One last Halloween picture, with your indulgence:

A true pumpkin artist merely removes the parts of the pumpkin that don’t belong. Note: I am not a pumpkin artist. But when I saw the scar on this one, I knew it belonged in front. My thought was to incorporate it in a tribute to Michael K. Williams, everybody’s favorite “Wire” villain, but…well, I’m no pumpkin artist.

Inspired by the Encyclopedia of Immaturity, Kate wanted to carve a barfkin this year. Of course I said yes.

The costume? She’s a hippie.

It’s pretty clear our wonderful little dog is losing his hearing. He responds to sharp hand claps or stomps on the floor, but not much else. I’ve considered he might be indulging in the traditional right of the elderly — selective hearing — but increasingly it seems he just doesn’t. The other day I took him for a quick walk when we were traveling, and as we circled around back to the car, the sight of Alan made him put his ears up, in a “that shape looks familiar, but I just can’t place it” sort of way, so I suppose he doesn’t see too well, either. Ah, the depredations of age. On the other hand, he still has a lust for life, and an interest in his environment, only now he relies on his sense of taste; if I let him, he’ll lick my hand for 20 minutes straight. I’m grateful shorts season is over, because for a while this summer, he was fond of tasting all our guests as they stood in the foyer, and let me tell you, it takes a serious dog person to put up with that for very long.

Needless to say, I won’t be taking him to Partridge Creek, the latest open-air mall to open in the neighborhood, which advertises itself as dog-friendly. (The billboards feature a dog with its head out the window of a car, with the legend, “Are we there yet?”) I was there today, and wondered about the wisdom of both the policy and the sorts of people who think it’s a good idea to take a giant Labrador retriever to a packed pedestrian space for no good reason other than that you can. I suppose the idea was conceived as a way to attract the Paris Hilton purse-dog contingent, but yesterday there were at least a dozen enormous breeds on display, including a few excitable specimens that really should have been somewhere else. I suppose it’s possible the owners were training their dogs to be around big crowds, but when I see an 80-pound Lab barely controlled by a 150-pound man — man in a semi-crouch, holding the leash with both hands, spluttering impotently at the pooch — I’m not reassured. Either get a collar that works, a trainer with a clue, or leave the beast at home.

Not much of a weekend, otherwise. Wrangled the last of Kate’s Halloween costume, took a couple long naps, sat poolside during a kid’s birthday party — the usual. Rented “Knocked Up” on Friday with great anticipation of yet another Apatow sweet-raunchfest, and came away disappointed. It was too long by many minutes and lurched jarringly from comedy to not-comedy. I found myself snapping my fingers for a cut, but then, am I a genius director? No, I’m just the person who has to sit through a two-hour-and-14-minute sex comedy that had not enough of either. I hope “Superbad” is better.

One of our stops Saturday was the American Apparel store, where I offered my child as a model. Ha ha kidding — I was really on my never-ending quest for a simple, well-cut, white T-shirt made of fabric thick enough you can’t read your watch through it. The verdict: The search goes on. But hey, I found a scoop-neck, cap-sleeve specimen seemingly spun by anorexic spiders for the low low price of $30. Forget reading your watch through it; you could have read the box scores from the agate page through it, which I suppose is the point, but jeez, it’s a damn T-shirt. HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THIS ITEM CORRECT? It’s like a cup of coffee. Two ingredients, an infinite number of ways to screw it up. This should be a Project Runway assignment. A grateful nation would make the winner rich.

Bloggage:

I was thinking if I were Mitch Albom’s editor, how easy my work would be. Take today’s. It begins:

When did adults start dressing for Halloween?

I’d write, “About 30 years ago, by my reckoning. Thanks for noticing, but see if you can’t do better by deadline. — Ed.” Then a big red X through the next 600 words, and careful placement in the middle of his desk.

Only it doesn’t work that way, not anymore. I doubt Albom has a desk in the newsroom, and anyway, no editor bosses him around, and anyway, he has an excuse — his other Sunday column, the one in Sports, lets everyone know just who has the biggest d–, er, book sales in the newsroom, who’s been on Oprah, and who better look the other way when three out of four nine out of ten nearly all the Sunday Metro columns are lame-ass. (Cf: iPods: What’s up with that? or School shootings: What’s up with that?)

Ah, well. I’m not one to talk, am I?

Here’s a somewhat meatier story, an oldie but goodie: Mark Jacobson’s 2000 profile of Frank Lucas, currently being played by Denzel Washington in “American Gangster.” Many choice passages, much rich detail, lots of heroin.

Finally, Fox Business anchor or porn star? I only got 50 percent right on this quiz. It’s that difficult.

There’s a new series of TV ads for the iPhone running lately, in which ordinary folks stand up in front of a piece of black seamless paper and tell stories about how much they love their you-know-whats, sometimes supported with anecdotes. One features an airline pilot, who talks about how one of his flights had been condemned to a three-hour delay because of weather. “Three hours for a flight that would take one hour and 40 minutes,” he said, knowingly. Oh, man. We’ve all been there.

So, bored, he turned on the iPhone and checked weather.com, where he discovered the weather was actually clearing at the flight’s destination. He called the tower, told them the good news, and whaddaya know, they were cleared for takeoff p.d.q. Go buy an iPhone!

I didn’t greet this news with optimism, as it evidently informs us that a U.S. airport has fewer weather-prognostication tools than the Weather Channel, proprietors of weather.com. I think if most of us realized, on a daily basis, how much all the rest of us are flying by the seat of our pants, so to speak, we’d never leave the house. And yet the world soldiers on.

But the ad was on my mind when I read a non-irritating David Brooks column today, “The Outsourced Brain.” Brooks is at his best on this sort of neutral ground, and he makes an interesting observation — that the beauty of this new information age isn’t how it adds to our store of knowledge, but subtracts from it, by freeing us of having to remember a bunch of stupid crap. After noting his increasing reliance on his car’s GPS system, he writes:

It was unnerving at first, but then a relief. Since the dawn of humanity, people have had to worry about how to get from here to there. Precious brainpower has been used storing directions, and memorizing turns. I myself have been trapped at dinner parties at which conversation was devoted exclusively to the topic of commuter routes.

My G.P.S. goddess liberated me from this drudgery. She enabled me to externalize geographic information from my own brain to a satellite brain, and you know how it felt? It felt like nirvana.

Through that experience I discovered the Sacred Order of the External Mind. I realized I could outsource those mental tasks I didn’t want to perform. Life is a math problem, and I had a calculator.

Until that moment, I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but then I realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these servants and liberate ourselves.

I suspect he’s correct. I’ve already noticed the dulling of some of my once-ninja skills in some of these areas. I never used to forget a phone number; I could probably still tell you the numbers of my best friends in junior high school. Nowadays I know my own, and that’s about it, but it’s OK, because they’re all in my phone’s memory, and I don’t need to. I worry more about the loss of geographic knowledge, as geography is more important than any of us think, and not just in the is-Maple-north-or-south-of-Twelve-Mile sense, either. People evolved to be connected to the earth, their own particular patch of it, and being able to delegate it to a GPS unit doesn’t strike me as a huge improvement. Plus, jeez people, do we really need another electronic device to get distracted by?

I keep a compass on my kitchen table’s lazy susan, to remind me which way is north. Every house I’ve lived in until now was oriented square — north out the back door, south out the front, etc. Everything in GP is at an angle. Drives. Me. Nuts.

Bloggage? I got no bloggage for you today, people. Let’s play a game — you leave the bloggage for me to be amused by. And have a great weekend.

NN.C regular Ashley Morris has been in the midst of some family hell these last few days. You’re comparing it to your family hell, which may range on the scale from My Mother Doesn’t Appreciate Me to My Sister-in-Law Always Drinks Too Much, Then Gets Bitter With Everyone.

Well, Ashley’s family hell sort of extends the scale. His sister/mother died. What’s a sister/mother, you ask? Ask Jack Nicholson. It’s what happens when a teenage girl has a baby, and her mother says, “I’ll raise the boy as my own. We’ll pretend you’re his older sister. Meanwhile, you get your shit together.” I don’t actually know if Ashley’s mother/grandmother said this to her daughter, but she should have, because things didn’t turn out so well for her, and she was found dead in her apartment last week.

So Ashley goes to clean things up, and finds…well, let him tell it:

Turns out my mother/sister OD’d. Spoons and lighters everywhere. About 300-400 syringes all over the floor. Residue of OxyContin in the spoons and on the tables. And a big 2 gram package of heroin on the counter.

I called the cops who found the body, and asked them what to do with the heroin. They said I could bring it in to the station.

Go read the rest. I offered him complicated condolences last week. I’d say complicated isn’t really the word for it.

Alan’s been tuning up his dad’s thousand-year-old .22 rifle, downloading ancient manuals online, disassembling it, cleaning it. Finally he took it to a state-owned rifle range in Oakland County and tested his aim. I’d say he did pretty well for an amateur who hasn’t picked up a firearm in years:

It’s times like this I’m glad I live with a man, competent in the manly arts and all that, able to defend our home from an onslaught of squirrels, rabbits and other small game. (And believe me, around here, I think it’s entirely possible.) Then I walked through the living room and saw this:

For your information, Alan selected every item on the top of that bookcase. The “little book” on the right is an art object made by one of our neighbors in Ann Arbor and was a Christmas present in 2003; the vase on the left is Pewabic and was a Mother’s Day* gift in 2005. The little Navajo turtle pot in the middle was found by Alan at an auction last summer. He thought the bottom was getting scratched by sitting directly on the wood, so this weekend he wandered into a shop in Stratford and bought that carpet scrap, part of an antique Persian, or so the saleslady said. “It’s Persian, but it sort of looks Navajo,” Alan replied. I looked at this arrangement and said:

“You know how I know you’re gay? Because you not only bought the pot and the carpet scrap, but when you put them together you placed the pot on the scrap asymmetrically.”

“I’m rebelling against my childhood in Defiance, Ohio.”

Defiance is a very symmetrical place, to be sure. Still.

Well, we heard from Danny, in the comments in the post below. For those of you who didn’t see it, it’s here. He’s safe for now, but as we all know, the area’s still terribly dangerous. Good thoughts, prayers and positive vibes — whatever your preference — to Danny.

However, no tragedy is so great it has no comic relief. I’m glad to see other people’s kids are like my kid:

The police in the afternoon escorted some residents in northern San Diego to retrieve medicine and urgent belongings. Of course, that definition was flexible.

“Bongos? Why the heck are you bringing bongos! We don’t need bongos!” Gerald DaSilva shouted to his daughter as they raced in and out of their relatively undamaged house and loaded their pickup. “Look at all this stuff — CDs, magazines, come on, what is all this stuff? Get your phone chargers.”

Ever think of what you’d grab if you had to flee with one carload? It’s a worthwhile exercise, both in idle woolgathering and for future disaster planning. For me, in order: kid, dog, art, letters. All the rest is replaceable.

In other news at this hour, it should be obvious I got nothin’ today. Well, I got this:

“Albus Dumbledore” is an anagram of “Male bods rule, bud!” (Thanks, Vince!)

Any astute reader would have seen that one coming a mile away. More later.

* CORRECTION: It was an anniversary gift. “I don’t give you Mother’s Day gifts. You’re not my mother!” He’s right. I was confused.

Going to Canada via the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. Clear sailing to Canada, bumper-to-bumper to Detroit. The falling dollar is very good for Canadian shoppers.

I have a framed photo on my desk of three people, standing on a corner in Stratford, Ontario — Alan, and a couple who would come to be known far and wide in blogdom as Lance Mannion and the Blonde, although then I knew them by their pre-internet names. It wasn’t our first trip, after which Lance was inspired to make the Blonde a homemade birthday card, but it was a while ago. Lance, the Blonde, Alan and I and sometimes others used to go every year around this time, drawn by the Stratford Festival, one of the best Shakespeare repertory companies in North America. (We women had a secret reason to go — Colm Feore — although “secret” implies we kept it to ourselves, and we jabbered about his strange stage magnetism non-stop.) We’d leave on Friday and come back Sunday, seeing two or three plays in that time, one or two of Will’s and usually another; the bill in most seasons is only about one-third Shakespeare and the rest other classics, including at least one musical.

We were so kulchuhed by the end, we made Lance drive all the way home, seven hours back to Indiana. Not that he ever gave up the wheel willingly.

But those were good times, and I look back on those fall weekends with great fondness, even the one where I got into a fight with Lance’s poet friend Steve, without quite knowing we were fighting until he stomped out of the room. That was the weekend we stayed in a B&B and it was Canadian Thanksgiving, and the owners of the house had their family home for the holiday. The family slept in sleeping bags in the parlor and scowled at us, the Yanks, the usurpers. Scowl at your parents, folks — they’re the ones who chose commerce over family.

Anyway, the bad thing about the trip was the drive, which could never be made less onerous. So when we moved to Detroit, effectively slicing it in half, I thought we’d be at Stratford more often. And then 2005 passed without a visit, and 2006, and I vowed 2007 wouldn’t get away from me, and it nearly did anyway. With the season dwindling, it was time to pull the trigger for at least an overnight stay, with the kid, and so we snatched up the last tickets to “Oklahoma!” and booked a room. It would have been nice to see Brian Bedford in “King Lear,” but even a good-tempered 10-year-old would balk at that one. I considered a Sunday matinee of “To Kill a Mockingbird” to round out the trip, but seeing two classic American stories produced by Canadians seemed a little strange, and besides — sold out.

So it was one night, one play, one theater. This one:

It’s a great stage, a thrust stage, not huge but perfect for Shakespeare, with a balcony and two downstage entrances, a trap door and everything else you need for ghosts and lovers and swordplay. But it’s really amazing what a good director can do with a musical, even a rowdy, dance-y, busy one like “Oklahoma!” In 1996 we saw “The Music Man” there, and it was glorious — if there weren’t 76 trombones onstage, it sure seemed that way.

“Oklahoma!” didn’t disappoint, either. That’s the thing about these old Broadway classics — even if someone’s having a bad night, there’s enough buoyancy in the rest of the production to carry it along. And no one was having a bad night, although Aunt Eller’s understudy was taking her part, and she was not only young enough that she looked like Laurey’s sister, she was pretty hot, too. Dan Chameroy was an excellent Curly, with a nice rich tenor and the requisite curls. (As a former bad girl and pervert, of course I found Jamie McKnight’s Jud Fry much more appealing, but I can understand why a blonde virgin like Laurey wouldn’t want him.) Kate, who had to stay up a whole two hours past her bedtime to see the whole thing, was only politely approving, but I caught her humming the main theme the next day, so I have to assume it was a success.

Of course, travel is very broadening, and always in an unexpected way. Kate spent the weekend being amused that the Cheetos bag from the vending machine described its contents as “soufflés.” Canada is a bilingual country, don’t you know:

And then we were headed home. I remember, back in those pre-9/11 days with Lance and the Blonde, sailing through customs at the border. Ah, no more. It was a 45-minute backup at the Blue Water Bridge, at Sarnia/Port Huron. At least the view is prettier than the tunnel:

It’s good to be home. Bloggage later. Time to go pick up the dog.

UPDATE: Lance reminds me he wrote about our Stratford trips a couple years ago, and remembers an incident I’d pretty much forgotten — the time we ran into Colm Feore on that wide green lawn in the picture above. Bonus: Picture of me c. 1995, wearing some hideous pink thing.

The Eastern Market is my favorite place in Detroit. Every Saturday morning, thousands of shoppers from city and suburb converge on the gritty urban space to buy cheap vegetables and flowers, meat and whatnot. I have a procedure: I find a parking place at one end, walk through on a reconnaissance pass, then walk back, shopping. I know who’s selling what and who has the good stuff, but this gives me an excuse to walk through twice.

Also, there’s a surprise every week.

I’ve spent my life living in pretty homogeneous places, and at midlife, I’ve had enough of that shit. When I walk through the market stalls I can pretty reliably count on hearing at least six different languages (three of which I cannot identify, all fricatives and coughing), seeing women in saris and hijabs and men in turbans and skullcaps, being offered the Final Call, being asked to sign a petition in support of impeachment or medical marijuana or Al Gore for president, being panhandled by a pathetic homeless guy asking for “just enough to get a coney for breakfast,” and witnessing at least one purchase of live poultry, usually by an Asian man who carries the birds away by the feet, suggesting he is not buying pets.

Over at Bert’s Marketplace, they have outdoor tables set up, a giant barbecue going (manned by cooks wearing T-shirts reading, “Why you all in my grill?”) and karaoke that always seems to have a singer, even before the lunch crowd arrives. A couple of weeks ago Kate and I heard the voice of a black gospel singer belting the last lines of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” Our view was blocked by a truck, and as we passed we saw the black gospel singer was actually a skinny white guy, comin’ for to carry me hoooooome.

When I’m done getting my vegetables, I cross the freeway on the pedestrian bridge, which is hung with the goods of hawkers pitching shea butter from the motherland and T-shirts with Marvin Gaye’s picture. Also, CDs that look suspiciously bootlegged, framed posters and lots and lots of incense. On the other side is the Gratiot Central Market, a mall of meat, one building for all your protein needs. It’s loud and rowdy — the clerks behind every counter encourage anarchic, step-right-up ordering, but it works, and you rarely have to wait more than a minute. Nothing is yuppified or gourmet, and in fact, there’s a fishmonger selling buffalo at something like $1.49 for four pounds. Everything is cheap, though — you can buy whole beef tenderloin for $6.95 a pound, and they’ll cut it to your order; the going rate at the upscale market close to my house is three times that.

After the meat, if it’s not too hot and I don’t have a reason to return home quickly, I allow myself a little me-time. If it’s close to lunch, a slice at Flat Planet Pizza. If Kate is with me, we buy bulk cherry sours and gummy worms at Rocky Peanut. If I wanted to, I could even get a pair of balls, but so far, I haven’t needed any.

Usually I park near a storefront that’s been turned into a rehearsal space for an African dance group. Anywhere from three to six men beat drums while women dressed in sports bras and kente cloths do the moves. It’s hard to tell if they’re rehearsing for something, holding a class or just working out; they don’t seem to mind onlookers, but they don’t explain or introduce anything, and they don’t have a bucket out for thrown dollars. They just drum and dance. The vibe is old-school black pride — long, graying dreadlocks, rasta tams and the like. Last week three young men stood on the sidewalk, watching from the other end of the fashion spectrum; they were all the way hip-hop, with the baggy pants, cocked ball caps, lots of attitude. The drummers barely gave them a glance, which seemed deliberate, or maybe it wasn’t. It takes lots of concentration to keep a steady dancing rhythm among two or three others. After a while the hip-hop guys moved on, and the dancing continued.

Sometimes people ask, “Do you go every weekend?” I reply, “As often as possible.” No one ever asks why, but if they did, I’d tell them.

Bloggage:

Why “drop a load of barrels” may replace “take a dump” in American slang.

Weingarten’s got a great poll this week, in which we are asked to judge the Style Invitational, aka The Contest For People Much Cleverer Than You. The challenge was to “take any word, remove its first letter, and redefine the result. You were allowed to insert spaces or punctuation, but not to alter the order of the letters.” The results in the poll are all pretty good; I don’t know how I’d choose between Riskies: A brand of pet food made in China and Unich: German city voted World’s Safest Town for Women.

Why I would hate to investigate traffic accidents. I read once that for all the attention homicide detectives get, the ones with the really strong stomachs are the ones who clean up our blood-slicked highways. No surprise there.

Work beckons. Have a swell day.

You know what was wrong with the ’70s? At any point in that decade, particularly, oh, the first half, you might be having a conversation with a friend’s boyfriend. Say this boyfriend was not approved of by your friend’s parents. Say those parents were, in fact, actively trying to keep the young lovers apart. Say the boyfriend was in a band. In the middle of your conversation, the boyfriend might shake out his center-parted auburn hair and announce that he was going to sing a song in the next set that would really stick it to his girlfriend’s father. And then he would open his mouth and bray this song right in your face, a capella:

And his breath would smell like beer. Not that you were actually still breathing at this point.

Some women think it’s romantic when men sing to them. I have never understood this.

For those of you who have received Facebook SuperPokes from me in the last few days, I apologize. I’m still figuring out why I need this thing, although I’ve been assured by Those Who Know that all will become clear eventually. Whatever. I spent most of yesterday at a conference, and one of the sessions featured a very energetic woman telling a room full of baffled small businesspeople that they need to be on Twitter, a site that seems to exist for the sole purpose of letting the whole world honk like a goose.*

(* Many years ago, Alan had an interview with an ornithologist. Before he left, I said, “Ask him what geese are saying when they honk at one another when they’re flying.” He returned and reported the answer: A puzzled look, and “Here I am.”)

On the other hand, if I’d been sent a Twitter text message telling me my buds John and Sammy were not in Atlanta yesterday at 8:48 a.m. EDT, but at the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood, I would not have awakened John at 5:48 a.m. PDT to ask what sort of DV camera I should buy. I know that’s the sort of day-brightener I always appreciate.

The conference wasn’t a total waste of time. It was a research trip, and I got lots of ideas, even though the temperature indoors seemed to be turned down to stun. I spent the first part of the week worrying that the nape of my neck would never feel cool and dry again and by Wednesday — not even the end of the week — I’m blowing on my fingers in hopes of feeling sensation in them. During a break in the action, I wandered out to the lobby to discover the UAW had struck Chrysler. By the time I got home, the strike was over. Six hours — not even a whole shift — and yet it was enough to send yet another sheaf of solidarity-forever photos out into the world. Tom Walsh at the Freep points out the stakes:

(UAW President) Ron Gettelfinger is on the verge of doing something so historic, forging the most important UAW contracts since the GM sit-down strikes of 1936-37, that he felt compelled to deploy the biggest weapon in his arsenal, the strike, to make it happen. He called strikes to squeeze every last penny and every possible promise of a job from the companies, in return for the UAW agreeing to major cost-saving measures, most importantly, a union-run trust fund to handle future health care costs for retirees.

And he called strikes to show the hourly rank-and-file workers that he has their back, that he’s doing everything he can to get the most he can for his people. If UAW members don’t trust their leader to do that, they won’t ratify these contracts. The heavy lifting is not done. Gettelfinger, UAW Vice President Bob King and their bargaining team must now hunker down with Ford Motor Co., arguably the weakest of Detroit’s automakers, to negotiate one more contract.

I point this out not to bore the crap out of you, only to pause for a moment and reflect that a smart beat reporter-turned-columnist can be a real service to readers. That is all.

One of the sessions I attended was on innovation. After I adjusted my brain to the idea — having spent my career in an industry that could have hung out a sign reading, PROUDLY INNOVATION-FREE SINCE THE CIVIL WAR — I started to wonder if newspapers might not have had to travel this rocky path, if they’d had the sense to see the future coming down the road at them. Impossible question to answer, I know, but I do know what kept them from seeing it: Fear. Newspapers have been managed from a position of nail-biting fear for so long they don’t know any other way to do it. Kind of like the UAW. Too bad.

When I snapped back to attention the speaker was talking about how the parking decks at Metro Airport were innovated to within an inch of their lives, and the next step will likely be a Star Trek transporter between your home and your departure gate, cutting the car and the parking out of the equation completely. Kind of like the internet and newspapers. Too bad.

Friends, I’m beat, and I told myself I’d get this chore out of the way early, so I can shower and eat and adjust my caffeine balance. I don’t have much bloggage, but I advise you to find your own at Comics Curmudgeon, where daily the proprietor points out the utter laziness and fear-based management that rules the funny pages. Psst: He’s just devastating on Ziggy today. Or Doghouse Riley, who is having Hoosier-style water problems, something I recall from my Hoosier days.

And if you’d like to be sucked into a Flash vortex and not get any work done for the rest of the day, go ahead and try to spot the difference. Make sure the monitor faces the wall and no one can see what you’re really doing.

Also, where’s Danny been these days? The halls feel empty and echo-y without him.