local market. Which, I regret to say, won’t be bouncing back the way it will in, say, Scottsdale. So, barring a piece of spectacularly good financial luck, we’re stuck here until the police find our mummified corpses at spring thaw at some date in the future.
What do you do with a house that’s not performing like a piggy bank? Pour more money into it, that’s what.
We’re in the first, early, just-looking-thanks stages of a kitchen remodel, the stage where I wonder if this can be done for a four-figure sum, occasionally say so aloud, and watch people laugh in my face. The first Kitchen Guy is coming this morning to give us a look-see, make some suggestions, and laugh in my face. He’s the very high-end guy, and yes, Ikea will be asked to weigh in at some point, too. (From them, I expect merely a discreet giggle.) We went to the high-end guy’s showroom yesterday, and wasn’t that something, touring all those showroom alcoves of dream kitchens, some of which the Shah of Iran would think himself unworthy to occupy. A friend of mine is a caterer, and from her, I’ve learned something important about kitchens: The fancier the kitchen, the less likely it is used by actual human beings. Or, as she puts it:
“The first thing you learn in catering is, if the kitchen is really fabulous, bring your own knives. Because you’ll be lucky to find a paring knife.”
Doesn’t that make you feel good about America? Tens of thousands spent on a room that only requires a fridge, microwave and a telephone for ordering takeout? There was a stove in the showroom, an oh-my-gaw stove, six burners and a grill and two ovens, with an instrument panel worthy of a 757, and all I could think is, “It’ll boil water and twice a year be fired up to reheat the pre-cooked turkey and ham, and someone else will own it and life isn’t fair.”
Nope, it sure ain’t.
So I have to go tidy up a bit. Let’s talk convention. I missed much of last night’s hoo-ha, but I caught the Michelle and Kennedy highlight reels, and thought they did great. How credible is the assassination plot, do you think? I’ll be back after I hand the kitchen guy a tissue to wipe away his tears of helpless laughter.
I don’t want you to think I’m obsessed with roller coasters, because I’m not. But I took this video, so what the hell. This is the Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point, a ride that lasts less than 30 seconds. They stretch it out with some recorded engine rumbling at the beginning and run the little Christmas tree lights, but it’s very simple — you’re blasted out of the gate, reach 120 mph in four seconds and climb 420 feet in the air, over the top and then 420 feet back down — straight down — with a little corkscrew twist thrown in, just in case you haven’t peed your pants yet.
Occasionally, when the track isn’t warm enough, it won’t make it over the top and returns to the station in reverse. This is called a “rollback” and is highly prized by insane coaster fanatics, who try to time their rides to get one — after a rain is a good time to be first in line. And in one terrifying case, it had the precise amount of momentum to make it to the top, and no further. In that case, they send a worker up in a basket to give it a push.
Some of you guys who share my coaster problems mentioned motion sickness. Not my problem — I’m a chicken about heights. And an experience like that? Being stuck? I would lay lie flat on the ground after disembarking, and I would probably still be there.
