MT has been down for a while. Narcissistic, self-indulgent posting to resume in the near future.

A postcard arrived in the mail today — an advertising image from the new Narnia movie on one side, at the top a question: “What if there were no Christmas?” On the back, an invitation to “worship and a Narnia adventure” at a local Grosse Pointe church.

And so it begins.

I’d been reading about this. The Disney Co., hoping to shake that Passion-of-the-Christ money tree a little, is pushing “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” via the churchy crowd. As one who liked the book, I hope we can get through the movie’s run without it becoming another bloody culture-war flag, because I am really, really not interested in that. Absolutely, positively…not interested.

Of course I recognize the Christian symbolism in the book. Kate, at 7, didn’t, but as she’s being raised in a non-religious home, I didn’t expect her to. I pointed it out to her; she did the 7-year-old version of, “huh,” and that was that. And that’s pretty much the way I’d like to leave it — fine story on one level, allegory on another. I fear, though, that someone’s going to screw it up:

In addition to the usual TV and newspaper ads and theatrical trailers, “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” is being promoted by the Barna Group, a marketing firm that specializes in generating buzz on the Christian scene, by making advanced screenings, study guides and block ticket sales available to churches. Right-wing groups like Focus on the Family have endorsed the film.

Oh, joy. I can’t wait to hear what gasbaggery issues from the hole beneath Michael Medved’s stupid porn-star mustache. And to think James Dobson may join in, in two-part harmony! It’s enough to send me to “Brokeback Mountain,” which I’d rather see first, but you know — 9-year-olds in the house, etc. Actually, I hope to see, and expect to like, both.

Big anniversary today, of which I was reminded by none other than the GPNews. The writer recalled just where she was when she heard the terrible news about John Lennon (in bed). She went to the big service in Central Park. She writes:

“I passed rocker Edgar Winter, arm-in-arm with four beautiful women, proving that rock stars don’t have to be good-looking to get babes.”

As if, until that moment, there may have been some doubt on that point.

Anyway, I remember something else about Lennon’s death — where my friend Mark West first heard about it. He was in California, on some whack new computer thing called Compuserve, swapping command-line interface chat with some guy who could see the front door of the Dakota in New York City. The guy said something seemed to be going on over there, huh, wonder what it is.

Mr. Watson, come here, I need you. What a difference 25 years makes.

I said, “Let it snow,” and behold, we’re in the process of getting a buttload. I heard the forecast and took inventory. Had: A case of beer, plenty of milk and kidfood, the makings for split-pea soup and biscuits, and what have we here? Sweet potatoes. So I made soup, and biscuits, and a pie. (Sweet-potato pie has lots of antioxidants. It’s, like, health food.) Nothing like watching the snow fly when you have plenty of beer in the house.

Finally, the bloggage: I can’t believe I used to work for this company:

The Akron Beacon Journal, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning paper now operating as a ‘zine for the geriatric set, is getting squeezed to comedic proportions by San Jose’s Knight Ridder, its parent company.

Executives recently asked employees to share pens and notepads with other departments, since no more office supplies will be purchased this year. The problem is that some departments have already run dry, including the photo department, which ran out of batteries and paper. “They did make an exception and ordered the photographers new batteries,” says reporter Paula Schleis.

Guess what KR’s overall profit margin was in 2004? Give up? OK: 19.3 percent, and you can look it up. Ask your local grocer if he could afford office supplies on that kind of margin.

Morning bloggage roundup coming up. I’m feeling a bit better today, although it still seems as though something is standing out on the stoop of my immune system’s house, trying to quietly open the door with a credit card. I guess I should go drink something with antioxidants, or maybe just a big glass of water.

In the meantime, some light reading:

I’ve been quiet on the war of late, for lots of reasons. I tell myself my energies are best expended elsewhere. I get enough venting out of babbling at Alan over the newspaper every morning: “Is he kidding? Are they kidding? How stupid does Dick Cheney think we are?!?”

So I leave the heavy lifting to others. Richard Cohen hoists his share this morning:

If, as Samuel Johnson said, “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,” then “support our troops” is very close by. It is being used to deflect criticism of the war in Iraq, or to rebut those who call for a pullout or question how incompetents seized control of the government in a coup by ideologues. In the lexicon of some, the only way to support our troops is to ensure that more of them die.

But if you want your politics in a lighter mood, I can’t recommend The Poor Man highly enough. Nominations are now open for his Wanker of the Year, the coveted Palme d’Hair.

The end of an era: The restaurant decor theme of crap-on-the-wall takes a long step toward the door.

Top-level sportswriters are the most unjustifiably pampered and coddled human beings on the planet. Detroit Super Bowl host committee officials kick off the kneepads tour.

Finally, an activity for Boxing Day: Taking Kate to the Hanukkah parade. Rolling menorahs on Hummer limos! What’s not to like?

I don’t know what’s worse about this picture — Condi’s dress or Bob’s facelift.

Boy, I remember when I thought Mel Gibson was about the yummiest piece of manflesh on the hoof. Now he looks like some sort of crazy Catholic/Mormon whack job who really should have listened to the advice about sunscreen. Yeah, I know he’s probably wearing all that facial hair for a movie. Still.

I ask you: What did we do for amusement before the internet? We had to wait for Spy magazine to point these things out to us.

Man, am I beat. My mouth feels as though it were coated in some sort of bacterial film. Think I’ll go drink some tea, get into my flannel jammies and pack it in early. Tomorrow we’ll catch up, eh?

I don’t generally talk about my assignments before they’re published, but I don’t think I’m giving any secrets away to say that some of them have touched on the Super Bowl. Super Bowl XL, of course.

Which, if you follow football, you know will be held in our fair city in February.

This is only the third SB to be held in a northern climate, and the question I keep hearing is, “But what if there’s snow?” As though snow is something so horrible, so incompatible with human gathering, that it must be feared and battled with incantations or, at the very least, flamethrowers aimed at the sky.

First. Trust me on this: Detroit is a city improved by snow. You simply cannot imagine what a dusting of powder does to spruce this joint up, especially in winter. (Needless to say, Ford Field is not an open-air stadium.)

Second. Winter, in general, is improved by snow. You want a depressing winter? Order up one where the temperature hovers in the mid-30s, and either it never snows or snows and melts and doesn’t stick. You want a sucking black hole of depression? That’s it, right there.

Finally. It has occurred to people putting on the Super Bowl that it could, theoretically, snow at this latitude during Super Bowl week. They are, in fact, prepared for it, and welcoming it. An adjacent downtown festival, the Motown Winter Blast, will benefit enormously from a healthy snowfall before and during Super Bowl week, and I hope they get it. Nothing like watching huskies pull sleds across slush to say, “It sure would be nice to have a little snow.”

So where did we get this snowphobia, this terror of a natural phenomenon? Certainly, snow presents short-term difficulties; it is a pain to drive in, and it’s a pain (sometimes literally) to remove. But when you’ve gotten where you’re going and shoveled the sidewalk, it’s all about the pretty. And that almost always lasts longer. Why fear this?

TV weatherpeople. That’s who I blame. They spread snow fear wherever they go. Send in the Blackhawk helicopters to bomb their Doppler weather centers. That would be the real war on terror.

Here in Michigan, it snowed the day before Thanksgiving. The forecasts started with 3-5 inches, then dwindled through the day until it matched with what we got — about an inch or two of mostly slush. It’s been a warm fall and the ground wasn’t cold enough for major stickage. But the accompanying TV-weather-reporting hysteria was enough to scare away my sister-in-law, who cancelled her Thanksgiving visit — there was a chance of an additional inch on the holiday, and that was enough to wave her off. (P.S. We had bright sunshine all day on Thanksgiving.) My friends John and Sam were elsewhere in Michigan that day, and Sam talked to a woman who didn’t want to “be out there traveling” in such horrible conditions.

Where did she have to travel? Sam asked.

About 15 miles. A lifelong Michigan resident, fearful of travelling 15 miles, through snowy conditions, in a car probably better-suited to snowy conditions than any she’s ever owned before. (Remember Delta 88s with rear-wheel drive? I do. Wheeee! That was a car that could spin.)

I now get my forecasts from weather.com. Alan favors the Lake St. Clair weather buoy. We’re much happier.

And I’m hoping for snow during Super Bowl week.

Oops, almost forgot:

As a piece of music, “My Humps” is a stunning assemblage of awful ideas. …The “humps” in question belong to Fergie, who brandishes her “lovely lady lumps” for the purpose of procuring various gifts from men who, one would assume, find the prospect of “lumps” very exciting�one lump begetting another lump, if you will.

While arguing with the pop music charts is like arguing with, well, TV weatherpeople, this is a pretty amusing takedown of a pretty awful hit.

Alan was late getting home Friday night, so I did something I would only do if I were alone on a Friday night — I watched “The Godfather, Part III” from beginning to end for the first time since the movie came out.

I remember seeing it in the theater, and thinking, “Of course it’s not nearly as good as the first two, but I think the critics are piling on a bit. It’s not that bad.”

To set the record straight: It is that bad. In fact, by the midpoint, I was convinced Francis Ford Coppola had sunk into existential despair and could only emerge by parodying himself. How so? Those who remember the movie might recall that at one point, there’s an actual helicopter attack on a meeting of the mafia dons. While it was welcome — someone had just used the phrase, “you gotta let us wet our beaks,” a line that certainly calls for summary execution — it was impossible not to think of “Apocalypse Now.” Good god, Francis, get a grip.

This attack also came after Joe Mantegna, a fine actor, was forced to deliver a horrible speech: I say to all of you, I have been treated this day, with no respect. I’ve earned you all money. I’ve made you rich, and I asked for little. Good. You will not give, I’ll take!

Evidently there’s some rule that all mafiosos in Godfather movies must speak like Hollywood Indians around the council fire. “You will not give, I’ll take!” I prefer Tony Soprano.

There were thousands of other problems, but my favorite were the shots of New York Times front pages, used to convey the breaking news out of Rome, about the election of Pope John Paul I. (Yes, the Corleones are a family of many pies, many fingers, and many wet beaks.) Little-known journalistic fact: The New York Times was on strike for the entire papacy of John Paul I. They missed the whole thing, front to back. (Note to youngsters: It wasn’t a long one.) Also, the typefaces didn’t match. Which drives me crazy.

My friend the film critic says it’s Hollywood legend: The original script was about a power struggle between Michael Corleone and Tom Hagen, but the producers balked at Robert Duvall’s salary requirement, which was: As much as Diane Keaton. They refused. And so we got Sofia Coppola showing he all her shades of wooden, which ran the gamut from ash to birch.

When it ended (Spoiler: NOT HAPPILY), I surfed around the dial and found Al Pacino on another channel, in “Scarface.” Watched it for 10 minutes. Just for the comic relief.

While we’re at the movies, though — someone mentioned Clark Griswold in the comments, and it made me think of “Christmas Vacation.” I wondered if Kate was old enough to watch it yet. I don’t think I saw it all the way through, but I’ve seen bits and pieces of it here and there, and it seemed she’d get a kick out of it. Asked IMdB. Hmm, PG-13. Well, so was “Seabiscuit,” and that didn’t have much objectionable material. Checked the “memorable quotes” from IMdB’s entry:

Where do you think you’re going? Nobody’s leaving. Nobody’s walking out on this fun, old-fashioned family Christmas. No, no. We’re all in this together. This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here. We’re gonna press on, and we’re gonna have the hap, hap, happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tap-danced with Danny fucking Kaye. And when Santa squeezes his fat white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse.

Oh well, I guess I can watch “A Christmas Story” a few dozen more times. Maybe in 2009.

So, on to the bloggage:

Michael Kinsley — word.

What did this woman get for her $4,000? I honestly can’t tell. For that money, she could spend two weeks in Istanbul — and do a lot of shopping. I know what I’d prefer.

Remember those people who said they were going to put their kids through college by investing in Beanie Babies? They were wrong, but others invested more wisely. An eBay success story.

It’s only natural — sometimes you ask yourself, What if God had sent his son to be born not to a poor Middle Eastern family during the Roman empire, but to a wealthy one in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan, during our own era? Or even if they were poor, but happened to be in the neighborhood when labor started? How might things have been different?

Well.

There would still be angels, sure. But instead of flapping around in the sky, on high, they’d perch on the roof. Plenty of altitude, nice opportunities for symmetry.

Even though a place like this has plenty of guest rooms, it’s possible there could be no room at the inn. If so, Mary and Joseph could have the baby out on the front lawn.

Would there be shepherds? Sure. In Grosse Pointe? Really? Aren’t there local ordinances? Probably, but this is the hand of God at work; they’d have to be encamped on the neighbors’ lawn.

How would word be spread? The angels, of course, with their celestial trumpets. Also, word of mouth — do you hear what I hear, and so on. But mainly, the event would be visible from outer space, and certainly heaven.

Come on, even a house like this can’t possibly carry an electrical load like that. Does it take a heavenly miracle? No. Just a generator.

Honestly, even though Kate thought it looked like the trees were dripping blood, I give this place points for many things — a consistent theme and design coherence, among other things. Bethlehem Vegas is not supplemented with Frosty, Rudolph, Santa and the guys (although there are reindeer grazing the grounds, but very abstract ones). There are several over-the-top displays along Lakeshore Drive this year, and two of them are strictly religious.

I was describing this to an out-of-town friend Saturday, and she said, “Well, sure. God has been very good to them, and they’re not afraid to show the world they’re grateful.” Also, passing commercial airliners.

Oy, a nice weekend it was, at least until Sunday morning. We went out Saturday night for the first time in about a thousand years, got home late, paid the babysitter and I actually got to watch, for the first time in about two thousand years, those final, excruciatingly unfunny moments of “Saturday Night Live.” I was in bed by 1 a.m., but just barely. One in the morning! It was almost like being an adult again.

Then it snowed overnight. Just enough to cover the grass. I’d say an inch, mebbe a smidge more.

So our neighbor’s snow-removal service showed up to clean off their driveway. They arrive with a crew of four, each armed with a snowblower. The driveway, I remind you, is directly beneath our bedroom window. They pulled starting cords in unison at 6 a.m.

Four snowblowers roaring as one under my window at 6 on a Sunday morning. It’s times like this I’m grateful I don’t own firearms.

The link of the day comes thanks to Amy, who is a serious Catholic but like the best Catholics, knows that God has a sense of humor. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Cavalcade of Bad Nativities.

Merry Christmas.

Circumstance carried me to the Somerset Collection today, the hoity-to-the-toity mall up in Novi. How hoity? A long line of children does not stretch across the central court waiting to see Santa; oh no, at Somerset, Santa can only be seen by appointment. I was there with my friend John and his adorable 3-year-old, Sally. Luckily, she didn’t want to see Santa, content to gaze upon him from a distance. The three of us were headed to the Apple store, to chip one more user away from the Windows empire. He left with a new PowerBook and a bright, virus-free future. (Knock wood.)

Sally got antsy before the deal was done, so I took her out to the Santa staging ground. She wanted to ride the escalator. We did so, about 20 times. Little kids are so great. When Kate was that age, she was as thrilled by a trip to the grocery store as one to the park. It’s a good age.

They’re all good ages, in their own way.

Said the person still on the near side of adolescence.

Oh, well. At least I know that if something confusing comes up to distance Kate’s generation from mine, American journalism will be happy to explain it all:

Teen Accused of Stealing iPod From D.C. Metro Rider

The electronic devices, which let people carry thousands of songs with them and listen to them through earphones, are about the size of a pack of cigarettes and have rapidly replaced the older portable Walkman-style stereos as the entertainment device of choice. Many people use them to alleviate the boredom of trips on crowded subway trains and the perceived tedium of many other activities.

Funny analysis of this puzzling paragraph, here.

Now I’m starting the weekend.

Maybe it was because I didn’t sleep well last night, but I spent two-thirds of today in a vile mood. Nothing helped — walking the dog, cranking the iPod, surfing the web. Especially not surfing the web. I don’t want to know what everyone’s crazy about at any given moment, particularly Bill O’Reilly. I shut the laptop, read a little, did an interview, organized some notes, melted some blue cheese on Italian bread, sent some e-mail and reflected that what I really wanted was about three Marlboro Lights and a six-pack to go, but unfortunately it wasn’t 11 a.m. yet. Decided instead to go for a drive.

Well, it is the Motor City.

That helped — nothing like a relatively uncrowded freeway and Rodney Crowell very loud to lift one’s spirits.

Also this, which was cheering in a jet-black sort of way, a “there’s one for the Darwin awards” amusement. No link, just the facts, ma’am:

CHICAGO — A 23-year-old man suffered fatal injuries when he fell from his Mt. Prospect balcony during a spitting contest with his friends, police in northwest suburb said Tuesday. Bartosz Drobek was participating in a “spitting contest” with his friends at 12:35 a.m. Monday on the balcony of his apartment building at 1700 W. Palm Drive in the suburb, when he lost his balance and fell to the ground, according to a Mt. Prospect police news release. Drobek struck his head on the pavement two stories below, according to the release. He had earlier gone out onto the balcony to smoke cigarettes with two other people, according to the release. Drobek, his brother and a friend, were competing in a spitting-distance contest, according to Ollech. He said at one point, Drobek crouched down and sprung up to spit off the balcony and went over the railing. His brother and friend immediately called 911 following the accident Drobek had been consuming alcohol prior to the fall, Ollech said.

Of course that’s not cheering at all. Alcohol has a learning curve; sometimes I think the best argument for a walkable college campus with a strict no-cars policy for underclassmen is that it allows you to do at least some of that learning when you’re less likely to hurt yourself. Still.

So let’s move on. I loved the lead on this story:

The Roman Catholic Church is preparing to abolish limbo, the place between heaven and hell reserved for the souls of children who die before they have been baptised.

Isn’t that funny? “Preparing to abolish” limbo, but presumably, until that actually happens, when the Pope tears up the deed or whatever, a few more unbaptized babies will go there, as they’ve done since the 13th century. It’s like the Israelis leaving Gaza — the end in sight, the chaos of moving boxes being carried onto trucks, the tears of longtime residents. So much of Catholic dogma made little sense to me when I was learning it. Now I wonder how I kept a straight face.

Finally, another funny-ha-ha story, which you may have already heard about — the family in Novi who were told to remove their Nativity scene from the lawn, presumably by one of Bill O’Reilly’s anti-Christmas storm troopers, but no, actually by some prigs in the subdivision where they live. Within days, the subdivision mullahs had backed off and peace was back in the valley. But this is my favorite line from the story:

On Nov. 21 the family received a letter asking them to remove the nativity scene but said nothing about the other numerous figures on the lawn, including a holiday Minnie Mouse and Winnie the Pooh along with a Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Is this a great country, or what?

I had a bit of work tonight, but I still planned to write something afterward. Then Alan turned on George Carlin’s latest special on demand, and I think I’m going to be pretty worthless from here on out.

Man, he’s funny.

But here’s a treat, much more amusing than me: The baby panda in Washington made his press debut today. I highly recommend the photo gallery, although I suspect that if people can die of exposure to cuteness, this critter might be the one who finds out.

More tomorrow, I promise.