The WashPost’s Joel Achenbach’s a great writer. Today’s wish-that-were-my-byline piece is “Numb Nation.”

Maybe we should have been tipped off by the detached heads.

This is a movie script detail. You can imagine it perfectly because you’ve seen it before, while eating popcorn. As the heads bound along, they preferentially face the viewer. In Kelley’s first draft, a couple of the heads were still blinking their eyes. (Picture a movie producer reading that in the script: “Beeeyootiful,” he says.)

Yeah, it’s the same stupid detail I noticed. But that’s not why I like the piece.

I may be pushing an inside joke too far with this, but: It’s worth sitting through the fleeting commercial to read this Salon piece on my favorite cinematic guilty pleasure, “The Ten Commandments,” scheduled for its annual airing this Sunday.

Back in the Fort, back in the day, I and my friends Adrianne and David, when this special time of year rolled around, liked to make dinner and then sit down to watch as much of Cecil B. DeMille’s four-hour epic as we could stand. “Has he turned the river red yet?” I asked one year, coming in late.

“No, first he has to meet Yvonne DeCarlo and raise her sheep,” David said. “Meet Yvonne DeCarlo and raise her sheep” — now there’s a catch phrase three adults can play with for years.

Anyway, it’s a great party movie, a feeling that’s shared by… dozens, anyway. “I have been to the mountaintop. I saw God. I got a permanent” — this is how my frum friend Eileen describes her own guilty-pleasure viewing.

The Salon story is a stitch, describing its pleasures at some length:

The film still generally wins the night’s top ratings; last year it won both the adult and kid markets, with an average of 10.6 million viewers. And its influence stretches further than anything Nielsen can measure, though especially to modern eyes it’s little more than a load of camp, with outrageous costumes and overacting, which is never more apparent than in the bedroom scenes between Moses and Egyptian Queen Nefertiti. “Oh Moses, you stubborn, splendid, adorable fool,” she tells the prophet, who has spent the afternoon making bricks with his enslaved Jewish brethren. “You can worship any God you like, as long as I can worship you.” TV Guide dubs the movie “a great big wallow, sublime hootchy-kootchy hokum.” …Sex was DeMille’s way of roping in wider audiences. “Hit sex hard!” was his frequent order to screenwriters. He dubbed the Golden Calf scene of “The Ten Commandments” — a sultry bump and grind of sweaty Israelites — “an orgy Sunday-school children can watch.” But his critics were unable to reconcile the professed piousness of DeMille’s vision with his vulgar showmanship and savvy. They constantly sought to expose his claim to a “unique ministry” of film as self-aggrandizing sham. To others, his films were “a fraud that enabled immorality to hide behind the protection of the Holy Book.”

Here’s where the interesting part comes in: “The Ten Commandments” was the driving force behind “the Eagle monoliths,” stone reproductions of the decalogue distributed throughout the Bible belt as a film promotion:

In addition to the famous case of Judge Roy Moore’s Alabama courtroom, there have been numerous recent battles over granite replicas of the Ten Commandments displayed on public property — in Indiana, Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas, New York, and other states. In December 2002, Slate reported that nearly half of the monoliths being disputed by the ACLU were from a set of 4,000, donated in the late 1950s by a peculiar partnership: the nonsectarian charitable organization the Fraternal Order of Eagles, and the film director Cecil B. DeMille, who “wanted to promote his movie.” A great many articles written about the contested Eagle monoliths implied or stated outright that DeMille’s involvement was strictly promotional. As proof, they noted that actor Yul Brynner (Pharoah Ramses in the film) had spoken at the very first monolith’s dedication ceremony, in Milwaukee in 1955. Charlton Heston dedicated another in North Dakota.

That number (4,000) is disputed, but not the fact one of the last standing sets did so in far-from-Hollywood Elkhart, Indiana.

Have fun.

This U.S. history class I drop in on from time to time moves terrifyingly fast. The lecturer is a pro with a commanding stage presence, a West Pointer whose withering glance alone should be enough to change all cell phones to “vibrate,” although alas some people still don’t get the message. The little twerp who got the last call to come during class time failed to wither, and actually sat in his seat when class ended and returned the call. “Some men you just can’t teach.” — the Captain, “Cool Hand Luke.”

Anyway, things move fast. This class covers Reconstruction to yesterday, and we’re up to the cold war. Today the teacher spent 30 minutes on Joseph McCarthy. His verdict: A nasty, lying drunk who did more real harm than most Americans will ever know, and whose acid presence is still felt today, years after his death. (This is a theme that interests me more as I age — the reverberation of certain acts, large and small, decades or centuries after they take place. My grandfather committed suicide in 1930, and I’m convinced it influences our family to this day.) The prof cited a U-M econ professor denied tenure for suspected pinko tendencies. He went off to Johns Hopkins and won a Nobel Prize. Just one of McCarthy’s minor casualties; worse were the Far East scholars hounded out of the State Department for the crime of telling the truth — that the Communists were going to come out on top in China, and we’d best start preparing for the inevitable.

It’s strange, moving closer to the part of the century I can actually remember. It’s strange, being a 46-year-old student, period. In English, we read Joyce Carol Oates’ short story, “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” with its mystifying dedication, “For Bob Dylan.” The students knew who Bob Dylan was, of course, but as the only person in the room who remembered when “Bringing it All Back Home” was released, I felt like the only person in the room who really understood why Oates might want to dedicate a story about the loss of innocence to him. Hello, kids, I’m your damn mama, is what I am.

Of course, I’m feeling incredibly old today — our seminar tonight featured the author of “Bobby Fischer Goes to War,” about the Spassky-Fischer chess match of 1972. I remember that, too. I was in junior high, another institution that doesn’t exist anymore.

In other news at this hour, a big shout-out to “The Wire,” which was shut out for so much as an Emmy nomination, but snagged a Peabody Award yesterday. Much cooler, when you think about it. Ashley will be so pleased.

It’s a truism in journalism that morning newspapers are edited with the delicate sensibilities of morning bagel-eaters in mind, but in my experience, this argument is used selectively. Surely, if it were applied across the board, someone might have balked at the full-page ad with a giant headline reading, “CONSTIPATED? BLOATED? IRRITABLE BOWELS? Amazing new herbal cleansing formula flushes out the harmful, energy-draining fecal matter decaying inside your body.”

Just as your thoughts turn to the question of whether your bowels are full of harmful, energy-draining fecal matter, there’s the news story on the front of the section, “A fascination with death.” Subhead: “Morgue tours gain popularity with teenagers.”

Oh, joy. You can figure out the rest. Thanks to the popularity of “CSI,” more teenagers are thinking, Hey, I look good in those low-slung jeans Marg Helgenberger wears, too. And that black guy is a total hottie! How can I become a medical examiner? And so the morgue tours in two Metro Detroit counties are booked through August and December, respectively. (You should know the through-December booking is the action-packed Wayne County morgue, which is where Elmore Leonard got the title for his novel “Unknown Man #89.” And now you do.)

I have to say, though, that I’m amazed by the access the public has to autopsies in this state. The Freep story features a photo of teenagers staring at a skull-cracking in horror, and another one one stretched out in a swoon. (There’s a fainter in every bunch, the medical examiner says.) You don’t get that sort of access in Indiana, that’s for sure. Is the process valuable? Ask the experts:

“We try to show students there are a lot of things that can hurt them, and they are not invincible,” she said. “A classroom can’t teach them about life and how precious it is.”

“And some,” she said, “think it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever seen.”

One 13-year-old was impressed:

“I thought everything was going to be covered with blood, and you wouldn’t be able to see anything.” Heather said. “It wasn’t like that. But the brain looks just like I pictured.

“And,” she said excitedly, “I learned the liver is huge!”

Well, honey, only in the problem-drinking population.

There was a Fellows’ outing Sunday night, to a jazz club in Detroit. I didn’t go. Normally, when there’s a choice between something fun to do in the outside world and something fun to watch on television, you should always opt for the former; it’s why they make videotape after all. And apparently this jazz club is quite hospitable to Fellows — last time they announced Yavuz from the stage several times. (“We have a visitor from Turkey here tonight…Let’s give it up for our Turkish journalist friend…”) That would be something to see. And yet, I didn’t, and I’m not sorry.

Why? Because damn, but that was a butt-kickin’ Sopranos episode last night, wasn’t it? New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier discusses his accomplishment of the new measure of Ultimate Inside Coolness, not being announced from the stage in Detroit but actually having a speaking role in a great Sopranos episode. And Throwing Things has a guest-cameo suggestion, should anyone be interested in resurrecting “Oz.”

I love TurboTax. How do I love TurboTax? Many, many ways. Don’t try to outsmart it, let it do its job, and oh what an easy time of tax season you’ll have.

Unless, like me, you input the wrong numbers from the wrong column on the right form, and suddenly find yourself confronting a Schedule D full of huge capital losses that you know were anything but. And so you have to redo everything. And then when you redo everything, you forget to enter your mortgage interest, not an insignificant amount. Why? Because you clicked past the question too fast, that’s why. You didn’t let TurboTax do its job.

Still, though: A refund! Happy, happy day in this happy, happy year of living deductively. And I didn’t even cheat one little bit. I never cheat on my taxes, which only proves what a chump I am. I don’t even stretch the truth. Ask yourself: What will I save? A few hundred dollars? And how much would you pay to avoid an audit? A few hundred dollars? The amounts always balance.

And so another weekend passes, after which I will have to burn rubber to get my screenplay and creative-writing pages done by their Monday/Tuesday due dates. It seems that, for a year that’s advertised as deadline-free, there are an awful lot of deadlines in my life.

So, how about some linkage, then?

The NYT had some good reads today. Does anyone need another reason to disdain Fox News?

At 5:30 p.m. last Monday, Shepard Smith, the 40-year-old host of Fox News Channel’s “Fox Report,” was hunched over his computer in the company’s bustling Midtown headquarters, poring over the script for his evening broadcast, and searching for verbs. Mr. Smith, let it be known, does not like verbs. Whenever he finds one, he crinkles his brow in disgust like a man who has discovered a dribble of food on his tie. He taps furiously at his keyboard, moves the cursor to the offending word and deletes it, or else adds “ing,” turning the verb into a participle and his script into the strange shorthand that passes for English these days on cable news:

“Outrage in the Middle East! A vow of revenge after an assassination and reportedly threatening the United States. Tonight � how real the threat?”

News for those with no attention span, right here.

Also, if you have a little longer attention span, you’ll enjoy the magazine cover story, Coach Fitz’ management theory, about that disappearing breed — the high-school coach who cares more about shaping young men’s characters than about winning. (And why is he disappearing? Why else? Parents.)

And since we’ve been discussing government meetings here of late, a sad story about one of Fort Wayne’s hardy perennials, Steve Loeschner. He’s the local oddball inevitably labeled “community activist” for his unfailing attendance at government meetings and willingness to write many letters to the editor about the doings there. I had lunch with him once. He was, well, strange — a quintessential nerd, no way around that. A friend of mine imagined his house, where he lived with his mother well into his middle age: “I’m seeing a card table, a bare light bulb, a stack of photocopied documents, and Steve bent over his manual typewriter, pounding the keys furiously.” I saw much the same thing, but how could you not like him? He held government accountable. If he sometimes picked the wrong battles — the open-container law bugged the hell out of him, and I’d bet a paycheck he didn’t drink — well, it’s better than not caring at all. He was helpful to young reporters at meetings, and that’s a never-ending job in Fort Wayne media.

Still, it was sad to hear he’d taken his own life earlier this month. Predictably, he mailed a letter to the coroner ahead of time, just to help an elected official do his job, I’d bet.

He didn’t take down his website first. The headstone of the digital age.

And can’t forget the PowerPoint Pledge of Allegiance.

Oh, and finally, an update on Jack Kelley. God bless Christianity Today for being so durn Christian. I look at the guy and say “lying liar,” they say “lying liar who might be delusional.” Faith! Hope! Charity! Gotta love that!

If you’re the sort of person who keeps notebooks of amusing quotations, and if you’re a journalist, you’ll want to jot this one down, from A.J. Liebling, quoted in a New Yorker piece on the late journalist:

“The pattern of a newspaperman’s life is like the plot of ‘Black Beauty.’ Sometimes he finds a kind master who gives him a dry stall and an occasional bran mash in the form of a Christmas bonus, sometimes he falls into the hands of a mean owner who drives him in spite of spavins and expects him to live on potato peelings. The Sunday World was a dry-stall interlude in my wanderings.”

The Free Press’ second-day story on the near-fisticuffs at Detroit City Council is thorough, and a wider look at what’s apparently a problem not limited to the Motor City. In nearby Warren,

…it has not been unusual for council members to clip their nails, eat potato chips, read the newspaper or tap their pencils loudly when a colleague they didn’t support was speaking. …The council meetings are so infamous that former Warren residents who have moved to Florida or the Upper Peninsula have been known to request video copies of the council meetings.

Just a thought, though: The problem isn’t helped by locals who comment enthusiastically on how entertaining this all is. On the other hand, having covered council meetings and prayed for anything more exciting than the sound of the rubber stamp to happen, I must say, I empathize.

After a few false starts, it’s bicycle season again. I rode to class today, miraculously remembering everything I was supposed to — water, iPod, lock, bookbag. (What I forgot: to oil my chain, something it desperately needs. Fortunately the iPod, in addition to providing encouragement on the long hill home, can be adjusted to cover the noise.)

There are lots of bikes in A2, with more year-round cyclists than you’d think, in a climate like this. After the hell of Fort Wayne cycling, it first seemed like heaven to be in a city with bike paths on at least a few major thoroughfares. But, as a story in the A2 News points out tonight, there’s still some work to do:

Kris Talley was biking on Scio Church Road west of Ann Arbor last summer when she experienced the kind of scare every cyclist dreads.

The Ann Arbor resident and chair of the Washtenaw Bicycling and Walking Coalition managed to follow the driver until he pulled into a nearby gravel pit, where she confronted him about driving too fast. In the end, the two agreed on one thing after their hour-long conversation: Both motorist and cyclist would be better off with a paved shoulder for an emergency exit.

Having ridden (once) on a few of these roads, I can tell you that while a paved shoulder would be nice, what the road really needs is more considerate motorists. Especially when they drive gravel trucks.

“Please be quiet. Please don’t tell me what to do.”

“I mean it, I’ll cut the doggone cameras off and we will go for it right here. If you keep talking to me you’re going to see me from the east side of Detroit.”

Two Detroit city council members go straight playground on each other. The punchline: They’re women.