Paul Fussell’s great book on American social class stratification — titled, duh, “Class” — is pretty out of date in the details by now.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They’re divorced now. But you knew that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I brought beignets!
Who you fuckin’?

So, bloggage? Some:

Um, what?

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

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

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

— that’s how I spell WIN.

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

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

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

(Pause.)

Where is my money?

(Pause.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One bit of bloggage today:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Too soon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Damn it anyway.

So, a little bloggage:

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

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

Where is Jon Stewart’s MacArthur Fellowship?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If nothing else, OU hosed the brackets.

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

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

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

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

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

One last all-bloggage day as things wrap up on my horse-eating project:

My friend Ron French has a pretty good story in today’s DetNews, a tick-tock on Flight 253:

Passengers throughout the midsection of the airplane stood up to investigate a noise some described as a popped balloon, others as a firecracker. A flight attendant, unable to locate the source, asked passengers to sit down and buckle up because the airplane was traveling through turbulence.

Jay Howard could tell the noise was close. He asked his seatmate if he smelled smoke, but Abdulmutallab said nothing. The Nigerian still had the blanket pulled up to his chin, but something was different. Small wisps of smoke wafted from below the blanket.
Howard lifted the blanket, and a billow of smoke rose toward the ceiling and spread across nearby rows.

One thing I don’t understand: What did they feed the guy — or what the guy fed himself, before or during the flight — that would overcome the natural pain response even a brainwashed terror-zombie would feel with his pants on fire. I mean, when you read this…

Abdulmutallab’s hands were inside the front of his pants. Abdulmutallab pulled them out. Both hands were on fire.

…you gotta wonder. The other passengers said he looked “like a zombie.” I don’t doubt it. However, the line between “stoned enough to feel no pain while setting one’s pants on fire” and “still alert enough to carry out the plan” has to be pretty fine.

Bart Stupak is getting hate mail, and it’s not even from his constituents. Has this ever happened before in the history of the House of Representatives? I don’t think so.

Fun fact to know and tell: Rough population of Stupak’s district, i.e., the Upper Peninsula of Michigan: 300,000 and a smidge. Area: 16,452 square miles. And you thought all the wide open spaces in this country were west of the Missouri River.

Why I never donate to telethons or benefit concerts: It’s like wetting your pants in a navy-blue suit, only less effective for alleviating suffering.

Finally, a link to the newest trailer for “Treme,” the new David Simon series on HBO. This one features John Goodman as Ashley Morris a foul-mouthed college professor who bears a passing resemblance to one who used to hang out in our very group, plus, as Laura Lippman points out, the obligatory HBO-show pole dancer. It is, however, safe for work, i.e., the Ashley-swears are snipped and the pole dancer keeps her bra on. Enjoy.