The real 8 Mile Road, Detroit

How many times have I said reading a daily newspaper in Detroit is hardly ever boring?

Two years ago, 1-year-old Deante Reid died in his parents’ care — and, to avoid funeral costs, his parents tried to cremate him in a barbecue grill, the boy’s mother told police. But the bones wouldn’t burn completely, so the couple hid what was left of the baby in the ceiling of a home on Dickerson in Detroit.

Jesus Christ. The story gets worse: The authorities found about the barbecue because they’re investigating the abuse of another kid in the same family. Burns.

Shudder.

Well, don’t want to bring you down too early on Monday. I’m writing this on my birthday, a big birthday, one that ends in a zero. It doesn’t make me happy — I don’t feel 50, although I’ve looked it since 40 or so. And while I’m happy to be 50 in the 21st century, when 50 is the new 35, nothing really changes. Women are invisible past 50. Nature is a bitch. Cronehood is scant compensation, but what the hell, we all can’t be Charlotte Rampling.

Self-pity over. I’m glad to be alive, even in a world where people barbecue their children.

Besides — [jarring change of mood; distraction by shiny object] — I got a cool present. I knew it was cool when I couldn’t even play with it the whole first day because Kate was downstairs with her friends, making a series of experimental films involving mutant werewolves and delinquent teenagers. As soon as I retrieve it from the werewolves, I think it’ll be a nice new resource for NN.C. More to come.

So how was everybody’s weekend? Good, I hope. I celebrated my impending midcentury doom by giving blood Friday. I mean, why not? I’ve always been a blood donor; all anyone has ever had to do is ask. This was my 49th unit, and yes, I noted the symmetry. I started when I was young and healthy in Columbus, Ohio, and have seen quite a few things change since then. Image-wise, blood products have gone from being the very stuff of life to agents of contagion more akin to toxic waste. The usually put a sticker on your shirt as you’re leaving, something like, “Be nice to me! I gave blood today.” If they were redesigning the stickers today, they should say, “Bow down before me! I have no communicable diseases, nor do I take Plavix, coumadin or Accutane and to my knowledge have not had sex with a man who’s had sex with another man since 1977.”

I’ve learned that the blood you give isn’t immediately rushed across the street to be infused in an accident victim; sometimes it’s exported to another part of the world. Blood is a commodity, and the Red Cross treats it as such, and you shouldn’t be shocked or offended to learn this. Remember those horrible pictures of 9/11, of all the emergency medical personnel lined up in ambulance bays, waiting for injured that never arrived? Remember how America responded? (The ones without stupid blogs, that is.) Feeling helpless in their living rooms, watching the carnage on TV, they went down to their local blood banks and donated a pint, blood that was, quite frankly, of no use to the thousands who died that day. Blood has a shelf life; gallons had to be discarded, rivers of blood now soaking into bio-waste landfills. Lesson: Think before you give.

Of course, there’s always a need. Most blood stays in the communities where it’s collected. Every year it gets scarcer, and once you’ve donated blood in the 21st century, you understand why. When I started donating in the late ’70s, the questions were about hepatitis and recent vaccinations, and the nice nurses touched you with their bare hands. Within a few years, they started asking about AIDS and HIV, and everyone wore latex. A few years later, they instituted a private-moment interlude in the interview, when you could slip behind a screen and put an anonymous bar-code sticker on your chart that told the computer what you were too embarrassed to tell the nice nurse — that you were an IV drug abuser or a catcher at last Saturday night’s bareback anal-sex orgy.

Friday was my first donor appointment in four years. The last one, in 2003, was memorable because it was in our office, and was marked by two faintings (Emma’s husband swooned, and Emma, watching, swooned in sympathy. Or maybe it was the other way around.) and a set-to between a gay editor and the bureaucracy of the American Red Cross, who found his protestations of rigorous HIV testing, safe-sex practices and mutual monogamy unconvincing, and rejected him permanently. This year, I was told by a gruff nurse to read the manual before I even signed in.

“I’ve got some experience with this,” I said. “Is there anything new?”

“The FDA requires us to make you read the manual,” she replied.

OK. The manual: Do you feel well today? Are you prone to fainting spells? Had a recent tattoo? Positive drug test for HIV? All familiar questions, then a new medical horror: Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease or Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Variant. Had a dura mater transplant lately? God, no. Cancer? Chemo? Infections? On to the contraindicated drug list, which had grown by a page, now encompassing many of the wonder drugs advertised on prime-time television. Insulin from bovine sources, blood thinners, acne drugs linked to birth defects. I began to wonder if this was worth it for a couple of cookies, a glass of orange juice and a free blood-pressure check.

It took 45 minutes to get through the screening. After that, the needle stick was a relief.

The whole operation was understaffed, and I didn’t have the usual post-donation experience of being walked to the canteen by an old man who keeps a firm grip on your elbow, lest you pass out. They waved me over to the Lorna Doones with a gesture and told me to call if I developed any alarming symptoms or recalled a previously forgotten interlude with a Village Person. The experience was, like so many things these days, not what it used to be.

So be nice to me. I put up with a lot of shit to keep the country’s blood supply safe.

Bloggage:

Meet a 3-year-old drum prodigy. Does he have a website? But of course. Sounds like his career’s well underway, which is good, because his parents have enrolled him in a school that will require many record sales to meet the tuition bill.

Amy Winehouse is Judy Garland, 2007 version. What the hell is that hanging down between her legs? A tampon string?

More later, but less of it. I have so much work to do this week I’ll barely have time to make videos. There’s a problem to have, eh?

This will be the last post before the holiday, because I will be a proverbial one-armed paperhanger until Friday, no, Saturday. I have moved-up deadlines on my writing projects, and my regular news-farming gig continues, because we cover the whole world, and Thanksgiving is not a worldwide holiday (but should be). Plus I have to make a pie and a Waldorf salad (secret ingredient: Cool Whip) and some tasty fresh rolls and that green-bean thing from yesterday. Alan trudged out of the house with one of those “don’t expect me before spring thaw” grunts, which every newshound knows as the thousand-yard Thanksgiving-week stare. I talked to another old newshound yesterday, who wisely took the week off, only to receive an emergency call from the newsroom to inform her one of her sub-editors had an alcoholic breakdown at the morning news meeting, just FYI.

I think all of us who are journalists in the audience can understand how that happens.

But still, I’m taking the time to be thankful, because I am, and because gratitude is a virtue, and virtue is my middle name. Also, because the longer I sit here blogging, the longer I can put off all that crap in the first paragraph.

So let’s get started with just a few of the things I’m thankful for this weekend:

…that my kid had a sleepover last night, and I slept until 9! hours and 22! minutes! into November 21. Virtually unprecedented.

…that it’s finally raining, even though it’s possible the rain will turn to snow and turn all our plans to shit. Still. Water in the streets means water in the lake, and just hearing the pitter-pat of rain on the skylight reminds me of how long it’s been since I heard it last.

…for my web host and great old friend and online guru, J.C. Burns, who has designed and encouraged and hosted and troubleshot this site since January 2001, at a total cost of $0.00 to yours truly.

…for all my great commenters, and for what they’ve taught me about the nature of online communities. I wish we could have some sort of slammin’ party at some equidistant point from all of us, but it would probably be someplace in South Dakota.

…for all the links on my blogroll, many of them tended by writers who daily remind me why the newspaper business is in such a state. (Please, stop before I lose my health insurance.)

Ah, the hell with gratitude. Gratitude is for losers. On to the useful bloggage!

My brother-in-law has used this method to carve the family poultry for years, ever since he saw Bryant Gumbel demonstrate it on the Today show. It works like a charm. Although, for reasons of better stories to tell down the road, you may prefer the comedy-of-errors method:

“One year the turkey took a long time to cook and I went to carve it after about 13 beers,” said Maurice Landry, who lives near Lake Charles, La. “The way I remember it, I bore down to take off the leg and the whole thing went shooting off the platter and knocked over the centerpiece.”

A question often asked in our household: Where would we be without newspapers to remind us to wear sunscreen? I just asked Google to rustle up that other dead-tree holiday staple — how to eat healthy at Thanksgiving. Immediate result: 398. More sure to come.

Detroit’s Metro Times throws bait in the water — 100 Greatest Detroit Songs Ever! — and, as usual, gets it all wrong. Why? There’s not a single song by J. Geils on it, even though the best live album in modern history was recorded here. And you can’t find “Panic in Detroit” anywhere. David Bowie is no local, but it’s a great song just the same.

OK, one-armed paper-hanging must commence. See you back here on Friday, mos’ likely. Happy Thanksgiving!

Because we are People of the Border Zone, one of our projects this year was getting everybody’s travel documents up to date. Kate got her first passport, Alan got his expired one renewed, and I merely hectored everyone to get pictures and birth certificates and get their butts down to the post office. (I have six years left on mine.)

They keep telling us that any day now, we won’t be able to cross the Canadian border without one, only they keep extending the deadline, due to onerous delays at the passport office. NPR had a story a few months ago, interviewing panicky people holding non-refundable tickets to France but no passport, and they applied four months ago. (To these people, I say: Apply in Detroit. Ours arrived in three weeks.)

Anyway, our two newest passports are cutting-edge technology — e-passports. They have a chip inside so the U.S. government can track our movements around the globe, or something. Also, they appear to have Added Patriotism for Extra Glares at the Border. Really. The new design, which debuted earlier this year, is called “American Icons,” and looks like it was brainstormed in Vegas. The timeless plea of diplomacy — The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection. — has been moved from the ID pages to the inside front cover, and now the ID facing page carries the preamble to the Constitution, watched over by a fierce carrion-eater.

Behold:

(It’s times like this I’m sort of sad Ben Franklin failed in his bid to get the wild turkey named as America’s official ornithological symbol. That would be a sight to see.)

Most of any passport is the blank visa pages. In mine, there’s a subtle pattern of state seals. In the new one, it’s where the “American Icons” theme really shines. Mt. Rushmore, the Liberty Bell, a steamer on the Mississippi, a farmer plowing with oxen. I think they should have embedded that chip with a little MIDI version of the National Anthem that would play when you open it, like a birthday card. It really would have nailed the theme. An NYT story on the redesign gets the design flaw exactly right:

“It is like being given a coloring book that your brother already colored in,” said Michael Bierut, of the design firm Pentagram in New York City. A passport, not unlike a scrapbook, gets its allure from gradually accruing exotic stamps, with the blank pages holding the promise of future adventure, he and other designers said. But they find that the new jumble of pictures detracts from that.

I crossed the Canadian border in 2004 with my fellow J-fellow, Jay. (Say that last phrase 10 times fast. It’s fun.) Jay was a producer for “Nightline” and had a passport worthy of an international man of mystery, with stamps from Arabic and Turkish and Cambodian border crossings, while mine had a single dumb mark from Heathrow. And now that would be dwarfed by the enormous heads on Mt. Rushmore.

Might as well stay home.

Since it’s Thanksgiving week, how about a recipe in lieu of bloggage today? Sure, you’d like that.

I know a lot of people out there have competing constituencies sitting around the table on the big day, everyone from adventurous foodie snobs to dug-in traditionalists, and nowhere do the two styles clash more obviously than over the green beans. The first group wants to tart up the dish with sesame oil or some other exotic flavoring, while the latter wants the kind made with cream of mushroom soup and fried onions. The following dish pleases everyone; it contains a major note of the Campbell’s version (onions), but substitutes a tangy sweet-and-sour sauce that’s much lighter. You can also make most of it ahead of time, and just add freshly cooked beans right before serving. It’s from Betty Rosbottom’s American Favorites cookbook, and Betty is, for my money, the best food writer you never heard of. A friend of mine, also a food writer, says, “I’d eat fried gravel if Betty had a recipe for it.” So buy the book, and enjoy…

Green beans with roasted onions

4 medium onions
2 T. unsalted butter
salt and pepper
1 cup chicken broth (can use reduced sodium, fat-free, whatever)
2 T. red wine vinegar
1 T. plus 2 t. sugar
2 pounds tender green beans, trimmed on the diagonal

Preheat oven to 450.

Peel onions without removing roots. Halve onions lengthwise, cutting through center of root. Cut each half into eight wedges, keeping some of root with each wedge, so wedge holds together.

Spray a large, flameproof baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Arrange onion wedges, slightly overlapping, in pan. Dot with butter, season generously with salt and pepper. Bake until onions are browned and tender, 50-60 minutes, checking after 40 minutes, as ovens can vary.

When onions are cooked, remove from pan and set aside. Place pan over high heat and add broth, vinegar and sugar. Whisk constantly, scraping up brown drippings into sauce. Cook until sauce reduces to a thick syrup, about 4 to 5 minutes. Return onions to pan and toss in thickened sauce. Remove from heat. (Can be prepared one day ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Reheat, stirring, over medium heat when needed.)

When ready to serve, cook beans in a large pot of boiling, salted water until just tender, about eight minutes. Drain well. Season with more salt, if needed. Mound beans on a warm serving platter, and arranged warm browned onions on top.

(That’s the official text. My notes: My onions usually cook in half an hour, not 50 minutes. I’ve never succeeded in getting the sauce to reduce to a thick syrup in under 20 minutes, but it doesn’t really matter — it tastes great even if the sauce is thin. Also, although the onion slices look great when they’re bound by the roots, that, too, is mainly a presentation thing. If yours fall apart, never worry.)

Have a great day. Mine will be a busy one.

How fitting, the weekend that Detroit takes its rightful place atop yet another list of Most Dangerous Cities — please, let’s save the “We’re number ONE!” chant for later in the morning, shall we? — that this story is the hey-Martha talker in our household:

The two gas stations had rivaled for years. They stood across an intersection from each other on Fort Street in Detroit, where even a penny’s difference was enough to lure customers.

And so came the price war: One station dropped a cent or two, and the other grudgingly followed.

But the seemingly petty back-and-forth escalated Friday, ending with a fatal bullet in BP station owner Jawad Bazzi’s head over what police say was a 3-cent difference in the cost of regular gas.

Nice bit of scene-setting there; that’s the story in a few sentences. But the details are so rich:

The two stations are holding firm at $2.96 a gallon, this when the prevailing price elsewhere in the area is in the $3.15-$3.20 range. From what little I know about gas-station economics, those are loss-leader prices; you’d best sell a lot of cigarettes to make up the difference. So it’s probably fair to assume the situation is tense already. And then the Marathon station owner, Hussah Masboath, drops the price to $2.93. Three cents! They might as well give it away free.

And then:

Bazzi walked across the street with a couple of employees to confront the Marathon owner and his posse.

“His posse.” I like how hip-hop slang is now creeping into sober newspaper reports.

The confrontation turned physical. Punches were thrown. A baseball bat appeared on the BP side, and connected with a Marathon employee. That’s when the gun was drawn. Two shots later, Bazzi, the BP owner, is dying on the ground. The police arrive, the Marathon station becomes a crime scene, and the yellow tape goes up and business is over for the day.

Are you ready for the punchline?

After the shooting, with the competing station closed, BP’s price per gallon increased to $3.09 for regular.

The Freep story, linked above, is better-written, but the News gets the name of the Marathon owner and this precious detail:

During the brawl, someone swung a baseball bat and the pole that Masboath used to change the numbers on his sign.

The pole! They didn’t even have time to put it away. Some stories you don’t read as much as watch unspool on your mind’s theater screen.

(Sigh.)

Could it have been a coincidence that, the day I finally got to see “Idiocracy,” I learn this unwelcome news?

As for “Idiocracy,” I have mixed feelings. There’s not much of a story there, the plot is thin; it really only exists to serve as an angry argument against stupidity. But who can’t be on board with that? I laughed out loud more than once; how can it possibly be worse than, say, “Deuce Bigalow?” This Esquire story gives you the gist of the film’s pathetic history, but I’d say you should see it just for the thousands of sight gags, throwaway lines and other details that will be with me for some time. (Let’s put it this way: I will never be able to watch “America’s Funniest Home Videos” with Kate again without thinking of “Ow My Balls!,” a big hit in 2505, apparently.)

As usual, YouTube is on the case. The movie’s setup is here.

An exhausting weekend, capped by Kate’s birthday party Sunday. I always think of the last eight weeks of the year as the Three Hurdles of Fall — Halloween, Dual-Birthday Fest and then the biggie, Christmas. I’m two-thirds done, but the last one is always the one most likely to send you sprawling.

On Saturday, a packed freeway sent me off onto surface streets, and for the first time since I’ve lived here, I saw the famed ruins of the Packard plant:

It’s one of the best-known urban-exploration sites in Detroit, because yes, folks, it is wide open, and people trek through it all the time. If you’re a Flickr member, search “packard detroit” in tags for a truly remarkable set of pictures. (No, I didn’t go in. I was alone, for one, and someone told me a story not long ago involving a photographer falling through a piece of rotted floor there and breaking both legs. I’d love to explain that one to my husband.)

Final bit of bloggage: A hung jury/mistrial for the cat assassin. With his peers hopelessly deadlocked at 8-4, the outcome prompted this comment from the defendant:

“I’m not surprised,” said the defendant, James M. Stevenson, founder of the Galveston Ornithological Society who was charged with one count of animal cruelty for shooting the cat last November with a .22-caliber rifle. “It reflects the attitudes of people in the United States — there are cat lovers and others who love biodiversity, including birds.”

I doubt he’ll be stashing his ammo in the future.

And so the week commences. Have a great one.

Yesterday’s surface-street trip through Detroit made me wonder if I’m the sort of person who gets a thrill from slumming. Isn’t it sort of ick to find ruin and degradation so interesting? Would I be so pleased to take the long way home if I had to do it on my bike, instead of in my nice safe car? Points to ponder. My gutters guy came by late in the afternoon, begging for work. He did our fall gutter blow-out last year, did a great job, and left not even a business card behind. I tried to find him in the spring, but the only thing I could remember about him was “John Friendly.”

That’s ridiculous, I thought. Johnny Friendly is the gangster boss in “On the Waterfront.” You must be getting that perimenopausal swiss-cheese brain thing. So I was thrilled when he knocked on the door last week with a flyer, which explained my confusion: His business name is John’s Friendly Tree Service, and he had indeed introduced himself the previous year as John Friendly.

“Like in ‘On the Waterfront,'” I said.

“I can’t believe you know that movie! That’s how I got my nickname!” he said. “No one knows that movie anymore.” Then he showed me the year’s big news in the Friendly household: a six-inch scar down the midline of his abdomen, next to a nickel-size hole: “Someone tried to rob me, and I wouldn’t give ’em my truck.” Wow. We agreed he’d clean the gutters in a couple weeks when the oaks were finished, and said goodbye.

It was a reminder that there’s a good reason not to drive through the city taking pictures, although to be sure, he was shot in Eastpointe, not Detroit. On the other hand, one reason the city doesn’t spook me (much) is, it’s just so empty. Not everywhere, of course; anyone who tells you downtown is a ghost town after 5 p.m. hasn’t been there lately. It’s not exactly Chicago, but it’s miles closer than it used to be. But the neighborhoods can have an eerie ghost-town vibe, especially in cold weather.

Anyway, John Friendly was tapioca for the week, and asked if he could do the gutters now, get half his money, then come back after Thanksgiving and do them again for the other half. We negotiated a price, and I paid him the full amount up front. “I appreciate this,” he said. “I’m broke.”

I said, “I’m a writer. We invented broke.” Coming from someone living in a nice house, I’m sure it sounded just about as repellent as it reads on the page. But I know a thing or two about cash-flow problems. Anyone willing to work as hard as John Friendly will be OK, as long as he doesn’t get shot again.

Today is Birth Day, Alan’s and Kate’s twin natal celebrations. We got up early and opened presents at the breakfast table. This year’s theme: Fleece. Kate’s been craving a pair of Uggs, the sheepskin boot that’s all the rage wherever there are chilly toes. Ugg is also the sound you make when you look at the price tag, but I found Acorn makes a seam-for-seam duplicate for one-third the price with only one major difference: it doesn’t say Ugg across the heel. I discussed it with her before I bought them, and told her to expect some blonde tootsie would point this out, and she should be prepared. She said she was ready, but then they came out of the box and …didn’t fit. Looks like baby inherited her mother’s sense of humor, nonchalant attitude toward homework and a boatlike shoe size.

So, let’s get bloggin’:

Are you there, God? It’s me, Mitch: Albom does what only he can do — commune with the dead and assure us that, yes, there is almost certainly high-def TV in heaven. Or maybe something better! Mind your tooth enamel and blood sugar as Mitch talks to Bo Schembechler. (Thanks to a merciful God or perhaps an editor who took his supplemental testosterone this week, Bo doesn’t talk back.)

Detroitblog turns up another gem in a city full of them: The world’s coolest music teacher. It says he’s willing to take on a few more students. Maybe I should call him, if only for the bragging rights of taking piano lessons from a guy who played on “Goin’ to a Go-Go” and “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”

It’s funny how, even if you don’t follow baseball, the best baseball announcers insinuate themselves into your life, somehow, maybe by coming out of a thousand summer radios or your dad’s TV on warm nights. One of the best, Joe Nuxhall, is dead. He and Marty Brennaman were inseparable from the Cincinnati Reds, especially in that team’s pre-Marge Schott glory days. RIP.

There are lots of places to get your hair cut in Detroit.

God, I wish I were a better photographer.

Sorry I’m late today. Early meeting, then I took the long way home. Here’s a picture from the drive:

Just another Mack Avenue business. It inspires more faith than another barbering place close by, which advertised a “tatoo artist” on-site. Nothing like getting permanent ink from someone who can’t spell.

So since we’re already behind here and I still have 900 words to write for some actual damn money, let’s make this quick, a little platter of hors d’oeuvres for you folks today. (Slight tangent: I began my career covering the occasional society event, and typing briefs promoting them in advance. As a result, I never have to look up the spelling of “hors d’oeuvres.”)

First, reader mail that didn’t appear in the comments, from me ol’ semi-roommate Borden in Chicago:

I am one of many who interviewed Paul Tibbets, while a lowly suburban reporter in Columbus. He was speaking on a non-Hiroshima topic, an American Airlines jetliner had crashed in Chicago (circa 1977) and I got Tibbets to speculate on the cause of the crash, which was amazingly prescient. The only way to put the jetliner into its death spiral –captured on photographic film– was if the mounts of one jet engine loosened and the engine flipped, resulting in powerful thrusts in both directions and leading to a horrible swirl to the ground. Not sure if a cause was revealed by NTSB, but Tibbets had the engineer and pilot insights and I’ll bet he was correct. One macabre touch: the American Airlines flight was outfitted with cameras allowing passengers to watch their takeoffs and landings on their monitors. Can you imagine the horror–as the cabin turned upside down– of glancing at a monitor and seeing the ground coming up fast?

Yeesh.

John Scalzi finally got to the Creation Museum, and it was worth the wait: Imagine, if you will, a load of horseshit. Stop by now to join the 500-plus comment thread. Web journalism at its best.

Whatever else the writers’ strike is accomplishing, it’s certainly improving YouTube. Evidence here and here, and probably a million other places.

It’s deer season! The Freep is running a virtual buck pole. Many gross pictures.

Off to earn some money. Carry on.

Today’s fun fact to know and tell: Michigan state legislators are about to take an 18-day break, earmarked for deer hunting. Someone once told me that opening day of gun season is a school holiday in West Virginia; I don’t doubt it.

But today isn’t opening day of anything but the polls. I’m alerting the media there will be a photo opportunity to capture me voting later this morning. Not much on the ballot here — a couple of school-board seats, and a power grab by the mayor of Grosse Pointe Woods to take full control of city council. He already has a 4-3 majority, but that’s not enough, I guess. I’m voting against his endorsed candidates; if the last seven years have taught us anything, it’s that dissent is good. Also, we need some oxygen in our commercial district and a view to the future that’s wider than that of a 70-year-old retiree.

Note: The above paragraph contains more information about the council race than you could read in the local weekly, which told me a lot about each candidate’s degrees but nothing about the power split.

OK, then. This will be brief. I’m on another of my semi-annual Get Your Shit Together binges, which requires me to spend less time online and makes my life very boring. Not only to you, but to me — yesterday I finished my to-do list and, in the grips of a near-spasmodic desire to get the hell out of my house, took a drive into Detroit. Always, always a treat. I regret I forgot my camera, because, as usual, the city served up a heapin’ helpin’ of ugly-lovely treats. My two new favorite business signs: LIQUOR ISLAND and, at an exterminator’s, ROACH KILLER. If I lived in Detroit, I would so totally buy my booze at Liquor Island, you’d probably never see me anywhere else.

The drive was so entrancing I pretty much forgot the excuse for my errand — to hit some junk furniture stores in search of another refinishing project. Craigslist has been no help, as it seems the entire industry has been taken over by particleboard. Doesn’t anyone discard nice oak pieces that have been painted for decades? Is everyone trying to get rich on eBay? Curse them all.

OK, the bloggage:

As bad as local TV news gets here, it can always get worse: In Fort Wayne, they asked two mediums to predict the mayor’s race. If nothing else, this was as pretty a package you can get on a redefinition of “it’s all bullshit:”

Both mediums use meditation to peer into the future, but they both said their visions are just a peek into what might be.

“I only see what’s destined at one moment in time. There is still free will, free choice to off set what is destined,” said Peters.

“Nothing is written in stone,” explained Smith.

Off to vote! Alert the media!

How often do you get a day like today, when you can root for the Patriots, see them win, AND see your brother make both ends of his bet on the game (he took the Colts and the points, and the under on the combined score)?

Sorry, Hoosiers. I just grew very very tired of all that Battle of Good vs. Evil pregame hype. And Peyton Manning is a smug little shit. And I’m mainlining so many reruns of “The Wire” on demand these days that I feel like I actually live in Baltimore. And that requires me to hate the Colts. So I do.

Time to pour a glass of baby’s blood, and regard the world with a carmine smile.

Fun fact to know and tell: If bottom slime isn’t washed off with a hose when the boat is still wet, you’ll be removing it inch by inch with a chisel all winter. Note: This is not our boat. It’s a big gaudy fishing rocket with triple 300 hp outboards. Shudder.

Ah, the melancholy of a boatyard in autumn: Carhartt padded jackets have replaced shorts. The waterfront restaurant is closed for the season. There’s not a girl in a bathing suit, or a girl, period, in sight. (Except me. And as a female long past my sell-by date, it’s a scientific fact that I am, in fact, invisible.) Instead of boats passing up and down the channels, it’s forklifts and jeeps with winches and the shrink-wrapping crews everywhere. And us. Another fall, another day spent watching Alan yank repeatedly on an outboard starting rope. If I had a dollar for every yank I’ve seen the course of our relationship, I’d be blogging from my luxury houseboat tied up at Pier 66, Barbados.

The details are boring — hell, the whole day was boring, or would be to you guys. As for me, I did my part, and once we got the motor running again, the day went smoothly. I’ve learned, during these routine mechanical failures, to remain implacable while Alan howls obscenities at the sky. (If I had a dollar for every one of those, I wouldn’t be blogging at all. I’d have my houseboys taking dictation.) I think before I make a stupid suggestion (“Are you sure there’s enough gas?”). And I appreciate my surroundings.

There was less to appreciate this year. Sorry, Gov. Richardson, but not only can you not have any Great Lakes water because we don’t want to give you any, there’s not much left. Lush Life was sitting on the bottom when we left our slip for the year, and though a strong push freed her — thank God; I can only imagine the obscenities that little development would have required — that’s what you call a pretty low ebb. Granted, the water’s always down in fall, and Lake St. Clair is shallow enough that a stiff west wind can drop the water on the American side by a few inches, this is close to unprecedented. I hope we get shitloads of rain and snow this winter, because I don’t fancy poling.

In other decline-of-the-American-empire news, we’re also running out of gas. The price jumped by 30 cents a gallon mid-week, pushing us over the $3 mark. The local Fox affiliate did a story. I’ve mentioned before that I prefer Fox’s local news because it’s so unabashedly interested in the knuckle-dragger market that, perversely, it makes it easier to endure. The Fox story consisted of interviewing drivers as they gassed up at $3.25 prices, and adding another voice of the common man to the anvil chorus, doncha know. Why did they suppose prices were so high? As one, they answered: “The economy.”

No one mentioned the price of crude, the drop in interest rates, inflation. Not that you’d expect people interviewed at a Detroit gas station to be Alan Greenspan, but even the distant ringing of a clue would have been refreshing. But they all said “the economy,” and they all said it exactly the same way: “It’s the economy,” suggesting someone was asking a leading question, or maybe they were just that dumb. Anyway, the story wasn’t on for very long — nothing is, because the audience has the attention span of toddlers at a birthday party. And then it was on to a shocking armed robbery of a convenience store caught on tape. In Dallas.

Sometimes it’s fun to be a misanthrope. Sometimes sucking the gall-soaked rag of bitterness tastes pretty good.

Or maybe I just need some more coffee. And a shower. And a million phone calls, and some office-straightening. So, on to the bloggage:

This may be of interest only to journalists and media nerds, and its backward-running narrative makes it hard to follow, but if you have the time, it’s a wry giggle. Short version: Wall Street Journal runs an editorial that insinuates union officials live high on the hog and need more congressional oversight. As part of the argument, they toss off an astonishing figure: That one “Jimmy Warren,” treasurer for the United Steelworkers and AFL-CIO, earns a salary totaling $825,262. Wow. Having recently learned that Ron Gettelfinger, president of the United Auto Workers, knocks down around $150,000, this seemed, well, high. It also seemed high to the steelworkers’ media-relations people, who’d never heard of him. Turns out Jimmy Warren is a treasurer in a local in Alabama, and makes $8,252 and…anyone? Yes, and 62 cents, making the fat salary quoted by America’s leading financial newspaper a rather comical and gruesome error of misplaced decimal points. What’s more, the wrong-o figure came from a Human Events website on the “highest-paid union bosses,” which includes officials from such proletarian, blue-collar labor outfits as the players’ organizations for the NBA, MLB and NFL, the Screen Actors Guild, the Directors Guild, etc. And Jimmy Warren is still on the list. Oh, well. Mistakes happen. Picky, picky.

Paul Tibbets is dead. I predict a Bob Greene column in the next few days, remarking on how reclusive the man was, and how rarely he gave interviews (except to BOB). Note: I’ve read at least half a dozen of these rare Tibbets interviews over the years. And I haven’t even been looking for them.

OK, outta here. Have a great weekend.