I’ve had more conference calls in the last week than in the previous (mumble) years of my life, which is to say: Two. And they weren’t even for business. After failing to learn our lesson last year, our little troupe of Mickey-and-Judy amateurs is entering another 48-hour film challenge. This one. Possible genres: Buddy Film, Comedy, Detective/cop, Drama, Fantasy, Film de Femme, Holiday Film, Horror, Mockumentary, Musical or Western, Romance, Sci Fi, Superhero, Thriller/Suspense. Lord save us. If we don’t like any of these, we can reject them for one from the wild-card pool, which contains such agony as Martial Arts/Stoner, Silent, Tragedy. And so on.

Well, it is a challenge, after all.

For those who care, I’ll be tweeting the experience, with pictures when I can, which will update my Facebook status. It starts at 7 p.m. July 24 and ends 48 hours later.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the Mockumentary idea, probably because “Bruno” is all up in my grill wherever I look. The New York Times has a story this morning about male shaving, and reports that Sacha Baron Cohen had to endure “repeated waxathons” to get hairless enough to play his gay Austrian character. We know what his natural state is, so I hope he had Jackson-strength drugs to help him get through.

The story references the Gillette videos we discussed here a few days back; once again, NN.c commenters surf the wave first. I didn’t watch the one on male armpits, and it’s a good thing, too, because I don’t care what funny reason they give (“an empty stable smells better than a full one”), a man with shaved armpits is an abomination to women. Men should be men.

We don’t have a Sacha Baron Cohen for our movie. But we do have a female ventriloquist who can sing and has 22 dummies. I’m hoping we draw Horror. Nothing like a singing ventriloquist dummy for maximum creeps.

A lot of bloggage today, so let’s hop to it:

Not long ago a journalist of very close acquaintance, ahem, had to participate in the destruction of many, many copies of one of the sections he helps produce, because somehow a photo slipped through, in which an extremely sharp-eyed reader might notice that one of the people in the photo was wearing a T-shirt that read “Go Straight Edge or go fuck yourself.” They don’t do that in Nashville, evidently.

I posted this on my Facebook yesterday. It’s a story about the latest Little Photoshop of Horrors, a picture essay in the New York Times Magazine that turns out to have been substantially tinkered with. This has happened before, and it will happen again, and for the life of me I don’t understand why, but then, I never understood photographers.

Short version: Photographer Edgar Martins has an assignment — to travel the country and document the subprime meltdown. So he sets out, and finds some lovely pictures (which you can’t see, because the NYT yanked them all off the website), but he cannot resist tinkering with them. Now he and the paper stand embarrassed if not disgraced, having handed their enemies a big fat stick to beat them with. And for what? Some symmetry. Like I said, I never understood photographers.* *Although I do appreciate them.

Think of an American visiting France who believes that if he just speaks louder, he will be speaking French. — the sublime Dahlia Lithwick on Sarah Palin.

Man on dog? A Fox News host tries to explain how Americans “marry other species.” I see so many of these Fox & Friends clips on Gawker, I’m starting to think they’re angling for the publicity. Funny.

…now this is a success strategy:

Irate parents demanded last night that the school board and administrators take action over stories assigned in Campbell High School English classes that they found objectionable, including stories by authors Stephen King, David Sedaris and Ernest Hemingway.

The stories included Sedaris’ “I Like Guys,” which deals with homosexuality; “The Crack Cocaine Diet” by Laura Lippman, which includes explicit sexual material, rape, murder and drug use; a Hemingway short story that includes statutory rape and discussion about abortion; and a King story called “Survivor Type.”

I once met an author, who when I told him I liked his book replied, “Please, then call your local library and demand it be taken off the shelves.” Lucky Laura!

I’m so tired — how tired am I? — I’m so tired that a howling thunderstorm passed over my roof last night, the kind that everyone discusses over breakfast and into the midmorning coffee break, and I slept right through it. Given that the hissing of summer sprinklers at dawn can wake me up, that’s saying something. I’m still not 100 percent functional, but a bike ride is on order now that the lovely weather behind the storm is on full display. That will help a great deal.

Just what a stressed-out person needs — another to-do list.

The class went fine, thanks for asking. As I mentioned in comments, this is an independent-study deal, and so far my little crew seems ready to go. Wayne State students are different from the ones I got to know in Ann Arbor a few years back, in that so many more of them work full-time, sometimes with multiple jobs. My student questionnaire asked them about their work hours, and let me tell you something — some of these folks work harder than any of us, and for no money, either, the paid summer internship having gone the way of the dodo.

When I was in college, the luckiest and smartest students got summer gigs at the big Ohio dailies, in Cincinnati and Cleveland and Dayton, mostly. There, the Newspaper Guild set intern pay in the contract, and as I recall it was 75 percent of a starting reporter’s salary, which even then was quite generous for a college student. The idea of working free was unheard of.

Of course, that was before Arianna Huffington came on the scene:

How bad is the job market for media types? A charity auction for a two- or three-month internship at the Huffington Post has collected bids as high as $13,000. …The auction’s beneficiary, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, seems exceptionally worthy. But are unemployed media wannabes really this worthless?

To be sure, she’s not the one charging for the chance to sit at her feet — or, more likely, at the feet of her third assistant — for three months, but it’s fitting that the idea of paying someone else to make their coffee should be done at the HuffPost. It didn’t invent the idea of “exposure” as payment enough for one’s work as a writer, but it’s certainly made the most hay of the idea.

A few weeks ago I read something horrifying. Is writing for the rich? asked Francis Wilkinson, who worked for the devil herself:

In 2007, I was in charge of recruiting writers for the expansion of The Huffington Post. I calculated that I would need 75 unpaid blog submissions per day, Monday through Friday, in order to make the site work. That target seemed absurd at first. Yet within two months, hundreds of willing bloggers had signed up, the majority of them credentialed authors published by major publishing houses.

The high end of publishing—books, magazines, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal—has always contained a contingent of wealthy worker bees who don’t actually live off their often meager salaries. But even a couple decades ago, a writer without independent means could still scrape together a living writing about something other than movie stars. Not a good one necessarily, but a living.

…But on the whole, the writing game seems likely to become even more a province of the upper middle class and flat-out wealthy than it is already. The offspring of the affluent, branded college degrees in hand, can afford to give it a go. But anyone hailing from more hardscrabble environs may find it too difficult to get traction before succumbing to the dismal economics of it all.

In other words, get ready for a lot more Megan McArdles. (By the way, has anyone summed up and flushed someone in a phrase better than Roy Edroso, who described her as “Eloise at the Atlantic”? Don’t think so.)

What the world needs is more Jack Londons.

Actually, what the world needs is me at my desk, on task. So adieu for now. A little bloggage:

David Edelstein disposes of “Angels & Demons” in four tight paragraphs with several memorable phrases, my favorite being “loaves and red herrings.” Also, this:

About that carnage: Angels & Demons is rated PG-13 in spite of multiple splattery shootings, brandings, gouged eyeballs, and close-ups of holy men writhing in flames. Of course, there’s no nudity.

Of course.

Speaking of phrases, two that if you get them too close together? Will cause your skin to break out in rashes: “Gov. Sarah Palin has issued a statement” and “I applaud Donald Trump.” Get the cortisone cream!

Later, all.

When I was at the University of Michigan I had the pleasure of attending one of Ralph Williams’ lecture courses: The Bible as Literature, I believe. He’s a legendary presence at Michigan, and has been there long enough that his lecture on Job had to be moved to another building and held on a weekend, because so many parents wanted to come. Probably many of them had been his students, too.

Williams is retiring this year. He gave his final lecture this week:

“The world will not much care, nor long remember that which you gather as capital,” said Williams to the mostly college-age crowd. “But it will remember and celebrate the beauty you create.”

Words to live by in an ugly age.

The teacher set up a circuit course for us for yesterday’s weights class at my gym, with plans to push us through it three times. “Let’s warm up with some jumping jacks,” he said. So we commenced jumping.

A dozen jumps in, something happened in my left knee. It wasn’t the classic pop of a tendon or ligament tear, more like an alarming buckle — a feeling that whoops-something’s-going-somewhere-it-shouldn’t, immediately followed by it’s-back-where-it-belongs-but-there’s-going-to-be-hell-to-pay. Followed by numbness.

Well, hell. And this is my good knee.

It’s just a sprain, I’m sure, but it means days and weeks of not-being-right, and, as you might expect, the numbness predictably gave way to pain. I fished out the brace from my last adventure in this area, and I think the crutches may be called for, too. Also, ice, elastic bandages, elevation, and resentment.

This had to happen to me because the great gods of karma had kissed our work only an hour earlier — we got that grant we were in the running for. A Pulitzer couldn’t have thrilled me more, so of course I had to be punished. Good thing it wasn’t a really big grant — that would have meant tumors or amputation.

So, given that I’m gimpy, behind and otherwise distracted, how about some links and I’ll duck out early to change the ice pack?

Only in Detroit: The papers print these stories to give suburbanites something to screech about, I think. Woman goes into the city to buy a wig for her “cancer-stricken grandmother,” leaves her car 10 minutes, comes out to find her two Chihuahuas stolen. Commenter helpfully adds, they were probably stolen for dog-fighting bait. Way to make a lady feel better!

Gannett editor tells employees to reserve Facebook and Twitter for their private time. Two days ago, I F’booked a complaint about how stupid the site has become of late, and received a note from one of my still-employed ex-colleagues, who said she Facebooks for laffs while she waits to be laid off. So that’s why!

Looks like there’s a good chance the Supremes will rule strip-searching a 13-year-old girl for two Advil is just the price we have to pay to keep schools under administrators’ control. Joy.

Maureen Dowd, touring California and Silicon Valley, keeps lowering the bar. How does she manage?

Off to limp to the shower. And make some coffee.

Does anyone know how to get the popular blogging platforms — Blogger, Typepad, WordPress — to cough up the municipality or zip code their hosted blogs originate from? Because I’m trying to compile a list of Grosse Pointe bloggers, and have a hard time believing the list begins and ends with me and the principal at North High School.

And yes, I have danced with Google until my feet are sore.

And yes, if you know someone in the 48236 and 48230 zips who does this, I expect you to let me know.

We haven’t had a food post for a while, have we? Here it is, Fat Tuesday, so let’s have one. What’s For Dinner used to be a common topic here at NN.C, as you old-timers can attest. Occasionally I get an e-mail: Nance, what’s for dinner lately? I’m out of ideas. Well, I am, too. My cooking took a turn when we moved here, and a) we could no longer count on Alan’s presence at the dinner table, given the vicissitudes of morning newspaper production schedules; and b) Kate stubbornly refused to grow out of her toddler tastes, and continued to eat maybe seven foods. I decided life was too short to worry too much about this nonsense, and made a sandwich. FTW.

I think maybe I just needed to walk in the wilderness for a while, because lately I’ve been making my way back. It occurs to me that unless I want to put on five pounds a year indefinitely, ultimately ending up on one of those electric scooters at the grocery store, I should change my ways. The Mark Bittman book is illuminating a new path. I’m trying to simplify, un-process, give meat a detour more often than not and cook a bit healthier, but at the end of the day I want a little reward for all those whole grains and fresh fruit during the day.

So last night I decided butter is proof of God’s love, and decided to show the proper gratitude. I made a spinach soufflé and some oven-roasted potatoes with rosemary from our own bush, struggling through winter in the sunny window. And you know what? It was goooood:

Husband, in background, finds Field & Stream more interesting.

People are terrified of soufflés, and for no good reason. They’re much easier than you think, not nearly as tricky as you’ve been led to believe. If you can beat egg whites and fold them, you too can have a lovely entree consisting mainly of air. Truth be told, I prefer my soufflés of chocolate and for dessert, but for a light supper, it’s hard to beat ’em. Maybe with a little mushroom sauce over the top. Next time.

And while we’re on the subject of pleasures and indulgences, let me recommend the second book on the nightstand at the moment, Laura Lippman’s “Hardly Knew Her.” I know Ms. L has written short fiction before, but this is the first I’ve read of it, and I have to say, I’m impressed. These stories are wry and noir-y, concerned with a corner of crime fiction that rarely gets its full measure of attention — troublesome women. And not just the femme fatale in the fitted suit and veiled hat, either, but far more interesting ones, soulless party girls and over-the-hill sexpots and gold-diggers deprived of their full measure of gold. Oh, and the suburban prostitute-masquerading-as-a-lobbyist, and also the one who screws her contractor to get the little extras out of a home reno, and…you get the idea. Read and enjoy.

Pals, I have a whole list of supplemental readings I was going to post for comment, most on the decline of newspapers and some suggestions for saving them (or their newsrooms), but as I started to do so I realized I have utterly lost my enthusiasm for the discussion. Maybe it’s just today, on this fine, sunny, cold morning that still holds the promise of spring. Or maybe I’ve reached my limit. Anyway, not today. Today is a day for Mardi Gras beads and jelly doughnuts and last splurges before 40 days of Lent. (An agnostic though I may be, I retain the cultural patterns of my Catholic upbringing.) Can we muster some bloggage? Perhaps:

You couldn’t go to the Oscar parties, but Hank and his colleague Amy could, and bring you a full report. It doesn’t sound like that much fun:

Barward, we are thrust against the hardened chest of Gerard Butler (King Leonidas from “300”). Thrust again. Thrust once more. We can’t help it, buddy — we are being pushed from behind by . . . Oliver Stone and his Just for Men eyebrows. It’s a manwich. For some reason, Butler decides to go find his grog someplace else.

One minute these guys are all bluster and go-ahead-knock-it-off, the next they turn into pants-wetting, weak-kneed pansies: Rick Santelli vs. his imagination.

Sean Penn doesn’t need screenwriters — he comes up with his own killer lines, and at parties, no less.

And with that, I’m off. Go make yourself a soufflé.

Hi there. I’m here, but not for long — hitting the road for the Buckeye State in a few. But I found a couple things in my perambulations over the last few days I thought you might want to read and discuss, while I check in from an undisclosed location from time to time.

First, our pen pal Hank Stuever files from “the beginning of the end of Mallworld as we know it,” a Black Friday essay on the long slow eclipse of shopping:

Certain Circuit City locations are marked for death here and there, and certain Ann Taylor Lofts are not responding to the corporate chemo, and the vacant Hecht’s box is still a forlorn husk at Westfield Wheaton Shopping Centre, its parking lot filled with empty school buses. Across the land, it’s heebie-jeebie vibes in the homogenous habitat. Bennigan’s, Sharper Image, Bombay Co., Linens ‘N Things, RIP. It’s a series of harbingers. It’s the end of things ‘N things.

Are you reading Roger Ebert’s blog? If not, you should. I’m embarrassed to say I’ve generally only followed links there when he’s talking about movies, but the guy has a wide-ranging and restless intellect, and writes about everything. But this piece, about having a Phantom of the Opera face (and some great memories of Gene Siskel), is superior. He is such a generous writer. I simply lurve him.

Oh, my goodness — the best rickroll EVAHR. You gotta love celebrities who can laugh at themselves. Although, honestly, isn’t it a bit of a stretch to call Rick Astley a celebrity? By the way, I always sort of liked that song. I always associate Rick Astley and Billy Ocean (“Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car”) with aerobics classes in the ’80s. It must be linked with endorphins in my lizard brain.

Off to Columbus.

Today’s mail was interesting:

It needs a reply.

Dear Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee,

I no longer live in Mark Souder’s district. Just so’s you know.

You can continue to send me the amusing direct-mail attacks, however. But as an editor, if I may: The most effective campaign literature spells the candidate’s name correctly.

Best,

Nance.

I was unfamiliar with the phrase “my 9/11 movie” until my screenwriting teacher used it in reference to “Amelie,” and I learned the definition was “the movie that brought you out of your 9/11 funk.” We were all that way, weren’t we? Dazed and frightened and confused and angry and depressed, convinced we’d just stepped off the cliff and were plummeting toward a pile of rocks and shit at the bottom, just waiting for the landing. And then, at some point, we were rescued by art. Maybe your 9/11 movie was a painting or a symphony or a two-and-a-half-minute single, but for me it was a movie: “Citizen Ruth.” This ferocious satire of the culture wars slapped me across the face and gave me hope. If we can make movies like this, I thought, we’re better than they are, because they can’t.

Turns out A.O. Scott loves it too, and tells us why in this fine video appreciation.