And with one breezy-hot day and a few widely scat­tereds, the heat is ban­ished just­likethat. At least for the next cou­ple of days, we should be able to turn off the A/C and instead lis­ten to the neigh­bors’ annoy­ing lawn ser­vice vis­its. Fine with me. The first week of August marks the tra­di­tional Notic­ing of the Chang­ing Light for me, which means I’m going to grab at least one fat fash­ion mag­a­zine off a news­stand and start plan­ning my umpteenth fan­tasy closet.

Fan­tasy closet is like fan­tasy foot­ball, in which women start with the blank slate of a well-designed empty closet — with lots of attrac­tive, Con­tainer Store stor­age options — and fill it with non-existent clothes we can’t afford but pre­tend we can. Then we wear them in fantasy-closet dress-up games, per­haps while watch­ing “Project Run­way,” in which we are pre­sented with fun out­fit ideas like this. (I’m think­ing of the top­most one.) “Project Run­way” is a genius show, entic­ing mil­lions of normal-size women to watch novice design­ers of wildly uneven tal­ent turn out one out­fit after another that barely cov­ers one’s ass and, in this case, com­pletely uncov­ers one’s back. It’s a great fantasy-closet shop­ping spot, “Project Run­way,” because only in fan­tasies are most women freed of such con­stric­tions as bras and the need to sit down from time to time.

I had about three min­utes in my entire life when I could have worn a top like that, which threat­ens with every step to slip and reveal one’s breasts from either a front or side angle. I was 11 years old.

But, as we’re fre­quently reminded, run­ways looks are like con­cept cars — just an idea. By the time that look finds its way to a store rack, the skirt will be nine inches longer and the top closed on the sides and back, and… it’ll pretty much be an entirely dif­fer­ent dress. But that’s OK! Because my fantasy-closet body can totally wear any­thing at all.

In recent years, I’ve done a lot of my fantasy-closet shop­ping online or in cat­a­logs. Which is why I’m so thor­oughly amused by the web­site Jezebel, which deserves some sort of fash­ion Pulitzer for the work they’ve done bring­ing pre­pos­ter­ous photo retouch­ing by fash­ion retail­ers to the public’s atten­tion. They made a big splash a few years back with their Red­book cover rev­e­la­tion, but have stayed on the job — along with many oth­ers, includ­ing the always-amusing Pho­to­shop Dis­as­ters.

The cur­rent Ann Tay­lor busi­ness is par­tic­u­larly wound­ing, as Ann is one place that, in gen­eral, sells afford­able, wear­able clothes for a wide range of age and body types. I wore a lot more Ann Tay­lor when I worked in offices, but I remem­ber it fondly, so know­ing they’re play­ing silly games with extreme photo retouch­ing — remov­ing mod­els’ ribcages seems to be a favorite — really chaps my ass. This isn’t “Project Run­way.” I pay real, non-fantasy money for clothes from places like that, and I’d appre­ci­ate it if they’d cut that shit out.

I once watched Alan get fit­ted for a suit, and I was struck by the con­trast with shop­ping for my own clothes. Like nearly every­one, Alan’s body dif­fers from the ideal, and this was treated by the tai­lor as a sim­ple and utterly unre­mark­able fact. Take it in here, let it out there, hem it thus, adjust, nip, change, presto, a suit. Whereas women are taught from an early age that their bod­ies are a col­lec­tion of “flaws” that must be cov­ered, cam­ou­flaged, squeezed in and shaped to fit what­ever some­one else has decided is this year’s model.

Sooner or later you grow out of this shit, to be sure, but I can’t help but think they’d sell more clothes if they cut it out.

My fan­tasy closet is shap­ing up nicely. I bought some fan­tasy boots, and I’m exper­i­ment­ing with cargo pants and jack­ets to wear with my non-fantasy scarves. I now own five Her­mes scarves; how did that hap­pen? Time to roll out the Joan Hol­loway all-stars, I think.

So, a lovely week­end awaits. Any blog­gage? Not much:

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, I can­not read the entire inter­net every day, and in gen­eral I avoid its small sto­ries, for two rea­sons: a) they’re small; and b) the peo­ple who write them have a way of mak­ing them seem like Water­gate crossed with the Hin­den­burg explo­sion (“we can now exclu­sively reveal…”). But this one, about some clown who’s been writ­ing for Andrew Bre­it­bart on the Shirley Sher­rod story, caught my eye, mainly because the clown in ques­tion is a Wayne State grad­u­ate, although who knows? That could be another part of his inflated resume, along with this amuse-bouche:

A gov­ern­ment offi­cial once claimed that Dr. Pezzi achieved the high­est score ever attained on an IQ test admin­is­tered nation­wide, although Pezzi dis­misses this as disin­gen­u­ous pan­der­ing.

Any­way, it appears this genius is prac­tic­ing med­i­cine some­where in north­ern Michi­gan. Beware, tourists!

Any­thing else? I got nothin’. Week­end, sweep me into your arms. I’m ready.

Paul Fussell’s great book on Amer­i­can social class strat­i­fi­ca­tion — titled, duh, “Class” — is pretty out of date in the details by now. Writ­ten at the dawn of the go-go ’80s, it missed how much that decade changed the rela­tion­ship between class and money, never mind the ’90s and ’00s, which blew it out of the water.

But a lot of the details are time­less, includ­ing my biggest take­away, which is prob­a­bly not unique to him, but he gets credit for being the first writer to point it out to me: The hall­mark of the mid­dle class is fear. Fear of slip­ping a rung, either in real­ity or just in the eyes of oth­ers. It explains so much about how middle-class Amer­i­cans dress, talk and oth­er­wise com­port them­selves.

Mid­dles love euphemism (“Excuse me, but where is your pow­der room?”). They like their labels on the out­side of their clothes, so every­one knows they bought the right designer purse or neck­tie. They fret over the con­di­tion of their lawns and the shine on their cars. Etcetera. And so it was that I picked up my Detroit News today and imme­di­ately iden­ti­fied the area’s biggest res­i­den­tial fore­clo­sure as a dis­tinctly middle-class house. Hell, it might even be pro­le­tar­ian. Who else would build an $18 mil­lion, 13,777-square-foot house in a sub­di­vi­sion, com­plete with bowl­ing alley and “cus­tom wine tast­ing and cigar rooms?”

“It’s like going to Dis­ney World,” said real estate agent Chris Knight, who has sold the home twice. “It’s a phe­nom­e­nal, one-of-a-kind spe­cial prop­erty. Water­falls, ponds all over the place, streams. Lots of Venet­ian plas­ter walls. Imported this, imported that …”

Venet­ian plas­ter, you say? It’s so much…classier than reg­u­lar plas­ter.

The story reminds us this pile of Venet­ian plas­ter — inevitably described as “a man­sion” — is not alone in its sad lit­tle sub­di­vi­sion, Turn­berry Estates:

A third of the subdivision’s home­own­ers have either faced fore­clo­sure in the past two years or had mort­gage prob­lems, pub­lic records indi­cate.

Since March 2008, one house was lost to fore­clo­sure; three were sched­uled for sales but avoided them; and two fore­clo­sure sales are pend­ing — includ­ing (for­mer Detroit Lion) Charles Rogers, accord­ing to the Legal News. The for­mer No. 2 NFL draft pick faces a sale Aug. 31 after default­ing and owing $1.17 mil­lion, accord­ing to a Wednes­day notice in the Legal News.

Turn­berry Estates has to stand for some­thing big­ger; the writer in me demands it. Nowhere do you see so much evi­dence of how dis­con­nected wealth and respon­si­bil­ity got in the last 25 or so years than you do in hous­ing — not just in these vul­gar money pits but even in more mod­est upscale homes (always homes, never houses), with their media rooms and enor­mous clos­ets and wine cel­lars and poker rooms and all the rest of it. I knew a guy who built a 10,000-square-foot house when he mar­ried a woman who had two daugh­ters. They needed the space, he said; they would have a live-in house­keeper to watch the girls when they wanted to do impul­sive new­ly­wed things like go out to din­ner or fly to New York for the week­end or what­ever.

They’re divorced now. But you knew that.

My house is 2,000 square feet. The peo­ple who built it raised seven chil­dren here, in three bed­rooms. My last house was about the same size. The pre­vi­ous own­ers had five kids — and one bath­room. My friend with the 10K house had sep­a­rate bath­rooms for each daugh­ter. The first thing they did after mov­ing in was con­vert a dead-air space into a deluxe closet.

Do I sound resent­ful? I’m not. Enjoy your money, rich peo­ple. But when my house is fore­closed upon, I bet it’ll be eas­ier to unload than the $18 mil­lion Venet­ian plas­ter show­place. Even with a cigar room.

So, some blog­gage? Prob­a­bly we can rus­tle up some:

The New York Post falls for a wrong-o. Did an accused killer who swal­lowed rat poi­son get an emer­gency liver trans­plant, as the paper crowed? Um, no. But that is one great head­line: Thug’s op is liver worst. Con­grats to the great­est copy desk in tab-dom.

Thanks to Rana (I think) for reac­quaint­ing me with Tom and Lorenzo, the Project Run­gay blog­gers who dab­ble in “Mad Men” on the side. I can take or leave them on the episode guides, but their com­men­tary on the clothes is first-rate. I loved their lat­est, on Betty Draper last sea­son, includ­ing her slam­min’ Roman hol­i­day getup. They’ve got great things to say about all the mad­women, though, so warn­ing: You can get lost in that site. But in a good way.

The Michi­gan oil spill now stretches for 35 miles of the Kala­ma­zoo River, and yes, pals, it looks like we have another BP on our hands. Who could have pre­dicted? And so on.

Kate’s going to the Warped Tour show with her dad tomor­row, and I promised her I’d get her a new gui­tar strap to col­lect auto­graphs on. So time to hop to it.

The TV sea­son is wind­ing down, and before it does, I want to throw a lit­tle love at “Break­ing Bad,” the other show air­ing at 10 p.m. Sun­day. I’m work­ing then, but that’s why God made DVRs. Like “Treme,” “Break­ing Bad” rewards sec­ond and third view­ings, although it’s not what you’d call nuanced or sub­tle. The story of a 50-year-old high-school chem­istry teacher who decides to take up metham­phet­a­mine pro­duc­tion could eas­ily become a car­toon, but in its third sea­son seems to have hit its stride as a sort of wak­ing night­mare of evil’s effects on those who choose it.

Wal­ter White tells him­self he got into meth-making as a way to leave his fam­ily finan­cially staked for life with­out him — he’s diag­nosed with ter­mi­nal lung can­cer in the pilot episode — but as his con­di­tion improved and the can­cer went into remis­sion, which it had to do if the show was to have more than one or two sea­sons, the tone shifted and Walt began to grasp the dimen­sions of the mon­ster he’d loosed into the world. Bod­ies began to fall. His part­ner, a hap­less man-child aptly named Jesse Pinkman, fell vic­tim to all man­ner of mis­ery, from heroin addic­tion to the O.D. death of his girl­friend. The cli­max of last sea­son was the mid-air col­li­sion, a mile or two above Walt’s house, of two com­mer­cial air­craft, an acci­dent caused by a dis­tracted air-traffic con­troller. Who was? The father of Jesse’s dead girl­friend. His atten­tion wan­dered when a bit of radio traf­fic used her name in a trans­mis­sion: Tango Delta Jane two oh three…

This sea­son, the stain is spread­ing, and reach­ing closer to Walt’s imme­di­ate fam­ily. His wife, Skyler, now knows where the money came from, but she’s unmoved by his moti­va­tion, and has left him, along with their teenage son and new­born daugh­ter. The lat­est vic­tim is his brother-in-law Hank, a DEA agent who fell vic­tim to a pair of identical-twin Mex­i­can assas­sins gun­ning for Hank, and…

This is sound­ing ridicu­lous, I know, but it isn’t. Or rather, it uses its made-for-TV improb­a­bil­i­ties well enough that you don’t find your­self rolling your eyes. If I have one crit­i­cism of the nar­ra­tive as it’s unfolded, it’s the aban­don­ment of one of the most inter­est­ing themes of sea­son one — the crum­mi­ness of a cer­tain middle-class Amer­i­can life, and how one liv­ing it can be so eas­ily seduced by money, i.e., a way out of it. Walt’s very sur­vival is threat­ened because his health insur­ance doesn’t cover the good chemo drugs. He and his wife attend a birth­day party for a col­lege friend of Walt’s, also a chemist, whose path took a dif­fer­ent turn, and who lives in lav­ish splen­dor. The friend offers Walt a job at his com­pany (with much bet­ter health insur­ance) out of pity, con­ceal­ing it well, but Walt fig­ures it out. The shame and humil­i­a­tion such a ges­ture inspires in the one it’s bestowed upon is a dif­fi­cult emo­tion for an actor to sum­mon. But Bryan Cranston does.

The pro­duc­ers are start­ing to cir­cle around back to it, a lit­tle bit. Now that Skyler knows there’s almost a mil­lion dol­lars in cash in a duf­fel bag in her crawl space, she’s start­ing to think about its impli­ca­tions. The scene where she walks into her lover’s bath­room and glo­ries in the radi­ant floor heat­ing was price­less. The things money can buy! (Although if I were her, I’d start with a kitchen reno. Her kitchen is almost glo­ri­ously ugly. But at this point, she might as well just buy a new house. Torch the kitchen. Remove the duf­fel bag from the premises first.)

I hope they con­tinue in this vein. Identical-twin Mex­i­can assas­sins can only take you so far. Although, sooner or later, the vio­lence and mis­ery has to reach Walt him­self. He’s dodged so many bul­lets, many of them lit­eral, that delay­ing it will soon be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive. He made a big deci­sion early on that sets every­thing in motion, and another one this sea­son to keep it that way. But until he loses a fin­ger or a child, it hasn’t cost him enough.

One final thing: I’m struck, watch­ing this show, by its depic­tion of mas­culin­ity. I men­tioned Jesse was a man-child, although he’s becom­ing more of a man. (He’s shed the over­grown baby clothes favored by so many young men these days, any­way. And the loss of the child isn’t doing him any favors.) Walt’s sense of him­self as a failed father, hus­band and provider — espe­cially the lat­ter — is what made him start down this tragic path. Hank, the DEA agent, is a macho car­toon. So far, the most fully inte­grated man is Gus­tavo Fring, the king­pin mas­ter­mind played by Gian­carlo Espos­ito. Calm, cool, ruth­less — just a lit­tle more seduc­tive­ness and he’d be the devil him­self.

We’ll see what hap­pens to Walt & Co. before the month is up. (I think.) Please, no more plane crashes.

And now I must skedad­dle. Although I’m sure the Hoosiers among you would rather talk about MARK SOUDER’S RESIGNATION?!??? A SEX scan­dal? Some­one wanted to SLEEP with him? I have just fainted.

With last night a pretty slow one on the health-care edit­ing beat, this story in the NYT made me snap my eyes wide open: “Law & Order” is this­close to can­cel­la­tion. Get OUT. I thought I’d never see the day. Lit­er­ally. As long as the show could con­tinue to calve spin­offs, I thought there would always be a place some­where on the NBC sched­ule for the bifur­cated drama of sep­a­rate but equal branches of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. It might dwin­dle down to “Law & Order: Nui­sance Ani­mals,” but dammit, it would be enrich­ing Dick Wolf and employ­ing east-coast actors at all lev­els of the food chain. It would be, as the lingo goes, part of the brand. Not hav­ing it there will take some get­ting used to. (And will likely never hap­pen. I may out­live the series itself, but surely I won’t out­last syn­di­ca­tion.)

I’ve never been a huge fan of the series — see Lance Man­nion or James Wol­cott for that — but I’ve watched quite a bit of it. I came to it late, when its ear­li­est sea­sons were already rotat­ing through daily syn­di­ca­tion on A&E. It was after Kate was born; she got hun­gry about the time the 1 p.m. episode was com­ing on, so I got in the habit of watch­ing while she nursed. (All those soft-focus pic­tures of moth­ers gaz­ing with love at their suck­ling infants? Bunk. You do that for the first day. Then you catch up on your mag­a­zines.)

I soon learned the rhythms of the show, as well as its too-obvious sign­posts. The wry, cold open, in which two stereo­typ­i­cal New York­ers stum­ble across a body while argu­ing about rent or restau­rants; the first mis­di­rec­tion; the sec­ond mis­di­rec­tion; the arrest at the bot­tom of the hour, fol­lowed by the legal strate­giz­ing in the sec­ond half, which always fin­ished with a wry walk-off line by D.A. Adam Schiff. I learned that if you see an actor you rec­og­nize in a seem­ingly minor scene early on, that’s the one who will be on trial later on. (This was a syn­di­ca­tion thing; Wolf was pretty good about hir­ing good actors on the upward tra­jec­tory of their career, so just because they were better-known in 1996 didn’t mean they were in 1991, when the episode first appeared.) I enjoyed the stunts — the sweeps-month two-parters with “Homi­cide: Life on the Street,” most notably. For some rea­son those stayed in the syn­di­ca­tion rota­tion, which was dis­con­cert­ing; stripped of their first half, they felt orphaned.

And like every­body else, even­tu­ally I tired of it all. The flip side of such a well-run machine was numb­ing pre­dictabil­ity and, worse, a cer­tain arch smug­ness — L&O more or less became the self-appointed court of last resort for the end­ings you wanted to see in real life. Early on, the writ­ing staff estab­lished itself as unapolo­getic headline-rippers, bas­ing its fic­tional sto­ries on real-life cases that didn’t end sat­is­fac­to­rily, and giv­ing the pub­lic the end­ing it wanted. O.J., Kobe, Jon­Benet — they all appeared in slightly altered form, with the usual legal dis­claimers. (When I was at Michi­gan, I sat through a few ses­sions of a TV-writing class with a fac­ulty mem­ber who’d done time in the L&O writ­ers’ room. The first order of busi­ness was to estab­lish a file full of ripped head­lines to base spec scripts on. I was aston­ished at how many in the class at this pres­ti­gious uni­ver­sity couldn’t fig­ure this one out. Here she was, giv­ing you a license to dis­pense with your own imag­i­na­tion, and they couldn’t wrap their heads around it.)

But you have to give Dick Wolf credit for help­ing show busi­ness. I once read that the best and worst thing that can hap­pen to an actor is to get cast on a soap opera — the best being the steady work that can last for years, the worst being, duh, the soap opera. I guess L&O was the upmar­ket ver­sion of that, although his best peo­ple rotated through pretty quickly and a few went on to greater things. I wish Sam Water­ston would do some­thing else, ditto Diane Wiest, but it’s not like anyone’s beat­ing down the door to cast geezer actors in any­thing, and both have had stel­lar careers in film and the­ater. You can’t blame any­one who chooses to make a liv­ing in such a per­ilous busi­ness for choos­ing job secu­rity, and the show isn’t ter­ri­ble — the ear­li­est sea­sons are still my favorite, and some of the writ­ing in those brief scenes is so tight and eco­nom­i­cal, it’s almost haiku.

But they lost me at SVU, a shame­less effort to attract the same sickos who enjoy the repul­sive CSI fran­chise. Rape sim­ply isn’t enter­tain­ing for me. (Not like MURDER, any­way!) I get really sick of hear­ing about flu­ids.

Lat­est word is that the show will likely not go away; if Wolf can’t reach an agree­ment with NBC, he’ll be off to a cable chan­nel. So maybe the pre­vi­ous 800 words don’t mean any­thing. But if it does, I’ve said my piece: Once I was a fan. I’m not any­more. Roll cred­its.

The best sin­gle episode, IMO: “The Trou­bles.” Argue your own case in com­ments.

For a while there, I won­dered whether “Treme” was shap­ing up to be David Simon’s “Star­dust Mem­o­ries.” The second-episode empha­sis on a trio of do-gooders from Madi­son, Wis., who descend on New Orleans after Kat­rina to help “the lower nine,” which they freely admit they’d never heard of before the storm — I squirmed a lit­tle.

Every dis­as­ter has do-gooders, and most of them are igno­rant of the authen­tic geog­ra­phy or cul­tural rhythms of the place they’re seek­ing to help, but what’s the alter­na­tive? Peo­ple who text HAITI to a num­ber on their cell phones? The ones who buy a ticket to a ben­e­fit con­cert, or tint their Face­book pro­file pic­ture a cer­tain color in a ges­ture of sol­i­dar­ity? (Maybe so. Ever since I watched a col­lec­tion of relief items for Hur­ri­cane Hugo vic­tims, and saw car after car of peo­ple appar­ently using it as an excuse to clean out their base­ments, I’ve made my per­sonal do-gooding a cash-only deal: Send money, and await fur­ther instruc­tions.)

The char­ac­ters in “Treme” were there to build houses with their church group, and peo­ple cer­tainly needed those. And while they were daffy and igno­rant and didn’t know why it costs extra to get a musi­cian to play “Saints” — and were almost cer­tainly big fans of “The Wire” — they got their wild night out in the real New Orleans, and maybe that was the point of those char­ac­ters after all. They were there to demon­strate that like all great cities, New Orleans will trans­form you if you let it. You arrive a cheese­head and leave some­thing else.

And it’s not like Simon spares the natives, either. Another daffy douchebag, the local DJ/layabout Davis McAlary, is one of those guys who has no qualms about lec­tur­ing his gay neigh­bors — gen­tri­fiers! the nerve! — about this or that obscure musi­cian who grew up around this or that cor­ner, fig­ures of tow­er­ing impor­tance they are some­how dimin­ish­ing, sim­ply by their pres­ence and their skill­ful home decor. Of course McAlary, played by the fab­u­lous Steve Zahn, is white him­self, but he’s a dif­fer­ent kind of white guy. He’s a musi­cian, and even though the sole com­po­si­tion of his we’ve heard is ridicu­lous, that gives him a license to live there that the gay men lack. He’s the oppo­site of an Oreo, black on the inside. At least he seems to think so.

(Bonus in-joke: He’s a God­dard Col­lege grad­u­ate, alma mater of David Mamet and attended by our own J.C. Burns. Ha.)

Treme is a neigh­bor­hood, and isn’t in the ninth ward, but the series isn’t as nar­row as that. It’s shap­ing up to be yet another Simonesque look at a suf­fer­ing city, ask­ing how it got that way, why it stays that way and why we should care. So far, it’s pretty clear: It got that way because a ter­ri­ble storm col­lapsed badly con­structed and main­tained flood­walls; it stays that way because the local civic cul­ture and insti­tu­tions tol­er­ate and fos­ter incom­pe­tence, and the fed­eral gov­ern­ment can’t seem to make them change; and we should care because of the music. Music is to “Treme” what drug deal­ing was to “The Wire,” in this case the lit­eral rhythm of daily life. Brass bands parade down the street. Every bar has a stage, and buskers sing on every cor­ner. Any­one with a tam­bourine or some­thing to bang on can pour out their joy or mis­ery at the drop of a hat, and does.

I had to watch the third episode twice before I grasped that the uptempo song Dr. John sang near the begin­ning of the hour, “My Indian Red,” was the same as, or based on, the a capella dirge the Mardi Gras Indi­ans were singing at the end of it, mourn­ing the loss of one of the tribe, whose body had only recently been found. Music is every­thing in New Orleans, and all it takes is a key or tempo change to take it from joy to sor­row. Or to anger, some­thing you clearly hear in Sonny the street musician’s pissed-off “Saints” for the Madi­son trio. (And they were right — he was the one who sug­gested it, not them.)

With four episodes down, you can see sub­tler themes emerg­ing — the way lop­sided suc­cess can strain a rela­tion­ship, the cor­rupt nature of insti­tu­tions, the sat­is­fac­tions and sor­rows of per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, and — that Simon big­gie — Why Cities Mat­ter. Although the most inter­est­ing char­ac­ter of all, Clarke Peters’ Albert Lam­breaux, is work­ing his own the­matic agenda entirely, and I’m not sure what it is. His might be a slow-motion crackup caused by PTSD, or maybe just the mys­tery of the Mardi Gras Indian tra­di­tion, which every­one refers to fre­quently — “the tra­di­tion” — but never actu­ally explains or illu­mi­nates. More will be revealed, I’m sure.

And then there’s the Ash­ley Mor­ris stand-in, Creighton Ber­nette, who deliv­ered the coup de grace in episode four this week — a ver­sion of his best-known rant. (There were so many to choose from.) I can now die happy. I hope Ash­ley, wher­ever he was, saw it too. If his own heart hadn’t given out two years ago, I’m sure he would have died of awe­some­ness, right there.

And that seems the best note to end on, espe­cially as a lit­tle inves­ti­ga­tion yes­ter­day by Sue turned up the sad news of what’s become of our once-regular com­menter, White­beard, aka Dun­can Haimerl. Died of a heart attack while recov­er­ing from can­cer surgery. One of the obit­u­ar­ies noted:

Duncan’s wife, Nancy, takes solace in the fact that Duncan’s mind and sense of humor never failed him. We saw that as he filed columns a few hours before surgery and soon after he began recov­ery, jok­ing about the details. Dun­can found some­thing he loved – cars, and writ­ing about them – and he never stopped doing it, never lost the pure joy of it.

Nancy would like Duncan’s old col­leagues and friends to know about the news, and that his suf­fer­ing at the end was min­i­mal.

RIP, pal. If there’s an after­life, Ashley’s there, and this week, he’s buy­ing every round.

Around the mid­dle of Feb­ru­ary, I decided there was a damn good rea­son that get­ting to the gym required approx­i­mately the same moti­va­tion as a nude crawl through — well, through the mile or so of depress­ing sub­ur­ban land­scape between it and my house. We’re always being admon­ished to lis­ten to our bod­ies, and my body was mak­ing it quite clear that it wished to indulge its inner bear and hiber­nate the rest of win­ter.

Plus, I had this book project that was blot­ting out the sun, and so. You know what hap­pened next.

The book is down to the last details, leav­ing the house is no longer a trial, the light is kind and plen­ti­ful and I am, pre­dictably, flabbed out again. This time, I need to com­bine the usual strat­egy of reg­u­lar exer­cise and sen­si­ble eat­ing with some­thing more dras­tic — I’m going low-carb, pals. Send search par­ties if I’m not back in a week.

I likely will be. I’ve tried Dr. Atkins’ whack diet in the past, and it’s always worked the same way: By day three, I’m hal­lu­ci­nat­ing about pota­toes. By day five, I’d pay $500 for a sin­gle slice of toast. After a week, it’s all over. But — lis­ten to this ratio­nal­iza­tion — those have always been with the zero-carb plan, and this time around — lis­ten to this, it’s pure bull­shit — things will be dif­fer­ent! I’m just try­ing to stay under 30 grams a day. Tough, but doable.

This morn­ing was a good omen: The cheese omelet folded together so beau­ti­fully, it looked like a pic­ture from a mag­a­zine. My omelets tend to be tasty, but messy, because I over­fill them. I threw in as much cheese as I felt like eat­ing, and it was a per­fect lit­tle enve­lope of melty deli­cious­ness.

But we shall see. There’s no doubt low-carb diets work. The prob­lem is, they’re hard to sus­tain, espe­cially if you like food. Who doesn’t like food? Atkins peo­ple, who can go on and on about bacon, but recoil in ter­ror at a roasted sweet potato. I love cau­li­flower, but show me a per­son who’s sat­is­fied with a cau­li­flower vichys­soise and I’ll show you some­one who is pro­foundly miss­ing the point of din­ner.

I’ll keep you posted. In the mean­time, going back to the gym feels good-bad. Bad in the inevitable sore­ness, good in the reasser­tion of mus­cle, that which can be felt through all the fat, that is. After two weeks, my low-grade back pain is gone, and even my knees feel bet­ter after all those squats. I’ve come to believe that the world would be a bet­ter, less cranky place if every home con­tained a well-used Pilates reformer. When I started mat Pilates classes last year, some­one said here they are a rev­e­la­tion, and that is Word, friends. If you’re long of torso like me, I beseech you to give them a try. So does your back.

And that makes approx­i­mately 500 words of the most bor­ing sub­ject mat­ter on the planet, and that’s all I will inflict upon you. I just want it on the record some­where: I’m try­ing.

It seems I’m over­due for a few words about “Treme,” and they are com­ing. It’s tra­di­tional for HBO to give TV crit­ics four episodes of its shows before they write a review, and that’s what I’m giv­ing myself before com­mit­ting, but so far: I am dig­ging it. It would be a sur­prise at this point if I didn’t: Like all good white peo­ple with New Yorker sub­scrip­tions, I’m a David Simon fan. Any­one inter­ested in look­ing at the prob­lems of Amer­i­can cities, fairly but pas­sion­ately, is some­one I’m will­ing to cut a lot of slack. And what hap­pened to New Orleans in 2005 is, it became Detroit more or less over the course of a few days — depop­u­lated, blighted, dys­func­tional, but with the same can’t-kill-it pulse. I’m inter­ested to see where it’s going.

And how can you not love a show with snappy dia­logue like this?

I brought beignets!
Who you fuckin’?

So, blog­gage? Some:

Um, what?

A mas­sive oil spill vile mat of flame in the Gulf of Mex­ico? Boy, I miss the ’90s. Life was sim­pler then.

As shal­low and sim­ple as my brain is in the morn­ing, of course I’m going to read any story with a head­line that asks, Why does this pair of pants cost $550? (The photo was of a male model is dis­tinctly run-of-the-mill khakis.) But when they can get this line above the jump –

“The cost of cre­at­ing those things has noth­ing to do with the price,” said David A. Aaker, the vice chair­man of Prophet, a brand con­sult­ing firm. “It is all about who else is wear­ing them, who designed them and who is sell­ing them.”

– that’s how I spell WIN.

And now I’m off. Enjoy the end of the week.

Not every­one gets to stay up late enough to see “The Col­bert Report,” and I hope I’m not spoil­ing any­one who catches it on the next-day reasonable-hour replay, but last night’s guest was David Simon, and guess whose name he dropped? Ash­ley Mor­ris’. (You can watch the clip here, and thanks, Del, for dig­ging that up.)

I’m so proud of my stu­pid lit­tle blog. It may not have many read­ers, but it has the right read­ers.

(Pause.)

Where is my money?

(Pause.)

For those of you new to this blog, after Ash­ley left us sud­denly in 2008, our web wiz­ard J.C. set up a script that pulled every com­ment he ever made here into a sin­gle thread. The link’s in the right rail, or here. What I find amus­ing about it is that, even sev­ered from the posts he was talk­ing about, they still make a cer­tain amount of sense, and you can dip in and out of them at will and still get a feel­ing for the man. Here’s one from near the top:

In St. Peters­burg in 1997, I was walk­ing down Nevsky Prospekt, and stopped at the Grand Hotel Evropa. They were adver­tis­ing “Bud and Burger: $8″. After a week in East­ern Europe, this actu­ally looked good. So I order my burger, get my Bud (they can’t call it Bud­weiser there because the Czechs own that name), and pound it down. I walk up to the bar for another Bud, and this gor­geous blonde is stand­ing beside me. Being a fear­less vir­ile Amer­i­can het­ero­sex­ual, I say to myself, what the hell. So I look at her and say “Hi, what’s your name”. She responds “Two hun­dred dol­lars”. With­out miss­ing a beat, I say “Is that your first name, your last name, or is that what your friends call you?” She looks con­fused, thinks for a sec­ond, then says again “two hun­dred dol­lars”. Finally, I’m served my Bud, and I walk away. And out in front of the hotel were all of the Russ­ian Mafia guys wear­ing the uni­form: khaki pants, black shirts, ital­ian loafers with no socks, and wrap-around sun­glasses. Oh, and they were all lean­ing on black mer­cedes, black BMWs, or black some­things. I didn’t fol­low my Rick Steves guide and try to strike up a con­ver­sa­tion…

For those even newer to this blog, Ash­ley pro­vided the loose frame­work of the char­ac­ter in “Treme” played by John Good­man. It’s an “inspired by,” not a “based on” char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, so don’t go get­ting any ideas; it’s not a line-for-line copy. But know­ing that Creighton Bernette’s lines were in some cases lifted from Ashley’s blog, it was funny to read this, in Hank’s review today:

His char­ac­ter was added to the array late in the show’s assem­bly and his dia­logue is sad­dled with dis­till­ing “Treme’s” social com­men­tary.

When a British jour­nal­ist inter­view­ing Creighton asks if New Orleans is worth rebuild­ing — since its destruc­tion and sink­ing is con­sid­ered by many to be Mother Nature’s fait accom­pli — the bel­liger­ent Creighton assaults him, tries to hurl his TV cam­era into the Mis­sis­sippi River and lets loose with the fiery coun­ter­ar­gu­ment that is “Treme’s” (and New Orleans’s) broad­est con­cern: The floods were a man-made dis­as­ter, trig­gered by a hur­ri­cane but caused by years of gov­ern­ment neglect and an inept fed­eral response.

While essen­tial to any story of life in New Orleans, such moments are nev­er­the­less “Treme’s” bur­den to bear. No mat­ter how hard the writ­ers seemed to have worked to avoid it, much of Goodman’s dia­logue in the early episodes has the fla­vor­ing of op-ed screeds, and it some­times seeps into other char­ac­ters’ scenes.

That’s what a blog is, isn’t it? One long op-ed screed. Ashley’s blog is still up, and while not quite a ghost ship, it’s tended inter­mit­tently by his widow, Hana (who was paid for her husband’s inspi­ra­tion). Spam­mers have flooded the com­ments, but I rec­om­mend the “great­est hits” links down the left rail, espe­cially “My Life in Porn,” because it links back here in sort of an orgy of log-rolling and ass-kissing.

Hank says “Treme” is good, by the way. It pre­mieres Sun­day. Although I will not be see­ing it until Tues­day. I’ll explain that later.

Think­ing about J.C. and his web wiz­ardry, he asked me once, when we were dis­cussing how I’ve still not made a last will and tes­ta­ment, “All I want to know is, who has con­trol of your online con­tent?” I thought for half a sec­ond, and bequeathed it all to him. As far as I’m con­cerned, if a blood ves­sel bursts in my brain today, I trust J.C. to keep the bar open. This ghost ship could sail for years. Maybe we can set up a guest-bartender sys­tem.

One bit of blog­gage today:

By my count, this is the sec­ond near-tragedy to strike the Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers sausage race in my mem­ory. HOW MUCH LONGER MUST THIS DEATH RACE BE ALLOWED TO CONTINUE? (This one’s the first.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go chase down a rab­bit. Back later.

Until I read the obits/appreciations yes­ter­day, I had for­got­ten about David Mills’ Misiden­ti­fied Black Per­son series. In a 2007 let­ter to Rome­nesko, the bible of media news, Mills pointed out the prob­lem:

In the late 1980s, as a fea­ture writer for the Wash­ing­ton Times, I wrote a piece about a cable-TV movie, and I’d inter­viewed its star, Avery Brooks. Insight mag­a­zine reprinted the story, and ran a photo of co-star Samuel L. Jack­son over the cap­tion “Avery Brooks.” Imag­ine my embar­rass­ment.

I con­fronted an edi­tor about this, and she kind of laughed it off. I don’t think Insight even both­ered to run a cor­rec­tion. At that point, Sam Jack­son wasn’t the movie star he is today. But black folks in D.C. were seri­ously dig­ging Avery Brooks as Hawk on “Spenser: For Hire.” So any black per­son who picked up that mag­a­zine and saw that error prob­a­bly felt a lit­tle pin­prick of insult. “Guess they think we all look alike.”

He fur­ther announced he’d be track­ing the prob­lem. Three months later, he had enough, just in the ath­letes cat­e­gory, to fill another col­umn.

Some were funny, and some were pathetic. In 2005, he pointed out, the Wash­ing­ton Times con­fused Robert Bobb, then a Wash­ing­ton D.C. city offi­cial, now finan­cial man­ager for Detroit Pub­lic Schools, with Mar­vin Gaye. Here’s Mar­vin Gaye. Here’s Robert Bobb. You tell me. Leon­tyne Price is an oper­atic soprano fond of tur­bans. Lena Horne is a cabaret singer. Price is darker-skinned, with a broad nose and full lips. Horne has a nar­row nose and thin­ner lips — in fact, Horne was some­times advised to “pass” as white to increase her earn­ing power. The AP con­fused them in a photo cap­tion. Well, they are both singers whose names begin with L.

You can see all of Mills’ blog posts on MBPs, as he called them, here. Hat tip to TV writer Alan Sepin­wall for remem­ber­ing how they were tagged; fur­ther hat tips for nam­ing his blog What’s Alan Watch­ing?, an acknowl­edg­ment of a bril­liant one-off by Eddie Mur­phy that sank under the waves so fast I thought I had hal­lu­ci­nated it. Sepin­wall explains here; it was a pilot that never got picked up, but aired in 1989. Once.

One more great Mills post: Attack of the Giant Negroes.

Too soon.

Well, it’s spring fer shure here in Michi­gan; by the fore­cast, it’s nearly sum­mer — 70s today, nudg­ing 80 tomor­row. And I have found an out­door exer­cise pen for Ruby Rab­bit in the clas­si­fieds, so I must away to pick it up soon. But before I go, a short story my brother-in-law Bill told a few years ago (which my search engine says I haven’t told before, and I hope it’s telling me the truth), which relates to the warn­ing we always hear at this time of year: Please, don’t buy your chil­dren chicks, ducks or rab­bits as Easter pets.

Years ago, it was com­mon­place for chil­dren to receive poul­try or lago­morphs for Easter presents, some­times dyed Easter col­ors. I never got one, but I knew many kids who did, and the story was always the same — the chicks were either stressed or squeezed to death, and the bunny ditto, if it wasn’t “released into the wild” by Dad within three days.

Any­way, one year Bill’s younger brother, Dickie, got a duck­ling. And the duck­ling did not die. Despite being played with by sev­eral chil­dren, the duck not only sur­vived Easter, it grew to matu­rity, shed­ding its pastel-dyed feath­ers for adult plumage and becom­ing a lit­eral pain in the ass in the bar­gain. It lived out­side and, per­haps brain-damaged by life away from its flock and lots of hand-feeding, became a butt-nipper, chas­ing the kids around the yard to pinch with its pow­er­ful beak. It finally became intol­er­a­ble, and the duck was taken to grandma and grandpa’s farm for a more nat­ural life. Grandma and grandpa lived in the coun­try near Cir­cleville, Ohio, and the duck was released into their flock with the usual fan­fare.

On sub­se­quent trips to visit the grand­par­ents, Dickie would some­times ask where the duck was. It was “down by the pond,” or “roost­ing under the porch,” but never where he could see it, and in time, he stopped ask­ing. Of course, you all know what hap­pened to the duck: It nipped grandma’s butt not long after arrival, and she, a coun­try woman who did not tol­er­ate inso­lent water­fowl , snatched it up, swiftly dis­patched it and served it for din­ner. Every­one but Dickie seemed to real­ize this.

Flash for­ward many, many years later — like, five years ago. Bill and Dickie are now about to col­lect Social Secu­rity. One day they’re sit­ting around talk­ing, and Dickie won­ders aloud, “I won­der what­ever hap­pened to that duck.” Bill said, “Grandma killed it. She was always a mean woman.” And Dickie was astounded. This had never occurred to him in the half-century or so since that long-ago spring, and for a moment he was eight years old again: Grandma…ate my duck? Some­times our child­hood illu­sions should be left intact.

So don’t buy your kid a live chick, duck or bunny for Easter. Although, if you do, it’s always pos­si­ble you’ll get a good fam­ily story out of it.

This morn­ing brings sad news: David Mills, aka Under­cover Black Man, aka writer/producer/whatever on “The Wire,” “Homi­cide: Life on the Street” and “Treme,” died sud­denly yes­ter­day on the set of “Treme.” The story linked above — and I have no idea what the Inves­tiga­tive Voice is, sorry — says it was an aneurysm.

It’s awful when a per­son this tal­ented is cut down in the prime of life. I didn’t know David, but like lots of peo­ple in that orbit, we exchanged a few e-mails from time to time. This detail from the story above should pro­vide a hint as to what we had in com­mon: While attend­ing (the Uni­ver­sity of Mary­land), Mills started a news­pa­per devoted to George Clin­ton and Par­lia­ment Funkadelic. You should not be sur­prised to learn that one of Mills’ first big splashes in TV writ­ing was “Bop Gun,” an episode of “Homi­cide” that takes its name from a P-Funk song. It also con­tains this price­less throw­away detail: A perp con­fesses to shoot­ing some­one over the destruc­tion of a rare Eddie Hazel record, a ref­er­ence maybe 12 peo­ple in the coun­try got, but that’s why you watched “Homi­cide,” for the chance you might be in that 12. (Why isn’t this show in syn­di­ca­tion any­where? I just learned this morn­ing that episode also fea­tures a 13-year-old Jake Gyl­len­haal. And I don’t think I’ve seen it since it aired in 1994.)

Mills died barely a week before “Treme” is set to pre­miere — April 11.

I can’t find it now, but in one of our e-mail exchanges, I told Mills a blog post of his had prompted me to fill out my P-Funk col­lec­tion via iTunes, and we went back and forth a lit­tle about guilty-pleasure pop hits. He said one of his was Diana Ross’ “Remem­ber Me,” and then I down­loaded that one, too. It’s fairly cheesy, Diana at her Diana-est, basi­cally a more uptempo ver­sion of “I Will Always Love You.” I guess now I have some­one to remem­ber when I hear it.

Damn it any­way.

So, a lit­tle blog­gage:

Google Maps added a bike fea­ture, sug­gest­ing the most bike-friendly routes between loca­tions. Here’s the map from my zip code to Belle Isle. I’d say they have some bugs to work out, but it’s a good start.

If you haven’t read the story I linked in the pre­vi­ous post, you are required to do so now. I am reminded once again of Jim at Sweet Juniper’s off­hand remark: One of the great things about this city is, fre­quently there’s nobody around to tell you you can’t do some­thing. Like open a strip club in your house.

Where is Jon Stewart’s MacArthur Fel­low­ship?

If any­one cares, my wind­shield was only cracked, not bro­ken, and it’s been like that for years, lit­er­ally. Alan bor­rowed my car in 2006 and came home with a crack in the wind­shield the width of my hand, and claimed no knowl­edge of how it hap­pened. Lit­tle by lit­tle, it expanded, and now it’s about 18 inches long. Although it’s down at the bot­tom and restricts my view not at all, it’s the sort of thing that would be an easy add-on ticket for a cop inter­ested in chop-busting. Bonus: In the four years I’ve had it, the own­er­ship of the glass shop changed and the price dropped from $590 to a lit­tle over $200. It pays to wait.

And now to think about my wind­shield not even a lit­tle — a bike ride.

I’m told my alma mater pulled off the first big upset of the NCAA tour­na­ment. Ohio Uni­ver­sity humil­i­ated the Hoyas of George­town — and boy, I can still do that head­line allit­er­a­tion, ain’a? — 97-83. For the record, this pleases me. For reals, (shrug). I can­not care about this stuff. I didn’t care about sports when I was a stu­dent there, so I can hardly start now. But know­ing that huge upsets are part of the DNA of this tour­na­ment, I guess I approve.

I have to say, it’s a lit­tle unset­tling to think any­one cares about sports in Athens these days. A while after I grad­u­ated, the school added a pro­gram in sports man­age­ment, and even that seemed strange. After grow­ing up in Colum­bus, enrolling at a school where col­lege foot­ball didn’t have the spe­cific grav­ity of the Nor­mandy inva­sion was like a dip in a cool lake on a hot day. I went to my share of foot­ball games, but I went Bobcat-style — after a few bloody Marys, leav­ing right after half­time. We came to see the band, the March­ing 110, then went uptown for more drink­ing. I went to one bas­ket­ball game. One of our party smug­gled in a large bull­horn. We sat high in the Con­vo­ca­tion Cen­ter and made prank announce­ments on the bull­horn, car­ried through­out the crowd by the dome’s freak­ish acoustics. “Num­ber 32, your pits smell,” went one. Num­ber 32, lined up for the foul shot, dropped his arms abruptly. Num­ber 32, I apol­o­gize.

The Mid-American Con­fer­ence in gen­eral is sort of a mess, I gather. I read a story awhile back call­ing it “the lit­tle con­fer­ence that can’t,” point­ing out that no MAC team has, well, let’s let the lede sum it up:

The last time any team from the Mid-American Con­fer­ence won an NCAA cham­pi­onship, the year was 1965. The pres­i­dent was Lyn­don B. John­son. The team was West­ern Michi­gan. The sport: men’s cross coun­try.

So you see the sort of cul­ture that pre­vails in Athens. Which makes OU’s win over George­town even more sur­pris­ing. Now they have the Big Mo, how­ever, so: Go Bob­cats. I’ll drink a bloody Mary in your honor this week­end. Sup­portin’ the team, Athens-style.

If noth­ing else, OU hosed the brack­ets.

I want this week OVER. So, blog­gage? Here’s a lit­tle:

She-who sported a new hair­style this week on Fox. She looks like she’s edg­ing into Mormon-wife ter­ri­tory, a cross between submit-unto-your-husbands and ’60s-era Loretta Lynn. I men­tion this because it’s the most inter­est­ing thing she’s done in a while. Not that i wish to be triv­ial.

I always avoid celebrity edi­tions of “Jeop­ardy!” It’s like ask­ing to have your dreams dashed.

“Break­ing Bad” starts its third sea­son this week­end. What fresh hell awaits Wal­ter White? I can hardly wait to find out.

More fleshed-out post­ing resumes next week. I hope.