In the admittedly tiny readership of Those Who Read Knight-Ridder Editors Monthly Reports, the editor of the Philadelphia Daily News is a legend. At least when I was reading them, Zach Stalberg used to salt the standard chest-thumping on circulation spikes, noteworthy stories and the like with items he called “It’s a tough town” — usually police briefs about, oh, street toughs attempting to knock a window-washer off his perch with a snowball, or a mugging victim trying to get help from a passerby, who mugs him a second time. Like that.

So it’s in that tradition that I offer this chuckle from the Free Press this morning. A man calls Comcast to complain about losing his cable in the middle of the Michigan State game, and gets this reply on his voice mail:

“I cut your cable, you mother(bleeping) mother(bleeper), mother(bleeper). I cut your cable, you won’t be (unintelligible) mother(bleeper), mother(bleeper), mother(bleeper), mother(bleeper), mother(bleeper).”

Tough town bonus points: It was a woman’s voice!

Kate’s jack-o-lantern started life as a traditional, smiling face with the standard bad dental work. And then it was…vandalized. Actually, I kind of like the new face, but Kate is not amused. At all.

I may never eat again.

What a divine confluence of elements at Wallace House tonight — a fine seminar by history professor and Middle East expert Juan Cole, two presentations by Fellows with Mideast roots, followed by a dinner to end all dinners, presented by our Turkish Fellow and his wife, and our Palestinian Fellow.

Since I’m prohibited by the rules from discussing the lectures — if you hit Prof. Cole’s site, you can get the gist of this hugely well-informed and widely read source — let’s just cut straight to the menu, shall we?

Eggplant salad, jajik (a runny yogurt-cucumber thing), hummus, potato salad, green salad, Turkish boerek (a phyllo-cheese thing), stewed lamb, rice with the pine nut thing going on, and your Turkish grandma’s rice pudding for dessert. Lots of wine.

I’m here to tell you, it was an iftar (the fast-breaking meal of Ramadan) worthy of a sultan. We should all sit down at the table of brotherhood more often, I tell you.

I don’t read business sections terribly closely, but this item from the NYT caught my eye this morning. It’s about the attitudes of workers in their 20s and 30s — their attitudes toward their employers, that is. A taste:

These younger workers are often viewed as demanding, self-absorbed and presumptuous, but also as ambitious, free-thinking and eager to learn. They form “a dramatically different labor market that is changing not just the way people are hired and fired, but also how they view their jobs, their employers and their careers,” … Because of an unsettled economy and an employment market that has not been kind to these workers, they think there is no reward for loyalty and are reluctant to make long-term commitments. Though they have been called disloyal and unwilling to pay their dues, the reality is that they are adapting to a workplace in which “corporations broke the old arrangement unilaterally…They’ve seen what’s gone on with their parents’ generation, and a lack of trust in the corporation is a perfectly rational response to that.”

I remember, at one point in the last few years, thinking that eventually the bean-counters — who were able to put a price on what their employees were worth down to the damn penny, and calculate so neatly how much they could afford to lose if they raised the cost of health care while lowering the cost-of-living raises — would have to finally put a price on what the rest of it would end up costing. In other words, they’d have to face the music and realize that while they were slashing costs to make the quarterly numbers, they were breeding a culture of distrust and indifference in their own work force.

Looks like that’s finally happened.

Ha.

Tell someone you spent a long weekend in Chicago, and everybody assumes your favorite part was the museum, or the nightlife, or the blues. Not me. I loved the Board of Trade.

I confess: I’ve never really understood commodities trading. There was a Scott Turow book with a commodities subplot that I was able to follow if I read very slowly and moved my lips, but as soon as I closed it for the last time, it all flew smack out of my head. I know commodities are, basically, “things that spoil if you’re not careful” and hence have very shifty prices. One rainstorm can send the price of corn all over the map. This is what I know, and that’s about all I know.

But I also know the price of corn is set at the Chicago Board of Trade, and it involves men screaming into one another’s faces, and if you haven’t seen it yourself, I recommend it. It’s so totally cool.

They brought us in and showed us an instructional video, and even now, I still don’t entirely get it. We were introduced to “hedgers” and “speculators” and the concept of price discovery and open outcry and… I forget. Anyway, I can sort of sketch the broadest outlines of the market system, but the instructional video is the stuff you have to sit through. At 9:25 or so, they bring you into the visitor’s gallery, which overlooks the floor. Trading starts at 9:30. The floor is pretty crowded at five minutes to, and the pits fill steadily, everybody relaxed and cool and chatting with each other, and then you notice it’s 5-4-3-2-1 time and BRANG it’s 9:30:00 and BOOM everybody starts shouting at everybody else, waving their hands and throwing these white-guy gang signs (closed fist, open palms, different finger combinations) and somehow, everyone understands exactly what’s going on.

Bushels of grain and truckloads of pork bellies are promised for three months, six months, however many months down the road. Runners scurry to and fro. More shouting.

I looked at the clock. Forty-five seconds had passed.

I was entranced, but as I still had a pretty raw throat from my cold, just watching gave me a certain sympathetic pain.

Several of the overseas fellows were appalled. “It’s cruel,” they said. “Why can’t it be replaced by an electronic system?” I suspect maybe some day it will. But it won’t be worth watching then. I’m glad I got a chance.

There’s a statue atop the Board of Trade building. It’s Ceres. Goddess of grain. And, maybe, shouting.

A commenter on the Smart thread tries to take it in a whole new direction. To save you the trip, here’s the text:

Okay, I know this comment isn’t germane to the topic, but…I don’t know where else to go. Am I the only one who thinks Ben Smith’s writing is not just bad, but embarassingly bad? I can never make it through one of his columns. I typically skim through his sports columns to glean a little info on I.U. basketball or whatever…but I often don’t have the stomach for even skimming. I skim through his restaurant reviews only to see how often he’s going to address his wife as “Jules”. I’d write the J-G’s editors, but clearly they have no taste, else they would have fired his wannabe-Midwestern-Faulkner ass a long time ago. Warden can be even worse. Penhollow’s headed that way, too. What’s up? Have they no taste?

Ahem. OK, then, let’s bring it on. First, the stipulation that I like Ben Smith — a sportswriter for the Fort’s Journal Gazette, my paper’s competition — a lot; he’s a really nice guy in a business where you don’t always have to be. Second, keep in mind he’s mostly writing about sports, and high-school sports at that, and your heart has to go out to anyone trying to squeeze drama out of a high-school basketball game, and YES, I saw “Hoosiers” and NO, I didn’t cry, so just shut your piehole.

I like Ben. You have to know that. “It’s just that style,” said Alan, just now.

“That style.

“That style.”

Yes, that style. Ben likes to write with great fanfare and flourish, and sometimes his reach exceeds his grasp. A writer’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s an editor for? The problem is, a good editor is hard to find. (Speaking as one who’s married to a good editor who’s been job-hunting for two years, sometimes a good editor finds it hard to get found. But enough about me.)

ANN ARBOR, Mich. – Thirty-seven years now, and Kyle Orton is still a bug on a windshield back there, still getting slam-danced so hard his head snaps back and the breath catches in 111,000-plus throats.

Thirty-seven years, and the Wave is rippling around the vast cavern of Michigan Stadium like a whisper of breeze lifting a lock of hair . . . and spatters of rain are coming down out of a sky going from the color of slate to the color of a thief’s heart . . . and the catcalls are beginning to float down now as Orton throws one last pass and the receiver carries it out of bounds and the clock runs out at last on another day to forget here for the Purdue Boilermakers.

That’s vintage Ben, right there. “Thirty-seven years,” the laid-on-thick similes (“like a breeze lifting a lock of hair”), the thundering tympani on the soundtrack (“breath catching in 111,000-plus throats”). This is one reason I rarely read sportswriters, because I tire of all this sweat popping out on a writer’s brow over what is, after all, a football game. My friend Jones, a sportswriter, is always sending me columns by Bill Simmons, one of the guys I do read. He’s got just the right touch (light, in case you haven’t guessed); I liked his review of “Seabiscuit,” which contained many amusing asides, like this:

There should be an Oscar category for actors who lose or gain an absurd amount of weight for a part, if only because it could lead to more goofy acceptance speeches from the completely and utterly insane Renee Zellweger. Who would be against this?

Back to Ben. He doesn’t always work for me, but you know what? I appreciate the effort; I only wish he had a better editor, who could rein in his excesses and encourage risk-taking in other ways. When I’m editing, I always go easier on writers who try and fail than those who don’t try at all. And there are so many of those, the non-tryers, the ones who will phone in (literally, sometimes) a few inches of crap, sprinkled with cliches and predictable quotes, and then stand around waiting for their Pulitzer Prize. And the Journal Gazette is a paper is sore need of more trying, as well as more good editors who can shape the trying into something you might want to read.

Do JG editors have no taste? No comment.

And P.S.: You’re wrong about Penhollow. Penhollow’s got it. He should be encouraged to let his big dog run more often, but he’s got it.

…but Elizabeth Smart’s parents just creep the ever-lovin’ shit out of me. I don’t make watching the Today show a habit, but I happened to be watching Friday morning for the teaser interview with Katie and Young, Dewy Elizabeth, and even though I’d just stepped out of the shower, I felt like I needed another.

If my daughter had been kidnapped, raped and held captive by a crazy homeless man I’d hired to wash my windows, and I was lucky enough to get her back, I’d spend the rest of my life scourging myself in hopes of somehow escaping the guilt over it. Schmoozing with Today show hosts would be the last thing on my mind.

The Smarts are different. The Smarts must love seeing themselves on television. The Smarts can’t stop putting their beautiful daughter on display in beautiful settings — in this case, their lavish (“rustic,” according to Katie) country home in the Utah mountains — and maybe it’s just me? But everything about it felt deeply, utterly wrong.

And who knew? USA Today agrees with me. Interestingly, once again this puzzling behavior is being attributed to “deeply religious” people. “Deeply religious” will go down in history as the antimatter destruction device against any question of your motives. You can’t possibly understand. You’re not deeply religious like me.

Well. I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.

I’m late to this one — I’d planned to blog over the weekend, but not with high-speed internet access in our hotel being billed at $7 for 30 minutes, no sir — so I apologize if you’ve read it before.

Besides, when the man who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “Passion” is struck by lightning, I think that can’t get enough attention. Plus, there are weird, somebody-up-there-doesn’t-like-me weirder-than-weird details:

An assistant director on the film, Jan Michelini, was also hit — for the second time in a few months. The first time, a lightning fork struck his umbrella during filming on top of a hill near Matera in Italy, causing light burns to the tips of his fingers, VLife, a supplement to Variety publications said in its October issue. A few months later the second strike happened, a few hours from Rome.

Memo to Mrs. Gibson: Make sure the insurance is up to date.

I’m going to have to figure out a way to adjust to this pure-blogging thing. The new-stuff first is messing up my narrative thread.

One of the most interesting things about this year is spending so much time with people from overseas. For the most part, they’re sophisticated people who’ve traveled farther and wider than I probably ever will, but they aren’t Americans, and there are gaps in their educational and cultural experience that I find fascinating.

Take this weekend. We had about one hour to see the Art Institute of Chicago, which is a one-day museum at the very least, but hell, you work with what you have. (My friend Greg, who was my host when I visited Paris, showed me the Louvre in an afternoon he called “the roller-skate tour,” and I can’t say I missed all that much.) Of course, one of the stops on the roller-skate tour of the Art Institute is Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” Afterward, at dinner, one of the overseas fellows asked, in essence, What’s the big deal about that one?

The best anyone could come up with was: It’s important because we’ve made it important. It’s an icon because it’s … iconic. It’s probably the second-most satirized painting in the world. (You know which one is the first.)

Noodling around online, I see I could have come up with a much more grad-schooly answer, referencing 16th-century Dutch portraitists and the like, but I guess the original works as well as any: Because it’s there.

One detail, from the elevator doors at the Rookery, my single favorite building of the walking tour. Birds. Get it? Rookery?