What a glorious day. Just perfect, pretty much start to finish. I’d planned to get up early for a dawn bike ride, but suffered a 90-minute bout of insomnia after an already late bedtime, so that was down the tubes. But I got away for an hour or so at lunch, and ran errands on two wheels. Stopped at the pet store — the best pet store in Michigan, for my money — for rabbit food, and visited with the baby buns in their big bin. The lady said they have a Flemish giant that they turn loose for exercise, and sometimes he jumps in with the babies. This would be an alarming sight to see, especially for the babies — the sky darkening with something roughly rabbit shaped, and then a bun the size of Spriggy landing in their midst. No wonder they looked so nervous.

Then, to the library to pay overdue fines and look for something for our next family movie night. “High Fidelity” is checked out. Grr. Then down to the ATM for some dolla-dolla-bills-y’all, and back home, not even all that sweaty. I like my Lansing days for the rediscovered joys of officemates and lunch out, and I like my work-at-home days for the bike rides and the chance to get laundry done between phone calls.

Amid all the glory of listening to the birds chirp, and making those phone calls, that was pretty much my day, until Alan pulled into the driveway in this:

Alas, it shipped without the Italian supermodel. But it did have a sunroof, and yesterday was our 19th wedding anniversary, so off we rolled down Lake Shore for an ice cream sundae, and that’s all the fun you can really have when your anniversary falls on a Tuesday, but no matter.

Being online and connected all day, I did collect some bloggage worth your time, however:

One from moi, on one of those crazy urban-farm ideas here in Detroit, only this one has spinach and fish. Hit the link and keep me employed.

My old Columbus Dispatch colleague Julia Keller is leaving the Chicago Tribune to teach at my alma mater. She’s a West Virginia girl, so she’ll enjoy being more or less back home. Almost almost heaven, as we never said in southeast Ohio.

If I read Mark Souder’s stupid column right, he’s mad at Dick Lugar for speaking the truth on election night because it was “ungracious” and slavery and how can you be bipartisan unless you’re partisan first, huh? I consider the day this twit got caught with his weenis in the wrong place proof of a loving and merciful God. Certainly one with a sense of humor.

While we’re on the subject of religious hysterics, a great Charles Pierce piece on the crazy Catholic school whose baseball team refused to play one with a girl on it.

General Motors cancelled a $10 million ad buy with Facebook. Why? Because nobody clicks their ads. Ha.

A note from Kim, of our commenting crew, who is today a job creator. A hirer, anyway:

I have a couple of job opportunities and am wondering if you know of folks either in the NN.C sphere or elsewhere who might be interested. They are in Wilmington, NC and Columbia, SC – my company recently closed on groups of stations in both markets (they were separate deals) and I am at the point of immediately hiring for NC to start up an online-only daily driven by radio. SC will be later this summer. I am looking for a managing editor for both places, and a cops/courts reporter for NC.

Finally, someone — can’t remember who — already noticed a language anachronism edging into “Mad Men,” that most obsessively policed environment, or so we’ve heard. First, Joanie told someone “it is what it is,” a phrase I’d bet a paycheck hadn’t been invented in 1966. Then, this week, a character requested an “impactful” ad. Say whu-? That neologism is so fresh it’s still in diapers. Matt Weiner? You aren’t all you think you are.

Hope Wednesday is as nice as Tuesday was.

We were killing time before going out to dinner the other night, and caught at bit of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony/concert on HBO (read: lotsa profanity). The speeches — both the introductions and the acceptances — went on ridiculously too long, but what are you going to do? It’s a hall of fame; if ever there was a time to run on at the mouth, that’s the time.

There were about a million archival clips, one of which included the Famous Flames, James Brown’s band. Three background vocalists were taking turns at the mic, dancing between ooh-wahs. I was reminded of one of the Original Kings of Comedy bits, where we are told the difference between ol’-skool R&B and hip-hop: Five guys/one microphone vs. 20 guys, and everybody gets a microphone.

Anyway, everybody getting inducted was missing a member, one way or another. A couple of the Faces were dead, and I guess Rod Stewart had better things to do, like maybe put finishing touches on his next collection of crap. Axl Rose stood up the rest of Guns ‘n Roses, but Slash was there. Alan theorized that all that hair is actually part of the leather top hat, that it’s actually stapled to the lining.

Maybe actually stapled to his head. From what I recall of Slash, he probably lost feeling in that extremity long ago.

How was your weekend? Mine was pretty good. Kate’s last jazz concert of the season. They played this, although a different arrangement. I’m going to miss this program, and not for the Wednesday-night me-time. She worked with some excellent musicians and learned a lot, and it washed out, in price, to about $4.50 per hour of instruction. On the other hand, I should probably spend Wednesday evenings at the gym for a while.

Found this on Sunday morning, Edmund White’s recollection of attending Cranbrook a few years ahead of Mitt Romney. I’m telling you, this story will have a peculiar sort of legs for a while, I think; for every “oh, pfft, boys will be boys” there will be at least one person who, like Alex remarked over the weekend, is glad this sort of bullshit is getting the attention it deserves. White:

I already knew I was gay by the time I got to Cranbrook, and I looked forward to this all-male environment. In vain. The school placed the boys in individual rooms in order to cut down on buggery. Kids were run ragged with endless sports practices that consumed the entire afternoon. There were only two brief fifteen-minute periods during the day when boys were allowed to smoke (with their parents’ permission) and to socialize. I did manage to seduce two or three fellow students while at Cranbrook, but only after Casanova-like strategies, whereas I’d heard that some prep schools in the East were real bordellos. I’ve written a novel, “A Boy’s Own Story,” based on my experiences at Cranbook.

I was friends with two writers while at Cranbrook, both of them resolutely straight though strangely tolerant of my “tendencies.” One was Thomas McGuane, who turned out to be a talented novelist and a real Montana rancher and cowboy, a man who’s had movie-star lovers (Margot Kidder and Elizabeth Ashley) and who’s now married to Jimmy Buffett’s sister; he’s said in print that he knew I was gay in school and thought it was “funny.” The other one was Raymond Sokolov, who became a preëminent film and later food critic, who’s lived in Paris and worked for Newsweek, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and whose wife is on the curatorial staff of the Metropolitan Museum.

Thomas McGuane again. I recall interviews in which he told stories about his own problems at Cranbrook, something about copying some Rimbaud poems and submitting them to a clueless teacher as his own, then getting them handed back with D’s and F’s scrawled across them. For all this hoop-de-do about the best and brightest, the place seems — or seemed, then — to be a breeding ground for gentlemen’s-C students from the upper classes.

Or maybe psychopaths.

Since we’ve already skipped to the bloggage, then:

Incorrect headline, shocking story nonetheless. What sort of criminals are we breeding these days?

For laziness, for stating-of-the-obvious, for sheer unadulterated yeah bitchez I gets paid for this, it’s hard to beat Mitch Albom this week. I just don’t have the energy to take it apart. Sorry.

Monday! Another week awaits! Let’s kill it, eh?

I got a call sometime in January from an old pal, asking if I’d like to have lunch in two hours, spur of the moment, and I said yes. It was a wonderful lunch and a wonderful time, and I resolved that if I had the chance to see an old pal again, I’d do it, because once you hit 50 you just never know. I missed my college-newspaper reunion two weeks ago, and I regret it, but we did make time for Dr. Frank Byrne’s 60th birthday party in Madison over the weekend, and I certainly don’t regret that, even though it required a too-early flight out and a too-late flight home and the weather was fairly shitty. It was still a great party, and a day-after breakfast, and somehow — Frank swears — it remained a surprise.

He swears. He’s too nice a guy to say otherwise, but if it’s true, I don’t know how she did it, because it was one big party. All his kids flew in from their various outposts, his mom and sister showed, and there were a few from Fort Wayne, as well as the expected horde from Madtown.

I’ve been living in Detroit long enough that my eye is thoroughly scuffed to the decay; I hardly notice it anymore. But man, did I notice Madison. What a prosperous, money-soaked town. There was a demonstration going on down at the capitol, where we didn’t linger. (See weather report, above.) I mentioned that when we arrived at the party.

“I see they were demonstrating at the capitol.”

“They’re always demonstrating at the capitol. The news would be if they weren’t.”

I gather this will continue until the election, and if Walker isn’t recalled — polling says he has a good shot at prevailing — likely for a while afterward.

That photo below was taken in the student union — the Rathskeller, where we drank beer because of the rain outside, on the famous Memorial Union Terrace. Frank’s favorite summer socializing spot, by the way. Send him out for a pitcher, but don’t expect him back for 45 minutes; he has to stop to talk to a few million people along the way.

(We stayed at the Hotel Red, by the way — Mrs. Frank got a rate. The showers were amazing. I could marry that damn shower. If you ever get a chance to experience one of those multi-head, crazy-ass showers, do so. It made up for the chill rain.)

Our last stop on the way out of town was a record store, where we bought Kate the Velvet Underground’s “White Light/White Heat” album, along with Black Flag’s “In My Head.” “If my parents bought me these records when I was 15, I’d have checked the refrigerator,” the clerk said, but didn’t say for what. I left it at that. Some things, you just leave unexplained.

I really need to keep up on the rest of the paper. As many of you know, I ignore the sports section. Sorry, sports fans, but it’s just too late for me. I read world/nation, metro, business and arts. There are many fine sportswriters in the world and I look them up when I can, but keeping up is something I don’t have time for.

So it was that I learned that a Los Angeles Laker named “Metta World Peace” elbowed an opponent during a game the other day and was ejected. Shouldn’t there be some explanation of the name? Wait, there was explanation of the name? Back when it was changed? From who? Ohhhh, Ron Artest. That guy. He started the brawl at the Palace. And now he’s calling himself World Peace, but I don’t get the Metta. Can anyone explain this? He sounds like he’s still a long way from peaceful.

During my time on the sports copy desk — a six-month stretch that will provide me with a lifetime of boring dinner-party stories — I came to think of basketball as Armpit Season. Picture after picture of armpits. It got old.

In ten days, I’m going to a Tigers game, however. Because free tickets + warm spring night (I hope) = awesome.

Bloggage tonight? Yeah, some:

A stupid Kathleen Parker column. (Yeah, what else is new, right?) A funny Charles Pierce comment on it.

David Simon has a blog (a website, anyway). E-i-e-i-o.

It took some hard pushin’, but I birthed ‘nother project for Bridge. Public-employee pensions, woo, but it’s over. I spent a chunk of today reporting a much lighter piece, and once the end-of-the-term grading is done, I’ll have a much lighter step to match.

Parts one, two, three, four.

And in the meantime, all I have to do is kill dozens of comments out of my email, not from Bridge readers but from Mlive, the newspaper/digital platform where we share our content. Apparently there are people in the world who have nothing better to do than snipe back and forth on newspaper comment boards.

Life is too short for that, but maybe not when your main point consists of honk and the person you’re arguing with says honk-honk.

Good lord, but there’s some bloggage to get to today, so let’s.

This was destined to go viral the minute the judge said, “Hot dog!” So enjoy. (You can’t see his hot dog.)

A naked man runs through my neighborhood. And I MISSED IT. Streaking isn’t back; he’s just a meth casualty released from the psych ward too soon.

Frank Rich on something that isn’t exactly news, but a decent primer on the sugar daddies swinging their moneybags in the current election.

And speaking of public-employee pensions, David Von Drehle tells a story better than I ever could — Rhode Island’s.

Off to edit some copy.

I sent Coozledad an Electric Six T-shirt and all I got was this beautiful watercolor of his pet crow, which Alan just brought back from the framer today:

A terrible photo, I know. Alan wanted to wait until daylight, but I insisted. Here’s a decent detail shot, from Cooz’s own blog. It’s just spectacular, and I’m amazed he’s this generous. I think I’ll send him an old ratty hoodie next, in the hope he’ll reply with some diamond earrings or something. We’ll walk it around the house for a week or two, until the crow tells us where he wants to hang (as long as it’s out of direct sunlight, or close to a bathroom).

This almost counters the news that we lost yet ANOTHER commenter, albeit one of the less-chatty ones — JayZ(the original), who, we learned from Bill, “passed away suddenly in France on Easter Sunday.” May I just say? That’s a line I’d like to see in my obituary someday, if that’s even possible.

I really don’t know what to say about that, other than I’m sorry.

And now it’s week’s end, “30 Rock” night, and I’m having a brownie and a second glass of wine, because why not? Tomorrow I’m going to hit the gym and it will surely hit me back, but I don’t care.

Bloggage?

Professionalism ain’t what it used to be.

The flight path of the pilot whose plane augured in to the Gulf of Mexico today. Lost pressure, blacked out, adios — it’s the same thing that happened to Payne Stewart’s plane a few years back. Arresting to see the final tracings.

Keep talkin’, liberal man. I’m sure it’ll do a lot of good.

Me, I’m going to bed. Have a great weekend, all.

What a week it’s been so far. Moe dies Saturday. On Monday, my car started missing; the verdict was bad ignition coils. Three hunnert dollars, ma’am. Bright side: This might be a recall issue, in which case I can expect reimbursement in four to six weeks.

Today I sat on my glasses. Bright side: I was just telling Kate I’m ready for new ones. I’ve had these for years, and they fit great and look great, but five years is enough for one pair of glasses, if you aren’t Elvis Costello. Still, is this a little too perfect? The last time this happened, I said, “I might be ready for one of those iPhones,” and that very day my pink Razr disappeared, never to be found again.

Meanwhile, I’m finishing a big project at work, and it is another horse-eating deal. Annd it’s the end of the term, and at the moment I feel like one of those marathoners who enters the stadium doing the hurricane walk. If I can get to the end of the week, all will be OK.

And if I can get through tomorrow, I’m planning to have two (2) craft beers after work. Maybe Oberon, if they’ve tapped it at one of my Wednesday places.

In the meantime, I beg your tolerance for a few more days. In return, I bring these tasty links:

A nice piece by Laura Berman in the DetNews about what many claim doesn’t exist: True hunger in the U.S. of A.

Hump day. Let’s get over it, eh?

It blew all day here, 25 mph steady and gusts a lot higher. Limbs down all over, power out to more than 50,000 customers. Knock wood and cast the evil eye aside, we weren’t one of them. Which didn’t stop me from having a fairly lousy day anyway, starting with an unexpected $300 car repair, continuing with blah-blah and salvaged only by dinner — grilled-asparagus omelets with gruyere cheese and a little slivered prosciutto. Both the cheese and the ham were odd-end leftovers. Black bean and roasted corn salad on the side, and a nice glass of wine.

And you know what? Nora Ephron is right: The best omelets are two whole eggs with a third yolk. Richer, but not too.

Remember when I said I’d be crushed for a few more days? I wasn’t kidding. Thanks anyway to my fellow Fellow Rob, who wrote yesterday to say, “your blog is still the shit.” He’s so nice. Take “the” out of that comment and it’s more accurate, but this too shall pass. I’d go dark for a few days, but I like to give y’all new threads to play in.

Any links? This:

Mrs. Romney goes shopping. In Palm Beach.

Mittens out-drawing Barry in Michigan, so far. Interesting map.

Happy Tuesday to all.

Driving to Lansing Friday morning, I found myself in an audio crisis. I can usually make NPR fill at least half the trip, but it’s pledge week. As a sustaining member, I opt out of the miseries of pledge week. Reached for my iPod, but ack! I’d left the earbuds at home, a hazard of dressing for work in the dark. Commercial radio it is, then. I stumbled across a wacky morning team, just as they announced they had a listener who believed she’d found the Word of the Day — some promotion, I expect. She was asked the word of the day, and answered “habitual.” Huzzah, she’s a winner, but wait, there’s one more hoop.

“Can you use it in a sentence?”

“I find chocolate habitual.”

“Very good! You win!”

Fortunately, I’m no longer driving this route at a full gallop, or else the twitching in my hands would have sent me off the road.

A pretty good story in today’s Freep, which qualifies as a unique take on the old problem of school safety. It considers a truly horrifying aspect of Detroit school life — the walk to school. I was telling my students the other day to try to keep fresh eyes, especially around Detroit, because it’s easy to start taking blight for granted, after you’ve seen it for a while. The photo gallery is an eye-popper.

On a lighter note, this amusing New York magazine piece on the artisanal artisanal-ness of Brooklyn. I recall exchanging an email or two with Roy after I stumbled across a Kickstarter for some outfit there, raising money to make artisanal soft drinks. Roy lived there at the time, and to my what-the-what question, he replied, “Not my part of Brooklyn.” Good to know.

Finally, I suppose most of you know by now that Moe, our comment-community member of four years, known in her analog life as Regina Cullen of Seattle, Wash., died over the weekend. In what has become a grim tradition here, J.C. has taken all her comments and collected them on a single page, which you can find here. (Link on the sidebar under Getting There from Here, along with those of Ashley Morris and Whitebeard.) It starts with her first appearance, Leap Day 2008, which we long-timers remember as Tim Goeglein Day. It ends, 2,204 comments later, on March 26 of this year. She was active and engaged, never self-pitying, throughout what must have been a long and very painful illness. She was posting on her Facebook page March 31 — a funny video of British animal voiceovers. The day before that, an excoriation of Mitt Romney’s contributions to the National Organization for Marriage. I think that was probably a pretty good distillation of Moe as we knew her — engaged with the nitty-gritty, but still up for a laugh. Our community will be poorer for her loss.

We’ve been having some terrible restaurant luck lately. The last couple of Easters, we have been meeting Alan’s sister for a meal halfway between our places, i.e. Toledo. The place we went last year went out of business, and this year’s choice, a boîte in the hipster district called Manhattan’s, should do the same. I hope they serve a great cocktail, because their brunch was an overpriced festival of disappointment. Fortunately, Toledo has a fine zoo, and that’s where we spent the afternoon, looking for the meerkats but not finding them — their exhibit was being remodeled. We did see the baby elephant, whose name is Louie. And the usual complement of beasts large and small. Alan was in search of the monkey house of his childhood memories, and we finally found it. It had been renovated into a food court, and the old cage-type setup is perfect for housing junk food-eating people, if you ask me.

Maybe Manhattan’s should investigate a rehab.

Otherwise, a fine weekend. One of my Facebook network, a professional photographer, posted a socko picture he took early Saturday morning, one he said he’s been trying to capture for four years. If you live around here, you know this weekend was exceptionally clear, and the moon was full Friday night. Another one.

That was a hell of a “Mad Men” last night, ain’a? I’m impressed by how well they’re conjuring the ’60s so far this season. Say “the ’60s” and it’s easy to default to hippies. It’s much more, and we forget how the drumbeat of urban violence really began to get loud around this time. Discuss, if you’re so inclined.

As many of you know, eight years ago I was fortunate enough to be a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, a sabbatical year for mid-career journalists. The fellowship was named for its major benefactors; the Knight was the foundation, and the Wallace was Mike, who died this weekend. He came to town every year, to meet the fellows and hobnob around his alma mater, where he was much-loved and respected. He didn’t come our year, however. Charles Eisendrath, the fellowship director, apologized on his behalf: “The bad news is, Mike had to cancel. He’s crashing deadline on a story. The good news is, he’s 86 and crashing deadline on a story.”

And so I didn’t lay eyes on him until a few years later, when he came in for a reunion to celebrate some milestone or another. I didn’t talk to him, as he was the sort of guy who is surrounded by people clamoring for his attention, and what do you say to Mike Wallace? That was great, when you nailed that guy that time, maybe. I haven’t watched “60 Minutes” in years, and when I have, I’m struck by what a throwback it is, but the fact remains, it’s a classic, and classics don’t change because everything else does. For many, many years, it was the gold standard, and Wallace was the most important reporter they had. I’m sure, in the days to come, some bold gnat will sneer about his early days as a pitchman for Fluffo shortening, or some vapid actress interview, but the fact remains, when it counted, he cast a long, long shadow.