Homeownership sucks. Responsibility sucks. Nothing like homeownership — particularly in a market with declining real-estate values — to make one yearn for the simpler days of an apartment, a mailbox with everyone else’s by the front entrance, a community pool and a call to Maintenance when things went wrong.

A little history: In true Detroit style, a previous owner of our house was enamored of gas-hungry machines, specifically recreational vehicles. In what may be a metaphor for the relationship between motor vehicles and the natural world, they used this enthusiasm to ruin the back yard. They picked up the garage and rotated it 90 degrees, plunking it in the goddamn middle of the yard. In between the garage and the house, they installed a deck. This is nice. In between the garage and the back of the property, they poured another parking slab, and in the thin stretch left before the property line, they poured gravel. (In the sales listing for the house, this was described as a “play area,” the same way “squalid shithole” becomes “handyman’s special.”) Everything else was paved.

For the first two years we lived here, we regarded this arrangement with contempt. Alan in particular was fond of referring to “the automotive engineer” who dreamed it up, even though he had no evidence that the person in question was an automotive engineer; this was just the part of him that knew sooner or later we were going to have to right the wrong, venting its entirely justified disgust. It would have been so much easier, and likely cheaper, to keep the stupid RV in a storage facility.

Well. We don’t have the tens of thousands of dollars required to either move the garage back or, better yet, tear it down and build a new one where the garage should be, break up and remove all the concrete and reclaim the back yard for the forces of good. But we had enough to get an estimate on hauling out all the gravel from the “play area” and replacing it with topsoil. The estimate was what we expected, so we told Mr. Landscaper to get a crew over here and git ‘er done. Which he did. The Bobcat had been working for an hour when they hit the surprise. “A body?” I asked hopefully. No, Alan said; they’d found giant heaps of broken-up concrete. The neighbor ambled over and explained that when the garage was removed from its original foundation, they’d broken up the slab and used it to underlay the gravel in the back corner of the lot, to support parking for yet another very heavy recreational vehicle. Mr. Landscaper said this would complicate things, that they’d need another man and a lot more dirt, but I said, “Let’s just do it the way it should be done,” and OK’d the cost overrun, which I was informed could increase the bill by as much as 100 percent.

The job got done and a good job it was. We added a couple hundred square feet of arable land to what had been weed-pocked gravel. When the bill came, I swallowed hard and opened it.

It was more than triple the estimate.

After I picked myself off the floor, I told myself all the things you tell yourself: All home-improvement projects go over budget, or It’s a real improvement, and you knew that wouldn’t be cheap and Would you rather be looking at weed-pocked gravel for a third summer? Each one of these platitudes was like a strong drink for my buyer’s remorse, and after I settled accounts with Mr. Landscaper, Alan went to the nursery and started planting. It took him the weekend, but now we have a small herb garden, two raspberry bushes, some climbing roses, a butterfly bush, some dead-nettle groundcover, new hostas and a birdbath. What had been impervious landscape is now nice and pervious again, and we’re putting oxygen into the air, plus growing raspberries. Which is more than you can say for those RVs, I hope.

Those birds better appreciate that damn birdbath, is all I can say.

At times like this, it’s important to not think like a renter. Otherwise you’d start thinking dangerous thoughts about how you might have spent that $2,000 if you didn’t have a house. In days gone by, you’d say, “Ah, but the house will be worth 4 percent more at the end of this year whether I do anything or not, so it’s just gravy.” Around here, though, that’s not the case. This just in: The auto industry is imploding. Blame the engineers.

So. The Brooklyn crew got 2/3 of the Jersey crew’s power structure last night, and at episode’s end, Tony was all alone with his machine gun in a bedroom with bad wallpaper, lying on a bare mattress in the dark, waiting for next Sunday and the last episode. I think that’s where I’m going to spend this week, too. The show is ending both the way we’ve always known it will, but not, if that makes any sense. Tony said, over and over and over in the last seven years, “Guys like me, we only end up dead or in the can,” and we keep telling ourselves, “Please, not for another season.” Well, it’s almost over, and I don’t see it ending any way but dead or in the can. I’ve been rooting for dead, but lately I’m thinking it would be amusing to see Carmela’s house sold to another family in the final montage, perhaps one of a non-white persuasion. I’m not going to be happy unless Blondie is appropriately punished, too. And I think, for her, that would be a fate worse than death.

Fave moment: When all the strippers and customers come out of the Bing to see what the excitement’s about. Was that a priest in the crowd?

Bloggage:

If someone asked for a show of hands of all the people who’ve heard “Respect” enough times that they never, ever want to hear it again, well, I’m reaching for the ceiling. Still. Make room in your head for one more, as it’s heard in Kelley Carter’s video package on Aretha Franklin’s greatest hit, “40 Years of Respect,” on Freep.com. A really nice job, with some great archival photos and interviews from people who knew Detroit’s daughter then and now. My favorite nugget: When Franklin’s son reveals that mom had a cold during the recording of the vocal, and points out the line where you can hear her falter. Roy Peter Clark, who teaches writing through the Poynter Institute, uses the Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin recordings of “Respect” to illustrate the concept of “voice.” (Yes, how sad that people choose to become writers and then have to learn what voice is.) One more note: A very old-school TV guy told me once that you could teach a word person TV skills a lot easier than you could teach a TV person word skills, and boy do you ever see it here. If more TV journalists worked like this, I might watch more TV.

When Alan was Features editor in Fort Wayne, sometimes our daily download of how-was-your-day-dear involved issues of, how you say, taste. The rebellious world of youth culture was always trying to shake up the squares in Features. I can’t tell you how often he’d have to waste time getting an executive ruling on whether Big Dick & the Penetrators could go in the club listings. (And those rulings usually went all the way up the chain of command, because if there’s one thing editors can do well, it’s avoid making decisions.)

The Cherry-Poppin’ Daddies were another problem. Once Big Dick & the Penetrators had been cleared, on the grounds that the sort of people who were likely to be offended by the name wouldn’t be poring over the fine print in the Where To Go listings, you’d think the Cherry-Poppin’ Daddies wouldn’t be a problem, either. But you never knew when that one would wash up on the shores of some feminist copy editor whose lips would compress to a thin line and whose flag would be raised, the one emblazoned, “No retreat, no surrender.”

Anyway, I’m wondering how many editors are, even as we speak, passing the buck up the chain of command for a ruling on the hot new craze that’s sweepin’ the nation, i.e.:

Cornhole.

Do not laugh, but be prepared to snicker, as you learn a few facts about the game. Did you know, for instance, that Cincinnati is “crazy for cornhole?” Did you know there’s a company called the Ohio Cornhole Company? Did you know that Geauga Lake, the northwest Ohio amusement park, is offering an All-American Cornhole Toss on the midway this year?

Man, just as Borat’s act is over, too.

Cornhole is basically beanbag toss, and gets its name from the grain that fills the bags (corn, not beans). Some people choose to call it “Baggo,” but that’s probably because they’re, you know, homophobic.

Oh, wait. Baggo. Never mind.

It was Family Movie Weekend, but I was the only one who saw all three — “Hairspray” for all three of us, “Shrek the Third” for Kate and me and “The Queen” for the adults. The latter was the only one worth discussing; I wish I’d had time to watch it again, if only to re-examine how they worked the magic, making a terrific, watchable two-hour movie about an idea (what are the uses of tradition?) and where the action consists mostly of people talking on the phone. I guess you do it with killer performances, and every nice thing anyone ever said about Helen Mirren was deserved, and then some.

During that week in 1997, around day four or five, when it seemed the entire world had taken leave of its senses over Princess Di, I stepped off the crazy train. I think I disembarked around the time Mother Teresa died, and she was treated like a crack-house O.D. Maybe not exactly, but definitely not top-o’-the-newscast. In other news at this hour, we go to Calcutta… The local Border’s had a “condolence book” you could sign, sitting on a table with a box of Kleenex. The audience at the big Labor Day classic-car auction lined up to throw gladiolus blossoms into the back seat of a Rolls-Royce that Diana had ridden in precisely once. It was clear this had gone from genuine feeling to a sort of mass hysteria. I didn’t give much thought to how the royal family was dealing with all of this, beyond acknowledging the obvious — the cluelessness of their non-reaction reaction; the Parade Before the Flowers, which inspired that rarity, a truly memorable and funny Maureen Dowd line (“they looked like they were judging a dog show”). “The Queen” isn’t journalism, God knows, only a smart, educated guess about what they were thinking, based on what they did, but it has the feel of something that could be the truth. (Wow, talk about your qualifiers.)

Honestly? I even felt a tiny bit of empathy for James Cromwell as Prince Philip, who was obviously there for comic relief and to lay down the law on such burning questions as How Do We Fly the Royal Standard. His way of coping with Diana’s children’s grief? Take them for a walk in the Scottish highlands. Someday the princes will grow old, and they’ll look back and say: There are worse ways to grieve.

However, even “The Queen” was swept away by the third-to-last Sopranos episode last night, “The Second Coming.” It would seem the ducks are coming home to roost.

I have a big deadline today, and I intend to make it. I’ve already tried two or three short, dashed-off entries for you folks to splash around in the comments over, but they all sucked more than usual and so: Bleah.

Besides, the only thing I can think about today, besides the deadline, is last night’s “Sopranos” episode, which left me with so much to chew on that I’ll be working it over for days. I know not everyone here watches the show, but hey — if you do, have at it. We could start with the episode title: “Kennedy and Heidi.” Those were the names of the two girls in the car Chris nearly collided head-on with, but what’s the deeper meaning? And, of course, there is a deeper meaning — this is “The Sopranos,” after all — and particularly when you consider Tony’s remark when he saw Kelly at the funeral (“Jackie Kennedy”). Or maybe there isn’t. And not to take anything too literally, I’m wondering if Chrissy is Ba:

Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk’s body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Or maybe he’s Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western lands.

Anyway, I’m pretty sure the next to go is A.J. Discuss. I’ll be back later, A.D.

Warning: A beautiful day is in progress at this very moment, the trees are blooming, I have much to do today and a yoga class starts at the gym in one hour. Translation: Expect short shrift. Here, have a few crumbs from the table.

From reading the message boards here and there, it’s plain there are two kinds of Sopranos fans in the world: The kind who want lots of mob business and whackage, and the kind who are content to watch Edie Falco reinvent denial every week in intense kitchen scenes. I’m the second kind. In fact, the mob whackage sort of gets in the way. We’ve had two in the last two weeks, and in both cases I’m thinking, “Who is this? And why do I care?” For us, the mob story is only the frame; the canvas is the psychological drama of watching Tony try to keep family away from Family, and failing. In these last few episodes, we — I, anyway — want some payoff. We want to see him finally pay, and pay dearly, for the life he’s led.

Well, the payback has begun, and, true to form, it’s a bitch. His outburst at Carmella over her spec house might as well have been made to the mirror. In Vito Jr., there’s yet another reminder of the toll mob life takes on a family. The gambling, particularly ironic in that Tony has always referred to such people as “degenerate gamblers,” is self-abuse. As for me, I’m keeping a copy of “The Western Lands” close, because I think that’s the key:

The ancient Egyptians postulated seven souls. Top soul, and the first to leave at the moment of death, is Ren, the Secret Name. This corresponds to my Director. He directs the film of your life from conception to death. The Secret Name is the title of your film. When you die, that’s where Ren came in.

Second soul, and second one off the sinking ship, is Sekem: Energy, Power, Light. The Director gives the orders, Sekem presses the right buttons.

Number three is Khu, the Guardian Angel. He, she, or it is third man out, depicted as flying away across a full moon, a bird with luminous wings and head of light. Sort of thing you might see on a screen in an Indian restaurant in Panama. The Khu is responsible for the subject and can be injured in his defense — but not permanently, since the first three souls are eternal. They go back to Heaven for another vessel.

The four remaining souls must take their chances with the subject in the Land of the Dead.

Number four is Ba, the heart, often treacherous. This is a hawk’s body with your face on it, shrunk down to the size of a fist. Many a hero has been brought down, like Samson, by a perfidious Ba.

Number five is Ka, the Double, most closely associated with the subject. The Ka, which usually reaches adolescence at the time of bodily death, is the only reliable guide through the Land of the Dead to the western lands.

Number six is Khaibit, the Shadow, Memory, your whole past conditioning from this and other lives.

Number seven is Sekhu, the Remains.

So. Speaking of seven souls, I see Warren Zevon’s ex-wife has not only published a book, it’s a book about her ex, and it was done at his request. What’s more, it sounds…not terrible:

The Mr. Zevon on these pages is surprisingly image-conscious, abusive, petty, jealous, sordid, vain, shopaholic and even banal; among his obsessive-compulsive tics was buying the same kind of gray T-shirt over and over again. His diary entries often focus on such things, so they are less scintillating than the literary lyrics for which he is known. Among the livelier entries is this one: “Went over to Ryan’s. Later in the evening I got stuck in the elevator — Fire Dept. had to come. Not as much fun as it sounds.”

But this lack of show-business artifice is precisely what makes the Zevon story so telling. What was even more unusual than his dark thoughts — like resenting the fact that Jackson Browne and Neil Young had lost people close to them and written beautiful, much-admired songs about those deaths — was his willingness to admit to those thoughts. On his deathbed, discussing the merits of having a funeral, he said, “I just don’t want to have to spend my last days wondering whether Henley” — Don Henley of the Eagles, who did not attend — “will show up.”

I guess that’s next on the nightstand.

You know those people who kill family members and then hide the bodies in freezers? Do you ever wonder what goes on inside their heads? Wonder no more. The DetNews offers an odd demi-interview with one of these guys, pegged to a more recent dismemberment murder hereabouts. It’s hilarious at many levels, including the one where, after a shockingly brief sentence (10 years), the killer says his crime is “water over the dam,” and that he paid his debt to society. And the banal details: “For three years and three months, (the body) lay atop frozen hamburger and kielbasa wrapped in brown butcher paper.” On the other hand, it sounds like no one missed the wife, who slept with her daughter’s boyfriend, among other unmotherly things.

Finally, in the thick of journalism awards season, congrats to our old pal Ron, winner of the coveted (because all awards must be described so) Golden Wheel.

Time for downward dog. Woof.

Early on in my residence here in the lovely D, I described the daily freeway traffic as a Ben-Hur chariot race. I don’t often fall in love with my own clever turns of phrase, but I stand by that one. And if you haven’t seen “Ben-Hur,” my God, check out the totally awesome FOUR-MINUTE trailer on YouTube. You get a big chunk of the chariot race around the 2:30 mark. That’s the morning commute here. Really. They issue you one of those whips at your first real-estate closing.

I guess lots of places are like this, but Detroit (and Chicago, to name another) combines those elements of speed, aggressiveness and close quarters you find in older cities, the ones that had big footprints before the freeways were built. The new roads required that neighborhoods either be demolished or sliced in two, which wasn’t easy or cheap then or now, and so tended to occupy the bare minimum of space. The entrance/exit ramps on the oldest parts of the Lodge, Ford and Davidson expressways here are short, and join freeways that frequently clip along at 75 miles per hour, even in the right lane. You want to know why Detroit automakers have had such a hard time giving up horsepower and bulk? Because every day their executives commute to work on these crazy-ass roads, and goddamn, you need a car that goes from zero to white-knuckle in about three seconds. Where’s my whip? Get over, jerkoff! Let me in!

So last night I was heading home from my class at Wayne State, which I always take at a gallop, because by the time I get home I have less than 30 minutes to pay the sitter, take her home, brew coffee and tuck Kate into bed before I start news-farmin’ at 9. I was moving along with the flow of traffic on I-94 when I glanced down and saw: 80 mph. Jeez, but you are a local now, aren’t you? I changed lanes (without signaling, because no one does) and dropped down to 70. As I said, 80 was flow-of-traffic speed, but even with seat belts and air bags, that’s a stupid pace to set on an urban freeway. I am someone’s mother and someone’s wife, and they would not be better off without me. Plus, we live in a two-story house. Not wheelchair-accessible.

The other night I caught most of “Drive,” the new Fox show about, as the promos reminded us about a million times, “an illegal cross-country road race.” Apparently it’s not only illegal, it’s a blind course that the participants, who have all been coerced in some way, navigate via cryptic text messages. It makes little sense, but the story is still building and in between befuddlement, there’s lots of enjoyable, hot car-on-car action.

Then I noticed something: All the cars were American-made. This may well be a sponsorship/product-placement issue, but it worked, dramatically speaking. One woman drove a Taurus, the new mom drove a minivan of indeterminate American lineage, the young men tended to be outfitted with classic, pre-OPEC muscle cars. The Taurus and the minivan were visual jokes among the Firebirds and Challengers, but it was a GM executive’s dream, all this American iron speeding down the Georgia blacktop, jockeying for position. I tried to imagine the action with Camrys and Accords, Tundras and Pathfinders, and it didn’t work. Whatever else Detroit gave the world, it gave it some pretty cool cars, and could again, I believe.

I pay more attention to car commercials than I used to; after all, the value of my house now rides on the fortunes of the auto industry. The other day one for the Dodge Avenger came on, and it featured…cupholders. Evidently the Avenger has heated and cooled cupholders. The Caliber has illuminated ones, for all those times you’ve struggled to find your coffee in the dark, I guess.

I’m not optimistic. Maybe they could get their mojo back selling chariots.

Bloggage:

Roger Ebert, still swingin’.

How amusing: You can buy a “House” T-shirt emblazoned with one of the good doctor’s favorite sayings: “Everybody Lies.” Including, you’ll see if you click through, the show’s producers, who would like us to believe female doctors spend their days making rounds in plunging necklines and towering heels. Oh, and pearls. I wish I’d saved the first note I got from Dr. Frank, back when we were arranging to meet for our first lunch. From memory: “I will try to find a tie without too much bloody sputum on it.”

To work I go. Keep your whip hand nimble.

This is, I think, my favorite beer commercial EVAR. It played maybe twice. And now it’s mine, all mine:

My neighbors have a big TV. Really big TV. How big is it? Can’t say — I’ve never seen it up close, because I don’t have to. If the curtains are open even a little bit, I can tell what they’re watching with 75 percent accuracy. (Right now, hockey.) And they live across the street and one door down; it’s a good 200 feet or more from my couch to their TV. That’s a big TV.

Big TVs are all the rage, now that the bugs have been worked out, now that they no longer have the footprint of a Volkswagen Beetle. Everybody I know is buying one. (True story: My friends John and Mary bought one, and hired a guy to hang it on the wall. He said he’d just finished a similar job at then-Sixer/now-Piston Chris Webber’s house. [Yes, he’s a Pointer.] He’d hung 13 of them. Thirteen flat-screens in one house! It’s like an episode of “Cribs.”)

Anyway, I guess eventually we’ll have a giant TV, too, once the price drops to $1.98, which it seems on track to do by year’s end. But I won’t feel good about it. I love TV now that TV is so much better than it used to be — thanks, HBO. I love watching DVDs at home. But my TV guilt-meter was calibrated in the days of “Three’s Company,” and there’s something about a giant TV that suggests a world of La-Z-Boy recliners with built-in cupholders and crocheted Kleenex-box cozies. It rings every snob bell I have, and I have a tower full of them. I hate myself. Why? Because part of me wants one, and the other part is covered in shame for doing so.

Here’s the thing about a giant TV: It wants to be on, all the time. I like a TV to be off most of the time. My first and most hard-core TV rule is this: If it’s on, the people in the room must be paying attention to it. If you leave the room for any reason other than a bathroom break or to fetch another beer, it must go off. Once I interviewed some lottery winners, plain old hardscrabble people who woke up one morning $9 million richer, courtesy of the state of Ohio. I caught them after they’d had the money for several months, which is to say, their old house was full to the rafters with new toys, but the new house — 1,000-square-foot master suite, cement pond out back, the works — was still under construction. There was a rock on her finger and a Corvette in his garage, and a giant TV in the living room, which was too small to accommodate it. It was mid-morning, around the time a movie old enough to shave was on TBS. I took a seat to the right of the screen, they sat opposite me. The TV stayed on. When I was talking, they both watched the TV. When they were talking, the one who was talking looked at me, the other one watched TV.

That was a formative experience in giant-TV culture. I still haven’t shaken it.

Oy, we had ourselves a day in the D yesterday. A “workplace shooting,” as they’ve come to be known. Guy fired from an accounting firm on Friday came back on Monday and shot a retiree helping out for tax season and two partners. The retiree died. The other two are still alive. Of course we have a sidebar story on how this might be avoided in the future. Grim humor within: An HR expert says Friday is “traditionally” the day to fire people. Really? I didn’t know that. I tried to think of firings I’ve witnessed, and the only common denominator they all had was the Box. You know the Box, usually a banker’s box, filled by either the fired party (or security) with the detritus of one work life — a few personal files, a stained coffee cup, a framed picture. Is there a sadder sight than a banker’s box with a “you don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps” mug overturned in the bottom? I don’t think so.

“The Office” has gone a long way toward pointing out the thousand soul-abrading, death-by-a-thousand-cuts indignities of life in cubicle land, but I don’t think they’ll tackle this subject for a while.

I predict [raises finger aloft] that we will come through this blogging thing, turn 320 degrees or so, and out the other side — yes, this is metaphor is intentional — with newfound respect for our unsung friend, the editor. Yesterday’s post was up for hours before I noticed I wrote “…for years I’ve tried very hard to annoy my site statistics.” I meant I ignore them. They’re like the quicksand of narcissism. I’ve read about people who monitor their credit scores daily, who track their eBay feedback nearly as often. And some people track their site stats obsessively, which is one reason I’ve avoided doing so. I mean, I like affirmation as much as the next person, but please.

However, Google Analytics is just out there waiting to be installed and noodled over, and today, my first day with it, was nearly enough to run me off the rails. I have a reader — or else a robo-reader — in Reykjavik. (Holla back, Iceland.) Someone came here via Googling the phrase “what hoody does TI wear in chevy commercial.” (Who’s TI?) And then there are those of you whom I can call by name. One reader in Portland (hey, Vince). One in Cincinnati (Rob!). Forty in Fort Wayne, approximately the remaining readership of the News-Sentinel. I have to stop. I have enough things to procrastinate with.

Buoyed by the success of last summer’s Project Table, I’ve been looking around for another little occupational therapy task for this summer. I check the classifieds daily for just the right diamond in the rough. I’m looking for something old, neglected and without lots of pain-in-the-ass scrollwork or other detail that will drive me crazy when I’m trying to strip/stain/varnish it. If it’s something I can use when it’s all done, so much the better, but something to sell would be OK, too. It has to be cheap. It has to have a certain nay-say-quaw, as those Frenchies say.

In other words, I’m looking for a low, wide bookcase, unless I’m not. I’ll know it when I see it.

One of the great tragedies of the impending death of the American newspaper is the loss of yet another source of accidental stories. All the effort goes into Page One, but the rest of the paper is full of nuggety goodness, too, with the added attraction of not being all laid out and packaged for you; you get the thrill of connecting the dots yourself. Yesterday the editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press made Romenesko for speaking aloud this heresy: Readers buy papers for the ads, too. Well, duh.

For this reason, I’ve always loved the classifieds. Classifieds are super-short stories told in 10 words or less: Wedding dress, size 16, never worn. Make offer. Or: Moving out of state, must sell misc. furniture. Bedroom, living room, kitchen. Traveling light, all must go. When I was stuck for column ideas, I’d turn to the classifieds to get the juices flowing. Sometimes I’d be close to tears. I’d keep thinking about that size-16 wedding dress, NWT.

Now the classifieds are online, on Craigslist. People selling something inexpensive don’t want to spend much on the ad for it. Twice a day I check the furniture-for-sale listings. I have to check it twice because it’s so active, and if you fall behind you’ll miss something. You’ll be relieved to know that even without the self-imposed brevity that goes with paying by the word, the free Craigslist classifieds are as rich with narrative drama as the ink-on-paper kind. Everyone’s moving out of state, it seems. Everyone’s downsizing. Everyone’s liquidating a business, divorcing or otherwise re-ordering their lives. And there’s still stunning waste in the corporate world. Two Le Corbusier black leather chairs for sale, with this note: They were used for one day (one day!!) on stage at an executive conference for one of the car companies. We’re not using them again, so….here they are.

Other cultural notes to be gleaned: If you have an armoire-style entertainment center you’re ready to part with, take it out in the back yard and bust it up for firewood, because you’re not going to get a dime for it in this market. The new entertainment center is long, low and buffet-style, the better to show off your plasma-screen, my dear, and everyone’s trying to get rid of the old one. My father (who sold furniture) always said you should spend your money on wood, not upholstery, because the latter declined in value faster; I think of him whenever I see some poor shlub expecting to get six bills for a double-reclining La-Z-Boy sofa (“from a pet-free, non-smoking home”). Also, this: Whoever came up with the idea of the bed with bookcase headboard, recessed lighting and Luuuuvv Mirror is awaiting a place in the levels of hell reserved for the tacky. Finally, correct spelling is the trigonometry of modern life — no one can do it anymore. I’ve looked at ads for “intertainment centers,” “armwars” and my personal favorite, a pair of “Chip and Dale chairs.”

Haven’t found my bookcase/table/whatever yet. But it’s out there, I just know it. The other day someone was selling two ’40s-style office chairs, in oak, with the added backstory that they were from one of the old Ford factory offices and were given to Dad upon his retirement. See, that’s something you wouldn’t see in a newspaper classified, not when you pay by the word. Just thinking about all the gabardined behinds that sat in those chairs, and the work those people did — designing the Edsel, maybe — is almost impossibly romantic to me. Which is why I always pay too much for stuff like that.

(On the other hand, my sister credits my occasional rewrites of her eBay listings with bringing higher prices. I turned a description of a Heisy glass cocktail shaker with an etched fly-fishing scene into an evocation of the lost era of Teddy Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. It sold for nearly $400. [Blows smoke from pistol barrel.])

So, bloggage:

You will get me on the Grand Canyon Skywalk when you pry my cold, dead fingers from the closest upright land-rooted structure, then quiet the shrieking of my ghost as my corpse is carried onto it. I mean, for someone nervous at heights, this is nightmare material. Good luck with that tourism, Hualapai tribe.

American Idol observation: If LaKisha wanted to cover a James Bond theme sung by another black woman with a big voice like hers — and I can think of no other motivation for choosing Shirley Bassey’s little corner of the British Invasion — why on earth didn’t she pick “Goldfinger”? Yet again, Ken Levine is the go-to funny guy for this:

Interesting that not one contestant chose a Herman’s Hermits song. I just picture Hannibal Phil Stacey singing “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” and Mrs. Brown being so terrified she gets a restraining order. …Sanjaya is now just humiliating himself every week. This is like when people dress up their dogs. William Hung was cringing. Please vote him off before Tony Bennett week. I beg of you.

OK, so let’s sign off with an eternal truth: When all else fails, a pretty girl can still move mountains with the right outfit. Particularly if it lacks foundation garments:

Finally finished “The Looming Tower” and will take it back to the library, overdue [kicks dirt], tomorrow. I’ll be buying it in paperback, once it has “the Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller” emblazoned across the cover. I think the Big P is a foregone conclusion, but I could be wrong.

The book tells, in great detail, the story of al Qaeda, Islamic fundamentalism and, in particular, Osama bin Laden. Chapter 1 has been excerpted widely, the story of Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian fundamentalist generally believed to be the father of Islamism. He was only one of many Muslims to come to America (in the ’40s, sorry Dinesh) and find himself disgusted by what he saw — mostly women, enjoying freedom of all sorts. Oh wait, there was another camel’s nose of leftism in this stew, too:

Qutb was familiar with the Kinsey Report, and referenced it in his later writings to illustrate his view of Americans as little different from beasts — “a reckless, deluded herd that only knows lust and money.” A staggering rate of divorce was to be expected in such a society, since “Every time a husband or wife notices a new sparkling personality, they lunge for it as if it were a new fashion in the world of desires.” The turbulent overtones of his own internal struggles can be heard in his diatribe: “A girl looks at you, appearing as if she were an enchanting nymph or an escaped mermaid, but as she approaches, you sense only the screaming instinct inside her, and you can smell her burning body, not the scent of perfume but flesh, only flesh. Tasty flesh, truly, but flesh nonetheless.”

There you have it, America: The seeds of al Qaeda were planted when some hussy fluttered her eyelashes at this uptight Egyptian. You just never know, do you?

That’s only the appetizer, though. The soul of the book is the twin tales of two fascinating men, John O’Neill and Osama bin Laden. The O’Neill story has been told before, about the singular FBI agent whose train wreck of a personal life did not overshadow the fact he was about the only soul in the FBI who knew just how bad al Qaeda was. He finally left the Bureau in frustration, taking a job as chief of security for the World Trade Center. He started just days before Sept. 11, 2001, the day he died.

Bin Laden’s story was less familiar. I knew the outlines and quite a few facts, but I never got the whole picture until this book, and the picture is pretty banal: Bin Laden is — remains — a rich kid, one of those rich kids whose character is shaped by what he never had to do, that is, go out and earn a living. And so he became a leaf in the wind, an Arab Kennedy cousin of sorts, blown here and there by the whims of whatever caught his fancy at any given moment.

You’ve known these guys; the American version is more likely to be into heroin, or sustainable organic agriculture, or blue-green algae as the health cure doctors don’t want you to know about, but s/he’s as rigid as his al Qaeda brethren are on the subject of jihad. Bin Laden served as the proprietor of the death-to-the-infidel hangout, doling out cash to his entourage the way the American rich kid doles out drugs. He flits from project to project, swanning around Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation with his ragged band of would-be martyrs, hoping to die for Allah. The Afghans thought what you’d imagine, that they were amateurs and pikers, but hey, they all had fat wallets.

In other words, Bin Laden was an overprivileged punk. They’re the dangerous ones.

I learned a lot I either never knew, or knew and forgot. For instance: When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Bin Laden went to the Saudi king and begged him not to allow the Americans in. He said he — he and his Afghan “veterans,” his hand-picked mujahideen — would protect the oil fields in this holiest of Muslim lands. Really? said the king. And what will you do when he flings some chemical bombs at you?

“We will fight them with faith!” Bin Laden replied. The Saudi king was unimpressed and put his money on Team America. Infidel!

As amusing as this exchange is, it underlines something important: Bin Laden hated Saddam Hussein. Hated his secularism, his hedonism, his un-Islamic showboating. So of course we invaded Iraq.

“The Looming Tower” is a mesmerizing read, but also a depressingly familiar story, about the damage done by people who claim to be acting on behalf of God. When I was doing my journalism fellowship a few years back, two of our overseas fellows were from the Middle East, one Israeli and one Palestinian. Both were extremely secular. At a restaurant one night in Ann Arbor, the waitress arrived at the table with four plates of sandwiches, and delivered them to the wrong people. As we passed them around, I joked that the bacon cheeseburger couldn’t be Adi’s, the Israeli’s — so traife. It’s the sort of joke I make with my Jewish friends all the time, some of whom keep kosher and some of whom don’t, but all capable of smiling at a weak jest about dietary laws. He actually was offended. Why would I assume he was one of those Jews, the observant ones? He really wanted to know; he couldn’t believe I’d even think such a thing about him. It was a reminder that in a part of the world where most of the problems have their roots in religion, that being religious is a political act in and of itself. I guess I’m taking note of the obvious, that Sammy Bin L. has more in common with religious lunatics in this country than he does with an old thrill-rapist like Saddam. But if you really want to see the influence of this country’s God-botherers wane, there’ll have to be a lot more blood on the floor. I guess I’m saying, count your blessings.

Bin Laden turned 50 a couple weeks ago, still presumably alive, still living in something approaching comfort if not total freedom. He got away with 9/11 because we underestimated him. He continues to live as a free man because we continue to do so.

Bloggage:

The WashPost gives us a nice profile of Felicia Pearson, aka Snoop, the little assassin on “The Wire.” Like Pearson herself, it’s not what you think it is.

Now I have to go; today is the dog’s annual vet visit and I must collect the vile stool sample. I like our vet. Last year he showed me his photo album of strange animal rescues he’s participated in. (He’s on call for tranquilization and/or euthanization services.) There’s a buck with what looks like a 10-point rack being fished out of Lake St. Clair in the midst of a sailboat race, coyotes and foxes of all sizes and predicaments, and of course the savage feral dogs of Detroit. There are no boring jobs, only boring people.

Later.

If you don’t watch “American Idol” you are excused from reading another word. I’ve simply given myself over to the cultural sluice on this one. Kate adores it, and so we watch. And I don’t mind — it’s entertaining in its own way, and if you don’t ask too much of it or yourself, it’s a very enjoyable ride for the viewer. Plus, it’s one of the very rare shows that the whole family can watch together, which is a huge part of its appeal. Just when you think the whole world of entertainment has been sliced and diced into niches, sub-niches and sub-sub-niches, along comes something that’s the 21st-century equivalent of “The Wonderful World of Disney,” only with Simon Cowell. That’s an improvement.

With all that’s written on the subject, I didn’t think there was much more to be said, but Virginia Heffernan manages to find a few more things to say, many of them amusing:

Mr. Cowell, the pitiless judge who still brings to the show the spirit of its British progenitor “Pop Idol,” seemed baffled by the piety Americans brought to the task of singing. Insisting that he wanted nothing but a vanilla hottie to showcase the Pygmalion talents of a guileful music packager, he still couldn’t stop them from singing their hearts out and thanking their moms and God.

To his credit, he eventually let himself be blown away. And he dropped Posh Spice as his paradigm of a musician, settling for Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. (Mr. Cowell, we shouldn’t forget, used to package puppets, cartoon characters and wrestlers as pop stars; he is new to virtuosity.) He and his compatriots had apparently never tangled with contestants like Kelly Clarkson, who’d grown up singing country, or Ruben Studdard, who’d grown up singing gospel. As for the contestants in those early seasons, their sincerity never dropped.

And on everybody’s favorite barfly:

The most recent seemingly insuperable problems at “Idol” have not come at the hands of the stern father figure, Mr. Cowell, but from Ms. Abdul, his gentler counterpart. Known at the outset for her busty tops and sweet cheerleading — her “mom I’d like to sleep with” vibe — she has lately become a different kind of mother. Dazed, delirious, sulky, petulant, lascivious: she often looks tired and confused, running some words together and inventing others.

Two years ago, a contestant named Corey Clark said Ms. Abdul had courted him and then done him professional favors. ABC deemed the charges exciting enough to devote an ominous and moderately persuasive episode of “20/20” to them, which did double duty as a hit job for the network’s entertainment division.

No specifics seemed to stick to Ms. Abdul, who Fox maintained had done nothing wrong, but the aura of loucheness is almost palpable. Gone is the perky soccer mom with the ’80s dance moves. She now regularly wears the pliant smile, smeared makeup and bedroom eyes of a woman who’s about to pass out.

See, that’s what I mean about entertaining: Kate can appreciate the wholesomeness of the boy singers; Alan, our family’s only real musician, can groove on the finer points of the performances; and I, the sicko culture vulture, can wait for Paula to pass out.

I noticed, last week, the talent gulf in the women was embarrassing. Six skinny white girls who can’t project to the back rows of a powder room up against three or four ladies of color who blow the roof off the dump. Every girl wants to be told she’s beautiful, but is there any compliment more deflating than hearing Simon say, “At least you’re pretty”?

Last week the men sucked eggs, but they improved this week. I voted for the Hispanic kid who took on Nina Simon’s “Feeling Good.” Brave boy.

Now, I take my leave. I have to generate story ideas today, which requires two things: A hot shower and a little light exercise to oxygenate the brain. Please, post no Antonella Barba pix in the comments; we run a clean shop here.