I didn’t watch the GOP “debate” last night. If I wanted to torture myself, I’d do one-legged squats or something that might have a net benefit in the end. Whereas listening to this year’s crop of pathetic pick-me-oh-pick-me veep candidates just makes you, in what might have been the only decent line all night from what I’ve read, dumber. (That’s Nikki Haley to Vivek Ramaswamy. BURN.)

Also, wasn’t it on cable? I don’t have cable anymore. And the series finale to “Reservation Dogs” was on last night. And I was packing — we’re headed to St. Louis for a weekend wedding. It will be very hot, as is St. Louis’ way. But the event will be indoors and “cocktail attire” is the dress suggestion, so I’m very excited to be getting out all my auto-prom finery, including this Whiting & Davis bag that I scored via a Facebook mom-swap group for something like $20:

The bride and groom are both scientists. Seriously. I’m looking forward to seeing what their friends turn out in. As well as talking to them at the reception, because scientists are awesome.

I baked in an extra day, and I’m not sure why. I was born in St. Louis, but I know it not at all, having moved away in infancy and only returned for brief visits over the years. We’ll be staying in the Central West End, so I have the mosaics at the Basilica on our punch list, as well as Forest Park. I’m hoping to find a bike share. I’m expecting to have a good time.

I spent some time on Google Maps, trying to locate our old apartment in the city. My relatives all moved to “the county” years ago, and spoke of “south St. Louis” as their former stomping ground. G-Maps informs me the neighborhood is Dutchtown. The school across the street, its playground among my earliest memories, is now a Buddhist temple or cultural center of some sort.

Anyway, I have about two hours to shower, stuff my poofy dress into a suitcase and get on outta here. You all have a great weekend, and I’ll take a lot of pictures.

P.S. Trump was in town last night, trying to get UAW votes by visiting a non-union shop that, its owner contends, would be put out of business by EVs. The usual people turned out for this. Right now, The Detroit News doesn’t even have it as the top story on their home page — that would be given to the ongoing Mel Tucker saga. As the kids say, lol:

One individual in the crowd who held a sign that said “union members for Trump,” acknowledged that she wasn’t a union member when approached by a Detroit News reporter after the event. Another person with a sign that read “auto workers for Trump” said he wasn’t an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn’t provide their names.

There are people in your life who are entirely happy with things as they are, and bless ’em, that’s great. There are others who are happy but are still restless, still looking for the next thing, still focused on moving forward.

My friend Michael is one of those. And he’s had quite a journey so far. He attended a seminary high school, thinking he might become a priest, ended up a lawyer, married once, divorced, married again, worked with Coleman Young, served on the Wayne State Board of Governors, did this, did that, came out as gay, divorced again (but remained, and remains, BFFs with his ex-wife), etc. and added a lot more accomplishments and interesting turns to the journey. Let me put it this way: We met in a digital filmmaking class. That should tell you something.

And on Saturday, he did this:

Yep, Michael is now Father Michael, having prostrated himself before God and being ordained in the Cathedral Abbey of St. Anthony, home of the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ, informally known as independent, not Roman, Catholics. (Here’s a story about the church from 2016, and it’s pretty good.)

I was raised Catholic, but this was the only Mass of Ordination I’ve attended. There was a small choir that sounded much bigger, thanks to the operatic voices within; the leader had a basso like Paul Robeson. The homilies were personal and casual; I learned that Michael had been the straw buyer when the archdiocese refused to sell the closed church to the ecumenical bishop, among other things. But it was a joyful, moving occasion, and I’m so glad I went. And now I have a new place to donate clothing, something I’m overdue to get moving on.

Sunday was lovely, sunny and warm, so my friend Bill and I made what will almost certainly be my last trip of the year to St. Clair for some river swimming. The water was about 67 degrees — bracing for a pool swimmer, but as we told everyone who gaped in astonishment from the boardwalk, not bad at all once you got used to it. The current seemed stronger than usual, and the autumn light on the water as a cold front rolled in was stirring. We watched the Lee A. Tregurtha pass, upbound, from the water, and when we signaled for a salute, the pilot gave us one! Just a short toot, but it counted. That is one big ship. I just checked its location on Boatnerd, and it’s closing in on Drummond Island, headed for Marquette.

“This is a very Great Lakes kind of experience,” Bill remarked, and it certainly was.

And that, friends, is one reason we’re putting off our European trip until March/April of next year. So much happens in the fall around here. You don’t want to miss it.

Some bloggage? A little:

Headline: Anti-abortion activists worry they’re on the wrong end of a Faustian bargain. Ha ha ha ha ha, she chortled bitterly. Fuck you.

Ron DeSantis is a horrible, horrible person, who has destroyed a quirky public college in Florida, trying to make it into a southern Hillsdale. However, even Hillsdale has higher standards:

Gone are gender-neutral bathrooms, hallway art that in some cases featured nudity and student murals that had been completed in February and were expected to remain for several years. Student orientation leaders had to remove Black Lives Matter and Pride pins from their polo shirts. A student government election this week pitted a returning student against a new student backed by a newly formed campus chapter of the conservative organization Turning Point USA.

Dan Duprez, a former New College admissions officer, said he was troubled by the tactics used to grow the incoming class, noting that the grade-point averages and standardized test scores of new students were lower than those of past freshman classes. He recalled a colleague showing him an admissions essay that was a screenshot of cellphone notes, “riddled with incorrect spelling and grammar, saying, basically, ‘I just want to play ball.’”

Finally, here’s Vivek Ramaswamy, the only presidential candidate the Michigan GOP was able to lure to its biannual leadership conference on Mackinac Island, promising the moon and stars:

“How are we going to find our way out of this, to win the war that we are losing? First step we have to take on the managerial class,” he said. “As your next U.S. president, if you all put me there, we will shut down the unconstitutional fourth branch, 75% headcount reduction in the administrative state in Washington, D.C. Rescind unconstitutional federal regulations. That’s a majority of federal regulations on day one that we are done with.”

Promising that those unprecedented cuts would “unlock the U.S. economy,” Ramaswamy said they would also clear the way to fully embrace fossil fuels, despite the impact on climate change.

“When you get the administrative state out of the way, we will drill, we will frack, we will burn coal. We will embrace nuclear again in this country without apology. That is how we grow our economy,” he said.

Yeah, sure, he can totally do that. What a winner! Snort.

OK, then, let’s have ourselves a good week, eh? I’ll do my best.

I haven’t been enrolled in Medicare for even a year, and I’ve already had my first fraudulent claim. I nearly pitched an EOB (explanation of benefits, for you healthy people) notice that arrived last week, sent by my gap-policy provider. Then I realized I hadn’t been to a doctor in months, so what could this be?

It turned out to be a claim for $4,500 worth of catheter supplies, made by a medical supply company in suburban Dallas. Sigh. Got on the phone, and ended up talking to someone in a call center that I suspect was on the other side of the Pacific. The woman, reading from a script, kept assuring me I wouldn’t be billed anything, and I kept telling her that wasn’t my concern, but rather that whether my Medicare account or identity or whatever had been compromised.

We ended it with her assuring me this was a glitch, a data-entry error, and it would be handled. Don’t worry.

Today I got another notice, this from Medicare itself, the great monolith, for the same claim, and this time, it indicated it had been paid. Another call, and I said the magic word to the phone tree: FRAUD. This time my call stayed stateside, and a report was made, and… I guess we’ll see what happens.

In other heart-stopping news at this hour, I took my old bike to a new shop for a top-to-bottom list of repairs, and had that great feeling walking out: This is the place I should have been going to all along. The guy not only knew my ancient Volkscycle, he used to sell them. He knew all about my Gatorskin tires, and why they might have failed me twice this summer. And best of all? “When do you think it’ll be ready?” “Eh, couple days.” Still plenty of time left in bike season.

And with that, I’ll cut the boring stuff and ask if you’ve ever seen anything quite as racist as Donald Trump’s new strategy to woo black voters, i.e. flaunting his arrests and mugshot and claiming a bond with them as a result:

Trump has latched on to a narrative promoted last month by Fox News commentators and others in conservative media — that his arrests could boost his standing among African Americans who believe the criminal justice system is unfair.

Trump claimed in a recent interview with conservative host Hugh Hewitt that his poll numbers among Black voters “have gone up four and five times” since his mug shot was released.

That’s not true, as CNN reported.

Gotta give it to Axios, which drives me insane many days. “That’s not true” has a note of mordant humor I appreciated.

You watch: Next month he’ll be hanging with Yeezy again. Or maybe rapping, who knows.

Back to working my way through Michael Wolff’s latest book excerpt. (I wouldn’t be caught dead buying one of his books.) The good parts are always leaked to the media, and here’s a good one:

(Tucker) Carlson put (Ron) DeSantis’s fate to a focus group of one: his wife. When they lived in Washington, Susie Carlson wouldn’t even see politicians. Carlson himself may have known everyone, dirtied himself for a paycheck, but not his wife. In her heart, it was 1985 and still a Wasp world, absent people, in Susie Carlson’s description and worldview, who were “impolite, hyperambitious, fraudulent.” She had no idea what was happening in the news and no interest in it. Her world was her children, her dogs, and the books she was reading. So the DeSantises were put to the Susie Carlson test.

They failed it miserably. They had a total inability to read the room — one with a genteel, stay-at-home woman, here in her own house. For two hours, Ron DeSantis sat at her table talking in an outdoor voice indoors, failing to observe any basics of conversational ritual or propriety, reeling off an unself-conscious list of his programs and initiatives and political accomplishments. Impersonal, cold, uninterested in anything outside of himself. The Carlsons are dog people with four spaniels, the progeny of other spaniels they have had before, who sleep in their bed. DeSantis pushed the dog under the table. Had he kicked the dog? Susie Carlson’s judgment was clear: She did not ever want to be anywhere near anybody like that ever again. Her husband agreed. DeSantis, in Carlson’s view, was a “fascist.” Forget Ron DeSantis.

Don’t really like Wolff and certainly dislike Carlson and DeSantis, but that’s pretty funny.

Ladies and gentlemen, teaching and learning in South Carolina:

Six months earlier, two of (English teacher Mary) Wood’s Advanced Placement English Language and Composition students had reported her to the school board for teaching about race. Wood had assigned her all-White class readings from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” a book that dissects what it means to be Black in America.

The students wrote in emails that the book — and accompanying videos that Wood, 47, played about systemic racism — made them ashamed to be White, violating a South Carolina proviso that forbids teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of their race.

Reading Coates’s book felt like “reading hate propaganda towards white people,” one student wrote.

At least two parents complained, too. Within days, school administrators ordered Wood to stop teaching the lesson. They placed a formal letter of reprimand in her file. It instructed her to keep teaching “without discussing this issue with your students.”

Wood finished out the spring semester feeling defeated and betrayed — not only by her students, but by the school system that raised her. The high school Wood teaches at is the same one she attended.

You know this story, right? A newly adopted law that protects white students from feeling squicky about what their ancestors did is starting to have an effect, even in AP classes. And teachers — good ones — are being targeted, and will be casualties. Which will discourage future teachers. And there’s already a shortage.

But this is also South Carolina, part of the ever-expanding Sunbelt, which would indicate that most Americans would rather pay fewer taxes than have their children attend decent schools where they’ll learn the entire point of education: To be challenged to examine your ideas, compare them with other ideas, decide which have merit. Consider that many ideas that contradict one another both have merit. Not be…what’s the word? A snowflake.

Or maybe we’ll have a situation, over time, like what happened after desegregation: Education academies, private schools where the CEOs and higher-level brains of any southern community send their children, away from the MAGA rabble. We don’t go forward in this country anymore, I swear.

Sorry for the short one today. Busy.

Today was a good day. Walked out to go to my early swim workout and saw a vivid star in the east, which I assume is Venus. Decided I’d try my new iPhone 14 and see if Alex is correct that it can capture starshine:

Affirmative, although a pretty crappy photo overall. Shoulda turned out the back yard light, done a better job of holding still, etc. Well, I was on my way out.

Afterward, a little work, then downriver for something I’ve been meaning to do for a while: Catch a closer look at the under-construction Gordie Howe International Crossing, and whaddaya know, it is coming right along.

It’ll be open by the end of next year, we’re told. It struck me, looking at it, that other than road-building, it’s hard to find an under-construction engineering marvel in my part of the world. But this bridge is 100 percent paid for by Canada. That’s how little they care for the Moroun family, owners of the Ambassador Bridge farther upriver. Much of the work is being done on this side of the river, and the paychecks are signed by Johnny Canuck. Best thing about it? It’ll have a bike lane. I can’t wait to commute to Canada on a bicycle.

Also spotted today: The Detroit-to-Windsor truck ferry.

I’ve seen signs for it, read about it in the papers, but never actually seen it at work. So there you are.

Then I met up with a friend and set off for a photo tour of lovely Delray, but the roads around there are so littered with debris that my bike got a flat 15 minutes in. So it wasn’t a perfect day, but it was an excuse to stop for a taco and Topo Chico at the Mexican cantina nearby. Which we did.

Then pizza for dinner, because why not. I’ll fix the flat tomorrow.

Have a great weekend, all.

I took this photo as I returned to my room in the Marriott during the jazz festival. Those of you who follow me on Instagram have already seen it:

Contrary to the popular belief that Detroit is deserted and desolate, Jefferson was hopping that night. A large motorcycle was idling at the light as I strolled by, with a bumpin’ sound system aboard, blaring “Papa Was a Rolling Stone.” And it only occurred to me later that the opening line of that song is, “It was the third of September,” and this photo was taken on September 3. That’s either an amusing coincidence or a reflection of an exceptionally well-curated playlist.

Anyway, also of note with reference to pop music: The “musty old hall in Detroit” where mourners of the Edmund Fitzgerald prayed in Gordon Lightfoot’s song? That’s it on the left. Old Mariner’s Church. Never been inside, but I bet it’s not musty.

So! Midweek, almost! What’s going on? Well, in Tennessee they’re looking for a Taylor Swift reporter, no seriously, they are:

USA TODAY and The Tennessean/tennessean.com, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK, seeking an experienced, video-forward journalist to capture the music and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. 

Swift’s fanbase has grown to unprecedented heights, and so has the significance of her music and growing legacy. We are looking for an energetic writer, photographer and social media pro who can quench an undeniable thirst for all things Taylor Swift with a steady stream of content across multiple platforms. Seeing both the facts and the fury, the Taylor Swift reporter will identify why the pop star’s influence only expands, what her fanbase stands for in pop culture, and the effect she has across the music and business worlds. 

The successful candidate is a driven, creative and energetic journalist able to capture the excitement around Swift’s ongoing tour and upcoming album release, while also providing thoughtful analysis of her music and career.

We are looking for a journalist with a voice — but not a bias — able to quickly cultivate a national audience through smart content designed to meet readers on their terms. This reporter will chronicle the biggest moments on the next portions of Taylor Swift’s tour, offering readers of USA TODAY, The Tennessean and more than 200 local news sources an inside view.

This journalist must be willing (and legally allowed) to travel internationally.

Huh.

It so happens I’ve been able to live my life almost entirely unaware of Taylor Swift’s output. When her tour barnstormed the country this summer, I dialed up a best-of playlist on Spotify and listened critically over the course of a few days. My verdict: It’s no surprise why she’s so successful. She has sunk a taproot deep into the hearts and minds of women and girls, ages 14-32, and speaks directly to them. And she, or she and her co-writers, or she, her co-writers and her producers, manage to package this communication in almost flawless pop songs. She’s also social-media savvy in ways that only a digital native can be, and projects a persona that says, “I’m not the one who steals your boyfriend. But I could be your best friend.”

I’ve added one song to my Liked playlist, “Anti-Hero,” and will take it off eventually, but for now, it’s fine.

There. Do I get the job? Yeah, didn’t think so. Not video-forward enough.

Want to know everything about Tim Scott’s love life, such as it is? Interesting and amusing WashPost Style story (gift link):

For months, Scott explained, a friend from church had been trying to set him up with a woman the friend knew. Scott had told him that he wasn’t ready for a relationship. Then, late last year, the friend texted Scott the woman’s photo.

“You know what?” Scott recalled telling his friend after seeing the picture. “I’ve prayed on it. Tell me about her again?”

He got the woman’s number. They started talking, hitting it off with discussions about God and using a phone app to do a Bible study together. Scott said he loved her laugh. They had dinner at a downtown Charleston restaurant. She got the steak, he got the swordfish, and they shared even though, as Scott would later learn, she didn’t care for swordfish. They played pickleball, and Scott was embarrassed to find out that he was the “weak man on the court.”

He wouldn’t tell me her name, and the campaign declined to make her available to chat, even off the record. Technically I can’t verify that she exists, except to note that for a presidential campaign to essentially reverse-catfish America would be insane. (By way of corroboration, DeCasper offered that she’s personally hung out with her at the zoo.)

Scott said he had theories about why other campaigns might want to draw attention to his being single. It’s just a way to “sow seeds of doubt” about his campaign, he said, a way “to say that, ‘That guy isn’t one of us.’”

“It’s like a different form of discrimination or bias,” Scott said. “You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack.”

I wonder if she lives in Canada.

With that, I’m outta here. Happy Wednesday.

Another day, another sex scandal at Michigan State. Spartans awoke today to discover USA Today had ripped the sheets back from the bed of their beloved football coach, Mel Tucker. And found him under there, masturbating while having “phone sex” with a woman, a rape survivor, who goes around the country educating college athletes about sexual violence and harassment in sports. Consensual, he says; not so, she says.

I mean.

I read the whole thing, and while I suspect neither party – Tucker or his accuser, Brenda Tracy – is telling the whole truth, at this point it doesn’t matter. When you’re the highest-paid employee (more on that in a minute) at a major university that’s still recovering from the Larry Nassar scandal, you don’t have “phone sex,” or whatever this was, with a woman not your wife. You don’t FaceTime her from your bed, chest uncovered, to complain about your dead marriage. You don’t flirt and comment on her Instagram photos and ask whether she’d date you if you didn’t have the ol’ ball and chain. And so on.

But here’s the thing: Tucker has an insane contract, $9.5 million a year for 10 years, funded in part by two wealthy alumni, the details of which the Free Press had to sue to uncover. He’s the second-highest-paid coach in the country, and the contract is probably responsible for inflating the salaries of many other college coaches. It was forged after a great opening season, and followed by a disappointing one, and now this. At least all the stories so far are pointing out that if Tucker is fired for cause, they don’t have to buy him out. Whew.

I was discussing this with a friend earlier today, and he said, “I guess what we learn from this is, men never learn.”

No, it appears they don’t. At least Tucker is 51, still an age when sex is mostly not a problem. Rudy Giuliani, 79, drooling over an assistant he allegedly called Big Tits, can’t say the same thing. On the one hand, you have to salute the raw biological urge that keeps leading men like this over various cliffs. On the other, holy shit what a dummy.

As another friend said of Bill Clinton at the time the Lewinsky affair broke: “Washington is full of beautiful, sexy, thirtysomething adulteresses who’d have been happy to run over and haul his ashes, but no, he had to pick the 25-year-old intern who was practically doodling ‘Monica Clinton’ in the margins of her notepads.”

He said:

According to Tucker, he became aroused when Tracy made a comment about needing to hit the gym more to look better without clothes on. They then discussed how having phone sex could complicate their relationship, he said, but Tracy suggested once would be harmless and he agreed.

“Unequivocally, there’s no doubt about it,” Tucker told the investigator, case documents show. “She was the one who said we’ll do it.”

She said:

Tracy denies all of that. The call started off normal, she said. But when she sent Tucker a photo of them together from the spring game, she said he responded by commenting on her buttocks and calling himself an “ass man.”

She remembered Tucker’s voice getting deeper and weirder as he continued talking about her buttocks. She asked him what he was doing, and he said he had a “hard dick” and was touching himself.

“You’re touching yourself?” Tracy asked, according to the investigation report. Tucker responded, “Yes.”

Ew.

Once again, however, the larger issue is MSU’s response when they received this report, in July. Did they immediately suspend Tucker? No. Did they suspend him before the football season started? They did not. They only did so after the USA Today story dropped, which is to say: Today.

Well, I hope he’s been saving his money.

After hearing about the earthquake in Morocco, I went into our photos from our trip there in 2019, remembering the charm of the medina, how parts of this thousand-year-old settlement still look like they haven’t changed much. The view from the rooftop of our riad:

I wonder how much of it was damaged.

I was never much of a Jimmy Buffett fan. Which is to say, I didn’t dislike him, but I didn’t buy his records or certainly, lord knows, call myself a Parrothead. The first song of his I remember hearing was “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” which I loved, and still do. But everything else? Overplayed and ultimately drilled into my brain by aggressive radio programmers. I’d purely love to never hear “Margaritaville” again. But I won’t be that lucky.

In 2016, in the days after we returned from Iceland, my friend Dustin took me with him to the Buffett show at Pine Knob amphitheater here. It was …fine, I guess. Nothing objectionable about it. Here’s a picture from that night, with Jimmy out front in blue:

That’s a big ensemble for a singer-songwriter; I count three guitars, keys, two background singers, steel drums, conga drums, regular drums, bass, a shaky-percussion-stuff guy and I’m not sure about the guy at the top left – maybe steel guitar? Can’t tell. That’s 12 souls making music; pretty easy to make a big sound that way. I’m sure this was during the number I wrote about on this very blog at the time:

That said, it was fun, although by the end I could fairly say I was sick of steel drums, the stupid talking coconut and especially the insistent pandering to the locals. By which I mean? The song – don’t ask me to name it, because I don’t know – about beautiful places. The accompanying video montage started with images of Buffettville, beaches and swaying palms and so on, but transitioned to the cool blue lakes and pine forests of Michigan, before ending with a giant map of Michigan, just in case the drunker members of the audience didn’t get it.

But how can you argue with his success? And that, it seems to me, came down to the exquisite timing of certain boomers, who right-place-right-timed it into a fortune. Much of his music was crap, but he was perfectly positioned to cash in on the rest of it. Parrotheads were the original superfan cult, way before the Beyhive and Swifties, formed before social media – or even the internet – made it possible to connect online. (I recall reading one power city for Parrotheads was Cincinnati, stocked as it was with fresh-scrubbed Procter & Gamble sales people whose professional lives were so bland and boring they leapt at the chance to spend a night pretending to be a sozzled beach bum.) Opening the Margaritaville restaurants was a natural move at a time when places like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood were making millions. The books? Why not? His brother-in-law was Thomas McGuane.

Basically, Jimmy was “extending his brand,” as we say these days, years before Gwyneth, Rhianna, Lizzo or any other pop-music celebrity was. Showbiz is gig work, forever and ever, and even successful gig workers can fall off a financial cliff. It’s nice to have multiple income streams. Diversify.

Couple other points to make: I really liked this piece by Greg Olear, on Substack, about “Margaritaville,” both song and concept:

Margaritaville is not a place; it’s a state of mind. And it’s not a healthy state of mind, not a lucid state of mind, not a happy state of mind. “Margaritaville” is awesome; Margaritaville sucks. What’s more, our drunken narrator knows it sucks. That’s why he calls it that, channeling the Rat Pack: to be ironic. He’s not bragging about being wasted on cheap tequila, as it appears at first glance, and as college kids who take to the song assume; he’s articulating his shame—confessing his sins—and by doing so, coming to terms with his pain.

…He is heartbroken. He is wallowing in self-pity. But there is no blame game—not anymore. Unlike certain FPOTUSes that come to mind, he is able to accept responsibility and own the consequences of his actions. There is no festering grievance. There is no embrace of full-on misogyny. He doesn’t start up a podcast and emulate Andrew Tate or Jordan Peterson. He doesn’t take the red pill. He doesn’t text Mark Meadows about barges coming for the Biden crime family. He looks deep within himself, admits the error of his ways, and grows from the experience.

“Margaritaville” is about a brokenhearted guy who hits rock bottom before turning his life around. That’s the genius of the song. The genius of Jimmy Buffett is that he was able to parlay the chill, fun-in-the-sun vibes of his greatest hit into a commercial empire.

It goes on from there, and is absolutely correct, although anyone who watched Reagan youth waving the stars and stripes to “Born in the USA,” an angry, bitter song about the loss of the American dream, can only shrug. I disagree the song is genius; it’s just misunderstood, probably thanks to the bouncy melody, marimbas and all the rest of it. Even “A Pirate Looks at Forty,” another song about regret and bad choices, is embraced by the fans as romantic, not tragic. The marimbas are subtler in that song, but you can hear them in the background, like the sound from a party a ways down the beach. American pop-music fans aren’t deep thinkers. As they used to say on “American Bandstand,” if it’s got a good beat and you can dance to it, it’ll be a hit.

Anyway, farewell to Jimmy Buffett, a brother-in-law whose books far outsold a great novelist, a restaurateur who made a fortune on cheeseburgers, a musician who cashed in magnificently on a few happy-sounding tunes, a guy who toured when he felt like it, paying 11 people to back him up. I don’t know if he had any last words, but if he did, I hope they were “use sunscreen.”

A simple Parrothead couple at Pine Knob, 2016: A cooler, a kiddie pool and a summer late afternoon.

One of the stories in journalism these days is about artificial intelligence, and what it’s doing to the industry, as news organizations race to their ultimate goal of having no actual employees (but still lots of readers/viewers).

My alma mater, the Columbus Dispatch, was embarrassed when the AI it was using to write high-school sports stories (thereby confirming the silent opinion of scores of newsroom observers of the sports department, ha ha just kidding not you Kirk but definitely that one guy whose name I forget) glitched so badly it was turning out stuff like:

“The Worthington Christian [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]] defeated the Westerville North [[LOSING_TEAM_MASCOT]] 2-1 in an Ohio boys soccer game on Saturday,” the story reads.

May I just say that I would buy, and wear the shit out of, a T-shirt that reads “Go [[WINNING_TEAM_MASCOT]],” especially if it came in Dri-Fit. Mistakes like that never would have seen the light of day in the olden days, but apparently this one did, because AI not only wrote that sentence, it published it, too. Oopsie.

Today, The Detroit News had a great story about a guy in Port Huron, the sort who would have once been described as a “gadfly,” who has set up an entire local-“news” website written by AI, right down to fake photos of the non-existent reporters whose bylines appear on the stories.

Here’s “Dwight Dixon:”

And here’s “Jurgen Diggler:”

Can’t forget “Stephanie Love:”

I would link to The Detroit News story, but it’s paywalled, because real reporters have to eat and pay rent. But I’ll summarize the best I can: The owner of this site was hard to find, and was traced through the administrators of a Facebook page connected to another publication, which was eventually rebranded as the Blue Water Current, and it sounds as though everyone involved is a real piece of work:

One of the administrators of the Current’s Facebook page is Kevin Lindke, who works at Blue Water Healthy Living. Smith [owner of Blue Water Healthy Living] said he hired Lindke in June because he liked how the self-appointed community watchdog kept tabs on public officials.

Lindke routinely files public records requests and scours government documents and court transcripts. He sometimes breaks news on his popular Facebook page before the local newspaper.

He isn’t above ad hominem attacks, referring to frequent targets as “Twerp,” “Miss Piggy” and “Lying Little Munchkin.” He disparages public officials daily as drunks, philanderers and pedophile sympathizers.

(May I just say? We waste a lot of time talking about whether we’re courting civil war or whatever, but if someone called me or anyone else a pedophile without producing a rap sheet to back it up, I’d be on their doorstep with an axe, not hiring that person. So I’m already inclined to think everyone in this story is not what you’d call quality folks.)

Lindke says his goal is to be a “trusted and respected local news source,” but so far it’s not going well, as the AI is producing copy like this:

“The occurrence of the storm on July 20th, a date forever marked in our collective memory, bore witness to the unwelcomed presence of golf-ball sized hail.”

Also, Lindke referred to his “staff” thusly:

“We’ve assembled a top-tier team of writers,” he wrote on Aug. 4.

Anyway, I don’t want to bite the whole News story. I visited Blue Water Current and found a story about the death of Jimmy Buffett. Here’s the top:

I screenshot it because another thing in the DN story is, this guy pulls down stories without explanation. The rest of it doesn’t improve, but it’s a good reminder that AI only regurgitates what it’s learned by reading human-written prose, and hoo-boy is this a good reminder of how shitty that can be. Besides that “iconic” and dumb alliteration in the lead, I also spotted “outpouring,” “arguably,” and this kicker:

In the wake of his passing, one thing is clear: Jimmy Buffett’s music and spirit will continue to inspire and bring joy to generations to come. So, here’s to Jimmy Buffett, the master of chill. Raise your margarita in his honor.

In other words, we have taught AI all this stuff. And people think great writing doesn’t matter anymore.

Boy, do I owe you guys a blog. I just put the last huge work obligation of summer in my rear-view mirror, and am looking forward to a very relaxed September. It is…my summer. I don’t care if it’s not as warm as August. It will be perfectly pleasant and it will belong to me.

My huge work obligation? I was working, through a contractor, on the social-media team for the Detroit Jazz Festival this past weekend. What that meant was up early and grind, grind, grind out content for all the channels, trying to cover three stages with 60 performers, drop the sponsors’ names, tag the performers so they share, etc. As someone who spent her career basically answering one question – What can I write that people might want to read? – it’s a little dizzying to consider the dozens that come with this hybrid of journalism, marketing and diplomacy. So I didn’t consider it (too much) and just tried to enjoy the music, which was pretty great. The artist in residence this year was a jazz drummer and hip-hop producer, and his three day-closing sets got progressively more hip-hop as the festival went on. I absolutely respect his vision that jazz and hip-hop have more in common than not, but I was also amused that at his closing-night show, he put a rapper on stage who introduced her new single, “Drunk AF.” I’m sure Billie Holiday was laughing somewhere on the astral plane.

The gig came with perks, including four nights’ lodging at the hotel in the RenCen, the hulking skyscraper complex at the foot of Woodward Avenue (and next door to the festival venue). It’s been a local joke since the day it opened that it’s almost impossible not to get lost there, and it took me about 24 hours to get my bearings. Just to give you an idea: The hotel’s “motor lobby” was on the first floor. The actual lobby was on the third. You took different elevators depending on whether your room was on the east or west side of the tower. Also, there are floors below the first which are not basement levels. But I figured it out well enough to guide an elderly couple to the Panera, so: Win.

You step out the back door and hello, what’s that:

Yes, cruise ships – one cruise ship, anyway – have discovered the Great Lakes. It’s so weird to see the Octantis go by on its voyages up and down the lakes. The ports of call leave something to be desired; I mean, there’s a few cities with halfway-decent downtowns, Mackinac Island and…I’m stumped. But, and this is something else I learned this weekend, via the TV in my room, tuned to CNN: Viking’s market niche is well-to-do seniors who don’t want to see children running around, nor onboard casinos. So the Great Lakes cruises, which are very expensive, concentrate on education and relaxation. I hope the guests enjoyed the jazz festival.

Here’s something else I saw wandering the de facto GM showroom on Level A (the RenCen being GM’s corporate headquarters):

That’s a pickup truck, and I was standing directly in front of it. The hood was about at my nose level, and I am not a short person. It boggles the mind that people who don’t need to haul around landscaping supplies or anything heavier than a laptop want vehicles like this, and yet: They do. Trucks and SUVs are the profit engine of the American auto industry. I mean, imagine parallel parking that thing. (Shudder.) And I’m an excellent parallel parker.

I have some more thoughts, including about Jimmy Buffett, but I’ll save them for another day. For now, it’s time to enjoy summer. Also, do some laundry.