Gotta say: I wasn’t a close observer of Andrew Breitbart. I knew who he was and what he was about, of course, but I wasn’t masochistic enough to monitor his various Big Whatevers on a regular basis. I skimmed the New Yorker profile awhile back, and came away with an impression of a fantastically angry man who brought a showbiz sensibility to a very baldly stated desire to destroy what he saw as institutions of the liberal media, blah blah blah. The fact he was able to get away with so much of this I attribute to the ability of those targets to say, Look, a truck. It’s coming this way. It’s speeding up. It’s not turning away. Isn’t that interesting?

I checked in on a few of the obituaries today, and once the shock wore off and the conspiracy theories fizzled and popped like firecrackers, a portrait like this emerged. David Frum:

The good was there. Breitbart was by all accounts generous with time and advice, a loving husband and father, and a loyal friend. One of those friends, Arianna Huffington, wrote today: “All I can think is what Andrew meant to me as a friend … his passion, his exuberance, his fearlessness.” Breitbart was unquestionably passionate and was exuberant. If by “fearless” you mean perpetually eager for confrontation, then yes he was fearless too, although in a very particular way. Nobody would ever describe Andrew Breitbart as a man of “quiet courage.” He delighted in the enraged outburst, the shouted insult, the videotaped jab of a finger into an opponent’s chest.

And I’m sorry, but this is the point where I check out. So he was a good guy in private, a jerkoff in public? I’m not interested in — no. I don’t like people like this. I understand that Don Rickles may well be a fantastic, sweet fellow after he’s offstage, but Don Rickles is an entertainer. Breitbart seemed to think of himself as one, too, but the world was his stage, and the damage was real. He told lies about people, malicious lies with very real consequences. Shirley Sherrod lost her job because of Breitbart. James O’Keefe, another trifling little liar, a nasty creep who makes Abbie Hoffman look like Willie Wonka, has a career because of him. He chose his targets and then said, By any means necessary.

Frum goes on:

Yet perhaps Breitbart’s most consequential innovation was his invention of a new kind of culture war. …Because President Obama was black, and because Breitbart believed in using every and any weapon at hand, Breitbart’s politics did inevitably become racially coded. Breitbart’s memory will always be linked to his defamation of Shirley Sherrod and his attempt to make a national scandal out of back payments to black farmers: the story he always called “Pigford” with self-conscious resonance.

Frum, whose discontent with the contemporary Republican party is no secret, goes on to add, “but he wasn’t a racist.” He was willing to use racist subtext to attack a president he didn’t like, and damn the consequences. But it was all in the game, yo.

I read some version of this — and Frum’s assessment is very good, I should add — half a dozen times today, and was left thinking that I simply have nothing but contempt for a life lived like this. I have more flaws, failings and human frailty than anyone here, but I think I’m basically honest. I try to tell the truth — and yes, my truth is not absolute and may not be yours — because if you’re in the communication business and you’re a liar, you’re a villain. It’s that simple. This is why I can’t stand phonies like Bob Greene and Mitch Albom, who do the same thing, but in a toadying, flattering way for their suburban audiences. If you write for a living, you may not always swing the sword of truth, but you cannot reject it entirely.

Oh, and may I just say? All these right-wingers clutching their pearls over all the mean things said about their boy today? Who left four young children and a wife, etc., and where is the decency? You have got to be fucking kidding me. Have you read what this man had to say about Ted Kennedy when he moved to the undiscovered country? Seriously?

A few Breitbartian links: Salon. Slate’s rerun of their 2010 profile of the man. Charlie Pierce. Mark Warren, at Charlie Pierce’s blog.

And that’s pretty much where I’m leaving it. No, one more note. Here’s what Shirley Sherrod, who had to leave her job after Breitbart colluded in a lie about her, had to say about his death:

“The news of Mr. Breitbart’s death came as a surprise to me when I was informed of it this morning,” Sherrod said in a statement sent to International Business Times by her attorney, Thomas Clare. “My prayers go out to Mr. Breitbart’s family as they cope during this very difficult time. I do not intend to make any further comments.”

Speaking of the truth, here’s one I need to pass along: I got my Amazon gift card, the one that arrives every few months, my cut of the Kickback Lounge. The range of these payouts ranges from around $17 to — in a Christmas month — $45. But this one? Ninety bucks. I’m speechless. I’m not sure why it’s so high, whether we had more shopping or just one shopper with a fondness for big-ticket items, but I’m not sure it matters. I’m grateful. Really.

OK, now the weekend awaits. I hope yours is spectacular. We’re going to see the Black Keys! Carumba.

Late Thursday evening, and I’m waiting for snow. We’re supposed to get a pile overnight, and I’d like to get a sense of what it might be before I turn in. If the pile arrives, I’ll work here tomorrow. No pile, off to Lansing (City of Light, City of Magic) at oh-dark-30.

In the meantime, I’m watching “Cellblock 6: Female Lockup” on TLC. Women in prison is an erotic archetype for some guys, a fact I’ve been aware of since seeing “The Big Bird Cage” at a drive-in in Ironton, Ohio, sometime around 1972. In an early scene, one of the birds makes a break for it, running for her life while naked and covered with grease. Oh, brother, I recall thinking, wondering how much longer until “Superfly” started.

The first few minutes, featuring a young Pam Grier in a white halter top/bellbottoms outfit. Also, this exchange, between an abducted woman and her kidnapper:

Woman: What are you going to do to me?
Man: Well, first I’m gonna rape ya.
Woman: You can’t rape me. I like sex.

I miss the ’70s. (Except that part.) Not ashamed.

(Later.)

As we’ve come to expect this winter, the snow underwhelmed here in Michigan’s banana belt. Between here and the capital, however, it’s deep and messy and so: It’s an at-home day for me.

But I have to get to work. So here’s some bloggage:

I got through most of this yesterday, Slate’s exhaustive look at Mitt Romney’s evolving abortion position. It’s pretty clear to me that there’s been little evolution at all, except in Romney’s packaging of his beliefs. For me, I keep coming back to Ann Keenan, the sister of Romney’s brother-in-law, who died of a botched illegal abortion in 1963. Once it was important to Romney. Not anymore, I guess. Well, 1963 was a long time ago.

The only voters in play for this primary are the tea partiers, anyway.

Via one of my FB network, “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?,” in French. Because.

Slush. This is winter? Please.

Man, I need to get out more. Friday night, a friend is having her 50th birthday party, which came about in a fairly roundabout way. She and some of her pals were at a charity auction a few days back, and someone bought a cake. This one:

What girl doesn’t want a Barbie cake, especially a glamorous bridal Barbie in a dress made of snow-white fondant? Once she’d been secured, the party was scheduled for a fortnight hence, and Barb spent the interval wrapped in plastic on the birthday girl’s unheated sun porch. The plan was to go to one bar and then to another bar, where they have a dance floor and a DJ and all the rest of it. I skipped bar no. 1, and arrived so early at no. 2 that the bartender and I looked at one another across an empty room. Oh well, I thought — this is why casinos were invented. I was in Greektown, and figured an hour of low-stakes blackjack might pass the time. So I walked a block, and, well.

When Michigan passed a law banning smoking in restaurants and bars statewide, they exempted casinos for the usual bad reasons (lobbyists). It must have convinced a lot of unapologetic smokers to take up slots, because of the hundreds of people crammed into two floors of gambling, at least three-quarters were puffing away. I understand that over time, I’ve lost my tolerance for smoke, but this was ridiculous. And that was only the beginning. The lowest minimum bet on all blackjack tables was $15, ditto on poker. There were a couple of craps tables that looked interesting, but I’ve never understood the game, and the table is so bizarre — COME and DON’T COME sounds like stage direction in a dirty movie, as does “hard eight.” I ended up doing a few slow circuits of the room, leaving and getting a little snack before heading back to the bar, where Barbie was glowing under dim light on a table in back.

From there, it was the usual night with buddies, with a few observations:

1) Anyone who drinks any alcoholic beverage mixed with Red Bull is insane.
2) Those jobs on Craigslist offering to hire young people for “fun PR jobs” are really for the miniskirted blondes who pass through the place in their branded clothing, passing out free samples of their branded cocktails, leaving T-shirts in their wake, but not before asking everyone to pose for glass-in-air pictures. Which is fine if you always wanted to be a cocktail waitress, but not get any tips.
3) Marketing alcohol to young people is a big business. When I went in, the street was deserted but for a few strollers. When I came out, a branded RV from some sort of booze concern was parked across the street, and the block was thronged. I wondered if I’d trade all the physical degradation of middle age — back pain, knee pain, avoirdupois, gray hair and the rest of it — for a second chance at youth, and this would be what I’d do on weekend nights. Decided: Nope.

Drink responsibly!

Barbie finally gave it up yesterday. Once the fondant was peeled off, she sported three layers of vanilla-and-chocolate goodness, plus buttercream. My mother made me a doll cake when I was little. Whatever else they are, they are memorable.

What was your best birthday cake?

Bloggage? Sure:

Newt Gingrich is practically dead, but we’ve said that before. The WashPost digs deeper in his background and finds all that Reagan butt-kissing isn’t exactly a consistent position for him:

In an unnoticed 1992 speech, Newt Gingrich in a single utterance took aim not only at a beloved conservative icon but also at a core tenet of the conservative movement: that government must be limited.

Ronald Reagan’s “weakness,” Gingrich told the National Academy of Public Administration in Atlanta, was that “he didn’t think government mattered. . . . The Reagan failure was to grossly undervalue the centrality of government as the organizing mechanism for reinforcing societal behavior.”

A review of thousands of documents detailing Gingrich’s career shows it wasn’t the first time he had criticized Reagan, whom he regularly invokes today in his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. When Gingrich was in the House, his chief of staff noted at a 1983 staff meeting that his boss frequently derided Reagan, along with then-White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III and Robert H. Michel, the House Republican leader.

Mittens might pull it out in Michigan after all. I’ve learned not to bet on this race, but I’d guess the outcome will depend on whether Sweater Vest actually pledges allegiance to the Pope before it’s over.

Flag-burning we can all get behind:

Wyoming, Mich. — A Michigan man whose son was killed while on patrol in Iraq in 2005 burned the New Jersey flag on his outdoor grill in protest after learning flags in that state were ordered flown at half-staff for the death of Whitney Houston.

Via Hank, why the Oscars are so lame: Oscar voters are overwhelmingly white (94%), male (77%) and old (86% older than 50). Now you know.

Monday! Come and get me!

A great lunch with the Lansing colleagues today. One told us about the time he managed a nude beach near San Francisco. The social culture there seems right for nude sunbathing, the weather not so much. Nevertheless, on days when it was warm enough for seaside lolling, i.e. above 70 degrees, a few hardy souls would come out, strip off and catch their share of rays.

“What’s involved with managing a nude beach?” I wondered. A short list: Stringing up the banner warning away those who might not know what they were getting into, opening the sunblock concession, a few other minor chores, “and then I was on masturbation patrol.” Wow. I get that men like to look at naked women, for sure. It’s just that I’ve never seen a nudist encampment with even a small handful of people you’d actually want to see naked. Throw in the chilly Pacific breezes, the sand, the lack of cover, and you’d think a person would have enough sense to hang out at home with a magazine about nude volleyball tournaments.

Speaking of nudity, the New York Times had a feature today on Kate Upton, the social-media supermodel who was unknown a year ago, and this week debuts on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She owes her fame to YouTube and, duh, her naturally wonderful body. How wonderful? This video, called Kate Upton Slow Motion, should give you an idea. You know what I find amazing about material like this? The comments. There’s a strong faction that says she’s “fat.” OK, sure. Enjoy mom’s basement, kiddo.

How was your Valentine’s Day? I hope you got through it, one way or another. I rolled out of the driveway at 6:37 a.m. and back up it at 5:27 p.m. In between was work and driving. And too much NPR. I love NPR, I donate monthly, but there’s a moment every few weeks when the syrupy voices and preeniness gets on my last nerve. So I switched over to a commercial rock station, the sort of thing I used to listen to regularly. Someone was talking about doing furnace work for a stripper who let her puppy crap all over the house. Wasn’t the idea of getting a lap dance from a stripper who might have puppy poo on her shoes disgusting? he asked. And with that, I snapped the radio off and swore my next car is going to have XM, and I don’t care how much it costs. A few weeks ago I met a guy who said he worked for Clear Channel.

“Oh,” I said, and he and I spoke the words in unison: “The evil empire.”

Now I’m watching Westminster, nursing a single glass of wine, and don’t think I’ll make it to best in show. I called the Doberman as winner of the working group, so the evening was a success. I think it was a fluke, but she set up so nicely. Name was Fifi.

We have much good bloggage today, however.

I touted Animals Talking in All Caps a few days ago. I’ve been working my way through the whole blog, a page at a time, since. This might be my single favorite.

These goddamn Chinese. Can you believe this? Steal the design, steal the profile, and even steal the blue oval:

It looks like a Ford F-150, right down to the iconic blue oval.

But inside the emblem is not the classic Ford script. Instead it’s the three-letter-brand of a Chinese automaker that has borrowed many of the F-150′s details — the hood contours, rectangular grille and extended cab — to emulate the most popular vehicle in America. The JAC 4R3 is set to launch in April during the 2012 Beijing International Automotive Exhibition.

Tommy Tomlinson finds a writing lesson in “Ode to Billy Joe.”

Thank you all for hitting the Bridge links on the right rail; your generosity with your clicks has been noted. There’s some good stuff over there on prison reform, and a short blog piece by moi on a rather dunderheaded misstep in an op-ed “written” by Mitt Romney. It’s not my catch, but it’s a good one.

Finally, I’m growing a little weary of the Jeff Zaslow tributes, but I thought this one, by Neil Steinberg, was very very good.

My eyes feel rubbed raw. Time for bed.

One of the miracles of the age is this: I’m sitting in a bar, writing on my stupid blog. Do I look like a yuppie douche? Probably. But I’m having a nice Czech lager, the day is done, and there’s very likely a shwarma in my future. Which is to say: Who cares?

Wednesdays are becoming my second-favorite night of the week. I drop Kate off at the Max for three and a half hours of music instruction, and I claim the evening for myself. I could go home and catch up on “Top Chef,” wherever it is in its cycle, but I think I prefer the bar.

So, I read this today, about Patch, the hyperlocal AOL experiment that’s sweepin’ the nation, or swept it for a while. We have one here. GrossePointeToday.com competes with it, to the extent we can, with students and volunteers. Our local Patcher does a good job, which I tell anyone who will listen. Our brand is different, and I tell people that, too. But I really, really don’t want to see this:

Patch has implemented a new “One Team One Goal” strategy, with a budget that effectively eliminates anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of freelance dollars, depending on the Patch region and how the supervising editor and regional ad director choose to allocate dollars.

The editorial emphasis is now on “easy, quick-hitting, cookie-cutter copy,” including mandatory “Best Of” features (i.e., best coffeeshop, best burgers, etc.) that compel businesses and readers to visit and participate in the Patch directories. (Each Patch has a directory of local businesses, organizations, churches, etc.)

I’ve noticed that here — a few months back, the local Patch stopped working quite so hard to cover the news and instead started demanding we weigh in on who has the best pizza/hamburger/bar food in eastern Wayne/Macomb counties. Why is it so hard to sell people what they need, and so easy to give them what they want? And I’m not even sure they want it. Who would?

On a lighter note, Romenesko also had more of a give-’em-what-they-want feature — words only journalists use. Such as? “Fled on foot,” for one. I love that one. Everyone should flee on foot more often.

Have we already skipped to the bloggage? Perhaps. How about this, which is by far the most interesting angle on the Pete Hoekstra spot yet: The creator of that ad is the evil genius behind the infamous Carly Fiorina demon sheep spot. Well, that explains a lot.

Via Hank, the answer to the question: What would Thomas Kincaid paint if he were locked in Room 101 for a year and force-fed Glenn Beck recordings, “Clockwork Orange”-style? This.

ANIMALS TALKING IN ALL CAPS. BECAUSE.

A final note: Some of you who’ve been reading here for a while know I have a little cyber-friendship with Amy Welborn, formerly of Fort Wayne, now of Birmingham, Ala. You might also know that Amy had a tragedy three years ago, when her husband, Michael Dubruiel, died unexpectedly, a few months after they made their move.

Amy has published a book about the experience and its aftermath, a sort of “Year of Magical Thinking” with more religion and a trip to Sicily. I downloaded “Wish You Were Here” for my iPad, and have been reading in it over the past couple of days and enjoying it very much. Maybe you will, too, and if you do, you order it via the Kickback Lounge.

With that, let’s start the coast downhill to the weekend, shall we?

Kate’s band had a gig last night. It was a Groundhog Day Eve event at one of the city parks. It was the usual clusterbump — the organizer thought “a PA system” referred to the one with speakers in the ceiling. Scott thought he could use the music school’s electronic drums, and he could, but we had to go fetch them. And then we got set up, and looked around. They thought it would be like the elementary school ice-cream social they played last spring, but it turned out to be even younger kids and a table of developmentally disabled adults. They were the final act, after the nature presentation on groundhogs.

“I feel like we’re in a Seinfeld episode,” Kate said.

“More like a Fellini movie,” I corrected.

But they did fine, even it was a little strange, their alt-rock repertoire with the little kids and the adults and the guy in the groundhog suit. But there was cake — how bad could it be? They finished the show with three verses of “I’m a Little Groundhog.” You don’t know that one?

I’m a little groundhog, furry and round
I’m coming out to look around
If I see my shadow, down I go
Six more weeks of winter, oh no!

I have it on video. I’ve been warned that if I put it on the internet, I will never be forgiven. Can’t really blame her.

So, happy groundhog day. Six more weeks of winter? We haven’t had six weeks of winter, period. Another ridonkulous day of above-40s temperatures, and the daffodils are now a full inch above ground. I’m thinking this is maybe it.

So, some bloggage?

Is there anything to say other than this? Don Cornelius is dead. One more line dance, for old time’s sake:

Happy Thursday, whether your groundhog sees its shadow or not.

I was down at Wayne today when my colleague and GPT partner Ben Burns wandered in. I asked him whether his Little League coaching career had intersected with Prince Fielder’s time in the locals. It had.

Fielder — although I guess you’d call a 12-year-old kid by his first name, wouldn’t you — was a head taller and two kids wider than every other player there, and could hit anything, Ben said. He knocked everything over the fence, to the point that one day Ben called for an intentional walk, generally frowned upon in Little League, but hell, it’s not every day you face a future MLB star.

Fun fact: When Prince was 12, he was messing around in Tiger Stadium with his dad and hit one into the stands. Fair.

So, bloggage?

We had a good Bridge yesterday. Ron’s piece on the loss of skilled public employees in Michigan was great — you never think of stuff like that until you read something like this:

Michele Glinn loved her job, and she was good at it. As the only Ph.D toxicologist working in the Michigan State Police toxicology unit, she analyzed blood samples for alcohol and other drugs — and crisscrossed the state testifying in court.

Frustrated by unpaid furlough days, a shrinking staff and a negative public perception of state employees, Glinn sat down at her computer one day last fall and sent her resume to an employment search firm. “I got a call from the headhunter the same day,” Glinn recalled. “Two days later, I had a phone interview; a week later, I was in St. Louis being offered a job on the spot.”

Her U-Haul crossed the state border in November, leaving Michigan with no one who can provide expert testimony for the prosecution in alcohol and drug cases. “The state has no one to answer scientific questions,” Glinn said. “That’s a public safety issue.”

I had a piece on the guy who does the Pure Michigan parodies.

I was thinking the other day about maybe getting an iPhone 4S — the talking one. But maybe? No:

But not in every way. Siri’s dirty little secret is that she’s a bandwidth guzzler, the digital equivalent of a 10-miles-per-gallon Hummer H1.

To make your wish her command, Siri floods your cell network with a stream of data; her responses require a similarly large flow in return. A study published this month by Arieso, an Atlanta firm that specializes in mobile networks, found that the Siri-equipped iPhone 4S uses twice as much data as does the plain old iPhone 4 and nearly three times as much as does the iPhone 3G. The new phone requires far more data than most other advanced smartphones, which are pretty data-intensive themselves, The Post has reported.

I refuse to be a data hog just to have Siri type my text messages.

I thought the weekend would never come, but it’s here, it’s here! Enjoy yours. I’m hoping to get to the market — it’s been a while. Maybe a picture? Here’s hoping.

Watchin’ the State o’ the Union, drinkin’ a second glass of wine, thinkin’ some thoughts. Among them:

Hey, there’s my congressman. Hansen Clarke. Big clapper. Well, it’s a big night for the D, on all fronts. We get major shoutouts in the SOTU, and the Tigers sign Prince Fielder. Here’s a rerun the Freep dug up from the vaults, about young Prince when he was a Little Leaguer in the Grosse Pointe Woods-Shores Little League. Note the photo. He has a great look in his eye, but clearly took that McDonald’s ad he did with his father to heart. On the other hand, one of the things to love about baseball is that some great players look like they enjoy an extra Pabst Blue Ribbon or three on the off days.

And it’s a good day for my darling daughter, entering the homestretch of midterms week. Today is history and gym. Yes, gym. They’ve been doing parts of it for the last week or so, and today is the 20-minute run, followed by the written test.

“A written test in gym?” her mother asked. “What sort of questions?”

“About stretching and stuff,” she said.

I hope she aces it. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her she’s getting off easy, gym-wise. Our system required .75 credits of gym to graduate, and every year was .25. You got senior year off, if you didn’t skip it chronically, which my friend Jeff did, to avoid getting his ass kicked for being an obvious homosexual. When they threatened to withhold his diploma, he signed up for six weeks of summer-school gym, which consisted of riding bikes and playing cards indoors on rainy days. No locker rooms, no ass-kicking, and the diploma arrived in August instead of June. I asked if he’d do it all again, knowing he missed “Pomp & Circumstance” at Vet’s Memorial and the all-night party.

“Absolutely,” he said.

Tells you everything you need to know about gym.

If she completes this year satisfactorily, Kate will never have to set foot in another high-school gym for anything but dances and pep rallies before graduation. So I hope she remembers how to stretch.

Bloggage? Oh, I’m sure we have some:

The SOTU featured warnings that “the middle class is under threat because of growing disparities between the rich and everyone else in America.” You don’t say. Did I link to that piece in last Sunday’s NYT, about Apple and its work at Foxconn, the Mordor-like Chinese factory where our favorite devices are born? No? You should read it, if you have the chance. It’s long, but like a horror movie, it’s hard to tear your eyes away. When Steve Jobs demanded an scratchproof glass screen for the iPhone, and demanded it be perfect in six weeks, they knew where to turn:

Apple executives say that going overseas, at this point, is their only option. One former executive described how the company relied upon a Chinese factory to revamp iPhone manufacturing just weeks before the device was due on shelves. Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.

A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.

“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

…When an Apple team visited, the Chinese plant’s owners were already constructing a new wing. “This is in case you give us the contract,” the manager said, according to a former Apple executive. The Chinese government had agreed to underwrite costs for numerous industries, and those subsidies had trickled down to the glass-cutting factory. It had a warehouse filled with glass samples available to Apple, free of charge. The owners made engineers available at almost no cost. They had built on-site dormitories so employees would be available 24 hours a day.

That’s why the middle class is in trouble — because we cannot compete with slave labor, essentially. What? You don’t want to live in a dorm attached to your workplace (eight to a room) and be roused at midnight to work a 12-hour shift in the factory that was built by the government? Lazy, lazy, lazy.

I missed Our Man Mitch’s rebuttal last night. Was it any good?

This makes me immediately seek detox with celebrity gossip. Here’s a photo of Demi Moore, and even though it is only head and shoulders, shows the outsize-head-on-tiny-body prototype so common in movie stars. Bonus: Patton Oswalt’s tweet stream after being robbed of an Academy Award nomination.

Time for work. Hump day!

After yesterday’s overcast start, the day brightened into something a little less leaden. The sun was safe behind many veils of clouds, but the rain stopped and what ho, I have an interview at the coffee shop on the corner? Think I’ll wear my raincoat in this mild, 50-degree weather. I called my editor in Lansing after I got home. It was 52 here, but 100 miles to the west, 32. And sure enough, soon the sky darkened again, the wind changed from southwest to northwest justlikethat, rain blew horizontally for a while and tomorrow it’ll be winter again. Highs in the 20s.

Do I start every blog with a weather report? Yes, I do. I am a Midwesterner, after all.

And at the moment I’m a Midwesterner with just two squares of a Green & Black white-chocolate bar left, the spoils of a splurge trip to Whole Foods Saturday. Whole Foods in Ann Arbor, I should add — a childhood friend was passing through, and thought she’d give me a shout, see if I was up for lunch. These days, I have a refuse-no-friends-who-are-passing-through policy, especially when I haven’t seen them in years. You never know when you’ll get another chance.

So we went to Zingerman’s Roadhouse. It was an episode of “Portlandia” come to life, with the waiter introducing himself, sketching out the restaurant’s philosophy (“comfort food and barbecue”), its policy on sourcing (local, of course) and then expressing his deep delight that he would get to break my friends’ Z-cherry, so to speak. All of this would be intolerable if Zingerman’s didn’t dollar up on the hoof so well. You pay through the nose, you put up with this seemingly endless bullshit, but when the food arrives, there is nothing to do but say, “This may be a side dish of macaroni and cheese priced at $7.50, but if there’s a dish of macaroni and cheese worth $7.50? It tastes like this.”

Cindy ordered the go-go grilled cheese sandwich. She asked if she could change the cheeses. But of course. Could she maybe have some cheddar with a little Maytag bleu? Certainly, our waiter said, adding:

“How old?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“How old on the cheddar?” There was a choice. One year, two years, or five. She asked for the one-year vintage. It was an excellent sandwich, and the mushroom soup was even better.

I had lentil soup, with a side of sauteed spinach. I’m going through a big sauteed-spinach phase. So easy. Buy it by the bag, prewashed, throw a little olive oil and garlic into the pan, get it going, toss in the greens and wait until they wilt down into iron-rich deliciousness. Sometimes I have it for breakfast, with a poached egg. Florentine, but without the mornay sauce. Popeye never asked for mornay sauce. It gives me the strength of 10 old bags.

Weather and food. Yep, that’s about right.

Fortunately, we have much good bloggage today:

First, quite the arresting slide show of the Italian cruise-ship disaster. Alan tells me they actually drifted to that position so close to the rocks, but I’m not sure. This overhead view plainly shows barely submerged rocks. How much pinot grigio was this captain drinking? The first rule of marine navigation: If you see rocks sticking out of the water, don’t drive the boat there. (It’s possible that’s some sort of lens flare or other trick of the light. Still. Awful close to those rocks, cap’n.)

My education sources keep telling me the lecture is dead. It’s not only not dead, it’s pretty lucrative — if you’re the lecturer, anyway:

In official Washington, there is an afterlife, and it’s a crowded, cacophonous place. Called the public speaking circuit, this D.C. Elysium is bound by the same transactional laws as the realm that preceded it. But instead of political parties, it is governed by speakers bureaus that promise visibility to those who sign up. In the past 30 years, a proliferation of bureaus has promoted, booked and enriched former lawmakers, candidates, consultants, Cabinet members, political reporters and gadflies.

“Let’s say you are secretary of something — there are two ways you are going to make a really good living: a lobbyist or a speaker, or a combination of the two,” said James Carville, the political consultant and a client of the Washington Speakers Bureau.

The bulls got out at Coozledad’s place again. Spoiler: Purley was OK after his encounter with the truck. I’m so glad, as Purley is the cutest bull ever. You let Mrs. Gingrich set eyes on him, and he’ll be a character in her next children’s book.

Me, on one side effect of the college competition — the common-app crush.

For once, a photo I find more interesting than Tom & Lorenzo. Spike Lee is a Christian now? Mariah Carey looks drunk, but considering she showed up in a version of the same dress that other lady did, maybe she had a reason. And yeah, Shelley shut it down. She looks better every year.

And with that, the hump day commences. Not you, Purley! Down, boy.

Tuesday morning comin’ down, in the form of what looks to be an all-day rain. After a brief cold snap we’re back into the 40s, and while the warmth is better than cold (I guess), it’s certainly dreary. Let’s pick an appropriate picture from the ol’ Flickr stream. Ah, here’s one:

Chili — with or without corn — will taste good today. Photo by J.C. Burns, nicked from his Flickr stream, used under a Creative Commons license. Let’s hop to the links, shall we?

Jim Griffoen at Sweet Juniper! on how they managed to sneak a bit of American toy kitsch into their neighbors’ perfect apartment. How perfect?

So we’ve got these wonderful German neighbors who are such sophisticated design nerds they make us look like Randy Quaid and his wife emptying our RV’s septic tank into the storm drain. One is a professor of architecture (and since most architects already try to look like Germans, you can imagine how ahead of the curve these two are). They have pretty much every piece of iconic midcentury furniture in their immaculate Mies van der Rohe townhouse. It’s like the furniture wing at MOMA.

We had a neighborhood garage sale a few months ago and when this family stopped at ours, the architect saw her four-year-old son having a blast while playing with some of my son’s old toys and she said with a delightful German bluntness:

“I see he likes these toys, but the design is not good and they would not really fit in our home.”

The New Yorker on Callista Gingrich. Fact I didn’t know: She writes children’s books! Well, of course she does, being a strict Catholic who spent her prime childbearing years in unmarried congress with a married man, only to win the big prize (the man) and discover it really wasn’t what she wanted anyway, but it came with a shitload of fancy jewelry and the chance to play Pretend Mommy with her children’s book-authoring career. Every self-respecting child I know would flee from her in terror. Well, book-signings are rare, anyway.

Finally, I am long overdue with this, which ran last week, when my friend Sammy Smith, spouse of J.C. Burns and likely the creator of today’s pot of chili, was settling affairs in Michigan following the death of her mother. She and her father (the Botanist) visited the Michigan Women’s Historical Center and Hall of Fame, and found a photo of then-governor Albert Sleeper signing the bill granting women’s suffrage while selected members of the gender “look on,” as the caption-writers always put it. One is Sammy’s great-grandmother. I like the picture because the women, dowagers all, look like they have the assembled power to stab the governor to death with their hatpins if he doesn’t come across.

Anyway, condolences to Sammy, and a good Tuesday to all.