Happy New Year to everyone, but especially you, my loyal readers, who have kept me maintaining this blog for, good lord, going on …24 years this month? It’s been that long? Amazing. We’ve lived through the Blog Craze, remained steadfast through social media, and who knows, maybe we’ll be popular again before cancer or random gunfire or a drunk/distracted driver takes me out. Not to be morbid, but I read the news yesterday oh boy, and I don’t see a lot to smile about.

That said, I’m still smiling. My 2024 one-word resolution, which I can’t remember, isn’t dong me much good, so I’m not making one this year. I have goals, of course, one being: Work less. Or rather, work less for others, more for me. The Biden stock market, decent luck and a lifetime of reasonably careful money management have left us reasonably comfortable, so I’d like to throttle back the freelance writing and write more for myself. Here, and elsewhere. So that’s the big one.

The others? The usual. Declutter. Death clean. Unfuck that which is fucked. Not to get too personal about our finances, but we’re investigating whether we can afford to bestow a chunk of cash on Kate to help her buy a house. Nothing fancy, but something that will allow her to start building equity on her own. As an all-1099 penniless artist (but a happy one!), she’ll never be able to do it on her own income, I fear, and it’s time for her to join the Sisterhood of Worrying About the Roof. As a boomer who benefited from an economic system that has since disintegrated, I have strong feelings about hoarding generational wealth. (I’m against it.) She’s our sole heir; might as well let her have some benefits now.

Entry level for a house in Metro Detroit that you don’t have to evict the raccoons from first: Roughly $200K. This is insane. But it’s the way we live today, so.

We’re taking the tree down today. I’m also pleased to report that yesterday’s ham-and-bean soup not only fulfilled the traditions of New Year’s dining, but it also used up the last of the Christmas ham, AND the accompanying Caesar salad did the same. As a Midwesterner, nothing makes me happier than using up leftovers. (Unless it’s buttoning up the house for winter.)

So, speaking of social media: A while back I joined a Facebook group about a concept called radical unschooling, just out of personal curiosity. I don’t radically unschool anyone, and am in fact a big believer in public education, but I’m also aware of how often it fails children who don’t fall into the mainstream, and while there are a fair number of utter crackpots in this group, there are many whose children struggle with structure. For the unaware, “radical unschooling” takes homeschool a step further, into basically trusting children will be led into learning by following their own instincts and interests. (Yeah, I know.) Kids stay home with a parent and, in the idealized version, go for a walk in a park and ask questions about plants and birds and wind and so forth, which the parent answers or, more often, directs the child to library books or YouTube videos or other resources that can answer them. But it’s pretty clear the idealized version doesn’t always pertain. One post asking for advice from the group was from a mother who went to a homeschooling fair and was scolded by a reading expert because her daughter was 8 years old and still illiterate.

“I thought she’d just naturally pick it up, and now I feel really bad, because this woman told me I’d missed a window!” she mourned. Whew.

A lot, and I mean a lot of the posts, suggest that someone’s child is neurodivergent, at least a little. And one topic comes up time and again: “Sensitivity issues.” One mother writes that her child won’t allow her to brush their curly hair, and now it’s matted. A child acts out in public, violently. Her kids have no self-control. The answer to many of these concerns seem to always be: The child has sensitivity issues. So my question for the group is: Who diagnoses sensitivity issues? I get the feeling lots of these parents aren’t into western medicine, so I doubt much of it is coming from doctors. Are sensitivity issues the new “oh I’m gluten-intolerant,” or is this just an extension of how we understand kids who are on the spectrum?

On to current events. :::opens newspaper page, slams it shut::: Ai-yi-yi, 2025. Let’s get through it in one piece.

The only thing I had on my calendar Thursday was a 9 a.m. appointment to give blood. Why do I still donate, knowing that the Red Cross emphasizes the “donor” part and never, ever talks about how they sell this donation? Eh, because people still need blood, and because I’m an adult enough to know that fresh blood is a commodity, and it would be foolish not to handle it as such. And the donation is at my gym, and the owner likes a good showing by members. People-pleasing is my business. Also, I’m HIV-negative and healthy, so: Shrug.

On the way over I drove past a few of the big trend in mid-level holiday decorations this year: The enormous inflatable. Regular inflatables have been around for a while, of course, but the enormous inflatable — big enough to approach the roofline on a two-story house — are new, the Christmas equivalent of the 12-foot skeleton. They’re sort of festively terrifying. I wonder what it must be like for a kid to look out the window and see a Rudolph or Frosty the size of a dinosaur swaying in the yard. But they’re catching on.

The problem, with it and all inflatables, is what to do in the daytime, the downtime for holiday decorations. Most people seem to turn the blowers off when the sun’s up, which leaves yards covered by what looks like holiday-colored parachutes, or maybe just dead snowmen and reindeer.

I got to the gym, spotted the blood crew on the basketball court, and started the routine. There’s always a lot of warnings and concerns about fainting, but I’ve never seen it happen. “So does anybody really faint?” I asked the phlebotomist.

“High-school kids. They go down all the time. And once one falls, they all do,” she said.

“But they’re young and healthy,” I said.

“And they never eat breakfast. Then they lie to us about how they ate breakfast. I asked one girl, ‘I thought you said you had a big breakfast. What did you eat?’ and she said, ‘Fruit snacks.’ I told her to eat a big lunch, and she came back and said she still felt sick. ‘What did you have for lunch?’ I asked. ‘A bag of apple slices.'” Damn, kids these days. I finished my bloodletting, drank a bottle of water, chose Cheez-its for my snack and headed out.

OK, Cheez-its AND mini Oreos. I wanted both salt and sweet.

It was a good Christmas hereabouts. I got many gifts, both thoughtful and practical, and Alan gave us a bike rack for our cars, one that slips into the trailer hitch and carries them on the outside, bus rack-style. That’ll be nice for exploring some car-free trails in the warm weather, maybe heading up north. I had a dream once of spending a big chunk of winter in a warm climate, taking both bikes and dog along, but after checking out seasonal rental rates for the Florida Keys (the only part of Florida I think I could tolerate), eh, maybe not.

Another thing I did over the last few days was watch a documentary — on Hulu, I believe — called “The Disappearance of Shere Hite.” Having remembered how “The Hite Report” on female sexuality rocked the usual suspects, it seemed worth a trot down memory lane. Hard to imagine her most newsworthy finding — the most women need more than PIV to reach orgasm — landed as hard as it did. But it did. And I came away thinking that younger women seem to have benefited from this. Far fewer men have Soprano-level opinions about oral sex, and thanks to Hite and many other people willing to talk about sex frankly, in general I think younger women might have an easier time of it than their grandmother’s generation did.

Then the Matt Gaetz report dropped, and: Nah.

Gaetz is a sleazebag of the first order, but we already knew that. I came away from it feeling for the girls who partied with him and his terrible friends. There’s always a lot of loose talk when something like this happens, that so-and-so “raped a child.” We can quibble over whether a 17-year-old is a child, and whether having consensual sex with a 17-year-old is rape. Personally, I don’t think it is, but I do think it’s fucking gross, and I wonder why there are so many girls that age willing to put themselves on websites like Seeking Arrangement and accept $400 to have sex with people like Gaetz and his friends at parties. They’ve been desensitized by porn, yes, but it takes more than that to turn a junior in high school into a prostitute. I suspect it takes lots of mom’s boyfriends, virtually no life of the mind beyond wondering what the Kardashians will be up to next, an obsession with social media and a few other poisons in the cultural stew to do it. (Although I also acknowledge there have always been girls like this, and likely always will.) Soon enough she’ll show up in porn loops with her hair in pigtails, pretending to be 15 again. She won’t fool anyone.

Gaetz, for his part, should be tarred and feathered. Failsons like him never are.

Don’t mean to bring you down this near-holiday weekend! It’s a unique liminal space, the only one of the year. Enjoy it.

For a few years, I would volunteer to work Christmas Day. For another few years, I was required to work Christmas Day. I never saw it as a big deal — when I was more connected to my birth family, we celebrated on the Eve, leaving the holiday itself as a yawning void, so might as well make some money and collect the chip to cash in later, for a holiday you really wanted off. The required-work years were all from home, so it was easy to keep my laptop open and check in every 15 minutes or so. Easy-peasy.

For a newspaper reporter, Christmas is either drudgery or tragedy. Go do a story on the B’nai B’rith volunteers who bring food to firehouses and hospitals — that’s drudgery, as is a bright on the slammed-for-hours Chinese restaurants, full of happy Jews enjoying their own Christmas tradition. Tragedy is the sort of thing that happens somewhere, every year: A fatal accident caused by bad weather or impaired driving. One year in Columbus a guy went to midnight Mass and while he was gone, his house caught fire and his entire family died. (Thanks, God!) Another year, an Alberta-clipper cold snap followed a snowstorm and broke water mains and other infrastructure all over the city. (You learn to carry a pencil at times like that, because pens freeze.) Yet another, a guy who’d robbed a bank and waited to be arrested, just to have a warm place to sleep, was bailed out by a softhearted man who didn’t think anyone should spend Christmas behind bars.

The underwear bomber — that was a Christmas story. As I recall, the editors of a certain Detroit paper couldn’t get a single reporter to answer the phone and roll to the airport to gather whatever fact-shards could be found there. (Damn caller ID!)

In…1979, I believe, unless it was 1978, J.C. and I went to a movie on Christmas Day, then headed to a local radio station, so he could record a review for a show he was contributing to. We got on the elevator with another station employee, who looked at us and said, “It’s a rule: The Jew works Christmas.”

Whatever your tradition, whatever your employment, I hope that if you have to work, someone brings you a nice warm plate of something good to eat, and it’s either as busy or as boring as you like. Maybe bring a book to read.

As for me, I’m reading about Matt Gaetz, who the incoming president of the United States thought qualified to be the top lawyer in the country. That person — incoming president, that is — also is going on again about buying Greenland.

The next four years are going to be long and miserable. But let’s enjoy the last good Christmas in the last good year. I’ll be back sometime after the holiday.

I’ve been doing this so long I can no longer remember if I’ve told a particular story before, but a quick search suggests maybe not*, so what the hell. Old women are allowed to repeat themselves.

I saw a Saturday Night Live sketch on office Christmas parties, which reminded me of the terrible ones we had in Fort Wayne, with one exception. You’d think a newsroom could throw a fun party, but we were cursed in some way. The job of organizing was usually given to the executive editor’s secretary, and her budget was limited. One year we had the worst chicken of my life — it seemed to have been boiled. The entertainment was a local elementary school choir, who didn’t sing Christmas songs but music that had been written for a non-denominational holiday play nobody knew, so the songs made no sense and weren’t very good, either.

She also invited a high-school girl who’d won a state speech championship to perform for us. She chose a dramatic dialogue where she played both parts, one an older, old-fashioned black woman and the other her younger, angrier daughter. The daughter was trying to convince the mother that white people never had her best interests at heart, but the mother was sweet and religious and believed it would all work out, praise Jesus. The climax, for me, came when the daughter exploded, “Mama, they call us n—–s behind our backs!” Ohhh-kay! That’s getting us in the holiday spirit!

The next year we, as in my colleague Adrianne and I, went to management in October and suggested we’d be willing to take over the job. We spent the paltry budget on deli platters and found a local bar with a private basement room. It was a little small for our purposes, but that only led to the convivial feeling. Open bar until the money ran out, then cash bar, mix tapes of bumpin’ holiday music, and we all had a great time. The night ended with a men’s room singalong of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” only with improvised lyrics. I remember “six urinals flushing!,” and a designer standing near one would do so. Some years later, we did something similar, with a karaoke machine. I recall an overnight sports guy, whom some privately called Boo Radley, wowing us with his interpretation of “Friends in Low Places.”

But the last one I endured there was pretty grim. It was held in the newsroom, over the lunch hour. Management kept finding new depths of cheapness, and I think they contributed a wan, unappetizing ham, not even Honeybaked. The rest was potluck, and the entertainment was a staffer with a keyboard and his own repertoire of Christian music.

All my employment after that was at small outfits, so the holidays could be observed in restaurants, at a couple pushed-together tables. They were fine. Lunch, a drink or two, and then home. At Deadline Detroit, we made it a dinner, at a Mexican restaurant with very good food that also allows guests to carry in their own booze, i.e. a perfect venue. The boss picked up the check. He probably spent more on six or seven of us than cheap-ass Knight Ridder, a major corporation, did on that stupid ham.

The parties in Columbus were much more in the traditional spirit of a holiday bacchanal — heavy-pouring bartenders and a quiet little library clerk throwing up in the hallway.

All this by way of saying we saw this movie, “Office Christmas Party,” on Christmas Day 2016, and it was very funny. Great cast.

* on a subsequent search, I see I did tell some of these stories, in 2005. Some details are different, but the gist is the same. Oh, well. It’s what old ladies do.

Tell us a Christmas/holiday office party story if you’ve got a good ‘un, eh?

A few years ago, one of Michigan’s plentiful dumbass state legislators introduced a bill to do away with private-employer vaccine mandates, specifically the ones hospitals commonly have that requires their employees to get flu shots and the like. I wrote a story about it, and what stands out to me is what the co-sponsor said when I asked him what his intent was:

“I’m not a strong believer in mandatory things. If it’s against someone’s religious beliefs or something like that, there are people who just don’t believe in things like that.”

There you have the Tea Party mentality, c. 2012: You can’t make me.

What I also remember about that piece is what a doctor told me:

“Nowadays, we’re trying to convince people who are already locked into their opinions, and also don’t have historical perspective on history of these diseases,” said DeGraw, who is a paid consultant for two pharmaceutical companies. “A child born in 1912 had a 1-in-5 chance of dying by its fifth birthday. Even my parents’ generation knew someone who died of these diseases.

“Pertussis is a great example,” he said. “In the ’30s and ’40s, before the vaccine, 7,000 to 8,000 kids would die in the U.S.(from whooping cough). Now, in the last decade, you only get a couple dozen.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., alleged incoming health czar in the Trump administration (although there are whispers he’ll be Chris Christie’d before January), says he’s not anti-vaccine. He just wants people to have choice, and for them to be fully informed about vaccine safety. I expect we could be heading toward a state of affairs similar to getting an abortion in a red state pre-Dobbs: Of course you can get your child vaccinated, but you have to sit through a video first, in which the “vaccine-injured” will tell sad tales about how their child was fine, fine, perfectly fine, and then he was vaccinated for measles/mumps/rubella and AUTISM. Still want that shot, mom? After all, most kids survive measles just fine.

I don’t want to keep harping on the medical damage we’re facing, because we’re facing so much other damage. Someone suggested that we could see a national school-voucher program in this administration, which will hollow out public schools. They’ll still exist in some fashion, for kids in Detroit or Chicago or wherever, and the Vance children and others of their wealth and class will attend elite private schools, but the vast middle class will be sucked into shitbag voucher academies. They’ll learn that God blessed America alone among nations, that slavery was really just an immigration program with a work requirement, and that higher ed is unnecessary — we need electricians, too! Girls can learn womanly skills like cooking, sewing and housekeeping, and boys will go to shop class.

Needless to say, teachers won’t be unionized, and they’ll be paid shit, while a few voucher-school tycoons grow very very rich. We’ll send money to homeschooling parents, too, and I’m sure that will work out just dandy.

I think I have to listen to some podcasts about movies or whatnot. This isn’t healthy for me or anyone else.

I went to Columbus this weekend, on family matters, and treated myself with the Crazy Mama’s 45th reunion party. Crazy Mama’s was a nightclub I used to go to, along with Jeff Borden and some others, back in the day, which is to say, the ’80s. It was spectacular; at a time when rock music had become bloated and boring — Kansas, anyone? — Crazy’s DJs played new wave, rockabilly, punk and other music that you never heard on the radio, and that just required you to get up and dance. And when I say “I used to go there,” I mean I was dedicated: For a while I was splitting my sleep in half. I’d stay until closing time, go home and sleep three or four hours, get up and go to work, then come home and crash for another three-hour nap before I left for another night of fun.

Pro tip: This is not a sustainable lifestyle, but I was very young.

I’d kinda-sorta planned to go with Borden and another friend, but Jeff had some family matters of his own and so that plan fell apart. I don’t mind going to stuff like that by myself, however, and the music was great — the Whiskey Daredevils, Willie Phoenix, Screaming Urge and the Fleshtones. I had a good time.

But now I’m back home, and it’s starting to look like family matters may bring me back to Columbus sooner rather than later. (I’m being oblique here for a reason.) They say life is a shit sandwich, and everybody’s got to take a bite. I just wish the whole country wasn’t being served a giant platter of them.

Oh, forgot to add: Here’s a podcast featuring Kate. You can listen on whatever platform you prefer. The podcast is called Outer Limited, and it’s produced by a music journalist here in Detroit and another bassist with a local band. The focus is Detroit music. She sounds good!

Someone I know wondered this weekend whether the story about Arnold Palmer that Trump told this weekend came from his good buddy Jack Nicklaus. Not that we’ll ever know. Another reason to despise the Golden Bear. You Buckeyes know that Nicklaus is probably the most famous native of Upper Arlington, the Columbus suburb where I grew up. (There’s also Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s, but he moved in later.) Jack is MAGA now, so I don’t feel bad about disliking him.

Or rather, Jack supports “the best candidate.” I expect he’ll consider the guy who talked about Arnie’s shlong the best. The guy who posted this last night:

Check out the package on that piece of fan art. MAGA is always going on about “stolen valor.” You’d think this would bother them. You’d think wrong.

Some of the early reports about the Arnold Palmer remarked didn’t say what Trump actually said. There were a few headlines like this, from the Scaife-owned Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (thanks, Jason):

I think even the NYT referred to “memories” about Palmer, but fortunately the rewrite desk sharpened it up:

Former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday spewed crude and vulgar remarks at a rally in Pennsylvania that included an off-color remark about a famous golfer’s penis size and a coarse insult about Vice President Kamala Harris.

…His monologue culminated in lewd remarks about the size of Mr. Palmer’s penis. Moments later, Mr. Trump gave the crowd an opportunity to call out a profanity. He went on to use that four-letter word to describe Ms. Harris.

“Such a horrible four years,” Mr. Trump said, referring to the Biden-Harris administration, as he surveyed the crowd of hundreds of people in front of him. “We had a horrible — think of the — everything they touch turns to —.”

Ugh. Oh well. Short shrift today, because my weekend was pretty full, but unexceptional. A Friday-night movie (“A Clockwork Orange” at a revival house), a Saturday bike outing, a Sunday bike outing, a welcome-home dinner for Kate, who’s been on the road this past week. Then I had this really weird dream just before I woke up, and it fogged my head for hours. Now I gotta get to work.

So I hope your week isn’t starting like mine.

‘Twas a rough night last night. Bad insomnia, probably not helped by a late dinner of Alan’s chili, but never mind that. Slept horribly, which means today is a low-effort, low-achievement day, but oh well. And I missed my morning swim. But! I managed to unload the dishwasher, drank two large glasses of water and prepared a decent lunch, so here’s hoping tomorrow will be better.

In the meantime, new music from Shadow Show here.

And proud parental moment here, via WDET-FM here in Detroit:

Logrolling for my daughter out of the way, here’s one reason I slept badly: Trump’s dance party last night in Pennsylvania. It made me renew my vow, made periodically over the last few years, to not forgive any MAGAts in my extended circle, should they come groveling for mercy through the wreckage of the American republic. I know, that’s not Jesus’ way, but Jesus doesn’t have to live here, where I do, gnawing my nails to the cuticle that we might actually have four more years of this bullshit. Even if Trump loses, I expect weeks, maybe months, of civil unrest. It’s going to be ugly. My older friends remind me that the 1960s were in many ways worse, and they’re correct, but this is now. And every day, EVERY DAY, Trump is telling us who he is, and if that is who you are? Fuck off, all the way off, and don’t leave a forwarding address.

At the moment he’s being questioned by a braver soul at the Economic Club of Chicago, that is to say, braver than the limp noodle who questioned him in Detroit last week (see previous entry). If I were the “beautiful woman” he pointed to during this exchange, I’d get up, go home and take a Silkwood shower, followed by a dip in a mikvah, followed by a sage-smudging ceremony:

Trump points out a “beautiful woman” in the crowd and says to her of migrants, “they will look at you and kill you” pic.twitter.com/3r5vSEH6Vl

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 15, 2024

So you can see, it’s just not a good Tuesday. Imagine if Biden — hell, if Harris — behaved the way Trump did last night. The New York Times would be sounding klaxon horns and calling battle stations. Instead, we have this:

Donald J. Trump was about 30 minutes into a town hall Monday night in suburban Philadelphia when a medical emergency in the crowd brought the questions and answers to a halt. Moments later, he tried to get back on track, when another medical incident seemed to derail things, this time for good.

And so Mr. Trump, a political candidate known for improvisational departures, made a detour. Rather than try to restart the political program, he seemed to decide in the moment that it would be more enjoyable for all concerned — and, it appeared, for himself — to just listen to music instead.

“Known for improvisational departures” — I ask you. Grandpa is sundowning.

Later:

Mr. Trump generally returns to his planned remarks after medical issues at other events. On Monday, he seemed more uncertain how to proceed. After offering what appeared to be a closing statement and having his campaign play a James Brown song, Mr. Trump suggested taking another question or two. As the crowd cheered in approval, he said, “let’s go,” but then said he’d play “Y.M.C.A.” and send the crowd home.

But after “Y.M.C.A.” ended, Mr. Trump seemed a little perplexed. “There’s nobody leaving,” he said. “What’s going on?” The audience cheered, and so the music kept going, as Ms. Noem stood awkwardly by, and many in the audience seemed unsure about whether the event was over.

I need to take a break from this stuff. Between this, the Israelis cooking refugees in tents and the Tigers losing, there’s no reason to open the paper (literally or figuratively) this week. But I’ll try to be back one more time before the end of it.

A former colleague of mine, Leo Morris, died a little over a year ago. He lived a couple blocks down the street from us in Fort Wayne. A nice guy, a bit of an odd duck, which sometimes came out in conversation. He mentioned once that he’d spent the weekend boxing up all the books that he had stacked on his staircase, having long ago run out of shelf space. He was down to a treacherous, narrow path, and you know how those stories often end.

Anyway, he died, and his siblings, both of whom live elsewhere, sold his house. A friend sent me a Redfin screen capture of recent sales; it seems to have gone for about $95K, then was sold again for $101K just a few weeks later, and the $6,000 probably represents the work the first owner put into cleaning it out. Now it’s back on the market for $289,900, an eye-popping amount in my opinion, but also appears to have undergone a full gut rehab. I recall a dark interior with a pool table in the dining room. Now it’s flooded with light, hardwood floors, brand-new kitchen, the works. Even the third-floor attic space appears to have been sided with cedar, a very nice touch.

I sent it to Alex, who informs me that not only are real-estate prices skyrocketing in the Fort for the usual reasons, but my old neighborhood, in the 46807 zip code, is now known as “The 07,” and is considered the hipster ‘hood.

Story of my life. Jeff Borden and I lived in a four-flat apartment house in a strip of Columbus between two suburbs (Grandview and Upper Arlington), at a time when everyone else our age was renting in German Village. (Motto: Drive our charming brick streets, but don’t expect to find a parking place.) Alan and I bought in the 07 because it was affordable and close to our office, and the houses were solid and had lots of charming architectural details. Both that old strip of Columbus and our little piece of Fort Wayne are now considered cool. I guess I really am an artist after all. Top o’ the world, ma!

I spent a few minutes punching the zip code into Realtor.com, and hoo-boy: This beauty, designed by Joel Roberts Ninde, a female architect who worked a lot around there, is a mere $319,900, and also looks like it recently underwent some major renovations.

Three thousand square feet, four bedrooms, and check out that bathroom tile. I used to walk Spriggy past that house; I think it used to be blue. The exterior is stucco, and the owner said it stayed cool in summer until the temperatures went past 90. There are several Ninde houses around that neighborhood, and they have stuff like built-in cabinetry, second-floor sleeping porches, arched doorways and other drool-worthy features.

Downside: The 07 was, when I lived there, considered a little risky ifyouknowwhatImeanandIthinkyoudo. Maybe the hipsters have improved the place. The only violent crime I saw there pales in comparison to what happens in Detroit and environs on a random Saturday. If I had to move back I’d snatch up that house and start a hipster salon, something like Laurel Canyon in the ’60s.

This one, two blocks away, was my favorite. Not on the market at the moment:

The front door is on the side. The street-facing side is a solarium, with a fireplace on the back wall, that also serves the living room. A million-dollar house in any other city in the country. Sigh.

OK, enough real-estate porn. For a while I thought I’d contracted Covid over the weekend; I was coughing from the depth of my lungs. Then I realized it started while I was making kung pao chicken, and had been a little heavy-handed with the Thai chilis. Basically, I pepper-sprayed myself when they hit the hot oil and sent up a cloud of capsaicin into my own lungs. Everything is fine now, but I can still tell it happened.

In other news at this hour, I am very, very worried about Florida. This storm is a mofo. Please stay safe, and I hope those of you in the footprint will send up a flare (so to speak) here when you’re out of danger.

We’ve been having an exceptionally warm autumn so far. I know many of you enjoy this, but I suspect we’re headed for another SLAM BANG OK IT’S WINTER NOW seasonal transition, having missed out on the pleasures of fall, i.e., the slowly cooling days, the slowly turning leaves, all of it. Right now it’s in the low 70s, forecast to top out at 77 in late afternoon, and all I can think is: Where is sweata weatha? Love sweata weatha.

“You miss January, Nance?” a friend asked me last night. I do not. But it’s a week into October, and I was hoping to put away my sandals by now.

It’s not that winter won’t come. Winter is never all that far away from Michigan. But we’ve had a few of those SLAM BANG seasonal changes of late, and I’m not crazy about them. You spend Easter in down jackets, then four days later it’s 85 degrees and stays that way.

Oh well. My house has not washed down a mountainside, so this is just mewling.

Let’s go to the news! Ho-ho, this is amusing:

According to a computer analysis by The New York Times, Mr. Trump’s rally speeches now last an average of 82 minutes, compared with 45 minutes in 2016. Proportionately, he uses 13 percent more all-or-nothing terms like “always” and “never” than he did eight years ago, which some experts consider a sign of advancing age.

Similarly, he uses 32 percent more negative words than positive words now, compared with 21 percent in 2016, which can be another indicator of cognitive change. And he uses swearwords 69 percent more often than he did when he first ran, a trend that could reflect what experts call disinhibition. (A study by Stat, a health care news outlet, produced similar findings.)

Mr. Trump frequently reaches to the past for his frame of reference, often to the 1980s and 1990s, when he was in his tabloid-fueled heyday. He cites fictional characters from that era like Hannibal Lecter from “Silence of the Lip” (he meant “Silence of the Lambs”), asks “where’s Johnny Carson, bring back Johnny” (who died in 2005) and ruminates on how attractive Cary Grant was (“the most handsome man”). He asks supporters whether they remember the landing in New York of Charles Lindbergh, who actually landed in Paris and long before Mr. Trump was born.

Actually it’s not amusing, it’s terrifying, because the rest of the paper informs us this is still anybody’s race. I mean, I’m glad the newspaper that practically considered it a crusade to get Biden to drop out is finally turning its attention to Trump, but who is listening at this point? Nobody. The few allegedly undecided voters, aren’t. As soon as early voting opens, I’m going in, casting my ballot with grim purpose, then returning to scan real-estate listings in countries where the language isn’t too hard to learn, and has some sweata weatha.

How was everyone’s weekend? Mine was fine. We saw “Megalopolis,” two of roughly six people in the theater. I’d describe it as…an ambitious mess. Those critics who keep saying, “Remember, ‘Apocalypse Now’ was a laughingstock at first” either never watched “Apocalypse Now” or weren’t there when it opened. I think it had been in theaters one weekend, and people were practically stopping me on the street to talk about the first three minutes, with the Doors and the chopper landing strut going through the frame, and the napalm. Three days after seeing “Megalopolis,” what I mostly remember was…none of it, really. Lush visuals, silly story, not much else. The girder scene, maybe? Aubrey Plaza trying her hardest, checking my phone inside my purse because I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the actress who played Julia before (she was Missandei in “Game of Thrones,” and her name is Nathalie Emmanuel) and ticking off the members of the Coppola Family Players who had parts (Talia Shire, Jason Schwartzman, Laurence Fishburne) along with Dustin Hoffman, Jon Voight and others. I think the ultimate explanation was the closing title, after FFC’s, “To my beloved wife Eleanor.” Eleanor Coppola died in April; this has the feeling of her surviving husband writing last notes and closing books.

Speaking of which, you know how Francis Ford Coppola got his middle name? His dad, Carmine, was a flautist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra from 1936-41, the depths of the Great Depression, and his son was born here. The Ford Motor Company basically carried the orchestra through the Depression, sponsoring their performances and keeping roofs over musicians’ heads and food on their tables. Carmine gave his baby the middle name in gratitude.

On Saturday, I went with a friend to see Jonathan Richman at the Magic Bag. The show was great, but short — one hour start to finish. Today I saw someone describe him as “Lou Reed’s nicer cousin.” He opened with this number, which I loved.

And now I’m going to enjoy this lovely Sunday. I leave you with this:

What we know is that these two men have 17 children with 6 different women but it’s women’s bodies that need to be controlled! pic.twitter.com/1oadrzY55i

— nazir afzal (@nazirafzal) October 6, 2024

Have a great week.

Because Twitter has lost virtually all of its legit advertisers — new releases from major studios/publishers, large corporations, etc. — it’s getting interesting. “Interesting” in the sense that if you’re into cheap Chinese gadgetry, hoo-boy. But also certain self-published, or practically self-published, books. You know me; I can resist neither bad writing, nor procrastination. And that’s how I ended up here:

To this writer’s credit, however, at least he’s finished something. Can’t say that here. I look forward to duplicating this exercise when “Melania” drops…whenever. Just looked it up: October 8. Imagine that. I guess we’ll see what that old ho’ has in store.

Speaking of propaganda, I’ve been alternately appalled and amused by the Tenet Media story (gift link). That is, the Russia-buys-U.S.-influencers story. Will Sommer, the WashPost reporter who covers such things, was chuckling through his briefing on “On the Media” the other day. It’s hard to believe anyone could be this stupid, but what do I know:

Most of the six members of Tenet’s “talent” team claim they did not know the money was coming from Russia. (Canadian activist Lauren Southern has not issued a statement as of this writing.) The indictment alleges that Tenet’s founders and Russian backers misled at least two of them, (Tim) Pool and (Dave) Rubin, about the source of Tenet’s funding by inventing a fictitious Belgian investor named Eduard Grigoriann.

Ah yes, an Armenian Belgian with an extra N on the end. I wonder if this real Eduard Grigoryan is getting any mileage out of this. I also wonder if Pool, Rubin and the other dullards on the team saved any of the money Tenet was paying them, as they were standing smack in the middle of a virtual firehose of cash. Because I doubt misfortune will smile on them in that way again.

Finally, the work peak is leveling out. I hope I have more time for you guys. I will. If I wanted to work this hard, I wouldn’t have retired.

More later this week.