These people aren’t moving. Millennium Force.
(Note to self: Never ever EVER.)
My rule: Ride nothing requiring FAA lighting.
Harnessing America’s industrial power to mimic the experience of falling to your death.
More experimenting with phoneblogging. As we hear the distant rumbles of cannon fire…
JohnC drops in with a writing lesson. The lede from the Freep’s mainbar on the Kilpatrick story:
Shortly after Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wakes up in jail this morning — still reeling from becoming the first sitting mayor in Detroit’s 307-year history to spend a night behind bars — Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is expected to charge him with felony assault.
John points out that when a story is this dramatic, you don’t have to overwrite it: Just let the facts speak for themselves. And while this isn’t a terribly turgid passage — you have to go to TV for that stuff — there’s just a hint of it there:
I’m talking about the phrase “still reeling from.” Not to take anything away from those guys, who’ve done a fantastic job on that story. Never mind the fact that the reporters have no idea whether the mayor will be “reeling,” one of my pet peeves is over-writing a story that pretty much tells itself. Take that phrase out, and you have a much, much stronger top.
Yes, I agree. If ever there was a case for letting the facts speak for themselves, it’s this. I was pleased to see my friend Ron French’s byline (one of three) on the News’ contribution. Ron’s hallmark as a writer is a keen eye for the ironic detail. Let’s see if we can find it here:
Kwame Kilpatrick’s lips quivered. He sat in silence, his hand pressed to his face, as 36th District Judge Ronald Giles cut another string of the thread by which a once-promising political career hung. “If it was not Kwame Kilpatrick sitting in that seat, if it was John Six-Pack sitting in the seat, what would I do?” Giles asked the mayor. Bond is revoked, Giles said. Then, the man who already was the first sitting mayor in Detroit’s 307-year history to be charged with a crime became the first to be locked in a jail cell in his own city.
Bingo!
It’s hard to teach this stuff. You have to have the eye and the ear and the perspective to know when the facts need no additional underlining. A very good reporter I once knew was struggling with a story about a nursing-home company in Chapter 11, while its owner lived like a pasha. He asked a colleague, also a good reporter but a very skilled writer, to take a shot. The second writer examined the facts for a few moments and came up with something like this:
As the XXXX chain of nursing homes slid closer to bankruptcy, owner XXXX knew he had to do something to stop the bleeding. He cut staff. He trimmed services. He lowered thermostats and curtailed extras. But he didn’t give up his private company plane, owned by the corporation but used exclusively by XXXX and his family. Nor did he sell the company retreat, which served as XXXX’s summer home. Nor did he…
It was a thing of beauty. In a just world, Mr. Moneybags would have shit his pants and died when he saw it. As it was, he probably just lit a cigar with a $20 bill and thought, “Good thing this rag won’t be around to bug me in a few more years.”
That concludes today’s writing lesson.
JohnC gets the Freep home-delivered; we get the News. Both were a little, eh, excited today. BEHIND BARS, the News’ front page shrieked, in a font size suitable for a stadium’s Jumbotron. I’ve ruminated here how the traditions of print journalism are being adapted by digital media, mostly in the widely imitated, rat-a-tat-tat phrasing of Drudge, who ripped it off from Walter Winchell and others from the golden age of print. Amusingly enough, you see this most often in gossip columns: “Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are back together! The former flames will record a duet for her new album, OK! can exclusively reveal…” But nothing will replace the screaming headline. Especially not Drudge’s ambulance light, or whatever that thing is.
OK, something will replace it. But we don’t know what it is yet. This seems as good a time as any to reveal that I’m now in a new digi-media space. Among the casualties of Saturday’s kayak trip was my old pink Razr cell phone, which disappeared sometime between 5 p.m. and 6:10 p.m., during which time I was out on the water. I have no memory of it going plop into the drink. In my last memory of it, it was sitting on the dock, which suggests it was either stolen, eaten by a duck or kicked down the boat ramp, but it doesn’t matter now because it is gone, gone, gone.
That was bad news. Until it turned into good news:
Alan accused me of losing my old phone on purpose. I did not. But that is my new iPhone 3G, it has a near-broadband connection and web browser, and I’ve been spending some time reading news on its index-card screen. I have news for all of you journalists: This is a game-changer. I’m trying to see where it leads me, not impose my habits upon it, and so far, it’s telling me that breaking news is going to be cell-phone news in the future. They’ll clip “still reeling” from ledes for space reasons, not for the esoteric ones discussed above.
Busy day today, so on to the bloggage:
Coozledad on his dual roosters, Sid and Nancy. See what a good writer can do with both white and dark meat.
Jim at Sweet Juniper goes shopping in Ann Arbor. Finds some toys, but not for the kids.
Every Thursday night, as I reach the end of my editing shift, I check to see what TBogg’s bassets are up to. Satchmo is sick (sad story), but Fenway, that irascible pup, is on the roof. Funny story. Reminds me of when Spriggy discovered he could climb onto the dining room table.
Roy, in a contemplative mood.
And me, outta here.
Please don’t get me started on flying commercially in this country. I don’t do it very often, but I have many strong opinions, most involving the stubborn refusal of too many customers to check their bags. It really chaps my ass, getting on a plane with a bunch of people, all of whom are trying to shove 10 pounds of bag into 5 pounds of overhead storage. It’s like traveling with a bunch of Soviet Siberians, back when the only place you could buy anything was Moscow, and you had to shlep it home on the Trans-Siberian Express. Of course, if you asked any of my fellow travelers, they’d say they’ve all lost luggage, oy but it was a nightmare and never again.
I’ve never lost my luggage. Maybe it’s just luck. To be sure, I don’t fly often. But before every flight, when the agent is tagging my bags, I check to make sure they have the right city on them. I rarely board with anything larger than what can be tucked under the seat. And for an extra 15 minutes at baggage claim, I am not one of the problem people.
How often in your life do you get to say this? If only there were more people in the world…well, like me.
Back and happy to be so. A few thoughts/clarifications:
** Just for the record, I didn’t spend my entire vacation thinking about the food movement in northern California. But I always need something to think about, and the Kingdom of Foodies made for satisfying vacation cogitation — not particularly consequential, and a lot less scary than, say, the fate of Fannie, Freddie and IndyMac. Plus, it was reinforced with every overpriced-yet-tasty meal.
So please don’t get the idea I’m obsessing about this. But I just came back from my post-vacation replenishment of the fridge and pantry, and it’s on my mind. Again.
Here’s what I spent a lot of time thinking about: Why do people I have so much in common with bug me so deeply? I enjoy eating well, eating local, eating slow. Few things bring me as much joy as a farmer’s market in July. I think fewer pesticides and chemical fertilizers is a good thing. I want the earth to be replenished by our agriculture, not depleted by it. I think farm animals have a right to cruelty-free lives.
And yet, one morning when we were getting dressed, the local NPR affiliate carried a local feature about a speed-dating event for people interested in green living, i.e., people who believe all those things about food, plus a few more covering how they live their lives and get to their jobs. One of the interviews was with a man who went away disappointed at the lack of commitment he found — people who thought recycling a few bottles and tolerating compact-fluorescent light bulbs constituted a green lifestyle. As opposed to him, for instance, who did everything short of composting his own excrement.
It wasn’t what he said that struck me so much as the tone — that blend of 90 percent smugness and 10 percent whining. It tickled a zone of deep familiarity in my brain before I figured where I’d heard it before. It is precisely the same one employed by certain Christians (I’m thinking Missouri Synod Lutherans here, but your local variety may be another denomination) when they’re finding fault with a world that fails to live up to their expectations and, far more important, reward their piety with social approval. And that’s when it clicked: This isn’t a lifestyle choice or even a movement, it’s a religion. And there’s nothing like religion to rinse all the fun out of something.
** How’s this for irony? When we were in Carmel, Clint Eastwood’s hometown, guess where he was? In our hometown.
** Sorry, Danny, didn’t make it up to Muir Woods, but we did spend an afternoon at Point Lobos State Reserve, and another kayaking on Elkhorn Slough. We got a pretty good dose of California’s loveliness.
** Someday I’d like to live in NoCal, if a) I can somehow go there with about $10 million in my pocket; and b) I can ever figure out the weather. As a Midwesterner, I prefer our Fisher-Price version — it comes from the west, it can be seen coming for days and days, there are no mountains to impede its progress and “summer” generally means “temperatures above 75 degrees.” The coastal breezes were wonderful for the first 48 hours — hey, why are all these people wearing down vests? — until we got acclimated, and then it was just, well, freezing. The rule seemed to be: Whatever the weather is in the morning, it will be the opposite by afternoon. Although it could be something else entirely.
Well, I have my old weather back now: The humidity smells like mold, not sage. The weather is on its old pattern, and sorry this is a disjointed mess but I have to go pick up the dog, whom I miss more than I ever imagined. Hang on, Spriggy — I’m on my way. The rest of you, back in a bit. And thanks for being such good chatterboxes when I was gone. You can run my bar anytime.
Well, I was right. The weather was hot and muggy and partly cloudy all day, and then, late afternoon, a deluge. This drove the film-festival launch party indoors, to the ground floor of the Renaissance Center. That place belongs in an architectural case study book somewhere, in several chapters, including “And Then Came the ’70s: What Were We Thinking?” and, of course, “How Not to Do It.”
Built in the mid-’70s, the RenCen has its own complicated history, perhaps best summed up in its name, an ironic joke worthy of Orwell’s Ministry of Love. It was intended to reassure the white people leaving the city in their rearview mirrors (although I’m not sure, precisely, how that would work) that the city was done with the unpleasantness of the riots and was on its way back, yeah baby. Obviously it didn’t work, but the city got its signature building out of it — a five-tower “rosette” with a central silo reaching 73 stories and the surrounding ones, 39 stories, all wrapped in the black glass that was not only ’70s standard but also a trademark of its architect, John Portman. (Its familiarity was always an itch I couldn’t scratch, until a little research showed Portman was the man who designed the Peachtree Center in Atlanta. Atlanta’s downtown was an early-adult formative experience for me.)
Inside is the nightmare. I walked in from the parking garage and stood there a minute, trying to get oriented. A security guard sitting at a station nearby didn’t even look up from his desk when he drawled, “Lemme guess. You’re lost.” Everybody gets lost in the RenCen. All those towers! All those levels! Curse you, John Portman and your stupid ideas about atria. Everything is round, every walkway seems to lead to another roundabout, and all the walls are some sort of beige concrete. I tried to listen for the music of the party, but the acoustics are awful. I knew where I was going, but I still needed directions. These were the directions: Go straight, follow the walkway around to your right. Look for the escalator. Take it down one level, make another right and you’re there. And I still nearly missed the escalator.
It’s not a terrible place, though. There’s the GM Wintergarden, a vast interior public space with a window wall overlooking the river. Alan likes to take the People Mover over on his lunch hour and eat a Potbelly’s sub while watching the freighters go by. Tellingly, this was a 1999 add-on to the building, after GM bought it. Trust Michiganders to know how much you need the sun in January.
And, I’m pleased to report, you can get good cell service inside, which is good because you need it: “OK, you’re passing Starbucks? I’m right across from Starbucks. Stop. No, stop. Stop walking. Turn to your right. Look up. Not that far. Lower. OK, I’m waving. See me wave? Great. No, I don’t know how to get here from there. Maybe we’d better hold the meeting over the phone.”
The storm was great, and the clearing after the storm was greater, the sun breaking through to light the casino on the Canadian side, bright against the fleeing bank of black clouds. There’s nothing that says, “yes, the storm will pass” like CAESAR’S in red neon, is there?
One final note: I interviewed a man a couple years ago, a sailor. On the wall of his office is a great photo of a boat sailing down the Detroit River, past the half-completed RenCen. It was him, and his boat. He had no idea who’d taken the picture. He’d just found it at a garage sale. What are the odds.
Some bloggage:
Geoffrey Feiger’s co-defendant’s lawyer suggests thanks for his client’s recent acquittal goes right up to the top:
In his initial meeting with 39 mock jurors chosen to represent a typical southeast Michigan jury pool, the judge hired to conduct the simulated trials asked how many trusted their government to tell the truth. Just four of 39 raised their hands.
“In my father’s day,” Fishman told me, “there would have been 38 hands up, with maybe one holdout who’d just gotten out of prison.”
Roy, on a roll, riffs on a Peggy Noonan column about the need to let the gray stallion run, by letting him insult people. Worth a try — he already sort of reminds me of Don Rickles.
Happy Friday. Happy weekend. Happy everything. It’s a lovely day.
Fort Wayne’s corporate overlords can’t support one of its crown jewels anymore, but they’re happy to ship the whole shootin’ match to Washington. Thanks, corporate overlords. Funny how Washington is so much closer to your new hometown of Philly.
My mind is empty as a cup today. We now get three newspapers delivered to the door — a WSJ salesperson called the other day, and I took pity — and I can’t think of anything to write about. Well, there was this: A story in the NYT about a lawyer’s plan to use Google searches to establish community standards. Since more people search “orgy” than “apple pie,” the reasoning goes, this proves the community tolerates more porn than may be immediately evident on its public face.
The NYT calls this a novel approach. I don’t think so.
In the 1970s, Columbus, Ohio was the country’s first test market for an interactive cable service called QUBE. Warner QUBE, to be exact. It was ground-breaking for the time — 30 channels! — and offered what was then cutting-edge technology, the ability to talk back to your TV. The box was hard-wired to your TV and lots of people tripped over the cable, but it was so novel no one cared. Three rows of buttons adorned the box, the size of a fat trade paperback. Ten channels were local broadcast (with Cincinnati’s and Cleveland’s included), 10 more were “community” channels, but the real interesting ones were the 10 on the far right, which were premium — pay-per-view. And of that 10, the most interesting was P-10, in the southeast corner of the box. This was the porn channel. You could have it disabled, but no one I knew did. The free-viewing period before the charge kicked in was ridiculously long by today’s standards — two whole minutes. It was what we’d now call hotel-room porn, hardcore movies with the closeups excised, but they were the real deal. I watched “Captain Lust” there with some friends, agog at the novelty of it all, not to mention the original theme song, sung as a sea chanty (Captain Lust was a pirate): Oh Captain Lust, he’s greedy, mean and horny-o… To give you an idea of how swiftly this changed the local lexicon: I was at a party around that time, and there were three guys named Pete in attendance. The host introduced the first two as P-1 and P-2, but the last guy was a real ladies’ man, so they called him P-10. Everybody got the joke.
We weren’t the only ones experimenting with this amazing technology. (Some things “Swingtown” gets right.) Remember, Betamaxes still cost in the $700 range back then, and this would have been among the first opportunities Americans had to view pornographic movies in the privacy of their own homes.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the city, an eager prosecutor is preparing a case against a dirty-bookstore owner, or maybe it was a dirty-movie theater owner. Can’t recall. (Kirk, Bernie Karsko told me the rest of this story, and maybe you remember it better.) He’s using the community standards offense. The defendant is smart enough to hire the right lawyer, who looked at his QUBE box, added two and two, and drew up a subpoena of the company’s records regarding P-10 movie purchases. Let’s just see what the community’s standards are when they’re behind closed doors, he says. Warner gets wind of this, pees its corporate pants, raises a stink, etc., and I believe the prosecutor backed down almost immediately. He knew he had a loser on his hands.
I think, but again I’m not sure, that the lawyer in question was Alan Isaacman, the same guy Edward Norton plays in “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Smart guy. (And a very good movie, I might add, despite its repellant central character.)
So, some bloggage:
Sometimes I think the difference between entrepreneurs and the rest of us is simply the power to get up off the couch. I thought of the human-powered gym years ago. You probably did, too. It’s impossible to sit pedaling, treadmilling, elliptical-ing or whatevering in one of those long lines at most gyms and not wonder why the whole setup isn’t hooked up to a generator. Screw the banks of TVs tuned to ESPN and CNN; what you need to keep going is the dimming of the overhead lights.
(Note that news item is over a year old. I only read about it today, buried within a Slate story about harnessing the power of the breast-bounce. Sorry, guys — no pix.)
Spend any time in Amish country, and you learn a thing or two about storing power. I once visited an Amish quilt shop in rural Allen County. It had a high, pitched roof, and on the south-facing side of the roof — also, coincidentally, the side that customers didn’t see, entering through the front door — was a bank of solar panels. Wires led to a stack of six car batteries, and wires from those powered a huge, industrial-type sewing machine of the sort found in any Asian sweatshop. This is where the quilts were made, and if you know sewing at all, it was obvious in the evenness of the stitching. They never claimed they were hand-sewn, but I always think of this as the height of Amish tricksiness. Many people think of the Amish as North America’s very own tribe of aboriginal innocents, but surprise, they’re not.
Off to work. Back to regular morning blogging this week, I think. I’ve finally slept enough.