Stipulated: Detroit is a city in which race is not just subtext, but the text itself. Stipulated: City officials, and the newspapers that quote them, are famously nervous about confronting these things. Stipulated: Last week two Detroit police officers, both white, were shot to death by a black assailant.

So this week, someone paints the Joe Louis memorial — a giant black fist — white. At the base of the sculpture, someone leaves photographs of the two dead cops, with “courtesy of the Fighting Whiteys” written across them.

But: Police said Monday they were unsure whether the white paint splattered on the sculpture early Monday symbolized racism or some other type of political statement against violence in Detroit. Ohhh-kay.

Two men are in custody. Make sure you click through for the remarkable picture of this remarkable piece of public art, which we were told on our KWF tour of Detroit was a gift from Sports Illustrated magazine. When I first read about it, in Zev Chafets’ excellent book on the city, I seem to recall it was pointed inland, at the suburbs. I don’t know if I’m misremembering or it was moved, but now it points to Canada, a suitable target for a swinging bronze fist, I’d say.

I always wanted to go to the sorts of parties that got written up in chic magazines, where mere mortals can only read about the fabulous food you ate and the lovely tables you sat at, and be consumed with envy over their tiny, tawdry little lives.

And what do you know? I did! Only I didn’t know it at the time!

Scott and Samantha’s wedding, which took us to New York last spring, made The Knot magazine. It’s not online, but that clipping above gives you an idea. (See the little petit fours? Those are the candles I tried to eat after I had too many drinks.) I wrote about this at the time, but I can’t find it in the bloggified archives, so just take my word for it: It was a lovely wedding, and now I have mass-media validation. What they left out: When I first knew Scott, he was living in a squalid apartment with only two pieces of furniture, an inflatable couch and a stereo (the latter essential for his job — pop music critic). Now he’s gettin’ married in a slick-paper magazine. Wonders, don’t ever cease.

If I’m ever going to become a work-at-home writer — yes, friends, it is my dream — I’m going to have to either a) develop the iron discipline of a yogi; or b) put the modem in the freezer. How the hell can anyone get any work done with always-on internet? One minute you’re trying to work on a little business, the next your famously short attention span is being rewarded in all the wrong ways. You all saw “Adaptation,” so you know the way the average lazy writer’s mind works. But you notice Charlie Kaufman wrote on an IBM Selectric, because God help him if he’d have had broadband:

“Boy, ‘Magic Carpet Ride’ really is the perfect ’60s single, isn’t it? Half pop hooks, half extended trippy stuff. Why hasn’t anyone ever written the definitive biography of Steppenwolf, huh? The Doors suck up all the attention from that era, don’t they? Oh, wait, now what am I saying? Let’s ask Dr. Google, no, Dr. Amazon:

“See, here you are: ‘Magic Carpet Ride: The Autobiography of John Kay and Steppenwolf.’ Four stars? Wow. What do the fans say? i really enjoyed this book.it told me many things i never knew about john kay,like the fact that he has never ridden a motorcycle because he is legally blind…yes it is written from his perspective but his version is a very important one.this book was an easy read and it kept me interested in it through out the whole thing.as a follow up to the book i watched the vh1 behind the music about steppenwolf which confirmed most of the things in the book..in my opinion i do think john should forgive the other guys or at least come to peace with it and them .we all do a lot of dumb things in life thats why we need friends to help us get back up again.i hope the wolf continues to rock much longer!its never too late to start all over again. Isn’t that nice? You know who else I’ve always wondered about? The girl from high school, ol’ what’s-her-face. Is she on Google? Why, she is!”

And so on.

the wolf continues to rock. Somewhere out there. But I’m getting no work done.

Since Kate was born, the number of movies I see in theaters has dropped precipitously. The Baby-Sitter Surcharge (BSS), $20 at the very least for a standard dinner-and-movie combo, moves too many to the “wait for the video” column. The occasional hurray-we’re-free sleepover invitation usually comes on the spur of the moment, and we see what’s in town.

So it usually happens that I get to Oscar night having seen maybe one of the nominated Best Picture contenders and hardly any of the more obscure categories. But! Through the miracle of sleepovers and video, this weekend I increased my viewing of Best Documentary Feature contenders from zero to two — we saw “The Fog of War” in the theater Friday, and “Capturing the Friedmans” on video Saturday, and both rocked me on my heels. Can’t recommend them highly enough. Run, don’t walk! And so on. Even if we’d paid the BSS, they still would have been worth it.

“The Fog of War” has all the artistry you expect from Errol Morris, including the usual Philip Glass score, but it also has Robert McNamara at 85, speaking with perhaps as much honesty as you can expect from the architect of the Vietnam War. But the most interesting parts, to me, were McNamara on the Cuban missile crisis and the firebombing of Tokyo and Gen. Curtis LeMay’s role in both (I’m probably more familiar with LeMay than most, if only because he was a son of Columbus, Ohio, and he was included in our local-history units).

The first night “The Fog of War” was in town, students were lined up down the block to get in, which I at first thought was an encouraging sign but then I figured it out: They were there as a class requirement. The night we saw it, it was all gray heads, but then, spring break had already started, and most of the non-gray heads have headed off to warmer climates. One gray head I wish would see it, but fat chance: George W. Bush.

As for the sad, cursed Friedman family, I linked to David Edelstein’s Slate review because it revealed the amazing information that this movie started out being a documentary about children’s birthday-party performers and ended up being about a family riven by the sex-abuse hysteria of the mid-’80s, but had a pedophile at its head. It’s about, oh, family and guilt and love and the elusive nature of truth and about a million other things, and how often do you get all of that in 90 minutes? Not often, I’ll tell you.

I notice “Spellbound” wasn’t nominated, which is an outrage, but if it had been, oh my what a burden that would have been for Academy voters. (Local trivia note: The winner of the spelling bee in the movie is a student at the U of M.)

One Curtis LeMay story: A friend awas tasked with writing his prepared obit for the Columbus Dispatch, and let me listen to the interview tape. The “bomb ’em back to the Stone Age” comment was taken out of context, he said. Hmm. Two views: Pro and con. Bonus: He was the model for Gen. Jack D. Ripper in “Dr. Strangelove”!?

I don’t usually look to the Journal Gazette for poignance, but I found it today in a typically underwritten column about a Hoosier who couldn’t wait to get quit of the place, and the family who just couldn’t understand.

Read between the lines, and you see the outlines of what seems to be a remarkable individual, this Eric Johnson who traveled the world for decades: I’m guessing he was gay, although that’s only a guess based on the lifestyle-and-choices stereotypes (ballet and bachelorhood); curious about the world outside Fort Wayne; highly intelligent; restless.

Indiana loves to proudly claim native sons and daughters only after the local narrow-mindedness and Siberian cultural conditions have driven them far away to make their fortunes. It would seem that Johnson is only another in a long series, minus the fame.

Jeff Clark will never know why his brother chose to spend his life roaming the world. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to be like the people in his hometown, working humdrum jobs and going home to the same house where they would eventually die, never having left the corner of the world where they were born.

Maybe? You think?

…is an interesting photo project documenting the same-sex marriages last week in San Francisco. Fund-raising opportunities, too, if you’re interested.

I remember this TV guy from his Fort Wayne days, when he was given to overly dramatic stand-ups, wrong-o reporting (he fell for the old Super Bowl-domestic violence canard) and the day he decided his true on-air persona should include a shaved head.

In other words, I never thought he was Peabody material.

But the years fly by, and things change. He still may not be Peabody material, but now he’s out ‘n’ proud. It’s worth clicking through for that picture, showing TV anchors in the most important part of their preparation. (It played much larger, and much funnier, in print.)

If they’d had this when Kate was nursing, we’d still be there. Happy hours for new moms!

Pamela Foster, who wore a black sweater and jeans, her blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, said she was happy just to be out of her pajamas.

…Breast-feeding was another frequent subject, one that raised some potentially touchy questions. Would drinking a glass of wine adulterate the purity of mother’s milk and bring the child welfare authorities? Could the early exposure of an infant’s tabula rasa to drink encourage pernicious vices later in life? And what about the possibly hazardous combination of drinking and pushing a stroller?

I look at it this way: Sooner or later, every kid needs to learn how to mix a decent martini for mommy. Might as well start ’em early.

Met with my advisor today. It was an informal deal — all I needed was a signature, and all he needed was a break from his latest project (proposal-writing. Ugh.). We had a nice chat.

I’ve mentioned many times that the level of ambient technology around this place is pretty stunning for a geriatric soul such as myself. The U runs on e-mail, but so does everyone’s personal life. The computer is at the center of the work we do, and takes up space once occupied by things like, oh, the stereo. And, I regret to say, the newspaper.

It’s like living in the Land of Early Adopters. My advisor, describing his news-consumption habits, says a lot about what editors are up against:

He just got TiVo, which allows him to watch stuff he can’t stay up for. Like? “The Daily Show,” the one that so many young people say they now rely on as a primary news source. And he sees why, because it’s really funny and imaginative, reporting and commentary all in one. He hasn’t watched a mainline network news show on a regular basis in years. He reads the national papers — NYT, WSJ — online. He dropped the Detroit Free Press a while ago, which was good for the Ann Arbor News, but not really; he estimates the time he spends with the hometown paper is down to 10 minutes or less. A zip through sports, the local columns, Page One. Features is mostly wire; little to read there. And lots of what he does read he already knew by monitoring online sources throughout the day.

If I were a newspaper editor, this would worry me. OK, terrify. Here’s a smart guy whose loyalty to his hometown paper is hanging by a thread — it can barely hold his attention — and he’s one of the good guys, the sort who stays informed because it’s his civic duty. The Daily Show won’t tell him about his local school board, but plenty of people in any community don’t care what the local school board does anyway.

And how do editors respond? Most papers are still squeezing payroll and staff in the wake of the 2000-01 downturn, doing more with less, giving less for the same price, and wondering where all their readers are going.

To The Daily Show, maybe? Here’s the other thing: We marveled at how fast the news becomes just another commodity for the audience to play with as they please. Remake the Howard Dean scream into an MP3. Turn the State of the Union into a comedy routine. Link to stupid newspaper stories on a weblog, add snark and enjoy. The audience thinks of your product as theirs (and they should; they paid for it), and is unimpressed by the provider. Which has always been true, but now it’s really true. When Janet Jackson showed her boob, she really gave it to the entire world.

My personal Nall family genealogist, Cousin John, tells me all Nalls in this country are at least somewhat related.

Oh, thank God. The next family reunion should be ever so much more fun.