If I didn’t get my fill of movies-in-the-theater during the holidays, I came pretty close. For all my posturing as a cineaste, the plain fact is most of my viewing is via DVD, so much so that I’ve started noticing how much I’m coming to resemble Kate at her first in-theater movie (“Elmo in Grouchland,” in the year Three): Sitting on Alan’s lap, happily scarfing popcorn, the movie started and she froze. Her hand didn’t move from the popcorn bag, and neither did she, for many long moments. That wide screen was pretty overwhelming.

Nowadays, when I see a movie in a real theater, I need to ask myself, “Was the cinematography in ‘True Grit’ that good, or did it just look good to someone who’s seen the last two Coen brothers’ movies on a not-even-16:9-TV?” Answer: Yes. It’s that good. And after “The King’s Speech,” I had to marvel at Colin Firth, who played two-thirds of his performance with the camera about three inches from his nose. Or maybe they set it back a few feet and used a long lens, but he still filled the screen. And when you fill the screen, you better know what every muscle in your face is doing, and to the extent he seemed to have control over all of them, well, it’s Oscar-nomination time for Colin.

The last of the three was “The Fighter,” and I think I enjoyed that one best of all, and I’m not sure why, although let’s check off its pleasures: The fabulous Melissa Leo, Christian Bale playing a crackhead dancing right up to the edge of chewed scenery but not stepping over, the fabulous Amy Adams, a perfectly fine Mark Wahlberg, and boxing. I’ve come to appreciate boxing late in life; too many Saturday nights spent on the couch watching HBO bouts has finally paid off, and I can see the sport of it now. It’s not just two guys pounding each other, it’s scoring and strategy and plans of attack. The film is based on a true story, and I was glad not to be a lifelong fight fan, because I didn’t want to know the ending. Alan said afterward he could see it coming like a punch in slo-mo, but not me.

But it raised the question about things like that. I don’t think I’m being spoiler-y here about “The King’s Speech” when I tell you the story — about how King George VI learned to master his lifelong stammer — all leads to a climactic address before the entire British Empire, via radio, and that he manages to pull it off. There wouldn’t be much of a movie if he had stood in front of the microphone and gaped like a landed fish, after all. And yet, you watch it unfold with your heart in your throat. The director, Tom Hooper, keeps the suspense high by showing Britons gathered around radios around the world, all gnawing their fingernails to the quick, waiting for their king to buh-buh-blow it. You empathize, the great miracle of storytelling.

The other wonderful thing about “The Fighter” was its several scenes of lively arguments between large groups of people, everyone talking at once, that reminded me how hard it is to capture these things. I guess it’s a credit to the director. When you watch your share of amateur-made short films, that’s the first thing you notice. One person talks. Then another person talks. Then the first person replies. And so on. It’s just not the way life unspools, especially when you’re arguing. I’d love to watch David O. Russell at work. He directed my all-time favorite rom-com, “Flirting With Disaster,” which contains a dinner-party scene just like that — audio chaos, everyone yap-yap-yapping over everyone else. Just sublime.

Anyway, I recommend all three. “The King’s Speech” isn’t a big vitamin sandwich on whole-wheat bread, either. It features Eve Best as Wallis Simpson — how wonderful is that?

Pretty wonderful. As is our first bit of bloggage today, from our own Coozledad. He always wanted to live with a sexual athlete. But he might have arranged the furniture more wisely.

Last night was a slow news night. Some people were late for church, and it made the main page of the New York Times.

Do not take health-care advice from celebrities. A new year’s resolution that’s easy to keep.

Finally, a sad story from a former Freep reporter: Farewell, Detroit. It broke his heart.

As for me, I’m just freezing. The long dark slog toward the light begins with the disassembly of the holiday displays. And it’s Monday. Urg.

For what it’s worth, I think this will be the last entry of the old year. The de facto holiday weekend begins tomorrow, so I might as well get down with the program, and give myself a couple days off as well. I plan to spend them brooding and cleaning. I brood while I clean, and vice versa. Nothing like a dirty bathroom for a good brood. And when it’s all over, you have a clean tub, which always improves my mood. This week I put the finishing touches on a long-simmering creative project, reread it all, and came to a conclusion: Well, this sucks. Get me rewrite. Time for a brood. And a workout. And the removal of all this Christmas stuff.

I get an annual Christmas newsletter from a couple of old friends. She’s a state officeholder in Ohio, he’s a lawyer, and some of you know who I’m talking about by now, but if you don’t, sorry, I’m not going to name them. They’re a loving, ambitious family, and over the years, I’ve found their annual chronicle of their year — and their successes, always their successes — a little oppressive. Their kids are all well-adjusted, smart and attractive. Even their dogs and cats are photogenic. Year after year, the newsletter details trips to glamorous overseas destinations, scholarships, admissions to exclusive schools, election to office, and one year, even a Robert F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award. When you’re like me, and your successes have not featured photo ops with Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, and your holiday letter could boil down to a phrase or two — another year older, no longer wearing anything other than Bermuda shorts in summer, love, Nance — opening theirs is sometimes an uncomfortable exercise.

This year’s letter arrived with a big disappointment in the lead — sorry, friends, no insider’s tour of the United States Senate for you in the new year — and then settled into its usual tone of optimism. There was even a guffaw, one made for a Christmas letter, in which their youngest son, already supporting himself as a full-time college student by working as a waiter in a jazz club and “modeling when assignments come along that he can fit into his schedule,” was approached about auditioning for “The Bachelorette,” but turned them down. (I told you this family was special.) And it occurred to me that success of all sorts is relative, and I’m putting 2010 down in the win column. We all stayed healthy, employed and afloat in some very stormy seas. That will have to do this year.

I hope you can read this appreciation of Quincy Jones (Wall Street Journal, paywall, etc.) pegged to his new book. If not, I’ll share one morsel I loved:

As (Michael) Jackson’s producer, Mr. Jones selected the songs—plowing through 800 to find nine—hired the musicians and engineering team, and supervised the recording, mixing and mastering of his three monster hits. Yet Jackson lost his appreciation for Mr. Jones’s contributions. “All he does is sit there and hold his head,” said Jackson, according to Mr. Jones. Jackson’s father, Joe, claimed the producer spent too much on “Thriller,” though the budget was well under $1 million. Thus far, the album has sold about 100 million copies.

Have they given out the Darwin Awards yet? Because I think we have a late-season winner.

It’s easy for the mayor of a city like New York to think your job is somehow greater than its description. Michael Bloomberg should have studied the career of Chicago’s Jane Byrne — in the end, it’s all about snow removal.

And with that, adieu for the year. See you on the new calendar.

Just to be festive, and just because one item had stubbornly eluded all my shop-local efforts, and just because it was on the way to the movie theater where we were seeing “True Grit” Friday afternoon, we stopped at Best Buy on Christmas Eve. The computer said they had nine copies of Crystal Bowersox’s “Farmer’s Daughter,” but the best efforts of the three of us and the nice salesgirl couldn’t turn up one.

“I could check in the back,” she offered, not very enthusiastically. Yes, The Back, the famous Back, always your last-ditch hope in stalking the elusive whatever-it-is. I took a look at the line, which stretched from the registers through a side aisle, almost to the back of this very big big box. It was a line worthy of a new Apple product, a Springsteen concert where tickets were only available at the door, or the Soviet Union. My resolve cracked. Screw it, Amazon’s handling this one. We’ll have it shipped directly to my sister-in-law’s house. Let’s go to the movies.

And with that, the holiday really began. It was a nice one. Kate got a guitar and a USB mic. She was upstairs within a couple of hours, laying down tracks in Garage Band. I got new kitchen stuff and a Madhur Jaffrey cookbook. Alan got a framed photo he’d admired in a small show last summer. It’s a street scene in contemporary Havana, because we are of course communists. I still recall 1993, when Alan and I were planning our wedding, and the evil empire was collapsing and surely Fidel would fall in a matter of weeks. “Let’s go to Cuba for our honeymoon,” I said. “I want to see it before Hilton and Marriott and all the rest of them get their mitts on it.” Ha ha ha. (We ended up honeymooning in San Francisco — same politics, colder climate. Ha ha.)

I’d still like to go. Although the photographers had some cautions: “Bring food,” they said. “We went to bed hungry a few nights. You can have all the money in the world, but there’s still nothing to buy.” Vacation paradise.

I also got a Keurig, and if you don’t know what one is yet, you will soon — it’s the single-cup coffeemaker that’s sweepin’ the nation. Now that I have reached the age of galloping decrepitude and near-constant exhaustion, I find myself wanting a single cup of coffee from time to time. But I’m too bourgeois to make a pot, because I know I would throw most of it out, etc. Enter the Keurig, which follows the disposable razor/inkjet printer model of economic extortion — cheap machine, dear supplies. I don’t care if the little K-cups are pricey. I don’t spend much money on alcohol anymore, so I’ll just shift the funds over to caffeine. And it makes a sublime cup of coffee, in about 60 seconds. I’m an American, and trash production is my birthright.

How was “True Grit,” you ask? Pretty good. Not perfect, but very entertaining. Where do the Coen brothers find these fantastic character actors to play the little parts? The voice of the lawyer who cross-examines Rooster Cogburn in the opening scenes will ring in my ears for days; it belongs to Joe Stevens. And Roger Deakins’ camera work was glorious, as usual. I don’t think Kate liked it very much, however; she said she couldn’t understand Jeff Bridges. And there was a big continuity error, after Maddie swims the river with her horse and faces Rooster and LaBoeuf on the other side, completely dry. I guess they had a reason for it, but it bugged me, too.

How was your holiday? Are you off this week? I wish I was, but alas, I am not. And so I’m outta here.

A little bloggage:

When the roll is called up yonder, Jimmy Carter will be there. A true Christian (despised by many other alleged Christians).

Jon Stewart, an heir to Edward R. Murrow? Maybe.

Roy does the dirty work of reading the right-wing blogs so you don’t have to, and has compiled his year-end top 10. You have to read some of these to believe them.

And now I’m off. Good Monday, all.

All that talk yesterday about Christmas carols reminded me of when Kate was in elementary school, and how the Christmas choir concert would unfold. Mrs. DeCarlo always mixed the grade levels up, and the kindergarteners usually came in the second half of the program. One year, as the curtain rose on the assembled little ones, the man next to me slapped his palms together once and said, “Yeah! Now for the good stuff!” His child was not in kindergarten; he just knew what he was talking about.

Mrs. DeCarlo didn’t stint on the material, either — they always sang the most charming songs, frequently with hand gestures. My favorite was “Christmas is Coming” with new lyrics: Christmas is coming, and we are getting fat / ’cause we eat too much of this and that. It was so sweet it made your teeth hurt. A little boy in the first row began potty-dancing to such an urgent extent that the other music teacher helped him into the wings. He returned during the second number to scattered applause.

It was like that every year. K-1 are the rock stars of any school concert.

Folks, I’m hanging up the laptop for the rest of the week. Too much left to do, too little to say. (Obviously.) I might toss up some photos, but this will be it until Monday. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, and until then, here’s some bloggage to chew on:

An interview with the Christmas innkeeper, by John Scalzi:

The baby is born, right? And then these guys show up. And they say, we have brought gifts for the child. And I say, that’s nice, what did you bring. And they say, we have brought gold and frankincense and myrrh. And I say, you’ve got to be kidding.

What’s wrong with that?

Let me quote another Christmas song for you. “A child, a child, shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold.” Really? Silver and gold? And not, oh, I don’t know, a blanket? An newborn infant is exhibiting signs of possible hypothermia and your response is to give him cold metal objects? Who ever wrote that song needs a smack upside the head.

A wonderful Detroitblog on the real Santa. He drives a sleigh — you really must see the picture, it’s a hoot — and he’s black. I’d love to see his naughty list.

Robin Givhan, the Washington Post fashion writer, is leaving the paper. Too bad. I’d love to see a compare-and-contrast piece between Michelle Obama and, oh, Jane Sullivan Roberts. I can’t believe we have a first lady who wears Marc Jacobs. I don’t know if the Obamas will be gone in two years or six, but when they go, I will miss ’em. They are the most photogenic First Family in…maybe ever.

Who have you showered with lately? Barney Frank schools a reporter from CNS. (You can tell CNS is a shoestring outfit, because they can’t afford a good microphone.

Roy has finally had enough of the war-on-Christmas nonsense. Note cleverly hidden racism in the Christmas card that poor National Review writer is allegedly forced to buy (“Whass Happenin’ on the Holidays?”). Yeah, that’s all that’s available where I shop, too. What a load.

Not to end on a sour note, but I’m off to the Eastern Market. List, checked twice: Ham, nuts, peppermint bark, whatever else tickles my fancy. Merry Christmas! The New Year comes later.

Some years back, my paper ran an interview with the author of a new book. I forget the title, but it was a guide for younger women who marry older men, which the author had done. How this happened was glossed over in a sentence:

“Bob was married when he met Tiffany, but he soon separated from his wife, and they began their relationship.”

Oh.

I believe Bob was a dentist, and Tiffany was a hygienist in his office. Oh.

A friend clipped the story, and scrawled in the margin: She broke up a family, and now we’re doing an approving story about her.

For once, we were ahead of the curve. For the first time in maybe ever, this NYT story from the Vows pages was on both memeorandum, the political blog aggregator, and wesmirch, the gossip blog aggregator. You can see why:

Carol Anne Riddell and John Partilla met in 2006 in a pre-kindergarten classroom. They both had children attending the same Upper West Side school. They also both had spouses.

Blah blah blah about how well they got along and what fast friends they became, and:

They got each other’s jokes and finished each other’s sentences. They shared a similar rhythm in the way they talked and moved. The very things one hopes to find in another person, but not when you’re married to someone else.

Ms. Riddell said she remembered crying in the shower, asking: “Why am I being punished? Why did someone throw him in my path when I can’t have him?”

In May 2008, Mr. Partilla invited her for a drink at O’Connell’s, a neighborhood bar. She said she knew something was up, because they had never met on their own before.

“I’ve fallen in love with you,” he recalled saying to her. She jumped up, knocking a glass of beer into his lap, and rushed out of the bar. Five minutes later, he said, she returned and told him, “I feel exactly the same way.” Then she left again.

Well, you can see how this would be a talker across the spectrum. The National Review sent its designated old maid to tut-tut. Even Gawker and the Village Voice joined the fun of beating up on John and Carol Anne.

I’ve known a couple or two who got their start like this. It’s unfortunate, but it’s really not the worst behavior I’ve seen in 53 years of life on the planet. I believe following your feelings should end when you start following a stroller, but everybody’s different, and besides, without couples like John and Carol Anne, who would we beat up on? My puzzlement is best summed up by the Voice writer, who wondered, “Why would you sign up for this? Why would you apply to air your family business? WHY ARE YOU SO DAMN PROUD OF YOURSELVES?” Well, yeah.

There is one blanket exception to the rule I would make in all cases, and that’s when one spouse decides he or she wants to leave for a same-sex partner. In those situations, the most decent thing you can do as an onlooker is button your lip, avert your eyes and silently Be There. I’m still waiting for the Times to Go There. Maybe next year.

Not much going on here today. We’re into the holiday slide, methinks. School is out, but work carries on. We had the Nall Family Christmas Saturday, which went very well, although my brother overbought, as usual. He could head these situations off at the pass if he did a little advance planning, but as usual, the last couple of days were punctuated by phone calls from the mall. The most famous of these came one year, 60 minutes before dinner was to start, and went like this: “Does Nancy need a vacuum cleaner?”

I didn’t. But this year I got a soap dispenser with an electronic sensor, which cracks me up. Did I activate the optional blinking-light timer, which runs for 20 seconds, so that your hands get good and washed? You need to ask?

So let’s skip to the bloggage:

I know the Irish drink, but I had no idea the Brits were this bad:

The foul smell is ominous. Downstairs in a central London pub, a woman has passed out on the floor of the ladies toilets, lying on the cold tiles with her dress pulled above her waist and knickers at her feet.

Intoxicated and at risk of choking on her own vomit, this is no teenage tearaway but a respected economist and middle-aged chief executive of an international company. It is Christmas party season in the City.

The City being, of course, the financial districts of one of the world’s most important cities. A great rewrite of “Silver Bells” is just waiting to happen.

This guy hangs out at a corner I sometimes pass en route to the freeway. Sometimes I wave. I used to think he was homeless and crazy, but I can see the iPod wires in this clip, and he’s obviously oriented enough to know what season it is:

Off to work. Happy Monday, all.

It seemed the sun would never rise today, and I imagine it will be in a big hurry to get out this evening. I understand there’s a reason for that. It’s also the reason I’m feeling lamer and blanker than usual this morning. It couldn’t possibly be that I had four glasses of wine on a mostly empty stomach last night. As I had the night off and we were home before 11, I followed them with an over-the-counter sleep aid, ’cause I had the rare opportunity for a full night’s sleep and I didn’t want anything short of a wailing smoke alarm to penetrate it.

And sleep I did, but I still feel wrapped in cotton wool. After breakfast and two cups of coffee. Oh, well. If you’re not allowed a third cup four days before the winter solstice, when are you allowed?

And, not making excuses here, but I have work to do on a story. So let’s go to the bloggage early, shall we?

(Third cup, in progress.)

You’ve probably heard of PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times’ website, which strives to bring light to the darkness by fact-checking claims made by politicians. It was the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for Public Service, i.e., the best of the big P’s, and has been widely emulated around the country — there’s a version of it in Michigan now, run by a non-profit think tank, and original-recipe PolitiFact has licensed its name to other papers, as well. Seven states have PolitiFact sites now. (Don’t worry, Indiana. I’m sure you’ll get one…some day.)

This week, PolitiFact named its Lie of the Year. Before you click, see if you can guess. Anyone? Anyone? OK, Iet’s cut to the chase:

PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen “government takeover of health care” as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan and was a significant factor in the Democrats’ shellacking in the November elections.

Remember, earlier in the week, when we discussed the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and how they game the system? They have company: The Center for Science in the Public Interest, another group of nutritional busybodies. Yesterday they were a player in this story, which had the conservative blogs and Facebook rockin’ with outrage:

With perfect Grinch timing, a consumer group has sued McDonald’s demanding that it take the toys out of its Happy Meals.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, claims it violates California law for the hamburger chain to make its meals too appealing to kids, thus launching them on a lifelong course to overeating and other health horrors. It’s representing an allegedly typical mother of two from Sacramento named Monet Parham. What’s Parham’s (so to speak) beef? “Because of McDonald’s marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased.”

The story goes on to harumph about Parham’s lack of parenting skills, blah blah blah, to the point that you can almost ignore a few key phrases:

You’re probably wondering: How is this grounds for a lawsuit? No one forced Parham to take her daughters to McDonald’s, buy them that particular menu item, and sit by as they ate every last French fry in the bag (if they did).

No, she’s suing because when she said no, her kids became disagreeable and “pouted” – for which she wants class action status. If she gets it, McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?

No, New York Daily News, all the conservative bloggers in the world and MMJeff, they aren’t. Filing a suit and seeking class-action status isn’t the same as winning a suit or getting class-action status. I know we have many lawyers in this house, who can maybe speak to the possibility of Ms. Parham’s suit getting anywhere beyond the pages of the New York Daily News, but at this point, it hardly matters. They’re in a New York daily newspaper, their message has been amplified, they’ve put McDonald’s on notice that it has wandered into the crosshairs of the media-savvy Center for Science in the Public Interest and WIN WIN WIN.

The CSPI is the group behind the “health scares” of the ’90s, which really showed how this ridiculous gamesmanship works, the “studies” that showed fettuccine alfredo, Chinese food and movie-theater popcorn is bad for you. Remember the phrase “heart attack on a plate?” That was theirs.

Another Xtranormal winner: Why your waiter hates you.

Did you know Coozledad has a pet chicken? And that he talks to the animals, just like me? He does.

Phone’s ringin’. Gotta go. Have a great weekend, all.

The Monty Python killer rabbit scene from the Holy Grail film is funny in and of itself, but it achieves a whole new level of humor when you actually keep a pet bunny, or “house rabbit,” as the English say. It’s funny because it’s true. I can’t tell you how many times our own killer has launched herself at one or another of us, furious because we’ve done …something. Her latest trick is to lurk under the dining room table, then aggressively confront anyone who walks through the room. Thankfully, she does not nip in these situations, only threaten.

This is the point at which many pet owners would be dialing the Rabbit Rescue — or boiling water on the stove — but I cannot be distressed by this. In fact, I’m amused. It gives me an opportunity to say, “Behold the cave of Caerbannog!” in a Scottish accent. And I cannot help but respect an animal that doesn’t weigh two pounds but is willing to fight the giants she finds herself living among. And she’s not always bad-tempered. Just now, she jumped up on the couch, accepted some petting and gave me a few licks on the forehead. Rabbits don’t lick for salt, so the book says, so that can be interpreted as a gesture of affection. Like all victims, I choose to see it that way.

Aw, she just rolled over on her back. So cute. Bought herself another week of indulgence.

(Perhaps you’re wondering: Is Nance one of those people who talks to her rabbit as though it were a person, and depicts the rabbit talking back in a funny voice? You know me too well.)

I went over to my local Target to buy wrapping paper yesterday. I know the time to do that is the day after Christmas, but I cannot face another present-wrapping session with the stuff I’ve been trying to use up for a decade now. The mall the Target is part of has fallen on hard times. It has its anchors — Sears, Macy’s, the big bull’s-eye — but the rest of it is all game-over, stores that might as well rename themselves House of Russian Prostitute Style. And there was a shooting there Thanksgiving weekend, so that pretty much iced the cake for the holidays. For more than a year, I’ll occasionally get an e-mail with 16 forwards on it from someone claiming there’s a FORCIBLE RAPE IN THE PARKING LOT EVERY SINGLE DAY, AND THE POLICE ARE COVERING IT ALL UP. I ignore this stuff and shop there anyway, but yesterday, as I made my way in via the rutted back road that I usually take, I had a glimpse of spring. And it nearly broke my axle.

Last week’s snowstorm started in very warm temperatures, and it rain/snowed all day before the temperature plunged 25 degrees overnight, which made all that standing water and slush freeze solid, which means the badly maintained parts of the parking lot are already nursing embryonic potholes the size of graves, and I’m sure the streets in our destitute communities are going to be just as bad. I’m wondering if maybe Coozledad will be willing to share a mule come spring.

Oh, hell. Let’s change the tone. Bloggage awaits:

I know Gwyneth Paltrow is beautiful and fit and perfect and a much better person than me. I also feel a dress like this is a hostile gesture that underlines all of the above, and drives it home with a big F.U. I’m going to assume that after two pregnancies, she’s benefitting from some sort of hidden boob support built into the bodice, but what about the bottom? I guess she has to entirely denude her lady garden to avoid tacky bush assertion, and what if her period arrived unexpectedly? Ew. Just ew. This dress came from the luxury department in the House of Russian Prostitute Style.

What browser do you use? Did you know what you’re charged for goods and services online can depend on this? I wish I were kidding. And I have already found a use for Chrome.

Interesting piece on a Canadian company that has found its market niche as the Comment Police. They cleaned up NPR and saved its comments sections in the bargain. A nice reminder that not everyone’s comments are as fabulous as ours.

The always-interesting Laura Miller on why readers love bad writing. Via Hank.

Jim at Sweet Juniper has found something for his dog Wendell to pull this winter.

Finally, a little “Silent Night” for you, excerpts from the Facebook posting of a friend of a friend, who lived through last week’s blizzard in northwest Indiana:

What an incredible weekend. Wound up stranded because of the blizzard, but we made it to the fire station in Wanatah where about 30 other stranded motorists spend the night. Met some very interesting people and we turned it into a party. Many thanks to the firefighters and Wanatah officials for their hospitality. …It really was an incredible experience. First, space was set aside for the four Muslims stranded so they could spread their prayer rugs to pray. Then there was the family from Romania on their way to Chicago. Their 11-year-old son serenaded us with a violin solo of Christmas carols at 3 a.m. Everyone was still up and talking and the young man received a standing ovation. Never experienced anything like it.

When we want to be, we can be pretty good.

Winter, he hath arrived. So of course I had to go to the Apple Store in the blizzard. Kate’s laptop was acting up, and of course it had to be fixed. So out I went, early on, and it wasn’t too bad, as long as you didn’t try to drive at Detroit speeds. Some people didn’t get the message; one spun out right in front of me on the way home, one exit before mine. He had just passed me going at least 60. (I was doing 45, which felt safe.)

I recall thinking: If this jerk hits me I am going to be so pissed.

He didn’t hit me. He was one lucky spinner, crossing three lanes of freeway before coming to rest facing traffic, but in the shoulder. Assuming everything was still inflated and aligned, all he had to do was wait for a break in traffic and do a U-turn.

Boy, was I glad to come home and see this:

Now it can be told: Deep inside, I’m a big ol’ L7 who puts up Christmas lights.

It doesn’t look like much snow. It isn’t much snow. Although it snowed heavily all day, the temperature hovered right around 31 degrees, so we mostly got slush. Then the temperature plunged overnight and the wind picked up, however, and I expect all day we’ll have falling limbs, power outages and ice upon ice. I can feel my character building.

Of course it could have been worse, and it was worse, elsewhere, and how many disappointed Vikings fans must be today, with either a worthless ticket to a football game or a very expensive one, should they be in any mood to book a last-minute flight to Detroit to watch their Vikes play tonight. Spare the jokes. OK, don’t: First prize, tickets to a Vikings-Giants game in a badly designed, unsafe stadium. Second prize, the same game in Detroit. Ha ha. We can laugh because, due to the unexpected turn of events, the game here is absolutely free. Show up, take your seat. If only I didn’t have to work. If only I cared enough about football to go downtown in single-digit temperatures, wrangle a parking place and trudge through near-gales (now blowing 29 knots) to watch a game in a warm stadium with a non-collapsing roof.

Think I’ll make beef stew instead.

And skip to the bloggage, before I go outside and attempt to chip my car out of the ice.

I missed this on Friday: John Lennon vs. Bono, and the death of the celebrity activist. Whatever shred of respect I retained for Bono blew away with his latest Louis Vuitton ad, which shows him arriving in Africa with his wife and about nine million dollars’ worth of luxury luggage, and no, I don’t care who they donated their goddamn fees to. It’s still disgusting.

Gene Weingarten can make running out of gas — no, not running out of gas — funny.

The Australian papers frequently go as far over the top as their British cousins, so caveat emptor, but here you go: Islamic biker gangs! They’re called “bikie” gangs in Oz, which for some reason makes me picture guys riding vehicles made by Fisher-Price.

And Dick Nixon gives us another gift from beyond the grave. If you read all the way to the end, you found this rancid morsel:

Nixon and Mr. Kissinger were brutally dismissive in response to requests that the United States press the Soviet Union to permit Jews to emigrate and escape persecution there.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Mr. Kissinger said. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responded. “We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

Maybe a humanitarian concern. But nothing to get excited about.

OK, time to put on the parka and the long johns. It’s brutal out there.

Running errands to Target yesterday, I heard a little Christmas music. I heard a lot of Christmas music, actually. For some reason, this time it took me back, to eighth-grade choir practice. Our teacher was demanding and a little crazy, as the best choir teachers frequently are. We were having our first run-through of “The Holly and the Ivy,” one of my favorite old English carols, not as well known then as it is today, and the lyrics even less so. Many of us were reading them for the first time:

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown
The rising of the sun
and the running of the deer
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing in the choir

We got to the last line, and it became evident many of my classmates had never seen the word “choir” on the page. About 80 percent of the chorus sang kwire, but the rest sang choyre. I thought Mr. Yenser was going to go insane, but that would come later, on “O, Holy Night,” when we were lectured over and over on the correct pronunciation of divine. Short i, people, short i! Di-vine, not dee-vine. He was also painstaking in his conducting, insisting we not start belting too early. It’s a long song that requires a slow build, and if we dared to bring it before “fall on your knees,” there was hell to pay. Even then, we had to keep it dialed down a notch, so as to really cut loose on the last three lines:

Oh niiiiight
Oh hoooooly night
Oh night DI-vine….

I tell you, Mariah Carey could learn a thing or three from him. I was strictly another face in the crowd in choir, no solos for me, although I would have my chance to disappoint him face-to-face later that season. He had an idea that would call for someone who lived close to school to carry out; would I be interested? I was only half a block away, so I said sure, and this was the idea: To welcome students to school with the sounds of Christmas music playing from speakers on the third floor. I’d have to arrive about 30 minutes early, and I’d be given access to a closed room at the top of the building, where I’d set up the record player, open the window, put the speaker on the ledge and let loose with some “Sleigh Ride” and other Christmas classics until the first bell. He had a few records to choose from, but left the mix up to me, and as I considered myself a natural DJ at the time, I was flattered. I even brought some of my parents’ albums from home and added some oddities — the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mahalia Jackson, a little Gregorian chant.

The gig was for two weeks, and by the second week, I was pretty sick of “Jingle Bells,” so I threw in “Sunshine of Your Love” as my final cut, when everyone was rushing to get through the doors and my audience was biggest. This got me some awrights from my classmates in homeroom, and that was all the encouragement I needed. The next day’s set consisted of Led Zeppelin, some early Stones and Jefferson Airplane. And this was before it was trendy for rock ‘n’ rollers to put out Christmas records. It was just “Born to be Wild” and “Somebody to Love” and to hell with Christmas. This is the devil’s music.

It might have gone on all week, until another teacher asked Mr. Yenser, who traveled between schools and arrived later in the day, why the Vanilla Fudge was being played from the third floor before school. And I’d stupidly left a few LPs in the room, so as not to have to haul them back and forth. The jig was up, and he expressed his profound, deep disappointment while I clutched “Disraeli Gears” to my chest and looked at the floor.

“But why this music? This?” he pleaded. I spluttered, and tried to explain that I just wanted to hear some cool tunes right before school, but this was clearly a violation of our agreement. I didn’t tell him people had liked it a lot better than “Joy to the World.” He couldn’t hear that at all; it was clear he was not one of those adults who secretly appreciated the Beatles. It was all noise and long hair to him. “I think you’re not right for this job,” he said, and I agreed. The last two days before vacation I slunk to school with everyone else, under the closed, silent window, covered in shame.

It’s funny — I think of Mr. Yenser whenever I hear Johnny Mathis sing oh night DEEvine, but I hadn’t even thought of this darkly comic chapter until today.

When I Google his name, I see he had many students who remember him fondly. I also see he was quite the square — taking his best students to a Fred Waring concert? Even in the early ’60s, that was pretty lame. I also see others disappointed him, too.

As culture-war skirmishes go, this one hardly counts. But I carry a wound, obviously.

And I’m sorry, Mr. Yenser, but the world will remember Eric Clapton a lot longer than they will Fred Waring. If you couldn’t see it then, I hope you saw it eventually.

So, a wee bit of bloggage?

I know we have many Civil War fans here, so for you — a period map of the slave-holding states, showing the concentrations of slave ownership by county, based on the 1860 census. I love maps, and I love this one. So did A. Lincoln.

“I loves me some me” — now pay Mr. Owens to say that.

Finally, a sad story from the WashPost — told mainly in Facebook status updates.

Where did this week go? I hope the ending is something to look forward to. Have a good one, all.

I had 30 minutes to spare yesterday in between errands and picking up Kate from school. That’s pretty much the perfect slice of time, if you ask me — not enough to squeeze one last chore in, but plenty of time to drink an eggnog latte at Starbucks and play Angry Birds on the iPhone while eavesdropping on a trio of geezers at the next table. I love eavesdropping, and I love geezers. None of them had iPhones, for one thing, which meant their attention was 100 percent on one another. For another, they were difficult to slot politically and didn’t hate the president, although one had recently been acquainted with the concept of the body man and marveled over it at some length:

“He has one guy whose job it is to carry all his stuff. His handkerchief, his cigarettes, whatever.”

“He’s not still smoking, is he?”

“I’m pretty sure he is, yeah. Guy carries his cigarettes and a lighter. He also plays basketball with the president whenever he’s asked. Now that’s a job.”

They also discussed the proliferation of crappy — i.e., benefit-free — jobs in recent years, and suggested it wasn’t good for the region as a whole, all those people not making enough and still having to pay their own medical bills and/or insurance. They discussed Alan Trammell, who had just passed through with his agent. And then they switched to Donald Trump, whom all agreed would be an excellent choice to rebuild New Orleans. I concentrated extra-hard on Angry Birds and reminded myself that eavesdropping is its own reward. I tried to imagine a New Orleans by Donald Trump’s design team. Then I tried to remember if I’ve ever seen a picture of him smiling, as he seems to have trademarked the Trump Scowl, which he wears 24/7 — it’s his brand. MogulFace. I couldn’t remember, but, as always, Professor Google could. Good lord, how many swirls is that combover making these days?

And then the latte was gone, I’d advanced several levels in Angry Birds and it was time to pick up the kid. A big night last night — the holiday instrumental-music concert. As always, my own personal rule of seating prevailed, i.e., whichever seat I choose, my child will be as far away as possible, foiling photo ops. Behold:

I’m so glad her hair is purple — otherwise I could never pick her out.

“Mission: Impossible” came off pretty well, although she said the teacher told her at their final practice that they would “suck.”

“Did he use that word?”

“No. But that was the idea.”

They didn’t suck, but they could have been a tetch tighter. Although, for sure, in seven rehearsals you can’t expect miracles from middle-schoolers. And the bassist wasn’t part of the problem, so, whew.

Ready for bloggage? Sure, and we’ve got some good stuff, too:

Hank Stuever, the Washington Post Style writer too tempestuous to tame! Bigfooted by none other than Oprah! I honestly don’t know what she feared from Hank, who is as upbeat and sunny as SpongeBob SquarePants. Maybe she feared his gay would rub off on her because she totally is not. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

How fair-and-balanced Fox spun the health-care debate, all the while remaining fair and balanced: Just add “government” and serve!

Do you know how to speak Hoosier? I don’t, but I got some valuable tips from this series:

Part two, part three, part four.

Indiana is the only place I’ve ever heard a college-educated person ask if “that guy was one of your guys’s guys.” And now, if you’ll excuse me, that rabbit needs caught and I’m off to drink some pop.