So Alan, who is normally immune to sales pitches of all kinds, saw a “brown Friday” sale on the Tushy aftermarket bidet, and bought one.

By “aftermarket” I mean that it didn’t involve installing a new fixture in our brand-new bathroom, but was one of those things that attaches to the bottom of your toilet seat and uses the same water line. There’s a button to the side that you use to direct and control the stream.

I avoided it for a few days, thinking, god, who wants to squirt cold water on your asshole, but eventually thought I needed to at least try it. The first splash was a little weird, but within one or two, um, days, I was a convert. Now, when I feel the urge, I go upstairs to the Tushy bathroom and indulge myself. I can’t wait for warm weather, when the cool stream will feel even more refreshing.

It serves to remind me, once again, that middle-class Americans* enjoy a standard of living the richest people a century ago couldn’t imagine.

We went through a few castles/fine homes in Spain, including the Casa Mila in Barcelona, one of Gaudi’s many masterpieces. It was built to house one of the city’s wealthiest families, and yet, a stroll through their living spaces is fairly underwhelming. The audio guide directed our attention, in the bathroom, to a samovar-like tank on a rack over the tub. About five gallons, maybe, with a gas burner underneath. This gave the bather the unimaginable luxury of…hot water. Years ago, I worked on a custom-publishing job about some great houses in Detroit. I looked through the correspondence of the original head of the household, and it was filled with bitching about how much it cost to heat the place, and the damn servants kept leaving windows cracked, in the dead of winter, and how do you like them apples.

I thought about this as I patted my backside dry with a few squares of TP this morning. World, envy me, for I have a clean butthole!

Two warnings about the Tushy: First, make sure to Google “tushy bidet” and go to that link; do not, for any reason, visit tushy-dot-com. Second, if you decide to buy one, prepare yourself for a barrage of excrement puns in your email, filled with poop emojis and the like. You can unsubscribe, of course, but just be advised. If you’re sensitive to that kind of thing.

* And our pets. It’s ridiculous.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have been riveted by the news out of Washington the past few days — the J6 committee report, the Trump tax returns, all of it. Too many links to post. What are the odds the Justice Department will actually live up to its name? Discuss.

Otherwise, we’re all waiting for the big blizzard that’s supposed to hit us overnight. (I had my teeth cleaned on Tuesday, and the hygienist said, “What about those people in Florida? It’s supposed to be in the 40s there!” My reply: “Who gives a shit?”)

Snow totals for our part of Michigan’s banana belt are now forecast at 2 inches, which is nothing, but the wind and plunging temperatures could be grim. I’m way more concerned with power outages. Keeping all devices charged today, and you should, too.

Hunker down! Let’s hope for some good pictures!

I got virtually all my shopping done before December 1, so I thought I might spend this month doing the things other people do, but I never seem to have time for. Like…baking. I’m not one to make dozens of family-recipe cookies and breads and candies, but a friend sent me this one for something called Negroni cookies and I whipped up a batch last night.

They turned out pretty great. Not overpoweringly sweet, interesting flavors, nice to look at on a plate. A lot of work for about two dozen cookies, but oh well. Endorsed.

Cookie reports. That’s what I’m reduced to. Wait — I also do the crossword puzzle and the NYT’s Spelling Bee, so I haven’t quite tipped into full-on pathetic old-lady existence just yet. Or is that the actual evidence. Thought so.

Sorry I’ve been so scarce this week. Two problems: I have little to say and I’m doing some freelance work. No giveaways, but how about a hint?

Yeah, you’re gonna have to wait for this one. Sorry.

I woke up the other morning to the news that Elon Musk was booed — loudly, and for a long time — during a Dave Chappelle set in San Francisco last month. From his reaction, ” a first for me in real life (frequent on Twitter),” it sounds like he’s like most rich guys, in that he’s surrounded by ass-kissers and thinks his shit doesn’t stink. (“No sir! Smells like fresh blueberry muffins back here!”) I will never understand this level of self-delusion, but then, I guess that’s what he pays his entourage to do. Plump his pillows, fluff his feathers, you know the drill.

Dave Chappelle, I figured, would know better. I guess he likes to punch down now.

As public comedowns go, it’s hard to beat the one Musk is going through now. Without being arrested or charged with a crime, he’s managed to squander a large chunk of his wealth, do serious damage to his reputation and stand revealed as an empty, silly twit, given to replicating his shallow gene pool with multiple women and tweeting slander about Dr. Fauci.

Dolt.

Now I’m watching “Pelosi in the House” and it’s getting to the good part, so. See you later. I hope before the end of the week, but you never know — the cup needs to refill.

What started as a little lower-back pain is turning into Backpocalypse. Third straight day in bed most of the time, with occasional movement to stay limber. I can cook a meal (although taking a cast-iron skillet out of the stove last night was a struggle) and walk the dog (as long as she doesn’t want a long one), but not sit for longer than a few minutes.

Saw my doctor yesterday. He prescribed prednisone (not helping so far), muscle relaxants (really not helping so far), and an x-ray. And physical therapy, which I have to set up. We’ll see. I’m hoping for recovery by the weekend. This shit sucks, although I’m doing a lot of reading and watching old Sopranos episodes on the laptop. It’s been interesting, seeing James Gandolfini assume the role of his life, the antihero who ushered in the golden age of TV. I recall showrunner David Chase despairing at how many of his own fans described Tony as “a good guy.” He’s not a good guy, and even the earliest seasons underline that.

Oh, well.

Bedbound as I am, I’ve been spending some time reading the news. This is the one-year anniversary of the Oxford High School shooting out in the exurbs. I haven’t read a single word of the coverage. Anniversary journalism was created for editors, so they can plan for a day sometime in the future. I don’t want to read about anyone’s grief, I don’t want to read how the survivors are coping, and I especially never, ever want to see another hashtag like #(Name of city)Strong. I hate the way these events are so common now, all we do is read from scripts afterward. For years, self-appointed media experts have begged reporters not to write so much about the killers, but instead concentrate on the victims. The message has sunk in, so today I’m scrolling past photo arrays of the four students killed, because we heard it all a year ago. It was tragic when they were killed, and it’s still tragic. I don’t see this as news.

Meanwhile, the cases against the kid who did the shooting, and his parents, who are being charged with negligent homicide, continue to drag on. The boy pled guilty a while back, but his parents are still fighting.

So I turn the virtual page, and it’s all about the impending rail strike, and I feel insane just reading about it. Are you telling me, NPR and New York Times and all the rest, that we’re looking at a national strike over four days of paid sick time, and what’s more, that today rail workers have ZERO DAYS OF PAID SICK TIME? How the hell did that happen? How does any industry get away with that? Is there something special about railroad work that it can’t accommodate workers having four measly sick days? Can someone explain this to a woman flat on her back waiting for the anti-inflammatories to kick in? Because I’m done with the crossword puzzle already and I’m temporarily sick of Tony Soprano.

If you grow up in Columbus, it doesn’t seem weird to have at least three friends whose parents have turned their rec room, or guest bathroom, or whatever, into a shrine to the Ohio State Buckeyes — the buckeye wallpaper, the block-O toilet seat lid, maybe a framed picture of the coach of the moment. When a baby girl is born to Mr. and Mrs. Gray, and they name her Scarlett Ann, netting them a cute story in the local media, it just seems…normal.

It’s a measure of how far I’ve come from Columbus that when the Free Press did a story last week about all the businesses along High Street had covered any Ms in their signage, I was able to finally say JFC these people. (Borden and I used to hang out at a High Street club called Crazy Mama’s, which I suppose would have to be called Crazy Xaxa’s. The basement place next door would be Xister Brown’s Descent. Down the Street? XcDonald’s.)

This is stirring up memories of working as a reporter in Columbus, and how it intersected with OSU. In Michigan it’s the couch blazes in East Lansing, but in Ohio, it can be anything. My favorite was the two city council members whose romance went sour: The spurned boyfriend drunkenly broke into her apartment in the middle of the night, and rousted his ex and her new lover out of bed. I believe he threatened them with a barbecue fork he found in the kitchen. He made them do Script Ohio stark naked, then stabbed their waterbed to death before fleeing the scene. This prompted a city editor, a legendary drunk himself but one blessed with a Shakespearean actor’s voice and diction, to crow to the newsroom at large, “Ah yes! Miss Coleman’s companion swung his baton while she enthusiastically dotted the I!” Newsrooms were fun places, back then.

I usually don’t take a side in sports contests, because it seems to be an E-ticket to misery. But man, I have to say: When Michigan put the smackdown on Ohio State on Saturday, it felt…wonderful. Underdogs, in hostile territory, all the sports yakkers calling them sacrificial lambs – and then they not only win, but win decisively? It was nice.

The chips and dip weren’t bad, either. I see why people get into this.

I hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, and I apologize for being absent. There was work to do, my back is still KILLING me, and ever since I got this new laptop, your comments are no longer coming to my email. A few will slip through, but it isn’t a steady stream rolling across my desktop. I have to check the dashboard, or just dial up the site like anybody else. It’s no biggie, but I get behind from time to time.

Anyway, it was a good weekend for me — holiday, birthday, OSU-beatdown day.

How about a meme, then?

Ha ha.

OK, enough gloating. Occasionally, I surfaced to check out the news. And whaddaya know? Nothing changes:

Republican lawmakers have largely remained silent in the wake of former President Trump’s dinner with antisemitic rapper Ye and white nationalist Nick Fuentes, reviving a tactic they frequently relied on during his presidency.

Wonderful. Just wonderful. I should go back to bed.

Hope the week ahead is good for everyone. I’ll be here more frequently.

I’ll say one thing for this Twitter business: It sure makes me never, ever want to own a Tesla.

Seriously, the return of Trump last night only shows how ridiculous this whole affair has become. At least we have the pleasure of Trump declining to rejoin, ha ha, because his own worthless social network is doing so well. When Musk took over Twitter, a number of people jumped ship and a couple urged me to do the same. I’m thinking: Nah. This shit is too funny. If it fails, it fails, and I’ll read more books. That’s a good thing.

Sherri commented on the last thread: If Elon runs Tesla the way he’s running Twitter, Tesla vehicles are a clear and present danger on our roads, because the man is demonstrating that he knows nothing about software engineering. As the wife of the former Detroit News autos editor: Can confirm. How the NHTSA lets Tesla get away with so much of the shit they’ve pulled — there are many examples, but the biggest is calling their driver-assist technology “autopilot” — is simply mystifying. He’s the living embodiment of one of my favorite Peter Arno cartoons.

And we awakened Sunday to yet another mass shooting. I hope that whoever the Colorado Springs gay-bar patron was who disarmed and pistol-whipped the perp, stopping the massacre, that she was a drag queen.

So the week of thanks begins. Congratulations if you’re off. I, unemployed and quote-unquote retired, have two interviews scheduled — not heavy lifting, I grant you — and the usual complement of errands and tasks to complete before the Day. I’m mostly done, but I forgot Cool Whip, the secret ingredient for my trashy-but-delicious Waldorf salad, and I’m-a get a big block of cheddar to perhaps whip up something new for the before-bird snacking. And Friday’s my birthday. Sixty-damn-five. And you may ask yourself: Well, how did I get here? One year at a time, that’s how. Rewatching the video at that link, though, I gotta say I don’t wish I were younger. (Just a pain-free 65.) We had some great music to enjoy when it was fresh. We still have great music, but it’s much harder to find. It reminds me of after I moved to Fort Wayne, and would subscribe to the Village Voice, just for the music coverage, in search of something, anything to listen to that wasn’t classic rock. Now everyone outside of a few large cities has to do something like that. Because so many radio people are simply awful.

Maybe we’ve discussed this before, but long before newspapers ruined themselves by trying to be everything to everyone, radio did the same. I’ve probably told this story before, but when I briefly worked at WOWO, they had a consultant who gave them top-secret, proprietary, must-shred-upon-completion playlists. Or maybe he just looked over the ones they had and made suggestions. Whatever it was, he vetoed the Carpenters’ “Goodbye to Love” as too edgy for WOWO’s conservative, very middle-of-the-road listeners. Remember that song? A slow ballad, Karen’s voice warbling in self-pity over her broken heart. The Carpenters? you’re asking, as I did. The consultant explained that there’s a fuzz-guitar break in the middle and whoa, too-too much. The program director pushed back, and he said OK, you can play it, but not in the morning.

Blow that pathetic example out, add shock jocks like the two guys in your town who make dick jokes and the extremely loathsome Randy Michaels, and you see why I’m no particular fan. You public radio people are exempt from this judgment, you know that. But if you ever ran a rock station, and rejected the B-52s for more Led Zeppelin in the playlist, you know who you are.

The weekend was good. Saw Kate play at the Magic Stick with her second band. She joined us in a small area with seating for the Protomartyr set, and I saw something even more impressive: Her handling an old creep who wanted to chat her up. Toward the back side of middle-aged, wedding ring, standing too close to my 26-year-old daughter, who was wearing a short black dress and bright red lipstick. It was pretty much this situation exactly:

I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, the guy was there but she was gone. “He had stank breath,” she said later. Of course I made a meme:

OK, time to go. Painters are here to do the final-final bit of Home Improvement, and I have one of those interviews in…23 minutes. Ciao!

Longtime readers know that my husband and daughter share a birthday, and it was yesterday. I usually make a meal and cake, but for two years now, we’ve met at a local restaurant and brought a bakery cake. And it’s been pretty great. We gave Kate a white-noise machine to help her sleep, and she gave Alan this:

That’s a bottle of artisanal mescal with a scorpion in it. A scorpion for a Scorpio. Ha ha.

She bought it around Halloween, in Mexico City, where she and the band had a gig. Someone was asking how they’re doing? Pretty good. They just finished their second album, it’s mixed and mastered, and they’re looking for a lawyer/manager/agent, all that crap. Kate continues to play in a second band, GiGi, and they’re opening for Protomartyr tomorrow night, and if you don’t know those names, well, you don’t live here and haunt the half-dozen or so venues where bands like them play.

And man, for some reason it’s been a bit of a week, probably because I went to Canada for two days at the beginning of it. When I got back, I realized I’d have a buttload of stuff to do, and it was all complicated by sudden-onset, near-crippling lower back pain. To all you armchair physicians: I doubt it’s a disc. I just woke up feeling like the Tin Man, so sore that if I’d dropped a $100 bill, I’d have let the wind take it rather than try to pick it up. Today I forced myself to swim 45 minutes, and everything seemed to loosen up a tad. Walked the dog, got another tad out of it. And now I feel 42 percent better.

Personally, I think it’s my body getting cheeky. Just a couple of weeks ago, I said to myself, “It’s funny. I never get headaches and I rarely get backaches. Two days later, a days-long headache and now this. I had to see my doctor on another matter and told him about my headache. He felt the back of my neck and said it was like kneading walnuts and suggested a massage. Perhaps I should spend retirement investigating alternative medicine treatments, getting a little more Woo about the old bod. Acupuncture, massage, infrared saunas.

But enough about me.

I’m not a subscriber to Business Insider and won’t become one, but you can get the gist of this story from the Twitter thread: Put simply, a tech-centric version of the evangelistic “quiverfull” movement is quietly trying to fill the earth with their self-determined genetically superior offspring.

(1/5) A few months ago I got a tip: A source told me that Elon Musk had "more children" than the public realized. So I did some reporting, and… it was true! He'd had twins with one of his employees. But I always felt like there was more to the story. https://t.co/vX9VmVBwfX

— Julia Black (@mjnblack) November 17, 2022

I’m so old — how old are you? — I’m so old that this reminds me of the Nobel laureate sperm bank that one of these literal wankers put together in the ’70s, correctly sensing that large number of women would grow weary of singles’ bars and would seek to become single mothers by buying a shot at a clinic somewhere. As I recall, this literal wanker managed to get three of them (Barack Obama had yet to win, dammmmmn guuurrrrl), but the place had gone limp (sorry) by 1999. New York magazine tells us:

In 2001, journalist David Plotz began an investigation for Slate into the donors of Graham’s clinic, and what had happened to their prized semen. (He riffs that he earned the nickname the Semen Detective, and later published a book on it, titled The Genius Factory). All in all, not a single baby ended up inheriting Nobel DNA, yet 217 kids in total were born from the sperm bank. Each donor was identified in sperm-bank catalogues by a color — fuschia no. 1, for example, or coral no. 36. After Plotz put out his call on Slate, he began publishing articles like “A Mother Searches for ‘Donor White,’” connecting with kids looking for their dads, as well as starting to reach the men who had donated to Graham’s sperm bank.

What he discovered was that just a few of the donors had produced a whole lot of offspring; for instance, one donor had produced as many as 30 kids, and that was just the ones Plotz knew about. He also found that the donors had been kind of a mixed bag. One man had falsely gotten into the bank by claiming to have an IQ of 160; another was the unremarkable son of a Nobel Prize winner; another was an Olympic gold medalist. As it turns out, after he failed to get the Nobel-winning sperm he sought, Graham began searching for donors on college campuses and recruiting young scientists, as well as hunting for “Renaissance men … donors who were younger, taller, and better looking than the laureates.” (In keeping with the sperm bank’s eugenicist legacy, all of the men were white). By the mid-1980s, Graham was accepting pretty much anyone who volunteered. “Forget about Nobel laureates; the Nobel sperm bank was taking men you wouldn’t wish on your ex-girlfriend,” Plotz writes. Ultimately, the sperm bank became kind of a scam, with women continuing to seek its services based on an illusory reputation that it couldn’t live up to.

If you’re still wondering whether you can get your hands on any of this mystery sperm, I’m afraid you’re out of luck; the bank closed in 1999, shortly after Graham’s death, and the frozen vials of sperm were incinerated.

Maybe humanity is getting dumber. After all, we dreamed up this silliness. And as anyone my age could tell you, sooner or later everything falls apart. And have you seen Elon Musk in a swimsuit? Eee-yikes.

OK, I think I’m going to call it a week. Happy weekend all, and let’s slide into the holiday weekend.

Now this is what I needed: A few days away. Hello from Canada:

This is the view from where I am, just outside Leamington, Ont. That’s Lake Erie. Typical November sunrise, nothing too special. I’m disappointed my phone couldn’t catch the colors — such as they were — no matter how I monkeyed with the exposure. I might be suffering iPhone 14 envy, having seen some of the amazing photos you lucky ducks are posting. But the ol’ 8 Plus is doing just fine otherwise, so I’ll endure.

Anyway, we’re on a getaway, me and a girlfriend. Just a couple days spent enjoying an off-season waterfront Airbnb, seeing the sights. You know what sights there are to see in Leamington? This:

A terrible picture, I know, but: Greenhouses. Thousands of acres of them, most built in the last decade or so. Leamington was already the Tomato Capital of Canada, and then they figured, hey, if we put glass over those fields, we can grow a lot more. And so they did, and this is why the produce terminal in Detroit is the first stateside stop for many of the vegetables consumed in my part of the U.S. (A fair amount of cannabis, fully legal in Canada, comes out of this area, too.) Last I checked, there were about 3,000 acres of greenhouses in this neighborhood, with more planned, although the light pollution is pretty serious, and the growers and environmentalists are trying to work things out. I can tell you that after the sun went down last night, there was still a band of light at the eastern horizon and as for the west, visible from my bedroom window, it was perma-sunset: That pink glow behind the trees, all night long.

The tomatoes they produce aren’t as good as homegrown, but they’re a lot better than the winter tomatoes I remember. I use them in salads in January; they’re fine. And I really enjoy the spinach and lettuce, peppers and cucumbers we get from here.

Today, I’m thinking Point Pelee for some bird-watching. Also, more sitting around in the hot tub, and also perhaps another couple episodes of “The Crown,” a show neither of our husbands is into. (I do recall Alan’s priceless line from when Charles and Diana were splitting up, mid-’90s. I explained it all to him, and he said, “No wonder he spends so much time fishing.”)

A bar cheeseburger may be in my future today, too. With a locally brewed lager. O, Canada.

I don’t have much bloggage, mainly because I’m still marinating in serotonin from the election. You have your own takes, but I think this is an interesting look at what might transpire in 2024. Beyond that, I think I’m going to turn my focus to Thanksgiving, and all I have to be thankful for.

You guys. I’m going to be scarce, or scattered, around here the next few days. For lo, election time is upon our nation and I volunteered to not only be a day-of challenger, but also a pre-processing observer, figuring, I’m retired, what else do I have to do? And not too much was a dumb answer, because chores and jobs are starting to pile up.

This weekend was the monkey wrench. I signed up for lifeguard training, and had to do the whole course again because I let my last certification lapse. It consumed the weekend like a ravenous beast, and isn’t even over. (The pool where we were supposed to do the deep-water stuff had mechanical problems, so that part is TBA.) But. I found time to attend two fun parties Saturday night, and had a couple drinks with a friend Sunday, so it wasn’t terrible. I’m just behind on everything else, relearning the lesson of my youth: Laundry will wait, but a fun party won’t.

I start ballot pre-processing observation this afternoon. And then it’ll be a sprint into Wednesday.

I’m feeling pretty confident about Michigan, a couple of nail-biter races notwithstanding. I’m not feeling good about the rest of the country, though. A doomy friend says these are the last good years in America. I’m increasingly thinking he’s right.

So to fill out the post, some pix from this weekend.

Learning infant CPR in lifeguarding class:

Me with a friend’s real baby and her grandmother at one of the fun parties. (He and his wife bought a convent and have filled it with massage therapists, facialists and artists. No one knew much about the elk, other than he was a native of Saskatchewan.) I’m dressed down because the earlier party was outdoors and extremely casual.

Finally, look what Alan found while vacuuming out a cold-air intake in our foyer. It’s in pretty good shape for having spent half a century in the bowels of our house:

If it’s worth anything, let me know. Otherwise I’m buying a lottery ticket.

Good week, all. I’ll speak up when I next surface.

(One last holiday-related post, sorry. But I think many of you can relate.)

I love Airbnb. Also, I hate Airbnb. It makes the sort of travel we’ve been doing in recent years not only affordable, but possible; there’s no way we could have stayed deep in the medinas of Morocco without it. Our last place, in Essaouira, was magical – it looked like the set of a French New Wave movie. The feral cats knocked on the door to the courtyard at 2 a.m., and were somehow charming rather than annoying. The host stopped by one day, and we got into a conversation about the difference between vegetarianism and veganism, both of which he found baffling. In other cities, Airbnb has given us space to spread out, to make simple meals, to take refuge in a place other than a hotel. On a couple of trips, traveling alone, I’ve done the single-room-in-a-house deal, and had not only comfortable lodging but made great connections.

However. When we met friends for dinner in Barcelona, I told her we were staying on a particular street in La Gracia. “Our Airbnb was on that street too,” she replied, and as we walked around the neighborhood, the signs were ummistakable: The doorbells/street mailboxes that all carried the same label, because a management company was renting them all. The “Tourists go home” graffiti everywhere. Airbnb had so infiltrated that charming neighborhood that locals were being priced out of it.

This isn’t a matter of opinion; short-term rentals are driving housing shortages in desirable cities everywhere. And problem rentals, like those in any hot American city where young people hold destination bachelor/bachelorette parties, are a headache for everyone. A friend here lives in Midtown Detroit, another area with skyrocketing rents, especially in Midtown. On a recent stroll down his own street, he said, he realized all the closest blocks were thick with Airbnb. In Detroit.

In west Michigan, a few communities have tried to enact local ordinances governing them, which prompted an influx of Airbnb lobbyists to the capital, who had little trouble convincing the GOP-controlled legislature that their allegedly foundational belief that small government knows best is wrong, at least in this case. Now there’s a law that says you can’t restrict short-term rentals in your own community.

And not all of our experiences have been great. We had to wrangle with our Madrid host, who took one flat and turned it into three, and stuck us in one that was decidedly not the one in the photos when we booked. He moved us after a couple days, which was fine, but the two unpictured flats were likely inescapable in a fire, something I think about a lot, especially in Europe. Our friends who met us there had an even worse experience, arriving to find their building wrapped in scaffolding, and workmen clambering around on it with very loud power tools, starting at 8 a.m. They bolted for a hotel after two days.

VRBO, I’m told, is better, but it’s much rarer, too. (We rent a VRBO cottage in northern Michigan, far from neighbors, and our cleanliness and care with the place inspired the owner to offer to deal with us directly, waiving the VRBO fee, etc. I treat rentals the same way I treat my own house.)

In the end, I feel like Airbnb is one of those supremely irritating move-fast-and-break-things products of Silicon Valley, where some guy says hey I got an idea, more guys shower him with money, and a few lucky people walk away multi-millionaires, while the rest of us get to sort out the inevitable consequences.

Nevertheless, we’ll probably use it again. Sigh.

How was everyone’s weekend? Ours was fine. We’re still working on the house, or rather, Alan is. (I provide domestic support in the form of laundry and meals.) Cooked some, shopped some, went out some. Shadow Show opened for another all-girl band at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit, which was an excuse to get out and about. Talked a lot to a random kid sitting nearby, who told me all about his Birthright trip to Israel. I found a reference to a previously unknown biography of Warren Zevon, which prompted me, the Zevon superfan, to look it up on Amazon. Used the look-inside feature to get a sense of it. The epigraph alone put me off:

It didn’t improve. Here’s something I’m always telling writers I edit: Don’t use a quote to repeat something you just said, not in a quote. Do they listen? Maybe some do. This guy didn’t:

And now the same writer is doing a biography of Elmore Leonard. Guess I’ll be giving that one a pass, too.

So. The week ahead yawns with possibilities. So far I’ll be…meeting with a Medicare guru, schvitzing with a swimming friend, taking online training to be a poll challenger. I was going to work the absentee counting boards, but all the training — required by law — was held during our time away. My job is literally, LITERALLY, pulling the stubs off ballots, but I can’t, by law, work without being retrained in how to pull the stubs off ballots. Remember, Donald Trump told you Detroit was a lawless place, “so corrupt,” and that, my friends, is bullshit. So I’ll help out this way.

Good week ahead to all. Don’t use quotes to repeat something you just wrote! Use quotes to illuminate and add dimension to what you just wrote!

Here’s a random Spain pic for you, the high altar in the cathedral in Toledo. Notre Dame looks like a simple country church compared to this place:

You know I’m writing this stuff down not just to please you folks, but to get it down before I forget, right? The photos are mostly for your entertainment, though.

Anyway, some random notes as I wind up the week. I may think of another one-topic post over the weekend, but one thing I learned this trip: I am shit at keeping hand-written notes. I find it easier to dictate notes via talk-to-text, with all the screwups that involves. Those authors who write in longhand? My hat, it is doffed.

For now, though, some randomness:

Covid

We got our third booster a week before we left, and here’s my confession: I behaved like a guy at an orgy who left his condoms in the car, but doesn’t want to miss any of the fun. Which is to say, I was shamefully mask-less in many venues, although I wore one in others. In my defense, I offer only two weak arguments: First, that when it comes to me and masks, heat is kryptonite. If it’s hot outside, I find it very hard to tolerate even a light, surgical-style mask. And it was plenty warm in both cities while we were there. It wasn’t a problem for outdoor stuff, and most of what we did was outdoors, but in some venues I just said fuck it, I’m taking my chances. The biggest test was when we saw Brian Jonestown Massacre at Sala Apollo in Barcelona. It was a packed, SRO house, and we were right there in the thick of it. No way — for me, anyway — to wear a mask in the press of bodies.

Which leads me to the second reason: Spain seems to have decided Covid is over. We did the same thing we did pre-France, that is, uploaded all our vax records to a government health agency and got the QR code for our phones, but not one venue asked to see them. Hardly anyone was wearing masks, so we followed the crowd, combined with some common sense. Packed subway cars, yes. Museums and airy spaces, no. I saw a man reading a newspaper on a subway train, translated the front-page headline as “Covid cases down” and thought, the vaccination rate here is 85 percent, I’ve got a fresh one in my immune system, let’s see how they work. And they worked fine. We didn’t get Covid.

Although we both got colds. In Madrid. My first since 2020. It slowed me down toward the end of the trip, but my knees were starting to hurt from all the walking, so I’ll take it.

(And if you think the colds may have been post-vax Covid, we tested. Both of us, twice. Negative.)

Getting around

I can’t say enough about how wonderful it was to be in two cities with excellent public transit, one of the great shames of Detroit (and many other cities). We went everywhere via subway and bus, and rarely had to walk more than 500 meters or so from station to destination. And don’t get me started on the high-speed rail. The driving distance from Barcelona to Madrid is 383 miles; we covered it in a little over three hours. The day trips to Segovia and Toledo, both 55 miles from Madrid? Twenty-seven minutes via rail. There are days when it takes longer to get to downtown Detroit, and I’m inner-ring.

But the U.S. didn’t invest in high-speed rail, because Reasons. Meanwhile, a horror story unfolded in Michigan the same day we took one of those trains: What was supposed to be a 5.5-hour ride from Detroit to Chicago via Amtrak ended up taking 19 hours. The engine broke down, the power went out, the toilets wouldn’t flush and they had no lights. One guy got off at Gary and paid an Uber $200 to take him to his hotel. Others just jumped off and walked to a nearby highway to wait for rides. Unreal. If there were a fast-train link between those cities, it would have taken about 90 minutes.

And a note about shoes: I didn’t make the mistake I made in Paris, i.e., try to be “fashionable” like the locals, and get by with a pair of close-to-the-foot Italian sneakers. I packed Adidas and my Chacos, which, thanks to “Hacks,” I now know are coded lesbian sandals. Don’t care. They saved my aching feet.

Eating. And drinking, of course.

You leave Spain with your belly full, thinking: Tapas. Tapas are the way to eat. Sit down, order two or three, plus a liter of sangria, and just nibble. Still hungry? Order another. The whole small-plates thing has a fan in me.

As for drinking, did you know — I did not — that the gin & tonic is basically the national drink of Spain? They drop the “and,” however, so you just ask for a “gintonic.” I had a misadventure with gin decades ago, and have only slowly been making my way back to it in recent years; even the smell made me nauseous. The Negroni was my first step, and after watching Alan down a few Spanish gintonics, I took the plunge. The experience is very different there; the waiter arrives with a huge balloon glass with two big-ass cubes in it, along with the bottle. S/he pours the gin from the bottle in front of you, then leaves you with your own personal bottle of high-end tonic. The high-end is crucial — no Canada Dry crap, but British-made Schweppes or Fever Tree, made with real sugar and not corn syrup. And damn, but they are so, so good. Cheers:

Note the juniper berries. True connoisseurs find that shit silly.

We’re running long here, so let’s get to the pix then, shall we?

The aqueduct in Segovia. Two thousand years old, built with no mortar. It can still carry water, the guidebooks say. Damn, them Romans knew their shit (although it’s been restored twice):

One for you Buckeyes:

The Sagrada Familia in afternoon light, and some detail from outside. Those are the shepherds, worshiping the Christ child with a lamb and at least one pigeon:

Dogs ride the subway with everyone else:

And with that, I’ll draw the post to a close and wish you all a fine weekend. Back next week.