So he did:

The caller lost his cool, but hang on after the hangup for the smirking. 4dbirds, you’ll love this.

I try not to make this blog too political. Probably should have saved it for the bloggage. But there isn’t going to be much of that today, because I’m empty as a cup and need to get a lot of work done by this afternoon, when Alex arrives for his stay at NN.C Central. It’s Stay With a Blogger Weekend, didn’t you know that? Photos when we get them.

I was talking about local driving habits with someone who grew up here, and he made the argument that yes, sure, Detroiters all drive like car thieves and favor moves like the Six-Lane High-Speed Cutover Without Signaling, but by and large, people drive with a decent baseline level of skill. I disagreed, but it was a boring argument and we don’t need to recount it here. However, I offer some proof of my position today. There was a huge water main break on a major freeway yesterday. I mean huge — a 48-incher — that erupted in a geyser and then abated to a mere waterfall, swiftly flooding the freeway. And I mean swiftly — a couple of cars were left on the road, water to their rear-view mirrors, drivers sitting on the roof waiting for rescue. That must have been some flood, I thought, stupidly, until I saw the victims on the late news and learned: Yes, they saw the water ahead of them and thought they could drive through it.

I mean, speaking of stupid.

I’m hoping nothing this exciting happens to Alex on his way here today.

L.A. Mary e-mailed to say the Comics Curmudgeon has opened her eyes to the thrills of “Gil Thorpe,” the strip so stupid it’s not even on the comics page in many papers. Editors save it, and “Tank McNamara,” for that problematic ocean of gray, the sports agate page. I never paid much attention to it, either, but the CC knows what he’s talking about:

Ha ha! Oh, man, the Gil Thorp summer hijinks are getting started even more quickly than I could have hoped! I’m totally in love with Gail Martin, the “rock and roll Carole King,” as she was called yesterday; truly, nothing shouts “rock and roll” like a collared shirt and a long braid that you clutch dramatically to your chest while you belt out your non-hits and your banjo player grooves behind you.

The art in this strip is almost comically bad. Fitting, I guess.

After five eps of “John From Cincinnati,” I think James Wolcott has it right: If this guy can heal the sick, the first thing he needs to lay hands on is this show. Although “I got my eye on you” is a new catchphrase here at NN.C Central.

OK, Alex just e-mailed and said he’s “leaving soon.” Which means I have to go banish dog hair, and pronto.

At the risk of taking sides in what must be the episodic-television wuss-out of the decade, let me just say the more I think about the last Sopranos installment, the less I hate it. It was a bold gesture, and a hard truth: Nothing really changes, especially with people who don’t want to change.

Tony and Carmela have arrived in middle age, failures in the one thing they strived to do (besides make money) — raising their children to escape their parents’ lives. Meadow’s on her way to being a mob wife and lawyer, having laid aside the one “pure” career path that would have set her apart. AJ’s the self-deluding, shiftless little shit he was always destined to be. (And how ironic, that by saving him from the Army, they’ve drawn a target on his back that will be hit sooner or later. Never mind Tony and Carmela’s support for the war and the president, but not when it comes to actually fighting the thing. Sure, he’s going to be an officer. And learn Arabic. Right.) In fact, the kids aren’t even sheltered anymore; they both know what DefCon 3 is, and discuss FBI protection at yet another family funeral the way they might talk about parking at the Meadowlands. Carmela has sold her soul so often she’s not even bothered by it any more, as long as there’s another house to divert her attention, or a nice piece of jewelry, or an Hermés scarf. Janice is ready to break up Bobby’s poor orphan children, in the name of being a “good mother,” so the next generation of lunatic killers is well under way.

Paulie’s a whack job, still. Sil’s in a coma. Junior’s getting off easy, wasting away in a poor farm with his glasses held together with duct tape. Everyone else is dead. The envelopes are lighter than a rejection letter. The party’s over, and seven years of therapy didn’t make a dent. Sounds like hell to me. As the song on the jukebox says, Oh, the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on…

I’d say more, but I know you all want to dis–.

[Twenty seconds of black.]

Oh, my, it was a nice weekend. Perfect weather. Alan went on a man-date with himself Friday night. It was fully in keeping with my secret to a happy marriage: Space.

You gotta give one another a little room to be something other than Mr. or Mrs. Better Half. Two become one, but before two became one they were two ones on their own. I was, anyway. So when Alan called late Friday afternoon, at the hour when we begin calibrating the closing of the Features section with whatever I’m making for dinner, and said, “The Sun Ra Arkestra is playing a 10 o’clock show in town, and I want to go,” of course there was only one answer: “Have a nice time.”

He didn’t say “without you,” but there was no chance of getting a babysitter at that hour, and on the subject of Sun Ra, we’ve agreed to disagree. I happily acknowledge I am not cool enough to fully appreciate a jazz musician who claimed to have been teleported to Saturn in 1936, where he was given instructions to drop out of college and speak to the world through his music. The show was at a building in southwest Detroit I’m actually familiar with, the Old Bohemian Hall, a relic from the early 20th century, when your tribe was your life. I did an interview there last fall. There was a scraggly art party going on downstairs, and the interview was up, on the second floor, where there’s a stage about the size of something you’d find in an elementary school. The owner showed me the bronze hooks recessed into the floor, where they set up the gymnastic equipment on Saturdays. I kept looking at the stage.

“You can almost see John Reed up there, talking to the crowd about one big union,” I said. Exactly.

Anyway, the place was a mess. It was one of six buildings the owner bought in the ’90s, he said, for a combined price of less than he paid for a Jeep Cherokee a few years later. Of course, the expense in real estate in places like this is not the purchase but the demolition and/or stabilization. You pay $1,500 for the building and put $100,000 into the roof. Alan said it was still a mess, very Fabulous Ruins. The stage lights consisted of a pole lamp with the shades removed, some clip-on work lights from Home Depot and, of all things, a trouble light in a cage, like you use to work on your car. The Arkestra does a bit where they stand up and walk around the hall playing their instruments, and they looked mighty vexed with the un-railed, unlit and crumbling steps they had to use. Did I mention most of these guys are in their 60s and perhaps 70s?

So what was the music like? “Oh, it was good,” Alan said. “Imagine Duke Ellington’s band in tinfoil hats and on acid, and with one guy playing a ram’s horn.” As I said: Not cool enough.

Bloggage:

There was so much good stuff in the papers over the weekend I can scarcely get to it all. Joel Achenbach on Red Meat Politics in the WashPost, along with a satisfying thumbsucker on cultural genocide by someone other than Americans, and the NYT did a short piece directing me to TrashTheDress.com, a website dedicated to a new wrinkle in wedding photography — the post-wedding dress-trashing session. Some gorgeous photographs. I wish I’d done this. Of course, my dress was off the rack and not Vera Wang.

But for pure knee-slapping humor, though, nothing matches the Bambi-vs.-Godzilla clash of this priceless interview of Jack Kevorkian by none other than Mitch Albom. Two of the nation’s leading hucksters of death go mano a mano, but the contest ultimately disappoints:

What do you think happens when we die?

“You stink. You rot and stink.”

No soul?

He laughed. “What’s a soul?”

It’s like watching Strawberry Shortcake in a steel cage match with Ted Bundy.

Regular readers have long ago given up hope of seeing even a glimmer of self-awareness from either of these guys. Kevorkian thought there would be riots in the street when he was sent away these last seven years, and Albom long ago accepted the job as the national expert on death and dying (Good Morning America Division). Still, it would’ve been even funnier if Kevorkian had messed with Mitch’s head a little bit, and instead of saying death leads to “rot and stink,” if he could have given a more Mitchlike answer:

“I think, Mitch, that when we die we find ourselves irresistibly drawn to a bright white light. As we step into the light, we suddenly find ourselves in an old-time drugstore, with a soda fountain. Sitting at the small tables are all your loved ones who preceded you in death; your father is the soda jerk, putting the finishing touches on a root beer float, which he places before you as you sit down. All your dogs, cats and other pets are there, too, waiting to be petted, although I think there’s some dispute about pet reptiles — they may be in a different facility. But definitely the dogs and cats are there. OK. So you sit down, and everyone is smiling at you. You may be confused. If you were taken quickly, say by a car crash or explosion or something, you probably are. You’re all like, “How did I get to this soda fountain, and why is my dad wearing a paper hat?” But you’re not afraid, because you’re suffused with the light, and also you have a nice root-beer float to enjoy. Then, the door opens again, and a guy who looks a lot like Wilfred Brimley walks in. This is God. Yes, God is Wilfred Brimley, but Wilfred Brimley is not God. It will all make sense to you as you experience it. Then–”

“Excuse me for a moment please, Jack. I need to go make some notes.”

It’s another lovely day. Enjoy it.

I seem to have stepped in it today. In about three hours I have to a) chaperone; b) drive to; and c) cater yet another end-of-year party for one of Kate’s school things. (These are the safety/service kids, the ones with a future in law enforcement.) I see that I’ve signed up to bring a salad, and a quick look in the fridge confirms that yes, once again there’s no food in it, much less an already prepared salad appropriate for a picnic on a 90-degree day. So it’s off to the store to find something with a wide age-group appeal and no mayo.

What I’m saying is this: Don’t expect much from ol’ Nance today. (As usual.)

Watched part 1 of “John From Cincinnati” last night. I imagine Tim Goodman has his reasons for calling it “a mess,” and I won’t argue too much — it’s weak out of the gate — but I remain hopeful. For those of you who were “Deadwood” fans, I can tell you the show continues two of David Milch’s big crowd-pleasers — cascades of profanity and a certain mannered style to the dialogue. There are other pleasures. Rebecca DeMornay was born to be photographed in golden-hour light, and the surfing is lovely without being that “Point Break” fantasy crap.

Parts 2 and 3 are on the menu for the weekend, and I can tell you more then (of course, you’ll have seen part 1 for yourselves by then, too). But I’m still optimistic. I didn’t think it sucked out loud; it was just a bit self-conscious and, sad to say, no “Sopranos,” alas. Or even “Six Feet Under.” But I’m optimistic, because in the history of HBO series, they’ve only flat-out disappointed me twice. (And those are, boys and girls? Yes, “Mind of the Married Man” and “Carnivale.”)

Time, she slips by whether we want it to or not. In this order: Shower, grocery store, school, park. It’s a lovely day. I’m not complaining.

If you think of life as a box of chocolates, not in the Gumpian sense of you-never-know-what-you’re-gonna-get but in the “one small, sublime pleasure after another” sense of this …horrible metaphor — well, let’s start again, shall we?

I was thinking of the things I like best in life the other day, John Coltrane blowing his horn in the back of my head, and thought that somewhere in the top 20 or so would be this: Discovering a great work of art — and yes, I’m lumping “popular entertainments” in with that, go ahead and mock — before you know anything about it. We talk stuff to death in this country, and so much of it is just hot air. The other day I surfed past “Cast Away” on cable, and thought for the millionth time how it might have been to see that movie without knowing beforehand that Tom Hanks survives a plane crash, lives for a matter of years on a deserted island, escapes the island, is rescued, returns to his life and realizes he’s lost the love of his life for good, all of which was revealed in the film’s trailer and advertising. I think it would have made for a better movie. Maybe it’s just me.

(Roger Ebert’s review of “Cast Away” deals with this question, and guess what: The film’s own damn director thinks giving away the store was the right thing to do, comparing the marketing of a film to McDonald’s. No wonder he’s such a success.)

Anyway, it made me think of the night I rented “Sunset Boulevard” at the video store, knowing nothing other than this was a classic movie I’ve never seen and that Gloria Swanson says, “I’m ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille.” Imagine what it was like seeing it unfold that night, just an ordinary weeknight in Fort Wayne, Indiana, one I’ll remember for the rest of my life. I felt like that guy in that speaker ad from the ’70s; “Sunset Boulevard” blew my hair back.

Many years ago, I was living in Columbus, Ohio, browsing the mass-market paperback racks at my local Little Professor, looking for something to read. I don’t remember what prompted me to pick up Kem Nunn’s “Tapping the Source,” but I did, and ever since I’ve wondered why I could pass Nunn on the street and not know who he is. Most capsule descriptions describe it as “surfing noir” or “Raymond Chandler does ‘Endless Summer,’” and these work well enough, but how the book worked on me, a kid who grew up in a time when California was, quite literally, the promised land (promised by the Beach Boys), was something else. It captured perfectly the sense Midwesterners of my generation (OK, change that last phrase to “I”) had of southern California as a place of beaches and sunshine and cool people, along with the inevitable adult realization that it wasn’t.

The back cover said it won an American Book Award for Best First Novel, but for me, it was like the book existed in the Twilight Zone. There were blurbs on the cover from Elmore Leonard and Robert Stone, hardly obscure blurbers, and I couldn’t find anyone who’d read it. Authors like Jay McInerney and Bret Easton Ellis were in every gossip column, but where was Kem Nunn? I’d say, “Sure, ‘Bright Lights, Big City’ was enjoyable enough, but have you read ‘Tapping the Source’?” and people would look at me blankly: Who’s he? And these were people who read books.

I reread the book every year or so, to see if it held up. It did. I found other novels by Nunn, to see if they were as good. They weren’t. Good enough, but “Tapping the Source” was lightning in a bottle.

Well, eventually the internet happened, and I did a little poking around, and discovered what Nunn’s problem was: He lived in California. He got his MFA not at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop but UC/Irvine. Evidently the book had been sold to the movies, but the movie never happened: …cursed by a movie deal that saw his fantastic first novel, “Tapping the Source” altered beyond recognition until it reputedly become the core of the movie “Point Break,” with which it has very little in common. I’ll say. Both stories feature surfing. That’s about all they have in common.

Anyway, I figured Kem Nunn was an elaborate figment of my imagination until one night near the end of “Deadwood,” the series, and I saw his name in the writing credits. So that’s where he ended up, I thought; well, at least he’ll make some money. And then, elsewhere on HBO around the same time, Ari Gold, Jeremy Piven’s character on “Entourage,” made some reference to the script for “Tapping the Source.” I can’t recall the line, but it had something to do with the mythical quality of the script, and may well have been yet another of the ten thousand Hollywood in-jokes on that show. But it seemed to be evidence that Nunn was not only still kicking, but might be under contract to HBO. And that is good news.

Turns out, he is. I’m holding in my hand an advance-screening DVD of “John From Cincinnati.” Co-creators: David Milch and Kem Nunn. Lucky, lucky me. I’ll give you a full report. Alan said, “All I know is, there’s no character in it named John, and it has nothing to do with Cincinnati.” Well, I appreciate the Buckeye reference, if no one else.

(Bonus mnemonic: Cincinnati has its name misspelled more than any other American city, and yes, I’m including Albuquerque, which people at least have enough sense to look up. Here’s my trick for remembering how to spell the Queen City: 1-2-1. One N, then two Ns, and one T. No double Ts, people! One T!)

UPDATE: I should read the L.A. Times more often.

Quick bloggage: I’m indebted to TV writer David Mills, who blogs as Undercover Black Man, for keeping track of what he calls MBPs, or Misidentified Black People. He contends, and he’s convinced me, that African Americans are misidentified in the news media more than any other group. (Page through that MBP link, and you’ll see the rather overwhelming evidence. The latest: Fox News confuses William Jefferson and John Conyers. Well, they do all look alike.

Yeesh, but I have work to do. Later, all.

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: