Reality television. It’s not my thing, but sometimes, it’s my thing.

Every so often I think about what the next new thing’s going to be, in any field. Not long ago we were talking about R.E.M., which broke up after 30 years. The Beatles were together for, what, seven? When was the last real new thing in pop music? Hip-hop, I figure — something no one had ever heard before, that enough people flipped over (and the right people hated) that it took its place in the parade. Same with TV. Reality TV made its first big splash with “Survivor.” A friend told me it wouldn’t last. “Reality TV is OVER,” he was always declaring. The last time he did, it was 2002.

Reality TV. Not over.

How about some bloggage?

A very oldie, but something I hadn’t read before, until someone unearthed it for the New Hampshire primary — Henry Allen on New Hampshire. Cruel and unfair, but it feels right to me. The place sounds like northern Michigan.

Six things I love about Detroit, by some Internet guy I should know more about, but don’t.

Matty Moroun’s terrible, awful, no-good, very bad week. And one that made applause break out in the courtroom.

I’m going to bed.

They must have reamed out the pipe since then, because it worked like a charm and over the course of two days, I watched (in the iPad-propped-against-a-lamp-while-I-worked sense) six episodes of season two, which is in many ways my favorite of the five. The show was building its reputation but hadn’t yet become a Thing, so it was possible to enjoy it as your own secret, while still finding fellow travelers from time to time. The setting of the Baltimore waterfront provided a rich array of dramatic possibilities and big themes, along with a visual environment that looked like nothing you’d seen before. It might be that I enjoyed it more this time because I’ve been thinking, lately, of the great economic restructuring we’re undergoing now, and a question that occurs to me a lot in the course of living in what was once the great, steaming heart of the country’s manufacturing economy: What are we going to do with these people?

The central narrative of “The Wire’s” second season was this very problem, as illustrated on Baltimore’s waterfront: Technology at ports requires fewer and fewer dockworkers, but the people who have done it for multiple generations have failed to get the message, and the economy has failed to offer any alternative other than “work two jobs.” Our society has always produced people across a range of intellect and abilities, and for most of its history, the bargain we made with them was simple: If you’re willing to work, we’ll find something for you to do, and — this is key — you’ll be able to make a living at it. It might not be a lavish one, but if your dreams are modest, there’s a place for you.

I was in a dollar store in Warren a few years back, and saw a young couple there. The woman looked older than her years, but had the sort of whip-thin edge that suggests a survivor — cosmetologist, shift supervisor, maybe a waitress. Her companion, on the other hand, was dressed in the oversized clothing favored by hip-hoppers, which made him look like a toddler playing Eminem dress-up. He tagged along behind her like one, too, occasionally goosing or otherwise bugging her, and you could tell she wasn’t enjoying any part of it. For the first time, I got an idea of why women like this would rather not marry the fathers of their children. The baby has an excuse, pops. What’s yours?

The morning is moving toward maturity, and it’s Hella Monday, so here goes with the bloggage:

New York City’s least-known, but hardest-working, casting director.

An electric fence at the Mexican border? Shucks, I was just pullin’ your leg! And all the people who cheered were, too.

Let’s try for better tomorrow. For now, gotta run.

Oh, hell, why not say, “the usual actress diet starved her into a Keane kid,” but she’s good at what she does.

So let’s go for bloggage today, because I don’t have the steam for much else.

Only one day later, and I’m already tiring of the Steve Jobs tributes, even as they move on to second-day stretches like this: Jobs understood our individualistic culture, and that is applicable to politics somehow, which I’m going to show with a lot of sweeping generalizations. Watch how I do it:

At the same time, while Mr. Jobs saw a society moving inexorably toward individual choice, he also seemed to understand that such individuality breeds detachment and confusion. And so Apple sought to fill that vacuum by making itself into more than a manufacturer; it became a kind of community, too, with storefronts and stickers and a membership that enabled you to get your e-mail, or video-conference with your friends, or post a Web page of your vacation photos.

But that’s nothing compared to the Corndog, at National Review Online, where the ideologues do what ideologues do: Seek to see the whole world through their special glasses:

That old Motorola cinderblock (cell phone) would cost about $10,000 in 2011 dollars, and you couldn’t play Angry Birds on it or watch Fox News or trade a stock. Once you figure out why your cell phone gets better and cheaper every year but your public schools get more expensive and less effective, you can apply that model to answer a great many questions about public policy. Not all of them, but a great many.

OK, I’m going to try to “figure this out”: A cell phone is not like public education because? One’s a cell phone, and one’s public education! What do I win?

I don’t always visit Sweet Juniper’s occasional posts on children’s literature, but I should, because of this explication de texte of “Goodbye Rune.” Killer line: I do feel like I understand Lars von Trier a little bit better now. Me, too!

OK, gotta run. We’re pulling the boat today, a bit early, in preparation for Alan starting a demanding new job at the paper later in the month, one that may well dictate that he never see his beloved sailboat again. Kidding. But at least we have good weather for it — Indian summer with a vengeance. Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you after it’s over.

I’m embarrassed it took me three viewings to pick it up.

And then this morning I watched the clips from last night’s Daily Show, and hello, Mary. The relevant portions start around 3:30, although you should watch the whole thing, so you can behold the misery etched on the face of one of Dr. Queerton’s “patients,” who went to him (he’s a clinical psychologist) for how-not-to-be-gay therapy. His specialty. Yes, the irony is downright cartoonish, isn’t it? And while I know it helps to laugh at people like this, that laughter is really the only defense possible against such sparkly queens and their enablers, like the Bachmanns, I still get pissed. I’m more aware of the time slipping past every year, but I really, seriously cannot wait until we look at these two, and all their ilk, as the 21st century equivalent of people who sold bleaching creams to black people in the 20th. They aren’t just ridiculous figures, they are evil. Speaking of Satan.

I’ve known gay people who get these sort of mailings from their parents, helpful books and brochures and spiritual advice on how not to be gay, on how to reform and renounce or, if you can’t do that, to simply live a celibate life, as Jesus is calling you to do. I’m pretty sure that even though they’re laughing when they tell me about it later, that they weren’t laughing when they got the mail that day. They likely weren’t laughing at the Thanksgiving table last year, or at Christmas, or whatever. One of them told me that when he came out to his family, his father started going to Mass daily — a daily Communicant, as the good Cat’liks say — to pray for his son’s deliverance from evil.

So no, I can’t laugh at the Bachmanns anymore. Although I do crack a smile, imagining their sex life.

Meanwhile, relationship advice from a gay man. Pretty sane, I’d say. (But language makes it NSFW.)

Looks like we’ve transitioned into the bloggage, then? Let’s hop to it:

So, a friend from way back in the day called the other night, and mentioned going to the Ohio State Fair. Which made me think of Miss Citizen Fair, about which I’ve bored you before, but led me to google the phrase “You are Miss Citizen Fair.” Hit No. 1: Me, in 2007. Hit No. 2: Bob Greene, two years later.

I’m not sure what this means, but it certainly freaked my cheese. We traffic in a certain amount of nostalgia here, but I hope it’s distinct from the Greenian school of Everything Was Better Then. The column linked above is from Bob’s book about the good ol’ days of the newspaper business, when Bob fell in love. In fact…

It was a time when newspapers were still such a fundamental part of everyday American life that there really were too many young women on the fairgrounds who fit the Miss Citizen Fair profile, too many young women for us to narrow down the field.

Too many young women walking around the Ohio State Fair carrying copies of that morning’s local newspaper. It was utterly common: a person at the fair, young or old, carrying the latest edition. It’s what people did: Purchase a paper every day, and carry it around with them.

Yeah, yeah. And men wore coats and ties to a baseball game. We get it.

Emmy nominations today, but nothing for “Treme.” Sorry, Khandi Alexander.

And as the hour grows late, I think I will fly.

*My memory may be faulty here; it might have been another work-of-David Simon blog. One of those.

Also, while it’s true I have an opinion on pretty much everything and can overanalyze with the best of them, I’m claiming my TV more for entertainment these days. I’m reserving the right to sit back and enjoy more. The world isn’t short of people who can slice, dice, unpack, unravel and unwind TV with the best of them, and for this one, I mostly choose not to participate. To fully appreciate, “Treme” requires a knowledge of New Orleans that is both broad and deep, and mine is neither. To illustrate, a sample conversation with the late Ashley Morris:

Me: I love New Orleans. We went there on vacation a few years ago.
AM: Oh?
Me: Yes, we stayed in a guesthouse on Ursulines Street. Run by a couple of gay men.
AM: Well, that narrows it down.

So let Ray Shea and the rest of them at BoT do the heavy lifting. Me, I just watch.

As frequently happens when quality television is involved, second seasons are when the ripening occurs, and that’s been the case with “Treme.” The show started with enormous expectations — anything that followed “The Wire” had to — and swiftly disappointed many by not being “The Wire.” But it was definitely in the mold of other Simon work, which is to say, it was about cities and how they work (and don’t work). You’d think, given where people live in these United States, we might want to see more of this. But the world is also full of people who, when they sit down for a night of telly, want the sweet balm of escapism. There are quite a few more who believe urban America is a hellhole, and seek confirmation in following bullet trails through viscera, because that’s what happens to you when you go there — you get shot.

There’s also been some critical backlash, like this piece, which basically says: Yawn. BO-ring. I disagree, obviously. You don’t need multiple shootings and drug busts to give a show forward momentum. “Treme” runs at a more leisurely pace than “The Wire,” but has no shortage of pleasures, the most obvious of which is the music.

The music this season has been wonderful, and there’s more of it than in season one. Every city has its own soundtrack, but New Orleans’ might be the richest on the continent, and the show goes out of its way to depict it, from high to low, to show how its threads weave together and keep making New Orleans’ musical tapestry so unique. I’ve always thought the most interesting places on the map are those where worlds and cultures collide, and they’ve been colliding in New Orleans, at the end of the big river, for centuries, and nowhere is this more evident than in the music coming out of every window and door. Truth be told, if “Treme” was little more than an excuse to link performances together, I’d probably still watch. (And if Albert and Delmond Lambreaux ever release their mashup of modern jazz and Mardi Gras Indian chants, I’ll probably buy it.)

Some of the efforts to include the city’s other big cultural scene, food, feel more strained. Anthony Bourdain got lots of writing credits this season, and while his pen is talented, I hope he doesn’t quit his day job. The scenes of Janette the chef’s evolution as a culinary artist were my least favorite of the season. (Although I probably will never cook fish again without thinking I should listen to it more.) Also, I’m in full agreement with the writer at Dark Brown Waffles who found Lucia Micarelli’s Annie Tee character a big bundle of who-cares. She spent several episodes struggling to birth an unmemorable song. Which goes to show you that in a musical town, some are bandleaders and composers and some are just players. Annie’s a very fine player. End of that story.

You can quibble over the details, but to me, “Treme” is at its best when it shows what’s wrong — and what’s glorious — about urban America, where the country built its strength and lost its way and now can’t come to grips with. We’re a mobile society; we like to strike it rich and find the next thing. New Orleans — and Baltimore, and Detroit, and many others — are reminders that we can’t just move on, that we owe cities something. The road to figuring that out is what “Treme” is all about.

New York magazine’s critic was kinder than the Atlantic’s. You might want to read.

In bloggage today:

I flipped on Nancy Grace last night for about half an hour while I worked. I’ve never watched more than 30 seconds of the blonde harpy, and I wanted to see if the top of her skull would blow off last night. I lasted longer this time, but not much; this clip should give you an idea why. What the–? Is this typical? If so, Fox isn’t the only cable-news outfit with an embarrassment to apologize for. That Susan Moss person! I’m still traumatized.

My appreciation of Monaco’s new princess continues. I tried to link to a single photo from this slideshow, but failed. If you have time to page through, it’s the very last one that made me laugh out loud, no. 27. Princess Stephanie, in her tobacco-colored tan and wrist tattoo — she’s the French version of Aunt Mimi in “Treme.”

And now, the hour grows late, and I gotta go. Happy Wednesday, all.

That’s Beartooth Pass, Montana Wyoming, four days ago. I’ve gone through snow in the mountains in June before, but not that much of it. I’m sure it’s lovely, and I’m sure the views are grand, but photos like this remind me how much I’m a flatlander. Once the ground gets high enough that you can fall from it and die, I have to fight the urge to lay face-down and hang on for dear life. Although then you miss all the pretty scenery.

I think that picture was MarkH’s. I hope it was. If not, I’m breaking someone’s copyright.

So. I made time for “Game of Thrones” and “The Killing” finales, finally, and I really don’t have much to add to the chorus. By way of comparison, I think these few paragraphs from Gawker sum it up pretty well. Essentially, one show played by the rules and one didn’t, and if you read any further, know here be spoilers, but let’s get to it:

I’m always interested in shows like “The Killing,” which arise out of a different TV culture. The original was Danish, called “Forbrydelsen,” and if I cared to, I could probably dig up the statistics, but let me retrieve them from memory instead: It was so popular the entire country ground to a halt for an hour every week, for an estimated economic impact of nine trillion kroner. For the finale, you could have walked naked down the main street in Copenhagen, and no one would have noticed. Even the mermaid statue was watching. And so on. All of which should bode well for the American remake, and for a while, it did. The series started out great, and for a few weeks, I totally got it. I loved it, in fact. It was “Prime Suspect,” another crime-story import, with more rain. Lots more rain, in fact. We’ve discussed the rain before, haven’t we? Too much rain.

Here’s something I — we — should have considered, however: There’s nothing on TV in Denmark. Oh, sure, Danes have satellite and cable and all the rest of it, but I bet most of their programming is imported. You just don’t think of Denmark when you think of groundbreaking entertainment, and while it’s western Europe and presumably their culture would be recognizable to us, it’s also one of those places where I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that “Dallas” is still popular. Or “Baywatch.” Or that their “(Insert name of country)’s Got Talent” franchise just crowned an operatic soprano, or a viola player, or a contortionist. Like us, but not. Skewed.

I’ve never been to Denmark, so I can’t say with any authority what their national character is like, but reaching into my big bag of national-character stereotypes, I come up with Gloom, and Individual Industry, and Self-Effacement. Probably they’re so pathetically grateful to get their very own competently produced murder-mystery series, produced in their native language, that they didn’t care that it strung them along for the entire series and then didn’t reveal the killer in the final episode. They don’t mind tuning in next season. It’s a national duty.

Because that’s what happened, if you didn’t hear. After however-many episodes of teasing and misleading and enough red herrings to make lunch for all of Scandinavia, the series ended with…more uncertainty! Another switcheroo! It might have been Billy Campbell, but it probably wasn’t!

You’ll have to wait another year to find out who the real killer was, in other words. Well, you will. And maybe you. But I’m so far out of this show, I might as well have moved to Denmark.

Here’s something Veena Sud (Danish for “fucks with your head”), the creator of the original series and executive producer of the American remake, didn’t consider: We eat murder for breakfast here. Every day in the United States of America, people die on TV, a whole army of them. We peek through their windows and watch them enjoying life, not knowing there’s a killer outside waiting to end it all. We watch them bound and tortured, begging for their lives. Once they’re dead, we tunnel into their wounds to watch their spleens explode. If we’re going to invest a whole series in just one murder, it better pay off. Because we don’t have time for this shit, otherwise.

Fun fact to know and tell: Copenhagen’s murder rate is roughly four per 100,000 population. It’s a city of 2 million, give or take, which means 80 homicides a year. Eighty! There were 361 murders in Detroit, year before last, a city of 800,000. As American as apple pie.

Which is not to say we’re callous about it (although we are). Just that you promised something you didn’t deliver. The show’s tag line, after all, was: Who killed Rosie Larsen? And you didn’t answer the question.

So the hell with Rosie. Bad things happen to prostitutes. Which “CSI” teaches us, three times a week.

“Game of Thrones,” now, that was a series with a payoff. OMG DRAGONS, and not just any dragons, but wee baby dragons! This show changed my mind about fantasy fiction, the whole damn genre. I’ve never been able to get into it, for a number of reasons, but the main one is magic. What’s the point of following a story if the writer’s hole card is magic? Write yourself into a corner? Have your character cast a spell and enchant his way out of it. I’m also not fond of dwarves, or swords, or krakens, or British accents as the all-purpose go-to tongue of the realm. But “Game of Thrones” gave me all of that, and wisely kept the magic at bay until the final moments, and then: Whoa.

(I will say, they kind of wimped out. In the book, Daenerys emerges from the ashes of her husband’s funeral pyre with the baby dragons actually nursing at her breasts. I suspect it would have been too hard/expensive to render with CGI, though.)

The “Game of Thrones” finale settled all the extant story lines and set up the second season with several strong new ones. I’m totally hooked. Now I need to decide whether I want to read the books, or let the show reveal the story to me. My sister’s on the final one, and I asked her, “So, has winter arrived yet?” And no, it hasn’t. The dragons aren’t even full-grown yet. I don’t know if I have the patience for all those pages of exposition. We’ll see.

The hour is drawing late, so let’s go blogging:

I’ve been reading about David Mamet’s conversion to the right wing, but I obviously haven’t read enough details, or at least not the ones revealed in Christopher Hitchens’ review of his new book. The man hasn’t had a political conversion, he’s gone mad:

Part of the left’s savage animus against Sarah Palin is attributable to her status not as a woman, neither as a Conservative, but as a Worker.

What? Life’s too short to waste on this one. I’d rather watch “The Killing” spin out the Larsen case for another 25 episodes or so.

OID: Boy, 7, steals stepfather’s car to go see his bio-dad, leads police on chase.

And as we’re running long today, I think that’s it. We just had a thunderstorm, followed by sunshine. Which means, boys and girls? Yes, humidity! Nothing like having a bad hair day to look forward to.

Despite everything I expected, I’m enjoying “Game of Thrones.” I generally despise anything involving broadswords and magic, and GoT has a lot of the former, less of the latter, plus boobs (this being HBO). The characters tend toward ridiculous names, but are helpfully color-coded — the Peroxide Twins, the Strawberry Blonde Clan — or are recognizable enough that I can keep them straight from scene to scene, like Mayor Carcetti on “The Wire,” whom we learned last week was a eunuch. (He’s gossips and schemes. You know how eunuchs are.)

No one is more surprised by this than I am. I’m not a fan of David Benioff, who’s co-writing this thing, and haven’t been since I saw him speak at Michigan way back when. There’s way too much exposition-through-dialogue — Lord Dyphtherion, how go affairs at your castle Wickershamshire? Is your brother still recovering from the injuries suffered in that joust with dark knight Bubonicus? What was at stake? Some significant titles and land? — but Benioff knows everything sounds better in a British accent. And once you’ve got the initial sorting by hair color and subplot, it’s no harder to follow than any soap opera. I’d like a little more magic, though. I assume it’s coming. I hope it won’t be too silly.

As different from “Game of Thrones” as chalk is from cheese, “Treme” is back for its second season, now examining Katrina-scarred New Orleans from a distance of a year and change. This is when residents knew for sure just how much the rest of the country cared about them (not much) and when the overstressed institutions of social order, mainly the police department, began to break down. I’m so bummed Ashley Morris isn’t alive to see this, but fortunately, the people at the Back of Town blog are breaking down each episode for us, and if you’re not following along there, you’re missing something. I recommend it over any professional “Treme” criticism, including this Salon piece (spoilers galore), which boiled down to: I didn’t like this scene, ergo, suckitude.

Y’all know what a David Simon fan I am; I will put my little hand in his and follow him anywhere. But generally, I’m finding this season better than the first, and not just because I know everyone now. Detroit is New Orleans in a colder climate, with a disaster that struck in slow motion, rather than in meteorological form. But they have a great deal in common, and the questions Simon is asking are the same ones anyone with open eyes asks when they live around here, about responsibility, complicity and all the rest of it.

(The scenes with the crazy chef, Enrico Brulard, I can only attribute to Simon’s bromance with Anthony Bourdain, although they’re plenty entertaining. I love food and respect the craftsmanship that goes into preparing it well, but watching Brulard fuss over dishes was a useful reminder not to worry too much about anything that will be in the municipal sewer system in 24 hours.)

Finally, “The Killing” is starting to grate. (All these shows run on Sunday night, when I’m working. Thank my lucky stars for DVRs and on-demand cable) It started out so well, and now in episode six or seven or something, all I’m looking forward to is the end, when the red herrings are shoveled off the deck and we find out who done it, and I’m already worried we’re in for some late-arriving character who will come bearing a suitcase full of deus ex machina. I’m already tired of so much, which I’m now realizing is mainly clichés served up by Enrico Brulard, with artful presentation and some garnish you don’t recognize — the Female Detective Who’s Married to Her Job, the Innocent Party With a Secret, etc. And the rain! Lord, the rain. I know it rains in Seattle, and I know it rains a lot, but presumably people come equipped for it, and occasionally bother to put their hoods up.

I’ve seldom been as thoroughly hooked by anything as I was by the first two episodes of “The Killing.” I’ve seldom been so disappointed by what came afterward.

Your thoughts? It’s sweeps month, you know.

A little bit of bloggage:

Jim Cramer, profiled in the NYT magazine, discusses his joust with Jon Stewart, which wasn’t really a joust at all. Mr. Whinypants says:

“As soon as he started, I realized Stewart was on a mission to make me look like a clown. I didn’t defend myself because I wasn’t prepared. What was I supposed to do, talk about how often I had been right? Praise myself? Get mad? I was mad, but I didn’t want to give the audience any blood. The national media said I got crushed, which I did, and made me into a buffoon.” He looked at his plate and shook his head. “You have a whole body of work and then — ” He signaled the waitress for more coffee. “Stewart was the prosecutor, and I was Exhibit A. But what was the crime? What did I do wrong? I wasn’t running Fannie or Freddie. I wasn’t in charge at Countrywide. CNBC was completely good. Better than the Department of Justice. What I did every night was call these bad actors out. I sat there with Stewart and thought: He’s never even seen my show. He doesn’t even know what I do.” He paused for a moment. “Obviously I didn’t know what he does, either.”

Tell it to someone who cares, Jim.

The last people in the world to discover Donald Trump is not what he seems, speak:

“The last thing you ever expect is that somebody you revere will mislead you,” said Alex Davis, 38, who bought a $500,000 unit in Trump International Hotel and Tower Fort Lauderdale, a waterfront property that Mr. Trump described in marketing materials as “my latest development” and compared to the Trump tower on Central Park in Manhattan.

“There was no disclaimer that he was not the developer,” Mr. Davis said. The building, where construction was halted when a major lender ran out of money in 2009, sits empty and unfinished, the outlines of a giant Trump sign, removed long ago, still faintly visible.

Mr. Davis is unable to recover any of his $100,000 deposit — half of which the developer used for construction costs.

“Revere” — what a strange word to use in that context.

A long piece on Hillary Clinton’s term as SoS that I haven’t read yet, but plan to. Over the weekend, maybe.

Which will start soon. Enjoy yours.

One day Paul got up to go inside to freshen his drink and didn’t come back. I went in a bit later to freshen my own and found him putting the last touches on a fairly elaborate snack platter — Triscuits with tuna salad, fruit, little cheesy things, etc. Plus a fresh cocktail with a fruit flag on the rim of the glass.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Erica’s getting married,” he said. “I’m having a reception.”

Oh, right. “All My Children.” And there Erica was, wearing a modest red-sequined wedding cocktail dress, marrying for the fourth time, to Adam Chandler. He’d also be the male lead in marriage no. 7, out of 10 as of 2005, the last list I could find, and I’m not spending an extra minute researching Erica’s marriages, let me tell you. Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Montgomery.

I’m sorry Paul died before the internet took over our lives, as I’m sure he’d enjoy surfing the “All My Children” blogs every day, maybe keeping one himself. You know what the big news would be today — it and “One Life to Live” are being cancelled after 40 years or so, part of the slow collapse of the daytime soap. Hard to imagine. I remember my grandmother watching these afternoon stories in the ’60s, when they were in black and white, the action punctuated with organ stings.

Soaps were always the golden handcuffs for actors, steady work that paid very well, but didn’t carry much prestige outside of fan conventions. Although I’m always amazed at how many respectable ones got their start there — Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei. Demi Moore was on “General Hospital,” although I think we can all agree her technique still has one foot in the Significant Close-up to Close a Scene.

The New Yorker ran a hilarious profile of the showrunner of “Days of Our Lives” a few years back. It was there I learned that the writing on soaps has reached the point where scenes in heaven are fairly routine now. Never watched ‘em, myself. Tried, during the Luke and Laura “General Hospital” era, but couldn’t get into it.

So how about a picture? From the Kid Rock cruise:

That’s from the Facebook of Deke Dickerson, whom I gather was a musician in one of the backup bands. Thanks to BobNG for pointing it out. As I said late in yesterday’s comments, I’m disappointed at how much better his album is than any of the many photo galleries published by the Free Press. If you’re on Facebook, you can look it up yourself; they’re public on his wall, but I don’t think any link I’d put here would work. I’m amazed, although I shouldn’t be, by how many guests had multiple Kid Rock tattoos. One had an interesting surgery scar on her thigh, too. I’m sure the story behind that one is something to hear.

A little bloggage for the weekend:

U.S. Postal Service FAIL, as the kids say: The new Statue of Liberty stamp turns out to be a photograph of the one in Las Vegas, not in New York Harbor. Another delightful read by Kim Severson, off the food beat for a while now, and blooming where she’s planted. I saw her speak at a conference in Ann Arbor, and she was by far the most amusing one there.

Finally, something to consider while our American kids are being taught to the test. Tell me if you think these Australian kids will ever forget this lesson about dinoaurs for the rest of their lives:

What does a getup like that cost, anyway? Can I save enough money by next Halloween?

Jolly good weekend to all.

The number of scurrying serfs required to keep its fires burning, its beds made, its kitchen turning out meals, its ten thousand chandeliers dusted and its inhabitants properly dressed is mind-boggling. (Although we only meet a few, the Granthams being a modest family. Or maybe the production budget only allowed for a cast of 20 or so.) Of course they all have complicated lives outside of their work, and the family itself is going through the things families went through in the Edwardian era, what with the need to get their daughters well-married and their estate properly passed down, all while the modern age lurks just offstage, the way the ’60s loom in “Mad Men.”

But being a woman, and the mistress of NN.C Abbey here in Michigan, I’m most interested in the domestic details of clothing and housekeeping, the way the ladies dress for dinner, what everyone eats. You needed a valet or maid just to attend to all the details of your wardrobe, to lace your corset or fasten your cufflinks or attach the stiff collar to your stiff shirt, so you can sit at the head of your table like a penguin and preside over dinner. I read once that true upper-class people call tuxedos “dinner jackets,” because that’s what they are.

I notice you don’t see the laundry being done. If you want to keep me awake at night, whisper in my ear that in my next life, I might be reincarnated as a laundress. I’ll stare lasers into the ceiling. The main character in the novel “The Girl With a Pearl Earring” was a laundress in the large and child-heavy household of Johannes Vermeer, and the paragraphs of description of the daily chores involved made my hands ache with sympathetic pain — the washing, the scrubbing, the rinsing, the starching, the bleaching, the wringing, the hanging, the ironing, the folding. My earliest memory of a washing machine at our house was one where you had to move the clothes over, a few at a time, into the spin-extractor, and yet, my mother did it happily. She also owned a washboard for problem cases, and I think she knew what the alternative was.

So far, my favorite moment is the old cook, trying to tell young Daisy, the kitchen maid, that Thomas the footman is not for her. Thomas is gay, and the cook tries to tell her a half-dozen ways, but Daisy, besotted with his attention, can’t hear her. “He’s not a ladies’ man,” the cook says; she’s a rougher sort, but apparently sodomite and buggerer aren’t in her vocabulary. And of course I love anything that drops from Maggie Smith’s mouth. She plays the dowager countess, and she gets all the best lines.

I can’t believe it’s only four parts, and we’re almost there! But a second season is on tap. So in that spirit, and because it’s Burns Day, let’s start the bloggage with a story about haggis. Mmm, gray food served in offal — my mouth is watering.

Although, when you think about it, what we eat isn’t much better. What’s the difference between what you put in homemade tacos and what Taco Bell calls “taco meat filling?” You probably don’t want to know. And in the right frame of mind — i.e., after a beer or three, during a blue moon — I’ll actually eat this stuff. Maybe I should stick to the vegetarian options.

The predates “Downton Abbey” by a few years, but I bought this book a while back — “What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew” — and enjoyed it immensely. It’s an explanation of Victorian England that concentrates on the little details of daily life, including maybe the biggest one: Why have a Downton Abbey at all? (Answer: To have a home base for fox-hunting, and an escape from plague season in London.)

Now I must fly. But first, was Trent Reznor really nominated for an Oscar? If so, I hope he wins. The score in “The Social Network” was outstanding, and I’m not a score-noticer by any stretch.

Good Burns Day to all. I’m headed for Taco Bell.

The idea is to say, Christmas is over and we’re not going to depress anyone by leaving Santa on the lawn until April, but it’s a long few weeks before we start to see anything approaching the softer light of spring, and so we’re going to let the candle of civilization burn in the dark a while longer. Until Valentine’s Day, say.

Who’s with me?

I don’t think Alan will be. Disassemble half the Christmas lights, then bring in the other half six weeks later? Winter sucks. Deal.

Well, that was my idea, anyway.

How are all of you this morning? We’re starting the year off right, with a glugging floor drain in the basement. It’s good that I handle Christmas on a pay-as-you-go basis, as January always seems to hold a few of these nasty surprises. There’s also the appraisal for our house, revealed yesterday, which came in at — calculating here — 52 percent of its 2005 purchase price. Yay, us! We’re po’.

There are times when the only reasonable response to such a pickle is to saute some spinach with garlic and then scramble a couple of eggs in there, too. There is little that can’t be faced on a spinach breakfast. Ask Popeye.

So while I wait for C&G Sewer Service, a question: Where would we be without Jon Stewart? Even in the clips roundups the day after, he’s better and funnier than anyone else on late night. The battle of the would-be Republican National Committee chairmen alone is worth your time. It’s hilarious to watch these tools caper for Grover Norquist. (If it weren’t so terrifying, of course.)

Charles Pugh — once the dumbest reporter on WKJG-TV in Fort Wayne, now the dumbest city council president Detroit has had since the last one:

City Council President Charles Pugh is dissolving his controversial nonprofit after taking criticism for secrecy surrounding it. The Pugh & You: Move Detroit Forward Fund was set up in March to raise money for staff travel and community outreach. But it caused heat for hosting a $5,000 a table fundraiser in August for Pugh’s 39th birthday. Criticism increased when Pugh refused to disclose donors that a staffer confirmed included a strip club operator who gave $500.

(A great picture, too. It needs a thought bubble: Once again, Kwame ruins it for everyone.)

I saw a couple of kids in downtown Grosse Pointe in shorts the other day. The temperature was edging toward balminess, so I thought perhaps they were just encouraging warmer weather. No. Turns out this is the thing, these days. Who knew? (I’m with the choose-your-battles parents. As long as hypothermia or frostbite isn’t a real risk, let ‘em suffer.)

And with that, I sign off to await the arrival of a plumber-y looking van in the driveway. You?