It looks as though the Matter of Mitch is in its last act, although I predict a twist or two yet to come. Like so many of these stories, it’s mainly of interest to journalists; readers just want what they want from their newspaper, and to be spared the sausage-making. But even as a journalist, it’s hard to know what the final lesson is. Albom was cleared of a “pattern of deception,” but found guilty of quote-appropriation, or lifting quotes from work of others without always making it clear just where it came from. Or, to put it another way:

Mitch might write, “‘Sure, I killed my wife,’ O.J. Simpson claims,” not “‘Sure, I killed my wife,’ O.J. Simpson told Barbara Walters in a widely watched interview.” He claims this is no big deal, that everyone does it, and besides, sometimes he’s writing “an essay,” and attribution is no big deal, as long as the quotes are accurate.

Now, you can parse this stuff all day, and I don’t want to do too much. He has a point when he implies attribution would bog down his essay-ish sentences, and there’s a certain sort of tin-eared editor who thinks the most important words in the newspaper are “police said,” and any sentence without it or its equivalent is a lie. I’m in the middle, of course; I hated when editors larded up my copy with clunky, journalese phrases. I wanted the freedom to refer to Newt Gingrich without having to insert “R-Georgia” after the first reference. Mostly I got what I wanted, but at the same time, I never thought “told the Associated Press” was so awful, either. If I didn’t do an interview, if I pulled the quotes from another story, I gave credit. It just seemed sporting.

But if, having been a columnist, I know what Albom’s talking about, I also know a thing or two about the way they work, and I think that’s what’s missing from this whole inquiry — a big-picture look at just what this guy is doing. He has about six full-time jobs, and I don’t care how hard-working you are, how efficiently you multi-task, whether you work in between jobs in the back seat of your company-paid car-service ride. There are but 24 hours in a day. What I found most amazing in the report were passages like these: Albom wasn’t anywhere near the locker room after the game. He’d left early, whisked by luxury car service to his popular afternoon radio show on WJR-AM (760), three miles away.

In the frenetic universe of Mitch Albom — best-selling author, media personality and columnist — the hectic pace of that day was not unusual. He’s used to multitasking on the fly.

When did we get so enamored of success — look, he has a column and a radio show! — that we stopped caring that the sportswriter leaves the game early or, in the case of the NCAA game that started all of this, writes the story before the game even happened? It seems all this corner-cutting wouldn’t be necessary if there wasn’t so much ground to cover in the first place.

I say that as someone who, for a while, had a column and a radio show and a TV gig. It was fun until it wasn’t. And I never had a play and a best-seller to worry about, either.

Here’s something else I noticed, in a letter to the editor today: Mitch Albom’s Sunday column about a baby named Faith is a classic Albom essay: clear, thoughtful and moving. Huh. I read the same essay, and had a somewhat different reaction. Here’s the lead:

I’ve been feeling sorry for myself lately. I’ve had some dark clouds, and all I could see were my own problems.

The column goes on to tell the story of a newborn with water on the brain, and do you even need to know the conclusion? In her first days on Earth, this wordless child has put more sentences in my head than all those indulgent, self-pitying voices. She has made me think and cry and put the ridiculous problems I must deal with in perspective. The last line: What a miracle life is.

Now, I guess if you’re the sort of person who considers “Tuesdays With Morrie” to be great art, as opposed to sappy treacle with the soul of a Hallmark card, maybe you can take a column like this at face value. All I could think was, Christ, does he have an embarrassment gene? A friend of mine — Lance Mannion, in fact — once said, “A God that would let those planes fly into the World Trade Center so that George Bush could know his true purpose in life is not worth worshipping.” Meaning: That wasn’t God’s reason. Some events — an innocent newborn with a head full of fluid, for one — are NOT ABOUT US. I guess we’re all free to take whatever lessons we want from these things, but I’d hope we’d learn to keep it to ourselves.

But then, I think I remember the great engine of newspaper column-writing: Everything is copy. It’s one of the things that makes us contemptible. If it weren’t for the kindness of readers, we would have to get real jobs.

So I guess I should shut up now.

UPDATE: A reader tried to post this in the comments and couldn’t — some blacklist quirk, I guess. It’s a WashPost column about the late, great WashPost columnist Marjorie Williams, and makes the point that what made her great — what makes all great columnists great — is her willingness to tell the truth, and to spare no one from it, even herself.

Obviously, we all need a reason to get up in the morning, and that’s a big one for a columnist — truth-telling. Although spare me the ones who get up and say, “Today I will speak the truth.” The deftest tricks are the ones where you can speak the truth while seeming to only meet deadline.

You-all celebrate your anniversaries with candy and flowers and jewelry if you like — when you’ve been stuck inside by parenthood as long as I have, plain old dinner and a movie suits me fine. The dinner: Higher-end Italian; I had the veal. The movie: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. You are commanded to see it.

I love a well-made documentary, and this is one of them. It’s almost madly entertaining, at the same time it reminds you how things like this happen — how people look the other way, ignore their guts, get out their rose-colored glasses and then, oops, it’s too late.

You know, I’m stupid about high-level business; past the shopkeeper level of accounting, I don’t understand. But it’s disturbing to learn the SEC doesn’t necessarily understand either, which is the only possible explanation for how Enron was able to practice its so-called “mark-to-market” accounting, which was the foundation for the whole fraud. The movie reminds us, however, that there was no one reason. Neither greed alone, nor deception alone, nor wishful thinking alone, nor a million others can explain how Enron came to be, and collapsed in such a spectacular cloud of cash.

Of course, all of those reasons are why the movie is such a gas to watch. It’s all there — the business-press blowjobbery, the corporate-culture team-building exercises, the get-with-the-program jettisoning of anyone who dared to ask the simple question: Just how does this company make money, anyway?

Answer: The old-fashioned way. They stole it. Aided and abetted by Wall Street, their own employees and a culture that said anything is permissible in the pursuit of profit, that is.

It’s been hard to stop thinking about this movie, because it was the first exciting journalism I’ve experienced in a while. Yes, I said exciting. Somewhere along the line we forgot the news can be not only informative but entertaining.

And that, friends, was the highlight of the weekend. Sometimes, in a marriage, no news is good news.

Oh no, wait — I did upgrade to Tiger today. Bombard me with widget suggestions.

I’m skipping my 30-year high school reunion this summer.

Our class is unusually reunion-happy. We reunite every five years, and this will be the first one I’ll miss. The 5-year event passed in a drunken haze. The 10th was too loud; never book a band for a party where people would rather talk than dance. The 15th was downtown (I think), and was memorable mainly for discovering one of the class’ most reliable and low-key marijuana connections was now a funeral director. The 20th was OK, I guess. The 25th featured a T-shirt with “millennium” misspelled, and sticks in my mind mostly for being the first where I thought everyone looked really old.

(And everyone thought that. I took a seat where I could watch people arriving, and you could see the faces as they came in and looked around the room — the frozen smile, the I-must-be-in-the-wrong-place darting eyes, the oh-my-God-I-hope-I-don’t-look-this-bad expressions.)

They weren’t bad parties, all things considered. One year I had a fascinating chat with a guy about how drug offenders on probation try to beat their urine tests. I had a long conversational interlude with a girl I knew only a little in high school, and discovered she’d become a marvelous, funny woman; I regretted not knowing her better in school. My friend Cindy, one of two Jews in a class of more than 700, was casually asked how she liked living in “Yidville,” now that she’s moved to the Jewish suburb of Bexley.

“Well, you don’t live there, you racist piece of shit, so it’s pretty nice,” she replied.

He thought she was joking. She wasn’t.

Thin girls showed up fat. Fat girls showed up thin. Men grew rounder and balder. Last reunion, I admired someone’s diamond solitaire. As I did, someone else in the conversation blurted, “My husband left me for my best friend.”

Reunions. Emotions always run high.

But this time, I’m not making the trip. I don’t know why, except that the whole process is beginning to bug me. The T-shirts with all the old-age jokes (“1975, KEG. 2005, EKG”), for one. I just got another e-mail begging me to help locate the “lost souls,” and I always check to see if Tim Doulin is still on the list. He is. I wonder how long it’ll take someone to figure out Tim is a reporter for the local newspaper, and his name appears in its pages several times a week. (Oh well — they always say readers don’t notice bylines.) There’s another reporter on the list, but he says if I tell them where he is, he’ll disown me. At least he writes out of town.

But this year Cindy isn’t going, and she’s my usual companion at these things. Honestly, there’s not a soul I’m curious about. The In Memorium page now includes that great girl I had that delightful chat with — heart trouble, diabetes, etc. I think: Is it worth the trip? I think: No.

I guess I finally graduated.

But hey! My sense of humor remains, er, sophomoric. I thought this was a stitch:

A penis that tells jokes on late night public access television may be expressive of something. But it is not the kind of freedom of expression protected by the First Amendment, the Michigan Court of Appeals has decided, confirming the indecent exposure conviction of the show’s producer and host.

Someone tell Frank Rich. Or maybe not:

The offensive talking penis did a form of Rodney Dangerfield-esque comedy (“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was in the army ya know. I didn’t do much, ya know what I mean? I just hung around.”)

Who says there’s nothing on TV in Grand Rapids? If Paul Schrader knew this, he’d have never left.

WDET played a chunk o’ Rolling Stones today. I didn’t catch the news peg, but I suppose it was this: the Stones are coming to the D this summer. Lord, another Stones tour. Sometimes I feel like the old sheep in “Charlotte’s Web,” contemplating spring with yet another lamb wobbling along behind. Stones tours are like spring lambs, only not as tasty. Or as cute, for that matter.

I saw the Stones in 1975, at the Akron Rubber Bowl. I guess it was the “It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll” tour, because Jagger sang “Fingerprint File.” I had to go to the first aid tent to get a drink of water, because the water pressure in the stadium was so low the drinking fountains weren’t working. I don’t recall what the ticket cost, but I’m sure it wasn’t cheap. Spend a fortune, sit among tens of thousands in profound discomfort, pee in a non-flushing toilet, beg for water from medics — it’s only rock ‘n’ roll. And I don’t like that, not anymore.

But I did like the selections on the radio today, including “Not Fade Away.” All my life I’ve been waiting to live in a city with a decent adult-alternative radio station. It makes up for not having the strength for stadium rock shows anymore.

That wasn’t the highlight of the day. Going for a bike ride was, although I may have overreached — I’ve been hacking for the last hour and it appears I’ll spend yet another night banished from my marital bed. Whenever I’m gone this long I wonder if I’ll ever be invited back, or if I’ll want to return. Sleeping alone is both lonely and wonderful — the way you can lie diagonally across the mattress and hog all the pillows, mmm that’s livin’. It’s like parking across two spaces at the mall, only you don’t get keyed in retaliation.

The Duke and Duchess of Windsor slept apart, you know. Of course, he was a Nazi fruitcake, and she was, well, what she was. Can’t blame either of ’em.

No bloggage today, but what about that “American Idol,” eh? I’ve been waiting so long for Carrie to put a foot wrong I thought it would never happen, but she absolutely fell apart on her second song tonight, whereas Bo! Who knew he had an inner O’Jay? Still, I think it’s Anthony’s turn to take a hike. Mr Bland-o. He should sing a song in Russian. I’m sure they’d buy his record over there.

If I hadn’t been sick this weekend, I’d have finished the wallpaper stripping. Instead, Alan did, proof that marrying him was the right call. When Alan works on a home-improvement project, he likes music on, loud. From my sickbed, I monitored the progress:

Radio, WDET’s usual eclectic weekend mix. He’s singing along with a song or two. Good.

He switches to CDs. “Every Picture Tells a Story,” really loud. He’s getting bored.

The sounds of wall-scraping becomes louder, an occasional expletive finds its way up the stairs. The music switches to Miles Davis, “Bitches Brew.” Hmm. Hard to say what this means; I prefer insipid pop music when I’m working.

Long pause, then P.J. Harvey, “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea,” really, really loud. Uh-oh. I thought I’d best go downstairs.

He was rubbing the wall furiously with a pot scrubber.

“This goddamn paper was put on with something like” (rub rub rub) “rubber cement or something” (rub rub rub) “it’s like it doesn’t even dissolve, it just balls up and sits there until you scrape it off.” (rub rub rub curse rub)

Now it’s all down, and the spackling begins. At least all that rubbing purged the original idea for a color — yellow. Now we’re thinking sort of a cool violet, something to capture the violence of the room’s recovery from the land of bad wallpaper.

I like “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea,” but for rolling the windows down and blasting in the car when you’re all alone, you can’t beat “To Bring You My Love.” Just sayin’.

Sometimes last year I thought I was the only person in the country who didn’t give a fat rat’s gluteus about Scott Peterson, Laci Peterson and even the unborn Peterson baby. In the annals of homicide, the so-called domestic can be either fascinating or banal, and the Peterson affair was definitely the latter. A man kills his pregnant wife? Jeez, that only happens every week somewhere in this country; we had a case in Fort Wayne where a man stabbed his newly delivered girlfriend in the chest while she was breastfeeding their baby, killing her and sparing the infant. For a domestic, that was positively cinematic compared to the Peterson case, which, face it, had one thing going for it: Good-looking white people close enough to a major media market in a pleasant state. Otherwise, I simply refused to pay attention. For a thousand reasons.

So I was glad to read this in the Chicago Tribune yesterday, by Douglas MacKinnon, pleading with the media to admit the inherent racism in the circuses over Lacey, Elizabeth, Jennifer, etc., and the comparative lack of coverage of any number of non-white female disappearances:

Define racism. One could certainly make the argument that the cable networks that continually focus on these missing white women, to the virtual exclusion of minority women, are practicing a form of racism. The racism in this case, however, while predicated on color, does not concern itself with the color of one’s skin. Rather, it is based on the color of money, ratings points and competition. Would an African-American woman who went missing days before her wedding receive the same (or any) coverage as that of Wilbanks? Not likely.

Duh. Obvious, but worth reading, anyway.

What was your high-school musical? I remember but one: “Bye Bye Birdie,” starring the band director’s blonde son in the title role. (His blonde daughter was some sort of super-majorette called the “Golden Girl.” A band parent’s exacta.)

Anyway, I wasn’t in “Bye Bye Birdie.” I wasn’t in the crew. I was even more pathetic than that — I hung out with some people who were on the crew, and came to practice mainly for the shenanigans we pulled in the trouper deck, surely the best hiding place, and shenanigans venue, in the school. (My second-favorite place was only available if the janitor liked you — the room under the swimming pool with the window that looked into the deep end, about five feet down. I spent a rapturous free period there, watching my classmates adjust their suits after diving, their faces distorted by held breath, bubbles trailing from their noses.)

Anyway, I never saw the final version of the play; the trouper deck on show night was a serious place. But I can still sing most of “Telephone Hour” and “Kids.” Which I suppose, for a trouper-deck troublemaker, that counts as a fairly successful theater experience.

How long ago that was. Which is why I recommend “The Supersizing of the School Play,” from Sunday’s NYT, reporting…anyone? Yes, the welcome news that high-school theater is the latest once-simple-and-wholesome educational activity to get steroidal and utterly screwed up. The story is datelined New Albany, Ind., which shouldn’t surprise anyone; Indiana is on the leading edge of the Supersizing of the Marching Band Show — follow that link for vintage NN — and it figures it would be on this trend, too. Hoosier parents think of high-school theater as a wholesome activity that will keep their kids off drugs and out of gangs (and it will, if they stay out of the trouper deck). What’s a $165,000 budget for the fall musical when such lofty aims are at stake?

When did it stop being enough to put a kid in his dad’s old vest and have him sing “Sue Me” in a Noo Yawk accent? Probably sometime before puberty. Today, even grade school students (and their schools) are being cultivated with “junior” versions of Broadway shows from M.T.I. and the “Getting to Know You” series from R&H. (Yes, fourth graders can now do a 70-minute “King and I,” albeit without the deep kissing.) By the time they return from high school drama club trips to New York, they want to perform the sophisticated roles, and replicate the increasingly dazzling effects, they enjoyed as audience members. …Bit by bit, a world formerly known for wooden renditions of “Our Town” in the cafetorium has become something strangely more like professional theater in its elaborateness, ambition and choice of material. And the most challenging musicals are now among the most coveted; some high schools do “Sweeney Todd.” Some do “Evita.” The holy grail for the elite programs, at least until “Cats” is released to them in 2006, is the humongous “Les Mis�rables.”

Oh, great. A high-school production of “Cats.” A new definition of hell.

What a weekend. Gentle temperatures, gentle sunlight, birdies tweeting outside my sickroom window, which is where I spent most of it. It was another deck-clearing mystery illness — fever, muscle aches, coughing, laryngitis, oh-you-name-it. I’ve relocated to the guest room, the better to spare the spouse a) my germs; and b) my restless thrashing in the throes of agony. I think the corner may have been turned, however — I awoke with damp hair, damper clothing and actual energy, evidence the fever had been driven from the building. I felt good enough to pour my first cup of coffee in two days, which instantly banished the lingering traces of headache, too.

“How much of this headache is whatever-I’ve-got and how much is caffeine deprivation?” I wondered at breakfast. Sobering thought, that — physical withdrawal symptoms must mean I’m an official coffee junkie now.

Like I care.

Here’s something being a newspaper columnist spoils you for: Newspaper columns. I used to read them all religiously; now I have but a small selection on my bookmarks, old reliables I find, well, reliable, and everybody else can just get in line. Some days are worse than others; take Mother’s Day.

There were no fewer than four Mother’s Day columns in my News/Free Press combined Sunday edition today. The day is a gimme, a big slow pitch, low-hanging fruit. I know this from experience; just go write a little bit about your own mom and leave early on Friday. Write about how you never appreciated her until you had kids of your own, salt with a few anecdotes, wind up with either a) I’m glad you’re still alive for me to tell you how much I appreciate you, Mom; or b) now my Mama’s dead and I wish I had told her sooner. (OK, so I couldn’t find one of those today. But I’ve read ’em.) What kind of tears are you trying to jerk, happy or sad? Either one’s a winner on the sappiest day of the year.

Column-writing is like shoveling coal into the furnace of a speeding train, and you take the easy ones where you can get them. God knows there’ll be enough days when you have no peg, no inspiration, and you’ll be reduced to writing about the weather. I’ve done both — Mother’s Day and the weather.

I only wish, now that I’m older and wiser, more editors would put a curb on M.D. emoting. Hold a competition; any columnist who wants to write about Mother’s Day has to submit it a week in advance, and only one will run, a determination to be made any way an editor sees fit.

This is the best Mother’s Day column I read today. It is spare and simple and…spare. Predictably, it’s by one of my old reliables.

Oh, and anyone who tried to get away with an editorial this lame? Would be shot. The link will only work for those who actually pay for the Col–bus Disp—-, and GOD KNOWS WHY THEY WOULD, when you open the editorial page and see the headline “Give Mom a hug.” It does not disappoint:

Mothers have antennae that detect trouble brewing while dads are mesmerized by sports on TV. Parents of both genders dearly love their kids, but mothers are better at showing it. Some problems never are solved until Mom gets home from work. As they mature, mothers willingly relinquish pieces of their independence in order that their husbands are fulfilled, the kids are healthy and happy, the pets are fed, rooms are clean, beds are made and prayers are said. Motherhood is the most difficult job that many women undertake, but it can be the most satisfying. The love and respect shown today for moms, stepmothers, grandmas and great-grandmas are hard-earned. Take time to remember that special person in your life.

OK, noted. And so the week begins.

Friends, I have been felled. A chest cold brews somewhere south of my collarbone, a headache rages north of it and, well, I’m a mess o’ misery. So let’s try for something better Monday, eh?

In the meantime, Richard Cohen says exactly what needs to be said about Lynndie England:

There is no end to the sadness of Lynndie England. There is no excusing what she did, but explaining is a different matter. She is that rare genuine article, the cliche, the stereotype that turns out upon investigation to be true. She lived with her family in a trailer in West Virginia. She’s only a high school graduate. She married when she was 19 — on a lark, she told her friends, and then for only two years.

A psychologist from her home area testified that England had been a blue baby, born also with a malformation of the tongue that gave her a speech impediment. Apparently, she often chose not to talk at all. She had a learning disability as well. And you can see — can’t you? — what no one will testify to: She’s homely — and that matters for a woman in America. She posed for pornographic pictures with Graner. The discipline of the Army apparently meant she no longer had to have any herself. This is why fascism can be so (sexually) exciting.

Not to bum you out on a Friday, but you know, it needed to be said.

Back to bed for me. OK, I’m already there — the miracle of a laptop and wireless network.

Just once, just once in my life, I want to go to strip wallpaper and discover I’m dealing with the nice strippable vinyl stuff, where all you have to do is pull it down and wash the wall, and you don’t have to screw around with DIF and paper scorers and sponges and splatter and scrapers and all the rest of it.

Kate calls this “dentist office wallpaper.” I think she’s got that about right. The burgundy in it matches the paint in the dining room and the green in it matches the paint in the living room, and all the colors are found upstairs, too. You’ve heard of bed in a bag? This was house in a bag.

Not that I am complaining. About the colors, anyway.

Here’s something I never thought I’d say: Good for Lynndie England. She may still go to some female version of military prison, she may have given birth to the antichrist, she may spend the rest of her sad little life unredeemed, but by God, if she can grab a couple of officers to take with her as she falls through the trap door, you gotta love that. I’ve been worried about her since I saw a photo of her walking with her “defense team,” which looks like it accidentally picked up a few comfort women along the way.

And I take back what I said about the baby. He’s pretty cute, and I’m sure has no 666 markings anywhere on his body.

Speaking of babies, you’ll have to sit through an ad to enjoy the whole of Jennifer Allen’s essay on raising boys, but if you have more than one — and yes, I mean you, Deb — you’ll want to read it. It’s a scream, and tender at the same time. Quite the trick. Go figure.

Alan surfed past “Queer Eye” tonight; the boys were taking on a frat house. And as those words passed through my brain — “oh, they’re taking on a frat house” — I wondered how much, er, San Fernando Valley-school cinema if-you-catch-my-drift has used QE as the framework for their plotlines. Because, you know, it’s perfect: The Fab Five take on the Sigma Chi house, and the Sweetheart gets locked out — for good! Maybe Ashley will do the soundtrack.

That may have been the most interesting thought I had all day. Illness passed through our household Monday evening and into Tuesday, and that tends to take your attention away from everything else. I discover, yet again, why I’m not cut out for nursing — too results-oriented. I want everything to happen the way it does on a Tylenol commercial; I want everyone feeling better within 30 seconds. Alas this rarely happens, although a good two-minute barf can do wonders.

I did get some reading done, and I recommend this interesting take on Bruce Springsteen, from Slate. I also heartily endorse “Gilead,” but so did the Pulitzer jury, so my second is probably unnecessary. And just to show I can roll in the gutter with the best of them, I wish the voting on “American Idol” would switch to a who-do-you-want-to-leave format, so I could give either Scott or Anthony the hook. Someone defend them — that should get the party started.

Someone asked what I thought of the runaway bride. Truthfully? Not much. If you want to know why, follow that link which, when I posted it, features this apparently irony-free headline:

Runaway bride may forgo $250 ice bucket

Honestly, I don’t know what goes through a woman’s head when she adds a $250 ice bucket to her gift registry; I’ve never been that kind of woman, although I had a wedding and a registry. The difference between my wedding and the runaway bride’s, however, at least in how she planned it to be, was approximately the same as the difference between one of our subsequent marital squabbles and the Civil War. Or between the normal cold feet I felt at the idea of standing in front of 100 of my closest friends and colleagues with a giant bow on my butt, and the cold feet that made the runaway bride get itchy feet and flee for the desert southwest, just to get a little time to herself.

I understand the desert is good for that sort of thing.

Honestly, I think whatever punishment the runaway bride deserves for this wild goose chase has already been meted out by CNN, which sadistically published a click-through gallery of her registry gifts, which is where I found out about the $250 ice bucket. (It’s Waterford.) And yes, I meant sadistic. I don’t know what else you call droll prose like this:

According to her bridal registry at Macy’s.com, the couple could have expected to receive a 16-inch Lenox “Solitaire” Oval Platter, which normally sells for $237 but is on sale for $189.99; the Kate Spade “Union Street” line 5-piece place setting ($55), and the KitchenAid Artisan 5-Qt. Stand Mixer (on sale for $249.99).

A spokesperson from Macy’s was unable to comment on individuals within their bridal registry, although the company will allow returns of most registry merchandise for up to one year along with a receipt.

It’s easy to see what happened, how what might have started out as a relatively sensible girl got steamrollered by the wedding industry. It’s hard not to, especially when your friends are getting married, and it’s all about whether you have salmon or beef tenderloin at the reception and a Vera Wang dress. In such an environment, a $250 ice bucket becomes a perfectly reasonable gift to request. A temper tantrum seems a perfectly reasonable response to discovering the cocktail napkins are the wrong shade. I got a manicure before my wedding (and still managed to chip the polish before I said my vows). Today’s bride gets a manicure, pedicure, hot-stone massage, aromatherapy session and professional makeup job. Don’t get me started on the hair. Last week I surfed past “Extreme Makeover” to see a bride getting a nose job, chin implant, brow lift, breast implants and lipo before her groom lifted her veil (the “reveal” — I shit you not) on national television.

Amy has a discussion going over certain changes in the Catholic wedding liturgy that have brides-to-be in tears all over Philadelphia; I won’t link because ultimately it’s one of those angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debates and the point I want to make is this: She’s religious, I’m not, and we’re in total agreement on one thing — the wedding industry is evil.

After Kate was born, I came to see the similarities between the wedding industry and the cult of birth, which has less merchandise to sell but an equally warped view of what are undeniably two very big days in a woman’s life, but ultimately, just the first day in two much more complicated long-term tasks — being married and raising a child. Wedding shysters stress “your special day” and birth cultists insist that anything but the perfect birth experience will leave you unfulfilled as a woman and your baby psychologically scarred by delayed bonding.

Poor runaway bride. What a hard act to follow, but maybe not. Her groom can’t say he doesn’t know what he’s getting into, if he ends up marrying her anyway. And she can’t say she didn’t know either. But at this point I’d advise her to burn the gift registry, kiss her deposits goodbye and head for a justice of the peace. In Vegas, maybe.

As usual, Hank is much funnier than me, at least on this topic. OK, on all topics.