First things first: Let’s all wish Kirk a happy mumble-mumble birthday. Happy birthday, old buddy.

Then, let’s turn to this remarkable column, by Frank Bruni, about Ted Cruz. Specifically, let’s look at this passage:

Anyone but Cruz: That’s the leitmotif of his life, stretching back to college at Princeton. His freshman roommate, Craig Mazin, told Patricia Murphy of The Daily Beast: “I would rather have anybody else be the president of the United States. Anyone. I would rather pick somebody from the phone book.”

It’s not easy to come across on-the-record quotes like that, and Mazin’s words suggest a disdain that transcends ideology. They bear heeding.

I was thinking Rubio would beat out Cruz for the nomination, but man — now I’m not so sure. More:

The political strategist Matthew Dowd, who worked for Bush back then, tweeted that “if truth serum was given to the staff of the 2000 Bush campaign,” an enormous percentage of them “would vote for Trump over Cruz.”

Another Bush 2000 alumnus said to me: “Why do people take such an instant dislike to Ted Cruz? It just saves time.”

His three signature moments in the Senate have been a florid smearing of Chuck Hagel with no achievable purpose other than attention for Ted Cruz, a flamboyant rebellion against Obamacare with no achievable purpose other than attention for Ted Cruz, and a fiery protest of federal funding for Planned Parenthood with no achievable purpose other than attention for Ted Cruz. Notice any pattern?

How did this happen to the GOP? Seriously, what went wrong with these people?

We know a little more about the California shooters, but the main lesson is that folks are crazy, and every week it’s crazier, and god only knows what will happen over the weekend. They left behind a six-month-old baby. Have you ever held a six-month-old? You never want to put them down; it’s the absolute peak of babyhood. And they did so, and then went and slaughtered people, and then died themselves.

Kid’s better off. At least, I hope so.

Crashing into bed in four, three, two, one. Have a good weekend, all.

I see how people get addicted to sleeping pills. It’s one reason i won’t take them. The price I pay is an occasional night of insomnia, followed by a terrible-feeling day, but it’s worth it not to be one of those people who can’t cope without Ambien.

Which is why I didn’t update yesterday. I was staring at my laptop at 8:30, the screen swimming in my vision, the tank utterly empty. And now I find myself overwhelmed by current events, an abundance of material.

Boy, Twitter was something early on in this disaster. I don’t think I’ve seen my own feelings tracked quite so closely without actually joining in. The gist of what I saw boiled down to fuck your thoughts and prayers.

As this story is, as they say, developing, let’s hash it out in comments hours from now, which is when you all will be reading this.

Two days off, and I have a million links, most of them good, to share. So here goes. Tuesday’s health coverage in the NYT led with the startling news that after years of increase, the number of new diabetes cases is finally starting to fall. And why? Well…

There is growing evidence that eating habits, after decades of deterioration, have finally begun to improve. The amount of soda Americans drink has declined by about a quarter since the late 1990s, and the average number of daily calories children and adults consume also has fallen. Physical activity has started to rise, and once-surging rates of obesity, a major driver of Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, have flattened. Type 1 diabetes, often diagnosed in childhood and adolescence and not usually associated with excess body weight, was also included in the data.

In other words, a problem once seen as well-nigh impossible turned out to be possible after all. It gives me hope for sensible gun laws. Of course, soda taxes of the sort public-health advocates would like is unlikely here, but when Mexico enacted them in 2013, guess what happened?

Preliminary data from the Mexican government and public health researchers in the United States finds that the tax prompted a substantial increase in prices and a resulting drop in the sales of drinks sweetened with sugar, particularly among the country’s poorest consumers. The long-term effects of the policy remain uncertain, but the tax is being heralded by advocates, who say it could translate to the United States.

“It’s exactly what we thought the tax would do,” said Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, whose team conducted the research.

OK, so with the health news out of the way, let’s get into the rest.

Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom and CBS and 92 years old, with some truly alarming cheek implants, is having his competency questioned. I wonder how often the reporters on this story get to write passages like this:

In an excruciating list of details, the petition said Mr. Redstone is incontinent, requires suctioning to remove phlegm up to 20 times a day, “has lately been susceptible to prurient urges and fixations that he is unable to control” and has lost interest in his prized collection of tropical fish.

The petition added that Mr. Redstone was “obsessed with eating steak,” even while on a feeding tube, and “demands, to the extent he can be understood, to engage in sexual activity every day.”

It was the part about the tropical fish that made me laugh out loud.

Remember Miss South Carolina Teen USA and her rambling, brain-farty answer to some pageant question? She was really, really hurt by your reaction. She and nine other internet-famous people – the leave-Britney-alone guy, Charlie who bit his brother’s finger, et al – talk about life these days.

The Upper Peninsula has one strip club. It is deep in the woods, and during deer season, it is jumping.

Here are all the lines spoken by female characters who are not Princess Leia in the first three Star Wars films. Don’t worry, it doesn’t take long to watch.

Ted Williams, one of my favorite outdoors writers, in an interview with Forbes. He’s old-school, a sportsman who hunts and fishes and prizes the outdoors accordingly. Alas, nature itself is like red and blue America:

…it doesn’t follow that most sportsmen are environmentalists. As a group they tend to be politically naïve and easily manipulated by their worst enemies. Because he fished and hunted and whooped it up for gun ownership, sportsmen ensured the election of George W. Bush—the most anti-fish-and-wildlife president we’ve ever had with the possible exception of Ronald Reagan, also propelled into office by sportsmen.

PETA-type purists may love fish and wildlife but not enough to learn about it. That’s why they oppose use of rotenone to save endangered fish from being hybridized and outcompeted off the planet, and that’s why they oppose culling of overpopulated deer and alien wildlife (feral horses, burros, cats, rats, hogs, goats, etc.) that destroy our native ecosystems.

There’s also a great walk-off story about sharing a name with a famous athlete.

Finally, an interview with the great Jon Carroll, who used to be linked all the time here, but hasn’t been since the San Francisco Chronicle put him behind a paywall. He’s still one of my faves. Now retired. The story has a link to a piece he wrote about depression; oh hell, I’ll just put it right here. Worth reading, if you’ve ever had the big D, or know someone who has, which is to say: Everyone.

I’m sure more will be revealed tomorrow about the California shooting. Now it’s looking like it came out of a fight at a holiday party? I can’t stand this. Talk later, all.

My battery’s dying and my brain’s empty, but I wanted to share this deeply strange photo of David Letterman, taken this week at his alma mater, Ball State.

I really can’t take my eyes off it.

He does look happy, doesn’t he?

Happy Tuesday, all.

I don’t know why, but it seemed this year’s Thanksgiving break was just about perfect, kicking off with my birthday on Wednesday and winding up with family not-thanksgiving today; my sister-in-law came up and we had lasagna, which is traditional, right? Anyway, I’ve been away from the grindstone just long enough, and it’s back to work today.

A few things we did:

** Had a Friendsgiving this year. There were some scheduling changes this year, and so we were freed to have the big banquet in the evening, not at 1 p.m., our usual time. You ask me, I think the candles sparkle brighter on the table after the sun goes down, but I bend to the will of the crowd — I’m just there to cook. But because of the later hour, we had more friends at our table, and it was lovely. The wine was spectacular, I made a stuffed boneless turkey breast and I just ate the last of it in a sandwich. Makes a nice bookend on the weekend.

** Saw “Spotlight,” the film about the Boston Globe’s priest pedophilia investigation. To paraphrase David Simon, for a journalist, it’s like watching porn. Just a really well-done film, admirably underplayed, that doesn’t traffic in shadowy parking-garage meetings or other low-rent cloak-and-dagger stuff. Journalism in stories like this mostly takes place in ugly offices and fluorescent-lit courthouses and other unglamorous places, where everybody dresses badly, in shades of beige, black, navy and oxford-shirt blue. Underdoing it like this gives the brief scenes where someone speaks a raw truth — “And then one day he asks you to jerk him off or give him a blowjob, and now you have another secret” — a great deal of power. The cranks, like the founder of the victims group SNAP, are not de-cranked for narrative purposes, and the strange, twitchy victims, you can immediately see, were chosen by their abusers because they were strange, twitchy kids.

I can’t think of any part of the story that was goosed for dramatic purposes, with the possible exception of one montage scene, where a children’s choir sings and a character comes to terms with the inexorable evil he and his colleagues are confronting. And that was hardly unforgivable, given some of the nonsense I’ve seen in journalism movies over the years.

** Went to the Eastern Market on Saturday. Beheld this:

No comment.

** Started a new book, “Slade House,” which Kate gave me for my birthday. I put aside Margaret Atwood for now, which I now see is worth the very low price I paid for it in Toronto.

** Finally, we cut the cord. The cable cord, that is. Those of you who have dealt with Comcast know what it’s like to deal with Comcast, so I won’t bore you with the details. But we got rid of the digital-cable box, picked up HBO Now and Showtime-via-stream, and Alan picked up a weird-looking antenna, with which we can receive all the local channels, in widescreen HD, and I think that’s going to do us just fine. Net savings: $110 a month. I’ll take it.

And now the holidays start in earnest. I have a jump on my shopping and for once am facing the next month un-frazzled and almost, dare I admit? A little festive. Let’s get into it. And let’s start this week.

Kate noticed this weekend that Wendy prefers men to women. That she does, but it helps that some men let her be a lapdog.

Hope your Thanksgiving was what you wanted it to be, and that you still have a lap-like space on your body. I feel like I ate my weight in butter, so off to the gym for me on Black Friday. You?

Whatever happened to that playlist service where you could embed a sound file in a blog post like this? I feel like we need some 50 Cent all up in here, “In Da Club,” cuz shawty, it’s my birfday, we gonna party, cuz it’s my birfday.

Actually, probably the partying will be kept to a minimum, although the year 58 must be celebrated somehow, and it is the biggest bar night of the year. Some friends and I discovered one not too far from here that has the best jukebox I’ve seen in ages. (Detroiters: Better than Honest John’s, oh yes it is.) So that’ll be da club for tonight. But tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’m cooking, so I have to get up ready to rumble in the kitchen.

That’s middle age for you.

I accept and thank you for all your tributes in advance. We’re all buddies in here.

A few links to get out of the way, some of which you folks have already posted in comments:

Gin & Tacos on security vs. freedom, bringing the Obviously sauce to the picnic:

By giving Americans the freedom to move about as they please and buy whatever they can afford (including some things that could be used to do harm) we are choosing (reasonably) to live with some risk. We’re never completely safe. As I tell the students, the only way to guarantee that you won’t be stabbed on the way to your next class is to create a society in which either cutlery or the right to walk around outside are forbidden. It’s certainly not likely to happen, and that’s why we choose to live with the minuscule risk that it will.

This is all incredibly simple, yet here I am explaining it because half of adult Americans do not appear to understand it. At one moment we appear to believe that we can protect ourselves from a nebulous and ephemeral threat and at the next moment we are willing to increase vastly the risks to ourselves and to society. The same people, for example, who oppose admitting Syrian refugees because doing so might pose the slightest increase in risk of danger from terrorism are most vocally in favor of letting everyone carry any kind of gun anywhere and at all times. We’re so concerned about our security that we are willing to let Syrian refugees die (literally) to protect ourselves, yet we don’t see a problem with handing out powerful, high-capacity firearms to any possibly unstable, possibly deranged white guy who can pass a laughable background check (or use one of the many loopholes in gun sales to circumvent even that) and hand over the purchase price. Our national principles can be jettisoned when we’re confronted with scary brown refugees but when we deal with the desire some of us have to avoid being murdered at work or school our freedoms are sacrosanct.

Neil Steinberg, touching on the same themes:

The right side of our political spectrum is devoted to marrying Islam to terror, Which makes them on the same team as ISIS, because that’s precisely why they commit these acts. Western culture is a big, warm, inclusive blob that absorbs and alters everything. Joan of Arc rides in, clad in armor, her eyes aglitter with passion for the Lord, and 500 years later, Miley Cyrus swings out, straddling a wrecking ball in her underwear. ISIS wants to separate Islam from the West, so men like them can be in charge forever and women never get to drive or sing. Thus they strike at the West in nihilistic acts of terror, counting on the Bruce Rauners of our nation to leap up and shout, “Golly, do we really want all these Syrians here?”

Yes, yes we do. Because the way to manufacture patriotic Americans is by letting their grandparents into the country after their homelands go to hell. My grandfather, Irwin Bramson, didn’t end up in a trench in Poland because a relative, Ira Saks, plucked him at age 15 out of the jaws of doom. So my mother, June, got to be born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1936, and not in Bialystok, Poland, where she’d end up another 5-year-old butchered by her neighbors.

I liked that image of Miley Cyrus swinging out of western civ. Made me chuckle. Of course, others see this as evidence of decadence; Rod Dreher — look up his stupid blog if you want to read it, I’m not linking here — has had his panties so bunchy lately, between terrorism and the hoo-ha on college campuses, that I’ve come up with a new rule: If it upsets Rod, I’m for it. Personally, I can’t wait until he makes good on this Benedict Option crap he’s always threatening and fucks off for good. Unfortunately, I’m sure he’ll be fucking off to someplace with wifi and a sinecure.

Which brings us to a final link, to Foreign Policy magazine, on terrorism in general, arranged in a helpful list:

Occasional terrorist attacks in the West are virtually inevitable, and odds are, we’ll see more attacks in the coming decades, not fewer. If we want to reduce the long-term risk of terrorism — and reduce its ability to twist Western societies into unrecognizable caricatures of themselves — we need to stop viewing terrorism as shocking and aberrational, and instead recognize it as an ongoing problem to be managed, rather than “defeated.”

The Israelis have been living with terrorism for generations. I don’t know that they’re the model we want to follow in our response, but they don’t hide under their beds, either.

So with that, I leave to go pick at a light breakfast before a 9:30 workout. The link between terrorism and birthdays isn’t an obvious one, but some years, maybe so. Not this one, not yet anyway.

Happy Thanksgiving, too. Look for photo posts through the weekend.

I told you Monday would be a bear and it was, and I screwed up and didn’t blog, but then I woke up at 4:30 a.m., and this mega-Jezebel post of terrible restaurant stories fell into my lap. It is, as the kids say, everything. Enjoy and I’ll be back later.

If you don’t have time, control-F to Santa and just read that one. (Wait, there are multiple Santa stories. Santa trucker is the one you want, but they’re all good.)

Short week ahead, and I’m hosting Thanksgiving, so much to do. Expect outages ahead, or maybe just a lot of food pictures. I can’t believe how fast the weeks whip by. On Sunday, I scan the week ahead and before I know it, it’s Thursday and I’m pulling myself out of the pool, telling the old lifeguard-coach, “See you next week, Tim.” That’s when my weekend starts, mentally, although two days of work remain at that point. But the attitude is different, no longer a climb but a coast. And then it’s Friday, and I head out to meet pals at a venerable local watering hole. The view across the street:

The scenery around here isn’t for everyone, but it grows on you. The Instagram filters help, too.

I was trying to grab the neon, admittedly in hail-Mary fashion, but I like the way it turned out. Just a tetch of Hopper-ness.

The broad-daylight shot:

But Sunday comes along eventually, and only a short week ahead, but Monday will be a bear. So let’s do this thing.

I work with public-radio people fairly regularly, so this story — about the graying of NPR — struck me. It’s a mix of reactions, equally “that’s too bad, because younger people need to be listening” and “it’s their own damn fault.” The latter is mainly due to the fact one of the local public stations is still playing “Car Talk,” years after half the team died. This seems like the public-radio equivalent of classic-rock stations refusing to move on because the Stones still sound so good, right?

This drives me nuts, too:

Some of the other brand-name talent at NPR illustrates the situation: Talk-show host Diane Rehm is 79; senior national correspondent Linda Wertheimer is 72; legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg is 71, and “Weekend Edition Saturday” host Scott Simon is a relative youngster at 63.

I enjoy 25-50 percent of the aforementioned hosts. It’s true, though, that when I go to a book-signing or other event that features a public radio-popular personality, I frequently feel like the youngest person there.

Any other bloggage? If you missed this, which someone posted in the comments last week, don’t. It’s good.

As is this companion piece. They’re both about people voting against their own interests, both absolutely worth your time.

Me, I’m off to tackle Monday.

As it looks like we have another developing terrorism story abroad, and I know you’ll want to talk about it, I’ll keep this brief. No blog posted last night because I did The Most Detroit Thing Imaginable, i.e., attended a popup dinner thrown by an up-and-coming chef, in this case a Detroit sushi artist. The theme was a Japanese home-cooked fall meal. If you’re expecting the sushi rolls you buy at the grocery, no dice. There was a squash thing in a dashi stock, fried smelt and tofu with pickled onions, everything vinegar-y and tart. Then there was this:

Salmon in three states of curing — none, one-day, three-day. I’m sorry I didn’t get the picture before the wasabi doodle was smeared. As a pop-up is basically a religious ceremony, eating before one has done the traditional Photograpy of the Food is sort of like chewing your communion host. Trust: It was very good. And I ate the flower, too.

Then there was this:

Noodles with sea urchin and salmon roe, as rich as anything you might be served in Paris or New Orleans. Then a little dish of ice cream then home to an early bed, and– psyche! Of course we rolled into the Motor City Casino. But just for a nightcap, and I was in bed by 11.

Let’s all turn our gaze to Mali, and allow ourselves just this one glimmer of grim amusement, from our commander in chief, just four paragraphs, on his favorite Obama conspiracy theory, with a great walk-off quote.

Have a good weekend, all.

So today I awoke to an astonishing 57 degrees at 5:30 a.m. For November, that’s, well, astonishing. But then a front blew in and I walked to the parking garage in a driving rain. To wit:

I hope this isn’t the turning of my marvelous luck of late. I’m hoping it’s just a wet head.

So much has been going on the Syrian-refugee front, it’s hard to keep up. And it’s best I keep my mouth shut, as Michigan has been snatched up in this, and southeast Michigan in particular. So I’ll leave that to you people.

In the meantime, I leave you with an amusing column about Bobby Jindal, a great correction from the NYT (scroll to the bottom) and yet another suicide bombing. Because that’s the way of the world these days.

Let’s get through the end of the week, and keep your powder, and heads, dry.